Even though she had known what Teg must say, his words pained her. She wanted to tell him that she was one of those who still felt human, but his judgment of the Sisterhood could not be denied.
We are taught to reject love. We can simulate it but each of us is capable of cutting it off in an instant.
There were sounds behind them. They stopped and turned. Lucilla and Taraza emerged from a lift tube speaking idly about their observations of the ghola.
“You are absolutely right to treat him as one of us,” Taraza said.
Teg heard but made no comment as they awaited the approach of the two women.
He knows, Odrade thought. He will not ask me about my birthmother. There was no bonding, no real imprint. Yes, he knows.
Odrade closed her eyes and memory startled her by producing of itself an image of a painting. The thing occupied a space on the wall of Taraza’s morning room. Ixian artifice had preserved the painting in the finest hermetically sealed frame behind a cover of invisible plaz. Odrade often stopped in front of the painting, feeling each time that her hand might reach out and actually touch the ancient canvas so cunningly preserved by the Ixians.
Cottages at Cordeville.
The artist’s name for his work and his own name were preserved on a burnished plate beneath the painting: Vincent Van Gogh.
The thing dated from a time so ancient that only rare remnants such as this painting remained to send a physical impression down the ages. She had tried to imagine the journeys that painting had taken, the serial chance that had brought it intact to Taraza’s room.
The Ixians had been at their best in the preservation and restoration. An observer could touch a dark spot on the lower left corner of the frame. Immediately, you were engulfed in the true genius, not only of the artist, but of the Ixian who had restored and preserved the work. His name was there on the frame: Martin Buro. When touched by the human finger, the dot became a sense projector, a benign spin-off of the technology that had produced the Ixian Probe. Buro had restored not only the painting but the painter — Van Gogh’s feeling — accompaniment to each brush stroke. All had been captured in the brush strokes, recorded there by human movements.
Odrade had stood there engrossed through the whole performance so many times she felt she could recreate the painting independently.
Recalling this experience so near to Teg’s accusation, she knew at once why her memory had reproduced the image for her, why that painting still fascinated her. For the brief space of that replay she always felt totally human, aware of the cottages as places where real people dwelled, aware in some complete way of the living chain that had paused there in the person of the mad Vincent Van Gogh, paused to record itself.
Taraza and Lucilla stopped about two paces from Teg and Odrade. There was a smell of garlic on Taraza’s breath.
“We stopped for a small bite to eat,” Taraza said. “Would you like anything?”
It was exactly the wrong question. Odrade freed her hand from Teg’s arm. She turned quickly and wiped her eyes on her cuff. Looking up once more at Teg, she saw surprise on his face. Yes, she thought, those were real tears!
“I think we’ve done everything here that we can,” Taraza said.
“It’s time you were on your way to Rakis, Dar.”
“Past time,” Odrade said.
Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it.
-Chenoeh: “Conversations with Leto II”
Hedley Tuek, High Priest of the Divided God, had grown increasingly angry with Stiros. Although too old himself ever to hope for the High Priest’s bench, Stiros had sons, grandsons, and numerous nephews. Stiros had transferred his personal ambitions to his family. A cynical man, Stiros. He represented a powerful faction in the priesthood, the so-called “scientific community,” whose influence was insidious and pervasive. They veered dangerously close to heresy.
Tuek reminded himself that more than one High Priest had been lost in the desert, regrettable accidents. Stiros and his faction were capable of creating such an accident.