“There is more,” Odrade agreed. “The Manifesto — I am its author. I wrote it at Taraza’s orders and following her detailed instructions.”
Teg glanced around the large chamber as though to make sure no one overheard. He spoke in a lowered voice: “The Tleilaxu are spreading it far and wide!”
“Just as we hoped.”
“Why are you telling me this? Taraza said you were to prepare me for . . .”
“There will come a time when you must know our purpose. It is Taraza’s wish that you make your own decisions then, that you really become a free agent.”
Even as she spoke, Odrade saw the Mentat glaze in his eyes.
Teg breathed deeply. Dependencies and key logs! He felt the Mentat sense of an enormous pattern just beyond the reach of his accumulated data. He did not even consider for an instant that some form of filial devotion had prompted these revelations. There was a fundamentalist, dogmatic, and ritualistic essence apparent in all Bene Gesserit training despite every effort to prevent this. Odrade, this daughter out of his past, was a full Reverend Mother with extraordinary powers of muscle and nerve control — full memories on the female side! She was one of the special ones! She knew tricks of violence that few humans ever suspected. Still, that similarity, that essence remained and a Mentat always saw it.
What does she want?
Affirmation of his paternity? She already had all of the confirmation she could need.
Observing her now, the way she waited so patiently for his thoughts to resolve, Teg reflected that it often was said with truth that Reverend Mothers no longer were completely members of the human race. They moved somehow outside the main flow, perhaps parallel to it, perhaps diving into it occasionally for their own purposes, but always removed from humankind. They removed themselves. It was an identifying mark of the Reverend Mother, a sense of extra identity that made them closer to the long-dead Tyrant than to the human stock from which they sprang.
Manipulation. That was their mark. They manipulated everyone and everything.
“I am to be the Bene Gesserit eyes,” Teg said. “Taraza wants me to make a human decision for all of you.”
Obviously pleased, Odrade squeezed his arm. “What a father I have!”
“Do you really have a father?” he asked and he recounted for her what he had been thinking about the Bene Gesserit removing themselves from humanity.
“Outside humanity,” she said. “What a curious idea. Are Guild navigators also outside their original humanity?”
He thought about this. Guild navigators diverged widely from humankind’s more common shape. Born in space and living out their lives in tanks of melange gas, they distorted the original form, elongated and repositioned limbs and organs. But a young navigator in estrus and before entering the tank could breed with a norm. It had been demonstrated. They became non-human but not in the way of the Bene Gesserit.
“Navigators are not your mental kin,” he said. “They think human. Guiding a ship through space, even with prescience to find the safe way, has a pattern a human can accept.”
“You don’t accept our pattern?”
“As far as I can, but somewhere in your development you shift outside the original pattern. I think you may perform a conscious act even to appear human. This way you hold my arm right now, as though you really were my daughter.”
“I am your daughter but I’m surprised you think so little of us.”
“Quite the contrary: I stand in awe of you.”
“Of your own daughter?”
“Of any Reverend Mother.”
“You think I exist only to manipulate lesser creatures?”
“I think you no longer really feel human. There’s a gap in you, something missing, something you’ve removed. You no longer are one of us.”
“Thank you,” Odrade said. “Taraza told me you would not hesitate to answer truthfully, but I knew that for myself.”
“For what have you prepared me?”
“You will know it when it occurs; that is all I can say . . . all I am permitted to say.”
Manipulating again! he thought. Damn them!
Odrade cleared her throat. She appeared about to say something more but she remained silent as she guided Teg around and strolled with him back across the chamber.