"High Priest Tuek himself says this," the messenger said. "They have been listening." He waved a hand vaguely toward the direction from which he had come.
All of the group in the hall understood. Rooms could be shaped to send voices from them into other places. There were always listeners.
"What have they heard?" Stiros demanded. His old voice quavered.
"She asked if her quarters were the best. They are about to move her and she must not find any of you out here."
"But what are we to do?" Stiros asked.
"Study her," Dromind said.
The hall was cleared immediately and all of them began the process of studying Sheeana. The pattern born here would print itself on all of their lives over the subsequent years. The routine that took shape around Sheeana produced changes felt in the farthest reaches of the Divided God's influence. Two words ignited the change: "Study her."
How naive she was, the priests thought. How curiously naive. But she could read and she displayed an intense interest in the Holy Books she found in Tuek's quarters. Her quarters now.
All was propitiation from the highest to the lowest. Tuek moved into the quarters of his chief assistant and the bumping process moved downward. Fabricators waited upon Sheeana and measured her. The finest stillsuit was fashioned for her. She acquired new robes of priestly gold and white with purple trim.
People began avoiding historian-locutor Dromind. He took to buttonholing his fellows and expounding the history of the original Siona as though this said something important about the present bearer of the ancient name.
"Siona was the mate of the Holy Duncan Idaho," Dromind reminded anyone who would listen. "Their descendants are everywhere."
"Indeed? Pardon me for not listening further but I am really on an urgent errand."
At first, Tuek was more patient with Dromind. The history was interesting and its lessons obvious. "God has sent us a new Siona," Tuek said. "All should be clear."
Dromind went away and returned with more tidbits from the past. "The accounts from Dar-es-Balat take on a new meaning now," Dromind told his High Priest. "Should we not make further tests and comparisons of this child?"
Dromind had braced the High Priest immediately after breakfast. The remains of Tuek's meal still occupied the serving table on the balcony. Through the open window, they could hear stirrings overhead in Sheeana's quarters.
Tuek put a cautioning finger to his lips and spoke in a hushed voice. "The Holy Child goes of her own choice to the desert." He went to a wall map and pointed to an area southwest of Keen. "Apparently this is an area that interests her or... I should say, calls her."
"I am told she makes frequent use of dictionaries," Dromind said. "Surely, that cannot be a -"
"She is testing us," Tuek said. "Do not be fooled."
"But Lord Tuek, she asks the most childish questions of Cania and Alhosa."
"Do you question my judgment, Dromind?"
Belatedly, Dromind realized he had overstepped the proper bounds. He fell silent but his expression said many more words were compressed within him.
"God has sent her to weed out some evil that has crept into the ranks of the anointed," Tuek said. "Go! Pray and ask your self if that evil has lodged itself within you."
When Dromind had gone, Tuek summoned a trusted aide. "Where is the Holy Child?"
"She has gone out into the desert, Lord, to commune with her Father."
"To the southwest?"
"Yes, Lord."
"Dromind must be taken far out to the east and left on the sand. Plant several thumpers to make sure he never returns."
"Dromind, Lord?"
"Dromind."
Even after Dromind was translated into the Mouth of God, the priests continued to follow his original injunction. They studied Sheeana.
Sheeana also studied.
Gradually, so gradually that she could not identify the point of transition, she recognized her great power over those around her. At first, it was a game, a continual Children's Day with adults jumping to obey each childish whim. But it appeared that no whim was too difficult.
Did she require a rare fruit for her table?
The fruit was served to her on a golden dish.
Did she glimpse a child far below on the teeming streets and require that child as a playmate?
That child was hustled up to Sheeana's temple quarters. When fear and shock passed, the child might even join in some game, which the priests and priestesses observed intently. Innocent skipping about on the rooftop garden, giggling whispers - all were subjected to intense analysis. Sheeana found the awe of such children a burden. She seldom called the same child back to her, preferring to learn new things from new playmates.
The priests achieved no consensus about the innocence of such encounters. The playmates were put through fearful interrogation until Sheeana discovered this and raged at her guardians.
Inevitably, word of Sheeana spread throughout Rakis and off-planet. The Sisterhood's reports accumulated. The years passed in a kind of sublimely autocratic routine - feeding Sheeana's curiosity. It was a curiosity that appeared to have no limits. None of those among the immediate attendants thought of this as education: Sheeana teaching the priests of Rakis and they teaching her. The Bene Gesserit, however, observed this aspect of Sheeana's life at once and watched it closely.
"She is in good hands. Leave her there until she is ready for us," Taraza ordered. "Keep a defense force on constant alert and see that I get regular reports."
Not once did Sheeana reveal her true origins nor what Shaitan had done to her family and neighbors. That was a private thing between Shaitan and herself. She thought of her silence as payment for having been spared.
Some things paled for Sheeana. She made fewer trips into the desert. Curiosity continued but it became obvious that an explanation of Shaitan's behavior toward her might not be found on the open sand. And although she knew there were embassies of other powers on Rakis, the Bene Gesserit spies among her attendants made sure that Sheeana did not express too much interest in the Sisterhood. Soothing answers to dampen such interest were provided and metered out to Sheeana as required.
The message from Taraza to her observers on Rakis was direct and pointed: "The generations of preparation have become the years of refinement. We will move only at the proper moment. There is no longer any doubt that this child is the one."
***
The overcast sky lifted as the sun of Gammu climbed, picking up the scents of grass and surrounding forest extracted and condensed by the morning dampness.
Duncan Idaho stood at a Forbidden Window inhaling the smells. This morning Patrin had told him: "You are fifteen years of age. You must consider yourself a young man. You no longer are a child."
"Is it my birthday?"
They were in Duncan's sleeping chamber where Patrin had just aroused him with a glass of citrus juice.
"I do not know your birthday."
"Do gholas have birthdays?"
Patrin remained silent. It was forbidden to speak of gholas with the ghola.
"Schwangyu says you can't answer that question," Duncan said.
Patrin spoke with obvious embarrassment. "The Bashar wishes me to tell you that your training class will be delayed this morning. He wishes you to do the leg and knee exercises until you are called."
"I did those yesterday!"
"I merely convey the Bashar's orders." Patrin took the empty glass and left Duncan alone.
Duncan dressed quickly. They would expect him for breakfast in the Commissary. Damn them! He did not need their breakfast. What was the Bashar doing? Why couldn't he start the classes on time? Leg and knee exercises! That was just make-work because Teg had some other unexpected duty. Angrily, Duncan took a Forbidden Route to a Forbidden Window. Let the damned guards be punished!
He found the odors coming through the open window evocative but could not place the memories that lurked at the edges of his awareness. He knew there were memories. Duncan found this frightening but magnetic - like walking along the edge of a cliff or openly confronting Schwangyu with his defiance. He had never walked along the edge of a cliff nor openly confronted Schwangyu with defiance, but he could imagine such things. Just seeing a filmbook holophoto of a cliff-edge path was enough to make his stomach tighten. As for Schwangyu, he often imagined angry disobedience and suffered the same physical reaction.
Someone else is in my mind, he thought.
Not just in his mind - in his body. He could sense other experiences as though he had just awakened, knowing he had dreamed but unable to recall the dream. This dream-stuff called up knowledge that he knew he could not possess.
Yet he did possess it.
He could name some of the trees he smelled out there but those names were not in the library's records.
This Forbidden Window was forbidden because it pierced an outer wall of the Keep and could be opened. It was often open, as now, for ventilation. The window was reached from his room by climbing over a balcony rail and slipping through a storeroom air shaft. He had learned to do this without the slightest disturbance of rail or storeroom or shaft. Quite early, it had been made clear to him that those trained by the Bene Gesserit could read extremely small signs. He could read some of those signs himself, thanks to the teachings of Teg and Lucilla.
Standing well back in the shadows of the upper hallway, Duncan focused on rolling slopes of forest climbing to rocky pinnacles. He found the forest compelling. The pinnacles beyond it possessed a magical quality. It was easy to imagine that no human had ever touched that land. How good it would be to lose himself there, to be only his own person without worrying that another person dwelled within him. A stranger there.
With a sigh, Duncan turned away and returned to his room along his secret route. Only when he was back in the safety of his room did he allow himself to say that he had done it once more. No one would be punished for this venture.
Punishments and pain, which hung like an aura around the places forbidden to him, only made Duncan exercise extreme caution when he broke the rules.
He did not like to think of the pain Schwangyu would cause him if she discovered him at a Forbidden Window. Even the worst pain, though, would not cause him to cry out, he told himself. He had never cried out even at her nastier tricks. He merely stared back at her, hating her but absorbing her lesson. To him, Schwangyu's lesson was direct: Refine his ability to move unobserved, unseen and unheard, leaving no spoor to betray his passage.
In his room, Duncan sat on the edge of his cot and contemplated the blank wall in front of him. Once, when he had stared at that wall, an image had formed there - a young woman with light amber hair and sweetly rounded features. She looked out of the wall at him and smiled. Her lips moved without sound. Duncan already had learned lip reading, though, and he read the words clearly.
"Duncan, my sweet Duncan."
Was that his mother? he wondered. His real mother?
Even gholas had real mothers somewhere back there. Lost in the time behind the axlotl tanks there had been a living woman who bore him and... and loved him. Yes, loved him because he was her child. If that face on the wall was his mother, how had her image found its way there? He could not identify the face but he wanted it to be his mother.
The experience frightened him but fear did not prevent him from wanting to repeat it. Whoever that young woman was, her fleeting presence tantalized him. The stranger within him knew that young woman. He felt sure of this. Sometimes, he wanted to be that stranger only for an instant - long enough to gather up all of those hidden memories - but he feared this desire. He would lose his real self, he thought, if the stranger entered his awareness.
Would that be like death? he wondered.
Duncan had seen death before he was six. His guards had repelled intruders and one of the guards was killed. Four intruders died as well. Duncan had watched the five bodies brought into the Keep - flaccid muscles, arms dragging. Some essential thing was gone from them. Nothing remained to call up memories - self-memories or stranger-memories.
The five were taken somewhere deep within the Keep. He heard a guard say later that the four intruders were loaded with "shere." That was his first encounter with the idea of an Ixian Probe.
"An Ixian Probe can raid the mind even of a dead person," Geasa explained. "Shere is a drug that protects you from the probe. Your cells will be totally dead before the drug effect is gone."
Adroit listening told Duncan the four intruders were being probed in other ways as well. These other ways were not explained to him but he suspected this must be something secret to the Bene Gesserit. He thought of it as another hellish trick of the Reverend Mothers. They must animate the dead and extract information from the unwilling flesh. Duncan visualized depersonalized muscles performing at the will of a diabolical observer.
The observer was always Schwangyu.
Such images filled Duncan's mind despite every effort by his teachers to dispel "foolishness invented by the ignorant." His teachers said these wild stories were valuable only to create fear of the Bene Gesserit among the uninitiated. Duncan refused to believe that he was of the initiated. Looking at a Reverend Mother he always thought: I'm not one of them!
Lucilla was most persistent lately. "Religion is a source of energy," she said. "You must recognize this energy. It can be directed for your own purposes."
Their purposes, not mine, he thought.
He imagined his own purposes and projected his own images of himself triumphant over the Sisterhood, especially over Schwangyu. Duncan felt that his imaginative projections were a subterranean reality that worked on him from that place where the stranger dwelled. But he learned to nod and give the appearance that he, too, found such religious credulity amusing.
Lucilla recognized the dichotomy in him. She told Schwangyu: "He thinks mystical forces are to be feared and, if possible, avoided. As long as he persists in this belief he cannot learn to use our most essential knowledge."
They met for what Schwangyu called "a regular assessment session," just the two of them in Schwangyu's study. The time was shortly after their light supper. The sounds of the Keep around them were those of transition - night patrols beginning, off-duty personnel enjoying one of their brief free-time periods. Schwangyu's study had not been completely insulated from such things, a deliberate contrivance of the Sisterhood's renovators. The trained senses of a Reverend Mother could detect many things from the sounds around her.
Schwangyu felt more and more at a loss in these "assessment sessions." It was increasingly obvious that Lucilla could not be won over to those opposing Taraza. Lucilla also was immune to a Reverend Mother's manipulative subterfuges. Most damnable of all, Lucilla and Teg between them were imparting highly volatile abilities to the ghola. Dangerous in the extreme. Added to all of her other problems, Schwangyu nurtured a growing respect for Lucilla.
"He thinks we use occult powers to practice our arts," Lucilla said. "How did he arrive at such a peculiar idea?"
Schwangyu felt the disadvantage imposed by this question. Lucilla already knew this had been done to weaken the ghola. Lucilla was saying: "Disobedience is a crime against our Sisterhood!"
"If he wants our knowledge, he will surely get it from you," Schwangyu said. No matter how dangerous, in Schwangyu's view, this was certainly a truth.
"His desire for knowledge is my best lever," Lucilla said, "but we both know that is not enough." There was no reproof in Lucilla's tone but Schwangyu felt it nevertheless.
Damn her! She's trying to win me over! Schwangyu thought.
Several responses entered Schwangyu's mind: "I have not disobeyed my orders." Pah! A disgusting excuse! "The ghola has been treated according to standard Bene Gesserit training practices." Inadequate and untrue. And this ghola was not a standard object of education. There were depths in him that could only be matched by a potential Reverend Mother. And that was the problem!
"I have made mistakes," Schwangyu said.
There! That was a double-pronged answer that another Reverend Mother could appreciate.
"You made no mistake when you damaged him," Lucilla said.
"But I failed to anticipate that another Reverend Mother might expose the flaws in him," Schwangyu said.
"He wants our powers only to escape us," Lucilla said. "He's thinking: Someday I'll know as much as they do and then I'll run away."
When Schwangyu did not respond, Lucilla said: "That was clever. If he runs, we will have to hunt him down and destroy him ourselves."
Schwangyu smiled.
"I will not make your mistake," Lucilla said. "I tell you openly what I know you would see anyway. I now understand why Taraza sent an Imprinter to one so young."
Schwangyu's smile vanished. "What are you doing?"
"I am bonding him to me the way we bond all of our acolytes to their teachers. I am treating him with candor and loyalty as one of our own."
"But he's male!"
"So the spice agony will be denied him, but nothing else. He is, I think, responding."
"And when the time comes for the ultimate stage of imprinting?" Schwangyu asked.
"Yes, that will be delicate. You think it will destroy him. That, of course, was your plan."
"Lucilla, the Sisterhood is not unanimous in following Taraza's designs for this ghola. Certainly, you know this."
It was Schwangyu's most powerful argument and the fact that it had been reserved for this moment said much. The fears that they might produce another Kwisatz Haderach were deep-seated and the dissension in the Bene Gesserit comparably powerful.
"He is primitive genetic stock and not bred to be a Kwisatz Haderach," Lucilla said.
"But the Tleilaxu have interfered with his genetic inheritance!"
"Yes; at our orders. They have sped up his nerve and muscle responses."
Is that all they have done?" Schwangyu asked.
"You've seen the cell studies," Lucilla said.
"If we could do as much as the Tleilaxu we would not need them," Schwangyu said. "We would have our own axlotl tanks."
"You think they have hidden something from us," Lucilla said.
"They had him completely outside our observation for nine months!"
"I have heard all of these arguments," Lucilla said.
Schwangyu threw up her hands in a gesture of capitulation. "He's all yours, then, Reverend Mother. And the consequences are on your head. But you will not remove me from this post no matter what you report to Chapter House."
"Remove you? Certainly not. I don't want your faction sending someone unknown to us."
"There is a limit to the insults I will take from you," Schwangyu said.
"And there's a limit to how much treachery Taraza will accept," Lucilla said.
"If we get another Paul Atreides or, the Gods forbid, another Tyrant, it will be Taraza's doing," Schwangyu said. "Tell her I said so."
Lucilla stood. "You may as well know that Taraza left entirely at my discretion how much melange I feed this ghola. I have already begun increasing his intake of the spice."
Schwangyu pounded both fists on her desk. "Damn you all! You will destroy us yet!"
***
On a morning of Sheeana's fourth year in priestly sanctuary, the reports of their spies brought a gleam of special interest to the Bene Gesserit watchers on Rakis.
"She was on the roof, you say?" the Mother Commander of the Rakian Keep asked.
Tamalane, the commander, had served previously on Gammu and knew more than most about what the Sisterhood hoped to conjoin here. The spies' report had interrupted Tamalane's breakfast of cifruit confit laced with melange. The messenger stood at ease beside the table while Tamalane resumed eating as she reread the report.
"On the roof, yes, Reverend Mother," the messenger said. Tamalane glanced up at the messenger, Kipuna, a Rakian native acolyte being groomed for sensitive local duties. Swallowing a mouthful of her confit, Tamalane said: " 'Bring them back!' Those were her exact words?"
Kipuna nodded curtly. She understood the question. Had Sheeana spoken with preemptory command?
Tamalane resumed scanning the report, looking for the sensitive signals. She was glad they had sent Kipuna herself. Tamalane respected the abilities of this Rakian woman. Kipuna had the soft round features and fuzzy hair common among much of the Rakian priestly class, but there was no fuzzy brain under that hair.
"Sheeana was displeased," Kipuna said. "The 'thopter passed nearby the rooftop and she saw the two manacled prisoners in it quite clearly. She knew they were being taken to death in the desert. "
Tamalane put down the report and smiled. "So she ordered the prisoners brought back to her. I find her choice of words fascinating."
"Bring them back?" Kipuna asked. "That seems a simple enough order. How is it fascinating?"
Tamalane admired the directness of the acolyte's interest. Kipuna was not about to pass up a chance at learning how a real Reverend Mother's mind worked.
"It was not that part of her performance that interested me," Tamalane said. She bent to the report, reading aloud: " 'You are servants unto Shaitan, not servants unto servants.' " Tamalane looked up at Kipuna. "You saw and heard all of this yourself?"
"Yes, Reverend Mother. It was judged important that I report to you personally should you have other questions."
"She still calls him Shaitan," Tamalane said. "How that must gall them! Of course, the Tyrant himself said it: 'They will call me Shaitan.' "
"I have seen the reports out of the hoard found at Dar-es-Balat," Kipuna said.
"There was no delay in bringing back the two prisoners?" Tamalane asked.
"As quickly as a message could be transmitted to the 'thopter, Reverend Mother. They were returned within minutes."
"So they are watching her and listening all the time. Good. Did Sheeana give any sign that she knew the two prisoners? Did any message pass between them?"
"I am sure they were strangers to her, Reverend Mother. Two ordinary people of the lower orders, rather dirty and poorly clothed. They smelled of the unwashed from the perimeter hovels."
"Sheeana ordered the manacles removed and then she spoke to this unwashed pair. Her exact words now: What did she say?"
" 'You are my people.' "
"Lovely, lovely," Tamalane said. "Sheeana then ordered that these two be taken away, bathed and given new clothes before being released. Tell me in your own words what happened next."
"She summoned Tuek who came with three of his councillor-attendants. It was... almost an argument."
"Memory-trance, please," Tamalane said. "Replay the exchange for me."
Kipuna closed her eyes, breathed deeply and fell into memory-trance. Then: "Sheeana says, 'I do not like it when you feed my people to Shaitan.' Councillor Stiros says, 'They are sacrificed to Shai-hulud!' Sheeana says, 'To Shaitan!' Sheeana stamps her foot in anger. Tuek says, 'Enough, Stiros. I will not hear more of this dissension.' Sheeana says, 'When will you learn?' Stiros starts to speak but Tuek silences him with a glare and says, 'We have learned, Holy Child.' Sheeana says, 'I want -' "
"Enough," Tamalane said.
The acolyte opened her eyes and waited silently.
Presently, Tamalane said, "Return to your post, Kipuna. You have done very well, indeed."
"Thank you, Reverend Mother."
"There will be consternation among the priests," Tamalane said.
"Sheeana's wish is their command because Tuek believes in her. They will stop using the worms as instruments of punishment."
"The two prisoners," Kipuna said.
"Yes, very observant of you. The two prisoners will tell what happened to them. The story will be distorted. People will say that Sheeana protects them from the priests."
"Isn't that exactly what she's doing, Reverend Mother?"
"Ahhhh, but consider the options open to the priests. They will increase their alternative forms of punishment - whippings and certain deprivations. While fear of Shaitan eases because of Sheeana, fear of the priests will increase."
Within two months, Tamalane's reports to Chapter House contained confirmation of her own words.
"Short rations, especially short water rations, have become the dominant form of punishment," Tamalane reported. "Wild rumors have penetrated the farthest reaches of Rakis and soon will find lodging on many other planets as well."
Tamalane considered the implications of her report with care. Many eyes would see it, including some not in sympathy with Taraza. Any Reverend Mother would be able to call up an image of what must be happening on Rakis. Many on Rakis had seen Sheeana's arrival atop a wild worm from the desert. The priestly response of secrecy had been flawed from the beginning. Curiosity unsatisfied tended to create its own answers. Guesses were often more dangerous than facts.
Previous reports had told of the children brought to play with Sheeana. The much-garbled stories of such children were repeated with increasing distortions and those distortions had been dutifully sent on to Chapter House. The two prisoners, returned to the streets in their new finery, only compounded the growing mythology. The Sisterhood, artists in mythology, possessed on Rakis a ready-made energy to be subtly amplified and directed.
"We have fed a wish-fulfillment belief into the populace," Tamalane reported. She thought of the Bene Gesserit-originated phrases as she reread her latest report.
"Sheeana is the one we have long awaited."
It was a simple enough statement that its meaning could be spread without unacceptable distortion.
"The Child of Shai-hulud comes to chastise the priests!"
That one had been a bit more complicated. A few priests died in dark alleys as a result of popular fervency. This had fed a new alertness into the corps of priestly enforcers with predictable injustices inflicted upon the populace.
Tamalane thought of the priestly delegation that had waited upon Sheeana as a result of turmoil among Tuek's councillors. Seven of them led by Stiros had intruded upon Sheeana's luncheon with a child from the streets. Knowing that this would happen Tamalane had been prepared and a secret recording of the incident had been brought to her, the words audible, every expression visible, the thoughts quite apparent to a Reverend Mother's trained eye.
"We were sacrificing to Shai-hulud!" Stiros protested.
"Tuek told you not to argue with me about that," Sheeana said.
How the priestesses smiled at the discomfiture of Stiros and the other priests!
"But Shai-hulud -" Stiros began.
"Shaitan!" Sheeana corrected him and her expression was easily read: Did these stupid priests know nothing?
"But we have always thought -"
"You were wrong!" Sheeana stamped a foot.
Stiros feigned the need for instruction. "Are we to believe that Shai-hulud, the Divided God, is also Shaitan?"
What a complete fool he was, Tamalane thought. Even a pubescent girl could confound him, as Sheeana proceeded to do.
"Any child of the streets knows this almost as soon as she can walk!" Sheeana ranted.
Stiros spoke slyly: "How do you know what is in the minds of street children?"
"You are evil to doubt me!" Sheeana accused. It was an answer she had learned to use often, knowing it would get back to Tuek and cause trouble.
Stiros knew this only too well. He waited with downcast eyes while Sheeana, speaking with heavy patience as one telling an old fable to a child, explained to him that either god or devil or both could inhabit the worm of the desert. Humans had only to accept this. It was not left to humans to decide such things.
Stiros had sent people into the desert for speaking such heresy. His expression (so carefully recorded for Bene Gesserit analysis) said such wild concepts were always springing up from the muck at the bottom of the Rakian heap. But now! He had to contend with Tuek's insistence that Sheeana spoke gospel truth!
As she looked at the recording, Tamalane thought the pot was boiling nicely. This she reported to Chapter House. Doubts flogged Stiros; doubts everywhere except among the populace in their devotion to Sheeana. Spies close to Tuek said he was even beginning to doubt the wisdom of his decision to translate the historian-locutor, Dromind.
"Was Dromind right to doubt her?" Tuek demanded of those around him.
"Impossible!" the sycophants said.
What else could they say? The High Priest could make no mistake in such decisions. God would not allow it. Sheeana clearly confounded him, though. She put the decisions of many previous High Priests into a terrible limbo. Reinterpretation was being demanded on all sides.
Stiros kept pounding at Tuek: "What do we really know about her?"
Tamalane had a full account of the most recent such confrontation. Stiros and Tuek alone, debating far into the night, just the two of them (they thought) in Tuek's quarters, comfortably ensconced in rare blue chairdogs, melange-laced confits close at hand. Tamalane's holophoto record of the meeting showed a single yellow glowglobe drifting on its suspensors close above the pair, the light dimmed to ease the strain on tired eyes.