"No one can control her! Perhaps no one should." He looked up at the comeyes. "Hey, Bell! You have more than one tiger by the tail."
Bellonda, returning to Archives, stopped at the door of Comeye-Recording and looked a question at the Watch Mother.
"In the shower again," the Watch Mother said. "It gets boring after a while."
"Participation Mystique!" Bellonda said and strode off to her quarters, her mind roiling with changed perceptions that needed reorganizing. He's a better Mentat than I am!
I'm jealous of Sheeana, damn her! And he knows it!
Participation Mystique! The orgy as energizer. Honored Matre sexual knowledge was having an effect on the Bene Gesserit akin to that primitive submersion in shared ecstasy. We take one step toward it and one step away.
Just knowing this thing exists! How repellent, how dangerous... and yet, how magnetic.
And Sheeana is immune! Damn her! Why did Idaho have to remind them of that just now?
Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum.
- Darwi Odrade
Tamalane appeared in Odrade's quarters at Eldio just before dawn, bringing news about the glazeway ahead of them.
"Drifting sand has made the road dangerous or impassable in six places beyond the sea. Very large dunes."
Odrade had just completed her daily regimen: mini-Agony of spice followed by exercise and cold shower. Eldio's guest sleeping cell had only one slingchair (they knew her preferences) and she had seated herself to await Streggi and the morning report.
Tamalane's face appeared sallow in the light of two silvery glowglobes but there was no mistaking her satisfaction. If you had listened to me in the first place!
"Get us 'thopters," Odrade said.
Tamalane left, obviously disappointed at Mother Superior's mild reaction.
Odrade summoned Streggi. "Check alternate roads. Find out about passage around the sea's western end."
Streggi hurried away, almost colliding with Tamalane who was returning.
"I regret to inform you that Transport cannot give us enough 'thopters immediately. They are relocating five communities east of us. We probably can have them by noon."
"Isn't there an observation terminal at the edge of that desert spur south of us?" Odrade asked.
"The first obstruction is just beyond it." Tamalane still was too pleased with herself.
"Have the 'thopters meet us there," Odrade said. "We will leave immediately after breakfast."
"But Dar..."
"Tell Clairby you are riding with me today. Yes, Streggi?" The acolyte stood in the doorway behind Tamalane.
The set of her shoulders as she left said Tamalane did not take the new seating arrangements as forgiveness. On the coals! But Tam's behavior fitted itself to their need.
"We can get to the observation terminal," Streggi said, indicating she had heard. "We'll stir up dust and sand but it's safe."
"Let's hurry breakfast."
The closer they came to the desert, the more barren the country, and Odrade commented on this as they sped south.
Within one hundred klicks of the last reported desert fringe, they saw signs of communities uprooted and removed to colder latitudes. Bare foundations, unsalvageable walls damaged in dismantling and left behind. Pipes cut off at foundation level. Too expensive to dig them out. Sand would cover all of this unsightly mess before long.
They had no Shield Wall here as there had been on Dune, Odrade observed to Streggi. Someday soon, the population of Chapterhouse would remove itself to polar regions and mine the ice for water.
"Is it true, Mother Superior," someone in back with Tamalane asked, "that we're already making spice-harvesting equipment?"
Odrade turned in her seat. The question had come from a Communications clerk, senior acolyte: an older woman with responsibility wrinkles deep in her forehead; dark and squinty from long hours at her equipment.
"We must be ready for the worms," Odrade said.
"If they come," Tamalane said.
"Have you ever walked on the desert, Tam?" Odrade asked.
"I was on Dune." Very short answer.
"But did you go out into open desert?"
"Only to some small drifts near Keen."
"That is not the same." A short answer deserved an equally short rejoinder.
"Other Memory tells me what I need to know." That was for the acolytes.
"It's not the same, Tam. You have to do it yourself. A very curious sensation on Dune, knowing a worm could come at any instant and consume you."
"I've heard about your Dune... exploit."
Exploit. Not "experience." Exploit. Very precise with her censure. Quite like Tam. "Too much of Bell has rubbed off on her," some will say.
"Walking on that sort of desert changes you, Tam. Other Memory becomes clearer. It's one thing to tap experiences of a Fremen ancestor. It's quite different walking there as a Fremen yourself, if only for a few hours."
"I did not enjoy it."
So much for Tam's venturesome spirit, and everyone in the car had seen her in a bad light. Word would spread.
On the coals, indeed!
But now the shift to Sheeana on the Council (if she suits) would have an easier explanation.
The observation terminal was a fused expanse of silica, green and glassy with heat bubbles through it. Odrade stood at the fused edge and noted how grass below her ended in patches, sand already invading the lower slopes of this once verdant hill. There were new saltbushes (planted by Sheeana's people, one of Odrade's entourage said) forming a random gray screen along the encroaching fingers of desert. A silent war. Chlorophyll-based life fighting a rear-guard action against the sand.