"Any sign of Mother Superior or her Spider Queen?"
"Negative. We can't tell. I mean it's a real mess. Shall I screen a view?"
"Get me a dispatch. And keep looking for Odrade!"
"I tell you nothing survived here, Bashar." There was a click and a low hum, then another voice: "Dispatch."
Teg brought his voice-print coder from beneath his chin and barked quick orders. "Scramble a hammership over the Citadel. Put the scene at the Landing Flat and their other disasters on open relay. All bands. Make sure they can see it. Announce no survivors at the Flat."
The double click of received-confirmed broke the link. Haker said: "Do you really think you can terrify them?"
"Educate them." He repeated Odrade's parting words: "Their education has been sadly neglected."
What had happened to Odrade? He felt sure she must be dead, perhaps the first casualty here. She had expected that. Dead but not lost if Murbella could restrain her impetuosity.
Odrade, at that moment, had Teg in direct sight from the tower. Logno had silenced her vital signs transmissions with a countersignal shield and had brought her to the tower shortly after the arrival of the first refugees from Gammu. No one questioned Logno's supremacy. A dead Great Honored Matre and a live one could only be something familiar.
Expecting to be killed at any moment, Odrade still gathered data as she went up in a nulltube with guards. The tube was an artifact from the Scattering, a transparent piston in a transparent cylinder. Few obstructing walls at the floors they passed. Mostly views of living areas and esoteric hardware Odrade surmised had military purposes. Lush evidence of comfort and quiet increased the higher they went.
Power climbs physically as well as psychologically.
Here they were at the top. A section of the tube cylinder swung outward and a guard pushed her roughly onto a thickly carpeted floor.
The workroom Dama showed me down there was another set piece.
Odrade recognized secrecy. Equipment and furnishings here would have been almost unrecognizable were it not for Murbella's knowledge. So other action centers were for show. Potemkin villages built for Reverend Mother.
Logno lied about Dama's intentions. I was expected to leave unharmed... carrying no useful information.
What other lies had they paraded in front of her?
Logno and all but one guard went to a console on Odrade's right. Pivoting on one foot, Odrade looked around. This was the real center. She studied it with care. Odd place. An aura of the sanitary. Treated with chemicals to make it clean. No bacterial or viral contaminants. No strangers in the blood. Everything debugged like a showcase for rare viands. And Dama showed interest in Bene Gesserit immunity to diseases. There was bacterial warfare in the Scattering.
They want one thing from us!
And just one surviving Reverend Mother would satisfy them if they could wrest information from her.
A full Bene Gesserit cadre would have to examine the strands of this web and see where they led.
If we win.
The operations console where Logno concentrated her attention was smaller than the showcase ones. Fingerfield manipulation. The hood on a low table beside Logno was smaller and transparent, revealing the medusa tangle of probes.
Shigawire for sure.
The hood showed a close affinity to T-probes from the Scattering Teg and others had described. Did these women possess more technological marvels? They must.
A glittering wall behind Logno, windows on her left opening onto a balcony, a far vista of Junction visible out there with movement of troops and armor. She recognized Teg in the distance, a figure on the shoulders of an adult, but gave no sign she saw anything extraordinary. She continued her slow study. Door to a passage with another nulltube partly visible in a separate area to her immediate left. More green tile on the floor there. Different functions in that space.
A sudden burst of noises erupted beyond the wall. Odrade identified some of them. Boots of soldiers made a distinctive sound on tiles. Swish of exotic fabrics. Voices. She distinguished accents of Honored Matres responding to each other in tones of shock.
We're winning!
Shock was to be expected when the invincible were brought low. She studied Logno. Would it be a plunge into despair?
If so, I may survive.
Murbella's role might be changed. Well, that could wait. Sisters had been briefed on what to do in the event of victory. Neither they nor anyone else in the attack force would lay rough hands on an Honored Matre--erotic or otherwise. Duncan had prepared the men, making the perils of sexual entrapment thoroughly known.
Risk no bondage. Raise no new antagonisms.
The new Spider Queen was revealed now as someone even stranger than Odrade had suspected. Logno left her console and came to within a pace of Odrade. "You have won this battle. We are your prisoners."
No orange in her eyes. Odrade swept her gaze around at the women who had been her guards. Blank expressions, clear eyes. Was this how they showed despair? It did not feel right. Logno and the others revealed no expected emotional responses.
Everything under wraps?
Events of the past hours should create emotional crisis. Logno gave no sign of it. Not a twitch of revealing nerve or muscle. Perhaps a casual concern and that was all.
A Bene Gesserit mask!
It had to be unconscious, something automatic ignited by defeat. So they did not really accept defeat.
We are still in there with them. Latent... but there! No wonder Murbella almost died. She was confronting her own genetic past as a supreme prohibition.
"My companions," Odrade said. "The three women who came with me. Where are they?"
"Dead." Logno's voice was as dead as the word.
Odrade suppressed a pang for Suipol. Tam and Dortujla had lived long and useful lives, but Suipol ... dead and never Shared.
Another good one lost. And isn't that a bitter lesson!
"I will identify the ones responsible if you desire revenge," Logno said.
Lesson two.
"Revenge is for children and the emotionally retarded."
A small return of orange in Logno's eyes.
Human self-delusion took many forms, Odrade reminded herself. Aware that the Scattering would produce the unexpected, she had armed herself accordingly with a protective remoteness that would allow her a space to assess new places, new things and new people. She had known she would be forced to put many things in different categories to serve her or deflect threats. She took Logno's attitude as a threat.
"You do not seem disturbed, Great Honored Matre."
"Others will avenge me." Flat, very self-composed.
The words were even stranger than her composure. She held everything under that close cover, bits and pieces revealed now in flickering movements aroused by Odrade's observation. Deep and intense things, but buried. It was all inside there, masked the way a Reverend Mother would mask it. Logno appeared to have no power at all and yet she spoke as though nothing essential had changed.
"I am your captive but that makes no difference."
Was she truly powerless? No! But that was the impression she wished to convey and all of the other Honored Matres around her mirrored this response.
"See us? Powerless except for the loyalty of our Sisters and the followers they have bonded to us. "
Were Honored Matres that confident of their vengeful legions? Possible only if they had never before suffered a defeat of this kind. Yet someone had driven them back into the Old Empire. Into the Million Planets.
Teg found Odrade and her captives while seeking a place to assess victory. Battle always required its analytical aftermath, especially from a Mentat commander. It was a comparison test this battle demanded of him more than any other in his experience. This conflict would not be lodged in memory until assessed and shared as far as possible among those who depended on him. It was his invariable pattern and he did not care what it revealed about him. Break that link
of interlocking interests and you prepared yourself for defeat.
I need a quiet place to assemble the threads of this battle and make a preliminary summary.
In his estimation, a most difficult problem of battle was to conduct it in a way that did not release human wildness. A Bene Gesserit dictum. Battle must be conducted to bring out the best in those who survived. Most difficult and sometimes all but impossible. The more remote the soldier from carnage, the more difficult. It was one reason Teg always tried to move to the battle scene and examine it personally. If you did not see the pain, you could easily cause greater pain without second thoughts. That was the Honored Matre pattern. But their pains had been brought home. What would they make of this?
That question was in his mind as he and aides emerged from the tube to see Odrade confronting a party of Honored Matres.
"Here is our commander, the Bashar Miles Teg," Odrade said, gesturing.
Honored Matres stared at Teg.
A child riding on the shoulders of an adult? This is their commander?
"Ghola," Logno muttered.
Odrade spoke to Haker. "Take these prisoners somewhere nearby where they can be comfortable."
Haker did not move until Teg nodded, then politely indicated that captives should precede him into the tiled area on their left. Teg's dominance was not lost on Honored Matres. They glowered at him as they obeyed Haker's invitation.
Men ordering women about!
With Odrade beside him, Teg touched a knee to Streggi's neck and they went onto the balcony. There was an oddity to the scene that he was a moment identifying. He had viewed many battle scenes from high vantages, most often from a scout 'thopter. This balcony was fixed in space, giving him a sense of immediacy. They stood about one hundred meters above the botanical gardens where much of the fiercest conflict had taken place. Many bodies law sprawled in final dislodgment--dolls thrown aside by departing children. He recognized uniforms of some of his troops and felt a pang.
Could I have done something to prevent this?
He had known this feeling many times and called it "Command Guilt." But this scene was different, not just in that uniqueness found in any battle but in a way that nagged at him. He decided it was partly the landscaped setting, a place better suited to garden parties, now torn by an ancient pattern of violence.
Small animals and birds were returning, nervously furtive after the upset of all that noisy human intrusion. Little furry creatures with long tails sniffed at casualties and scampered up neighboring trees for no apparent reason. Colorful birds peered from screening foliage or flitted across the scene--lines of blurred pigmentation that became camouflage when they ducked abruptly under leaves. Feathered accents to the scene, trying to restore that non-tranquility human observers mistook for peace in such settings. Teg knew better. In his pre-ghola life, he had grown up surrounded by wilderness: farm life close by but wild animals just beyond cultivation. It was not tranquil out there.
With that observation he recognized what had tugged at his awareness. Considering the fact they had stormed a well-manned defensive emplacement occupied by heavily armed defenders, the number of casualties down there was extremely small. He had seen nothing to explain this since entering the Citadel. Were they caught off-balance? Their losses in space were one thing--his ability to see defender ships produced a devastating advantage. But this complex held prepared positions where defenders could have fallen back and made the assault more costly. Collapse of Honored Matre resistance had been abrupt and now it remained unexplained.
I was wrong to assume they responded to display of their disasters.
He glanced at Odrade. "That Great Honored Matre in there, did she give the command for defense to stop?"
"That's my assumption."
Cautious and a typical Bene Gesserit answer. She, too, was subjecting the scene to careful observation.
Was her assumption a reasonable explanation for the abruptness with which defenders threw down their arms?
Why would they do it? To prevent more bloodshed?
Given the callousness Honored Matres usually demonstrated, that was unlikely. The decision had been made for reasons that plagued him.
A trap?
Now that he thought about it, there were other strange things about the battle scene. None of the usual calls from wounded, no scurrying about with cries for stretchers and medics. He could see Suks moving among the bodies. That, at least, was familiar, but every figure they examined was left where it had fallen.
All dead? No wounded?
He experienced gripping fear. Not an unusual fear in battle but he had learned to read it. Something profoundly wrong. Noises, things within his view, the smells took on a new intensity. He felt himself acutely attuned, a predatory animal in the jungle, knowing his terrain but aware of something intrusive that must be identified lest he become hunted instead of hunter. He registered his surroundings at a different level of consciousness, reading himself as well, searching out arousal patterns that had achieved this response. Streggi trembled beneath him. So she felt his distress.
"Something's very wrong here," Odrade said.
He pushed a hand at her, demanding silence. Even in this tower surrounded by victorious troops, he felt exposed to a threat his clamoring senses failed to reveal.
Danger!
He was sure of it. The unknown frustrated him. It required every bit of his training to keep from falling into a nervous fugue.
Nudging Streggi to turn, Teg barked an order to an aide standing in the balcony doorway. The aide listened quietly and ran to obey. They must get casualty figures. How many wounded compared to deaths? Reports on captured weapons. Urgent!
When he returned to his examination of the scene, he saw another disturbing thing, a basic oddity his eyes had tried to report. Very little blood on those fallen figures in Bene Gesserit uniforms. You expected battle casualties to show that ultimate evidence of common humanity--flowing red that darkened on exposure but always left its indelible mark in the memories of those who saw it. Lack of bloody carnage was an unknown and, in warfare, unknown had a history of bringing extreme peril.
He spoke softly to Odrade. "They have a weapon we have not discovered."
Do not be quick to reveal judgment. Hidden judgment often is more potent. It can guide reactions whose effects are felt only when too late to divert them.
--Bene Gesserit Advice to Postulants
Sheeana smelled worms at a distance: cinnamon undertones of melange mingled with bitter flint and brimstone, the crystal-banked inferno of the great Rakian sand-eaters. But she sensed these tiny descendents only because they existed out there in such numbers.
They are so small.
It had been hot here at Desert Watch today and now in late afternoon she welcomed the artifically cooled interior. There was a tolerable temperature adjustment in her old quarters although the window on the west had been left open. Sheeana went to that window and stared out at glaring sand.
Memory told her what this vantage would be tonight: starlight bright in dry air, thin illumination on sand waves that reached to a darkly curved horizon. She remembered Rakian moons and missed them. Stars alone did not satisfy her Fremen heritage.
She had thought of this as retreat, a place and time to think about what was happening to her Sisterhood.
Axlotl tanks, Cyborgs, and now this.
Odrade's plan held no mysteries since their Sharing. A gamble? And if it succeeded?
We will know perhaps tomorrow and then what will we become?
She admitted to a magnet in Desert Watch, more than a place to consider consequences. She had walked in sun-scorched heat today, proving to herself she could still call worms with her dance, emotion expressed as action.
Dance of Propitiation. My language of the worms.
She had gone dervish-whirling on a dune until hunger shattered her memory-trance. And little worms were spread all around in gaping watchfulness, remembered flames within the frames of
crystal teeth.
But why so small?
The words of investigators explained but did not satisfy. "It is the dampness. "
Sheeana recalled giant Shai-hulud of Dune, "the Old Man of the Desert," large enough to swallow spice factories, ring surfaces hard as plastrete. Masters in their own domain. God and devil in the sands. She sensed the potential from her window vantage.
Why did the Tyrant choose symbiotic existence in a worm?
Did those tiny worms carry his endless dream?
Sandtrout inhabitated this desert. Accept them as a new skin and she might follow the Tyrant's path.
Metamorphosis. The Divided God.
She knew the lure.
Do I dare?
Memories of her last moments of ignorance came over her --barely eight then, the month of Igat on Dune.
Not Rakis. Dune, as my ancestors named it.