LXXXI. How to Fool a Truthsayer

"Can a Truthsayer lie?" the Bene Gesserit adept asked her Instructor.

"Of course," responded the Reverend Mother.

"But as a Truthsayer, how can one lie in the presence of other Truthsayers?" the adept continued.

"Simple. Speak the truth," the Reverend Mother smiled, "so long as the truth you speak is unrelated to your real motives."

- CODEX OF THE REFORMED B.G.

"How is Memory-merging going," Reverend Mother and Missionary Visella Ashejak asked from the terrace, one hand holding the white robe that clad her cold body, to stop it from flapping in the evening breeze. There was not a soul in the impossibly tall building that was to the department of Customs, where it all had started, and on the very top floor, out in the green garden overlooking the ocean, the air howled carrying the screams of eagles soaring on the thermal that pulled them from the ground.

Behind her stood Leerna, now a Reverend Mother sworn to the Bene Gesserit by means of the multitude that inhabited her. She thought the terrace to be an odd choice for the Reverend Mother, a woman with the means of a continental governor. Like it had happened many times since Leerna's spice ordeal, she conceived the thought in her mind, and noticed an echo reverberating from within the intimacy of her own head. "The dreams," she replied.

The training they shared made it so that single words conveyed entire dialogues. Because of that, Leerna knew she had a narrow path to walk, so that her teacher would not guess the horrible truth during this evening meeting. 'Be grateful that she is looking at the view', a soft echo whispered back at the level of her temples.

"Dreams of falling?" Visella asked, feeling the smooth surface of the parapet with the other hand. Her eyes kept staring at the distance, where a fiery red sun solemnly dived into the amaranthine ocean, rushing toward its nightly extinction.

Leerna repeated the words she had long rehearsed. "Yes. From life to life, from birth to birth. Falling backwards in time, without control."

Visella did not reply, her face bathing in the red light of the sun. Part of Leerna's newly acquired Bene Gesserit nature noted coldly how her teacher seemed in a sentimental mood tonight, a mood that had dragged her back to the building where she had first met her lover long ago. That was good, she thought, as bottled up inside her she was hiding something that could sentence her to death.

"But hopefully not from death to death?" Visella continued. Leerna panicked for a moment, falling back to the irrational fear that her teacher could read her mind. Of course not, of course not, she reasoned. Both Kwisatz Haderachs used to travel through the folds of time, disembodied souls not bound by their genetic experiences, and could see an entire ancestor's lifespan, while us Bene Gesserit can only remember dead lives up to the moment the next daughter is conceived. Her teacher was probing gently, making sure the new Reverend Mother did not display the ability to see beyond, no obvious display of some wild talent.

"Not prescient, no." Again, 'Speak the truth. Don't let Visella guess you can't access Other Memories, and why!'

Visella nodded, approvingly. "And while awake?"

"I have no lucid dreams," she shook her head.

Visella's gaze stopped lingering on the sunset and turned toward her. Her eyes burned by the intensity with which she was seizing up her disciple. "Ah. You can't recall Other Memories at will, can you?"

'Thank you for trying. Have a nice day.' Leerna blinked, and in doing so she gave it away. "I haven't tamed the Memories yet, Reverend Mother." That was true, and truth was the Bene Gesserit's best way of lying.

'Redirect her', whispered the echo inside her.

Raising her gaze to meet her teacher's, Leerna emptied her mind, stood there defenseless, like a sacrificial lamb, open to the world, under the scrutiny of Visella's Bene Gesserit talents, plus the new ones her teacher had acquired here on Agarath. Retreat now, Leerna admonished the echo inside her head. She could not give away that one specific voice always lingered at the edge of her consciousness.

Visella met her gaze with a patient smile, then turned once again at the sun, seemingly oblivious to her disciple's struggle. "There is no taming. They are coming to you, whether you pursue them or not. Let the process take its course. The Mohalata will help organize the material so that you can sort through it. It's only been a few days, after all." Then she sighed.

A sigh, Leerna thought, grateful: more moods. The voice in her head offered her a quote: 'Truthsayers spot the truth only when they achieve an empty mind. Your teacher is instead being emotional.'

Not that you would know anything about that, Leerna responded bitterly.

From high above, a giant eagle circled above, where indigo clouds shredded by the wind accelerated toward infinity. Out of sight from her teacher, Leerna attempted one more time to apply her mental strength on a lever she imagined inside her brain. At the other end of that lever sat the echo, the haunting Other Memory which refused to fade back into the background. Leerna felt the lever resisting her, and the echo turning into a snigger.

'There is no confronting me, Leerna. You and I, daughter, are bonded together and forever.'

I am not your daughter, foolish scientist, Leerna fought back. With her inner eyes she tried to conjure up the personalities of all the Others inside her, minds that would only come back to her at night, in dreams, when they could escape through the net that kept them away. She pleaded for help, but in vain. They were squealing, outraged for being shut out and silenced.

'Isn't that what your Bene Gesserit says is needed here? A Molahata, a communion of good souls who will block your most evil ancestors from taking over?'

What Molahata? There is only you, pestiferous unbeliever, Leerna replied.

'You need no other Mohalata than me, daughter.'

What is this that you are doing to me?

But the inner voice receded. Something had been said in the outside world, and her teacher expected an answer.

"Again," Visella shrugged, "what do the Sages know of the changes inside you?"

Leerna shook her head. "Why ask. They record everything, everyone, even us now."

"Not here," Visella raised a finger. "Not now. Arbatar saw to that."

Leerna paused at the revelation. For once, nothing and nobody could eavesdrop. 'Technically, I am still here', noted the echo. 'Now, distract.'

"Well then: Reverend Mother, why lie to Arbatar?" Leerna asked, pointing a finger to Visella's soostone pendant.

"We Shared," she whispered, meaning: you know. And Leerna knew, of course. That was before the echo of the Ixian scientist in her head had built that great dam inside her consciousness.

"And what changed? You, Arbatar and Solideum planned to flee the planet the day of my worm trip, yet you are still here."

Visella paused, then smiled enigmatically. "Everything changes." But she did not add more.

"Do you have any instructions for me, then?" As nobody can hear us conspire.

"Distract the Sages with something obvious," Visella explained. "What would keep their minds busy?"

"If I am to keep the sages off balance, I'd start recruiting new acolytes. Found a Chapter. Proselytize openly."

"Good," Visella smiled once again, her eyes ablaze from the last sunset light. "See to it. Before you go though, take this," and she produced a small pile of sheets that rustled as she took it out from a large pocket hidden in her dress.

"Is that cellulose?" Leerna asked, suddenly interested. Scribbles covered every page.

Visella pressed the manuscript into her disciple's hand. "You know what it contains. Give it to Arbatar if the circumstances require it."

Leerna took the pages, the long penstrokes carved in the sheets feeling almost warm at the touch. "Do you mean... if you die?" She felt a pang of fear, and then guilt. If her teacher's plans, whatever they were, could go awry, she could maybe break free.

"Die or fail, it makes no difference. It's all here. I entrust it to you, for the part of me that resides inside you will know when it is time to share it."

Now Leerna was thoroughly confused. "Let's speak plainly, Reverend Mother. Why do you give me your own written confession? Why do you give me power over you in this way?"

"Power?" Visella's eyes turned from flame to ice. She laughed. "You and I have no more power than what the Sisterhood has given us. I give you a written piece of myself so that maybe, if I am defeated, my reasons will live on. Feel free to call me sentimental if you like."

"This manuscript," Leerna rolled up the pages and tucked them in a similar pocket in her robe, "is that why you asked to meet me here and now, Reverend Mother Visella?"

"That. As to my plan... our plan now... it has changed."

"I figured that by you still being on this planet."

"You loathed the idea of me escaping, is that right?"

Leerna nodded. Truth.

"Only..." Visella continued.

"What else, Reverend Mother?"

"You are going to loathe the new plan a great deal more." Visella turned back toward the sunset, one tear glistening on her cheek. "I hope you gain complete access to your Memories soon. This audience is over, Reverend Mother Leerna."

And with a shudder, Leerna turned around and briskly walked toward the door behind which an elevator would deliver her to safety. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

'Ahhh, so many lives you can't access. Wouldn't you want to replay what Visella's life was like, Leerna?' whispered the voice of the Ixian scientist inside her. "I am the gateway. So many lives... you could go crazy. That's why I erected a wall. You need my protection."

"What do you want from me!" Leerna screamed in the silence of her head.

'I'd just like you to open up to me, allow me in, gently, only to experience, to experience some of the feelings of being alive.'

"Forget it. I know where that path goes."

'Then, the only thing you will know about your Other Memories, will be the things I will decide to share with you. I am your Mohalata, after all.'

Leerna's face, lit by the elevator's lights, went pale.

'How long before Visella realizes you will have no access to Other Memory ever again? How long before something betrays you? Look how closely she observes us!"

"When that happens I will be doomed, and you with me!"

'Yes, daughter, but what do I have to lose? I am dead after all. But if you open up to me now, there is so much more we can accomplish together."

"I will not become an Abomination."

'Nonsense,' the Ixian scientist observed coolly, 'The Bene Gesserit always used big words to conceal things it never understood.'