"Siaynoq contains the idea of the light revealing reality."
"Reality... that is a very ambiguous word, Lord."
- THE GOD-EMPEROR OF DUNE
Dust swept the barren streets of the glorious city of Lat, where only echoes remained of the busy squares and the bustling caravanserai that only weeks ago had welcomed pilgrims, merchants and adventurers alike.
No more though, for opposing armed forces split control of the city into uneven thirds. The streets that once danced at the sound of the market criers, and quieted at the call of the muezzins chanting from mile-high towers reaching above the temples, the cathedrals and the churches of many faiths; now those streets only let the sound of the wind through, and the marching footsteps of soldiers.
It is a bleak omen that strums the chords of rabbi Olza's heart, a heart always ready to lift itself up, a heart come back down from the orbital revolutions of the interstellar spaceship. A heart that unexpectedly opened up to new potentiality up in the skies and now finds the carefully preserved memories of the planet's old-trodden ground dull and soulless. That it was this, the dusty soil and the dull ochre brick buildings, the source of her happiness once, of her grounding; and the sky above, stretching far beyond her finger pointing upward, a place unknown, full of fears; this simple idea had accompanied her all her life; and how it had changed in the months in space, turned upside down, really, such that the sterile streets of Lat looked dull, and her stroll through such a mundane landscape so void of expectations; and the sky above, the cradle of the future.
Yet the rabbi did not expect Security Commissioner Hilom Perei to understand. He led the way being a step ahead, on purpose, as they walked on the sidewalk of the Delphyne sector, the one he still owned and governed, toward the Cordian checkpoint. Hilom, like the ochre brick buildings of the merchant district, had not changed; Hilom the strong, the defender, secret guardian of his people, but Olza's new eyes saw him as dull and sterile as the dust they treaded in; so that the rabbi questioned whether these years spent hiding in the midst of so much commerce and genteel crowds had any value.
She looked up, searching for the tiny dot of light that meant a ship was circling the vast space above them; at which the Commissioner, who did not like to hold his silence for long, mumbled in reproach:
"Lost your mind in the sky, have you, Rabbi?" The Commissioner's tone was deferential and irritated at the same time; a strange opening for their first meeting after the months she had spent as hostage in space.
Always quick-witted, she spoke her mind with an unusual lack of kindness: "Lost our city to foreigners, have you Hilom?" The energy in the rebuke startled the Commissioner, who stumbled on the broken pavement. The two were friends, had been friends two decades earlier, could get away from the formality of their titles and be direct and raw; but still.
"It was never our city to own," he replied gloomily, "only to administer."
"It was your desire to govern, not ours," continued the rabbi, keeping at a distance. "We only sought refuge and a happy life. Yet you don't seem too unhappy for what you lost."
"In manners and combativeness it seems you have borrowed from our new friends," he said, not looking back at her. "Have you sided with the Bene Gesserit?"
The rabbi paused, recognizing some truth in the sarcasm.
"We keep about a third of the planet under our institutional control," continued the rabbi. "Same with the city of Lat". The Cordians came first, after the bombs at their embassy and in Daskanei, where scores of their war veterans purchased acres of fertile land. Under the guise of their citizen protection program they took control of another third of the city, and another third of the planet. The Tailarons demanded to be observers, and armed ones. They counted the second largest population on the planet. And they took the remaining third. "Nominally, we remain a sovereign planet, though the other forces create new borders."
"Not we: you. It was easy for our kind to hide in plain sight when religions were tolerated and commerce flourished. Hard to single out an outcast in a crowd. But now?" and she pointed to the deserted street.
"We are not outcasts," Hilom replied, "never have been."
"Call it a secret sect, or hidden community, the matter remains."
"I don't mean to be disrespectful, rabbi, but please let the safety of our people rest in the hands of those who can best manage it."
"How do you manage, now that the rug is pulled under our feet?"
"I have never shied away from a challenge, rabbi."
"Maybe this is not a challenge worth a fight. Maybe we should gather all the families, the mishpacha, ask for asylum in the giant no-ship of your trade partners, and seek a new home."
"My trade partners?"
"You made the deal, you exchanged the hostages. I was one of them, remember? You came to me. You said, rabbi for the good of our community. You did not think the profit was worth mentioning. You confined me in a space ship for months, until it was time to rotate hostages." She paused. "You know at the time I thought it was your resentment from twenty years ago."
"Profit was never the reason, nor resentment. And you don't seem too unhappy about your captivity in space, rabbi." Hilom was not blind to the transformation that had happened in her. "The sharpest mind you have always been, and the kindest, rabbi, but now your words cut deep. You bring new friends and, I sense, a dangerous change of mind."
"Rebecca is one of us. She landed with me yesterday, part of the new hostage exchange."
"Admit her to rabbinical studies. She can serve our community. I have not disagreed with that". The Commissioner accelerated his pace, anxious to get through the checkpoint and to the other side, to the temple of Dur just inside the Cordian-controlled area.
"But she is already a full rabbi, in mind and speech and heart... through her memories."
"The same memories that make her millions of Reverend Mothers."
"Even Rabbi Eben of Gammu, who taught her since she was a child, the same rabbi who is so reserved around the Sisterhood, supports the idea. You can't turn your back on a daughter of Israel."
"I am not."
"Call her ritually impure if you like, she can be purified. Call her book-wise but not street-savvy. Call those memories education and not experience."
"A daughter of Israel she is not."
"Careful there, Commissioner. We have strict rules around refusing asylum. You feel callous and are cautious because of your current predicament."
"Caution is a good sign. It means you are questioning your reality," commented Hilom.
"What poisoned your mind, Hilom? Thoughts of a Bene Gesserit conspiracy? What have they done to wrestle this planet away from you? Nothing. Have they always observed our secret alliance? Times and times over, and the exchange has paid itself many times over. What has your dear Cordian friend done instead? Trespassed on your sovereignty, caused an international crisis from which violence or irreversible loss will follow. You have to answer to your community about your taste for questionable friends."
"I do not have time for threats from one of my own, rabbi."
"Then where are you taking us in such a hurry?" She pointed ahead, where dry leaves swept by a whirlwind crossed the street in front of them.
"To the temple of the Divided God, to meet the Cordian ambassador."
"The very same! A mouse's trap set right inside the heathen's heart!"
"Do not forget Ben is Priest Brogallo, and he is Master of the Temple. He has jurisdiction over Dur's holy places. And today is Siaynoq. Even the Tailarons will respect the neutrality of the church."
"I prefer to believe that the custom died when the first soldier stepped on this planet."
"You'll see. We won't be long." Behind the silhouettes of the last remaining buildings they could see the titanic central plaza where the riots first started, with the Prismatic Tower on the near side and the Temple of Dur on the other. A high black fence ran through the entire length of the square, made of mobile pop up walls and lined with spikebrush. People in line marked where a plasteel door had been installed, with guards on both sides.
"And why would you need me there to assist?" complained the rabbi.
"Not to assist, but to confer with Ben regarding the new religious fervor that is spreading like wildfire across the land."
"I am not surprised, given swarms of soldiers are claiming the land."
"That's not the reason," he murmured.
"I have something to tell you," the Rabbi blurted out. "You may not believe me, since we have not been friends since the events of twenty years ago."
"Do not dare proffer his name in my presence."
"This is not about Esau. Wherever his exile brought him. I only ask, hear me out."
"Am I not all ears?" grumbled the Commissioner. Anything not to hear his brother's name.
Rabbi Olza pulled the Commissioner by the sleeve, twenty paces away from the gate, and broke a promise the moment she whispered slowly in his ear: "They have sandworms."
At that the Commissioner tripped, muttered a curse under his breath as he fell hard on his ankle, twisting it.
"Hilom, are you well?"
A bit dazed he pulled himself up with a groan and without a word walked up to the guards, his Delphyne guards; then waved at the Cordian soldier on the other side of the gate, who stood to attention and let him pass at once, but stopped the rabbi.
"Is there a problem?" Hilom asked, and the deadly tone of his voice stronger than a weapon.
"We don't know her," the Cordian soldier replied. "We need to check her against our database."
The rabbi waved Hilom away and smiled, standing patiently a few steps behind her friend who could barely contain his rage.
After a tense moment, the soldier took a step back. "You are clear," he said, motioning her through. They walked to the other side keeping quiet.
"Sandworms, Hilom!" she repeated a few paces farther.
"Say no more."
Rabbi Olza caught his friend's arm as he limped through the giant plaza and toward the temple. "They have it, the demon and the god, and the cornucopia of the ancient times and..."
"Say no more!" barked the Commissioner. "I will have to pass you as a madwoman to the Cordian guards, if they are eavesdropping."
"But think of the possibilities!"
"Possibilities? You are telling me I have been tricked by a ten-year child into producing trickles of artificial spice while they hoarded the Divided God himself up in the sky."
"They had no reason to share this with us."
"And yet they profess their friendship. Not this way," Hilom pointed away from to the back entrance which was the closest. "We will go in in plain sight," and he turned toward the temple's doors, granite and plasteel, as tall as six people. They hurried toward the building, noticing small groups of believers lingering just outside. "And why is that, rabbi, that the presence of the beast suddenly fills your heart with joy? Since when is that our ancestors' way? Tell me that."
"We do not have to live this way," she pleaded. Their pace accelerated as the Commissioner, whose pain had retreated, resume his normal gait. The temple was a few breaths away.
"Let's then prostrate ourselves and worship the worm, then?"
"No. You don't understand. What Elohim provides, big and small, are all miracles. But I have come to realize that it's time for man to name them so; to wield the supernatural, to name it, to make it happen."
Hilom stopped no farther than ten paces from the gray walls of the temple of Dur, and turned to confront her.
"Wield the supernatural?"
"Everything around us is a miracle, Hilom. Only us people decide to make them so. Let's take this sandworm; and the distant memories of the Holy Land preserved intact by Rebecca, and the Reverend Mothers. Take the spice machines, take the no-ship, and all together with our allies let us flee into the freedom of the cosmos."
"And leave Delphyne? Our promised land?"
"Only in our imagination. Another miracle made so by an act of will. Let's embrace these people, while remaining distinct, and traverse the universe."
"Flee again?"
"Not as fugitives, but as pioneers. Another promised land awaits us. I feel it."
"You have always felt many things, my friend," he replied curtly, meantime shaking away a white-robed arm that had reached out for his. "No alms, sorry, ma'am." The Commissioner stopped on his tracks as his gaze followed the white arm up to the body to which it belonged, a ragged woman with hair so long it touches the ground, framing a familiar face. "The Pythian? Out of your sanctuary?" He had hardly recognized the harsh face, the wild hair and empty sockets. She looked bewildered.
Alarmed, rabbi Olza chimed in: "What is happening here?"
"Do not enter. Time's up," was her gloomy reply. But against her will, the Commissioner took the Pythian by the arm and dragged her toward the cyclopic doors that were curiously ajar, ajar in the sacred day of Siaynoq for the masses, an unplanned, quite unnatural position, leaving a gap for no more than two people to go through. They left the mendicants and pilgrims outside to enter in the enveloping shade of the sacred site, red and blue lights filtering through stained windows impossibly high. Like a dream, the sun's yellow rays entered via a clear dome at the top creating a blinding spotlight around the central altar. There was somebody there, a woman; a young-looking woman in a torn dishasha stood on the sacred altar surrounded by devotees of the Church of Dur and beyond that surrounded by a circle of soldiers in cardinal red and white, the fierce colors of Cordia. Indistinct echoes made it impossible to catch the woman's speech and the barks of the people around her. She seemed to be rousing them, and chastizing them, while the soldiers approached in a tightening circle. The Pythian trailed behind them, whining. "It's happening, it's happening again," she warned; "every time it is worse", but otherwise her blubbering was unintelligible to Hilom and rabbi Olza. Their steps slowed. A few more paces and there they were, as far from the soldiers as they were from the deranged woman, who was still shouting, gesturing in such an expressive, hypnotic way that to Hilom it seemed like a language unto itself. As her hood fell back, despite the distance that separated them, Hilom recognized the pattern, the subtle lips, dark, somber skin and the soft contours. "The woman from the video!" he mumbled, "the riot-maker!"
Rabbi Olza extended an arm and stopped his friend from advancing. A voice, suddenly familiar, cried out as a man in ceremonial robes dashed in their direction from a lateral nave: Ben's - or high priest Brogallo for the others, protesting with force at the intrusion of secular forces on holy ground, but unheard.
The soldiers in slow motion close in on the listeners and the woman, until fighting starts in the shadow of the altar and a uniform in cardinal red grabs the woman's ankle, pulling hard. She is startled and her face turns toward the soldier, and even at that distance Hilom can see black in her eyes. She is unbalanced, she must fall, she must fall, is what goes through Hilom's mind as he feels a similar tug to his shoulder, pulling him back, it's the Pythian. A cry wants to escape his lungs and a cry is in fact heard as the Pythian's hand tugs him back until he loses balance too and stumbles backwards and he is falling, the ground coming closer to his backbone, and he can't but look up where the stained windows obscure the sky and they are red, blood red, and angry.
He is angry, angry at what is happening around him and at his people and planet and it's only as he hits the ground, surprisingly without pain as the same hand that grabbed him is supporting his fall now, he realizes the cry is not his own, for his mouth is shut; it's not his, it's not the rabbi's nor Ben's nor anybody's; it's an inhuman cry, a sound from the primordial night of humanity, ringing through his ears and piercing his mind like his brain were, all of it, just a giant eardrum, and it hurts and hurts and hurts like an exploding muscle, while it echoes and echoes from wall to wall, from window to window, it raises up to the domes and spires of Dur's false heaven and crashes down on them all like a rain of shattered glass, then down through the stone slabs into the abysses of Gehenna. He raises his head to get a clear view of the altar where the cry erupted from the void while his mind hallucinates that the very pillars of the building are shaking loose. Nobody is standing. Nobody is standing. Like a shockwave centering on the ancient altar, people are splayed in circles around the stone on the cold, cooling floor, some sobbing, holding hands on their ears, some immobile in twister positions.
"The rioter!" Hilom wants to shout, but only a feeble gasp comes out. A high-pitched voice rings out: "Do not touch Sheeana!" it's the Pythian's cry and he recognizes it in a second but that second seems to last for an eternity. He turns to his side where rabbi Olza lays in a fetal position, shaking, but awake. He looks to the altar, and a streak of darkness bubbles up from his heart, the heart that had turned friend against friend many years ago, brother against brother, he who wanted the power and a planet in his grasp, what for, not for glory, but for the most futile reasons, for control and dominance and a woman's attention, and it bubbles up in his stomach and he turns and throws up on the cold marble.
He is still down but feels alive, relieved, like he has purged himself of an evil long suppressed, and he gets up and can stand and stumble forward. The Commissioner looks at the Cordian soldiers laying unconscious, others spasming uncontrollably, and approaches the alter. "You!" he blurts out angrily, but the woman - Sheeana, the Pythian had said - who is leaning on the altar's slab from where she has fallen, does not hear him. Her face looks down, fierce, to the display of bodies around her, eye sockets dark as hell, in the deafening silence. Finally, as coming out of a reverie, this Sheeana raises her chin to make eye contact with him, and he sees in those black orbits all the sins of his life, not bubbling up to get out, but enveloping him in a nightmare. Him, whose heart turned against his brother twenty years prior, who wanted the power and the planet in his grasp, and what for, not for glory, but for the most futile reasons, for control and dominance and a woman's love who instead rejected him even more bitterly after the crime. Thou shalt not raise a hand against your brother! And yet he did, exiled his brother even, and took his place and station but did not get his woman, and that was not for lack of trying. And despite ignoring his heart, how the deed had blackened his every day since that dark time twenty years prior, when he sent Esau away, that's what he told people, but in reality he sent him to certain death. His hands knew, stained blue and red from the window lights. His hands, the killer's.
The woman's dark eyes pierce his soul in the shade of the altar with the blinding light filtering in from above, eyes like mirrors showing him the well of the guilt inside him; just as he recoils from the eye contact, time rushes back. Ben stumbles toward the altar too. Soldiers in cardinal red and white swarm in from the side doors, the back entrance, and reach past them, they trap her. Hilom and Ben can't see what is happening as there is a wall of soldiers between them and the woman. This time this Sheeana woman, unfazed, lets herself be carried away, unresisting, her eye sockets not black anymore, but deep blue; her face seems confused. Ben - for the others watching, High Priest Brogallo - with his hand so much as rubs against the woman's hand, retracts it like bitten by a snake. She remains aloof, absent-minded, surrounded by soldiers pushing her in the narrow corridor of white stark sunlight just before the temple exit, and for a moment she shines like a white dove. "What happened?" she asks aloud.
"What happened?" Hilom replies convulsively from inside the temple, shrouded in blood red and blue lights. "What will happen to her?" asks rabbi Olza, now by his side.
From behind them, a raucous voice cries out in echoes that spread over the noise: "The knot.". It's Pythian, who looks up, her empty orbits staring at the vacuum. "The knot is forming," she repeats in a trance, as if the words hold some sort of significance. "We are reaching the end of time."