I thought of it as emerging, coming through victorious. I came out the other side.
Only to find herself immersed in new and harsher demands.
Odrade sat up on her Rakian window ledge and pushed her cushion aside. She turned her back on the bazaar. It was becoming noisier out there. Damned priests! They were stretching delay to its absolute limits!
I must think about my own childhood because that will help me with Sheeana, she thought. Immediately, she sneered at her own weakness. Another excuse!
It took some postulants at least fifty years to become Reverend Mothers. This was ground into them during Secondary Training: a lesson of patience. Odrade showed an early penchant for deep study. There was consideration that she might become one of the Bene Gesserit Mentats and probably an Archivist. This idea was dropped on the discovery that her talents lay in a more profitable direction. She was aimed at more sensitive duties in Chapter House.
Security.
That wild talent among the Atreides often had this employment. Care with details, that was Odrade’s hallmark. She knew her sisters could predict some of her actions simply from their deep knowledge of her. Taraza did it regularly. Odrade had overheard the explanation from Taraza’s own lips:
“Odrade’s persona is exquisitely reflected in her performance of duties.”
There was a joke in Chapter House: “Where does Odrade go when she’s off duty? She goes to work.”
Chapter House imposed little need to adopt the covering masks that a Reverend Mother used automatically on the Outside. She might show emotions momentarily, deal openly with mistakes of her own and of others, feel sad or bitter or even, sometimes, happy. Men were available — not for breeding, but for occasional solace. All such Bene Gesserit Chapter House males were quite charming and a few were even sincere in their charm. These few, of course, were much in demand.
Emotions.
Recognition twisted through Odrade’s mind.
So I come to it as I always do.
Odrade felt the warm evening sunlight of Rakis on her back. She knew where her body sat, but her mind opened itself to the coming encounter with Sheeana.
Love!
It would be so easy and so dangerous.
In this moment, she envied the Station Mothers, the ones allowed to live out a lifetime with a mated breeding partner. Miles Teg came from such a union. Other Memories told her how it had been for the Lady Jessica and her Duke. Even Muad’dib had chosen that form of mating.
It is not for me.
Odrade admitted to a bitter jealousy that she had not been permitted such a life. What were the compensations of the life into which she had been guided?
“A life without love can be devoted more intensely to the Sisterhood. We provide our own forms of support to the initiated. Do not worry about sexual enjoyment. That is available whenever you feel the need.”
With charming men!
Since the days of the Lady Jessica, through the Tyrant’s times and beyond, many things had changed . . . including the Bene Gesserit. Every Reverend Mother knew it.
A deep sigh shuddered through Odrade. She glanced back over her shoulder at the bazaar. Still no sign of Sheeana.
I must not love this child!
It was done. Odrade knew she had played out the mnemonic game in its required Bene Gesserit form. She swiveled her body and sat cross-legged on the ledge. It was a commanding view of the bazaar and over the rooftops of the city and its basin. Those few remnant hills out there south of here were, she knew, the last of what had been the Shield Wall of Dune, the high ramparts of basement rock breached by Muad’dib and his sandworm-mounted legions.
Heat danced from the ground beyond the qanat and canal that protected Keen from intrusions by the new worms. Odrade smiled softly. The priests found nothing strange in moating their communities to keep their Divided God from intruding upon them.
We will worship you, God, but don’t bother us. This is our religion, our city. You see, we no longer call this place Arrakeen. Now, it’s Keen. The planet no longer is Dune or Arrakis. Now, it’s Rakis. Keep your distance, God. You are the past and the past is an embarrassment.