Dune

“But not Tam and Bell?”

“My informants tell me Bell now tolerates him.”

“Bell? Tolerant?”

“You misjudge her, Sheeana. It’s a flaw in you.” She is hiding something. What have you done, Sheeana?

“Sheeana, do you think you could work with Bell?”

“Because I tease her?” Work with Bell? What does she mean? Not Bell to head that damnable Missionaria project!

A faint twitching lifted the corners of Odrade’s mouth. Another prank? Could that be it?

Sheeana was a prime gossip subject in Central’s dining rooms. Stories of how she teased Breeding Mistresses (especially Bell) and elaborately detailed accounts of seductions fleshed out with Honored Matre comparisons from Murbella spiced more than the food. Odrade had heard snatches of the latest story only two days ago. “She said, ‘I used the Let-him-misbehave method. Very effective with men who think they’re leading you down the garden path.’”

“Tease? Is that what you do, Sheeana?”

“An appropriate word: reshape by going against the natural inclination.” The instant the words were out of her mouth, Sheeana knew she had made a mistake.

Odrade felt warning stillness. Reshape? Her gaze went to that odd black mound in the corner. She stared at it with a fixity that surprised her. It drank vision. She kept probing for coherence, something that spoke to her. Nothing responded, not even when she probed to her limits. And that’s its purpose!

“It’s called ‘Void,’” Sheeana said.

“Yours?” Please, Sheeana. Say someone else did it. The one who did this has gone where I cannot follow.

“I did it one night about a week ago.”

Is black plaz the only thing you reshape? “A fascinating comment on art in general.”

“And not on art specific?”

“I have a problem with you, Sheeana. You alarm some Sisters.” And me. There’s a wild place in you we have not found. Atreides gene markers Duncan told us to seek are in your cells. What have they given you?

“Alarm my Sisters?”

“Especially when they recall that you’re the youngest ever to survive the Agony.”

“Except for Abominations.”

“Is that what you are?”

“Mother Superior!” She has never deliberately hurt me except as a lesson.

“You went through the Agony as an act of disobedience.”

“Wouldn’t you say rather that I went against mature advice?” Humor sometimes distracts her.

Prester, Sheeana’s acolyte aide, came to the door and rapped lightly on the wall beside it until she had their attention. “You said I was to tell you immediately when the search teams returned.”

“What do they report?”

Relief in Sheeana’s voice?

“Team eight wants you to look at their scans.”

“They always want that!”

Sheeana spoke with forced frustration. “Do you want to look at the scans with me, Mother Superior?”

“I’ll wait here.”

“This won’t take long.”

When they had gone, Odrade went to the western window: a clear view across rooftops to the new desert. Small dunes here. Almost sunset and that dry heat so reminiscent of Dune.

What is Sheeana hiding?

A young man, hardly more than a boy, had been sunning nude on a neighboring rooftop, face-up on a sea-green mattress with a golden towel across his face. His skin was a sun-warmed gold to match towel and pubic hair. A breeze touched a corner of the towel and lifted it. One languid hand came up and restored the cover.

How can he be idle? Night worker? Probably.

Idleness was not encouraged and this was flaunting it. Odrade smiled to herself. Anyone could be excused for assuming he was a night worker. He might be depending on that specific guess. The trick would be to remain unseen by those who knew otherwise.

I will not ask. Intelligence deserves some rewards. And, after all, he could be a night worker.

She lifted her gaze. A new pattern emerging here: exotic sunsets. Narrow band of orange drawn along the horizon, bulging where the sun had just dipped below the land. Silvery blue above the orange went darker overhead. She had seen this many times on Dune. Meteorological explanations she did not care to explore. Better to let eyes absorb this transient beauty; better to permit ears and skin to feel sudden stillness descend upon this land in the quick darkness after the orange vanished.

Faintly, she saw the young man pick up mattress and towel and vanish behind a ventilator.