Dune

“Why do you say that? Do not speak just to please me!”

“But Honored Matre, could the witches send a great ship from Gammu to here just to carry me? And where are the witches now? They hide from you.”

“Yes, where are they?” Honored Matre demanded.

Rebecca shrugged.

“Were you on Gammu when the one they called Bashar fled us?” Honored Matre asked.

She knows you were. “I was there, Great Honored Matre, and heard the stories. I do not believe them.”

“Believe what we tell you to believe, wretch! What are the stories you heard?”

“That he moved with a speed the eye could not see. That he killed many . . . people with only his hands. That he stole a no-ship and fled into the Scattering.”

“Believe that he fled, wretch.” See how she fears! She cannot hide the trembling.

“Speak of the Truthsay,” Great Honored Matre commanded.

“Great Honored Matre, I do not understand the Truthsay. I know only the words of my Sholem, my husband. I can repeat his words if you wish.”

Great Honored Matre considered this, glancing from side to side at her aides and councillors, who were beginning to show signs of boredom. Why doesn’t she just kill this wretch?

Rebecca, seeing the violence in eyes that glared orange at her, shrank into herself. She thought of her husband by his love-name, Shoel, now, and his words comforted. He had shown the “proper talent” while still a child. Some called it an instinct but Shoel had never used that word. “Trust your gut feelings. That’s what my teachers always said.”

It was such a down-to-earth expression that he said it usually threw off the ones who came seeking “the esoteric mystery.”

“There is no secret,” Shoel had said. “It’s training and hard work like anything else. You exercise what they call ‘petit perception,’ the ability to detect very small variations in human reactions.”

Rebecca could see such small reactions in those who stared down at her. They want me dead. Why?

Speaker had advice. The great one likes to show off her power over the others. She does not do what others want but what she thinks they do not want.

“Great Honored Matre,” Rebecca ventured, “you are so rich and powerful. Surely you must have a place of menial employment where I may be of service to you.”

“You wish to enter my service?” What a feral grin!

“It would make me happy, Great Honored Matre.”

“I am not here to make you happy.”

Logno took a step forward onto the floor. “Then make us happy, Dama. Let us have some sport with—”

“Silence!” Ahhh, that was a mistake, calling her by the intimate name here among the others.

Logno drew back and almost dropped the goad.

Great Honored Matre stared down at Rebecca with an orange glare. “You will go back to your miserable existence on Gammu, wretch. I will not kill you. That would be a mercy. Having seen what we could give you, live your life without it.”

“Great Honored Matre!” Logno protested. “We have suspicions about—”

“I have suspicions about you, Logno. Send her back and alive! Hear me? Do you think us incapable of finding her if we ever have need of her?”

“No, Great Honored Matre.”

“We are watching you, wretch,” Great Honored Matre said.

Bait! She thinks of you as something to capture larger game. How interesting. This one has a head and uses it in spite of her violent nature. So that’s how she came to power.

All the way back to Gammu, confined to stinking quarters in a ship that had once served the Guild, Rebecca considered her predicament. Surely, those whores had not expected her to mistake their intent. But . . . perhaps they did. Subservience, cringing. They revel in such things.

She knew this came from a bit of her Shoel’s Truthsay as much as from the Lampadas advisors.

“You accumulate a lot of small observations, sensed but never brought to consciousness,” Shoel had said. “Cumulatively, they say things to you but not in a language anyone speaks. Language isn’t necessary.”

She had thought this one of the oddest things she had ever heard. But that was before her own Agony. In bed at night, comforted by darkness and the touch of loving flesh, they had acted wordlessly but had shared words, too.

“Language obstructs you,” Shoel had said. “What you do is learn to read your own reactions. Sometimes, you can find words to describe this . . . sometimes . . . not.”

“No words? Not even for the questions?”

“Words you want, is it? How are these? Trust. Belief. Truth. Honesty.”

“Those are good words, Shoel.”

“But they miss the mark. Don’t depend on them.”

“Then what do you depend on?”