Dune

Odrade thought that a great barrier to accepting the fact that you could make your own decisions. Something she would not be required to explain to Murbella.

How do I soften the blow?

There were times when you could not soften it; in fact when it was kinder to rip off the bandages in one swift shot of agony.

“Can this . . . this Duncan Idaho really give me back my memories from . . . before?”

“He can and he will.”

“Are we not being too precipitous?” Tamalane asked.

“I’ve been studying accounts of the Bashar,” Teg said. “He was a famous military man and a Mentat.”

“And you’re proud of that, I suppose?” Bell was taking out her objections on the boy.

“Not especially.” He returned her gaze without flinching. “I think of him as someone else. Interesting, though.”

“Someone else,” Bellonda muttered. She looked at Odrade with ill-concealed disagreement. “You’re giving him the deep teaching!”

“As his birth-mother did.”

“Will I remember her?” Teg asked.

Odrade gave him a conspiratorial smile, one they had shared often in their orchard walks. “You will.”

“Everything?”

“You’ll remember all of it—your wife, your children, the battles. Everything.”

“Send him away!” Bellonda said.

The boy smiled but looked to Odrade, awaiting her command.

“Very well, Miles,” Odrade said. “Tell Streggi to take you to your new quarters in the no-ship. I’ll come along later and introduce you to Duncan.”

“May I ride on Streggi’s shoulders?”

“Ask her.”

Impulsively, Teg dashed up to Odrade, lifted himself onto his toes and kissed her cheek. “I hope my real mother was like you.”

Odrade patted his shoulder. “Very much like me. Run along now.”

When the door closed behind him, Tamalane said: “You haven’t told him you’re one of his daughters!”

“Not yet.”

“Will Idaho tell him?”

“If it’s indicated.”

Bellonda was not interested in petty details. “What are you planning, Dar?”

Tamalane answered for her. “A punishment force commanded by our Mentat Bashar. It’s obvious.”

She took the bait!

“Is that it?” Bellonda demanded.

Odrade favored them both with a hard stare. “Teg was the best we ever had. If anyone can punish our enemies . . .”

“We’d better start growing another one,” Tamalane said.

“I don’t like the influence Murbella may have on him,” Bellonda said.

“Will Idaho cooperate?” Tamalane asked.

“He will do what an Atreides asks of him.”

Odrade spoke with more confidence than she felt but the words opened her mind to another source of the alien feelings.

I’m seeing us as Murbella sees us! I can think like at least one Honored Matre!

We do not teach history; we recreate the experience. We follow the chain of consequences—the tracks of the beast in its forest. Look behind our words and you see the broad sweep of social behavior that no historian has ever touched.

—BENE GESSERIT PANOPLIA PROPHETICUS

Scytale whistled while he walked down the corridor fronting his quarters, taking his afternoon exercise. Down and back. Whistling.

Get them accustomed to me whistling.

As he whistled, he composed a ditty to go with the sound: “Tleilaxu sperm does not talk.” Over and over, the words rolled in his mind. They could not use his cells to bridge the genetic gap and learn his secrets.

They must come to me with gifts.

Odrade had stopped by to see him earlier “on my way to confer with Murbella.” She mentioned the captive Honored Matre to him frequently. There was a purpose but he had no idea what it might be. Threat? Always possible. It would be revealed eventually.

“I hope you are not fearful,” Odrade had said.

They had been standing at his food slot while he waited for lunch to appear. The menu was never quite to his liking but acceptable. Today, he had asked for seafood. No telling what form it would take.

“Fearful? Of you? Ahhh, dear Mother Superior, I am priceless to you alive. Why should I fear?”

“My Council reserves judgment on your latest requests.”

I expected that.

“It’s a mistake to hobble me,” he said. “Limits your choices. Weakens you.”

Those words had taken several days of planning for him to compose. He waited for their effect.

“It depends on how one intends to employ the tool, Master Scytale. Some tools break when you don’t use them properly.”

Damn you, witch!

He smiled, showing his sharp canines. “Testing to extinction, Mother Superior?”

She made one of her rare sallies into humor. “Do you really expect me to strengthen you? For what do you bargain now, Scytale?”

So I’m no longer Master Scytale. Strike her with the flat of the blade!

“You Scatter your Sisters, hoping some will escape destruction. What are the economic consequences of your hysterical reaction?”

Consequences! They always talk about consequences.

“We trade for time, Scytale.” Very solemn.