Chapterhouse: Dune (Dune Chronicles #6)

Chapterhouse: Dune (Dune Chronicles #6) Page 28

"We merely gather our forces before -"

"Before returning to an arena where you are sure to be crushed... where you cannot count on overwhelming numbers."

Dama's voice relapsed into soft Galach that Odrade had difficulty understanding. "So they have been to you... and made their offer. What fools you are to trust the..."

"I have not said we trust."

"If Logno back there..." Nod of head indicating the aide in the room "... heard you talking to me this way you would be dead in less time than I take to warn you of it."

"I am fortunate there are only the two of us."

"Don't count on that to carry you much farther."

Odrade glanced over her shoulder at the building. Alterations in Guild design were visible: a long facade of windows, much exotic wood and jeweled stones.

Wealth.

She was dealing with wealth in an extreme it would be hard for some to imagine. Nothing Dama wanted, nothing that could be provided by the society subservient to her, would be denied. Nothing except freedom to go back into the Scattering.

How firmly did Dama cling to the fantasy that her exile might end? And what was the force that had driven such power back to the Old Empire? Why here? Odrade dared not ask.

"We will continue this in my quarters," Dama said.

Into the Spider Queen's lair at last!

Dama's quarters were a bit of a puzzle. Richly carpeted floors. She kicked off sandals and went barefoot on entering. Odrade followed this lead.

Look at the callused flesh along the outsides of her feet! Dangerous weapons kept well-conditioned.

Not the soft floor but the room itself puzzled Odrade. One small window looking over the carefully manicured botanical garden. No hangings or pictures on the walls. No decorations. An air vent grill drew shadowy stripes above the door they had entered. One other door on the right. Another air vent. Two soft gray couches. Two small side tables in glistening black. Another larger table in tones of gold with a green shimmer above it to indicate a control field. Odrade identified the fine rectangular outline of a projector inset into the golden table.

Ahhhh, this is her workroom. Are we here to work?

A refined concentration about this place. Care had been taken to eliminate distractions. What distractions would Dama accept?

Where are the decorated rooms? She has to live in particular ways with her surroundings. You cannot always be forming mental barriers to reject things around you that sit disagreeably in your psyche. If you want real comfort, your home cannot be set up in a way that attacks you, especially no attacks on the unconscious side. She is aware of unconscious vulnerabilities! This one is truly dangerous but she has the power to say "Yes."

It was an ancient Bene Gesserit insight. You looked for the ones who could say "Yes." Never bother with underlings who can only say "No." You sought the one who could make an agreement, sign a contract, pay off on a promise. Spider Queen did not often say "Yes" but she had that power and knew it.

I should have realized when she took me aside. She sent me the first signal when she permitted me to call her Dama. Have I been too precipitate, setting up Teg's attack in a way I cannot stop? Too late for second thoughts. I knew it when I unleashed him.

But what other forces may we attract?

Odrade had Dama's dominance pattern registered. Words and gestures were likely to make Spider Queen recoil, crouching back to intense awareness of her own heartbeats.

The drama must go forward.

Dama was doing something with her hands in the green field atop the golden table. She concentrated on it, ignoring Odrade in a way that was both insult and compliment.

You will not interfere, witch, because that is not in your best interest and you know it. Besides, you are not important enough to distract me.

Dama appeared agitated.

Has the attack on Gammu been successful? Are refugees beginning to arrive?

An orange glare focused on Odrade. "Your pilot has just destroyed himself and your ship rather than submit to our inspection. What did you bring?"

"Ourselves."

"There is a signal coming from you!"

"Telling my companions whether I am alive or dead. You already knew that. Some of our ancestors burned their ships before an attack. No retreat possible."

Odrade spoke with exquisite care, tone and timing adjusted to Dama's responses. "If I am successful, you will provide my transport. My pilot was a Cyborg and shere could not protect him from your probes. His orders were to kill himself rather than fall into your hands."

"Providing us with coordinates to your planet." The orange subsided from Dama's eyes, but she still was disturbed. "I did not think your people obeyed you to that extent."

How do you hold them without sexual bonding, witch? Is the answer not obvious? We have secret powers.

Careful now, Odrade cautioned herself. A methodical approach, alert for new demands. Let her think we choose one method of response and stick to it. How much does she know about us? She does not know that even Mother Superior may be only a morsel of bait, a lure to gain vital information. Does that make us superior? If so, can superior training surmount superior speed and numbers?

Odrade had no answer.

Dama seated herself behind the golden table, leaving Odrade standing. There was a nesting sense about the movement. She did not leave this place often. This was the true center of her web. All things she thought she needed were here. She had brought Odrade to this room because it was an inconvenience to be elsewhere. She was uncomfortable in other settings, perhaps even felt threatened. Dama did not court danger. She had done so once but that was long ago, shut off behind her somewhere. Now, she wanted only to sit here in a safe and well-organized cocoon where she could manipulate others.

Odrade found these observations a welcome affirmation of Bene Gesserit deductions. The Sisterhood knew how to exploit this leverage.

"Have you nothing more to say?" Dama asked.

Stall for time.

Odrade ventured a question. " I am extremely curious why you agreed to this meeting?"

"Why are you curious?"

"It seems so... so out of character for you."

"We determine what is in character for us!" Quite testy there.

"But what is it about us interests you?"

"You think we find you interesting?"

"Perhaps you even find us remarkable, because that is certainly how we look at you."

A pleased expression made its fleeting appearance on Dama's face. "I knew you would be fascinated by us."

"The exotic interests the exotic," Odrade said.

This brought a knowing smile to Dama's lips, the smile of someone whose pet has been clever. She stood and went to the one window. Summoning Odrade to her side, Dama gestured to a stand of trees beyond the first flowering bushes and spoke in that soft accent so difficult to follow.

Something ticked off an inner alarm. Odrade fell into simulflow, seeking the source. Something in the room or in Spider Queen? There was a lack of spontaneity about the setting matched by much that Dama did. So all of this was designed to create an effect. Carefully schemed.

Is this one really my Spider Queen? Or is there a more powerful one watching us?

Odrade explored this thought, sorting swiftly. It was a process that provided more questions than answers, a mental shorthand akin to that of Mentats. Sort for relevance and bring up the latent (but orderly) backgrounds. Order generally was a product of human activity. Chaos existed as raw material from which to create order. That was the Mentat approach, giving no unalterable truths but a remarkable lever for decision-making: orderly assemblage of data in a non-discrete system.

She arrived at a Projective.

They revel in chaos! Prefer it! Adrenaline addicts!

So Dama was Dama, Great Honored Matre. Forever the patroness, forever the superior.

There is no greater one watching us. But Dama believes this is bargaining. One would think she had never done it before. Precisely!

Dama touched an unmarked place below the window and the wall folded back, revealing that the window was but an artful projection. The way was opened onto a high balcony paved with dark green tiles. It overlooked plantations much different from those in the window projection. Here was chaos preserved, wilderness left to its own devices and made more remarkable by ordered gardens in the distance. Brambles, fallen trees, thick bushes. And beyond: evenly spaced rows of what appeared to be vegetables with automated harvesters passing back and forth, leaving bare ground behind them.

Love of chaos, indeed!

Spider Queen smiled and led the way onto the balcony.

As she emerged, Odrade once more was stopped by what she saw. A decoration on the parapet to her left. A life-size figure shaped from an almost ethereal substance, all feathery planes and curved surfaces.

When she squinted at the figure, Odrade saw it was intended to represent a human. Male or female? In some positions male, and in some female. Planes and curves responded to vagrant breezes. Thin, almost invisible wires (looked to be shigawire) suspended it from a delicately curving tube anchored in a translucent mound. The lower extremities of the figure almost touched the pebbled surface of the supporting base.

Odrade stared, captivated.

Why does it remind me of Sheeana's "The Void"?

When the wind moved it, the whole creation appeared to dance, relapsing sometimes into a graceful walk, then a slow pirouette and sweeping turns with outstretched leg.

"It is called 'Ballet Master,' " Dama said. "In some winds it will kick its feet high. I have seen it running as gracefully as a marathoner. Sometimes it is just ugly little motions, arms jerking as though they held weapons. Beautiful and ugly - it is all the same. I think the artist misnamed it. 'Being Unknown' would have been better."

Beautiful and ugly - all the same. Being Unknown.

That was a terrible thing about Sheeana's creation. Odrade felt a cold wash of fear. "Who was the artist?"

"I've no idea. One of my predecessors took it from a planet we were destroying. Why does it interest you?"

It's the wild thing no one can govern. But she said: "I presume we're both seeking a basis for understanding, trying to find similarities between us."

This brought the orange glare. "You may try to understand us but we have no need to understand you."

"Both of us come from societies of women."

"It is dangerous to think of us as your offshoots!"

But Murbella's evidence says you are. Formed in the Scattering by Fish Speakers and Reverend Mothers in extremis.

All ingenuous and fooling nobody, Odrade asked: "Why is that dangerous?"

Dama's laugh conveyed no amusement. Vindictive.

Odrade experienced an abrupt new assessment of danger. More than a Bene Gesserit probe-and-review was demanded here. These women were accustomed to killing when angered. A reflex. Dama had said as much when speaking to her aide, and Dama had just signaled there were limits to her tolerance.

Yet, in her own way, she is trying to bargain. She displays her mechanical marvels, her powers, her wealth. No offer of alliance. Be willing servants, witches, our slaves, and we will forgive much. To gain the last of the Million Planets? More than that, certainly, but an interesting number.

With a new caution, Odrade reformed her approach. Reverend Mothers too easily fell into an adaptive pattern. I am, of course, quite different from you but I will unbend for the sake of accord. That would not do with Honored Matres. They would accept nothing to suggest they were not in absolute control. It was a statement of Dama's superiority over her Sisters that she allowed Odrade so much latitude.

Once more, Dama spoke in her imperious manner.

Odrade listened. How odd that Spider Queen thought one of the most attractive things the Bene Gesserit could provide was immunity from new diseases.

Was that the form of attack that drove them here?

Her sincerity was naive. None of this tiresome periodic checking to see if you had acquired secret inhabitants in your flesh. Sometimes not so secret. Sometimes disgustingly perilous. But the Bene Gesserit could end all that and would be suitably rewarded.

How pleasant.

Still that vindictive tone in every word. Odrade caught herself in this thought: Vindictive? That did not catch the proper flavor. Something carried at a deeper level.

Unconsciously jealous of what you lost when you broke away from us!

This was another pattern and it had been stylized!

Honored Matres fell back on repetitious mannerisms.

Mannerisms we abandoned long ago.

This was more than refusal to recognize Bene Gesserit origins. This was garbage disposal.

Drop your discards wherever they lose your interest. Underlings take out the garbage. She is more concerned with the next thing she wants to consume than she is with fouling her own nest.

The Honored Matre flaw was larger than suspected. Much more deadly to themselves and all they controlled. And they could not face it because, to them, it was not there.

Never existed.

Dama remained an untouchable paradox. No question of alliance entered her mind. She would seem to dance up to it but only to test her enemy.

I was right after all to unleash Teg.

Logno came out of the workroom with a tray on which stood two spindly glasses almost filled with golden liquid. Dama took one, sniffed it, and sipped with a pleased expression.

What is that vicious glitter in Logno's eyes?

"Try some of this wine," Dama said, gesturing to Odrade. "It's from a planet I'm sure you've never heard of but where we have concentrated the required elements to produce the perfect golden grape for the perfect golden wine."

Odrade was caught by this long association of humans with their precious ancient drink. The god Bacchus. Berries fermented on the bush or in tribal containers.

"It is not poisoned," Dama said as Odrade hesitated. "I assure you. We kill where it suits our needs but we are not crass. We reserve our more blatant deadliness for the masses. I do not mistake you for one of the masses."

Dama chuckled at her own witticism. The labored friendliness was almost gross.

Odrade took the proffered glass and sipped.

"It's a thing someone devised to please us," Dama said, her attention fixed on Odrade.

The one sip was enough. Odrade's senses detected a foreign substance and she was several heartbeats identifying its purpose.

To nullify the shere protecting me from their probes.

She adjusted her metabolism to render the substance harmless, then announced what she had done.

Dama glared at Logno. "So that is why none of these things work with the witches! And you never suspected!" The rage was an almost physical force directed at the hapless aide.

"It is one of the immune systems with which we combat disease," Odrade said.

Dama hurled her glass to the tiles. She was some time regaining composure. Logno retreated slowly, holding the tray almost as a shield.

So Dama did more than sneak into power. Her Sisters consider her deadly. And so must I consider her.

"Someone will pay for this wasted effort," Dama said. Her smile was not pleasant.

Someone.

Someone made the wine. Someone made the dancing figure. Someone will pay. The identity was never important, only the pleasure or the need for retribution. Subservience.

"Do not interrupt my thoughts," Dama said. She went to the parapet and gazed at her Being Unknown, obviously recomposing her bargaining stance.

Odrade turned her attention to Logno. What was that continued watchfulness, rapt attention fixed on Dama? No longer simple fear. Logno suddenly appeared supremely dangerous.

Poison!

Odrade knew it as certainly as though the aide had shouted the word.

I am not Logno's target. Not yet. She has taken this opportunity to make her bid for power.

There was no need to look at Dama. The moment of Spider Queen's death was visible on Logno's face. Turning, Odrade confirmed it. Dama lay in a heap under Being Unknown.

"You will call me Great Honored Matre," Logno said. "And you will learn to thank me for it. She (pointing at the red heap in the balcony corner) intended to betray you and exterminate your people. I have other plans. I am not one to destroy a useful weapon at the moment of our greatest need."

Battle? There's always a desire for breathing space motivating it somewhere.

- The Bashar Teg

Murbella watched the struggle for Junction with a detachment that did not reflect her feelings. She stood with a coterie of Proctors in her no-ship's command center, attention fixed on relay projections from groundside comeyes.

There were battles all around Junction - bursts of light on darkside, gray eruptions on dayside. A major engagement directed by Teg centered on "the Citadel" - a giant mound of Guild design with a new tower near its rim. Although Odrade's vital-signs transmissions had stopped abruptly, her early reports confirmed that Great Honored Matre was in there.

The need to observe from a distance helped Murbella's sense of detachment but she felt the excitement.

Interesting times!

This ship contained precious cargo. The millions from Lampadas were being Shared and prepared for Scattering in a suite ordinarily reserved for Mother Superior. The wild Sister with her cargo of Memory dominated their priorities here.

Golden Egg for sure!

Murbella thought of the lives being risked in that suite. Preparing for the worst. No lack of volunteers and the threat in the Junction conflict minimized need for spice poison to ignite Sharings, reducing danger. Anyone on this ship could sense all-or-nothing in Odrade's gamble. Imminent threat of death was recognized. Sharing necessary!

Transformation of a Reverend Mother into sets of memories passed around at perilous cost among the Sisters no longer carried a mysterious aura for her, but Murbella still was awed by the responsibility. The courage of Rebecca... and Lucilla!... demanded admiration.

Millions of Memory Lives! All concentrated in what the Sisterhood called Extremis Progressiva, two by two then four by four and sixteen by sixteen, until each held all of them and any survivor could preserve the precious accumulation.

What they were doing in Mother Superior's suite had some of that flavor. The concept no longer terrified Murbella but it was not yet ordinary. Odrade's words comforted.

"Once you have fully accommodated to the bundles of Other Memory, all else falls into a perspective that is utterly familiar, as though you had known it always."

Murbella recognized that Teg was prepared to die in defense of this multiple awareness that was the Sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit.

Can I do less?

Teg, no longer completely an enigma, remained an object of respect. Odrade Within amplified this with reminders of his exploits, then: "I wonder how I'm doing down there? Ask."

Comcommand said, "No word. But her transmissions may have been blocked by energy shielding."

They knew who really asked the question. It was on their faces.

She has Odrade!

Murbella again focused on the battle at the Citadel.

Her own reactions surprised Murbella. Everything colored by historical disgust at repetition of war's nonsense, but still this exuberant spirit reveling in newly acquired Bene Gesserit abilities.

Honored Matre forces had good weapons down there, she noted, and Teg's heat-absorption pads were taking punishment but even as she watched, the defensive perimeter collapsed. She could hear howling as a large Idaho-designed disrupter went bouncing down a passage between tall trees, knocking out defenders right and left.

Other Memory gave her a peculiar comparison. It was like a circus. Ships landing, disgorging their human cargoes.

"In the center ring! The Spider Queen! Acts never before seen by the human eye!"

Odrade's persona produced a sense of amusement. How's this for closeness of sisterhood?

Are you dead down there, Dar? You must be. Spider Queen will blame you and be enraged.

Trees placed long afternoon shadows across Teg's lane of attack, she saw. Inviting cover. He ordered his people to go around. Ignore inviting avenues. Look for hard ways to approach and use them.

The Citadel lay in a gigantic botanical garden, strange trees and even stranger bushes mingled with prosaic plantings, all scattered around as though thrown there by a dancing child.

Murbella found the circus metaphor attractive. It gave perspective to what she witnessed.

Announcements in her mind.

Over there, dancing animals, defenders of Spider Queen, all bound to obey! And in the first ring, the main event, supervised by our Ringmaster, Miles Teg! His people do mysterious things. Here is the talent!

It had aspects of a staged battle in the Roman Circus. Murbella appreciated the allusion. It made observation richer.

Battle towers filled with armored soldiers approach. They engage. Flames cut the sky. Bodies fall.

But these were real bodies, real pains, real deaths. Bene Gesserit sensitivities forced her to regret the waste.

Is this how it was for my parents caught in the sweep?

Metaphors from Other Memory vanished. She saw Junction then as she knew Teg must see it. Bloody violence, familiar in memory and yet new. She saw attackers advancing, heard them.

Woman's voice, distinct with shock: "That bush screamed at me!"

Another voice, male: "No telling where some of this originated. That sticky stuff burns your skin."

Murbella heard action on the far side of the Citadel but it grew eerily quiet around Teg's position. She saw his troops flitting through shadows, closing in on the tower. There was Teg on Streggi's shoulders. He took a moment to stare up at the facade confronting them about half a klick away. She chose a projection that looked where he looked. Motion behind windows there.

Where were the mysterious last-ditch weapons Honored Matres were supposed to possess?

What will he do now?

Teg had lost his Command Pod to a laser hit outside the main engagement area. The pod lay on its side behind him and he sat astride Streggi's shoulders in a patch of screening bushes, some still smoldering. He had lost his comboard with the pod but retained the silvery horseshoe of his comlink, although it was crippled without the pod's amplifiers. Communications specialist crouched nearby, jittering because they had lost close contact with the action.

The battle beyond the buildings grew louder. He heard hoarse shouts, the high hissing of burners and the lower buzz of large lasguns mingled with tinny zip-zips of hand weapons. Somewhere off there to his left was a thrum-thrum he recognized as heavy armor in trouble. A scraping sound with it, metal agony. Energy system damaged in that one. It was dragging itself over the ground, probably making a mess of the gardens.

Haker, Teg's personal aide, came dodging down the lane behind the Bashar.

Streggi noticed him first and turned without warning, forcing Teg to look at the man. Haker, dark and muscular, with heavy eyebrows (sweat-dampened now) stopped directly in front of Teg and spoke before fully regaining his breath.

"We have the last pockets bottled up, Bashar."

Haker raised his voice to override the battle sounds and a buzzing squawker over his left shoulder producing low conversations, battle urgency in clipped tones.

"The far perimeter?" Teg demanded.

"Mop up in half an hour, no more. You should get out of here, Bashar. Mother Superior warned us to keep you out of needless danger."

Teg gestured at his useless pod. "Why don't I have a Communications backup?"

"A big laze got both backups in the same burn as they were coming in.

"They were together?"

Haker heard the anger. "Sir, they were..."

"No important equipment is sent in together. I'll want to know who disobeyed orders." The quiet voice from immature vocal cords carried more menace than a shout.

"Yes, Bashar." Strictly obedient and no sign from Haker that the mistake was his own.

Damn! "How soon will replacements arrive?"

"Five minutes."

"Get my reserve pod in here as fast as you can." Teg touched Streggi's neck with a knee.

Haker spoke before she could turn. "Bashar, they got the reserve, too. I've ordered another."

Teg repressed a sigh. These things happened in battle but he didn't like depending on primitive coms. "We'll set up here. Get more squawkers." They, at least, had the range.

Haker glanced at the greenery around them. "Here?"

"I don't like the look of those buildings up ahead. That tower commands this area. And they must have underground access. I would."

"There's nothing on the..."

"My memory layout doesn't include that tower. Get sonics in here to check the ground. I want our plan brought up to the minute with secure information."

Haker's squawker came alive with an override voice: "Bashar! Is the Bashar available?"

Streggi moved him next to Haker without being told. Teg took the squawker, whistling his code as he grabbed it.

"Bashar, it's a mess at the Flat. About a hundred of them tried to lift and ran into our screen. No survivors."

"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 Dana 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.