"Don't bother me with petty details!" What a voice of command! Thin and reedy but all other essentials there.

Without being told, the Proctors returned to the hatch. Odrade waved them away with an angry gesture. Only then did she realize that she had reached a decision.

"Give him back his clothes and bring him out," she said. "Get Streggi in here."

Teg's first words on emerging alarmed Odrade and made her wonder if she had made a mistake.

"What if I will not do battle the way you want?"

"But you said . . ."

"I've said many things in my . . . lives. Battle doesn't reinforce moral sense, Dar."

She (and Taraza) had heard the Bashar on that subject more than once. "Warfare leaves a residue of 'eat drink and be merry' that often leads inexorably to moral breakdown."

Correct but she did not know what he had in mind with his reminder. "For every veteran who returns with a new sense of destiny ('I survived; that must be God's purpose') more come home with barely submerged bitterness, ready to take 'the easy way' because they saw so much of it in the stresses of war."

They were Teg's words but her belief.

Streggi hurried into the room but before she could speak, Odrade motioned her to stand aside and wait silently.

For once, the acolyte had the courage to disobey Mother Superior.

"Duncan should know he has another daughter. Mother and child live and are healthy." She looked at Teg. "Hello, Miles." Only then did Streggi remove herself to the rear wall and stand quietly.

She is better than I hoped, Odrade thought.

Idaho relaxed into his chair, feeling now the tensions of worry that had interfered with his appreciation of what he had observed here.

Teg nodded to Streggi but spoke to Odrade: "Any more words to whisper in God's ear?" It was essential to control their attention and count on Odrade recognizing it. "If not, I'm really famished."

Odrade raised a finger to signal Streggi and heard the acolyte leave.

She sensed where Teg was directing her attention and, sure enough, he said: "Perhaps you've really created a scar this time."

A barb directed at the Sisterhood's boast that "We don't let scars accumulate on our pasts. Scars often conceal more than they reveal."

"Some scars reveal more than they conceal," he said. He looked at Idaho. "Right, Duncan?" One Mentat to another.

"I believe I've come in on an old argument," Idaho said.

Teg looked at Odrade. "See, daughter? A Mentat knows old argument when he hears it. You pride yourselves on knowing what's required of you at every turn, but the monster at this turning is one of your own making!"

"Mother Superior!" That was a Proctor who did not want her addressed thus.

Odrade ignored her. She felt chagrin, harsh and compelling. Taraza Within remembered the dispute: "We are shaped by Bene Gesserit associations. In peculiar ways, they blunt us. Oh, we cut swift and deep when we must, but that's another kind of blunting."

"I'll not take part in blunting you," Teg said. So he remembered.

Streggi returned with a bowl of stew, brown broth with meat floating in it. Teg sat on the floor and spooned it into his mouth with urgent motions.

Odrade remained silent, her thoughts moving where Teg had sent them. There was a hard shell Reverend Mothers put around themselves against which all things from outside (including emotions) played like projections. Murbella was right and the Sisterhood had to relearn emotions. If they were only observers, they were doomed.

She addressed Teg. "You won't be asked to blunt us."

Both Teg and Idaho heard something else in her voice. Teg put aside his empty bowl but Idaho was first to speak. "Cultivated," he said.

Teg agreed. Sisters were seldom impulsive. You got ordered reactions from them even in times of peril. They went beyond what most people thought of as cultivated. They were driven not so much by dreams of power as by their own long view, a thing compounded by immediacy and almost unlimited memory. So Odrade was following a carefully thought out plan. Teg glanced at the watchful Proctors.

"You were prepared to kill me," he said.

No one answered. There was no need. They all recognized Mentat Projection.

Teg turned and looked back into the room where he had regained his memories. Sheeana was gone. More memories whispered at the edge of awareness. They would speak in their own time. This diminutive body. That was difficult. And Streggi . . . He focused on Odrade. "You were more clever than you thought. But my mother . . ."

"I don't think she anticipated this," Odrade said.

"No . . . she was not that much Atreides."

An electrifying word in these circumstances, it charged a special silence in the room. The Proctors moved closer.

That mother of his!

Teg ignored the hovering Proctors. "In answer to the questions you have not asked, I cannot explain what happened to me on Gammu. My physical and mental speed defies explanation. Given the size and energy, in one of your heartbeats I could be clear of this room and well on my way out of the ship. Ohhh . . ." Hand upraised. "I'm still your obedient dog. I'll do what you require, but perhaps not in the way you imagine."

Odrade saw consternation in the faces of her Sisters. What have I loosed upon us?

"We can prevent any living thing from leaving this ship," she said. "You may be fast but I doubt you are faster than the fire that would engulf you should you try to leave without our permission."

"I will leave in my own good time and with your permission. How many of Burzmali's special troops do you have?"

"Almost two million." Startled out of her.

"So many!"

"He had more than twice that number with him at Lampadas when Honored Matres obliterated them."

"We shall have to be more clever than poor Burzmali. Would you leave me to discuss this with Duncan? That is why you keep us around, isn't it? Our specialty?" He aimed a smiling look at the overhead comeyes. "I'm sure you'll review our discussion thoroughly before approving."

Odrade and her Sisters exchanged glances. They shared an unspoken question: What else can we do?

As she stood, Odrade looked at Idaho. "Here's a real job for a Truthsayer-Mentat!"

When the women were gone, Teg pulled himself up onto one of the chairs and looked into the empty room visible beyond the seewall. It had been close there and he still felt his heart pumping hard from the effort. "Quite a show," he said.

"I've seen better." Extremely dry.

"What I'd like right now is a large glass of Marinete, but I doubt this body could take it."

"Bell will be waiting for Dar when she gets back to Central," Idaho said.

"To the nethermost hell with Bell! We have to defuse those Honored Matres before they find us."

"And our Bashar has just the plan."

"Damn that title!"

Idaho inhaled a sharp breath restricted by shock.

"Tell you something, Duncan!" Intense. "Once when I was arriving for an important meeting with potential enemies, I heard an aide announce me. 'The Bashar is here.' I damned near stumbled, caught by the abstraction."

"Mentat blur."

"Of course it was. But I knew the title removed me from something I did not dare lose. Bashar? I was more than that! I was Miles Teg, the name given me by my parents."

"You were on the name-chain!"

"Certainly, and I realized my name stood at a distance from something more primal. Miles Teg? No, I was more basic than that. I could hear my mother saying, 'Oh, what a beautiful baby.' So there I was with another name: 'Beautiful Baby.'"

"Did you go deeper?" Idaho found himself fascinated.

"I was caught. Name leads to name leads to names leads to nameless. When I walked into that important room, I was nameless. Did you ever risk that?"

"Once." A reluctant admission.

"We all do it at least once. But there I was. I'd been briefed. I had a reference for everyone at that table-face, name, title, plus all of the backgrounding."

"But you weren't really there."

"Oh, I could see the expectant faces measuring me, wondering, worrying. But they did not know me!"

"That gave you a feeling of great power?"

"Exactly as we were warned in Mentat school. I asked myself: 'Is this Mind at its beginning?' Don't laugh. It's a tantalizing question."

"So you went deeper?" Caught by Teg's words, Idaho ignored tugs of warning at the edge of his awareness.

"Oh, yes. And I found myself in the famous 'Hall of Mirrors' they described and warned us to flee."

"So you remembered how to get out and . . ."

"Remembered? You've obviously been there. Did memory get you out?"

"It helped."

"Despite the warnings, I lingered, seeing my 'self of selves' and infinite permutations. Reflections of reflections ad infinitum."

"Fascination of the 'ego core.' Damn few ever escape from that depth. You were lucky."

"I'm not sure it should be called luck. I knew there must be a First Awareness, an awakening . . ."

"Which discovers it is not the first."

"But I wanted a self at the root of the self!"

"Didn't the people at this meeting notice anything odd about you?"

"I found out later I sat down with a wooden expression that concealed these mental gymnastics."

"You didn't speak?"

"I was struck dumb. This was interpreted as 'the Bashar's expected reticence.' So much for reputation."

Idaho started to smile and remembered the comeyes. He saw at once how the watchdogs would interpret such revelations. Wild talent in a dangerous descendant of the Atreides! Sisters knew about the mirrors. Anyone who escaped must be suspect. What did the mirrors show him?

As though he heard the dangerous question, Teg said: "I was caught and knew it. I could visualize myself as a bedridden vegetable but I didn't care. The mirrors were everything until, like something floating up out of water, I saw my mother. She looked more or less the way she had just before she died."

Idaho inhaled a trembling breath. Didn't Teg know what he had just said for the comeyes to record?

"The Sisters will now imagine I'm at least a potential Kwisatz Haderach," Teg said. "Another Muad'Dib. Bullcrap! As you're so fond of saying, Duncan. Neither of us would risk that. We know what he created and we're not stupid!"

Idaho could not swallow. Would they accept Teg's words? He spoke the truth but still . . .

"She took my hand," Teg said. "I could feel it! And she led me right out of the Hall. I expected her to be with me when I felt myself seated at the table. My hand still tingled from her touch but she was gone. I knew that. I just brought myself to attention and took over. The Sisterhood had important advantages to gain there and I gained them."

"Something your mother planted in-"

"No! I saw her the same way Reverend Mothers see Other Memory. It was her way of saying: 'Why the hell are you wasting time here when there's work to do?' She has never left me, Duncan. The past never leaves any of us."

Idaho abruptly saw the purpose behind Teg's recital. Honesty and candor, indeed!

"You have Other Memory!"

"No! Except what anyone has in emergencies. The Hall of Mirrors was an emergency and it also let me see and feel the source of help. But I'm not going back there!"

Idaho accepted this. Most Mentats risked one dip into Infinity and learned the transient nature of names and titles but Teg's account was much more than a statement about Time as flow and tableau.

"I figured it was time we introduced ourselves fully to the Bene Gesserit," Teg said. "They should know how far they can trust us. There's work to do and we've wasted enough time on stupidities."





Spend energies on those who make you strong. Energy spent on weaklings drags you to doom. (HM rule) Bene Gesserit Commentary: Who judges?

-THE DORTUJLA RECORD

The day of Dortujla's return did not go w