We are so few compared to them.
Sheeana stooped and picked up a pebble. She looked at it a moment and then threw it at the fence beside them. The pebble sailed through the meshes without touching them.
Odrade took a firmer grip on herself. The sounds of their footsteps on the blown sand that drifted across this little-used roadway seemed suddenly over-loud. The spindly causeway leading out over the Dar-es-Balat ring-qanat and moat lay no more than two hundred paces ahead at the end of this narrow road.
Sheeana spoke: “I am doing this because you ordered it, Mother. But I still don’t know why.”
Because this is the crucible where we test Waff and, through him, reshape the Tleilaxu!
“It is a demonstration,” Odrade said.
That was true. It was not the whole truth, but it served.
Sheeana walked head down, gaze intent on where she placed each step. Was this how she always approached her Shaitan? Odrade wondered. Thoughtful and remote?
Odrade heard a faint thwocking sound high up behind her. The watchful ornithopters were arriving. They would keep their distance, but many eyes would observe this demonstration.
“I will dance,” Sheeana said. “That usually calls a big one.”
Odrade felt her heartbeat quicken. Would the “big one” continue to obey Sheeana despite the presence of two companions?
This is suicidal madness!
But it had to be done: Taraza’s orders.
Odrade glanced at the fenced spice yard beside them. The place appeared oddly familiar. More than deja vu. Inner certainty informed by Other Memories told her this place remained virtually unchanged from ancient times. The design of the spice silos in the yard was as old as Rakis: oval tanks on tall legs, metal and plaz insects waiting stilt-legged to leap upon their prey. She suspected an unconscious message from the original designers: Melange is both boon and bane.
Beneath the silos, a sandy wasteland where no growth was permitted spread out beside mud-walled buildings, an amoeba arm of Dar-es-Balat reaching almost to the qanat edge. The Tyrant’s long-hidden no-globe had produced a teeming religious community that hid most of its activities behind windowless walls and underground.
The secret working of our unconscious desires!
Once more, Sheeana spoke: “Tuek is different.”
Odrade saw Waff’s head lift sharply. He had heard. He would be thinking: Can we conceal things from the Prophet’s messenger?
Too many people already knew that a Face Dancer masqueraded as Tuek, Odrade thought. The priestly cabal, of course, believed they were giving the Tleilaxu enough netting in which to snare not only the Bene Tleilax but the Sisterhood as well.
Odrade smelled the biting odors of chemicals that had been used to kill wild growth in the spice storage yard. The odors forced her attention back to necessities. She did not dare indulge in mental wanderings out here! It would be so easy for the Sisterhood to become caught in its own trap.
Sheeana stumbled and emitted a small cry, more irritation than pain. Waff turned his head sharply and looked at Sheeana before returning his attention to the roadway. The child had merely stumbled on a break in the road surface, he saw. Drifted sand concealed places where the roadway had been cracked. The faery structure of the causeway ahead of him appeared sound, however. Not substantial enough to support one of the Prophet’s descendants, but more than enough for a supplicant human to cross it into the desert.
Waff thought of himself chiefly as a supplicant.
I come as a beggar into the land of thy messenger, God.
He had his suspicions about Odrade. The Reverend Mother had brought him here to drain him of his knowledge before killing him. With God’s help, I may surprise her yet. He knew his body was proof against an Ixian Probe, although she obviously did not have such a cumbersome device on her person. But it was the strength of his own will and confidence in God’s grace that reassured Waff.
And what if the hand they hold out to us is held out in sincerity?
That, too, would be God’s doing.
Alliance with the Bene Gesserit, firm control of Rakis: What a dream that was! The Shariat ascendant at last and the Bene Gesserit as missionaries.