Dune

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.

—THE CODA

“Who expected the air machinery to break down?”

The Rabbi asked his question of no one in particular. He sat on a low bench, a scroll clutched to his breast. The scroll had been reinforced by modern artifice but it still was old and fragile. He was not sure of the time. Midmorning probably. They had eaten not long ago food that could be described as breakfast.

“I expected it.”

He appeared to be addressing the scroll. “Passover has come and gone and our door was locked.”

Rebecca came to stand over him. “Please, Rabbi. How does this help Joshua at his labors?”

“We have not been abandoned,” the Rabbi told his scroll. “It is we who have hidden ourselves away. When we cannot be found by strangers, where would anyone look who might help us?”

He peered up abruptly at Rebecca, owlish behind his glasses. “Have you brought evil to us, Rebecca?”

She knew his meaning. “Outsiders always think there’s something nefarious about the Bene Gesserit,” she said.

“So now I, your Rabbi, am Outsider!”

“You estrange yourself, Rabbi. I speak from the viewpoint of the Sisterhood you made me help. What they do is often boring. Repetitious but not evil.”

“I made you help? Yes, I did that. Forgive me, Rebecca. If evil joins us, I have done it.”

“Rabbi! Stop this. They are an extended clan. And still, they keep a touchy individualism. Does an extended clan mean nothing to you? Does my dignity offend you?”

“I tell you, Rebecca, what offends me. By my hand you have learned to follow different books than . . .” He raised the scroll as though it were a bludgeon.

“No books at all, Rabbi. Oh, they have a Coda but it’s just a collection of reminders, sometimes useful, sometimes to be discarded. They always adjust their Coda to current requirements.”

“There are books that cannot be adjusted, Rebecca!”

She stared down at him with ill-concealed dismay. Was this how he saw the Sisterhood? Or was it fear talking?

Joshua came to stand beside her, hands greasy, black smears on forehead and cheeks. “Your suggestion was the right one. It’s working again. How long I don’t know. The problem is—”

“You do not know the problem,” the Rabbi interrupted.

“The mechanical problem, Rabbi,” Rebecca said. “This no-chamber’s field distorts machinery.”

“We could not bring in frictionless machinery,” Joshua said. “Too revealing, not to mention the cost.”

“Your machinery is not all that has been distorted.”

Joshua looked at Rebecca with raised eyebrows. What’s wrong with him? So Joshua trusted Bene Gesserit insights, too. That offended the Rabbi. His flock sought guidance elsewhere.

The Rabbi surprised her then. “You think I’m jealous, Rebecca?”

She shook her head from side to side.

“You display talents,” the Rabbi said, “that others are quick to use. Your suggestion fixed the machinery? These . . . these Others told you how?”

Rebecca shrugged. This was the Rabbi of old, not to be challenged in his own house.

“I should praise you?” the Rabbi asked. “You have power? Now, you will govern us?”

“No one, least of all I, ever suggested that, Rabbi.” She was offended and did not mind showing it.

“Forgive me, daughter. That is what you call ‘flip.’”

“I don’t need your praise, Rabbi. And of course I forgive.”

“Your Others have something to say about this?”

“The Bene Gesserit say fear of praise goes back to an ancient prohibition against praising your child because that brings down the wrath of the gods.”

He bowed his head. “Sometimes a bit of wisdom.”

Joshua appeared embarrassed. “I’m going to try sleeping. I should be rested.” He aimed a meaningful glance at the machinery area where a labored rasping could be heard.

He left them for the darkened end of the chamber, stumbling on a child’s toy as he went.

The Rabbi patted the bench beside him. “Sit, Rebecca.”

She sat.

“I am fearful for you, for us, for all of the things we represent.” He caressed the scroll. “We have been true for so many generations.” His gaze swept the room. “And we don’t even have a minyan here.”

Rebecca wiped tears from her eyes. “Rabbi, you misjudge the Sisterhood. They wish only to perfect humans and their governments.”

“So they say.”

“So I say. Government, to them, is an art form. You find that amusing?”

“You arouse my curiosity. Are these women self-deluded by dreams of their own importance?”

“They think of themselves as watchdogs.”

“Dogs?”

“Watchdogs, alert to when a lesson may be taught. That is what they seek. Never try to teach someone a lesson he cannot absorb.”

“Always these bits of wisdom.” He sounded sad. “And they govern themselves artistically?”

“They think of themselves as a jury with absolute powers that no law can veto.”

He waved the scroll in front of her nose. “I thought so!”

“No human law, Rabbi.”

“You tell me these women who make religions to suit themselves believe in a . . . in a power greater than themselves.”

“Their belief would not accord with ours, Rabbi, but I do not think it evil.”

“What is this . . . this belief?”

“They call it the ‘leveling drift.’ They see it genetically and as instinct. Brilliant parents are likely to have children closer to the average, for example.”

“A drift. This is a belief?”

“That is why they avoid prominence. They are advisors, even king-makers on occasion, but they do not want to be in the target foreground.”

“This drift . . . do they believe there is a Drift-Maker?”

“They don’t assume there is. Only that there is this observable movement.”

“So what do they do in this drift?”

“They take precautions.”

“In the presence of Satan, I should think so!”

“They don’t oppose the current but seem only to move across it, making it work for them, using the back eddies.”

“Oyyy!”

“Ancient sailing masters understood this quite well, Rabbi. The Sisterhood has what amounts to current charts telling them places to avoid and where to make their greatest efforts.”

Again, he waved the scroll. “This is no current chart.”

“You misinterpret, Rabbi. They know the fallacies about overwhelming machines.” She glanced at the laboring machinery. “They see us in currents machinery cannot breast.”

“These little wisdoms. I do not know, daughter. Meddling in politics, I accept. But in holy matters . . .”

“A leveling drift, Rabbi. Mass influence on brilliant innovators who move out of the pack and produce new things. Even when the new helps us, the drift catches the innovator.”

“Who is to say what helps, Rebecca?”

“I merely tell what they believe. They see taxation as evidence of the drift, taking away free energy that might create more new things. A sensitized person detects it, they say.”

“And these . . . these Honored Matres?”

“They fit the pattern. Power-closed government intent on making all potential challengers ineffectual. Screen out the bright ones. Blunt intelligence.”

A tiny beeping sound came from the machinery area. Joshua was past them before they could stand. He bent over the screen that revealed events on the surface.

“They are back,” he said. “See! They dig in the ashes directly above us.”

“Have they found us?” The Rabbi sounded almost relieved.

Joshua watched the screen.

Rebecca placed her head beside his, studying the diggers—ten men with that dreaming look in their eyes of those who had been bonded to Honored Matres.

“They only dig at random,” Rebecca said, straightening.

“You’re sure?” Joshua stood and looked into her face, seeking secret confirmation.

Any Bene Gesserit could see it.

“Look for yourself.” She gestured at the screen. “They are leaving. They go to the sligsty now.”

“Where they belong,” the Rabbi muttered.