Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [200]
Sheeana, though, would remain here. She saw no point in going back. Addressing Murbella, she said, “Even before Honored Matres destroyed Rakis, the Bene Gesserit order made me the centerpiece of a manufactured religion. For decades I had to hide while the Missionaria spread myths about me. I let the legend continue without me. What would I achieve if I stopped it now? So I say, leave it, if the thought comforts people. My place is on this planet.”
She saw that Scytale was also in the audience. The last of the Tleilaxu Masters had, in the end, proved greatly helpful, fighting for instead of against them. “Scytale, will you remain with us? Will you join my new order here? We can use your knowledge and genetic expertise. We are, after all, founding a colony, and we have only a few hundred people.”
“I expect others from the outside will eventually join you,” Murbella said.
The little Tleilaxu was surprised by the invitation. “Of course I will stay. Thank you. My people have no other place now, not even sacred Bandalong.” He smiled at Sheeana. “Perhaps at your side I can accomplish something worthwhile.”
Duncan walked among the Bene Gesserit refugees. “You are gardeners laying down flagstones on our path of destiny. Many of us will return to worlds we once called home, but you will remain here.”
With a warm feeling toward him, Sheeana touched Duncan’s arm. Though still flesh and bone, and human, she knew he was far more than that. And his words rang true. “Thanks to you Duncan, my Sisters and I are finally home.”
The worst part of going back is that the past is never exactly the way you remember it.
—PAUL ATREIDES,
Notebooks of a Ghola
Back in the Old Empire, the last Chapterhouse defenders waited, tense and alert, but nothing changed for days. The machine warships had not moved, and Bashar Janess Idaho had received no further word from the Navigator ships that had whisked the Mother Commander away. Fast scouts flitted back and forth from the hundred laststand groupings, and the situation was the same along the entire front.
Waiting. No one knew what was happening.
Janess reacted with alarm and dismay when a large swarm of ships burst out of foldspace in all sizes and configurations. Shouting into the commline, the bashar rallied all of her functional defensive craft that remained in orbit. At first she did not recognize the configurations, but then she saw that the newly arrived cluster included smaller human and thinking-machine vessels that had been towed along by the Holtzman engines of great Guildships.
“Identify yourselves!” Janess said to the unexpected armada.
On the bridge of her large battleship, returning home, Murbella smiled at Duncan. “That is your—our daughter.”
He raised his eyebrows and performed quick mental calculations. “One of the twins?”
“Janess.” Murbella frowned slightly. “The other one, Rinya, didn’t survive the Agony. I forgot you didn’t know. Tanidia, the middle one, is alive and well, assigned with the Missionaria among the refugees. But we lost Gianne, our youngest—born just before I became a Reverend Mother. She died during the Chapterhouse plague.”
Duncan steadied himself. How odd to feel a blow of genuine grief to learn of the death of two children he had never met. He hadn’t even known their names until now. He tried to imagine what the young women might have been like. As Kwisatz Haderach and evermind, he could do many things . . . almost anything. But he couldn’t bring back his daughters.
Duncan studied Janess’s features on the screen: dark hair and round face from his own genes, a petite figure, intense eyes, and a hard expression showing she would never run from a challenge. A synthesis of himself and Murbella. He activated the commline himself. “Bashar Janess Idaho, this is Duncan Idaho, your father. I am with the Mother Commander.”
Murbella leaned into the field of view. “Stand down, Janess. The war is over. You have nothing to fear from us.”
Janess seemed suspicious. “There are thinking-machine ships with you.