Dune

“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.