The antics of the old Imperium are no more. No longer the Bene Gesserit can be content to rely on its century- old traditions. The spice awareness, prana bindu, the Missionaria, even the Tleilaxy axolotl tanks - they are unique, but small talents in an uncharted universe. Who even remembers the Ginaz Swordmasters who trained me? All gifts grow old. And one day the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood will meet the modern civilizations that the Scattering gave birth to and will finally realize the Sisterhood is a group of happy savages. The others will show you their books with legends and fables about you. Oh yes, they will still remember you the way the old gods are remembered. But you; you will compare your aged gifts to the ones of an Infinite Universe, and will humbly realize that you, that we, the sons of the Imperium, will never be the center of the universe again.
- DUNCAN IDAHO, A MESSAGE TO THE SISTERHOOD
Eilanna of the Goddess strode across the hall directed to the stygian black door. She preferred long dresses that opened at the level of her thighs, while revealing nothing. She made it a point to hint about other hints, for example lining the underside of her white dress with flesh-colored garments, which in the swirl of her stride made it look like more skin was to be revealed, it could be revealed if more could be torn away from her body. Wrapped in seven veils she liked to move, like the legendary odalisque.
It was in the manual.
She made it also a point to make sure the guards, women and men alike, followed her with their gaze as she walked down the hallway to the Cordian security arm located in the basement of their militarized embassy. She had slipped a capsule of denoir in the casing of her emerald bracelet, which ensured a pheromone trail would follow her each and every movement. At low potency the extract secreted by the Felean silkworm made her a more charming persuader. Not that she needed anything special to charm the Cordian soldiers, starved of leisure and sensual responses.
You have been trained on the science of desire. Or so said her manual.
The Houri smiled, causing temporary disorientation to the young men standing guards. She flashed the Ambassador's pass, which gave her access everywhere in the compound. The guards swiftly opened the door, watched her cross the threshold like a dream walking past.
There were more guards, monitoring systems, gates. Floating screens showed the situation outside of the building. In the red light of Lat's evening you could barely notice the blood on the cobblestones. Cordian soldiers in cardinal red were just moving the last bodies away, with a calm and consternation that surprised the Houri, who was aware of the cruel Cordian military training, until her gaze looked beyond into the background, where hundreds of protesters lined up just outside of the reinforced perimeter, contemptuous faces who did not scream but whose silence was to be feared even more.
They'd better show respect to the dead in front of the rioters out there, she thought. She noticed how each dead body was put on a stretcher and transported to local groundcars titled after Lat's medical facilities. A show of care - never mind that nothing can wake up the dead.
But that was all distractions. She steeled herself, preparing for the upcoming encounter. She had planned the course of the meeting carefully, and delivered her first line as the Goddess herself would have liked her to: "And so we meet again, temptress, this time each one on the right side of a jail door." She flashed a cruel smile.
On the other side of the see-through barrier stood a woman with cascading locks framing her oval face and piercing blue eyes devoid of any white. Examining her with fresh eyes, Eilanna noticed how she had changed from the chance encounter at the market months before; a frazzled, tired expression reflected in the eye wrinkles and frayed hair, yet calm.
For a moment Eilanna reviewed her plans and the precarious situation her Order had placed her in. She looked at the woman, sitting on a primitive wooden chair in an empty cell.
"The perfume really makes you alluring," said the woman wearily.
"I did not wear it for you."
"Surely your superb training makes these chemical pheromones nothing more than a cheap stratagem, Eilanna of the Goddess."
"You remember me. My training and upbringing was sublime, and these perfumes cost more than any of your kind could afford in a lifetime."
The woman's matter-of-fact tone hit her like a wave: "What I could say to you now in five words could kill you, or turn your viscera inside out so that it would take the rest of your lifetime to sort them out."
Eilanna almost stumbled, for while she was not a Truthsayer, enough love for the truth was in her to recognize the prisoner in front of her had simply stated the facts.
"Three back and forths, and you already are on the defensive, Houri of the Goddess. Are you coming here to be the good or the bad cop?" The woman, Sheeana, stood up, instinctively causing Eilanna to back one step despite the transparent barrier that separated them.
"Why do they name you after the martyr Sheeana of Dune?"
"Because nothing beats hiding in plain sight."
"Explain yourself," the Houri asked.
"Others have tried, and left with nothing. Why are they sending you here? Are you their last resort?" Despite the words, the woman's exhausted voice did not seek a confrontation.
"I am."
"Do you carry water?" Sheeana said with a hoarse voice.
"I do," for a moment Eilanna was tempted to trade the water for real answers. She lifted a canteen of water, passed it through a small aperture in the barrier to the woman, who drank convulsively until the container was returned, empty.
"Thank you," she replied.
"You are welcome." A flicker of a sincere connection.
"... for not bargaining with me for the water," the woman continued.
"We Houris rise above cheap stratagems," the Houri replied dryly.
"Then you are made of a different mold than your allies here." The woman straightened up, coming alive after her thirst was quenched. "So this is the time when we can set aside the preambles and you will ask me direct questions."
"Indeed. Who are you, woman?"
"Sheeana."
"Where do you come from?"
"Rakis."
Eilanna rolled her eyes.
"Who sends you?"
"A lone wolf has no master. Nor should you."
"You appeared one day in Lat, started a riot, went missing and into the countryside for months leaving a trail of violence behind, and then you suddenly reappear in the holiest place in the city and do... whatever that you did. We are still searching for the accomplices who took out the Cordian guards in Dur's temple while the sunlight temporarily blinded them. That was a nice stratagem, granted." Or so the guards said to hide whatever really happened in there. "What are you trying to achieve here?"
A sigh. "I hoped this planet would reveal it to me."
This backwards planet.
"It was foolish," continued the woman.
"You are not being very forthright, Sheeana of Rakis."
The woman's shoulders caved in slightly.
"I only speak truth to you."
"Partial truths. But they want the whole story."
"Your subconscious could never take it."
The woman Sheeana stood there in silence. Silence was the weapon of the interrogator. But in this instance, the silence started to grow, the darkness of the walls behind the woman swirling ominous in the background, until it was Eilanna to break it.
"Why the blue eyes?"
"Rakis."
"Spice?"
Silence.
Eilanna continued: "That's something I did not notice during our first encounter at the market. Or were you hiding behind contact lenses when we first met?"
"No need to start a messianic wave of fanaticism."
"By a girl, refugee from Rakis?"
"You are he one saying I started a riot. What do you need me to explain?"
Silence.
"The ones who sent me here, the ones who keep you here, sent me on a mission of mercy, Sheeana," continued Eilanna. "I can listen, but they do not take it lightly that you are not collaborating."
More silence. This Sheeana looked dazed, frazzled, like nerves only were keeping her in her seat. "They have no reservations using pain with their captives, have you not noticed?"
The silence spoke for her.
"Do you know what they will do to you if you don't make your position clear?"
"No. Is more torture in the plans?"
This Sheeana imposter may have hidden talents, but she will die here if she does not decide to talk. The only lever was the truth. "The Cordians mutilate their prisoners. Fingers, toes, ears, noses, they have no scruples."
She continued over the woman's silence: "You don't believe me, Sheeana girl? You don't know the Cordians in the forsaken part of the universe you came from? The magnificent Cordia! The civilized Cordia! Senate, Triumvirs and the People! Cordia the Proud! Did you know that the last time a planet rebelled against them, they slaughtered all the men and sterilized the women?"
"And so history relearns itself, Eilanna," was Sheeana's weak answer. "So much for your long-range lessons, Shai Hulud." Sheeana lifted her face as with one hand she smoothed her hair. There were deep blue marks on the woman's arms, and round ones on her neck. Eilanna noticed. Restraining ropes and suction cups.
"Did you say more torture?" Eilanna asked. The answer flashed in her eyes. They used the T-probe on her! She could not think of what the device could do in the hand of an experienced Cordian torturer. "They went as far as the probe, didn't they?" but Eilanna did not need an answer.
"Ah, what will humans do to others they don't consider human, Eilanna."
The houri was shocked. "Do you know most people don't survive a t-probe?"
"How could they touch me and survive? That's the question I ask myself!" Sheeana complained weakly.
"If you mean..."
"I think... I am fragile when I am not angry."
"Are you angry now?"
"Anger is sucked out of you when a probe nearly electrocutes you to death."
Eilanna nodded, suddenly feeling a pang of empathy. The beasts dared use a probe on a woman! Why would the Cordians send me here, if they have already put this Sheeana from Rakis under the probe?
"You thought," Sheeana interrupted her thoughts, "you could play good cop and save me, but entering here you did not know that I am already condemned."
"What do you mean?" asked the Houri, feeling lost.
"Your visit revealed it to me."
"My visit," Eilanna repeated, then the truth hit her a moment later.
The Cordians would only call me if... the t-probe must have come back negative!
She cleared her throat. "If it's shere what you are using..."
"There can never be shere in my body." A dry statement. "I am allergic."
"But there is no other way to avoid..."
"Of course not. Nobody can. No training, nor can any substance besides shere help. Nor can the spice, which signs you have seen in my eyes, now without contact lenses to hide them. How much time are you buying me, Eilanna?" asked Sheeana.
"That depends on you. My intercession gives you respite until the evening. After that you will be back in their hands."
"There is nothing of importance I could possibly tell them."
"Then I hope your fingers can deny the falchion they will employ to maim you the satisfaction that your nervous system denied the probe."
This is a failure, and an affront to the sacred role of women we of the Goddess are supposed to cultivate, the Houri thought. My Order should study this woman.
"Eilanna," continued Sheeana weakly, "Are you going to leave or to stay?"
"And lose the opportunity to see you change your mind, if the occasion arises?"
"But you," Sheeana guessed, "are a woman of power. These Cordians, are you attached to them or the other way around? Do they know how far your strings go?"
"No strings," the Houri said quickly, for the little device weaved in her undergarments neutralized any spying technology the Cordians had, but people could still be listening from around the corner.
"I beg your pardon," continued Sheeana, "Then let me ask you: what does the Goddess want?"
What does the Goddess want from me, indeed? Would she risk invoking her privileges to take this woman out of the Cordian cells and away off-planets? She knew she could not order the ambassador around. There wasn't enough time for the persuasion strategies Houris like her specialized in. The grand plan took priority over the condition of this unfortunate woman. Unless... "Describe the sandworms for me."
"What?"
"You are not going to give me any new information. We can decide to spend our remaining time in any way you choose. But if you truly are from Rakis, describe the sandworms to me."
And so Sheeana did, and in fine detail, like only Fremen and Reverend Mothers could recall, the touch leathery body and fearful vibrations and the mouth like a million swords. "They dance on the sand like spaceships cruising through the cosmos, spacetime making ripples in their wake ," she added at the end. "But to a tune most cannot hear."
Eilanna paused. She had never heard them described in this way: a realistic eye-witness report, and none of the religious decorations that these descriptions always carried with it.
"How was life on Rakis?"
"Life was sunrise and sunset. Good sand boots and stillsuits made the difference between life and death. I was surprised to find some delight in such a mortal place. Despite my anger and immaturity, it imprinted me with the need to be alive. While my training sees this as a triviality, I miss my double-mooned home planet. And the indigo sunsets. I do not miss its cities nor its obtuse priesthood though."
Eilanna chuckled, thinking of the Dur church on Lat and priest Brogallo. "Well you would not find the priesthood of Dur has changed for the better after having lost Dur's own planet."
"How could they. They would have sent me back to the desert to be devoured by Shai Hulud as all children without parents. Now your turn, Eilanna," Sheeana replied sadly.
"I am not the interrogator, here?"
"But I have nothing to say. Tell me about you and the Goddess."
Eilanna waited as memories like the ones she was summoning were far and few. "I was born in a miserable village at the equator. I could not remember the name if I tried. Here on Delphyne, the land of grass and dirt. Father left. Mother was too busy with three children from another careless man. The children worked in the spidersilk dens because only we had fingers small enough to handle the little spiders. My earliest memory is of me laying down on the ground, looking at a sky netted in white threads crossing at beautiful angles. At age six a woman came to the village, made us walk back and forth in front of us, made us talk, made us dance. She left all of us little girls perfume bottles to smell, saying she would come back in the morning. That night, I had my first period. And so the Houri woman bought me from my mother and stepfather, told them I was marked. Mother was happy to send me to a better life. The Houris buried me in their training house for twenty years. Kef was a beautiful prison."
Sheeana's eyes lit up. "We have more in common than you think, then." Then she continued: "Did you bring any food?"
"Felean pomegranates can sustain a man in the desert. And a woman. I brought some. I did not know you went under the probe. Many never recover. At the least you must be famished." The Houri took four large red fruits out of her bag. Three were too large to pass through the little aperture carved out in the middle of the barrier, but one made it through.
"What was training like?" Sheeana asked while breaking the skin of the fruit, dipping her fingers in the rich flesh to extract the pulpy red seeds.
"Exciting, then terribly scary, then routinely boring," Eilanna confessed, discovering in herself an authenticity she had not revealed in years. "Kef is one giant paradise, the air itself intoxicating. Birds from a thousand worlds live there. Everything bows to beauty. And beauty is hard work. Even at a young age."
"Indeed."
"They say the Houris submit in order to dominate, and they fashion their training the same way. We are the ultimate performers. Every craft, every word, every movement is elevated to art. We are so much more than what people believe to see; our word for ourselves is people shapers. But the six-year old me took a long time to understand. You are trained to be the best woman and lover in the world, and then, and only then, you discover you are but a part of a grandiose plan."
"Why would you leave a society in the hands of greedy men?"
"Why indeed?" Eilanna smiled, surprised.
"And the Goddess?"
"Her Mysteries are many, and not for the non-initiated," she shielded herself, feeling she had been about to reveal too much.
"I am Bene-Gesserit trained, Eilanna."
Eilanna held her breath, whispered "A witch of the Old Worlds?"
"Aren't we all witches in the eyes of insecure men?" That gave her pause. The Houri avoided meeting Sheeana's eyes. A Reverend Mother with the name of a saint! That profoundly changed the game. She realized she could not leave without securing this odd woman's survival.
"The legends..."
"There are legends about the Reverend Mothers, yes." Sheena was busy taking out seeds which she then filled her mouth with.
"We of the Houris..."
"Yes. And yet, wouldn't you want to become also a Reverend Mother, and see it for yourself, Eilanna?" Sheeana's blue eyes locked gaze with the Houri, who found it irresistible to look back.
"And the blue..."
"And the blue..."
"Does the Sayyadina know, Sheeana? Wouldn't she be technically yours to command?"
"I hope the Sayyadina will be here soon."
"So you are part of them," said Eilanna, thinking of the spice, and the plans that had been hatched in this backwater of the universe, and on a tower where fruity drinks were served.
"You are one of us and don't know it yet, Eilanna. The Sayyadina is coming."
"Not if the Cordians don't let her in."
"You will then, Eilanna. But rationality alone should suffice." Sheeana smiled weakly. "What did you see coming here?"
"There was blood on the street. Fanatics are chanting your name, Sheeana. This embassy is completely surrounded by a mob. It was unsettling. They do not shout. They do not protest. Yet the fury in their looks is the one of, of... primitive beasts!"
"I never intended to, Eilanna. Were there fights?"
"Several casualties, including Cordian soldiers."
Sheeana looked down: the broken pulp of the pomegranate had stained the floor. Then she looked up: "Look at me Lady Eilanna. My heart spells consequences greater than my mind can imagine. I walk down the street, and I move, but untold multitudes move in me. And the humanity around me feels it, with senses they don't know they have. I have no interest, and find no pleasure, in what is happening. But I will nevertheless use it as my insurance. It is not safe, right now, to be a Cordian on this planet, if the Cordians hold captive the Holy Sheeana. Nothing rational, no show of force, no threats will weaken the crowd following me. Take a walk outside of this building and tell me if it is not true. Talk to Cordia. Tell them dangerous fanatics are on the brink. Tell them, or the Sayyadina will. They can torture me and kill me or enslave me to be used as prey for the beasts they employ in their stadiums. But no matter what they do, one can't touch a Prophetess and Reverend Mother without consequences. Even if your Ambassador won't understand, his superiors will. The Cordians may be cruel, but the toughest of them will melt when facing the restless crowds that have awakened in this city, and on this planet, and who in the name of god, will die on a sword with the word jihad on their smiling lips..."
Eilanna stood up, alarmed. "What did you do to these people, Sheeana?"
The prisoner slid down on the floor, exhausted. "I am a symbol. Now go make sure the Sayyadina makes it through the Cordian guards."
"Alright," the Houri panted, turned to the door. "And if the Sayyadina can't make it, I will bring the wrath of the Goddess if Keli dares to ignore my counsel." She extended a hand to touch Sheeana's, but hit the transparent barrier instead.
"Go..." Sheeana whispered, suddenly almost breathless.
"Yes, you'd better rest." Eilanna turned toward the exit, replied: "I am going now in four... three... two... one..." and paused, perfectly still.
No answer came.
"Sheeana," she said, still facing the door.
"Yes."
"You have fallen into a deep trance."
"Yes."
"You are defenseless, you are fragile. You are now like a tender lamb. I command you to listen to me with your entire awareness. Nod if true."
More silence. Eilanna turned around. Sheeana, the survivor of the t-probe, weak and starved beyond comprehension, was on her knees on the floor stained red from the fruit juices. Her face was perfectly calm in the deep hypnosis. It seemed like the mask of death.
"It is not the perfume, in case you are wondering." But Sheena did not say anything.
Eilanna looked at the empty blue eyes that stared into infinity. "We are of the Goddess, my dear. Our scents, our jewelry, our clothing, our voices, are all designed to ensnare. And so is our food. New to Felean fruit? A cheap stratagem, you would call it. Natural sedatives and hypnotic agents. Yet, we never let our principles be in the way of achieving our ideals."
"We have known about Felean cultivars for a long, long time in a place far away from these shallow waters, in the ocean depths where the titanic battles are being fought for the ability to shape the Future."
Once again, Sheeana did not reply but sat on the floor, passive.
"Sheeana, meek lamb, you are strong without but soft within. When you see me, your strength melts. You are of the Goddess. You are mine. I have come to you and I will save your life from the Cordian's. Not the Sayyadina, but I. Nod if you understand."
A nod.
"Sheeana, meek lamb, you are fertile ground, and in this ground I will bury a seed. The seed will take hold, take roots, and grow into a beautiful, gentle tree that only I will water. And you will come to me for water. This seed, is a coercion I am burying deep down in your psyche. Here is the coercion: you will raise no finger against the Goddess and her Houri. You will wait, wait for the time when we will ask you to serve, so that you can repay your debt to me and the Houris." She murmured a password, the key subconscious command. "Now, confirm you understand."
"I understand, Houri."
She extended a hand through the aperture in the translucent barrier, and reached for Sheeana's forehead. "With hands I help you up. With hands I seal our bond. You will awaken in a moment. You will have forgotten this exchange. I will be still here but you will not see me nor hear me walk out of this room."
Eilanna of the Goddess snapped her fingers.
Sheeana looked around, confused.
The Houri emerged from the cell, walking steadily toward the ambassador's quarters.
And once again my mission is complete. She smiled. Reverend Mothers, pfft!
Then a disquieted part of herself asked, could she really have killed me with five words, like she said?
I am glad I forgot to ask.