Heretics of Dune (Dune Chronicles #5)

Heretics of Dune (Dune Chronicles #5) Page 29

"You have found a new drug," Teg said.

Her laughter was spontaneous and loud, almost raucous. "No, Bashar! We have an old one."

"And you would make an addict of me?"

"Like all the others we control, Bashar, you have a choice: death or obedience."

"That is a rather old choice," he agreed. What was her immediate threat? He could sense no violence. Quite the contrary. His doubled vision showed him broken glimpses of extremely sensuous overtones. Did they think they could imprint him?

She smiled at him, a knowing expression with something frigid under it.

"Will he serve us well, Muzzafar?"

"I believe so, Honored Matre."

Teg frowned in thought. There was something deeply evil about this pair. They went against every morality by which he modeled his behavior. It was well to remember that neither of them knew this strange thing that had speeded his reactions.

They seemed to be enjoying his puzzled discomfiture.

Teg took some reassurance from the realization that neither of these two really enjoyed life. He could see that in them clearly with eyes the Sisterhood had educated. The Honored Matre and Muzzafar had forgotten or, most likely, abandoned everything that supported the survival of joyous humans. He thought they probably no longer were capable of finding a real wellspring of joy in their own flesh. Theirs would have to be mostly a voyeur's existence, the eternal observer, always remembering what it had been like before they had taken the turning into whatever it was they had become. Even when they wallowed in the performance of something that once had meant gratification, they would have to reach for new extremes each time just to touch the edges of their own memories.

The Honored Matre's grin widened, showing a line of gleaming white teeth. "Look at him, Muzzafar. He has not the slightest conception of what we can do."

Teg heard this but he also saw with eyes trained by the Bene Gesserit. Not a milligram of naivete remained in either of these two. Nothing was expected to surprise them. Nothing could be truly new for them. Still, they plotted and devised, hoping that this extreme would produce the remembered thrill. They knew it would not, of course, and they expected to carry away from the experience only more burning rage out of which to fashion another attempt at the unreachable. That was how their thinking went.

Teg designed a smile for them, using all of the skills he had learned at Bene Gesserit hands. It was a smile full of compassion, of understanding and real pleasure in his own existence. He knew it for the most deadly insult he could hurl at them and he saw it hit. Muzzafar glowered at him. The Honored Matre went from orange-eyed rage to an abrupt surprise and then, quite slowly, to dawning pleasure. She had not expected this! It was something new!

"Muzzafar," she said, the orange receding from her eyes, "bring the Honored Matre who has been chosen to mark our Bashar."

Teg, his doubled vision showing the immediate peril, understood at last. He could feel awareness of his own future spreading outward like waves as the power grew in him. The wild change in him was continuing! He felt the energy expand. With it came understanding and choices. He saw himself as the whirlwind rampaging through this building - bodies scattered behind him (Muzzafar and the Honored Matre among them) and the whole complex looking like an abattoir when he departed.

Must I do that? he wondered.

For each one he killed, more would have to be killed. He saw the necessity of it, though, as he saw at last the Tyrant's design. The pain he could see for himself almost made him cry out but he held it back.

"Yes, bring this Honored Matre to me," he said, knowing that this would be one less for him to seek out and destroy elsewhere in the building. The room of the scanlyzer controls must be taken out first.

O you who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your prayers.

- Sign over Arrakeen Landing Field (Historical Records: Dar-es-Balat)

Taraza watched a snow-flutter of falling blossoms against the silvery sky of a Rakian morning. There was an opalescent sheen to the sky that, despite all of her preparatory briefings, she had not anticipated. Rakis held many surprises. The smell of mock orange was powerful here at the edge of the Dar-es-Balat roof garden, overriding all other odors.

Never believe that you have plumbed the depths of any place... or of any human, she reminded herself.

Conversation was ended out here but not the echoes of the spoken thoughts they had exchanged only minutes ago. All agreed, though, that it was time for action. Soon, Sheeana would "dance a worm" for them and once more demonstrate her mastery.

Waff and a new priestly representative would share this "holy event" but Taraza was sure neither of them knew the real nature of what they were about to witness. Waff bore watching, of course. He still carried that air of irritated disbelief in everything he saw or heard. It was a strange mixture with his underlying awe at being on Rakis. The catalyst was obviously his rage over the fact that fools ruled here.

Odrade returned from the meeting room and stopped beside Taraza.

"I am extremely disquieted by the reports from Gammu," Taraza said. "Do you bring something new?"

"No. Things are obviously still chaotic there."

"Tell me, Dar, what do you think we should do?"

"I keep remembering the Tyrant's words to Chenoeh: 'The Bene Gesserit are so close to what they should be, yet so far.' "

Taraza pointed at the open desert beyond the museum city's qanat. "He's still out there, Dar. I'm sure of it." Taraza turned to face Odrade. "And Sheeana speaks to him."

"He told so many lies," Odrade said.

"But he didn't lie about his own incarnation. Remember what he said. 'Every descendant part of me will carry some of my awareness locked away within it, lost and helpless-pearls of me moving blindly in the sand, caught in an endless dream.' "

"You bank a great deal on your belief in the power of that dream," Odrade said.

"We must recover the Tyrant's design! All of it!"

Odrade sighed but did not speak.

"Never underestimate the power of an idea," Taraza said. "The Atreides were ever philosophers in their governance. Philosophy is always dangerous because it promotes the creation of new ideas."

Still, Odrade did not respond.

"The worm carries it all within him, Dar! All of the forces he set in motion are still in him."

"Are you trying to convince me or yourself, Tar?"

"I am punishing you, Dar. Just as the Tyrant is still punishing us."

"For not being what we should be? Ahh, here come Sheeana and the others."

"The worm's language, Dar. That is the important thing."

"If you say so, Mother Superior."

Taraza sent an angry stare at Odrade, who moved forward to greet the newcomers. There was a disturbing gloom in Odrade.

The presence of Sheeana, though, restored Taraza's sense of purpose. An alert little thing, Sheeana. Very good material. Sheeana had demonstrated her dance the previous night, performing in the great museum room against a tapestry background, an exotic dance against an exotic spice-fiber hanging with its image of desert and worms. She appeared to be almost a part of the hanging, a figure projected forward from the stylized dunes and their elaborately detailed coursing worms. Taraza recalled how Sheeana's brown hair had been thrown outward by the whirling movements of the dance, swinging in a fuzzy arc. Sidelighting accented the reddish glints in her hair. Her eyes had been closed but it was not a face in repose. Excitement betrayed itself in the passionate set of her wide mouth, the flaring of her nostrils, the forward thrust of her chin. Her motions had conveyed an inner sophistication that belied her youth.

The dance is her language, Taraza thought. Odrade is correct. Seeing it, we will learn it.

Waff had something of a withdrawn look this morning. It was difficult to determine if his eyes were looking outward or inward.

With Waff was Tulushan, a darkly handsome Rakian, the priesthood's chosen representative at today's "holy event." Taraza, meeting him at the demonstration dance, had found it extraordinary how Tulushan never needed to say "but," and yet the word was always there in everything he uttered. A perfect bureaucrat. He rightly expected to go far but those expectations would soon encounter their ultimate surprise. She felt no pity for him at this knowledge. Tulushan was a soft-faced youth of too few standards for such a position of trust. There was more to him than met the eye, of course. And less.

Waff moved to one side in the garden, leaving Odrade and Sheeana with Tulushan.

The young priest was expendable, naturally. That explained much about why he had been chosen for this venture. It told her that she had achieved the proper level of potential violence. Taraza did not think, though, that any of the priestly factions would dare harm Sheeana.

We will stay close to Sheeana.

They had spent a busy week since the demonstration of the whores' sexual accomplishments. A very disturbing week, when it came to that. Odrade had been kept busy with Sheeana. Taraza would have preferred Lucilla for this educational chore but you made do with what was available and Odrade obviously was the best available on Rakis for such teaching.

Taraza looked back toward the desert. They were waiting for the 'thopters from Keen with their cargoes of Very Important Observers. The VIOs were not yet late but crowding it as such people always did.

Sheeana seemed to be taking the sexual education well, although Taraza's estimation of the Sisterhood's available teaching males on Rakis was not high. Her first night here, Taraza had called in one of the servant males. Afterward, she had judged it too much trouble for the little joy and forgetfulness it provided. Besides, what was there to forget? To forget was to allow a weakness.

Never forget!

That's what the whores did, though. They traded in forgetfulness. And they had not the least awareness of the Tyrant's continuing viselike hold on human destiny nor of the need to break that hold.

Taraza had listened secretly to the previous day's session between Sheeana and Odrade.

What was I listening for?

Young girl and teacher had been out here in the roof garden, facing each other on two benches, a portable Ixian damper hiding their words from anyone who did not have the coded translator. The suspensor-buoyed damper hovered over the two like a strange umbrella, a black disc projecting distortions that hid the precise movements of lips and the sounds of voices.

To Taraza, standing within the long meeting room, the tiny translator in her left ear, the lesson had occurred like an equally distorted memory.

When I was taught these things, we had not seen what the whores of the Scattering could do.

"Why do we say it's the complexity of sex?" Sheeana asked. "The man you sent last night kept saying that."

"Many believe they understand it, Sheeana. Perhaps no one has ever understood it, because such words require more of the mind than they do of the flesh."

"Why must I not use any of the things we saw the Face Dancers do?"

"Sheeana, complexity hides within complexity. Great deeds and foul ones have been done at the goading of sexual forces. We speak of 'sexual strength' and 'sexual energies' and such things as 'the overmounting urge of desire.' I don't deny that such things are observable. But what we are looking at here is a force so powerful that it can destroy you and everything you hold worthwhile."

"That's what I'm trying to understand. What is it the whores are doing wrong?"

"They ignore the species at its work, Sheeana. I think you can already sense this. The Tyrant certainly knew about it. What was his Golden Path but a vision of sexual forces at work recreating humankind endlessly?"

"And the whores don't create?"

"They mostly try to control their worlds with this force."

"They seem to be doing that."

"Ahhh, but what counterforces do they call forth?"

"I don't understand."

"You know about Voice and how it can control some people?"

"But not control everybody."

"Exactly. A civilization subjected to Voice over a long period develops ways of adapting to this force, preventing manipulation by those who use Voice."

"So there are people who know how to resist the whores?"

"We see unmistakable signs of it. And that is one of the reasons we are here on Rakis."

"Will the whores come here?"

"I'm afraid so. They want to control the core of the Old Empire because they see us as an easy conquest."

"Aren't you afraid they'll win?"

"They won't win, Sheeana. Depend on it. But they are good for us."

"How is that?"

Sheeana's tone echoed Taraza's own shock at hearing such words from Odrade. How much did Odrade suspect? In the next instant, Taraza understood and she wondered if the lesson was equally understandable to the young girl.

"The core is static, Sheeana. We have been almost at a standstill for thousands of years. Life and movement are 'out there' with the people of the Scattering who resist the whores. Whatever we do, we must make that resistance even stronger."

The sound of approaching 'thopters broke Taraza from her reverie of remembrance. The VIOs were arriving from Keen. Still at some distance, but the sound carried far in the clear air.

Odrade's teaching method was a good one, Taraza had to admit as she scanned the sky for a first glimpse of the 'thopters. Apparently they were coming in low and from the other side of the building. That was the wrong direction but perhaps they had taken the VIOs on a short excursion over the remains of the Tyrant's wall. Many people were curious about the place where Odrade had found the spice hoard.

Sheeana, Odrade, Waff, and Tulushan went back into the long meeting room. They had heard the 'thopters, too. Sheeana was anxious to show her power over the worms. Taraza hesitated. There was a laboring sound in the approaching 'thopters. Were they overloaded? How many observers had they brought?

The first 'thopter lifted over the penthouse roof and Taraza saw the armored cockpit. She recognized treachery even before the first beam arced out of the machine, slicing through her legs below the knees. She fell heavily against a potted tree, her legs completely severed. Another beam slashed out at her, slicing at an angle across her hip. The 'thopter swept over her in an abrupt roar of booster jets and banked away to the left.

Taraza clung to the tree, shunting the agony aside. She managed to cut off most of the bloodflow from her wounds but the pain was great. Not as great as the spice agony, though, she reminded herself. That helped but she knew she was doomed. She heard shouts and the multiple sounds of violence all around the museum now.

I have won! Taraza thought.

Odrade darted from the penthouse and bent over Taraza. They said nothing but Odrade showed that she understood by putting her forehead to Taraza's temple. It was the ages-old cue of the Bene Gesserit. Taraza began pouring her life into Odrade - Other Memories, hopes, fears... everything.

One of them might yet escape.

Sheeana watched from the penthouse, staying where she had been ordered to wait. She knew what was happening out there in the roof garden. This was the ultimate mystery of the Bene Gesserit and every postulant was aware of it.

Waff and Tulushan, already out of the room when the attack came, did not return.

Sheeana shuddered with apprehension.

Abruptly, Odrade stood and ran back into the penthouse. There was a wild look in her eyes but she moved with purpose. Leaping up, she gathered glowglobes, grabbing them in bundles by their toggle cords. She thrust several bundles into Sheeana's hands and Sheeana felt her body grow lighter with the lift of the globes' suspensor fields. Trailing more clusters of the globes beyond their field range, Odrade hurried across to the narrow end of the room where a grill in the wall indicated what she sought. With Sheeana's help, she lifted the grill out of its slots, revealing a deep airshaft. The light of the clustered glowglobes showed rough walls inside.

"Hold the globes close to get the maximum field effect," Odrade said. "Push them away to lower yourself. In you go."

Sheeana clutched the toggle cords in a sweaty hand and hopped over the sill. She let herself fall, then fearfully clutched the globes close. Light from above told her Odrade was following.

At the bottom, they emerged into a pump room, the susurrations of many fans a background for the sounds of violence from outside.

"We must get to the no-room and then to the desert," Odrade said. "All of these machinery systems are interconnected. There will be a passage."

"Is she dead?" Sheeana whispered.

"Yes."

"Poor Mother Superior."

"I am the Mother Superior now, Sheeana. At least temporarily." She pointed upward. "Those were the whores attacking us. We must hurry."

The world is for the living. Who are they?

We dared the dark to reach the white and warm.

She was the wind when the wind was in my way.

Alive at noon, I perished in her form.

Who rise from the flesh to spirit know the fall:

The word outleaps the world and light is all.

- Theodore Roethke (Historical Quotations: Dar-es-Balat)

It required little conscious volition for Teg to become the whirlwind. He had recognized at last the nature of the threat from the Honored Matres. Recognition fitted itself into the blurred requirements made upon him by the new Mentat awareness that went with his magnified speed.

Monstrous threat required monstrous countermeasures. Blood spattered him as he drove himself through the headquarters building, slaughtering everyone he met.

As he had learned from his Bene Gesserit teachers, the great problem of the human universe lay in how you managed procreation. He could hear the voice of his first teacher as he carried destruction through the building.

"You may think of this only as sexuality but we prefer the more basic term: procreation. It has many facets and offshoots and it has apparently unlimited energy. The emotion called 'love' is only one small aspect. "

Teg crushed the throat of a man standing rigidly in his path and, at last, found the control room for the building's defenses. Only one man was seated in it, his right hand almost touching a red key on the console in front of him.

With a slashing left hand, Teg almost decapitated the man. The body tipped backward in slow motion, blood welling from the gaping neck.

The Sisterhood is right to call them whores!

You could drag humankind almost anywhere by manipulating the enormous energies of procreation. You could goad humans into actions they would never have believed possible. One of his teachers had said it directly:

"This energy must have an outlet. Bottle it up and it becomes monstrously dangerous. Redirect it and it will sweep over anything in its path. This is an ultimate secret of all religions."

Teg was conscious of leaving more than fifty bodies behind him as he left the building. The last fatality was a soldier in camouflage uniform standing in the open doorway, apparently about to enter.

As he ran past apparently unmoving people and vehicles, Teg's revved-up mind had time to reflect on what he had left behind him. Was there any consolation, he wondered, in the fact that the old Honored Matre's last living expression was one of real surprise? Could he congratulate himself that Muzzafar would never again see his frame bush home?

The necessity for what he had accomplished in a few heartbeats was very clear, though, to one trained by the Bene Gesserit. Teg knew his history. There were many paradise planets in the Old Empire, probably many more among the people of the Scattering. Humans always seemed capable of trying that foolish experiment. People in such places mostly lazed along. A quick-smart analysis said this was because of the easy climates on such planets. He knew this for stupidity. It was because sexual energy was easily released in such places. Let the Missionaries of the Divided God or some denominational construct enter one of these paradises and you got outrageous violence.

"We of the Sisterhood know," one of Teg's teachers had said. "We have put a flame to that fuse more than once with our Missionaria Protectiva."

Teg did not stop running until he was in an alley at least five kilometers from the abattoir that had been the headquarters for the old Honored Matre. He knew that very little time had passed but there was something much more important upon which he had to focus. He had not killed every occupant of that building. There were eyes back there belonging to people who knew now what he could do. They had seen him kill Honored Matres. They had seen Muzzafar topple dead at his hands. The evidence of the bodies left behind and the slowed replay of recordings would tell it all.

Teg leaned against a wall. Skin was torn from his left palm. He let himself return to normal time as he watched blood oozing from the wound. The blood was almost black.

More oxygen in my blood?

He was panting but not as much as these exertions would seem to require.

What has happened to me?

It was something from his Atreides ancestry, he knew. Crisis had tipped him over into another dimension of human possibilities. Whatever the transformation, it was profound. He could see outward now into many necessities. And the people he had passed on his run to this alley had seemed like statues.

Will I ever think of them as muck?

It could only happen if he let it happen, he knew. But the temptation was there and he allowed himself a brief commiseration for the Honored Matres. Great Temptation had toppled them into their own muck.

What to do now?

The main line lay open to him. There was a man here in Ysai, one man who would be sure to know everyone Teg required. Teg looked around the alley. Yes, that man was near.

The fragrance of flowers and herbs wafted to Teg from somewhere down this alley. He moved toward this fragrance, aware that it led him where he needed to go and that no violent attack awaited him here. This was, temporarily, a quiet backwater.

He came to the fragrant source quickly. It was an inset doorway marked by a blue awning with two words on it in modern Galach: "Personal Service."

Teg entered and saw immediately what he had found. They were to be seen at many places in the Old Empire: eating establishments harking back to ancient times, eschewing automata from kitchen to table. Most of them were "in" establishments. You told friends about your latest "discovery" with an admonition to them not to spread the word.

"Don't want to spoil it with crowding."

This idea had always amused Teg. You spread the word about such places but you did it under the guise of keeping a secret.

Mouth-watering odors of cooking emerged from the kitchen at the rear. A waiter passed bearing a tray from which steam lifted, carrying the promise of good things.

A young woman in a short black dress with a white apron came up to him. "This way, sir. We have a table open in the corner."

She held a chair for him to be seated with his back to the wall. "Someone will be with you in a moment, sir." She passed him a stiff sheet of cheap double-thickness paper. "Our menu is printed. I hope you won't mind."

He watched her leave. The waiter he had seen passed going the other way toward the kitchen. The tray was empty.

Teg's feet had led him here as though he had been running on a fixed track. And there was the man he required, dining nearby.

The waiter had stopped to talk to the man Teg knew held the answer to the next moves required here. The two were laughing together. Teg scanned the rest of the room: only three other tables occupied. An older woman sat at a table in the far corner nibbling at some frosty confection. She was dressed in what Teg thought must be the peak of current fashion, a clinging short red gown cut low at the neck. Her shoes matched. A young couple sat at a table off to his right. They saw no one except each other. An older man in a tightly fitted old-fashioned brown tunic ate sparingly of a green vegetable dish near the door. He had eyes only for his food.

The man talking to the waiter laughed loudly.

Teg stared at the back of the waiter's head. Tufts of blond hair sprang from the nape of the waiter's neck like broken bunches of dead grass. The man's collar was frayed beneath the tufted hair. Teg lowered his gaze. The waiter's shoes were run over at the heels. The hem of his black jacket had been darned. Was it thrift in this place? Thrift or some other form of economic pressure? The odors from the kitchen did not suggest any stinting there. The tableware was shining and clean. No cracked dishes. But the striped red and white cloth on the table had been darned in several places, care taken to match the original fabric.

Once more, Teg studied the other customers. They looked substantial. None of the starving poor in this place. Teg had it registered then. Not only was this an "in" place, somebody had designed it for just that effect. There was a clever mind behind such an establishment. This was the kind of restaurant that rising young executives revealed to make points with prospective customers or to please a superior. The food would be superb and the portions generous. Teg realized that his instincts had led him here correctly. He bent his attention to the menu then, allowing hunger to enter his consciousness at last. The hunger was at least as fierce as that which had astonished the late Field Marshal Muzzafar.

The waiter appeared beside him with a tray on which were placed a small open box and a jar from which wafted the pungent odor of newskin ointment.

"I see you have injured your hand, Bashar," the man said. He placed the tray on the table. "Allow me to dress the injury before you order."

Teg lifted the injured hand and watched the swift competence of the treatment.

"You know me?" Teg asked.

"Yes, sir. And after what I've been hearing, it seems strange to see you in full uniform. There." He finished the dressing.

"What have you been hearing?" Teg spoke in a low voice.

"That the Honored Matres hunt you."

"I've just killed some of them and many of their... What should we call them?"

The man paled but he spoke firmly. "Slaves would be a good word, sir."

"You were at Renditai, weren't you," Teg said.

"Yes, sir. Many of us settled here afterward."

"I need food but I cannot pay you," Teg said.

"No one from Renditai has need of your money, Bashar. Do they know you came this way?"

"I don't believe they do."

"The people here now are regulars. None of them would betray you. I will try to warn you if someone dangerous comes. What did you wish to eat?"

"A great deal of food. I will leave the choice to you. About twice as much carbohydrate as protein. No stimulants."

"What do you mean by a great deal, sir?"

"Keep bringing it until I tell you to stop... or until you feel I have overstepped your generosity."

"In spite of appearances, sir, this is not a poor establishment. The extras here have made me a rich man."

Score one for his assessment, Teg thought. The thrift here was a calculated pose.

The waiter left and again spoke to the man at the central table. Teg studied the man openly after the waiter went on into the kitchen. Yes, that was the man. The diner concentrated on a plate heaped with some green-garnished pasta.

There was very little sign in this man of a woman's care, Teg thought. His collar had been closed awry, the clingstraps tangled. Spots of the greenish sauce soiled his left cuff. He was naturally righthanded but ate while his left hand remained in the path of spillage. Frayed cuffs on his trousers. One trouser hem, partly released from its threaded bondage, dragged at the heel. Stockings mismatched - one blue and one pale yellow. None of this appeared to bother him. No mother or other woman had ever dragged this one back from a doorway with orders to make himself presentable. His basic attitude was announced in his whole appearance:

"What you see is as presentable as it gets."

The man looked up suddenly, a jerking motion as though he had been goosed. He sent a brown-eyed gaze around the room, pausing at each face in turn as though he looked for a particular visage. This done, he returned his attention to his plate.

The waiter returned with a clear soup in which shreds of egg and some green vegetables could be seen.

"While the rest of your meal is being prepared, sir," he said.

"Did you come here directly after Renditai?" Teg asked.

"Yes, sir. But I served with you also at Acline."

"The sixty-seventh Gammu," Teg said.

"Yes, sir!"

"We saved a good many lives that time," Teg said. "Theirs and ours."

When Teg still did not begin eating, the waiter spoke in a rather cold voice, "Would you require a snooper, sir?"

"Not while you're serving me," Teg said. He meant what he said but he felt a bit of a fraud because doubled vision told him the food was safe.

The waiter started to turn away, pleased.

"One moment," Teg said.

"Sir?"

"The man at that central table. He is one of your regulars?"

"Professor Delnay? Oh, yes, sir."

"Delnay. Yes, I thought so."

"Professor of martial arts, sir. And the history of same."

"I know. When it comes time to serve my dessert, please ask Professor Delnay if he would join me."

"Shall I tell him who you are, sir?"

"Don't you think he already knows?"

"That would seem likely, sir, but still..."

"Caution where caution belongs," Teg said. "Bring on the food."

Delnay's interest was fully aroused long before the waiter relayed Teg's invitation. The professor's first words as he seated himself across from Teg were: "That was the most remarkable gastronomic performance I have ever seen. Are you sure you can eat a dessert?"

"Two or three of them at least," Teg said.

"Astonishing!"

Teg sampled a spoonful of a honey-sweetened confection. He swallowed it, then: "This place is a jewel."

"I have kept it a careful secret," Delnay said. "Except for a few close friends, of course. To what do I owe the honor of your invitation?"

"Have you ever been... ah, marked by an Honored Matre?"

"Lords of perdition, no! I'm not important enough for that."

"I was hoping to ask you to risk your life, Delnay."

"In what way?" No hesitation. That was reassuring.

"There is a place in Ysai where my old soldiers meet. I want to go there and see as many of them as possible."

"Through the streets in full regalia the way you are now?"

"In any way you can arrange it."

Delnay put a finger to his lower lip and leaned back to stare at Teg. "You're not an easy figure to disguise, you know. However, there may be a way." He nodded thoughtfully. "Yes." He smiled. "You won't like it, I'm afraid."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Some padding and other alterations. We will pass you off as a Bordano overseer. You'll smell of the sewer, of course. And you'll have to carry it off that you don't notice."

"Why do you think that will succeed?" Teg asked.

"Oh, there's going to be a storm tonight. Regular thing this time of year. Laying down the moisture for next year's open crops. And filling the reservoirs for the heated fields, you know."