I left had Tabr the day before, looking for the white plain, the legendary salt flats that only the Mother of All Storms can reveal. I was a guest of my distant cousin Ak'mar at the sietch at the foot of Habbanya Ridge when the Coriolis storm hit us. It was a monster hurricane and raged for five days and five nights. I bid farewell and left with the strongest sandworm I could summon. Sand and only sand, and no salt plain. I was vain and rode in plain daylight, fearful the winds would once again bury the plain under the sand. Many feelings moved me. I was angry, and I was scared, and I thought of the many ways I could die in the open desert. Finally at sunset I unhooked the worm and slid down to the top of a dune. The red sun turned the spice dust into embers. To my surprise, an old man shrouded in white was sitting not far, waiting for me. "Are you content now?" he asked. He wore no stillsuit. "No, I could find the white plains," was my answer. "You deceive yourself," said the man in white. I had my hand close to my knife, for only djinns dwell in the open sand without a stillsuit. "You see only what you want to see," he admonished me, then pointed to where I came from. Sheepishly, I followed his finger and behind me had the vision of the white plains, laid bare in front of my eyes, a whirlwind moving across it like a dancing demon. "It's been in front of you all of today, but you never had eyes to see past your own obsessions," I heard him say. I turned back to thank the Man of the Desert, but he was gone. Fear overcame me at once. I turned back to check on the plains, and sand was all I could see.
- THE FREMEN CORPUS
Daylight dimmed, waves crashing on the shore in splashes of liquid gold which turned to orange, which turned to blazing red ripples. The sky above the ocean played with the purple clouds, then turned to a deep cobalt that lingered way longer than physics should have allowed, as the two people on the beach stood quietly in awe of the sunset. Like a late-coming guest, a shroud of darkness finally swooped in from the east to cast the first timid stars. The two figures stayed there, reclined on a large beach chair, feet in the sand, embracing, observing, not at loss for words in so much as letting the beauty around them carry the conversation. A seagull screamed at the first shooting star.
They talked softly for a while.
"What is it?" Arbatar asked, alarmed at Visella's passing frown.
But she could not find the words. Yet she was restless. Her body was comfortable and her heart was gently warmed by the android's presence. She felt reluctant to analyze.
"Carefree."
"It is this moment, yes."
"I worry..."
"We still have to get to the best part, the meteor shower."
"I worry that when you are living a perfect moment, that something will come to drag you down."
"A perfect moment, like now?" Arbatar asked, one hand throwing a blanket over their bodies to fight the cold breeze played with their hair.
"Yes. Yes, now."
"But we can have this now anytime we want."
"Yes. Well, no. It's not this, this..."
"... beautiful twilight..."
"It's how sometimes your heart can reach out to the nature around you and feel that truly your life could end any second, making each and every moment filled with infinite bliss, and gratitude."
"May we live every moment in this way, together, and for as long as we are allowed."
"It's... a very new sensation."
"How?"
"Layers of Reverend Mothers and training admonishments usually act as a filter to my perception."
"Always there?
"Always. But right now I feel like I can see all the colors." Visella shrugged. "There is no life in the Bene Gesserit, because it is in a sense a life of perennial atonement."
"What did you do, my dear?"
"No! What my ancestors did. You see, if I dig really deep, I can find a lifetime for every second of my own. Over the centuries..."
"Please go on."
"... survival favors the bold, and time and time over the winners erase their crimes."
"Do you mean history is written by the winners?"
"Except I have the real history!"
"A walking closet full of skeletons."
"And it takes all of a Reverend Mother's control not to be walked over by it."
"A high price to pay for the benefit of memories."
"But death makes you value life. Except, in a different way now, I feel life on the surface of my skin." The Android caressed her arm, prickled with goosebumps.
"You make me feel incredibly alive."
Arbatar took Visella's hand gently; she relaxed the grip she had on her necklace.
"You did it again."
"What?"
"When you are in deep thought, you touch the soostone at your neck. Tell me about it."
Visella stiffened, then relaxed, cursing her weakened training for the lapse of control. "No..."
"Tell me. It's just words. How can words bring about the end of the world?"
"You can't possibly be interested," she replied. "It's..." she hesitated, "...about my first crush as a little girl."
Arbatar's silence bid her to continue.
"I thought we were here for the meteor shower."
"But while we wait..."
Visella sighed. She looked up, hoping the famous summer meteor shower of Agarath would begin, a spectacle so wonderful that millions of visitors now crowded the lands at the equator where the shower was expected. Nothing came to her rescue. So she began: "At ten I was a rambunctious girl with curly hair. My adoptive parents worked as teachers at Laimu, a tiny island on the ocean planet of Buzzell. Imagine pristine waters with tropical pines growing seaside."
"But... cold?"
"In winter, and hot in the summers. That spring there was an iceberg with a stranded polar bear passing through the archipelago. My adoptive father took me and my classmates on a boat trip to it but forgot to bring binoculars. We could only see a moving a white dot on white as the current pushed it far from reach."
"Your father was also your teacher in school?"
"It was a small island! I used to walk looking on the ground from the school to my house. There was a boy my age, black hair and smiling green eyes, who always stood under a fir just outside of the school gate."
"How did you notice him?'
"I didn't! Until one day he smiled at me and handed me a beautiful mother-of-pearl."
"A gallivant gesture!"
"We were ten! Stop it!"
"I... did not know what to do. I guess I thanked him. The shell was sparkling of a thousand colors. He said that if I wanted to keep it I owed him to tell him my name. I am sure he already knew it."
"And then?"
"And then he smiled again, turned around, and left me alone in the street. That's how we met."
"And his name?"
"You are so curious!"
"I would know the name of my potential rival."
"Be serious! His name was Teian."
"Teian."
"So why didn't he go to school if he was your age?"
"He couldn't! He helped his parents with the fishing nets every day. Only the middle class could afford school on the island. Everyone else came on rest day for an hour of practice writing letters and counting numbers."
"And so did he wait for you outside of school every day?"
"We'd steal an hour after school and walk on the beach looking for shells. He wore a headband and torn t-shirt and shorts, but to me he was the hero of the seas. He only talked about his dream of becoming a pearl diver. After the beach we'd rest under a tree, our backs against the trunk, comparing our finds and trading pieces. Often his father would come find him, at which point, suddenly shy, he would furtively excuse himself and run away."
"Was it a clandestine love?"
"It was! My adopted parents looked down on the fishermen and told me plainly to find myself another friend. They feared I would rub off bad manners from what they considered poor people."
"But you persisted, surely?"
"Summer was approaching and the days ran longer. Father and mother often held after school lessons for the kids who were behind, on behalf of my good grades, I was left alone to wander around."
"An island so small that kids could adventure by themselves."
"A community so small that you could always count on a grownup nearby."
"So you and your friend had all sorts of adventures by yourselves."
"We searched for oysters at low tide, trapped crabs, stole summer cantaloupes, investigated old wrecks, teased each other and in general did all the things I did not dare try and he could not say no because he was my hero of the seas."
"I am taking notes. Any luck with the oysters?"
"None, but an afternoon in mid summer, he revealed to me he was going to be a diver. His brother had given him and would take him on the boat with the professionals. His eyes were bright and his voice trembled. I had him promise me his first pearl."
"Did he succeed?"
"Better! From his first trip he brought back a soostone, the iridescent growth on a susani turtle. His smile was as large as a watermelon split open with a knife. I still remember the giant thing shining in his small hand. He gave it to me as a gift. We had no idea how much that was worth."
"Precious. Did you kiss?"
"Stop it! We were ten! Quit it, this is not a funny story."
"Since then I went around showing off my soostone, wrapped with a shoelace around my neck."
"His family must have been very mad."
"His father came to my father's house to claim the soostone back. My adoptive father was a proud man who couldn't bear the thought of being belittled by an illiterate fisherman. In his eyes, the fisherman represented everything he despised about his life on the island, so he came to my defense and refused. From there on I was forced to hide the soostone under my shirt. Some time later Teian stole a boat and took me out to sea to watch the sunset. The sun splashing at the horizon seemed glorious like a red marigold. Coming back to shore, the lantern on the boat, that little lantern sailors used to lit up on the stern on their way back to the shore, gave us away. He had lit it out of habit, and that's how the boat's owner found us."
"Did he report you to your parents?"
"Yes! Who were mad at me ignoring their admonishments. I was trapped in the house for a week."
"Then?"
"We kissed on midsummer's night."
"You told me you were barely ten!"
"There was at the Sea Festival, torches lit everywhere, there was musicians playing on the beach, people were out frolicking and kids running around. He took me up on a hill where you could see the shooting stars. The day after he went out to sea," and her face darkened, "but didn't come back."
Even androids can be at a loss for words. Arbatar kept silent but his eyes begged her to go on.
"In the morning they took him on the divers' boat to go to the great reef. The wind was howling from the north and black clouds stood at the horizon. Still they went to earn a day's pay. I was in school and did not think much of it until lessons ended. I remember clutching the soostone in my hand and waiting for him at the beach. Call it a premonition. The boat was hours away from coming back, but I stood on the beach, my feet deep in the sand to keep warm, my arms freezing. The seagulls screamed at me in the wind. With every hour that passed I became more bored, then worried, then panicky. White foam crested the unusually tall waves. Near sunset a boat finally came back and I could see from afar the darkness around the stern. The light was off. When I did not see him get off the boat, I felt part of me split away. I was watching myself experience something tragic."
"How did you find out what happened?"
"From his companions. He dived and never resurfaced. The sea was rough and cold that day. The group has debated what to do. They greased their bodies and put greased cotton in their ears. They closed their nostrils with tortoise-shell clips. He was wearing one of those clips as he grabbed the rock that would sink him right to the bottom, a net tied to his wrist for collecting oysters. He jumped in, a hand sliding over a rope they had already sunk into the seabed. It's dark down there and the water is muddy. By the time his companions realized he had not resurfaced, it was too late."
"They told me the news, but I already knew," Visella continued, clutching Arbatar's arm. "His brother dove back in search of him, but in vain. He died, and for what? For pearls and soostones. His brother howled and tore hair from his scalp in distraught. It took all of them to pin him to the floor of the boat, so that he would not dive again to despair and death. His friends dove for him, looking for a still hand, an arm, a body that did not move. Nothing. They rang the bell, and whistled and then in the end, they prayed."
"I lost Teian to fate, or recklessness, or bad weather. Or cramps, or the rapture of the deep, in search of oysters that were scarcer and scarcer. And this," she said clutching the stone in her hand, "embodies his memory. It is... the price of a life."
"That evening they found me wandering in the village, as it did not make sense, it could not make sense. I wandered around searching for him, hoping to see his face turn a corner, or wait for me under the fir outside of the school's gates. I could see his smile, a smile that had drowned under the water."
Arbatar asked: "What happened next?"
"The funeral. His family crafted a doll made of straw. It was a crude piece of work, with old rags and two green buttons for the eyes, but to me it was him. I begged his sisters to give it to me but through the tears they cursed me and blamed me for his death. Teian had pushed his brother so hard to go to the reef together with the grownups because he wanted to make me a pearl bracelet. They screamed at me and spit at me until I ran away balling. The next evening I watched the funeral at a distance as they launched a doll-size boat with a doll-size Teian in it, decorated with pine cones and flowers. The little candle light shone bright in the moonlight and I followed it until it grew dim in the black waters, where I imagined his body to emerge and carry it under."
"And I went back to my adoptive parents' house and locked myself in the room, and never ever spoke about it."
"You kept the soostone all these years," Arbatar said. "But it must be a haunting memory."
"No, you don't understand. You see," Visella replied, lifting her chin in the cold air, "My hero of the seas gave me the greatest gift of all."
"I don't understand ... the stone?"
"The rage... the determination never to lose somebody I love again."
Unbeknownst to them, the flood tide had arrived and the waves lapped their bare feet. They stood up and walked along the shore for some time, until the breeze picked up, blowing their jackets' flaps in the air.
"I found a way to escape, Arbatar," she volunteered, shy as a little girl, as they walked back along the wet sand with arms locked, physically and emotionally still in that ambiguous transition between proximity and closeness.
A worried look came upon the android, who steadied herself in the damp sand.
Visella explained with a trembling voice: "From here. A dissident group in Alkadi could take my implant away and help me take over an old trade vessel whose navigation systems are compromised by a systemwide failure."
Arbatar turned away, looking out to the sea. The waves continued to roll in, more vigorous than before. Visella laid out the rest of the plan: "Those dissidents are so bent on leaving the planet they would help me hijack a spice container you put in orbit."
With a newfound bitterness, Arbatar commented: "And you all would be parting ways after sharing the profits?"
"They would never live to see profits, if I were to keep the spice for the Navigator whose prescience I'd need to trace a safe travel path among the stars."
In a gesture that made her genuinely human, Arbatar sighed. "The Navigator, I forgot," she commented, "two marauding heroes in the depth of space. And I thought you had rediscovered what it meant to be alive."
"This is not some kind of bad space opera, Arbatar," she said reproachfully.
"Don't mock my patience." The android stopped on her tracks, asked: "Will you leave?"
"Will you come with me, if I do?" Visella replied.
A pause.
"Yes," the android replied as they resumed their walk, and with that simple word leaving behind her past life, people and allegiances.
Visella sighed, relieved, and shook the other's hand tight.
"Do you know how much I am asking of you, Arbatar?"
"I do. And it's still a yes."
They stood there, listening to the waves.
"Arbatar, I don't know how to handle this, this... thing with us."
"Who does?"
"I am excited and terrified, and scared..."
"And I don't want to miss a single moment of it."
"You don't understand... I have been a Reverend Mother, trained to leash the universe to a docile evolution... part of an order where attachment and emotions are futile... I feel I have followed a script for so long I don't know what it is to improvise. I can't think."
"What can go wrong with us?"
"What can not go wrong!"
"If it does," she said softly, "it will have been worth it."
The android was from a distant planet in the Scattering, far away from the old Imperium, and did not have the faintest idea at the time of how extraordinary a circumstance it was, to see a Reverend Mother's tears. Nevertheless, as she pressed her body closer to Visella, no thinking was required to choose what to do next.