Heretics of Dune (Dune, #5)

by Frank Herbert

It was an eternal flaw. Out there in the Scattering, humankind expanded exponentially, swarming across unlimited space. The Tyrant’s Golden Path secure at last. Or was it? Surely, the Atreides worm had planned more than the simple survival of the species.

He did something to us that we have not yet unearthed—even after all of these millennia. I think I know what he did. My opposition says otherwise.

The Scattering took the Tyrant’s lessons outward in the human migrations, changed in unknown ways but ultimately submissive to recognition.

He knew that gholas once had been awakened by conditioning them unconsciously to attempt murder on someone they loved.

She suspected an unconscious message from the original designers: Melange is both boon and bane.

This thing out there was fixed in the Atreides history. Leto II, the Tyrant, had fallen to his dissolution from that faery bridge. The great worm of Rakis, the Tyrant God Emperor himself, had been tumbled from that bridge on his wedding peregrination.

The worm’s warm surface felt non-organic to Odrade, as though it were some Ixian artifact.

The Tyrant had died at a place of his own choosing. Many deaths had left their imprint on that place but his the greatest. The Tyrant chose his peregrination route with purpose. Sheeana had not told her worm to go there. It moved that way of its own volition. The magnet of the Tyrant’s endless dream drew it back to the place where the dream began.

Duncan stared hard at Teg. Not only did this old Bashar resemble Duke Leto in appearance, but he also had that same Atreides charisma: a legendary figure even among his former enemies. Teg had said he was descended from Ghanima of the Atreides, but there had to be more in it than that.

She had tried to pull her failing body upright and death had caught her in the attempt, exposing that last motion like an insect caught in amber.

Odrade thought of him as living proof that a strong enough fanaticism could endure for ages. Zensunni and the old Sufi survived in the Tleilaxu. It was like a deadly microbe that had lain dormant all of those millennia, waiting for the right host to feed its virulence.

She sent her light along the floor, noting places where searchers had chipped and burned the rock seeking more of the Tyrant’s fabulous hoard. Fish Speakers had taken most of that melange, its hiding place revealed by the Idaho ghola who had been consort of the famed Siona. The records said subsequent searchers had found more caches hidden behind false walls and floors.

She knew this word. Reverend Mothers of the Tyrant’s time had impressed it into the Bene Gesserit consciousness, tracing its roots out to the most ancient sources. “Arafel: the cloud darkness at the end of the universe.” Odrade felt the gasping accumulation of her warning sense. It focused on that single word. “The Tyrant’s holy judgment,” the priests called that word. “The cloud darkness of holy judgment!”

Arafel . . . at the edge of the universe. Beyond the setting sun!

“I BEQUEATH TO YOU MY FEAR AND LONELINESS. TO YOU I GIVE THE CERTAINTY THAT THE BODY AND SOUL OF THE BENE GESSERIT WILL MEET THE SAME FATE AS ALL OTHER BODIES AND ALL OTHER SOULS.”

“WHAT IS SURVIVAL IF YOU DO NOT SURVIVE WHOLE? ASK THE BENE TLEILAX THAT! WHAT IF YOU NO LONGER HEAR THE MUSIC OF LIFE? MEMORIES ARE NOT ENOUGH UNLESS THEY CALL YOU TO NOBLE PURPOSE!”

“WHY DID YOUR SISTERHOOD NOT BUILD THE GOLDEN PATH? YOU KNEW THE NECESSITY. YOUR FAILURE CONDEMNED ME, THE GOD EMPEROR, TO MILLENNIA OF PERSONAL DESPAIR.” The words “God Emperor” were not in Chakobsa but in the language of the Islamiyat, where they conveyed an explicit second meaning to any speaker of that tongue: “Your God and Your Emperor because you made me so.”

The new Rakians spoke of the need “to keep up with the times.” They meant: “Give us more power!”

“He knew what he was doing,” she said. “Millennia of enforced peace followed by the Famine Times and the Scattering. A message of direct results. Remember! He did not destroy the Bene Tleilax or the Bene Gesserit.”

“Embassies from great religions are on Gammu now,” Sirafa said. “Some you have never encountered. They are from what you call the Scattering.” “And what do you call it?” “The Seeking.” Sirafa raised a placating hand. “Do not fear! We have a common enemy.”

“By their fruits, ye shall know them,” she thought. Some of the old religions can still produce wisdom.

Bellonda found a straight chair and sat down, bringing her eyes level with Taraza’s. “At the height of the Scattering,” she said, “we lost some twenty percent of our failures.” “It is not failures who are coming back to us.” “But the Tyrant surely knew this would happen!” “The Scattering was his goal, Bell. That was his Golden Path, humankind’s survival!” “But we know how he felt about the Tleilaxu and yet he did not exterminate them. He could have and he did not!” “He wanted diversity.”

Observation: The machine cannot share that birth experience except in a remotely vicarious way sure to miss important personal nuances.

As she crossed it, she realized that she had always known it was there: a place where she could enter the void and float free. She no longer was vulnerable. She could be killed but she could not be defeated.

Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They re-create the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the future as well.

A hundred years at least, Teg thought. Time to gather many forces into their hands . . . if Taraza’s fears were to be credited.

Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short.

Rakis was the prize the Scattered Ones really sought and it might yet be demanded of the Tleilaxu.

Siaynoq become a sexual grip on uncounted billions in the Scattering!

Now, he remembered what the Tleilaxu had planted in him, the submerged awareness that awaited only this moment of seduction by a Bene Gesserit Imprinter.

“Bashar! Look at my eyes!” He obeyed, seeing little flecks of orange drifting in across the whites. The sense of peril was acute. “If you ever see my eyes fully orange, beware!” she said. “You will have offended me beyond my ability to tolerate.”

Teg designed a smile for them, using all of the skills he had learned at Bene Gesserit hands. It was a smile full of compassion, of understanding and real pleasure in his own existence. He knew it for the most deadly insult he could hurl at them and he saw it hit.

“I keep remembering the Tyrant’s words to Chenoeh: ‘The Bene Gesserit are so close to what they should be, yet so far.’”

What was his Golden Path but a vision of sexual forces at work recreating humankind endlessly?”

Quiet chuckles said you could be amused but you did not have to make a guffawing fool of yourself.

Justice? Who asks for justice. We make our own justice. We make it here on Arrakis—win or die. Let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms and the freedom to use them.

She thought of Waff and his Face Dancers dead with Miles Teg in the terrible destruction of Rakis. It did not do to dwell on the bloody attrition being suffered in the Old Empire. Better to think about the muscles of retribution being created by the blundering violence of the Honored Matres.

I will have another niche made, she thought. I will commission another bust: Miles Teg, the Great Heretic!

Lastly, she thought about the worm in the no-ship’s hold—a worm nearing the moment of its metamorphosis. A small earth-dammed basin filled with melange awaited that worm. When the moment came, it would be lured out by Sheeana into the bath of melange and water. The resulting sandtrout could then begin their long transformation.

The “Last Will and Testament of Miles Teg,” which he had planted in the no-ship’s submolecular storage systems, could not be discredited. Even Bellonda agreed to that. Chapter House required a complete revision of all its historical records. A new look had been demanded of them by what Teg had seen of the Lost Ones—the whores from the Scattering.

“I thought you deserved an explanation of the Mother Superior’s design. It was aimed at the destruction of Rakis, you see. What she really wanted was the elimination of almost all of the worms.” “Great Gods below! Why?” “They were an oracular force holding us in bondage. Those pearls of the Tyrant’s awareness magnified that hold. He didn’t predict events, he created them.” Duncan pointed toward the rear of the ship. “But what about . . .” “That one? It’s just one now. By the time it reaches sufficient numbers to be an influence once more, humankind will have gone its own way beyond him. We’ll be too numerous by then, doing too many different things on our own. No single force will rule all of our futures completely, never again.”

We were right and Schwangyu and her people were wrong. We knew he wanted out. He had to want that after what he did. She spoke aloud in a soft whisper, as much for herself as for the nearby observers stationed there to watch for the moment when metamorphosis began in that worm. “We have your language now,” she said.