Teacher: You can't speak the truth. You can't speak the truth.
Disciple: How so?
Teacher: Speak the truth and watch your teachings fashion cages for the immature. Speak the truth and watch the wise parrot it back, none the wiser.
Disciple: What can you teach me?
Teacher: Teach? I only nudge the ready ones on the path of discovery.
Disciple: Is that how you teach?
Teacher: I only plant seeds that individual action will sprout. Experience is the only teacher.
- THE BENE GESSERIT CODA
Reverend Mother Visella, Governor of Alkadi, and her aide and student Leerna stood with teacups in hand on the wooden bench opposite to the Sage.
"I will focus your attention on the news about the Guild," he said monotonously.
"Avatasuyara, I see you have captured a Navigator," Visella pointed out after reviewing the documentation that was pumped in her mind via the implant that connected her instantly to their planet-scale systems. The information was there for all to see, but the value was in the discussion.
"I? We captured Navigator Solideum on Tupile, Sage Visella."
"I asked you to send probes to the boundaries of the Imperium, but did not think you would risk your splendid isolation for me."
"We embraced you because of your divergent thinking, Visella. We take calculated risks." The Sage shifted his weight on his wooden stool. Embers burned in the firepit before them.
Visella considered this. Thanks to her, tens of thousands of spying probes now orbited key systems. The androids' technology managed to miniaturize cloaking devices to occupy a space no bigger than a room. These were undetectable no-probes collecting data from afar, then sending key results to no-transmitters and no-relays which packaged signals for instantaneous communication over immense foldspace distances. Throughout the centuries of the Old Imperium first, the Tyrant regime and the New Rakian Age then, intel was never separate from its physical carrier, either the brain of a shere-imbued messenger or encrypted on some medium, both subject the constraints of the physical world; reason why secrets and news were so often conveyed in person after perilous travel. But this civilization perfected data jumping through foldspace, fashioning an invisible and undetectable network. Echoes of stories amplified by endless repeaters spread news across the voids in ways that prescience, she assumed, could not see nor decipher.
"You should think of handing Agarath's Foreign Affairs over to me in bulk," continued Visella. "Do you realize what you hold in your... our hands?"
"A pilot and an antique spaceship. What value are they to us?" Avatasuyara asked with mild curiosity, while staring at the wood that surrounded his place, not so much a house but a rundown hut surrounded by trees. Androids did not need much in terms of accommodation, after all.
"You think you only ensnared a pilot? A Steersman is a scryer. This, Avatasuyara, is a formidable resource in the right hands. Will he cooperate?"
"Makes no matter. Since you are so familiar with prescience and the old Guild, we will put him under your supervision," he replied gravely.
"You give him to me, and rest assured he won't cooperate."
"You have no trust in our help, Visella? Do I need to remind you how Arbatar had you in her tea cup so quickly? You, you opened up to many new gifts since she sat you down for a chat four seasons ago."
Visella blinked, submerging her more recent, confused feelings to find refuge in the mask of control she still commanded through her old Bene Gesserit training; a training, she had realized, the value of which decreased the more she learned to balance on new surfaces on Agarath. Once again she wondered at the full capabilities of these androids. She sipped the tea - there was always tea! - brewed in the small wooden hut that was the Sage's abode, made of a straw bed and a kitchen. The bonfire crackled timidly, not giving away much heat. The small figure of Avatasuyara, covered in a gray tunic and barefoot, like a monk of the old days, hid well whatever powers he could summon.
"You did not only send probes. The reports speak of agents."
"We sent a few human-attuned androids on the CHOAM ships that come to trade hardwoods. We learned that the Guild and the Bene Tleilax are no more. Your Sisterhood won and is merging with a group called Honored Matres."
She paused, not wasting any tear over the demise of obsolete male-dominated institutions. After having reviewed all available reports, she commented: "I am relieved to hear about the Bene Gesserit. Farewell Odrade, you were a friend a long time ago. But I see no mention of a giant no-ship grounded on a planet called Chapterhouse?"
"We found the planet, but not the ship. And your Sisters are preparing for battle."
"Could we help?"
A head shake. "We never interfere, Sage Visella."
"But..."
"In the Lotus Sutra, the first Sage said we should light up our corner; not the whole universe. Just to make it blissful where we are is enough," Avatasuyara ruled.
"Here is your learning opportunity, council of Six. We shall not see ourselves as humble planetary administrators. The destiny of all mankind should be in our purview."
Avatasuyara remained quiet.
"I will see the Navigator then, Sage."
"Very well, Visella." The small man sighed and stood up, handing her a small bronze box. "Your spice stash. The one we retrieved from your ship. Forgive me for not returning it to you sooner."
"Is the Reverend Mother free to go?" Leerna asked with a gasp.
"No, silly, I am wired to a planetary comms system and am entrusted with the wellbeing of millions of sentient beings. I can't go anywhere. And wouldn't," she added quickly, "for this is the right place and time. But I do thank you, Sage. When it comes to managing my own spice rationing, I prefer my own counsel to even your doctors'."
"Very well," he replied matter-of-factly, "although as it is obvious to point out, no rationing is needed any longer."
"I beg your pardon?" asked Visella, wondering what report or train of thought she had missed.
"It's Tupile we were speaking of, Sage Visella."
"And of the capture of the last living Navigator, if the Guild is truly no more."
"I am sorry I was not clear," the little man smiled. "Where do you think the Guild hid its spice stocks?"
There was a clang as Leerna's teacup hit the ground. The two women stood motionless, breathing heavily to catch up.
"How... much?"
"It's measured in metric tons. It looks like several centuries of stockpiling."
"We must..."
"It's being moved to multiple safe locations, yes."
"Is this conversation on broadcast?" asked Visella, mindful of the ever-present public monitoring of the Experiment. A crow cawed from a tree; in her mind it could be one of the many recording machines that belonged to their vast communication apparatus.
Avatasuyara shook his head. "Only to the Six. Classified."
"Classified? All this time you told me my life would be forever on display, Sage!"
"You are too literal. Since when do we let rules override common sense?"
"But..."
"Haven't you caught up, Sage Visella? Do you expect words to be the vehicle to transmit our teachings?" The tone nudged her to a higher level of awareness, elevated by the Bene Gesserit own admonishments: experience was the only teacher! She sensed double meanings in the lesson she was being served.
"Look at your box," he continued, "Your spice. It was everything in your life. Losing it, what did it mean to you, up to now?"
"Death by torture." Visella visibly relaxed, feeling free.
"And now with one hand you dip into a planet full of it. Take a fresh look at that box with your updated understanding. So?"
"Now," she declared, "it's nothing special."
"And so are our acquisitions. If you like, you can use the spice to stretch your lifespan further," he waved a hand, "like it matters in the end. Listen up, Leerna disciple. When you tread the correct path, when you learn the correct way, what looks unattainable before, after the fact becomes nothing special."
It was Visella's turn to stand up with the determination of a Reverend Mother on a mission. "Take me to this Steersman," she told the Sage; then, facing her disciple: "Leerna, prepare yourself for the worm trip."
"Will it be nothing special in the end, Reverend Mother?" she asked.
"Yes. But only decades afterwards," Visella replied while she walked away.