If we become institutionalized in your judgments, that's a sure way to extinguish the Bene Gesserit.
- REVEREND MOTHER SUPERIOR ALMA MAVIS TARAZA
Mother Superior Ashala Redondo peeked through the slit that pierced the heavy cell door. In the darkness of the cell on the other side she could barely make out the profile of a boy, his face caught in the light coming from the ceiling above. We caught him, the lieutenant had reported. The Bashar.
"The ex-Bashar, you mean," Ashala had snapped back. "Do not linger on dangerous nostalgia."
"Yes, ma'am," the soldier had replied meekly. The admiration for his ex commander could still be found in the sparkling of his eyes.
"How about his accomplices?" she questioned.
"Still at large."
Ashala's elation subsided.
"My men are in hot pursuit," the lieutenant continued. "It's a matter of time."
"And Bellonda?" Ashala continued, with a glimpse of hope. As she said this, he mouth moved imperceptibly as to suppress a pang deep inside, a sudden physical pain that required all her Bene Gesserit training to conceal.
"We found her, spice-starved, in one of the Chapter's underground rooms. Per your instructions, Mother Superior, she is being interrogated by the Council right now."
Good news, Ashala thought, and yet we are standing on a precipice. Damn you, Miles Teg!
She motioned to the lieutenant to open the door. "I take that he is completely immobilized?"
"Shigawire wrap his legs and arms, Reverend Mother."
A moment later she was striding through the doorway and into the large dark space where the Bashar was confined and tightly tied down, her hand grasping a small briefcase. The foul odor in the air assailed her.
She found Miles Teg tied to a chair; the smell revealed he was wet with his own piss.
"Disgusting, Bashar."
"My body cannot yet master self-control under critical conditions," the man-in-a-boy's-body replied factually, staring at her straight in the eyes. "Your guards are still so afraid of me that they won't let me leave this chair. I have no complaints. If you can't stand the smell, go." It was clear this Mother Superior was not used to being challenged, Teg thought. She remained at a distance, the door open behind her to let the air circulate out.
"Bellonda is ours, Bashar,"
"So graceful of you to tell me."
Ashala grimaced, revealing the slightest hint of fatigue. Still staying opposite to her prisoner, she leaned back so that the chairdog which was there for her comfort could take position under her, and sat. Uncharacteristically, she sighed. "Does Bellonda have the coordinates of the no-ship you launched into space?"
Miles Teg smiled faintly. "No."
"Is it true it stores our entire spice stockpile?"
"Yes."
"Then you must be the only one who can locate it," she concluded
"My insurance policy, Magistra Equitum."
"It's Mother Superior to you," Ashala snapped, standing up to advance a few steps. She stopped a few paces short as the smell of Teg's soiled clothing reached her. "Tell me, does Murbella know?"
"She does not. The logistics of smuggling hundreds of metric tons of spice out of the planet under the Bene Gesserit's nose did require some elusive maneuvers," he conceded. He glanced at the bundle she kept in her hand. "Does that contain a weapon to end my life?"
"What do you compute, Mentat?"
"A concealed knife would fit your personality," he commented, "but then again, you would direct somebody else's hand to do it. You are aware, I believe, that killing me condemns all Reverend Mothers to a slow death through the most painful of withdrawals?"
"Unbeknownst to you, Mentat, we have other reserves."
"Master Zoel's spice tanks. So keen on embracing new technologies now, aren't you, leader of the conservatives? But let me guess: based on my projections, the tanks are enough to support a hundred, two hundred Reverend Mothers at most. Ten days have passed since the moment you discovered there is no spice on Chapterhouse. Nine months are needed to convert a suitable woman into what we humorously refer to as a spice production unit. You must recall Murbella forced Zoel to stop creating new tanks because of your faction's opposition. And we are still a few years away from being able to harvest spice from our own sandworms. In short, Reverend Mother, you risk dying of melange withdrawal on a planet that is just almost on the brink of generating tons of the substance."
In the silence that followed, Teg decided to plow on. "What will the Bene Gesserit say, as their own personal stash runs out? Murbella was surgically dishing out spice by the milligrams. Do you understand why? By now over half of the Reverend Mothers must be feeling the first withdrawal symptoms. Will the Other Sisters still support you when you fail to keep them alive? How about the Honored Matres that you converted?"
Ashala suppressed a cry. "You don't know what it is like to die of spice withdrawal!"
"I read the records. T-Probe torture is like a picnic on Dan, in comparison. Your face is pale and a twitch under your eye tells me you are already feeling it, too."
"Traitor! You are a traitor to Murbella, me and the entire Sisterhood!" she cried out.
Teg remained silent.
"Answer me, Teg."
"I did not hear a question?"
"I have many ways to force you to reveal the ship's position, Bashar."
"You are betting I will care enough about my second life as a ghola not to die? I had a full and heroic first life. All my days are borrowed. I could decide to do this merely to spite you. It is going to be an interesting experiment."
"We are no strangers to torture," she threatened. "You will tell us. This is the last warning before I go ahead and apply this T-probe on you", Ashala replied, opening the briefcase she had held in hand.
A kid's laughter filled the room. It was high-pitch, and childish, yet full of an adult's contempt. Something in the way that Bashar had reacted made Ashala lose any hope that the device would work on him. A stomach pain had developed, imperceptible at first, now turning into growing spasms.
"Your soldiers were wise to restrain me, or you would feel my hands on your neck right now. But I endured a T-probe once. So let's change the game a bit." And the Bashar pressed his wrist against the shigawire that held it. A trickle of blood ran down his finger, dropping to the floor. "See how easy you made it for me to doom you all?"
"Medics!" Ashala called out. A guard came in, looked startled at the scene, and without a word he tore a strip of cloth from his uniform and rolled the improvised bandage around Miles Teg's wrist, while the prisoner continued to chide the Reverend Mother. "See? I am a Mentat, or do you forget, Ashala? I have played this encounter in my mind hundreds of times. I know all the branches and all the ends. You have no medics on standby! You did not even expect I could try to cut my own veins!"
"But..." Ashala tried to reply, ashamed.
"Silence! You have nothing to bargain with. If I learn that Bellonda or Murbella or any of my agents are killed in this coup d'etat of yours, I will end my life so quickly that you won't be able to stop me!"
Ashala was visibly boiling with rage. How could a man unbalance a Reverend Mother! It did not help that he had shamed her in front of an ex-soldier of his. For a moment she stopped to ponder - how deep did this soldier's loyalty for the Bene Gesserit run?
As soon as the blood stopped dripping, she stood up from the chairdog and imperiously waved him away. The soldier walked briskly toward the exit, carefully closing the door.
"Now that you saved me, you should also consider how a Mentat would devise additional safe-guards to make sure you'd care about his well-being, even after having revealed the coordinates of the ship that contains the entire Bene Gesserit's spice stockpile. Only my willing cooperation could save you now."
"It's a bluff!"
"Captain Xero mans the spice ship and will only surrender it if I join him aboard. You are Truthsayer, aren't you?"
She was. "Then hear me."
"I hear you," Ashala responded. "It's truth."
"Good. Reverend Mother Ashala, hear me well now, because you don't have much time left. Moments ago your newly installed Council made the unfortunate discovery that the person your soldiers brought in is, alas, not our Reverend Mother Bellonda. I trust that you have kept your Council slightly on edge, by not supplying it all the spice it needs because, as its new glorious chair, you need to demonstrate you hold the power. Face Dancers are not as fast as Reverend Mothers, but you'd be surprised how sluggish a Bene Gesserit will be without its daily spice ordeal. I bet with Master Zoel that no more than three of your Council members are coming out of that room alive."
A slight vertigo hit the Reverend Mother. She stepped back a pace, one leg searching for the chairdog that was somewhere behind her.
"And you know this to be true, because you are a Truthsayer. Not all your allies are in that room, of course. The ones that are in full spice withdrawal - the ones who are not critical to your power base - are agonizing in their rooms, defenseless. The few ones you have kept well supplied - your key operatives on the ground, people who get things done; not the Council members you keep on a tight leash - are performing many duties. The ones who are off duty have been lured to the pleasure houses... where Lorain's men are subduing and Imprinting them."
Ashala let out an involuntary gasp.
"The ones on duty are the target of Angelika's Sisters, including the acolytes who have yet to go through the Agony, thanks to you suspending their training program, and who are so adept at speed-killing."
Ashala sank into the chairdog as the room started to spin in her vision. "Son of a whore!" she screamed. "You are letting the Honored Matres kill us! Betrayer! Betrayer!" She rolled off the chair and approached the Mentat at speed.
"Your lover," he whispered a moment before she would sever his throat with a hand. Ashala froze in her trucks.
"We knew you had one, of course. Don't risk her life, too."
Her blood boiling, Ashala used all her leftover energies to drag herself toward the door. "You stay here, while I use the army to smother your little resistance! Spice or not, you will see what I will do to you and Murbella. Soldiers, to me!" and she firmly pushed the handle.
Except, the door did not move. It was locked.
"Guard! Open immediately!"
The door stayed shut while Ashala continued to share the handle, an eerie silence coming from the other side.
Finally she turned around, her face utterly confused.
Sunlight from the ceiling hit Miles Teg's eyes, which appeared for a moment to be shrouded by a golden glaze, the cue of a fresh Mentat projection.
"I am not the one who is confined here, Ashala."
The Bashar slowly rose, while the wires that were supposed to hold him captive fell onto the ground.
"A ghola-hating, man-abhorrent Reverend Mother would not approach a soiled ghola child, a symbol of all the things she considers abominations. She would not check that the prisoner is restrained. She would keep a distance, and play with words. She would take what the soldiers said at face value."
"I..." Ashala gasped, now providing Teg with a rare display of panic.
"Truthfully," the Bashar continued, "this is your cell, not mine. Do you think my soldiers would obey you?"
"Murbella..."
"She is in the other cell, protected by my personnel against any last-ditch effort of your accomplices." The Bashar approached the Reverend Mother who was now fast retreating toward the opposite wall. "Your coup is over."
"Coup? The Proctors have voted!" she sneered, her body shaking.
"Murbella and I have discussed the next steps."
"I... spice..." she moaned as her body crumbled to the ground.
"Soldier!" Teg shouted across the room. "Spice for the prisoner!"
The door opened as three soldiers jumped in with a small syringe full of a blue liquid. Per his plan. Miles Teg strode toward the exit, stopping to give one last look at the Reverend Mother trembling on the floor.
"We will win the Proctors back." Then he turned to the nearest soldier. "Now get her a medic!"
