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

She saw the worry in his eyes. “You heard Levi talking yesterday of the questions being asked here. Why did the Bene Gesserit witch come to us? That is what they ask.”

“Our story is consistent and believable,” Rebecca protested. “The Sisters have taught us ways that even Truthsay cannot penetrate.”

“I don’t know . . . I don’t know.” The Rabbi shook his head sadly. “What is a lie? What is truth? Do we condemn ourselves with our own mouths?”

“It is pogrom that we resist, Rabbi!” That usually stiffened his resolve.

“Cossacks! Yes, you are right, daughter. There have been cossacks in every age and we are not the only ones who have felt their knouts and swords as they rode into the village with murder in their hearts.”

It was odd, Rebecca thought, how he managed to give the impression that these events were of recent occurrence and that his eyes had seen them. Never to forgive, never to forget. Lidiche was yesterday. What a powerful thing that was in the memory of Secret Israel. Pogrom! Almost as powerful in its continuity as these Bene Gesserit presences she carried in her awareness. Almost. That was the thing the Rabbi resisted, she told herself.

“I fear that you have been taken from us,” the Rabbi said. “What have I done to you? What have I done? And all in the name of honor.”

He looked at the instruments on his study wall that reported the nightly power accumulations from the vertical-axis windmills placed around the farmstead. The instruments said the machines were humming away up there, storing energy for the morrow. That was a gift of the Bene Gesserit: freedom from Ix. Independence. What a peculiar word.

Without looking at Rebecca, he said: “I find this thing of Other Memory very difficult and always have. Memory should bring wisdom but it does not. It is how we order the memory and where we apply our knowledge.”

He turned and looked at her, his face falling into shadows. “What is it this one inside you says? This one you think of as Lucilla?”

Rebecca could see it pleased him to say Lucilla’s name. If Lucilla could speak through a daughter of Secret Israel, then she still lived and had not been betrayed.

Rebecca lowered her gaze as she spoke. “She says we have these inner images, sounds and sensations that come at command or intrude under necessity.”

“Necessity, yes! And what is that except reports of senses from flesh that may have been where you should not have been and done offensive things?”

Other bodies, other memories, Rebecca thought. Having experienced this she knew she could never willingly abandon it. Perhaps I have indeed become Bene Gesserit. That is what he fears, of course.

“I will tell you a thing,” the Rabbi said. “This ‘crucial intersection of living awareness,’ as they call it, that is nothing unless you know how your own decisions go out from you like threads into the lives of others.”

“To see our own actions in the reactions of others, yes, that is how the Sisters view it.”

“That is wisdom. What is it the lady says they seek?”

“Influence on the maturing of humankind.”

“Mmmmmm. And she finds that events are not beyond her influence, merely beyond her senses. That is almost wise. But maturity . . . ahhh, Rebecca. Do we interfere with a higher plan? Is it the right of humans to set limits on the nature of Yaweh? I think Leto II understood that. This lady in you denies it.”

“She says he was a damnable tyrant.”

“He was but there have been wise tyrants before him and doubtless will be more after us.”

“They call him Shaitan.”

“He had Satan’s own powers. I share their fear of that. He was not so much prescient as he was a cement. He fixed the shape of what he saw.”

“That is what the lady says. But she says it is their grail that he preserved.”

“Again, they are almost wise.”

A great sigh shook the Rabbi and once more he looked to the instruments on his wall. Energy for the morrow.

He returned his attention to Rebecca. She was changed. He could not avoid awareness of it. She had become very like the Bene Gesserit. It was understandable. Her mind was filled with all of those people from Lampadas. But they were not Gadarene swine to be driven into the sea and their diabolism with them. And I am not another Jesus.

“This thing they tell you about the Mother Superior Odrade—that she often damns her own Archivists and the Archives with them. What a thing! Are not Archives like the books in which we preserve our wisdom?”

“Then am I an Archivist, Rabbi?”

Her question confounded him but it also illuminated the problem. He smiled. “I tell you something, daughter. I admit to a little sympathy with this Odrade. There is always something grumbling about Archivists.”

“Is that wisdom, Rabbi?” How shyly she asked it!

“Believe me, daughter, it is. How carefully the Archivist suppresses even the smallest hint of judgment. One word after another. Such arrogance!”

“How do they judge which words to use, Rabbi?”

“Ahhh, a bit of wisdom comes to you, daughter. But these Bene Gesserit have not achieved wisdom and it is their grail that prevents it.”

She could see it on his face. He tries to arm me with doubts about these lives I carry.