Dune [Frank Herbert's Dune Saga Collection: Books 1 - 6]

Lucilla accepted this without question. That which was so secret would be perceived as dangerous by anyone who even suspected its presence. “Else why do they keep it secret, eh? Answer me that!”

The crystal continued to pour its secrets into her awareness: “At the threat of discovery, they have a standard reaction, ‘We seek the religion of our roots. It is a revival, bringing back what is best from our past.’”

Lucilla knew this pattern. There were always “nutty revivalists.” It was guaranteed to blunt most curiosity. “Them? Oh, they’re another bunch of revivalists.”

“The masking system (the crystal continued) did not succeed with us. We have our own well-recorded Jewish heritage and a fund of Other Memory to tell us reasons for secrecy. We did not disturb the situation until I, Mother Superior during and after the battle of Corrin (Very old, indeed!), saw that our Sisterhood had need of a secret society, a group responsive to our requests for assistance.”

Lucilla felt a surge of skepticism. Requests?

The long-ago Mother Superior had anticipated skepticism. “On occasion, we make demands they cannot avoid. But they make demands on us as well.”

Lucilla felt immersed in the mystique of this underground society. It was more than ultra-secret. Her clumsy questions in Archives had elicited mostly rejections. “Jews? What’s that? Oh, yes—an ancient sect. Look it up for yourself. We don’t have time for idle religious research.”

The crystal had more to impart: “Jews are amused and sometimes dismayed at what they interpret as our copying them. Our breeding records dominated by the female line to control the mating pattern are seen as Jewish. You are only a Jew if your mother was a Jew.”

The crystal came to its conclusion: “The Diaspora will be remembered. Keeping this secret involves our deepest honor.”

Lucilla lifted the hood from her head.

“You are a very good choice for an extremely touchy assignment on Lampadas,” Odrade had said, restoring the crystal to its hiding place.

That is the past and likely dead. Look where Odrade’s “touchy assignment” has brought me!

From her vantage in the Gammu farmhouse, Lucilla noted a large produce carrier had entered the grounds. There was a bustle of activity below her. Workers came from all sides to meet the big carrier with towbins of vegetables. She smelled the pungent juices from the cut stems of marrows.

Lucilla did not move from the window. Her host had supplied her with local garments—a long gown of drab gray everwear and a bright blue headscarf to confine her sandy hair. It was important to do nothing calling undue attention to herself. She had seen other women pause to watch the farm work. Her presence here could be taken as curiosity.

It was a large carrier, its suspensors laboring under the load of produce already piled in its articulated sections. The operator stood in a transparent house at the front, hands on the steering lever, eyes straight ahead. His legs were spread wide and he leaned into the web of sloping supports, touching the power bar with his left hip. He was a large man, face dark and deeply wrinkled, hair laced with gray. His body was an extension of the machinery—guiding ponderous movement. He flicked his gaze up to Lucilla as he passed, then back to the track into the wide loading area defined by buildings below her.

Built into his machine, she thought. That said something about the way humans were fitted to the things they did. Lucilla sensed a weakening force in this thought. If you fitted yourself too tightly to one thing, other abilities atrophied. We become what we do.

She pictured herself suddenly as another operator in some great machine, no different from that man in the carrier.

The big machine trundled past her out of the yard, its operator not sparing her another glance. He had seen her once. Why look twice?

Her hosts had made a wise choice in this hiding place, she thought. A sparsely populated area with trustworthy workers in the immediate vicinity and little curiosity among the people who passed. Hard work dulled curiosity. She had noted the character of the area when she was brought here. Evening then and people already trudging toward their homes. You could measure the urban density of an area by when work stopped. Early to bed and you were in a loosely packed region. Night activity said people remained restless, twitchy with inner awareness of others active and vibrating too near.