Dune

Odrade remained silent, her thoughts moving where Teg had sent them. There was a hard shell Reverend Mothers put around themselves against which all things from outside (including emotions) played like projections. Murbella was right and the Sisterhood had to relearn emotions. If they were only observers, they were doomed.

She addressed Teg. “You won’t be asked to blunt us.”

Both Teg and Idaho heard something else in her voice. Teg put aside his empty bowl but Idaho was first to speak. “Cultivated,” he said.

Teg agreed. Sisters were seldom impulsive. You got ordered reactions from them even in times of peril. They went beyond what most people thought of as cultivated. They were driven not so much by dreams of power as by their own long view, a thing compounded by immediacy and almost unlimited memory. So Odrade was following a carefully thought out plan. Teg glanced at the watchful Proctors.

“You were prepared to kill me,” he said.

No one answered. There was no need. They all recognized Mentat Projection.

Teg turned and looked back into the room where he had regained his memories. Sheeana was gone. More memories whispered at the edge of awareness. They would speak in their own time. This diminutive body. That was difficult. And Streggi . . . He focused on Odrade. “You were more clever than you thought. But my mother . . .”

“I don’t think she anticipated this,” Odrade said.

“No . . . she was not that much Atreides.”

An electrifying word in these circumstances, it charged a special silence in the room. The Proctors moved closer.

That mother of his!

Teg ignored the hovering Proctors. “In answer to the questions you have not asked, I cannot explain what happened to me on Gammu. My physical and mental speed defies explanation. Given the size and energy, in one of your heartbeats I could be clear of this room and well on my way out of the ship. Ohhh . . .” Hand upraised. “I’m still your obedient dog. I’ll do what you require, but perhaps not in the way you imagine.”

Odrade saw consternation in the faces of her Sisters. What have I loosed upon us?

“We can prevent any living thing from leaving this ship,” she said. “You may be fast but I doubt you are faster than the fire that would engulf you should you try to leave without our permission.”

“I will leave in my own good time and with your permission. How many of Burzmali’s special troops do you have?”

“Almost two million.” Startled out of her.

“So many!”

“He had more than twice that number with him at Lampadas when Honored Matres obliterated them.”

“We shall have to be more clever than poor Burzmali. Would you leave me to discuss this with Duncan? That is why you keep us around, isn’t it? Our specialty?” He aimed a smiling look at the overhead comeyes. “I’m sure you’ll review our discussion thoroughly before approving.”

Odrade and her Sisters exchanged glances. They shared an unspoken question: What else can we do?

As she stood, Odrade looked at Idaho. “Here’s a real job for a Truthsayer-Mentat!”

When the women were gone, Teg pulled himself up onto one of the chairs and looked into the empty room visible beyond the seewall. It had been close there and he still felt his heart pumping hard from the effort. “Quite a show,” he said.

“I’ve seen better.” Extremely dry.

“What I’d like right now is a large glass of Marinete, but I doubt this body could take it.”

“Bell will be waiting for Dar when she gets back to Central,” Idaho said.

“To the nethermost hell with Bell! We have to defuse those Honored Matres before they find us.”

“And our Bashar has just the plan.”

“Damn that title!”

Idaho inhaled a sharp breath restricted by shock.

“Tell you something, Duncan!” Intense. “Once when I was arriving for an important meeting with potential enemies, I heard an aide announce me. ‘The Bashar is here.’ I damned near stumbled, caught by the abstraction.”

“Mentat blur.”

“Of course it was. But I knew the title removed me from something I did not dare lose. Bashar? I was more than that! I was Miles Teg, the name given me by my parents.”

“You were on the name-chain!”

“Certainly, and I realized my name stood at a distance from something more primal. Miles Teg? No, I was more basic than that. I could hear my mother saying, ‘Oh, what a beautiful baby.’ So there I was with another name: ‘Beautiful Baby.’”

“Did you go deeper?” Idaho found himself fascinated.

“I was caught. Name leads to name leads to names leads to nameless. When I walked into that important room, I was nameless. Did you ever risk that?”

“Once.” A reluctant admission.

“We all do it at least once. But there I was. I’d been briefed. I had a reference for everyone at that table—face, name, title, plus all of the backgrounding.”

“But you weren’t really there.”

“Oh, I could see the expectant faces measuring me, wondering, worrying. But they did not know me!”

“That gave you a feeling of great power?”