II.
Lights on the No-Ship
I tell you that below the desert of Dune there is a secret place with the greatest treasure of all time. I do not lie. When the last worm dies and the last melange is harvested upon our sands, these deep treasures will spring up throughout our universe. As the power of the spice monopoly fades and the hidden stockpiles make their mark, new powers will appear throughout the realm. It is time humans learned once more to live in their instincts.
- EMPEROR LETO II ATREIDES TO HARQ AL-ADA
[from "Children of Dune"]
Soft amber lamps created a diffuse aura of light at the center of the circular room where Reverend Mother Sheeana stood with palms up to the ceiling, dressed in a tight workout clothing in crimson and gold. Acolyte Oriana looked up expectantly from her kneeled position as she waited for the ritual to get to its crucial moment. All around her sat the other renegade Sisters with whom she had escaped the Bene Gesserit's Chapterhouse planet only two years prior aboard the very same no-ship.
The evening had started with hour-long mantra vocalizations, prana-bindu positions, and powerful slow body movements that left them shaky and breathless by the end. Perspiration had condensation on the ceiling; occasionally a drop would fall on her skin. The ventilation system cannot handle this concentration of human energy, she liked to think.
Presently Sheeana cried out, and started that night's dance, shifting the evening from the planned to its unpredictable part. In the following half an hour the group was going to accelerate to a frenzy, hums and chants full of physical power, something her Bene Gesserit training had never contemplated. Sheeana seemed glowing with light, as her cat-like, sensual moves acted like a catalyst for the rest of the group. Jumping up from their sitting positions, all the Sisters started to move in unison with drum beats that boomed through the room's speakers.
Oriana's mind went to the last stop the no-ship had made planet-side only a week before. Most of the crew had disembarked, and Sheeana had demanded that she and her Sisters performed in front of the crowd in the main spaceport's city, and even hired live musicians. What a thrill, what a rapture that had been!
Oriana felt her arms and hips take a life of their own, a simpatico effect moving her in sync with the sisters, with no need to look at them. She felt the energy leap from one to the other, a thread of light that enveloped and connected them all in the trance dance. She closed her eyes, abandoning herself to the resounding waves, trusting not to bump into the others. In her heightened state of mind she saw herself from above, looking down them, while millions of glowing light particles pulsated in the air whirling around the center of the room.
Faster and faster the music went, swifter became the movements and the shouts. They yapped, they screamed, more often they would race and dance and laugh in an accelerating sense of euphoria that peaked and left them collapsed on the floor. Oriana felt a rumble shake from her womb, wild and primordial, moving up her, into her lungs and throat, and screamed with the sound of thunder, her mind blowing out her awareness into the air, into the ceiling. Confetti of gold fell like fireworks after reaching the light. The music ended, Everything went quiet. Oriana could not feel her body, likely spread on the cold floor slippery with sweat. After a time that seemed endless, she felt back her feet and arms, found herself naked, crouched on the side, felt Sheeana's hand put a thick blanket on her body, felt the surge of warmth, and a sensation of comfort and freedom. She was empty, her emotions subsiding, not at bay under the tight Bene Gesserit control she had been taught on Chapterhouse; instead she felt at rest, her entire being quiescent, organs and skin coming together like a singular membrane encompassing all senses: she felt the oxygenated breeze coming out of the vents, the fragrance in the air, the pulse of her blood pulsating in her veins.
Stumbling, she got up, eyes opening and re-adjusting to the material world. Her Sisters lay in clusters, some dressed and some more or less naked, blankets on all of them, Sheeana was going back and forth like a caring nurse, whispering to an ear, caressing a hand. They regrouped in a circle joining hands, smiles and exhaustion on their faces, but in silence. The men who had joined the dance looked into the void in front of them, still enraptured.
So swift was the change! Oriana thought. They had fled Chapterhouse to preserve the Order's integrity, as Reverend Mother Murbella had admitted their arch-enemy, the Honored Matres, to the planet. And yet where are these dances and mantras coming from? Oriana did not go through Missionaria Protectiva training, but knew her other Sisters were bothered by these mystic rituals. Aren't these rites something the Bene Gesserit would use on people to put entire religions under our control? And yet we use them for ourselves. But the vertigo, the abandonment, the heightened awareness! It was so easy for all of them to follow Sheeana's lead, into and beyond their old training. Coming to a resolution, she approached her at the door: "Sheeana, may I have a word with you later?" The Reverend Mother nodded, a gentle smile softening the fire of her blue-filled eyes. Sheeana certainly had guessed her thoughts. While her Sisters walked all in line in front of her toward their shared quarters, she made a mental list of all the things that bothered her.
Mystic dances.
Public exhibitions.
Training men and women on the Tleilaxu and Honored Matres' practices for sexual boding!
Even music! The Bene Gesserit were known not to indulge in anything that could evoke the power of feelings. Sounds of footsteps in front of her. Deep in thought, her pace slowed down.
Where Sheeana leads, we follow without questioning. The recent chatter among the Sisters replayed in her mind. The bonding of men! The ecstasy was so great! And such a glorious feeling was the hunting for males on each new planet. She felt giddy at the thought. And yet she could feel the hold that Bene Gesserit training had on her, the very training and tradition she had vowed to preserve while fleeing Chapterhouse and the incoming Matres. That hold was not as firm as before, and that was troubling. I start to see the cracks. I am not alone in this. She looked up, scanning the way ahead. The rest of the group was a few turns away down the hallway, It was time to hurry and rejoin them as the chatter had vanished around the corners.
She came to a fork at the end of a corridor and made to veer right. The lights in the narrow passage of the ship oddly blinked for a moment. Oriana noticed the side door that was reserved to the maintenance crew was open, darkness within. Unusual, and careless. As she peeked in, the lights in the main corridor came off again. Then a metallic thud, the sensation of her body falling, slamming on the plasteel of the floor. Darkness.
Somebody crouched by Oriana's body lightly rested a hand on her forehead. The aggressor's body violently reshaped itself, and now slender, taller, features shrinking or growing to model after hers, settling into a perfect copy of the original.
As the lights came back on, a different Oriana crossed back to the main corridor, closing the door behind, the service passage still shrouded in darkness, hiding the dying body within.
In a last glimpse of awareness, Oriana the Acolyte saw herself from above, particles of light around her, felt her mind dissolve as fleeting specks in the air of the no-ship.