Текст книги "Heretics of Dune"
Автор книги: Frank Herbert
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***
This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here – the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos.
– The Atreides Manifesto, Bene Gesserit Archives
«What you are doing is too dangerous,» Teg said. «My orders are to protect you and strengthen you. I cannot permit this to continue.»
Teg and Duncan stood in the long, wood-paneled hallway just outside the no-globe's practice floor. It was late afternoon by the clock of their arbitrary routine and Lucilla had just swept away in anger after a vituperative confrontation.
Every meeting between Duncan and Lucilla lately had taken on the nature of a battle. Just now, she had stood in the doorway to the practice hall, a solid figure saved from being stolid by her softening curves, the seductive movements obvious to both males.
"Stop it, Lucilla!" Duncan had ordered.
Only her voice betrayed her anger: "How long do you think I will wait to carry out my orders?"
"Until you or someone else tells me that I -"
"Taraza requires things of you that none of us here knows!" Lucilla said.
Teg tried to soothe the mounting angers: "Please. Isn't it enough that Duncan continues to improve his performance? In a few days, I will start keeping regular watch outside. We can -"
"You can stop interfering with me, damn you!" Lucilla snapped. She whirled and stalked away.
As he saw the hard resolution on Duncan's face now, something furious began to work in Teg. He felt impelled by the necessities of their isolated situation. His intellect, that marvelously honed Mentat instrument, was shielded here from the mental uproar to which it adjusted on the outside. He thought that if he could only silence his mind, bring everything to stillness, all things would become clear to him.
"Why are you holding your breath, Bashar?"
Duncan's voice impaled Teg. It required a supreme act of will to resume normal breathing. He felt the emotions of his two companions in the no-globe as an ebb and flow temporarily removed from other forces.
Other forces.
Mentat awareness could be an idiot in the presence of other forces that swept through the universe. There might exist in the universe people whose lives were infused with powers he could not imagine. Before such forces he would be chaff moved on the froth of wild currents.
Who could plunge into such an uproar and emerge intact?
"What can Lucilla possibly do if I continue to resist her?" Duncan asked.
"Has she used Voice on you?" Teg asked. His own voice sounded remote to him.
"Once."
"You resisted?" Remote surprise lurked somewhere within Teg.
"I learned the way of that from Paul Muad'dib himself."
"She is capable of paralyzing you and -"
"I think her orders prohibit violence."
"What is violence, Duncan?"
"I'm going to the showers, Bashar. Are you coming?"
"In a few minutes." Teg took a deep breath, sensing how close he was to exhaustion. This afternoon on the practice floor and afterward had drained him. He watched Duncan leave. Where was Lucilla? What was she planning? How long could she wait? That was the central question and it put the no-globe's peculiar emphasis on their isolation from Time.
Again, he sensed that ebb and flow which their three lives influenced. I must talk to Lucilla! Where has she gone? The library? No! There is something else I must do first.
Lucilla sat in the room she had chosen for her personal quarters. It was a small space with an ornate bed filling an inset into one wall. Gross and subtle signs around her said this had been the room of a favorite Harkonnen hetaira. Pastel blues with darker blue accents shaded the fabrics. Despite the baroque carvings on bed, alcove, ceiling, and every functioning appurtenance, the room itself could be swept out of her consciousness once she relaxed here. She lay back on the bed and closed her eyes against the sexually gross figures on the alcove ceiling.
Teg will have to be dealt with.
It would have to be done in such a way that it did not offend Taraza or weaken the ghola. Teg presented a special problem in many ways, especially in the way his mental processes could dip into and out of deeper sources akin to those of the Bene Gesserit.
The Reverend Mother who bore him, of course!
Something passed from such a mother to such a child. It began in the womb and probably did not end even when they were finally separated. He had never undergone the all-ravening transmutation that produced Abominations... no, not that. But he had subtle and real powers. Those born of Reverend Mothers learned things impossible to others.
Teg knew precisely how Lucilla viewed love in all of its manifestations. She had seen it on his face that once in his quarters at the Keep.
"Calculating witch!"
He might as well have spoken it aloud.
She recalled the way she had favored him with her benign smile and dominating expression. That had been a mistake, demeaning to both of them. She sensed in such thoughts a latent sympathy for Teg. Somewhere within her, despite all of the careful Bene Gesserit training, there were chinks in her armor. Her teachers had warned her about that many times.
"To be capable of inducing real love, you must feel it, but only temporarily. And once is enough!"
Teg's reactions to the Duncan Idaho ghola said much. Teg was both drawn to and repelled by their young charge.
As I am.
Perhaps it had been a mistake not to seduce Teg.
In her sex education, where she had been taught to gain strength from intercourse rather than lose herself in it, her teachers had emphasized analysis and historical comparisons, of which there were many in a Reverend Mother's Other Memories.
Lucilla focused her thoughts on Teg's male presence. Doing this, she could feel a female response, her flesh wanting Teg close to her and aroused to sexual peak – ready for the moment of mystery.
Faint amusement crept into Lucilla's awareness. Not orgasm. No scientific labels! It was purest Bene Gesserit cant: moment of mystery, the Imprinter's ultimate specialty. Immersion in the long Bene Gesserit continuity required this concept. She had been taught to believe deeply in a duality: the scientific knowledge by which the Breeding Mistresses guided them but, at the same time, the moment of mystery that confounded all knowledge. Bene Gesserit history and science said the procreative drive must remain irretrievably buried in the psyche. It could not be removed without destroying the species.
The safety net.
Lucilla gathered her sexual forces around her now as only a Bene Gesserit Imprinter could. She began to focus her thoughts on Duncan. By now, he would be in the showers and thinking about this evening's training session with his Reverend Mother-teacher.
I will go to my student presently, she thought. The important lesson must be taught or he will not be fully prepared for Rakis.
Those were Taraza's instructions.
Lucilla swung the focus of her thoughts fully onto Duncan. It was almost as though she saw him standing naked under the shower.
How little he understood of what there might be to learn!
Duncan sat alone in the dressing cubicle off the showers which adjoined the practice hall. He was immersed in a deep sadness. This brought remembered pains to old wounds that this young flesh had never experienced.
Some things never changed! The Sisterhood was at its old-old games again.
He looked up and around this dark-paneled Harkonnen place. Arabesques were carved into walls and ceiling, strange designs in the tesserae of the floor. Monsters and lovely human bodies intermingled across the same defining lines. Only a flicker of attention separated one from the other.
Duncan looked down at this body that the Tleilaxu and their axlotl tanks had produced for him. It still felt strange at moments. He had been a man of many adult experiences in the last instant he remembered from his pre-ghola life – fighting off a swarm of Sardaukar warriors, giving his young Duke a chance to escape.
His Duke! Paul had been no older than this flesh then. Conditioned, though, the way the Atreides always were: Loyalty and honor above all else.
The way they conditioned me after they saved me from the Harkonnens.
Something within him could not evade that ancient debt. He knew its source. He could outline the process by which it had been embedded in him.
There it remained.
Duncan glanced at the tiled floor. Words had been worked in the tile along the cubicle's splashboard. It was a script that one part of him identified as an ancient thing from the old Harkonnen times but that another part of him found to be an all-too-familiar Galach.
"CLEAN SWEET CLEAN BRIGHT CLEAN PURE CLEAN"
The ancient script repeated itself around the room's perimeter as though the words themselves might create something that Duncan knew was alien to the Harkonnens of his memories.
Over the door to the showers, more script:
"CONFESS THY HEART AND FIND PURITY"
A religious admonition in a Harkonnen stronghold? Had the Harkonnens changed in the centuries after his death? Duncan found this hard to believe. These words were things that the builders probably had thought appropriate.
He felt rather than heard Lucilla enter the room behind him. Duncan stood and fastened the clips of the tunic he had appropriated from the nullentropy bins (but only after removing all Harkonnen insignia!).
Without turning, he said: "What now, Lucilla?"
She stroked the fabric of the tunic along his left arm. "The Harkonnens had rich tastes."
Duncan spoke quietly: "Lucilla, if you touch me again without my permission, I will try to kill you. I will try so hard that you very likely will have to kill me."
She recoiled.
He stared into her eyes. "I am not some damned stud for the witches!"
"Is that what you think we want of you?"
"Nobody has said what you want of me but your actions are obvious!"
He stood poised on the balls of his feet. The unawakened thing within him stirred and sent his pulse racing.
Lucilla studied him carefully. Damn that Miles Teg! She had not expected resistance to take this form. There was no doubting Duncan's sincerity. Words by themselves no longer would serve. He was immune to Voice.
Truth.
It was the only weapon left to her.
"Duncan, I do not know precisely what it is Taraza expects you to do on Rakis. I can guess but my guess may be wrong."
"Guess, then."
"There is a young girl on Rakis, barely into her teens. Her name is Sheeana. The worms of Rakis obey her. Somehow, the Sisterhood must gather this talent into its own store of abilities."
"What could I possibly...
"If I knew, I certainly would tell you now."
He heard her sincerity unmasked by her desperation.
"What does your talent have to do with this?" he demanded.
"Only Taraza and her councillors know."
"They want some hold on me, something from which I cannot escape!"
Lucilla already had arrived at this deduction but she had not expected him to see it that quickly. Duncan's youthful face concealed a mind that worked in ways she had not yet fathomed. Lucilla's thoughts raced.
"Control the worms and you could revive the old religion." It was Teg's voice from the doorway behind Lucilla.
I did not hear him arrive!
She whirled. Teg stood there with one of the antique Harkonnen lasguns held casually across his left arm, its muzzle directed at her.
"This is to insure that you listen to me," he said.
"How long have you been there listening?"
Her angry glare did not change his expression.
"From the moment you admitted you don't know what Taraza expects of Duncan," Teg said. "Nor do I. But I can make a few Mentat projections – nothing firm yet but all of them suggestive. Tell me if I am wrong."
"About what?"
He glanced at Duncan. "One of the things you were told to do was to make him irresistible to most women."
Lucilla tried to conceal her dismay. Taraza had warned her to conceal this from Teg as long as possible. She saw that concealment no longer was possible. Teg had read her reaction with those damnable abilities imparted to him by his damnable mother!
"A great deal of energy is being gathered and aimed at Rakis," Teg said. He looked steadily at Duncan. "No matter what the Tleilaxu have buried in him, he has the stamp of ancient humankind in his genes. Is that what the Breeding Mistresses need?"
"A damned Bene Gesserit stud!" Duncan said.
"What do you intend to do with that weapon?" Lucilla asked. She nodded at the antique lasgun in Teg's hands.
"This? I didn't even put a charge cartridge in it." He lowered the lasgun and leaned it into a corner beside him.
"Miles Teg, you will be punished!" Lucilla grated.
"That will have to wait," he said. "It's almost night outside. I've been out there under the life-shield. Burzmali has been here. He has left his sign to tell me he read the message I scratched with those animal marks on the trees."
A glittering alertness came into Duncan's eyes.
"What will you do?" Lucilla asked.
"I have left new marks arranging a rendezvous. Right now, we are all going up to the library. We are going to study the maps. We will commit them to memory. At the very least, we should know where we are when we run."
She gave him the benefit of a curt nod.
Duncan noted her movement with only part of his awareness. His mind already had leaped ahead to the ancient equipment in the Harkonnen library. He had been the one to show both Lucilla and Teg how to use it correctly, calling up an ancient map of Giedi Prime dating from the time when the no-globe had been built.
With Duncan's pre-ghola memory as guide and his own more modern knowledge of the planet, Teg had tried to bring the map up to date.
"Forest Guard Station" became "Bene Gesserit Keep."
"Part of it was a Harkonnen hunting lodge," Duncan had said. "They hunted human game raised and conditioned specifically for that purpose."
Towns vanished under Teg's updating. Some cities remained but received new labels. "Ysai," the nearest metropolis, had been marked "Barony" on the original map.
Duncan's eyes went hard in memory. "That's where they tortured me."
When Teg exhausted his memory of the planet, much was marked unknown but there were frequent curly-ended Bene Gesserit symbols to identify the places where Taraza's people had told Teg he might find temporary sanctuary.
Those were the places Teg wanted committed to memory.
As he turned to lead them up to the library, Teg said: "I will erase the map when we have learned it. There's no telling who might find this place and study it."
Lucilla swept past him. "It's on your head, Miles!" she said.
Teg called after her retreating back: "A Mentat tells you that I did what was required of me."
She spoke without turning: "How logical!"
***
This room reconstructs a bit of the desert of Dune. The sandcrawler directly in front of you dates from the Atreides times. Grouped around it, moving clockwise from your left, are a small harvester, a carryall, a primitive spice factory and the other support equipment. All are explained at each station. Note the illuminated quotation above the display: «FOR THEY SHALL SUCK OF THE ABUNDANCE OF THE SEAS AND OF THE TREASURE IN THE SAND.» This ancient religious quotation was oft repeated by the famous Gurney Halleck.
– Guide Announcement, Museum of Dar-es-Balat
The worm did not slow its relentless progress until just before dusk.. By then, Odrade had played out her questions and still had no answers. How did Sheeana control the worms? Sheeana said she was not steering her Shaitan in this direction. What was this hidden language to which the desert monster responded? Odrade knew that her Sister-guardians up there in the 'thopters that paced them would be exhausting the same questions plus one more.
Why did Odrade let this ride continue?
They might even hazard a few guesses: She does not call us in because that might disturb the beast. She does not trust us to pluck her party from its back.
The truth was far simpler: curiosity.
The hissing passage of the worm could have been a surging vessel breasting seas. The dry flinty odors of overheated sand, swept across them by a following wind, said otherwise. Only open desert stretched around them now, kilometer after kilometer of whaleback dunes as regular in their spacing as ocean waves.
Waff had been silent for a long period. He crouched in a miniature reproduction of Odrade's position, his attention directed ahead, a blank expression on his face. His most recent statement:
"God guard the faithful in the hour of our trial!"
Odrade thought of him as living proof that a strong enough fanaticism could endure for ages. Zensunni and the old Sufi survived in the Tleilaxu. It was like a deadly microbe that had lain dormant all of those millennia, waiting for the right host to feed its virulence.
What will happen to the thing I planted in the Rakian priesthood? she wondered. Saint Sheeana was a certainty.
Sheeana sat on a ring of her Shaitan, her robe pulled up to expose her thin shanks. She gripped the ring with both hands between her legs.
She had said that her first worm ride went directly to the city of Keen. Why there? Had the worm simply been taking her to her own kind?
This one beneath them now certainly had a different goal. Sheeana no longer questioned but then Odrade had ordered her to remain silent and practice the low trance. That, at least, would assure that every last detail of this experience could be recalled easily from her memory. If there were a hidden language between Sheeana and worm, they would find it later.
Odrade peered at the horizon. The remnant base of the ancient wall around the Sareer was only a few kilometers ahead. Long shadows from it lay across the dunes, telling Odrade that the remnant was higher than she had originally suspected. It was a shattered and broken outline now, with great boulders strewn along its base. The notch where the Tyrant had tumbled from his bridge into the Idaho River lay well to their right, at least three kilometers off their path. No river flowed there now.
Waff stirred beside her. "I heed Thy call, God," he said. "It is Waff of the Entio who prays in Thy Holy Place."
Odrade swiveled her gaze toward him without moving her head. Entio? Her Other Memories knew an Entio, a tribal leader in the great Zensunni Wandering, long before Dune. What was this? What ancient memories did these Tleilaxu keep alive?
Sheeana broke her silence. "Shaitan is slowing."
The remains of the ancient wall blocked their way. It loomed at least fifty meters over the highest dunes. The worm turned slightly to the right and moved between two giant boulders that towered above them. It came to a stop. The long ridged back lay parallel to a mostly intact section of the wall's base.
Sheeana stood and looked at the barrier.
"What is this place?" Waff asked. He raised his voice above the sound of the 'thopters circling overhead.
Odrade released her tiring grip and flexed her fingers. She continued to kneel while she studied their surroundings. Shadows from the tumbled boulders drew hard lines on sand spills and smaller rocks. Seen close up, not twenty meters away, the wall revealed cracks and fissures, dark openings into the ancient foundation.
Waff stood and massaged his hands.
"Why have we been brought here?" he asked. His voice was faintly plaintive.
The worm twitched.
"Shaitan wants us to get off," Sheeana said.
How does she know? Odrade wondered. The worm's movement had not been enough to make any of them stumble. It could have been some private reflex after the long journey.
But Sheeana faced the ancient wall's foundation, sat down on the curve of the worm and slid off. She dropped in a crouch on soft sand.
Odrade and Waff moved forward and watched with fascination as Sheeana slogged through the sand to the front of the creature. There, Sheeana placed both hands on her hips and faced the gaping mouth. Hidden flames played orange light across the young face.
"Shaitan, why are we here?" Sheeana demanded.
Again, the worm twitched.
"He wants all of you off him," Sheeana called.
Waff looked at Odrade. "If God wishes thee to die, He causes thy steps to lead thee to the place of thy death."
Odrade gave him back a paraphrase from the cant of the Shariat: "Obey God's messenger in all things."
Waff sighed. Doubt was plain on his face. But he turned and was first off the worm, dropping just ahead of Odrade. They followed Sheeana's example, moving to the front of the creature. Odrade, every sense alert, fixed her gaze on Sheeana.
It was much hotter in front of the gaping mouth. The familiar bite of melange filled the air around them.
"We are here, God," Waff said.
Odrade, getting more than a little tired of his religious awe, spared a glance for their surroundings – the shattered rocks, the eroded barrier reaching into the dusky sky, sand sloping against the time-scarred stones, and the slow scorching huff-huff of the worm's internal fires.
But where is here? Odrade wondered. What is special about this place to make it the worm's destination?
Four of the watching 'thopters passed in line overhead. The sound of their wing fans and the hissing jets momentarily drowned out the worm's background rumblings.
Shall I call them down? Odrade wondered. It would take only a hand signal. Instead, she lifted two hands in the signal for the watchers to remain aloft.
Evening's chill was on the sand now. Odrade shivered and adjusted her metabolism to the new demands. She felt confident that the worm would not engulf them with Sheeana beside them.
Sheeana turned her back on the worm. "He wants us to be here," she said.
As though her words were a command, the worm twisted its head away from them and slid off through the tall scattering of giant boulders. They could hear it speeding away back into the desert.
Odrade faced the base of the ancient wall. Darkness would be upon them soon but enough light remained in the high desert's long dusk that they might yet see some explanation of why the creature had brought them here. A tall fissure in the rock wall to her right seemed as good a place to investigate as any. Keeping part of her attention on the sounds from Waff, Odrade climbed a sandy incline toward the dark opening. Sheeana kept pace with her.
"Why are we here, Mother?"
Odrade shook her head. She heard Waff following.
The fissure directly in front of her was a shadowy hole into darkness. Odrade stopped and held Sheeana beside her. She judged the opening to be about a meter wide and some four times that in height. The rocky sides were curiously smooth, as though polished by human hands. Sand had drifted into the opening. Light from the setting sun reflected off the sand to bathe one side of the opening in a wash of gold.
Waff spoke from behind them: "What is this place?"
"There are many old caves," Sheeana said. "Fremen hid their spice in caves." She inhaled deeply through her nose. "Do you smell it, Mother?"
There was a definite melange odor to the place, Odrade agreed.
Waff moved past Odrade and into the fissure. He turned there, looking up at the walls where they met in a sharp angle above him. Facing Odrade and Sheeana, he backed farther into the opening, his attention on the walls. Odrade and Sheeana stepped closer to him. With an abrupt hissing of spilled sand, Waff vanished from their sight. In the same instant, the sand all around Odrade and Sheeana slipped forward into the fissure, dragging both of them with it. Odrade grabbed Sheeana's hand.
"Mother!" Sheeana cried.
The sound echoed from invisible rock walls as they slid down a long slope of spilling sand into concealing darkness. The sand drifted them to a stop in a final wash of gentle movement. Odrade, in sand up to her knees, extricated herself and pulled Sheeana with her onto a hard surface.
Sheeana started to speak but Odrade said: "Hush! Listen!"
There was a grating disturbance off to the left.
"Waff?"
"I'm in it up to my waist." There was terror in his voice.
Odrade spoke dryly. "God must want it that way. Pull yourself out gently. It feels like rock under our feet. Gently now! We don't need another avalanche."
As her eyes adjusted, Odrade looked up the sand slope down which they had tumbled. The opening where they had entered this place was a distant slit of dusky gold far away above them.
"Mother," Sheeana whispered. "I'm scared."
"Say the Litany Against Fear," Odrade ordered. "And be still. Our friends know we are here. They will help us get out."
"God has brought us to this place," Waff said.
Odrade did not respond. In the silence, she pursed her lips and gave a high-pitched whistle, listening for the echoes. Her ears told her they were in a large space with some sort of low obstruction behind them. She turned her back on the narrow fissure and gave another whistle.
The low barrier lay about a hundred meters away.
Odrade freed her hand from Sheeana's. "Stay right here, please. Waff?"
"I hear the 'thopters," he said.
"We all hear them," Odrade said. "They are landing. We will have help presently. Meanwhile, please stay where you are and remain silent. I need the silence."
Whistling and listening for the echoes, placing each foot carefully, Odrade worked her way deeper into the darkness. An outstretched hand encountered a rough rock surface. She felt along it. Only about waist high. She could feel nothing beyond it. The echoes of her whistles said it was a smaller space there and partly enclosed.
A voice called from high behind her. "Reverend Mother! Are you there?"
Odrade turned, cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted: "Stay back! We've been spilled into a deep cave. Bring a light and a long rope."
A tiny dark figure moved back out of the distant opening. The light up there was growing dimmer. She lowered her cupped hands and spoke into the darkness.
"Sheeana? Waff? Come toward me about ten paces and wait there."
"Where are we, Mother?" Sheeana asked.
"Patience, child."
A low, muttering sound came from Waff. Odrade recognized the ancient words of the Islamiyat. He was praying. Waff had dropped all attempts to conceal his origins from her. Good. The believer was a receptacle for her to feed with the sweets of the Missionaria Protectiva.
Meanwhile, the possibilities of this place where the worm had brought them excited Odrade. Guided by one hand on the rock barrier, she explored along it to her left. The top was quite smooth in places. All of it sloped inward away from her. Other Memories offered a sudden projection:
Catchbasin!
This was a Fremen water storage basin. Odrade inhaled deeply, testing for moisture. The air was flint dry.
A bright light from the fissure stabbed downward, driving away the darkness. A voice called from the opening and Odrade recognized it as one of her Sisters.
"We can see you!"
Odrade stepped back from the low barrier and turned, peering all around. Waff and Sheeana stood about sixty meters away staring at their surroundings. The chamber was roughly circular, some two hundred meters in diameter. A rock dome arched high overhead. She examined the low barrier beside her: yes, a Fremen catchbasin. She could discern the small rock island in its center where a captive worm could be kept ready to spill into the water. Other Memories replayed that agonized, twisting death which produced the spice poison to ignite a Fremen orgy.
A low arch framed more darkness on the far side of the basin. She could see the spillway there where water had been brought down from a windtrap. There would be more catchbasins back there, an entire complex of them designed to hold a wealth of moisture for an ancient tribe. She knew the name of this place now.
"Sietch Tabr," Odrade whispered.
The words ignited a flood of useful memories. This had been Stilgar's place in the time of Muad'dib. Why did that worm bring us to Sietch Tabr?
A worm took Sheeana to the City of Keen. That others might know of her? Then what was there to know here? Were there people back there in that darkness? Odrade sensed no indications of life in that direction.
Her Sister at the opening interrupted these thoughts. "We've had to ask for the rope to be brought from Dar-es-Balat! The people at the museum say this is probably Sietch Tabr! They thought it had been destroyed!"
"Send down a light so I can explore it," Odrade called.
"The priests ask that we leave it undisturbed!"
"Send me a light!" Odrade insisted.
Presently, a dark object tumbled down the sandslope in a small spill of sand. Odrade sent Sheeana scampering for it. A touch on the switch and a bright beam went lancing at the dark archway beyond the catchbasin. Yes, more basins there. And beside this basin, a narrow stairway cut into the rock. The steps led upward, turning and removing themselves from her view.
Odrade bent and whispered in Sheeana's ear. "Watch Waff carefully. If he moves after us, call out."
"Yes, Mother. Where are we going?"
"I must look at this place. I am the one who has been brought here for a purpose." She raised her voice and addressed Waff: "Waff, please wait there for the rope."
"What have you been whispering?" he demanded. "Why must I wait? What are you doing?"
"I have been praying," Odrade said. "Now, I must continue this pilgrimage alone."
"Why alone?"
In the old language of the Islamiyat, she said: "It is written."
That stopped him!
Odrade led the way at a fast walk toward the rock stairs.
Sheeana, hurrying along beside Odrade, said: "We must tell people about this place. The old Fremen caves are safe from Shaitan."
"Be still, child," Odrade said. She aimed the light up into the stairway. It curved through the rock, angling sharply to the right up there. Odrade hesitated. The warning sense of danger she had felt at the beginning of this venture came back intensified. It was an almost palpable thing within her.
