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

“I’ve heard about your Dune . . . exploit.”

Exploit. Not “experience.” Exploit. Very precise with her censure. Quite like Tam. “Too much of Bell has rubbed off on her,” some will say.

“Walking on that sort of desert changes you, Tam. Other Memory becomes clearer. It’s one thing to tap experiences of a Fremen ancestor. It’s quite different walking there as a Fremen yourself, if only for a few hours.”

“I did not enjoy it.”

So much for Tam’s venturesome spirit, and everyone in the car had seen her in a bad light. Word would spread.

On the coals, indeed!

But now the shift to Sheeana on the Council (if she suits) would have an easier explanation.

The observation terminal was a fused expanse of silica, green and glassy with heat bubbles through it. Odrade stood at the fused edge and noted how grass below her ended in patches, sand already invading the lower slopes of this once verdant hill. There were new saltbushes (planted by Sheeana’s people, one of Odrade’s entourage said) forming a random gray screen along the encroaching fingers of desert. A silent war. Chlorophyll-based life fighting a rear-guard action against the sand.

A low dune lifted above the terminal to her right. Waving for the others not to follow, she climbed the sandhill, and just beyond its concealing bulk, there was the desert of memory.

So this is what we are creating.

No signs of habitation. She did not look back at growing things making their last desperate struggle against invading dunes but kept her attention focused outward to the horizon. There was the boundary desert dwellers watched. Anything moving in that dry expanse was potentially dangerous.

When she returned to the others, she kept her gaze for a time on the glazed surface of the terminal.

The older Communications acolyte came up to Odrade with a request from Weather.

Odrade scanned it. Concise and inescapable. Nothing sudden about the changes spelled out in these words. They were asking for more ground equipment. This did not come with the abruptness of an accidental storm but with Mother Superior’s decision.

Yesterday? Did I decide to phase out the sea only yesterday?

She returned the report to the Communications acolyte and looked beyond her at the sand-marked glaze.

“Request approved.” Then: “It saddens me to see all of those buildings gone back there.”

The acolyte shrugged. She shrugged! Odrade felt like striking her. (And wouldn’t that send upsets rumbling through the Sisterhood!)

Odrade turned her back on the woman.

What could I possibly say to her? We have been on this ground five times the lifetime of our oldest sisters. And this one shrugs.

Yet . . . by some standards, she knew the Sisterhood’s installations had barely reached maturity. Plaz and plasteel tended to maintain an orderly relationship between buildings and their settings. Fixed in land and memory. Towns and cities did not submit easily to other forces . . . except to human whims.

Another natural force.

The concept of respect for age was an odd one, she decided. Humans carried it inborn. She had seen it in the old Bashar when he spoke of his family holdings on Lernaeus.

“We thought it fitting to keep my mother’s decor.”

Continuity. Would a revived ghola revive those feelings as well?

This is where my kind have been.

That took on a peculiar patina when “my kind” were blood-related ancestors.

Look how long we Atreides persisted on Caladan, restoring the old castle, polishing deep carvings in ancient wood. Whole teams of retainers just to keep the creaking old place at a level of barely tolerable functionalism.

But those retainers had not thought themselves ill used. There had been a sense of privilege in their labors. Hands that polished the wood almost caressed it.

“Old. Been with the Atreides a long time now.”

People and their artifacts. She felt tool sense as a living part of herself.

“I’m better because of this stick in my hand . . . because of this fire-sharpened spear to kill my meat . . . because of this shelter against the cold . . . because of my stone cellar to store our winter food . . . because of this swift sailing vessel . . . this giant ocean liner . . . this ship of metal and ceramics that carries me into space . . .”

Those first human venturers into space—how little they suspected of where the voyage would extend. How isolated they were in those ancient times! Little capsules of livable atmosphere linked to cumbersome data sources by primitive transmission systems. Solitude. Loneliness. Limited opportunity for anything but surviving. Keep the air washed. Be sure of potable water. Exercise to prevent the debilitation of weightlessness. Stay active. Healthy mind in a healthy body. What was a healthy mind, anyway?

“Mother Superior?”

That damned Communications acolyte again!