"We've explored every contact we could find."
"Depend on it; you haven't traced them all."
Burzmali shrugged. "Of course not. I have not acted on that assumption."
Taraza took a deep breath. "Go back to Gammu. Take with you as much help as our Security can spare. Tell Bellonda those are my orders. You must insinuate agents into every walk of life. Find out who Patrin knew. What of his surviving family? Friends? Winkle them out."
"That will cause a stir no matter how careful we are. Others will know."
"That cannot be helped. And Burzmali!"
He was on his feet. "Yes, Mother Superior?"
"The other searchers: You must stay ahead of them."
"May I use a Guild navigator?"
"No!"
"Then how -"
"Burzmali, what if Miles and Lucilla and our ghola are still on Gammu?"
"I've already told you that I do not accept the idea of their leaving in a no-ship!"
For a long silent period, Taraza studied the man standing at the foot of her cot. Trained by Miles Teg. The old Bashar's favorite student. What was Burzmali's trained instinct suggesting.
In a low voice, she prompted: "Yes?"
"Gammu was Giedi Prime, a Harkonnen place."
"What does that suggest to you?"
"They were rich, Mother Superior. Very rich."
"So?"
"Rich enough to accomplish the secret installation of a no-room... even of a large no-globe."
"There are no records! Ix has never even vaguely suggested such a thing. They have not probed on Gammu for..."
"Bribes, third-party purchases, many transshipments," Burzmali said. "The Famine Times were very disruptive and before that there were all those millennia of the Tyrant."
"When the Harkonnens kept their heads down or lost them. Still, I will admit the possibility."
"Records could have been lost," Burzmali said.
"Not by us or the other governments that survived. What prompts this line of speculation?"
"Patrin."
"Ahhhhh."
He spoke quickly: "If such a thing were discovered, a Gammu native might know about it."
"How many of them would know? Do you think they could have kept such a secret for... Yes! I see what you mean. If it were a secret of Patrin's family...
"I have not dared question any of them about it."
"Of course not! But where would you look... without alerting...
"That place on the mountain where the no-ship marks were left."
"It would require you to go there in person!"
"Very hard to conceal from spies," he agreed. "Unless I went with a very small force and seemingly on another purpose."
"What other purpose?"
"To place a funeral marker in memory of my old Bashar."
"Suggesting that we know he is dead? Yes!"
"You've already asked the Tleilaxu to replace our ghola."
"That was a simple precaution and does not bear on... Burzmali, this is extremely dangerous. I doubt we can mislead the kinds of people who will observe you on Gammu."
"The mourning of myself and the people I take with me will be dramatic and believable."
"The believable does not necessarily convince a wary observer."
"Do you not trust my loyalty and the loyalty of the people I will take with me?"
Taraza pursed her lips in thought. She reminded herself that fixed loyalty was a thing they had learned to improve upon from the Atreides pattern. How to produce people who command the utmost devotion. Burzmali and Teg both were fine examples.
"It might work," Taraza agreed. She stared speculatively at Burzmali. Teg's favorite student could be right!
"Then I'll go," Burzmali said. He turned to leave.
"One moment," Taraza said.
Burzmali turned. "You will saturate yourselves with shere, all of you. And if you're captured by Face Dancers - these new ones! - you must burn your own heads or shatter them completely. Take the necessary precautions."
The suddenly sobered expression on Burzmali's face reassured Taraza. He had been proud of himself for a moment there. Better to dampen his pride. No need for him to be reckless.
***
We have long known that the objects of our palpable sense experiences can be influenced by choice - both conscious choice and unconscious. This is a demonstrated fact that does not require that we believe some force within us reaches out and touches the universe. I address a pragmatic relationship between belief and what we identify as "real." All of our judgments carry a heavy burden of ancestral beliefs to which we of the Bene Gesserit tend to be more susceptible than most. It is not enough that we are aware of this and guard against it. Alternative interpretations must always receive our attention.
- Mother Superior Taraza: Argument in Council
"God will judge us here," Waff gloated.
He had been doing that at unpredictable moments all during this long ride across the desert. Sheeana appeared not to notice but Waff's voice and comments had begun to wear on Odrade. The Rakian sun had moved far down to the west but the worm that carried them appeared untiring in its drive across the ancient Sareer toward the remnant mounds of the Tyrant's barrier wall.
Why this direction? Odrade wondered.
No answer satisfied. The fanaticism and renewed danger from Waff, though, demanded immediate response. She called up the cant of the Shariat that she knew drove him.
"Let God do the judging and not men."
Waff scowled at the taunting note in her voice. He looked at the horizon ahead and then up at the 'thopters, which kept pace with them.
"Men must do God's work," he muttered.
Odrade did not answer. Waff had been deflected into his doubts and now would be asking himself: Did these Bene Gesserit witches really share the Great Belief?
Her thoughts dove back into the unanswered questions, tumbling through all she knew about the worms of Rakis. Personal memories and Other Memories wove a mad montage. She could visualize robed Fremen atop a worm even larger than this one, each rider leaning back against a long hooked pole that dug into a worm's rings as her hands now gripped this one. She felt the wind against her cheeks, the robe whipping against her shanks. This ride and others merged into a long familiarity.
It has been a long time since an Atreides rode this way.
Was there a clue to their destination back in Dar-es-Balat? How could there be? But it had been so hot and her mind had been questing forward to what might happen on this venture into the desert. She had not been as alert as she might have been.
In common with every other community on Rakis, Dar-es-Balat pulled inward from its edges during the heat of the early afternoon. Odrade recalled the chafing of her new stillsuit while she waited in a building's shadows near the western limits of Dar-es-Balat. She waited for the separate escorts to bring Sheeana and Waff from the safe houses where Odrade had installed them.
What a tempting target she had made. But they had to be certain of Rakian compliance. The Bene Gesserit escorts delayed deliberately.
"Shaitan likes the heat," Sheeana had said.
Rakians hid from the heat but the worms came out then. Was that a significant fact, revealing the reason for this worm to take them in a particular direction?
My mind is bouncing around like a child's ball!
What did it signify that Rakians hid from the sun while a little Tleilaxu, a Reverend Mother, and a wild young girl went coursing across the desert atop a worm? It was an ancient pattern on Rakis. Nothing surprising about it at all. The ancient Fremen had been mostly nocturnal, though. Their modern descendants depended more on shade to protect them from the hottest sunlight.
How safe the priests felt behind their guardian moats!
Every resident of a Rakian urban center knew the qanat was out there, water running slick in shadowed darkness, trickles diverted to feed the narrow canals whose evaporation was recaptured in the windtraps.
