Heretics of Dune

There had been obvious sensual arousal in Sheeana as she watched the Face Dancer performance. The Training Proctors would have to call in their male assistants earlier than usual for Sheeana. What would Sheeana do then? Would she try this new knowledge on the men? Inhibitions must be raised in Sheeana to prevent that! She must be taught the dangers to herself.

The Sisters and acolytes present had controlled themselves well, storing what they learned firmly in memory. Sheeana's education must be built on that observation. Others mastered such internal forces.

The Face Dancer observers had remained inscrutable, but there had been things to see in Waff. He said he would destroy the two demonstrators but what would he do first? Would he succumb to temptation? What thoughts went through his mind as he watched the Face Dancer male squirm in mind-blanking ecstasy?

In a way, the demonstration reminded Odrade of the Rakian dance she had seen in the Great Square of Keen. In the short term, the dance had been deliberately unrhythmic but the progression created a long-term rhythm that repeated itself in some two hundred... steps. The dancers had stretched out their rhythm to a remarkable degree.

As had the Face Dancer demonstrators.

Siaynoq become a sexual grip on uncounted billions in the Scattering!

Odrade thought about the dance, the long rhythm followed by chaotic violence. Siaynoq's glorious focusing of religious energies had devolved into a different kind of exchange. She thought about Sheeana's excited response to her glimpses of that dance in the Great Square. Odrade remembered asking Sheeana: "What did they share down there?"

"The dancers, silly!"

That response had not been permissible. "I've warned you about that tone, Sheeana. Do you wish to learn immediately what a Reverend Mother can do to punish you?"

The words played themselves like ghost messages in Odrade's mind as she looked at the gathering darkness outside the Dar-es-Balat penthouse. A great loneliness welled up in her. All the others had gone from this room.

Only the punished one remains!

How bright-eyed Sheeana had been in that room above the Great Square, her mind so full of questions. "Why do you always talk about hurting and punishment?"

"You must learn discipline. How can you control others when you cannot control yourself?"

"I don't like that lesson."

"None of us does very much... until later when we've learned the value of it by experience."

As intended, that response had festered long in Sheeana's awareness. In the end, she had revealed all she knew about the dance.

"Some of the dancers escape. Others go directly to Shaitan. The priests say they go to Shai-hulud."

"What of the ones who survive?"

"When they recover, they must join a great dance in the desert. If Shaitan comes there, they die. If Shaitan does not come, they are rewarded."

Odrade had seen the pattern. Sheeana's explanatory words had not been necessary beyond that point, even though the recital had been allowed to continue. How bitter Sheeana's voice had been!

"They get money, space in a bazaar, that kind of reward. The priests say they have proved that they are human."

"Are the ones who fail not human?"

Sheeana had remained silent for a long time in deep thought. The track was clear to Odrade, though: the Sisterhood's test of humanity! Her own passage into the acceptable humanity of the Sisterhood had already been duplicated by Sheeana. How soft that passage seemed in comparison to the other pains!

In the dim light of the museum penthouse, Odrade held up her right hand, looking at it, remembering the agony box, and the gom jabbar poised at her neck ready to kill her if she flinched or cried out.

Sheeana had not cried out, either. But she had known the answer to Odrade's question even before the agony box.

"They are human but different."

Odrade spoke aloud in the empty room with its displays from the Tyrant's no-chamber hoard.

"What did you do to us, Leto? Are you only Shaitan talking to us? What would you force us to share now?"

Was the fossil dance to become fossil sex?

"Who are you talking to, Mother?"

It was Sheeana's voice from the open doorway across the room. Her gray postulant's robe was only a faint shape there, growing larger as she approached.

"Mother Superior sent me for you," Sheeana said as she came to a stop near Odrade.

"I was talking to myself," Odrade said. She looked at the strangely quiet girl, remembering the gut-wrenching excitement of that moment when the Fulcrum Question had been asked of Sheeana.

"Do you wish to be a Reverend Mother?"

"Why are you talking to yourself, Mother?" There was a load of concern in Sheeana's voice. The Teaching Proctors would have their hands full removing those emotions.

"I was remembering when I asked you if you wished to be a Reverend Mother," Odrade said. "It prompted other thoughts."

"You said I must give myself to your direction in all things, holding back nothing, disobeying you in nothing."

"And you said: 'Is that all?' "