Silence and then a faint humming.
"I'm not getting anything." Yar.
Teg hears their voices with painful sensitivity. He forces his eyes to open against the opposing commands of the probe.
"Look!" Yar says.
Three sets of eyes stare back at Teg. How slowly they move. Dit, Dat, and Dot: the eyes go blink... blink... at least a minute between blinks. Yar is reaching for something on his console. His fingers will take a week to reach their destination.
Teg explores the bindings on his hands and arms. Ordinary rope! Taking his time, he squirms his fingers into contact with the knots. They loosen, slowly at first, and then flying apart. He moves on to the straps holding him to the sling litter. These are easier: simple slip locks. Yar's hand is not even a fourth of the way to the console.
Blink... blink... blink...
The three sets of eyes show faint surprise.
Teg releases himself from the medusa tangle of probe contacts. Pop-pop-pop! The grippers fly away from him. He is surprised to notice a slow start of bleeding on the back of his right hand where it has brushed the probe contacts aside.
Mentat projection: I am moving with dangerous speed.
But now he is off the litter. Functionary is reaching a slow-slow hand toward a bulge in a side pocket. Teg's hand crushes the functionary's throat. Functionary will never again touch that little lasgun he always carries. Yar's outstretched hand is still not a third of the way to the probe console. There is definite surprise in his eyes, though. Teg doubts that the man even sees the hand that breaks his neck. Materly is moving a bit faster. Her left foot is coming toward where Teg had been just the flick of an instant previously. Still too slow! Materly's head is thrown back, the throat exposed for Teg's down-chopping hand.
How slowly they fall to the floor!
Teg became aware of perspiration pouring from him but he could not spare time to worry about this.
I knew every move they would make before they made it! What has happened to me?
Mentat projection: The probe agony has lifted me to a new level of ability.
Intense hunger pangs made him aware of the energy drain. He pushed the sensation aside, feeling himself return to a normal time beat. Three dull sounds: bodies falling to the floor.
Teg examined the probe console. Definitely not Ixian. Similar controls, though. He shorted out the data storage system, erasing it.
Room lights?
Controls beside the door from the outside. He extinguished the lights, took three deep breaths. A whirling blur of motion erupted into the night.
The ones who had brought him here, clad in their bulky clothing against the winter chill, barely had time to turn toward the odd sound before the whirling blur struck them down.
Teg returned to normal time-beat more quickly. Starlight showed him a trail leading downslope through thick brush. He slipped and slid on the snow-churned mud for a space and then found the way to balance himself, anticipating the terrain. Each step went where he knew it must go. He found himself presently in an open space that looked out across a valley.
The lights of a city and a great black rectangle of building near the center. He knew this place: Ysai. The puppet masters were there.
I am free!
***
There was a man who sat each day looking out through a narrow vertical opening where a single board had been removed from a tall wooden fence. Each day a wild ass of the desert passed outside the fence and across the narrow opening - first the nose, then the head, the forelegs, the long brown back, the hindlegs, and lastly the tail. One day, the man leaped to his feet with the light of discovery in his eyes and he shouted for all who could hear him: "It is obvious! The nose causes the tail!"
-Stories of the Hidden Wisdom, from the Oral History of Rakis
Several times since coming to Rakis, Odrade had found herself caught in the memory of that ancient painting which occupied such a prominent place on the wall of Taraza's Chapter House quarters. When the memory came, she felt her hands tingle to the touch of the brush. Her nostrils swelled to the induced smells of oils and pigments. Her emotions assaulted the canvas. Each time, Odrade emerged from the memory with new doubts that Sheeana was her canvas.
Which of us paints the other?
It had happened again this morning. Still dark outside the Rakian Keep's penthouse where she quartered with Sheeana: An acolyte entered softly to waken Odrade and tell her that Taraza would arrive shortly. Odrade looked up at the softly illuminated face of the dark-haired acolyte and immediately that memory-painting flashed into her awareness.
Which of us truly creates another?
"Let Sheeana sleep a bit longer," Odrade said before dismissing the acolyte.
"Will you breakfast before the Mother Superior's arrival?" the acolyte asked.
"We will wait upon Taraza's pleasure."
Arising, Odrade went through a swift toilet and donned her best black robe. She strode then to the east window of the penthouse common room and looked out in the direction of the spacefield. Many moving lights cast a glow on the dusty sky there. She activated all of the room's glowglobes to soften the exterior view. The globes became reflected golden starbursts on the thick armor-plaz of the windows. The dusky surface also reflected a dim outline of her own features, showing the fatigue lines clearly.
I knew she would come, Odrade thought.
Even as she thought this, the Rakian sun came over the dust-blurred horizon like a child's orange ball thrust into view. Immediately, there was the heat-bounce that so many observers of Rakis had mentioned. Odrade turned away from the view and saw the hall door open.
Taraza entered with a rustle of robes. A hand closed the door behind her, leaving the two of them alone. The Mother Superior advanced on Odrade, black hood up and the cowl framing her face. It was not a reassuring sight.
Recognizing the disturbance in Odrade, Taraza played on it. "Well, Dar, I think we finally meet as strangers."
The effect of Taraza's words startled Odrade. She correctly interpreted the threat but fear left her, spilling out as though it were water poured from a jug. For the first time in her life, Odrade recognized the precise moment of crossing a dividing line. This was a line whose existence she thought few of her Sisters suspected. As she crossed it, she realized that she had always known it was there: a place where she could enter the void and float free. She no longer was vulnerable. She could be killed but she could not be defeated.
"So it's not Dar and Tar anymore," Odrade said.
Taraza heard the clear, uninhibited tone of Odrade's voice and interpreted this as confidence. "Perhaps it never was Dar and Tar," she said, her voice icy. "I see that you think you have been extremely clever."
The battle has been joined, Odrade thought. But I do not stand in the path of her attack.
Odrade said: "The alternatives to alliance with the Tleilaxu could not be accepted. Especially when I recognized what it was you truly sought for us."
Taraza felt suddenly weary. It had been a long trip despite the space-folding leaps of her no-ship. The flesh always knew when it had been twisted out of its familiar rhythms. She chose a soft divan and sat down, sighing in the luxurious comfort.
Odrade recognized the Mother Superior's fatigue and felt immediate sympathy. They were suddenly two Reverend Mothers with common problems.
Taraza obviously sensed this. She patted the cushion beside her and waited for Odrade to be seated.
"We must preserve the Sisterhood," Taraza said. "That is the only important thing."
"Of course."
