Duncan sat on the floor at her feet. From this angle, Tamalane was a black-shrouded and ominous figure.
“We do not punish with the ultimate agony,” she said. “That is reserved for a Reverend Mother’s passage through the spice.”
Duncan nodded. Library records referred to “spice agony,” a mysterious trial that created a Reverend Mother.
“Major punishments are painful, nonetheless,” she said. “They are also emotionally painful. Emotion evoked by punishment is always that emotion we judge to be the penitent’s greatest weakness and thus we strengthen the punished.”
Her words filled Duncan with unfocused dread. What were they doing to his guards? He could not speak but there was no need. Tamalane was not finished.
“The punishment always ends with a dessert,” she said and she clapped her hands against her knees.
Duncan frowned. Dessert? That was part of a banquet. How could a banquet be punishment?
“It is not really a banquet but the idea of a banquet,” Tamalane said. One clawlike hand described a circle in the air. “The dessert comes something totally unexpected. The penitent thinks: Ahhh, I have been forgiven at last! You understand?”
Duncan shook his head from side to side. No, he did not understand.
“It is the sweetness of the moment,” she said. “You have been through every course of a painful banquet and come out at the end to something you can savor. But! As you savor it, then comes the most painful moment of all, the recognition, the understanding that this is not pleasure-at-the-end. No, indeed. This is the ultimate pain of the major punishment. It locks in the Bene Gesserit lesson.”
“But what will she do to those guards?” The words were wrenched from Duncan.
“I cannot say what the specific elements of the individual punishments will be. I have no need to know. I can only tell you it will be different for each of them.”
Tamalane would say no more. She returned to laying out the next day’s lessons. “We will continue tomorrow,” she said, “teaching you to identify the sources of the various accents of spoken Galach.”
No one else, not even Teg or Patrin, would answer his questions about the punishments. Even the guards, when he saw them afterward, refused to speak of their ordeals. Some reacted curtly to his overtures and none would play with him anymore. There was no forgiveness among the punished. That much was clear.
Damn Schwangyu! Damn Schwangyu! . . .
That was where his deep hatred of her began. All of the old witches shared in his hatred. Would the new young one be the same as the old ones?
Damn Schwangyu!
When he demanded of Schwangyu: “Why did you have to punish them?” Schwangyu took some time before answering, then: “It is dangerous for you here on Gammu. There are people who wish you harm.”
Duncan did not ask why. This was another area where his questions were never answered. Not even Teg would answer, although Teg’s very presence emphasized the fact of that danger.
And Miles Teg was a Mentat who must know many answers. Duncan often saw the old man’s eyes glisten while his thoughts went far away. But there was no Mentat response to such questions as:
“Why are we here on Gammu?”
“Who do you guard against? Who wants to harm me?”
“Who are my parents?”
Silence greeted such questions or sometimes Teg would growl: “I cannot answer you.”
The library was useless. He had discovered this when he was only eight and his chief instructor was a failed Reverend Mother named Luran Geasa — not quite as ancient as Schwangyu but well along in years, more than a hundred, anyway.
At his demand, the library produced information about Gammu/Giedi Prime, about the Harkonnens and their fall, about various conflicts where Teg had commanded. None of those battles came through as very bloody; several commentators referred to Teg’s “superb diplomacy.” But, one datum leading to another, Duncan learned about the time of the God Emperor and the taming of his people. This period commanded Duncan’s attention for weeks. He found an old map in the records and projected it on the focus wall. The commentator’s superimpositions told him that this very Keep had been a Fish Speaker Command Center abandoned during the Scattering.