Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [36]
“Even you need to be watched, Rabbi.”
Anger flushed his leathery skin. “You and your witches should have heeded the warnings and ceased your grotesque experiments. If only the Honored Matres had managed to get rid of Scytale when they destroyed all Tleilaxu worlds, then his hateful knowledge of tanks and gholas would have been lost.”
“The Honored Matres also hunted down your people, Rabbi. You and the Tleilaxu share the same enemy.”
“But it is not the same at all. We have been unfairly persecuted throughout history, while the Tleilaxu merely received their just desserts. Their own Face Dancers turned on them, from what I understand.” He took a step away from the fleshy mound, from the chemical and biological odors that wafted from the tanks. “I can hardly recall what Rebecca once looked like, before she became this thing.”
Sheeana searched for the memories, and asked the voices within to assist her. This time they did, and she found what she wanted, like accessing old archival images. The woman had looked elegant in her brown robe and braided hair. She’d worn contact lenses to conceal the blue eyes of her spice addiction. . . .
With a bitter expression, the Rabbi placed a hand on Rebecca’s exposed flesh. A tear ran down his cheek. He muttered the same thing each time he visited her. A litany for him. “You witches did this to her, made her into a monster.”
“She’s not a monster, not even a martyr.” She tapped her own forehead. “Rebecca’s thoughts and memories are in here and inside many other Sisters, Shared with us all. Rebecca did what was necessary, and so will we.”
“By making more gholas? Will it never end?”
“You are concerned about a pebble in your shoe, while we seek to avoid the rockslide. Sooner or later, we will no longer be able to run from the Enemy. We’ll need the ingenuity and special talents of these gholas, in particular those capable of becoming another Kwisatz Haderach. But we must handle the genetic material carefully, nurturing and developing it in the proper order, at the proper pace.” She strolled to one of the new tanks, a fresh young woman whose form had not yet deteriorated into unrecognizability.
As she stood there, a troubling thought refused to leave her mind, no matter how much she tried to push it away. An absurd line of reasoning, but all day long it had been percolating. What if my own abilities could be equivalent to those of a Kwisatz Haderach? I already have a natural ability to control the great worms. I have the Atreides genes, and centuries of the Sisterhood’s perfected knowledge to draw upon. Would I dare?
She felt voices surfacing from within; one rose above the others. The ancient Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, repeating something that she once said so long ago to a young Paul Atreides: “Yet, there’s a place where no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot—into both feminine and masculine pasts . . . the one who can be many places at once . . .” The old crone’s voice drifted away, without giving Sheeana any advice, one way or the other.
With a sneer, the Rabbi interrupted her thoughts. “And you trust that old Tleilaxu to help you, when he’s desperate to achieve his own goals before dying? Scytale hid those cells for so many years. How many of them contain dangerous secrets? You’ve already discovered Face Dancer cells among the samples. How many of your ghola abominations are traps laid by the Tleilaxu?”
She gazed at him dispassionately, knowing that no argument would ever sway him. The Rabbi made the sign of the evil eye, and fled.
DUNCAN ENCOUNTERED SHEEANA in an empty corridor, in the dimness of the artificial night. The no-ship’s recyclers and life-support systems kept the air comfortably cool, but upon seeing her alone like this Duncan felt a flush of heat.
Sheeana’s large eyes fixed on him like a weapon’s targeting system. Feeling a tingle like static electricity