Good Intentions
Your words reveal your good intentions; your body betrays your real ones.
- THE AZHAR BOOK
"We cannot hide here forever, Sheeana." The words came out of Walli unbidden while looking at the dimly lit profile of Sheeana sitting with the Sisters in dusty pillows filled with straw. Why were they all following Sheeana like sheep after the shepard? Yet she insisted on continuing traveling across the planet's surface, avoiding the no ship. "You are a tourist on an experience spree," Walli had told her earlier that morning, without getting a response.
Sheeana raised a hand to impose silence. Since their on-foot journey had started weeks before, they had wandered across the countryside, following dusty roads to reach faraway hilltops and green valleys, stopping at nightfall by countless villages. There Sheeana and the group would beg for hospitality like common pilgrims, settle in for the night. Inevitably a casual chit-chat with a local herder, the visit of the village elder or simply the way they walked would give something away. By sunrise word would spread that a group of holy priestesses were in town, and a line of petitioners formed outside. Hadn't it been for the verdant vegetation, the stream running around the houses and the cattle grazing in the meadow, this would have looked like a sietch scene from Rakis. What drew the people to them? It was a deep instinct. They had long shed the traditional abas and were wearing simple clothes to mingle with the locals. Nobody would know they were Reverend Mothers, not while wearing contact lenses to mask the full blue of their irises. Yet it did not matter. Walli was unsure whether to blame it on the century-old compulsions so patiently planted by their Missionaria Protectiva across the generations; or something else. She looked at Sheena, dressed in simple white cotton, hair braided, the sunlight filtering through the hole at the center of the roof playing with her hands. Even dressed like a peasant, Sheeana emanated the dignity of an Egyptian goddess of old.
Sheeana gazed at the crowd outside with a mix of compassion and defiance. A cripple stepped into the brick-built house, a shining white of comfort in the midst of the mud hut village that hid in the shade of the palm grove. The bystanders inside the house made way as he limped his way to the front. Sheena listened intently, about the cart wheel that broke his leg and the poorly healed bone, her eyes transfixed on the old man and his contorted limb. The man begged for a miracle. She prescribed a concoction of local herbs, like Sayyadina Idala Alquim had taught them, and sent him away.
In the brief pause that followed, Sheeana turned her head to look at Walli, and softly replied: "You object to my little vacation," then waved to the next villager in line.
"People may have died in our last dance in Lat," Walli whispered. "Do you realize the consequences of your talents? It was fair and fun when it was us in the no ship, but things have gotten real serious down here."
"And that is why we are far away from the capital," Sheeana answered, "to do no harm; to experience life as it really is." An old woman stepped forward asking about the whereabouts of her son, gone six months before looking for work, without ever sending word back. Good, reliable Ecath took her to a corner where Leyana offered readings of the Dune tarot. A pair of herders came forward to present their case. The quarrel was about the ownership of an ox, which the village elders were not able to settle.
"I am tired of following your whims, Sheeana. It is imperative we look into what you are capable of doing. You know it is a responsibility only you can bear," Walli continued to whisper in between breaks. "One thing is to dance for the sandworms, another is how you infect crowds with madness. You owe us an explanation." Walli scooted closer to her so that she could be sure no one would hear. "Instead you have us wander aimlessly at the hand of Ecath. No commoner will shed light to your purpose. Look at them, poor things: slaving to the cattle they tend to on behalf of a few local families who hold them in a yoke like they were animals. They sleep in the mud, and get paid in dates, milk and livestock."
"About the dance: I do not have an explanation for you Walli, no more than I have it for myself. Things happened out of my control." Then, facing the petitioners, Sheeana replied raising her voice: "Dur does not care about people's quarrels. Go out and pick a mediator, resolve your quarrel, and come back next daylight with an agreement. If one is not reached, give the ox to the poorest family of this town." The two went away, dismissed. "As for these people, they remind me why we exist."
"To free them from their chains? The key to that is in the planetary capital, then, where the power lies; not in this forsaken countryside purgatory. You met the village elders; they have no power. You met the silk-dressed landowners too. The gold rings they wear are worth more than this entire village. Maybe you should go advise them then."
But Sheeana was focused once again on the humanity that filled the room, and did not reply.
"Why do they listen to you?" Walli whispered.
"Because I am Dur's daughter, and the last sandrider. Even if they don't know it. Next!"
Leyana came back, bid her attention. "Rakis waif, we have to leave."
"One more petitioner," Sheeana commanded.
Walli insisted: "Then go talk to the landowners, if you care about these people; but don't have them go through this theater of the faith. No concoction or tarot reading will lift their burden."
A mother came forth with a newborn child in her hands. "Reverend Mother, bless this boy, for he is the future of my family." Sheeana took the child from her hands, and looked at the cooing baby. "What is your name, mother?"
"Xiomara," she hesitated, then summoned her courage. "My lady, the women are talking but do not dare ask. Are you truly a Rakian Sayyadina?"
"I am a Reverend Mother from Rakis of old." The motions of the crowd suddenly changed, charging the space between her and them with attention. "Mother!" cried out one of the farmers. Sheeana lowered her voice as a new type of silence set in. "And your son's name?" She noticed Leyana out of the corner of her eye, shifting weight from one foot to the other as her only sign of distress.
Walli kept whispering as the audience continued: "Sheeana, we need to avoid exposure until you are able to control your wild talents. Think of the possibilities. There is more than wandering around countryside villages practicing white magic."
Sheena kept holding the baby, staring at his brown eyes, gently rocking him. "Wake up to the gifts, Walli," she whispered back. "Since my days in Rakis, I have not been around real people. I feel this as an energy grounding me. People run this planet and not the Sisterhood. They do not look forward but only back. They have petty problems and commonplace aspirations. How do you reconcile what we do with the humanity we want to nurture?"
"That is not accurate, Sheeana. We only seek to help..."
"But by supporting the power structures of the old Imperium, we just perpetuated old injustices." Sheeana asked the mother for the child's name again. She looked up to the crowd that packed the room. The air was sweaty and hot. She considered how they operated at different levels of existence, and her privilege in even seeing it. These people and their lives, would they experience the longing, the seeking of meaning? The thirst for mind-expanding consciousness? Or would they only look down to the ground they trod upon, their tedious everyday existence which would one day be carved on their gravestones as countryside epitaphs in a planetary Spoon River?
To feel the answer she oriented all her senses in the direction of the crowd in front of her, expectant faces, puzzled faces. In that instant, she knew. She stroked the baby's hairless head, pronounced an old Fremen blessing: "May the night be thy friend, may daylight be short; the sietch your home, a sandworm for transport. The sky, your freedom; your kin, your support. May you be lightning across the sands, a knife to fight your enemy's bloody hands. May your water pay the price to drink the milk of paradise." She said it to the boy as much as the other people present. An awe-struck "hai!" came back from the crowd. She turned once again to Walli, missing to notice the buildup of tension in the room.
"I look back as far as you do," was Walli's rebuke. "Humans have colonized the skies, it does not mean it's learned all of history's lessons." But her eyes were stuck on the crowd, alarmed by their surprise reaction to the blessing. Did Sheena realize she used Voice, right there and then? She could feel the beginning of something she could not explain.
"Except the God Emperor's," Sheena replied. The crowd in front of them overheard her and made the ritual gesture that asked for Dur's blessing, and ward Shai-Hulud.
They still give thanks to the Tyrant, Walli noticed, thousands of years past his death.
"He created stagnation and obedience so that we could be primed to seek the opposite. To start anew a million new times. Yet economic oppression, slavery and other old habits are die-hard. Open your eyes to the condition of these villagers." A murmur grew around Sheena, subsided as she sang a lullaby to the baby.
"I see there are no sewers here," replied Walli.
"Deep one, we need to go," whispered Leyana, tugging Sheeana's sleeve.
"The stream they drink from is the same they bathe into with their animals," Walli continued.
"And yet," said Sheeana stopping the lullaby, "not far from here there is a city fat with the profits from pilgrimage. This planet's pattern is clear: uncoordinated communities left to their means. Have you noticed how the language changes every few miles? This is a dumping ground for immigrants. Some communities have machines and crops that would be a boon to this village, yet they do not interact. Don't you think it is a catastrophe how humanity still struggles for justice millennia after inventing the very concept?" She returned the baby into his mother's hands, but her eyes were upset. "If this were Rakis, we Fremen would have spilled the slaver's water on the sand before dusk. What is the difference between cattle and humans? That humans can break shackles."
Ecath warned them: "You talk too loud."
"The Reverend Mother is upset," the mother murmured, retreating two steps with the baby in her arms. Walli looked at the people stuck between awe and panic. Sheeana addressed the crowd: "We are grateful for the food and shelter you have shared with us. But we cannot overstay your hospitality in a time of drought. The audience is over. We will be going in the morning."
"Bi-lal kaifa," chanted the crowd. But she could hear echoes of anger.
"We go now, Deep one." said Leyana while pulling Sheeana's sleeve.
Walli sought closure: "We can't do much for economic injustice from inside the system, Sheeana. Let's go back to the no ship; we have to plan for the long term."
"No," she rebuked, "we will continue our trip. It's a pilgrimage in reverse, from our shining buildings and ships into the grounds of real humankind. There is so much to see, treading step after step with open, with unclouded eyes. We Bene Gesserit have always focused on the elites and their politics, we lost touch with the people we are supposed to help."
"You speak like the Missionaria now."
"It's the only arm of the Sisterhood that works with the people. We have to outshine our Sisterhood, Walli, when we finally settle on a planet."
Then she noticed how Leyena stood quiet next to her.
"Did you say it was time to go?"
Leyana touched Sheeana's hand, like she had done before, and closed her eyes. Then sighed: "It doesn't matter anymore, Deep one."
"You are warned not to cast your visions in my direction again, Leyana. I am not a fish to be trapped in it," and she finally lifted herself up, her legs aching from sitting. Together the four of them strode out of the white hut and into the adjacent street, among the passerby's general stare.
"I wish you had not used Voice a moment ago. I don't like the way they look at us, Sheeana," Walli whispered.
"I did not use Voice," was her reply, "Let's join Oriana and the others. Ecath, tell me what you see."
Their guide stumbled in trying to keep pace with Sheeana: "I see misery, madam; these people are much worse than any community we have gone through. I fear for your safety; let us go back to Lat under the protection of the Sayyadina."
"But we are under her protection, Ecath. I am teaching my companions a lesson; I am highlighting our privilege, that we were born or trained to belong to the elite echelon where decisions are made. While these people, they will never have the opportunity to choose."
They walked swiftly toward the river where they knew they would find the others. The air was boiling, surely they could bathe just upriver from the village. A few hours passed while quietly enjoying the cold breeze blowing on the river banks. Walli and Sheeana barely spoke, unclear whether because the recent exchange had upset them, or out of the unnerving feeling that the people of the village had aroused in them. Soon enough they were all walking back, Ecath pointing out the ancient design of the oxen-pulled carts on the dirt trail; all of them avoiding the manure that littered it. Back in the sickly village they were, looking at the flies flying in dark dense clouds, or resting on the faces of sleeping children. It was a blessing to find the white brick hut where they slept, a real roof that somehow kept the worst of the heat out. They entered in the darkness - only a hole in the top let the sunlight in, having no windows; and collapsed on the pillows. Only a minute in, eyes adapting to the dim lighting, Walli noticed the bundle on the floor. It was of a nondescript color, made of fabric, hastily folded together. It did not smell right. "What is it?" she asked, crouching to pick it up.
She opened the rags to reveal a bloody mass. In the darkness of the hut, she and Sheeana had to squint to make out its shape. The skin tone gave it away. It was a hand, a hand cut just below the wrist, and laid in the white rag which had turned umber with mud and red with blood. The hand had a white pallor, scarlet the manicured nails; a hand which had never done any peasant work. A gold ring shone on the middle finger, too tight to remove without cutting the flesh; while the index and little fingers were marked with a small depression where easier-to-remove rings had been. The flesh cut at the wrist was red and moist, it smelled of iron and blood. It was the hand of a landlord. Walli gasped. All eyes looked at Sheeana. "Leyana, is this what you saw?" Leyana shook her head: "More. They made an offering."
A clamor came from outside. Stepping out, the Sisters saw a dozen peasants standing, twisted smiles on their faces. A cheering crowd stood in a semicircle around them. Their faces were proud, distorted, filled with a vengeful joy.
Long shadows made it hard to understand what was going on, but Walli was sure of something: there were too many hands. Each man held a body part, a chopped hand, an arm, a foot, white all as ivory.
"Offers for you. They cut their enemy; they broke shackles. Give out your blessings, Sheeana," Walli whispered softly. A terrified Sheeana said the words, turned her face toward her Sisters.
"And now, Walli?"
"Slowly, we run," she whispered.