BOOK ONE  - CHAPTER TWO
 

You subject yourselves to the Atreides rulership because of one single reason: the understanding Muad'Dib had and his sister has of the future. Muad'Dib was the Lisan Al-Gaib, and this fact seduced you into betrothal, but his prescient faculty lures you back to this place to seal the wedding. I tell you your Mahdi is no more, but still you insist on remaining in the trap his prescience created! He accepted a single future for all of us and set us on a course, but you are not powerless to prevent his scenario from running its full course! You can always reinterpret the universe, choose a different set of axioms and build a new existence for yourself on that basis. He created a deterministic system out of a chaotic multitude, but I give you the advice to seek out the chaos once more!
-The Preacher at Arrakeen-
 

The night sky glimmered with many faint stars, distributed in patterns not even Miles Teg could recognise. The young ghola Bashar had access to the memories of all the journeys the original Teg had undertaken in service of the Sisterhood throughout his long life, but he knew he had never been in this sector of space. Whatever Duncan Idaho had done at the ship's controls after lifting off from Chapter House, the Bene Gesserit core planet, it had caused the no-ship to travel far from the Old Empire.

They had been stranded on the planet for three months. From information gathered on his many scouting missions, Teg had managed to form a fairly reliable map of the area the damaged no-ship had been forced to touch down in. The ship itself rested on a plateau overlooking a valley overgrown with lush vegetation, the gigantic mass of machinery and plasteel covered with oddly shaped protrusions looking rather out of place in this particular environment.

His feelings of uneasiness, a disconcerting mixture of knowing he didn't belong here and an unexpectedly nasty form of homesickness caused by the fact he recognised none of the plants and animals he had seen, were alleviated slightly by the discovery he had made eventually that the totality of lifeforms around him followed somewhat familiar patterns. Whatever combination of molecules might lie at the basis of the evolution of life on a planet, apparently the universe was permeated by certain principles that guided the development of life into a limited set of possible manifestations.

Divine intervention appeared unlikely to him, the great number of contingencies attached to the existence of a higher being having forced him away from any religious anthropomorphic projections onto the natural order of things, but to have these guiding principles be a higher-order manifestation of the fundamental forces of nature was a workable hypothesis.

Statistics is the key, he thought. Despite the uncertainties involved with interactions of elementary particles, chaos does not rule. The very laws of nature are simply examples of inductive reasoning, based on observations of the movement of sufficiently large quantities of particles. The forces governing the movements and transmutations of those particles need not be deterministic, but could be merely propensities to develop from one state towards any one of a finite set of closely related states. Laws are abstractions, and merely apparently universal within a certain realm. It is in this apparent contradiction that the great mystery of the universe becomes knowable for a short time - resembling a brief but overwhelmingly bright flash of light rather than a clear, detailed image -, and dissolves into a mystery again. It is important that I retain this perceptual and mental malleability.

He could find the proof for his reasoning all around him. He was unfamiliar with all but a few of the types of organisms in the area around the no-ship, but they were all easliy classified into the same set of phyla that was prevalent on all the worlds of the Old Empire he had visited. Still, none of us belongs on this world, Teg realised.

It was quite a colourful collection of people that had been dragged along into the unknown - into a new Scattering - because of Idaho's actions a few months earlier. They all understood the threat they had fled from - a fragile alliance of Bene Gesserit and Honoured Matres under the leadership of Murbella - but many of them disputed the wisdom of the ghola Mentat's actions. He had deliberately lost all information about their position relative to familiar space in a massive data dump.

One if his most adamant opponents was the Rabbi, but this in itself was not surprising. The head of a group of Jews that had always lived a life according to rules that were already ancient when the God-Emperor's reign was still young, an important part of the past few months he had spent trying to protect his people against being tainted by the heretical beliefs of the Bene Gesserit. His people had had an agreement with the Sisterhood for a long time, members of one group helping the other in times of great peril, but this mutual obligation didn't mean in the slightest that he agreed with the many heretical theories his allies had constructed.

"My people are certainly no stranger to fleeing from overwhelming evil - our diaspora is the fulfillment of a prophecy, and continues to this day - but never did we relinquish the hope that one day we might return to the Holy Land." His powerful voice echoed through one of the larger storage rooms in which most of the ship's inhabitants had gathered that night. "Retaining the purity of our beliefs and culture is the main pillar supporting our existence. This ghola's actions have severed the ties with the rest of our people."

"His impetuosity might very well have saved us all", Bene Gesserit Proctor Garimi said, even though she didn't fully believe this herself. "The alliance between Bene Gesserit and Honoured Matres was extremely fragile, and inherently explosive. Nothing good could come of it."

What chance do we have of surviving here?, Garimi thought. I don't foresee any problems staying alive in a physical sense, but this group is too ill-equipped to realise any of the goals Reverend Mothers of the Second Scattering would pursue. Any Reverend Mother is trained to be autonomous and highly adaptive to new circumstances, but even the most talented ones do need certain resources in order to continue to develop. Melange is one! Our supplies have reached dangerously low levels.

She looked around her. She realised the absence of certain people at this meeting provided important clues about the shifting balance of power and allegiances in their group. Miles Teg was out exploring, as he often was. His mysterious powers continue to develop, no matter how much he tries to hide it from us. And I must not forget this is the Bashar - he most certainly has an agenda of his own.

Duncan Idaho was somewhere else in the no-ship. He had a very powerful bond with Sheeana, and this relationship had become much stronger lately, with them keeping to themselves most of the time. What are those two up to?

"We do appreciate your efforts in trying to protect us from peril - I too recognised the dangers of the path your Mother Superior had chosen." The Rabbi glared at the small group of Reverend Mothers sitting to Garimi's left, who were trying not to participate in this particular conversation, having learnt the futility of attempting to educate the Rabbi in Bene Gesserit ways of thinking over the past few months. "The arrogance the ghola displayed by making such a far-reaching decision for us is what bothers me. This does not prove to me he has a particularly well-developed sense of ethics, and I will not allow myself or my people to be tainted by it."

"Still, his presence and abilities supplied the Sisterhood with exactly that: a sense of ethics, a conscience." Garimi decided to explore this subject with the Rabbi one more time. "Navigating uncharted territory in our quest to improve the human race required a strong sense of direction. A course is laid out on a basis formed by everything that came before, and Idaho provided us with the proper feedback-mechanism on multiple levels."

"Improving the human race ... Pah!"

So it's time for the insult again, Garimi thought. The Rabbi had followed this particular thread of reasoning before, his rant always resulting in an insult to the Bene Gesserit. He's still trying to distance himself from us as much as he can, despite the fact the understanding between his people and the Sisterhood has been in place for many generations. However, I can't think of him as an isolationist blinded by his own preconceptions - he's much more intelligent than that.

"His behaviour is typical of someone indoctrinated by the Bene Gesserit," the Rabbi spat out. "With great reluctance I agreed to let Rebecca, one of my people, submerge herself in your ways, because our plans demanded it. She explained many things about you to me, and every bit of new information strengthened my original opinion. You are unclean. The Sisterhood does not acknowledge a personal saviour - there is just a faceless, unthinking current underlying reality you presume to control. And your Missionaria Protectiva, creating religions to further your own goals - you think you yourself are divine!"

Garimi sighed. "Perhaps we're divine in the sense that a prophet is. The essence of the prohet is that he's a servant - we chose that role for ourselves, realising we should not be the ones being worshipped, but that the focus needed to be on the better world we long for."

"Still, you claim to be able to decide whether or not someone is human - you even devised a test for it. Calling someone human or not is a divine act."

Garimi detected that a small measure of resignation had settled over the Rabbi, but that this particular duel wasn't over yet. "The Bene Gesserit did not create the distinction, we merely recognised the criteria."

"It is not your place to judge."

He chooses this tactic again? A peculiar gleam in the Rabbi's eyes caught Garimi's attention. Suddenly she realised what he was doing. He's not trying to convince me. He wants me to react a certain way, to act out a particular routine. It's a lesson for the other members of his group!

She knew now how to respond. "Oh, but it is. We realised how outsiders could accuse us of extreme arrogance in assuming our plan was the only correct one, and we recognised the trap we had created for ourselves - that's one of the reasons the Duncans were so valuable to us."

The Rabbi barely managed to surpress a smile. I might not agree with these Bene Gesserits on many points, but one has to admire their perceptiveness. "Resurrecting mortal flesh should not be the work of men."

"The Sisterhood saw the necessity of utilising extreme measures in executing our plans - even if that meant using gholas and religious beliefs as tools."

"One does not use religion."

"The scope of the goals the Sisterhood set out to reach at its conception required a method involving religious elements. These are what gave the Sisterhood its longevity. Our plans were intended to span several millennia. Surely you of all people recognise the endurance religious beliefs provide?"

"Rebecca tells me the Tleilaxu used a similar strategy. The complete lack of an acceptable system of ethics in their way of life proves longevity based on religious beliefs is not always a good thing."

"The Tleilaxu fell into the trap of not evolving, but instead letting the elements of a flawed ideological system fall prey to inbreeding. The Sisterhood never fell into this trap because our God is not a person but an idea, a potential, and our religion no more than pure rationality. This opened up our convictions to internal scrutiny, allowing us to develop rather than stagnate. Your own people felt compelled to travel a different path, but your involvement with us proves you never entered the cul-de-sac the Tleilaxu found themselves in."

Garimi watched the Rabbi sit back, and understood this discussion was now over. Clever man! He has managed to make our alliance stronger - necessary if we want to survive - while retaining the religious identity for his group. She saw Rebecca realised this, and watched the first signs of understanding emerge on the faces of the other members of the group of Jews.

Still, it might not be enough to save us if Idaho and Sheeana continue to follow their own agenda. Do they realise I know of their increased interest in the Tleilaxu Master in the holding cell? Sheeana was able to communicate with the sandworms on Rakis. How much of The Tyrant's awareness is still present in the worm we took with us from Chapter House? What do they want? I should attempt to find out soon.

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