Dune

The laughter awakened Duncan. He sat up, activated a low glowglobe, and stared at her. How tousled he looked after their earlier sexual collision.

His expression hovered between amusement and upset at being awakened. “Why are you laughing?”

Laughter subsided in gasps. Her sides ached. She was afraid his tentative smile would ignite a new spasm. “Oh . . . oh! Duncan! Sexual collision!”

He knew this was their mutual term for the addiction that bound them but why would it make her laugh?

His puzzled expression struck her as ludicrous.

Between gasps, she said: “Two more words.” And she had to clamp her mouth closed to prevent another outburst.

“What?”

His voice was the funniest thing she had ever heard. She thrust a hand at him and shook her head. “Ohhh . . . ohhh . . .”

“Murbella, what’s wrong with you?”

She could only continue shaking her head.

He tried a tentative smile. It gentled her and she leaned against him. “No!” When his right hand wandered. “I just want to be close.”

“Look what time it is.” He lifted his chin toward the ceiling projection. “Almost three.”

“It was so funny, Duncan.”

“So tell me about it.”

“When I catch my breath.”

He eased her down onto her pillow. “We’re like a damned old married couple. Funny stories in the middle of the night.”

“No, darling, we’re different.”

“A question of degree, nothing else.”

“Quality,” she insisted.

“What was so funny?”

She recounted her nightmare and Bellonda’s influence.

“Zensunni. Very ancient technique. The Sisters use it to rid you of trauma connections. Words that ignite unconscious responses.”

Fear returned.

“Murbella, why are you trembling?”

“Honored Matre teachers warned us terrible things would happen if we fell into Zensunni hands.”

“Bullcrap! I went through the same thing as a Mentat.”

His words conjured another dream fragment. A beast with two heads. Both mouths open. Words in there. On the left, “One word,” and on the right, “leads to another.”

Mirth displaced fear. It subsided without laughter. “Duncan!”

“Mmmmmmm.” Mentat distance in the sound.

“Bell said the Bene Gesserit use words as weapons—Voice. ‘Tools of control,’ she called them.”

“A lesson you must learn almost as instinct. They’ll never trust you into the deeper training until you learn this.”

And I won’t trust you afterward.

She rolled away from him and looked at the comeyes glittering in the ceiling around the time projection.

I’m still on probation.

She was aware her teachers discussed her privately. Conversations were choked off when she approached. They stared at her in their special way, as though she were an interesting specimen.

Bellonda’s voice cluttered her mind.

Nightmare tendrils. Midmorning then and the sweat of her own exertions a stink in her nostrils. Probationer a dutiful three paces from Reverend Mother. Bell’s voice:

“Never be an expert. That locks you up tight.”

All of this because I asked if there were no words to guide the Bene Gesserit.

“Duncan, why do they mix mental and physical teaching?”

“Mind and body reinforce each other.” Sleepy. Damn him! He’s going back to sleep.

She shook Duncan’s shoulder. “If words are so damned unimportant, why do they talk about disciplines so much?”

“Patterns,” he mumbled. “Dirty word.”

“What?” She shook him more roughly.

He turned onto his back, moving his lips, then: “Discipline equals pattern equals bad way to go. They say we’re all natural pattern creators . . . means ‘order’ to them, I think.”

“Why is that so bad?”

“Gives others handle to destroy us or traps us in . . . in things we won’t change.”

“You’re wrong about mind and body.”

“Hmmmmph?”

“It’s pressures locking one to the other.”

“Isn’t that what I said? Hey! Are we going to talk or sleep or what?”

“No more ‘or what.’ Not tonight.”

A deep sigh lifted his chest.

“They’re not out to improve my health,” she said.

“Nobody said they were.”

“That comes later, after the Agony.” She knew he hated reminders of that deadly trial but there was no avoiding it. The prospect filled her mind.

“All right!” He sat up, punched his pillow into shape and leaned back against it to study her. “What’s up?”

“They’re so damned clever with their word-weapons! She brought Teg to you and said you were fully responsible for him.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“He thinks of you as his father.”

“Not really.”

“No, but . . . did you think that about the Bashar?”

“When he restored my memories? Yeah.”

“You’re a pair of intellectual orphans, always looking for parents who aren’t there. He hasn’t the faintest idea of how much you will hurt him.”

“That tends to split up the family.”

“So you hate the Bashar in him and you’re glad you’ll hurt him.”

“Didn’t say that.”

“Why is he so important?”

“The Bashar? Military genius. Always doing the unexpected. Confounds his foes by appearing where they never expect him to be.”

“Can’t anyone do that?”