Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [206]
“But I like this castle! It’s a Duke’s castle.” Jessica could not think of her Leto as a child. He wore fishing dungarees and a striped shirt, just like the ones he had worn when Jessica had first come to Caladan as a concubine purchased from the Bene Gesserit. The young nobleman had put a knife to her throat that day, a bluff . . .
Yueh smiled. “A Duke . . . Such titles no longer mean anything with the Imperium long gone. Do the people of Caladan even need a Duke anymore?”
Jessica’s reaction was automatic, making her realize she had not thought through her notion. “The people still need leaders, no matter what title we use. And we can be good leaders, as House Atreides has always been in the past. My Leto will be a good Duke.”
The boy’s eyes glittered as he listened with rapt attention. Beyond his youthful features, Jessica could see the seeds of the man she loved. This young Atreides was among the first of a new generation of gholas produced by Scytale. The baby had been shipped to Caladan and christened there—just as the original Paul had been.
Since leaving Synchrony, Jessica and Yueh had struggled to recover here, endeavoring in the process to bring back a degree of glory to the quiet water world. The tangled threads of their initial and ghola lives made them ironic allies, two people with shared tragedies and shared pasts. Finally, though he could never have his beloved Wanna back, Yueh had found some measure of peace.
Jessica, though, knew that her true Duke waited for her. Eventually he would grow to manhood. When he got his memories back, his physical age would not matter.
Jessica’s partnership with Leto would be unusual, but no stranger than the relationships of all the mismatched gholas that had grown up on the no-ship. As a Bene Gesserit, she could slow her own aging process, and with melange readily available from the operations on Chapterhouse, Buzzell, and Qelso, they could both enjoy extended lives. She would prepare Leto, and when the time was right, she would help trigger his true awakening. Miraculously, he would once again be the man she loved, with all his thoughts and memories.
She only had to wait a decade or two. As a Bene Gesserit, she could be patient.
Jessica grasped his small hand. This time there would be no political reason to prevent them from getting married, if that was what he wanted, and she wanted. It only mattered to her that they would be together again.
“Everything will be the same when you finally remember, Leto. And everything will be different.”
The future is around all of us, and it looks very much like the past.
—MOTHER SUPERIOR SHEEANA,
at the founding of the Orthodox School on Synchrony
The mangled and permanently grounded Ithaca had become the new headquarters building for Sheeana’s splinter group. Innovative human architects in conjunction with construction robots had remodeled the large vessel into a unique and imposing headquarters. The navigation bridge, the highest deck on the no-ship, had been opened up and converted into an observation tower.
Mother Superior Sheeana stared across the breathtaking, rebuilt city of Synchrony. Dipping into her deep reservoir of memories, she drew parallels to one of the original Bene Gesserit schools on Wallach IX, which had also been founded in an urban setting. Here many of the machine spires remained, and some even moved as they had before, processing materials in automated industries.
Years ago, Duncan and the willing machines had helped her reconstruct the unusual metropolis, though he balanced his “miraculous” work with the necessity of letting the humans achieve their own successes. He and Sheeana knew the dangers of letting people grow too soft, and he had no intention of allowing them to rely on him for things they could do for themselves. Humankind needed to solve its own problems as much as possible.
At the same time, clusters of thinking machines had begun to grow apart, given manageable goals,