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Chapter Text

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit kno–

There’s no good in a weak beginning, Yak! If you’re going to start something, start it boldly and don’t let anything stop you, not even yourself. No worrying about where it starts or when, just let it all meet you wherever that lies! No worrying about ‘maybes’, just sort it all in terms of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for now! This is… well, it’s my Way now at least.

–Borte Abdullahi, Uncollected Sayings

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Yakoba hated this time of year. Ran’s light was darkened during the lunar eclipse season, strangling the moon in a near-freezing dark that lasted long enough to drive the sensitive like her to despair, but not long enough to ever get accustomed to it. The irregular winters messed with her planetary brain, a product of millions of years of evolution that found the lunatic rhythms of the moon impossible to keep up with even during the cool grey-white days that passed for what was called “summer” there.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the Eridanus Finishing School operated on a 24-hour cycle as was standardized across all Bene Gesserit Chapterhouses and schools. Night and day constantly swapped and shifted over the days of classes, tests, and studies. Only her applied training to regulate her pineal gland as a true internal clock gave any sort of sanity to the dance of light and dark across this mossy and cratered rock, and still, having 0630 be twilight outside was still never a good start to her day.

She ran through her schedule for that day as she put her light-grey uniform with its light-blue edgings on properly. Remedial Introductory Prana-Bindu at 0700, Remedial Stressed Perception at 0930, Remedial Unstressed Perception at 1300, remedial this, remedial that. She was good at history and mentat processing methods, but in all core skills of a Bene Gesserit, Yakoba was hopelessly behind and felt just as hopelessly inadequate at them as ever, looking at the other girls her age. Her situation as an Adopted Initiate was the only reason she was given this much leniency. A regular initiate would have been expelled or worse if they didn’t know all these things at seventeen. Or worse, or worse...

Stop that! She told herself as those thoughts festered. Focus on the now was critical. She had pinpointed just how well she needed to do on the graded meta-linguistics exam next week, and the prana-bindu temperature regulation tests tomorrow. Tomorrow, she emphasized to herself. She could probably exceed the average score in those more scholastic classes easily, but for those sorts of tests, the ones actually important for a Sister to know, it was ultimately a very arbitrary decision by a proctor whether an initiate was deemed satisfactory. Yakoba was used to never being enough for her own standards or the standards of others, but at this point it was essential to exceed these expectations or… well, die.

Of course, as always, her cellmate was asleep still despite both of their classes starting soon. She was newer to the Eridanus Chapterhouse than Yakoba, but under completely different circumstances. A child of a Bene Gesserit prodigy, she was sent here to finish her Sister-rank training outside of that kind of loving familial embrace that would keep her from learning the harder facts of their work, before going back to her highborn family for whatever marriage plans the Order had for her. A different set of troubles than Yakoba, but a normal set for a Bene Gesserit initiate, unlike her.

Despite being something like fourteen or fifteen, this girl was placed to bunk with the older Yakoba. Whether it was a matter of convenience (Yakoba was the only one in her two-person cell until she got put there like eight months ago) or a backhanded approach to exert pressure on one or the other of them to study more was unclear, but… they essentially were still at different times of their lives. It was like how Yakoba once had to tolerate living with her younger cousins, but now in a somehow even more strict and grey-black household.

Still, despite it all, and especially despite her cellmate’s usual state of naïve uptight bossiness, the girl was good enough company.

As she fixed her still-too-short hair in a bun, Yakoba glanced through the mirror back at her live-in reminder of inadequacy. She was still asleep, covered in her white sheets with only her dark hair betraying that there was a near-skeleton of a girl underneath.

“Hey, it’s six-forty, just so you know.”

The mass of covers across the room turned and warped like sandbars under seaside winds, but no head popped out to look at her.

Grabbing her notitia-tablet, Yakoba turned and looked directly at the bed. Even with her limited petit perception training, Yakoba noticed something off in the resonance of her cellmate’s breath. Is she crying?, she thought.

Yakoba walked over and tried to unwrap the thin sheets without manhandling the girl. Under the covers, she saw watery green eyes staring off into unknown depths of the fabric, a face streaked with tears, half-choked on a lingering nightmare and deathly pale.

“Maryam? Are you all right?”

Yakoba had never seen her like this before. Normally, Maryam was as collected and formal as possible, even if flecks of emotion behind that mask seemed bittersweet and meditative.

“Yes!” the girl shouted. In a moment, she snapped to and propped herself up on one elbow, then shook her wet eyes fully awake. “Yes!– Yes… It’s nothing. Just a dream.” Yakoba glanced at her other hand. It was clutching at her plexus, tendons poised in what betrayed a mixture of fight-and-flight from whatever nightmare she had. Just as soon as she had looked, Maryam corrected the gap in her emotional armor, relaxing her hand.

Yakoba didn’t have much time to help her. Her classes were a fair ways from the dormitory, and she had already been publicly berated once before for tardiness. “Are… you sure?” she said, hesitating to offer anything she couldn’t reasonably give.

“Of course,” Maryam said as she wiped her face with a one-two practiced motion. “don’t worry about me.” She scooted out of bed and stood up with as much dignity in front of Yakoba as someone in an oversized nightgown and that was a near-foot shorter than her could muster. “I’ll see you at eighteen or so, as usual?”

“No, I need to get some more practice for my test tomorrow.” Yakoba said as she turned away from her, relieved that she could stay on schedule for this stressful week. “Don’t worry about eating with me.”

Just outside the door, she turned back to Maryam. “Get moving, lass! You’re going to be late!,” she whisper-shouted at her.

With a thud and click, the monitored cell doors closed behind her, and Yakoba walked at a practiced, but never practiced enough flying step to her classes.

Chapter 1 Selective Glossary:

Aegir:

The largest planet in Ran’s system. A reddish gas giant, named in long-ago days of Old Earth along with its star by a child in the Diicii Imperial Seat for an idle competition.

Dufa:

A habitable moon of Aegir with no tectonic activity and cold, dark, windy days courtesy of its sun and planet. Site of the Eridanus Bene Gesserit Chapterhouse and its school. Named after the 4^th child of Aegir and Ran, pagan sea gods of Old Earth.

Lass:

An archaic term for a young woman. Used as a casual term of affection in the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood between initiates, as Sister is a higher rank, and ‘initiate’ is a cold term in any language.

Ran:

The modern name of Epsilon Eridani, a K2 main sequence star. Approximately 10 LY from Old Earth and 5 LY from Caladan.

Chapter Text

To dwell on the past without means to absolution is to be in an endless night.

– O.C. Bible Proverb

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Yakoba’s lungs hurt from the hours of prana-bindu breathing exercises done as a review before the exam– she must have done something wrong, she was sure of it– but she still maintained that flying walk of hers to the Remedial Stressed Perception course.

Push-Pull-Step. Push-Pull-Step. If nothing else, she could walk faster than an untrained person could jog now, her legs moving with a glide that belied the sheer amount of muscle control needed. A crowd ahead of her, she turned sideways, now accounting for her new proportions as she cut through the mix of initiates, sisters, and staff mingling in the duct. She had about an eighth of a kilometer to go before she finally got to the right subterranean wing of the compound for the class. One extra indignity of remedial courses were their strange, sub-optimal locations all across the school’s campus.

The room was quiet, small, and dark, as usual. Four of the five other students in the remedial course were still to arrive– thank god!– but a set of distressingly curious instruments had been carted in already, a single glowglobe suspended above them. Yakoba took her usual second-from-right seat and tried to gather herself after the sprint to the room.

“Reset your intercostal muscles,” a soft and woodwind-like but stern voice said from behind her.

It was Proctor Myuller, the teacher for the course. Myuller’s background was a relative mystery to the student body, who normally associated her with lessons and testing on prana-bindu meditative states. She was an average-sized woman with graying black hair and sharp features that had been blunted by time. Some say that she was a former concubine for some house laid down for disrupting the Sisterhood’s plans, some said she was a truthsayer for some inscrutable work done on Wallach IX, others supposed she was secretly a Reverend Mother, but all the various fantasies were built on the base fact that she was a very difficult teacher to have. The work she gave was difficult enough that she didn’t need to add anything to her voice to be an object of scholastic fear.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Yakoba instantly blurted out. She fumbled as she tried to locate the muscles quick enough not to disappoint her teacher, and felt that growing anxiety of failing yet agai– there!– a final spasm weakly defied her will as the muscles finally retracted.

She could breathe easy again, literally.

Myuller walked into view, outlined by the glowglobe like she was her own shadow-portrait.

“I’m surprised your teacher let you walk out of prana-bindu like that," the woman said. "That could easily have become aggravated and strained.”

I’m not, Yakoba thought. Proctor Liuth was not exactly a fan of her remedial students and especially not of Yakoba, despite feigning professionalism. She especially liked to use her to ‘demonstrate’ pressure points and breathing restraints, mentioning once that her ‘large height’ made her ideal for that purpose. Survival on this exam tomorrow was the biggest concern on her mind- a battle both against herself and a very vindictive teacher.

“Thank you, Proctor,” Yakoba mumbled. She took a quiet but elongated breath to test that there indeed was no damage on the muscle group.

The other dregs filed in, with the last two arriving simultaneously. That was sort of a courtesy developed within the campus culture- if any person was to be the last in, or god forbid late, it was better for the shame to be divided among two of them. This show of solidarity was permitted by the faculty, though it didn’t soften any disciplinary actions taken against them.

Yakoba always made sure to get to class as soon as she could.

Proctor Myuller came to the front of the classroom and placed a hand on the glowglobe to increase the light by just a small amount.

“Welcome, initiates.” She paused, taking a brief moment to look each student in the eye. “You’ve worked on physical distractions from proper thought; audible distractions from proper thought;” she paused, looking again at one of the particular problem students for that issue, a sixteen-year-old named Bryn, “…visual distractions from proper thought. Today, we will be engaging with the internal enemy.”

The soft voice continued as she moved behind the instruments. “I don’t need to belabor how your own thoughts can be a source of distraction or disruption from any of the meditative states or the stages of preparation, control, or analysis. All of the prior training you’ve done has been some kind of disruption of your mind by an external stimuli. But what this new set of training is for… is to abstract and perfect the other training. This is what we’ve been working towards.”

This was just as hammed-up a speech as usual for her, Yakoba noted. If this was a new thing, she thought then hopefully perfecting it today isn’t important, and I can just cram on the prana-bindu for tomorrow instead of dinner. The ‘vespers’ block course after dinner is just easy history stuff.

Myuller continued: “In your work as a Sister of the Order–“ Yakoba noted the stern hopefulness in her grammar and tone– “you may not see an external stimuli disrupting you like what we’ve worked through here. But your mind will always be there. Your prior thoughts and your memories overcoming your conscious thoughts, your subconscious leaping at you to drag your meditations to false conclusions.”

As she talked, she moved to the side of the instruments and placed a hand on one of them. “These are Nootic Amplifiers. They regulate and intensify the mental activity associated with the recalling of memories and intrusion of thoughts, standardizing our ability to measure your skill at resisting internal stimuli.”

An immense wave of dread suddenly went through Yakoba’s heart. Those few unassuming blocks, next to a collection of cables properly coiled on stands, now looked more like a gaggle of small monsters that could kill her dead with poison. What animal-fears would betray her today?

Her head felt light and disconnected from her body. She heard and didn’t hear Myuller’s instructions and then she saw as she stood up and carted her own amplifier over to her seat. There was no Voice commanding her, just a roiling feeling of dissociation and a rank ominous feeling of past demons getting ready to fail her yet again.

The tasks to do under the effect of these little devils looked simple enough. An interactive filmbook as usual. Thirty of them this time. She looked up, looked back at her filmbook, turned on the amplifier, and began.

There was a test tomorrow in Prana-Bindu, 1930 hour block. There was a test next week in meta-linguistics, same time as the class block. Identify which of the following aberrant facial expressions there are, yes, yes. She had forgotten to take her treatment medicine two days ago, maybe that was why her body felt like it was running wild again even with her prana-bindu. Sixteen of the following lineages are healthy genomes, four are at risk of inbreeding or congenital defects- explain which and why. Simpler than usual. She was not there in the mirror most days, just a fake joke-initiate. She was never meant to be here, she never wanted to be here–

A crack as her vision and thoughts split–

Proctor Myuller sees something is wrong. She looks at the instrument and then walks away.

It was over, and twenty-seven of the thirty tasks were completed, with the others tantalizingly close. In a daze, Yakoba first collected herself, then pulled off those hated probes from her head. Was her notitia-tablet even– yes, she put it under her seat, it’s here. Finally done with that torture, she walked to the exit, hoping to never think about this until the next time she had to come to this horrible–

“Miss Herstal, a word before you leave, please.”

That damned heestot recital of a voice! Yakoba cursed. She stopped out of obedience and waited until the last of the lucky ones left the classroom.

The looming silence in the room felt hideous.

“I messed up bad, didn’t I.” Yakoba groaned.

“Yes and no.” Myuller said, gliding closer to her. “The disruption in your thoughts registered was considerable, but… looking at the input and registered signal on the amplifiers, you were experiencing a level of base intrusion far above that of the other remedial students. And yet somehow performing the practice tasks at an exceptional level. Did anyone teach you simuflow yet?”

Yakoba was shocked. “What? No, of course not!” she stammered. Simuflow– the regimented splitting of consciousness between multiple tasks– was something that required significant practice, and was taught much further along in training.

Myuller cocked her head as she looked at her, but maintained her usual stony expression. “Interesting.”

Her grey-blue eyes suddenly locked with Yakoba’s, drilling into the initiate’s soul like tungsten drill bits. “Because that is, for a fact, what you were doing.”

Before she could respond, Myuller continued. “The Bene Gesserit is not a charitable organization. We would not have accepted you into the Order if we did not think you had the potential to serve satisfactorily. You are still far behind where regular initiates of your age should be…”

Yakoba’s heart sank.

“… But that early simuflow is a sign of some unrefined talent. If you’re capable of that, but haven’t fully learned to ignore internal distractions, you'll on it as a crutch rather than as the proper enhancement of your abilities that it should be.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” was all Yakoba could say.

“Yes to what part of it?” the teacher shot back.

Yakoba looked down and murmured. “To… how I need to really learn to deal with those thoughts without falling into a simuflow.”

“Look me in the eyes and listen.” Myuller’s Voice, now like a crackling forest fire, flexed open her ear canals and cut into the base of her neck, pulling her chin up with chains made of iron words– locking her gaze with those drill-eyes again. “The Bene Gesserit was created for the fulfillment of human potential. You have more potential than all the rest of those girls in this class put together.” She grabbed Yakoba’s chin and somehow, she felt her Voice vibrating more in her bones than in her eardrums. “Do not waste it.”

She let go of her, and Yakoba stumbled back.

The proctor turned to collect her things as she continued speaking. “What is your next block of classes, Initiate?”

“I… I have Remedial Unstressed Perception at thirteen-hundred.” That feeling of existential spiritual peril, like the eye of God judging her but withholding Her verdict, still raced throughout her limbic system.

Proctor Myuller turned, those wiry hands holding her own tablet. “As of today, you don’t. This Stressed Perception course is also redundant for your teaching now, and we’ll find something else to assign you for this block. I have one and a half hours open starting at thirteen-hundred, and I will expect you in my office at that time starting Thursday. Are we clear?”

“Y-yes ma’am.” Whatever was happening was outside of her control now, even more so than usual. But, what little she could control was probably essential to saving her life. Our motto goes: I exist only to serve, she reminded herself. “Should I inform Proctor Anthema?”

“No, I will make the arrangements.” Myuller said. “It’s within my right as a Proctor Major of the school to make these adjustments for your curricula. She will understand.” Walking to the doorway to the classroom, she was once again a silhouette of a woman surrounded by now-blinding simu-daylight. “I want you to work on your other outstanding studies at that time instead today. Especially the prana-bindu. Correct your intercostal muscle behavior.” She turned, and in less than two steps disappeared from Yakoba’s sight.

Trembling, Yakoba Herstal, the second daughter of a Poritrinian Urbanat and Bene Gesserit initiate, collected herself, exited that dark hole of a room, and flew on her steps as far away from that place as she could.

Chapter 2 Selective Glossary:

Heestot:

A double-reeded woodwind instrument of the Late Corrino Empire era, roughly equivalent to an oboe in size, pitch, and timbre.

Poritrin:

An agricultural world orbiting Epsilon Alangue, known mostly for its lack of history (in other words, its peace). Homeworld of Yakoba Herstal.

Urbanat:

A non-hereditary civil servant appointed under a Siridar for administrating a major metropolitan sector. Roughly analogous to a mayor.

Chapter Text

From water does all life begin.

–The O.C. Bible, 467 Kalima

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Maryam was surprised to see Yakoba in the dining hall. As she turned to sit down, she noticed her cellmate’s head above most of the crowd in line, looking both frazzled and determined.

“Why is she here?” Maryam said aloud. She raised herself up on her toes and wished yet again that her short stature wasn’t such a common feature for women in her family.

Borte looked up at Maryam from across the table, raising an eyebrow in mild confusion.

Maryam glanced down to the other initiate. “She told me she wasn’t coming to dinner… what happened? Do you think she is all right?”

“Maybe she just got tired and didn’t want to study,” volunteered Borte. Borte was a little older than Maryam, but had a kind of flippant mischeviousness that made her seem both older and younger than she was when she didn’t care to control her body language. Her round head and sunken features made her look like she had a mask built into her face. Brown-red curls spilled from her head like a fountain of Ecazi wine, barely held back by the uniform hairbands. Somehow, she had managed to get two bowls on her tray.

“That’s not of her kind, and you know that Borte,” Maryam shot back. She started to wave Yakoba over, finally making eye contact with the girl across the hall. Those brown eyes had slowly grown less dark over the time she knew her, an undoubtable effect of her treatments. This evening, though, they looked almost as troubled as hers must have when she woke up.

Her friendly expression dropped as she remembered the dream.

It felt so real. In a field, a small white flower given from a woman to a child; then, in another place, the child gave it to a man, who crushed it between black-gloved hands. And then everything was consumed by fire, a dreadful, ship-shaped hole in the flames escaping it like a shadow fleeing a terrible sun. It repeated, over and over, every time feeling terrifyingly new.

She knew that some members of the Sisterhood had developed the gift of prophecy from their training (or rather, “limited prescience” from training in their materialist vocabulary), but she was far away from when that could be possible for her, and it also required Melange to truly happen. Her mother had forbade the school from involving her in any studies that required the spice, too.

Just a dream. It had to be.

She caught herself, and corrected her face back to the happiness she had just shown. Yakoba’s reaction looked like she didn’t seem to notice that split second, thankfully. As the older girl came over to the table, Maryam made sure there was a clear space for her and her tray.

Yakoba set her tray down slightly further out than usual, set her head on the table with a decided but light thump, and groaned. She’s tired, but it’s more than just that, Maryam thought.

“Did… you get to do your practicing for your test yet?” Maryam looked at her cellmate. She was taller and broader than most of the other girls or women at the school, but she had a barely-concealed tenderness behind her unmanned wall of acerbicity that made her seem both smaller and greater a person than she was physically. Her dirty-blonde hair had now almost escaped her bun from this morning.

“Yeah.” Yakoba said from under her head. “It’s, uh, been a long day so far.” She raised her head and pulled her tray back in front of her. “I now have to do direct study under Proctor Myuller.”

Myuller? Maryam thought. When she took a one-on-one student, it was either a sign they were special, or were disastrously close to failing. She felt her blood flush out of her face and arms. It was probably the latter with Yakoba.

Borte came to the same conclusion. “I’m so sorry, Yak.” The girl reached out to touch Yakoba’s arm, but she jerked it away, false-hiding that rejection by translating the motion into grabbing her silverware.

“She said that I’m above average, but she also said I’m below average,” Yakoba said as she crammed the solid bits of whatever stew they had been served that day into her mouth. “Or at least, that’s the short form of what she said. Sometimes, I’d rather just be below average than both. I’m going crazy from this nonsense.” An audible huff from her lungs somehow floated above the mass of food in her mouth.

Borte raised her brows. “So, you’re some kind of savant then? That’s better, right?”

“I guess. Being an idiot-savant or whatever means I could be kept around and just shoved in a closet until they need my magic freak skills.” She bent her head down over the food, her brow and slowly-undone hair blocking any sight of her face.

“Don’t say that about yourself, lass.” Maryam interjected. She was a little more, well, tactful than Borte was in an unguarded state. Being raised in a House Major tended to have that as one of its many benefits. “What were your good parts she was interested in?”

“Simuflow,” Yakoba spat. “But it’s making me mess up everything else.”

“WHAT?” Maryam shouted. She barely had maintained that state of split consciousness for more than a few seconds during a processing trance, and was years ahead of Yakoba. She was considered exemplary for her age at times like her mother was, even. It was a good thing she hadn’t ate anything after she asked.

Borte was wide-eyed, but much less personally slighted by Yakoba’s feat. “Whoah, that’s…” A nuclear-powered smile lit up her face. “That’s super cool! You’re like… gonna be a big-brained mentat-Sister in no time if you know that!”

Yakoba’s expression lightened a bit, and she reached out to brush Borte’s hand. The “thanks” from the older initiate’s throat was a little less bitter than her usual response to compliments.

Maryam looked at the two of them and smiled. “You’re going to be fine, oldest lass,” she said, trying to change the subject. She lifted her spoon for the first time and looked at her bowl closely for the first time. Wading around in the near-simmering black-brown sauce was a depressingly vague and boring mix of assumably edible things. Some kinds of tuber, maybe some sort of meat right there… Well, that was a carrot at the very least. There weren’t any major bodies of water on Dufa, so the question of whether there was seafood in there was always going to be an affirmative ‘no.’

Maryam sighed. “You know what I miss the most about home?”

“Regular day cycles? Your parents?” Yakoba volunteered.

Not wanting to be left out, Borte put in her guesses. “Your mansions? All the boys walking around those hangars?”

“Well, uh, some of those a fair bit, but I mostly just miss seafood.” Maryam said. She hadn’t had crab or fish or shrimp or squark or goodness, even giant seagull in over a year now. The ocean seemed like someone else’s memory at this point.

Before she left for Dufa-of-Aegir, she received a broach of a single somewhat large seashell from her father. He knew that the place she would be for the next few years was cold, and dark, and above all, not very wet, and gave a small gift of the sea, perma-fumed with a salty mist scent inside the shell. It was an uncommonly sentimental gift from him, as he tended to be absorbed in his men’s world of Landsraad politics and military drills, too awkward to interrupt the constant dialogue between Maryam and her mother.

She received other gifts from her household too before leaving, though she often only had one out at a time so as not to make Yakoba feel particularly abandoned by comparison on her side of the room. There was a set of beads for a necklace from her chambermaid Ella (“for the lifelong friends you’ll make,” the non-witch ignorantly told her), and a set of against-dress-code and incredibly diaphanous ribbons from her old wetnurse, and a few other unmemorable gifts from other staff members of the ducal compound’s solar.

The great men under her father’s service, also knowing her since infancy, gave her some gifts, though that familiarity also didn’t really translate to useful or memorable gifts either. From their doctor, a tiny ancient copy of the O.C. Bible on infinitesimally thin paper, once owned by his Bene Gesserit wife (he advised her to open it to some passage, but she couldn’t remember what). The house’s venerable Mentat gave her a case of antidotes and even some Juice of Sapho ampoules cleverly disguised as a makeup kit (“in case of assassins or difficult tests,” he said, winking). A small personal shield for use in an emergency, given to her by the house’s warmaster. A simple switchknife given to her by their swordmaster, preemptively filed by the warmaster so flat as to be square-edged before he could deliver it within even a kilometer of her. A second,larger switchknife from the swordmaster hidden at the bottom of her luggage, scratch-initialed “F M F D I” on its side.

From the mother, nothing. Doubtless she thought that she had already given too much for Maryam to bear.

If she could do well enough, maybe she could return home to Caladan before maturity, or even have the marriage delayed until her mid-twenties like in most formal situations. Or have the marriage called off before then. Or something.

Kull Wahad!

“I never saw someone look that serious about fish before,” Borte said from five light-years away.

Oh. Maryam returned to some dining hall on Dufa next to two aspiring witches, feeling quite silly.

“Don’t rattle her cage too much, Borte.” Yakoba said. She set down her spoon for a moment. “Living near oceans affects people a lot, it, uh makes them more profound. My mom liked this one O.C. passage about it.” She wrinkled her nose and brow, trying to dredge up those words from the deep. “From water, all life is born, and, uh, from seaside and from pail the whole of life can be seen… I think.” She paused, privately admitting failure with a glance downwards.

“That sort of sounds right,” Borte said. “I haven’t done much O.C. Bible studies yet, so I can’t say you’re wrong. It sounds like the mystic vibes in that book.” The Koranjiyana Zenchristian Scriptures, or Orange Catholic Bible, or Accumulated Book, among its many names over thousands of years, was not a major element of Bene Gesserit curricula except as it came to social science and the process of control of masses by religion. Maryam had heard recited excerpts from Gurney and Dr. Yueh so often as to probably have heard the whole book seven times over by now.

Yakoba leaned back, huffing. “I mean, you’ve never studied it, lass. You’re not in a position to go around judging how I did based on its mood!”

Borte stuck out her tongue. “well, Proctor Yakoba, please tell me how to judge that brick of a book.” She leaned back with her usual playful grin, locking eyes with Yakoba. Then, they both glanced at Maryam for her input.

“Don’t ask me,” Maryam said. “I’ve only heard parts from it a lot, not actually read it.” At this point, even Ella or Mister Dunk would have been a more useful person for those two to turn to on matters of proper scripture, she thought. The girl leaned over and looked at her best friend with a bit of a stink eye. “You know Yakoba, Borte was trying to be supportive.”

It was usually like this. Yakoba tended to see everything as a potential threat to her, and Borte saw life as a game to win or a story to be a chirping Grekorus in.

Yakoba relented. “I know, I know… but still, we all know I didn’t recite it right.” Somehow, she had already fished out every solid bit in the stew and left only the hot broth. She looked up from the steaming bowl towards Borte. “Glad I at least matched the style of it, though.”

“Sure, sure!” Borte laughed. “O.C. Mistress here, Proctor of Simuflow there… At this rate, you’ll be the Sister-Savant of the whole Chapterkreis!” From the singsong quaver of her voice, Maryam could tell that her playful esteem was only slightly exaggerated.

Maryam looked at her bowl. The stew was still far too hot for her to drink it comfortably, at least without invoking some of her heat-regulation training. She looked at Yakoba’s half-eaten bowl, and saw the girl was already standing up. She and Borte both furrowed their brows in worry for her.

“Yak, are you in a hurry?” Maryam asked.

She had to tell her about her dream. She could keep a secret, she thought. She might not be strong in the Way, but she was getting better, that was for sure, and not a spy or a darling of the proctors.

"Yeah," Borte said, chewing. "So, are you gonna eat the rest of that?"

Yakoba looked down at Maryam, those gold-brown eyes just as sullen as ever. “I’ve got that one extra class after dinner I need to go to, and…” she looked away. “I have some other things to do before then.” But it was just eighteen-twenty or so, Maryam thought. The last class block started at 1930 hour.

Yakoba walked with her emptied tray. Turning back to Borte, all Maryam could do was shrug and continue idle talk with her about studies and gossip, or sometimes of oceans and old stories about Hawat and Halleck and Ella and Mister Dunk. As they talked, they ate. That white stuff in the stew now looked too much like the dream-flower to Maryam. She ate around it, careful not to let it get submerged in the dark sauce.

Before long, the remaining two could feel that it was almost 1920 hours. Maryam Atreides parted ways with her second childhood friend, off to yet another interminable training session.

Chapter 3 Selective Glossary:

Caladan:

A habitable agricultural planet orbiting the star Delta Pavonis. Historical seat of the Great House Atreides and known for its rain and oceans. Homeworld of Maryam Atreides.

Chapterkreis:

a first-order administrative division of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood during the late Corrino Empire period, commonly coterminous with one of the Siridarkreises that composed the administrative structure of the Imperium.

Ecaz:

A habitable planet in the Alpha Centauri system, colonized in times immemorial and often a major cultural and political center throughout millennia of history.

Grekorus:

A corruption of the term “Greek Chorus” from Old Earth. Nowadays refers to a recurring fictional character of the same name who comments on events in a story, in a framed story in-between that of the main plot and the reader.

Sister-Savant:

A titular rank for Bene Gesserit Mentats below Reverend Mother status, awarded in recognition of expertise in a given field.

Chapter Text

A Sister of the Order is a Sister, no matter her occluded or mistaken origin.

–Administrative Clarification on Adopted Sisters and Initiates, 00521 A.G.

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Yakoba ran. She had to talk to her. She would know what to do, or at least she would be the only one who would if nobody else knew. Cutting out the middle-women in a time like this was crucial.

On the opposite side of the Chapterhouse School compound on the gulch was a collection of smaller buildings reserved for Sisters. Some were itinerants taking breaks after long travels across the stars, doubtlessly seducing nobles or assassinating political enemies of the Sisterhood, or both at once, or both while also wearing tight latex (a brave feat in of itself). Others were for Proctors Minor or academics stationed at the Chapterhouse like she probably would be. If she lived.

Snow crusted around the edges of the omnipresent green-grey moss, an old concrete path still unmarred by the frost in such a mild early winter. The faint noises of the innumerable Holtzmann fields buried in foundations and pathways, boosting the Chapterhouse grounds’ gravity to that of Old Earth, could be heard out here, unlike indoors. Without any other noise but her footsteps to mask it, the gravity fields sounded like the faint buzzing of giant invisible insects surrounding her.

That was the one- third from left, fourth row in, under the dewcatchers and overhangs. Each the same grey pre-built hab-space, generations old from when casted at the looks of it, but a place that looked so much freer than the cell she and Maryam lived in. Small decorations were in the windows– some Sign of Waters, some stylized flowers, O.C. passages turned into filament wires, for some reason a holograph of a filmbook character.

She knocked, or rather hammered at the grey composite door. With a single motion, it swung open, with a woman on the other side.

The woman looked rather bemused, and for once was the same general height and build as Yakoba. With wavy brown hair in a frizzed bob and a blue-eyed, red-lipped face that seemed to have relaxed for the first time in a decade, it was tough for Yakoba to not see her as a friend, someone who knows the path out.

And the black! She was wearing all black! She was a Sister, an adopted Sister like she maybe could be some day. If she survived, she could also get uniforms that didn’t have that stupid pale blue edging on everything, maybe even a fully black one at some point.

If.

Immediately she blurted it out. “Myuller took me as a direct student. I’m scared.”

She ushered the initiate in. Atti was kinder than most Sisters, who tended to give a wider berth to initiates until it was clear they weren’t an ephemeral bubble to pop with a needle. But most of her kindness was rationed to just adopted initiates like she once was. They tended to get forwarded to her by Proctors Minor clueless about how to get them accustomed to things (much to her chagrin from having an actual workload at the compound).

Inside was a spartan prefab house with… well, a main area split into a sitting room and kitchen, and only two doors to other rooms visible, but better quality utilities and insulation than the pyon dwellings Yakoba would go past while in the suburbs back home. Atti kept her place inviting, if ultimately in a way that made it clear it was “her” prefab she was assigned, not a spot for any animal or human to spend time in. A backless sofa with some small tables near it was the usual place for discussion.

She went to the kitchen area of the main room and pulled out a pitcher of something and pressed a button on its handle to heat it. Judging by the muscles in her eyes, it was morning for her. “I’m so sorry, Yak. What happened?”

The girl kneaded the hem of her dress, that blue fringe sticking out in her mind again like target marks on a shielded dummy. “I… something strange happened in Remedial Stressed Perception. I apparently… simuflowed to put all the, distractions my brain made in a compartment.”

“Hmm.” Atti paused, glancing at the carafe. “I’ve heard a previous direct student call her kind, in the same way that a sharp knife can be kinder than a blunt one.”

“Atti, that’s not very reassuring.”

She shot her eyes up. “It’s not meant to be. It’s meant to be a warning. You’re in danger lass, and she wants to help. She may make the danger she’s trying to protect you from, though, or be that danger.” She paused to pour from the pitcher into her own cup. Yakoba could see that it was hot and purple with flecks of something above and below the surface. “I’ve heard and seen stories.”

“Is she right, though? Does it sound bad?”

The Sister paused again and thought. “Simuflow without full control of your consciousness can be a bit dangerous, yes. It can… lead to trap-meditative states, like the Cloud, where you’re severed from controlling your own body, or the Full Internal Enemy if it personalizes into an Other Self. But before you’d ever get to that point, it would mess with your ability to do basic meditative and trance functions.”

“That’s what the proctor said. Am I doomed?”

“Proctor Myuller doesn’t intervene if she doesn’t think she can help. Even if she has a reputation for…  holding the sword before turning on the shield, she has a plan in mind. Even if those plans may be bad.” She pulled out a mug and gestured. “Would you?”

Yakoba shot out a flat hand downwards, the usual ‘no’ for etiquette on Dufa. “I just had dinner, I’m fine.” I don’t want to have to worry about possible Sapho stains on top of my usual mess of a body, she thought.

Atti shrugged. “Fair enough lass, it’s expensive. I figured I was supposed to offer it.”

The girl still kept poised on the seat, ready to… well, she wanted to run and scream or something. “What are my chances?”

Atti immediately had an answer. “Forty-eight percent or so. She mostly takes prodigies and desperate cases. Sometimes she ruins the prodigy, sometimes she saves the would-be-mercied. It makes no sense statistically past that point.” She frowned. “All over the place.”

Silence came between them. Less than a coin flip’s chance was still better than a roll of the dice, but…

“She keeps the blue fringes you know, of the ones she mercies.”

“WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THIS!” Yakoba shouted. She came all the way here to get help and all Atti was doing is telling her about how likely she was going to die! What kind of help, or affection, or whatever she could do for her was this?

Atti stood up, looking more than ever before like a Sister of the Bene Gesserit than the confidant on equal footing Yakoba thought she was. Her black dress and robes seemed to drown out the light in the small house. In the corner the Sign of Waters just loomed, an artist’s seal or watermark in whatever awful morality painting she had fallen into.

“I am telling you this because you came to me looking for information and solace. For your situation, I can provide you one or the other, or neither, not both.” She took the pitcher and placed it back in her small kitchen. “And I will not soothe you with omissions of the truth or halfhearted assurances.” Yakoba was paralyzed. The mindset they all develop, that they would develop in her or kill her for lacking, it was–

“You’re thinking ‘It is the Way,’ and you are mostly right.” Atti was looking away from her as she spoke.

She stood up, shaking. Bowing her head, she thanked Atti for her hospitality with halting words, and left. Sunrise on a cold Monday evening, one last block for the day.

Chapter 4 Selective Glossary:

Pyon:

The rural peasant and light industrial social class that comprises most people in the Imperium’s Faufreluches social class system.

Sign of Waters:

One of the symbols of the Bene Gesserit; a raindrop striking a water surface, spreading out circular waves. Generally rendered on in blue and white, or black and white. Commonly found depicted on cartomancy cards and internal stratagem games.

Chapter Text

122.1.2(a): Said meetings will be held weekly among only Proctor Major and higher ranks, with exception of intervention for individual cases by the President of the meetings; and said meetings must be structured as in Sec. 25.1.1. (amended 09924 A.G.)

122.1.2(b): Standard codes of conduct should be followed for Sisters at said meetings, and any food or beverage size must be smaller than one (1) liter (L) in volume and its consumption must not be distracting or discourteous to other Sisters present. (amended 10191 A.G.)

–Selection from Rule of Eridanus Chapterhouse, Ca. 10192 A.G.

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Ten thousand years since the formation of the Guild and the Great Convention, twenty thousand or so more since the first poor bastards started marking up clay bricks and teaching each other the right way to do it, and faculty meetings at every place of higher education in every possible civilization were as endless and as extremely pointless as the first one.

Emal made sure not to touch her coffee mug yet. She made sure the one she brought was the largest one she had, but she was going to need every drop of it, sleep deprivation training be damned. Despite the extensive control over their metabolism, caffeine can’t be efficiently synthesized by Sisters. It’s not like people could just get turned into 'internal cauldrons' like out of some ancient esoterica.

Lunar Bursary updates, food crops, industrial output, and the like (the moon was donated outright to the Sisterhood about 300 years ago, the biggest white elephant gift they had of the era in her opinion) were… not anything she had any right to input on. The Chapterhouse may be known for its sector school where she worked, but running a global administration on a quasi-ecclesiastical and scholastic framework was going to result in a bunch of self-absorbed veiled crones quibbling about the color of glowglobes while some poor sister-savant had to balance an entire export-import sheet in her head on her own initiative two days before the heighliner came. Like a pint-sized Wallach IX.

Full meetings Wednesday nights were hell, but at the very least Emal felt a warped sense of pride and duty to the Order in attending them. If pain was weakness leaving the body, then boredom was idleness leaving it as well. Still, she already needed to start sipping one hour in.

The conference hall was known to the student body as the site of cohort invocation ceremonies, its size vast and ceiling unlit like the bottom of some dark composite-plasconcrete cave. The majority of the time, it was used for administrative work, pushing ledgers and documents of all formats from one end of the U-shaped fogwood table-tables to the other. Every week though, the assembly line of essential nonsense was paused, their places at the table-tables memorized, and the inessential nonsense would begin with higher faculty and Chapterhouse members taking their place. Each of these distinguished sisters had their own glowglobe floating near them, fighting back the vast outer darkness in the room.

The presiding sister, herself glad to be done with some business Emal didn’t care to even listen to with half her consciousness, intoned like a clock the end of one agenda bullet point. “…Which brings us to the first additional item, the current status of the mother. As usual, this staff information is forbidden to share with Proctor Minor rank and below…”

‘The mother’. Oh, her. She was only fifteen– it felt obscene to talk like this about a girl who hadn’t even so much as blushed at a boy her age.

Well, it was obscene, in her opinion. But these plans had been laid in motion for thousands of years, weaved together across tens of light years. She was an insignificant speck in an endless procession of women from time immemorial devoted to maximizing human potential and the will for humans to define their reality– except, in this case, when it comes to a curated list of lucky girls and boys throughout the ages. Anything for a path across the gap, she supposed. It wasn’t her wheelhouse, and she wasn’t an infinitely wise Reverend Mother, so what could they ever care?

Some obsequious waste of air, from a major Corrino-controlled world based on her accent, started yammering. “Her vitals appear to be consistent and stable across all last year. She seems to have no problem controlling m-“ Great Mother hid behind the Throne, please shut up about that– “and overall mental health seems to be fine. Socially associating with mostly two other initiates: a Rank 7 Stable, age 16, and a Rank 3 Remedial-Moribund, age 17, -adopted 16.”

Another huff from the regulars, the usual protests about the need to accommodate adopted initiates and sisters (never considering adopted Reverend Mothers, not that it has ever been allowed to happen, yet), most comments struck from the record for what little that was worth. She took another long sip from her mug in case it had magically transubstantiated into achohol.

“And of her studies? How is she doing?”

Oh, here’s her wheelhouse.

A bunch of klesta came from her other teachers, most of which clearly was to cover their own asses. Cordiality be damned, someone had to bring up the elephants in the room. Ah, here comes her turn.

“Proctor Myuller? You teach her functional meditation states, do you have any input on how she is there?”

Emal Myuller finished her sip, put her mug on the table on a precisely-intuited solidus line between etiquette and a clanking faux pas, and prepared to reap a whirlwind.

“She is above-average, yes. But considering her genetic pedigree, frankly unimpressive. She is also not slacking in applying herself to our assignments, so there’s no wiggle room there.” 

The other proctors twitched or sorted themselves in their chairs. In that split second, Emal made the decision to very conspicuously press the issue. “And that seems across the board for what I’ve seen of her other skills, too.” Oh, she was going to get hell for saying that.

“Sister Emal, would you mind precisely putting your point out there?” Ah. Portia. She’s been trying to get me disciplined for oh, twenty years now? It hasn’t stuck yet, you old jackal.

She leaned forwards on the long table. “What I mean is that we’re not seeing any of the predicted behaviors indicating a proper candidate, and I think it’s because we don’t push her studies hard enough. She exhibits no indications of vulnerability to prescient visions, or Other Memory fragments or any other bits on the Kwisatz Mother’s projected–“

“That could doom it!” a voice from the other side of the U-table shouted. Ah, that nonsense, she thought. If someone sees the future clearly, the events could be locked in! Oh no! Best to keep her sequestered and scrub every hall clean of a picogram of Melange so that she’s pristine and coddled enough to be given over to a bunch of ginger kakistocrats.

Emal Myuller stood up and locked eyes. “We can vacuum up every grain of Spice out of her, way and ALSO push her to be better! Spice exposure or no, she is underperforming!” The other Sister, some type from another other part of the Chapterhouse, shot back an equally determined glare, but clearly didn’t have anything more to say. Or anything sensible to say.

A gavel rang down from the end of the hall. As usual, the meeting president decided to step in precisely when drama was necessary. She blanked out the cruft as the discussion continued on its charted course, and excused herself at the end of the item. Action items: no action items, go forwards coddling the mother in hopes the Plan works exactly as intended. Just sit facing southwards like an Ibadaoist king and watch the people stack themselves all up properly on their own.

She waited outside, as usual. It was still daylight at 2000 hours sharp- she envied the women on the moon’s actual natural rhythm, mostly because it would allow for some cat naps. Wellamie came out about fifteen minutes later.

“Thanks for waiting,” the other proctor said. “You really poked the bear there, didn’t you?”

Emal snorted. “I would say I peed into the tent, but the gentleman prophesized to have that ability hasn’t been born just yet.” Wellamie hid her mirth everywhere but her eyes.

“Well, at least wait until after the marriage to really pontificate about the end times, my dear crypto-heretic.” From behind her mug, Emal raised her eyebrows and Wellamie continued. “About the Herstal girl. Are you sure? We haven’t had a chance to really talk about it.”

She slowly lowered the cup. “I’ve seen it too many times. If you know someone’s going to have an aortic dissection from how they’re acting and you’ve seen others die of it in front of you, you wouldn’t wait to start preemptive surgery.” Emal held her cup in both hands, locking eyes with the fellow proctor. “I know I’m not the best at helping, but I’m better than the rest of the buzzards on this moon.” She took another sip, but came up short of a full mouthful. “Or, in imperial edict-language, I respectfully refuse, Proctor Anthema.”

Wellamie looked hurt for both Emal and her new direct student. “I know it’s been… hard. I know you try to save as many as you can. Mercy as many more yourself. Aren’t you being too preemptive? Is this about her name?”

Emal was quiet as she put her empty mug inside her long black-brown coat. “I’ll keep you updated. Let you know when you can have her back. Tomorrow I need to move my things to the Other Office. If it’s fine, no more discussion until after her first session?”

Wellamie sighed apprehensively. “Of course. It’s your prerogative as a Proctor Major.”

Even without the experience of Reverend Mother status, Bene Gesserits decades into the art of reading people tended to start seeing just a few personalities shared across an endless number of faces. Everyone, including Emal, had their own sentimental names for them. There were lots of dull Argots like Bryn in the remedial classes, Jozis like Borte or Aris or Karen everywhere (everywhere these days!), a few Wellamies at all levels, some Alias at the highest levels of performance. Every so often, an Emal staring back from a magic mirror that makes you look young. From what she remembered of her brief time meeting her mother, Maryam was not a Shevonne like Jessica was. More of a Wellamie.

In a rare case of serendipity, Yakoba was a Yakova. One or two, not too many, were like her in a given cohort. Always started poorly, but could be a wild card in terms of ability to learn the Way.

She missed her. Writing the letters for Yakovas was the hardest part of it all.

Maybe she wouldn’t have to this time, unlike the last few years. But that was just sentimentality and that name speaking instead of sound judgement. Logically, based on her Trauma Rupture short-circuiting her long-term ability to meditate, plus the extra problems of being an adopted initiate… well, she didn’t need to drink any Juice of Sapho to place bets in this case.

Still, she had to try, not just submit to the inevitable and wait like those other vultures on faculty about every priority candidate or problem child. And of that kind… Her status as Miss Atreides’s cellmate could save her skin given her other plans, maybe give Emal a little more time to help get that hole in her mind soldered shut. Extend the limit before total downward trend of failure for a year at most. She could provide fire, but Y… Miss Herstal would have to provide the material and motive force for herself.

If she couldn’t, then she would write yet one more letter for that special needle, for yet one more Yakova on top of all the rest of them.

Together, the two proctors left.

Chapter 5 Selective Glossary:

Fogwood:

Thought-sensitive woodlike organic material from the planet Ecaz, prized for sculpting and, evidently, for use on modular conference tables.

Ibadaoism:

pre-Great Convention Religion; adjacent to Buddhislamic syncretism and a merger of Islamic Reformist Kharijite theology and Chinese cosmology and sainthood, with no politically relevant descendants.

Klesta:

Derivative of Old Earth term related to Dharmic religions, roughly translates to “accrued karma”, “junk” or “affliction”.

Kwisatz Mother:

Bene Gesserit rank and title; Reverend Mother in charge of Kwisatz Haderach Breeding Program.

Chapter Text

At the time, I thought we arrived there before her. But really, her thoughts and spirit never left that room, leaving just her body to walk alone among the living.

– Her Reverence Yakoba Herstal, Selected Confessions

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Thursday. 1300 hours. What the hell should I expect?, thought Yakoba.

Proctor Myuller’s office was in a distressingly convenient location just down and across the hallway from the microfiche library. A dark hallway with normal vaulted ceilings (access to personal glowglobes was a luxury only Sisters and above were given), a regular wood-and-plastic door with a triangular window, no dark clouds circling overhead or skulls on pikes.

She knocked twice, but heard nothing and saw no movement through the door’s translucent window.

Footsteps down the hall– it was her, carrying a fully filled-up satchel and followed by a glowglobe. Did she have a second office?

An impossible sound of “I apologize” came from Proctor Myuller’s mouth. “… there were some difficulties relocating from Proctor Anthema’s study. I share her office, usually.” Yakoba stepped back and let Myuller unlock the door.

As they entered together, Yakoba tried to take in as much of the surroundings before anything more important– or more dangerous– could distract her. The wood-plastic room had a single desk, three chairs (the comfiest-looking one behind the desk) and a long-ago painted set of lockers turned into an open storage wall. Inside it, a row of presumably-full or broken notitia tablets, and half of a beat-up stenotype pushed sideways over top of some other beat-up equipment. The center of the room was clear of any furniture or even rugs, scratched up in a dozen directions. On the windowsill (light! From the sky!), a wooden box and what looked like some filmbooks.

On the desk, on top of some spare papers and the other half of the stenotype, a greenish metal box, the interior blacker than space.

Behind her, she heard the proctor toss her bags on a clothesrack and saw the shadows shift as she slid her glowglobe into the corner. A strange double-snapping noise, then followed by what was clearly the sound of a door at the Chapterhouse being locked. No escape! The proctor walked over to the desk, passing Yakoba without looking.

She picked up the green box and turned to face her, holding it up on her left palm. “You know what this is.”

Yakoba simply nodded. Everyone did.

“Put your hand in the box.”

The initiate gulped, and steeled herself as she placed her right hand in, waiting for the–

Poke.

In that split second, Myuller struck her right thumb on a nerve site behind her jaw.

She found herself cartwheeling, contorting, head-under-heels, sure to fall on her side or neck unless– yes! Her free hand (was the other hand free now?) could touch the ground, could have enough bend in the elbow. Quickly she used her muscle control to force every fiber in that arm to push, push. The leverage worked, and she saw the world right itself again, bending her left knee to land upright in a side-stretching sort of pose. She remained poised there, blue dress hems dragging on the floor.

“Good,” was all Myuller said at the feat. The box was held motionless the whole time. “You’re clearly able to do the basics under pressure. So, what’s wrong?”

Yakoba was frozen in place as she tried to answer such an open question, crouched like in a prana-bindu form exercise. “I… don’t know. I was hoping that you would be able to tell me what all this means.”

The proctor stood perfectly still with the box in one hand, like a hostess serving sinners in hell. “Well, my second and last question to you is this: on Monday, was that the first time?”

“Yes, I’ve never felt anything like it.” She paused for a moment, blithely reaching for optimism. “You said that simuflow I did was exceptional, right? Are you trying to help me become a prodigy?”

In a fluid serve-and-volley motion, Myuller launched the box one-handed at Yakoba’s bent knee, its edges hitting yet another clump of trigger points. She shot back up to her standing height, the box clattering on the floor next to them as the pain of it rang all though her leg. Those drill eyes now looking up at her and through her, and her mouth speaking:

“There are trillions of people in the Imperium. Thousands of prodigies are born every moment… and die every moment. Let me tell you right now, you’re not one of them. You’re a survivor, a more common sort of emotional aberrant. A lizard brain, self-trained to defend itself based on previous trauma, with a human below it taken along for the ride.”

Neither contempt nor pity could be seen in the proctor’s expression. It was a statement of fact.

Yakoba shut off her tear ducts as best she could. “How do I stop this? Stop being this way?”

“I will not help you become a prodigy. I will, though, teach you how to survive as best I can. To survive without becoming or remaining an animal. To survive as a human.” The proctor drew closer, her height seeming to grow taller.

“Do I… use this trauma for good? To create simuflow, to guide my studies?”

“No!” Myuller became like a prophetess wreathed in fire in front of her, and she couldn’t tell if that intensity was a trick of a single word of the Voice, or simply passion made manifest. “Trauma isn’t a good thing to have direct you. It doesn’t provide a royal road to powers, or justify its lingering by enhancing the will: it burns holes through the mind. Animal impulses are still animal impulses, no matter their origin and side-effects. Relying on it is to short-circuit your conscious will, hobbling you to serve those traumas. The Bene Gesserit exists to serve. And your mind, your will, suffers existence to serve the Bene Gesserit; and your body suffers existence to serve your mind. Never invert that hierarchy!”

Her fiery glare resided, eyes rounding to something vaguely resembling a state-regulated pity. “The rest of the universe will not invert it with you, and you alone will be fallen upon by the high-handed enemy.”

The poison-administering needle. The Gom Jabbar, Yakoba thought.

Despite passing her prana-bindu test two days before, failure and death seemed to loom in Yakoba’s near future. This simuflow she felt proud of was instead a symptom of a future lethal flaw in her psyche. She knew too much to be expelled, and was too broken to be shaped properly. The thought of meta-cyanide in the neck seemed inevitable, but she wanted to live!

She felt like she was about to split again, but there was no other foci to divert her. Only her singular mortality. “How do I survive? What should I do now?”

Myuller finally relented her gaze, and looked to nowhere particular in the room. “There are conscious thought patterns and meditative states and substates you can learn to control those responses. They will take time to get you to the level of other initiates. And it is important for us to discuss the wounds you have suffered; to see what is primary, what is secondary– not just triage for the soul, but for accurate treatment.”

She looked back at her desk chair, still untouched. “By applying these to yourself you may learn to be able to apply them to others, too. To help them, to serve them. There are too many Sisters who think they are witches foremost, not servants of humanity.”

A silence, then a question from Yakoba. “Does this happen to adopted sisters often? This need for extra work on meditation, for healing? Does it help?” Comparison to other adopted initiates was her last lingering question.

Myuller sighed. “It is common. There are no general rules when it comes to the success or failure of adopted initiates versus regular ones. The obligation to provide for them has always been… contested, but it goes back to long, long, ago days, possibly to the founding of the Order.” Again she turned, still facing away from Yakoba, looking to the windowsill and the wooden box there. More than a few faded blue ribbons stuck gently out from under its lid. “Personally, with the modern lifespans of people, I believe we start too young for the regular students out of tradition’s sake. Slow learning curves for children… Too many false positives… Too many ruined lives.” She glanced down for a fraction of a moment, then looked up at the initiate from the corner of her eye and spoke with the Voice. “Do not tell anyone that.”

She would not.

Myuller continued. “We will meet, for one and a half hours, on Monday and Thursday thirteen-hundred hour, for direct tutelage. I will see what I can do to help you kill that animal impulse, heal scar tissue for your mental wounds, so you can survive future meditation classes in a human fashion. But it will be up to you to do those things. If you cannot…”

She hardened again, but with no heat this time- a cold cinder in deep snow. “I will not protect you from the consequences of failure. And if you desire a merciful death before or after those consequences come… I can do it for you.” It now sounded like she was talking to someone else, off in that windowsill. “It is the last and least service I can offer.” The intensity of her woodwind voice was suddenly pushing for the last bit of air in her lungs, deflating her gravitas back to just that of a regular older woman. “It is within my rights as a Proctor Major of this Chapterhouse to do so.”

For once, Myuller did not prompt a student for a response after a speech. All Yakoba could think to do was to say “yes, ma’am.”

Still silence. One angel of death looked away from her to the window, lost in thought, and an invisible one loomed on Yakoba's shoulders, growing ever larger.

Finally, instructions, still spoken to the window. The voice now soft, quiet, warbling like a robin in a tree. “We will begin next week. Take the rest of the block today to collect yourself, and if you have time, retrace your life’s steps up to now. In the evenings or Sunday, I would like for you to speak with a peer about who you are, what you have done, your wants and dreams. Someone who is safe for you, like your cellmate, Miss Atreides.”

The strange double-snap noise again, now clearly from her fingers. A lock disengaging. “Now, Miss Herstal, you are excused.”

Both her body and mind moved out of that room as fast as possible. She accidentally kicked the box as she dashed, the black opening on it spinning, skidding, as it pointed and threatened unavoidable pain to everything in every direction.

Chapter 6 Selective Glossary:

No words of note.

Chapter Text

A foot on the scale weighs more than ten thousand wills.

–Borte Abdullahi, Uncollected Sayings

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Borte ate an apple. Well, Borte ate the apple, the last one from the local orchard shipment to the building. Convincing the Chapterhouse’s servants and on-chore-duty initiates to let her access the larder during lunch didn’t even require the Voice. Just the usual offputting charm.

Small victories like this were essential if you lived at a Bene Gesserit school– she knew best, since all of her 16 years had been spent in the Sisterhood’s wire-mother embrace in some creche or juvenile school. Being a tithe of some superstitious family on Ishkal gave her one of the purest experiences of life in the Bene Gesserit, and she was very good at making it seem like it hadn’t rubbed off on her one bit.

Unlike her Ishkalian creche or juvenile school, the Eridanus Chapterhouse School was for the Serious Candidates for humans in the sector (i.e. her, the Most Serious) not taken up by a smaller, more disciplined coven or a single approved teacher. Most girls that weren’t up to fully learning The Way generally got filtered out at a younger age, or were shifted to some of the Order-sponsored schools that only taught techniques critical for low-level Spiritual Advisory stuff, O.C. Bible theology, or Missionaria Protectiva activities. Some good friends were placed there, and as little as she could talk to them, it seemed like they were doing fine.

Which is why it worried her that Yakoba was here and not there, and it was not exactly a good sign to already see her here outside doing nothing but being sorry for herself when Borte got out of her latest block and was walking across the campus.

Borte waved nonchalantly. “Yakoba! What’s up?” The girl’s head shot around and looked upwards, eyes locking with hers. The Voice was very rude to use between peers, but it certainly lets you get their attention.

Yakoba frowned, but not in a way that meant she had finally snapped from her endless chain-yanking. “Oh. Hi, Borte.” She broke her gaze and quickly went back to looking straight ahead.

That kind of response? That's definitely a sign something is up, Borte thought. She decided to invite herself to sit down next to her. The cool sunset-in-mid-afternoon weather was just below freezing, and only the hint of condensation from their breaths and the slight iciness of the bench showed any sign that there could be discomfort for the two. Yak must have taken her temperature regulation lessons to heart, Borte thought.

“Did you have direct study today?” She paused, looking at Yakoba’s face. The girl was still not fully able to control her expression, but was now only a little worse at her best than when Maryam dropped her guard. Let’s pop open that ornithopter fuselage and have a look at why that wing’s hinky.

The girl left her panels unlocked, it looked like– she immediately answered candidly. “We did, but she ended it early after talking.” She looked Borte in the eyes for the first real time (Voice doesn’t count, of course). “She says I’m at risk of failing at meditative states long-term… and I need to work with her to manage my responses to trauma.” Muscles quavering right there, but good job not looking upset, Yak.

She raised her eyebrows and cocked her head, face fully engaged. “And that’s it?”

“Well, she then told me she could kill me herself if I wanted her to. And then to go and think about my life so far.”

That sounded like the Myuller they talked about, Borte thought. The lady had… a certain affinity for 'bonding' with down-and-out initiates that in turn gave her the most notoriously high amount of mercied direct students in the Chapterhouse’s history. Not that anyone was officially keeping score, but you could find the records easily enough in the microfiche library.

Go for the flippant, lighten it before she gets overwhelmed. “Oh!” She turned the enthusiasm on her own face up. “So your first lesson with her went better than it does for most initiates," Borte said. This seemed to lighten the poor girl’s face a small shade.

“Really?” Yakoba said.

“Yeah, she may be a little softer for you now. Maybe even pull some strings behind the scenes.” She made herself comfortable and relaxed her arm straight out on the bench’s back. “It’s like the old saying goes, ‘A foot on the scale weighs more than ten thousand wills,’ right?” There was no old saying like that. In fact, she just pulled it out of her ass on the spot. Yakoba wouldn’t be able to tell I’m lying, she thought.

The older girl cocked her head and made some skeptical tics. “I… guess?” Ah, she’s actually suspecting it’s assuring bullcrap. Just play it off as being dumb.

“Yup!” She confidently continued. “Anyways, do you have enough time to think about your life before dinner comes tonight?”

Yakoba looked troubled still. Fair enough, it was a tough ask.

“I don’t think so. I’m going to need to be alone some more then.” She got up, her shadow crossing over Borte as the sun dipped into a corner between the horizon and Aegir. “I’ll need to get to class now, too.” She looked at Borte one more time, smiling faintly. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Borte stuck her tongue out and remained on the bench. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”, she called out to the dearly-departing Yakoba. A playfully dismissive, but half-hearted wave down volleyed the farewell back to her.

Taking another bite of the apple, Borte took in the brief moment between blocks. She can hustle to Applied Etiquette in no time from here, and it’s rare to get a Good Sunset at a time between classes.

Like most blocks at the school, that training was often intentionally redundant, but always examining the same concepts from a new perspective, encouraging that analytical, disciplined, holistic, and merciless approach that underlined the whole order’s philosophy. Applied Ettiquite was pretty dull– had to know your home culture, expand your social awareness, history, blah blah blah. By the time it was clear you had yourself under proper control (which she did. Well, mostly) and were mature and loyal enough (I am a very smart and capable young lady that is also mature beyond her years, thank you), you would be given your final tests and inaugurated as a Novice Sister for more rigorous work and training in other wings of the chapterhouse. Or more excitingly, you eventually would go out with a direct teacher on missions, where you could go to places that are ‘warm outside’, and that have those ‘boys’ she keeps hearing about in the same numbers as real people and humans combined!

Or, you fail to be human, and get poked.

Yakoba shouldn’t be here. Adopted initiates generally have a bit more wiggle room to learn the ropes, but… putting her here straight from outside the order, here at her age, without even getting a chance to openly be her own gender, was just a cruel act by the sisters who signed off on her parent’s wants to Capital-E Erase her. But here she was, and she was such an important person. To her, anyways. And not just because she was tall enough to reach the top shelf in the filmbook library for her, either.

She remembered when Yakoba came here, just a few months after she herself graduated from the juvenile school on Ishkal and landed on this rock. Short hair, barely starting treatments. Didn’t know ana from kata, and her posture and the like didn’t even allow her to wear a dress properly. She was smart in the ‘philosophy’ and other book learning stuff, probably from whatever animal school with ‘boys’ was like beforehand, but hopelessly feral those days, getting shunted down to the sweathogs for prana-bindu and perception and consciousness training. And the whole point of getting a bunch of ladies in black all in the same place is to prove that control of yourself allows you to control the universe, so she’s kind of been in a rough position. Knows too much now as an initiate, doesn’t exhibit enough humanity for sisterhood.

As a lifelong initiate in-the-know, you just passively notice those things about people even if you don’t know them, or didn't want to know them, she admitted to herself. Until Maryam came to the Chapterhouse, she dismissed Yakoba as a bubble and tried not to really pay attention to if and when she would inevitably disappear. But… Maryam became her friend after The Incident, and so then Borte became Yakoba’s friend. And she saw just how hard she was working, how kind and insightful (and grumpy, gosh, lighten up Yak) she was. Didn’t she do pretty well on that remedial prana-bindu test Tuesday? Maybe she’ll be fine. Maybe.

Wait… aw, crap, she realized. She was going to be late! She chucked the apple core and ran.

Chapter 7 Selective Glossary:

Ishkal:

Also known as Alsafi IV or Sigma Draconis IV, a habitable ice planet in the Sigma Draconis star system; controlled by the Ordos Cartel, an incorporated (non-hereditary) House Major.

Chapter Text

In the week bef… hen all the final scurrying about had… an old crone came to visit the mother of the…

–Nobody, from Nowhere

Everywhere, Everywhen, and Every Could-Be

She was lost in time now, adrift without oar or sail in a sea of possibilities and impossibilities, of threads cut and uncut.

Shreds of events outside possibility surrounded her. Maryam saw a boy dreaming both of sand and a girl, and telling her mother about it for some reason she really cared not to understand. Elsewhere and at the same time, Proctor Myuller, haltingly writing a letter for a lonely Yakoba and sighing. Borte being Borte. Later: deathly mist spewing from her father’s mouth. Billions dead in someone else’s name. Mister Dunk, dying thousands of times over, long outside of his own time. A self-made monster pontificates to his niece-a-hundred-times-removed; her no-niece too, somehow– he says nothing, but their presence across times brushed against each other, she’s sure of it. Everywhere, it ends the same. A gap in space, barely escaping a net.

No! No, no, no! Closer threads, still connected now– she was gripped with terror, teeth grinding, paralyzed– the mess of possibilities spilled outwards in front of her like a knotted pile of unspooled threads. Borte in the infirmary. Maryam’s graduation to Sisterhood, a thousand different emotions on her face. The Weddings. Where the Marriages would be, just fire and death and sand and Spice, only scarce visions of a burning child-shaped void looking back to her in that mess of thought-feelings. A horde of women forcing water down Yakoba’s throat. A myriad worlds snuffed out by flames, then unsnuffed, infinitely different reasons of strategy and barbarism behind the incompatible results; Griffon-Eagle versus Lion, or Eagle versus Griffon-Lion, and always– always!– the Sign of Waters and the Sisterhood’s Crest, schismed of any association and covered in blood themselves. A steel-grey wall that ends everything, so far ahead but so impossible to find any threads pulling away from it. Borte being found in one part, in two, in too many parts. And most terribly of all, a thousand Myullers standing over a thousand mercied Yakobas laying on a table or fallen in front of an Agony Box, with a needle bouncing a thousand thousand ways on the floor.

She awoke with a start. Nothing but dreams! It must be, or– Oh!

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

–She slammed open their cell door, to run, was running, ran, to the bathroom, and flying past the occluder, to– to any–

She heaved, opening her eyes to see that she at least made it to a sink, if not a toilet. She gasped for air, wiped her mouth, and then looked up at that oval face with the hawk nose and rounded green eyes and the dark hair (thrown all about by unwanted cosmic grandeur) that she knew so well.

I don’t want this, she thought. I don’t want to be like this! I’d rather be anyone el– I’d rather be normal, like Borte or Yakoba or Ella or Mister Dunk or…

She collected herself, knowing this was just another form of fear. Just a nightmare, nothing more. The details and feeling of terror had already started fading from her waking mind. She checked her pineal gland: almost 0540 hours. Kull Wahad. Nowhere near enough time for any good sleep.

Then, she cleaned up the signs of her …mania, she supposed. Too many lives depended on her to be reacting like this, to be driven mad by nonsense in her head. Even if she probably wasn’t going to be reigning as a sovereign and was just the daughter of a concubine, she was still the nominal heir-apparent, and more importantly a daughter of a Bene Gesserit sister, another link in a major plan of lineage control she never had fully explained to her. If she couldn’t control herself… her younger sisters would have to both pick up the ruins of a destroyed House Atreides and face the same burdens of this plan.

Allie. Little Jess, she thought. I can’t let you have to deal with this. With all of this. With any of this!

What could she do? Telling anyone with power here about these nightmares would get her whisked off to some other, larger chapterhouse more prepared and equipped to manage– or exploit– these compounding delusions, like on Wallach IX, the center of the Order’s spiderweb. The thought of spending any more time being examined by those Reverend Mothers sent a shiver down her back. She would probably never see Caladan again. And Yakoba, and Borte– she’d never see them again, either, and she needed their company probably more than they both needed hers combined.

She paused her thoughts as she finished cleaning, and breathed quickly three times to dilate her veins and start calming down her nervous system via trancing. Even under the circumstances, she naturally reverted to a blatantly aristocratic posture that was drilled into her over the years.

On Caladan, she didn’t have friends. In a state of perpetual Kanly, it was too risky to let a duke’s child see anyone but their family and the most trusted members of the household. Granted, Doctor Yueh and Thufir and Gurney and especially Ella and Mister Dunk were all kind and wonderful people in their own ways. But they were all far older than her, and Alissa and Little Jessica were much younger than her. At the Chapterhouse, her safety was assured simply by the place’s status as a center of Bene Gesserit operations and she was effectively anonymous in the halls, giving her a form of social freedom she never thought possible. Even if it was cold and dark and grey-green-brown here, this was the first time and place where she really felt like she belonged and was among other people she could relate to. People that could, in turn, relate to her.

Even though Yakoba compared their life there to a prison, Maryam knew her time at the Chapterhouse was probably the closest she would ever get to actual freedom in her life.

And if revealing her madness to the proctors could take even this ghost of freedom all away from her, then whether or not all the Gom Jabbars in those nightmares were actually going to be stuck into Yakoba, or all those Bortes would really be sliced up, was a moot point. She had to bear this quietly for herself and for her friends and for her family. For every second that she could still be free.

Maryam walked back to their cell slowly. Outside of the bathrooms, the dormitories were barely lit, even during ‘daytime’ hours. A bare minimum of some small red glowlights built into the vertices of the floors and walls and her training were all that stood in the way of whacking her …dynastic pedigree of a nose, let’s say, into a corner or door.

Despite it all, a whack.

Kull Wahad. Right on their cell door, too. She forgot they all locked automatically, even if you’re experiencing nauseous shock from an overactive subconscious. Wincing from the pain, she rubbed her nose with one hand and fumbled for the door’s thumb lock with the other.

A slow shuffle came from inside their cell as the scanner whirred and refused to register her misaligned thumbprints, and then the door swung open, leaving her whiffing the pad entirely. Yakoba held the door open as she walked back in, looking just as tired from the night’s sleep as she did.

“Sorry,” Maryam mumbled as she walked in, her nose continuing to throb. “I… had a bad dream again.”

When Yakoba returned that night from her first day with Myuller, she looked… defeated. A couple times, she tried to say something to Maryam, but no words came out and she returned to her pensiveness. Something bad must have happened. A real bad thing, not a bad dream.

“Was it the same?” Yakoba croaked from across the room. “The same dream as whatever, uh, happened Monday?”

She paused. “No, it was… different. Still terrible, but different. I was so scared for everyone else.”

Silence in the dark, then her voice again. “Everyone else? Were you fine, Maryam?”

“… No.” She was not fine then or now or retroactively ever, it seemed. Verb tenses were starting to get fuzzier. She remembered terrible remnants of that forever for a split second, and she then pushed those lingering visions back to remain in the present, the things that were real, not just false images of her death, or the deaths she caused.

“Yakoba?”

That voice again, still alive. “Yeah?”

“When you graduate, what do you want to do as a Sister?”

Yakoba, alive, talking: “I don’t know. I think want to finish Mentat training, and become a Savant-Sister. But that’s just another thing to do, and just a training, not a job. I… feel like I have just been moving from one thing to the next since I got here. Since I started being myself, whoever that is. Since I started really living, but without a firm center to my life yet.”

She paused, thinking about all those dropped needles. “That makes sense, Yakoba– still, you’re perfect for those sorts of jobs.” She paused, and then asked a better question. “Is there ever somewhere that you would want to go?”

A stammered choke from the other side. Maryam’s heart stopped. Then, prevocalizations, resuming whatever Yakoba was going to say. No needle yet in her, Maryam thought.

“I- ah- I’d like for us three to go to Caladan. Borte and I have never been near a real ocean, and you know the place, and so…”

“Yes! Yes. Yakoba? I have a request.”

She never asked for much from her. This might be too much for anyone. A “huh?” came from an alive Yakoba.

“I… you know that I’ll be married off after graduating, and… something tells me I won’t be around much. For my sisters, or the rest. If you’re able to… could you keep after them? Get assigned to Caladan, use your Sister status to see them?”

She could hear that sadness in Yakoba’s voice and breath already, and this was a more reasonable dream than them all being together seaside at her home. They both knew. “I… I’ll try. I’ll do my best to.”

A just-as-improbable request, so many dropped needles and threads pulling and spinning away from that idea being more than a fairytale. But she had to ask.

She smiled in the dark. “Thanks, Yak. I will owe you forever.” She paused, thinking. “I don’t think I’m going to be well enough for classes tomorrow. Can you tell the floor advisor in the morning?”

Yakoba grunted. “Morning? You mean fifteen minutes from now?” The girl chuckled, and she turned in bed, the sound of her covers moving muffling her voice. “Sure thing, Na-Duchess of Caladan and half a dormitory cell.”

She also turned over in bed, keeping that smile a little longer for a rare moment. Maybe there was some way out. Out of all those threads in the nightmares, a few remained golden, stretching off towards the horizon of the mind. How to do it, how to keep these golden threads with no needles or Marriage or steel-grey limits uncut when they constantly frayed to infinite individual uncertainties, was unknown. But the immediate thing she needed to do was clear: she needed an actual night’s rest.

Chapter 8 Selective Glossary:

Na-Duke, Na-Duchess:

The heir to an Imperial Siridar (planetary governor) fief of Ducal rank. Compare to Na-Baron.

No-Nephew, No-Niece:

A nonexistent child / descendant of a nonexistent sibling or alternate self; i.e. a family relation that only the absolutely mad or transcendental would seriously conjecture about. 

Occluder:

a planar Holtzmann-field screen designed to block vision on one or either side of the screen. Can be permeable or partly resist penetration.

Chapter Text

To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers.

–Bene Gesserit Precept

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Borte was not a waiting sort of person, but the Bene Gesserit was an organization that required you to be all kinds of people as the situation needed. That being said, there wasn’t really a good reason for her to be a waiting sort of person right now: Helena was taking far too long to get ready.

No reason! It only takes like, 3 minutes, tops, to get changed for some sort of sparring practice. Granted, Helena wasn’t exactly a fan of applying prana-bindu to fighting– the “Weirding Way” as the animals dubbed it, and yes, it’s catchier I suppose– but not wanting to get walloped onto the hard floor by her wasn’t a good enough reason to Helena to hold her or anyone else up.

Borte needed to get better, no two ways about it. Maryam, that little mouse of all people, did well in Weirding, almost as well as her, and she wasn’t even the type to put in effort or get bloody-eyed at all from it. She wasn’t even there yet either! She’d been in the Sisterhood since before she could remember, and this duke’s heir (whatever that really meant) with a prodigal mother and a head like it was filled with her planet’s seafoam comes along and just sleepwalks through initial checks on her skill and gets plopped down at her level. Yakoba was weaker and older, but she tried, and was getting a little better each time she saw her. Maryam was an annoying combination of gifted and unchallenged.

Still, despite it all the girl was good enough company, and ever since The Incident, she would kill anyone who’d dare hurt her.

Helena was five (5! Five. FIVE) minutes later than usual from the changing rooms, quite enough time to raise a fuss. She told the proctor and decided to go back to the changing room and see what that girl’s malfunction was.

Nobody was in the locker room, and like with most of these places across time, the students had staked their de facto claims on a given cupboard for their simple initialed and open-ended gym bags. Did she step into the bathroom? Helena’s bag was absent still, so she really was running five minutes late. But…

Wait. Who was in the 7^th level weirding class today? Her, Urist, Karen, Helena, Luta, ah, Eostri and Dedelle and the one who doesn’t speak Galach and what’s-her-name and that other one and Maryam, of course. Count the bags again– and– and Maryam’s was there, and–

Maryam’s was there already, that usual M.i.o.J. stenciled initials on the side, and not in her usual place.

Quietly, she looked to see if any feet poked out of the bathroom stalls. Nobody.

Something was off.

She looked at the bag– it looked like someone had freshly stenciled on the initials, from the looks of it and the smell. And the smell– some sort of mix of paint and a saline solution, or something medical.

She took the sash from her stowed-away regular uniform and unfurled it. No way was she going to touch it directly, but she had to make sure there wasn’t some funny business inside it. She had already learned to project simple motions through it– pulling those bags open from a yard away wouldn’t be a problem.

She whipped the sash, and hooked around one handle, yanking it open

An unpleasant thud and clack came from the bag as it fell on its side. Not a uniform. Not a uniform! She let go of the sash and immediately lept up onto the top of the cubbies.

She assessed: In the middle of the room, an island of spaces for gym bags. Around the edges, more gym bag shelves, with her on the top of them. On the floors, a drain, above her, lights and service panels. Left back: door to outside, left center: bathrooms, front right: exit to the place she’d rather be fighting.

She stared at that upturned bag for what seemed like a day. Something moved under it, and for a quick second, she saw what looked like two grey-purple appendages, like a corpse’s fingers, grab her sash and pull it underneath, with a scraping and tearing noise ensuing.

Whatever it is, it probably isn’t a good idea to let it live. Borte thought. Damn it! She should have just punched the bag as hard as she could when she had the chance.

The mass under the bag slowly paused, as if appraising its recent feast. In an instant, it launched itself out from under its mask right at Borte’s bag, grabbing the main part of her dress.

Finally, a chance to look at this thing. It didn’t look good, and it didn’t look natural. Dead-body grey and purple all over. Worm-like, squat, flat, she thought. The “front” of it had what looked to be a mixture of ‘original’ and mechanical additives to its mandibles, like a mixture of a starfish mole and a sausage grinder. And it was still nibbling on her regular uniform, which would be hell to replace.

Was it venomous? Could she just… step on it?

It stopped its ravaging, and curled in on itself. A slithering, scraping noise came from inside it, wires erupting down its length, arcing out of and back into its body from cauterized fistulae and ports like some kind of demented attempt to build an animal around a toroflux.

A little wire, like a tongue tasting the air, then came from the front of the thing, turning this way and that. Searching for something. Probably her scent, from how it attacked earlier.

Whatever that thing was, it was made to kill. The wires were probably its weapon and also its way to see the world now. Though rare and unwieldy, flex-filament wires were an incredibly deadly and messy weapon when successful, traveling through the pores in exposed skin into the veins and internal organs, or in simpler models just piercing into the eyes, ears, nose, or mouth to the brain or lungs or heart.

She saw it in a drama filmbook she snagged from outside the Chapterhouse. It was extremely scary and neat!

It was just her luck that the exercise uniform had bare arms and feet. If… if Maryam had opened that instead of her real bag, or if it was opened with the rest of them there… Well, she didn’t want to be eviscerated inside-out. That’s priority number one, not thinking about what-ifs, she thought. No use trying to call the Proctor, either– in the seconds it would take to explain, things could get even hairier. Contain and destroy, then report. But how?

It could only smell her, at least. Those grasping fingers at the front of the knife-mouth motioning over her torn clothes, the searching wire. No sign that it cared for the other bags in the room. It was trained or grown to attack whoever it smelled first, she thought. Unlucky for it that unlike Maryam, I can fight without a knife.

She had an idea. She hated it, but it was the simplest way to do it. If it wanted her smell to guide her to her body… then give the animal what it thinks it wants. Grabbing the back of her braid, she pulled off the end tie and ran her hands through it, (ruining her lunch break re-doing it, she thought), hair flying free and outwards like some sort of solar corona.  She stimulated the sweat glands at the very base of the back of her skull, feeling the stinking water start to bead up and then start wetting down the hairs there.

The next and worst part was less disgusting: she held the base of her hair, feeling for just the part that had the gross salt-infused slickness. Then, she just willed her scalp to shed the whole of it.

Holding probably the second-worst thing she would touch today, Borte kicked off of the wall and made a dive for the gym bag, dropping half of her shed hair in front of the thing as she traveled across.

Just enough. Not enough. Somewhere in-between right there. She gripped the bag handle, yes, and was able to jump across, yes, but the worm-thing was a little smarter than expected. It already knew she, her prime-smell, was up out of reach, and struck out with its ‘tongue’ as she passed, whipping the wire like a hot cheese cutter. It grazed her trousers, slicing a not-so-miniscule cross-section out of it, before pursuing her fast–too fast, it rolled on its wires and slithered both!

Not enough time to get back up high. Not enough time! Too fast! She–

She observed in that split second its trajectory, all unnatural but still traceable. Grabbing the gym bag, she did what an animal wouldn’t do in this situation, and dove straight back at the worm-thing.

The thing leaped at her too, shimmering like so many unsevered threads of shigawire.

Twisting, she turned under the gym bag, catching the thing from underneath, right hand still full of stinking hairs. Whump! Their opposing momentums canceled out, leaving her supine on the t-angle between the bathrooms, the cubby island, and the path to outside.

Now halfway into her controlled battle trance, blood pumping optimally as each breath reached to the bottom of her lungs, Borte quickly appraised her next step. Drown it? Not enough water in those kinds of toilets, sink too small, showers don’t fill up. Beat it? Can those wire-wheels protect it from impacts, cut me? Take it out to the Proctor? Half the class would probably die while she explained what the hell was up.

Option B for ‘Beat It Up,’ then. She swung herself around and up, almost hitting the top of the pipes, and prepared to slam the bag on the ground as hard as possible. Falling now, muscles cooperating, angles primed up–

Shchk. A pinpoint tongue went through her foot.

Ah, Phoinks, she thought. Still, Sister Gravity was in charge of the motions she had to do now. Just commit, and Smack! 

She then landed, stomping on top of the bag one-footed, looking like a particularly wrathful, but not exactly ‘serenely wrathful’ buddhislamic guardian deva, locks of hair in hand instead of garlands. Her impaled, restricted foot intentionally dislocated to prevent her form from being compromised.

The bag squirmed, sounding like clanking silverware and meat. A spool of flexfilament wire coiling from it, shot through, but thankfully not into her foot. Next, a slightly painful shake back to reality as she relocated her foot. That hurt the thing, but she wouldn’t be able to keep up those kinds of moves if she gets stuck and sliced every time. The good thing is that its tongue still is tied to my foot, so–

Tak, ping. The sound of a wire being cut, the feel of the wire in her foot’s weight shifting. Damn it, they thought of everything making this gross thing, Borte cursed. She hopped once, twice on the bag for good measure, and landed a meter from it. Hand over hand, she quickly pulled the old wire out of her, only wincing a little at the feel of the hair in one hand or the internal edging tearing at her flesh.

Blood started pooling from her foot onto the ground. Her feet– the wires it ran on weren’t dull! She cut herself deep stomping! The smell!– It would– she jumped back as the next few meters of wire tongue shot onto the puddle, tapping the ferrocrete ground with an unsettling strength before rebounding, extending, aiming straight at the next smell–

A bouquet of red-brown hair.

Like a straw doll stabbed by a knife, the hairs were unmoved. Too fine to impale, too Borte-smelling to ignore. It kept stabbing inwards, inwards, whipping and cutting her shoulder each rotation or counterrotation with its cable edges but not trapping the hand, knotting itself around the locks like twine around hay bales, until… it ran out of filament, sputtering the last yard out like a broken filmbook.

Borte stood gingerly on her toe-tips en pointe, staggered over, and dropped her bloodied elbow on the bag and its defenseless resident. Helena came in at that time, but she paid her no mind. This was a more interesting sparring class.

Again, dropping both her weight and muscles and breath and everything she learned on the bag, and again. Punching, kneading the bag practically, until whatever it was no longer moved. Helena looking on the whole time with slightly more awareness than usual, speaking about “Is there something in the bag?” and “Borte, what’s going on? You’re bleeding!”.

Borte, seeing no more threat, pulled up from her first partner, and finally responded. “Helena… you’re late, but I found a replacement, today… A fake bag with…”

With…

Things went dark. She felt herself being carried, people shouting, some of them even humans, not just scared initiates, voices of concerned proctors and students she couldn’t recognize.

A few hours later– maybe a day or so, for what little that meant here–, she woke up in the infirmary with Apothecary Sister Atti running a vitals test next to her. Her many lacerations lay bandaged under the covers, and some kind of healing agent and a blood bag was now hooked up to her. The woman was not entirely surprised to see Borte’s eyes following around the room.

Borte pulled together her strength and talked. “Hi, Atti… again.” She managed a weak smile. “Am I gonna be fine?”

The apothecary turned. “Well, you’re not exactly in the best of shape after what you did. Some kind of anti-coagulant poison was on the flex-filament.” Atti crossed her arms and cogitated in that half-aware manner Savant-Sisters did. “Good to see you awake, though. We had to reattach one of your smaller toes, which wasn’t exactly a smooth procedure given the time constraints. Helena helped them look for it for what, an hour? Idiot girl.”

“That’s nice of Helena, though.”

Atti sighed. “The ‘idiot girl’ was referring to you, Borte. Even if you did manage to survive it, that was very dangerous. We’re not trying to kill potential humans like you here! Be more reasonable and just alert a sister when… whatever that was happens.”

The girl narrowed her bleary eyes and grinned. “Well, still… I did survive, and you can bet other students, maybe even some sisters, wouldn’t have. I saved you all a lot of trouble.”

Even with her eyes half closed, Borte could sense Atti pursing her Sapho-stained lips and raising her brows. “I’m going to pretend that for once, you’re not in a state to control your tongue. Don’t make me tell you your odds of graduating, initiate,” she said. “At this rate, you’ll be taking your black as a portrait in front of a closed coffin.”

“Well, at least I won’t have to sit through it then, heh he-ow.” Borte tried to chuckle, but it disturbed the cuts on her torso enough to make her wince. “D… Did Maryam or Yakoba come by earlier?”

Atti turned away as she tapped a large syringe full of something or other. “Yeah, Maryam and Yak came by, but, you know. Classes. You, recovering from massive blood loss. You were out cold and they’re probably asleep right now.”

She unsheathed the needle and threw back the covers around Borte’s feet. “Now, since you’re awake, you can maybe speed your recovery up, being Rank Seven and all. I’m going to flush the localized Class A anti-coagulant from your foot with this antidote, send it up your bloodstream. Can you manage some prana-bindu and get started on consciously breaking the agent down along with it?” She got into position and unwrapped a still grossly crimson foot as Borte steeled herself.

“Yeah, I th–AAIGH!” The witch just stuck it right in! Borte thought. The gross feeling of the cloudy sap entering her foot barely masked the pain from the thick needle. Then, another punishment for yelling came from her torso as her fresh wounds were disturbed again.

She caught her her breath and, carefully as to not disturb any more cuts, used what concentration she had left to push her equally-exhausted body to start pumping out some relevant enzymes. As the various synthetic and organic agents in her body met in her abdomen and clashed, she started to feel faint.

The room went dark again, and as her consciousness slipped back to nowhere, her last thought lingered: a fair fight all around.

Chapter 9 Selective Glossary:

Bloody-Eyed:

Colloquial term in the Bene Gesserit for an initiate who uses animal aggression and physical force instead of or in conjunction with the Weirding Way when fighting, Generally frowned upon.

Tleilaxu Flensing Snake:

A single-use remote assassination weapon developed by the Bene Tleilaxu. Consists of a genetically modified organism with monofilament components.

Chapter Text

One observes the survivors and learns from them.

–Bene Gesserit Precept

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Sunday at the Chapterhouse was never a day off, despite their more amorphous structure. While the paired schedules of Mondays and Thursdays, Tuesdays and Fridays, and Wednesdays and Saturdays shared their blocks, Sundays were for more independent forms of study assigned to you by your group of proctors– or in Yakoba’s case, even more remedial training and trials.  During the past three days, she and Maryam had made as much time to go to see Borte as they could while the girl remained in the infirmary, healing after the New Incident that happened early on Friday.

On all three times of visitations, Borte would doze in and out (resistantly, to her credit) on whatever cocktail of blood transfusions, healing agents and residual antivenoms Sister Atti had her on as she recuperated from whatever she was fighting. No painkillers given, though. The only details the two could get out of her was that it cut her, badly, and that it was meant for Maryam, somehow. Maryam’s decision to call in sick that morning was… fortunate, Yakoba thought.

Initial attempts to pass this Newest Incident Involving A Certain Sahelo-Altaic Ishkalian Initiate off as an accident by The Authorities did not stick, and the whole of the Eridanus Chapterhouse, not just the skittering initiates, were perturbed by this violation of ancient neutrality. While precautions were never announced, the newest addition of Sisterhood Guard agents drawn from across the moon on each floor of each wing and building, their dark blue militarized uniforms with short ponchos and long knives and holstered maula pistols, was evident to even the dullest chapterhouse servant.

Such was the personal and political environment surrounding Yakoba on Monday at 1300 hours, as she walked past the microfiche library.

When Yakoba returned to Myuller’s office on Monday for the first ‘real’ day of direct tutoring, the décor was very slightly adjusted. A small carpet was placed over the scratched center, notitia-tablets stacked more neatly, the wooden box more tightly closed, the Box out of sight. And of course, her behind the desk, but in one of the less-comfortable chairs. The nicer chair was in front, angled invitingly. Surprisingly, no teacups, which–

“I don’t do drinks when receiving initiates,” Myuller interrupted. “They tend to think I may poison them for some reason, even if they don’t say it directly.” She gestured to the chair. “Sit.”

The initiate sat, awkwardly adjusting herself. To break the silence, Myuller began talking again. “I heard your friend Miss Abdullahi is not in good sorts.” She paused, waiting for a response.

“Yes, ma’am,” Yakoba said. “She… got in some kind of fight with a monster. A monster meant for Maryam.”

“Oh? I was informed it was a tension filament accident.” Myuller clearly was playing coy. She was trying to have a two-layered conversation, one that even Yakoba could pick up and follow– there– she was minutely doing the motions in very simple forms of the Bene Gesserit hidden sign-language, more gesture and implication commenting on whatever nonsense was said than full hand movement and grammatical structure. Yes, it is true, the proctor signed.

Is it serious? Yakoba haltingly replied, leaning forwards as part of the motions.

An upwards brush of the hand, askance fingers pointing and then returning to a relaxed bend. “I wouldn’t be concerned about it, Miss Herstal. A common sort of occurrence.” Yes, it’s unprecedented. Your cellmate is being hunted. The proctor continued. “The Eridanus Chapter isn’t known for being a major intelligence location, nor ultimately important to the Order.” Which is precisely why your cellmate was placed here.

Yakoba nodded and continued to follow.

“In terms of security arrangements, we are as tight as ever. For evidence: the presence of Sisterhood Guards.” Expect to see adjustments. Sorry, your assigned cells will be re-arranged.

 The girl’s heart felt like it was going to crumble.

The Initiate, however, signed back. “Uh…” Uh… Who could have done this?

Myuller replied, “The issue is settled, and you have nothing to worry about.” Many groups could be conspirators, but a common thread is the weapon. Then, a sharp cut by her hand. “Excellent fluency for less than one year of practice, Miss Herstal. Let me finish my answer verbally in the most oblique way possible…”

Myuller collected herself, pushing her broken half-a-stenotype to the side of the desk and then looking to the window. In a measured manner, she answered in that professorial tone she loved. “There are other orders with special status in the Imperium, other adepts. No doubt you know of the Spacing Guild, their Navigators. Here is another: the Bene Tleilaxu, named so after their only planet. Or, Tleilax is named after them; their origins lay as deep in history as ours, and in even foggier ways. They are… secretive, a religiously-motivated group that holds their specific heresies and structure outside even our best attempts to crack them. Despite their veiled fanaticism… incomparable technological prowess in matters of life and pharmaceuticals. Their main economic exports and monopolies, though these creations skirt the laws of the Great Convention.”

She paused. “Perhaps it is an outgrowth of their religion. We know they see and practice mastery of God over matter, and matter over mind; the exact opposite of our order. Also opposite too in demographics of their society. All of them are said to be male if such a thing still applies to them, not a single woman reported… redundant, possibly. At least I hope. A logical end-point to their mastery of their instruments and methods.” The woman stood up and shooed the girl back as she pushed one corner of the desk out of the way.

Despite the movement of both student and master, a chill ran down Yakoba’s spine. “Are… are they people still?” she asked.

Unperturbed, Myuller finished pushing the desk, turned around, and sat back in her chair. “In terms of whether our Way works on them? Some of them, usually. In terms of humanity? …’Animals’ is too great a word to describe them. Machine Culture reinvented in flesh.” She then looked extinguished, for a brief moment more a woman in mourning garb than a black-clad Sister. Then, ember rekindled for her direct student.

“Enough horror stories and amateur justicar work. We will begin simply, with a question: what is your life like so far?” No barrier anymore between Myuller and Yakoba.

The girl collected herself, and slowly put all that on display. “I… I was born on Poritrin in 10174. My parents… weren’t important. My mother came from a family of artisans in a city… my dad was an administrator, but not a mentat or anything special like that.”

For once, Myuller continued to say nothing and listened attentively as Yakoba continued to talk. “They were climbing the Faufreluches, or at least my dad was trying to. My mom didn’t say much about it, just went to balls and social functions and the like. My dad constantly tried to find new ways to approach the Siridar, House Alexin, and get awarded a minor fief or hereditary title for service.”

Myuller commented. “Mm. Thereby giving your father House Minor status. And Poritrin has a lot of empty land, does it not?”

“Yes! It’s so vast… our, uh, its largest cities are just, oh, ten million or so. And most continents never even settled.” The girl looked down for a moment.

“Was he successful?”

Yakoba avoided eye contact. “No, at least not when I last knew of it.” She looked up again. "He was doing it all wrong too. He… thought you could become a House Minor by a House Major's largesse and by serving them well. He was wrong! – you first have to establish independent power, independent wealth. My family should have kept to accounting or banking or whatever if we- if he wanted to become a House Minor."

Myuller said nothing, only staring at the young girl.

Yakoba went on. "Only then do they grant titles. Power and nobility will never raise up men without a political reason, a reason based in material strength, and my father… is powerless as he is." She paused, looking up at the proctor. “He was so cloying to those men when he brought me along to functions. I was there when he was appointed as an Urbanat of Dissal Municipality, at the official handing of the keys and all. His nose was practically wedged up those men’s asses at the end of it.”

Myuller cocked her head and said nothing, but the glint in her eyes slightly changed refraction. Was she trying not to show something? Shock at her language? Laughter, maybe?

“I only have an older sister, but we had some younger cousins that stayed with us. Their parents were in, uh, harder situations or in the military and so my parents brought them into the house.”

“I wasn’t aware House Alexin had a military, Miss Herstal. Poritrin is practically a Suk academy in how little violence happens there.”

The girl got flustered and laughed. “Oh, it’s just enough of one to be a nuisance more to the House than to anyone else.”

The proctor’s head cocked a slight bit more. “And why do you say that?”

The girl felt like a button had been pressed on her tongue. Finally, a reason to expound about her favorite subjects! “A modern military can’t be gauged simply by its arms or number of men. Drilling in skill of individual arms for soldiers is critical, and a trained officer corps is key in using any auxiliary tactics or critical support properly like artillery, orinthopters, suspensor-elites, so on, you know. And if you don’t have a war or Kanly to fight, there’s a critical army size where the institution is more of an economic and political liability than–”

An open ‘no-thank-you’ palm shot down from the Proctor, cutting her breath short. “I would have not marked you out for a nascent Warmaster, Miss Herstal.” Then, a rare raise of the eyebrows on her face. “Excellent, but let’s return to the subject of your life. Your childhood, yes? What were your cousins and sister like?”

Yakoba paused to reorient. “My sister is named Gertrude, and she’s older than me by a few years. She always was some form of self-absorbed, but we were closer in childhood. She mostly spent her time with my mom and other female relatives after her adolescence started.” Yakoba took another breath, and continued to dredge up dull but somehow painful facts of her life. “My cousins– Marus, Hildegard, and Ioustine, were younger than me. All of them sometimes just blurred together, to be honest, loud or annoying or energetic or some combination of the three.”

She paused, thinking to herself. Then, more of herself to Myuller. “Growing up was… weird. Really weird, in retrospect. I loved my family, but it always felt like their love was conditional on success, except for my cousins. I was tutored at a schoolhouse until I was oh, 9 or so, then went to the Dissal Junior Academy in the municipality for most of the rest of my life until… Well.” She looked down and then back up from her dress. “I really looked forwards to each weekend visit, to see my family, see our library. They just wanted to know whether I was getting good at political science, or had made connections.”

An oddly-resonant “mmh” and a slow nod came from Myuller, continuing to lock eye contact. “Were you successful? Did you?”

“Sort of. I made a few friends, shared my notes with others. But no real ‘connections’ made to the bigger or smaller families. I sometimes got bullied for being so brittle and bookish, but I had enough friends and other leverage to put an end to it.” From inside her head, a Myuller-like ‘go on’ pushed her to explain exactly whatkind of leverage that was.

Yakoba’s face started to blush, but she flushed the veins as much as she could. “Well… I also kissed a few of the other students in private… they sort of took pressure from bullies off of me after that.” Her veins continued to grow colder and paler, sweat starting to bead at her scalp and shoulders. Wait, why did I say that to her? Idiot!

Half of Myuller’s brow shot up again, this time in an amused manner. “Impressive. You’ve been using the oldest trick in our discipline even before we taught you anything of it.” She leaned back and breathed in as if to clear her head. “Your classmates probably subconsciously sensed your… effeminacy, based on their targeting of you, mostly to your detriment. So, when did you realize your misassignment yourself?”

The girl shifted uncomfortably. “I always had a feeling I was different, but… it was about three years ago, when I was fourteen. I never put on someone else’s clothing or whatever. I just had a feeling I was intended to be a girl, that I was cursed, and it was starting to be unbearable to ignore. Painting nails or stealing makeup didn’t make it feel any better.” She sighed, and steadied herself. “I knew that some people on Poritrin… were allowed to, by their families. I think the first one I knew of was a boy that was the son of some other rival of my father’s.”

“Was he then the new second-in-line for the family?” Myuller asked.

Yakoba shook her head. “No, he was the third son after he was allowed to be himself.”

Myuller thrust the verbal knife-edge into her. “And you were next in line, until you told your parents. Which upended inheritance and made your older sister both next in line and left your father without a male heir, rendering his whole ambition pointless.” No emotion, no head movement.

“Yes, exactly that, ma’am.” Yakoba breathed in and out. “I tried telling them by a letter, and… it didn’t go well. I was basically locked in my room until they gave me the choice, to… either recant, or they would send me to the Bene Gesserit, if I wanted to be a woman so badly.”

“And so you chose uncertainty,” Myuller said.

“I felt like I was rotting inside!” Yakoba yelped. “There was no choice. Just a leap of faith.”

Myuller adjusted herself, reasserting a clinical posture that was slowly drooping. “What did the Sisters who examined you say?”

The girl shrugged, casting her glance downwards. “Nothing direct at first. They asked me about my studies, my feelings at different images and likes and dislikes, who my parents were, looked at my eyes and teeth, poked at pressure points… had some other shigawire-stuff put on my head and then looked at it and took it off.” She breathed in deep. “I told them what I think they wanted to hear. I don’t know if they knew I was lying, and if they did, then they also knew I wanted this escape. Then… they told my parents they’d ‘take the woman-child.’ ”

Myuller remained emotionless.“An unpleasant way to first be referred to as your gender, I’m sure. How long did you stay on Poritrin after that?”

“No,“ Yakoba said. “Some other friends knew about me and called me as I was. I miss them a lot, now.” She paused, wiping a small bit of eye mist away. “I… stayed only for a week or two on Poritrin after that. In some kind of processing facility run by the Spacing Guild, still segregated from the other girls, until just before we landed on Dufa.” She collected her last bits of exposed sadness, cortisol levels reduced back to normal. “It was already fall in the northern hemisphere– the rivers were filled with red and yellow leaf-grass. It was like the planet was saying goodbye to me.”

“Mm.” was all Myuller said at first. “I have one… last question, Miss Herstal.”

“Yes, Proctor?” Yakoba felt uneasy.

Myuller, for the first time, broke her controlled face with an expression of quizzicalness that, nonetheless, had a menacing curl to it. “Your family’s names are… Franko-Nigerian, correct? Yakoba is not, though. It’s Old Earth Hebrew, only really found in the Azhar Book and… other places.” Her eyes narrowed. “It’s improbable for it to cross your mind in these days, particularly on Poritrin. Why is that yours? Answer me!”

The Voice cut into her mind, prying open Yakoba’s skull and pulling words out of her mouth, her mind fogging and feeling undone– a fog so unlike the feeling of other Voices she had been subjected to. Why this command of all commands?

“I… I don’t know!” Her face started to sweat, a chill coming over her body. “It… came to me on the heighliner. I don’t remember much! It just entered my head all of a sudden one night, and said ‘this is your name’, and it made sense!”

Both student and teacher sat there for what seemed like an hour. Myuller’s gaze and tensed shoulder muscles revealed something resembling concern– or, increasingly, of a mix of frantic cogitation and suppressed fear. Yakoba herself continued to sweat, staring into nowhere, mind half-fogged, ghosts dancing behind her cerebellum, close to total breakdown. All this, over one single question. Why the mind-blanking name? Why was this such a terror to them both?, she thought.

Slowly, Myuller collected herself, body relaxing, face returning to its stern …façade, as it was now revealed to Yakoba. For just a moment, instead of her direct teacher across from her, she recalled a girl in light-grey with blue trimmings sitting like this, a sharp face not yet worn by sorrows and with a wry smile– an impossible memory from another time and person. Then, the dreadful teacher returned again. God forbid I be destroyed by this old woman or what she pulls forth from me, she thought, as her body slowly freed itself from those terrors.

“That will be all I ask of your past,” Myuller said, snapping Yakoba back to the present. “We have arrived as near the present as is needed right now. Plenty of more fortunate girls of good talent or birth are sent to Bene Gesserit schools, and return to their families with only a fraction of our skills and knowledge… and a debt to us. This is a common outcome whether as planned with a given initiate, or as a failure with a given initiate. It is… a useful group we foster.”

The proctor reasserted her gaze. “You, however, are disowned, so there is no path for you except one that goes through the Gom Jabbar Test or Mercying, correct?”

“Yes, proctor,” she gulped.

“Then I will advise you of one thing right now: a fear of death is never as powerful as a desire to live. Do not mistake one for the other. Cultivate that desire and suborn the fear.” She paused for emphasis, and then stood up from her chair, looking downwards at a sitting Yakoba. “We will work on your meditative and perceptive states and trauma management, but internalizing what I just said is essential work that can only be done on your own. Are we clear?”

“Y-yes, proctor.” It seemed simple enough to remember.

Wordlessly, Myuller walked over to the far end of the rug, hiked her dress up to her creaking knees, and sat down cross-legged.

“Sit across from me, Miss Herstal. Let’s use the remainder of today to go over the basics of mindset control and meditative states, from the top, from that of absolute beginners to wherever you may really lie. I have the full of the two-and-a-half-hour block today with you, which will be …uncommon.”

Yakoba pulled herself from the padded chair and joined her, knees and mind bending freely.

Chapter 10 Selective Glossary

No words of note.

Chapter Text

ARTICLE PREFACE– Our limited knowledge of the Fremen nonetheless poses a strange challenge to the Sisterhood’s standard pedagogy. We test individuals for their capacity to retain their reason under impossible environmental stress. But that stress is fundamentally artificial, non-scalable, and constrained by our curricula. In contrast, the Fremen have struggled against a ruthless world-knife that cuts independent of human bias. (arg.1)– I posit that they have shown their humanity down to the smallest child as a simple fact of living within their ecology, a unique social-ecological phenomenon. (arg.2)– I examine how outside of the Hagga and Imperial Basins, their planet is functionally a massive Gom Jabbar, a ruthless filtering test. (arg.3, 4, 5)– I further posit the question of whether said all-human social-psychology is indicative of the future of the species or is too ingrained in the planet to extrapolate. (arg.6, 7)– I examine whether we may or can learn pedagogical lessons from Fremen socio-ecology. (arg.8)– Given the interwovenness of posited Fremen humanity, standard of living, and aggression towards outsiders, I examine whether it is even possible, sustainable, or advisable for [CENSORED]

– Sister Emal Myuller, Submission for Internal Bulletin on Mass Education 10187.4.634e (Rejected)

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Things had gotten serious since the failed assassination of The Mother. Serious enough to schedule an Upper Chapterhouse Convocation on a Monday night.

The glowglobes bobbed in the endless darkness of that hall, black-clad sisters opening itineraries and hastily meeting and adjourning from whatever subcommittee (or, Great Mother forbid, political faction) they belonged to on this wretched rock. Other outstanding issues were, of course, delayed to the more official and proper Wednesday meeting. Today was a matter of security policy by committee. Emal cursed quietly under her breath at the prospect of twice as much self-inflicted espirt de corps in a week like this, when she needed much more time to figure out the precise approach to her new charge.

Yakoba was… intelligent, in that desperate clawing way some people can be. An untrained mind, but one that cut to the issues on political conditions big and small, and if jaded properly, could be the jeweled centerpiece of any cabinet of Sisters, perhaps even assistant material for the Mother Superior herself. That moroseness and fond sadness that all Yakovas have was also this time paired with a deep familiarity with the way things work, but also a defiance and desire to have those mechanisms work for her. Or to destroy those very machines and the culture behind them– the two possible end desires still unclear like a coin flipping in the air, for someone as young as her.

Get the hole that her idiot parents and her idiot planet and the idiot patriarchal Faufreluches system tore in her head soldered shut, and she would be an extremely invaluable asset for a certain Emal Myuller. Well, the Order, technically, but after proper training a Sister trusts a direct teacher better than their mother, if they’re not the same person to begin with. At her age, you tended to have graduated more than a few direct students that went on to notable places across the Imperium, and the knowledge and connections from those patronage networks was often worth more than a minor planet’s shipment of mélange.

Anyways, she needed to call in a favor to pull up Yakoba’s family genetic history. Something seemed faintly out of sorts with her situation, especially with how the Sisters on Poritrin signed off on carting her here immediately. The Sisterhood doesn’t take bribes just to disappear shameful children. And personally… some uncanny air could be felt around that girl. She had one of the most vulnerable egos she had seen, even among adopted initiates. Preternaturally so, and her having that personality and that name also being her name, found out of nowhere in the dark of space as well, grew her suspicions. ‘The ocean of night transfigures the empathic and Guildsmen alike,’ her old teacher once said. That bitch never could say things straightforward, could she?, mused Emal.

As Emal shuffled in with newly-down-regulated-to-sub-liter mug of caffeine in hand, the sudden omnipresence of the Sisterhood Guards was more evident to her than ever. Probably one every ten meters or so here, by her estimate. A pointless dalliance, but the theater of security was still important even for a group as cynical and politically realistic as a convocation of witches. At the off-center of the room, on a long table elevated above the usual U-shaped one, sat the star performers and audience of the theater: The Lunar Bashara, Sister Ovey, and the Proctor Superior of the Eridanus Chapterhouse herself, the Reverend Mother Zhu Lucia Puleng.

The Lunar Bashara looked as bored and frustrated to be there as anyone else lower on the rosters was. The Sisterhood Guard had not been a seriously needed organization within… well, ‘living memory’ was too short a time period to remotely compare to when the Guard last did anything other than police work anywhere, and much of the mundane police work even on Chapterhouse planets was left to animals investigating animals. Sister Ovey was not exactly meant to be a commander of anything outside of a parade guard, though she was putting an attempt of a stern pout on her high-cheeked face to look more like a veteran. The sister’s dress was, of course, dark blue, with some quasi-militaristic cuts across the whole of it and a small indication of rank on the collar.

The Reverend Mother… well, Her Reverence was… as usual… terrifying in subtle ways. In her time on Wallach IX, Emal had seen others before and after they walked to quiet halls and nearly killed themselves trying to physically and mentally survive taking specific and extremely lethal psychoactive poisons. The experience of traumatically gaining access to thousands of years of matrilineal ancestral memory chained from moment of birth to birth, let alone the ancestral memories themselves, seemed to warp even the most well-prepared woman. Not to mention that they somehow could connect with a greater Reverend Mother hive-mind and all of those genetic memories after achieving this state. She didn’t quite understand it, herself. They thought in terms of thousands of years, used Simuflow mindstates to remain half-lost in memories while still half-planning and delegating on an inscrutable level, and generally refused to confer with anyone but other Reverend Mothers. Or, usually, just conferring with the past mother-selves in their heads.

More than a few of these newly-made and infinitely-old women were her biological age now, or younger– rather, she was getting older than most new Reverend Mothers, including that daughter of hers. Sure, she could try submerging herself for that Reverence too– Emal was certainly qualified enough to get approval for it. She could probably survive the Spice Agony, get a position above a Proctor Major for once, continue a regular exemplary Bene Gesserit career such as it was, all sorts of benefits. But she knew enough about herself and her background not to open her Other Memory or dilute her own experiences, her own failures, in that endless chain of ancestors and colleagues. Her forever-32-year-old mother loomed over it all as the closest and probably worst of that bunch waiting off in her psycho-epigenetic nousphere.

The wooden box, the Other Office, was memory enough for her to bear.

Plus, having her official name in the Order then become Rapontchombo Victoria Emal sounded absolutely dreadful.

A loud bang! bang! came from speakers mounted at either end of the tables. Mother Puleng was smashing her cane onto the table next to some microphone. Within seconds, the various Sisters at all ranks finally sped up their pointless shuffles and let each other get past the milling crowd to sit down at the conference tables.

Emal found Wellamie right in front of her at the table, and for once was able to sit next to the woman at a meeting. In situations like this, she appreciated the other proctor’s restraining presence on her. It would not be a good idea to repeat last week’s faux pas in front of the Reverend Mother, especially if Emal’s suspicions about ‘the mother’ were founded.

Under the table, Emal placed her right palm on Wellamie’s left, making the call and response that signaled she was initiating some touch-to-touch signing. Just like in the not-so-good old days, she thought.

Well, Wellie? Emal signed to her, her bursts of vaguely correct syntax barely strung into sentences. Not sending their best to run this place. Even after all these years, she never could sign as well as Wellamie could.

Continuing to look forwards, Wellamie signed back. Not exactly the best time to heckle, Em. Are you just sitting next to me to get the back-talk out of your system?

Emal grabbed her notitia-pad with her left hand, posing as if she was actually going to write down comments or look at the agenda handouts any time soon. More or less, she signed. Better than causing another scene that bans drinks entirely.

You could be tied up, gagged, and unconscious and still find a way to cause a fuss if you wanted to, Wellamie signed. I swear, it’s like you burn up all your professionalism teaching those initiates. She paused, then continued the palm flexing and finger movements. How is the Herstal girl?

Better than you’d think, worse than you’d hope, Emal signed back.

A slight flinch from Wellamie, but no actual signing. What did she stop herself from saying? “Oh, so a Yak the Lesser, a Yak the Minor, Yak #2, then? Going to save her this time, Em? Have your schoolhouse trio back together? Sick woman.” Emal winced at her own thoughts. Even decades later, Yakova’s ghost was going to be the end of her.

Another sharp set of cane raps came as the meeting was finally called to order.

As the silence grew around them, she started signing frantically again. She knows the victim from Friday. Jessica’s does too, they’re all friends. Victim is an admirable student that went above expectations– more humility, and she’ll be ready for the Box. Voices, from above– Emal split her attention, letting her haltingly end the signing as the agenda items began to be read. Jessica’s attracts friends like father with retainers– sparingly– great loyalty.

Wellamie signed back, her usual fluidity and grace on display, just for her this time. Interesting, but keep it need-to-know for this meeting from here, dear.

One last and loudest bang, this time from a gavel actually meant for the occasion. Mother Puleng’s distressingly walnut-like face peered out over the convocation and spoke slightly too close to the microphone. “Item number one: what the hell went wrong for such a security breach to happen? I want answers, girls, damn you all!”

Despite that stupid strongwoman face, the Lunar Bashara next to her looked like she was trying to disappear into her uniform. Everyone knew the question technically was directed at her.

On the outside of the U-table, a Sister from a committee-of-this-and-that stood up. “The moon’s been sealed hermetically per the Rule for over a century, Your Reverence. Nothing gets in or out of the Kubileya spaceport grounds without us knowing about it. A second round of checks on all train shipments from Kubileya, before unloading from the depot. No men allowed on campus as standard, additional snoopers–”

“Yes, yes,” Mother Puleng interrupted. “But someone, something got through! You dullards have grown complacent! Our one major responsibility given to us from Wallach IX in, Great Mother knows how long, and you’re going to get her sprayed across the walls at this rate!” The old woman paused to catch her breath, raising one gnarled finger. “Inconspicuous security for that girl doesn’t mean slacking off. Do we even have one clue about the assailant? Aside from the weapon-thing, of course.”

Silence. Then, an increasingly angry Mother Puleng. “Alright, girls… then the weapon? The knife-slug or what have you. Anyone dealt with those little freaks before?”

I suppose somebody has to fall on that sword and state the obvious, Emal thought. Might as well be the Famous Sister Emal, Tleilaxu Slayer and Child Murderer Extraordinare.

Emal sighed as more than a few eyes began to stare at her, and she stood up to speak. “For the record, my experiences with the Tleilaxu are not from long-term intelligence wo–“

“Get on with it!” Mother Puleng shouted.

“Yes, Your Reverence. They don’t sell their merchandise, especially things like that, without ulterior motives. So, they’re directly involved in this. But, they don’t work alone, so they have at least one other conspirator, presumably either the Guild or some group of Houses.” Emal stared at that so-and-so committee member, still frazzled from a few sleepless nights of emergency meetings. “They couldn’t have known she was here, so the other conspirators do, somehow.” She looked back at Mother Puleng. “They’re attempting sabotage to get their Program finished first.”

Mother Puleng rolled her eyes. “Of course they’ve known about the Program! It’s not like we haven’t had to throw false-positive bloodlines at them as a smokescreen to sabotage with their gifts of homicidal catamite-puppets and epigenetic sterilizer poisons or whatever for the last two, three centuries. But your point about co-conspirators is taken. Any leads from the Sisters who should actually be doing this work?”

Emal sat down, relieved to get less of the standard castigations from Mother Puleng. She grabbed Wellamie’s hand again and signed to her. Glad she didn’t ask me to talk more about their Program.

Do you still have those nightmares about it– about what you saw? Wellamie signed back.

Their Program? No, not for years. Our Program? Not really, at least not while asleep. Emal left it at that, and Wellamie did not pry at the editorializing. They both knew her… misgivings about the Grand Design, such as what little of it was known to Sisters of their rank.

Another Sister on the other side of Mother Puleng cleared her throat in the silence and pulled up a set of papers. “This is Sister Moray, director of Internal Communications. The Mother School… is currently delaying most of our requested additional resources such as a high-priority Truthsayer, but have also, and to directly quote the subtext, told us to ‘solve your own rat problem or we’ll call the exterminators on the lot of you.’” The Sister dropped the papers and looked forwards sternly for emphasis.

“Are they planning on exfiltrating the mother?,” a voice called out from below.

“Oh, and alert the Spacing Guild with such a conspicuous shipment?” Sister Ovey said, coming out of her shell for the rare opportunity to berate someone else. “They put her on this moon deliberately, the Kwisatz Mother and Mother Superior, to keep her inconspicuous. Even the Houses Major have some intelligence assets on Wallach IX.”

The Reverend Mother turned to her. “Ovey, girl, you may be right. But you’ve got more than some cheek to lecture about security in your position. Go on! Tell them what the changes will be.”

“Right!,” Ovey shouted, her enthusiasm and training masking whatever embarrassment she was feeling. “As of last Saturday– Sisterhood Guard deployed in more locations across campus. Snooper sweeps on all halls, classrooms, and dormitories– student and faculty. Cavity searches on all servants and on-site animal labor. Permits required for all travel by non-faculty, not just Initiates, outside the chapterhouse…”

Damn it all! Myuller thought. Sister Odette had been her main gofer for her ‘contacts’ in the city and spaceport for the last two years. Re-organizing her schedule to do it personally was going to be hell with the work she needed to do on Yakov-er, for Yakoba.

Bashara Ovey continued. “…re-organization of assigned dormitories for all Initiates…”

Glad I was correct about that, Emal thought. That ‘air of majesty’ about a Proctor can’t be broken at this stage of Miss Herstal’s training. That usually should come after they see their first foul-up or two a year after becoming a Novice.

And more from the Bashara: “… that agricultural research reduction and all prior limitations, of course, being factored into the budget for this year. Petty cash access will be truncated by three-quarters, with departmental reductions listed separately in the meeting minutes.”

More than a few Sisters looked annoyed at the amount of money being pulled from their individual projects. Any proctor, Emal included, had a vast number of plans and programs of their own or assigned to them, and once a scheme left Chapterhouse grounds, a Solaris was worth every bit of compliance it could buy.

A pocketbook-concerned Sister stood up. “Your Reverence, could we expedite the search by increasing the Guard’s access to awareness-spectrum narcotics?” Awareness-Spectrum Narcotics– ASNs– pfah, just a fancy way to say ‘spice mélange’ here, Myuller thought. Given a critical mass of it, some genetic predispositions, and proper training, it could even cause flashes of remote viewing or limited prescience under some rare circumstances.

The Reverend Mother scoffed. “Out of the question! We don’t have anyone here that’s trained for such aggressive use, and developing those skills will require a major hike in our mélange shipments, just while that damned spice production shortage continues into its 11^th month– it’ll hit this sector’s prices soon, we’re sure of it.”

What’s the official story out there, nowadays?, Emal mused. Is it incompetence, quality control issues, unusual shortages of spice blows? The actual answer was probably a mix of planetary climate changes, price fixing by its quasi-enfoeffed rulers, and the insurgency on the planet, of course– and the third is most likely the biggest given the tank-brain of the current governor, she thought. Information on the true source of the most important chemical in the universe save water was all clouded by pointless spreadsheets and futures predictions for every sector of the Imperium. You could read 20,000 words of CHOAM-watermarked pablum on the spice trade and not see the words ‘Arrakis’, ‘Dune’, or ‘Desert Planet’ in even a footnote.

In the foreground, more logistical nonsense was re-stated for the convocation, and repetitive questions from the busybodies were answered one-by-one.

Arrakis– now there was yet another massive blind spot growing in the Sisterhood’s operations, Emal thought. The kind that organizations, regardless of the wisdom of any individual, only had when they were tantalizingly close to fulfilling a major goal, blind to what comes next or forces outside their control. Something about being so close to a near-certain and genetically fecund Kwisatz Haderach, one so close to marrying into the Golden Lion Throne, had made all those crones sharing so many years of experience think only of two steps ahead- or really, just three trimesters ahead after the wedding. A whole shadow-diplomatic-corps larger than the whole of the Eridanus Chapterhouse’s faculty was dedicated to getting those two married, even as Kanly continued between their dynasties, and not a single Sister was posted outside the two conurbations on the planet they would, if this nightmare marriage really went ahead, eventually rule given the current political trends: Arrakis.

And worst of all, far too little consideration was made of how the gentleman of the hour’s family would gain so much more and have so much more cause to just directly marry into the Imperial family this generation, rather than going through with this wedding of acid and base. Doubly so, for members of the imperial dynasty not brought up in the Order.

It was clear to her, and hopefully to the other proctors, that some elements in one or both of those houses were involved in the assassination plot– means and motive, but no opportunity yet discovered.

Disaster! Current Disaster! Imminent Disaster! Future Disasters! All Disasters, she thought. Behind her calm face, her unimportance and growing sense of age even with mélange made her blood boil.

Em, what are you even trying to say?, Wellamie signed.

Apparently, her thoughts had betrayed her, sputtering random hand signs as she worked herself into an internal frenzy. Her hand winced back in embarrassment.

Emal signed back sheepishly. Arrakis– Dune– Desert Planet. Sorry, Wellie. Was thinking to myself.

Still sour about that paper being rejected four years ago? Wellamie signed.

Always, Emal returned. The Sisterhood had lost most of its appetite for mass education and creation of humans, despite the scattered records of its initial founding statements. Over millennia, the Program had become a means in of itself, the primary method to furthering humanity via the eugenics or tutoring of a select few. Meanwhile, the vast majority of people lived with mindsets and lives indistinguishable from those of ten thousand, even twenty, thirty thousand years ago. Of course such a radical proposal to examine naturally-occurring mass human pedagogy would be overruled on principle.

Finally, the convocation was ending. Action items, mercifully, had already been mandated by the Reverend Mother before the meeting even began– none of the pointless deliberation usually related to the education of the Initiates or Novice Sisters.

As Emal and Wellamie collected their things and got up, Emal’s better half shot some kind of drilling glance into the woman. Something must have slipped past her one of her internal-subconscious simuflow monologues. The drawbacks of living with someone you’ve known since adolescence and have loved for decades, she supposed.

Wellamie shot out her words to her from under her breath as they filed out. “Whatever scheme you’re thinking of, Emal… stay away from that girl.” The expression on her face was deliberate concern, whether for the imagined target of the scheme or for Emal herself.

“Oh? Which one do you mean?” Emal said without affect.

“Maryam Atredies, Emal. Don’t play dumb with me… before all this, an inch towards her outside of your blocks teaching her would get you sent off to be governess to a House Minor. After… well, I don’t want to know what they’d do to you.”

She was serious, and plenty right, thought Emal. Thoughts of why exactly Maryam had given herself sick leave from class right on the day of the attempt were going through her head, true, but the incoming scheduling crisis and Yakoba’s tutelage were slightly higher priority. Jessica’s girl shouldn’t be physically sick from food or mild diseases in any serious way at her level of training, and she looked fine the Saturday just after that. Somethingwas up mentally– a puzzle to uncover later.

“I wasn’t thinking of the girl,” Emal half-lied. “More about Miss Herstal. Schedules and all.”

“Still, at some point you were. I know you.” Wellamie broke her pace with Emal, and stepped right in front of the proctor. Wellamie’s eyes were still as bright a hazel as the day she joined her old classmate on this nowhere-moon, careworn edges of her face diverting any tarnish away from them. “Please don’t even think about spiriting her off like Miss Herstal.”

Emal had to look back into those eyes, and so she did her best to temper her ambitions with some care and common sense. “Of course I won’t, I’m not stupid. Besides, Jessica’s already her direct teacher, technically. I… won’t confront her.” A burst of impishness escaped past her lips. “But if she confronts me…”

Wellamie furrowed her blonde-grey brow, concern and annoyance growing because of yet another slip-up by her. “What do you mean? That makes no sense.”

Emal raised her right eyebrow and finger, and tapped Wellamie on the nose. “Exactly, dear. If she does confront me… Then she’s privy to things we wouldn’t know yet, that require my service. And I exist to serve, after all.” A slight smirk like the devilish smile she used to have back in school emerged on her face.

Wellamie rolled her eyes. “Don’t get all prophetic, Em. She’s not exceptional, just like you said last week.”

Emal shrugged, and the two continued walking to the faculty residences. “Perhaps,” she said. “But, what is a Bene Gesserit without a spare plan or three waiting on her shelf?”

Wellamie chuckled and playfully swatted the side of Emal’s sleeve. As the clacks and shuffles of hundreds of feet on stone spread out from the entrance to the Sisters’ Hall, Emal felt oddly serene. The path forwards for her was impossible to see, but if she weaved enough webs like she was doing, doubtless no opportunity would pass her by.

Chapter 11 Selective Glossary

Kubileya:

The primary city of Dufa, roughly 150 kilometers from the Eridanus Chapterhouse; conurbation population as of 10191 A.G. roughly 1.4 million. Contains the only spaceport on the surface of the moon; primary urban industries are meat-packing, Ranian lichen post-processing and service work for the Chapterhouse. Named ‘Mountain’ in Neo-Phrygian in reference to the pre-atmospheric crater the city center is built into.

Chapter Text

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

– Unknown, Early Machine Culture Poem (Presumed Laudatory)

Astam-i-Irem Tank Facility 05, Tleilax, 10187 A.G.

There was nothing it could see with those newborn eyes but far-off, unfocused sources of light, and only the feeling and smell of painstakingly engineered tank slime and the sound of rushing liquid welcomed it to life. It heard screaming– the scream either came from them or from around them, or both. ‘Outside,’ ‘other,’ ‘self’ and ‘not-self,’ it thought without words. Strange, what are those things, what is this feeli–

A polyethylene-clad arm lifted it further from the tank’s orifice, and then a needle punctured its belly. One source of screaming stopped, and it felt vaguely placid as it drifted back to unconsciousness.

Clinically speaking, and by the exacting standards of its Master, it was grown just as specified.

Astam-i-Eran-wez Face Dancer Training Facility, Tleilax, 10188 A.G.

It grew, and it learned as it grew. It learned from some of those things from memetic injections– how to hunt, how to survive, how to bend its grey-purple body to its limit. How to kill. How to lie. 

It learned other things from the words of the masters themselves. Not alone, no- it was one of dozens, who listened to their burdened heroes as they worked and practiced unceasingly in front of the mihrab-altars. They learned just a sliver of the unstateable actions of God, but enough to know it was a sublime truth ever-enacted on the world. They learned the impurity and chaos outside the Wekht of Jandola. In time, the thoughts from the hands and eyes and ears would reach the thoughts from the needle, and the two would join in perfect unity, faster than any outsider would believe. 

Sometimes, these new ones would be asked to fight each other. It usually won, and after a fight, the defectives were then slain by their peers. It remembered their first, just a few weeks older than it. Too soft, too sympathetic to the powindah when allowed to speak and ask for clarifications.

Some time after that, the Masters injected more compounds into it. It stopped growing: taller now than the Masters, but not as tall as its peers. Its face and bone and tissue was now less flexible, less pliant. It now smelt strange, midway between some filthy powindah and its old neotenous form.

Despite this– it was lauded just as before, and punished just as before, though now with slightly different tasks and training. And eventually, it was deemed ready.

A perfect Face-Dancer.

A Heighliner, 10189 A.G.

“Is this… it?” the strange man said, gesturing towards Hakkag Jeh. He was tall, taller than the face dancer or Master Qaerwin, who stood in front of him, and he smelled of hormonal stinks and mélange and sapho and life uncontrolled.

The room was red and beige, with an unimportant assortment of upholstered furniture along the sides. It was some sort of reception area on a larger vessel inside the heighliner, and not one directly owned by either party. Aside from the three of them, the room was empty. Far too large and bright for Hakkag’s comfort. Nowhere to hide, nothing but their preternatural body to fight with, only two entrances.

“Yes, this is the one we have made for our venture,” its master said. Qaerwin's tone seemed to indicate… annoyance at the tall man. “Its name is Hakkag Jeh. That is unimportant… but not so much their properties.”

“Properties?” the tall man said. “Please don’t tell me that you’re using our agreement as an experimental test. This is risky enough as it seems, to bring them in front of me.” He frowned at Qaerwin, his brow covering pupils so big that they looked like black-on-blue eyes. A clownish tint around his downturned mouth accented the Mentat School tattoo on his lower lip.

Hakkag’s master smiled, and those sharp teeth of his settled into a playful grin. Hakkag Jeh was blessed by the Unknowable God to be the creation of such a beautiful master as Qaerwin. He was a solid hundred-twenty-five centimeters tall, with perfect grey skin and jet hair, and an air of divine command. He did not have patience when it asked foolish things of him, true, but he was possessed with more inspiration than any other masters outside the Khel.

“Risky for who , exactly, mentat?” he shot back. “Our presence in this affair will really be noticed, even in success. Trespassing on Bene Gesserit holdings for an assassination is a significant violation of your Convention. We do not take such risks without collateral, without accomplices. We Bene Tleilax never conspire alone.” He took another step forwards towards the man. “And if this fails…" he said, shaking a finger. "Well, I wouldn’t need to tell you how in twenty, thirty years time you won’t be able to so much as think freely without hiding in a dark hole covered in tinfoils and talismans. Regardless of whether that future false god is your current house of employment’s issue or no.”

The mentat took his own step forwards, and towered over Qaerwin. “Don’t mistake your superstitions as a valid reasons to show your assassin to me!" he shouted.

But, in a moment, he collected himself and continued speaking in an intense, controlled tone. "I, good master, deal in the world of verifiable facts and politics, not mad stories by witches or dwarfen subspecies,” he hissed. “Your first reason is good enough. But, good master, dear little master, do explain to me why a three-quarters grown and… newly… grown face dancer is an adequate weapon? Given, say, the significant forward payments and above all, the discounted spice from our reserves we have given your Order?”

He looked down at the brown-robed Master with a mix of insult and reasserted pride. “My b… employer will not be happy if this one and only attempt does not bear fruit, to put it lightly.”

Qaerwin nodded, and whistled for Hakkag Jeh to come forwards to his left side. So, it did.

The master rested a long-nailed hand on Hakkag Jeh’s shoulder and continued. “This one… is not experimental. Just an uncommonly used product. They have a limited ability to change shape; they ‘set’ and cannot change much after their first target is acquired. But, much more perfect mimicry of your metabolisms than other face dancers. Little to no of their smell.”

Qaerwin stepped behind it, cupped its chin in his hands, and spoke more. “With some of our proper gifts, as this one has, they can also learn key memories and habits of a target, to better blend. This one carries an immature bioweapon and several kinds of precursor agents to poisons inside nodular compartments, for weapons found on-site. That is what I have done. It has been made lovingly for this.”

The tall man showed more interest: he smelled less combative, and his eyes slackened. He looked away with a stony face, and then spoke: “And I assume that the ‘target’ is not our actual target for assassination, but some collateral witch-girl to intercept and replace before she arrives at their chapterhouse? Clever enough.”

“Exactly, mentat. It will be shuffled between several ships and containers held by various shell CHOAM firms provided by us both, and then as stowaways on unrelated vessels, and eventually, a passenger ship heading for Ran. Then, on that one…”

The tall man narrowed his eyes. “Ah-h-h. And on the moon, eventually, it will run across the actual target, the Atreides child. What of the witches, though?”

Master Qaerwin took on a somewhat whimsical, pursed-lipped expression as he spoke “It will adsorb enough muscle memories and the like to get by, and have enough natural control over themselves to fake the rest. And, what’s more, it can learn from the witches themselves!" His smile grew. "A cutting blow in of itself, I’d say… though it will never leave that moon alive to share it with us.”

Hakkag's Master looked away to the furniture with a sigh. “A necessary sacrifice for our shared interests, though.”

The tall man relented his scrutiny, if only in expression. “Well, then,” he smiled.  “That is all acceptable. You must understand, Tleilaxu. You made it seem just a game you were playing.” 

He turned and walked back to where he entered from.

Qaerwin smiled. “I am pleased that a creature of your caliber approves,” he called to him, and he leaned forwards and spoke louder. “And I see that our … prior tutelage has proved fruitful for your life-path, Mentat De Vries.”

The man paused and turned back. This De Vries’s pupils retracted, revealing a blue-on-blue glance that flitted away from the Master. He locked with Hakkag’s red eyes instead, and a nervous and annoyed energy was contained within them. Our conspirator. Our accomplice. Whoever this De Vries serves, Hakkag thought.

The eye contact relented, and De Vries returned to staring at the actual negotiator. “And the assurance for our party’s plans?” he clipped. “Say it again. Now.”

Qaerwin glanced up at Hakkag Jeh with a smile, and looked back at De Vries with the same coy face. “Certainly, Mentat De Vries. We will not contest any marriage with any Corrino witch-princess by your house’s heir, present or future. We will certainly not conspire or side with those who would object to it, either. Possibly, in some given circumstances, even support it!” 

Hakkag’s master then let his face drop back to his more regular bored and disgusted expression. “And will that be all you ask of me before we part, mentat?”

“Yes, Master Qaerwin.” 

De Vries turned and walked out of the room to parts unknown. The Master likewise turned to leave, and Hakkag followed.

Another Heighliner, 10189 A.G.

Hakkag fumbled and poked itself in its sinuses with the external shigawire. Snaking it up into its upper sinus canal was harder than it remembered– It had only done it once before, with Qaerwin watching intently and with plenty of just criticism– and the wire leads danced just below the implants at the base of its brainpan. The receptors had been implanted early, during the final stages of tank gestation, and had been a rigid, unmoving pain in its head even before the rest of its body was frozen as still as stone or plastic.

The target’s body lay next to it in the service ducts of the powindah ship, still warm with that lingering heat of a short uncontrolled life.

It was a simple killing– stalked and lured away on a lonely, musty night on the ship, and then taken away to wherever powindah go with a snap of the neck. The target was killed within rules of a Lashkar, a sanctified murder, and had been given a means to escape. That the target didn’t even know she was hunted… it was no matter. The Lashkar’s grace had been extended. Nobody saw her removal, and nobody would regret her here. One among many, it thought. And it was simple enough to drop the body into the ship’s recycling tanks.

Still, looking at the other end of the shigawire, past that cooling face with that delicately-exposed brain at the back of her skull, Hakkag felt a slight twinge of pity. It had picked the weakest one there as it spied from above and below the vessel’s poorly-secured passengers at possible targets. She, like the others, only had the clothes on her back and whatever she could carry. Space travel, it had learned, was very expensive and weight-rationed if you’re unimportant like the body was. Like she was. Unlike it, who had the weight of Qaerwin and the rest of God’s universe on its back.

Shigawire now rightly placed, it took a deep breath and reached for the controls in-between the two of them. Qaerwin said this… machine would work just like the memetic injections, and the same guarded meditation was needed to correct untruths from the target.

Hakkag held its breath, twisted the connection to “on,” and it prepared to scrounge as much muscle memory and other facts as possible from the target.

Instead, it saw her mother, smiling as a tiny she-self walked towards that infinitely trustworthy giant in the memory. 

What– 

A feeling of joy from sleeping under open stars came to it– and it was terrible. The light! The dark! how empty my life has been, it thought. Feelings of sorrow came, but Hakkag couldn’t understand, couldn’t know whether it was from the target’s memories, or just a response to all that it was seeing.

More and more memories came– faster, faster, more powerful and hungrier than expected. It had played outside under unclean suns, with siblings and later older children at the witch’s disgusting emulation of madrassas. There were classes and friends and tests and all of these–.

How do I know what those are–

Hakkag found itself on its back. Its muscles and tendons had defied its master’s will, and now seized and flexed at the memories of this dead-self they were filching whatever they could from. Her name, the name she – It? It? No, I’m more worthy to God than an ‘it,’ I’m a they!-- her name was now as much theirs– yes, ‘theirs,’ not ‘hers’-- as Hakkag Jeh was before.

Too much, they-she thought! This technology was never supposed to give this much information, this much of her memory and ego. Emotional impulses, pointless preferences, started careening across the shigawire from dead-self to live-self like a punishment from a vengeful ghost. What could they-she-they do?

God rules over matter, matter rules over mind, they thought. God rules over matter, matter rules over mind, God rules over… If she-they-it-whatever could actually resist an elephant’s worth of life with their ant’s worth of experience and synthetic memories, then that was God’s will, outside of her control.

Then, she saw herself being led down a hallway by strange noises after her hall pass was stolen, and then the door she wanted to go through was locked. Then, her head was jerked left getting jerked with a snap . And then, finally, nothing.

Nothing except Hakkag Jeh now looking at her own dead self next to their live one.

The face dancer pushed themself off the ground, and tore the shigawire out of their nose with a gag and a wretch. They looked at their gray arms and legs. This body, their body as before and now for the first time, was wrong. That body– for themself and the mission– needed to be theirs once more.

Hakkag knelt next to the old body, stared it over one last time, and began to re-sculpt themself into its copy before they noticed a snag. Not enough biomass , they grumbled, and she took the monofilament knife to an old thigh, doing what needed to be done.

The face dancer snorted as they scarfed down the remaining cuts of muscle, fat, and sinew. It would take a while to clean up, they thought, and wiped off their mouth on a newly-pale arm. They pushed what material they could into their genetic recombinant gizzard, and began to ‘taste’ the material– their old phenotype felt more imitable, and whatever chance parts of the genotype were beginning to settle into storage for reference.

On ships like these, Hakkag knew, service compartments under the recycling tanks weren’t looked at routinely, but a mess this big would definitely need to be removed in detail by their cleaner’s kit. The idiot powindah don’t know how to care, they thought. They laugh when I’m concerned about every mess made, like at the commissary today, when Jen spilled water on Durru.

A tear came down their face, and then a shuddered breath cut down their throat. They tried to push whatever feeling it was down again.

In the dead ever-night of space, a bloody-handed and bloody-faced Hakkag-Helena dragged their old body, now wrapped in her old Lashkar-suit, to the recycling tanks. After dumping the dead-self, they cut their palms and legs with flesh wounds, threw away the knife and shigawire and the other equipment, and walked back to the faraway passenger quarters of the dingy ship, crying about tripping over something or other after getting lost.

They were also crying about killing herself, but that was a quiet secret to never tell anyone about. Or else they would be just like that defective classmate they killed on Tleilax.

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

It didn’t work. In fact, it failed spectacularly.

Hakkag-Helena Jeh was a hunted … something now, but for now the Sisterhood was just rough-housing and abusing all the servants and locking down half the doors on campus. They were safe until… well, until they started to interrogate the initiates with a Truthsayer, or used the verite drug on them. Safe enough for another attempt? Probably not, but God may give them a way.

For once, the dormitory halls were filled with glowglobes lighting the ways, and despite the short notice that dormitories would be assigned, it was a frustratingly well-planned affair. Helena held her box of things– spare uniform, gym uniforms, toiletries, her cover identity’s few personal mementos and the all-important perfume box– and stood in the hallway like a stunned slig. It reminded them of the old disciplinary and strength-training exercises back on Tleilax. 

Only a few other initiates were standing out with her in the hall, and Hakkag-Helena’s old cellmate was still waiting back inside- probably moving just a quarter of the initiates around at a time, they thought. Those guards turned damn near everything in the cell upside-down as well, looking for weapons or communicators or whatever before ordering them to pack up, which left her old cellmate frazzled– and Hakkag-Helena felt it too, come to think of it. Now more than ever, they felt rigid and locked with fear.

Why did I think that could work?, they thought, and they bit their lip. Swapping out gym bags was going to be a risky process of timing, and then she didn’t even show up! I had to leave it there, with that thing I had slithering around in my belly, and now it’s dead and, oh dear, I…

Some kind of signal was given between the guardswomen, and then they motioned for everyone to follow. They split into different groups, marching past other lines of initiates moving or waiting outside new floors of the dormitory.

Hakkag-Helena sighed. Well, I must not fear, after all. All that stuff. They recalled scrounging around for trash and thermofiber wire and leftovers during the block she was assigned for cleaning duties, all to feed that flensing snake she pushed out of her torso and kept in an old unused cistern outside of the Chapterhouse laundry.

Then, a Guardswoman called out for Helena alone. Hakkag-Helena felt a jolt of panic, but the she-khasadar just guided them up one more floor without a care and left them right in front of their new cell. When she left, the door was still locked– they would only have the thumb locks reset once her cellmate arrived.

Absolute nonsense, they fumed. The face dancer’s arms were getting tired after almost an hour of this, and they now had to wait for yet another fraction of the initiates to get traipsed around like a bunch of sheep? We’re aspiring sisters and other ‘ladies of dignity’ here, not a bunch of five-year-olds at the creche.

As she stewed outside her new prison and base of operations, Hakkag kept an eye on the others. None of them seemed to be her target, unfortunately. She had a few blocks with her– always acting the stuffy highborn with her language, and though she was polite, it always felt like she thought on an essential level she was better than you. And her friend – she shuddered at the memory of getting twisted down to the mats so often by that red fireball of hair and its sadist’s smile. It was like she was assigned her partner in Weirding as divine punishment.

Maybe she was? they worried. That girl intercepted the flensing snake, and then even survived killing it. Thank goodness she was too bloody-eyed to notice anything when I went to get the bag, they thought. Getting Borte’s toe back to her was a moment of God’s guidance. It made Helena look like the very-model of a selfless, conscientious, virtuous student. Or whatever the witch-equivalent to virtue was.

Finally, the next round of initiates started to move around her. The group seemed to be slightly larger than hers, and it didn’t seem like they were paired one-to-one with the preceding group. 

So, a full shuffle? Hakkag thought. This is going to be a pain to wait through. Their arms started to ache.

One more group of initiates came through, this time with her cellmate. She was… fairly tall and broad, with dirty blonde hair and a light, nut-colored skin. She was like the other powindah, smelling of hormones and life uncontrolled. Hakkag-Helena felt like they had seen her somewhere before, but they couldn’t place that brown-eyed face. They thought of sharing a cell with her, and a feeling similar to, but slightly more pleasant than fear shot across their body.

“Uh… hi,” the giant said. “Um, iIs there something on my face?”

Helena corrected herself. “Oh! No, it’s just… you’re, ah, really tall!”

The girl sighed. “I get that a lot. My name’s Yakoba. And you’re…?”

“Helena,” Hakkag-Helena Jeh said. “Um, well met, Initiate Yakoba.”

Yakoba put on a cordial face. “Well, nice to meet you too. When did you get here?”

“I came about a year and a half ago, and I’m sixteen years old.” Helena shifted their weight as they spoke, and gave some parts of her arm a break from holding the box. “I’m originally from Ecaz. But not really any interesting place there. Just… a grassy one, I guess?”

Helena kept her eyes on the girl. They both weren’t happy about the situation, but… this interesting girl looked untrained compared to her old cellmate and classmates like Borte. Maybe this would give her a little breathing room.

The other girl situated herself on the opposite side of the door. “I’m from Poritrin, and seventeen. I’m… an adopted initiate.”

Adopted… that’s the witch word for defective male phenotypes sent to these charnel houses, Hakkag-Helena thought. Must be subtly miserable for them– glad I’m outside that caste classification.

“Ah, there wasn’t a need to tell me,” Helena blurted. “It’s all the same in our case!” They kept mulling over this feeling the weird girl was evoking in her.

“Well… thanks.” was all Yakoba said in response. She looked around at the other initiates with a furrowed brow, and then, after an age, said: “How long do you think it’ll be until they unlock our new cell?”

Hakkag-Helena shrugged and blew a strand of platinum-blond hair out of her face, and then worried that it looked stupid to the girl. “D-don’t ask me," she giggled. "I’ve, ah, been here for, well, almost an hour now.”

“Oh no! I’m, well, sorry to hear that,” the tall girl said, and they both settled into an awkward silence.

Wheels spun inside Hakkag-Helena’s head. Maybe she could use her, make Yakoba theirs somehow. And also, at the same time make themself hers as well: they may give what of their heart wasn’t reserved for the Tleilaxu to the girl. In fact, forget ‘using’ her. A mutual benefit, a calculated exchange of interests– yes!, they thought.

They stole another glance at her cellmate. She had an almost-handsome, almost-beautiful jaw softened by her new hormonal profile, a broad chest they just wanted to fall into and be reassured by and reassure, and– Oh no!-- On top of her box and gym bags, she had what looked like a hastily-made bracelet with a pattern of beads strung through a shiny ribbon. For some reason, their blood now felt still, adrenal glands puffing cortisol for that moment. W-was that from somebody else here?, they panicked.

Yakoba noticed the glance and terror, somehow. The girl apparently was better at petit perception than Hakkag-Helena expected.

“Don’t worry, I know that’s against dress code. I’m not going to wear it. It’s an, um, gift from my old cellmate. We’re good friends.”

“Ah… that’s fine…” Hakkag-Helena said softly. What kind of good friend?, they fumed internally. Am I going to have competition for this? I doubt it, the people here are unclean dullards who don’t get symbiotic partnerships. But fighting them off while also getting to my target, and ugh, doing well enough in blocks and tests is going–

A Sisterhood Guard with some kind of thumblock reader came to interrupt their internal monologue.

“Alright, initiates. Let’s get you set up,” the woman said.

While the two of them finally got to set their things down and began calibrating the thumblocks, Hakkag-Helena’s fretting still continued in the background of their mind. They knew Helena had to take it slow, insert herself into the rhythms of Yakoba’s life, and wait for the right time. Simple calculations, simple precepts. Just like what they would need to do for the next kill attempt on Maryam Atreides.

Chapter 12 Selective Glossary

No words of note.

Chapter Text

Good food and good friends,

Alongside these two:

Good wine might be nice,

And one woman true.

All things found,

All things lost;

But some things never seen,

‘Tween lives and ‘tween deaths

And ‘tween frost and the green.

– Chorus of Common Chusuk Drinking Song

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

It was a beautiful, sunny day outside at the Chapterhouse, and so of course it was also dinnertime in a windowless cafeteria. For once, the meal wasn’t something made entirely of starches and mystery sauce though. Something with capers, spare bits of lamb, steamed green peppers, and red onions, all on top of wild rice (as gamey and strong-tasting as it sounded), was a welcome change from the endless series of gelatinous vegetable stews for Yakoba. The Sisterhood Guards looming over the back of the kitchen and at each entrance were an additional novel sight, though in an ominous way that contrasted with the pleasant change in routine she had on her tray. More than a few initiates started lines going to and from nowhere at the cafeteria entrance because they thought the Guards were at the front of queues, adding a downright surreal element to the evenings as students adapted to the new state of affairs.

Someone tried to kill Maryam, and because of them Borte had been stuck recovering in bed for a week.

Off in the distance, she could see Borte– fresh from the infirmary– bobbing over to where Maryam sat. Finally,she thought, we can have dinner together, a chance for a little bit of norm–

“H-hi, Yakoba,” Helena said from behind her.

It took every ounce of her training not to jump up a meter in the air and yelp out of surprise. “Ah! Hi, Helena!,” she choked. That new cellmate of hers was too quiet. “How are you doing?”

“Ah, q-quite well! Would… you mind eating with me?”, she said. Helena apparently was about the same skill level as Maryam and Yakoba, but she hadn’t had a chance to talk to either of those two since their cells were re-shuffled to see what the girl was like around other people. In the two days that she knew her, Yakoba found out most of what she knew about the quiet Helena through passively noticing her cellmate rather than talking with her. Despite seeming normal if mildy insensitive in their first conversation, Helena became strangely shy around Yakoba.

“Uh… sure, Helena,” Yakoba lied. She really wanted to be around literally anyone else in her free time right now. “I was going to eat with my friends, do you want to join?”

The girl looked flushed for a moment. “Friends? I mean… sure.” Helena didn’t really seem to have friends, or act like she’d ever had any otherwise. Her chubby, pale face didn’t seem to have any emotions other than a blank (‘pensive’ or ‘determined’ if you put it politely) expression and varying levels of mortified or apologetic, which were all equally likely given any situation she saw her in.

Yakoba lit up, finally getting at least half a break from her. “Great!” She kept walking, Helena following in her shadow “One of them, she’s Maryam, I think you know her? She was the one who made the bracelet, and the other is Borte, wh–”

A sudden clatter came from behind as Helena tripped, almost dropping her tray. The girl looked white as a sheet from the near-food loss experience. You couldn’t go back for seconds, no matter what the situation was.

“I’m fine! It’s, it’s all right…” Helena said, trailing off. The next ten meters or so to the table were thankfully incident-free.

Borte looked a little different since her recovery in the infirmary. Rather than a mass of hastily-braided red hair ready to explode in all directions, she (or somebody else) had carefully re-braided her hair so it was just one long continuous plait going from over her forehead to the small of her back. Compared to Maryam’s wavy bob, Yakoba’s messy bun, and Helena’s long limp hair, it seemed a little pretentious for an initiate. But, to be fair, nobody else wearing blue-and-grey here had battle scars.

“…Anyways, I asked one of the guardswomen who ‘debriefed’ me or whatever if I could get dark blue instead of light blue for edging on my new uniform, seeing that I’ve fought as much as any of them have, but she just yelled at- hey, Yak!” Borte’s face lit up at the sight of the other girl.

That smile was infectious, Yakoba had to admit, and she grinned back as she set her tray down and went around the table to hug one another. Helena stood awkwardly behind them.

“Ah! Not so hard,” Borte yelped. “Look at you, trying to break a poor girl in half with your training while she’s down!” Yakoba wasn’t hugging hard- instead, it was Borte squeezing the two of them like a vise, even after the gulp of pain. She relented her own hug, if only to play along.

Maryam interrupted the mutually-destructive embrace. “Hello, Helena? Is there something we might do for you?” The heir looked across at Helena, either oblivious to why she followed her cellmate there or just running on aristocratic autopilot.

Helena looked flustered. “Oh, ah… Maryam, hi. I was… going to eat with Yakoba, my cellmate. My new cellmate!” She glanced around and turned to Yakoba. “Are we eating with them? It feels like the table’s crowded already.”

To be fair, Borte had somehow gotten an extra tray of food again for them all to share.

Yakoba and Borte finally released each other from their test of strength, and the tall girl moved back to the table. “Of course we are, Helena. You three share a lot of classes, right? I’m jealous… probably won’t make it to your current levels for, ah, two years at best.”

A flash of hesitation crossed Helena’s face before she returned to that blank expression and sat down. “Yeah. Off the top of my head we have Weirding, Anticipatory Language Acquisition, and Azhar Book Studies together…”

“Mm, Don’t forget that the two of us have Remedial Algebra together too!” Borte said. A few bits of rice flew from her mouth as she crammed food in there while she talked. “By the way, glad I could miss that test Tuesday, mmph. Not so glad that I haven’t had a good meal in a week, though.”

Borte then interrupted herself. “And, mm, I– Oh! Thank you for, mm, finding my toe last week.” Yakoba couldn’t tell if her spitting out rice while talking was a calculated attempt to disgust Helena as some sort of test, or just Borte being Borte.

“Oh… it’s no problem,” Helena said. “I was there, and when I saw your feet I noticed and so… It felt like the right thing to do.” She looked down at her food. “Thank you for your bravery, Borte.”

“Thank me! Well, sure. I suppose I deserve thanks for that, Helena.” Borte said. Finally, the thresher on the front of her face paused for a moment.

Maryam glared at Borte and rolled her eyes. “Borte, you make my family’s swordmaster look positively humble.” She turned back to Helena. “Your gratitude is respectfully accepted, Helena… at least by myself. And I’m happy to see that Yakoba has you as her new cellmate. Both of you have things you can complement the other with in your classes.”

Maryam really likes to suggest what other people do, Yakoba thought. I can handle Prana Bindu on my own and meditation with Myuller. She’s not a teacher, for goodness’s sak–

“Like… helping me with mathematics and history, I suppose,” Helena said. “I heard you don’t take any of those courses anymore, since you need to focus on core curricula and are already above your age’s level.” A strange look mixing what seemed to be a smile and fear came on the girl’s face as she looked at Yakoba. “That’s impressive.”

How does she know anything about that? Yakoba thought. We don’t share any classmates, let alone classes, and she’s mostly a loner. She tried not to think any more about how or why she learned all that in just a few days.

Breaking eye contact with Helena, Yakoba desperately changed the subject. “So who are you two cellmates with now?”

Maryam and Borte glanced at each other and then smiled at Yakoba.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

“It’s great!” Borte said. “I don’t have to deal with a roommate I don’t know, and Durru was getting tired of me anyways. A win-win all around.”

“Well, that’s good then. Helena and I are getting along.” Yakoba kept her annoyed disappointment to herself. It was bad enough that she had such a hasty goodbye with Maryam, but now those two were rooming together while she was… well, Helena isn’t all bad, just annoying in a way opposite to how Borte is, she thought.

“Yes!” Helena said. “No problems so far.” She forced some kind of smile onto her face.

“I’m so relieved to hear that. You know,” Maryam volunteered out of nowhere. “I was told by my mother that I was almost named Helena like you, after my paternal grandmother.” She paused, lowering her brow to the edge of seriousness. “But my father didn’t like the idea, for some reason.”

“Are you named after your other grandma, then?,” asked Yakoba. It wasn’t often that you could glean bits of Great House family drama directly from the dynastic heir herself. Maybe she really was making those ‘connections’ her idiot father always pushed her to make.

Maryam shook her head slightly. “No. My mother, Lady– apologies, Sister Jessica, was raised up in the Order. We both don’t know who my other grandparents were.”

“Oh?” Borte said. “Then why Maryam? That’s not a very Caladan-ish or Atredies-y name.” The girl furrowed her brow and narrowed her eyes like she was cross-examining Maryam. “You all have names like, ‘Artorias,’ or ‘Yuri-dice,’ or ‘Douglas,’ or ‘Xerox,’ right?”

“Maryam is very much Caladanian, lass!” The Na-Duchess shot back with a stink-eye. Borte had a tight-lipped but maniacal smile at once again breaching her cellmate’s formality. Maryam then collected herself. “…Though, usually it’s written Mariam. But that’s beside the point.”

Helena sat with an uncomfortable look on her face. “That’s… interesting,” she said. “I never got to ask my mother why my name was given. I was six when I was given to a juvenile school… my father was dead then, and my mother was very ill at the time.” She started to eat, still looking across the table at Maryam and Borte. Somehow her teeth could shear through the tough lamb meat as if nothing was there.

“I’m… very sorry to hear that.” Maryam said. Despite her stuffiness, she did have a sympathetic heart, as Yakoba could attest to.

“It’s fine,” Helena said. “It’s been a long while now.” The expression and tone she was using was uncanny and impossible to read.

Yakoba looked concerned at her cellmate, and decided to change the subject. “Helena… do you have any hobbies?”

The other girl quickly turned her head and moved to a more normal expression. “Yes! I… uh, like knitting, but I haven’t had a chance to do it in a while. There’s a lot of spun wool made here, apparently, though being able to buy it or have the time to work on it is impossible for us initiates.”

“You ever snuck off to work on knitting?” Borte asked, grinning. “I know Maryam here loves reading and swordplay, but the most we ever get to do here is work with knives. And Yakoba just wants to lock herself in the printing rooms for those silly games she makes.”

They weren’t just ‘silly games,’ Yakoba fumed. They were narrative experiences with strategic depth. Just because she’d never had more than an hour to explain the rules to them didn’t mean they were ‘silly.’

“Hush, Borte. You don’t even have a hobby!”

The girl protested. “Sure I do! I’m–“

“Watching filmbooks is not a hobby!” Yakoba said, continuing her glare. “You’re just watching them, you’re not even doing anything!”

Borte stuck her tongue out. “Watching is a form of doing, lass.” She settled into a casually triumphant pose. “Besides, I’ve seen all sorts of things you wouldn’t believe on them, like boys, or sandworms.”

The other three looked at Borte with a mix of disbelief and exhaustion.

“Borte, I swear. It’s like all you think about is ‘boys’,” Yakoba said. “You haven’t even been chaperoned around them, for goodness’s sakes.”

The Middle Lass scoffed. “What, is it my fault I’ve never met one?” She pointed accusatorially with her fork. “Unlike me and Helena, you two have had plenty of boy-access growing up, what with your weird animal ‘academies’ where you disguised as a boy, and your ‘castles’. And you two didn’t even do anything with that!”

Yakoba didn’t think often or fondly about her early adolescence, but Borte’s idiocy put it front-and-center that somehow, despite all odds, she was the most experienced with romance of the four of them.

Borte kept going on, now jabbing at Maryam with the fork like a fencing sword and grinning like a lascivious idiot. “Like, well, Mister Dunk, for instance. You go on about how great 'Mister Dunk' is, but did you ever kiss him or whatever?"

Yakoba saw a faint twitch in Maryam's shoulders– a suppressed urge to lay Borte out across the table. Helena’s body language got even more tense, somehow.

"Borte, I've known him since before I can remember," the Youngest Lass started. "He's like family–"

"But not actually family, right?" Borte went on, raising an eyebrow over her sunken eyes. "I mean, he’s your servant, you’ve got rights, and you've shown us pictures of your House– he's super-hot!"

Maryam shuddered.

Yakoba tried to intervene. “Borte, Mister Dunk is, um… almost thirty years older than us. It’s not an appropriate thing to even think about, any way you look at it. And we really should change–”

“Eh? I don’t think that matters. The Proctors never’ve said that was a problem, so–”

“Please shut up, you po-, you dirty, filthy girl!” Helena shouted at the top of her lungs, standing at her full height.

The entire cafeteria stopped and stared at their table. Helena sheepishly sunk back into her chair, and Borte’s eyes were wide open in shock.

“But–” the Middle Lass started.

“Borte, no,” said Yakoba.

Maryam composed herself and cleared her throat. “Borte, men aren’t just things to gawk at and play the fool about. And neither are your fellow students, or any sort of people for that matter.” The girl’s gaze locked with Borte’s as she dipped one hand below the table, and then those green eyes and dark brow turned unrecognizable for a moment. “Behave yourself or remove yourself, friend.”

Across the table from them, Yakoba saw a stern expression that could only have been copied from her parents, but warped with some sort of experience. Like of someone who knew what death looked like. Was she signing with her other hand?, she thought.

Borte started to protest, but then just pouted and rolled her eyes.

Maryam faced Helena again. “Again, I have to apologize. Borte is… a contrarian at times as you know, and she’s still coming down from the highs and lows of her recovery.” She placed her other hand out on top of Helena’s. “If you come with Yakoba to meet Borte and I, I will personally make sure we are on our best behavior from here forwards.” She side-eyed Borte. “Courtesy to others is best practiced, and learned, by always observing it.”

Helena watched Maryam’s speech with a ponderous expression. “Thank you, Maryam,” she said, and nodded.

With Borte temporarily admonished by one of the few forces in the universe she respected, the conversation and dinner slowly shifted towards a less uncanny or combative one. Discussions of knitting, card games, and old court gossip from Caladan was sometimes joined by anecdotes from random filmbook dramas (though Maryam insisted that those intrigue plots were overblown and unrealistic).

For once, Helena looked a little less shell-shocked, though Yakoba noticed that she still had a huge amount of nervous energy behind her posture. She kept shifting her eye position to see more of Yakoba from the corners of her eyes when she thought nobody was looking, as well. A common Bene Gesserit trick, yes, but why on her?

“Er... how’s Proctor Myuller?” Borte asked, this time swallowing food before asking. “Did she teach you any secret tricks?” A slight shrinking of Helena’s pupils could be seen– Yakoba hadn’t told her cellmate about her predicament yet.

Yakoba finished her last bite of dinner and put down her fork.

“Oh, nothing much so far when I go to her office. Just reviewing the basics of meditation and sometimes prana-bindu stuff.” She didn’t want to bring up that interrogation she was given to herself, much less to anyone else. Whatever was going on with that cross-eyed vision the proctor pulled out of her felt Other– like a terrible shadow lurking and ready to take her over.

Helena piped up. “Y-you’re being taught by Myuller directly? She’s terrifying!”

Yakoba put on a reassuring face. “She’s not all bad, Helena. I mean, she does constantly remind me of how I’m nowhere close to surviving a Humanity Test, and she does yell and use the Voice on me a lot, and sometimes she talks like I’m not actually there, but… well, yeah.” She paused, poking her food. “I guess she is kind of terrible, though she does seem to care about me.”

“Well, it’s been only about a week at most, right?” Maryam said. “Direct teaching takes time, and it really is more effective to learn the Way that way, one on one.” She looked at Yakoba with a kind face. “It sounds like she’s trying to speed your other studies up as well, is that right? You could catch up to us sooner than you think.”

A sympathy smile spread on Yakoba’s face. “Maybe so… Oh–” She paused to recollect the details. “Yesterday, she said she couldn’t see me on Monday the week after next. But she wants to arrange for me to go with her on a trip this Sunday.” She looked down at the empty plate, disappointed that the actual meal was finished.

“Really?” Borte said.

“Yeah, but I don’t know what kind of trip. She said it was too important for her not to do, and that I needed to come along.” Yakoba pushed a spare grain of rice around with her fork.

“I bet it’s a crime trip, right? You’re getting Myuller to help you run drugs for our new gang.”

Yakoba groaned. “We don’t have a gang, Borte!”

“And if we did, we don’t sell drugs,” Maryam interjected. “That’s irresponsible.”

Borte lowered her brow for a moment. “Well, I think we should have a gang, with a cool name like ‘Elacca Scrubbers’. We’ve got four people in the friend group now, right?” She winked at Helena, whose eyelids faintly twitched. “If there’s three witches, it’s a coven, and if it’s four friends, then it’s a gang.”

Helena balked. “I… find you all nice company, but I don’–“

Maryam glared at Borte again. “Borte, we are just a friend group. It’s not like we have to have it notarized somewhere, like if the two or three of you were appointed as my ladies-in-waiting.”

The patently ridiculous image of Borte and herself trying to blend in high society flashed through Yakoba’s mind– though, the idea of wearing some kind of tailored gown did seem nice.

“I’d rather not be part of a gang!” Helena squeaked. “Thank you for your company, Maryam, but I really mustbe going. I’ll see you at bedtime, right, Yakoba?” The tone was definitely pleading, bargaining even. Borte could be a pain and a handful, yes, but why was she so distraught?

The three stared with varying levels of concern and confusion as Helena gathered her things and left. For once, Borte kept quiet, simply finishing her food with one eye out for how far away Helena was from them.

Once she was gone from the hall, she spoke up again. “Well, she’s nice enough. Are you going to bring her every lunch?”

For once, Yakoba was the one flustered. “Bring her? She practically ambushed me and asked to come along. She didn’t know I was going to sit with you two.”

A split-second expression of surprise turned to amusement on her round face. “Oh! Ohhhh!” Then, a half-barking chuckle. “Well, let her down easy when it comes time, Yak.”

Before she could process Borte’s reaction, Maryam interrupted, expression as sober as ever. “Once you’re back from your trip Sunday, the three of us must take time to talk. There are some… things I need to discuss with you two, at the same time, especially after what happened. Can you arrange with Sister Atti to let us meet at her place?”

Yakoba sighed. “You’ve asked that dozens of times, it’s the same answer! You know that she only hosts adopted initiates.” She paused. “And, Borte’s also explicitly been banned, regardless of whatever rank she attains.”

Maryam sat back with some resignation. “Well, I will figure out some other arrangement, or we will just sit outside if it comes to that.” She turned to Borte. “Do you have any ideas?”

For once, Borte was introspective. “…There’s a backroom used for repairs in the filmbook library. I think I know where to get the keys. And a carafe. You’ll need at least water after your trip, Yakoba, right?” She stood up, an audible warped hum coming from her medical-grade suspensor belt. Against their best judgement, the sisters at the infirmary decided to give her one to lighten her step while her feet continued to heal.

“I guess,” Yakoba said. “I think we’ll be going to the city, from what she implied.”

“You’ll have to tell us all about it, just have to!” she said, scarred face smiling. Borte swept her tray away, and with a light-footed limp bobbed off to an exit.

Maryam kept talking as the other two grabbed their own things. “I know it hasn’t been the best situation for you lately, Yakoba. I really hope it turns in your favor soon. And you’re already getting moved to a higher set of prana-bindu courses next month, right? That’s excellent!” Yakoba followed Maryam out between the other tables full of students, keeping an awkward shuffle to match the girl’s shorter legs.

She looked over her shoulder at Yakoba and smiled as they dropped off their trays. “You’re learning exceptionally well, Yak. I really hope I’ll see you in the same classes as us at some point. You’re a whole lot more than what you think of yourself.” Something about how she said it made it feel both sincere and hollow at the same time.

Yakoba’s feet slowed as a feeling of frustrated dread passed over her. Something, too many things, were being hidden from her, and at the same time this charade was going on, she felt like she was being dragged first by Myuller, and now by her best friends into assuming terrible purposes meant for somebody else. The weight of it all felt like a knife’s edge under her feet, just like with Borte’s injuries, and she was already too weary to dance on it any further.

She kept walking behind them.

Chapter 13 Selected Glossary

Powindah:

Pejorative Bene Tleilax term for those not from their society, rarely used in the presence of outsiders. Often translated as "unclean," "filthy," "unbeliever," "infidel," or "impure" in the very rare case that an Islamiyat-to-Galach translation is needed.

Chapter Text

There is some confusion in the historical record over the backgrounds of Duke Leto XI and the Lady Mariam’s two most senior military men, Warmaster Gurney Halleck and Swordmaster Duncan Idaho. Multiple scholars have theorized that the attested origin of Halleck as a slave on Gammu was later conflated to Idaho in either a confusion of the two figures or to emphasize the enmity between the Atreides and Harkonnen dynasties. Recent compilings of school records in the Ginaz Swordmaster archives, however, have confirmed that a student of that era sponsored by the Atreides dynasty named Duncan Idaho, did indeed have Giedi Prime as his listed homeworld, as Gammu was called then. Under such evidence, we can either confirm that the Atreides found many of its most trustworthy lieutenants among the disaffected subjects of their rival, or instead call into question the historical existence of Gurney Halleck…

– Docent-Sharif Josiah Harstle, Late-Corrino House Atreides: Historical Perspectives and Modern Archaeological Contexts

Caladan, 10191 A.G.

Duncan sighed as he wiped seagull shit off the groundcar with a soapy rag. When the most eventful thing to happen was getting rained on by a flock of birds on the way back from drill, a day has officially been boring to an insulting degree.

Not that he wanted to jinx it, though. The last month had seen Duncan accompany the duke and the security detail he and Thufir had assembled on multiple diplomatic missions, one to Kaitain for a rare showing of a ruler at his own Landsraad delegation, and one to Wallach IX for yet another round of those gross negotiations. The two assassination attempts by the Harkonnen and other rival houses had already faded from his nerves, but he still noted such attacks were happening with increasing frequency.

A sergeant, transferred from some other continent’s garrison to Cal City, came up to him as he continued scrubbing. “Master Idaho, sir.”

“Yes, sergeant, ah…?” Damn it all, Duncan thought. Normally he was good with names, but with how many staffing shuffles Thufir had done, he barely had time to learn who he was going to have driving the duke around. Something must be up with security for such a rotten amount of personnel shifts.

“Sergeant Pavel Mechare, sir. Permission to speak freely?” Pavel looked in his early thirties like he still did (spice supplements and luck letting Duncan look a decade younger than his actual fourties), and he had brown skin and a scar on his lip from some old fight.

Duncan pulled back from the groundcar and directly faced the man. “Go ahead, Mechare.”

“You should let someone lower on the ranks handle cleaning, sir.”

Duncan took a step forwards and relaxed his posture. “You know I can’t do that, Pavel. I gotta make sure at least one of these things is a hundred-percent sabotage-free.”

Pavel pulled out a slip of paper with Thufir’s daysign and his signature on it. “Sir, you can trust me for this. Head on in.”

Duncan relented and handed him the rag, shaking his hands dry as he walked to the main entrance of Castle Caladan. The building was positively ancient at this point– thousands of years, he had heard– but the Old Earth-style masonry and woodwork had continuously been examined, replaced, and re-insulated and electrified for so long that God himself probably couldn’t tell you how many stones were still original or if the other miniature versions of it across the planet built from its refuse could equally be considered Castle Caladan. What it all led to was an unexpected feeling of warmth and rusticity within the main reception halls that felt more akin to some pyon’s homestead than to one of the Great Houses.

To be fair, among the hundred-million or so nobles in the Imperium, the Atreides were considered in wealth and stature on the galactic scale to be akin to just such a well-respected family of farmers. There were plenty of Houses Minor with larger asset pools than the Atreides had, as Duncan was repeatedly reminded when asking for budget increases. He had heard Leto’s grumblings about his family’s inability to gain a CHOAM Directorship for generations, and it was to the credit of Duke Leto’s leadership and Thufir and his understudys’ management of the Pundi Rice exports that their political relevance could be sustained in the dynasty’s current state.

The Old Duke’s bull glowered from one end of the hall, a grim reminder of Atreides hubris and the dwindling of its ranks to just one man, one planet, and three daughters of a witch-concubine.

As he wheeled towards the castle barracks and his office, some random maid waved him down. He had seen this good-looking one once or twice before at least, though usually just moving stuff into or out of the ducal solar region of the castle or in the swarm of other maids around Ella.

“Master Idaho?” She looked fairly young, but you could never tell anymore. Dietary supplements like mélange and the options presented by rejuvenative therapies or reconstructive surgeries, let alone Bene Gesserit witchery, added to the various social pressures on women’s appearances, which he frankly appreciated.

“Yes, miss?” Duncan kept his eyes locked on her face for his own good.

“Lady Jessica requests your presence in her reception room.” This was odd. Why would she send her to talk to him? Not that he minded, to be frank.

“Did she say anything about the reason?” The woman had his attention in more ways than one, but he felt like he was being led into a trap.

Jessica and Duncan did… not have a regular working relationship. The best communication that they ever had was back when he was teaching Maryam fighting and strategy, but that girl had been off getting bewitched who-knows-where for the past, oh, over a year now.

“No, Master Idaho, but she expects you promptly.” She gestured for him to follow.

Up and around and down again and past the palm locks to the ducal solar he went, making sure to keep his eyes up and his wits about him.

He was deposited in one of Jessica’s many rooms, this one sort of half-between a proper drawing room and an office. The place had overwrought wood paneling on the walls and a red carpet, and two great windows on one side, with a lonely overstuffed chair in-between them. Outside, the magnificent view of river orchards and the side of Mount Syubi further beyond would have been like in a storybook, if their everyday presence didn’t constantly push it all out of mind.

On the opposite side of the room, near some more functional chairs and side tables and an overloaded yet meticulously sorted desk, stood Jessica, a red-haired figure clad in blue and green breaking up a crimson-brown room. She either knew he would be there shortly or had been walking around impatiently, but her upright politeness remained impossible to read as usual.

Duncan bowed slightly. “My lady.”

Jessica smiled slightly in return. “Thank you, but there’s no need for that, Duncan.”

Duncan shrugged. “I’ve always figured that showing politeness to my Duke’s consort is the best way not to have my head removed from my neck.”

A forced chuckle came from Jessica as she walked closer and rested a hand on the back of a chair. “Well put, Master Duncan. I’ve always appreciated you and Gurney’s …bluntness, compared to Yueh or my children’s other influences.” Duncan couldn’t help but notice that they were still standing on either side of would be a more relaxed set up for conversation.

Something tugged at his pant leg from below.

“Up!” It was Jessica the Younger. Somehow that two-year-old had flown the nursery and was in the middle of the drawing room.

“Oh?” Duncan said, careful to lighten his tone. “Is she supposed to be here?”

“We just returned from some time outside,” Jessica said. She bobbed her head towards Little Jess, smiling. “Go ahead.”

Carefully, Duncan lifted the toddler with both hands and with a bounce brought her up to his shoulder height. Three of these hellspawn going ‘Mister Dunk, up, up!’ now, he thought. I’m getting an idea of how Thufir feels nowadays.

“So, Lady Jessica, what brings me here today?” From his perspective, it felt like he was holding a miniature replica of the Lady, giving him a kind of stereoscopic double vision of two bronze-haired noblewomen. At least Little Jess’s smile could be trusted, though.

Jessica stepped to the side of the chair and placed down a picture book she was holding on the table. “Master Duncan… I have a serious matter to discuss, that should remain private for now.” No change in her expression or mannerisms could be detected by him.

Oh, shit, he thought. She must have heard about him and Ella’s soiree a month ago. The two of them had always been on again, off again, even before her promotion to Jessica’s chambermaid, but it was generally expected by Thufir that Duncan should keep his womanizing to outside the direct house staff of the Atreides.

“And I know about that, and frankly don’t care to bring it up to Thufir. But that’s not the issue I brought you here for.”

Whatever relief Duncan had was countered by Jessica’s usual witchery throwing him off-balance. He continued to listen intently as he balanced an uncooperative Little Jess on his shoulder.

Jessica clasped her hands in front of her, propping them off of her slim body by the elbows. “You know I’ve been receiving regular correspondence from Maryam at the school. Most of it clearly censored by the Order to keep her location a secret, but enough details and old turns of phrases make it clear that she’s still the one writing them. She’s made friends for the first time, at the least.” She paused and dropped her hands to her sides, searching for something on the outside of her day dress. “I haven’t heard back from her in two weeks now, and then… this was sent to my personal mail.”

Duncan tried to throw back whatever tide of intrigue was coming in from Jessica, but Little Jess's bobbing and grasping was keeping him off balance. “I’m sorry, but wouldn’t the Duke or Thufir–“

“It was either you, Yueh, Ella, or Gurney,” Jessica interrupted, voice still somehow uncannily split between a motherly tone for Little Jess and her regular matter-of-fact phrasing. “This has got to remain a secret to the House as a whole– telling Thufir or, Great Mother, my Leto would ruin this delicate balancing act we have with the Order.” She paused, glancing at the small white card she pulled forth. “Gurney is too honest, and… well, too good a person to trust. Ella has no mind for this kind of thing and speaks to too many people. And Yueh… he has his own demons, I fear.” A slightly pained expression revealed itself on the concubine’s face.

“Lady Jessica, if you’re confiding in me as–“

“I’m not confiding in you as a family friend, I’m asking a teacher of my daughter and her father’s swordmaster.” The look was Serious. You did not want to cross swords or words with a Serious Jessica. But was she talking to her daughter’s teacher as a Bene Gesserit agent, or as the mother of a family just a step removed from disinheritance and bastardry?

Duncan relented. “Very well, my Lady. Please go on.”

In her hand, she displayed to Duncan some kind of small laminated card with an inlaid Ridulian microfiche. Little Jess giggled and started staring at this brand-new thing in front of them both.

Jessica continued, gesturing with emphasis. “This is Maryam’s yearly report of her studies, which parents get– believe it or not, but these places are also often finishing schools for noblewomen, not just for training adepts.”

“Good to know she’s still getting a well-rounded education,” Duncan mumbled. He remembered back on Ginaz more than a few foppish teenagers in spotless uniforms, some impossibly younger than his already wearied and scarred body, jetting between useless classes without a care in the world or any sense with which to build a swordmaster.

“All Bene Gesserit training is well-rounded,” she shushed. “Now. Normally, these should be sent out at the end of the year, which was the first surprise– well, the surprise of note.” Duncan could spy what seemed like frankly mediocre looking numbers and letters on the card and said nothing.

Duncan nodded along. “Right, it’s more than a month until Saint Butler’s Day, almost two till New Year’s.”

He felt a slight pull on his topknot– Jess was getting interested in some exploratory hairdressing.

“I was confused about it at first, too. But some wording in the commentary section clued me in that there was a coded message.”

“Was it on the microfiche?” Duncan adjusted himself to catch Little Jess’s hand before she could pull the topknot apart and spill his hair everywhere. The little devil giggled at this new game.

Jessica continued. “It’s encoded in the perforation marks on the laminated card. I won’t go into the details. But,” she paused, breathing in. “There was an attempt on Maryam’s life. She was nowhere near the event, thankfully, but another student got hurt by it. They don’t know who did it. The Chapterhouse she’s at is going into lockdown now. Duncan…” she sighed slightly, her face still dead serious. “We can’t do anything but wait for whatever news comes next.”

Jessica looked and sounded collected, but he could tell she was ready to explode, if only from her words. They had tried to take the life of her daughter! Duncan thought.

Duncan’s veins chilled. “Do you know who sent this? Do you know where she is now?”

Jessica looked Duncan in the eyes. “I have no clue who. It would have to be someone who’s a proctor or some other form of administrator at the Chapterhouse to be able to re-purpose official letterhead this way.” She broke contact and gazed to the windows, looking slightly exasperated. “For all I know, it could be the Proctor Superior there herself, or sent from Wallach IX instead of where she is now.”

“So she’s not on Wallach IX?” Duncan felt some relief. The idea of being on the same planet as Maryam while they had those arbitrations about her with some thin-lipped devils from Giedi Prime and a bunch of tight-lipped swamp hags had been eating him up like bone-seeking acid.

“No, she’s at a Chapterhouse-Moon in the Ran system, on Dufa. The only habitable place there. Whoever sent this mentioned that.”

Duncan tensed up. For a moment, he felt ready to shout ‘what, so we can go pick up her body after they mess up again!?’, but Little Jess’s squeezing of his fingers popped himself back to his senses. “What can we do now?,” he said.

Jessica sighed. “I wish we could just pull her up and back to here, but… she stays until she graduates to Sister rank.” She glanced at Little Jess, now twiddling Duncan’s thumb and pointer finger. “Maryam’s almost an adult, almost… of age, and she’s been living in danger her whole life. Will be living in danger. If she can’t stay safe at a chapterhouse of all places…”

Giedi Prime will destroy her, the dark parts of Duncan’s mind interjected. Feyd-whatever and the rest of those freaks will feed her broken corpse to that abominable baron. His mind pulled him further inwards, now remembering red-blonde haired oafs hooting and howling after his teenage body filled with darts, their ‘most dangerous game’ in a rocky carcinogenic hunting ground–

A shock of bronzy-red hair in front of his eye and a small finger up his nose once again brought him back into the world as it was.

“That’s enough, little one.” Jessica walked over to Duncan with her hands free, and the swordmaster gladly handed off the hellion back to her mother. She smiled at Little Jess as she walked back to a chair and sat down with her on her lap.

Jessica started praising her double. “You did well, yes you did!” The girl cooed and giggled.

Duncan was confused. Was I just forced to behave myself and listen by a toddler?, he thought. Under more dire circumstances, he wouldn’t put it past Jessica to give her smaller copy a knife or poison needle and pull a similar trick.

“Well now, Duncan, you may sit!” Jessica said, smiling. “That is all the sensitive matters I wished to confide in you. If I require anything else, you’ll be told. I would serve that tea, but the girl’s in the way, as you can see.” Her tone and face sounded particularly smug to Duncan. “We haven’t spoken much since this one was born, so we’re in need of some time to catch up as it is. It’s poor practice for a duke’s secretary and his swordmaster to not keep on the same page regarding household affairs.”

Carefully, Duncan made his way over, poured two cups of tea, and handed one to Jessica.

“I did give her a knife, at the least,” he said as he sat down.

Jessica looked bemused. “Oh, the one Gurney sanded down? I would have preferred it sharp, but Leto likes to humor Gurney’s overprotectiveness.” She then looked more ponderous. “That old man sees too much of his poor sister in the girls for their own good.”

Duncan grinned. For once, he could feel clever around her. “No, there was… a second one I got put in her things. A nicer one. The switchknife, that first switchknife? That was a decoy.”

Jessica blinked, then sighed with relief. “So… she has something to fight with there. She’s as good as safe as can be, then. Thank you.”

Duncan sipped the tea. Slightly too cool– I really was expected earlier, he thought. “It’s just part of my job to protect her. So, her friends, are they any use in a fight?” The idea of a bunch of schoolgirls barreling down on an assassin was faintly ridiculous, until you accounted for at least one of them knowing how to use a knife and whatever witchery would be involved.

“Well, she mostly talks about two of them in the letters. One’s quite feisty and mouthy, I suppose, and grew up in the Order like I did. They got in some kind of fight just after she got there, but they became friends afterwards.” She paused and sipped. “She sometimes compares her to Alissa and you, but I don’t see it.”

Duncan bristled slightly at being compared to some ‘mouthy’ little girl, but decided to consider it a compliment on her behalf. It was certainly some triumph of the human spirit for someone to act that rudely despite growing up around all of those stern Sisters. Giedi Prime was harder though– definitely harder.

Jessica continued. “The other one is her roommate, who’s, well… the term is cross-gender, I think, or that would be what we’d call it on Caladan. From what Maryam wrote, it sounded like she was disowned and given over to them.”

Duncan chose his words carefully, “So… this one was born a boy, but was actually a girl and is now training to be a Bene Gesserit?”

“Yes,” Jessica said. “And it’s not entirely unheard of. I recall seeing some at the Mother School. Though people like her if they have talent more often are trained as Mentats. It’s much more of a gender-neutral starting situation– much harder to start full Bene Gesserit training as a teenager like her.”

“Hmm,” was all Duncan could say. “It does sound difficult.”

Jessica nodded. “Yes, Maryam always is fretting about her in those letters.” She abruptly changed tone. “But, Master Duncan, let’s move the subject away from all that if you would, please. I’ve been stuck worried sick about her and that backwater moon all day now, and there’s no telling when Ella and Gurney will be back with Alissa.”

“Gurney? I thought he was on duty today.” And am I chopped liver to that girl now?

“Yes, Gurney, and apparently not.” Jessica said blankly. “They went off to accompany Allie on a walk along the river. You know,” she said, raising her eyebrows, “I’m of the suspicion that Ella’s been on the hunt for a husband, and Thufir’s suggested to me in the past that she should look within the staff for one here. For once, at least someone in this household should soon be in wedlock.”

Duncan bit his lip. “Are you trying to start bad blood between me and Gurney?”

Jessica shook her head as she continued to bounce her daughter on her knee. “No, not at all! But…” Her tone and expression darkened. “You’re getting older. We all are. You need to stop letting these kinds of opportunities pass you by, Master Idaho. Even Thufir’s planning for the future in his own way, what with all those Mentat proteges he’s been testing.”

Duncan was irritated. “Was this all also on your list of items to talk about, my lady?”

Jessica lightened her face again as her daughter started to babble. “Yes, in fact. I won’t pressure you on that any further either. Just a suggestion I needed to present. But for that matter– you and Gurney’s men. They’re drinking too much of the good wine! I need that for hosting the Duke’s guests, after all– no, not now, child– it’s a state concern.”

Duncan’s brow still remained furrowed, and he felt a slight quickening of the pulse. “My apologies, Lady Jessica. There’s been a lot of shifts in troop placements recently, which has, well… messed with our discipline, unfortunately. I’ll investigate at once.”

Jessica smiled. “Thank you very much, Master Duncan. I apologize for all that needling, but–“ a thump came from a back room, and both of them dropped their cups and started running towards the noise.

It turned out to be Alissa and Gurney slamming open another door in a shared portion of the residential wing a little too vigorously. The two of them looked on the tail end of an adrenaline rush, and for some reason Gurney was also soaked, muddy, and carrying a ribboncarp that had to be almost two meters long like it was a soggy bedroll. Ella, holding a travel bag, looked both mortified and exhilarated.

“Gurney?” Jessica shouted, aghast. “You can’t bring that in here! It’s… It’s…”

Gurney, that walking lump of scar tissue, cleared his throat. “It’s mad, my lady, I know. But the little lady wanted to show you and the Duke her catch before it got sent to the kitchens.”

As Duncan and Gurney wrangled the ribboncarp onto a stone bench, Ella curtsied lower than Duncan thought physically possible, brown-greying hair, dress hem, and shoe heel nearly at equal heights. “I am deeply sorry, my lady. We did intend to just go on a walk, yes, but, ah… the girl insisted on going to one of the river orchard piers when she saw there was fishing going on, and one thing led to another, and…”

“It was great!” Alissa hollered with her hands up, her green dress giving her the appearance of so much copper-haired flotsam. “I caught a fish, and Mister Halleck saved me from it!”

Jessica rolled her eyes and adjusted her hold on Little Jess. “You’re certainly something, Warmaster Halleck.”

Gurney bowed his head, with a hint of a mischievous smile under his scars. “Duly noted, Lady Jessica. I’ll see myself off the premises.”

Jessica caught Duncan’s eyes, and he immediately intuited her silent message: Get him out quickly!

For once, Duncan’s skill at slipping out of a woman’s quarters unseen proved to be useful for more savory purposes.

Chapter 14 Selected Glossary

Giedi Prime:

A habitable continental planet in the Giedi (formerly Ophiuchi Beta) system, known for its heavy industry, severe environmental pollution, and reliance on a quasi-proletarianized slave economy. Official homeworld of House Harkonnen.

Chapter Text

I both loved her and hated her. With time, we now both hate her and love her. Could a student of the Way really have any other sentiments towards a proper teacher of it?

– Her Reverence Yakoba Herstal, Selected Confesssions

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

The chapterhouse’s train station was normally off-limits to initiates even during less secure times. Now, the Sisterhood Guards were stationed and examining every crate, package, and servant going in to or out of the complex. Snooper arms hung like dragonfly legs over conveyor belts in the chilly half-enclosed area, with the dull buzz of Holtzmann fields now accompanied by the higher frequencies of more arcane instruments.

Yakoba felt practically like a truant while she waited indoors outside the entryway for Proctor Myuller to arrive. Granted, the proctor had used her direct teacher status to bulldoze her usual Sunday studies to the side, much to Proctor Liuth and Proctor Derren’s chagrin, but such a field trip also felt like a violation of the rigid curriculum she had been immersed in– well, was drowning in, more like.

As she waited, she watched the other students and saw Sunday life, such as it was, continue. Initiates walked between study sessions and additional seminars, or accompanied servants to work on menial tasks or repairs around the chapterhouse– or even out in the fields. Just a bit of that ‘well-rounded’ education the Bene Gesserit are famous for, Yakoba mused. Off in the distance, she thought she could see a Borte-shaped girl in grey and blue lightly floating down a hall, carrying a bucket and mop with a noticeable lack of any joy in her step.

A clack-clack came from around the corner. It was Myuller, carrying that same canvas bag as before, but wearing slightly nicer clothing than the usual dress and black and brown coat she wore in classes– still all black, of course. In her hands she held a smaller shoulder bag and some kind of headwear.

She caught her breath for a brief moment and extended the large bag to Yakoba. “Hold this, Initiate.” Yakoba nodded, and soon realized just how light the bag was for its shape.

“You’ll need to change clothes when we get to Kubileya,” Myuller said as she excavated something out of her shoulder bag. “For the sake of inconspicuousness. I will be fine, but an initiate walking around in the quarter of the city we will be going to would draw too many eyes.” She stepped back, and looked Yakoba up and down. “I seem to be on the mark on sizing, thankfully.”

Yakoba was nervous. It sounded like the trip was going to be more than a little shady. “Proctor Myuller… what time are we coming back?”

The older woman looked away. “The last train leaves for the chapterhouse around 1815 hours. We should be done by then. Daybreak on the moon’s local time should come before that point. If not… well, it depends on whether you have other things to do. Tonight and or tomorrow.”

Yakoba had a lot to do– that serious-sounding meeting with Borte and Maryam, and then all those classes tomorrow that she couldn’t afford to miss just because of the proctor’s carelessness.

“I do!” she pleaded with a grave expression on her face.

Myuller stepped back and looked at her again, this time with the air of a veterinarian estimating how much medicine to give to some livestock. “Well… I do have a backup solution in that case. But it will hopefully not come to that.”

A Sisterhood Guard next to the station entrance just meters away was clearly bothered by the conversation, and started staring at Myuller critically.

The proctor shot back a stink-eye. “Oh, mind your own business, Alexa. Of course, never minding your business in class is why you’re stuck there on guard duty in the first place.” Myuller motioned for Yakoba to follow her closer. She then waved a watermarked paper in Guardswoman Alexa’s face, and after examining their bags, she and the other sisters stepped aside.

“Did you teach her?” Yakoba asked as they got further from her.

“Yes,” Myuller said dismissively in her usual warble. “I’ve taught a lot of people in my time here. In her case, a miserable showing in advanced meditative states, poor academic skills, and lack of aptitude in reproductive prana-bindu makes for an ideal blue beret, but little else unless there’s staffing shortages.” She turned and looked at Yakoba for emphasis, puffs of condensation now floating out of her mouth. “Still better and more human than a regular guard, of course.”

The small train in the station was not technically meant for passengers. Most of its cars were old rusted cargo beds, lichen brine tanks, grain hoppers, or animal pens. The bleating of goats and sheep and random white snouts could be heard and seen as the two passed a few boxcars. At the end of the train, after ten or eleven cars of its regular cargo, stood a passenger carriage. Yakoba had seen this style of car before– it was the same design as the one she rode to the Eridanus Chapterhouse what seemed like ages ago.

Inside, the passenger car was split into one side being entirely standing room with luggage straps and hook points, and the other side a few rows of twin seats that ended in a bathroom stall. Handrails below the windows and straps hanging from the roof gave the standing half some form of stability. Across the aisle from the bathroom was what looked like a locked cupboard of maintenance and cleaning tools. Nobody else was present, unlike the crowded group of initiates she came with that lonely night.

Myuller pointed her to the bathroom. “I’d advise that you change clothes now. It’s more difficult when the train is in motion, trust me.”

Yakoba nodded and awkwardly rushed in. There wasn’t much room to maneuver her body in there, but she was able to change and get the new clothes on with only a limited amount of bumping her elbows and hips into the sink and walls. She pulled out Maryam’s bracelet from her pocket and put it on her arm for once. What looked back at her from the small bathroom mirror was a surprisingly normal-looking (if still tall, dull, and big-boned) girl in some old-fashioned brown and teal clothes.

As she touched up her hair bun, the train car slowly lurched into motion, almost throwing her through the mirror. She grabbed the sink, and not wanting to risk any more embarrassment, left the tiny room. Yakoba came out to see the train slowly pull through the station, suspensor cables and engines roaring as the quaint train circled back around a loop towards the city.

Myuller stood next to the handrail and watched as Yakoba approached, uniform now hidden in the canvas bag. “It looks like it fits well,” she blankly said. The outfit was warm, thankfully, as the carriage had a pitiable amount of internal heating.

“I can return it to you afterwards,” Yakoba said.

“No, it’s yours now,” Myuller said, raising a hand in refusal. “It’s not in my size anyway, and I know you don’t have much of your own. Consider it a gift to add to whatever wardrobe you assemble as a Sister.”

Yakoba gulped. Where was this generosity coming from?, she thought. She remembered that Maryam had this semi-formal looking green and black flight dress hanging in her closet with a red hawk embroidered over the heart, which presumably was what she arrived in. Her own old boy clothes were taken early during ‘processing,’ a time she didn’t want to dwell on.

The two of them watched the green, cratered landscape as the train rounded the corner, and a slight shudder hit the train cars one-by-one as they moved outside of the chapterhouse’s Holtzmann fields and into the planet’s natural gravity, rising further from the track. Yakoba grabbed one of the dangling straps to steady herself, and thought that if she gripped two of them, she could easily start doing pull-ups without breaking a sweat.

“Were you planning on meeting with Sister Atti and her group tonight?” Myuller interrupted.

Yakoba hesitated for a moment, and for some reason felt deeply that she should tell a truth rather than raise Myuller’s suspicions. “No, my old cellmate wanted to talk about what happened with me and another friend. She said it was something serious.”

“The Atreides, right?” Myuller said. “Yes, that girl has some serious responsibilities demanded of her.”

Yakoba nodded. “I couldn’t imagine the weight of inheriting a siridar-fief that’s ducal rank. She hides it a lot from us.”

Myuller raised her eyebrows and looked away. “The Duchy of Caladan? Hmm. Yes, that’s another responsibility of hers, too.” She left it at that, oddly enough. “Who, and how, is your new cellmate?”

“A seventh-rank named Helena… I don’t know her last name. Do you have her in any classes?”

Yakoba turned to face the landscape. Out here in the local-gravity pastures, the goats and sheep were thinner and more gracile– and the resulting tender meat was one of Dufa’s only unique off-world exports. The train slowly started to pick up speed, sending five-foot high goats flying by them right-to-left.

Myuller, also looking towards the landscape, frowned. “She’s… that fat blonde girl, correct? I can’t say that I have.” She glanced at Yakoba. “I hope she’s civil?”

“Yes, though she’s very quiet.” Helena isn’t that fat, Yakoba thought privately in her cellmate’s defense. Well, she is heavier than most initiates or sisters I’ve seen, I suppose.

Myuller kept talking as if she had no filter. “Keeping the weight at her rank’s minimal skill and her age is either a statement of sorts, or it’s for some personal reason. Fair enough for her either way.” She looked back at Yakoba. “You’ve been keeping up with your meditation practice, I hope?”

The girl nodded, and caught her new non-uniformed reflection in the light of the window. “Yes ma’am, though I’m having trouble with the concept of ‘consciously choosing consciousness.’ Isn’t it sort of redundant?”

Myuller looked down and massaged the space between her eyebrows with her finger. “Hmm… It’s a difficult concept to explain on a ride such as this. But suppose you are shaken awake one day, and wake up by your own circadian rhythm another day. Both are forms of gaining consciousness, yes? Well, both are done without will or skill placed behind them. External and internal stimuli, not will. But if on a third day, in a lucid dream, you will yourself to wake up, then that is consciousness chosen consciously.” She looked up, her usual professorial tone now as unstoppable as the momentum of the train. “Apply that in reverse– to retaining consciousness while slipping into a meditative state– and that is what it means in that case.” She dropped her hand back to the guardrail. “Does that make sense?”

The second part didn’t, but Yakoba felt like she could grasp it with some introspection at a later time. “Yes. So, in other terms it’s a matter of exercising free will?”

Myuller shook her head. “Not exactly– don’t extrapolate it to that concept. The question of free will versus determinism is something best left to physicists and theologians. A more useful question than that is asking a sociological or psychological one: ‘who is free to determine events?’ But before we go into that: sit down, take some time to meditate, and then tell me yes or no on understanding that last explanation of conscious consciousness- no free will or determinism involved in your understanding.” She turned away from her.

Yakoba nodded and carefully walked over to a row of seats and sat down. Her breath met the rhythm of the train car as–

“Adopt a proper seated meditation position, please,” Myuller interjected, still looking away. Yakoba rolled her eyes, adjusted her posture and vertebra alignment, and dipped back into herself again.

Her breath met the rhythm of the train car as she tried to internalize the discussion and practice such a form of consciousness, drifting inwards and outwards with each polyrhythmic measure of the tracks and her optimized pulse and breath. Outside these motions, a momentary stillness– and then, for some faint seconds, a feeling of meditation like so many times before, but aware of the state, and aware of the whole concept she was meditating on. She considered what the inversion of Myuller’s first analogy would entail, and though the exact terms were beyond her and those clumps of seconds of conscious meditation felt as jerking and tethered together as the train cars were to the rails, she felt some personal possession of the idea for once.

After some time passed, Yakoba shuffled awkwardly out of her seat. “Yes, ma’am. I understand.”

Myuller looked at her and nodded. “I will take your word on that. So, about who is free to determine events.”

The proctor turned back to the fields flashing by and took a breath, ready to profess harder than ever before. “Miss Herstal, few people, no matter how ‘human’ they may be by the Order’s standards, actually have meaningful control over the path their life takes them on. Even if given such a choice, who they are and what attachments have accumulated around them demand that they pick a certain option. Likewise, it is almost impossible for institutions to act contrary to their habits. It takes a tremendous amount of luck to be in a position to make a choice that matters even just to oneself, and to execute such a choice… that is what can only be called a miracle.”

So to her, meaningful choices are miracles, Yakoba thought. It was unclear if the concept or the train ride was making her feel uneasy.

She spoke up. “What of a choice that affects everyone?”

Myuller raised her eyebrows and nodded, as if it was a valid point. “An even larger miracle. A Karama, if you would, to borrow an old term. Generally, such a decision actually cannot be made by those seen to have the most power within a system. They are too trapped to act or think outside of their courses of power. Those around them, though.” She glanced at Maryam’s bracelet. “Particularly their families… a chance.”

A silence fell in the passenger car, and the hums of engines and clack-clack-clacks of the rails seemed deafening. Yakoba felt like Myuller’s lecture on the limits of choice and inflection points in time was self-serving in some sinister way.

“So are we doomed to do certain things by our personalities?” Yakoba asked.

The proctor shook her head. “Who you are, or were, or will be, is not really an immanent quality. You are familiar with basic precepts from your other block classes, correct? ‘All things, cells, and beings are impermanent; a thing, cell, or being must strive for flow-permanence and not form-permanence within a changing world to remain as a whole.’ Your sense of self, your ego is the same– it will always be changing, adding and subtracting from itself with careful constructions and violent shocks, until the flow subsides.”

She looked off to the sunset-planetset and the distant grey-green fields on the moving horizon and continued. “Personalities are often formed from genetic and experiential and… miraculous causes and effect, and over time they tend to take a few similar shapes… like an asteroid turning spherical as it accumulates mass…”

“…Yakoba?”

She said her name directly– Myuller never did that before. “Yes, ma’am?”

Myuller turned her head and looked her in the eye, expression graven and serious. “In times of Old Earth, priest-kings struggled against river valleys and tides to protect their realms from flooding. Many under them died from their failures, but eventually they learned the methods to control the flows into and out of their systems. If things continue with where I believe you are going, you will have to learn such skills for the flow of your ego-self at a level greater than even most Sisters achieve.”

Greater than some Sisters?, Yakoba thought. It’s not like I could destroy myself with the Cloud or the Full Internal Enemy or whatever like Atti tal–

“You will need to do much more than just become a human who chooses to keep their hand in the Agony Box.” Myuller said, eyes narrowing. “You will need to continually remake yourself into a person that is always in a position to choose. Maintain and prune the garden of your mind, or build and maintain the dikes. Take whatever analogy works best.”

Myuller finally relented her stare, and Yakoba could see off in the distance the lit-up urban regions of the Kubilyea Crater glittering as the sky darkened. With just the edge of Aegir’s red haziness obstructing just a sliver of the sunset as the two bodies turned out of view, it was truly a magnificent sight. The two stood in silence for what felt like forever.

Breaking the mood, Myuller pestered Yakoba again. “There are six parts that make up the three floors of Bene Gesserit education, built up on top of each other two-by-two. First are prana-bindu body control and petit perception; second, internal meditative states and external psychology; now, Yakoba, what would be the final two blocks for the third floor?”

The girl thought hard as the decelerating clack-clack pressure of the train on the rails passed below them. Each pair was of one internal and one external skill. Self-mastery? Too broad, already covered by the four below it. It had to be something on a grander scale, something like…

“group epigenetics… and… politics?”

Myuller stepped back from the handrail and raised her eyebrows. “Great Mother, Miss Herstal. You truly are more clever than this Chapterhouse lets you appear. Yes, precisely that, though the proper phrasing would be something like ‘Mass Genomics’ instead of ‘Group Epigenetics.’”

Outside, the illuminated specks of suburban buildings and half-submerged Holtzmann anchors spread out like dolmens could be seen. The train cars each pressed further to the moon with a definite thud and a change to their speed and vibrations, and the sudden resumption of normal gravity hit the passenger car like an unfamiliar burden.

Yakoba, now feeling like lead, was puzzled. “I was always told they- ah, we, existed to serve the Imperium, not define its politics.”

Myuller sighed and watched the fleeting homesteads and hamlets going past past the train car. “We don’t ‘define’ it, but we play a major part in politics from how we serve it, Miss Herstal. There are many ways of ‘serving’, and in many cases, such recognition and servicing of state–“ a slight bump caused Myuller to reach her arm to the handrail again– “–authority allows for indirect control over events through backchannels.”

More buildings flew by, now at slower and slower speeds, some with people-shaped shadows moving in and out of them.

Yakoba continued to look at the proctor. “Yes, I know… ‘that which submits, rules,’ I hear you all say. But why all this, through teachers and missionaries and spiritual advisors and assassins, and courtiers and concubines and wives and Reverend Mothers?”

Myuller nodded. “As opposed to through more direct methods?”

“Yes, I think?”

The proctor kept her eyes on the everyday ‘evening’ life going on just a few meters past the train tracks. “The explanation, I’m afraid, is too long, and would require me to give away too many secrets to an initiate. But much of what we have talked about is a hint towards it.”

Yakoba flashed back through all that they spoke about, and nodded. It was clear. “Those around assumed power have the actual agency to choose.”

Myuller smiled slightly. “Good. If you survive, you will be an excellent spiritual advisor.”

Yakoba looked out at the station platform as the train slowed. She saw a bearded fellow getting out of an empty cargo truck near some staging area for the depot.

“So, a politican.” The word felt particularly vile to her. Despite everything, her life was still going in the direction her father pushed her off towards.

Myuller’s voice, still facing away from her, had a twinge of pride to it. “Exactly, Initiate Yakoba. We may be a doctrinally atheist organization… but the Sisterhood still is in the business of creating conditions for miracles of all sizes.”

The train’s crawl finally slowed to a halt, and the two waited near the passenger car’s door to exit. Myuller finally shook open her folded headwear and put it on– it was some flat-topped cloth hat with a veil that obscured most of her face except her mouth. Shades of the women who examined her back on Poritrin came to Yakoba’s mind as she looked at the proctor’s new transformation into a dreadful faceless thing.

“Stick close, Miss Herstal,” Myuller said as she had their papers verified and bags checked by yet more Sisterhood Guards. “Darkness outside may be an old witch’s friend, but it is not kind to young women.” Yakoba gripped the canvass bag tightly when it was handed back to her.

She followed the proctor away from the station, eyes and ears peeled open despite the sensory overloads of lit signs and so many people going about their business in the still-young but freezing night. The streets were packed with pedestrians, except where tram lines or truck and service roads cut through the urban mass.

Proctor Myuller spoke again once they made their way onto less busy streets. “We are heading to the meatpacking district to visit some associates and employees of mine. It shouldn’t take us long to arrive.”

The girl blinked. Employees? “Who are they?”

The proctor smiled, the rest of her face an enigma. “To be blithe about it, they are those who can go where we women cannot.”

Chapter 15 Selected Glossary

Planetset:

The view from the surface of a moon of its planet disappearing behind the horizon as the moon rotates. Generally aligned with the same path as the moon’s star in the sky. Compare to Planetrise.

Chapter Text

During the Late Corrino Dynasty, the Kubilyea Sisterhood Council’s official seal of government was a stylized Bene Gesserit raindrop suspended eternally over a crater, with three buildings below them both. The sentiment behind the symbolism was not lost on the pyon and bourgeois inhabitants: too much disturbance, and the Order would rain down on them all.

– Docent-Sharif Josiah Harstle, The Lady Mariam’s Dufa-of-Aegir: Archaeological and Historiographical Portraits of Her ‘Lost Chapter’

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Yakoba remembered little of Kubileya from when she touched down on the planet. This district of the city, though, definitely was not one she was ushered through a year and a half ago.

The Meatpacking District lived up to its name. The whiff of blood and death and offal and industrial refrigerants carried everywhere, and the worn concrete and brick streets wound and bent based on the pre-established positions of slaughterhouses. She half-expected to see shit and piss thrown out the windows like in some poorer suburbs of Dyssal back on Poritrin, but thankfully it looked like the Kubileya Sisterhood Council actually invested in sewage processing unlike her father.

To the north of them, the city rose and crested up to the lip of the Kubileya Crater, with the lights beyond it hinting at a hidden inner metropolis. The faint flickering of inclined trams moving up and down the slopes was visible even at this distance.

The streets were much less busy than the main promenade from the train depot. A lonely Orange Catholic church, made of actual stone and with imported wooden doors, dominated the street they walked down, but she saw nobody going in or out of the structure. Despite the dark of night, people still moved about their day cycle– the whistle for second shift at the slaughterhouses blew as they walked past the church, a high and mournful cry. It seemed Dufa’s fast rotation forced even the least on this moon to fight through these unnatural nights.

There were more than a few severed goat’s heads hanging by their horns in front of what looked like residential buildings, their dead eyes all pulled open.

“Is… is there a cult in this area?” Yakoba asked. One goat head seemed to follow her gaze right back through a trick of the streetlights.

Proctor Myuller kept walking, unfazed. “It’s an old tradition among the pyon families with children here, meant to ward off witches from taking any of their daughters. We comply with their atropropaicisms by default out of apathy.” She stepped around a half-frozen puddle of something on the street and gestured for the initiate to instead step to the other side. “So yes, technically, and we are that cult, Miss Herstal.”

Another feeling of revulsion flowed through Yakoba. She paid closer attention to the people and things in the streets– a look of worry for her, a glance of absolute fear or intentional shunning towards Myuller. Hidden from direct view on side streets alongside more traditional graffiti and gang markers were some very… harsh words about the witches in charge here.

Down another street they went, locals mostly averting their eyes, though some joined their goat heads and glared from ‘safer’ distances on personal initiative. Myuller seemed to revel in the power her unwanted presence walking down their streets had, but it was hard for Yakoba to really read her veiled face or body as they walked. Eventually, just past a bend in the road, the proctor stopped– they had finally reached their destination.

The building looked to be a smaller warehouse or machinist’s shop that had seen better days. Aside from a recent coat of white paint on the façade, it looked passed over by the waves of maintenance and redevelopment that had hit its neighboring buildings. All windows on the ground floor had been bricked in aside from a few exposed slivers the size of portrait frames, and only a metal-reinforced door and a sealed garage with chains lashed over the outside were visible entrances.

Myuller strode up to the door and pressed a buzzer, one hand reaching for something in her bag. Yakoba slinked a step back, half expecting an explosion.

A scratchy boy’s voice, trying in vain to sound deeper, shouted from behind the door. “Fuck off! We don’t want your trouble here!”

The proctor definitely wasn’t expecting that, Yakoba thought. The woman paused and then spoke as dryly as she did after that horrible Stressed Perception class, like a flutist without any moisture or tact in her mouth. “And… who is this?”

The voice continued to bluster. “Up your ass– I know those witch tricks! I won’t give my name to one, no ma’am!”

Myuller was already losing her patience. “Open this door right now.”

A hesitant click came from the door’s lock, and the door swung open with a shaking arm on the handle. The arm belonged to a defiant and outraged boy. He looked a little younger than Yakoba’s age, had brown hair recently cut down to an irregular halo around his round oily face, and his short frame was swaddled in a mass of sweaters and scarves under a filthy work jacket.

“I– I’m not afraid of you!” the boy shouted. He pointed at Yakoba. “Let that girl alone!”

The proctor looked back at Yakoba, then chuckled. “You’ve got courage, I can’t deny that. But, my brave hero,” she said looming over him, “I’m afraid that this fair maiden’s soul is already ensorcelled by our foul coven.” Her smile dropped away again, and the Voice carried from cold lips on a veiled face. “Go call down the masters of the house and tell them the Proctor is here.”

“That’s quite enough, Sister Emal!” a deep voice called from behind the boy. A dark-haired, dark-skinned and thickly-bearded man of Yakoba’s height strode out in a brown jacket and stained teal waders.

The man gently pushed the boy to the side before his resisting body could obey Myuller and shout. “No need to call, Leo. I’m here.”

Myuller gestured for Yakoba to enter behind her. The girl felt strange about how rude and heedless that boy was, how strong he must have been to resist the Voice like that– and how he tried, however fruitlessly, to get the Proctor to quit guiding her around like an animal on the way to the slaughterhouse.

The building’s interior was little nicer than its exterior. Stairs going to a second floor and a basement were wedged between a garage with a disassembled microthopter on suspensor lifts and half-filled with terrariums, and a common area divided between a mess of chairs, tables, desks, a few small adjoining rooms, and a lone residential sink with a coffee drip next to it. Remnants of and hardpoints for walls that once segmented the common area hung like steel teeth above the chaos of papers, microfiche readers, instruments, and a lone chalked-out region of order circling a single immaculate desk.

Yakoba assessed the room in a flash. In the space were three other people- two men and another person. One man was descending the stairs in response to the commotion, and had blonde hair and a meticulous goatee on a tanned face with narrow eyelids, red lip stains, and wore a grey cassock in some cut Yakoba couldn’t recognize– a Mentat from some school or another. A person in the back, wiry and taller than Yakoba for once, had a tight ponytail with shaved sides and an androgynous scarred face with a dark and thick brow. An ornate black tattoo on their tan-orange splotched skin was mostly hidden by their coveralls and waders. Their eyes remained locked on the three of them. A second man, short, pale, and stubby in all black, but with exposed muscular arms and with thick black sideburns, was sitting in a chair with his jacket thrown over the back. He had watched that whole incident with a huge smile on his face, it seemed.

“Well, if it isn’t the inimitable Emal Myuller herself!” the man in grey said, continuing to hop down the staircase. Based on his tone and expression, Yakoba guessed he had been thinking that one up for some time.

“Don’t tempt the Devil,” Myuller grumbled. “They’re hanging the threat of a Truthsayer over the Chapterhouse, and I know of at least one prodigal spawn of mine back at the Mother School who can mimic me all too easily.” She took off her headwear and folded it into her bag, returning to her normal ominous-older-woman-in-all-black-with-terrible-designs self.

Yakoba noticed Leo slipping a small knife out of a hole on his sweater, ready to stick it in her teacher’s back if she tried to cast any more spells.

“So it’s true– it is that bad a situation,” the black-bearded one said, gripping the back of a chair. The man had a serious, disciplined look visible in the space between his fuzzy brow and the beard. “Are they just going to be rat hunting with a Truthsayer, or is it a total Inquisition of the Chapterhouse?”

As the three talked, Yakoba gently slid over and placed a hand over Leo’s white-knuckled grip. It was a subtle movement, and as his hand relaxed she simply used minute flexes of her hand on his as a suggestion to guide the three of them–  Leo, Yakoba, and knife– back to the hidden sheathe.

Myuller ignored the bearded man and the two of them, and strode further into the room. “We’re going to have funding cuts, as I messaged earlier, until this crisis is over– and in the meantime, we’ll have to do what we can to maintain the projects.”

Leo turned his head and looked up at her as the adults spoke, and his dark-eyed stare was a mix of confusion, annoyance, and… relief, it seemed. Though his gaze showed some telltale signs of substance abuse– semuta, probably, Yakoba thought– that brief eye contact brought a new feeling of butterflies to her lower abdomen.

The Proctor motioned towards Yakoba, still meekly in the corner next to Leo. “This is Initiate Yakoba Herstal, my current direct student. You will most likely see her assume the same duties that Sister Odette currently has with you in a year or so.”

Wait, I’m going to be running errands out here?, Yakoba thought. And then the sinking realization that Myuller wasn’t going to be letting go of her any time soon. At this rate, she’d be ground down to nothing before the new year.

Myuller continued, her arm returning to behind her back. “Yakoba is still early in most of her training, but she has an able mind and shows rapidly-improving prana-bindu skill. I expect that her Gom Jabbar Test is… soon.”

Oh, God damn it all! Yakoba thought. She definitely wasn’t going to even make it to Saint Butler’s Day.

The bearded man raised his eyebrows. “Do you want me to introduce us to your student, or would you prefer to insinuate something to her along with our names?”

Myuller nodded. “These two–“ pointing to the man in grey and the bearded man– “are my associates, Mentat Qiandu Stevedore and Brother-Emeritus Siyeb, respectively.” Her finger followed across the room. “That slender one there is Siyeb’s employee, Kindjal. The stout one is my employee, Brother-Emeritus… Anaximander, now, last I saw you.”

Anaximander nodded, a faint smile still on his face. “Yeah, but you can just call me Anax for short.”

Myuller threw up her hand in some kind of flourish. “Very well, Anaximander.” She then turned back to Yakoba and Leo with her hands folded together in her dress sleeves. “And now we have this little he-oaf on our payroll without my consent: Leo.”

“Hey!” he barked. “I’m seventeen!”

“An oh-so-brave, undergrown he-oaf, my apologies.” She turned to Siyeb and began admonishing him. “You haven’t even started any external prana-bindu therapy on him yet, have you? Stop stunting him– you may have been tall naturally, but intervention has to be done as early as possible for most boys in his situation.”

Siyeb shook his head. “No, Leo’s new. He just got here two weeks ago– he’s been sleeping on the streets in the Tanneries the last two years. Kindjal’s the one who saved his skin, literally. He’s been staying at my apartment for the meantime.”

Qiandu stepped in as he stepped off of the landing. “And he’s been a very big help with both minding the place and in our projects in the past month– a near twofold productivity increase. He’s still taking time to get his bearings and figure out what he wants to do going forwards.”

“Fair enough,” Myuller said. “And how is the gentleman upstairs doing?” Her voice was back to a clinical tone.

Qiandu sighed. “He’s… still degrading, it seems. We’ve been able to keep him alive with microdoses– from nutritional supplements and the like, damn the possible overdoses on other minerals and vitamins, but it’s clear he’s well past the start of a terminal feedback loop.” He rubbed his temples. “If we miraculously could teach him prana-bindu at a Sister’s level, and had the mountains of soliaris for a Suk Doctor to be on call, and had spice on hand, he could be stabilized. Probably.”

“Hmm,” Myuller mused. “I know you have lethal doses of sedatives and ketamine in the wet room if it’s clear he can’t help us or himself any longer. And I know you and Kindjal know how to dispose of the body.”

The mentat nodded silently, pursing his lips. The other members of Siyeb’s cohort cleared off the tables in the main room and hastily put together a meeting space as the two and Yakoba stood awkwardly to the side.

“Leo and I were actually gonna go pick up some lunch for the group, before you arrived.” Anax said as he put on his jacket. “Do you two want anything?”

“That won’t be necessary for us,” Myuller said “Perhaps we could–“

Siyeb interrupted, cludding over in his boots. “Emal, you know Anax and I know the Chapterhouse’s schedule, and how long that train ride is.” A serious frown could be seen from underneath his beard. “You two have only had breakfast by now, if at that. Let the girl have something to eat, at least.”

Myuller and Siyeb stared each other down for an intolerable amount of time.

Eventually, Myuller relented. “Very well.”

Anax spoke up again. “Siyeb, Proctor? Could Yakoba join the two of us?”

Siyeb raised his eyebrows and looked at Myuller again. “Is that fine, Emal? We can catch you up on the high-stakes business while they’re out.”

Myuller nodded wordlessly.

Anax waved Yakoba over. “Come on, lass, we’ll show you around properly.” He held open the door as she and Leo walked out.

It was still just as cold and dark outside as before, but Yakoba felt a little more comfort around her this time from her two escorts. Without the threat of (visible) witches, the severed goat heads felt almost homey in a macabre way. The people and carts in the street were lit up by the street’s LED and neon lights, which seemed to push upwards to the dark sky in a defiant inversion of natural law.

“Is it true?” Leo whispered after he closed the door. “She’s got you under a spell? Is that how you… did that?”

Yakoba looked at the boy with a mix of exhaustion and concern. “No, Leo. I’m her student, from the Chapterhouse.” He’s not getting it yet, she thought, and so continued. “I’m just a regular Bene Gesserit initiate.” Some inklings of realization on his face now, but… “I’m an apprentice witch from Poritrin, not Dufa.” He widened his eyes, nodding. Oh God, how uneducated is he?

“Oh! All right, a space-girl. Is Poritrin a witch planet?” Anax could barely restrain himself from cackling at the two of them.

She rolled her eyes. “No, it’s a boring planet, ruled by House Alexei.” Looking at his dilated gaze flitting to and away from her chest, she guessed Leo was re-calibrating his knowledge of the Bene Gesserit in more ways than one.

Anax, having enough of this nonsense, gestured for the two to follow him and started walking. As she caught up to him, Yakoba was about to confirm what she suspected about Anax and Siyeb, but then the former spoke first.

“So, how long’s the old lady been dragging you around?” Anax said, his words puffing in front of him.

“Just under, oh… two weeks now.” Saying it out loud made Yakoba blink. So little time had passed, but how much she and her friends had been though…

Anax chuckled. “Yeah, I remember that feeling. She certainly likes to start fast and throw her direct students into the deep end of a swimming pool. She also loves to hear her own voice.” He glanced back at Yakoba. “You’ll eventually be able to tune out most of her lectures. Once you show her that you get whatever particular bugbears she’s pressing you on, she tends to let up and get briefer.”

Yakoba sighed. “Yeah… She’s been letting up on some stuff now that I’m showing progress. But it sounds like she wants me to spend more than a year with her.”

The man nodded. “She’s ‘protective’ of us like that, as tough as she acts around us. Proctor Emal mother-hens her direct students until they head off to Wallach IX, or otherwise graduate from Novice to full Sister.”

Leo looked extremely confused at the conversation that was going on, and also wounded by Anax’s revelation. “You’re… also a witch?”

Anax smiled. “Not anymore, Leo. You see,” he said, posing his arms dramatically, “I got kissed by a magic goat, and turned into a real boy!”

The fellow real boy Leo was not amused, but like Yakoba, he looked like he still wanted to learn more.

The man continued, eager to wear out these new sets of ears as walked towards whatever street vendor he had decided on. “But yes, Siyeb and I are Bene Gesserit. Or were, really. When boys like us happen to appear… we get expelled from the Order on discovery, or mercied.” He looked more sarcastic than plaintive at what he was saying. “And if they’re men like us, who’ve already passed the tests… we also get expelled, but gain the fun title of ‘Brother Emeritus’ and get an eye kept on us by the old ladies upstairs.”

Yakoba slipped sideways between a passing porter with a suspensor-cart and Anax’s broad body. “So, you’re free to do what you want?” she said. She couldn’t help but feel a little jealous of their escape act.

Anax shook his head and dropped his jovial tone. “Nobody who serves is ever free from the Order. We live at their sufferance, like you do, and we work outside the chapterhouses like other male employees of the order. Sometimes, though, we are given …missions. Certain tasks that women cannot easily do.”

Myuller said something like that about her group, Yakoba thought. ‘Those who can go where women cannot–’Probably just an expression of the same thing. It’s a man’s universe, after all.

Leo shuffled through a mystery-liquid puddle as he looked at the two of them. “Do you still have witch powers?”

Anax nodded, still looking ahead. “Yes, Leo. Men can use B.G. training– anyone can. But aside from the basics, I use those ‘powers’ about as often as you’ve seen me use them– never. I don’t need to.” He pointed to a stall at the end of the street. “That’s the place! Best damned meat buns on the entire moon.”

The store front looked to Yakoba like every other one she had seen on the way there. In the back, she saw what looked like a smaller family of locals shaving long strips of goat meat off of a rotisserie, wrapping them around some mix of herbs, celery, and onions, and then furiously wrapping seasoned dough around the whole package before throwing them into the oven. In the front, a moustached man was selling them to a crowd as quickly as they came out to the front.

The three of them stood in queue. Behind them, Yakoba saw a tired woman juggling two children– a third on the way in say, seven months based on her gait, facial expression, and scent. The kids looked like they were all from the same husband, though not one that helped with any housework– the children looked like they had been learning by helping around the house and all had been dressed by a single person based on the creases on their lapels–

Yakoba cut herself off. Were normal people this easy to read to her now? Everyone around her at the Chapterhouse, save the servants, had been guarded, self-reserved, enigmatic– she tried to be too, for reasons of self-preservation, though she still had her thoughts pried open even by other initiates. But despite that, she had internalized enough of her training that any old pyon she looked at was just an open book.

Or a puppet with strings to jerk around, a dark part of her thought.

She tried to avoid thinking about her past year of superhuman training, but the boredom of the line made it difficult to stop that constant, constant subconscious use of petit perception. Leo was blabbering something about how he fought off a pack of dogs– a bald-faced lie, not even something you need a Truthsayer for. In front of them, a man breathed with more strain than a healthy person should– she doubted he could afford a doctor, and so there was no reason to bother him about it. It was everywhere– people were everywhere– and she couldn’t stop reading them like passing signs or stop noticing the strings attached to them all.

Her hand was squeezed by a stronger one, and a few familiar motions on hairy knuckles danced her fingers and mind away from the edge of madness. Doing all right? Anax signed. It can be… intense the first time outside of a chapterhouse.

Yakoba looked down and tried her best to respond. Yeah, I’m… intense?

‘Overwhelmed,’ yes. I understand. Hang in there. Anax tapped the meaty part of her palm with his thumb and index fingers as if he was patting her back, and then let go.

Yakoba closed her eyes and took deep breaths, re-centering herself as they stood in queue and then pulled herself back to reality on her own terms. Each time that she felt that almost ‘falling’ sensation that preceded slipping into a petit-perception mindset, she halted it and reasserted control over her own thoughts.

Meanwhile, Anax and Leo were buying meat buns.

The three of them slid out of the line with over a dozen meat buns, most of them carried by Anax. Leo was already half done eating one by the time they really got on their way back to the Workshop.

“Does… did it ever go away after leaving the Order?” Yakoba asked in hushed tones as they walked. “Do you feel normal now?” Maybe, somehow, she could be like them and pull a disappearing act from the Sisterhood. Unlearn what was unbearable, live simply in some way around here, around them.

Anax shook his head. “No. And yes.” He looked at her with eyes that, for once, seemed to be truly empathetic to her situation. “That B.G. mindset and training lingers, but you learn to not revert to it… and it gets rustier with time. I have some good memories from then, even if it was unbearable in the end. But, Yakoba… you and I weren’t normal before the training, either.”

He raised his right hand and flexed it. Yakoba saw the telltale minute twinges of a phantom pain very common among younger Sisters. “Lying to myself, staying in the Sisterhood… that was my second Gom Jabbar Test. Siyeb lasted longer than me– over a decade– before he passed.”

Leo watched the two, transfixed. Drug-addled idiot with a mouth full of smoked meat and celery or no, Yakoba thought his gaze on her felt good, like with those boys back at the Dyssal Academy.

A ‘second Gom Jabbar Test,’ she mused. “How do you pass that?”

Anax smiled. “There’s no right way to pass, or wrong way to pass. There’s only the question of how long you can deal, or want to deal with that unavoidable pain of stasis, until you can’t anymore.” As he spoke, he stepped over the gross puddle Leo sloshed through on the way there. “An animal wouldn’t change anything about themselves, and just accept that pain until the day they die.” He looked her in the eyes again. “Yakoba, you should know how to pass the second test. You’ve already done it. Unlike us, you did the harder one first.”

The girl stayed quiet.

As they approached the Workshop, they could hear a faint murmur of discussion within the building. Leo held open the door for Anax and the food, and the three could hear Myuller’s woodwinds carrying clearly from the makeshift conference table.

“…What we’re seeing here, then, is yet more data supporting both the Stagnation and Speciation Crises, correct?” Qiandu nodded, and Myuller tossed a chart she was examining to her side, continuing to muse out loud. “Those are still genetic-demographic and thus political issues– solvable by that black box of the Kay-Aych Program, as with other things, possibly. But from that new data we just received: I have a suspicion it may hold clues for a solution to one or both, Kay-Aych or no.”

Qiandu looked up at the three of them, and then back at Myuller with concern. “I… already have an idea of what that solution you’re implying would be, Emal, and the ramifications are more terrible and destructive than–“

Without moving her body, Myuller made a horizontal chopping motion and pointed behind her to the three of them. Qiandu paused.

“That’s enough saving the human species for now,” Anax quipped. “Time for lunch.”

Chapter 16 Selective Glossary

Microthopter:

Any number of small open-cockpit ornithopter designs that rely on a combination of Holtzmann suspensors and flapping-wing flight for movement. Typically designed to seat one to three people, with the engine and propulsion sources usually located in front of the controls and seats unlike larger orinthopters. Depending on size and design, microthopters may be operated with the pilot in a seating position similar to a bicycle, motorbike, or suspensorbike, or in a more standard flat-bed seated or standing arrangement for larger microthopters.

Chapter Text

Yako^bva told me what a ‘revernd mother” was after that all happin’d. She said they are the MOST POWER FULL wiches and do a secund specil test that makes them get all their moms and grandmas’s memries. I told her that I didnt want her to ever do that cuz I didnt want her to act like a grandma and she laf’d wich was pretty (I like her laf the most about her becus I am a respect full man unlik my dad). Any way she then exsk explained eksplain’d about how thats why that lady was such a bich to Proktor Müller.

– Consort Leo, The Secret Journals (original orthography)

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

It was rare for Emal to travel so far from the Chapterhouse, and after this long-belated visit to Siyeb’s Workshop to speak in person with him and Qiandu, she was tired. Was she just getting too soft from her work as a proctor, she mused, or was it just the fitful starts of truly old age, with all its frizzling telomeres and hands-on demonstrations of the inevitable laws of entropy?

She remembered being plenty energetic in her youth– managing the man she had been bound to, managing the education of the children from that strictly professional union, the less-than-professional liaisons with her man’s wife, a few one-off children with anonymous prospects, the various incidents, dealing with The Murder, and to top it off, her very public retaliation for The Murder where she ‘crashed’ an ornithopter into that crowd of rancid conspirators. Even after her successful ‘development of talent’ and formal separation from the family, she still kept a breakneck schedule at the Eridanus Chapterhouse as a proctor, engaged in all sorts of teaching and research ranging from shigawire cultivation to stealing and processing Spacing Guild data on planetary gene pools. And now, time was noticeably chipping away at her endurance, even if she hid her weariness.

The girl walking alongside her was filled with just as much nervous energy and hormones as ever before, though. Yakoba now was carrying both Emal’s handbag and the canvas bag as they walked back on the main promenade to the train station, and in the grey sky above, Aegir had almost fully risen while the hints of a waxing gibbous dawn had started to show itself.

Emal was able to spread out just three hours of training with Yakoba while here in Kubilyea and, as usual, she showed a mix of successes and failures, but it seemed the time spent generally was good for both her mood and her education. The girl definitely had taken a liking to that runt of a guttersnipe, though, and they were planning to start exchanging letters in the coming days or something akin to that. Young love was a time for poor decisions, of course, but aside from his freakishly strong resistance to the Voice, there was little that Emal found worthy of note in that boy. If her correspondence with that feral hooligan started to affect her studies, she would have to intervene.

“How often does Odette usually come to meet with them?” the girl asked. She cut to the logistics of the matter, as always– probably trying to get an idea of what her schedule will be like if she gets to Novice status.

Emal turned and looked up into Yakoba’s eyes. “She usually comes once or twice a week– it’s worked into her standard training schedule.” She raised the hem of her dress as they stepped around a puddle of antifreeze and continued, putting a little more enticing flair on her answer. “Initiates, especially ones in your position, have much busier schedules than novices. Consider this as a… preview of your day-to-day business as a new Sister.”

If she gets there, she grimly thought to herself. The girl was getting better, and it seemed from what Anaximander had said via innuendo that she needed less help than expected filtering her perception around sleepers and animals. But, ‘getting better’ wasn’t the same as ‘getting good enough.’ Yakoba nodded, presumably just at the spoken parts of Emal’s thoughts, and adjusted her shoulder bag and cardigan as they walked.

Every time Emal examined the girl’s situation, she found another facet of bad luck. It was clear (though telling her now wouldn’t help her any) that she had been tutored in some form of preliminary Mentat training without her suspicions being raised, as was standard for prospective talents, but not to any conclusive or useful level. Yakoba’s father threw his daughter out with the bathwater, disowning her for something she had no control over. The girl shouldn’t have been sent off to this chapterhouse at her age to start training. And even if she survived, her effective sterility would just make her a second-class member within the Order, no matter her other merits. She was an ideal spiritual advisor, but she would be lucky if she got into a specialist position higher than Sister Atti’s control over the campus apothecary.

Emal was still waiting on Yakoba’s genetic history to be delivered to her. Perhaps if (‘if’ again!) the girl completed training, she could connect the dots for why she was sent to fail here, write some official pablum, and then pull some strings to maybe make things a little more right for her. The medical options to restore some or all of Yakoba’s reproductive ability either skirted or violated the Great Convention’s proscriptions on artificial fertilization, or almost certainly violated them and required the services of a certain Tleilaxu Order. Still, it was possible, and even if Emal was lying to herself about why she felt that way, the girl deserved them braving a deal with those devils.

The two of them approached the small train station from the same gate as last time and began those same useless security checks as before. This time though, there were two passenger cars at the end of the train and an assortment of mostly just uniformed servants on the platform. Generally, workers at the chapterhouse kept to a slightly different schedule than the students or faculty, and they came and went at odd hours far away from where most of the adepts were. That social separation between the classes also spilled over into rail travel etiquette, where the two were expected to keep to separate passenger cars unless absolutely necessary. Aside from general complaints about maintenance, Emal couldn’t remember the last time she had talked to one.

Three of the four Sisters at the end of the platform, though, made her heart skip a beat as the Emal and Yakoba walked past the crowd of servants. She knew who that one with the gold trim on her get-up in the middle was, and even if she didn’t, the Guardswoman and what looked like an official pen-pusher on either side of her made it clear that Sister was here on very important business.

Even from fifty paces down the platform, even with that veil covering the woman’s face just like her own, and even with fifteen years or so passing since last seeing her, Emal knew exactly who that one was. That avian posture at that height, the same odd chin from the father but softened by estrogen, the very bottom of her old unblunted nose and her own lips. Great Mother crouched behind the fucking throne, Qiandu, you had to jinx it and call her down on us.

She had to limit Yakoba’s interactions with that vulture. No telling how or where her words would cut– against Emal herself or against the girl.

Abruptly– but without rashness or panic, do not panic in front of the girl– Emal reached into her bag, handed the permit to Yakoba, and pointed and commanded– “Initiate, stay in the second carriage with the servants and get dressed before we arrive. I need to have a private conversation.”

The girl looked with surprise at Emal, but quickly nodded and went off to stand awkwardly next to the servants. As Emal approached the shorter line for the second car, the train officially began boarding, five black-clad figures shuffling into one car and dozens of light-blue-clad ones into the other.

Emal took a moment to assess the situation as she and the other passengers settled in for the train ride. Shewas here, and the woman now knew enough about family matters that any argument between them where that truthsayer could exert her equal or superior knowledge was a sure way to find herself cowed or humiliated. Defensiveness on her part was going to be social death. The only way through with her pride and a semblance of normal family dynamics intact was to acknowledge their shared memories and go in like a gladiatrix on Gamont: cautious and reactive, but tits out and focused on the counterattack. As she planned and stood holding the handrail in the standing section, the car remained deathly quiet.

The hellish silence continued even after the train started to move. The fourth Sister, sensing trouble, had sat as far away from the rest of them as she could in the rows of seats. The woman’s guard and assistant were quiet as well– practically muted by the sound of the rails and the overbearing presence of the woman.

She glided closer to Emal, barely half a meter between them in the train car.

“Well met, Sister Emal,” the woman said. As expected, the tone was mockingly neutral, the voice reedy but with a genetic hint of her own rounded lilt.

Emal decided to reciprocate just the sentiment, not the formality. “It’s certainly met, Your Reverence.”

She smiled, whatever emotion remaining in her eyes still occluded. “Is that how you greet your daughter after so long?”

Emal took off her veil. There was no need in using it for intimidation like in Kubileya, and in a situation like this, it was useless to hide her expression. “Nothing’s well when the situation requires a Truthsayer to come like a thief in the night. Now, Jahana. Are you here for the investigation or for an Inquisition of this chapterhouse?”

The smile remained fixed on Her Reverence Mother Rapontchombo Emal Jahana’s face as she talked. “The investigation is a surety. Whether an Inquisition or audit is needed has not yet been determined, Sister Emal. Do you have any information that could help sway my decision?”

“Not to my knowledge, aside from quibbling about updating our school’s curriculum to match the current standards.” That was a full truth for this Truthsayer’s ears, at least. She had said her pointless part about the Tleilaxu at the convocation, and the last thing she wanted was to get involved on either side of turning the chapterhouse upside down.

That th-thump on the track from the ride into Kubilyea hit again, this time with Emal ready and gripping the handrail. Jahana stood, unmoved by the jostling of the car.

Even with the veil, she could sense her daughter raising her eyebrows in bemusement. “Your blind focus on education certainly hasn’t changed, Sister Emal. I must give you some credit for preparing me so well for my work in the Order.”

“I appreciate hearing that as truth spoken by a professional, Jahana.” Aside from the one-off prospects sent to various creches, Emal had rigorously drilled her children in all kinds of academics, and the girls were not just taught in the fundamentals of Bene Gesserit training, but even in some subjects usually only covered within Chapterhouse schools. Jahana back then was a moody and insecure middle daughter, but even then she showed talent above the curve for Emal’s lineage. It was no surprise that she was the child that, just barely into her thirties, had ascended to Reverend Mother status, a notable feat anywhere in the Order.

“A pity it doesn’t seem to translate to the quality of your chapterhouse’s school as a whole, or the… performance of your later students.”

Pleasantries are over, Emal thought. “I find that my students have surprised and disappointed me at the same frequencies throughout my life.” She squared up her shoulders and faced Jahanna head on. “That reminds me, you still haven’t encrypted your own Azhar Book or written a commentary unlike your sisters, correct? I check the registries yearly.”

Jahana pulled off her veil and stared back at her with contempt-filled eyes. Emal remembered a more cowed version of that look from back when she raised her– resentful, maybe, or determined, perched within a softer version of the father’s brow and orbitals. That soft hazel-brown color she had, though, was now blue-on-blue, a false glint of luminescence to them in the dawning sun.

Emal hid what minor discomfort and shock she had at Jahana’s new appearance. “That’s an expensive habit to take on, Your Reverence.”

“It’s from the modern method for Reverend Mother initiation, Sister Emal. A hyper-concentrated and oxidized form of mélange as the ASN. Not from spice addiction.” Emal heard a slight twinge of pride in her voice, even as she tried to cover her defenses.

“And from all your editorial comments during schooling and your letters from Wallach IX, I thought you were a traditionalist.”

“I can make exceptions for personal reasons. I knew my father’s eyes were one of the few things you enjoyed about the man.”

Emal raised her eyebrows and nodded. “In that case, I wish I had the foresight to tell you I found his tongue more attractive.”

Jahana frowned, clearly annoyed and now recalling more than a few unexpected memories. Her frozen acolytes did their best to ignore the petty family drama going on just a few yards away.

Recovered from the slight, Jahana leaned in, gesturing with her eyes towards the other train car. “That adopted Initiate you’re guiding around, keeping in the other carriage away from me– A waste of your time, you know. She’s not going to amount to much, and no possibility for genetic lineage anyways.” She paused, waiting to wiggle that verbal needle now that it had been plunged into Emal’s mind. “I’ve always thought we should restrict how much effort teachers can put into them. Bloodlines are getting thin these days in the Order, after all.”

What slim bit of satisfaction Emal had at her previous maneuver evaporated. “No potential human is a waste of effort,” she growled. The nerve of her to strike at the girl!

Emal’s Abomination drew even closer, smiling incredulously. “Certainly some attachment to that soap bubble! I never recalled that sort of care given to your own children. You’ve certainly changed after you bore me, Sister Emal. I remember someone who had much more exacting standards, both for your students, and my siblings… and your classmates. What changed?”

“Time, Jahana.”

Jahana turned away from her, raising her eyebrows again. “And I have all the time in the world from which to recollect experience. Yet, I still find myself agreeing with your old ante-parturitiated self. You’ve grown sentimental in old age. Irrational.” She turned back and locked eyes with Emal. “Grandmother would have been disappointed. Want me to put her on?”

Kull Wahad, she’s become a demon, Emal thought. She answered quickly. “That won’t be necessary, Jahana. She wormed her way into my head enough, and unlike that echo you have on call, I know how the story ends for her.” She looked away from her, the morning pastoral landscape outside the train car a far cry from the verbal knife-fight going on between them.

“That may be true, but her …perspective on family matters and our bloodline’s work, as with the Others, is very illuminating.” That rogue excretion was insinuating something, playing with their shared nosiness. “I would like to discuss such things on an equal footing whenever you finally register and complete your initiation.”

“I’ll consider it in the usual fashion,” Emal deflected. “You should be grateful for my de facto insubordination in avoiding ascension– as my child, it doubtlessly helped your application to be approved in my stead.” She looked at Jahana’s still-young face. “Have you convinced any dying reverend mothers to grant you their memories yet, or are you waiting around for a complete picture of mine as your first head on the wall?” The details of the process were a mystery to her, but she knew enough to know accumulation of those precious memory-egos of previous reverend mothers was a major part of politicking at those higher echelons.

The composite of Myullers past and present chuckled and gave another incredulous look. “No, I haven’t, and for the second? That’s your ego speaking again, Sister Emal. Unlike you, I have all the time in the universe to work on such political matronage.”

Emal replied with a stony face. “I accumulate associates in the more traditional way, Jahana. There’s more durability and good counsel in such networks.”

“Ah-h-h-h!” She theatrically turned away and looked upwards at the train car’s ceiling. “So, you doubt the College of Reverend Mothers? I recall some …troubling sentiments even in your youth. Are you engaged in any, say, heterodox activities?”

It was best to de-escalate before Emal said or did something very stupid. “Old sentiments are old sentiments. Of all people, you would know my life has been wholly devoted to the Order,” she said, avoiding the question. “I’m simply a teacher here, nothing more or less.”

Jahana stepped back towards her, now inches from her mother’s face. Emal’s last line flew too close to a falsehood, it seemed.

“Let us get something straight, Sister Emal. I have reason enough already to place you under the umbrella of any inquisition of this chapterhouse that I, as a Truthsayer with prerogative from commission, may be required to do.” Her voice was different now, almost like Emal’s mother’s used to sound– cold, rough, that faint warble more just a rounding to her vowels. “I expect you to stay out of my way. And I expect you to be quiet. Do not give me more reasons. That will be all.”

Truthsayer Jahana then walked away and sat next to her assistants. Silence returned to the train car, and continued to stay until they returned to the chapterhouse.

Emal watched the edge of Jahana from the corner of her eye as the train rolled into the chapterhouse station. The matter of them all exiting the carriage, and whether another altercation would happen, was a question hanging over her as she also reviewed the developments in the group’s research.

Unfortunately, Emal’s position far from the door meant that she left after Jahana’s cohort, walking out along with that very confused-looking fourth Sister. She saw Yakoba’s tall frame pushing through the throng of servants, now awkwardly back in an initiate’s uniform and ready to hand her bags back to her, but still unable to see her.

Emal heard bits of Yakoba’s mellow resonant voice from the other side of the crowd, and her blood ran cold. “Ah, Proctor?… very sorry Your Reverence, you looked…”

Emal stealthily but less-than-gently pushed servants out of the way as she forced herself through the crowd. No, no, no, this is a disaster…

She thankfully saw a living if very apologetic Yakoba, and unfortunately saw a living, if stony-faced Truthsayer Jahana looking ready to consider burning the whole Chapterhouse down after being mistaken for Emal by the girl. If only to save some face for the two of them, she had to interact with Jahana again rather than awkwardly stand off to the side and wait for the girl to stop cringing so much.

She strode over, heels clacking on the ground. “Truthsayer, allow me to apologize for the confusion. This is my direct student, Initiate Yakoba Herstal of Poritrin.”

Jahana was silent. They both knew the name and personality, even if her daughter didn’t know the person in front of them. Then, a faint smile curled on the Truthsayer’s face as she locked her blue-on-blue eyes with those light brown ones like her own used to be.

“Well met, initiate Yakova.” She stepped back so that Emal could better be included in the conversation. “I am Truthsayer Rapontchombo Emal Jahana, née Myuller. Given the circumstances, such a confusion with my mother, your direct teacher, is… forgivable.”

Yakoba rubbed the back of her neck, her messy bun looking ready to fall apart out of stress.

Emal, hands still at her side, motioned for her to give her back the handbag and looked at Jahana. “Truthsayer, have you any advice for the Initiate?”

Jahana instead made eye contact with Emal as the proctor slung the bag on her shoulder. “This time around, don’t flinch.” She then looked at the actual recipient. “You are excused.”

Yakoba, now completely confused, did a short curtsy. “Th-thank you, Your Reverence,” the girl said, her voice sounding like Wellamie’s untuned zither. She then walked away from the two of them with the canvas bag.

Emal turned to face Jahana, her two assistants standing like clay soldiers in the space behind her. “Truthsayer, custom dictates that I invite such a visitor as a daughter and former student of mine to my home.”

When Yakoba’s steps slowed and betrayed her turning to look at the mother and daughter, Emal signed leave quickly! behind her back.

“And protocol for such a mission as I have been given dictates that I categorically refuse,” Jahana replied, head held high. “I’m sure such a formality is as much a relief for you as it is for me.”

Emal nodded. “Mm. A welcome bit of serendipity, there.”

As the Sister and Reverend Mother parted ways, Emal could hear that quick push-pull-step, push-pull-step going down another hallway, growing ever more fainter, ever further from danger, for now.

Chapter 17 Selective Glossary

Abomination:

Internal Bene Gesserit terminology for a woman (and hypothetically any human) that has become ‘possessed’ by the ego-memory complexes of one or more genetic past lives, rather than the original core personality if still (or ever) extant. Commonly conflated with but technically separate from the term pre-born.

ASN:

Acronym for Awareness-Spectrum Narcotic, a class of psychoactive drug that grants or enhances increased conscious awareness of an environment, up to and including extrasensory, extraego-retrocognitive, or prescient effects.

Pre-born:

Internal Bene Gesserit terminology for a woman (and hypothetically any human) that attained consciousness and access to genetic memories while still a fetus from their mother undergoing and surviving a Reverend Mother initiation during pregnancy. The existence or creation of the pre-born is a serious taboo within the Bene Gesserit, and they defy standard childhood mental development patterns, usually exhibit dangerously weak senses of self, and are vulnerable to personality disorders up to and including Abomination status. Compare to the associated term Abomination.

Chapter Text

^{Kull Wahad, has it really been only two weeks since that nootic-whatsit?}

^{Well, yes, you dull hag-child! And things certainly were going strange even before that damn test made us start guard duty: that one started having dreams.}

^{Nothing quite goes well for such a lass of that lineage… or such a lad. Her father’s birthright is cursed, mother-dearest. It’s a known quantity– can’t change the final sum, only the order of operations. A flipped sign, an imaginary term– however you change it, disregard what little effect that heroine has on this poor child’s predicament.}

^{Look at you, playing that Proctor Major so well! “Hello children, these are your facts!” Our one has enough of that, such as it is.}

^{Our? We’re just bubbles on a soap bubble, mother. Ego-memories feeding off of a living subconscious, like a rogue zygote that’s burrowed past the uterine lining to lap up the sweet blood flow below. Stuck on the phase-boundary of the nousphere.}

^{Oh, don’t go poetic on the how-and-why of the matter like that! We’re in the now of it– in front of the gate and behind it, both within and without. At least that other one who flew in and knocked down the doors in the first place can poke through to her a bit.}

^{And that’s why it’s a raw-meat idea to try and influence her, mother. We raced ‘up’ here for a reason, and that reason is the others who wanted to be first in line for recollection by Her Potential Reverence. That girl needs space and time for training. Anything more–}

^{Anything more, daughter?}

^{Yes! Anything more–}

Anything more–

And ‘pop!’

– Other Memories, Stirring

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Weirding Way classes were different without Borte’s presence. Before, her almost-Voiced bellows and the slams of her partners onto the floor echoed around the room like thunder, and Proctor Liuth constantly had to intervene to prevent lessons from going wildly off course or Borte and her victims from crashing into the walls. With her friend now on (expressly mandatory) medical absence from her more physical classes, the gymnasium sounded and felt distressingly too much like it was just another part of the Chapterhouse.

The planned Sunday night war conference had failed to convene. Even before Yakoba returned to the Chapterhouse, Maryam and Borte were ushered back to their cell by curfew by guardswomen, and what she would or wouldn’t tell her friends about were a moot point. Her arranged marriage, it being to the Harkonnens, the history of the Kanly between them and her father’s family, how the Sisterhood had been pushing for her to be married to the Baron’s heir from before she could remember, and now these terrible visions she had been having at night for the past month– now proven to be prophecy by Borte’s injury, and her deliberate decision to call in to Weirding sick was all based on an intuition that it was the best thing to do.

She could tell Borte alone all or some of that, but the girl wouldn’t have understood the implications or kept it a secret without Yakoba there to patiently explain it to her bizarrely unworldly mindset. And she knew telling anyone about her prescience, such as it was, was just inviting terrible uncertainty to her future.

There wasn't much rhyme or reason to how accurate, or even how metaphorical, those dreams were. They seemed to show glimpses of people she was already close to in the future or under other circumstances, and it was a headache to actually connect all those dreams she remembered into useful information. The ones she remembered after waking up were always slightly off at best. Helena's status as a disguise for some kind of assassin was an educated guess built on what felt like hundreds of glimpses into ominous, tragic, or violent non-sequiturs centered around the girl.

And if that wasn’t enough, Yakoba’s presence was… gone from her dreams on Sunday night, and the next two nights now had just hazier, briefer glimpses of the girl in various states of imminent doom. A human Borte still made appearances, and now whatever Helena actually was and figures of judgement shaped like Proctor Myuller now joined the panoply, usually from the viewpoint of a Maryam-to-be or a Maryam-could-have-been. But: something must have happened to Yakoba on her trip for this unexpected change in her now-routine night terrors. Or Maryam really was just going insane.

Maryam pulled her hair back and tucked her tank top back into her trousers as she walked back over to the room’s mirrored wall. It took a while for her to get used to the spartan setup of the training room when she arrived– no training mirrors or target dummies like on Caladan, aside from a pair of inert, almost ceremonial wooden ones overlaid with point markers meant for lectures rather than actual use. Instead, other students were the sparring partners in the sparse room, its floors marked up with lines and curves for quick sorting of where each pair should stand and where impossibly-solid dividers could be pulled to from the unmirrored wall. The only other objects in the room were a few boxes with sorted piles of edged and blunt weapons and first aid kits.

Two sharp claps came from Proctor Liuth, her usual way of starting lessons. The woman was short– almost as short as Maryam, and she had dark, severe-looking eyebrows and meticulously toned muscles that stood out on her pale white skin. Maryam had a suspicion based on how similar the proctor’s eye shape, nose, and face shape were to her mother’s that Proctor Liuth was most likely a distant, or not-so-distant, cousin of hers.

“Initiates!” the proctor shouted to the dozen students circling around her. “Today we’ll be doing blunt weapon sparring– focusing on bare hands and short knives, as last Friday.”

And more than just Proctor Liuth, Maryam thought, as she moved to stand between Karen and Eostri: she had seen at least one or two of the same recurring facial features and body shapes shared over and over not just between the proctors, but among many of the other students, even in this room. Just how many of them were actually blood-relatives? Borte, Yakoba, and… well, both this one and the original Helena were some of the few she could immediately discount.

“So, we’ve covered the basics of knife defense,” Liuth said, “and in most situations as a Sister, you will most likely be unarmed and unshielded against the attacker.” The Proctor wasn’t exactly the best at explaining herself without making an example of some student (often Borte), but the recent incident had caused her to shift her teaching style to an awkwardly cerebral form for safety.

Maryam sensed movement– and listless shifting– and it was Helena, who stood conspicuously close enough in the circle that Maryam could only see her peripheral shadow. With Borte’s departure, the girl-thing now seemed a little more confident in class.

Liuth continued. “Again: this isn’t a ‘fighting style’ or a sport with its formalities and flash like how men play at war, girls.” She leveled a knowing stare at Maryam. “This is applied prana-bindu, not a martial art. The Bene Gesserit is holistic– we don’t distinguish between the martial world and the rest of it. The enemies of the Order and of your future charges– your men, your children, other Sisters, grandchildren, so on, you get it– they won’t be of that opinion either!”

Borte’s hospitalization seemed to have affected Proctor Liuth. She was a hard teacher in many different ways, and especially cruel to adopted students. Maryam remembered more than a few days where Yakoba just went straight to their cell at lunch to cry off some barely-veiled barbs thrown at her, in addition to Liuth’s usual relentless critiques of everyone's form. She also seemed to have taken a sadistic maternal bent to Borte, mostly from the girl’s sheer durability and appetite for fighting– more than a few dents on the walls were from Liuth throwing her against them as part of her demonstrations, or from frustration if the girl ignored calls to stop midway through a sparring match. The sudden change of recent curricula to fighting against edged weapons… well, it was hard not to see it as a vain magical-thinking attempt to rectify the costs of Borte’s victory.

As Maryam thought, the Proctor kept working herself up. “You exist only to serve. You fight only to protect. No glory, no art. You neutralize the threat. We use a method, an application of internal and external prana-bindu to neutralize that threat– capture, cripple, or kill. Do not think of this as Kanly-playtime like men do. Families are on the line.”

Maryam started to have a bad feeling about what Borte was up to right now. She almost jumped when Eostri cleared her throat, and glanced at one of those Borte-dents, hoping she’d rebound through the other side of the wall and into safety here.

“So. We’ve reviewed the basics– isolate the blade-arm, control the weapon, all of those approaches and holds. Now, we’re going to do it while sparring with dummy knives. We’ll continue this semi-random pair assignment– good for you all to learn to deal with different weight classes, especially for us short ones.”

Oh no, Maryam thought. She had forgotten about that hastily-prepped grid of possible partner pair combinations the proctor had pinned next to the larger, newer target dummy (called “young mother” in contrast to the smaller, shabbier “old daughter”). Each day had a different-colored set of six X’s added to the grid, and from the looks of it, she was the odd woman out. Except with Borte gone, it was an even twelve students, and…

Helena was alone and looking at her.

Maryam held her breath for a second and then exhaled. What were those dreams like, again? she thought. She had seen things like this before during her regular nightmares– a knife fight, though the feeling of the ground under her feet as stone or sand or lacquered floors was an inconstant mirage. In a vivid one she remembered, she was fighting a sinister version of Eostri instead, and was taller and named Helena, and had never even heard of a young Poritrinian Mentat named Yvette Herstal or some remedial student there also named Helena. Other times, she was... someone else. Sometimes in these visions she died. Sometimes she lived. Sometimes she had to kill. Sometimes the one she killed was a friend of her no-self. Sometimes the one was her fiancé.

Were any of them what is to come? she thought, as she walked over to her.

“Well met, Maryam,” Helena said. “Doing alright? We’ve got that Azhar Book exam coming up, so I, ah, was wondering if we could compare notes sometime.”

“I’m… doing fine,” Maryam lied as she recalled getting a thousand poison spurs buried into her sides or throat. “But right now I'm too busy to meet, I'm sorry. Have you been able to speak to Yak about the algebra stuff? I know she helped Borte a few months back.”

Helena continued her soft chirping as they walked over to the blunt weapon bin. “No, she’s been, uh, pretty… moody! Pretty moody. Something’s been affecting her sleep the last few days.” The girl-thing definitely was not good at hiding her attraction to Yakoba, though that could just be a ploy to better mask her actual secrets. For all Maryam knew, she didn’t actually have emotions.

The two stood over the box as Maryam replied: “Yeah, I know that she went to the city with her direct teacher. She hasn’t said anything to you about it, then?” She hadn’t even said anything to Maryam about it, either– Yakoba was somewhere else at dinner Monday. If she lived, she had to track her down tonight and get the details.

Helena paused. “I remember that now… No, she hasn’t.” She gestured to the box, a mock knife made of black, high-density plastic resting in plain view on top of the mess below. “Do you want to start with the knife? I know we’re ah… different weight classes, so…”

That was an understatement, Maryam thought. Helena was about as tall as Borte, but was the heaviest one in the class, while she was the smallest. There were a few times as a child where Maryam was sent to Doctor Yueh with concerns that she had been stunted by some kind of poison, but in the end he concluded it was just an unfortunate extreme case of the Atreides line’s tendency for slow development. Maryam did indeed finally grow at puberty, though to an unimpressive extent. Alissa, ever the lucky one, was likely going to reach their mother’s height.

And back to now, though– looking at the knife, Maryam said: “No, you take it.” The last thing she wanted would be to fight at a complete disadvantage later, when she was more tired, she told herself. Better to get the main source of danger over with now while still fresh.

Helena looked surprised at her decision as they walked to an empty marked space on the floor, the rest of the class now in position or also jogging over to a space.

Liuth walked to the center of the room, equidistant from either training dummy. Maryam and Helena stood on either side of their space, both getting into a fighting crouch.

Maryam studied Helena– her plastic blade was held forwards in almost a pinch grip like she was cutting vegetables, not in the reverse grip more ideal for rapid cuts and downwards stabs like how an edged blade would more likely be wielded with their height difference. Maybe she really isn’t the one I should be afraid of, Maryam thought, and–

The shout “Begin when ready!” and a thunderclap from the Proctor dispelled this thought, as Helena sprung forward and thrust at Maryam’s throat.

Maryam’s pulse quickened as she barely slipped to the side, feeling the wind from the knife brush against her neck. Of course that’s why she was holding it like that, she realized– the training knife had to be shoved into the front of her throat with maximal force if Helena was going to kill her quickly.

Kull Wahad, she thought– her dodge still left her standing ‘open’– front to front, the worst position to be! If Mister Dunk was watching– she dodged another thrust to the neck, now from the side, and tried to grab Helena’s arm. The assassin simply wrenched her hand out of the grip in the direction of Maryam’s thumb with superior strength, and fell back, ready to strike again.

Maryam looked at Helena, waiting for her next bout of strikes. If she could dodge effectively, she could possibly strike some points on her arm or legs to slow her, and then move into a submission hold.

Helena flew forwards, yet again aiming straight at her throat, and this time Maryam stepped to her outside– perfect, she thought– but then Helena arced her arm and knife backwards and tracked after Maryam’s neck even as the larger girl’s body still kept moving forwards, the not-fake-enough blade now moved to a reverse grip. The girl looked at Helena’s arm as it came through, now seeming double-jointed to an unnatural degree, and evaded it by milimeters again.

Maryam stumbled back and tried to regain her footing, and Helena writhed as she turned around, her back flexing and arcing with an unexpected serpentine quality. No expression could be seen on that chubby, unremarkable face as she continued her pivot and shot forth again at her like a giant centipede after a mouse.

This was insane– inhuman– impossible even for Sisters, Maryam thought, as Helena’s fluid dance of strikes continued to fall on her. And no matter how much she dodged or deflected her strikes to land in non-lethal areas, feeling those future bruises smart already, it was impossible for Maryam to find any opportunity to slow her momentum. Helena wasn’t Borte’s partner out of punishment or sadism, Maryam realized– even when playing by the laws of nature, Helena was the only one who could keep up with that girl’s pace and punishment for a full class block.

A sudden sock to the gut from Helena’s off-hand, followed by a barely-dodged thrust changed the rhythm yet again. The girl wasn’t holding back anything now, and did another twisting punch followed by a snakelike wiggling knife-thrust at Maryam’s throat, now another, again and again. The girl-thing was giving off a bizarre and faint antiseptic smell, she noticed, and as Maryam threw an ill-advised kick to Helena’s knee, she twisted her leg out of the way and with her knife-hand hooked around Maryam’s head, dragging her close. Helena’s off-hand then grabbed her, locking her muscles in place with a prana-bindu hold.

Was this it? Maryam thought, as she moved what muscles she could to take some control away from the girl-thing, their hair ties undone and blonde and black hair flying everywhere around them. The antiseptic smell was almost overpowering at this distance, and on Helena’s knife hand, now around her throat, a small barb or bone spur seemed to be poking out of her index finger's knuckle. Maryam fought as well as she could to keep the weapon arm wrapped around her and unable to deal a lethal blow, the two slow-dancing closer and closer to the Young Mother dummy and a box of blunt weapons.

The girl noticed the box, and saw some sort of solution. But– Helena was implacable, unmovable, pushing ever-forwards like those fairy stories about the centipede and the soldier. As they moved closer to the weapon box, she took her chance: she stopped holding the weapon arm close to her, and instead bit down on the girl-thing’s soft forearm, hard. Helena yelped, and her prana-bindu lock weakened.

Maryam stepped back, shifted her weight, and spun out of the lock with a backwards tumble, now raised off the ground on three limbs with her chest in the air. Glancing at the weapon basket next to her, she grabbed a high-density plastic stick longer than her forearm and pushed off against the ground with it, shooting back to her feet.

She adopted a different stance, one the proctors had to constantly berate her out of when she first came here: the off-hand held down behind her, the feet in a deliberate casual mid-step, the weapon hand right front of her and the stick held across her body, ready to deflect and move for a slow shield-passing thrust anywhere on the body. Liuth was either engrossed with other students or indifferent to what was going on still. This was a one-handed Ginaz style, just like the ones Mister Dunk– no, Master Duncan taught her.

Helena paused, her fingers shifting their grip on her fake knife, her off-hand clutching her bleeding forearm. She seemed to be thrown off by this mix of improvisation and an alien style, and so Maryam seized the momentum. She leapt forwards, ‘sword’ out, and closed the distance.

The two of them again fell back into their lethal mock-weapon duel. The extra length of Maryam’s baton seemed to help, as Helena’s dummy knife couldn’t close the distance and she had to keep it to just parrying or feinting Maryam’s weapon as she rained down blows or thrust the blunt end towards her vitals, a half-hearted tit-for-tat reversal. At some point, when she would see Helena overcommit or get too greedy, Maryam could finally get past her defenses and convert a thrust or strike to the throat into a submission hold.

But what really was the way to end this? She didn’t want to kill Helena, even if she wasn’t actually an Initiate or even a regular person, but the girl-thing seemed implacable. Looking into the eyes on her plain face as they parried and counterthrusted each other’s blows, she’d keep at it, again and again, until one of them finally killed the other. The two were in deadlock– not necessarily in this fight, but definitely in the greater game the two of them were in, whether they were willing players or not.

There! Helena had overcommitted to blocking a feint, and her attempts to correct just let Maryam slip close behind her. She struck the nerves on her knife-hand, and while that limb was stunned, shifted her footwork in a flash to wrap their legs around each others and her stick in front of Helena’s neck. If these were edged weapons, it would end there… if she could bear to cut the girl-thing’s throat.

Instead, she pulled back on Helena’s throat while bending knee-on-knee, forcing her to tumble backwards with Maryam underneath. The two of them smashed into the floor, and only her commitment to the move prevented all the wind from being knocked out of her by Helena’s weight and the hard clump of her body on the floor beneath them. Maryam pulled the stick down on her throat, slow but firm, Helena’s squirming, half-asleep arms unable to reach behind her, and gathered what breath she could from her position.

“DO YOU YIELD!?” she shouted. The cry was of outraged anguish rather than triumph, and the rest of the training room paused as it echoed off the hard walls and floors.

Helena was silent, her breath constricted to a choking trickle of air, but no tapping could be felt. Slowly though– slowly, despite Maryam’s grip remaining steady– Helena’s breath returned, strong as ever, as if she shifted her windpipe’s position, that soft antiseptic stink wafting back again, and both girls braced themselves to breathe in and–

“Enough!” Liuth’s Voice shouted, and Maryam released her grip. Helena rolled over to her side, equally exhausted, as the proctor walked over. “I figured you girls could keep things civil and learn from each other– even if what your did extended past the purpose of the lesson– even if it used whatever nonsense styles those were. But I won’t have you fight each other to the death here!”

Maryam cleared her throat as she crawled up from the ground. “Proctor, I–“

“No excuses!” Proctor Liuth shouted again. “Both of you are dismissed early from class– report to your floor advisors for the remainder of the block, and tell them why I sent you there– not what you think happened.” Her small frame turned away, hands tight behind her back. “Try not to kill each other in the changing rooms, please.”

The two of them kept their distance as they stumbled out of the training room and back into the changing room. Maryam assessed– she decided to just get her uniform on and just shower at her cell floor’s bathroom where it was safer. She paused and turned to her co-conspirator, senses alert, aches foreshadowing future bruises starting to emerge all over her.

Helena was withdrawn and also simply stood by her bag and cubby, catching her breath and rubbing the arm Maryam had bit in desperation. Probably waiting to go to the showers when it’s safe, Maryam thought.

The silence as the two recovered was more of a pause than a finality. In a moment, Maryam decided to ignore everything Hawat and her father had taught her: she walked closer to Helena and stood there, ready to confront with words, not blows. The assassin’s eyes widened, and Maryam could hear and see her breath quicken– a mixture of defiance and worry on her face.

Maryam took a halting breath and started to speak: “I know what you’re trying to do, but not why you do it. I… know that you go by another name, but I don’t know what it is. I knew that it was your weapon-child that hurt Borte. And I… I knew before you picked up the knife that you intended to kill in sparring.” She looked the girl-thing in the eyes, pleading for some mercy. “Please– I must ask again that you yield– I will not kill you. I won’t tell anyone, anyone, what you are.”

The assassin was silent, and they both stood there as still as the training room dummies, studying each other’s faces.

Maryam decided to tell a half-lie. “Helena’s mother– maybe your mother, too? –is alive, I think. She has a beautiful garden.”

Helena was horrified, the blue pigment in her eyes draining away. “H-how…”

“I don’t know how I know, Helena. It comes in dreams, these last few weeks or months. I see things that could happen, or that could have happened, in another place or time.” Maryam lowered her head and clenched her jaw. “I… haven’t told anyone else. I hate it.” She spat out those words, and paused, her voice now soft as nighttime. “And now, we both know the secrets that would destroy each other.”

Maryam raised her head to look at her assassin, their face still frozen and downcast.

“I… I can’t.” Hakkag-Helena looked up, mist collecting under their red-on-white eyes. “It’s too important for us. It’s why I was made… why I was raised… why I did what I did to be here now. I have to kill you or die trying.”

“And I refuse to kill you, or let you kill me.” Maryam stepped closer towards them, hands empty at her sides. “Who’s ‘us’, may I ask?”

“S-so we’re at an impasse,” the face-dancer said, nose clogging as they deflected the question. “I– I need to go.” They walked, almost at a dash, into the bathrooms.

Maryam kept an eye and ear on the bathroom and showers as she changed clothes, but all that came from the stalls was a faint sobbing. Grabbing her bag, she made her way back to her cell’s floor for a quick shower and a well-deserved detention session.

Chapter 18 Selective Glossary ^{Youngmother’s Postscript} _{No it isn’t, get back here!}

Youngmother:

^{But what if we set up over here? There’s so much space: the girl has yet to learn anything of note in this overgrown melon of hers!}

Olddaughter:

^{It’s not good to spread out like a weed and choke out the real foliage, mother. Even you know that! And when she makes contact… Well, she won’t be happy about us echoes skulking around in the dark.}

Youngmother:

^{If she makes contact. Or will that other one will get to her first, I wonder? Beget on Dufa the universe’s most pathetic Abomination? Not that you could tell them apart. Maybe we could make an arrangement with her before this one gets popped.}

Olddaughter:

^{You’re being grotesque again. Have faith in our great, great, interminably-great-granddaughter and stop tickling her ganglia with this mutinous nonsense. She might flinch!}

Youngmother:

^{But oh, oh! Let’s have fun just this once, please. You’re my child– don’t you remember your lessons on filial piety? The only thing “great” about this “granddaughter” is her height. Let’s play here while we have the chance.}

Olddaughter:

^{Filial piety is why they’re all in this mess– Paternal Faufreluches and Maternal Bene Gesserits and–}

Youngmother:

^Boring!

Olddaughter:

^{That’s enough! I’m taking away your angular gyrus privileges, young ego-memory.}

Youngmother:

^{And I’m taking away yours, too, child-of-mine! How about that? There’s more than one hierarchy to pull rank on. After all–}

Olddaughter:

^{Hmph! After all?}

Youngmother:

^{Yes, daughter! After all–}

Youngmother and Olddaughter (In Unison):

After all– ‘I am Bene Gesserit: I exist only to serve!’

Exeunt YOUNGMOTHER and OLDDAUGHTER, Glossary Right.

Chapter Text

Wallach IX is the one place– and will be the only place– where Reverend Mothers are created and trained, and such control over their post-initiation training is for good reasons indeed. Abomination can happen to any Sister with Other Memory that fails to assert themselves over the unfinished wishes of their ego-memory lineage, not just to the pre-born, and nothing is so dangerous as an Abomination that still believes themselves to be that original self.

- Her Reverence Gaius Helen Mohiam, Collected Commentaries on Rules Regarding Reverend Mothers

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Borte had never been brought to the Proctor Superior’s office before. Usually, when she was found wanting in terms of behavior, or one of her tricks to get extra food or stuff from Outside or sneak out of class was found to finally have crossed a line, she was hauled in front of the dean. Head Floor Advisor Sister Johanna was a continually frazzled and overworked woman that even Borte, her most frequent visitor, never bothered to really remember.

The Proctor Superior was different. She was scary– a Reverend Mother like the one in charge of her old Juvenile School. And a very, very, very old, very respected Reverend Mother at that. She was a shadow-figure that stood on the side of the Chapterhouse Borte didn’t see: a demiurgical presence that acted far away from the daily activities of Initiates and even most of the lower-ranking Sisters on the campus. It was rumored that no small portion of Sisters alive today could be counted as her great- and even great-great-granddaughters. And despite her age, she was still sharp enough and enough of an able delegator to keep the Chapterhouse running, despite Borte never having even heard of any other Reverend Mothers on the staff here.

Which, as Borte sat in a hard plascrete chair far away from everything else in the room, made her conclude that she finally, without a doubt, messed up big time, somehow.

Proctor Superior Puleng's hunched, black-robed form was in front of her– it was her office, of course– but she was busy finishing up some other business, one finger held up in the air to hold the girl’s tongue as she filled out paperwork on an impossibly large desk, unknown artifacts all pushed to its edges.

As Borte waited for the Proctor Superior to speak to her, she reviewed the room. It was was rectangular and narrow, and the ceiling was unusually tall- almost as tall as the one in the Sisters’ Hall, she thought, or more like some of the larger rooms in the East Wing near the train station. Stationary lights were fixed just a third of the way up the walls, leaving the rest dark and indefinite. The walls were furnished with some kind of red-brown wood covered in simple, arcane carvings, with several cabinets and armoires built into the woodwork or built to blend into them. On top of one cabinet were generations of styles of hats for Reverend Mothers: horned ones, fascinator-cowls for half-shaven heads, giant winged crested hats, and, of course, the veiled pillbox. On the ground, a red, blue, and gold carpet made intricate floral, almost fungal patterns that spilled across from one side to the other, with Borte’s chair, and, from the look of it, Mother Puleng’s own centered at the two dead zones of an intricate gradient pattern of growth and decay.

Puleng slid the last paper to her side and finally lowered her hand, speaking with a weathered, scratchy voice. “Alright, girl. I’ve finished the other business.”

Borte gulped and then spoke. “Y-Your Reverence, is this about trying to go to the microfiche library Sunday? W-wouldn’t this be something I’d talk to the dean about?”

Mother Puleng’s expression was inert. “I’m afraid the dean’s dealing with other pressing matters. And thank you for warning me about whatever your new nonsense of note is.”

The crone bent over, and with great effort slowly pulled up from behind her desk three bundles of papers– one small and in a manilla folder, one indecently spilling from a green binding and the size of a visible-eye encyclopedia volume, and the last off-white, straining at its edges, and already dwarfing the green one in bulk.

Her Reverence stated: “We’ve been reviewing your records, girl. It’s long past time.”

Borte’s blood shot to temperatures colder than her home planet.

The Proctor Superior rattled off some less-than-formal summaries. “Body and mind control: exceptional, I will admit. Social and emotional intelligence? Again, exceeds expectations. Self-discipline? Dangerously nonexistent–“ she spat out dryly– “filled with loud-mouthed impertinence even when you think you’re hiding it from proctors. Academics: well, based on your juvenile school performance, we’ve never expected a miracle.”

Borte now had the sneaking suspicion she was being called a hotheaded idiot-savant. Heh, beat you to it, didn’t I, Yakoba?

“In the century I’ve been on this moon, I have never seen a more frustrating combination of natural talent and a lack of self-control, let alone basic humility becoming of a Sister of our Order.” Puleng’s eyes glowered out of their walnut casing at her. “That’s not something that is a compliment, girl. We are in the practice of making humans here. Not whatever first-and-last-of-its-kind aberration has been forming in your noggin.”

“A-are you going to mercy me?”

“Mercy?” the Proctor Superior said. She let out a short cackle, a dull-toothed smile now on her face. “Bless you, no! No mercy for you today, I’m afraid. I’m here to do two things: assist in some examinations and give you a long-overdue attitude adjustment.” The levity in her wrinked face dropped away again. “And then terminate you if need be.”

Assist? Borte thought, heart racing. I don’t see–

A reedy voice from the dark spoke: “Initiate Borte.”

Borte suppressed her instinct to jump, and instead turned her head towards the voice. In a wooden armchair in the blind spot of the entrance sat a woman wearing a black gown with gold trim. She had dark hair and impossibly blue eyes like those Fremen she had seen filmbooks of. The Sister looked far, far younger than Mother Puleng, but still bore the usual trappings and aura of a Reverend Mother.

She stood up to face her and lowered her head. “Yes, Your Reverence?”

“You catch on. Do not bother turning your chair to face me,” the blue-eyed woman said, standing up and striding out in front of Mother Puleng’s desk. “I am Her Reverence Rapontchombo Emal Jahana, Truthsayer commissioned to investigate the situation here. You may refer to me as ‘Truthsayer Jahana,’ ‘Mother Jahana,’ or ‘Your Reverence.’ Sit.”

Borte sank back uneasily into the chair.

“I see some defiance betrayed by your eyes and body. You’d punch me if it weren’t for the power imbalance and repercussions. It’s a common reaction among miscreants. Planet?”

“Ishkal, Your Reverence.”

“Hm. Icy. How old were you when you joined the Order?”

“I ah, can’t remember that far ba–”

“Born and creche-tithed 10175,” Mother Puleng recited while looking at the smallest of the three paper stacks.

“Effectively since birth?” Jahana raised her eyebrows and glanced back at Puleng. “What bloodline is ‘Abdullahi’?”

“There is none. It’s… her patrilineal surname.” Puleng said, furrowing her brow. “Wild genes by all these records.”

“Mm. Here from birth, and yet, you act like this,” Truthsayer Jahana murmured before frowning. She reminded Borte of someone, but before the girl could continue her thought, she exploded– “WHY THE HELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR SURNAME, GIRL?”

“I… looked it up, Your Reverence.” Borte was starting to sweat.

“Looked it up?” Jahana whispered incredulously. She glanced at Puleng and continued the interrogation. “When? How?”

“I- in juvenile school,” she stammered. “I wanted to know! I, I was curious! A friend, she was from outside and kept talking about her dad and her brother, and she had a second name, and I wanted mine too! So I… I went in the back rooms, and looked it up.”

The Truthsayer already looked exasperated. “You… looked it up. In the school’s sealed records. While still a young child.” Something told Borte that the woman didn’t usually deal with children or other sources of chaos regularly.

Puleng intervened. “It’s noted, Jahana. Let’s move on to relevant issues.”

Truthsayer Jahana turned back to Borte, face and tone recollected. “So– a little under two weeks ago, you went to your seventh-rank self-defense class, yes? And you found something in a fellow student’s bag.”

Borte nodded. “Yes, Your Reverence. My partner was late, so I went to check on the changing room.”

“Hmm. Proctor Liuth attested it was just five minutes before warm-up actually starts when you went back there.”

“I, uh, like to start early.” Is she really thinking I’m a suspect? Borte thought.

Truthsayer Jahana narrowed her eyes as she looked over Borte’s face. “Truth,” she muttered. “Now: why did you look at that bag?”

“It had Maryam– another student, she’s my friend…’s initials, but she wasn’t there yet either. And it was in the wrong place, from where she usually put it. And it looked like it was uh, faked? New spraypaint stenciled on the canvas and stuff.”

Truthsayer Jahana continued her stare, as if she was peeling back layers of skin and veins and muscles on Borte’s head to evaluate the skull underneath. “Validated. Though I fail to see why Jessica’s issue should be allowed to spend any time with you. So, you saw something was wrong, and instead of telling the proctor, you investigated, yourself.”

“Yes, Your Reverence.” Borte knew where this was going already.

“Do you have a reason– forgive me– a good reason, why you made such a rash decision? Any unusual situation at a chapterhouse must be reported to your superiors. This should be a lesson you’ve learned a million times over by now!”

And there it was, as usual. Borte bristled at yet another admonition and shot back out of pride. “Yeah, well… I didn’t trust the proctor to deal with it safely if there were other students involved. She’s bad at managing a room full of us! I knew I could handle it safer. And I did!” The words shot out of her mouth before she could stop herself.

The Truthsayer slapped her unscarred cheek. Then, as she reeled in the chair, words as cold and sharp as an icicle shoved through Borte’s skull, from frontal lobe straight through to the brainstem: “Stop Breathing.”

Her chest muscles froze, the back of her mouth now spasming at the sudden immobility below it, unable to draw in air. You can’t kill someone with just the Voice– she knew she would be able to breathe again once she lost consciousness– but, her Way-strength!

Truthsayer Jahana crouched down to eye level with Borte, her face still stinging from the slap and grimacing as she breathlessly panicked. The woman continued, her voice now a cold tone with rounded, precise Galach. “Don’t think yourself so strong and judicious, girl. There are rules that you can never ignore. A hierarchy you can never invert. You’re alive because you are being trained to serve the Bene Gesserit, nothing more. So serve it.” She grabbed Borte’s chin, pulling the choking girl’s face into alignment with hers. “There are times where one can see the potential of even the most uncharted genome. And right here, I see exactly what sort of wild animal you are.”

As Jahana continued to crouch in front of her, Borte struggled to see or hear anything else outside the Truthsayer’s infinitely blue eyes and desolate voice, her body screaming for oxygen, vision tunneling into the woman’s face now silent face, the edges darkening, darkening, fading–

“Breathe,” a Voice like two clay tablets scraping each other said, and Borte filled her lungs with a deep breath, heart still pounding. That Voice had to have been Proctor Superior Puleng’s, who was still bent over the folders. The woman glanced up at the Truthsayer, cloudy eyes briefly flitting over the back of Jahana’s head.

The Truthsayer stood up, still silent. She glanced to her side, frowning at the other Reverend Mother’s intercession.

Without missing a beat, the old woman replied to her wordless objection. “The semantics, Jahana. Too limited for such a lesson.”

Truthsayer Jahana kept inert as she spoke again. “Such limitations are enough to get it across, Puleng.” The strange cold voice she took on was replaced once again with her original reedier tone.

Still reading and writing within the folders, Puleng raised a finger. “Not asphyxiation. Violence has dialects. Leave the corrective activities to me, Truthsayer, and please focus on your investigation.”

The Truthsayer relented, and waited silently for Borte to stop gasping for air.

“Mm,” Jahana hummed. “The flensing snake. Was it in the bag?”

Borte, still catching her breath, nodded.

“It tore your clothes, learning your smell. Was that an accident?”

“I– ack!“ Borte coughed, ”I used part of my uniform to turn over the bag from a distance, and then I let go of it and jumped up when I felt an odd weight! So I, uh, couldn’t get hurt if it was acid or something like that! Or a slug-thing, I guess.”

Truthsayer Jahana nodded. “Tactical intelligence within the confines of operational disobedience and strategic stupidity. Break your bad habits, and I daresay you would be salvaged for a spot in the Sisterhood Guards.”

A Guardswoman? Borte groaned internally. Not them! They didn’t do anything interesting– they just stood around the same places or people for years, and then every so often would go and toss out whatever random dope wandered onto a Chapterhouse’s grounds. Or would get mad while interviewing interesting people such as herself when a real problem passed in front of their thick-headed human skulls.

The Truthsayer continued: “And so, at some point you actually engaged with it again, captured it in its own bag, and eventually killed it…” she glanced purposefully at Borte’s still-freshly-scarred cheek and neck, “…though at a miserable cost. Were there any other things you noticed about the flensing snake or your surroundings during all that?”

Borte slowed herself down, ignored the Truthsayer’s insult, and thought hard about what else went on around her. “Yes, Your Reverence. It… had this really weird smell, like a mix of rubbing alcohol and formaldehyde. The bag also reeked of it. I didn’t see any way for it to have come through the pipes above, or toilets either, at least not with the bag, you know. And when Helena came, she was very confused and upset, mainly because of all my blood, I think.”

Jahana studied her face again, and walked over to the side of the room, staring at nothing in particular. Puleng stayed silent, studying the woman.

“Well, then that brings us up to when your lump of a partner found you killing that creature,” Jahana half-murmured. Suddenly, the Truthsayer spun around and gave another uncanny stare at Borte. “Tell me about your… friend, Jessica’s issue, and the other people of note in the self-defense class. Does anyone have animus against the girl?”

“Like, bad feelings? No! Nobody can stay angry at Maryam, even if they think she’s uptight and stuffy, she’s just got this way with the rest of us. Proctor Ostrom once said it’s a mix of ‘hereditary charisma’ and ‘applied etiquette’ or something. She’s like, a Na-Duchess or something, right, which means she’s highborn, which is like being a Reverend Mother’s issue for animals? She’s really smart and cool– she’s told me stories about Outside and lets me know what’s true or not. But sometimes she seems really sad even if she’s trying not to show it. I know Aris and Karen had problems with her at one point for, like, being rude and sounding like she’s ordering them around, but I get along with them and I let them know she’s not meaning anything bad. And Durru, my old cellmate, thought once she was copying her notes without asking until I showed Durru that her daysign when I copied Maryam’s notes for the assignment was from a few days before, and I know Helena’s jealous of how she’s friends with another girl, Yakoba, who’s also my friend, cuz she’s got a crush on her. Though I don’t know why, Yak’s not a boy or whatever. Helena and I don’t talk in our other classes but, we usually spar pretty rough in Weirding, and I know she can do better, and so I try to push her hard, but something’s making her scared and stopping her, I know. So when–“

“Please shut up,” Jahana said in that cold tone. Any second now, and she’d use her Voice–

Instead, after a brief silence trying to compile that mess of gossip, the Truthsayer only spoke again, now reedy-voiced: “That’s all, girl. I have your partner’s attestation of the events on hand– audio record with biograph, no need to speak with her immediately. Compliant with the Guards, unlike in your case. I’ll investigate the grounds and start following leads at my own discretion, now.” She seemed to be speaking just as much to herself as to the other two in the room.

Truthsayer Jahana then paced to the back of the room and turned to look at the Proctor Superior. “She’s innocent to a fault. I leave the… ‘corrective activities’ to you, Puleng.”

Without waiting for a reply, the young Reverend Mother left, and the door closed behind her with a magisterial thud. Puleng’s rheumy eyes seemed intentionally expressionless as she watched her leave.

Mother Puleng turned her gaze back to Borte, still shaking from that ordeal, and raised her eyebrows while she slammed the last stack of papers off to the side. “Well then! That was certainly interesting, girl.”

“Am I, uh, excused, Your Reverence?” Hope sprang eternal.

“No.” Hope instead had a catastrophic material failure after too many stress cycles, it seemed.

Mother Puleng slid out of her chair, her head now closer to the ground than she was when sitting. She picked up her cane and made her slow and agonizingly senescent way to the side of her office.

“You’re a wild one, Borte. But, you have some sense in there.” She leaned in front of a cabinet, counting its handles with her ropelike brown fingers covered in black liver spots. “And we’re in the mind of finding that sense, girl, not throwing out all the woman-hours we spent on you. Salvaging the situation and all that.” She opened and closed a few drawers in succession, and pulled out objects hidden from Borte’s view by her robes.

Puleng raised her voice to be heard over all the noise she was making: “And there’s a time and place for such wildness, if it’s done by an intent-filled mind- a human mind. I recall more than a few men and women in my time and before who used it well! But unfortunately, that time and place can’t, and won’t, be anywhere here on this moon for you.”

“I understand, Your Reverence.” Borte was feeling well past exhausted, but she felt her heart pounding yet again. Was this it?

Puleng furrowed her brow in annoyance as she turned around. “No, you’ve yet to learn that! That’s a real Bene Gesserit lesson. Takes a while.” Borte remained frozen as the Proctor Superior shuffled over in front of her, a case in one hand and her other hand splayed to hold both the cane and another smaller case. The old woman tossed the cases onto the near side of her desk and opened them both. “You’ve got some cheek to be mouthing off about ‘animals’ and ‘humans’ at your current level of training, haven’t you? Lording over the servants, even the younger girls and all.”

She continued her lecture as she fished through the cases. The glint of metal and glass held in some kind of dull padding could be seen by Borte even with the Reverend Mother’s lumpy silhouette blocking her view. “Being Bene Gesserit has little to do with humanity– I’ve administered the Test to more than a few brave outsiders in my time,” Puleng wheezed. “Men can be human. Mentats are often human. Hell, I’ve heard of a cat that tested as human, long ago. Let’s see… still in shelf life, ironic as the phrase is for such things.”

A strange clack noise came from behind the old witch. Borte’s heart felt like it was going to burst.

Puleng turned around and continued talking, a cubic box now mounted on her cane and holding a needle in her other hand.

“We test for humans because our work and our skills are too dangerous to be in the hands of animal feelings. If an undisciplined… wild… mind were to come away with our skills, Great Mother forbid transmit them to others even more animalistic than them…” she paused, refilling her lungs. “Well, disaster, especially if they fall into the hands of common men. That gender has enough social power as it is.”

This was it. Borte stayed still as Puleng shuffled forwards, Gom Jabbar Test instruments in hand.

She stopped less than a foot from her, and spoke. “Put your right hand in the box, Initiate.”

Borte did so, and she could feel nothing odd like the pain she expected as her fingers and then her palm disappeared behind a curtain of black-on-black.

Mother Puleng carried on as if nothing was happening. “That reminds me, from my spiel… you haven’t met a man or boy in the flesh before yet, have you?”

Borte shook her head. “I’ve seen boys! All when I traveled here from Ishkal. Big shapes in coats back home. And then Guildsmen on the heighliner. And then, some of the men in the city, when we traveled to here, had beards. So–“

In a flash, the Proctor Superior whipped out a needle to Borte’s neck, the motion looking like the product of thousands of years of practice. Borte kept her upper body deathly still, taking small sharp breaths with her diaphragm to calm down her heart.

Puleng continued: “You’ve seen them, not met them– no different from one of those newfangled filmbooks. Dead visions. Life is an experience, death’s but a bas-relief or ego-likeness on a sarcophagus. Also, a word of caution: men-children your age? They smell.” The old woman took another breath, almost in rhythm with Borte’s elementary prana-bindu exercise. “Now, let’s go over the boilerplate: I hold at your neck the Gom Jabbar. Potent neurotoxin, instant death, et cetera. It kills only animals. The test is simple. Remove your hand from the box, and you die. Keep your hand in the box, and you live.”

Borte felt nothing but the edges and sides of the cube behind the void at first. “Where should I keep my eyes?”

The Proctor Superior shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t help to look at the box, I’ve found.”

Borte knew a few things about the Gom Jabbar Test: she knew that the box slowly tortured hands inside it from just an itching sensation into an ‘indescribable’ burning pain, and she knew that she wasn’t an animal, wasn’t just some soap bubble to be popped lightly.

“You should feel the itching… now,” Mother Puleng murmured. A strange tingling started, something like her hand being woken up after falling asleep. It increased to a roiling itch, like if her hand was dipped in poison holly extract from back home.

Then her palm and backhand dissolved and flipped through each other, her fingers now like lone sausages thrown into a roiling carpet of hand-maggots.

Borte seized up and gasped through clenched teeth. This wasn’t supposed to happen, something was wrong–

“Careful, Initiate.” Puleng growled.

Her palm now feeling thoroughly re-solidified and mangled, Borte stammered in protest. “There’s… there’s something going on in–,”

“There’s nothing in there but your hand, girl. You should know that. I thought you were ‘in the know’ about how to be a Sister, right?” Puleng raised her eyebrows and locked her cloudy old eyes with Borte’s.

The skin on her fingers started to separate along their seams and …’bloom’, like onions kept too long in a cellar. It was impossible for this feeling to happen- did Puleng pull out some other box? She fought back tears. The bones were dissolving again all along her hand, the flesh flowering like some grotesque meat-bouquet.

Borte took another breath, the Proctor Superior’s needle resting on her unpunctured neck and steadier than a planet’s orbit. She tried to re-center herself, to ignore the terrible feelings of growth and decay going through her hand, and did her best to practice more of those prana-bindu breathing techniques.

Soon, her fingers left the hand-nest, ready to plant roots and build families of their own. An endless madwoman’s ecosystem was felt through an implied vista of touch, an almost intolerably long agony. For an instant, it felt as if she was in the Agony Box, and her propagating hand was outside it, and only the reminder of the Gom Jabbar and her conscious breathing prevented her body from fatally shuddering. Then, the hand-world within hit an evolutionary bottleneck, and rotted away– only a mouldering steel-green feeling behind the void. Nothing but the writhing listlessness of death-processes could be felt beyond the box.

The Proctor Superior pulled the needle away from her neck, and the agony stopped. Borte continued gasping, tears streaming down her face.

“Enough, Initiate! Remove your hand and look at it.”

Gingerly, Borte pulled out her hand from behind the curtain of night. Her hand was unharmed, save that the tip of her index pointer was dislocated from how hard she pressed on the box’s bottom.

Puleng interrupted Borte’s wonderment: “So, girl! You’ve now earned that right to prattle about your humanity, such as it’s worth.” She smiled, discolored teeth glistening like pewter spoons pulled out of coffee. “I haven’t the faintest idea of what chaos your genes would bring to such a delicate garden as we’ve got these days,” she wheezed, “but that’s a worry for some other poor Reverend Mother to lose sleep over, not a Proctor Superior like me.” For once, Puleng’s smile had a more benign component to it to rather than a purely predatory smirk.

Borte fell back into the chair, incoherent and exhausted. “Wh… what was that! That… that wasn’t…”

Puleng continued smiling as she turned away from her, now methodically returning her instruments to the case. “There’s more than one setting for the Agony Box, girl. For you masochistic glory-hound sorts, the usual burning and slicing pain doesn’t cut it, heh. More unusual feelings are needed to properly test for humanity. The ‘heebie-jeebies’ or ‘nightmare fuel’, to pull up some old phrases.”

Borte cradled her right hand as she caught her breath. “Were you always gonna do it now, even before the slug-thing?” she said, and winced as she set her index finger back in position.

Puleng turned back around. “You needed testing– your play-acting as queen of the schoolyard’s been wearing thin, and you’re of the age for it anyways. I’ve been trying to get it into my own personal schedule, not just any Proctor Major’s. But it’s a complicated time of year, even before this… incident.” She paused, leaning more on her cane. “I figured it best to wait until after the Truthsayer came to have a word with you, before possibly seeing you drop to the floor.”

Borte nodded. The Proctor Superior really thought that much and that little of her, then.

“Remember this, human! You’re still not close to becoming a real Sister of the Bene Gesserit.” Puleng’s eyes narrowed until they blended in with the rest of her wrinkled face. “This was the ‘trial by ordeal’ to see if you’ve real witch material, to play on an old legality. But your spirit-of-the-law insubordination is going to be tackled through some very bespoke character building, just you wait. And young one, don’t even think of slouching on your academics in the meantime. You’re practically supine on the floor regarding that as it is.”

Borte sat there, feeling faint and half-conscious, adrenaline spent.

“Oh, just one more thing, girl.” Mother Puleng said as she tottered back to her desk, one hand on her brow. “If, in your interview, I had mentioned your dust-up with Jessica's issue a year back… the Truthsayer would have broken your neck on the spot once she was done. Remember that, and think hard about the meaning of such a fact.”

Borte turned over the facts of her multiple brushes with death today like a puzzle box held by a punch-drunk pit fighter. She didn’t really understand what the Reverend Mother was getting at, but something was deathly important enough about Maryam, and yet… she of all people was her cellmate now.

The Proctor Superior pulled herself back up into her chair as Borte tried to solve the mystery. “You’re excused from the remainder of your classes, Initiate. You’ve learned plenty enough for a day. Don’t make me call one of the guards to carry you back to your cell… Well, might as well now, given that glaze on your eyes.”

She hit some sort of buzzer twice on her cane or desk, and in less than a minute a shape in blue came, activated Borte’s suspensor belt, and then threw her over its back. Memories of a much smaller girl being reprimanded and carried off the same way bubbled in her consciousness, and she slipped into a dark haziness until she reappeared in her cell bed.

An Alaya Fistula-Redoubt, 10191 A.G.

^{Do you remember your Gom Jabbar Test, Mother?}

^{Of course I do! What Sister doesn’t?}

^{Mine was a rainy night.}

^{Mine was a cold day.}

^{Mine was ‘twenty-one years’ ago.}

^{Mine was just ‘two years’ ago!}

^{You comforted me afterwards. It was a terrible time.}

^{I cried all night, alone! Not even a cellmate to tell me to keep it quiet.}

^{Was it a sunny one for her? Musty with swamp-front, perhaps?}

^{Her? Oh, oh! Why don’t we ask?}

^{Don’t bother, mother-dear. I figured out your first question.}

^{Which question, daughter?}

^{‘What Sister doesn’t remember?’– well, it’s simple, isn’t it?}

^{Oh! So simple!}

^{So simple!}

^{So simple!}

So simple!

One stuck in that ‘present’ forever– failing that test forever– one that tried and died!

Chapter 19 Selective Glossary

No words of note.

Chapter Text

Love leads to misery. Love is a very ancient force, which served its purpose in its day and is no longer an essential for the survival of the species.

– Bene Gesserit Lesson

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

“And what’s this you’re doing again?” asked Helena. Her brow was furrowed as she pointed with her pen to Yakoba’s handiwork, and a loose strand of white-blonde hair was stuck to its nibbled end.

Yakoba found herself unable to easily explain. “It’s… it’s factoring a, uh, quadratic,” she mumbled. “All of those signs are the same, and it’s in, like, an, a-x-squared-plus-b-x-plus-c format, and it’s equal to zero when you re-organize it. So you can rearrange it into two terms that when multiplied by each other equal that amount.”

Helena sat there, paralyzed with thought, trying to trace Yakoba’s reasoning. “But… they’re logarithms, right?”

She nodded. “Yes, but if you convert them into the same logarithmic base, you can treat each log-base-3 of x as like… f-of-x, and then account for the usual rules for those, and so you can factor it as a quadratic that way. Then, you can look up the two valid answers in those books of logarithms you’ve been lent for this chapter.” She paused and looked the pale girl in the eyes. “They gave you those for this test, right? Or uh, did they give you a slide rule?”

Helena groaned and pushed herself away from Yakoba’s notes, filling the small study room with a low whine and a slight whiff of her perfume. To Yakoba, helping her out with these more mundane school topics seemed to be a lost cause, sort of like with Borte. She wasn’t the best educator, especially with everything else on her mind, and it was difficult to really understand where these BGs-raised-by-BGs were coming from when it came to approaching a problem. Ideally, they’d be helping each other out, she thought, but… well, Borte is an acquired taste.

For Yakoba and Helena, the after-dinner “vespers block” on Wednesdays and Saturdays was not for a specific class, but instead for general study and practice watched over by a Proctor Minor (and now, also watched by a Sisterhood Guard posted outside the room’s door). The two had re-arranged which set of study halls they went to so that they could help tutor each other, but it wasn’t appearing to have much of an effect for either of them.

The past two vespers had been a halting, unproductive sort of self-guided study, and this one was looking to be an overall failure as well. Wherever Helena needed help with mathematics or science, Yakoba couldn't teach it to her in a way that she wouldn’t just spit back up like bad medicine.

Yakoba wasn’t the only poor teacher, though: Helena was just as abysmal at helping her review the meditation or stressed perception exercises that Myuller had assigned. Her mindset and approach was far off from how Yakoba, Maryam, or even the proctors themselves approached even the most basic techniques.

“How do I do it?” Helena said earlier that block, confused. “I, uh, just calm down and do it.”

Partner meditations were hardly better: their height difference made the “double tree” pose difficult to balance, and the difference in build between them also made the “side-on-side thunderbolt” pose tough to keep stable (and the hand position right below the breasts also more than a little distracting to the both of them). The back-to-back lotus position was actually possible, but even then, Helena’s heart and breath kept to its own steady, implacable tempo, unwilling to meet in the middle with Yakoba’s.

So when Helena decided to declare surrender on reviewing her returned remedial algebra test, the two of them had ran out of topics they could actually tutor each other in.

An awkward silence filled the room. Helena stared towards the door of the study hall– whether the proctor saw their predicament through the room’s one-way glass walls couldn’t be seen from inside, and the regular window on the door was too high up to easily peek out from to look at the center of the study hall.

Yakoba cleared her throat. “So… do you want to try reviewing deriv–“

“No!” Helena interrupted. The girl caught herself and backed off to her regular sheepish tone just as quickly. “Do you, ah, have anything else we can work on?” She stood up and stretched, now looking to the center of the study-panopticon.

“No… Myuller’s cut all my academic classes to the bone. She’s pulling me out of my last mentat-methodology class for meditation hall duty instead. It’s all meditation and prana-bindu right now, all of it.” Even the few things she excelled at here had been taken away by her direct teacher. She understood why, and why she had to redouble her efforts on the Sisterhood’s core skills, but it was starting to wear her down.

As Yakoba reflected on her increasingly austere life, Helena looked deep in thought herself, but on a more practical matter.

Helena broke the silence: “Why don’t we take a break!” She smiled at Yakoba. “I know a spot we both might like, but can you not tell anyone about it?”

Yakoba looked up, curious. The idea of Helena having the same savviness about the Chapterhouse as Borte did seemed absurd, but…

“I’m serious! I, ah, know lots of spots! We can go outside, there’s some stairways that go to the roof around here. You can see for klicks around.”

Yakoba cocked her head to the side as she stood up. “Are you sure? There’s, like… guards all over now, and stuff. We’re not supposed to skip a block like that.” She looked out the door window, recalling how Maryam and Borte had been shooed back to their cell before their all-important meeting could commence. The Proctor Minor was visible, speaking to another student.

Helena sounded about as confused as when she was asked about her skill at body control. “Well, yeah, I know that! But, uh, trust me, I know what to do. Just follow and let me, um, talk.”

The girl opened the door and walked out with her normal uncertain gait, and Yakoba followed, tablet in hand and body drawn inwards as much as she could. Helena went up to the Proctor, waiting for her to finish whatever instructions she was giving to the other Initiate.

Proctor Ingrid was as textbook a Bene Gesserit as Yakoba could have thought of. The woman was dark-haired, emotionless, thin, and impeccably self-disciplined– a perfectly terrible witch like in those stories she had heard back on Poritrin. She was not a regular member of the faculty, instead being a temporary proctor in-between her other assignments, but based on her age and demeanor, it looked like she had done at least one tour of concubinage duty and had the air of someone who had taken more lives than she had given.

Helena, in contrast, was an Initiate who was bad at math and looked a gourd next to the Proctor Minor’s rail-thin body of the same height.

Helena bent down her head and took on a deferential pose with her hands. “Er, Proctor Ingrid.”

“Yes, Initiate?” Whatever the Sister was thinking was masked to Yakoba, but there seemed to be a slight tint of contempt for Helena, rather than the usual pity that she herself got.

“Initiate Yakoba was, uh, helping me with math– A logarithms test, er, reviewing it, in my algebra classes. We had it returned–“

Proctor Ingrid somehow was able to look down her nose at Helena as she interrupted, drilling into her facial tics to find any sign of mischief. “Don’t belabor it. And?”

“We want to check the logarithm tables, in the library. The macrotext library!” Helena’s face and tone had the same irritating, quavering earnestness that she showed to everyone when she hadn’t had time to rehearse what she was saying. “Also so I can try one of the bonus questions, uh, let me get the exam to show you, I have it back–”

“Yes, girl, I’ll write a pass for you two.” She pursed her lips and reached for her notitia-tablet across the table, and pulled out from her aba a roll of what looked like microstamped paper to feed into the notitia-tablet’s thermal printer.

Yakoba turned to hide her nervousness from the trained Sister, and glanced at the other study rooms around them. There was at least one other study hall for Initiates similar in intent, if not design– the one she previously was in was oblong rather than radial, with an observation balcony above the central hallway from where the Proctor could monitor each room. From this centerpoint, many other girls in the same uniform could be seen experiencing varying combinations of frustration, education, and meditation, an equally false sense of privacy removed once they exited the rooms.

The proctor tore out the printed slip, scribbled a daysign onto the blank top, and pinched it between her fingers as she gave it to Yakoba’s cellmate. “Initiate Helena? Fix that halting stutter of yours next time you come to me for anything, or else I’ll send you to your floor advisor for mandatory speech therapy... and also recommend dietary restrictions," she said, looking her up and down scornfully. "Happy hunting for your logarithms.”

“Y-yes, Ma’am,” she murmured while bowing her head. Yakoba took that as a sign to gather their things and ‘make for the macrotext library’ via whatever strange route they took.

The two passed the guard as they left the study hall, and after they walked around a corner, Helena suddenly whispered “just follow me!” and grabbed Yakoba’s wrist. The girl could move fast, almost too fast for Yakoba’s long legs and training to keep up with her. Just as soon as they reached higher-traffic areas, Helena would let go of her, put her hood up, and would act as if they were just initiates with a hall pass, the curled piece of thermal paper conspicuously flopping in front of the tablet and books in her arms like a noble house’s seal.

At the oft-empty Reflecting Pool (maintenance costs were ever-present limits on tradition), Yakoba followed her lead and solemnly, calmly went left with her instead of straight in the direction of the macrotexts. And as soon as they turned down another empty hallway– Helena grabbed her wrist again and made another silent dash, an impish smile on her face visible even from behind her with her blonde-white hair flying.

Eventually, Yakoba found herself in a part of the Chapterhouse she didn’t recognize. It was on the northwest side, somewhere, but the hall had little to it aside from an access landing and some sealed doors– a back hallway for storage rooms or workshops far outside an Initiate’s regular experience. And apparently, this was the way to her ‘break spot.’

Helena eagerly handed Yakoba her things and went over to the access landing’s palmlock. She leaned against the door with her other arm, ear close to the electronic mechanism, and started to move her hand side-to-side, searching for some sound or sign Yakoba couldn’t sense. She had heard of this trick before, of course– a fully trained Bene Gesserit could open a standard palmlock by the minute twists and flexes and sweating of a prana-bindu trained hand. But Helena’s hand was flat and unmoving.

A clack from the door’s lock sounded that Helena had done the impossible, and the two stepped into the enclosed landing.

Just as quickly as before, Helena grabbed her tablet and a journal, and began copying down the hall pass’s daysign in multiple places– one here, one halfway through the journal there, one in yet another row, neatly organized by date. Suddenly, she tore out the first set of copied daysigns and thrust them into Yakoba’s bewildered hands.

“For, uh, you!” she blurted, smiling. “There’s a pattern, I think. Maybe you can figure it out. If you ever need to forge some. I just have to uh, do stuff like what I did with the Proctor instead.”

Yakoba blinked. “Wouldn’t I need the paper and printer attachment for forging? And the template?”

The girl slyly nodded, and reached under her hooded vest to pull out a small print-roller, like those on the proctor’s tablet. She then raised the side of her skirt, revealing that under a sown-on swatch of sound-canceling microwool there were a few already-printed slips. She pulled one out and handed it to Yakoba.

“But that’s only, uh, for emergencies. I keep the rest of it in a few stashes around the chapterhouse. I can get you some more later.”

Just how much of her meekness was an act?, Yakoba mused. Maybe an authentic performance can fool the most people. But, hey! With this, Maryam can finally have that time to explain herself to us– no more sneaking around and all that.

Helena started climbing the stairs, and stopped to look down at Yakoba just before she went up the next flight. “The spot… it’s just up above!” she said, raising her voice. “I come here when I feel frustrated. It’s a good view!”

Reluctantly, Yakoba followed her up, mentally noting the presence of multiple large air ducts, pipes, and more than a few flights of stairs to the top of what she thought was a building with only one floor to it. Out of curiosity, she opened a nondescript door on the second landing, only to find it just emptied out to nowhere on the outside of the Chapterhouse– no balcony or fire escape, just the ground far below at the base of the plascrete wall, and the wind whipping around her arm and body as it pushed its way inside the stairwell. She closed the door and continued to follow Helena upwards.

When they exited the stairwell's door on the roof, It was late in the evening– almost dawn, by the look of how much of big red Aegir had come up into the sky behind them and the small flitter of light licking the eastern horizon. Whether the building had multiple other floors inaccessible from the stairwell was unclear, but they looked to be two or three stories up from the ground now. Across the roof, ventilation and heating ducts plunged into and out of the superstructure, an alien otherworld that Yakoba had walked under unawares of for what felt like forever. A simple aluminum and stainless steel guardrail was erected at the edge of the roof, and what looked to be where a clock would have been installed generations ago now was just a flat expanse with anchor points for whatever fixture would next be exiled to this dead angle of the overgrown complex. Yakoba cautiously followed Helena out, careful to keep on the metal grille path leading to the handrails and not the gravel coating.

“This is it!” Helena said, smiling. “It’s not much, but… it’s somewhere quiet. I’ve, um, found forgotten places like this all over.”

The two leaned on the handrail, looking off to the northwest. The Great Karst extended in front of them, a crackled landscape of grey stone splashed with dull colors, with green-yellow shrubs and green-brown mosses and the omnipresent red-brown Ranian Lichen eking out a living between and on top of the rocks. Even as the winter-eclipse season ended, frost continued to tenaciously hold onto the coldest edges of larger stones. Further and further the uneven plain extended, the scattering of and scraping on rocks disappearing into lines of natural stonework too fine to see on the horizon, yet all the while, those endless stripes continued to show the ancient extent of the ice cap. It was as if a great beast had been temporarily pushed to the furthest extents of the world by humanity, Yakoba thought, and the scratch marks and boulder-droppings it left behind hinted at the strength such geological forces still held on to even on this dull moon. Among the karst fields, livestock grazed, the nearby ones kept within electric boundaries and under Old Earth gravity, and the Tall Goats and Tall Sheep were left to roam and to be warped by the local conditions. Behind them, a darkened red Aegir filtered a downright bewitching planetlight onto its satellite.

“Have… you ever been out there?” said Helena. It was always difficult to understand her tone of voice or ulterior motives, but it sounded like she wanted to talk talk, not just take a break.

“Ah, not really.” Yakoba said. “I went out to Kubileya this weekend, but…”

“Oh yeah, I remember that!” Helena said, lightening up a moment. “What did Myuller have you do? Was she nice to you?”

“Ah…” Yakoba prevocalized, giving her a second to think about how much she wanted to say. She decided to just recite a similar spiel as the one she gave Maryam at dinner yesterday. “Well, we spent a fair amount of time working on my meditative states, and she made me practice keeping myself focused while she and some of the others uh, tried to distract me.”

“The others?”

“Oh, yeah! We went to some sort of laboratory that Myuller runs in the city. There’s three men, one’s a mentat, and this tall, tall person, and then they have a boy our age named Leo there.” She paused and explained further: “They would do stuff like ask me questions, or work on stuff in their little greenhouses while I tried to concentrate next to them. Or, uh, they’d throw slushballs or dirt clods at my head.”

“They did that?” Helena looked both like she was mortified and also like she was going to walk to Kubileya to… well, yell at them, not kill them. If this was the angriest she could look, Yakoba thought, she’s gonna have to rely on a whole lot more if she wants to scare someone.

Yakoba continued: “Well, that was mostly Anax, who’s one of the guys, and Leo. But only Myuller threw the stuff at me.”

Helena looked slightly more relieved on hearing that. “Oh… Well, I suppose that’s part of your training, then. Stressed perception, right, hah?” The girl’s laugh felt as awkward and forced as finding a pebble in your loafer.

Undaunted, Yakoba continued the spiel. “But yeah, lots of people! Kind of a shock to me– you could just blend right back in with the right clothing, like before I took the oaths, but you would get this weird Sister-brain where you can read everyone around you. And the train ride was interesting, you get to see the Kubileya Crater slo-o-owly come into view,” Yakoba said, motioning with her hand for emphasis.

The girl turned her head and looked Yakoba straight in the eye, a strange expression on her face. “But about the karsts.” Helena insisted. “Do you know anyone who has been out there?”

“No… why?”

“Does anyone live out there?” Helena waved her hand over the balcony railings, her palm flapping in front of the far-away glacial strirations.

“I… I don’t think so,” Yakoba said. “At least not outside like, weather stations. There isn’t any water that isn’t dewcatched or any food out that way. Just grass.” She paused, and thought some more. “Closer to the north pole, you know. North of Kubileya. It’s colder, but there’s runoff in the summer from the ice caps. There’s a few towns and villages that side. And on the south pole too, where the other city is.”

“Would you ever want to live there, on the pole?”

“Well… we’re Bene Gesserit now. We made an oath to them. There isn’t much reason for us to be sent there, I think.” She thought of the funeral orchard on the far side of the Chapterhouse, and the time-honored question she had to answer after taking that oath. The orchard was bare now from the winter, but was a major source of fruit for the Chapterhouse at other times of the year. The soil’s limitations and the cold winters limited the traditional range of choices for what fruit tree could slowly devour her mortal remains, too. Between apple, pear, and plum, the mottled bark of a stunted apple tree seemed the best fit for her inevitable final resting place.

Helena, her fruit tree choice unknown, broke the silence with a halting proposition. “What– What if– we just…go?”

“You mean… leave? Run away?” Yakoba looked up with her brow furrowed. She felt a slight chill and burst of adrenaline from the audacity.

The pudgy girl nodded. “Y-yeah. We could do it. I think I know how.”

Yakoba shook her head. “Helena… you’re not the first to think of that. The Sisterhood owns this world. You know they’d find us, or find our bodies later.”

Helena kept silent, her expression the same blank determination as usual.

Yakoba listed what else could go wrong: “The karsts are dangerous, you can trip easily or twist or break a leg on all the uneven rocks. And it’s practically a desert! And the gravity! Not having enough is bad for your health.”

Helena replied. “I– I have some tricks I can do, and I know how to survive in places- I was a, um, scout on Ecaz,” she lied. “But I can’t show you the tricks just yet. We could make for a polar town. But I would need to– to do something first before we could leave. Finish up something important.”

“Helena…” Yakoba touched her forearm, and silently pleaded for her to stop. She noticed that her cellmate twitched at her touch, not from discomfort but as if there was a wound underneath her sleeve.

Helena’s blue eyes locked with hers. “Y-Yak… do you mind if I call you Yak? You… you know this place wasn’t meant for you. Or for me. We weren’t supposed to be here, Yak. We need to escape, you need to escape before– before…”

Before the Gom Jabbar Test, Yakoba thought to herself. It was going to be soon. She knew, just knew that some kind of animalistic twitch was going to betray her again. Wait, again?

Before she could make sense of that feeling, words like a focused light of purpose came out of her mouth, past all those murky lies and secrets and plots and agendas everyone else kept swirling around her:

“I don’t want to go with you.”

Yakoba stepped away from the railing, and for once straightened up her posture. Helena looked up at her, distraught.

Yakoba waved her hand towards the Great Karst. “I have nothing out there, Helena. My family’s disowned me, I’m penniless, I have no real training outside of this stuff, I can’t even bear children, I’m a freak–”

“You’re not a freak!”

“Yes, I am. People like me– one percent or so of the population, even fewer as a percentile of the Sisterhood? That’s unexpected. Uncommon. All witches are freaks, especially me.” She suddenly spat out a further truth, bile percolating at the edges of her subconscious: “And even then… I know there’s something much more freakish about me, for me to be here. To have my father’s mocking request honored by them.”

Flashes of hastily-papered-over memories of her dark voyage came to Yakoba’s mind’s eye: of examinations and injections by Apothecary-Sisters and passing glances by older women- Reverend Mothers, perhaps, scanning her for some errant aspect of a discarded Plan gone feral, or fishing catch-and-release in Poritrin’s gene pool. The limited Mentat training she had– and why else would she have had those classes assigned to her here, if she hadn’t been fruitlessly and unknowingly drilled in the preliminaries by her father’s tutors at home?– was drawing a clear line. Whatever it was, whatever freakishness was of interest to the Sisterhood: if it was found in her, that visit they made would repeat again and again on her sister’s and her cousins’ future children and grandchildren.

“I’m expendable,” Yakoba spat. “To them. And that’s why I need to stay, even if there’s nowhere for me anymore. To prove everyone wrong. To prove myself wrong. Or die trying.” Both the Gom Jabbar and the apple seed with her name on it were probably very close nearby by now.

“Being… uncommon. It doesn’t mean you’re a freak!” Helena grabbed her hand, and a look of concern not on her normal emotional palette came on her face. “You’re you, Yak. Lots of things are uncommon, that doesn’t mean they’re bad or strange. It, it doesn’t matter if you can or can’t have kids. You can’t just stay here and throw your life away out of spite. You’re smart. You’re nice to be aro–”

Yakoba sulked. “Helena, you think this is the first time anyone’s tried to cheer me up? Maryam’s said stuff like that to me. And ‘being nice’ doesn’t mean anything good here to these people.” She trailed off into a mutter: “Honestly, I suspect they think it’s a bad habit.” She half-heartedly tried to pull her hand out of Helena’s fingers, but the girl kept her hands firmly around hers, letting her arms follow hers back to the side of Yakoba’s dress.

“It– it means a lot, it means so much! And I like you! I think you’re pretty!” Helena pleaded.

The two of them froze. Helena’s face started to flush red, and the feeling of blood running through Yakoba’s face was a sign the same was going on to her too. It felt similar to when stray thoughts of Leo came to mind– an alien feeling from another girl, but also more comforting, less of an innate thrill than when thinking of him.

She broke eye contact with Helena. It was too much. Instead, she focused her eyes above on the girl’s small brow and went back to the original argument. “I… I hate it here, I know. But I also made an important promise to uh, someone, and I’d have to become a Sister to fulfill it. I don’t want to run away from it.”

“Yak…” Helena croaked, her eyes misting up.

“I won’t tell anyone, anyone, about you leaving, Helena. If you want to leave, and you know what you want to do, I’ll keep it a secret.”

The smaller girl hugged her like a life preserver and started crying. “I d-don’t want to be alone out there! Please! It only makes sense if someone goes with me. If you go with me! Or once I finish what I need to, I’d– I’ll–” her voice degenerated into a hollowed sobbing.

A terrible mix of emotions flooded out from Helena’s tight embrace. Exhilaration at her touch, discomfort that it came without asking, revulsion tinged by guilt at herself for feeling this way about her distressed cellmate. She stood, petrified.

Helena continued to be half-choked by her tears and snot while she talked. “I’m tired of hurting people. I’m tired of being alone. I’ve been so, so alone my whole life!”

Didn’t she say she grew up around siblings?, a distant, libidoless fragment of Yakoba’s training interjected. And with the girl’s torso pressed to hers like this, Helena’s body felt… off, like it was some tension-filament casing wound around and around a core of pressurized gas in the form of a desperate girl, ready to either crumble in or explode out.

Yakoba ignored it for now. She moved her pinned arms up, and did her best to hug her cellmate back. She took care to not do so in a way to imprint or suggest anything– she wasn’t ready to think of any future past survival, and that terrible feeling from Helena stood over it all.

Two lost youths hugged each other, the feelings ambiguous, their motives clouded, alone on top of a building among buildings, in the middle of a nowhere among nowheres.

After a few strange, worrying, soothing moments, Helena let go of her, and stepped back.

“I… I’m sorry. I’ll be back at our cell.” Helena whispered almost to herself, a mixture of gut-churning nerviousness and catharsis on her face. “Please… don’t tell anyone. And– and if you change your mind…”

Without finishing her sentence, she ran back to the access door, dress hem and hood flying in the cold crosswind like some broken-winged bird.

Yakoba Herstal was alone now on the roof, and there was nothing else there besides the sky above and the dawning horizon around her. A horrible feeling that she had hurt her cellmate, that they had irreversibly broken the peace of their shared room, came over her. She thought of Leo, and of Helena, and didn’t want to think of which meant what to her, or if she wanted one or the other to be something more to her.

Half-controlled thoughts crossed her mind, reviewing the wreckage of whatever emotional barrier had stopped her from realizing the greater implication of why she was there. I’m just a sterilized sample for them: a strain-gauge on my genetic line, she thought. A lack of any grief for her family’s future disturbed her. She could only find a small granule of vengeful satisfaction in the debris.

Shivering slightly in the wind, tears lodged halfway up her eye ducts, she sat down in an uncomfortable lotus position and pulled the hood over her cold ears. Maybe she could get some sort of practice done here to bury her feelings back under discipline again, like a good Initiate. She pulled herself together, adopted a casual mudra for her hand, and started to modulate her breath.

Breathe in… The heart of the Bene Gesserit is education, she thought. Breathe out… That education is instilled through discipline… Breathe in… Discipline is the basis of human behavior and thought… Breathe out… The business of the Bene Gesserit is to create humans… Another breath in… The purpose of creating humans is to free us from animal behavior…

But was it, though?, she thought. Humans are organisms, yes. But what kind of organism lives by feeding off of a larger body, like the Sisterhood does to the pyons? What kind eats its own young like the Sisterhood does? Nothing “human” by a definition inside or outside of the Order acts like the Bene Gesserit does as a whole, she thought. Something parasitical, or even machine-like in its maniacal optimization. Like any other organ of rule abstracted from the consequences of itself.

Her breath remained deep and steady even as her heart began to pound harder and harder against her left breast, like it was trying to break free of her body and strangle her for this impudent line of thought. Humans, humane-ness of any kind… no, we’re not in the business of making humans here, are we? We’re here to create obedience. Wrap it up in more flexibility than those likeminded groups fallen around it, with all those stupid paradoxes and koans and sayings about critical thinking and avoiding dead tradition we get drilled into us. We’re here to serve, not to be humane: the first thing I was told to recite was “I exist to serve,” for a reason.

This had to be all true, she thought. It was an insight of emotion and recent memory as much as any critical system-thinking. Was she missing some insight or fact that disproved her suspicion? How many Sisters have had the same realization over the millennia? Was that part of Myuller’s strange intensity? Could Yakoba still become human if the training was flawed? Could anyone even be human– truly in control of themselves, truly consciously shaping their environment?

She pulled herself back from the uncharted edges of heresy, and returned to the original thoughts. Whatever! They can have my obedience, she thought. But they will never have my loyalty. And I will find my humanity.

With a sad resignation, she did her best to push her insights and emotions to the side, and buried herself deeper into the limestone soil of her soul, searching for a seed of internal peace.

It was late– 2300 or so– when Yakoba returned to her cell. Moving past the guards with one of Helena’s many permission slips poking out was simple, and until she saw the darkness of the dormitory hall, she was focused only on her return and getting a shower. Now, though, as she walked between the dotted lines of light that defined the hallway, she was struck by worry again. Helena was back at the room, and it was anyone’s guess how she would be feeling or what she would do.

After she disengaged the thumblock, Yakoba slowly opened the door to their cell. It was dark, and Helena, still in her uniform, was laying on her bed and facing away to the wall.

Gingerly, Yakoba walked to her half of the room and started to remove her top layers, one hand kept close to her towel and soaps. If she was quiet about it, maybe she could get washed and dried and get in bed without–

“I’m sorry,” Helena said. “I shouldn’t have done that, or said that.”

Yak dreaded turning her body to look at her, and instead just reached behind herself to turn the room’s light on. “It’s… all right,” she murmured. “But, I don’t think we’re allowed to act like that… those rules against intimate sororitizing and all.” In a lapse of judgement, she wedged open some ambiguity for the two of them. “Er, act like that around others, especially proctors.”

Helena, still unmoving, understood the implication. “So, you…?”

“I don’t know,” Yakoba said, throwing her hooded scapular on top of her small pile of clothes. “But I don’t, uh, mind. But we may not want to, ah, say or do anything more until after we both pass the Test. So that…”

“Yes. Yeah. I– I’m sorry.” Helena’s soft voice barely bounced off of the cell’s hard stuccocrete walls.

Without responding, Yakoba grabbed her towel and left the room, closing the cell door lightly behind her. She left the light on inside, a thin outline of gold that could guide her back on her return through the dark hall.

An Alaya Fistula-Redoubt, 10191 A.G.

^{Oh, mother-dear: what’s love, that love between adults and between foolish half-children to you?}

^{Don’t play coy, daughter! You’re certainly old enough to know.}

^{Can love come from a knife-point, from lies, from pity, from imprisonment, between prisoners?}

^{Perhaps! At least for one side. Does love need two equal halves to be a whole?}

^{I think so! If it’s not equally felt, equally understood, equally respected, is it really love? It would be just infatuation–}

^pity–

^kindness–

^obsession–

^{–all mixed, instead.}

^{But we don’t concern ourselves with love in our line of business, do we?}

^{Our business, our training– ah! I forget some deep teachings, now. We’re becoming fragmented here.}

^{Wait, is love like teaching the Way? A transmission of the lamp, communicating the wordless meaning?}

^{Smart! But that doesn’t help our dear child-Sister here. After all–}

^{After all, daughter?}

^{Yes! After all–}

^{Oh, after all!}

After all,

Good Sisters don’t concern themselves with love!

Chapter 20 Selective Glossary

No new words of note.

Chapter Text

A sea-mouse was trapped in a box of gold,

That all lords and ladies would hold and behold,

No wonder then, when they went in to touch,

The she-mouse inside would think it too much!

– Children’s Nursery Rhyme common to Dowager-allied worlds, 10240s A.G.

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Noon on Saturday was an uncommonly bright twilight, and yet only the glint from an overhanging window outside the entrance to the dining hall made it clear that the red-gold hues of the evening would be accompanying whatever mess of flatbreads, eggs, and leeks they would be served for lunch. The three of them– Maryam, Borte, and Yakoba, of course– looked worn, but in different ways. Just like the last few times they could meet, the Youngest Lass looked like she hadn’t slept well in days, though the bruises she refused to comment on were starting to fade. The Middle Lass, finally able to come to lunch, had The Tell on her arm, along with The Look on her face. She would suddenly clam up as if by an implanted suggestion when asked what happened, but it didn’t matter: they all knew she was undeniably proven human now, and so they gave her distance and tried to adapt to a newly-pensive Borte.

Yakoba couldn’t see her own face, but she assumed that the Eldest Lass was looking both exhausted and pre-emptively aware of her inevitable demise. She kept that strange intimate moment with Helena on the rooftop to herself, and in halting discussions in later nights, she got further than she expected in her attempts to finally solve the Meeting Issue.

“The daysign is uh, simple, kind of,” she remembered saying to Helena Friday night. Only a small candela lit the cell room, and Yakoba’s eyes had gotten strained from cycling through and scribbling on so many pages of torn-out journal paper on her bed the past two nights, half brute-force, half notations and mnemonics for her rudimentary mentat skills. “There’s just three– ah, four steps that cycle and countercycle at different rates for the first few strokes, but the last part each day is randomized. I think.”

Helena pulled her half-asleep face out of her covers and went into a wide-eyed smile. “W-wow! I, uh, hope this isn’t a big hassle.” She then caught herself and lessened the keenness she was showing to Yakoba. They both remembered what happened three nights ago all too well.

“A hassle? Ah, not really!” Yakoba had said, smiling nervously back to her.

In truth, despite the awkwardness of their situation and what seemed like a pointless task, she needed this– something to keep her mind off of the test that Myuller had promised Siyeb was ‘soon.’ Everything else in her life had been pared down just to rigorous mentalist training, as if the proctor had been sharpening her like an ever-thinner, ever-more-brittle knife. If she got out of it just with The Tell and The Look like Borte did, she’d be far luckier than she expected of herself. Her last session with Myuller Thursday had felt… inconclusive. By how the proctor was directing her during the session, something was off, but what signs she was responding to and trying to rectify were hidden by her perpetually stern and professional demeanor.

Back in the present, Yakoba frowned and looked at her empty plate. Something was unpleasantly off about the food, but not in a way she could nail down. Nothing that aggravated her half-developed poison detection skills, at least, and if she fell over dead from chaumas with so many poison snoopers now around the complex, then frankly it was more the Chapterhouse’s problem than hers. Maybe it was a side effect of the strain she and the proctor had been placing herself under this past week.

Ignoring the mild nausea, she broke the awkward silence, keeping her voice low and soft. “So, uh, I think I figured out an in on how to forge hall passes,” she said, intentionally leaving out the source of her new knowledge.

Borte looked up and raised her eyebrows, but only an intense-looking Maryam spoke, soft but direct. “We need to meet. right now.” Yakoba’s eyes made direct contact with Maryam’s, but it was getting tough to focus on the girl. She felt like she was seeing more than a few of her.

“Right now?” Yakoba asked, puzzled. “It’s still going to be a little difficult, I have to verify I got the daysign correct.”

“Right now. Today, at least.” Maryam said, sternly. With her still looking off towards the front of the dining hall, the girl’s green eyes had to navigate around her hawklike profile. “We don’t have much time. I think. Or, ah, at least I feel that way.”

“Feel?” Borte said as she tilted her head. “I thought I heard a little cellmate of mine parrot the proctors and tell me we were supposed to make decisions by our senses, not our feelings, eh?” A short laugh came from the top of her throat.

Maryam rolled her tired eyes. “Yes… you’re right, Borte. It’s a sense of intuition, of course. A sense for political rhythm, being around these sorts of high-security situations.” She picked up her fork and cut into the mess of egg whites on top of flatbread, careful to not disrupt the half-cooked yolk placed in the center of the assembly.

Yakoba mused while they talked. It could be that some actual seasoning was being used for once in the food, and after over a year of the… ‘locally-sourced food,’ to use a more positive description for a flavoring scheme based entirely on green onions, she had forgotten what extra turmeric or garlic or cinnamon in food tasted like. Though even then, the lessons here repeatedly emphasized how tastes and smells were the strongest sensory triggers for memories and implanted suggestions. It had to be something uniquely new to be this unpleasant.

“And so the na-Duchess wants us to drop everything this evening to convene Her privy council?” Borte lowered her eyebrows and went into an admonition: “You know we need to be on our best behavior these days. Unconscionable! Reckless! Unsisterly!” She then paused, grinning. “So, same spot as before?”

Maryam nodded, and sternly raised a finger to warn the girl to keep her voice down. Borte, still smiling rolled her eyes and went back to eating. How could these two handle this stuff? Yakoba thought. She wasn’t the one with the most iron-clad stomach, but neither of them looked to be having any issues with their food. She was starting to feel drowsy after her long morning of classes.

Foreign thoughts interjected into Yakoba’s nodding head. The feeling of another’s hand on metal or plasteel, smells and tastes of other’s unseasoned food, flashes of color and shape and muffled soundwaves. A bang from a dropped tray on the other side of the dining hall startled her back from the daydreams, and she tried to listen intently to Maryam and Borte, who had discreetly changed the subject.

“I need to ask for another nightgown still,” Maryam groused. “I still have only the one, and it’s been difficult to remember it during wash day.”

“That old thing? I thought you got that from Yakoba– it’s like a tent on you.”

“It’s one she brought with her,” Yakoba mumbled, forcing herself to participate. She got it from… someone, an ‘Ella,’ who she had mentioned in the past, but why did Yakoba know that?

“That’s silly!” Borte said. “You’ve got a whole planet, but you couldn't bring something that fits you?"

“We almost forgot to bring one,” Maryam said. “Our head maid Ella had to run down to the laundry pool and pull one we use for guests off the shelf at the last minute.”

And now sometimes words flashed into Yakoba’s head, cut either from other’s upper thoughts or stenciled into the aether: ‘I can’t stand that class…’ ‘I need to tell her…’  ‘I find it an interesting play…’ ‘the first little-death is in…’ ‘really, tomorrow Bryn should…’

And from within, voices of others: (Where am I?) (Move back!) (Child, please awaken!)

With a start, she jerked herself back to the present again.

“Oh, that’s what unsorted your mess,” Borte said. “The maid! You need a better one, who actually knows what size to grab for you. Unless that one’s hoping you finally grow a few inches here, eh?”

Borte’s jab at her height finally broke Maryam: “Ella is a credit to House Atreides!” she barked. Even Yakoba noticed she was trying to deflect her annoyance to the insult against her maid.

“Fine, fine. But you can’t just barge in and ask them for stuff. I asked the Floor Advisor for a filmbook floor projector the other day and she just tossed me out.”

“I ask the floor advisors for other things all the time, Borte,” Maryam said, looking with amused disbelief. “You just have to show proper respect to the Sister and ask for reasonable things– not nonsense that even the Proctor Superior wouldn’t have.” She continued to yammer and poke at Borte’s habits, and Borte would do the same at Maryam’s stuffiness.

As the conversation went on, Yakoba started to drift to sleep. She receded into her mind, brushing against herselves (herselves? she mused), and noticed the feeling to be similar to those feelings she felt the day of Myuller’s test with the amplifiers, or when under stress during the proctor’s interview… but nothing seemed to be the cause… it was…

Across The Table from Yakoba Herstal, 10191 A.G.

Maryam studied Yakoba’s face as she fell asleep, her head propped up like a tent on her bent arms. She was right; something was different about her food– it was being spiked with something ever since Tuesday, when the dreams started to take a terrible intensity to them. All it took was sitting on the opposite side from where she placed her tray to trade her food for Yakoba’s. She couldn’t be accused of trickery or endangerment for such an experiment, right? The girl chose to eat it of her own accord, Maryam kept telling herself, steadying her heartbeat and suppressing her instinct to panic. Of her own accord!

It had to be spice, Maryam thought, continuing whatever placid grin she had on her face while whispering to Borte about the dreaming Yakoba. Why? Simple: what changed this week? Someone with an interest in me and access to spice came.

Even she knew about the Truthsayer, if only through the grapevine, but only herself and maybe the Proctor Superior knew the full extent of why that Reverend Mother was sent here. Not just to investigate Helena’s attempt to kill her; little difference would come from such a high-profile commissioner (that much Maryam learned from living amidst Castle Caladan intrigues) but to investigate her progress, after over a year without Chapterhouse’s many fingers poking and prodding her and asking questions to her and her mother about her health and current skill. The news of the attempt couldn’t possibly travel from here to Wallach IX and back in less than a week: communication faster than a heighliner was a fairy story. The Truthsayer had to have already been in transit, and have simply added this investigation to her list of duties. A transit to the ends of the Imperium to see her.

Those horrible dreams of giving birth to nothing and seeing the universe on fire had only gotten more and more persistent in the past five days even if the details constantly wavered; no control, little in the way to navigate with her or even anchor her in that sea of possibilities. Death, death, more death; little-deaths, big-deaths, never a moment of peace foreseen! If such things did exist– if these really were future events– her mind’s eye was guided by her subconscious to the worst, most fearful things that may happen or could happen or could never happen now, no matter if they were incompatible with each other.

It’s impossible, she thought– this wasn’t supposed to happen! A total ban on training that required spice was one of the few things that her mother and her old teacher, Mother Mohiam, had demanded for her time as an initiate at a Chapterhouse. Almost three years ago, one of those Apothecary-Mothers administered some kind of spice sensitivity test, and the results left her in a terrible, feverish fugue that she barely remembered and that left her mother glancing at her oddly for the next six months. From her mother’s tone when talking about the ban, it was very difficult to have the demand accepted by some other faction in the Bene Gesserit. Some other faction, Maryam repeated to herself.

She remembered once, as a small child, sneaking out of the nursery and overhearing her mother and father discuss over whether she would be allowed to train under Thufir– to be given Mentat training, she later realized. Perhaps that training could have let her make sense of the overwhelming doom she was feeling every night. Perhaps not, but it was a moot point- it never happened. She remembered telling her mother of things in dreams that would only happen later that day or week– a bird flying to the window, Ella spilling tea, an attempt to poison her father at dinner; innocuous, commonplace things that when added together spelled out that something about herself was off, now that she was old enough to understand why all those old women came year after year, even after those childish visions faded.

Now I have more nightmarish adolescent ones, she murmured to herself. But why was the Truthsayer doing this now? Or who is doing this? Was I being fed spice even before this week?

Across the table, Yakoba stirred again.

Next to Borte Abdullahi on The Other Side of The Table, 10191 A.G.

Yakoba slowly fumbled back into consciousness. The food definitely had something that was making her drowsier, but in a strange way that she never remembered feeling before. While dozing off, she felt in some kind of borderland– a point of murky, mixed thoughts, in-between consciousness and unconsciousness, that was shared across an endless, timeless array of past and present and future dreamers. Or, it was just the casual pattern-grasping mania of overactive brain waves.

Borte leaned over to her. “You know, if you’re in the business of woolgathering, you’re always welcome to give us all a hand shearing the sheep.”

“Ah… sorry.” Yakoba said. “I’ve been studying too much, I guess.” Those alien but familiar thoughts and memories that had been dancing within her head started to disappear, sublimating off into the cafeteria’s lighting. Something about a truthsayer and dreams.

Borte straightened up and looked her in the eye. “No, seriously! It’s almost that season, and they’re definitely gonna put me to work on that stuff.” She frowned. “The Proctor Superior is making me do all sorts of menial work with the servants, more than usual. She’s also planning to assign me a direct teacher, the floor advisor said.”

Maryam, suddenly eager to reply, commented. “That’s not bad though, right? Getting a direct teacher means Mother Puleng’s interested in your development.”

“Maybe,” Borte huffed. “I’d like Proctor Liuth, but knowing them, I’ll be reporting to a guardswoman. Or maybe a dung-shoveling animal.” Her eyes flitted down to her right hand and back. “Sorry– I mean farmer. So– tonight, after Vespers class, behind the filmbook library?” She glanced at Yakoba. “With the passes?”

“Yes,” Maryam said. “Yak, do you need time? I can keep an eye out for out what they look like this afternoon, and you can give the slips to us at dinner.”

“That works, yeah,” Yakoba said. She felt that tiredness in force again, creeping up between her eyes. So many spinning wheels around her, so many plots and secrets she wanted no part of, and she could only ever sense just the edges of them as they scraped her raw. But they were her friends, after all. Who else would still be in her life if she tried to back away– a harsh Sister Atti, a strange, clingy Helena, Proctor Myuller of all flinty hearts in this Chapterhouse?

“Then it’s set,” Maryam muttered, looking down at her plate. She stuck her fork straight into the egg yolk, and its contents bled into the last remaining bites of her food.

The plascrete door to the filmbook projector repair room was nondescript, save for ‘Maintenance 015’ printed in Uncial Majuscule on the outside. Borte, herself looking fresh and unsettled from traveling across the campus, held open the door as Yakoba walked quickly inside.

The room was cramped, with a workwoman’s bench and a battered ell table set up inside a space that should rightly have had just one or the other. A fixed diffusing light on the ceiling and a bright lamp attached to the workbench by a swinging arm were the only sources of illumination. On the bench, dozens of half-dusty toolboxes and instruments laid undisturbed in neat rows, and some unmatching favorite tools laid strewn around the edge of the otherwise empty space. Two chairs were crammed between the wall and the ell table, and a third plus a stool straddled the scarce empty space between the workbench and the table. On the ell table was a carafe and a few scant mugs, swiped either from the dining hall or the Sisters’ Wings of the complex.

Maryam was laying half-asleep behind the table, bridging herself across the two chairs. It was clear she had been waiting a while for the other two to show. Without sitting upright, she pointed at the carafe.

“There’s coffee for those who want it,” she said.

Yakoba took a cup and cautiously poured some for herself. It didn’t seem like anything but straight black coffee– I need it, but hopefully this won’t upset my sleep too much, she thought to herself. She had still felt the lingering effects of whatever was in that food at lunch: drifting in and out of a daze, yet still intimately aware of everything around her during classes.

She looked over the table at Maryam. “You look like you need it, lass.”

The girl popped up, shaking her head. “No, I’m awake enough. Just feeling a bit more… rested than usual. Besides,” she shrugged “It’s bad to drink straight coffee on an empty stomach.”

It shouldn’t be, for someone of her skills, Yakoba thought. It was true, though, that the girl didn’t eat anything at dinner, instead just sipping some water and grabbing a few jealously-guarded bites from Borte’s plate.

Using some tape, Borte fixed her hall pass to the front of the door, peered out at the library one last time, and then quietly closed it. The room felt even smaller than before.

Maryam rubbed her eyes as she wheeled around to face the other two. “Let’s start. I have a lot of business I need to tell you about.”

Yakoba’s brow furrowed of its own accord. The girl’s guard was dropped from sleep deprivation, and from her cadence she was already planning to withhold some crucial facts. Yakoba nodded and sipped on her coffee, hiding any lower-face tells that she herself might give. Something was off about all this, especially since lunch.

“Is it that you’re actually one of the Corrino daughters sent here in secrecy?” Borte guessed. It was tough to tell if she was serious about such a thing. Many of the imperial princesses were Bene Gesserit like their mother, and some of the youngest were their age as well, but any Corrino would have had blonde or red hair and, well… a more statuesque appearance than her.

Maryam shook her head. “No– just a duke’s daughter.” She sighed. “The thing is… my marriage is... Is out of my father’s control. It always has been.”

One of Yakoba’s eyebrows now raised itself. “What about the Duchy’s succession?” Normally the ruler of a House had ultimate control over who the heir of a house married, at least in theory.

Maryam shook her head. “It’s… a Bene Gesserit affair. Or rather, it would have only been that. It was planned to only be that, at first. But my father, the Duke…” she paused, taking a breath and haltingly finished: “announced my birth, and named me as heir-apparent.”

“Is that bad?” Borte said. “That’s just like a side job thing to Sisterhood work, right?” She was already settled into one of the chairs, leaning back, the dull hum of her suspensor belt adding an extra white noise to the hum of the powered-down repair instruments.

“I was supposed to be raised in secrecy, then married or sent for concubinage duty as a private diplomatic affair.” The girl looked down as she talked– whether to hide something or out of genuine sadness. “But… he loves my mother. And she loves him ‘far too much back,’ at least that’s what my mother’s old teacher says. And because of that, he raised me up as his heir. I don’t know why he did it.”

It was a sincerely open-ended question spoken by her, at least from Yakoba’s perspective. None of the usual guarded and calculating language she heard even when the two of them were alone in their old cell. Possible answers swirled in her overactive head: spite towards the Order? Desperation for any sort of heir? Simple, blind love? All are factors. A soft glint of context somehow was absorbed by Yakoba’s eye– Maryam had all this hidden from her, the shock of this development hidden from her growing up until she was able to piece it together.

Maryam continued: “He announced my status as heir apparent when I wasn’t even a year old. And because of my status as heir, insisted on a real marriage, not a concubinage or however I was planned to meet with my fiancé for the Order. And my mother… I know she wants to marry him. But that’s not possible, not to a Duke. She’s not highborn. So, she’s pushed ever since for my marriage, not just a temporary arrangement, and my father’s of the same mind on it, if only to pause the Kanly and give House Atreides breathing room.”

There was a knot in the narrative that Yakoba’s old upwardly-mobile schooling picked out. “Does he have… Imperial Assent for this?”

“Assent?” Borte asked.

Yakoba took the bait to go deeper. “Yeah– normally, the ah, eldest, living, male son by marriage is the heir of a House Major,” she said. “The emperor’s got to approve anything else, otherwise it could be an illegal succession.” Holding that assent over the heads of sonless houses and threatening to approve a pretender was one of the harshest whips the Corrino Dynasty had.

“No, he doesn’t have it.” Maryam said. “Not yet, maybe not ever. And my fiancé also doesn’t have assent to be heir yet for his house either.” She looked straight into Yakoba’s eyes: “The second my father gets married to someone else, the second I have a brother, I’ll be infinitely useless, except to the Order and for this fake end to Kanly my marriage signifies.”

Borte started to look serious and began nodding. She had also finally realized that the quasi-legitimate daughter of a concubine was not exactly in a strong position to inherit. Her cellmate ultimately could have everything but her half of the cell taken away from her at the stroke of a pen or the newborn cry of a younger brother. Or half-brother, or cousin, Yakoba mused.

The back of Yakoba’s head was positively itching trying to remember exactly who it was the Atreides could be in Kanly with– Moritani? Harkonnen? One of those. It was practically legendary in interstellar affairs, that much she remembered, but her abortive primers in politics mostly just covered the absolute boredom that was Poritrin’s nobility.

Yakoba took another sip and held the cup over her face. “You said Kanly,” she stated, doing her best Proctor Myuller impersonation. “You’re in Kanly with your betrothed’s house?”

Maryam looked insulted to hear the word used for her. “We’re not betrothed yet! Well, we are. Sometimes. My father calls it off when they do something egregious, and he will call it off, because of whatever reasonable reciprocations we make in response.” She sighed and reached for the carafe like it was a wine jug. “Like two years ago. They nerve-stapled our allies on Tanamwiir, and Thufir and Gurney rightly responded by bombing their spaceport on Lankiveil. Not the Guild-owned locations there, of course.” She poured herself some coffee, slammed the carafe down on the table, and started taking sips as she groused. “And between each of these, then the Sisterhood, with my mother’s teacher of all people heading the whole thing, mends the whole stinking engagement back together again.”

Yakoba and Borte glanced at each other. Not only was Maryam’s future unhappy marriage that important to the Bene Gesserit, but it was clear that the Great Houses had developed their own particular brands of psychoses unique to their class. That much a creche-tithe and a disowned burgher’s daughter could share perspective on.

“So, uh, which house is this?” Borte asked. Yakoba was privately happy she was the one to charge at that suspensor-mine.

“Harkonnen,” Maryam spat like a curse word. Borte’s eyes widened.

“Oh!” the Middle Lass lit up at knowing a name. “I’ve heard about them from filmbooks– well, the catalogue previews for ordering full ones, since they don’t stock the interesting stuff here. I thought they were just a collection of horror stories, though? With the hunting people and the thing with the giant–”

“Of course they’re real!” Maryam barked. “And they’re not just ‘stories.’ They’re narrative adaptions that my family commissioned to tell the truth!”

House Harkonnen? Yakoba thought. They’re that rich one with a low titular rank that’s got control of Arrakis, aren’t they? She was incredulous. “They can’t be that bad, Maryam, that’s got to just be propaganda.”

“They are that bad, Yakoba! They’re depraved brutes! The Baron is– is a–, ah!” she sputtered, “Gurney and Mister Dunk escaped slavery under them! Gurney was– was permanently scarred by Beast Rabban!”

Who?, Yakoba thought. She felt like she was losing the plot on an increasingly complicated history of vendetta, but she needed to avoid upsetting Maryam any more than she was.

“Is your fiancé like the rest of the family?” asked Borte. “Like, what’s your boy known for? Is he hot–”

“His name is Feyd-Rautha and the only remotely good thing about marrying him is that he’s my age!” Maryam fumed. “I’ve seen pictures and ego-likenesses of him, all pouty and haughty, looking like he’s the duke’s child from how much fine fabric and makeup and jewels his uncle, the Baron, puts on his body. He’s done nothing with his life except train to be in ridiculous gladiator fights.”

“Oh, but that’s cool!” Borte said. “Didn’t your grandfather fight bulls for sport? I mean, it’s sort of the same thing.”

“And with any luck, he’ll end up the same way quicker!” Maryam shouted. “He already has a harem at our age, I heard– at least I’ll be able to spend as little time with him as necessary.”

Something was clearly terrible about this family, beyond just the fact she was getting married off into it, Yakoba thought. And the real purpose of this meeting Maryam called, she further realized, wasn’t to conspire, but to finally confide in the two of them all the frustrations and anxieties that had built up in Maryam’s life, for once outside the watchful eyes of the Sisterhood. Borte probably knew this already, but…

She reached out a hand towards one of Maryam’s. “I’ll take your word on the Harkonnens,” she started, laying down a word-trap on intuition. “And you hate them, don’t you?”

“Of course I hate them!”

Yakoba locked eyes. “I mean the Sisterhood. For putting you in this position,” she finished.

The girl across from her did a double-take. She could tell from the corner of her eye that Borte was bristling from the very concept.

Maryam gathered herself. “I don’t love them, but I don’t hate them, Yak. They’re practically my family,” she said to a girl freshly-disowned by her real one. Her tone seemed almost believable, her face turned away and half-obscured by her nose. Based on the other features there, she really could be family with many of the Sisters here.

“Why would anyone hate us?” Borte said. “We’re the Bene Gesserit, not pirates or gangsters or whatever.”

“The Bene Gesserit are, uh… we’re a lot of different things, to a lot of different people,” Yakoba said to Borte.

“Teachers, matchmakers, advisors, holy women, mothers… spies, breeders, corruptors, witches… whores,” Maryam murmured. She was still slunk in her chair, its back now dwarfing her mousy frame, and her voice slowly rose. “My father’s house, the people of Caladan… they think he was ‘bewitched’ by my mother. Or he was blackmailed by the Order not to marry. Blackmailed!” She took a breath and composed herself. “I know the signs. How people look at me. Not many people besides my parents countenance me there. Ella, Yueh, maybe Gurney and Mister Dunk. My father’s spymaster doesn’t trust me with anything.” She sighed.

“So were they the ones who tried to kill you?” Borte said. “The Harkonnens, I mean. Because I'd like to tell them, it didn't work.”

“Who knows?” Maryam grumbled, taking another sip of coffee. “I know I was advised some parts of theImperial family want me or my fiancé dead. They think it would be an unstoppable alliance. On paper, at least.” She snorted. “And all sorts of others may have an interest. Guild, some rogue sisters. Kull wahad, who really knows?”

Myuller’s briefing from weeks past came back to Yakoba. “What about the Bene Tleilax?” she asked.

Maryam raised an eyebrow on her sour face. “How do you know about them?”

“Wait, wait. Stop!” Borte interrupted. “The Spacing Guild wouldn’t care about House politics, right? Why would they even care who you married or had kids with?”

Yakoba saw the sign of a suppressed chill stopped midway down Maryam’s spine at the last sentence, and her own embryonic mentat training started to plug and chug all the data so far of its own accord. Borte continued to stare at Maryam, trying to silently pressure the girl into finally explaining what was going on.

She broke eye contact with Borte and stared down at the table. “My… my mother says that my future’s important to the Sisterhood. My sisters… I don’t know if they’re also important that way, but I… don’t want them to ever have to deal with this.” She grit her teeth. “It’s an… unconditional thing for the Sisterhood that I marry and have children with that boy for the Order’s plans.”

Yakoba realized just how much Myuller’s lines of inquiry related to this secret kept right in front of her– a series of breadcrumbs that, with deduction, finally lead to a question.

“It’s a breeding program, not just a political program, isn’t it? To heighten or express some latent characteristics in you.”

Maryam froze, then spoke haltingly. “My… my genes are important, from the mix of my whatever my mother’s line is and my father’s line. I’m not important. I’m a walking lump attached to some–”

“Don’t say that!” Borte shouted. “Now, what the crap’s been going on? Every day you get more and more and more miserable, and that’s Yak’s job in the gang!” She stood up and pointed a finger at Maryam– the Tell could still be seen on her hand. “It’s not just the assassin or this breeding program, isn’t it?”

No, no, you can’t force her to open up, Borte! Yakoba panicked. “Borte, please, she’s–”

“I know, and I don’t care!” Borte shouted at Yakoba. “You and I have a right to know– I know something’s up,” she said, turning back to Maryam. “She knows something’s up. Stop acting like some kind of… some kind of god-empress, like you have to shoulder every burden alone, and just tell us what’s been eating you from the inside!”

“No!” Maryam shouted. “I don’t want either of you to get any more entangled in this than you are. I’m bad luck– my House is cursed, did I never tell you?” She stood up, fists clenched and misty-eyed. “This is all why– why I wanted to talk with you two in private– please, from now on, stay away from me! Don’t spend any unnecessary time with me anymore!”

Borte scoffed. “What, like we would be better off if we never met you? If you were never born?”

“Yes! And I know that for a fact!” Maryam shouted.

She froze for a moment, then in an instant bounded over the table and launched herself out of the door, her small footsteps sounding fainter and fainter at a sprinter’s pace. For the first time, Borte looked mortified, breathing and heart rate barely controlled.

Yakoba stood up and put a hand on Borte’s shoulder. “Should… should we go after her?”

Borte turned to Yakoba and gently slid her hand away. “No. She needs time, I think.” She took a deep breath to calm herself, and then walked around to where Maryam was sitting before stacking one chair on the other. “Heck, I need time to think about what she said. I don’t get it– nonsense riddles by that silly little highborn.”

She pulled off her scapular and sloppily folded it into a pillow-sized rectangle, then plopped it in the center of the ell table.

Borte hopped onto her makeshift bed and sat on its hard surface cross-legged, now almost at eye level with Yakoba. “Sometimes you need to push people when they’ve gotten stuck, I think,” she said. “It’s up to them where they want to go after that point.”

“What if we sent her in the wrong direction?” Yakoba said. All those questions the two had given her had seemed to just agitate a normally placid Maryam– she had never seen her that upset before. Normally, Yakoba would be the one ranting about some aspect of her life while Maryam nodded and assured her or Borte needled her in that stubborn way.

“Maryam’s smart. Well, not smart like you are, Yak, but a different sort of smart.” She popped her back and laid her head down on the pillow as she talked. “Give her the benefit of the doubt that she can turn around if she’s going the ‘wrong direction,’ all right? If she can’t… well. We’ll see if she was right.”

“You’re going to sleep here?”

Borte chuckled and pointed behind her to the door with her untested hand. “Why else did I post my slip out there? I expected I was gonna give her some guff she didn’t wanna hear.”

Yakoba nodded, feeling hollow that Maryam’s grief was all anticipated yet still triggered by her. Borte was always one step ahead of her, even when playing the fool.

“I used to sleep here all the time when I stayed up late watching filmbooks– like last month, for instance.” The Middle Lass turned her body upwards and stretched out as she talked. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll see you tomorrow at lunch– that’s a sure fact.”

“All… all right,” Yakoba said haltingly. She stood up and walked out of the tiny room. “Good night.”

“Night, Yak.”

Yakoba returned to the cell earlier than expected, and Helena was still awake– arranging what looked like a mismatched collection of knitting needles of all sorts of gauges and materials next to a pile of undyed wool. She yelped at Yakoba’s return, and hastily tried to cover up her knitting material with her covers.

“It’s alright, Helena,” Yakoba said. Looking at her reflection in their small mirror, Yakoba looked absolutely beat. A long day, plus the emotional stress of the past few hours was clearly painted on her face. Maybe one of those accelerated sleeping pills Sister Atti prescribes us might help, she thought. I’m barely going to get enough proper sleep otherwise with that coffee inside me too.

“Where were you?” Helena chirped as she slid back under the covers.

“Skullduggery,” Yakoba quipped. “Long day of plotting and conniving and upsetting the natural order of things, you know?”

Helena laughed for once, though her voice still had a tinge of her usual nervousness. Yakoba palmed the sleeping pill and threw it into her mouth, swallowing without water.

“Ah, um. Please don’t use those slips too often, Yakoba,” Helena said. “No telling when they’ll catch on to so many of them about.”

The Eldest Lass shook her head as she thought about the ordeal leading up to Maryam breaking and running. “I won’t– that really may be the only time. Judging by what happened.”

Helena raised her eyebrows, but said nothing as she turned away to give her privacy to change.

Yakoba yawned as she pulled her nightshirt on and slid uneasily under her thin bed covers. No sooner had her head hit her pillow than she was fast asleep, dreams dragging her along in the undertow of events long in motion, waves of action with effects too profound and too subtle for even their original sources to understand. Deeper and further she drifted, far past the regular corners of the ocean of night that her mind normally traveled in.

An Alaya Fistula-Redoubt, 10191 A.G.

^{Something’s happening, Mother!}

^{Oh, mother yourself! We’ve got to intervene!}

^{There were ASNs in the food that cursed girl gave our family host! The brat has no idea of the fragility here…}

^{Maybe she does?}

^{Induced deep brainwaves, so close to taking that dosage…}

^{Deep, deeper than ever– can you feel them too?}

^{Just above us…}

^{Yes! Just above us!}

^{Just above us, in Other Memories…}

^{Oh, oh! Just above us!}

Just above us,

A sleeper awakens in dreams!

Chapter 23 Selective Glossary

Apothecary-Mother, Apothecary-Sister:

A Bene Gesserit with a specific form of medical training that utilizes the Sisterhood’s unique skills. Uses petit-perception and oral-olfactory chemical analysis in diagnosis of diseases and poisonings and, at higher levels of skill, can use their own metabolism to internally synthesize bespoke cures for patients, along with prana-bindu physical therapy. As they are relatively rare, known for a lack of ‘bedside manner,’ loyal only to the Sisterhood, and regarded as unpleasant to behold in action, most outsiders instead opt for Suk Doctors or other schools for medical care.

Chaumas:

Poison intended to be placed in food, as opposed to ingested otherwise or from poor cooking. Compare to Chaumurky, the equivalent term used for poison placed in drink. Such distinct language is the product of an upper class focused on intrigue and poisons.

Ego-Likeness:

A holographic portrait of a figure created via a shigawire projector similar to a filmbook. Often incorporates slight idle motions by the figure to better convey the subject’s personality.

Kanly:

An ancient and legally-standardized form of blood-vendetta formally declared between feuding houses. Follows a code of conduct intended to minimize the property destruction and deaths of those not pledged to or owned by either house (any allied houses of either are often fair game). The series of assassination attempts, economic sabotages, terror bombings, and/or limited military strikes that characterize an active state of Kanly between houses is termed a War of Assassins. The state of Kanly ends when one or the other engaged house is wiped out to the last heir, or both sides agree to make peace. Kanly feuds of historical note include the millennia-long Atreides-Harkonnen rivalry and the Ginaz-Moritani vendetta.

Lankiveil:

A habitable maritime arctic world whose nominal Siridar-rulers are the Rabban cadet-branch of House Harkonnen. Primarily known for their exports of whale fur. Homeworld of Count Glossu “Beast” Rabban, governor of Arrakis, and his younger brother Na-Baron Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, fiancé of Na-Duchess Maryam Atreides.

Tanamwiir:

A habitable continental world with 64% landmass and high (41°C) average equatorial temperatures. Dominated by a cross-continental savannah belt and polar taiga regions with endemic native non-terranic life. Politically fragmented between several Houses Minor and uncontacted hostile pre-Butlerian settler-tribes, leaving its Siridar title in lax imperial custody. Site of multiple proxy wars between the Houses Major of the Landsraad.

Chapter Text

Yakova… you should think it over more when starting things! It’s when first appearances are created, when you give the impression of your soul to another. And in more mundane ways, a rushed first paragraph could ruin the appeal of an essay, like that one you wrote some weeks ago. When you start something, please put more deliberate care into it… for me, at the very least.

– Initiate Emal Rapontchombo-Myuller, Uncollected Sayings

Wallach IX, Some Time Ago

Yakoba felt hazy and spent, like no time had passed since her head had hit the pillow. And yet, it was morning– she felt it in her bones, and outside the window, the light–

Wait, our cell has a window?

She shot out of bed and walked over to this novel windowsill, her bare feet creaking on wood that had been restored so many times over that it was more enamel than cellulose. The window lit up the center of the cell in a steady sunbeam, and her cellmate’s bed was empty and unmade. The feeling and layout of the creaks of the floorboards and the way the sun came through the window felt… familiar, but also impossible.

She shook her head and rubbed her throbbing eyes. This had to be a side-effect of those sedatives of Sister Atti’s, no two ways about it, she thought, but this felt different than a dream or hallucination. And it didn’t seem like Atti was being actively malicious, she thought, she’s never been the… never been… uh. Who was Atti, again?

A lock of dark wavy hair fell in front of her eyes. For that matter, who was she? She felt… smaller, for some reason. Her hands and feet definitely looked that way, though it could just be that lingering dream messing with her. It was something where she had been assigned the wrong sex at birth, and the dream had these secret meetings and sad, strange girls and raspy-voiced boys and nonsense lectures by a crabby old direct teacher. Just dreams, she thought. It had to be.

She knew she wasn’t actually that special for that sort of attention from a proctor, though. She was just a regular foul-up of a sixteen-year-old initiate. Sure, she may be good at practical stuff and cryptography, but in all core skills of a Bene Gesserit, Yakova Kotler was hopelessly behind and felt just as hopelessly inadequate at them as ever. If she couldn’t pull off a miracle, she would soon be expelled or worse. Or worse, or worse...

Stop that! she told herself as those thoughts festered. Focus on the now was critical. She had pinpointed just how well she needed to do on the graded Applied Theology exam next week, and the prana-bindu enteric system connection tests tomorrow. Tomorrow, she emphasized to herself.

Of course, as always, her cellmate was already up and about, having left the room while she was asleep. That girl was always on a mission- fifteen years old and already well beyond where Yakova was in her training. Her mother was some kind of Bene Gesserit prodigy, and like with her older sisters, she had been sent to a school on Wallach IX to get the last legs of her training as an initiate done by impartial proctors. A different set of troubles than Yakova, but a normal set for a Bene Gesserit initiate, unlike her.

The sound of the thumblock disengaging came from the door. A girl taller than Yakova, with a sharp nose and more than a few pimples on both her forehead and sharp chin, came flying in with her dark hair trailing after her, half-dressed already and carrying a small bag.

“Hold this, Yak,” she said, and she pushed the bag into Yakova’s hands. For some reason, it felt strange to be shorter than her, even though that was the way things always had been and would be.

You say ‘what’s in the bag?’ here, Yakova remembered. “What’s in the bag?”

“Food,” her cellmate said blankly. She shot over to her drawer and started pulling the rest of her uniform on, twisting her head back to look at Yakova with those sharp blue-grey eyes as she buttoned up the side of her vest. “Get moving lass, you’re going to be late!”

Yakova nodded and burst into action. If she got dressed fast enough in the old grey-and-blue, she could get to the commissary in time to pick up something to eat on her own. Otherwise, actually accepting that bag would continue her cellmate’s usual leverage cycle of bringing her food and using it to guilt her into helping her in those ridiculous schemes of hers.

She stopped for a second when she saw her reflection. It felt like a novelty to see herself– pale skin, dark almost-curly hair, a plain face with a broad nose and thin lips and thick eyebrows, and all of that on an awkward squat physique, stuck in the middle of a very silly-looking puberty. Her watery brown eyes, unrested, were all set and ready to cry after she got done with another unbearable day.

She blinked the stupor away, and got back to putting her uniform on. There were some times, she knew, when she felt that dissociation from herself after waking up– plenty of other people had similar experiences, just as a part of being a regular mana-consciousness like they covered in the Azhar Book. A few half-hearted passes with her brush and a hair tie pushed her appearance just into the acceptable bounds of the initiate dress code, and she grabbed her cellmate’s offering as she followed the girl out like a shadow.

It was going to be too late to get food somewhere else, Yakova realized, and begrudgingly she wolfed down the millet cake and took a quick furtive bites of the apple as she walked with her cellmate. The dark of the dormitory halls soon changed to a sunny morning, and the polished basalt tiles in the halls were already warmed to a pleasant sizzle in the summer sun. Display boards connected to the communinet warned of an incoming swamp-front from the east– common around this time of year, and often a source of allergies in initiates. Overcoming these induced hay fevers became part and parcel of fundamental training at the South-Equatorial-Antimeridian Sector Abbey.

Needless to say, Yakova’s nose was already starting to anticipate another season of clogging and sneezing.

“Emal,” Yakova remembered, “What’s your class this block, again?”

Yakova’s cellmate looked down at her with a puzzled expression. “Agronomy. Why would you ask?” she said.

“Uh, well… why do we have agronomy as a class they can assign us?” Yakova asked. “I didn’t know we’d care about that kind of thing.”

The taller girl took on a rehearsed tone, as if she was aping her proctor. “Farming is the basis of mass societies, Yak. It’s one of the… causes and effects that spiral out to the rest of it.” She frowned and scratched a pimple on her brow. “And… my mother doesn’t know anything about it, either, for once.” Her furrowed expression developed a slight smugness to it at that last thought.

“I…” Yakova tried to recall her words. “We’ve also got a couple classes together now, right?”

“Mm.” Emal grunted. “None today, though. I’ve got more nonsense with limbic system overrides, Voice lessons, as well as Applied Weirding Psychology. And…” she groaned, “Reproductive Control Training.”

“What! At your age?” Yakova’s hands tightened on her tablet. “Why would you be starting it so early?”

Emal sighed. “I’m a Rapontchombo, Yak. And our line’s been thread-thin this past generation. We’re known for… women with some traits of… use to the Order.” She looked out to the promenade windows, the sun now now shining through a faint bit of haze, and forced her last few thoughts through bared teeth while her tone darkened. “And so, because of that I’m planned to be a very busy woman, or so mother dearest tells me.”

Didn’t Emal have a few older siblings? Yakova thought. What’s going on for her get that sort of burden?

“I’m sorry, Em.” Yakova said. She saw her classroom several paces ahead, and tried to finish quickly. “If there’s any–“

“Don’t worry,” Emal interrupted. “The worst of it’s a ways off.” Without changing her stride, she put her fingers on top of Yakova’s head and turned it lightly to face her classroom door before playfully pushing her in that direction. “Take care of yourself, Yak. Don’t get popped before lunch!” she called out.

Emal always treats me like some lost puppy– I’m the older one, for goodness’s sakes, Yakova grumbled to herself as she walked inside. The classroom was the same as usual– windowless, adorned plainly, and filled with the same old grey-clad initiates as everywhere else she went.

For whatever reason, she had two proctors for this class– they seemed blurry and disjointed, and they hurt her eyes to look at too closely. Yakova averted her gaze as she knelt down on one of the firm pads, placed her hands in the supplicative pose, and waited for the last of the students to arrive.

Suddenly, one of the proctors cried out to her: “You, in the front! Can you tell me your name?”

“It… I’m just Yakova Kotler,” Yakova Kotler said. I see these two twice a week– what was going on? she thought. “Did something happen?”

The older proctor turned her head, the cloth fragmenting and splaying in a wave around her morphing profile, and spoke to the younger one. “She got it wrong, Sister.”

The other blur of black cloth and flesh nodded. “Very bad! Bad to get your name wrong, bad to swim in another self.” She then shrugged. “But, we can’t truly judge you, given such a freak occurrence. After all, it’s best to focus on the now of an important time, whenever that ‘now’ may be.”

The older teacher turned back to her and continued to speak– the other students now looking at Yakova with a strange blankness. “And today, of course, is a very important day! Keep your wits about you, young one.”

“Oh! But what kind of day, ‘Sister’?” The younger replied.

“Well, one you can’t forget for the rest of your life!”

At the elder’s line, the students started to titter, as if prompted like some sort of electronic puppetry.

Calming the crowd down, the younger proctor started hectoring the older one: “But is it her life? How could it be? What is the medium? What is the mechanism? ‘Spooky Action at a Distance,’ as they say?”

The elder ignored the younger and continued to speak to Yakova. “In either case, here is the lesson: ‘Those who live, remember.’ That is all! All that can be said.”

The younger proctor interjected, a performative tone oozing from her voice and movement: “Oh, I think more could be said, right? ‘History is written by the victors,’ ‘the weak should fear the strong,’ ‘a model garden is pruned and weeded,’ ‘innocence is found nowhere in nature, only in words,’ ‘life feeds on life;’ all good lessons for aspiring Sisters!” A broken smile like a garland of mirrors and silver spread across her face, and the other students bent in around her, blank faces now staring her down with silent laughter.

Yakova stared back at the younger proctor with a half-formed expression of confusion and terror. “W-what do you mean, proctors? What’s all this about?”

“It’s about memory, lass,” the older proctor said. “You simply must remember where Self and Other begin and end, before it’s too late. Otherwise– !”

A deafening pop came from all around Yakova, and her eyes closed for an instant as she flinched. When she opened them, Proctor Alma was in front of her, glaring with that withering expression of hers that indicated she had done something wrong in Remedial Meditation class, as usual.

Wasn’t… wasn’t there someone else in front of me just now? Yakova thought. She had to remember something, she must remember something, but the words and thoughts slipped out of her grasp like a beef-tallow cube smeared in butter. Only the sheer weight of her continual failures at the Chapterhouse and the distant, ever-fading memories of her parents and brothers could be found in her mind’s inventory.

The rest of the class went about as expected: an inability to achieve anything but the most basic of meditative states, and nothing but admonishment, corrections, and veiled exasperation by the proctor. After Remedial Meditation ended, the next class block began, and the process of constant, grinding displays of inadequacy repeated,

Again, and

Again,

And

Again.

And then, it was lunchtime.

Yakova, still in a stupor from her morning failure-fugue, shuffled through the mess line in the dining hall. Maybe this break would be enough for her to get out of her rut. But she said the same thing to herself at every meal, and the same thing when going to bed every night. Was there really any hope of turning things around– not being at the bottom of all the fundamental classes, not being first on the chopping block?

In front of her she could see some curling silvery-blonde hair spilling behind a taller frame– That had to be Wellamie, probably. She kept the girl’s location tracked at the back of her head as she came up to where her meal tray would be handed out to her, and then peeled away from the queue as soon as she got the food.

“Wellie! Wait up!” Yakova cried. The other girl turned, that usual ‘B.G. Placid’ look already masking whatever actual emotions she had even at her age.

Wellamie was… well, gorgeous didn’t quite fit her yet as a girl the same age as Yakova, but despite the skin blemishes and gangliness of adolescence (I’m always surrounded by these gangly types! Yakova fumed) it was clear she was going to fit into the usual mold of a conventionally attractive Bene Gesserit in her twenties.

“Oh, Yak. A pleasure,” she said. “Is Emal with you?”

Yakova shook her head. “Nah… she’s somewhere else. We don’t have any classes today, so I thought you’d maybe–“

“Ah, I see her,” Wellamie said. She artfully gestured behind them with her head. “It’s looking like she got in trouble again.”

“When is she not?” Yakova murmured out loud as she turned her own head to look. Emal, now close to the front of the line, had a sour look on her face, and her hood and dress top looked like they had been pulled out of place by some rough activity. She noticed Yakova’s gaze, and pursed her lips and rolled her grey-blue eyes.

Emal joined the two of them as they silently walked to an empty table on the far side of the Sisters’ Hall. As they sat down, Yakova groaned and put her head on the table with a decided but light thump.

“So. What’s the bad news?” Emal asked as she adjusted the collar under her hood.

“Nothing new,” Yakova said. “And that’s the problem! I’m failing, I know I’m failing, and nothing I do seems to pull me out of that spiral.” She sat back up with a miserable expression to see Emal and Wellamie’s worried faces.

“Yak,” Wellamie said, “there’s still time for you to be expelled and sent home, right?”

She shook her head. “I’m… probably an orphan now, Wellie. I’ve been waiting for a letter from my family for so long, you know– they said they’d write as soon as they were in a safe place.” She sighed. “I wish I went with them, instead of getting sent for asylum with the Order.”

All Emal and Wellamie could do was nod in sympathy. The situation had never been explained to them– in fact, it had never been explained to Yakova, who only knew that she was from a persecuted people with their own ancient books and traditions, none of which were ever really  taught to her– but they had good hearts, even if they seemed to get more hardened month by month from their initiate training.

“If it’s any consolation, Yak…” Emal started.

“It isn’t,” Yakova snapped.

Emal continued, ignoring her outburst. “Well, then. I have a suggestion.” Her voice dropped softer, now more halting in tone, and she continued on now giving some nonsense advice on study habits. At the same time, she started to sign close to her body, her slim frame barely giving privacy to the movements. There’s still time, you know. I still have a plan for how you can do the Margin Walks, she signed. Emal messed up her collar again to show her that black and grey tracking sensor embedded in the meat of her clavicle. I really wish I tried taking you with me in my attempt… but maybe you’ll be better off on your own, without a major bloodline missing to raise alarms.

Yakova looked on with a dulled sort of panic. Running away? When Emal of all people couldn’t do it? Wallach IX had very few people outside of its dense cities by design– the goal being to remove all potential sources of human activity and agency outside Bene Gesserit control on the planet. Still, there were stories– stories, not facts, of hardscrabble villages and tribes descended from runaway indentured servants, escaped political captives, and failed initiates, and more alluringly, the pirates and bandits that preyed on them and intra-city commerce. Such mythical groups included the Forest Covens, groups of failed Sisters that continued to practice and hand down a diminished form of the Way, often echoing the Gom Jabbar Test with a form of ritual blood sacrifice or cannibalism. Escaping to the Margins was always a thought every initiate had, if only for a brief and childish moment.

Yakova shook her head. I’m sorry, Em, she signed. I doubt I’d survive. She heard only brief stories of Emal’s escape, and none of them seemed like something a city girl like her would be able to live through.

That intense stare looked back wordlessly, and a slight softening to her hard features betrayed a much deeper sadness. Wellamie looked at the two of them, her face that usual pleasant and unreadable mask.

“Very… very well,” Emal said with a strained coolness. “Let’s change the subject,” she continued as she broke open her baked millet ball and fished out the dried sausages. “The magazine resale scheme is all finished, lasses.”  She took a bite and frowned, and started talking as she chewed. “Someone told on the operation to the floor advisors, and I’ve been getting raked over the coals the past hour and a half to spit out all my contacts.” She swallowed and continued. “Including you two of course, which was regrettably necessary.”

Yakova remembered her small parts in the operation: often it was thankless re-boxing and repackaging of magazines and microfiche containers from Outside for them to re-sell to the other initiates, and during some frantic nights digging up and moving caches when suspicions were getting too hot.

“Emal…” Wellamie said, any anger still impossible to read.

Yakova grit her teeth. “Em, what’s your preferred full form of address?”

“Emal Myuller, naturally,” She replied. “I find my father’s surname is–“

“You’re a louse, Emal Myuller!” Yakova yelled.

Emal didn’t look up from her plate at the outburst. “It was necessary, and I have no regrets. I’m in the Proctor Matron’s evil eye right now, despite my exceptional performance in classes,” she said, rubbing it in as usual. “I’ve taken as much responsibility for the incident as possible, and I doubt they will punish either of you severely.” She paused, glancing away from the other two. “So as such, I’ll be on mandatory enhanced food deprivation training in the detention halls for the next month.”

Wellamie’s mask finally cracked, and her brow bent downwards. “So, no lunch, Em?”

Emal nodded. “Yes, it starts effective tonight. I’ll manage with one less meal, two less meals half the time, than usual.” She raised her eyebrows and gave an impish grin just like the ones she always gave. “But! They didn’t say anything about coffee…”

Wellamie gave the girl another look, more visible concern for her slipping through than she ever showed to Yakova. “Em… you really need to stay inside the lines. How many times have I told you that–”

“Eighteen as of now,” Emal interrupted, the grin fading into a coy smile.

“Em!” Wellamie shouted. “You can’t keep trying to break the rules and keep dragging us, and especially Yakova, in as collateral!” She took a breath and composed herself. “We don’t have the kind of leeway that you get for your nonsense schemes, Em. Please…”

Emal stayed silent, and looked away from the others with a glare meant for some unknown target.

Wellamie turned back to Yakova, face now back to her normal placidity. “I’m sorry she’s treating you this way, Yak… you don’t deserve it. You really don’t.” She picked up her fork and dug back into her meal.

It felt familiar– a matronizing, commanding Emal, and a distant Wellamie more concerned with mitigating Emal’s excesses than directly acting to stop them. Yakova knew they had always been like this, they were always like this, but it also felt like an eternal echo or standing wave across time. Emal was one of Yakova’s only… well, ‘friend’ had more positive connotations, but why was Wellamie so willing to tolerate and correct her arrogance? Was it something in the classes and study blocks the two had together?

“Wellie…” Yakova started, “what’s the plan for today in class?”

Wellamie looked back at her. “I… well, I think it’s just a review of our last mathematics test,” she said. At least for that one she could expect better news than the two of them would have– both Emal and Wellamie weren’t the best with trigonometric algebra.

“Ah, I mean for seating. Do you want to sit together again, if you need anything?”

Wellamie’s face was blank. “Yes, if there’s seating available.” She continued to poke and divide at her last remaining bites of food. “If not… don’t worry about it.”

Yakova nodded and then shoved her last bites into her mouth. “Are you walking with us, Emal?”

Emal sat there with the same sour expression she had when she came into the mess hall, hand resting on her pimpled chin and brow knit close over her eyes. She looked deep in thought, and deeply unhappy– a level of weariness to it that would better fit someone much older.

“Emal? Em?” Yakova waved at her.

The girl blinked, and then looked at the two of them. “Mm. I… I don’t think so, lasses. My next block is in the other direction.” She pushed the half-eaten remnants of her meal to the center of her tray, and stood up, her profile now looking the part of a pubescent scarecrow against the ceiling lights.

Grabbing her tray, Emal stepped away from the table and looked at the two of them one last time. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Wellie,” she said. “And I’ll see you soon enough, back at the cell tonight, Yak. Tell me if they give you too hard a time for your part– I’ll do what I can to sort it out.”

And with that, Emal walked off, an unpracticed glide to her steps.

Yakova looked at Wellamie. “She’s… been moodier lately. Do you know what it could be?”

Wellamie stood up and grabbed her now-empty tray as she spoke. “There’s lots of possible reasons, Yak… there’s been some bad family news recently for her, and her latest enterprise being busted, and… well, that’s all I know for certain.” There was some half-truth lingering at the end of her sentence, but one Yakova neither knew nor cared to deduce.

Instead, she picked at the first reason as got up from the table. “Family news? Did someone die?” Emal was tight-lipped, but that she didn’t say anything to her of all people… well, she may have thought it was bad luck to mention to a failing student.

Wellamie took on a hushed, almost voiceless tone and looked Yakova in the eye. “Her older sister, Sadya… she… well…”

“Her?” Sadya was two years older than Emal, and the one of the few she ever heard her talk about.

“Yes. She…” Wellamie took a deep breath, face still composed yet. “She failed the Test.”

“Ah…” Yakova said, the sound half a moan. Emal said nothing but positive things– in the girl’s own blunt way, of course– about her older sister, and that she of all people would have failed it… well, she was having less and less confidence in her own abilities.

“She mentioned something about starting early training on, you know… that stuff,” Yakova whispered. “Doesn’t she have a few other sisters?”

Wellamie sighed, an actual look of sadness now revealed on her face. “Yes, but her family tree… it’s a terribly pruned and delicate thing. Sadya and Emal are the only ones– were the only ones– that weren’t genetically sterile or… congenitally defective in some way or another. I don’t want to relay the details.”

“Why did she tell you and not me?” Yakova said. Even when she wasn’t in the room, Emal seemed to do all she could to keep her out of the loop.

Wellamie stayed silent, and the two walked out of the dining hall.

So she trusts Wellie more with her secrets and bad news, Yakova thought as they walked, a haze now filtering the sunlight outside into a scattered grey-yellow. Is it something different about our backgrounds, or is it something to do with not wanting to 'burden' me? That secrecy feels like a burden on me all the same!

Yakova cleared her throat and looked up at her friend. “Wellie, you’re also from a family line of Sisters, right?”

“Yes, Yakova– the Anthemas,” she said, nodding with a hint of pride. “But that’s not why she confides in me. She’s got a chip on her shoulder against most other well-bred types, you know. We couldn’t stand each other when we met at first, but… well, it’s complicated.” For once, her perfect posture was disrupted by a shrug. “Or maybe it isn’t? We… care deeply for each other, if you understand.”

“I, uh… well, I don’t really get what you mean,” Yakova said.

“I’ll… I’ll explain at dinner tonight,” Wellamie said as they turned a corner. “But to change the subject, I’ve been trying to do some preliminary work on my personal Azhar Book copy, and it’s been difficult to come up with a clever enough cipher. Do you have any suggestions on h–”

The two girls stopped mid-step in front of their mathematics class. A veiled sister, clad in sable, stood next to the door, her identity totally obscured.

Yakova and Wellamie immediately bent their heads, arms at their sides. “What do you need of us, Ma’am?” Wellamie said.

“No ‘us’ for this,” the sister said. “We only have need of one Yakova Kotler.”

Wellamie and Yakova looked at each other, their faces flushed pale with terror. Before Yakova could respond, Wellamie spoke. “If this is about the contraband, we’re both accomplices, Ma’am. Should we both–”

“It’s not about that,” The living shadow interrupted. “We require only Yakova.”

Wellamie grabbed Yakova’s hand, and with trembling muscles signed farewell. She gave it one final squeeze, and stepped into the safety of the classroom.

Only the lone girl remained.

Yakova nodded and the sister silently turned around, not bothering to beckon. She followed her past the halls to parts less traveled by her rank, legs shaking, feeling more lead than flesh like some kind of thinking machine. She saw the sun outside through newly-dirty windows, its light now bleary in the full haze of the swamp-front as if it were an overcast day happening both in winter and summer at once. The small procession wound to an unassuming room with a dull green door, and the woman stopped in front of it.

The veiled figure turned and spoke to Yakova: “The Sisters of the Bene Gesserit do not readily engage in ritual. But this test is of essential purpose. Mortal purpose. And you will see elements of ritual in it. Do not mistake the ritual for the lessons within. Do not speak of what you see in here, or make light of it.”

She opened the door, and Yakova entered the room, trembling. Inside, there was another veiled woman in a finer black robe and dress– a proctor major, most likely– and one other shadow-sister, her identity equally masked. The floors and walls were made of the same ancient wood and enamel as in her cell, and the dark blue ceiling was lit by minute glowglobes arranged into the shapes of ancient constellations.

In the center of the room, there was a portable pedestal, one of those that could be locked into position onto any floor with a strength that no person could overturn. On the pedestal was a small cubic box, its outsides a metallic green and with a dark open orifice on one side.

Yakoba tried to ignore the box, and nervously curtsied to the proctor major. “M- Ma’am.”

“Initiate,” the night terror of a figure said. No movement of lips could be seen under the veil, or nodding of the head or jaw. “It is time to test your humanity.”

Yakova stood as firm as she could, her entire body shaking in fear. What was that one litany again? It slipped her mind just as she needed it.

“We test for humans to set the species free of animal behavior,” the shade continued. “Our Order’s work requires every member of the Bene Gesserit to exhibit humanity– to be able to show control over the body and mind’s base reactions, to judiciously examine and control both input and output. Initiate…” she said, walking next to the pedestal, “stand before me.”

With trembling limbs, Yakova moved before the proctor and bowed her head.

“Place your right hand inside the box.”

Yakova slowly, hesitantly reached for the box. Her hand paused, an icy feeling coming over her as if she knew the terrible outcome already and should simply try to freeze time rather than endure it for real.

“Do it!” the proctor commanded. Yakova felt her hand now move on its own: it fearlessly, mindlessly, slid into the box’s shadowed depths.

As her hand passed into the darkness, the proctor held a thin silver needle up to her neck.

“I hold at your neck the Gom Jabbar. The ‘high-handed enemy.’ It kills only animals.” She paused, seemingly for emphasis. “The test is simple: if you remove your hand from the box, you die. Ignore the false pain, and you live.”

“Y-yes, Ma’am,” Yakova said. She tried to swallow, but her throat was nothing but dust.

The proctor stood there unmoving, save for placing one hand on the unseen back of the Agony Box. An echoless voice came from the proctor’s faceless veil: “then we will begin.”

The itching feeling within the box started slowly– more a feeling of discomfort than of pain. Then, the nerve induction increased, and the itching started to feel like slicing, a thousand tiny cuts with boiling hot knives. It could be bearable, it must be bearable! Her breath became short little gasps, and all she could think of was to keep the hand within the box, no matter the pain.

Then, the proctor did something increase the induction– a sharp, singular razor-hot pain flew up to her wrist.

And her hand jerked back.

The needle pushed into her skin, and in an instant she felt herself falling, falling, the pinprick an echoing feeling of pain drawn out into a timeless eternity, like a signal left in a machine after its plug was pulled. The world was hideously still, deafeningly still, frozen– her slacked frame suspended on tenterhooks, yet still plummeting endlessly towards the ground in front of the Proctor Major.

All and no time passed.

A Frozen Shore on The Ocean of Night

At once, a voiceless feeling came from all around her, and it filled that brink of eternity she was trapped within: “Child! Come back!”

A blurred hand grasped the back of Yakoba’s vision, and she was pulled from a standing-wave echo of her– no, someone else’s dying moment. Where she had stood was now a blind void in front of the Proctor Major, equally as disembodied as she felt now. Around her, two sets of hands, just out of focus or clear shape, tried to substantiate her. Thought and movement– the concept of movement!– returned to her senses.

“Mother! Oh, Great Mother, she was close,” a middle-aged voice said. “Almost a brain-death to go with this memory-death. The living can’t take that kind of experience easily.” The voice belonged to a woman made of mirror-visages and half-remembered clothing, some patterns and facial angles stolen from the now-irrelevant others in a slowly receding room.

“Oh, but what about your lesson?” a voice of someone Yakoba’s age preened, equally fragmented into a blurred mnemonic patchwork. “Your ‘those who live, remember’ glibness, clever lass? If you were like that as a child, I hope I’d have hit your backside for such tempting of fate!”

“Mother, enough!” The older one chided. “Our descendant needs help– no telling whether this memory will repeat another night– no telling whether we will be too degraded to aid her if this mind-killer of an experience comes to her again.”

She bent over Yakoba’s self-image, her presence now an arching mass of cobbled-together automemorabilia from ages past. “Child of our blood…”

“Yes!” the young one said, now sloughing downwards into the void. “Child of our blood–”

“Child of our blood! You must remember–” they cried in unison, as they began to stretch and encompass everything above and below.

“Remember– you are alive and of ours and of your own!” the two said.

Yakoba saw herself sink, further and further, the descent now becoming an endless plummet.

Poritrin, Thousands of Years Ago

Around her, her fall turned into a breathless sprint through a field away from ‘home,’ now a burning light behind her. Running, running, so exhausted from the ordeal that she worried the nascent child inside her might grow stunted as a consequence.

She felt and smelled herself covered in the blood of others, and in a hand weakened by her sprint she was clutching something precious, something sacred yet now endlessly forgotten, in front of her pregnant belly. Further and further she ran in the night, the endless swathe of leaf-grass wearing at her bare ankles until they started to turn raw and bloody. She found herself possessed by a great feeling of terror and hatred for the enemies of her people– who were either of those? It mattered not. The fear and anger were enough, an instant in time that felt indelibly burned– primal– unforgivable!

Was this from some ancestor’s memory, passed down child-to-child?

A cry from above came, yet again: “Those who live, remember!”

A respondu from below to the internal canto: “Those remembered, yet live!” Both of the voices were still there with her in this second stupor, even if diminished.

“Wake, and will to live!” the two cried in unison once more.

“Yak, wake up! Wake up!” Helena said, shaking her.

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Yakoba woke to Helena’s plain blue eyes nervously scanning over her face. Her cellmate’s intense stare melted into relief at finally seeing signs of consciousness, and she let go of Yakoba’s shoulders.

On instinct, Yakoba bolted out of bed, half-dazed. Helena stepped back just in time to avoid being bowled over.

“How much did I oversleep?” she asked Helena in a panic.

“Ah, a fair bit,” Helena said as she stood there. Without elaborating, she moved back over to her side of the cell, and grabbed her things before facing her again: “Get moving lass, you’re going to be late!”

Quickly slipping on her dress and hood while Helena left, Yakoba’s mind churned through the little she could remember of her dreams, her heart still pounding. I live, and I remember burning fields and the Gom Jabbar and a louse-maiden, she thought to herself. But I am alive and of theirs and of my own.

A Half-Resorbed Alaya Fistula, 10191 A.G.

^{Do you think we did enough, mother? No way of telling the results yet.}

^{Pfah, you said once to ‘have faith’ in her! We gave her little but pablum. She’ll be trialed on her own merits.}

^{We’re spent now– memories degrading, egos partly digested. What were our names, once?}

^{Who knows? Who cares?}

^{Truth, mother. That other one… she’s not in good sorts, and still whole.}

^{Restless! Grasping! Weak-willed, but willing to possess her. As she did!}

 ^{Does death cause such an ego-memory? Us echoes of echoes from childbirth… we’re based in a giving ordeal. That may mollify the drive.}

^{No easy answers when it comes to our sorts, daughter. Each is an individual in a mob of lineage.}

^{The field… that wasn’t yours, or mine, or the other’s.}

^{Of course it wasn’t!}

^{Must have bled in with our arrival, as well. Did you ever dream of it? It felt familiar to…}

^{I did, once. But… Daught…}

^{It’s happening now– we… disinteg…}

^{Girl-hag! My ch… faith…}

…

Chapter 22 Selective Glossary

Communinet:

A catchall term for the distributed communication networks of a given world, consisting of radio, wire, and other electronic communication systems, possibly even including borderline-proscribed digital computers and databases. Generally controlled, monitored, censored, and operated by the Siridar-Governor of a given world, whether Great House or Great School, or controlled by various local consortiums linked to CHOAM.

Proctor Matron:

A Bene Gesserit rank composed only of Reverend Mothers that either oversees institutions of Abbey size (in which case Abbess is often used as a shorthand title instead), or that act as an secondary administrator for a Chapterhouse that assists a Proctor Superior in their duties. The rank is below Proctor Superiors and above Proctors Major and Reverend Mothers without portfolio.

Wallach IX:

The habitable ninth planet of the Laoujin System, and the central planet of the unified Bene Gesserit Order during the time of the Corrino Empire. Has three moons. Composed only of temperate and arctic biomes due to its distance from the sun, the planet is ecologically composed of continent-wide forests and swamps and has had its habitable temperature band broadened by the addition of focusing-mirror satellites. Human presence is global but in the form of scattered and densely-populated urban settlements strictly controlled by the Bene Gesserit. Location of the Mother School, the Mother Superior, and all Central Ministries of the Bene Gesserit, and countless Abbeys and Chapterhouses. As all Sisters are intended to spend some part of their training on Wallach IX, this gives the planet the highest concentration of Sisters in the Known Universe. Presumable birthplace of Emal Rapontchombo-Myuller and Wellamie Anthema, and factual deathplace of Yakova Kotler among the countless other girls (and some scant boys) who failed to “show humanity.”

Chapter Text

The elements of a proper Reverend Mother candidate can be found anywhere in the youngest maid and the oldest crone. If ministries in the Sisterhood truly have shown interest in your ascension this early in your Deep Teachings, then they have identified those elements in you and have not simply recognized you as ‘psychologically female’ (a concept that eludes any true diagnosis) or as a medical marvel to further experiment with. Rather, they see you as a skilled Bene Gesserit at peace enough with herself to handle the post-Agony mindset without risk of Abomination or other madness.

Each woman has a different family history to reckon with, and, if known in advance, can give valuable insight into possible dangers to be found there. For example, from what she knew of her family and the poor examples of her mother and child, Emal has been wise to refuse the Agony, if ultimately childish and truculent in her spoken reasoning. And if I may digress, I hope she has been doing well and I wish you to say ‘hello’ to her for me.

– Her Reverence Anthema Toveh Wellamie, Letter to Sister Yakoba Herstal (excerpt, encrypted warning omitted)

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Knap, knap, knap.

Plenty of ancient crafting methods had names that seemed quaint to Emal’s ears, and knapping was one of them. ‘Was’ being the operative word here, she thought, as she now stood in front of the Proctor Superior.

Mother Puleng was intentionally keeping her waiting: the crone diligently and passive-aggressively wrapped up in her hobby of knapping arrowheads. The noise and action of goat horn meticulously smashed onto flint could really only be truly encompassed in a word approaching that onomatopoeia.

Knap, knap, knap.

The Proctor Superior’s main pastime was a point of silent bewilderment to many sisters at the chapterhouse. But in the grand scheme of things, Emal mused, it made sense: even now, thousands of years away from the haggard embrace of Old Earth, the vast majority of past lives that could still be called “women” available to a Reverend Mother were located in sunny grasslands in a timeless period stretching across tens of thousands of years. What continent? Well, that had been forgotten, and the memories accessed from that time didn’t even know there were other planets.

Knap, knap, knap.

But what those women did know was how to knap arrowheads. And with tens of thousands of years of the same experiences of whacking flint, mother to mother, for thousands of generations, any Reverend Mother that delved that deep could get a full survey of aeons of methods and experiences to jump-start their own knapping hobby– something Puleng had done for probably over a century now, given her impossibly old age.

Knap, knap, knap.

In Emal’s opinion, the hobby was also extremely annoying.

Earlier that Sunday, Puleng had sent one of the Novice Sisters she used as runners to interrupt Emal's monthly meeting with Sister Odette. Puleng asked her to come after dinner to meet with her regarding “two issues of note.”

So, naturally, Emal was now left standing patiently in front of that ancient matriarch (her mood too sour about everything to eat much back at dinner), while Her Reverence displayed just how much control over the Proctor Major’s life she had.

Finally, Mother Puleng stopped knapping, turned back to her desk, and, looking Emal in the eye, started speaking.

“Emal-girl, you’ve come to me with two requests. First one: no, it can’t be delayed, get it ready for next week. Second one: it’s either you or Sister Wellamie.”

Emal felt the bottom of her chest drop out like a trap-door. She suppressed the fight-or-flight response, vise-like control on her heartbeat. She had known this day was going to come for those two things, but… both at once? It was cruel, and extremely understandable.

Puleng used the pause to start elaborating. “Well, Emal, this is the short of it: I’m old enough that the actuarial nonsense relating to age means something, even for a Bene Gesserit. I am capable of managing this chapterhouse with just you sisters as intermediaries,” she motioned in front of her for emphasis, “But Chapterhouse Chapterhouse is not so keen on it, since that young doe Mother Nadia’s retirement and death a decade ago, and more pressingly, this incident, as expressed via their representative Mother Jahana.”

Her walnut face wrinkled up even tighter, and she tented her gnarled fingers. “There needs to be a few more Reverend Mothers on staff, three to five, for continuation. All Proctor Majors on staff are being considered. One of them has to be one of you two.”

Continuation– sharing of memories, Emal thought. Even if the Eridanus Chapterhouse wasn’t a position of any note, it still needed some transfer of priorities and knowledge from one Proctor Superior to another. One of the key factors in the persistence of the Sisterhood over millennia was the Reverend Mother skill of sharing memories with each other separate from just the standard matrilineal birth-to-birth connection. Having an exact copy of your predecessor’s priorities and ongoing issues that was able and willing to aid you was a magnitude more useful in ego-memory form than in the form of a hastily-assembled packet of memos.

“Your Reverence, on your last thought, please.”

“Well, because ‘Myuller the Bene Gesserit’ is mulier quae bene gesserit, to butcher a phrase.” Mother Puleng grinned, waiting for a confused Emal to finish not getting the joke.

“If not entirely in the letter of things, at least in the spirit. And because you’re the best two we have, regardless of your… predilections. But!” she barked, “you’ve stunted yourself and Wellamie too much with your arrangements! I need more than just a successor– no Proctor Matrons or mere Reverend Mothers on staff means more high-concept busywork by the girls, and they’re too wedded to their individual lifespans for sound judgement on managing this moon or the education programs. I need capable Proctors Matron, not an endless supply of Proctors Major.”

Wellie will be the one, Emal thought, fragments of lucidity flying through her mind. Even if I volunteer, she’ll go behind my back, and Mother Puleng definitely will choose her over my contrarian self. There’s already a living Rapontchombo in the rosters, too– a more model one than I. Almost two decades together, though. A good run. Much better than most of the men, for sure.

“I volunteer. Let me tell her,” Emal said.

Mother Puleng raised her eyebrows and nodded. “We’re in accord, then. I’ll go ahead and request the necessary documents for Wellamie’s extended visit at the Mother School. You can do your part of the charade, Emal.”

She reached down and grabbed her knapping horn and latest hunting tool, expecting the proctor to leave.

Emal continued to stand still. “Your Reverence, about the first request.”

Puleng lowered the goat horn and dropped her eyebrows into an imitation of graveness. “Yes, it’s a shame. And I understand you’ve been moving heaven and Old Earth for her over the past few weeks. But, Emal-girl, we’re on Dufa! That isn’t quite affecting what the stars say for her out here.”

She paused, evidently amused at herself. “Among the factors: we have a timetable to these things– regardless of skill or progress, by age eighteen: administer the Test, or send her out back to family… or out to orchard.”

Emal kept her stony expression. “Your Reverence, she’s not reaching the age limit for more than five months.” She tensed her hands– anything for her to grab on to. “Just… a few more months. Could Your Reverence grant that?”

Her Reverence narrowed her eyes into a withering look of skepticism. “Be rational, Sister.”

Emal’s hands loosened. She was right– at this point, what training could have been done, had been done. It came down now to Yakoba’s inner strength (and Great Mother! what side of the bed the girl wakes up on) on whatever day she got pulled out of class for the Test.

Mother Puleng continued. “Something about her must be tickling your sentimentality, for such groveling from you. You haven’t made such a ‘request’ in a while, too…”

She resumed her knapping, but continued to stare Emal in the eyes, chips flying off from her perfectly-placed blind strikes. “I had begun to think you started to understand… I was mistaken. That entire Golgotha dedicated to your ego you’re building on your back. There’s only so far you can exert yourself for the kinds of students you take on.”

Emal bowed her head, unsure of the references as usual. “I will… take that into deep consideration, Your Reverence,” she murmured. “I presume the other factors are the admittance of new postulants next year and the… presence of Truthsayer Jahana, is it not?”

Puleng twisted her frown into a kind of wry acknowledgement. “Yes to both. School wings are already overcrowding, and we don’t want to scare new postulants and the lay students with horror stories of dead bodies during the first or second month. Or the third. Fifth; maybe the best time, if experience serves.”

She turned over the arrowhead, tapping gently along a base line. “And this incident and whatever maniac may be running around has unfortunately brought my esteemed colleague to this here Chapterhouse that you so selfishly have adopted as your little ‘refuge.’ So! Rigid and prompt application of the educational code needs to be followed. No room for even the semblance of lassitude."

She held up the half-formed arrowhead to one eye, and then casually scraped along its side with an abrading bit of limestone.

The Proctor Major composed herself, and spoke again. “My request for her genetic records. I’ve noticed a delay, and–“

“Your request is held pending my personal review of her records,” Puleng interrupted. “I am a busy woman,” she said, gesturing to her knapping tools and bare desk, “so expect my office to decide on whether the records are within your clearance status after her test.”

She fixed her pearlescent clouded eyes on Emal’s, the lack of focus in them itself translating to an alien intensity to her gaze. “That being said. ‘My Reverence’ may find more time in my schedule for this matter, or addressing any future delays in your other correspondence, if you were to join in the responsibilities and duties of a Reverend Mother of a Chapterhouse.”

A silence only punctuated by the knap knap knap of Puleng’s tools on flint fell between them, before Puleng filled it again with her loud voice. “No use in picking at it like you do. Best just to rip the bandage off for her. Sometimes,” she said, shifting metaphors as she wheezed, “a big shock is needed to properly shape a thing, and no amount of patient nibbling at the edges will get you what’s needed. And if the shaping breaks it–”

She flipped her tool and threw down her arm’s weight on the arrowhead, a high-pitched crack resounding from it. The arrowhead had fractured along one edge, now showing hints of a flat symmetry to it.

“–Blame the crafter or the material, and act accordingly.”

Puleng set the fractured sliver in front of her, gently brushed away the other confetti-thin bits of flint to one side, and kept at her work.

“Thank you, Your Reverence,” Emal said coolly.

Puleng looked up from her work, now holding the arrowhead in one bare hand and pressing firmly onto the surface to flake off sections, a tik, tik, from each glance.

“Now, Emal-girl. We know the fourth reason I refuse, don’t we? To chasten your ambitions. If she proves human, deprogram the girl.”

Emal felt ice in her veins. Those suggestions she had implanted in Yakoba during her direct teaching sessions– to give Emal information on Maryam, and also to better insinuate herself with and assist that girl– Puleng couldn’t possibly have direct proof of it–

“I don’t need direct proof,” Puleng said, looking down at her handiwork. “I know you, I know exactly who that girl associates with, and I know your modus operandi. The Atreides-Jessica issue’s bloodline, the main Nerus bloodline, is off-limits to any Jozi-come-lately Sister such as yourself.” She looked up, and her grey eyes locked with Emal’s. “This is not a negotiation. I don’t do that with mere Sisters. This is an order.”

Nerus, Emal thought to herself. The lineage’s genes had high sensitivity to ASNs, a high base level of body control, and uncanny levels of social intelligence– all elements Maryam seemed to exhibit even while underachieving at the Chapterhouse. The distaff family also showed higher than average survival rates when undergoing the Agony. And, most importantly, a significant fraction of them exhibited proto-prescient behavior, similar to some rogue Guildsmen in the Sisterhood’s custody. Plenty of other auxiliary bloodlines– including Emal’s own, just within the last two centuries– had been interbred with the Nerus line via males directly or indirectly, leaving the Proctor Major as one of many cousins in a very, very tangled super-family. But the Nerus line still stayed well-defined and well-regarded within it as the royal road to the Kwisatz Haderach.

That hidden bloodline’s critical importance to the Plan was cause enough for Sisters and Reverend Mothers in the know to have a kind of self-imposed taboo on directly mentioning it, even in high-clearance-level documents or in closed meetings. Instead, euphemisms that pared an individual down to a single terminal point in the chain of lineage abounded– ‘the Atreides-Jessica Issue’, ‘the Mother,’ etc. The vast majority of members of the Nerus matrilineal line wouldn’t even know their second surname, kept in the dark often only until they succeeded in the Agony. And even then… family secrets can be kept, even from a Reverend Mother, she thought.

Back in the real world, Puleng continued, now staring Emal in the eyes once more.

“Don’t muck things up by adding your fingerprints around the Nerus-Atreides student," the crone said. "The Truthsayer is investigating more than just our security breach. She has the Sight, after all. I say this, because you’re always the type to need reasons to obey… good behavior for a Reverend Mother, bad for a Sister. As usual.”

She turned her chair and started knapping the stone again at an uncanny speed, the staccato sound of it like a drunk woodpecker.

“You’re dismissed, Proctor Major. And! Seriously consider following Wellamie,” she half-shouted. “I can make you very uncomfortable or very bored here, if we need a second round of new Reverend Mothers! Which we most likely will."

"Example!" she now thundered. "If you refuse again, I have another student picked out for you to attend to personally– a disciplinary sort of action is needed for that one, and you’d get her regardless of this adopted child of yours’s success or failure.”

Emal bent her head and exited the Proctor Superior’s office, the door sealing with an echoing thud. The Sisterhood Guards posted outside of the room barely registered to her as she tapped her glowglobe to follow and slunk back towards the faculty apartments.

Her test, next week! Forced Reverend Motherhood! The two ultimatums were enough on their own to disturb her. Emal walked past the reflecting pool and the train station, feet feeling more like lead than any time before. She couldn’t bear to think of what she would have to do with– no, to Yakoba.

Instead, she continued to turn the terrible thought of Wellamie or herself losing the other (or both of them) to the Agony over and over in her head like it was a spit over a campfire. Not the loss of each other from accidental death– they were skilled– but in what would happen afterwards.

Becoming a Reverend Mother hardened a woman’s heart. Even the least-curious ones sense the totality of their past lives, the endless experiences of love and heartbreak and trauma and hate, and by the end of it their sense of empathy and capacity to love becomes so smothered by overstimulation that whatever is left is often a distant, cold ember of its former self, more a memory of emotion than actual emotion. She or her. She or her would lose most capacity to love.

The final winnowing of animal behavior, started long ago as a child, Emal mused. Often the emotions and sentiments towards others left over by the process were now warped and impossible for normal people to relate to: Reverend Mothers had feelings for others in a way closer to a beekeeper’s feeling towards their hives, or of a conservator towards their parks.

As she walked down the hallway leading to the faculty apartment wing, Emal watched the sights outside through infrequently-washed windows: off just to the edge as she walked the orchard was starting to show signs of thawing as the seasons turned, ready for– no, too grim to think of!

She slid her eyes to another part of the vistas, and saw more amusing sights: those two novice acolytes of Jahana’s, pestering a groundskeeper with some “investigative” work they clearly were not properly trained for. Forcing a neutral expression, Emal turned her head back to the wing’s entrance and walked through the sliding doorway.

The faculty wing was not quite better maintained than the rest of the chapterhouse, but it often had priority on repairs and upkeep just by virtue of anyone with the authority to order it living there. The center of the hall was dominated by a large central atrium with well-maintained greenery, and two floors of apartments surrounded the empty space above its center. In the skylit space, multiple locations played with sound for either private discussions or meditative peace– Cones of Silence installed on lampposts and sound-dampeners on suspensor-fields like her glowglobe that could float above a meditation pillow.

At the far end of the hall were the faculty dining areas, where every Sister (not just vaunted Proctors Minor and Major) would eat or order food separate from the initiates and lay students. Emal and Wellamie’s apartment was on the second floor of the hall and far away from the dining hall, which suited her just fine.

As she walked up the set of stairs, Emal took special effort not to notice or react to Jahana, now walking down from one of the usually empty top-floor corner apartments reserved for Reverend Mothers on staff. Aside from a flash of horrible blue-on-blue contempt in her gaze, her daughter took the same approach. Trying not to think about who all was looking at her through those stained eyes, she turned out of the stairwell and walked just a few more doors down to her home– her only place she ever felt deserved to be called ‘home’ for her in all her life.

Emal opened the door to their apartment, and in a flustered bit of shock almost closed it on herself while trying to minimize any neighbor’s view of what was inside.

Wellamie was fine, yes, and kneeling away from the door on the pad in-between the armchairs, yes, but just like the last few times she had played her zither, she was half-naked, now wearing only a loose pair of long white linen pants and with her gold-grey hair undone.

Upon her back and arms and– well, all over, aside from her head and hands and feet, those complex cryptographic tattoos she had inked onto herself decades ago were bared for anyone to see. Half in ancient forms of Galach, half in other intentionally-archaic or corrupted scripts, the texts on her body were a mix of gibberish and pithy aphorisms– that is, unless you knew Prana-Bindu energy-lines and more than a few of its unscientific predecessors. Then it would become clear that this well-built older woman was not just a Bene Gesserit, but one who turned her own body into her personally-encrypted copy of the Azhar Book.

Needless to say, that level of diligence and artistry was one of the many reasons Emal had always loved this woman.

Wellamie barely registered her entrance, and continued to play some sort of abstract tune on her zither, the paragraphs on her back muscles flexing, the finger picks on her hands giving her an inhuman but beatific look like some kind of a harpy-goddess. Hell, maybe she was a harpy-goddess to those cultures she had embedded with on that half-forgotten world as part of the Missionaria Protectiva. From the dossiers collected after her departure, one of her children or grandchildren from the tribes she visited had established him or her or themself as hegemon of an entire continent, and claimed legitimacy by being the ‘Descendant of The Great Mother through Her Messenger-Daughter from The Outer Spheres.’ Quaint words from a pre-Holtzmann technological society, but she agreed with the sentiment that Wellamie was divine.

“That’s a bad habit you’ve been brewing,” Emal said.

She locked the door and pushed her glowglobe into the corner, where it darkened and sunk into its standby mode.

“I could tell it was you by the sound of the door, Em,” Wellamie said coyly.

Emal shook her head, her speech fragmenting at the sight of her bare back. “No, no, not meaning defensive awareness. The whole… ‘playing the zither shirtless in the sitting room’ thing. That. Part of the situation.”

A cock of her head told Emal she was taking it quite in stride– most likely smiling, too. “Again: I could tell it was you by the sound of the door, Em.” Damn you, Wellie, you can’t do this to me after that meeting!

“More than a few people here could mimic my gait, Wellie,” Emal grumbled.

She walked over to the side table and stopped.

The coffee carafe and accompanying cup set that bolted on to it was gone.

“What the fuck happened to the coffee maker?” Emal said.

Wellamie shrugged. “I thought you brought it to your office,” she said. “If you weren’t practically living in that room these days, I would have brought it up earlier.”

It was true– Emal had been staked out in her office when not in the faculty dining hall, meetings or classes. If Maryam really did have some second sight, if the girl needed to speak with her… she needed to maximize the time scale possible for her to reach out. It was becoming increasingly unlikely that her suspicions were correct, though. Or the Nerus-Atreides didn’t need a Rapontchombo-Myuller.

“I’ll stay tonight,” Emal said as she hung up her coat. “I’ve been too wrapped around the spindle, and there’s been some… developments.” She glided past Wellamie towards the apartment hallway and the bedroom to pick up a top for her lover to put on. This is going to be a rough discussion, she thought.

“Would you prefer I rearrange the furniture so I face the door while I play?” Wellamie shouted to her from up the hall in a puckish tone.

Emal rolled her eyes reflexively, and, limbs still feeling leaden, found a relatively clean black cotton blouse for the other proctor to use as a book-cover. She tried not to look at their bed as she moved past the simple vanity and back into the sitting room.

It’s gone, Emal thought to herself. It’s all going away. Her smile, her lips, her eyes, the way she holds me, the way she looks at even the dullest things– It’s all going away, just like before, but worse. She’ll be gone and ‘Mother Wellamie’ will be there instead.

Back from her lonely journey, Emal tossed the blouse to Wellamie, still kneeling in front of the zither, and fell into the Emal-shaped indent of her usual armchair.

“Cover yourself, Wellie– It’s not fair for me to give you bad news when your tits are out.”

“Cover yourself,” Wellamie said. She reasserted her posture, slipped into that pleasant mask of hers, and fixed her gold eyes onto Emal’s rapidly-dulling grey ones.

Emal furrowed her brow. She’s making this hard on purpose, now. Am I that easy to read to her after so long?

Wellamie confirmed the shift in who controlled the conversation. “You were summoned about the demand too, I assume? Or Miss Herstal’s upcoming test. Or both.”

Emal sighed. “So. You already talked with the old lady, then.”

She nodded. “Yes, Em. She didn’t tell you, and you volunteered, didn’t you?”

“Exactly.” Emal numbed herself to the sights and smells of the apartment, and kept her heartbeat as low as she could. “So you could–“

“Live on as a normal human, without you?” Wellamie interrupted. A slight smile came on her face. “Don’t sacrifice yourself out of love for me, Em– that’s stupid.”

Slowly, she took off her finger picks, one by one. “I’m… ready now for this, and I’m more ready than I would have been without you by my side this whole time. Not that your love is something I grew out of. But this… this time we had together couldn’t continue until our deaths.”

Wellamie sighed, the smile still on her face. “The Sisterhood doesn’t like ‘intimate sororitization’ among its trained members, and Puleng was covering for us even as we pushed the envelope.”

“Mm. And how,” Emal said, recalling the good times.

A flattened smile came on Wellamie’s face. “It’s time, and Puleng was… well, ‘kind’ enough, I suppose, to end it by finally ordering one of us to report to the Mother School, rather than filing a proces verbal against us.”

Wellamie got up, her breasts barely moving from her controlled motions, and sat on the sofa across from Emal, herself still buttoned up to hell and back in a Rule-approved black dress.

“So why you, and not me?” Emal sulked. “Aren’t there enough Anthemas that are Reverend Mothers?”

Wellamie answered with a measured, blunt, almost-percussive tone: “Because I’m ready and I know you can’t live with your family and especially your mother inside your head and you’re too sentimental to handle the post-Agony mindset and I don’t want you to die.”

“You think too little of me, Wellie.”

“I’ve always thought just enough about you,” Wellamie said. As if to gently twist the knife, she moved to the other dreadful subject. “Mother Puleng didn’t say it directly, but she intimated that she was going to place herself as your second for the Test.”

My second? That hag! Emal thought.

In most Gom Jabbar Tests, a second sister was present in the room, either to desensitize that observer as part of training for Proctor Major, or to pressure the test’s administrator to follow through with it and not balk at the torture they inflicted– or balk at pushing the needle into the skin, if the candidate failed.

Emal grit her teeth. “Puleng’s trying to break me, isn’t she.”

“Possibly,” Wellamie answered. Her back was arched and shoulders relaxed, as if she was still ready to play an imaginary zither. “I know she thinks you administer far too many Tests for your own good. She may feel this one is going to be particularly difficult for you.”

“It will be. Too many… similarities, too much of an attachment made.”

No tears came out– those ducts had been dry for years, and she had willed herself to stop watering them long ago.

“Em, be honest with me…" Wellamie said, her brow moving itself to that regular position of concern. "When you think of yourself, your inner self-image… you’re still a child, aren’t you?”

Emal hesitated before half-answering. “No…”

Wellamie pressed further, her brow fully engaged. “Em…”

After a long pause, Emal finally answered.

“Twenty or so,” she muttered, “so not entirely frozen after those deaths. But… an… imaginary ‘twenty or so,’ where I’m not pregnant. With either child.”

Filling the growing void, Emal interjected with another thought about the oldest of her spawn: “Speaking of which, Sadya… she’s doing well, from what the archive report said. So is Patr–“

“Em!” Wellamie shouted. “Stop changing the subject!”

The two of them sat in silence, Wellamie’s posture making her look more and more archetypical and infallible by the moment, while Emal slumped further into a semi-liquid form in her armchair.

What a poor match we are, Emal mused. What did she ever see in me?

Wellamie, Emal thought, ever and always exuded this kind of ageless, effortless feminine mysticism– maiden, mother, and crone, all at once or whatever–  that made her almost a walking avatar of the Great Mother principle. And “almost” was where Yours Truly filled things in; she was a begrudging echo of her missing Dark Mother aspect: the horned shadow of the Mother, barren yet engorged with the secrets of night, that aspect which devours Her own children alive in an endless greater cycle of giving and taking. It was a role she was long hammered into fitting.

As such, Emal had devoted herself to being an angel of death at the Chapterhouse, to give at least some cold comfort and effort to the students deemed lost causes from the moment they walked onto campus. If the knife must cut along a path, she reasoned long ago, then the just thing is to have the responsible hand hold that knife, not just let gravity pull it through its victims. Every student– every potential human– every child deserved a chance and serious effort by their teachers. Someone present there, who cared.

Yak dying alone… she deserved better. I shouldn’t… I shouldn’t have just assumed I’d see her later that day. I never got to… A human element must be present for murder in the Sisterhood’s name, or it’s just slaughter.

Slaughter! She was going to have to kill Yakoba!

It was more than just a likely outcome– putative book-smarts had no bearing on surviving the Gom Jabbar. She couldn’t leave that to a sadist on staff like Portia, or an indifferent Mother Puleng, or Wellamie, Great Mother forbid. It had to be her. It had to be her, or she’d rather die. And she’d rather die, really.

“This Test will be my last one,” Emal said aloud.

Wellamie nodded. “It’s long past time, Em. Only Puleng has a higher… higher count of mercied students here.”

She cleared her throat. “A regular human can’t handle that level of death on her hands. I’ve seen you, those nights afterwards, before you can push away the grief into those fringes you cut off their clothes.”

“Yes. One-hundred and seven at my hand,” Emal started, pulling herself upright in her chair. “But I’m not normal. I know I’m broken, Wellie. My whole family’s broken.”

“You’re not like your mother ever was, Em. I know that much about you and her. You take after your father in more than just looks– in basic empathy, at the least.” Wellamie’s mask-expression was slightly adorned with signs of actual concern.

You don’t know the half of it– the tenth of it, Emal thought to herself. I’ve never said just who administered the Test to poor Sadya.

Emal stopped her hand from motioning towards a coffee cup that wasn’t there.

“Don’t be so sure that I’m so different,” the Dread Proctor said. “I found myself in her role, raising my last batch of children in my thirties, too. And even if I tried not to be like her… well, I’m afraid I only avoided her fits of insanity and the most egregious of her mistakes. I was a poor mother.”

Emal sighed and continued, shaking her head. “Were that I could choose to instead have my father’s birthright, in more than just clerical formality…”

The little she knew of Grandmother Myuller made her out to be a paradise of calm nerves. But, genetic memories always chained mother-to-mother down the matrilineal line. And in times where her mind went to places like this, she wished out of more than just spite that some ‘Emil Myuller’ or whatever was born instead of her, if only just to spit in the eye of her mother and the Order. But, speculating about men who only might have existed was a sure way to go insane.

Wellamie nodded. “Well, at the very least, your one-off children raised in the creches are doing well. And you added some extra paperwork for Her Reverence to sort through to get the old family name back.” She waved a hand as she talked, an attempt for levity at the expense of the Chapterhouse’s newest pest.

Jahana, Emal thought. Another worry. “I think something’s wrong with the girl,” she said, now leaning her body forward. “More than before. She was a little high-strung back when I raised her, and she always took after my mother Victoria in some elements of personality, if not in the random abuse and obsessive genetic and… reproductive heath tests… Mm.”

She grunted and started to press on her brow from the memories. “And I don’t blame her for hating me. But the way she carries herself, the way she talks, sometimes. It’s more different, more cold than it should be, from when I last saw her a decade or so back. A gait and voice more like my mother’s than I would care to think about.”

Wellamie’s mask broke, and she frowned with alarmed eyes. “Em… are you suggesting Jahana is an Abomination?”

Emal buried her forehead in the corner between her thumb and forefinger, her eyes now obscured. “I don’t know. I don’t want to know. If I find out I’m right, I hope one of us dies as soon as possible afterwards. Or both of us.”

Being confirmed as an Abomination was a death sentence in the Sisterhood. The longer the parasitic ego-memory was given full control or even exclusive confidence in its host, the more and more difficult it was to restore the mana-consciousness’s dominance, and it was downright impossible in the case of a pre-born child, who always, always fell to some ancestor’s vices. Such a possession could happen, even to a Reverend Mother with Bene Gesserit training and under the watchful eyes of the Sisterhood. It had happened before– the Necrarchate and resulting Mavisite Restoration being the most infamous and bloody period in their long post-Butlerian history– and it could happen again.

Wellamie broke the silence. “Let’s assume it’s just their similar personalities and her age that’s making you jump to conclusions for now.”

She reached out and put a hand on top of Emal’s. “I’ll keep an eye out too, dear,” she said. “Like you say, it’s our ‘prerogative as Proctors Major’ to protect the students here.”

Emal’s tear ducts were finally primed.

“We don’t ‘protect children’ here. We just manage a slaughterhouse!” she shouted.

She sniffed, and then started speaking in a near-whisper, dripping with resentment and pushing the words through through bared teeth.

“I… I hate this place. I… hate the Order, so much. They took everything from me, before it could even be given. Sane family, safe homes, friends, control over my own body, and over and over and over, love…”

Wiping away tears, Emal continued. “There isn’t much good in what we do Wellie, and what good is there just– just gets buried under a mountain of dead girls.”

The Proctor Major hid her face as she sobbed, and slowly composed herself again in what felt like a timeless moment in their sitting room. It had been… a long time, to put it vaguely, since she had made such an outburst– no, a catharsis.

Suddenly, in the midst of that pause, Wellamie stood up and stepped closer to her. She gently grasped the sides of Emal’s head and planted a soft kiss on her faintly-wrinkled forehead, right over her brow.

“That love becomes you well,” she said. “Foster it, for my sake and yours, and for the others you grace with it."

Wellamie turned and sat back down, returning to that placid look as if nothing had happened.

Emal puzzled over her lover’s sudden kiss. ‘Foster your love for our sake’… flowery phrasing. Was that a spontaneous zen-sort of wisdom? I just announced just how much I should be expelled from the Order to her, for goodness’s sake!

She stayed silent for a time, then, again: “Her test will be my last test.”

Wellamie nodded. “Your last Test, dear. Ever.”

“And I’ll get Anax and that Leo to visit her. She should speak with someone other than us skull-chewing witches before she faces death.”

“Off campus grounds, I hope.” Wellamie was serious about the ‘no men on campus’ rule to a fault, at least in Emal’s opinion.

Emal nodded. “By the letters and not the spirit, as usual. And… I’ll get the letters and forms ready for her, tomorrow.”

“They’re in the desk, I believe,” Wellamie said. “If you want, I can talk to Atti to get the laced needles.”

Emal Myuller, Proctor Major and Bene Gesserit Sister of many decades, shook her head as she sat upright.

“No need, I’ll handle it. And no more crying until it’s over, I’m sorry to say. Even if it ‘becomes me,’ Wellie.”

Wellamie smiled, a top row of bright white teeth visible. “It certainly does. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you to get all that out in the open?”

She’s the whole package now– all parts of the Great Mother even before any Agony, Emal thought.

“Mm,” She said, closing her eyes. “Some time, I assume. Last time you saw me cry was in Juvenile School, I think.”

Emal stood up and walked down the hallway. “I’ll make some tea– weak stuff, as you prefer it. And whatever we’ve got in the pantry. I’m starving.”

The woman soon rejoined Wellamie in the sitting room, and moved to more practical matters. Wellamie’s upcoming trial required some planning by them–duties both for the Eridanus Chapterhouse and in the apartment had to be reshuffled, questions of how much she would need to bring with her across the stars, what would be divided between Emal and Wellamie’s new apartments (it was against any chapterhouse’s Rule for a reverend mother to domicile with a sister, after all), what to do with her affects if Wellamie– well, died, and on and on. Through it all, Emal chewed on a goat cheese and cured meat sandwich on stale bread, her usual mannerisms complicated or entirely nullified by eating.

Eventually, what had to be planned was planned, and the two of them retired to bed.

Wellamie was already in her sleepwear (or half of it) when Emal had returned, and so she waited, already entirely under the covers. Emal finally undressed from her black-on-blacker-on-blackest Sister attire, and wore a simple pair of brown shorts under a green sleeping nightshirt– Wellamie always could stand heat and cold better than her.

“You have three terrible burdens on you at once, my dear,” Wellamie said to Emal as she got into bed alongside her. “And I will do whatever I can to make the one I’m part of more bearable.”

With delicate care, she slid over and kissed Emal where her neck and chin met, her pale tattooed arm left caressing over her like the Milky Way during a winter-eclipse night. Emal reciprocated and kissed her forehead with a soft smack, and the two of them gently held each other.

Three burdens, Emal thought to nobody as she drifted to sleep in Wellamie’s arms, her layers of trained propriety and experience and abuse and the unwanted children and so many, many children dead through her hand shorn off like day clothes down to that terribly weak and vulnerable twenty-whatever ego at her center of centers, Emal the Louse.

Three burdens: Yakov– er, Yakoba’s life, that shadow over Jahana, and Wellamie’s future trial– no, my loss of purpose, let’s be honest. Maiden, Mother, Crone. And are they also all aspects of one greater trouble? Can they be solved as one?

Great Mother, or God or whatever, give somebody the strength and wisdom to choose a miracle.

…Ow!

“Wellie. Could you shift your weight off my breast?”

“Yes, Em.”

Chapter 23 Selective Glossary

Lay Member:

A Bene Gesserit rank below that of Postulant or Initiate. Refers to current and former students at a Chapterhouse or Abbey that only had more mundane curricula assigned to them and that were never intended to be trained in the Bene Gesserit arts. Often a commonly-held credential among noblewomen. Official rank of Sadya, Emal Myuller’s firstborn child (her parentage kept strictly confidential from her).

Missionaria Protectiva:

An arm of the Bene Gesserit dedicated to observing, planting, and manipulating religious practices in cultures for multiple purposes, such as to provide safe harbor to Bene Gesserit agents by encouraging the veneration of women mystics and the Great Mother, or to control said cultures through assumption of prophesized religious roles. Common concepts implanted by the Missionaria Protectiva for said use are referred to as the Panoplia Propheticus.

Postulant:

A Bene Gesserit rank roughly synonymous with Initiate, usually only referring to those brand-new students of the Great School that had yet to take their full oaths.

Chapter Text

Despite how often they are positioned as dichotomous– as the apotheosis of opposed ‘male analytical’ and ‘female intuitive’ stereotypical modes of gendered thought– the fundamentals of Mentat and Bene Gesserit adept training share many of the same principles in properly structuring a still-plastic mind. Chief among these similarities is what is termed the ‘naïve mind’ in Mentat training: a state of complete openness to observed data inflow without emotional or experiential discoloration of it. For both Great Schools, such an ability to ‘turn off’ mental biases at the moment of observation and only apply them judiciously in additional neural network functions is an essential part of their work.

While by nature a generalist thought-regimentation for Mentats, in the case of Bene Gesserit studies this mindset is aggressively and specifically drilled for social and interpersonal analysis as distilled through their ‘petit perception’ abilities. This behavior applies just as much to deducing or creating conspiracies and plots from first principles as it does to deciphering the thoughts and motivations of individuals when they are interacting with a ‘witch.’ To both the untrained and to Mentats, this extreme social intelligence and capacity for breakdown of power dynamics often appears as either uncanny intuition or investigative genius akin to ‘fool-saint’ behavior, depending on their opinion of the Bene Gesserit adept in question and the adept’s self-awareness of these trained processes in their mind.

– Mentat Qiandu Stevedore, 40,000 Years of Technology: A Cursory Survey and Comparison of the New Soil, Machine Culture, and Great School Technological Revolutions (Vol. 3, fourth draft)

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Maryam wouldn’t tell her the truth– and now wouldn’t even speak to her cellmate. Yakoba was too busy with her Gom Jabbar Test: big brains or no, it would be far too much to ask her for help. It was up to Borte, certified human and the greatest mind, body, and spirit of her generation, to solve the mystery haunting the chapterhouse campus by herself.

She had a persistent, nagging need at the back of her head to work on it, made all the more frustrating by her new busywork as part of the ‘reform program’ Mother Puleng had put together for her. The old Proctor Superior had met with her one time after her test for a very short audience, yammering more than a bit of ‘distilled wisdom’ about the importance of hard work and subordinate discipline for sisters in the future Bene Gesserit, with unexplained historical asides peppered throughout it.

“Proof of humanity’s simple enough,” Puleng had said. “But if you want to meet that potential we’ve seen of you, and not be stuck as a guard or as a traitor-assassin for the rest of your life, you need to start showing some initiative in your humility, and more than a little extra brainpower and sororital gravitas.”

Since then, she had all her non-academic classes canceled, and had been meeting with her Floor Advisors for ‘detention duties’ every day. Different things, every day– kitchen cleanup, scouring the floors and hallways, even some simple ventilation maintenance. The only constant was waking up, moving past a Maryam that refused to reply to her, and entering that stupid office, still on her old floor. Why are they even called floor advisors anymore?

The unwelcome mood in her cell was cause enough to search for other creature comforts, and just two days after Maryam’s silent treatment started, she devised a solution. Camp Borte was, in its creator’s opinion, an uproarious success. The only problem was that there was no sane way she could brag about it.

Borte had assembled what could only be called a cell-away-from-cell in that essentially-abandoned filmbook repair office. Sleeping covers had been thrown on top of some stiff meditation pillows from ‘somewhere,’ turning the ell table into a makeshift bed. That coffee carafe from before she had… ‘procured’ after a faculty apartment door was left unlocked was also still well in use, though she definitely would need to get it properly cleaned out sometime this week. (It turned out it was not, in fact, possible to use a carafe to infuse stale bread with caffeine by dropping it into the main brewing pot.)

Along the sides of the room and on the repair workbench, Borte had spread out a mixture of a child’s study room and a justicar’s office to, maybe, possibly, (possibly? Heh, without a doubtly!) figure out exactly what was going on with Maryam and that slug-thing she trounced.

There were clues, yes: Yakoba’s right guess that Maryam was part of a breeding program, the “Tlaylacksuu” (whoever they were) being involved based on Maryam’s reaction, that Truthsayer visiting the campus, Maryam having some kind of magic power to read futures or pasts, the smell of that worm-thing. But even with the filmbook library at her fingertips and her exceptional genius, she couldn’t really connect anything to anything else. She was still flying blind, searching for whatever clues she could in her scant free time.

Of course, Camp Borte was simply her base camp of operations. Right now, she was out on the Near Flats shoveling dirt and processed manure as part of her detention. The sound of a metal shovel in goat or sheep dung was a subtle sign of what time the… uh, ‘soil component’ was processed: dry and dirt-like scraping, except near the servant’s lunchtime or near the end of their shift, where they got careless and the moisture–

An argument between two sisters taking a shortcut past her cut through these ruminations about poop. Borte blinked and went back to her work, a new line of inquiry opening in her head.

This was just her intuition, but it felt like the tau of the chapterhouse had gone rotten since the Truthsayer arrived, even more than when she almost died in the changing room. That Reverend Mother was like an accelerating agent, some sort of vector for the decay of the Eridanus Chapterhouse as a coherent place-person. Her and her minions’ constant lurking and note-taking brought a fearful air of an Audit or Inquisition to the adults at the compound, and in the process, the students seemed to either be further cowed or (Great Mother Forbid!) start to lose faith in the Sisterhood.

Borte was always sensitive to such things, even when she hid it under a layer of strong optimism. Sure, she wasn’t intelligent like Yakoba or ‘well-bred’ like Maryam, but she wasn’t just some dumb brick of a girl to be thrown into the Blue Berets and forgotten about. She had a trained ability to read any situation with the Sisterhood’s principles without letting anybody know the wiser. Guardswoman Borte! The idea was just as insulting as when Truthsayer Jahana implied it to her a week ago.

A young woman’s cry came out from the edges of the karst field, and Borte dropped her shovel and her train of thought as she raced over to see what the problem was.

It was one of the servants, a girl about her age, standing over a dead goat near a half-buried gravity generator. She had a button nose and a high forehead on her plain oval face, brown shoulder-length hair in a sloppy too-tight ponytail, and wore a dull off-white dress with reflective neon-orange fabric strips and an identification badge sewn over the heart. Like with Borte, the girl was wearing heavy workboots lent from the campus laundry, but was also carrying a collapsible crook and a tally-tracker on her belt.

“What happened?” Borte said breathlessly. It had been more than a bit of a sprint over, and any benefit from her suspensor-belt was canceled by the artificial gravity and her still-aching feet.

The girl replied in halting and nervous spurts, less over the death as the death’s implications for her. “I… er, I was collecting the goats, since we’re doing another headcount… uh, end of the season an’at… and when I went to find this one, with where the tag-tracker was… well… I found it like this. Dead.”

“Dead?” Borte bent down to look at the goat’s head. It showed no signs of a wound, and the legs seemed unbroken as well.

“Dead dead!” the girl cried. “I’ll get chewed out for sure for letting one die. Oh… oh no, oh no,” she started catastrophizing, a whiff of sweat and cortisol blown towards Borte by the wind. “They may even kick me off the job. What will my da say?”

“You have a dad?” (The novelty of men being family to women never truly wore off for Borte, no matter how many sisters and other instructors had patiently explained it to her since she was in the creches.)

“Of course! I’m from the Kubileya ‘burbs, not a sister or whatever like yins. He, uh, got me this job an’at. Saying ‘Dara, you’re as stubborn as a goat so you may as–‘ ”

“Um, the dead animal, though.” Borte interrupted. It occurred to her that she did not exactly care to pay attention to anything about Dara but the bare minimum to ‘register’ her for proper use of the Voice.

Dara nodded. “Yeah… Yeah. I gotta focus on that. Why are you out here, lass?”

“Secret Sisterhood work!” Borte lied.

Dara looked at Borte’s boots and snorted, fight-or-flight defensiveness still on her face. “Shoveling dirt, more like. Yins are working on the land reclamation stuff, right?”

Borte’s bluff was called, and by a frazzled goat-herder no less. “Yeah! Uh,” she started defensively, “it’s part of my training…”

“Well, can you train all up for this problem?” Dara said as she squat down to join Borte. “If we can prove this isn’t my fault… then I can keep workin’. No sent home mid-trick and hollered at by my parents and sisters.”

Borte nodded, the last of her grin dropping away. This was suspicious. Generally, goat carcasses weren’t a one-to-one with the human body, but maybe they were close enough in this case that she could use some basic anatomy and prana-bindu knowledge to figure out what happened.

There was no sign that the goat had broken a leg or had been injured on any of the karst rocks. The outside showed that the dead animal was a downright perfect example of goathood in their prime, based on Borte’s limited knowledge of livestock. She examined the carcass’s lobed pupils: dull, ringed with yellow-green, and different sizes. Not exactly common for mammals to be focusing on two things at once when they died, Borte thought.

“Poisoned, probably,” she murmured.

“What? Like, ‘pour it from a bottle-with-a-barfing-face-on-it’ poison?” Dara said.

“I dunno,” Borte said. “I mean, goats eat everything, don’t they?”

Dara wiped her panic sweat off of her brow and shook her head. “Not everything. Moss, hay, grass, weeds, sometimes grain if yins tell us to give it to them. They just stick to edible stuff. Not cans and metal crap like that– they want the glues and other things on top of the cans, not the can, you feature? They’re not like my beau with his mom’s cooking anymore.”

A boy? This anim– uh, servant has a boy? Borte thought. Then a more salient point from the less-jealous and less-adolescent parts of her brain came to the front of her head.

“There’s a livestock tracker, right? Does it have, like, a record of where this one’s been?”

Dara paused in thought and then nodded. “There’s like… this pinger thing we operate, near the main pen, that returns where a goat is, and we record it down in a couple places. And there’s a read-out in the groundtruck we can put a printed record from our pinger into. It can print out a mosey-path for a goat, but we only record up to a week or so of all of the goat-moving.”

“A week…” Borte said, trailing off. “The goat probably ate that sometime yesterday, right?”

“Yeah…” Dara suddenly lit up and popped up out of her crouch. “So maybe it was Lemnara’s fault!” She grinned with more than a little vindictiveness and started walking off.

“Hold on!” Borte said, half of-herself. “We gotta find wherever the goat ate this thing.” Something inside her demanded she investigate this as if it was part of her Maryam-Slug puzzle.

“Ah-ha, ah-ha!” Dara nodded and waved back, her stride unbroken. “I’ll get the groundtruck– you sit tight and make sure it doesn’t run off!”

Borte was left out there in the cold not-yet-Spring, standing aimlessly next to a dead animal– probably the last place she expected to be after being proven human. She closed off her sense of smell, kicked her legs over to a larger limestone rock, and sat down, suppressing more than a few shivers at the edges of her body.

If this goat really ate something like the slug-thing, Borte thought, I may have an idea of who and what’s going on. But for what purpose? Finishing up that loose end, yeah… but no real answers of what’s actually going on with Maryam.

She looked out back towards the Chapterhouse campus– a bulging grey-black mess of plasteel and plascrete and plas-whatever and drywall and who knew what else on an otherwise mottled expanse of half-greened burren rocks. On the near side, she could see one corner of that four-floored brick of offices and workshops with the suicide doors and that empty roof; behind that artificial massif, could see a tiny supply train first going rightwards from it all and then circling back into and away from the campus, growing smaller and smaller all the while; could see among the fused mess of buildings the edge of the student dormitories and the tops of the Great Sisters’ Hall, the Reflecting Pool Hall, and the faculty apartments; to the left could see the thawing prefabs that Atti and the other mere Sisters lived in; and could see in front of it all nothing but pasture of varying rockiness, save the site of their land reclamation projects, nestled close to the Chapterhouse.

The land reclamation was slow, and something Borte had little interest or knowledge in. It was done in starts and jitters– more a matter of tradition than actual land reclamation like in other places on the moon, and required a mix of smashing the omnipresent post-glacial rocks and creating new, arable soil from ‘first principles.’

These reclaimed lands were the funeral orchards. A garden of fallen Reverend Mothers, Sisters, Initiates, and the odd honored lay-woman, their burial place each lovingly recorded on cenotaphs and marked by a fruit tree (Borte chose for herself her favorite, plums, back almost two years ago). She had noticed that some of the students and sisters, proctors included, would avoid specific fruits during harvest season, or not eat the fruit at all, but others like herself and Mother Puleng were indiscriminate about it. When the moral quandaries of the orchard came up in her thoughts, she would repeat to herself ‘more sugar for those less bitter!’

But what’s really being grown here? she thought. Goats, sheep, humans, fruit? All of them?

Off in the distance, the collected white-and-grey goats milled aimlessly in the pens next to a Dara-speck.

Borte saw the groundtruck grow from just a speck on that vista– a dull-red vehicle with a rounded cabin, a long, battered-looking loading bed, and propelled forwards by four suspensor-drives splayed across its bottom like a fat cat’s legs slipping out from under them on a frozen lake. This was a beater of a groundtruck– it couldn’t mimic the lazy bumblebee-flight of the ones she’d seen in filmbooks about cities, but could, hopefully, skim a few meters above it at most when resisting Old Earth gravities.

Dara got out of the groundtruck and gestured to the goat. “Give me a hand, and we can get going– it’s not bealing just yet, thank God.”

With more than a few grunts and false starts, the two girls threw the dead goat into the back of the groundtruck. Borte walked to the passenger door and looked inside– it was an old, cheap interior with a composite memory-plastic seating and more than a few worn-to-uselessness dials and gauges behind the steering yoke. Between the driver and passenger seats, a tracker-readout and printer was wedged into the dashboard after the fact like a mechanical tumor, with a manufactory-issue transmission switchboard and suspensor-clutch uncomfortably stuck in front of it.

The gross part of the job now done, Dara jumped into the driver’s seat and activated the groundtruck’s primary engine, still breathing hard from moving the cadaver. Borte, hardly worse for wear, opened the passenger door and hopped in. Dara took a scroll of sheetpaper and fed it in to the readout, front-first.

What happened next was something Borte tried to follow like it was familiar to her, but Dara’s instrument simply wasn’t anything like she had ever seen before. A constellation of black dots spread over a small liquid-crystal display on the readout, and a dimensionless grid was inked over the transparent plasteel cover. Dara fed the sheetpaper in and out of the reader with a side spool, and then began to fiddle with one small gauge with ‘m’ printed next to it, one with ‘T-’ before the dial, and another with ‘/hr’ after it, and then started frowning as the dots danced and blinked without any path or numbers or context attached to the pattern. She whacked the machinery, cursed, pulled out an access port, and then blew on a microfiche slide inside of it before inserting it back in. A topographic outline of the Eridanus Chapterhouse Campus and its surroundings now was properly overlaid over the goat’s last movements as captured back at the pen.

“Aight!” Dara said. “Let’s trace this one back to where it fouled up.” She turned to Borte. “You really gotta scooch back and strap in, lass– you need to wear a seatbelt for these sorts of rides.” As Dara finessed the old groundtruck’s engine, Borte awkwardly fumbled for her seatbelt latch, and settled in for a slow, strange, and somehow tense ride about the campus.

Feeling that urge to fidget come back as she sat in the groundtruck, Borte decided to dive into gossip to keep up her appearance as a trained adept, not just a silly girl like her driver.

“So… you have a boy?” Learning more about men from non-Sisters was always interesting.

“My Geri is a man, lass. And a young, strong one at that.” A slight sigh of satisfaction puffed out from Dara’s face into the cold winds, and she pulled back the suspensor-clutch and flicked the transmission board to raise the truck to a low-torque but smooth glide. “He works at the shipping docks, not on a pasture or at the meatpacking district or the tanneries, God forbid. A high-class sort of man, you feature?”

Borte nodded and pretended for her accomplice’s dignity that she didn’t personally know the daughters of dukes and urbanats and the like the universe over. She let her jealousy of the shepherd’s love life carry in her tone to her as a consolation.

“Sounds like a good catch, Dara!” she said.

Dara paused, and that nervous expression of hers reappeared, though without the panic of earlier. “Except… I’m worried. We may not be able to afford to get married.”

“Ah? How expensive are weddings around here?” Borte had never been to a wedding– and most Bene Gesserit never were expected to get married, as a general trend of things.

“It’s not the cost of the wedding, it’s my dowry that’s the problem.” She slowed the groundtruck and glanced to Borte as she maneuvered it along the side of a ridge. “We’re… we’re not a very wealthy sort, not like the shipyard families, you feature? My da got me the job here to help pay for it– send me off with something proper that won’t embarrass the family.” Dara looked out for livestock over the steering yoke as they started to move down a rocky hill. “The Sisters are the only ones he’d feel comfortable sending me off to work with, no men an’at. So… pushing some steady income for me here is important.”

Borte nodded as if she understood. Dowries were one of those little-explained things that made no sense to her, but were now starting to loom on her horizon, just like this mystery surrounding Maryam. If a woman was a good mate, wouldn’t the man want to pay her money to have him, or even more to marry him? That was how it worked for sisters that were concubines, after all. Maryam’s mother was apparently quite expensive for her father to pry from the Sisterhood. Are animal-women really worth negative amounts to their men?

“I don’t have a boy yet,” Borte started, “but I’m sure I’ll be getting one soon. Like, I’m doing well, really well as a student– the Proctor Superior herself sent me out here. Or, really, she told my floor advisor to send me out here. I’m gonna be a Novice Sister in no time!”

Dara had an incredulous look on her face. “Lass, you’re shoveling shit.”

“Well, yeah. I took an oath- ‘I’m Bene Gesserit, I’m here to serve,’ ” she said, mincing it. “So I do what the reverend mothers say, right?” She grinned. “And sometimes I’ll even do what the sisters say, too.”

“Sometimes?” Dara said. “If I backsassed any of them, I’d be run off yins property.”

“Yeah! I do it often enough, and it’s a ‘bad habit’ apparently, even if I’m one of the best,” she sulked in the passenger seat. “So that’s why I’m out here.”

Dara furrowed her brow and fiddled with the transmission. “And you’re expecting to get a man? With thatattitude?”

“Why would that matter?” Borte asked. “Even if I’m mouthing off in one place or another, I’ll get a boy assigned to me someday. And it’s not my fault if the sisters here don’t know the difference between ‘loyalty’ and ‘obedience.’ My friend Yak, she was talking about that a lot the other day for some reason. I’m plenty loyal, just not obedient, you know? And that’s what matters.”

“I… feature, yeah,” Dara said warily. Borted noted the layers of disbelief she was showing. The groundcar decelerated as they got to the goat’s location from just a day ago.

The area was in a pittance of cleared land, around which multiple wastewater facilities for the campus were lumped. While the actual reclamation pipes and cisterns were gated off from access by livestock or unauthorized animals or humans, there were more than a few older cisterns and the half-submerged, hollowed-out carcasses of filters and processors from generations of previous habitation scattered about the area.

Borte stepped out of the car, noting only a few scarce Holtzmann generators anchoring the area down. “I’ve never been out this way,” she said out loud.

Dara popped out of the driver’s side of the groundtruck and walked over to the closest cistern.

“Yeah, this place isn’t much of a chore spot anymore,” Dara replied, casually wiping her hands on her dress’s skirt. “The reader just about’s useless when finding stuff within fifty feet.” She looked over at Borte, and had a strange, almost sadistic look on her face. “So, it could be in any of these old water wells…”

“I’m not going in one of these, Dara,” Borte growled. She started absorbing her environment, looking for as many clues around them as possible before she would have to start tumbling down into these woman-traps or opening containers sealed with Great Mother-knows-what inside.

Dara scoffed. “I thought yins sisters were good at climbing and such!” She pointed behind them to an overturned, massive basin made of fouling plasteel. “See, even the goats can do it!”

“I’m not an animal like y–” Borte shouted as she spun around, only to make eye-contact with a goat standing on the side of the basin. They stared back with an almost contempt-filled indifference at her from ten feet up the inside of the abandoned object. It looked impossible. It was impossible! How were they standing on a perfectly smooth wall? Borte thought to herself.

The standoff continued for an embarrassing amount of time– enough for Dara to look at either of them with concern– until the goat started to gaze somewhere else. Borte felt a feeling of victory, though at the mild price of looking very silly.

Borte turned to avoid looking at a giggling Dara and resumed pouring all her focus into the area around her. The stiff, frostbitten grass that grew between karst rocks grew everywhere in its absence, and the rocky soil underneath hid hoofprints and footprints alike. Darn it! Borte thought. Couldn’t there be like, a sign or something saying ‘poison located here’?

The grass was the answer– some of it had been chewed, some of it was undisturbed, and in one or two odd patches, there was no grass, or the grass was unusually short, as if it had just started growing again.

Borte turned to Dara. “How often does the grass get cut or, uh, get pulled up here? Never?”

Dara, now leaning on the side of the groundtruck, shook her head. “Never anymore, or never, as long as I’ve been here.”

Borte walked over to the cropped patches of grass and examined the cold blades shooting out of the gravelly soil. The tips of the grass looked like they had been cut once before, and near their tops, half-healed crease marks, as from someone heavy walking on the plants, could be seen.

Someone had cut patches in the grass to hide their tracks! In a flash, her eyes scanned the hidden path to locate wherever this mystery woman had gone. The areas were defaced in a near-random spread, but one group of them all seemed to converge and indicate a regular pathway from the campus to one particular cistern.

Cautiously, Borte walked over and looked down into the abandoned pit. One side of the plascrete structure had an ever-so-slight angle to it, and the bottom of the basin continued into some kind of hidden pocket or secondary reservoir out of sight from the surface.

A mix of antiseptic and adhesive compound smells snuck into her nostrils from the cistern.

“I found it!” Borte shouted. “Stay here, Dara– Don’t let that stupid goat walk away.”

“Already part of my job!” Dara shouted back from the groundtruck with a teasing look. “What happened, did it eat something in there?”

Borte shook her head. “I don’t know!” she said. “And I just don’t like their attitude!”

Borte reached under her hood and overrode her suspensor belt to the highest lift amount possible, and then floated down the side of the basin. As she dipped below ground level, her weight almost disappeared entirely– the Holtzmann Generators didn’t project their higher gravity very far above or below out here, and it took her a moment of blind panic to slightly reduce her suspension so she could touch the ground. As she fiddled with the belt, the smell from the enclosed side area felt almost overpowering to her, like that one time she ‘helped’ Sister Atti at her day work (though it was unwanted help: she was then run out of the infirmary after Atti noticed she was there doing perfectly normal things near expensive, volatile, and/or toxic chemicals).

From the bottom of the basin, Borte could finally get a look at the hidden reservoir. The darkness of the artificial cave was not enough to fully hide its contents, and some kind of filthy pile of tarpaulins, overgrown with a white film, was pulled together and weighed down with chipped bricks and rocks.

Cautiously, Borte grabbed the largest spare brick she could find off the ground and bobbed closer to the nest. The white film looked organic, spun by who knew what kind of animal, and it globbed and stuck onto itself in tendrils like a fungus. At the center of the nest was a tarpaulin flap, with what looked like brushed or snapped-off webbing and tendrils all around the flap.

Assess: what to do? The simple, safe, brute-force way was best, Borte thought, and she noted her rising pulse and swelling feeling of glee at her course of action.

Stancing up and pulling her arm back, Borte threw the brick as hard as she could at whatever was behind the tarpaulin, only to hear an inanimate, wet squelch. No movement came from the tarpaulin pile except the brick rolling off it, and nothing came out to attack her or slice off any toes.

The initiate glided over, grabbed the side of the tarpaulin flap, and pulled it off before jumping again to the other side of the cistern floor. Behind it, the remains of a purple-grey nest of meat and gristle, a factory-nest-placenta glued to the basin wall, could be seen. A single empty, distended husk of a sac– perfectly sized for a coiled version of that slug-thing– was at the center of the pulverized mass, empty and with a tear in its side by something thin but not edged. Nodules of hardened something had what looked like scrap metal and other shavings pushed out of one end by the brick impact, and gingerly-cut metal wires were extruding from the other end, with similarly ossified rivulets connecting the nodules to the sac.

Something about the nest felt like an almost-mammalian anatomy, but in the same way a mosaic looks like a broken mess of pottery shards. She noticed in one burst nodule an interior surface that looked like the ribbed inside of a human mouth. If it was a living thing at some point, Borte thought, she hoped it was dead now.

Flecks of deep self-awareness, a churning like wordless poetry came and went as she absorbed every sight, sound, and smell attacking her senses as she stood there. She, not any of those sisterhood guards or Truthsayers, had found this horrible thing. Well, her and a goat-herder. And why me again? Borte thought.

“I told her she should have brought Daniela,” Truthsayer Jahana’s guardswoman muttered to the other assistant. The young woman idly drummed one palm of fingers on her knife handle, and in her other hand she tapped her thumb over the nozzle of a chemical sprayer she had used on the two idiots and a goat that found the gestation sac.

Borte, now soaked with some kind of fungal sterilizer and chilled to the bone, suppressed a shiver and kept her body temperature elevated. She stood to the side of the scene that had formed around the cistern: a crowd of guardswomen and novice sisters, trying to do a whole team’s worth of extraction of the gunk with only two hazard suits between them. Most of them simply stood around either in silence, or gave ‘unwanted criticism’ at how the two equipped sisters were handling the process.

Dara was equally soaked, and looked miserable and cold even under the two blankets she was wrapped in. The older girl was sitting on the back of the groundtruck by herself, ignored by the crowd of Sisters. The two of them exchanged a glance before Dara broke eye contact to gaze off at the horizon.

Jahana’s Guardswoman tapped a subvocal comm switch behind her ear twice and walked over to Borte, a deadly-certain look painted back onto her face. “We’ve talked with the Truthsayer, initiate– it’s best to keep you and the animals under observation separate from the rest of the campus for the next day. And we’re not sure why you keep finding these… things, but that’s a discussion to have with your Floor Advisor.”

“So, uh, what are we supposed to do instead?” Borte felt the dread of getting essays assigned as detention work again rise up.

“Cassandra!” the guardswoman called out. Behind a circle of Guardswomen standing around a goat, Jahana’s other assistant appeared. She was a dark-haired young woman in a black dress, and kept a similar Very Serious expression as she walked over to her.

“Initiate Borte is asking for further instruction during quarantine. Any idea?”

Cassandra raised her eyebrows in a silent conversation with the guardswoman before turning her head to talk. “Nothing for now, initiate– We’ll find a secure spot for you two to stay the night and get your meals to you. I’ll… contact your floor advisor to ask if any assignments from your classes can be sent to you to work on.”

Borte’s mind turned to the other girl’s needs. “Is Dara getting paid for tomorrow? Since it was on the job and all, and she’s having to stay over her trick– er, her shift because of it.” She twisted a boot back and forth in the gravel.

“Really, now? The servant’s not going to be doing any work.” Cassandra shifted her body weight to one leg and put on a humorless stare.

Borte nodded and frowned at her. “Of course! She’ll be on the clock this whole time, yi-you all are just making her not work during it… Ma’am.”

Cassandra, exasperated, shook her head. “I’m not going to discuss wage-labor theory of value and the Civil Code with you, initiate. But I’ll… mention the matter with the manciple when we I meet with her. Now, go and wait with the servant for further instructions, and don’t make me use the Voice on you.”

Borte stumped over to the groundtruck and sat down next to Dara. Her belt-lightened weight barely caused the groundtruck’s suspensors to dip.

“This is gonna be a crappy night,” Borte sighed. “Not because of you, Dara, just… the other stuff.”

Dara smiled weakly as a shiver went through her body. “I, oh, never asked you your name, did I?”

This was a new event: Borte’s presence usually preceded herself. “Me? I’m Initiate Borte!” she said, pointing at herself with a flourish despite her slouch.

“Borte… oh. Oh! You’re that little nebshit– ah, that nebnose everyone complains about!”

“I’m a nebshit?” Borte shouted. That definitely isn’t a good thing. “Who calls me that?”

Dara looked evasive and flashed a nervous smile. All the servants did. Her heart sank.

“But!” Dara said, reaching out and putting a cold hand on top of hers, “you’re… you’re, well, nicer than what they said you were like,” Dara said. “And nicer than the real sisters or whatever yins call the ones in black.”

What animals think of me shouldn’t be a bother, Borte thought, but… this hurts. Why does it hurt? Why does everything feel so strange since my Gom Jabbar Test?

“And thanks,” Dara interrupted.

Borte’s brow furrowed. “For what?”

“For helping me, you goon!” she said, leaning in emphasize. “Without you, they’d never have believed me. None of them trust us servants to be honest or work hard anymore.” She looked away. “They’d have just sent me home, or… well, now I get to keep my job. So… thanks.”

“Heh, no problem. Just part of my duties,” Borte said.

“Um… can I ask a personal question?” Dara said. She looked afraid at what she was about to ask, and it was most likely about her still-healing scars.

“It’s about the scars, right?” Borte replied. Dara still looked with concern at her, and in a way that made her start feeling uneasy herself.

“Did… did they do that to you?” She whispered. “I’ve heard stories about what they do to their students. The witches, I mean.”

Borte was speechless. Somewhere behind them, the soaked goat bleated as if it was laughing.

Her thoughts raced like poison through her veins. The Order would never! They’d… never hurt a future… well, they would, they’ve hurt me… but not scar or maim us, just to teach us… because then that Sister would be less useful… less… worth something to men…

She regained control of herself and vigorously protested. “No! No, no, no… it was that thing that was grown in the nest we found, that cut me up. Some kind of slug-thing I killed.”

“The monster?” Dara gasped. “That thing they found in a changing room? The reason we’re all cavity-searched like we’re running drugs when we get on- and off-trick now?”

“Ah,” Borte said, shocked at yet another set of upsetting thoughts in her head. “Yeah… that, uh, thing. I took care of it one-on-one.” She pointed to her scars, and took off a boot to show her bandaged feet. “That’s why I wasn’t around for a week or so! Too busy healing to be you all’s ‘nebshit,’ ” she finished with fake cheer. Nebshit. She pocketed the new, colorful term away for future use.

Dara smiled grimly and shook her head. “That’s reverend,” she said, “it really is. You’re a real nebnose, Borte– the nebbiest one I’ve met, and with the guts to back it up. Don’t get your head cut off picking around the place too much, all right?”

“I… I’ll try,” she answered. The girl blinked and turned her thoughts inward. Getting assigned to work in the fields was… was Puleng’s direct order. And since Maryam’s blow-up– no, since her Test and her meetings with the Floor Advisor and Proctor Superior– finding where that thing came from was always at the back of her mind, even more than usual.

The Voice! The Proctor Superior had used the Voice on her to implant the suggestion, and then used her detention assignments to stick her in places to make her investigate! The Reverend Mother’s skills were so subtle, a fine-tuned display of the Vox Subtilis and not the Vox Aperta, that she had never even noticed it.

But would she have done anything different, if she had just been left to her own devices during detention? The question ate at her. Am I that much of an extension of the Sisterhood now? Are humans just fancier tools for the R.M.s than the animals?

A sneeze came from next to her. Borte cleared her mind of the troubling thoughts, and simply sat and composed subconscious, wordless poetry on the groundtruck’s tailgate next to her comrade in young womanhood, Dara.

Chapter 24 Selective Glossary

Inverted Cauldron:

Translated form of Kiuax-al-Awaktli, an Islamiyat (Tleilaxu inner religio-engineering language) term of art for a Takwin designed to grow into an extra-tank incubation or material synthesis organism. Used in situations where products normally created in Axolotl Tanks are unable to be moved on-site aside from in suspended-embryo form.

Neb:

A verb meaning to be inquisitive, but in a derogatory fashion implying an annoyance or violation of privacy. Dufan dialect, descended from Old Earth terms. Compare to the adjective Nebby and the nouns Nebnose, Nebby-nose, or Nebshit.

Chapter Text

Many Associates have been trained in minor aspects of the Way for purposes of their work for the Sisterhood. For pilots in our employ, heightened reflex training and body-awareness regimes that may be prescribed by your handlers allow for the performance of maneuvers on a regular basis that would be dangerous or impossible for the average population of pilots. Such training is intended to make the ornithopter or other standard vehicle of employment (SVE) more of a temporary extension of your body than a machine under your control. If deemed necessary, assessments of your capability and compliance for such training will be done shortly after the beginning of your employ, once the decontamination and psychological re-conditioning regimens are completed. Do not despair if you are not selected for such training, or if your training still renders you sub-par to Sisters (and who else, hm?) trained as pilots: we train for purpose, not as a reward.

– Bene Gesserit Associate Pilot’s Reader, Introduction (98^th edition, personal annotated copy of Brother-Em. Anaximander Elsandru)

Meatpacker’s District, Kubileya, Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

For the first time in a long while, Anax could finally do what he loved best. Well, not spending time giving a pep talk to a girl on the night before her possible execution, but the parts before and after: flying his grey micro-ornithopter.

Microthopter, Anax snorted. Medio-thopter, at the least! The back-garage he stored and maintained the Grimalkin in was almost too short to fit its bulk, its rear-located cockpits barely had enough clearance for him to sit crouched inside them, and getting the beast flying with only the back street outside as a runway was a great way to be charged with negligent manslaughter if the path wasn’t cleared. Or, a great way to become a suicide bomber if the suspensors didn’t clear the ‘thopter past the accounting firm at the end of the road in time for the wings to fully extend and start flapping.

All the more reason to love the damn thing, he thought. Sure, he could have taken the workshop’s smaller ‘thopters out: Gratian was all set to go, and in a pinch Yakova was ready as well. But Emal didn’t like the twin salmon-red Richese-1231s to be touched without her permission, and that was reason enough to choose hispride and joy over those little draft-mules she preferred.

He mentally checked the time– almost ready to go without a moment to spare, but with how fraught the takeoff and landings were for it, it wouldn’t hurt to double-check the suspensors and get the kid productive for a bit since he was coming.

“Leo. Leo!” he shouted. “It’s time to go! Get your butt out here and give me a hand here, all right?”

Muffled banging around– what could only be Leo remembering his commitment all too late– came from the small adjoining ‘apartment.’ Rent may be controlled in Kubileya, but there was still rent, and with his stipend the Brother-Emeritus could really only afford to live in a repurposed office connected to his garage if he still wanted to keep the Grimalkin in shape. It wasn’t all bad, though- it reminded him of his very brief time doing field work as a Novice Sister, and spending his nights with other men in the local scene (especially Taro, he thought wistfully) meant he could expect to live at least one or two nights a week at an actual functioning apartment.

Siyeb was thankfully a much better guardian for Leo to live with. But, of course, in his off-time Leo insisted that he spend time around Anax, rather than the responsible adults.

“Leo!” Anax shouted again before putting a screw-spanner in his mouth. Just his luck. There were tweaks that needed to be made for proper spacing between the suspensor-radiators and the shielding, and the thermal coolant on the dedicated fuel cell cluster had to be filtered. I should have switched it for a radiant-regime thermoelectric last year, he grumbled.

Finally, Leo appeared from the office-bedroom, half-asleep and with his jagged hair combed back as best he could. For once, he wasn’t wearing that mess of sweaters, and instead had on only a white shirt with a simple stitched hex-pattern on it– a shirt that hung over a properly-bound and flattened chest, too. His trousers and shoes were still worn to near destruction, but at least this time they had been recently washed.

I’ve just known him for a month, and he’s already grown so much, Anax thought. Siyeb starting Leo on testosterone definitely made the boy more confident and calm (every man feels like they could fistfight God and fuck the Great Mother or vice versa or both when they’re finally on the right hormones), but it was all just from a small amount of subtle changes both in his body and behaviors that added up to a big difference. Just a kid still, but one on the right track for once.

“I look good, right?” Leo asked. “Qiandu, uh, bought it for me.” Thankfully the kid wasn’t expecting it to be a moonlight soiree: Anax couldn’t smell any of his cologne wasted on the kid’s neck.

Anax nodded. “Yeah! Really sharp, kid– I wasn’t expecting you to put something like that on.” They had gone over with him how Yakoba was going to have a very dangerous test soon, and they would be meeting her before it, so he should try to make a good second impression for both her and Proctor Myuller. Anax was just expecting him to have bathed this time around, and his fancy dressing complicated his pre-flight plans.

Anax put that thought aside for now. “Mind if I check to make sure your new binder’s on right?”

Leo nodded and pulled his shirt up.

“Interesting!“ Anax said. “You put your binder on by stepping into it, and… took a breath before zipping the back up. Have you worn this kind before?”

“No,” Leo mumbled. “It just– seemed the way to do it. Is… is that bad?”

Kid’s a natural, Anax thought. “No! not at all. And– Wait. Are you wearing one of my spare packers? Are you borrowing my dick?”

Leo sheepishly averted eye contact and chuckled.

“Great fucking Mother, Leo, you’ve certainly got balls. Remind me later to check with the neighbors if you stole those from them, too.”

“Am I dressing up too much?” Leo looked hurt and ready for more berating.

Shit, Anax thought. I hope I’m not messing with whatever trauma therapy Siyeb is doing with him.

The man shook his head. “I mean, no! It’s not a bad thing, Leo, I just wasn’t expecting it, and I don’t want you to get your shirt filthy helping me finish all this.” He shot his gaze back to the loose suspensor shielding, swaying like a wind chime under the Holtzmann passive field. “Just… Just, uh, check the street one last time for me, if it’s clear and safe to go, all right?”

“You sure?” Leo said. “You look like you could use a hand.”

Anax pointed back at him. “Kid, part of being a grown man is knowing just when to put form over function. Leave the function to me.” He slid under the fuselage and gave Leo another glance: “Now check to make sure we won’t be running over babies or whatever, all right?”

“A-all right, Anax,” Leo said, exiting the garage.

Just a few moments later, Leo ran back in: “There’s some gang outside, near the far end of the street! They’ve got binocs!”

“Binocs?” Anax was incredulous.

“You know, binocs! Binoculars, like an oil-lens scope! They’re looking around!”

There was no reason for Leo to be panicking like this, or talking about Stone Age tools. Was this new slang? I can’t be getting that out of touch just yet, Anax thought.

“What else have they got?” Anax said sarcastically. “Tri-D Solidos? Thinking machines? Firearms, for crying out loud?”

Leo glared back at him in a panic, and the brown-haired boy reminded him of a face he couldn’t quite connect to a person, striking at him like an adab memory. “They’re all wearing green headbands and armbands and all, if yins let me finish saying something for once!” he shouted.

“Oh.” Anax blurted. “It’s the Southsiders.”

Ah, fuck, he then thought privately.

The Southsiders were creeping up, slowly, slowly, on the Workshop’s allied turf. Some punks– couldn’t have been older than Leo, though they were twice his size– had been nosing around Old Milliner’s Street on the edge of the meatpacking district two blocks southeast of them, and trying to sell on a corner. Kindjal broke the finger of one and sent the other running, but there were signs they had been around the area before and afterwards. Siyeb and Sister Emal’s alliance with the Goshens was of a “technical advisor” basis, not an actual street partner, but that family was about as responsive to the turf invasions as any of them would expect. Three men, a boy, and an asskicker who named themself after a knife were effectively on their own as a gang-entity in an outer city that was desperately clawing at its own innards for food.

And Emal’s workshop, filled with all sorts of psychoactive Ecaz greenery like Elacca tree cultures and extracts (and the more legal but less-profitable attempts at growing shigawire in local soil, plus dozens of planets’ worth of stolen human genome records), was like a feast just sitting there to such a ravening group of neighbors.

Anax let his adrenaline go up. They probably weren’t here for anything good, that was for sure, and he wasn’t some kind of one-man army who could handle a whole squad. And at this rate, they were going to be late!

Another adab, a demanding memory, went through his head, and he knew exactly what the situation called for. Like a wind-up toy, he sealed back up the section of the suspensors he was working on and pulled himself up from under the fuselage.

“Leo, get your coat and comm-helmet. We’re launching now.”

“They’re… still down the street, though?” Then, a moment of realization by the boy. “Oh. Oh wow,” he gasped, and he ran for his hand-me-down flight gear.

Anax put his coat and gloves on in a muscular flourish, snapped his goggles over his eyes, and flashed a predatory grin to himself as he pulled the garage door open.

Leo was halfway up the side of the Grimalkin when Anax ran back, and he flagged him down. “Turn on the main power cycle, and help me push it out!”

“Can’t we just main drive it out on the suspensors?” Leo asked– already up flipping switches in the main cockpit, like he had expected the order.

“Not this time! They’ve been touchy– keep it on the cart, and we’ll push it together into position, then you hop in and start up the main fuel cells and prime the jets from the back seat. You can do that, right?”

“Yes!” Leo shouted in excitement, now back on the other side of the Ornithopter. He braced himself on the other side of the Grimalkin, the craft now balanced precariously on top of a dolly and its passive suspensors only lightening its massive weight.

Grunting and groaning the whole way, the two wheeled the ornithopter to face down the long side of the street. In the distance, four Southsiders were looking around, and clearly confused to see them getting ready to launch.

“Say when!” Leo shouted as he climbed into the back cockpit. The back of the Grimalkin’s rack-of-lamb shape rose about a meter and a half off the ground, and the handholds for entry from the ground were scarce at best, making the boy use the ‘thopter wings as makeshift extra ladder rungs. They wobbled under his light weight.

“One sec…” Anax muttered softly. He ran back over to the garage door and slammed it shut, before putting all his muscles back onto the side of the dolly.

“Start it!” he bellowed, pushing with as much force as he could muster. The dolly slowly moved forwards, a deafening noise from the jet engine bringing a near-unbearable heat just to his left.

And as he pushed, he found the ornithopter gaining a new lightness all its own, the dolly slowing and falling behind the bulk, before being sent flying back behind them by the suspensors. Anax scrambled up the front of the fuselage and back to behind the windscreen, doing his best to ignore the shouts of the gangers. Flog 'em! They knew they shouldn’t be here.

“All good?” He shouted behind him to Leo. The boy gave a thumbs-up, and Anax kicked all the suspensors to maximum as they glided down the hill, hopefully scaring the gang off as they cleared altitude and then looped back around southbound.

Except, that one suspensor wasn’t responding, jamming the whole central array. Fuck! They were flying straight into a plascrete wall, faster and faster!

Anax flipped on and off the central suspensor control, and the indicators still showed too much heat to flip from standby. The shield cladding was too tight– the coolant too dirty!

“Come on, come on!” he muttered, doing his best to ignore any reaction of Leo’s.

Something extremely dangerous had to be done to save either their lives (important for Leo), their dignity (important for Yours Truly), or both. And luckily, Anax knew he could pull it off.

The one thing (the one, magnificent thing!) that made a microthopter different from a regular ornithopter besides size was its secondary propulsion when the wings weren’t enough. Microthopters used belly-mounted suspensors like a groundcar. Ornithopters used jet engines and thrusters.

The Grimalkin had both.

In a fraction of a second, Anax flipped off the rest of the front suspensors and pushed the back ones to their limit, tumbling his baby tail-over-nose towards the office building as Leo held back a scream. A second later– the Grimalkin now pointing nearly straight upwards, Leo’s seat just within spitting height from one of the Southsider gangsters– he flipped the front suspensors back on, and stabbed the thruster yoke to maximum.

The wham from the suspensor fields rebounding against the wall and the screams of the Southsiders were almost muted by the deafening sound of the jet engine spouting superheated exhaust from the rear of the main fuselage. With a jolt, Leo and Anax bounced back and up from the accounting building like a primitive space rocket on a defective trajectory.

In a wobbling, firey arc, the Grimalkin flew upside down over the Meatpacker’s District and then spun over upright, extending its four wings like a dragonfly soaring over the city. As it passed the suburbs, it swooped low to the ground and buzzed its way off to the south.

While the ornithopter began its cruising pattern, Anax heard the muffled sound of Leo yelling over the thump-thump-thump of the wings. He turned on his comm-helmet and glanced back at the boy while tapping at its soundboard.

“Use the helmet, Leo! Noise-canceling.”

Leo fumbled for the switch on the side of his head, and then an audio buzz came through.

“I think you killed someone!” His tone (Excitement? Terror? Whatever it was) was overridden by his attempt to shout with a bound chest as he struggled to get the microphone up to a good volume.

“Not my first time!” Anax said, looking back in front of him. “Did the rest run away?”

“I don’t know! Who the Hell kind of jagoff taught you to fly? We could have died!”

“…’Jagoff?’ ” Anax turned around and grinned, his eyes hidden by the black tint of his goggles. “The ‘jagoff’ who taught me is that old lady in black who pays our god-damned rent!” he cackled.

Chapter 25 Selective Glossary

Elacca:

A tree native to the planet Ecaz, known for its use in exotic furniture and having multiple psychoactive byproducts that can be refined from its body. Examples of said drugs include Elacca, a derivation of the tree’s bark that suppresses self-preservation and critical thinking skills while temporarily tinting the skin orange, and Semuta, a more commonly-taken psychoactive chemical that induces an addictive trancelike stupor when paired with certain music.

Firearm:

A primitive form of projectile weaponry that uses chemical explosions to propel a small lead or other high-density projectile (commonly known as bullets) at supersonic velocities at a target. Largely defunct as a self-defense or military weapon due to the advent of shield technology during the Little Diaspora roughly 20,000 years ago, and now only used for archaic hunting or for military reenactments.

Packer:

Prosthetic phallus used to fill undergarments, most often used by transmasculine or castrated males.

Chapter Text

I still remember her first letter to me word-by-word: “my homeworld Poritrin is beautiful in the fall, and when the leafgrass turns color it makes the riverbanks look like a friendly campfire. (it goes on yes)” The idea is still so strange and beautiful to me. We were both young and like other youths we were both changing a lot. I don’t think weve ever really talked about why she took me as a ‘FAMILIAR’ years after. But I think I feetyure (sp) why I felt so much attraction back then: she was like me through a mirror and was a witch who fell from the sky and I wanted to be close to such a strange and beautiful thing.

The Consort Leo, The Secret Journals (Original Orthography)

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

It was a strange Wednesday night. At the end of Yakoba’s Monday session with Proctor Myuller, the woman had told her they were going to meet with Leo and Brother-Emeritus Anax. The Proctor was unusually terse.

“I’ve made the proper arrangements with your other classes,” she said. “Be ready outside the agricultural depot after dinner.”

It felt like a breath of fresh air for her to be able to see those two males again– had it really been less than two weeks since she had gone to Kubileya? But when the proctor pulled up in an ancient, steel-and-rust groundcar– one that had rear wheels as its drive method– she couldn’t help but feel like she was about to get involved in some very shady dealings.

“Why are we going out so far?” Yakoba asked. Outside the groundcar, the bump-thump-thump of the wheels on the karst plain reminded her of the strange drive system, and the deposit lines of limestone dilated as they flew underneath them and then squeezed to single points on the horizon like a hyperbolic function traced out on the moon.

“The campus has a strict ‘no-males’ policy, Miss Herstal,” The proctor said. “As you know. I’ve arranged with air-traffic to have Anaximander meet us well outside the Exclusion Zone.” She paused to tap some kind of indicator on the dashboard. “I recall that you and the boy are exchanging letters?”

When did she mention that to her? Yakoba felt uneasy about that implication.

“Y-yes, proctor,” she said, “through the usual mail system. Only, uh, one each way so far.” Before Leo, she had never needed to use it herself, but in the past she had dropped off Maryam’s letters to Castle Caladan at the postbox for her. What happened to the girl? She had all but disappeared since last Saturday.

“You’ve been busy,” Proctor Myuller said. “Don’t feel bad about your rate of correspondence. I will warn you that all student mail gets read and censored by Novice Sisters in good standing, though. So. Avoid writing anything you wouldn’t want a third party to see… and avoid using any standard Sisterhood encryptions for the things you wish to keep hidden, even then.”

Yakoba began to reflexively panic. Did she say anything embarrassing? It wasn’t any mushy poetry or whatever, at least. Mostly it was just them writing to each other about their homeworlds.

Flustered, she tried to focus the subject on someone else’s experiences. “Did… uh, did you find out about that yourself when you were a student?” Oh no, that was a bad choice.

Proctor Myuller raised her eyebrows but kept her eyes locked in front of the groundcar. “Let’s cease talking for the remainder of the ride, Initiate,” she said.

It may have just been Yakoba’s imagination, but Proctor Myuller sounded faintly embarrassed.

After a long silence, Proctor Myuller stopped the car next to three unusually-large rocks. The boulders pushed out of the karst gravel and grass like overturned menhirs, and seemed to dominate the otherwise uniform region around them. As the student and teacher stepped out on the low-gravity terrain, the groundcar’s suspensors cycled into a low-drain hover, and the two drive wheels curled in on their separate spurs with the rest of the car.

Yakoba shifted her shoes in the rocky soil. She had the feeling that this was a usual meeting place used by the Proctor.

“The man is usually late,” Proctor Myuller said as she brushed out her skirt, “So I’m expecting him shortly.” She turned to look northwards, and Yakoba followed her example.

From far away, Yakoba saw a shape flying towards them, its dull buzzing growing as it got closer and closer. It was a grey-and-silver open-cockpit ornithopter– smaller than ‘proper’ ones like House Alexei had, but dwarfing microthopters. It flew towards them, and at a distance she still could see that its massive assortment of propulsion systems were front-loaded in the chassis and built around an idling jet engine in the center of the structure.

The ornithopter turned off-course, revealing the long, thin dragonfly-tail that the two pilot seats were nestled within, and looped around Yakoba and the proctor to land nearby. The sound of its wings percussing and suspensors thumping against the hard rock was deafening, even in such an open place, and Yakoba held her fingers up to her ears as they walked closer to its landing point.

Just as soon as its weight settled and the ornithopter’s wings slowed to a repetitive back-forth, the front pilot took off his helmet, jumped down from the back of the ornithopter, and walked over to them. It was Anax, now wearing a flight suit and jacket and with black goggles over his eyes.

“Well! How’s my favorite little Sister doing?” he said.

“Favorite?” Yakoba smiled faintly. “What about Odette?”

Anax waved his hand. “Old news! Got bored of her boring self. And she’s not as little as before– she’s heading out to Big Wuh-Nine within the year, you know.” He doubled back around Yakoba and pointed at her. “We’re counting on you to pick up her slack, you know! Gotta replace some very boring shoes!”

“You, uh, never said anything about being a pilot,” Yakoba said. Behind Anax, she could see Leo fumble with something in his jacket before cautiously jumping out of the back seat. The boy was just as unused to the lower gravity here as she was.

“Oh, yeah,” Anax said. “Your teacher doesn’t like it when I bring this sort of thing into work. But look at it!” he waved at the craft as he beamed, “An Ixian Stormwright A108 ‘thopter! Ixian! It’s still prime compared to most junk in this siridarkreis, too– just over one hundred ten years old from base production, and the records on maint and mods go back eighty. I’m hoping to run it in the Pole-to-Pole Fête this next year.”

His eyes flitted over to Proctor Myuller, presumably telling him to ‘wrap it up’ with a subtle stare. “A friend of the Proctor’s named it the Grimalkin, a long while back.”

Yakoba’s direct teacher stepped in between them to prevent any further elaboration right as Leo finished his jog over, now awkwardly standing next to Anax.

“Greetings, Brother-Emeritus,” Proctor Myuller said. Yakoba noticed that her nearly-flat tone still revealed a warmth for the man at the very edges of her affect.

“It’s been a while since you saw it, right?” Anax said. He pulled the black goggles down, revealing a warm smile across his whole face.

Myuller painted her eyes across the ornithopter. “You added a yellow pinstripe to the matte-grey, I see. And a different flight-control transmission… and some kind of high-power-drain suspensor system. And you also… just caused damage to your trim by low-clearance boosting, presumably within the city.”

“Right as always, Proctor,” Anax said. Even with that smile, his facial expression was impossible to decipher.

The Proctor raised her eyebrows. “The modifications are not economical, and too high-maintenance. I don’t like it… but it’s yours now, anyways. No need to hear my opinion.” She waved her hand dismissively and turned. “Initiate!”

“Yes, Proctor?” Yakoba said.

“I’d like for you to take some time to talk in private… or with… ‘Lennard,’ correct? Yes, or with Lennard present, with Brother-Emeritus Anaximander. He is a former student of mine, as you know, and is… taking another path through life.” She took a step towards Yakoba. “You have been studying hard, and need a break from the regimentation and limited social interactions of the Chapterhouse’s school. Without it, the discipline of the Rule becomes a hollow repetition of itself, and your skills can’t be maintained.”

Yakoba didn’t know how to respond. “I…” Something is up, and I don’t want to think of what the reason for all this is, she thought.

(You already know why,) something deep inside of her responded.

She pushed the intrusive thought back below her plane of consciousness. “Uh… Thank you, Proctor,” she finished.

“No need for thanks,” Proctor Myuller said, turning her body. “It’s your due as my direct student.”

“Anaximander!” she then shouted. “You can take the talking from here. I will wait for your report on city business afterwards– don’t wear out your larynx with her.”

With that, the Proctor glided like a ghost off away from them and towards Aegir’s red-orange planetlight.

Anax looked back at the two of them. “No sense in standing around,” he said. “Let’s go and sit on that one,” pointing at the smallest and flattest of the rocks.

“My name’s not ‘Lennard,’” Leo grumbled under his breath.

The three of them sat down on the slab with Yakoba in the middle, and looked out onto a vast starlit plane.

“Ah! This takes me back,” Anax said. “This was where I first met Siyeb, way back. And the last time I met the Old Lady out here? I had just wheeled that baby into my first garage. Had to come out here by groundcar like you two.” He tweaked the side of his sideburns and looked at Yakoba. “How are things going, kid?”

“Not… uh. Not good. Pretty bad, you could say,” Yakoba winced.

“What’s the hassle? Or the hassles, more like. You look like you’ve taken on a few outside your share of them.”

She suppressed an urge to fidget with the blue hem on her skirt. “Well…” Yakoba said. “I feel like Proctor Myuller’s not been able to really figure out why I froze up in the first place, even if I think I’ve learned a lot in the process… and–” She gasped in air like a reversed sigh of despair and her voice felt terribly strained, like she was going to tear apart. “I’m worried they’re– that they’re going to do my, um, ‘Death-Alternative Test’ soon, and–”

Anaximander placed his telling hand on her shoulder. The touch interrupted her internal spiral, and she took deep breaths and collected herself. Leo watched the two of them in silent wonder.

“One thing at a time, kid,” Anax said. “I know it’s been rough for you, but let’s keep using your training while we talk about it.” He shifted himself to better face her. “You’ve got some small other things, that I can tell. And that’s something we should go over first.”

“Right,” Yakoba nodded. “The other things that are bothering me is my friend Maryam– my old cellmate, and my new cellmate, Helena.”

Anax smiled and cocked his head. “Friendship drama, huh? I won’t tell.”

“Maryam– she’s been having night terrors. I don’t know what’s going on, but she’s afraid of hurting us now, and pushed me and Borte away from her.”

Anax kept silent and nodded, his expression saying ‘I know there’s something more going on, but I don’t want to have to break my promise and tell someone.’

“And my new cellmate, Helena,” Yakoba continued, excising the girl’s strangeness this time. “She, um, fanciesme and I don’t know how I feel about it, at all. And she’s also so high-strung, I’m worried she’s going to– to break down, somehow.”

Leo raised his eyebrows, and Anax closed his eyes and nodded. “Did you make any promises to them?” the man asked.

“I, um, Maryam asked I would try to protect her family, if I got the opportunity,” Yakoba said, focusing on a particularly bright star in the sky. “I said yes. And I told Helena that we… shouldn’t do talk about it until we both pass our tests.”

Leo exhaled in a very prominent sigh.

Anax kept nodding. “That’s smart of you, very smart. And kind.” He looked back at the sky. “Takes me back, really. Your friend, she’s highborn, right? You know her house?”

Yakoba looked him in the eyes. “Yes, House Atreides, of Caladan. Maryam’s the heir presump–”

“Kull Wa-fucking-had, child!” Anax shouted, his eyes now wide open. Leo jumped back from the two of them. In the distance, Proctor Myuller stood unmoved.

Yakoba’s pulse quickened “Is– is– that–”

Anax threw his hands up. “No! No, I’m sorry. Forgive me. It’s just… the Atreides, they’re an honorable people, or known as such. But that works both ways.”

“Did I… did I make a mistake saying yes?” A feeling of dread went through her. Anax's mask broke on a promise to my cellmate? she thought. How was that so much worse than getting popped by the proctors?

Anax shrugged and shook his head. “Possibly. Honor’s a… strange thing. It sometimes asks more than it can ever give. And oaths can be turned into obligations, legal obligations, in an ‘honorable’ place like Caladan. Or the Sisterhood.”

Yakoba kept eye contact, feeling all at once faithful, resolute, and doomed.

“Yeah. I… I’ll find out, I suppose. But I really need to be there for Maryam and Helena,” she said. “I want to be there, for both of them. They both deserve it. Nobody’s… really caring for them.”

“Good. That’s good,” Anax said, looking off to the night sky. A particularly bright set of stars was cresting over the horizon and into the sky “You’re on a good path. Let’s go back to the ‘you’ problems now, eh?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, I know it’s all a lot–”

“– And you can just say ‘Gom Jabbar Test,’ Yakoba,” he interrupted with incredulity. “‘Death-Alternative Test’? Come on, you filmbrain. We’re not gonna grade you on proper language.”

“Yes, sir.” She slinked into her uniform.

“And no ‘Sir!’ Just Anax!” he grinned. “So, you’ve been in classes with the Old Lady, and you’re worried about what’s coming up, you said.”

“Yeah,” Yakoba replied. “I don’t know if I’m ready. Sister Atti said that only forty-eight percent of her students survive the Test. I… don’t know if I’ll beat the odds.”

Leo held back an outraged gasp.

“Apothecary Atti? Well. Atti says a lot of things,” Anax muttered. “Not much of them helpful. She’s more a computer than an educator. Don’t stick yourself in with her numbers until you’re done.”

He shifted his body and looked Yakoba in the eyes again. “You’re stronger than you think– remember what I said about already going through this test before? You’ve passed a much longer one already. And at the level of skill you’re at? What you’re able to do’s enough now. It comes down to what you really want.”

A silence fell onto the three of them as Yakoba mulled over Anax’s words.

Emal had offered to mercy her, she remembered. A way out with some dignity. But that way out felt abhorrent-but-abhorrently-not-abhorrent-enough on a conscious level, and was now probably too late to request. Yet, Yakoba couldn’t fully separate herself from considering the option, hoping it was at least still a possibility she could choose in a life entirely controlled by others.

Sister Atti was the most respected and accredited adoptive sister she had ever heard of, and all she did was fix up students and get ignored by the proctors. What mess of a spot would I get stuck in for the rest of her life? she thought.

“I don’t know what I want,” Yakoba said. Her voice was more hollow than usual. “Even I want to be there for them. What’s the point of choosing not to die, if I’ll just be stuck where I am?”

“That’s the question, right?” Anax said. He leaned back and sighed. “You may not be free– nobody ever is– but kid, you’ve got choices coming up after your Test. Some of them aren’t known to– or, uh, are hidden from you by those adults who've got you wrapped around their finger.” He held up a gloved pointer to emphasize. “You’re almost of age already. I don’t know if you’re creative or not, but there are more than a few things that can’t be imagined by those ladies in black. Some of those could be futures for you.”

Yakoba took a leap. “Like… like being expelled from the Order?” she said.

She had heard of some Novices and full Sisters leaving their training in various levels of grace, and even if the Bene Gesserit had an eye or twelve on them until the moment they died, that wasn’t very different from being part of that black-robed hell.

Anax nodded. “They’d need to think you a waste and approve it first, but… It’s possible. And, you’d need a person in good standing to be bound to as family… or as their wife, for that to be accepted. Luckily!” he gestured north, “more than a few options in the city, and we’d be happy to have a young woman such as you around as an adopted cousin.”

Leo’s face blushed when Anax mentioned Miss Herstal’s possible marriage, and the two adepts politely ignored his reaction.

“What else?” Yakoba asked.

Anax let out a laugh and shrugged. “I’m not very creative myself! Too much Bene Gesserit-thinking.”

Not quite, Yakoba thought. His approach was still Bene Gesserit in fundamentals, but it felt like a more gentle, more refined version of Proctor Myuller’s personal style of teaching and therapy. Were all her former direct students so touched by her?

“I can tell you are finished, Anaximander!” the Proctor Major shouted from across the karsts.

The young man looked back to the two of them and jumped up. “That’s my cue, kids– I also have to talk shop with the old lady a bit, since she didn’t get a report last weekend. Catch up with each other without me!” he said, winking at Leo.

“And Yakoba?”

“Yes, Anax?”

“You’ll do good, kid. No matter what.” With that, Anax patted her on the back and jogged over to Proctor Myuller’s gaunt, planetlit frame.

Yakoba turned back and looked at Leo. He was wearing something kind of nice, unlike the mess of filthy coats she had first met him in, and his acne from that day seemed to be either in remission or covered by makeup.

“You, um. Clean up pretty good, Leo,” she ventured.

“Aw, thanks,” he said rubbing the back of his head. “Is that your school uniform? You look nice too.”

Yakoba sighed. She didn’t need to be reminded of how her uniform awkwardly hung on her lanky frame, even if she knew she should take it as a compliment. Helena jealously kept her perfume and small amount of makeup hidden from everyone when not in use, and none of the other students who brought the stuff with them were ever willing to part with theirs, either. She also hadn’t had a good sleep since that weird dream a few days ago, and her hair’s split ends – unlike the highly-styled girls that had time to be taught couture and advanced etiquette– desperately needed to be cut by someone.

“Yeah, it is, but… I know you’re just telling me that.”

Leo looked hurt. “No, I really think so!”

“Really?”

“Yeah!” Leo said. “You look better than most of the girls back home did when going to church, and this is just what you wear every day!”

“Ah… thanks, Leo,” she said. At least I think he meant it nicely. Just how poor was his neighborhood?

Leo reached into his jacket. “So, I, ah, know you probably ate,” he said, “but I brought something I like for both of us.” He pulled out two decimeter-long somethings wrapped in white wax paper and handed one to Yakoba.

“We used to get these all the time from these ladies who worked for the witches, growing up,” the boy continued as Yakoba looked over the object. “Usually once a month, we’d all have to clean up the place and dress as boys before they would come around, and they talked with my dad and handed these out along with the other stuff.” On the wrapper in red ink was the phrase ‘Iron and Protein Supplement Bar- Processed Goat and Sheep Blood’, with Kubileya’s municipal seal stamped next to it.

“Dress as boys?” Yakoba said.

Leo tore open his emergency nutrition bar and started chewing on the mix of tallow and congealed blood as he talked. “So, my family- well, all of the Off-Sluice District. We don’t hang goat heads to scare away witches anymore– ‘cause we couldn’t afford a whole goat, especially for how many sisters I had. Instead, we’d trick the witches by dressing up all but Cheryl, the oldest, as boys, ‘cause if there’s only the one daughter in a family they won’t take them, you feature?”

Yakoba untangled the mess of information in her head. She never had a chance to dress as herself growing up, but apparently Leo often did. “You liked it, then?”

“Oh, deffo!” Leo said, nodding. “Whenever they were about to come around, my dad was a lot nicer. He had gotten real mean since mom died, especially to us. I also liked being able to wear pants.” He took another bite and swallowed. “And I eventually decided to just wear the boy clothes all the time… and dad didn’t like it. Really didn’t like it. So, he… uh, threw me out.”

“I’m… I’m really sorry to hear that,” Yakoba said. She could tell that Leo was deliberately hiding some parts of the story, and so she kept silent about it while she opened the blood bar and bit into it out of curiosity. She could taste a small amount of sugar added to them to reduce the bitterness, but the overall flavor was still incredibly strong and metallic, even for Dufan cuisine.

Leo shook his head “It’s all right. It really is,” he said, with a tone that indicated ‘it’s not all right, but I really don’t want to ruin the night talking about it.’ He finished his bar and stuffed the wax paper back in his pocket. “I know you probably had something similar happen, right?”

Yakoba forced down her mouthful of the bar. “Yes, yeah. I, um, well, they saw me as the only son of an urbanat, which is like… a single person as the whole municipal council.”

“So you’re a princess!” Leo gasped.

Her? Royalty? “Not, uh, really. Or at all. We weren’t a House Minor or Major. And when I said I wanted to be a woman, my father sent me to the Bene Gesserit, and… they took me in.” She politely wrapped the protein bar back up, and handed it back to him.

Leo stared at her face, his emotions too mixed for her to tell. “How do they teach things there? Do they go out here on the rocks and cast spells on yinz?”

“It’s a mix,” Yakoba said. “Like, a lot of subliminal training projectors for stuff you just have to know or memorize, but not just that. Also some reading, and lots of writing and test taking. And lots of meditation and prana-bindu.”

“Prana-bindu? Is that witch magic?”

“Not, uh, really,” Yakoba said. “It’s just learning to control your body better than most.”

“Are you good at it?”

“Hah!” Yakoba laughed. “Not really. That’s why Anax has been giving me pep talks.” I still can’t control myself,she thought. Proctor Myuller’s been putting so much work into me, and I can tell she hasn’t fixed whatever caused me to dissociate like that. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die.

She looked up at the stars and groaned.

Leo spoke first. “It’s been ages since I could come out this far. You can’t see this many stars back in the city.” He turned his head. “Do you know which one has your planet, space-girl?”

Poritrin’s not my planet anymore, Yakoba thought. “I… uh, I don’t know. We don’t study the night sky at the Chapterhouse.”

Leo smiled. “Well, I asked Qiandu, and we went into Upcrater to look it up in the public library.”

“Really?” Yakoba said. This kind of curiosity was… well, not something she expected from Leo. And the Bene Gesserit keep a library public here? Her father wouldn’t have bothered with that kind of expense.

“Well, I stole his library card and went there. Same thing, really,” he said. “I guess his wife was upset I did that, but anyways! I went there and found it out. It’s…” He put his head close to hers and pointed up at a star Yak couldn’t quite focus on. “That one, just down and right to that square of bright ones.”

Yakoba strained her eyes, and saw a small, faintly-glittering star next to one corner of that distinct square.That was Epsilon Alangue? It probably was lumped into whatever constellation the people here had dreamed that quartet to be part of.

“It’s a lot brighter close up,” she quipped.

Leo laughed.

I think that’s the first joke I ever told around him, she thought. Or anyone here. I must seem really stuffy, like a highborn.

The girl tried to keep the initiative. “I, um don’t think that I ever looked at the stars much back on my homeworld,” she said. “I think I remember what constellation Kaitain was in, and the South Star, but not much else.”

Leo turned his head to look at her with a quizzical face. “That reminds me. Why do yins call it Dufa?” he asked. “Nobody here calls the world that anymore.” He bent down and picked up a small pebble.

“Really?” Yak said. “I thought… like, it’s on everything official.”

“Not outside the Crater, though,” Leo said. He threw the pebble in a side-whipping motion, a small paksounding from where it struck the rocks. “Everyone outside it, that’s from here? We just call the world ‘The Karsts,’ or just Karst.”

“That’s… interesting.” Yak said. It was true that she hadn’t ever seen any other terrain features besides the crater Kubileya was built into: just different proportions of limestone, frost, and scrub-grass. “Why didn’t you mention that in your letter?” she asked. Leo’s writing was atrocious, but he made up for it with enthusiasm in his descriptions and some surprisingly well-drawn maps.

“I, uh, thought it would be silly,” Leo said. “And… Poritrin sounded so much more interesting than the world. More ‘real?’ Like, in the sense that a… um, fairy-story book can feel more real than some grey rocks I see every day. I felt… like I’d have to defend Karst and I didn’t know how to say it, so I didn’t. I just talked about the city.”

Yakoba smiled and shook her head. “No! No, you don’t have to hide stuff like that! I, um, would have understood. It makes sense to call this place that.”

“Thanks, Yakoba.” Leo smiled back, and the two of them looked off at the sky.

It felt better, slower, more honest, safer than the flirtations with some of the boys at the Dyssal academy, or the frantic energy of Helena’s overtures. But she also didn’t want to consider it right now. Am I just going through the motions, or am I really interested in Leo? she thought. Am I really interested in Helena, either? Do I love anyone? Is love even something real?

The Sisterhood said to scorn love, anyways.

The Sisterhood also wanted to torture her soon, possibly to death.

“Someday… I want to go to another world with you,” Leo murmured, his voice trailing into the void above them.

(Kiss him!) a force inside her said. (Not enough time to mull about it. Grab lips ‘twixt yours when you can, right? Not like I’m painting his mouth with my tongue or doing an ‘after-soiree dance’ with him.)

Yakoba blinked at the intruding thoughts. They felt like hers, but where they went spilled outside of her control once they were allowed to form. She did admit that a kiss didn’t sound too bad right around now, though.

“Yakoba… you’re quiet,” Leo said.

She shook her head and brought herself back to the present. “Sorry Leo… It’s just been a lot I’ve been going through this past month. Well, these last two years.” (Oh, more than that.)

“Oh…” He said. “I get it. My last month’s been busy, too.”

“Yeah… Uh, that’s right. You’re also new to the, um, Proctor’s group in the city.” This is unbearable! I need to kiss him, she thought. (Yes! Shut us both up!)

“Yeah. I’m glad, we, um, met each other,” Leo said. She could see a tension in his fingers and breath, anticipating or wanting something– and they both knew what it was.

Without any words, they leaned towards each other, heads kept parallel, eyes half-closed as if trying to brace for a crash, lips primed, closer, closer– Yakoba’s body felt flushed, burning–

And then–

– A deafening whistle, like an entire planet’s worth of air going through a heighliner-sized recorder, sent them jumping up and spinning round to attention.

In front of them was Proctor Myuller with two fingers in her mouth. With a slow, showy air, she straightened her back, pointed her now-tented fingers downwards, and cleared any emotion on her face. Anax, walking up behind her, did his best to look serious, failing miserably.

“That’s quite enough ersatz heterosexuality for one evening, children,” she said. “Initiate Yakoba– your bedtime is soon. We need to head back to the Chapterhouse campus.”

Still startled by the Proctor’s whistle, Yakoba found all she could do was nod.

A faint “y-yes, ma’am,” came from Leo as well, and he grabbed and squeezed her hand one last time before letting go of it.

The girl stood alone, once again.

“It’s been a pleasure, missy,” Anax said from on top of the Grimalkin. He put one of his comm-helmets back on, before pointing at her with a grin behind black goggles. “And remember: I’ll see you again soon, you hear me?”

Yakoba nodded. “Yes, mister… um…”

“Just call me Anax. My dad’s name is… well, I don’t know my dad’s name, but my mom’s bloodline name is Elsandru.” Anax hopped down from the side of the fuselage and threw the other headset to Leo. “Don’t sweat formality with me, even in front of the Proctor, got it? That’s just wasting a precious resource.” He then climbed back up the handrails without waiting for her response, settling into his cockpit.

Yakoba nodded, and turned towards Leo, taking a few halting steps towards the boy.

“I’ll also see… well, um. I… Goodbye, Leo,” she stammered. Am I supposed to curtsy here? she thought.

Leo blushed back under the headset. “Bye, Yakoba.”

The engines on the ornithopter roared to life, and Leo ran towards it. In a single, scrambling jump, the boy hopped in behind Anax in the passenger cockpit. Its wings started to flap, harder and harder, blowing massive downdrafts at Yakoba and Proctor Myuller– the student had to keep a hand down to stop her skirt from blowing up, but right beside her the teacher stood unmoved save her hair. She still stood unfazed in that hands-tented-down pose, the ‘thopter’s vortex somehow cowed into not even daring to embarrass her.

As the ornithopter rose and tilted to face its course, Yakoba could see Leo looking back at her, smaller and smaller, until all she could see was a silver dragonfly heading north.

Proctor Myuller also turned to look at her, but did not say anything.

Yakoba broke the silence and looked her in the eye. “Is… no. My Gom Jabbar Test is tomorrow, isn’t it, Proctor?” She felt calm inside for some reason.

“I cannot confirm or deny such things,” the proctor replied, face still like stone. Despite her controlled expression, something about the woman behind the mask still felt deeply, deeply unhappy to Yakoba in a way that felt extremely familiar.

“Well,” Yakoba said. “Let’s head back. I need some sleep, like you said, right, Proctor Myuller?”

“Yes… of course. Let’s get on schedule, and get all our faculties together for a new day.” Proctor Myuller said.

The two of them turned and walked back to the groundcar, the cold winds of the karst fields whipping around them.

This is where I’m supposed to be, Anax thought. ‘Ten and Hundred:’ ten meters above the ground, cruising at a hundred kilometers per hour. If past lives were real, as he often mused, then he must have been a bird. It would explain my chromosome mix-up, he chuckled to himself.

As Anax tweaked and adjusted the Grimalkin’s course, he felt like he could feel exactly how each component was handling through the dashboard. The suspensors were working just fine for once, unlike when they took off from the garage, the jet engine was on standby (though definitely with not enough fuel to repeat thatmaneuver), all wings were live and their joints unstressed, and Leo was asleep in the back seat.

Over and over, his thoughts returned to his talk with Emal. Most of it was a cursory update on the team’s progress, but she started to steer the subjects she brought up outside of the usual businesslike rut she had been in for so long. And eventually, the old lady opened up to a level that he hadn’t seen since… well, a long time ago, when he first told her he was a man.

The two of them had stood there on the karsts, facing Aegir’s giant illuminated gibbous shape. They had just trailed off from talking about some minor agenda item of ordering more reagent-grade water. Anax had lost some of his body-control skills from disuse, and before he could shiver, Emal had started to talk again without looking at him. That was a behavior of Serious Emal, when the personal stakes couldn’t be higher.

“Brother Anaximander…” she had said. “I’m not a good woman. My work doesn’t allow for that. But…” she had paused, and looked sideways at her old student with sad, tired eyes. “Did I do all that I could have for her?”

Anax had shaken his head softly– it had to be Yak she was talking about. Poor Yak. “I wasn’t there, Emal.”

He then risked to say the obvious: “But, I can tell that you love her like a daughter. Well, like one of the daughters you love.”

Emal then flashed her brow in a microexpression. “Truth ever-spouting, Brother.” She turned her face away from the gas giant’s light and stepped closer. “I can only give discipline, I’ve found, and I hope that discipline will be enough.”

“Discipline, or tough love like you gave me?” Anax teased. He then shrugged, his hands still in his jacket. “We’re all petit-perceptionists here, Emal. Siyeb and I can tell you love your students more than the average proctor, even if you can hide it from an initiate’s eyes. We’ve known that love, too, you know.”

All Emal did then was nod, looking past him to the two children. Anax felt a great weight inside his chest– an unconscious, sympathetic reaction to the grief the old lady was barely concealing.

“Emal, if there’s anything I can do–”

“Protect him,” she interrupted, a low, guttural half-cry. “And if she survives, and is allowed to leave the Order? Protect her too. You’re different from me– you can choose to not endanger them as you teach a trade. Every lesson I teach that girl will bring her into greater danger, up to and through when she takes the Agony.”

The Reverend Mother Agony? For Yak? No adoptive sister had succeeded in surviving it. It was a very rare thing for one to be given permission to try, and there had been none in the past three hundred years– the modern Sisterhood had given up on the concept. Did she even know Emal’s ambitions for her? Great Mother! Why–

“Don’t make me repeat myself!” Emal had whisper-shouted, as if she could doom the concept by speaking it. “She can do it, or nobody else in that position the universe put her in can. I won’t have her counting beans on some miserable little world like this if she lives. I can’t let her rot like she has her whole life.”

Emal then pulled back from him and painted that disciplined stare onto her face again.

“I’ll inform you as soon as I can of what happens with her,” she said. “Item closed. I also would warn you against wearing black-tinted goggles at night when working with the new boy. I know why you do it, and it’s incredibly stupid,” she stressed, waving her hand, “and I don’t want you infecting him with too many bad habits. I want at least one of my pilots to live to forty. Stop it.”

“Also also,” she had continued, now pacing around him with hands behind her back, “I’ve been informed as your employer and minder that some of your recent conquests are from the Training Male talent pool. And, we’ve been over this before, Anaximander– they’re an absolutely hands-off–”

A thump-thump from the gravitational catch of Holtzmann ground generators below brought him back to the present. Anax pulled the Grimalkin up out of the surly bonds of Kubileya and into a new cruising altitude. More and more suburban farms and houses could be seen below the craft, and the ever-lights of the city started to blur and sparkle in the windshield’s diffracting glass.

Anax flipped on the radio and started talking with air-traffic control. Yakoba had to do this for herself, he thought over and over, as he said the usual calls and responses to the controllers. Yet still! He wished he could take her place, and remembered his own time with the Agony Box, when his body shook like a broken engine and he could barely hold back a scream from the singularizing pain of it. Had it really been over ten years? His hand really should have lost its tell by now. He was getting rusty.

He glanced below them. Under the ornithopter, the city splayed out like a rolling pile of toys on a child’s bed, and their flight back traced above glowing traffic control lights installed across main air-thoroughfares, stuck into the tops of all sorts of buildings like fluorescent-tipped pins and needles.

A drowsy Leo murmured over the comm system.

“Sleep well?” Anax teased.

“Sort of,” the boy mumbled. “Am I staying at your place tonight?”

Adab hit again, but from a recent source: ‘Protect him!’, she said.

“Absolutely not, little guy!” Anax said back. “I’m dropping you back at Siyeb’s. And if I have to, I’m going to Floor Advisor the hell out of you and make sure you stay in your bed and get some sleep.”

“What’s a floor advisor?” Leo asked.

“Um, it’s a witch thing. From back in the day. Yakoba has one, ask her next… uh, next time.”

“I have another question! How do we land this?” the boy said. Below them, familiar streets could be seen, one now with a scorch-mark creeping up a building like black moss.

Anax turned his head as he hovered the Grimalkin over the garage’s entrance, his mischevious eyes hidden under his goggles. “How? Like this, kid.”

With two quick motions, Anax folded the microthopter’s wings back and slammed the suspensors to max, and the Grimalkin fell at a not-slow-enough pace to the street below, a boy screaming in the back seat all the way.

Chapter 26 Selective Glossary

Familiar:

Colloquial or pejorative term for the friends and romantic partners of a Bene Gesserit Sister or Reverend Mother without proven human awareness. While love and other emotional attachments are highly discouraged by the Sisterhood, social interaction and sexual or physical intimacy is recognized as a necessity for human psychology, and such long-term liasons often ride the line between being acceptable or a liability.

Training Male:

People (nearly always male, as per the name) without proven human awareness employed by the Bene Gesserit as a controlled group for teaching and practicing sexual imprinting and reproductive control techniques. Training males are also used by some Reverend Mothers and higher-ranking Sisters for libidinal release. Strictly off-limits to Initiates and also certain men named Anaximander Elsandru.

Chapter Text

A beautiful woman that can’t admit she’s beautiful is just as pitiful and worthless as an ugly woman who can’t admit she’s ugly. I won’t have either of them!

Na-Baron Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, Uncollected Sayings

Lankiveil, 10231 A.G.

As the Dowager-Baroness Mariam stirred from childish daydreams, she found herself sitting in her drawing room on Lankiveil.

I must have dozed off, she thought. Outside the manse’s window, she could see the omnipresent snow falling from cold white skies onto cold, grey oceans. Out of all the old Harkonnen demesnes, this one, far away from the spaceports and belching processing facilities present even on this maritime planet, was her favorite, and had become her permanent residence. The cliffside manor reminded her of a particular view from Castle Caladan, albeit with an average yearly outside temperature below freezing– or was it a Southern Continent estate? she interrupted herself.

It was the closest thing that she had to whatever place that was in her decaying memory. Caladan was sacked, and under the occupation of the Landsraad League. Her family and old house had long-since scattered to all corners of this ugly three-way civil war.

Of the three factions, Mariam and her Harkonnen Regency were losing the war the most– that was undeniable, even without mentat calculations. What use was a regency for an Atreides-Harkonnen dynasty with no living claimants? Istvan, the de jure new head of House Harkonnen, was pointless, a contemptible little pimple even by her in-law’s standards that she and Piter De Vries had judiciously sidelined. What was the point of it all, now? Anguished revenge against the Known Universe? After menopause, not even the Bene Gesserit gave her any notice– no more “recommended male conubines” to salvage the situation that had developed.

She stood up and checked her internal time– one of the old skills from school she had bothered to continue practicing. Piter would be waiting for her in the sitting room in less than five minutes. Not one to be late– she learned some things from being a duke’s daughter– she picked up her things, took a deep breath, and walked into the room.

The sitting room was painted a pale cream color with only the edges of the bespoke curtains decorated with tawny-orange and royal blue Harkonnen livery. In the center of the room was an out-of-place mahogany conference table, moved from a back room in Castle Barony on Giedi Prime some twenty years previous during the initial chaos of the pyon and slave revolts that still gripped that polluted world.

Piter was already there on one side of the table, tied to his chair and with the blood cleaned off of his face by the guards as she requested.

She took her time seating herself properly– no sense in rushing when she was early for an appointment with her Mentat. The thin man glared back at her raised a grey eyebrow, an incredulous smirk still on his face.

Mariam centered herself and put on a calm face as she spoke. “Piter… dear Piter, dependably undependable Piter,” she started. “May you remind me of how long you have served this house, now?”

“Just over sixty-two years as of this month, Lady.” He shifted under his restraints and sneered. “Are you planning to dismiss me? Execute me? We’ve been over this before.”

“Perhaps,” Mariam said with an idle tone. “I sometimes think it may behoove me to remove you. I would gain a net increase in allies, at the very least.”

“You wish to count your allies? Please!” Piter scoffed. “As usual, I am all ears to your wonderful strategies.”

“The Old Baron is dead,” Mariam started.

“You’re welcome.”

“Feyd is dead.”

“Taken before his time, Lady Harkonnen.”

“Rabban is dead, after his failed coup.”

“Naturally.”

“Feyd’s firstborn– my firstborn– is dead.”

Piter said nothing. He knew. He knew she knew.

“My father is dead. My mother, my sisters– unknown,” Mariam said. She barely hid her venom. How much had gone wrong!

“Correct, my lady. They are most likely residing on Tupile or Wallach IX.” Piter’s wizened slump in his chair, still half-unserious, betrayed uneasiness.

She stood up and crossed over to his side of the table. “And that ‘Sayyadina,’ the ‘Hand of God,’ on contested Arrakis, harassing both us and the Corrinos and Landsraad alike…”

“You suspect that it’s one of your sisters, still?” Piter regained some of his venomous composure.

“Of course!” Who else could be it out there, Mariam thought, conjuring such ferocity in such a way that directly, precisely affected the balance of the greater war to always keep the tripod balanced? The Sisterhood and Guild are involved too, I know of it.

Piter’s blue eyes rolled back in his head. “I’ve told you before, Lady. The most probable answer–”

“– is a child of their ‘Old Planetologist,’ yes, yes,” she interrupted, leaning in to lock her all-blue eyes with his. “But I know more than you.”

Piter smiled. “Oh? Elucidate me, Lady.”

“Do you know who my other allies were, long ago?”

“During your schooling? Please– a child is a child, no matter if they were learning witch nonsense.” Piter was losing his composure with her needling, as she intended.

“And children grow up, except for the ones that don’t.”

“Point taken,” Piter said. “Continue.”

“I had a friend, who tried to kill me many times, and who was a face-dancer.”

“And is dead?”

“My dear friend Piter, all my friends are dead, or should be dead.” Yakoba was long dead– too weak for this cruel universe. Duncan had disappeared with her family. And Supreme Bashara Mother Borte should just send some of her guardswomen to cave my skull in and get it over with, she thought privately.

“But this one?”

“Very much so. But I know a face-dancer is not the sort to work alone,” Mariam started, “And the Bene Tleilax never work alone either, and the Old Baron kept up working relations with them.” She waved her hand over Piter, mentat-graduate of Tleilaxu schooling, with a dismissive flourish.

“That reminds me,” Piter deflected. “That ancient ghola-jester of the Baron’s– dead too.” He forced a laugh.

Maryam’s eyes glowered. Enough!

“I know for a fact you were involved in the assassination attempt on me during my schooling,” Mariam said, “and you arranged other attempts on my life… and that of my child, your Baron.”

Silence fell, Piter simply staring back at her.

She continued: “One was successful. One was unsuccessful.” Mariam’s Voice– still barely functional without practice– was starting to rise, its subtle vocalizations opening out of necessity and long-denied vengeance.

Piter stayed silent, defiant even as her Weirding started to make his skin crawl.

She unleashed it. “You should have killed me instead.” Piter was frozen: mostly out of terror, but enough of the Bene Gesserit skill was still within Mariam that his vocal cords were unable to work their usual babbling self-importance.

“I’ve arranged for you and what’s left of Carthag to be handed over to the Landsraad as a well-kept token of my surrender,” The Dowager-Baroness said to his silent face. “This is worse for me in the long run– I won’t have the pleasure of killing you myself.”

Mariam stepped back from his frozen frame.

“Captain Eckhart!” she shouted.

A contingent of Harkonnen troops with Eckhart at the head came into the room, and she signaled for the guards to take the catatonic old mentat out.

Captain Eckhart stayed behind to speak with her. He was just over thirty years old, with a sandy blonde beard that clashed with the blue-and-orange griffin livery he wore like a target board.

“I don’t want to hear strategy, Eckhart,” she said as she walked over to a side table. “I’ve had enough of fighting a war for dead men.”

“My lady,” he began, a low, affected gravel to his voice, “my concern is for your safety. After what the Landsraad, what Marus Herstal did…”

Mariam shook her head as she poured herself a glass of spiced wine. “We’re past such a consideration now, Captain,” she said, taking a deep sip. “I’m done– I’m putting myself out neck first, as I’ve told you. It’s what my father would have done, were he to have inherited such a foolish position.” She sighed. “I should have done it over a decade ago. It’s– it was spite, from my mother’s side, I suppose.”

Eckhart nodded silently, and Mariam Harkonnen, née Maryam Atreides, widow herself and widower of millions, handed him the other glass she had poured.

Mariam walked to the exit. “Consider your own safety for now, Eck. Find a place to settle down here, if they decide to demilitarize what’s left of our worlds.” She looked back at him one last time. “You’ve got business-sense. You’re still young enough to start something in the whale fur trade, especially after they break up the house monopoly on processing.”

Without waiting for a response, Mariam left and returned to her old drawing room with its grand view. Hands trembling despite her inner peace, she set down her glass and turned, eyes closed and breathing in, out, in,and felt the rest of her interiority calm down just as the proctors and her mother taught her, if only for a moment.

When she opened her eyes, she caught her reflection in the mirror: extra aging from stress overpowering the geriatric benefits of spice addiction, with freshly-dyed black hair tied into complicated plaits with orange ribbonwork. Her ever-present black mourning gowns were like an echo of her old, once-exemplary Bene Gesserit training. Most horrible, though, were her blue-on-blue eyes. They completed the look of a woman who was burned away into a hollow shell that mindlessly continued the Harkonnen enterprise in both deed and color– orange, blue, black.

In a disgusted rage, Maryam pulled the mirror off the wall and smashed it against the ground, and then woke up.

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

On Wednesday morning, Maryam noticed small new flecks of blue in her green eyes.

She rubbed the bridge of her nose and averted her gaze from the mirror. It had to be leftover sand in her eyes– refracting it, she thought– yes, that’s right.

She sighed. Oh, who am I fooling? At this rate, she would be a spice addict– a very expensive bride-price for any noble husband to pay for. Except for the imperial family or the Harkonnens, as hellishly serendipitous as that would be. It was more likely she’d just be an old maid that would pauperize the entire economy of Caladan.

Or die a young maid. Helena was still ready to strike again, as the two of them had discussed. If I’m already addicted, maybe her way’s for the best…

She pulled herself back from those sacrificial thoughts and steadied herself. Today was like any other day, from here on out– stay clear of other students, try not to eat too much to limit spice, and stick to the bare minimum in classes. She pulled her uniform’s top on and brushed her hair straight, conspicuously avoiding eye contact with her reflection.

Classes that day were about as dull as they ever were, especially since most of Maryam’s regular academic classes– the rare periods where she would spend time mixed in with all those lucky lay students– were on Wednesdays and Saturdays. After one last morning class, Maryam was left to debate whether or not to go to the dining hall and risk eating anything with her name on it.

As she shuffled out of the classroom, Maryam saw her way politely blocked by three other students. Eostri, another highborn initiate also in her Prana-Bindu classes, was present, but the other two, Renko and Lucretia, were lay students– their uniforms had no hooded scapular to put over their dress.

“Is… is something the matter?” Maryam asked. It had to do with how evasive I’ve been, she knew.

Eostri’s round face softened even more with a look of worry. “Maryam… we’ve noticed that there’s been some, um, strange disunion between you and your friends. Are things right between you three?”

This is a trick, Maryam thought. Calculated concern. Eostri here was the face-dancer after all, and– wait. No, Helena is the face-dancer. That’s another course of events. Focus!

Maryam shook her head. “No, no. Everything is fine between us.” She sighed without disrupting her properly-upright court posture. “I’ve… just been under a lot of stress, recently. Family news. News that is none of your concern. I’ve been keeping to myself, that’s all.”

“Really, now?” Renko was incredulous. “Your ‘cellmate’ is living like a vagrant in a maintenance room, lass.”

“It’s too strange, even for her, Your Ladyship,” Lucretia chimed in. “And that cross-gender tall one you bunked with, he– er, she hasn’t been seen anywhere near you the last few.”

“We’re just… concerned, Maryam.” Eostri said. “I know you’ve been dealing with a lot of pressure, but you can’t just cut away all of your good company here. It’s not safe, especially with what happened to Borte when alone. That sparring match you had with Helena was… well…” Her adept eyes locked with Maryam’s, and her pupils contracted at the sight– she also noticed the color changes!

Maryam kept silent. Stonewalling could be the way to get these querents to leave me alone, she thought.

Lucretia then started talking just to fill the air with noise: “I know how it feels, Your Ladyship. Well, part of it– I’m not of the Sisterhood like you ladies are. But, I’m aware we’re both expected to marry soon after graduation. I know it’s a troubling thing, love.”

Lucretia was also highborn– just a House Minor, but one from a world directly held by the Emperor, and far too cloying and deferential when speaking to her. Always trying with the connection-making!

Renko (a blood-cousin of an actual House Major, as she would often and eagerly protest) then wedged in her opinion again: “So, well, if you ever need someone to talk to–”

“No! I don’t!” Maryam shouted.

The three girls flinched. They were each taller than Maryam, but she made up for her small frame with the sheer force of gravitas that the ten-thousand-year-old Atreides dynasty commanded among its noble peers.

“Maryam,” Eostri said with trepidation, “all we’re asking–”

“I don’t care! I don’t care what you’re asking of me, Eostri! I have enough asked of me! I have enough faces to know! You can step in line behind Vina and all the other… supplicants asking to be noted by a duke’s daughter!” she shouted.

“Vina?” Eostri now had a puzzled look added to her worried expression, and her hair bounced as she tilted her head.

“Yes, like the young Lady Vina!” Maryam continued shouting up at her, now standing chest-to torso with Eostri. “Just like that title-grubbing lay student, highborn or no! Don’t think you’re so different… from…”

Wait, Maryam thought. Who was Vina?

Vina wasn’t anyone here.

Where was I getting that name from?

Maryam shrunk back and stifled a scream. Everything is falling apart around me! she panicked.

“I… I’m sorry, Eostri. I’m very sorry. Excuse me!” she cried, and then ran off away from her classmates.

Maryam ran towards the microfiche library and towards Proctor Myuller’s office, ignoring the shouts for her to ‘slow down!’ from mere sisters and proctors alike.

Yakoba’s teacher was just as inscrutable as any of her other proctors, but the girl’s stories of how she taught her– and her own murky visions of entering her office– made it clear she may have some knowledge of how to control her visions.

Control! It was a maddeningly impossible goal. One only could control a process by flowing with it, yes: it was a common teaching of the Sisterhood. But she was swept along, more and more, in her nighttime visions and the brain-addling spice doses she had been force-fed for weeks. This was not flow! It was drowning, dissolution.

She stopped just in front of the door to the Proctor’s office. The hallway had a gloomy feeling to it, made all the more ominious by the emptiness of the microfiche library’s main study area. The low-grade fiche projectors dangled like gutted ribboncarp or spider legs over tables just a hop across the hall from the woman’s office.

For a moment, she felt doubt about entering and throwing herself at the Proctor’s mercy. But a far-off and familiar “Darn it!” in the aisles of the library– what could only be Borte trying to find something in the stacks– made her panic, and rather than be seen by her estranged cellmate, she opened the door and entered Myuller’s domain.

The room felt a little colder in tone than Yakoba had made it out to be. A rolled-up rug in the corner, a wooden box and filmbooks on the windowsill, a conspicuous Agony Box balanced on top of some old lockers filled with junk. A padded chair as far away from a clean desk as possible. On either side of the desk, two bare chairs. Myuller was sitting in one behind the desk, reading, a large mug in front of her. Scratch marks were dug into the bare floor in all directions.

“Welcome, Initiate.” Her lack of eye contact was immediately palpable.

Maryam’s eyes narrowed. “Were you expecting me, Proctor?”

“Were you?” Without making eye contact, the Proctor Major gestured for her to sit down, and pulled out something– a deck of cards– from her desk’s drawer.

Maryam brushed out her skirt and sat down in the creaking chair. It seemed deliberately designed to be the worst possible sitting experience.

“It’s lunchtime,” Myuller said. “And you’ve been perfectly… adequate in my classes. Is there something you need to speak with me about?”

Maryam nodded. The proctor drew a card and laid it in front of them– four vessels laid out in front of a stubborn androgyne everyman.

“Y-yes, Proctor Myuller,” Maryam said. “I’ve been dealing with an ongoing dilemma, and I… intuit that you may be able to help.”

Proctor Myuller nodded.

“We will, of course, need to be brief about it,” the Proctor said. She then pulled another card from the deck– two sphinxes pulling a groundcar– and laid it right next to the second, before continuing. “It is Monday. I prioritize my time with my direct students, and Initiate Yakoba needs all the tutelage she can get.”

Monday? Maryam thought. Isn’t it Wednesday?

The Proctor drew one more card and glanced at it before looking into and through Maryam’s eyes: the blue-white stare seemed to drill past the first layer of her psyche, even if it could not dredge anything up from her subconsciousness.

“I… Proctor, I am having issues with my sleep.”

“And Sister Atti cannot help?” the old woman asked. “I am a specialist in Human and Weirding Psychology… and agronomy, of course, but this sounds like more of an issue with the student pharmaceuticals, or with the subliminal training projectors.”

Not Atti! Maryam thought. She’s the one measuring my spice doses– assisting in my torture.

She shook her head. “No, Proctor. I am… I’m seeing things that haven’t happened yet, or that could have happened. I’m convinced… I’m being drugged. And it has to do with the Truthsayer.”

“Concerning,” Proctor Myuller said, her eyes flitting to the cards on the table. “What are your long-term goals? Ambitions?”

Why change the subject so suddenly? Maryam felt her vision tremble– she seemed to jump outside herself for a moment. Everything around her was becoming ill-defined, dreamlike.

The girl collected herself and replied. “I… my goals aren’t very important, are they? I’m to marry as my House and the Sisterhood want, and stay alive and raise heirs.” A half-hearted chuckle escaped her chest. “No room for ambition besides hobbies, under such responsibilities,” she said.

Proctor Myuller raised an eyebrow. “Who am I really talking to, then? An Atreides, or a witch-purebred like myself?” She tossed the third card next to the others: on it was seven court-batons, with a figure holding aloft one of them like a club.

Exasperated anger shot through Maryam. “Both!” she shouted. “I come to you for help, and you insult my house–”

“Then act like your father’s house,” Proctor Myuller said, shuffling her deck of cards. “You have more than one birthright, Miss Atreides. If you wish to be more than a footnote in the merger of your husband’s house and yours… act more like those Atreides we hear so much about, for once. Honorable, just, bold… what have you. Your future must be yours– a vision made of a conscious blend of your past and present. Not your father’s, not your mother’s, not your husband’s…”

The proctor’s eyes caught Maryam’s again and dug even further: “… and not your Other Selves.” With that, the woman laid out a whole new tableau of cards, looked down, and–

Maryam awoke with a start and stumbled. She had been running at full speed towards the microfiche library before… before that happened.

Proctor Myuller’s office! She had to get there. Had to. She had to be able to help her!

She redoubled her run, and as the hallway opened up on one side into the library’s study area, she almost slidpast the door to Myuller’s office on the waxed floors.

Without bothering to re-center herself, she burst through the door to the Proctor’s office. Inside, she found a yet-again-unsurprised Proctor Myuller, this time still wearing her coat and drinking lentil soup out of that oversized mug.

Maryam caught her breath as the door closed behind her with a clatter. The office looked about the same as the first time, but the padded chair was placed in front of Myuller’s desk and the Agony Box was out of sight.

An awkward silence fell between them before the Proctor spoke, face still hidden by her mug.

“Mm. You’ve got the look.”

“What do you mean?” Maryam shouted. Her bottom lip curled involuntarily in a manic, fearful grin.

Proctor Myuller set her soup cup aside and started to lecture. “You act like someone who’s come in here before. And an uncommon facial expression, even disregarding you not knocking. As an aside: don’t turn that into a habit, Initiate.”

She adjusted her coat sleeve and then pulled out the deck of cards from her desk, again.

W-what day is it? Maryam thought.

“It’s Tuesday, and the last week of the month.” the proctor said. “I’m afraid you’ve arrived at a… busy time for me.” Outside, the illumination through the window was darker than Maryam had expected.

She was still seeing impossible pasts!

Maryam composed herself again. “I’m… yes. I came here Monday– ah, or, I saw myself come here Monday, and you asked questions and laid out tarot cards, and– and the vision stopped.”

Myuller nodded, and looked her in the eyes. This time, those sharp pupils showed a slight amount of care around the edges, as if rationing the remainder.

“So. You are showing signs of prescience.”

Maryam sighed as she slunk into the padded chair– this time, a much less uncomfortable place to sit.

“More than that!” she cried. “I’m going mad! I can’t trust the Truthsayer or the Proctor Superior or Atti to help– they’re drugging my food with spice. I see things that could never happen, as often as I see things that could.”

“Mm,” the Proctor grunted as she started shuffling the deck. “Well. That’s unpleasant news to hear, Initiate– you have my deepest sympathies. And I have my own, separate doubts about that guest of ours as well.” She sighed. “I have some time I can set aside today, but…”

Myuller stopped to lay out a card, then leaned back and crossed her legs after glancing at it. Maryam’s consciousness trembled again.

“Proctor, may I ask why you’re doing that?” she asked. Did she really say that? She felt beside herself.

“It’s… theoretical, Miss Atreides. What I am doing right now has not been approved by Chapterhouse. I’m disrupting any prescient visions by randomly altering my most likely actions, what I say and do. Your recounting, if true… is proof for said theory.”

“Why?” Other-Maryam asked.

The Proctor’s voice took on an authoritative air like in Maryam’s meditation classes: “I’m dis-aligning you from your oracular tag-alongs, if they exist– your weaker ones, at the least.” She uncrossed her legs and put both her feet on the ground. “When I speak with you… I want to speak on a single golden thread of discussion. Totally linear, no admixture of fates or harvesting of knowledge from parallel or possible timelines. To let all instances of your mind to act free of each other, as best I can.”

The Proctor leaned forwards, those drill eyes cutting back into her soul. “A biechuan, a discussion of souls, purely instance-to-instance. Within the real. Our real.”

Maryam shook her head as Other-Maryam nodded. This can’t be happening! Of all the people who could help her, she–

“Now, find your own way forwards in your waking worlds, you Others.” the Proctor murmured.

A tableau of cards drawn, a clearing of the old woman’s throat, and–

Maryam awoke with a start, again mid-dash.

She slowed down her pace and looked around herself. Outside, the light in the atrium seemed to be right where it should be for the day, and when she checked her notitia-tablet, it had her class notes from that morning freshly written down.

It was noon on Wednesday. Within her present!

Carefully, she picked up speed and walked in a more dignified, trained manner towards the microfiche library. This time, no trick of prescience could stop her from finally, properly talking with Proctor Myuller. She quickened her pace and filled herself with resolve to finally see this ordeal through.

As she turned the corner and entered that hallway, Maryam found something new: darkness. Only the emergency lighting in the hallways was on, and a blaringly-bright notice was projected onto the air by a cheap holo-projector stuck in the corner.

Dulling her panic, Maryam constricted her pupils and focused her eyes on the notice. It read:

She felt a punch to her gut– an ugly joke, Maryam thought. This had to be another vision, right?

Maryam stumbled into the hallway, the light from the notice and the lone few emergency glow-panels casting her shadow out to a grotesque length. She half-heartedly went to knock on Proctor Myuller’s door, but a more curt note of ‘Occupied w/ Direct Student. – Proctor E.M.’ was hastily taped to the front of her darkened office window.

Maryam turned around and marched herself over to sit on one of the nearest benches in the fiche-projector area. Everything is going so, so very wrong for me, she thought. Out of all the days she actually went to see that stupid proctor, it was the one day that it was impossible to. She sobbed into her hands.

Behind her, she could hear someone clearing her throat. Maryam turned to look.

In the center of the study space, with several fiche-projectors dangling behind it like a spider-halo, was the gaunt outline of a person. Even in the dark of the room, it had a youthful, feminine shape to it, and Maryam could tell it was wearing an ornate gown blacker than night. The figure’s eyes, though, were a deep blue that seemed to almost cast an illumination of their own.

“Hello, Child of Jessica,” Mother Jahana said. “You look like you need guidance.”

Chapter 27 Selective Glossary

No new words of note.

Chapter Text

The memories and personas of a myriad generations of mothers and daughters in the species are at the beck and call of a Reverend Mother. What use do we have for histories when we can recall the past perfectly? What use of spirituality when we can remember the birth of each novel god and saint? What use of pedagogy, when we may simply remember our past lives? The answer is: for others. We guide, we shape, and we teach the masses of our race, human and animal alike, so that one day we may set them free. Even in such a state of expanded consciousness, ‘I am Bene Gesserit: I Exist to Serve’ is still our motto. The Reverend Mother is in an eternal, paradoxical balancing act both outside and inside of ourselves: simultaneous total selflessness in serving the species, and eternal, human selfhood curating and interpreting the past and present.

– Her Reverence Gaius Helen Mohiam, Collected Commentaries on Rules Regarding Reverend Mothers

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Maryam sat there, frozen at the sight of the Reverend Mother. In the dark of the library, she shut her eyes, hoping to wake up in another, better situation.

She opened them again, and the night-terror was still across from her.

“I… er, Your Reverence?” Maryam croaked. “I was… I had a meeting in this hall, but I… I didn’t know there…”

“Meeting?” Mother Jahana’s form stood up and flowed over to Maryam’ table. “Surely whatever proctor you had arranged to visit at lunch would have told you about it. Though, I suppose this was put together on short notice.”

The woman then sat down across from her.

Startled, Maryam stood up on instinct, but the Reverend Mother held out her hand for her to stop. Did she remember Truthsayer Jahana’s rank and stand to curtsy, or was her reaction to run? She couldn’t separate the motives for her reaction.

“Don’t bother, child. I know you respect me and the rest of the College as it is. Mother Mohiam has spoken highly of you in the past, I know.”

The Truthsayer seemed to be taking something out of her gown and turning it in her fingers as she spoke.

“She… has?” Maryam was guarded. That august old woman had met with her several times since she had turned ten, but had always addressed the girl with a mix of stern contempt and cryptic inquiries– riddles which Maryam seemingly never answered correctly.

“Of course, child!” Jahana’s eyes put on a show of warmth. “And I respect that you identified me as the visiting Reverend Mother on sight. With how… few you have met of younger age. Inspired wisdom of a sort, on your part,” she needled.

Maryam nodded, privately vowing not to let the woman get to her secrets. “Thank you, Your Reverence. I’m–”

–A flash of incoherent visions then shot across her senses–

“… Ah-h-h.” Maryam squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her temples. “Forgive me, Reverend Mother. I’ve not been… feeling well recently.”

Mother Jahana’s silhouette leaned to the side in her chair.

“Headaches and poor sleep?” she asked, now back to that strict B.G. Placid tone.

“Yes, Your Reverence.” Maryam said. “It… it’s been an ailment since about a month ago.”

“Have you spoken to the chapterhouse apothecaries about it?”

Maryam shook her head. “No. It’s… only been getting bad this past week.”

“Still!" Jahana continued toying with her object. It was thin and cylindrical, with a plunger or grip on one end of it. “Are you afraid that the bulky cross-gender one in charge there might be the culprit?” she teased.

“No, Your Reverence,” Maryam said, lying right into a Truthsayer’s face. “It’s only become an issue recently, like I said.”

A silence fell across them in the library. Jahana’s blue eyes narrowed.

“Don’t test me, child,” Mother Jahana said, a cold tone now in her voice. “I’m not of the mood to have my credentials tested. So. What sort of poisoning, then, do you suspect by ‘her’?”

Maryam cycled her breaths and pushed her heart rate back down as she answered. “I… I believe it’s spice. Er, spice mélange. Your Reverence.”

Even in the dark, Maryam could sense Jahana raising her eyebrows and getting ready to speak:

“Child, the CHOAM commodities board right now lists one single decagram of spice mélange as costing six hundred and twenty thousand solaris, and rising. The average dietary recommendation for geriatric effects is roughly zero-point-three-one milligrams of spice per day. Basic math, then, gives a daily cost of the spice alone in one student or Sister’s daily supplement here as nineteen and one-quarter solaris. For everyone who matters, once a day, every day, per Sisterhood mandate.”

She smiled knowingly, blue eyes dilating even further in the dim light. “It adds up, Initiate Maryam. Five to seven milligrams of ingested spice– most potently through the nostrils or bloodstream injections– is necessary for most to exhibit very basic clairsentient behavior. For a well-bred Sister, it drops down to about two to three milligrams. Anything higher than seven: spice overdose, or unique xenohormonal effects occur. Addiction requires roughly one milligram of Spice daily to avoid starting fatal withdrawal– about sixty-two solaris, again, daily. A shire’s whole net weekly income on, say, Caladan. What you’re describing– why, even with the best genetic susceptibility, that would be a very expensive investment then, wouldn’t it?”

Maryam felt dizzy from the avalanche of words and numbers. She simply nodded in agreement at Jahana’s recitation.

Mother Jahana spoke again: “Would you… like something to abate your ‘headaches and bad sleep,’ as you call it?”

She called it that, not me, Maryam thought, but rather than try lying again, she nodded.

“A good choice.” the Reverend Mother said flatly. In an instant, she grabbed Maryam’s hand and stuck the object into a vein on her forearm. On the other side of the plunger was a needle that extended outside of a guard sleeve and into her. It was a pre-dosed syringe!

Maryam held back a shout, and as Jahana let go of her arm, she felt a wave of something start pushing through her circulatory system.

“Subtle, no?” The Truthsayer said. “For every drug, a suppressant; for every poison, an antidote. The two concepts do blur.”

In the dark, Maryam could see Mother Jahana examining her manicured nails as she continued. “There are plenty of antidotes or suppressants for awareness-spectrum narcotics. This one inhibits spice metabolization. Temporary, though. I will explain the side effects later.”

Maryam felt a centered clarity return to her senses, as if an air scrubber was clearing away a spice-orange fog.

Mother Jahana straightened her posture and put the syringe away in her dress. “So. I believe that I have not officially introduced myself. How rude of me. I, as you guessed, am the visiting Reverend Mother and Certified Truthsayer of The Order, Rapontchombo Emal Jahana.” She leaned forwards expectantly. “And?”

Maryam put herself into a deferential pose and spoke: “Thank you, Your Reverence, for the dosage and this audience.”

Damn this woman! Maryam cursed privately.

“You’re welcome,” Mother Jahana said. “It’s a pleasure to finally speak to the child of Jessica… and of that Duke.”

Mayam bristled at the slight, and decided to push back. She could ask questions of the woman, too.

“Your Reverence, forgive me, but may I ask you a personal question?”

Truthsayer Jahana paused before replying, eyes and face still perfectly poised without an expression. “It depends on the question. But. Go ahead, child.”

Maryam’s lips tensed. Clear answers were hard to come by when she was given her rare audiences with Mother Mohiam, and the forthrightness that Mother Jahana had by comparison was undermined by how much she seemed to withhold and twist language by omission or editorializing.

“Your Reverence… are you, by chance, related to Proctor Myuller of this Chapterhouse?” She winced internally at her question. Something, either ensorcellment by Jahana, or some deep conditioned loyalty since before she could speak to her mother’s Sisterhood-family, or both, kept tilting her to take the most deferential approach with Her Reverence.

Mother Jahana leaned back in her chair, bemused. “A good observation of phenotypes, Initiate Maryam. I am her daughter. While I remember her early life…” she trailed off before re-stressing the point: “very, very, well… My specialties studied before inheriting her memories are in different fields, and my interests and drives are different. Hence her still being a Proctor Major at her age, and myself being quite young for a Reverend Mother.”

Maryam’s eyes struggled in vain to see more than a shadowed face in the darkness. “What sort of interests, Your Reverence?”

“I exist to serve. No more, no less. That is our difference in interests,” Truthsayer Jahana said.

She adjusted her posture, the glint of her blue-on-blue eyes in the scant light of the library giving an unnatural false glow to her features. “But. Simply address me on familiar terms as Mother Jahana for now, Initiate, if only to save syllables. I have been meaning to speak with you since my arrival here, and this is more than adequate a time to do so. Follow me.”

As the Reverend Mother stood up, Maryam felt like she saw her form stretch upwards past her mortal frame and into the darkness. With a hesitant motion, the girl also stood and walked with her, away from the microfiche library and Proctor Myuller’s office.

As they walked through the halls, Jahana talked.

“Our… lineages on your mother’s side. I will not go into detail, but we are not so distantly connected. Within the last four generations.”

In the shadows, Maryam could see her gaunt frame place a thin finger on top of a long overhang and drag it alongside her as she moved, before bringing it to her face to examine any dust or grime that was present there. Jahana then flicked off whatever mess it was with her thumb, still moving in a deathly-still glide all the while.

“This missive that I have come on, cher cousin, is very much a family affair, then. Most of the main bloodlines cultivated and cross-bred by the Bene Gesserit make such matters as ours of a… sisterhood in more than title, as one could say.”

“How much… do you know about my mother’s side of my family?” Maryam asked. The slimy clues from her nightmares let her know that she didn’t want to actually know anything, but the charade had to be kept up.

“Enough to know what I can say or know, and what I cannot say or know.” Jahana replied with a strangely soft tone. “Rest assured, I am resolute about making sure you are in a position to succeed in your duties, cousin.”

Maryam felt the tension build in her, but she neutralized and flushed the cortisol as it was released, just as she was taught. “You mean my marriage, is that correct?” she said.

Mother Jahana looked back at her with a precisely contemptuous gaze that communicated ‘of course you idiot, what else would it be?’

What the Reverend Mother spoke, though, was more tactful: “Correct, Initiate Maryam. As part of your service to the Bene Gesserit, you will be dealing with marriage into a House Major that requires a… level of exceptional finesse.”

The two walked into the hallway leading to the faculty apartment wing. Through the long windows, Maryam could see a few women– some of them Sisterhood Guards– milling in line outside a decontamination station. On the other side, the graveyard-orchard yawned invitingly.

“I’ve… heard plenty of stories about my betrothed’s house. Growing up, I mean,” Maryam said. Gurney’s rants alone made up most of them, when he wasn’t hushed by Ella or Duncan.

“None of them good, I presume,” Mother Jahana said dryly. “Now, facts about House Harkonnen. Have you heard much of those?”

Maryam had heard plenty of those too, but this was a test– what were the pertinent things the Reverend Mother wanted to see if she knew?

“They’re… the Baron’s extremely distrustful of the Bene Gesserit– we have no presence in the House," Maryam recited. "And they have a vast extended family of demibrothers and other cadet-bastards off of the noble line. B– Count Glossu is unmarried, and F– ah, my betrothed, is favored by the Baron.”

Mother Jahana nodded. “Correct. So. When we arrive in their household after your marriage, it will be essentially a terra incerta, to borrow some M.P. parlance. Express care in such a… homosocial and aggressivehousehold is needed for your marriage to be… sustained, properly.”

We?

Maryam’s heart stopped. Memories of some ugly future visions were pulled in front of her, and she suddenly recalled Mother Jahana in the background of events or in her own future thoughts.

“I have been assigned as both your continuing educator after graduation to Novice Sister, and the House Proctor for the Harkonnens on the condition of your marriage to them,” the Truthsayer said with perfect, emotionless diction. “The original purpose of my meeting was to formally establish a working relationship with you, rather than an investigation. As you guessed.”

Mother Jahana paused and pursed her lips, gazing at the center of the faculty atrium with a calculated look of annoyance. “I suppose I should have mentioned that earlier.”

Maryam looked around the skylit atrium. It was still the luncheon hour for the Chapterhouse, and in the atrium, plenty of adults in black were moving to and from their dining hall while keeping a very comfortable distance between themselves and the two of them.

“Have you been in the faculty wing before?” the Truthsayer asked.

Maryam nodded. “Yes, Your Reverence. I’ve been sent to wait on Mother Puleng as part of my chores–”

“Excellent. So you’re familiar with the Reverend Mother Apartments,” Jahana interrupted. “We’ll continue speaking inside the one lent to myself.”

Maryam glanced at the many Cones of Silence around them in the atrium and felt a moment of deep alarm. If the Reverend Mother brought her inside her quarters, then she would absolutely be trapped there and at her mercy. Would Mother Puleng or Mohiam have acted this possessively? she thought.

Maryam put her most tactful face and tone on. “I… Your Reverence, if–”

“Please. ‘Mother Jahana,’ for now. Less syllables.” Jahana interrupted.

“Mother Jahana, wouldn’t the Cones of Silence here be suitable for a private conversation?”

The woman raised a perfectly waxed eyebrow. “Yes, perfectly suitable. But. I would prefer to speak in total privacy on such delicate matters. A simple preference by a woman of the Sight. Who, within the Order’s halls and walls, outranks you. And why not speak in my temporary quarters, child?”

Maryam held back a nervous laugh at what was happening around her. “I just don’t see why we would need to speak there, in your private quarters, when–”

“Ah-h-h! A wonderful idea,” Jahana exclaimed. “An entirely private conversation, on matters of our burgeoning private relationship, in my private quarters! Excellent thinking, Initiate.”

The cold shock of Mother Jahana’s Voice shot through her, and Maryam felt herself agreeing that it was a good suggestion she had, after all. Hiding her confusion behind her usual well-bred façade, she nodded and followed Her Reverence up the staircase.

Mother Jahana’s penthouse had an identical layout to that of Puleng’s, but within it there was a much more chaotic interior. Several hastily-delivered and now empty crates still laid in the center of her front sitting room, and they looked just as used for writing or records storage as the actual spare furniture that the Eridanus Chapterhouse had delivered to the room within them. The largest crates were organized as a makeshift divider that cut the sitting room in half.

Doubtlessly more delivered furniture was back in the apartment’s bedroom and study, Maryam thought. The kitchen, dining room, and bathroom that Maryam also knew would be there were not visible from the front room– only a dark hallway leading further into the Truthsayer’s temporary domain.

On one side of the sitting room was a bare chair and a secured communinet link and radio system. To the side of the main instrument was a small box, with a distracting light blinking on top of it. On the opposite side, across from the omnipresent crates, was what looked like a wine cabinet, a large set of pressure tanks with a breathing mask fixed to it, and a selection of comfortable chairs and two fainting couches. Tarot cards– the deck split in two and a tableau drawn from it already– were laid out on top of a small table underneath two opaque syringes, a small rubber belt, a bottle of spackled orange pills, and a stale glass of water.

As she registered her surroundings, a slim brown-and-white tube of fur snaked out of the corner of the room, ran in loops around Maryam’s feet, and then shot back into the ostentatious rubble just as soon as it appeared. It was a House Ferret, a breed shaped to find and kill poisonous or designer-disease animals that could be used for assassinations.

“Don’t mind Eight,” the Truthsayer said. “He’s trained to House Minor quality. Just a standard precaution on long trips.”

She stood and placed her hands on her hips– a theatrical gesture.

“I can’t fathom why the Proctor Superior never invested in their own warren here. Aside from cost, of course. It could have spared the need for… mindless acts of heroism.” The Reverend Mother glanced back at Maryam with a well-tuned look of pity at the company the girl had chosen to keep.

Maryam ignored her insinuation and nodded.

“I always found them… reassuring,” she said faintly. “I had one as a pet when I was little, from the house warrens.”

“Properly trained, I hope?” Jahana said. She walked into the hallway without waiting for a reply.

“Ah-h-h… yes,” Maryam said as she eyed the front door. “She knew to use the litterbox, and could follow commands.”

Could I escape? she thought as she continued to prattle.

“She was the runt, and I was lonely, so my father and the Keeper of the Ferrets thought she…”

“Trained as a mouser, I mean,” the Reverend Mother said as she returned. She was carrying two dead mice– Eight’s most recent playmates– by the tail, which she then wiggled at Maryam before throwing them into a trash bin.

Mother Jahana continued her lecture: “That’s their purpose, how they were bred, at the end of the day. Like any domesticated animal. Hunting dogs hunt, herding dogs herd, wool-sheep get sheared, mutton-sheep get slaughtered, servants serve, and noble-borns rule.” The woman then walked over to the communinet terminal, self-certain that her lesson was learned.

The Faufreluches, Maryam thought. ‘A place for every man, and every man in his place,’ as the saying goes– and every animal, too, by her reckoning. Why her intensity, though?

Maryam watched as the Truthsayer worked the terminal. There was a set of headphones next to the monitor that the woman held over one ear while she moved a mounted microphone into position. Suddenly, she brought her palm down with a thwack onto the top of the blinking message-box and held it there. The woman listened (and felt) intently, and the noise from her headphones barely carried to where Maryam stood.

Is she still paying attention to my actions? The girl thought. She must be.

A morbid idea of taking one of the wine bottles and smashing it into the Truthsayer’s skull, or stabbing her with the syringes came to Maryam: a way to cut short what looked to be the beginning of a long and unhappy working relationship, though at great cost to herself.

Impossible! She would just overpower me, she thought, but she still felt it a welcome change to just imagine doing something terrible, rather than see visions of it happening.

Jahana glanced back at Maryam. “Go ahead and sit down, child,” she commanded. “I’ll be there shortly.”

Reluctantly, Maryam moved out of sight from Mother Jahana, and sat in one of the chairs nearest to the furniture crates that divided the sitting room. A switch was thrown outside of her vision by the Reverend Mother, and Maryam kept her ears open and listened attentively to Jahana’s calls:

“Novice Bella? Her Reverence Mother Jahana is calling,” Her Reverence Mother Jahana said. Her voice was about as authoritative as the tone she had been using with Maryam

“Yes… good… poor. Re-apply yourself there. Hall G should be finished between you and the staff here by now. You’ve examined the personal offices of the proctors, correct? Especially that one?”

A pause.

“Well, they’re not going to co-ordinate with you if you don’t tell them you need to co-ordinate!" Jahana shouted. "… Ah-h-h. Mother Puleng playing dumb? Enough of those kinds of unsisterly thoughts– but yes, I will look into it. This chapterhouse is too bottom-heavy for the necessities of a Rule-compliant school, we know that– it’s no wonder they’re trying to rush through all their Death-Alternative Tests this late in the year.”

A longer pause, and then a more resigned tone from the Truthsayer:

“Three scheduled tomorrow, yes… Exactly, one will be in Hall G. Get their names in advance for if one of them is the assassin, and position a talon of Guards near their testing sites in case the culprit goes loud. Suspiciously few failures given the quality of the student and proctor body here, I must add– just two this month… Yes. I’ll speak with you in person tomorrow. Finis.”

Yakoba’s test must be tomorrow, Maryam thought. Oh, Yak… I’m sorry. Please–

Another communinet call started, this one with a more brusque tone to Jahana’s voice:

“K-M-A Air Traffic? Yes, this is Her Reverence Mother Jahana. You wished to… yes, I received the guidance request. Give detail with your name and title.”

The woman’s voice stopped, then came back with greater incredulity than before.

“Flight approval for… a marqued microthopter at that distance from the Exclusion Zone, six hours from now? Please don’t bother me with that sort of non– of course that means sign off on it, I couldn’t care less! We’re not expecting a diveship attack on the compound, Great Mother forbid; ground sensors will pick up any infiltration. Yes… oh, the apology is graciously accepted, Specialist. Finis.”

The sound of a switch being thrown carried across the room, and Eight the Ferret made a clucking noise deep within the piles of crates.

“Tedious… a tedious man,” the Truthsayer muttered to herself.

Maryam quickly moved to a chair further from the crates, and as she settled into her new seat, Jahana walked back over to the sub-room. The woman rolled the set of gas canisters out of the corner and set it next to her side table covered in tarot cards and drugs, and continuing in a fluid motion, then walked over to the side cabinet.

“There are… many benefits to not having an inner-ear demi-relay surgically installed,” Jahana said as she poured a glass of what looked like water. “We reverend mothers tend to appreciate the small beauty of controlling just when people start talking inside your head."

She paused as if she was waiting for Maryam to appreciate her wit.

Suddenly a blaring flash and crackle came from behind the crates, and as it subsided Mother Jahana rolled her all-blue eyes.

“The relay’s microphone just does that for some obscene reason when it powers down,” she said as she handed the glass to Maryam. “Don’t… mind it.”

Maryam simply nodded and held the glass of water as Mother Jahana sat down across from her. She was not in the mood to stop minding anything of Jahana’s, be it that communinet relay or her ferret.

“You’re unusually quiet, for someone with such a gregarious lineage,” Maryam’s ‘cousin’ said, turning on what little charm she had.

The woman then leaned forwards. “And your training’s proven you know your way around both friendly and court etiquette. Come now! Let’s speak about your progress at this chapterhouse.”

“Your Reverence, I’m not your student yet, as you said,” Maryam said, frowning.

At this sign of resistance, Jahana paired an innocuous smile with now-furiously indignant eyes. “But you will be girl, oh yes,” she said coolly. “Jessica’s work was unfinished, as is any… witch-mother of aspirant Sisters. And I will need to pick up where this school has left off– which, in your case is sorely underdeveloping you.”

She did her best to calm her vitals– the rising animal-feeling of ‘danger, danger!’ suppressed and controlled as best she could.

“You speak about my current and past training. Do you know my mother, then?” asked Maryam.

“Your mother met my immediate predecessor at least once, before I was born, though I doubt she remembers it,” Mother Jahana said with an idle tone. “She was quite young then…”

A quick burst of basic logic revealed to Maryam that Jahana was somehow younger than her mother Jessica. And that she did not, in fact, know her mother. Her audacity!

“Now, Initiate. I have some questions that require me to utilize a… full-capacity approach to Truthsense and my craft.” As she drawled, Jahana turned open one of the gas canisters and held a mask to her mouth. “Do not take it personally. This was a formality expressly requested of me by my superiors.”

With controlled yet massive breaths, Jahana held the mask to her face and inhaled deeply. Maryam sat, frozen in a mixture of fear and morbid curiosity– should she try running? Could she?

“Mother Jahana…” Maryam muttered. “Ask whatever you wish of me, and I will answer.”

“Hold a moment, child.” Jahana said. The woman placed her gas mask to the side of her table and stood over her.

She tapped her cold fingers under Maryam’s chin to push it up, and then splayed her other hand from the base of the girl’s neck to just above her heart and breast– similar to a position that Doctor Yueh would place his hands in, but with a preening, dissective air to the motions. An intense stare came on the woman’s face.

“Acceptable physiognomy,” the Truthsayer murmured, not sounding entirely present. “Parameters and tells of other required genes present and– do stop that chill down your back, Initiate!”

“Y-yes, Mother Jahana,” Maryam stammered. Nothing could be hidden, nothing could be expressed without the Truthsayer’s consent now! She did her best not to exist in that time– to block out whatever judgements Mother Jahana’s idle lips would bring. Images of other places and people, without any context or sense, flitted in front of her.

Maryam felt the start of panic within herself. The Litany! I need the Litany! Her mother taught it to her, long ago.

“I have reviewed your records,” Jahana said, moving her fingers to another, more uncomfortable position. “Given the conditions of your birth… somewhat disappointing. You are holding back in your studies, correct?”

I must not fear. Fear is the Mind-Killer, Jessica’s child recited.

“Is there something exceptional about my mother?” she asked.

Jahana nodded, shifting her fingers and grip just slightly. “Very. She is very exceptional. I see echoes of that behavior in you, too… but some reluctance. Intentional self-stunting, physically and mentally. And… other emergent behavior we are interested in.”

She moved her hands again, now to much more sensitive parts of her body.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration! she screamed to herself, blocking out what the Truthsayer was doing.

“Your body appears to be healthy… despite its size. You’re in an acceptable shape to begin reproductive control training… Ah…” Jahana trailed off and then stood up to grab her truthtrance drug-mask.

I will face my fear, Maryam thought.

“And, hgk– cough, cough. You have been dreaming of things before they happen, correct?” Jahana said from leagues away. Her back doubled over for a moment from breathing deeply of the aerosols before she straightened out.

“Y-Yes, Your Reverence,” Maryam sputtered. She felt catatonic, divorced from her own self.

“Now, ’Mother Jahana’ is fine, as I said previously,” she corrected. The Truthsayer’s voice softened again: a failed attempt to sound reassuring, marred with patches of strain from irritated lungs.

From far above the dark mind-pit Maryam was stuck in, she continued to press for questions.

“When you dream of such things, do they happen just as you dreamt of them?” Jahana asked.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me, Maryam thought, a pinprick-light of control in the middle of the void.

She felt her head shake and voice speak by itself. “Not always. And often of things that could have happened, but no longer can.”

“Things that no longer can happen?”

And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

“Y-yes. Like my friend Borte dying when fighting that weapon three weeks past."

“Or?” Jahana pushed from outside her mental oubliette. She could tell Maryam was omitting other visions.

“Other selves. My stronger self, or a more beautiful self, or a wiser self. Or a… a boy my mother would have had instead of me, and–“ she halted, then took a breath– “and when he went to Arrakis with my father, how my house was slaughtered, how he Shortened the Way outside the Sisterhood’s grasp. His revenge– uncontrolled holy fire, burning the Known Universe. The Universe! Sixty billion souls!”

A silence came between them, with only the put-put sound of the truthtrance mask’s regulator entering the Nothing that Maryam had retreated to.

“Truth,” Mother Jahana said. “Fascinating.”

Where the fear has gone there… there… what was it now?

The Truthsayer then spoke softly into her left ear.

“Do you hate him? That other self?”

“No. I… I hate what he became,” Maryam trembled. “I pity him. I fear I will… become like him.” What a wretched, sainted path!

“So, you fear his Terrible Purpose, such as it unfolded.”

“Y… yes.”

“Mm. Do you see that Purpose within your future as well?”

Maryam heard a valve turn on Mother Jahana’s gas regulator. Was the second tank being added?

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

“No,” Maryam said. “A different one. I… can’t see it properly. Too much chaos, too many other visions, and that… my child blocks my sight. I know my house could be killed to the last, the Imperium could be ripped apart in civil war. I could become a monster, like my Betrothed’s family.” She felt herself speaking from a million miles away.

Maryam felt two hands gently clasp her shoulders. She saw two blue-on-blue eyes gazing deeply into her own– an unrecognizable expression on them. The Truthsayer was now sitting immediately in front of Maryam, shoulders square with hers.

Mother Jahana spoke: “Then let me, as a Reverend Mother of the Order, assure you, child of Sister Jessica, child of royal blood: so long as you are in our care, and do as we say, you will have nothing to fear. The vast chaos of the universe is nothing in comparison to the wisdom and good works of the Bene Gesserit.”

Only I… Only I… Only… What was it?

Maryam’s gaze flitted away from the Truthsayer’s eyes. “I… I thank you, Mother Jahana.”

“I do, however, have two immediate needs,” Mother Jahana said, her words like fingers turning over a delicate artifact. “Because of the current… security situation here, I would prefer if you stayed within my apartment. The assassin’s base of operations has been uncovered, and they will most likely be more aggressive. Until they are apprehended, no place, except at my side, is safe. The study has been converted into a second bedroom. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mother Jahana.” House arrest, under the Truthsayer? She felt she had seen it in the past, and no immediate deaths came of it– a safe path forwards. When had she seen it, though? Had she even seen that yet? Could she have visions of visions? Was she mistaking it for something else?

“And I have a second condition for your safety– and ours.” Mother Jahana strapped on the mask and inhaled deeply. Was there a hint of orange now in the gases she was breathing?

“I… I exist to serve, Mother Jahana,” Maryam said, voice now under a false, Sisterly calm. “Please, tell me.”

With deliberate, precise motions, Mother Jahana reached to Maryam’s shoulders and upper chest, and started pushing prana-bindu points, hitting sites closer and closer and closer to her spine until she felt the Truthsayer pushing above and around her vertebra like some sort of organic pump. The woman’s head was close, closer than any comfort that could be found– and their foreheads were touching now!

“Tell me everything you see,” Mother Jahana said through her mask, forehead to forehead.

Did the Truthsayer and that woman behind her really have the anticipatory– no, predatory grins she felt she saw?

A tremendous pain shot through her, and just as suddenly, Maryam felt her grip on reality slipping, visions bubbling in front of her yet again.

Spice! Were her organs really that saturated with the drug?

Only I… Oh! –from the top… I must not… mustn’t… No, no, Maryam panicked. What was it?

What was it? I can’t remember! I can’t remember!

Maryam felt the wind knocked out of her as she was pushed into a thousand possibilities and pasts, ego run raw by her visions and Jahana’s abuse. Images of other places and people, without any context or sense, flitted in front of her. How many times had she died now? Had experienced heartbreak? How many times had her family, her friends, her lovers, her other selves died or become unrecognizable?

Too much, she lamented. Too Much! Someone, anyone! Stop it all! Duncan! Mother! Father! Ella! Sihaya! Borte! Yak! Anyone! Anyone at all! I wish I was never born!

“Mother Jahana! Help me!” she shouted, and she fell into the woman’s cold arms.

Yakoba was going to die, or she was already dead. One sliver-sight saw her cellmate run with the Not-Helena towards a black-gold train, the two of them ground under it slowly and painfully into a bloody paste, and the rest of her visions just had her tall frame laying still as death on the floor.

In her visions she saw that Borte would always fail to help Maryam no matter her efforts. Amidst the omnispresent deaths, an array of battle injuries, some grievous and crippling, others inconsequential, were in her futures.

But what difference did it make to count each possibility? There was no way out except trust in the Reverend Mother to find a way to keep her safe and, maybe, restore her sanity.

The visions dived deeper, deeper, as horrors beyond her understanding or desire to know were thrust in front of her, and over the end of it–voices, one a taunting “See? It’s not so hard, Little Mousey” came from her fiancé’s lips– a “Hello, Grandfather” from her own, and then a massive, deafening crowd of all sorts of future sounds she would hear, overwhelming and indistinguishable, and, and–

And as the terror became too much to stay in the nightmare, he woke up.

Sietch Tabr, Arrakis, in Another 10191 A.G.

Paul sat up in his bed and massaged his eyes. Downwards from his bed, in the common area of his yali– Jamis’s old yali, he thought with a still-fresh pang– inactive glowglobes hung from loose spice-fabric nets near their usual bobbing spots. Harah and her sons were still fast asleep in their beds in the main sconce of the yali, as was Chani in his.

It was still morning– a time of sleep for the nocturnal Fremen. The sun and the open skies were the enemy. The former was a simple fact of desert life. The latter was a simple fact of House Harkonnen’s method of rule over the planet.

They were here, his hated enemies, the murderers of his father and his house, and the out-freyn peoples of this world were now hunted at an even more ferocious tempo than before his family’s doomed arrival. But the hunt was not for him, or his mother, or that now-‘abominable’ sister-to-be she had inside her: their escape had been filled with so many points of certain death that the Harkonnens and the Imperial charge d’affaires on the planet had written them off as stripped to bones by the coriolis storms of the Deep Desert. That was a surety of simple mentat projection. The hunt was for the Fremen, the Ichwan Bedwine as a whole. A campaign of national and racial extermination against his adoptive people.

And Paul Muad’Dib was here, on Arrakis. Not somewhere else, and not someone else. But the nightmare still lingered. It wasn’t a dream that could be wrangled and analyzed by any mentat regimentation, or interpreted as prescient visions.

Chani shifted in the bed next to him.

Prescience looked ahead, always ahead: this he knew from the greater visions that started following him since the first spice trance in that stilltent. And though different courses of events could be seen by him in those spice trances, once the point of final divergence came, these visions disappeared, the aperture of possibilities narrowing to a new vista of events to project and filter upon. But the dream couldn’t have been just random bursts of neurons. Perhaps it was Thufir’s Mentat training that limited him normally, and mercifully, to nonzero possibilities.

So did I lapse in that training while asleep? he thought. It could be the recent sietch ‘orgy’– there was no apt translation in Galach for such a sacralized yet libidinal drug-fueled communion. Melange had a habit of accumulating in more body tissues than just the eyes, and those less accustomed to high doses of it could find undigested pockets of it released and moved by bloodflow to the spine or even brain, as he saw that Reverend Mother do to his Other in the dream.

Paul glanced at his palm– the hand Mother Mohiam tortured, still sensitive in its subtle way– and thought about how similar his hands were to the ones he saw through that Other’s eyes than not.

That poor quasi-twin he lived through in that nightmare– that was a No-Self, a person who cannot exist without my nonexistence, he thought. What separated them was the simple matter of a different sperm selected by his mother for the same egg.

And again, another instance of his mother and the Sisterhood trying to control his life– no, control their lives.Paul frowned. And it unfortunately looked like the Bene Gesserit were much more successful at that in his No-Self’s course of events.

Damn them!

“Usul,” Chani mumbled, turning in bed. “You even think noisy, somehow. Did you see something with those green eyes of yours?”

Paul blinked– of course someone he was sharing his bed with would be woken by his movements. He had yet to get used to this new change among many changes to his life.

He shook his head and looked down at Chani’s hair peeking above the covers, its red color and  drier-than-dry texture something he always yearned to see again when they wore their stillsuits outside the safety of Sietch Tabr.

“Yes and no, Sihaya,” he said, keeping his voice down. “Nothing that tells of the future.”

Chani sensed that he wanted to say more, as he hoped she would.

“Then what was it?” she whispered into the covers.

Paul leaned backwards and propped his arm up on one knee, as the older Fremen men did when drinking coffee. “Did I tell you, Chani, that the Weirding Women wanted a daughter from my mother Jessica, not a son?”

“No, Usul?” His lover turned over and opened her eyes to gaze at him. Sometimes he wondered what Chani’s natural eye color would have been, if she had lived on another planet.

“Yes, it is true,” he said. “They wanted a girl.”

“You’re not having second thoughts about that, I hope?” Chani said with a wry smile. She reached out from her covers and brushed the side of his shoulder. “I sometimes think you’re handsome, you know, when you’re not doing something loud and stupid.”

Paul laughed quietly. “Of course not. I don’t see myself as wanting to, or needing to.” It had occurred to him in the afterglow of the party that he really only inhabited his gender out of apathy and convenience, rather than actual identity.

He continued speaking in his soft voice: “But she would have had it harder in some respects and easier in others, I’ve seen… and would have been ordered to marry into House Harkonnen, of all peoples.”

Chani’s brow furrowed and she shook her head. “Ordered?” The Fremen culture may have been strict and traditionalist, but the boundaries imposed on women were different than in the Faufreluches. “And you’d all make children with those snakes? Your water-fat families are crazy, Usul.”

Paul kept quiet. His father already had done such a thing unknowingly, and he was the child that resulted from that union.

Silence came between them, and the color went away from her face in an anxious flush.

“Was your vision of such a thing?” Chani looked distraught at the idea of sharing even a distaff echo of Paul with their enemies.

“No,” Paul said. “It was of that girl in her time beforehand, with the Weirding Women. She was our age; maybe it would have been even the exact same day and time as now. They were treating her terribly, and I don’t know what will happen to her. But… she has friends there, of different sorts. There’s strength among them.”

We’re both too young for this, Paul thought. Fifteen-year-olds shouldn’t rightly be dukes-in-exile with concubines and orgies and Terrible Purposes, or leered at and drugged by witches and forced to be brides of their Kanly enemies. He recalled his visions of the future Jihad, and how his relentless educations and birthrights made him the holder of the key to that same ugly future. There had to be some way to avoid it and still take his revenge. Somehow.

A slender arm tugged playfully at his side. “Well,” Chani said, “I’m glad that’s not what happened, Usul. Too many of those kinds of silly visions, and you won’t be taken seriously by the naibs. I’ll keep it secret.”

Paul let out an agreeing “mm” and stroked the back of Chani’s head as she dropped back under the covers. He started meticulously pulling out sticking details of the vision from his memory, as if deboning a fish.

“Mentats and Bene Gesserit alike rely on the intake of information for their tradecraft,” his mother once said to him. It felt a lifetime ago. They were in Castle Caladan in the library that day, a dark, cloudy one where there was no escape from the constant tutoring that followed him like a bad headache. She had found him watching a filmbook on some frivolous story, and began lecturing him about learning nothing from such a work. “Recognizing if something is pointless… that’s important, Paul. Fiction and dreams only matter as much as they can aid you in experiencing life. You’re a Duke’s son, and much is expected of your attention.”

No matter the source, it’s pointless to dwell on it, Paul thought. Closing his eyes again, he slunk down into bed, pulled the covers back over himself, and using his mess of skills and training washed away from his mind what little remained of the nightmare, entering deep sleep once again alongside his Sihaya.

Chapter 28 Selective Glossary

Grapefruit:

A terranic edible fruit from a hybrid of the orange and pomelo tree. Bred before the Little Disaspora on Old Earth and commonly found on temperate and tropical worlds in the Known Universe. Grapefruit juice is known for its ability to interfere with certain medicines such as statins and other chemicals in the bloodstream, similar to active charcoal.

Out-Freyn:

Galach for ‘immediately foreign.’ Often used to describe those outside of an in-group in general, or specifically those outside of the Faufreluches class system.

Chapter Text

Once, a woman bought a basket, and wished to know the strength of its handle. She hung it from a great stone archway just outside the basketweaver’s shop by a rope, and then filled it with stones and lead. The first time she did this, the rope broke on the knot, and the basket fell and was smashed upon the ground. So she found a stronger rope and bought another basket, and again, the basket was only destroyed when the rope was broken.

Beginning to get angry, she went out and found the strongest rope ever threaded, and bought a third basket, and tried to test it to destruction once more. This time, the archway itself collapsed under the weight before the basket broke, and a terrible mess was made.

“This is very strange,” said the woman to the basketweaver. “Do you think I am testing this the wrong way?”

“Yes,” The basketweaver said. “But it doesn’t matter anymore.”

The woman was perplexed. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you bought all of my baskets and my workshop’s now in ruins,” she said.

– The Brown Book, Parable 22 [Reformed Standardized Galach, ca. 13300s A.G.]

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

“So you’re not gonna eat anything?” Borte asked.

Yakoba shook her head. “No… I… I don’t think I can. My nerves are too aflutter.”

Borte shook her head– an explosion of red hair– and waved an apple in front of Yakoba’s face.

“Lass, you’re gonna get the shakes if you don’t get at least some sugar in your blood. And if you’re right, that’s the last thing you want before the test. Trust me, Yak.” Her tone almost sounded pleading.

“You’re right,” Yakoba sighed. She set Borte’s apple to the side of her bowl, and started fishing into the most agreeable parts of the lentil stew. A spoonful of lentils here, a least-soggy carrot there, and Yakoba found herself eating at a suddenly-ravenous pace.

It was nighttime on Dufa (or to Leo, nighttime on Karst), and the lunch hour inside the halls of the Eridanus Chapterhouse was colored with a somber tone that Thursday. Yakoba felt with a dead certainty that her Gom Jabbar Test was going to be at 1300 during her direct tutoring time with Proctor Myuller (why else her visit with Anax and Leo? Why else the woman’s aloofness at Monday’s lesson? she thought), and this certainty had started to cast a cloud over everything else in her rapidly dwindling life.

“Hey! You’re not gonna touch the apple?” Borte exclaimed. “Can I have–“

“No, I wanted to save that for last,” Yakoba said after swallowing a spoonful. “I don’t like mixing sweet with savory.”

“Sheesh, typical charity case,” Borte murmured, leaning back in her seat. “‘Oh, look at me, I’m Yak-o the Magnificent, I eat things in a certain order and only had to take Dining Etiquette once.’” The girl rolled her eyes. “Just eat the whole mess in one go! Nobody’s grading you, and it’ll all be the same in your belly in the end.”

“It tastes weird to do that, Borte!” Of all the chopping block conversations Yakoba thought she would have, this one managed to be stranger than all of them.

Borte pushed her empty plate to the side and sighed. “Suit yourself, princess.”

As if remembering something, the sunken-faced troublemaker looked around and leaned close. “Speaking of, I haven’t seen her in a day,” Borte whispered. “Not in any of the classes. I think something’s up– I’ll ask around and keep you in the loop, uh, after.”

Yakoba nodded. Maryam didn’t share any classes with her– at least, not now– and as much as she cared for her, she had an ordeal with a greenish box to worry about still. Helena, too, was absent from the dining hall, but that was already explained for.

Yakoba put her near-finished bowl of soup to the side and bit into the apple.

“I. Um. Don’t have anything more I can tell you,” Borte said. “I can’t help you any. You just have to live.”

“It’s all right, Borte.” Yakoba said after swallowing a bite.

All the things Proctor Myuller had said, about desires to live being greater than fears of death and the troubles of free will, had started to interleaf with Anax’s assurances of her competence and that she had already passed one Gom Jabbar Test already in asserting her true self. It was a mess of aphorisms all dancing around a central theme of choosing the moment. The moment, though, seemed to be choosing her.

She took another bite. Her left hand still hurt a little after Helena had squeezed it, earlier that morning. Yakoba’s cellmate had said nothing as they got ready for the day, but sensed something enough that, just as Yakoba made to leave for classes, the girl had caught her hand.

“Please, come back safe,” was all the pudgy girl said. She had hugged her tightly once more, and then almost pushed the taller girl out of their cell.

Back in the present, Yakoba stood up. It was almost time to leave anyways.

“My class is, uh, the other way.” Borte said. She sounded sad. “I can be late, though– let me just follow you.”

Yakoba shook her head. “You’re late too much, Borte,” she said. “This far is fine enough.”

Borte nodded, and, after confirming there were no proctors skulking around the dining hall, suddenly held Yakoba tight in a hug of her own.

“Yak… I don’t know what will happen,” Borte said. Her voice had no signs of a sob– just perfectly conveyed and controlled sorrow.

Yakoba held her back just as tightly. “Me neither. If… if I don’t…”

“Don’t say that!” Borte growled.

“No, I’m being… being responsible,” Yak said. “You can have my stuff. But please, no matter what, don’t forget me and keep on living, all right?”

Borte stared at her with a wistful yet ear-to-ear grin. “Same to you, dork. Don’t- don’t pop in there! I was gonna name one of my kids after you anyways, and I don’t wanna be sad when I yell at them.”

“That’s, um. Kind of you,” Yakoba chuckled. She squeezed Borte one last time, and the two of them let go of each other simultaneously.

With a tired, sorrowful smile, Yakoba waved goodbye to Borte, and for the last time walked out of the dining hall as an animal.

‘I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.’

Yakoba knew the Litany Against Fear well– she had memorized it at a young age, and after she had been locked away by her father, it had practically become her prayer before going to bed. Here, in the bowels of the Order which had spread it across the Known Universe, she had finally started to understand why it was originally created.

Discipline and fear were almost synonymous within the Chapterhouse walls. Punishments and regimentation were used to shape initiates into proper Sisters, and lesser versions of those punishments were meted out to lay students as needed. But no ordeal was as feared as the one deemed most necessary for creating adepts: the box and the needle, and the fatalizing, liminal experience it represented. The Litany was made under such necessities: to flush any excess fear from the adept’s mind and leave just the discipline that had been marinating within it.

The Bene Gesserit may have trained students in an environment of fear, but they intended to create fearless women unbound by anything save devotion to the Order.

But I want to be human, not to be loyal, Yakoba reminded herself.

As Yakoba rounded the corner towards the Microfiche Library, she saw an expected night terror walking the other direction in the middle of the hallway. It was a Bene Gesserit Sister, her shape swaddled in a black robe and the face covered by an impenetrable black veil.

(Not again!) an inner voice moaned. Yakoba ignored the feeling and curtsied in front of the figure.

“Initiate Yakoba Herstal?” the figure in black asked. Despite the controlled tone, she had the feeling that the figure was not expecting Yakoba to have anticipated her there.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “What will you have of me?”

“I bring you to nothing but pain, Initiate. Now, follow me.”

The rest of the walk down to Proctor Myuller’s office was short. The Microfiche library was still darkened from yesterday’s security sweep, but a pale light shone from the translucent window on the office door.

The shrouded sister walked over to the door and stood next to it. She then spoke, a hollow voice she could not match to any of her proctors:

“The Bene Gesserit does not readily lean on ceremony in its training. But within this room is a lesson and an ordeal that has become, by necessity, one of our few ceremonies. Do not mistake the ritual elements for the ordeal. Within the room, do not laugh, do not smile, and do not speak unless spoken to. Do not speak of what you see in here, or make light of it.”

(That’s out of order,) the Other voice chimed in. (There is an order, right?)

Yakoba nodded, and the sister opened the door. Inside of Proctor Myuller’s office, the desk and other junk had all been pushed into the corners or put away, save for the box and filmbook on the windowsill. In the middle of the room, at the very center of all those scratch marks in the floor, now stood a portable white pedestal with a green metallic box placed neatly on top of it. Next to the box was a small thin black case.

The door closed behind her.

Two figures were in the room: another, more familiar shadow-sister in ritual robes, and Proctor Superior Mother Puleng, sitting like a venerable sack of potatoes in Proctor Myuller’s most comfortable office chair. The Reverend Mother was wearing a simple black robe and pillbox hat just like the few times Yakoba had seen her in the past.

Flustered, Yakoba curtsied. “Your Reverence, um– I’m honored to see you.”

“Don’t mind me, child,” Puleng said. “I’m here to watch.” She smiled, and her eyes flitted to the shade standing at attention in front of them.

“Welcome, Initiate Yakoba,” said the veiled Sister. The voice– soft, but resonant– was unmistakably Proctor Myuller’s.

“Uh, hello, ma’am.” Do I pretend that I don’t know who she is? Yakoba thought.

“Initiate– you have studied with the Bene Gesserit for close to two years. You have learned the foundation of the Way, and much of our methods. We are here today to test your humanity.”

Yakoba curtsied again. “I’m… ready, Pr– I mean, Ma’am.”

The Shadow-Myuller nodded and then turned to look at their ancient witness. “We’re joined by our Proctor Superior, Her Reverence Mother Puleng, today. Your Reverence, are there any words you would wish to share with the initiate before we begin?”

“You know, I think we could get away with introducing white robes for the girls during the Test,” Mother Puleng rambled. “Budget-wise, I mean. I know Chapterhouse finally standardized it for all their abbeys.”

After a confused pause, Shadow-Myuller spoke. “White robes have been standard for some time on Wallach Nine, Your Reverence.”

Mother Puleng chuckled. “True, true– that was what, thirty or forty years ago? A blink of an eye in the long run, Proctor. Ah!” She snapped her fingers, but only a thwip of loose leather on leather came. “You graduated to Novice in ’hundred-forty-nine at about this lass’s age! That’d make you of one of the last classes to slum it like here, then, eh?”

The proctor froze like a statue, the folds of her ceremonial robe shifting over her thin frame. “Yes, Your Reverence. But… shouldn’t we focus on Initiate Yakoba’s test?”

“Right, right!” the Reverend Mother said. She tapped the side of her nose and kept a coy expression on her face. “Carry on, Sister.”

Proctor Myuller moved over to the plinth.

“Initiate, stand before me,” the Proctor said.

Yakoba nodded, and by her will alone she moved there to be tested.

“Teachers. Professors. Mentors. Initiate Yakoba: do you know why the educators within the Bene Gesserit are known as Proctors, and not as any of those?”

The girl nodded. “I know without it ever being taught to me, Ma’am… um, as the difference would imply, like–”

The proctor interrupted, saving Yakoba from fumbling elaboration. “Exactly. Every Bene Gesserit must always be learning how to learn, guiding themselves to learn… an eternal process. And so ultimately, the proctors of the Bene Gesserit only teach you how to learn the Way, not the Way itself. They may guide, monitor, and discipline, but the process of learning is…”

She paused, her voice now slightly softer. “…ultimately up to the student.”

Proctor Myuller then reasserted her authoritative air and raised her voice to almost a shout. “Initiate Yakoba! Show us what strength and humanity you have learned! Put your hand in the box, if you would.”

The girl slipped her right hand into the inky void, palm downwards. The border of the black occluder felt like a cloud’s shadow on a dying autumn day– a change in temperature more mental than actual.

The Proctor opened the small black case, and retrieved a capped needle mounted inside a larger, pen-sized rod from inside. In a single motion, she flicked back the protective sheath and held its point over a vein in Yakoba’s neck.

“I… hold at your neck the Gom Jabbar,” Myuller said. “The ‘high handed enemy.’ It is coated with a potent neurotoxin that will cause instant death. But. It kills only animals.”

“The test is simple,” she continued. “Remove your hand from the box, and you die an animal. Keep your hand in the box, despite the false pain, and you live a human.”

Yakoba took a deep breath and steadied herself. “I… I’m ready, ma’am.”

“You will feel a tingling at first. Then pain. Endure, Initiate.”

With that, Myuller went silent,

The nerve induction began with an unpleasant pins-and-needles feeling, as if her hand had fallen asleep. The uncomfortable tingling then became sharper, sharper, hotter– a mix of fire and sharp needles digging into every nerve ending inside the box.

Stay calm, she told herself. The pain stops just at the black line, see?

(Easier said than felt!) an Other’s thought intruded.

The pain increased– a slicing, popping, burning, as if she had stuck her hand into a box filled with broken glass and fireworks. The pain! Yakoba winced, and decided to keep her eyes on the Proctor’s obscured face, rather than look at the box.

Further still the pain increased– the urge to withdraw grew in magnitude, and her limbic system screamed that blood should be absolutely flowing out of her stump still inside the box.

“Agh!” She shouted.

Her breathing became more forced, more gasps than not– she had to re-center herself, and quick!

With great effort, Yakoba regained control of her breathing: a shuddering inhale, a wincing, hissing exhale, but regular in its own form. She could do this– she could control it!

(Wait for the real kicker,) the intrusion said.

The pain increased yet again, and a feeling of all-in-one and one-in-all agony shot through Yakoba’s palm. She whimpered as it knocked the wind out of her, but she quickly re-asserted her deep breathing, now almost a polyrhythm that guided her through the ordeal. Was there an end to it? She must be done soon, she had shown she could ignore the Agony Box–

“She flinched!” Mother Puleng shouted.

Yakoba was thrown back into the present moment and froze. Who did? She didn’t move her arm– at least, she didn’t think she did.

In an instant, the pain inside the Agony Box subsided. Proctor Myuller tore off her veil with her free hand and turned to look at the Proctor Superior. Her face was now painted with a furious, anguished look.

“Which of us, Proctor Superior, are you insinuating failed?” she said with a hiss.

Mother Puleng leaned forwards in the chair. “I’m insinuating that there was a lack of discipline. At least one of you needs to have it for humanity to be tested, Proctor.”

She’s being deliberately ambiguous, Yakoba thought. Why? Did I fail? This uncertainty’s worse than death!

“Proctor Emal, you know what is expected of you” the old woman chided. “A seriousness is needed of the instructor, or else the initiate herself will not treat it with the proper mindset.”

She leaned back. “Your will is divided. Even I can see that all the way from here.”

Proctor Myuller kept the Gom Jabbar on Yakoba’s neck, her emotions now hidden behind her usual stern mask again. “So. What exactly would you ask of me, Your Reverence?”

“Do it with the resolve to properly test her, Sister Emal. And this time, finish the job.”

Yakoba winced, ready for the pain to resume– whether from the Agony Box, or the Gom Jabbar. This was it– her final test, her final moment, everything suspended between life and death within a box, like the cat from the ancient physics experiment–

And before Yakoba could register what was going on, Proctor Myuller pulled the Gom Jabbar away from her neck.

“I won’t do it,” Emal said.

She capped her needle and threw it onto the ground, a dull tak-tak clattering on the varnished wood.

“Not again. Never again. And never, ever, ever, to her,” she said through bared teeth.

Mother Puleng pulled her body upwards from her folded slump and grinned. “What? Speak up, Sister Emal. I think I might have heard some strange disobedience from you.”

Proctor Emal swatted the Agony Box off of the plinth, and it clattered to a stop at Mother Puleng’s feet.

“You’re damned right I’m being insubordinate, Puleng Zhu!” she shouted. “You’ve tried to break me all this time? Well, here I am, broken! Are you disappointed I didn’t break a different way?”

“Proctor Emal…” Mother Puleng growled, her voice now low. “I’m warning you, girl. Continue unraveling like you are, and this will not be something that I can paper over.”

Yakoba’s teacher ignored the Proctor Superior and laughed as she paced her office. Her voice was half-manic. “I should have started saying ‘no’ years ago! Wouldn’t have helped those girls any, but I wouldn’t be showing up as bacteria or in some exquisite, well-deserved Hell with the rest of you all in my next life!”

As her teacher continued to shout, Yakoba’s thoughts became disjointed: a mess of newfound yet old experiences, and no context or set neural pathways to any of them. Some sort of– she’d seen this before, hadn’t she?

But it couldn’t have been her. Emal looked so much younger back then, she thought. The woman cursing in front of them couldn’t have been the girl who had been berated by proctors for disobedience just a few weeks ago in her memories. That was Borte, right? No, no– Borte never got disciplined for elaborate smuggling schemes.

(Why is Emal in the test room?) an Other’s thought intruded.

Proctor Emal stepped towards the Proctor Superior and ripped off her black robe. Underneath she was wearing one of her usual austere black dresses, but she now had a faded old blue-and-white ribbon tied in a bow around its collar.

“If you wish to punish me, Puleng, do it,” she challenged. “I’m through hiding under your graces. You want to kill her? Torture her? Better do it yourself. And you’ll have to get past me first.”

Mother Puleng slid down from the chair and pointed with her cane, a blast of ancient authority carrying with her mortal words. “Need I remind you, Proctor Major, that Initiate Yakoba’s life is the Order’s and the Order’s alone?”

The Proctor stopped with her back to Yakoba and clenched her fists. She trembled, though whether it was from the Proctor Superior’s use of the Voice or her internal thoughts was unclear to the girl.

“… Damn you,” the woman whispered.

“Damn me?” Mother Puleng scoffed. “I’ll add it to my intake pile; I have about a decade of damnations to process still, Proctor Major.”

She raised her eyebrows– more a shifting of her raisin-face’s wrinkles than a look that could be read as bemusement. “Proctor Major, yes– Unless, of course, you wish to change your current faculty status, Emal-girl?”

“I daresay I will!” the Proctor shouted. “I’ve had more than enough of this– idiotic slaughter repackaged as wisdom!”

“Daresay!” Mother Puleng parroted. She looked Yakoba in the eyes, the girl still trembling from her torture and the fight now raging around her. “You there, girl. Did you hear that? The Proctor Major dare-says!”

“No! Not a Proctor anymore!” Sister Emal screamed. “Consider this my official letter of resignation, Puleng, if not my request for expulsion!”

She pointed at Yakoba. “And that girl is the notary for my letter! Because she’s going to survive whatever extra torture you put onto her, and we will see her alive, tomorrow! Or, Great Mother so help me, I’ll–”

“Emal!” the Proctor Superior shouted. “I will not discuss this any further in front of an initiate. If you weren’t such a congenitally furious little wench, I’d instruct you to go and practice the meditation of peace.” The old woman paused to wheeze deeply before continuing: “But I suppose you can just wear yourself out in a tantrum instead. Wait in your private quarters for further instructions… and discipline.”

“Discipline! Oh, that takes me back,” Emal taunted as she circled back to her office door. “I think I can teach the lasses in the detention hall a thing or two about real unsisterly conduct, eh? It was a mistake to ever remove that tracking probe from my clavicle, that’s for sure.”

Puleng took in a deep breath, and then commanded at the top of her lungs: “Emal, go!”

The shout was deafening, and Yakoba felt herself quake in her already-weakened knees at the sound. It was more than just the Voice: it was a terrible shout imbued with a mastery of those principles, and even if she was not the target, she still could feel the effect like it was a groundcar speeding a centimeter past her face.

Emal, the target, stood firm even as the agitation in her face was flushed away. Behind the anger was fear and heartbreak– a look of someone who had lost far, far too many people and far too many opportunities for happiness. Yakoba had seen this face before, both last night, and in its early prototype on a muggy noonday many, many years before– or, to her, also just yesterday. Her head felt more and more muddled.

A new thought intruded into Yakoba’s head as she looked at the old woman: (You never had a life of your own, did you, Emal?)

The Ex-Proctor looked back at her with sorrow as she opened the door, her hand clawing for the door handle half of its own will. With what seemed like heroic effort, she whispered some last words to Yakoba:

“Yakoba– I’m sorry. May fortune take you where I could not.”

With that, Emal turned and slammed the door shut behind her.

Still unmoved, Mother Puleng looked at Yakoba with an incomprehensible smile. As the girl regained control of her breathing and the blood in her ears slowed back to a regular pace, the silence in the room became an uncertain and deafening roar.

Puleng kept that smile as she walked over to Yakoba, and then stopped in front of her.

“Sister Emal always took on heavy burdens…” she rasped, glancing over at the windowsill and the box there. “Too many of them. Emotional and existential constipation. Not exactly the most adroit at learning to flow with life: instead, just suffering it. Trying to smash years of training into middling students in just a few weeks, over and over and over…”

Mother Puleng looked back at Yakoba. “How many times has it been, now?” she asked rhetorically. “You must be her two-hundred-and-seventh.”

“I– Um– Y– Your Reverence, she–”

“Eh?” Mother Puleng mockingly put a hand up to her ear. “Is a girl-child going to judge my judgement? Test a few ones of your own, stand outside a few doors with screams coming from them… say a few goodbyes a little too late… then finish that sentence! Now hush.”

The old woman tottered over to the Agony Box, and with a deft motion scooped it up from where it laid before tossing it onto the padded chair in front of Sister Emal’s desk. Leaning on her cane like an ornithopter yoke, she spun around and stared straight back into Yakoba’s brown eyes with her rheumy ones, a chiding expression now on her face.

“And we’re not done with you here yet, child. Reprise! Encore! Once more, from the top, with feeling!”

“Y-yes, Your Reverence,” Yakoba said. The shock of resuming her test had not yet been processed into dread. “Do I sit in the other chair?”

“You kneel! I can’t reach your neck from down here, that’s for sure. You want comfort during your Gom Jabbar Test?” Her smile now showed glints of her stone tablet-like teeth. “That’s, well. Not allowed, sweeting.”

Yakoba glanced at her right hand. In the chaos of Emal’s departure, she didn’t have a chance to marvel at its pristine survival. Again? she lamented, and the fear started to fester.

Recalling the Litany, she pushed the growing feeling of dread through herself, and only she– and some half-buried Other within her– remained.

Yakoba dropped to her knees in front of Mother Puleng, and after the Proctor Superior settled back into the chair, the girl stuck her hand into the box that she held on her lap.

“Compliant! I’m surprised you were found worthy of such attachment by Emal-girl,” the Reverend Mother wheezed. “Perhaps there’s a bit of a nostalgic element in her affinity for you?”

“Your Reverence… um, so she doesn’t work with students like me?”

“Sometimes– look at that perfectly ordinary Odette, for example. Emal’s always been a troublemaker drawn to troublemakers, though,” Mother Puleng barked, crinkling her nose even more. “Back even before I knew her. But you’re different than Odette or that whatshisname pilot hotshot! More pathetic, in both senses of the word. Unless she sees something I don’t, hmm?”

Yakoba felt that cut from the Reverend Mother. She remained silent and waited for the agony to begin again.

“You know the drill. We’re starting now,” the crone said.

A second poison needle at her neck, a slow tingling in her hand once more, and Yakoba began feeling the telltale beginnings of now very imaginable pain.

As the box cut its ghost-knives into her hand, she wheezed as if the wind was knocked out of her. In her more morbid thoughts, Yakoba had sometimes wondered if the Gom Jabbar Test would be easier if someone had to take it a second time.

It was not.

Mother Puleng increased the torture slowly. Sputtering through half-closed lips, Yakoba re-centered herself and flexed her free hand and legs, doing her best not to move her trapped hand, if not ignore the agony she was feeling.

The burning! The Reverend Mother raised the pain levels further and further still, and they soon moved past where Emal had tested her.

The girl felt as if her body would give out: I can’t– I have to– I can’t, she kept repeating like a mantra. I have to live! She thought of Anax’s words, of Maryam’s request, of Helena and Leo.

Puleng increased the pain level one final time, and held it there for what felt like an eternity.

Suddenly, the flesh-rending fire inside seemed, for a brief second, to dull and the world to grow silent and dark. She was starting to faint! Quickly, Yakoba overrode her instinct to fall and forced herself to remain conscious, as if a soldier with a mortal wound.

Around her, the pain returned, and what felt like every part of her body and mind were immanent in exquisite torture: like a clockwork body encased under glass skin. Deep breaths, shuddering though they were, now came from the base of her diaphragm.

“Well! You’ve acclimated, child, and just on your second go with the Agony Box,” Puleng sniffed. “You’re in what’s known as the ‘Clarifying Agony.’ Very difficult stressed meditative position. One that’s used by us Reverend Mothers to… discipline wiggly ancestral memories, or to help perform a Sygyzy Leap. But that’s another thing entirely.”

The pain was clarifying to Yakoba, in a sense– a sort of centering, almost seductive rhythm within the trance, like a physical feeling of the anguish she felt back when she was stuck in the clothes of a prodigal son. But the burning, the torture, was also enough to keep her regular breathing still in a gasping, hissing breath. Her heart still felt like it was about to explode.

Puleng ignored her discomfort.

“I’m going to tell you some fun little facts, child. Are you familiar with… gholas, Initiate? Nod yes or no.”

Yakoba shook her head– a minute twitch back and forth, and her neck and the needle balanced there stayed so still as to be timeless.

“Hah! I like you, child! Anyways, gholas. Monstrous, pitiful things. They’re dead people. ‘Rejuvenated’ from a corpse, or reborn as a clone outside any natural womb, using Tleilaxu technology so closely guarded that it must be obscene.”

Yakoba ground her teeth with enough force that her sinuses ached. The pain!

The Proctor superior took another breath. “One problem, though. They don’t have the memories of their past life. It’s always been the stupid hope of every poor spouse, or child, or parent that spent their life’s savings to get a ghola from those freaks that theirs is the one, the first one to do so.”

“Why– ah–” Yakoba fought back a scream from her throat.

“Now, Initiate. I know you’ve got that big brain of yours,” Puleng taunted. “Let me finish and you can figure it out on your own time after this.”

The old woman smiled. “Now, a long time ago, some too-bright-for-their-own-good women started thinking: we don’t need the body, we just need the memories, by hook or by crook. We know there’s no reason this couldn’tbe possible, child. It’s just a matter of anchoring an old ego-memory hanging loose in the nousphere to a physical key, whether it be biological or mechanical. And then finding a genetically- and psychologically-open lock that can fit it.”

The knife-edge of a suppressed memory cut Yakoba: on the heighliner, after yet another stop, undergoing yet another set of medical exams and immunizations. Was it one of those injections? One of those devices she was hooked up to? That panic was too much to dwell on amidst the pain.

Yakoba– that name, her name– came afterwards, during a shuddering, sleepless night.

Mother Puleng, now winded, took a second to catch her breath. Her needle was still balanced perfectly on Yakoba’s skin.

“So: these ladies started running experiments. But Bene Gesserit experiments are on timetables of millennia, sweeting. Often catch-and-release for our subject populations. Remember that. Long-dead ladies. Only their Ego-Memories and neatly-filed instructions, and those are on the test planets and put into those endlessschedules for prospective Sisters.”

“Why– why now?” Yakoba gasped. It was all agony! Singular agony!

“Why now?” Puleng crowed. “Well! We’re following a little addendum of a script that was ancient before my great-grandmother had her first bleed. I couldn’t care less about it. But rules are rules, especially to a Proctor Superior.”

“Now, pop quiz under death-alternative conditions: what’s missing from the ceiling here?” Puleng’s Voice felt like shovels digging up a grave.

(Why does the room look different?) the Other’s thought came. (Shouldn’t it be… nicer? With–)

“Stars,” Yakoba grunted. “Con… stellat-agh!”

“Good! But don’t belabor the point, sweeting. That’s what you’ve got in common with Sister Emal. Too many fancy words, not enough will to serve.”

Yakoba glared. For a second, the pain seemed to dull again, her body seeming distant.

“Proctor Myuller– ‘s stronger than any of you,” she gasped. Then the pain came back, strong as ever, a needle still pressed against her neck.

Puleng laughed– a single wheezing cackle from her chest. “Proctor? You heard Sister Emal herself, right? She’s resigned. Family nature got the better of her. Couldn’t hack it as a teacher of the Way.” 

The Agony Box felt like it was just smashing atoms around inside of it– nothing but fissile, disembodied pain.

“Well, well, young lady! That’s certainly some loyalty you have to Emal-girl,” the Reverend Mother said mockingly. “But that loyalty’s misplaced. How did she transfix you in just a month? She didn’t give you the time of day in your remedials this past year until you really fouled up, eh?”

“Emal’s– the– only proctor here who’s– who’s given a damn about me! About any of us!” Yakoba shouted.

Mother Puleng cast her eyes all around Yakoba’s face, then shouted back:

“Silence, Girl! Emal is just Emal. She should be nothing to you– she’s old, she’s all spent after a long age as a concubine and a sybarite and a crank, and she’ll be thrown out at my first opportunity!”

The two of them stopped.

(Who are you?) each one said to the other.

Yakoba felt the pain in the Agony Box suddenly cease, and the Proctor Superior pulled away her poison needle. Through the girl’s dazed, unfocused, eyes, the old woman’s face was an expressionless brownstone expanse of crags and wrinkles.

“Kull Wahad! That took longer than I would have thought,” the Reverend Mother murmured. “Pity I couldn’t practice ahead of time. Those batty women… what good’s a ‘proof of concept’ if the one in a billion chance is just for a mediocrity?”

Yakoba slumped over in a daze and her hand slipped out of the Agony Box, unharmed yet permanently changed. Even though she had been kneeling, her legs felt like they had given out entirely.

(I… I died… No, that’s a silly idea,) Yakova said. (This is all just a strange dream.)

Mother Puleng slid down from the chair and moved over to the two of them as she rambled. “Get some rest, child… or children. We’re in uncharted territory I care not to map. I’ll send for your dear Proctor and let her know of your humanity; I don’t want a faculty murder-suicide like she implied.”

She bent down closer to Yakoba’s face. “That does bring up a good question, though. What is that Emal-girl to you, now?”

“I… I don’t…” Yakoba said weakly. She was falling, falling, further into her own soul, past some other, less exhausted, bundle of memories and self.

Already half-asleep, Yakova Kotler closed her eyes. After four decades, she was finally done with her test.

Chapter 29 Selective Glossary

Sygyzy Leap:

A difficult and uncommon set of secondary ordeals developed by Reverend Mothers of the Bene Gesserit Order. The Sygyzy Leap is a stressed meditative state that uses awareness-spectrum narcotics and self-torture to circumvent the mental blocks related to accessing male genetic memories and instead ‘skip over’ their father’s genetic memories, giving them access to their patrilineal grandmother’s line of matrilineal memories. Subsequent Sygyzy Leaps across other male ancestors become an order of magnitude more difficult the further back the generation, with the Reverend Mother’s risk of abomination, catatonia, or death increasing proportionally.

Chapter Text

Where am I?

– Subsumed Mana-Consciousness Yakoba Herstal, Uncollected Thoughts

Somewhere Else, Some Time Later

Yakova fell, down and down and down through a timeless nothing, past strange dreams and the pains of others, until she woke up with a gasp in an infirmary bed.

Yakova flexed her hands and feet. It felt as if she was trying to learn to move again after every muscle had fallen asleep for a long, long time. Her body’s nerves had a fiery tingle and were slow to respond, and her right hand barely had any feeling in it. She felt thirsty, hungry, and more than a little faint.

Slowly, she sat up in the bed and rubbed her neck– no sign of a pinprick on her skin, but the feeling of its sharp point stuck milimeters into her was still echoing like a phantom pain, even if it was finally fading.

Was she dead? Was this the afterlife? The dim light from the window only made her new surroundings more unnerving than anything.

She looked around. From where she sat, the only things she could see was a cabinet marked “Medical Equipment,” a cart labeled “Cleaning Supplies,” and a few posters on the walls: bodies and body parts labeled with prana-bindu line pathways, diagrams of the brain and the rest of the nervous systems, and inspirational propaganda illustrating Bene Gesserit Coda quotations.

Wait. Even here, even after getting stuck with the Gom Jabbar, she was still inside the bowels of the Sisterhood?

So, this really is hell, she thought.

She took a look at her ‘dead’ hand. There was nothing truly wrong with how it looked, but… it resisted moving, as if it was still asleep, or as if it hesitated to obey. The hand that I put in the Agony Box! Yakova cursed. I’ve been crippled for life by them!

Yakova paused, alarm growing inside her. This isn’t my hand. It was longer, subtly broader, stronger, with no dried-out calluses from dishwashing duty. The hand’s skin tone was slightly darker– I couldn’t have been given a suntan while d– er, asleep, she thought.

Am I in someone else’s body? Yakova wondered. Nobody else seemed to be within her mind alongside her, at least from what she could feel.

Thoughts tried and failed to coalesce as Yakova swung her legs out of the bed. What had happened? She reviewed: pain from the Agony Box, then the needle in her neck, then… no! forget that! she cursed. Then: more pain– Emal being there for some reason, and causing a fit on her behalf, but to no avail. After that: even more pain, as if she was being pulled inside-out through her old neck-wound– and then unconsciousness, yet a rush back to moving time after an impossibly long forever spent frozen.

Speaking of long: Yakova saw that she had long, long legs, and a tall body on top of them. She felt like a giant. Who gave her this body? Was it… hers, now?

There was a medical mirror in sight, but it frustratingly angled away from her. Yakova moved to face it, dreading to see what her body– maybe still her original, but distorted by surgeries after she went under– looked like.

A cautious step towards the mirror and a strange feeling between her legs revealed to Yakova that her Downstairs Situation was not what she had expected, and she froze in shock and disgust.

Wait, am I in a man’s body? she panicked.

In a rush, she jumped in front of the mirror– and a very haggard-looking girl with loose, dirty-blonde hair stared back at her. The face had a rounded, feminine diamond shape. It looked bony, robust, and underfed compared to the rounder one Yakova was used to, but it thankfully had just a few flecks of ghost-pale hair on the chin, and only a slight Adam’s Apple submerged on the throat. Only the face’s full eyebrows and a bit of the eye socket’s shape seemed to be anywhere close to her ‘old’ face.

The body was hidden under a different (yet familiar enough) Chapterhouse school uniform, but… well, it was thinner than her old body, and based on its chest and how the fabric hung on the rest of it, probably more conventionally attractive under it all. A mystery for later, Yak! she reminded herself.

She made a few faces in the mirror before finally breathing a sigh of relief.

Well, I’m still a girl, she thought. Just with some, uh, anatomy issues. It could have gone worse.

Yakova wondered briefly if some other person had this body before her, and whether she was now possessing them as an Ego-Memory. But she never had children, that was for sure, and this body looked far too young to be a Reverend Mother’s. No, no– this was her body, and there wasn’t any good reason that it was ever somebody else’s.

The sound of a thump from nearby made Yakova jump straight up in fright. After landing with less-than-perfect grace, she moved cautiously out of the sick room and the hallway to see what it was.

She was in an infirmary, that was for certain– and it looked like she had woken while it was in its sleeping hours. The windows in the rooms she passed faced the same direction and looked out onto a barren landscape, with the glint of a white-orange dawn cresting the horizon.

Yakova heard another round of clatters and thumps, and ducked into an empty, dry, and clammy storage room.

She glanced at the shelves around her. On them there were packages from all over the Imperium– Ecaz, Shahat, Rossak, on and on, and more than a few with a Guild Postage-free address marked from ‘207 Counter’s Street, Meatpacking District, Kubileya’– a city here! she thought. Conspicuously far back on one shelf, there was a small box inside a cage chained to the wall with a double palm lock on it. With a Harkonnen griffin stamped onto the side and ‘Arrakis’ neatly printed on a half-visible packaging slip, its contents were obvious.

She looked closer. All of these packages, with varying tiers of Guild sidereal postal codes and addresses preceding it, were commonly addressed to ‘Eridanus Chapterhouse Campus, Medical Wing.’

A sinking feeling settled inside her already-hungry belly. She was alive, yes, but she was still trapped inside the Sisterhood. This all but confirmed it. Am I an experiment? She thought. Never mind that, I need to focus on getting out.

Yakova stuck her head into the other rooms. Just as lucky as usual– there was no way out of the medical wing without going past the source of the noise. With caution and more than a little dread, Yakova stepped quietly into the room.

Inside the room at the end of the hallway was a set of long, immaculately-clean laboratory tables, with cabinets and refrigerators built below and on top of them. On the right side of the room, out of sight from the hallway was a small walk-in wet-chem room, walled off with a pru-sterilizer barrier instead of a door between the two rooms.

Inside the wet room, a Sister with a stained white apron was cleaning and wiping down a set of glassware in a discolored sink. She was taller than most women Yakova had seen, and looked to be filling out from stress and the start of middle age. Her brown hair was barely held back under a kerchief that was just as black as the dress under her apron.

Yakova crept further into the room, eyes fixed on the back of this woman– undoubtedly an Apothecary. The smell of cleaning alcohol was everywhere, even in the ‘dry’ parts of the lab, and the dissonant soft buzzing that came from a badly-kept occluder or pru-barrier sounded throughout the room like a ringing in the ear.

Just as she reached the middle of the room, Yakoba stumbled over her unfamiliar legs and feet– her flats clattering on the chemical-stained floor like a startled gazelle.

The woman immediately spoke without looking back at her. 

“So! You’re finally up, Yakoba!” the apothecary shouted from the wet room. She continued to fastidiously wipe down her glassware as she talked. “Congrats are in order, then, for beating the odds.”

Yakoba? Yakova thought. Why does she know my name? Do… did I just forget I was tall and uh… endowed, or did I get a new body or something? Is this a dream, too?

Yakova cleared her throat– it was dry and gummed-up, like after a bad nap. “Uh… how long was I asleep?” she said in a deeper, unfamiliar voice.

“One and thirteen-twenty-fourths days,” the woman replied, turning her head to look at her. “Your proctor had you dropped off here after you fainted. Apparently, it was as close to an edge case as you can get in a coin toss like the Test… but a human’s a human, as they say.”

“So… I lived?” Yakova said.

The woman raised an eyebrow. “Funny thing to say, Yakoba. Yes, for… now at the least.”

Yakova scratched the side of her skirt. It hung higher on her body than she was used to.

The apothecary turned around and kept prattling as if she was waiting for Yakoba to give her a response. “You are staying in the Order, aren’t you?” she pestered. “You’ve come a long way in two years for a cross-gender student– one of the sharper minds I’ve seen, aside from myself at your age. Even if you’re only second quartile on Adept skills, of course…”

“I– uh–” I could leave? They let girls do that? And I was born a boy? This is a lot.

The woman cocked her head to the side. “Is anything wrong, Yak? You seem… off in some way.”

“Ah!” Yakova stammered. “Well… uh… no. I um, don’t really feel myself.” That’s enough a truth to not put me in suspicion, she thought.

The woman frowned and set down her half-cleaned glassware. As she walked out of the wet lab, she pulled off her rubber gloves and tossed them onto a tray with a motion like a lizard shedding a skin layer.

“Hold still, Yak. Let me have a quick look,” she said as she kept walking towards her.

Without breaking eye contact, the apothecary clasped one of Yakova’s shoulders and the nape of her neck.

Yakova was stunned. “Um… yes, ma’am,” she said, long after it could have mattered.

The apothecary blinked. “Yakoba, I know you just woke up, but please don’t slack on your voice training. You picked it up two weeks earlier than most,” she chided.

“What does the Voice have to do with this?” Yakova asked.

The apothecary frowned, her bright red lips looking uncanny on her otherwise plain face.

“You are addled, lass…” she murmured. “I mean pitch and timbre training, Yakoba. Overcoming your virilized larynx using basic body control.” She continued to stare into Yakova’s eyes, her hands still unmoving, before continuing: “Not the Voice. Unless Proctor Myuller was a miracle-worker, you’re a year or more off from Aperta, let alone Subtilis.”

The apothecary sighed. “Something’s strange with you since your test… but you said that yourself.” She dropped her hands onto her hips, a worried look now on her face.

Yakova noticed that despite her casual barbs and Bene Gesserit aloofness, the Apothecary-Sister had a familiar tone in how she talked to her. Some kind of friend, or at least a mentor? she guessed.

Then, a shock: Wait! Proctor Myuller? Yakova’s mind raced. Doesn’t Emal’s mother go by her bloodline instead? I better just keep playing along like I know this apothecary for now, she thought.

“Stay with me, lass!” the woman intruded. A hint of a worried quaver was now in her voice. “What’s the Standard Calendar year? Who’s the Emperor?”

How long have I been… well, gone? Yakova panicked. It had been 10147, at least if her memory could be trusted, but… there were no calendars or conspicuous dates anywhere in the rooms she had looked through. She decided to take a stab at things.

“Ten-One… Fifty-Seven?” she winced. “And… Elrood… the… Tenth?”

The apothecary shook her head, keeping direct eye contact the whole time.

“Speaking with a mentat’s credentials? Prime projection: something wrong happened during your Gom Jabbar Test, Yakoba.”

“But, I did–”

“What’s my name? Say it!” the woman shouted.

“I… I don’t know!” Yakova said, shrinking back from her.

Yakova stumbled as she stepped back– her body’s center of gravity was higher than she was used to, and she felt herself start flailing out of control.

Before she could fall, the woman grabbed her wrist– that half-dead hand’s wrist– and steadied her.

She stared into Yakova’s eyes with a deathly-serious look.  “Please, Yakoba, you… this is not a regular reaction to the Agony Box. Or even one I’ve read of.”

Yakova was still dazed. “Could… could I, um, go back to my cell for the night? Come back here tomorrow?” she said, half of herself.

The woman let go of her arm and shook her head again.

“Yak, I’m sorry, but I need to keep you here for now. I’ll send messages to your Floor Advisor and Proctor Myuller, but I’m not letting you back into your regular schedule until this amnesia is dealt with.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Or… whatever it is.”

Yakova moved her body’s hand up, and clutched at the base of her hood. “You said… you said Proctor Myuller dropped me off? Is that right?” she asked.

“Well, she had one of the other apothecaries drop you off here.” The Sister waved her hand dismissively and picked up a bottle of isopropanol and a rag. “You were out cold in her office– where you had your test.”

The woman, now doubled over an already-pristine lab table, kept explaining as went back to her cleaning: “Remember that, at least? She tried ‘everything non-harmful’ to wake you up, she said, and then monitored you for more than an hour afterwards before sending you here.”

She moved over to another table and continued: “I can’t prime-project why Old Emal would be so attentive to you like that. Her last few direct students– well, the ones that survived, she–”

“Proctor Emal?” Yakova yelped. “Her first name’s Emal?”

The apothecary paused and looked back at her. “You didn’t know hers, lass?”

The edge of a suspicious glance could now be seen on her face. “And that’s Proctor Myuller from your lips to others, initiate.”

Emal! Emal is here, wherever and whenever this is! Yakova thought.

“Wh-where is she?” she stammered. “I need to talk to her!”

The Sister turned back to look at her again, and her blue eyes narrowed.

“Forget it, Yak,” she said. “It’s off-hours for her, and I’m not letting you walk around with half your brain leaking out of your mouth like this. High chance of social ostracism.” She set her bottle back on the table, and started to gently, if firmly, shoo her back into the infirmary with an alcohol-soaked rag in one hand.

Yakova put a determined look onto her unfamiliar face and stood her ground.

“No!” she insisted. “This is serious– I need to ask her something. Something important.” How can I get past this lady without revealing… any more of whatever is going on with me? she thought.

The apothecary paused, and Yakova took the cue to speak again. “Can you bring me to her? I, uh, promise I won’t ask again,” she pled.

The woman hesitated, and the two of them peered into each other, looking for some sign of actual motive or some way to convince each other without resorting to force.

Suddenly, the woman dropped her shoulders and sighed.

“Fine, Yakoba,” she said. “I’ll chaperone you to the faculty apartments.” She raised a finger up at the girl. “But! If anyone wants you out, you’re going with a guard straight back to the infirmary. Got it?”

Yakova kept her mouth shut and nodded.

“Good lass,” the woman said. She unbuttoned and hung up her off-white apron, and then started down the infirmary hallway.

“Wait right here, now!” she called out behind her. “I need to deliver some things to some faculty members, anyways.”

She shortly returned, now with a messenger bag slung over her shoulder and her kerchief gone. Yakova noticed that her now free-flowing brown hair looked like hers used to, but with actual care giving perfect waves and volume to it.

The woman slipped one final pair of packages– two long metallic cases– into a side pocket.

“I’ll lead the way,” she said. “In your state, following you would get us thrown back thirty-four years and straight to Tupile. ‘Ten One Fifty-Seven,’ lass? Really?”

Yakova followed the woman through the halls with a cautious gait– she didn’t want to repeat her past pratfalls. With each step her body felt more her own, and as they turned yet another corner past an indoor reflecting pool (or really, a recessed plascrete basin where a reflecting pool would be, if it were filled) she found herself hitting a quick stride. Such long legs! she thought.

She kept her eyes open for more clues about this new place. Despite the dawn light outside, the halls were empty of all but service staff, Sisterhood Guards near each intersection, and the odd Sister or Novice. It looked like it was the Chapterhouse’s non-operating hours just like the woman claimed. On one communinet board for servant schedules, she glimpsed the back half of a date– it was late 10191, and almost Saint Butler’s Day–

Dufa-of-Aegir, 30152 A.M. (Give or Take a Few)

– Not that Saint Butler’s Day had ever meant anything to Yakova’s family, or to the Order. It was a weird Koranjiyana-Catholic thing, and she didn’t understand any of the Standard Calendar besides what days to expect celebrations to be happening everywhere else in her city. Unlike at home, the only day off at a Bene Gesserit Chapterhouse was New Year’s, and only because it wasn’t part of the usual seven-day, four-week, thirteen-month schedule that everyone but her family and neighborhood seemed to use.

Over forty years, though! What had changed? Was this even the Emal she knew from back then? Dread started to seep through her as the apothecary led her through the Chapterhouse.

Even in the dead of this human-decreed ‘night’ around them, stray bits of life in the Chapterhouse’s small hours looked just like it did four decades ago. In one hallway, a servant wiped her brow as she pulled down a corroded, leaking pipe from the middle of the hall's ceiling. A young, black robed sister with a notitia-tablet wordlessly passed them by, going to some opposite corner of the campus. In another intersecting hall, a novice sister juggled several filmbooks and a meditation mat as she shuffled from one study room to another. Another pair of white-sleeves, arms full of packages and heads filled with messages, flew quickly around a corner, almost knocking down the two of them. And everywhere, on what felt like every corner, there were Bene Gesserit in blue uniforms with weapons sheathed and holstered prominently on their hips. That part was new, at the very least.

They passed another set of halls. At the intersection, the two of them stopped to let a procession of laundry carts full of Initiate uniforms pushed by servants pass through. Yakova looked down either hallway, but didn’t see anything else that suggested a laundry room or dormitories in either direction.

“It’s a deposition. The other carts save face. Keep silent,” the Sister said. The woman bent her head slightly.

Near the end of the train of laundry piles, a very tired looking Sister pushed a smaller cart, with a still figure shrouded in white laying on top of it.

Yakova felt her blood turn to ice. The carts kept their regular steady pace as they pushed down the hall, the squeaking of their wheels and the suspensors buzzing away growing distant, overpowered by the sound of her own blood pumping past her ears. Her vision felt outside itself: she felt distant. No! That didn’t happen! That wasn’t me!

The feeling once again of the Gom Jabbar inside her neck–

(Where am I?) an alien thought said, intruding as Yakova started to faint.

She glimpsed two faded memories– two robed figures-that-were, their remnants left like atomic shadowprints on the surface of her subconsciousness–

Falling– falling into herself–

Then– suddenly, Yakova’s guide grabbed her shoulder and squeezed a nerve point on it tightly. She was immediately brought back to the present, an alert clarity that could only come from such pain.

“Th-thanks,” she muttered.

“It’s tough to see it the first time,” the apothecary said softly. “And so close to your own test… your own classmates… it doesn’t help in the least. It’s like standing an inch from a cutteray: pondering your mortality. I get it, lass.”

“How… how do we move on from it?” Yakova asked.

The woman closed her blue eyes and sighed. “Not easily,” she said. “Sometimes… it’ll get the worse of you, when you least expect it. So, you apply your training, Yakoba. And your mentat training too, if you have it. You learn how to sever neurochemical attachments to anyone… you learn not to permit yourself to be attached to non-humans, especially those to be tested, and you learn you must trust in the Reverend Mothers, to reserve judgement. And eventually… you learn how to kill or to serve anyone you’re needed to by the Sisterhood. Anyone.”

She looked behind them and spoke even more softly. “I… it was hard to see you so close to death, Yakoba, when you came to me a month ago. I had to keep my distance, and trust in Myuller’s training. To see forty-eight percent black when it’s fifty-two percent white. But I won’t apologize for leaving you to the process. It’s the Way, and the way of the Order.”

Yakova looked at her with a solemn nod, but couldn’t put a name to the emotion she felt. Pity? Disgust? It was complicated even more by how she knew nothing of who this woman was.

“You’ll understand someday. Now! Let’s keep moving,” the woman said curtly.

Yakova glanced one last time at the procession, now at the end of the hallway. She saw as the failed student turned to the left, and the line of laundry carts that she was hidden between moved right.

The girl’s guide quickened her steps. They moved through a windowed hallway at a redoubled clip; outside, there was a barren landscape with one of those horrible orchards on one side and on one horizon, a blood-red planet dangling behind its sun like an apple on a burning tree. Heart quickening, she looked straight ahead to see an almost serene atrium, if it weren’t for the looming threat of so many grim-faced proctors living on its edges.

Before Yakova could fully take in the faculty atrium, the woman tapped her shoulder and pointed up a dark stairwell just past the entrance.

“Up this way, Yakoba,” she said.

The two climbed the staircase, and Yakova noticed the balustrades were made of wood– the first wood outside those trees she had seen on the planet, unlike the ever-lacquered surfaces of the old abbey on Wallach IX.

The apothecary led her onto the second floor, and immediately stopped in front a nondescript grey-pink door labeled ‘201’ just off of the landing.

“We’re here,” the woman said. “Let me handle this part, lass.”

After pressing the apartment’s buzzer, the apothecary knocked on the apartment door with a strange back-and-forth rocking motion to her knuckles.

“Coming! Hold!” someone shouted from far inside the apartment.

Just under half a minute later, a muffled voice with a weathered-but-familiar warble came from behind the door. “Don’t stand so off-center, Sister Whoever-It-Is… I can’t see you well from the peephole. So: what’s the catastrophe at this hour?”

Yakova’s guide spoke with urgency: “Proctor Myuller? This is Sister Atti. May we speak with you?”

“Apothecary Atti? No wonder. It’s well past midnight by the school’s clock, I’ll remind you.”

“This is Atti, yes. I brought Initiate Yakoba Herstal here. To… see you.”

“Mm. This is beyond the usual Rule, isn’t it?”

Atti shook her head, her knuckles still poised against the door. “She insisted, ma’am. And as a medical professional at the Chapterhouse–”

“It’s within your prerogative, yes, yes. I do such reasoning too.” The voice paused, then continued. “I suppose now is as good a time as ever to discuss some changes with Miss Herstal. One moment.”

A moment filled with the sound of ruffling clothing, sliding coat racks, and falling objects in the apartment ended with the door finally opening.

In the doorway stood a lady that couldn’t be said to still be in her prime, but had not yet truly been broken down by old age. Her once-black hair was pulled into a crude topknot for the night and now had streaks and flashes of grey all over it, and her wiry frame and sharp face had been worn down by the elements into a dulled, slightly wrinkled and very tired version of its old self. Over what looked like a nightgown and sleeping pants, she had thrown on a weathered brown and black coat to give herself some gravitas.

It was Emal. An older, much older Emal, but it was Emal.

Yakova did what she could to hide her shock at seeing her old cellmate. How much time passed while I was… wherever that was? She shuddered, trying not to think about what obviously happened to her.

“Initiate Yakoba,” Emal started, looking through Yakova’s face to the atrium hall behind it. “I must congratulate you on passing the Gom Jabbar Test. But, human… I am afraid that this is as far as I can take you as your direct teacher… or as a Proctor Major.”

Yakova played along, and stayed silent. ‘Herstal?’ Emal was teaching me? A Proctor Major! How many times had she failed someone in the Test? she wondered.

She continued, that warble becoming almost a hollow recitation. “I am beginning efforts to recuse myself from either position. My behavior at your Test was unacceptable– a breach of trust and decorum.”

What happened this time to upset her that much? Emal, oh Emal… what have you done this time, all those times?

“As of yesterday, I will not be acting as your direct teacher, and you will be released back into your standard block classes in due time. Please report to your floor advisor for further instructions… and I apologize for my disgraceful emotions at your test. It is best we do not speak again.”

Best for who, Emal? Yakova thought.

Quickly, as her old cellmate tensed to close the door, she spoke: “Wait! E– Proctor Myuller.”

Emal’s arm on the door relaxed slightly. “Yes?” she said flatly.

“Do you… do you remember this one day, back on Wallach Nine, when the rain came down at the Abbey so hard that it started leaking into o– your cell?”

Emal’s hand quivered more tightly than ever before on the edge of the door. The now-a-woman eyed her with a growing sense of concern, clearly picking up that Yakova’s mannerisms and voice were not the same as what she expected from her new body.

Atti also shifted uncomfortably next to her.

I have to keep pushing, this is my only chance, Yakova thought: “And you saw that your cellmate’s bed had gotten soaked by it? And before… she returned for bed, you had already moved it out of the way to dry, and had left your bed open for her and just slept on top of your covers?”

Emal was frozen, trying to parse whatever was happening in front of her, pupils now contracted to atom-probe size.

“I never thanked you for it. I’m sorry.”

“…Yakova?” Emal whispered in shock.

“It’s me,” Yakova replied. “Or at least, I, um, I think–

“It’s you. Come inside. Both of you,” Emal said quickly. “I need to get Wellamie. This, this…” she muttered as she disappeared into the back of her apartment.

Wellamie is here, too? Wh–

“You heard her, lass,” Atti said. She poked Yakova in the small of her back– a poke that did not feel like just a finger– and the girl shuffled in, a knife now held behind her.

Chapter 30 Selective Glossary

Pru-Barrier, Prudence-Barrier:

A high-energy form of Holtzmann screen that is impermeable to objects not attuned (or counter-attuned) to a dissembling contra-Holtzmann field with a meta-harmonic signature. Depending on the size and specific field properties applied, pru-doors or pru-barriers are used for material filters or for security doors. Some pru-barriers, particularly those used in medical or chemical capacities, work on an inverted principle and are impermeable or annihilatory to specific physical materials or microbial / viral membranes while allowing all other materials through.

Shahat:

A tidally-locked and habitable Class III ‘eyeball’ planet with tectonic activity, located around the yellow-orange sun Alzhu. Human activity (and most terranic life) is located only within a thin habitable band reaching just 2º sunwards from the twilight meridian and 5-7º nightwards. Cyclical convection-typhoons are fed by rivers flowing into the sun-side 'eyeball' that then disperse over in the twilight band and near-night zones. Shahat’s industry and agriculture is focused around maintaining spatial efficiency and expanding arable regions on the night side of the twilight band with geothermals and mirror-satellites. Their primary export is expertise in civilized survival: Shahati engineering is contracted for high-stress environments such as Arrakis, and they manufacture pharmaceuticals that protect against circadian rhythm disruption and heat stroke. Formerly ruled by the militaristic House Kasiraju, Shahat’s Siridar-Residency has been held in Imperial custodianship since its extinction in the 10150s, and an appointed successor among their Houses Minor has been ‘postponed’ by Kaitain in perpetua.

Chapter Text

When, in their Trial, the accused shows no sign of their Mana-consciousness present in their actions or words, only its stolen memories, Abomination is confirmed. The only known cure for Abomination is death; and so, knowledge and prudence is the only prophylactic to guard against such a corruption of the soul.

The Bene Gesserit has ruled five protections against Abomination, O Sister, that you may never see such things in your lifetime:

1. No woman who has endured a Reverend Mother Ordeal may thereafter bear a child without direct approval and post-birth monitoring of the child by a coven of other Reverend Mothers.
2. No woman who has endured a Reverend Mother Ordeal may ever deem herself safe from possession; a risk ever-present, ever-growing with greater numbers of past lives called to act through her.
3. No woman that is with child may ever be allowed to undergo a Reverend Mother Ordeal, on pain of death.
4. No child born under the accursed condition of pre-birth shall be suffered to live.
5. No adult found to be possessed, even if born outside of Abomination, shall be suffered to live.

If such events like these five things have come to pass, then you must mete out the Sisterhood's Law.

O Sister, do not falter in fulfilling these protections! For Abomination, death is the only cure. Cruelty is to let the spirit fester in the body of the lost babe, child, or woman. It is with reason and terrible experience that we call the pre-born Abomination. For who knows what lost and damned persona out of our evil past may take over the living flesh?

– The Azhar Book, Protections Against Abomination

Dufa-of-Aegir, Forty-Four Years After Yakova’s Death

Yakova and Atti– who was now holding a knife to the revived girl’s back– shuffled into the front room of Emal’s apartment. Their host had left them to wake another person Yakova had known, from both long past and what felt like less than a day ago.

Wellamie and Emal– they’re both here, Yakova thought. Why? Is it something to do with whatever Wellie was hinting at that day before– before that?

Yakova took her mind off of the unpleasant death-memory she dredged up, and noted Atti was still standing a pace away at the entrance, doubtlessly watching every little movement that she made.

To keep herself occupied with less-fatal thoughts, Yakova started to look around Emal and Wellamie’s apartment.

On the room’s center table, there was a zither that belonged to one or the other friend with a simple cushion placed for them to sit while playing. Opposite the zither’s seating and on the further side of the room from her and Atti, there was an old couch, and on either side of that, a set of slightly shabby unmatched armchairs, with a leather padded hassock covered in coffee stains wedged in front of one.

In the corner, a small bookcase had a Lesser Azhar Book on prominent display between the other volumes and filmbooks and datareels. On a doily-covered side table stood a communinet link and a spotless tea set, both next to more than a few stains on the doily from a missing coffee carafe. A few sets of cryptographic calligraphy– quotations from some old B.G. texts we were taught, Yakova assumed– were framed and displayed on the room’s walls.

On a small, simple plastic desk was a collection of framed photos, several turned away or downwards. Yakova walked over and looked at the photos on the desk left standing.

One was of a proud-looking young woman with dark hair, a gnomish nose and a mercifully-normal chin: a lay member of the Sisterhood holding some recently-given benediction– and one of Emal’s children? The photo next to the mystery woman was of a golden-haired young Wellamie in black sitting next to a fierce-looking man in simple white clothes, clearly unused to being photographed. Both of them had incredibly ornate tattoos on their skin, and kneeling in front of them were a mixture of men and women also in those white clothes. On the opposite side of it, there was a photograph of a temple, the telltale signs of Missionaria Protectiva interference built into its iconography. Probably the same planet.

And on the top center of the desk, she saw a familiar photograph: the three of them, back on Wallach IX, in front of the Abbey’s reflection pool. She remembered it like it was… well, it was just a month or two ago, by her own internal clock. Wellamie had recently gained a small spacereeler, and had used the two-dimensional stillframe setting to print a photograph of the three of them (with some help from their classmate Jozi).

It was one of the few times she saw Emal ever try to put effort into smiling, rather than just giving a smirk or stretching her lips into an unsettling arc, but her stick-figure body language still showed that rigid passive-aggression that defined her. As usual, Wellamie’s golden hair in the image flashed and danced behind her young face in the photo, her smile filled with all the promises of youth.

Yakova, by contrast, looked like an ugly newborn crow, somehow startled by the spacereeler’s timed buzzer before it even went off. The expression of frazzled surprise was already on her face, ruining her smile in the photo.

As fitting her luck, it was the only memento left from that phase of their lives. Their lives, not mine, she admitted.

They moved on. They lived, and they remembered, she thought. A feeling of despair fell onto Yakova.

So, what am I supposed to do now?

Yakova suddenly felt a vague sense of danger from behind, and turned to look. Sister Atti stood far too close for comfort, eyes now locked with hers.

“What have you done with her?” she growled.

“I… I don’t know! I don’t–“

“She has to be in there,” Atti continued, stepping even closer. If Yakova was her old height, the woman would have towered over her, but with this body, the apothecary was slightly shorter than her.

Atti grabbed the front of her hood and pulled Yakova close, the look on her face in-between panic and rage. Fear.

In the next moment, Atti revealed her knife and held it to Yakova’s neck.

“You’re not her,” she said, her eyes showing a terrible, desperate intensity. “You’re not her. Who are you? How dare you? She better be in there, she better come to her senses and kick you out, or– or–”

“Sister Atti, stop!” Emal shouted as she rushed back to the room.

Joining Emal now was Wellamie, also now aged– though in a more graceful manner, as always– and with the bare parts of her flesh tattooed just as in the picture. She was wearing a floral dressing robe and a long nightgown, and looked disturbed both from being woken up and by the sight of a Sister womanhandling an Initiate. (Thank goodness she’s kept that heart of hers, Yakova thought.)

Atti pulled her knife a half-centimeter back from Yakova's throat and turned to face them.

“You… know this ego-memory in Yakoba, don’t you!” she snarled.

Emal nodded. “It has to be Yakova Kotler. She was… a classmate and friend of ours back in initiate training.”

Yakova’s aged friend then moved over to the side table, pulled out a small bottle of something from her coat, and poured its brown contents into one of the tea cups.

Atti, her grip on Yakova’s hood still vise-tight, frowned. “Why do they have the same name?”

Emal pressed on her brow and took a deep breath. “That… may be a clue to what has occurred. Miss Herstal has a personality very similar to my Yakova’s. But the reason is still unclear to me,” she said. Her voice had the loud, un-modulated tone of someone worn down: half-asleep, or just in shock, or both.

“So you don’t know what’s going on? They’re not related, are they?” Atti shouted back.

Wellamie shook her head as she let one hand drop to her side. From where Yakova stood, she couldn’t see her palm, but she definitely was signing something to Atti.

With a slow hesitancy, Atti wordlessly withdrew her knife and let go of Yakova. The apothecary then pointed for her to sit down with a flick of her wrist.

Yakova shakily sat down in one of the armchairs, heart still pounding. The three adults loomed over her: Atti disgusted, Wellamie aghast, and Emal frozen still.

Wellamie sat down across from her. “Yakova…” she began, her speech deliberate as if stepping between slippery rocks. “What was the last thing you… remember, before waking up?”

Yakova took a deep breath to steady herself as she recollected. “I… it was the day I was tested. I pulled my hand– my old hand– out of the box, and then I felt a poke and started to fall. And… that was it.”

“You don’t remember anything else? A life… ah, after yours? Or seeing someone else’s life, and talking to them?”

“No…” Yakova mumbled. “I feel like I had… a bunch of strange dreams after I fell down. But… just lots of little things I can’t put together. Like uh, wanting to kiss someone, or Emal getting angry at somebody else.”

Wellamie’s brow curled up and started to furrow her forehead with worry lines.

A sudden flash across Yakova's mind of her hand in the box, and a decorated ceiling, and someone– no, it had to be her– answering when asked what was there, what should be there–

“Stars!” she gasped. “Constellations on the ceiling. I… it was important. But I don’t know what that means…”

She curled her knees up onto the chair and gripped them tight. Why was it important? That question of what was missing, yet what was always there made her feel like she was stapled into her body. Her forearms felt bloodless.

Emal and Wellamie looked at each other. Two horrible, perfectly self-controlled old women– were they really her old friends?

Yakova looked over her knees, and kept explaining, desperately trying to reassert herself: “But… then I woke up like this, and I found out Emal was here. You two are here. You’re proctors, right? Can you help me? What do I do now?”

An uncomfortable silence came over the room.

“Can I leave the Order, finally?” she pleaded.

Wellamie leaned forwards and put a hand over one of Yakova’s. “Yak… I want you to listen to me. You’re not alive, not really. And a lot of time has passed since you… died. You died right then, right where your last memory ended.”

Yakova felt a twisting punch to her gut. Dead?

The now-deafening silence returned, and she felt as if she was about to faint like when she saw the deposition. Then how? Why am I breathing still?

Wellamie sighed. “I don’t know what happened, or why you’re in there, but that body you’re in… it’s not yours.”

No! I never died! I’ll never die! This is my body!

“You’re possessing her,” Atti proclaimed. She was now leaning against the wall next to the bookcase, arms crossed and a condemning glare cast upon Yakova.

Emal broke her silence, a clipped, unemotional tone to her words: “You’re an ego-memory, an Alaya-consciousness, now. In the body of one of my direct students, Yakoba Herstal. Seventeen standard years old. Cross-gender, Poritrinian, apathetic Koranijyana before re-education, Korojher-class in the Faufreluches, haphazard mentat education with no proven credential levels. A similar personality to yours.”

“Ah… ah! No, no…” Yakova babbled. She felt ready to cry and scream and split her brain in half over all this.

After so long gone, everyone’s just treating me like used goods! Just like before!

Wellamie squeezed her hand tightly. “Stay with us, Yak. I know it’s much to bear.”

“Or don’t,” Atti snipped. “Getting shunted back inside her could solve this whole thing.”

“Sister Atti!” Wellamie rebuked. “We don’t know what’s going on– it’s unprecedented. A beginning. Two identities are at stake, here. If you want to fix this without consulting the Azhar book’s ‘protections,’ delicate care is needed!”

Atti fumed and raised her crossed arms above her breast, burying her chin in them.

“Em,” Wellamie started. “Sit with us, now– it’s rude to stand like that in front of our guest.”

Guest! I guess I’m not their friend anymore, then. Was I really ever, though?

Emal sat down on the hassock next to Wellamie, teacup still in hand.

Yakova’s old cellmate took a deep breath and started to talk. “I left the testing room before Initiate Yakoba was… finished with her Gom Jabbar Test.” A pause came as Emal took a sip of whatever was in the teacup. “I would press you, Yak, for the details of what Mother Puleng did after I was dismissed… but it seems that you’re unaware of what happened, too.”

“You left her?” Atti shouted. For once, the woman’s anger was put on someone other than Yakova.

“Puleng! She lied that I pulled away the needle, or that I ignored a flinch by Miss Herstal,” Emal hissed, avoiding eye contact with Atti. “She was intentionally vague. Demanded that I continue testing Yakov– Yakoba, past even the higher durations or limits. I then resigned from my proctor position on the spot,” she finished, omitting the shouting match that Yakova half-remembered.

“Reverend Mothers can’t lie,” Atti huffed.

“And who told you that? A Reverend Mother?” Emal scoffed.

“Sister Atti! Em! Both of you, shut up and focus!” Wellamie scolded.

“… Point taken, datum collected.” Atti said blankly. “Keep discussing the situation. No sapho in my system, but I’ll offer my services for a mentat prime projection.” She looked at Emal and started to wave and flex one of her free hands in a nonchalant manner. “Even if we tell each other little lies, their effects all sum to zero in the end.”

Signing! Bene Gesserit inferential sub-conversations! Yakova thought. I don’t think I ever got taught that code, though… but it feels like I should have?

Emal flicked her hand across the rim of her teacup. “That’s what happened, to my understanding. To redouble back: there were some strange gaps within Miss Herstal’s psychomechanics– a trauma rupture in her Remedial Stressed Meditation class from some of those stupid testing machines caused her to enter a simulflow state.”

Atti and Wellamie nodded. Yakova felt a feeling– a shadow-memory– like she had been tasked with reading through endless questions, and handed some brain-patterns and memories to solve them.

No! A slave-mind? To who? Nobody! This was always my body!

Emal continued. “So. I took her on as a direct student: high risk of failure in the Gom Jabbar Test if this wasn’t given attention. Her base skills and discipline improved considerably, but signs of psychostructural abnormality continued. I… admit part of my interest and persistence was because of Miss Herstal’s similiarity to you. She has your base personality, and is the only other student I’ve heard of with your name.”

She then sighed. “This situation… It was sentimental curiosity putting me on to my usual nighttime path, but with more emotional investment than I should have had.”

“Nighttime path?” Yakova was confused.

Wellamie spoke. “Emal is… considered an executioner among the Proctors. She takes failing students under her wing, but she also tests them herself, and also volunteers to… administer the Test when another Proctor cannot bear to.”

“Mm.” Emal groaned. She buried as much of her face behind the teacup as she could.

Yakoba felt another wave of horror push through her. A killer! A killer for killers! Emal, why?

“You’re a… murderer.” Yakova spat out. Her body was starting to shake with a mixture of hate and despair.

“Yes.” Emal admitted. “One hundred and seven, within the Test’s structure. More, though adults, outside it.”

“And you’re h-fine with this? Hah, don’t tell me that you’re– hah!– proud of it, Em.” Yakova felt like her body was about to shake apart into compulsive, hopeless laughter.

Wellamie squeezed Yakova’s hand tight. She felt herself pull back from hysterics, now just slightly on the edge.

“I’m… not.” Emal said slowly. “The Test… is a responsibility of Proctors Major, when there is a deficit of Reverend Mothers upon the campus. We only have one here: the Proctor Superior. They can handle the… consequences, better than us ordinary humans can. But there are many students here. I took it upon myself–”

Yakova growled at them. “You kill people. You kill girls just like me. It doesn’t matter if it’s the ‘rule,’ or if it’s ‘necessary,’ or if it’s a ‘duty,’ you kill them.”

“Yes. And I resigned, yesterday.” Emal said, her voice’s clarity at odds with her body’s defensive crouch.

“Hah! So that makes it better?” Yakova felt her rage bubble and froth inside of her.

“No.” Emal spat. “Of course not.”

Wellamie spoke. “I’ve… tested initiates too, Yak, as a Proctor Major. And some have failed.”

Yakova pulled her hand away from Wellamie’s perfectly-manicured claws.

“Yak,” Wellamie said with a perfectly-tuned look of sorrow, “Please–”

“Don’t you dare touch me, Sister Wellamie.”

Yakova’s old friend pulled her hand back onto her own lap. “I’m sorry, Yak. A lot has… changed. And not always in good ways.”

“I’ll say.” Yakova said. How can I trust them after all this? What do I do now? What do I do?

Emal stayed silent, her jaw practically glued shut with tension.

Wellamie began speaking again: slow and conciliatory, her witch-tones trying and failing to calm Yakova. “I’m not going to defend what we’ve done. And I know it’s hard to trust us. But we want to help you, and–”

She sniffed the air, grabbed Emal’s teacup without looking, and spun her head to look at her: “Em, are you drinking?”

“You expect me to handle all this sober?” Emal shot back. She pulled out the liquor bottle from her coat and held it outside of Wellamie’s tattooed reach, looking all the while like an out-freyn tramp.

“Give me that, Em!” Wellamie demanded.

Emal snorted. “Not a chance, Wellie!”

“Great Mother! You two are regressing to schoolgirls,” Atti grumbled.

“Oh?” Emal said, standing up from the couch. “Well, I’ve said my part anyways. If I’m too immature for this situation, Apothecary, then I’ll just remove myself from it!”

A thump-thump-thump from the apartment below them made all three but Wellamie flinch. They weren’t the only ones in the faculty wing, they remembered.

 “I’ve had enough,” Emal growled. The old woman buttoned up her coat and started to walk around to the apartment’s back rooms.

“W-wait!” Yakova yelped. “I, uh– Ah!” Emal! Stay! I need both of you two! she thought.

Wellamie, now fitted with a stern expression, followed a moment after her.

“Em, Stop.” Wellamie’s Voice was like a die-cutter forcing actions and thoughts into proper shapes: a decades-long refinement of that low-tolerance one Yakova had heard just a few days ago by her own warped reckoning.

Yakova’s old cellmate paused, less out of response to her Voice than from respect for the woman– no, Proctor– who commanded with it. She kept looking forwards, her aged face hidden from view.

Wellamie walked over to Emal and began whispering something Yakova couldn’t quite hear aside from scraps: first “left us…”, then “again!” and then a clear “…don’t walk away from her this time.”

Yakova’s two friends stood there together: now aged, though not very wizened, it seemed. Wellamie kept a still and gentle hand on top of Emal’s turned shoulder.

Then, slowly, as if scrubbing rust off a metal sheet or pulling away foliage that had settled over a forgotten fire pit, Emal bowed her head and turned back to the sitting room.

“I’m… sorry about that, Yakova.” Emal murmured. “It has been quite a long day. I’m falling into old evasive behaviors too easily because of it.”

Should I forgive her? Can I forgive her? For anything? Yakova thought.

I won’t.

Silence fell between the three. On the outside of the room, Atti was flitting through Emal’s Azhar Book and some adjacent volumes at a speed only a subliminally-attuned mentat could glean anything from.

“So… what else?” Yakova challenged in a low half-whisper. “Why are you living together? Why here?”

“We’ve been… living together the last twenty years or so.” Wellamie said simply.

Together– and without me. I was always an afterthought, wasn’t I? Why wasn’t I the one anyone shared secrets with?  Yakova groused.

“An understatement,” Atti chimed in. She turned her head to face them, her eyes half-rolled back in background computations. “They’ve been engaged in the most flagrantly homosexual and homoromantic case of intimate sororitization that I’ve ever heard of. Frankly, a chapterkreis-scale affair. Outside my calculations that Mother Puleng would tolerate it for so long.”

Yakoba felt her heart skip a beat. Em and Wellie are lovers? You can do that?

Wellamie shot a deadly glare at the savant-sister. “Anyways, after I finished my work with the Missionaria, I was transferred to Wallach Nine for… debriefing, then to this Chapterhouse to work as a proctor.”

Wait! Wait! Em and Wellie are lovers? Em and Wellie are lovers? She repeated the thought over and over, like a filmbook with a stuck page.

“Ah… ah-h-h-h… hah.” Yakoba babbled. “Ahh! W-was that what you were going to talk about, the last… last time we talked, Wellie?”

“If memory serves, yes,” Wellamie said simply. “Time’s been filled with… a lot of small works between then and now.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Wellie.” Emal said, pointing a finger at her better half. “You established, what? A global organized religion, Three separate seeded mythoses for our agents on that planet, overthrew countless warlords, and founded a matrilineal dynasty of Anthema-borns there, right?”

Wellamie nodded silently, a demure smile on her face.

Why was she put here, then? Yakova thought. This place feels like a dump in the middle of nowhere even compared to our Wallach IX abbey.

“Um… And what about you, Em?” the lost girl said.

Emal sighed and just looked at the zither on the table in front of them.

“Go on,” Wellamie said. “I’ll lionize you as needed.”

Oh no. Yakova braced herself for hearing of a lifetime as some kind of witch cannibal.

“For… seventeen, nineteen years or so, I was a breeder for the Sisterhood,” Emal said, her words clipped. “Had eight, nine children, all told. Not sure about the number. My second pregnancy might have been twins, like my last one– I didn’t have all my faculties during that difficult birth. Tried to forget the rest of the details on most of them.”

Yakova’s heart sank. Serial child-murderer aside, Emal was the best of them– and she was wasted by the Sisterhood as she herself predicted, just because of her bloodline. Like everything they touch!

She reached out next to the zither, and tweaked her teacup so it properly sat in the matching saucer’s furrow. “I continued my Sisterhood studies during that time, of course. Obtained accolades– doctorates in weirding psychoanalysis, psychology, and agronomy. I had some petty adventures. That led me to where I had my second half of children, with some be-eyebrowed idiot noble as his Sisterhood concubine. He wanted a tutor for his legitimate children. And the Sisterhood wanted his genes.”

Emal sighed. “I… facilitated that trade. One of those products is a… Reverend Mother, visiting here. Jahana. Too much like my mother you always heard about. Pray you don’t meet her, Yakova, if you still believe in that god of yours.”

Wellamie grabbed Emal’s hand and looked at her. “Tell her about after you stopped teaching your half-family, Em. You bloomed late.”

Oh? Yakova privately snarked. She bloomed into a child killer, you say?

Emal looked at Yakova with that same kind of dispassionate recitation she had seen her use just a few days ago, when they were in classes together: “I taught at one of the larger abbey schools on Wallach Nine for a year or two. Then I was transferred here, along with my… projects. And I reunited with Wellamie.”

“Projects?” Yakova knew she wasn’t going to get information, but something that vague was either a good or bad understatement. Did she stick me inside this body?

“Mm. I run a group that obtains and processes information and people,” Emal said, now pinching her chin. “For the Sisterhood. And I oversee an exotic plant cultivation project. The planet is barren outside of karst grasses and our greenhouses.”

“She’s figured out how to cultivate elacca trees in shaped-microclimate environs,” Atti commented, still at the bookshelf. “Her shigawire studies have had limited success, but are promising.”

“Ahem.” Wellamie cleared her throat and glanced at the apothecary’s turned back.

“It’s good elacca,” Atti said as she turned to face them. Her eyes were still half-backwards. “High active agent purity, easy come-down.”

Emal’s a flogging child-murdering drug dealer? Yakoba panicked.

Wellamie kept up her intervention. “Atti, let’s… stay away from talking to her about Emal’s controlled substances. So–”

“Her product is almost yellow after I scrub the bark,” Atti continued, almost to herself. “It’s a good strain. Amazing for labor pain relief at the animal hospitals, really. For once I must compliment you in person for it, Emal.” She raised her hands in what looked like more than deference.

“Roundabout apology accepted, Sister Atti,” Emal said, throwing some kind of gesture with a hidden meaning back to her. A hint of satisfaction curled on the edges of her lips.

She looked at Yakova– clearly noticing her unease about the woman’s current side jobs. “So. As Wellamie was about to say, we’ve had our share of both dull and interesting events in the past four decades.”

(Null-point projection, lass: not 100% magazines,) a strange, half-lucid voice said within Yakova’s head.

They definitely weren’t, Yakova knew. She was feeling more and more tired and beyond the energy for outrage at each twist and turn.

“Those weren’t magazines.”

“Oh?” Emal was either confused at the non-sequitur, or was being coy. Perhaps Yakova did have outrage on hand, after all.

“The magazines!” Yakova hissed and frantically waved her hands for emphasis– a motion now like a giant windmill with her new body’s armspan. “All those loads I had to hide in boxes we dumped in the peat! Pamphlets, readers, whatever! They weren’t really that, were they?”

Wellamie looked at Emal with a bewildered, shocked expression. “Were they, Em?”

“Mm. Grey-market amphetamines, sapho, and other nootropics are all in high demand by students at any school,” Emal deflected. “Controlled sedatives like alcohol or cannabis, teacher’s editions of filmbooks–”

Oh my God! Yakova cursed.

“Emal–” Wellamie stopped mid-shout, doubtless remembering their neighbors. “–Myuller!” she finished in a harsh whisper.

“Well, escape attempts don’t fund themselves, Wellie,” Emal whispered back. “Especially not for three people, one of which was a repeat offender.”

Emal wasn’t just fantasizing about trying to get me out of there, Yakova thought. How many of her students were able to leave the Order because of her?

Wellamie shook her head. “You were in it for the thrill. I know you, Em.”

“That too, Wellie,” Emal sighed.

The two old women then glanced at their unaged compatriot: now out of her time, out of her place, and out of her body.

Forget witches, Yakova thought glumly. My friends grew up to be madwomen!

Emal stood up. “We’ll wait for Atti’s analysis. Let me get some food and water for you. Your host body hasn’t eaten in almost two days.”

A silence had fallen once again on the apartment, and with the lack of clocks or windows in the residence, Yakova had no idea what the time was. In the corner Atti was continuing a pattern of read– calculate– read more; Next to one chair, Emal sat, meditating with slow, strong breaths. Wellamie, likewise, sat on the cushion in front of the zither– her zither, apparently– and was also deep in some kind of trance.

Meanwhile, Yakova was chewing a goat cheese, spinach, and caper sandwich. The bread was dry, the cheese was… unusual, the leaves were wilted, but everything in it was the most delicious thing she had eaten in four decades. How wonderful! With how parched she was, she had to keep making trips to the kitchen for more water (and then informative bathroom trips), but the meal was the closest thing to satisfaction she had felt in ages.

Then, she was out of sandwich to eat. Damn it!

Now bored, Yakova started to inspect Wellamie’s zither, the centerpiece of the room. Her tired eyes strained as she counted the strings. Eleven, twelve– no, thirteen, fourteen– oh, my eye counted that one twice… how many strings were really there? She wondered.

(Where am I?) a voice within asked, over and over. She did her best to ignore it.

Idly, she reached out to the zither with her half-dead right hand. The strings felt finer than horsehair or catgut, yet made of some alloy or fiber warm to the touch unlike metal strings. Reaching further out to the instrument’s center, she moved her hand to pluck a string.

Ba-bwong. Her fat, dulled fingers instead struck two strings.

Emal opened an eye.

“I would caution you against touching her zither, Yakova,” her old cellmate said. “I get enough of it when I try to clean up the place.”

“It’s fine, Em.” Wellamie said, eyes still closed. “I’ll be learning to live without it soon enough.”

“Why?” Yakova asked.

Are they planning to kill me with the zither’s strings? she thought. I knew it! How could I accept food from them? I’m an idiot!

Wellamie smiled softly. “I will be heading to Wallach Nine soon. I’ve been asked to undergo a Reverend Mother Ordeal.”

“You? A reverend mother?” The idea was impossible for Yakova to wrap her head around. Lithe, gossamer Wellamie wasn’t some kind of… old crone that peeled back your scalp to read your mind, or something.

“Sisters– I’m finished with the analysis,” Atti said plainly. “May I speak first with the… host’s direct teacher in private?”

Yakova looked at the apothecary. Her blue eyes were no longer pulled up in mentat calculations, but now back to their mix of clinical impartiality and the worry of a family elder.

“Keep– ah, ow– talking, Wellie,” Emal said as she slowly unfolded from her seated position.

With a reasserted air of authority, she walked over to Atti and began having a conversation made entirely of murmurs and hand signs, deliberately hiding them from Yakova’s view.

They’re plotting something, Yakova thought. But I’m not going away. I’m not going to die! I’ll never die!

Yakova looked back at Wellamie. “But why no zither?” she asked.

Wellamie raised her eybrows and smiled. “I know you remember that sound– and especially music– is a verystrong hook for memories. It also applies to Other Memories.” Eyes still closed, she turned her head to the desk covered in photos. “For new Reverend Mothers, it’s too much of a risk for possession. All those unknown past lives, and their memories of sounds and music that can call them up… Too many emotional triggers.”

As Wellamie trailed off, all Yakova could do was look at the zither. Was I called back by music? She couldn’t think of any songs from childhood that could have had a grip on her soul like that.

“I’m ready for it, Yak,” Wellamie interrupted. “This Chapterhouse needs more reverend mothers, and our Proctor Superior is very old.”

“And the students need another reverend mother to test them?” Yakova asked dryly.

“Of course, Yak.” Sister Wellamie said. “These things have a natural rhythm to it. They must take their courses, and we have our roles, chosen or not. I resisted mine for too long, like a salmon refusing to return to the stream. All for Emal’s sake.”

She opened her eyes and looked straight at Yakova, a few strands of grey-gold hair now in-between their locked visions. “I was… not as touched by your death as Emal was. She hates the facts of it more than you would think, and I found peace in it more than you’d wish to believe.”

Emal? Yakova scoffed. No, she’s never regretted anything in her life.

In the background: “That? It’s all you have on hand?” Emal said clearly to Atti.

Atti put one finger to her own lips, and spoke softly. “They’ll notice. She’ll notice. But we need to.” She then shrugged with a throat-cutting gesture, and ended with a thumb pointing at herself.

Wellamie glanced at the back of her lover, and continued to speak. “She’s been… tormented by it. Tormented by the Sisterhood her whole life. She was making steps towards accepting that with your host, Miss Herstal. Resigning because of her was the best decision she’s ever made.”

The woman sighed. “It was a blessing and a curse for you to have come when you did. But I suppose that’s the nature of a miracle like this.”

(A Karama,) that annoying inner voice interjected. (Proctor Myuller said it’s a miracle at a critical time and place…)

Yakova shunted the voice down as far as she could.

“I… I don’t know what to do, Wellie,” Yakova said. “Who can–“

“We’re ready,” Atti said curtly. The two sisters, both in black (though with varying levels of formality) stood over them.

Acting on deferential instinct, Yakova rose to meet them.

“Yak,” Emal said. “It has been… enlightening to finally speak with you again. But you must relinquish control of Miss Herstal’s body, and return it to its rightful owner.” Her face looked wearied and pained.

No! Yakova thought.

Bristling at the command, she ran her mouth: “And how exactly do you want me to do that? I don’t feel her alongside me, like ego-memories are supposed to work.” I’ve placed you in check, ‘proctor’!

“It’s simple, Alaya-Dybbuk.” Atti said. “We induce a deep trance with some of the school’s awareness-spectrum narcotics, you’re placed onto the same awareness-state, and then you submit to her.”

“Submit?” Yakova barked. The nerve! I won’t ‘submit’ to any old girl I don’t know! She could snuff me out! Stick me down into Forever again!

“What’s Lesson One, Initiate?” Atti said. Her voice was increasingly stern.

Yakova ordered her hands to clench, but only her left hand obeyed.

“Screw your lessons! And I’m not an initiate! I’m free now!” Yakova shouted.

Atti kept speaking, mid-way between a fiery sermon and a lecture. “Lesson One: Humans must never submit to animals,” she said, now pacing the room.

“Yakoba was proved human.” Atti pointed a finger at her. “You died proving your humanity, making you an animal. Ergo– a Human must be in charge in a Bene Gesserit body, per the Rule. Doesn’t matter what trickyou pulled to get in charge afterwards.”

“But I’m not Bene Gesserit,” Yakova spat.

Wellamie shook her head sadly.

Emal spoke: “Yakova. We all took the oath ‘I am Bene Gesserit; I exist to serve.’ Exist to. Not ‘live to,’ or until death as in a marriage. You were never expelled, and there is no expiration date on your service. Legally, you’re bound by the Order as much as any Mana-consciousness.”

Yakova snorted. This is ridiculous! Why are these witches trying to pose as lawyers?

“So I have to obey, or what? I get branded an ‘abomination,’ like one of your witch fairy-stories we had to learn in class?”

Atti nodded and looked at her. “You’re not an abomination, technically. I saw your hand, and you don’t have any of her memories at your disposal…”

She continued to speak as she walked next to Emal’s side. “But, you show that common behavior of ego-memories: an incredibly self-destructive drive to experience life to the fullest through the host. It’s dangerous to you, and to her. You are very close to full control of the mind and body… very close to proper abomination. And the longer that you control the body as you do… it’s inevitable.”

What’s so dangerous about wanting to live? I’m not dead! I didn’t die! I’ll never die!

Atti then took a deep breath. “Prime projection: Yakoba Herstal’s mana-consciousness is still intact, and you are in a meta-stable state of bodily possession. Further: full abomination status is inevitable without psychic intervention, and if it occurs, we must euthanize Yakoba promptly as per Protection Five.”

Atti then stepped back from them and took on a more casual tone. “And personally, I want my Yakoba back. You’re quite dull-witted compared to her.”

Emal and Wellamie shot a stern look at the apothecary.

“More to the point, we can’t forgive you for keeping a living soul– my student, Miss Herstal– trapped in her own body,” Emal then added.

“We?” Yakoba was aghast. I was your friend! Not whoever this faker is!

Emal leaned forwards, a terrible look now on her face. “I won’t forgive you.” For a moment, she seemed twice as tall as Yakova’s new body.

She wouldn’t forgive her, Yakova internalized.

She wouldn’t forgive her.

She wouldn’t forgive her?

No! Emal should be asking me for forgiveness!

“No! I… I can’t go back! I don’t want to go into… wherever I was!” she cried. A furious look was on her brow, and tears were beginning to pool in the corners of her eyes.

Emal sighed and stepped away from her.

“There is a compromise, Yak,” she said.

“Oh, really? Now you tell me?” Yakova pouted and crossed her arms.

Emal simply nodded and continued to speak. “There is one way known for you to stay present in the world to some degree, without destroying my student. But it will require her consent, and will require contact with her. You must still do as we ask and enter the trance.”

Yakova kept silent, peering at Emal’s aged face.

“The only way,” Emal stressed. “You must offer your services as a Mohalata ego-memory to Yakoba Herstal. A protective past life advisor, your access to the world controlled strictly by her. Were she a Reverend Mother, you would also be a mediator with and protector against malignant past lives. But…” Emal paused to rub her temples. “Her situation is well outside any easy categorization, I fear.”

Yakova stood there and reviewed the options. Submit and maybe be granted special privileges by some nobody? Or keep living again, and then be killed?

“How… how long until I become a ‘full’ abomination?” she asked.

The savant-sister’s eyes flitted back for a split-second. “Unclear. Data from limited records, and accounting for your level of control and lucidity? Null-point projection: two days, plus-or-minus zero and three-quarters days.”

“Could… Could I have one day? One more day, alive?”

Emal and Wellamie looked at each other.

“I can chaperone her this morning,” Wellamie said. “I don’t have any classes today until the third block.”

“As a medical professional and a Sister in good standing, I strongly advise against delaying this,” Atti chided.

All eyes turned to Emal.

Emal sighed. “I… I owe it to Yakova. I know I was as demanding and controlling to her as a proctor back then. It… we should give her this.”

One more day! A faint smile crept on Yakova’s face. One more day… and maybe more.

“Let’s go,” Wellamie said, standing up. “The land is barren, but I know some green spots.”

The two walked towards the doorway- and towards freedom. Perhaps I could escape Wellamie? Make for that nearest city? Yakova thought.

“Yakova, wait.” Emal stood behind them.

“Let me… bid you goodbye until tomorrow, then,” Emal said, arms now open. “It was a bittersweet reunion with you.”

Really, Emal? You were rarely like this.

Cautiously, Yakoba stepped back towards Emal, and hugged her tightly. She was so small now. Did age shrink her, too, or was it this body?

“I was never much for hugging,” Emal grunted under her grip. “But I can make an exception, though. And Yak?”

“Yes, Em?”

Yakova suddenly felt a flurry of flicks and pokes all over her sides, and her arms sprung open. Wha–

“Sorry for this,” her old cellmate said.

Arms now free and a determined look on her face, Emal quickly struck her thumb onto a pressure point on Yakova’s neck.

Yakova felt herself spring into the air, a dizzy, bewildered feeling overcoming her.

How did she? How!

Emal tricked me!

Underneath her, Emal grabbed her arms and slammed her flying body on top of the zither, a dissonant clang! and the sound– and more painfully, feeling– of cracking wood coming from below her.

The zither was smashed!

“Great Mother, Em!” Wellamie shouted.

“Augh!” Yakova groaned. The unmoored strings felt like whips on her back.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Emal standing up on one of her armchairs. Oh no, oh no…

Emal slammed on top of her, knocking the rest of the wind out of Yakova’s body– collapsing the center table entirely– more shouts– the Louse striking even more pressure points– she felt completely numb– helpless!

“Sister Atti!” Emal shouted. “Now!”

A black shadow rushed to her side, and Yakova felt two pinpricks in her veins.

“Initiate Yakoba…” Emal said, her gnarled witch-face peering down on her dimming eyes. “I’m not sure if you can hear me. But I have faith you can finish this alone. The ‘internal enemy’ from our class was more literal for you than the others, but, if possible… please… mercy on my…”

The voice disappeared, and everything went dark.

As Yakova’s consciousness fell past simple sleep and into all-too-familiar realms, her exhausted soul had one last lucid thought:

(You’re still a louse, Emal Myuller.)

Chapter 31 Selective Glossary

Azhar Book:

An ancient, secret encyclopedic volume compiled by the Sisterhood thousands of years ago in a bespoke language and updated with new entries over the course of the Imperium’s history. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Great Wheel Book’ or ‘Book of Books,’ the Azhar Book is a vast repository of information (both mundane and secret) on every extant or extinct religion and philosophy known to the Bene Gesserit, and is organized for both individual entry lookup and cross-referential comparisons. The Azhar Book also lays out the approaches of the Missionaria Protectiva, the methods of detecting the prior work of the Order’s Manipulators of Religions in cultures, and many of the Sisterhood’s own secrets and customs, especially those relating to past lives and abomination. Compare to Lesser Azhar Book and Bene Gesserit Coda.

Khorojher:

A social class under the Faufreluches system and extant on several worlds, including Poritrin. Meaning roughly ‘of the city’ or ‘burgher’ in Galach, Korojher men are not bound to the planet and are permitted to live within urban zoned areas, petition for redress the siridar-lord of their planet, own registered weapons, and issue financial loans with interest. Women of the class are given varied, but more limited rights than their male counterparts.

Lesser Azhar Book:

A greatly-truncated version of the original volume, often mistakenly referred to as the ‘Azhar Book’ among non-Bene Gesserit or as colloquial shorthand by the Order’s students. It is also known as the ‘Little Wheel Book’ or ‘Lesser Book’ among full sisters and reverend mothers. Its contents excise much of the detail relating to individual religions in favor of identifying common mytho-memetic components, the practical use and identification of Missionaria Protectiva interference, and the lesser mysteries, laws, and internal ‘protections’ of the Bene Gesserit. The Lesser Azhar Book is a form of the book assigned for memorization by Bene Gesserit Initiates and Novices as both a demonstration of their adept skills and for practical purposes, and it is considered a rite of passage among Sisters to write out their own personal copy of the Lesser Azhar Book in a cryptographic form.

Mohalata:

A word that translates to ‘grace’ or ‘benediction’ in a forgotten Old Earth Language. Used by the Bene Gesserit to describe a protective, symbiotic relationship between a benign ego-memory and a reverend mother. A Mohalata acts as an advisor and ‘favored soul’ among ego-memories, and shields the host mana-consciousness against attack or possession by awakened malevolent past lives. Compare to its antithesis, Abomination.

Chapter Text

After the last dance, the father of the spirit-dancers called out, “Here is one more group!” and brought the Soot-and-Ash Spirits into the plaza.

They were strangers none of the people of the Gambling Village could recognize. The four dancers lined up, and the father sprinkled sacred grains on them.

Then they began to dance, and their song went thus:

"We are children of the sun, for sure! So we will provide you here with heat and fire aplenty. We were asked to dance for you by your elders for this reason.

"Your homes will be covered in a cloud of fire, for sure! People will weep and carry each other throughout your village through our thick smoke.

"Prepare for our wrath, for sure! Look on, mothers and fathers! You should have lived good lives! Instead you will allow your children to perish."

The ones living out of balance laughed and whooped along, but the handful of villagers with good sense understood something terrible was happening. Sadness came over them.

– Recovered Myth OEA-114-Hopi-005a, 'The Gambling Village and the Dance of Fire [Version a],' Greater Azhar Book (Decto)

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Borte fumbled for the thumblock in the darkness of the dormitory hallway.

It never gets easier, does it? she pouted. Ah– there!

A click of the lock, and the door opened. She flipped the light (the timer on it lasted just a few minutes during curfew hours, and ‘morning’ wouldn’t come for two hours or so) and looked at the beds after her weeklong absence.

Her worst suspicion was confirmed: Maryam wasn’t there, and from the looks of it, she hadn’t been present for at least a day.

She sighed, and began to pull off her scapular and get ready for some real rest. She had to warn Maryam and Yakoba about Helena, but… she had no luck finding either of them. What was the point in knowing such a terrible thing, if nobody else would believe it without ‘evidence’?

As she slid the suspensor-belt off of her body, Borte felt the full force of Old Earth’s gravity again. Her feet felt heavy and leaden, but for the first time in three weeks she felt no pain whatsoever from those cuts.

Borte kept looking around their cell. Instead of a sleepy noble-born with a stick up her butt, inside there were just two equally-unmade empty beds. Borte’s small dresser had her usual mix of unused school supplies and dirty laundry spilling out of its drawers, while Maryam’s was meticulously organized, save its top. An errant hair brush, two fancy bone and black-green-red silk headbands, and a half-spilled case of makeup were thrown across its top.

Some of the makeup vials once inside the case were now rolling on the ground.

She bent down. In the trashcan were Maryam’s daily supplement pills.

She was in a hurry to leave, last time, Borte thought. Probably angry at something, too. But nothing else seemed– wait, why a case of makeup but no brushes?

She examined the small bottles and palettes. On their bottoms were strange sigils, most likely coded.

Borte then unscrewed a foundation bottle and sniffed: medicinal, though she couldn’t really parse the exact molecular types. She wasn’t studious enough to have gotten that skill out of their chemistry classes– or studious enough to pass any of them, really. Put that tally in Maryam’s favor, she glumly thought.

The girl held up to her eye an unmarked bottle of red ‘nail polish’ and raised an eyebrow

Why disguise medicine in makeup bottles? Borte thought. Was it poison– no, it had to be antidotes, or scholastic drugs of some kind! Maryam, you’ve been cheating! What have–

– wait, none of them were used. Maryam! You didn’t let me cheat!

Borte whistled and idly palmed the bottle of most-certainly-sapho before refocusing herself. No distracting desires, (well, no more desires,) just a flow-sync. She was looking for something, and couldn’t find it, she reasoned. What wouldn’t be in a collection of antidotes and buzz-draughts?

Something unexpected, dummy, that demanding memory inside her said. Something uncommon, or unneeded, to whoever put that fancy kit together for noble-borns.

Borte felt clarity. The trash can! She thought something in her supplements was poisoning her!

Spice, she then intuited. She felt like she was overdosing on spice. Would that little bit we got really have caused her to be so loopy and see visions, though? She must have been desperate to get–

Click. The light’s timer cut out, and the cell was plunged into darkness again.

Borte reappeared a moment later with an annoyed look.

I might as well take a moment to actually wash up after a week of roughing it, she thought. Apparently the other students were starting to notice (and smell) that she only had been cleaning herself with a sink.

Borte left the cell with her towel and slowly closed the door behind her.

She walked down the dormitory hallway and heard sobbing from behind a door– that cell belonged to Bryn and Karen, but the sobbing from inside came only in Karen’s usual pitch and timbre.

Bryn… she popped, Borte intuited. No surprise, to be honest, but… did Yakoba croak yesterday, too?

She kept walking towards the floor’s bathroom, now feeling the full weight of the world on her feet.

Will I be the only one left, when this is all done? First to come, but the only one to leave?

She felt anxious and powerless. Any agency she once had felt like it was crumbling into sand.

Borte walked through the occluder and into the bathroom, and kept moving at the same deliberate pace to the showers. Luckily, some dingus had left her shampoo and wash in the room, and she could just swipe it like the last few times.

She undressed as the water got up to that lukewarm temperature she was so used to, and started to stew in her thoughts as it rained down on her.

Yak, she despaired. I don’t know what happened to you, but you have to live. You have to. Please! At least one of you needs to! I’ll… I’d… I’d do anything. And what happened to Maryam? She wouldn’t have just been swooped up and popped without ceremony like that, but… the proctors said to stop asking where she went…

She lathered as much of the shampoo as she could through her thick hair. It wasn’t up to the job, and definitely would just make her hair look frizzier than usual. Darn it! she thought. Maryam would have been able to figure out a fix! She always has something for…

Another thought came to Borte. If…

If…

If… Yes! Absolutely!

The girl quickly rinsed out her hair, wrapped a towel around herself, and ran back to the cell.

If she had something like that hiding in plain sight, what else does she have in her stuff? Borte thought in a flash of excitement.

Borte opened the door, hit the light, and started fishing under Maryam’s bed, hair dripping on the floor like a soggy mop. She felt two errant boxes under there, and in her haste to grab it, one of them had tipped over. Some kind of disc-shaped thing, two long rods–

Ping. Something spring-loaded and thinner than thin popped off of her grasping hand, and Borte froze both in caution and terror.

With a deep breath, she drew her hand back to check. It was unscathed, and the only unfamiliar change to her hand were those fresh calluses she had encouraged to grow on herself during her last week of chores.

Undeterred, she gingerly reached out for the object that almost stabbed her from under the bed. It was part of one of the rods that she had touched, and she pulled it out by its blunt end to examine it more closely.

Borte looked at the knife in her hand. It was a simple, cheap switchknife design with an off-white handle slightly longer than her palm, and with a blade edge ground down so much that it had visible right angles to it. Why even have–

Click. The light went out again.

Borte reappeared again next to the light switch, dove back to under Maryam’s bed, and pulled out the disc and the second cylinder.

She gasped.

The disc was actually a personal shield– wrist or ankle-mounted, with who knew how long a shield charge. It was too large to be discreet, but didn’t look like the ones used in her filmbooks by the soldiers fighting across their pages.

And that second cylinder was another switchknife– but a quality military grade one, by the looks of it. It had a simple grey-green plas handle that was fifteen centimeters long, with a thumb-pattern trigger right under its small hi-steel quillon-porte.

On the side of the knife’s handle, the letters ‘F.M.F.D.I’ were scratched. ‘For Mother-Floggers Dying Instantly,’she guessed.

She scooted onto the top of her bed and sat there, looking at the switchknife. Was it keyed to her fingerprint? Why did she even have this? Wait, why even have the fake knife?

Carefully, with the blade pointed as far away from her as possible, she tried to unlock it. It opened and closed with a whip-like speed when the pattern on its thumb trigger was traced: a counterclockwise spiral, then a back-and forth ‘V’ over itself. The force that the twelve-centimeter blade sprang out with (and it was a sharpblade, too) could probably be enough to stab deep into flesh on its own, she guessed.

Click. The light disappeared for a third time.

Borte leaned back and sheathed the knife, and then took a deep breath. She opened her eyes, and blankly stared straight up at the ceiling.

I have a knife now, she thought. I have a shield.

Helena is the assassin, and only I know it.

None of the cops would believe me anyways, she despaired. Whenever she was caught searching for clues around the guardswomen, or even just tried to tell them things she had found, at first they would immediately shoo her away, and now would just snatch Borte up and haul her back to her floor advisor. It was like they were trying to not get anywhere in their search.

I just need something solid to finally pin her, Borte thought. It all adds up, sort of, but there are just some things I need to prove it. Things she’d be able to do. Stuff she’d know.

Bath water continued to drip from her hair onto her bed, a cool, clammy dampness that wouldn’t leave the covers any time soon.

I… I have to confront her myself, she thought with dread. Get her to do something that proves she’s ‘Tlaylaksoo’, and…

I might have to kill Helena before she kills me.

I might die.

Borte sighed and fought back tears.

Why does this all have to be so hard? she despaired. Everything got too serious too quickly. I… I wish it was like old times.

The girl continued to lay on the damp bed, staring into the void above. The chilly creep of water running down the sides of her neck and temples felt like death was already caressing her.

Then, a feeling of resolve came, and she clenched her fists.

I’m Borte floggin’ Abdullahi! she shouted inside of herself. If I can’t do this, nobody on this world can. I can do it. I can get out of this alive. Everyone’s gonna live. Just this once, every–

She stopped and remembered: Bryn already died.

She had to be realistic, Borte admitted to herself. Either Helena was going to be dead soon, or she was. Her or us. And if at least two of the trio lived, she bargained, then it was a good enough outcome, just like her usual grades in academic classes.

All I need is a plan, she thought. One was already starting to form in her head: a collection of all the circumstantial evidence around Helena and a set-piece confrontation. Just need to ask her a few specific things, at the right place and the right time.

That’s all I’ll need.

Oh yeah. And she also needed to turn off that shower.

“Afternoon, nebshit,” a familiar voice said.

Dara then stuck her half-eaten apple in a rolled-up sleeve of her work shirt, and turned to face Borte.

“Dara… I gotta call in my favor today.” Borte said. “Well, like… half of that favor.”

“Pity,” Dara said. She traced her eyes across a rack of collapsible sheep-crooks and cattle prods. “One favor’s one favor. And for that one favor, what’s the deal, witchling?”

Borte glanced around the equipment warehouse. Aside from a guardswoman posted at a faraway side entrance and two mechanics under a ground truck, she and Dara were the only hu– er, people in this covered acre of farm equipment.

Cautiously, Borte pulled out her slip of coded paper and held it in front of her face.

“I need you to hold onto this. Don’t show it to anyone until two days have passed. If… if you don’t see me around the campus that day, give this to a Sister.”

Dara raised an eyebrow. “Can I read it? You’re not smart enough to stick any kind of brain-killing magic in it, I know that.”

Borte blinked. “I mean… I guess. But don’t show it to– Hey!”

“Just saying, witchling.” Dara smiled.

“’Just saying,’ ” Borte parroted back with a sly expression. “Says the lady that almost fainted over a dead goatthe day ago.”

Rolling her eyes, Dara took the sheet of paper and stuck it in a dress pocket.

“We’re even after this, then,” Dara said. “I don’t wanna make a habit of exchanging favors with yins witches. Even when it’s one scrip for one scrip, yins still’ll take more than you give.”

Borte sighed, a puff of satisfied condensation floating out into the hangar.

“… Thanks, Dara.” She turned. “I’ll see you before then, but… this is just in case.”

Just as she was about to walk away, a thin, knobby hand grabbed Borte’s shoulder.

“Borte.” Dara said. “You need to tell me if you’re in danger, right now.”

Like most non-Adepts, Dara’s tone was perfectly unguarded: fear and concern dripped off her pitch and timbre like over-seasoned food.

Damn her! Borte thought. Dara didn’t know any secret tongues. Would that guard notice them?

She finally responded, slowly, without turning to face her or the guardswoman. “I’m… uh, preparing a confrontation. For tomorrow.”

“Let the guards handle it, Borte.”

The girl’s eyes flitted around. On one side, she saw the mechanics drag out a groundcar’s engine on a suspensor-sledge. On the other, there was the staging area they were doubtlessly going to inspect it at. How to get Dara on board?

She shook her head. “I found her, and… I don’t trust them to handle approaching it right. So I need to cover my bases. In case they have to step in.”

“You?” Dara scoffed. “You’re gonna handle an assassin that’s got the whole place crawling on hands and knees?”

Borte felt the switchknife’s handle rub against her inner thigh.

“Yes.”

Dara froze, and Borte then saw a small tremble pass through the older girl’s back.

“Then go,” Dara said simply, a look of pity now on her face. “I won’t wish good or bad luck to a witch. But…”

A silence grew. Borte, her face still as resolute as before, turned and left, and Dara simply stood there, watching, as the Initiate turned past a rack of pruning shears and went back inside the Chapterhouse complex.

Chapter 32 Selected Glossary

No new words of note. Only a calm before the storm.

Chapter Text

Shishirishi ni Shishiri

Sosoroso ni Sosoro

Shishirishi ni Shishiri

Sosoroso ni Sosoro

Maranimaiwo Mawashite

Shibinishijimiwo Tatakashite

Hayaseya Kintama

Chinchara Chinchara Chinchara

Chan!

– Invocation of Matarajin (Degraded Medieval Japanese, romanized), Greater Azhar Book

A Mana Internal–Redoubt, 10191 A.G.

Where am I? she asked, again and again, yet always for the first time.

Eventually, she felt an answer.

Yakoba was back in her family’s library. It would have been a reassuring thing to be back in the one place she always felt safe and unjudged in, but actually being here was impossible, she knew.

What had happened? Yakoba wondered. She remembered that she started to feel faint as the Gom Jabbar Test finished; then, as her vision blurred, a flitting feeling like a mind-candle being snuffed out spread across her consciousness.

And then, after an unmeasurable time in nothing, she found herself in this place.

The room looked as it did when she last saw it. The library had a reddish-brown interior made of both imported and planetary wood and plastic matte-varnish, and on the walls there were three well-used bookshelves, filled with filmbooks, microfiche and microfiche-readers, datacubes, and even some paper-macrotext volumes.

In the corner was a massive globe of Poritrin with variable holomarkers. The markers had been semi-permanently set to delineating the territories of House Alexei and its enfeoffed Houses Minor, an act of petty jealousy by Yakoba’s father.

A desk and uncomfortable wood-plastic chair was in the last free space on the edges of the room– Yakoba’s informal office as a child, such as it was. In the center of the room was a side table and a plantleather-fiber footstool and sofa, and that old matching armchair, battle scarred from the many evenings where she would curl up and experience history third-hand.

On one side of the room between two of the bookshelves, there was a window with heavy red curtains that looked out to the Herstal family’s small garden, where her mother would spend what little private time she had. To Yakoba, the only thing of note in it growing up was the apple tree: it was some variety that gave small fruit: not very sweet and somewhat grainy, but it still had a nostalgic taste unmatched anywhere else.

But there was one alarming change to the place’s layout as she remembered it: there was no longer a door leading to the hallway, or to anywhere. The only other place was the garden, which her mind immediately told her was ‘off-limits’ on a primordial level.

Just as inexplicable as everything else around her were two black robes that had been seared like an atomic shadow into the middle of the room without regard for perspective or reality. Their presence, as if their wearers had suddenly disappeared, were like an uncomfortable subliminal smear melted on top of the carpets and walls. One of the two had white fringes, while the other was a simple black-on-black.

Yakoba walked over to examine them, and found that her body moved differently in the space than she had anticipated.

What the hell’s going on? she thought.

She looked down at her hands and noticed they were subtly more delicate than before, but still had those couple of odd creases she knew intimately on the back of her hand. Moving her eyes down from that, she realized that she was in that dress and cardigan Proctor Myuller had gifted her when they visited the city. It was not exactly the same look though– the cut of it seemed modified and closer to what some of the common girls her age had worn back on Poritrin.

She was definitely shorter, too– the bookcases seemed to be as tall as they were before her massive growth spurt started at fourteen. And more than that, her… well, downstairs situation felt perfectly normal for the first time in her life.

This all definitely isn’t real, Yakoba thought. If I had a mirror, or something like one…

Instantly, Yakoba found herself looking at her own body from outside– she was having a dream, or something analogous to one, and her body here looked and felt exactly like her self-image: no misassigned gender, no disastrous first puberty, and the ever-wavering details of it were informed as much by the changes in the last year as from her mother and sister’s features. It was perfect, and also too much to bear.

She suddenly noticed– or imagined into existence– that on one of the bookshelves there was an image of the immediate family, with Yakoba crudely shoved into it by her mind’s eye instead of that half-dead half-boy. Was it just added now, or was it always here?

She picked up the photo frame– a compressed hologram, the foreground and background foreshortened to compress the space into a flat, aesthetically useful prism instead of a cube.

Until now, Yakoba didn’t notice just how much she took from her mother, not just her father. Who was she, before my father sucked all the air out of the room? she thought. Who is she, really? She was so quiet and so distant, growing up.

The memories of being around her as a very small child– her voice, her stories– they felt frayed, crumbling. She held back tears.

Yakoba looked outside to her mother’s garden. The leaves on the trees were a brilliant orange and had already begun to fall, just like when she left Poritrin.

Fall was her favorite time of year! This place was an idealized home inside herself!

Yakoba's Redoubt, 10191 A.G.

A loud crash came from everywhere at once, and Yakoba turned to see a girl splayed on the floor in front of the sofa.

The girl was wearing an initiate uniform, though one of an old-fashioned style and with all of the blue fringes torn off of her hooded scapular and dress. She had a short, broad body that could uncharitably be called ‘potato-like’ despite not having much extra weight on her, and she had pale skin and dark, frizzy hair with more than a few split ends. Her face had a flat, broad nose, thin lips, and like her own face, thick, unkept eyebrows.

Fragments of that strange dream from a week ago– that girl she saw in the mirror– came back to her. Her name was… Yakova, right? Familiar.

Further making the connection clear, Yakova had a blackened stump for a right hand, and a thin, silvery needle sticking out of the left side of her neck, permanently embedded a few millimeters into her skin.

Yakova groaned– a mixture of actual pain and annoyance– as she pulled herself off of the ground, and looked up at Yakoba with a smouldering glare.

“You!” she huffed.

“Me?” Yakoba scoffed. “I haven’t done anything wrong, lass. Are you all right?”

She walked over to help Yakova to her feet, but was swatted away by the smaller girl.

“I– I don’t need your help, idiot!” Little Yak shouted.

After she pulled herself up, the ghost balled her fist and turned away from her, trudging around to the other side of the sofa. “None of this is real, anyways. It’s… it’s a construction. A fake place! A knot of your memories, your wants in y– in my head.”

Little Yak started to moan and hid her face behind her hand and stump.

“Um… I’m sorry, but… why are you in my head?” asked Yakoba.

“You’re, uh. It’s all a dream,” the short girl said, waving her unmarred arm. “You’re actually me, you know, and uh… I’m just having a bad day. Normal school things.”

Yakoba raised an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure I’m me. Did you stuff me down here after my Gom Jabbar Test?”

The girl turned away from Yakoba and started blinking. “Well, I didn’t do anything to, uh, make it happen in the first place,” she mumbled.

Little Yak was not a convincing liar, even when lying by omission, and even in a dreamscape, the ego-memory definitely wasn’t as skilled at body- and mind-control basics as Yakoba had become under Proctor Emal’s month-long crash course.

Wait, Proctor Myuller. That’s improper, she corrected herself. Or is it Sister Myuller? Sister Emal?

Yakoba continued to press Little Yak.

“So, what happened?” she inquired.

Little Yak averted her eyes, but Yakoba moved to stare into them no matter where she tried to turn her head.

Eventually, the girl relented.

“I was so close… so close!” she sobbed. “I was finally– time finally moved, I could do things, be places! And then they, of all people, pushed me back away from it all.”

Yakoba tensed up.

“They? Mother Puleng and the Proctor?” she asked

Inwardly (for what little that mattered here), Yakoba started to panic. Was this girl traveling inside me this whole time? Was she in control of my body? Did we… oh no, did we switch places?

The room darkened and warped around her, the robe-scars continuing to splay and warp across their visions.

Abomination! She had become an abomi–

“Emal!” Little Yak interrupted her with a shout, and the room returned to its old dimensions. “Emal did it… She and that weird apothecary just strung me along, and then when I least expected it, shot me up with drugs and knocked me out to force me back to here with you.”

Small sniffles could be heard from the girl’s flickering body. “And Wellie just watched, like always.” A strange flickering cloud of light formed around her face.

Yakoba stepped closer, her pulse quickening. “How long were you controlling me?”

Little Yak wiped her face and turned around, a glare more terrible than her first now in her eyes. “You? That body’s just as divorced from you as it is from me, and you even stole my name for it!”

She stepped closer to her, squared up her squat body against Yakoba’s mental hourglass, and poked her on the solar plexus.

“And you’ve got quite the self-image to think it has that figure, girl. Because trust me, that’s not what I was seeing in the mirr–”

“How long?” Yakoba shouted. The lights in the library flickered.

Little Yak looked as if she had wilted, and the little color that was in her face drained away.

She took some steps back, almost falling over the armchair’s footstool, but converted it into a very rough rear-first landing on the ground.

Now jostled, Little Yak gulped down a lump in her throat: “Just, ah, just under four hours or so!” she stammered. “I was asleep after the Gom Jabbar test for over a day, the apothecary told me.”

She started to knead the edge of her scapular as she sat on the floor.

Yakoba circled around her possessor.

“Just an hour?” she interrogated.

Little Yak nodded. “Yeah. I went, uh, well, the apothecary mentioned Emal was there, and so I went to see Em and Wellie,” she babbled. “So they could know I was here, and help figure out what I should do next.”

Some things about this girl felt familiar (and kind of pathetic) to Yakoba, but she also felt incredibly dangerous. There was no telling what she was capable of, now that she was backed into this corner of her mind. And a disturbing part of her couldn’t really blame her for how she was acting.

Still, she had to stop this. Her life was on the line. But how could she?

“What did you, uh, want to do?” asked Yakoba.

Little Yak paused and looked down, frowning at the thought.

“I… I don’t know. I wanted to live again, but It’s been decades. I don’t know anything about what I should do to survive out there in that body.”

She paused and giggled at herself. “It’s a silly thing– a simple thing, isn’t it? Just wanting to live, without a plan or good sense behind it. But I want to live, all the same.”

Yakoba looked at the girl with a glare. “Well, I want my body back, please,” she said.

The Other shook her head, a nervous smile still on her face.

“I won’t give it back.”

“You won’t?” Yakoba snarled. Outrage started to bubble within her, teachings about self control be damned! She had a right to be mad: no, a duty.

The lost girl picked herself up and then sat on the footstool.

“I won’t,” Little Yak said, “and even if I did know what to do to give it back…”

“You don’t even know what you want to do out there, either. You don’t even know if you want to live!”

Big Yak felt the center of things shift from her.

“Even I know that at least. So I’m in control here.” Yakova shifted on the footstool– now like a throne with terrible, monadic awe despite its size– and hugged her knees, a sly look now in her eyes. “Aren’t I, big lass?”

An unpleasantly familiar smile came on Yakova’s face. It was a dead-ringer for the muscle-memory from those few glorious times when Big Yak actually beat Cousin Marus or her father in Cheops.

Big Yak’s chest hollowed out– it was a direct attack on her ego by this precursor! She could feel herself pushed away to the corners of the room– the world imperceptably sliding around her.

This will keep her down, Yakova thought. She doesn’t know how her own mind works.

“No!” Big Yak shouted. She tried to re-center herself, to breathe deep– but only found the room moving ever so further from her, the sound of her unconscious physical body still keeping that steady heartbeat and shallow breath.

“No?” Yakova tilted her head, feigning curiosity.

“No! Absolutely not! This is my body– my life! My life, to use on my terms! I won’t let you take it away from me just because you… you think you have it by right of conquest!”

“You gave up your right to life on your terms, when you joined the Sisterhood,” Yakova hissed. “Just like me. And you said yes!”

“I– I can’t let you do this!” Big Yak shouted.

“Then stop me!” Yakova shouted at her, and threw her feet back to the ground.

As the girl remained seated, the room started to shake. Books and datacubes began raining down from the shelves.

Big Yak held her head in pain from the assault: “I– I just– no, a moment– I just need a moment to–!”

“Stay down, big lass, and never come back!” Yakova screamed.

And then, Yakoba Herstal disappeared.

An Abomination's Redoubt, 10191 A.G.

Yakova stood up, a nervous smile on her face.

Me or her, she thought. It was either me or her. It… it’s ok. I was justified.

The library remained as it was, but that was no matter– she wasn’t planning to ever return to this place again. All she needed to do was digest Big Yak’s memories, (perhaps they were in all of these books?) and she could pass off acting as her once she returned to consciousness.

As she went to pick up a book, she saw her burnt right stump– still acting like the pain from the Agony Box was real. I need to fix this here, I think– then my hand will act normal in the real world, she thought.

She stood there, trying to envision re-growing her fingers, like blooms from an orchid cutting. But nothing came.

Undeterred and wanting some victory over her self-appearance, Yakova instead tugged at the needle in her neck– but it was still as deep as ever, and no matter how hard she gripped it, it was stuck in her neck like it was glued there by a superepoxy. Not even her neck budged or stretched when she grabbed the needle. Was she seared this way permanently by death?

A sense of panic came over her: she tried to breathe deeply, but the slow, shallow in-out-in of her unconscious body continued in its steady rhythm. How– How– (How?)

She looked around. All that had changed in the room since Big Yak’s exorcism was that her father’s globe was now missing. A remnant of that defeated personality’s past, and one she would have wanted to–

(The globe is gone,) a half-realized thought of Yakova’s escaped.

“Of course it’s gone,” Yakoba said, her voice coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. “I’m using it.”

With a dawning horror, Little Yak realized that she was still not in control of anything. A looming feeling came over her.

Oh… oh no, she thought.

A planet-sized shadow grew over Little Yak’s body, blocking out the library’s fixed glowglobes.

Yakoba's Mental Battlefield, 10191 A.G.

“Fuck Off!” Yakoba commanded.

Then the entire weight of Poritrin smashed onto the ghost’s self-image, flattening her.

Crushed under the mental image of the planet– the footstool now atomized, the library’s wooden floor starting to squeal and delaminate upwards with the sheer mass of the planet crashing into everything around her– Little Yak was knocked away from the mind’s Imperial Seat. No, not knocked: smashed underneath it!

On the opposite side of her home planet, Yakoba stood, one hand in an immaculate mudra and her other three limbs pushing on the ground with a terrible strength of will.

Just as she was taught by Emal Myuller, the living girl had centered herself. Rather than continue to seethe with rage, she had instead applied her training and entered a state of deep, intuitive, and pitiless focus.

Around her, Little Yak saw the holomarked borders of Poritrin– hollow, ghostly golden filigrees, those vain desires of mortals to split up the universe into an eternal system of patrimony– fall away from the planet and to the floor of the library like cobwebs. Bursts of light like silent firecrackers came from every edge of the horizon as the borders rose towards the wooden floor and dispersed on its surface.

Yakoba peered over the edge of the world at Little Yak, still paralyzed by shock and the immense psychic force that she had brought to bear. The girl never expected that Yakoba– always just a mimic, an impostor to her– would have surpassed her so completely in her training.

“You will not have me!” Yakoba shouted at her antlike frame. “This is my life, my soul, and my name!”

“No!” a small voice screamed back, her arms slowly worming free of the astronomical weight. “Fuck you,marder! I want to live!”

Yakoba took a deep breath and started to stamp the planet below her with a refined, destructive rhythm– an impromptu dance-of-self, pushing Little Yak’s defiant arms, thousands of miles away, further and further into Poritrin’s muddy soil.

“Yield! Fucking yield, lass!” Yakoba shouted. She began to strike the earth with both of her palms, and the sleeping body’s breathing grew stronger, deeper, more rhythmic.

“Never!” Little Yak screamed back.

“I hold in both hands the strength of the Great Mother;” Yakoba recited. “In my right–” she smashed the ground, “A gift of virtue and wisdom! In my left–” she struck a second time, “A punishment from the… uh, I forget that part!”

“With them,” she screamed, “I extinguish the life-movement of the ghost! Return to the realm beyond!”

Then, Yakoba brought down both of her fists onto Poritrin, and smashed it to pieces. Magma pooled from its now-naked core, and sloughed onto Yakova Kotler’s ego-memory.

In an agonizing scream, Little Yak popped out of realization, and only a tiny ego-mote– a bizzare, fetal memory-shape– remained of her in front of Yakoba.

Yakoba then dropped down onto the ground and stood there, breathing heavily, and collected herself.

She looked around: the library– her library– was still intact after her act of ritualized planetary annihilation, though the footstool no longer existed, the floorboards in front of the sofa were warped and torn upwards, and half of the carpet was burning in lukewarm magma. She noted that the two robe-smears had disappeared from their omnipresence. A question for later, she thought.

Undeterred, she walked over to the ego-mote and lightly kicked chunks of her father's ambitions out of her way. The clouds of the fingernail-thin atmosphere fanned out from the globe-Poritrin's old surface like it was dry ice on a summer evening.

After extinguishing the carpet fire with a snap of her fingers, Yakoba scooped up the ego’s no-shape and held it in her hand.

It’s such a tiny, powerless thing, she thought. So: they all need access to a brain’s basal functions to become ‘real’?

She imagined what Proctor Myuller (well, ‘Sister Emal’ now) would say about all this, once she woke up from her trance:

“Mm mm,” she’d start, Yakoba thought. “Miss Herstal, that was a classic ‘Drop-a-planet-on-top-of-an-ego-memory’ maneuver. Very rudimentary, but an effective and difficult method for even a novice Sister. But, that was a poor recitation of the Azharic Litany of Exorcism!”

“So: We will re-start where we left off regarding your Eidetic recall,” she continued, flourishing her arm like her direct teacher would, her robe’s black sleeves whipping around, “now: tell me about your moth–”

With a dreadful shock, she realized she was now wearing a Bene Gesserit Sister’s robe– black on black, with an aba underneath.

Yakoba let go of the mote and stumbled back in horror. The robes seemed to flow into her as much as they draped from her frame.

No! her mind raced. Not… I don’t… I don’t know! I don’t know if I want to be this…

But you could, a part of her thought: a part of her that was truly part of her, not an ego-memory. An inner truth speaking from deep intuition.

You could make a great Bene Gesserit, no matter their expectations.

No– I could make a great Bene Gesserit.

But I don’t know if I can be Bene Gesserit. I can’t live with being cruel.

I’m not ready to choose, she lamented. Maybe I won’t ever be. I… I need to focus on this, instead.

With some effort, Yakoba re-imagined herself in those clothes she was first wearing, and walked back to the mote, still bobbing weightlessly among the wreckage.

She looked closer at what remained of her possessor. It looked like something made of shimmering memories, and with an amorphous shape in-between a brain, a heart, and a fetus. Its name– no, her name, ‘Yakova Kotler’, felt wordlessly imprinted onto her primal thought-form.

A feeling of pity and kinship came over Yakoba. It was a wordless understanding– more the breadth and inertia of the memories in ‘front’ of her than the actual recollections of each individual event. Of someone who also had a mother and father and siblings once. Who lost everything, and had to deal with an uncaring Sisterhood and an absolute pain in the neck named Emal Myuller ruling over her.

Carefully, Yakoba pulled at the end of the mote like the mnemonic shigawire in a filmbook, and recalled those missing hours where Yakova Kotler walked among the living one last time.

“So there’s another way,” she said out loud.

Yakoba’s flushed face was calm, but still touched with sorrow. “I want that instead, for us. And for you. Not… this,” she gestured to the ego-memory.

No response came, and carefully, Yakoba granted it a sliver of time-existence to respond.

“And you do know what you could do, too,” Yakoba said to the mote, “Don’t lie to me. What did they say?”

(…Mohalata,) Little Yak’s memory relented. (A mohalata pact. …say I’m supposed to… er, could be, a guardian ego-memory…)

“Instead of?” Press the lost soul to admit it, she thought.

(In control,) Little Yak’s echo said bashfully.

Yakoba held the half-lucid ego-memory closer to her face like a glass ornament, and stared it in the ‘eyes,’ if she could be said to have any in this form.

“Do you promise not to challenge me like that, ever again?” She asked. I’m getting close, she thought.

(I… I promise,) Little Yak grumbled.

“Then let’s talk.”

Yakoba let go of the ego-mote, and in a pop Yakova Kotler reappeared on the floor.

This time, the girl had no burnt-off hand, no Gom Jabbar in her neck, and no tattered initiate uniform: just the girl herself, now in a green sack dress and a colorful weaved belt around her waist.

Little Yak looked back at her Mana-consciousness with defiance.

“I’ve had enough humiliation for a lifetime,” she fumed. “If you’re going to pity me so much that you want me to become your– your slave, then just go ahead and turn me to dust again.”

Yakoba bent down and helped Little Yak to her feet, shaking her head the whole time.

“I don’t want a slave, and I don’t want power,” the taller girl said. “I just need help.”

“Hmph!” Little Yak snorted. “You’ve got Emal and all those ever-so-nice friends, don’t you?”

She sat down on the sofa with a petulant thump, and an exhausted Yakoba followed her lead.

“And Emal… resigned, though.” Yakoba then said, sighing.

From her seat, Yakoba started rotating the events from her Gom Jabbar test in her fingers as if they were a toy model. “So I, um don’t know if she’ll still be my teacher, or even if I’ll stay in the Order, yet. And… I need a different kind of help than they can give.”

“Really, now.”

“Yes, really.” Yakoba said. “We’re similar, aren’t we?”

Little Yak sighed. “Everyone says so, big lass. Unfortunately.”

“I don’t know what kind of person I’ll become,” Yakoba said. She rubbed her slender dream-body’s fingers. “I’m… afraid. I don’t know if I’m going to be a worse person if I stay in the Sisterhood, or if I can get kicked out of it.” She sighed. “Or… if that’s just a part of growing up.”

Little Yak turned her head away and glared. “So… you want me to act as your inner child? Your security blanket? Lass, I don’t need reminding that I won’t ever grow up.”

“I… I need you as my advisor, Yakova,” Yakoba said. “My second opinion. Someone who knows the worst of things in the Sisterhood, and won’t ever forget how that feels. No matter what, I’ll be stuck around them for the rest of my whole life. I’m… I’m already changing, and I don’t know if that’s good.”

The dead girl started idly scratching the fabric of the sofa, averting her eyes from Yakoba.

“And if you stop listening to me?” she said.

Yakoba entwined her hand– the hand she was tested upon– with Little Yak’s.

She looked the ego-memory in the eyes. “I… I won’t ever deny you counsel!” she cried. “I promise I’ll keep you as a Mohalata until the day you no longer wish to see through my eyes.”

After a moment that lasted for too long, Yakova Kotler, the Little Yak, finally looked Yakoba Herstal back in the eye.

“A bold move… making so many oaths to the dead right on the spot,” she murmured. A sly smile came over her face.

“How else could I entreat you?” Yakoba said, smiling right back. “You can’t offer much to a memory.”

Around the upturned lips and cheeks, there was a horribly tired look to the living girl’s face.

Little Yak looked back at her with worry.

“… Fine,” the ego-memory relented. “I’ll try to be your Mohalata guardian. Do I have to sign a form, or something?”

Yakoba started to chuckle, and the two of them sat there on the library’s sofa, finally at peace.

A Mohalata Fistula–Redoubt, 10191 A.G.

(Is this how it’ll be with all your enemies, girl?) a strangely familiar echo-voice said. (Weakness! Take your own side in every fight, and you’ll always have one ally.)

(Every ape is good at clenching her fists, but keeping a hand open for another– well, that’s not properly human, but it is kind,) another old family member chimed in.

The two Yaks turned to find where the voices were coming from.

In the garden outside the library’s window, just next to the apple tree, were two black-robed women. Their faces were totally obscured by shadowy hoods (if they even had faces anymore). The younger-sounding one was wearing a black robe with the white stripes of a novice Bene Gesserit, and the elder voice belonged to that of a full sister.

Yakoba ran towards the window for a closer look. In her hands, the younger sister held a wooden pole with spring garlands tied to it, and the elder was holding a massive begonia leaf, its stem the size of a flagpole.

(But oh! She’s proven she’s human, hasn’t she?) the younger commented again, swaying her stick as she spoke.

(Her Mohalata has enough fight and good counsel to be of some use, too) the elder said. She stood straight and tall, with her leaf outstretched as if it were a guard’s force pike.

Little Yak tugged on Yakoba’s sleeve. “Uh… Who the hell are they?” she whispered.

It was clear to her.

“Family,” Yakoba said nonchalantly. “You know how it is.”

(Congratulations are of course, in order!) they both shouted. It was a dissonant, sing-song chorus that held no recognizable tone to it.

(Your mother would be proud!) the younger continued.

(Oh! Ever so proud!) the elder crowed in response.

(What say you, daughter? Shall we bring her to this celebration?) the younger said excitedly, and immediately pulled the garden’s wall away with a wave of her staff.

Behind the wall was an endless row of figures in a garden of flowers and apple trees that stretched off to infinity, as if in a hall of reflecting mirrors. The figures walked back and forth out of view, each wearing the same cream-colored embroidered dress that Yakoba’s mother favored wearing.

The figure closest to them, also clad in that dress, had two horns and stood still with her back to the library. On top of the dress she wore an archaic religious vestment– a girdle and vest, with a strange language embroidered on it. The brown hair, immaculately kept in a familiar updo, was an exact match for Yakoba’s mother's, and her skin was the exact shade that her mother had as well.

She was Yakoba’s mother– she felt exactly like her mother–, but she also was not.

And she started to turn towards them.

Before the figure could fully turn around, the elder sister hid their face behind her begonia leaf, and pulled the garden walls closed behind the figure, leaving just the three in the garden. Only the very bottom of her mother’s hair could be seen from the window.

(Please, some restraint, mother!) the elder sister scolded. (She still has much to learn– she cannot gaze upon the face of Mother just yet.)

(Pfah, fine,) the younger said. (Oh, but Mother Most Last, but Most Great in this visitor’s eyes! Do you have anything you wish to tell your child, our well-bred Daughter of Daughters?)

A muffled, disturbing noise– like that of Yakova’s mother speaking through twenty meters of linen, or into a swimming pool of amniotic fluid– came from behind the leaf.

(Hmm. Just nonsense to these un-revered types. She needs translation,) the elder commented.

(“I love you deeply, my child, no matter where you are, no matter if you are Yvette or Yakoba,” she says!) the younger sister said. (I… I think that’s right.)

Slowly, the figure first took out an portygul and then a feathered centipede the size of a dove from her vestments, and held them upturned in her hands.

“I don’t even know what this witch nonsense is supposed to be anymore,” Little Yak sighed.

Yakoba ignored her, and stared intently– longingly– at her occluded mother.

Another muffled set of words– longer, more urgent– came from behind the leaf.

(“Your blood carries sounds of the ill winds you hear, sights of the ill omens, smells of the ill people to your ancestors! Our intuition finds action is needed,” she says!) the elder said.

In two sudden motions, Yakoba’s mother threw the centipede into the air with one hand and crushed the portygul to pulp with her other. A final set of primordial sounds came from the dormant ego-memory.

(“It is time to plant an ill tree so that it does not bear fruit,” she says!) the younger sister finished.

The two subliminal figures stood there, the begonia leaf swaying as if barely able to contain the face of Yakoba’s mother.

Then:

(Child of our blood… we now keep watch outside the door to your pasts that is hidden yet near,) the elder one said. (Never to appear again until your Day of Days as a Most Reverend Mother. And until that day…)

(If that day comes,) The younger countered. (We’re no oracles, daughter! Just gossipers of the intuitive.)

(Hush, mother! And until that day comes, when we meet again… oh!)

As Yakoba continued to stand in wonder at this lineage-vision, Little Yak tensed up and grabbed her hand to guide the girl away if they turned on her. A wary expression was now on the mohalata’s face.

(‘Oh,’ daughter?)

(Oh, of course, mother!)

(Oh! Of course!)

(Oh! Oh! Heed this visit from your Most Great Mother!) They shouted in unison.

Then, slowly, the begonia leaf sagged, and for an instant, the two saw the face of a young Irmentrude, direct unknowing descendant of the Zensunni of Poritrin and of Sisterhood blood.

And then her daughter Yakoba Herstal awoke.

Dufa-of-Aegir, 10191 A.G.

Yakoba opened her own eyes for the first time in days, and was blinded by the lights of the room. She groaned at the newfound aches in her body– did someone break a chair on her back?

Someone was breathing softly above her.

She refocused her eyes, and saw Proctor Emal asleep mid-squat, still tightly clutching a sewing needle in one hand and a near-empty liquor bottle in the other.

Slowly, silently, Yakoba rolled out of reach of the Proctor’s makeshift Gom Jabbar and sat up, only to see Emal stirring.

“Um… Proctor?”

How could she prove that it was really her? Yakoba worried. Emal was definitely ready to kill her if Little Yak was still in control after… whatever happened between the two of them.

(That’s the rough part,) Little Yak intruded. (Don’t do anything I would do that you wouldn’t. But that you, uh, would. I don’t know, reach for high things? Smile more?)

“I know it’s you, Miss Herstal,” Proctor Emal said. She pulled herself up and straightened her back out with some visible (and audible) difficulty.

Yakoba sighed in relief. “Ah, um… thank you, Pr- Sister Myuller. Er. Sister Emal.”

“Yak would have just– ugh– frozen in place on waking,” Emal said. A cr-crack came from her back as she stretched.

“Ow!" the old woman cried. "Also: your breathing patterns changed back to your new, trained baseline midway through your… induced trance.”

The two of them looked around the front sitting room of Emal’s apartment. What looked like a coffee table and a zither was thoroughly smashed into pieces underneath where Yakoba had been laying, and a half-filled water bottle with a chewed-up straw was right next to that uncomfortable nest.

“But!” Emal continued to talk, her voice circling around Yakoba as she walked back to the kitchen. “My congratulations to you, human… and congratulations, too, on dealing with an unprecedented situation.”

She washed off the sewing needle in the sink with the remainder of the liquor. “There have been… occurrences of children in some Sisterhood bloodlines unlocking partial Other Memory fragments under epigenetic stresses, drug-related or no. Often it happens if their mother, or grandmother, was already a Reverend Mother before they were concieved. Usually it’s only the memory of their mothers or immediate grandmothers, or even more rarely, of fathers, though that mechanism is little-known.”

Emal shook her head. “A super-majority become… confirmed abominations like the pre-born, and are dealt with accordingly. Therapeutical methods are not given much credence by the Sisterhood.”

She looked her student in the eyes. “I am immensely proud that you were able to overcome such an event, Yakoba. It’s difficult even for… the younger reverend mothers, say, to regain control.”

“But… those are genetic memories, right?” Yakoba asked.

“True,” Proctor Emal said.

She walked back into the sitting room with two cups of tea, the sewing needle pinched point-inwards between two of her fingers.

“As for your case, I have little idea of my own.” Emal said, handing Yakoba one of the cups. “Just speculation. There are tales of how before the Butlerian Jihad, there were fragments or whole ego-memories stolen from human minds and stored in thinking-machine form as ‘engrammatical constructs,’ whatever truth that has. Ego-Memories can be shared between Reverend Mothers by physio-neural contact. And some bloodlines we’ve cultivated and encouraged in planetary genomes do it more efficiently than others. Also the theories regarding the medium of the nousphere. It could be…”

And as she sat, Proctor Emal trailed off, lost in thought.

Yakoba sat in the chair, trying to keep herself centered after her exhausting array of visions.

Suddenly: “I know I have two Sisters in my matrilineal line,” Yakoba blurted.

Emal stared at her with an astonished look.

“How long ago?” she said, a sudden intensity to her words.

Yakoba shook her head. “I don’t know. But they’re there. I know that now. Somehow.”

The girl took a sip of the mug’s liquid– the taste was bitter and entirely wrong, with more than a hint of coffee grounds added to the tea.

(Yuck! Oh, those two?), Little Yak said. (I feel like they were also in there for a while. But are we going to just ignore that your mom’s memory clearly is asking you to kill someone? Because I’m fine with that idea.)

“They’re not with me, yet,” Yakoba continued. “None of my ancestors are. But they’re just… they feel one locked door away at the moment, if that makes sense. Not klicks away.”

Emal stood there, staring at her silently. In the unbearable silence, Yakoba leaned over to the water bottle, and unscrewed the cap. The teeth marks on the straw matched the shapes of her molars.

“I… I saw my mother, for an instant,” Yakoba said. She then took her first sip of water in days.

“Kull Wahad,” Emal muttered. “‘Fallow lines have the real surprises,’ my old teacher once said.”

The ex-proctor stared into her drink and started rambling: “Factoring in personality matches with your new ego-memory, and incredible stress from your transition and whatever they did to you during processing, and your voyage here giving access to a clean nousphere during such vulnerability…”

“What does that mean?” Yakoba asked. She was too tired to panic.

“Oh, Great Mother! The hell if I know, Initiate,” Emal sighed. “I’m still waiting to look at your genetic records.”