We can model the concept of prescience as the ability to see the superimposed states of the future. The normal human only sees the collapsed states, can maybe infer some of the stories that spring to the future from there. The spice-enabled oracle sees the sum of the stories, and the ability to observe the future states.
– THE IXIAN RENAISSANCE
A long time ago, a few planets ago, during her teenage years, Tairasu never had to suffer fools or be ordered around. It distinctively was not Matres' style, and what the daughter of a Great Matre like her could depend on was that she was destined to a proud future. Her days were lazy, fun, and spent in luxury.
The day that would change her life forever she had chosen a revealing dress with a black dragon embossed over the cardinal red of a Matre-in-training despite her being a mere Supplicant at the time; and with her best friends - other elite girls related to high-rank Sisters - she planned to hit the city accompanied by a bonded soldier and a trusted driver. The air was cool, green were the trees outside of her mother's mansion, and as the ground car spilled them in the city's rich shopping quarter the passersby fanned out and lowered their gaze to make way for them like they were royalty. It was exhilaratingly fun. The city in her teenage eyes was the ultimate adventure, a place for shopping therapy, carousing and rambunctious law-breaking under the promise of impunity implied by her red dragon dress, combat powers, and reputation for retribution. Little did the locals know that the Great Matre had specifically forbidden these trouble-making raids and would have likely left them to their own devices had some trouble occurred.
And yet how painful to discover that her trouble-making appetites saved her life. Upon returning to her mother's mansion, there was a new guard at the gate. Which did not matter, until her bodyguard was fast shot dead while rolling down the window. Only after she automatically deployed her tremendous reflexes to aim the dead soldier's weapon to the enemy, watching its body slump into the unnatural pose of death, Tairasu realized she was in danger, and second, that her mother was dead.
Commanding the driver to go back to town at the cost of his life, she collapsed on the back seat, shocked and silent, not able to grasp the reality of what was happening. Violence was in the Matres' blood, and her mother, fierce and homicidal in public yet fun and sweet in private, had surely been overcome by a competitor. As far as careers in the Order were concerned, adapt or die was the only accepted rule.
Where would she go? She wandered in the city trusting nobody knew yet of the event, getting lost in dangerous or questionable neighborhoods until late at night, where she had crashed a local hotel. The concierge did not try to stop her, intimidated by her wild look and Matres attire. What would she do? Her friends were unreachable – or as she feared, had written her off according to the unspoken rule of all Matres' daughters – befriend only the powerful.
The new Great Matre that had replaced her mother was certainly her former assistant, or a rival that had found a way through her defenses. This looked like a grand attack, one that would secure her a new position and the mansion that came with it. Surely the new Great Matre was going to hunt her down. Or maybe, just maybe, she would have forgotten about her on account of her being untrained, unblooded and isolated.
After hours of uncontrollable sobbing in her hotel room they had found her, and dragged her unresisting body out and shipped her to the farthest Matres School many solar systems over, never to come back, never to take revenge, her sorrow and pain to be transformed and reshaped in the training, her psyche to be subverted and sculpted in pain, aggression and fear by the T-probe and the laiz. By intercession, one of her former friends whose relative was the new Great Matre had pleaded for her life.
And so, Chapterhouse. That morning as she failed to find the right mood for meditating (she once again had ingested too much spice and kept fidgeting), Tairasu contemplated how an unexpected act of kindness had saved her. To this date she had never said thank you - not that in the vicious society of Honored Matres, giving thanks could be interpreted as anything but weakness. Her friend could have just killed her on the spot had she tried. What was her name again? Quodira. I need to know whether she is on Chapterhouse, she thought.
She stood up, but the air around her turned purple. Who was that girl sitting on the floor underneath her, clasps of hair inordinately falling on her shoulders?
Tutor Gammala had talked about of out body experiences. Common byproduct of early spice sensitization. She looked around containing her surprise for fear the experience would dissolve, but instead of the classroom, she realized by instinct, the impossibly swirling translucent waters that surrounded her were the currents of Time and Madness.
There was a golden locket laid on a polastine table.
A pack of dogs walked humans on a leash.
A flurry of wind left a gaping wound.
The desert sun, shining over all the land and leaving no place to hide.
Specks of gold floating in the air.
Speckles of blue whirling like a sandstorm.
The rhythmic thumping of the sand, vibrating quickly like the surface of a drum.
Smell of ozone.
I must remember this.
"Tairasu, come back!" she heard as Gerta shook her awake from her wanderings. "Plenary session!" Catapulted from the vision world to the real one, Tairasu jumped up, still reeling, took up a spice pill discreetly while students and teachers were busy moving toward the exit, and slowly queued up with Gerta and Sutica at the end of the line. The onrush of the spice high did not, like she had hoped, bring her back to the vision. The school was gathering outside.
In the weeks that had passed since her initiation the secret night training with the Black Swans adepts had eclipsed her daily Bene Gesserit training. The sandy winds grew stronger, as her tolerance to her melange overdoses. Rumors about secret societies continued to flourish. The once green pastures by the School grounds were now permanent seas of yellow shrubs and stubble. They were introduced to water discipline. She had lost her taste for the locally available men. Barefoot in an abandoned fruit packing facility that had not been demolished yet, the Black Swans adepts learned the Voice – the Bene Gesserit's secret denied to all but Reverend Mothers – until their untrained voice became hoarse.
The plenary session meant it was decision day. She found her place in the yellow courtyard, while waiting for the Tutors to convene. Angelika was a long time showing up. But she was there today, once again stunning everyone with a turquoise dress that looked translucent but wasn't. She made eye contact with Gerta. In the subtle code they had learned in their time with the Swans, turquoise meant they should redouble their recruiting efforts.
The students stood, quietly, in the courtyard, prodding Tairasu to wonder how the Bene Gesserit had managed to tame such a wild bunch of killers to obediently line up and wait. It was the mystique, and the promise of power and status.
The whole process, she knew, was going to be sweet and brief. Back in the beginning they would admit scores of students, but lately it had come down to just a few.
A hundred students were standing in the courtyard, immobile. Don't blink.
The Tutors walked through their tanks. Whoever they touched was marked for advancement to the Reverend Mother preparatory classes. The ultimate level where they held their Secrets tight.
This one time, the Tutors touched only two. One was Sutica, and their trio had suddenly become two.