The Genetics of the Agony
Today's courage will forge tomorrow's wisdom.
- THE ATREIDES MANIFESTO
"Walk with me Teg," offered Bellonda after the Council meeting was adjourned. The ten-year old walked briskly to keep pace, while Bellonda slowed down to match his speed. Teg noticed how Bell aimed for the sandy path that led to what was once Odrade's orchards. He kept pace quietly, noting the discomfort in the other Mentat. The dry climate was becoming increasingly insufferable. If it was true that he had a double, where was he right now?
"If you have specific suggestions with respect to my performance as a Mentat, I hope this is a good time to discuss it." There, she said it.
"For how long have you been on the council, Bell?"
"Fifteen years."
"Murbella still wants you there."
"That may be a punishment or a source of amusement for her, I fear." She noticed new prickly pears were growing in the same corner of the orchard where lilies used to grow, and sighed.
"It does not seem that she can afford either, in her predicament."
"Indeed," she replied dryly. She stopped in her tracks as they reached the first few trees, now black withered shapes that extended up to the sky like imploring monsters. A plaque marked the dead sapling that she had planted over Odrade's remains.
"Why are you angry, Bell?" the question would have upset her, if the voice asking it had not been the gentle one of a ten-year old. Ghola notwithstanding.
"The necessities," she summed it up.
"Ah, that," sighed Teg, nodding, "the world is asking us to do things we would have never considered before. Gholas, cyborgs, Axolotl tanks, and a Reverend Mother who is beautiful and terrifying."
"Do you know Murbella is the youngest ever Reverend Mother Superior?" she turned, looking down at him.
"Do you reckon she does not think about it every single day? Odrade has put her there, but she has realized that the gift leaves more pain than pleasure."
"Teg, if something happened to her, the entire Sisterhood would collapse and the Matres would take over, or exterminate us. Do you know how few we are?"
"And so let's do everything we can to protect her. And now you can tell me what it is that really disturbs you."
"Everything!" She threw her arms up in the air, unaware that from Teg's vantage point she stood out in front of the dead orchard trees, tall and dry, just like she was one of those extinct creatures. "The Order as it is, is done. Many are the Sisters who think dissolving the Sisterhood would be preferable. We had already written our own Coda, even!"
"Like a final requiem, right? Finally I caught the Sisterhood doing something melodramatic." They resumed walking toward the School buildings, Teg skipping and leading the way this time.
Those words made Bell even more upset. "You know very well that we are being displaced. We used to be a peer-organized Sisterhood, and transformed into a beauty contest that is feeding Murbella's own celebrity cult. Even our own Sisters are falling for it. The Matres are learning our skills, but how will we defend ourselves if we cannot learn from them how to move faster than the eye can see?"
In a move that was characteristic of this specific ghola, Teg remained silent, listening on.
"So what suggestions do you have for me, Mentat?" continued Bell sarcastically.
"You don't say it, but you have an affection for Mother Superior despite the way she scolds you. Perhaps something about Dar you recognize in her. You know she is the one we need, and yet leave her the burden of leading the combined Sisterhoods the way she does. What is this love and hate, Bell?"
"You.. spoke right," Bell replied trying not to stumble on a paver that had shifted from its original place.
"You need to vent? Then come to me. Murbella does not need our grievances. You are stuck in your ways and the ways are changing. Yet you refuse to adjust to the new tune."
"I am aware of my shortcomings." she replied automatically.
"If you care about Murbella, then what you feel is what the Sisters who wanted to attempt on her life are feeling. Go out, make them know, and in gaining the trust of the more rebellious Reverend Mothers and Acolytes you will have the full list of our dissidents."
At the short pace of Teg-boy, they were still a good distance from the Schools, the buildings that just a few years ago housed the best of the Bene Gesserit students, and that now were full of Matres in training. Looking at Bellonda's gaze, Teg guessed: "You can't really see any of them as one of yours, can you?"
"No."
"Yet Murbella was one of them."
"She changed. Willingly. And still sometimes she acts like a violent, selfish, brow-nose whore."
"She can channel her past when acting in front of her old kind. I have seen her. Matres, at least the ones who have not tried the Agony yet, only expect fear and rage from a leader."
"Childish."
"Easy to manipulate."
There was a natural pause in the dialogue. Teg signaled to go back toward the Council rooms, and they retraced their steps.
"Why did you say 'our grievances', Teg?"
"I have grievances of my own."
"I noticed. The way you chastise me, for example."
"I beg your forgiveness, Bell. I know it is uncalled for. I... am a very old man in a ten-year old body. The Order rests on the head of a pin, my double is alive and somewhere in the Scattering, and my body chemistry compels me to play outside and look for play pals of my same biological age... not to speak of my emotional swings." Bell looked down and saw tears in the boy's eyes. For a moment the great Teg looked all like a boy on the verge of balling. She fought the compulsion to hug him, uncertain of what three-hundred-year old Teg would have thought. So she froze, half embarrassed for wanting to act, half self-conscious for not doing anything.
"Thank you for not trying to hug me. I cannot be seen in public under the effect of my own biology. I remain your commander-in-chief after all" he snorted.
"Your body knows it is being stolen from its childhood. I am saddened."
"So I too have to suffer these Necessities, Bell."
"I confess we feared this, but deliberately did not stop from cloning you and awakening you this soon."
"When I die this time, do not make me come back again," he remarked gloomily.
"Not before you tell me exactly what kind of faculties you acquired on Gammu, besides your combat speed, and how," replied Bellonda bluntly. Aah, that it is, thought Teg.
They were approaching the headquarters entrance now, Teg's guards lining up visibly in front of it (and others, invisibly) and making way for them. Teg tugged Bell's arm to have her go around and in the courtyard, where he knew there was no recording device.
"Bell, Murbella's hold is ever so shaky," he murmured
"I see it too."
"It will take a new generation to truly merge the Orders, but in the meantime she is the glue and she is faltering."
"What is your computation?"
"Not enough data. But a valid guess is that she also is reacting defensively to all these necessities. Have you noticed how prone to rage she is? It's small signs – the messy eating habits, the erratic walks, the outbursts even when there are no Matres around."
"And?" they turned around to go back through the courtyard, ambling aimlessly.
"I can only go so far. What does a Reverend Mother know of another Reverend Mother, Bell?"
"What do you mean?" she whispered.
"Could Other Memories take over?"
"Nonsense."
"How about the Odrade in her mind?" Teg stopped in an area where he knew there would be a cone of silence. "Would she approve of her conduct? Wouldn't she want to desperately help?"
"Simul-flow is just what it is for us, Teg. No matter how many Atreides Other Memories you may have, they remain projections on the background of the self.
"So you say. Then, what does your Bene Gesserit perception tell you of her?"
"Nothing we don't know," commented Bell.
"Under a very thin veneer, she seems stuck and resentful."
"And?"
"You are supposed to be Sisters, aren't you? And there is no Odrade, Sheeana, Tamalane. Take care of your own."
"What do you mean?" asked the Reverend Mother.
"Take care of your own!" he barked.
Teg remained silent all the time it took to walk back to the building.
As soon as they were back into the main hallway, he casually added: "Bell, the chemistry of the Agony has had my undivided attention lately."
"Since you cannot grasp what the personal experience of it actually means," rebuked Bellonda. Teg could see her confusion – she was asking herself why he would bring this up now that comeyes were going to follow them everywhere. Let her believe this is just a side discussion to distract the Archives from the real talk they had out there.
"The men die in the Agony," he beckoned her over in the direction where his apartments were located.
"So it has happened for thousands of years. Except for Paul and Leto Atreides, of course."
"And yet genetically, men are endowed with an X chromosome and mitochondrial DNA too. Where does the difference lay then? Psychology? Awareness?"
"You don't need to run that far. The same genes may lie dormant or be expressed differently in a man. I can't see a man take on himself the pain of child delivery. His nervous system would cave in."
"Possible," commented Teg, opening the door that led into his apartments' antechamber and striding in. "Thousands of years, and yet no proof."
"The Kwisatch Haderach is enough of a turnoff for us Sisters," wearily answered Bellonda, "but I see that does not discourage you."
"Maybe, but I have new data for you Bell: it was not only Paul and Leto. For centuries under the Tyrant, Atreides bloodline candidates were given to the spice trance, and many survived. Man and female." He pointed to two regular chairs (no chairdogs in his apartment), and proceeded to make a mild spice coffee.
"I read the same Archive reports. Sources from the Tyrant's times were often contaminated by Worm's own agents. You cannot trust that. Imagine how much worm essence the Tyrant would have had to save up in order to make that happen. The concentrated blue spice is something the Sisterhood only acquired in the pre-Leto times, and each vial was worth – is still worth today," she corrected herself, laying uncomfortably, but proudly in the primitive chair Teg had left her, "several planetary systems."
Teg came back from the corner where he had prepared spice coffee the way his mother Lady Janet, put two full cups on the table, his signal for this is going to be a long night. While bringing the tray back, he continued: "The Emperor surely conserved a dedicated stock of spice to endow a long life to his administrators. Being Bene Gesserit trained, he would know the value of the Test – the gom jabbar trial as it was delivered in those obscure days. When he came into power he had a few decades to decide how each of the original Dune worms would die. He likely sank them all in water and harvested all the spice essence he could."
"You convinced me of the possibility, Miles. You have not enunciated your conclusion."
"Atreides mainline candidates did the worm journey, generation after generation for centuries."
"A possibility. After all, the Tyrant never bothered to explain what was not asked of him."
"And even then he liked to lie when it suited him."
"This is not just speculation, is it Teg?"
"Ask Duncan Idaho."
Bellonda muttered a curse under her breath. Never before had she met a Mentat so dangerous and so useful. This Miles Teg was still not a match for the Duncan they had lost to the Scattering.
"Did you ask him?"
"Back on Gammu, I did."
"It's too bad we lost such a brilliant mind."
"One you almost killed, if I remember correctly. He is lost to us, but an asset to the Scattering."
"I grow tired of following your breadcrumbs, Teg. Let's jump to the ending, please."
"For centuries, Atreides males were given spice essence overdoses and survived. Think about the many male Majordomos…"
"And neither of them became a prescient seer?"
"Not beyond what was revealed to them during the Agony. And without access to Other Memories either."
"It misses the point, from my female point of view."
"The point is, the Tyrant may have left many more latent gifts than we ever cared to discover."
"Odrade's limited prescience, for example. What are we going to find when we look, Atreides?"
"Compute this, Bellonda! I have had a long day too."
Bellonda closed her eyes, for once interested in analyzing a problem that was not linked to logistics, Matres, or Archives policies.
"There are many more types of prescience than we may have suspected," voiced Bellonda.
"That's one," confirmed Teg.
"There may be new physical abilities that we have not cared to monitor in Atreides or Siona descendants. Your reflexes are an example."
"Two."
"Reverend Fathers? Specular to Mothers, not quite like a Kwisatz Haderach?"
"Possible, desirable maybe, but unsubstantiated."
"Have you tried the Agony?"
"Not on my bucket list, Bell."
She paused, lost in computation. Her cup stood empty on the table.
"What would the Tyrant do with Atreides males, if a Siona X chromosome was the entire goal of his breeding program?" were her words, produced with whiplashing lucidity.
"It turns out, the Tyrant was breeding for many goals. Taraza asserted how he was still pulling the strings of the future through his Worm spawn on Rakis. And you have seen Odrade's ethnographic notes about the Rakians dances – people who survived the violence went into the desert to be judged by the worms."
"That sounds like the Test to me."
"But without spice."
"We need a stricter program to test the Atreides bloodlines."
"Three."
"And…"
"Recall how Sheeana's dances, in Odrade's observations, spoke the same language of Rakis."
"Sheeana is also a direct product of the Tyrant's genetic program?"
"Why not? Her coming was even prophesied," he leaned in, an impossibly adult gesture in that body of his. "You must know," said a fired-up Bellonda, "that she never bonded nor ever was bonded by Duncan's male imprinters? Ha, if I could have had a free hand in…"
"Sheeana, yes. Go to your Archives, and answer the question: what talents did Leto hide in Sheeana?"
Bellonda, stood up in a hurry: "Excuse me, I will go and find out now." Then she strode out of the room.
She will have a long night on this one, thought Teg. And for the time being, she will stop asking me what other talents I have developed.