I.
Of a Reverend Mother's
Encounter in the Scattering
Our approach is to abstract from the accidental nature of events; we test the rules, causes and effects, that describe our universe. In this, we are unapologetically at odds with contemporary philosophies. There is an ultimate reality. We corner it by triangulating independent observers who probe it directly. This is not the prevailing dogma passed down through the generations, a vestige of the old Imperium. The prevailing dogma denies the separation between objective and subjective. To them, reality is but a subjective projection, a screen on which elemental observations are changed by the psyche of the observer, painting order on a canvas of chaos. Their look is all inward. Hence their dogmatic interpretation of prescience: the oracle fixes the future according to what it sees; it does not perceive, as we instead theorize, the superimposed projection of all future states. We smile and disprove this senseless dogma every day in our work! Look at what our instruments are capable of. An Ixian paracompass points to the North regardless of its owner's psyche! With the same confidence, we look inside ourselves and find rules, causes and effects. We do not care about the problem of human agency and free will. The universe's laws are God enough for us.
- THE IXIAN RENAISSANCE
Reverend Mother Visella Ashejak's ride up the elevator was smooth despite the vertiginous vertical speed she inferred by looking through the transparent walls of plexi and out into the rainforest surrounding the building. The trees were fast disappearing on the ground. A few seconds later, the door opened but she felt no deceleration. The anti-g suspensors underneath the platform were incredibly powerful. Expensive. This building belonged to top bureaucrats, not the rank and file of the administrators.
The robo-helper guided her gently onto the open-air floor, which was organized as a garden with patios and wooden frames designed to create comfortable small meeting areas with low tables, tatami, and chairs. The sound of splashing water was everywhere. It was sunrise on the planet she had landed just an hour before; she prayed she could take off just as quickly.
As she walked along the terrace, Visella noticed she was at the very top of the tower. but no barriers protected people from falling down below. Force fields were surely concealed in the exterior walls to refrain elite bureaucrats from smashing on the ground below. How high was she now? The view was obstructed by the garden hedge.
Up a few steps she went, and into a gated area where the robo-server pointed to a shoe rack. She left her sandals on the rack, and washed her feet, hands and face in a shallow pool of water and a nearby carved stone basin. From there, she arrived at a raised spear-shaped platform furnished with pillows and low chairs. A female figure with a wide burnt orange gown and a tight white blouse was waiting, looking pensive. The blouse's fabric fell down her body in ripples, hiding a flat chest and creating sparkling light effects as the breeze blew softly through it.
Here is the bureaucrat, thought Visella, annoyed. No Reverend Mother had ever touched this planet, or they would have rushed her through the bureaucracy promptly, with the courtesy that her station demanded. Instead she followed a robo-server to this place!
Her host bowed, invited her to sit down with a gesture. "Good morning, Reverend Mother. And what a splendid morning indeed. I am Sapient Arbatar Sorgo. Sorry to keep you waiting." A scroll hung from a divider, black ink flowing in beautiful calligraphy lines. Summer.
Visella kept quiet while observing how Arbatar kneeled on the tatami and cleaned a whisk and a bowl with a hemp cloth. The bowl was white, mottled with azure clouds. The straight, squared edges of the gray kettle contrasted elegantly with the curves and hues of the bowl. Water poured from a black flagon into the kettle, which was placed on a stone surface and started glowing a faint orange. Bubbles came up to the surface. It is raging hot, thought the Reverend Mother from her small chair.
Her host kept silent. Visella focused on the rainforest stretching just beyond the parapet. The moist air, the dawn light invited joy and calm; it had the opposite effect on the Reverend Mother. A beautiful sunrise on a beautiful land… why am I nervous? This is too tall a building for the mind to contemplate nature's beauty. There should be howling winds here, not a gentle breeze.
Holding the scalding kettle in her hands, the Sapient Arbatar poured water into the bowl in a sweeping move.
Visella swept her gaze across her host's figure, the angle of the elbow, the perfect hairdo, the curiously long middle finger on her left hand. Something screamed at her. Is she a Face Dancer? No. How hot is that kettle she is grasping with her bare hands? Realization struck. By all Gods below! Her skin is not burning. It is a machine!
"Tea?" the android in front of her asked colloquially while staring in amusement at her. She scooped a green powder from a ball-shaped container, poured it into the bowl and dissolved it in the water with a whisk. It smelled of matcha tea powder.
Breaking through her Bene Gesserit self-control, the Reverend Mother let a repelled look escape just for a moment before her training took over. The ancient words echoed in her memory: 'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind!'
The android took the bowl with two hands to her perfectly contoured lips, taking a ceremonial sip to show it was safe. Then offered it to the Reverend Mother.
Visella was still young for Bene Gesserit standards, but ten years in the Scattering had left a mark, a wrinkle under her eyes, her natural beauty had become fiercer, her muscles more sinewy. Yet somehow she felt aging another decade with that exchange of glances. Her hands accepted the bowl. I am deeply exhausted. She opened her lips, but not to sip. "Is that Gamont's matcha? The leaves' fragrance is unique."
"Not quite, but close," spoke the android Arbatar. "This is our local variety. Harvested in the hills of our southern continent twice a year. But I admit it is not at the level of Gamont's. Though CHOAM ships rarely bring tea here," continued the Sapient, still smiling.
A machine's smile could mean anything. CHOAM ships, she considered. The venerable trade company from the Old Imperium gets this far. Mayhap I will hitch a ride with them.
"So what is all this?" ventured Visella, looking around.
"Our Immigration and Customs office. I am its Secretary."
Visella sipped in silence. Sapient Arbatar produced a second bowl for herself from behind the little table and proceeded to clean it with the same gestures as before. Visella's Other Memories noted how this was not the ancient custom.
"You are quiet. What is in your mind?" the android continued. Water poured out of the kettle into the second bowl, hot steam clouds evaporating in the brisk morning air. Colorful birds perched on branches around them and sang. There was humidity in the air. It was going to be an oppressively hot morning.
"Never met a machine before," Visella replied.
"For some it means evoking deeply-rooted ideas from the ancient Butlerian Jihad. For others, a suspicion that I may be just a puppet on strings." She paused while sipping tea. "Beginnings are interesting. Risk taking is required. Please indulge me in a little game, Reverend Mother. We both write down what is going through our minds and then exchange papers."
"Why?" replied a puzzled Visella. Another smile in return. Visella took the pen and scribbled quickly: "Are you a person, and should I treat you as one?" They exchanged sheets. Arbatar's paper read: "We don't know that we think alike but what harm comes from presuming we do?" Visella smiled in return, and she let it be. After all, a smile could mean anything.
"Similar reservations. That is progress," said Arbatar in between sips.
"Is it? Is somebody directing you? It could be an elaborate game you play with every Reverend Mother you meet."
"I have never met an original Reverend Mother from the Million Worlds before. Others who were similar. Not quite, but close. I ask myself the same question: how do I know your mental process too is free of external interferences? Do you have no masters?"
Lectured by a machine. "You were programmed, I was not."
"What are those precious genes, the Siona markers, that you carry? And the rigorous training? So are they not directing your actions?"
"Influencing versus directing. Let's talk business. Specifically, my safe passage. Why is your Customs department detaining me?" I do not feel danger, but are my instincts reliable with androids? Visella closed her eyes while savoring the tea and sank into Other Memory, looking for insight. She had Ix ancestors.
"More like entertaining you," spoke Sapient Arbatar, unaware of Visella's inner dialogue. "Your safe passage, indeed. Where are my manners! You must forgive my little time-consuming experiment. I do dabble in the field of dialectics in my free time."
"You do! Very fitting for a machine!"
"Well, when you know you are different, you wonder whether there can be shared meaning. How can you know? Every word, every gesture to somebody from the farthest place in the Scattering may mean something different, and that may have consequences."
The last word hung in the air like a bringer of bad news. "If understanding is already hard among humans, how deep, or how shallow is the divide between us?"
"Sophisms!" Visella rebuked her, "I need safe passage and permission to leave this planet." If I am to report back to the Missionaria Protectiva. She had ventured to a half dozen planets in a decade-long mission, and vital recon information had to be brought back to the Sisterhood for the natural next step. Planets ready for sandtrout and Sheeana. Bring in the prophetess!
"To simplify," continued Arbatar, "We don't need to be similar. I certainly do not aspire to be human." This word also hung in the air, like she had said I do not aspire to be a cooking stove. "By the way, the rice crackers are quite nice," the android added, nodding toward the little tray next to them.
"So?" replied the Reverend Mother. The android did love to talk. Patience Sister! The first time in history we met this! There could be something useful for the Sisterhood.
"I realized that there is a solution: environmental pressures, Reverend Mother. And natural selection," Arbatar continued. Visella nodded: "We are both shaped by our environment."
Another android smile: "As long as the environment shaped us the same way, as long as we have been under the same pressure to survive and perpetuate our kind, then I believe both our people have adapted to think alike... So I am optimistic. Different origin, but similar necessities. More tea?"
It made sense, uncomfortably. Visella nodded again, looking at the simul-ivory timepiece on her wrist. Her time-sense was not adjusted to the local circadian rhythms. This meeting is not entirely a waste of time, but I need to be on my way. Obviously she could not read an android the way you could read a human. Would Truthsense work on this thing, if I were a Truthsayer?
"So be it," Visella permitted, relaxing on her chair. It was a glorious, tropical day. The haze had all evaporated, revealing a panorama that, at their height above the canopy, spanned several hundred miles from their position to the horizon. Large birds of prey roamed the skies, certainly a local breed of giant eagle dating back from the days when the planet was terraformed with imported Terran fauna; fifteen-feet wingspan, shrieks that pierced the wind. "But I am curious. May I ask about your kind, or would that be against etiquette?"
"Questions," replied the Sapient, "come with hospitality. Ask away."
"How old are you?"
"Three hundred standard years".
"Can you die?"
"Everything perishes in due time, Reverend Mother."
"Were you created?"
"We build our bodies and hardware. Our software is created by recombination."
"Like procreation?"
"Not quite, but close. We breed minds by merging vectors from different individuals. There can be more than two parents."
"Is your body entirely mechanical or partly biological?"
No answer, only a smile.
"What is your credo?" Always probe for weaknesses, her Missionaria training reminded her.
"The Reverend Mother asks about religion. That would be very human of us!" the android shrugged. Intentionally mimicking human body language?
Then it... she? put down the bowl, elaborating: "We cultivate open-mindedness, and the expansion of awareness. We share one common principle."
"And that is?"
"Compassion. All sentient beings deserve compassion."
Voices from Other Memory clamored inside Visella's head. "Don't toy with me! What do you mean? That you all are Buddhists of old?"
"Our approach is not quite that, but close. We have to thank the holo-libraries our human friends brought to us during the Famine times."
"Approach to what?"
"To interacting with the universe around us. What are we and what are you? What difference does it make if we both think? Sentient beings. We could not find a single passage where Buddhists made Nirvana, the Dharma, and compassion an exclusive club for humans. Instead they talked about sentient beings! What a radical concept for the times".
"What a radical concept for all times! It seems very... human." Visella snapped, testing.
"Human! But no, this credo is so rarely found among humans!" Arbatar was smiling again.
As the Mentat had said: "Nothing is out of the question in the Scattering!" Visella leaned back in her small chair, her body pushing against the soft embroidered pillows. She was profoundly disconcerted. Where had these creatures emerged from? A swirl of other questions followed. Would Voice work? Surely not the sexual imprinting the Sisterhood had perfected and was still carefully using. Once back to Chapterhouse, we shall send a whole contingent of Sisters and either annex or completely cauterize this place. The unknown factor! But that was not all, as she had noticed the signs of incredible wealth in the size of this planet's spaceport, the expensive construction materials, the decor, this very tower shooting up from the ground up to a mile in height, dominating from above like an apex predator on the land.
"How many?" Only a smile.
"Tell me, does the notion of gender mean anything to you?"
"Tricky. We have a construct similar to biological sex, but it is not binary. For simplicity, you can address me as a she."
"Very well," continued Arbatar after noting the time marked on her own golden timepiece. "Your questions are revealing, but not unusual. Now that our little introduction is over, I will endeavor to get to the point." Finally! Visella stiffened in her chair, all her senses becoming alert. This long diversion was masking the difficulties ahead. If pushed against a corner, could she hurt an inorganic machine? Would she reach the nearest exit in time? The elevator? How could she flee from here? From an entire planet?
"I have your Old Imperium paperwork. And I have identified you as a Reverend Mother from the old legends. Your presence on our planet is a pleasant surprise. You are the first Mother we have seen in centuries. May I ask what is the purpose of your mission?"
"I am in transit. My lighter's life systems malfunctioned on the way back to Junction, and this was the nearest star system with a Goldilocks zone."
"How did you know there would be an inhabited planet here?"
"I didn't. I only knew it was inhabitable. My craft is a light ship. Crew of one. I am a trained pilot. I had limited autonomy left due to a failure in the air recycling apparatus. I needed fresh air and a base from which to send a distress signal. Or improvise repairs. I am glad this planet is inhabited, and beg your help to repair my ship and leave at once. The Bene Gesserit will remember."
"You were very lucky to find us here. This place does not usually show up in navigation maps, though we conduct our fair share of business with many worlds."
"I have noticed your spaceport" continued Visella. An oblique look. "Smugglers?"
"Only proper business, but discreet. Tropical hardwoods. Our signature rose water. Fine tea. Advanced electronics. No weaponry of any kind." A pause. "Don't you see how fantastic this is, Reverend Mother? Here you are, comfortably addressing me as a person." That lingered in the air.
"I give you the benefit of the doubt, sentient being," snapped Visella. Then, a suspicion. "Arbatar, is this just a ruse? A simulated performance? A Turing test? You are declared conscious if you give me the impression of being so? Who is the puppeteer holding your strings?"
"No strings! No tests!" The android came closer to the table to stare at her eyes. "Being shaped by the same pressures, remember". Android smile.
"And yours is…" Revelation struck again. Reverend Mother Visella stood up in a blink.
"Survival." Android smile.
"Which means…"
"You are safe here, please. No harm will come to you, Reverend Mother." Arbatar stood up slowly, showing her open hands.
"So long as I do not try to leave!"
"Yes. We do not wish our presence to be noticed."
"By whom? CHOAM? By the sentient beings of my Order? Well I see now the extent of your compassion!"
"Not quite there Reverend Mother, but close. I need to balance the need for safety of countless sentient beings on this planet. And yes, your Bene Gesserit would certainly remember this." Arbatar relaxed once again, sat back down on her knees and grabbed the bowl.
"What would happen if I fled, Arbatar?" said Visella.
"From a mile-high tower? You cannot outrun gravity. Or from this planet? On a ship with failing life support? My timepiece just notified me that our crew has completed the capture of your ship. Do sit down, Reverend Mother, and let's be sensible. The day is gorgeous. This planet has all that a human may long for. Including other fellow humans. It is a wonderful time to be alive. Enjoy the moment. We will get to know each other better, in time."
The Sapient paused, then continued: "And do try the rice crackers, by the way — they are quite tasty."
A furious Visella picked a cracker up and bit into it. It tasted sweet. Like a good trap.
"Tasty, right?" asked the Sapient.
"Not quite, but close," was the Reverend Mother's bitter answer.