Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [99]
“Under other circumstances, I might have imposed banishment and exile. However, we cannot afford to diminish our numbers. Where would we send you? To execution? I think not. We have already split from Chapterhouse, and we’ve had few enough children in the intervening thirteen years. Do I dare eliminate you, Garimi, and your supporters? Crumbling factions are what one would expect from a weak and power-mad cult. We are Bene Gesserit. We are better than that!”
“Then what do you suggest, Sheeana?” Garimi stepped out of the box of the accused and strode toward the podium where Sheeana stood. “I cannot simply ignore my convictions, and you cannot ignore our supposed crime.”
“The gholas—all of them—will be tested again. If you are proved correct that this child is a threat, then there was no crime committed. In fact, you will have saved us all. However, if you are wrong, then you will formally rescind your objections.” She crossed her own arms, mirroring Garimi.
“The Sisterhood has made its decision, and you defied it. I am fully prepared to grow another ghola of Leto II—or another ten gholas—to ensure that at least one survives. Eleven gholas of Duncan were killed before we charged the Bashar with protecting him. Is that what you want us to do, Garimi?” The look of horror in the other woman’s eyes was the only answer Sheeana needed.
“In the meantime, I assign you to watch over Leto II, as his guardian. In fact, you are now responsible for all of the gholas, as the official Proctor Superior.”
Garimi and her followers were stunned. Sheeana smiled at their disbelief. Everyone in the chamber knew that responsibility for the one-year-old boy’s life now lay solely with Garimi. Teg could not control his faint smile. Sheeana had devised a perfect Bene Gesserit punishment. Garimi did not dare let anything happen to him.
Recognizing that she was trapped, Garimi nodded curtly. “I will watch, and I will discover what dangers lurk within him. When I do, I expect you to take the necessary action.”
“Necessary action, only.”
Leto Il sat innocently in his padded chair, a small, helpless-looking baby—with thirty-five hundred years of tyrannical memories locked away inside of him.
AFTER STARING AGAIN at “Cottages at Cordeville,” Sheeana lay in her quarters, drifting in and out of sleep, her thoughts troubled and overactive. Neither Serena Butler nor Odrade had come back to whisper to her in some time, but she felt a deeper disturbance churning in Other Memory, an uneasiness. As fatigue fuzzed her thoughts, she sensed an odd sort of trap enfolding her, a vision that drew her under, more than a dream. She tried to awaken to the alarming change, but could not.
Browns and grays swirled around her, and she saw a brightness beyond that drew her closer, pulling her body through the colors toward the light. Sounds intruded like a screaming wind, and a dry dustiness invaded her lungs, making her cough.
Abruptly, the turmoil and noise subsided, and she found herself standing on sand, with great rolling dunes extending from the foreground to the farthest horizons. Was it the Rakis of her childhood? Or perhaps an even older planet? Oddly, though she stood barefoot in her sleeping clothes, she could not feel the surface beneath her, nor did she feel the heat from the bright sun overhead. Her throat, however, was parched.
Surrounded by empty dunes, it seemed pointless to walk or run in any direction, and so she waited. Sheeana bent over and picked up a handful of sand. Lifting her hand high, she spilled the sand, letting it fall—but it formed an odd hourglass in the air, particles filtering slowly through an imaginary constricted opening. She watched the invisible bottom chamber begin to fill. Did it mean that time was running out? For whom?
Convinced that this was more than a dream, she wondered if she could be experiencing a journey into Other Memory that was not just voices, but actual experiences. Tactile visions encompassed all of her senses, like reality. Had she taken a path to some other place . . .