I should have realized when she took me aside. She sent me the first signal when she permitted me to call her Dama. Have I been too precipitate, setting up Teg's attack in a way I cannot stop? Too late for second thoughts. I knew it when I unleashed him.
But what other forces may we attract?
Odrade had Dama's dominance pattern registered. Words and gestures were likely to make Spider Queen recoil, crouching back to intense awareness of her own heartbeats.
The drama must go forward.
Dama was doing something with her hands in the green field atop the golden table. She concentrated on it, ignoring Odrade in a way that was both insult and compliment.
You will not interfere, witch, because that is not in your best interest and you know it. Besides, you are not important enough to distract me.
Dama appeared agitated.
Has the attack on Gammu been successful? Are refugees beginning to arrive?
An orange glare focused on Odrade. "Your pilot has just destroyed himself and your ship rather than submit to our inspection. What did you bring?"
"Ourselves."
"There is a signal coming from you!"
"Telling my companions whether I am alive or dead. You already knew that. Some of our ancestors burned their ships before an attack. No retreat possible."
Odrade spoke with exquisite care, tone and timing adjusted to Dama's responses. "If I am successful, you will provide my transport. My pilot was a Cyborg and shere could not protect him from your probes. His orders were to kill himself rather than fall into your hands."
"Providing us with coordinates to your planet." The orange subsided from Dama's eyes, but she still was disturbed. "I did not think your people obeyed you to that extent."
How do you hold them without sexual bonding, witch? Is the answer not obvious? We have secret powers.
Careful now, Odrade cautioned herself. A methodical approach, alert for new demands. Let her think we choose one method of response and stick to it. How much does she know about us? She does not know that even Mother Superior may be only a morsel of bait, a lure to gain vital information. Does that make us superior? If so, can superior training surmount superior speed and numbers?
Odrade had no answer.
Dama seated herself behind the golden table, leaving Odrade standing. There was a nesting sense about the movement. She did not leave this place often. This was the true center of her web. All things she thought she needed were here. She had brought Odrade to this room because it was an inconvenience to be elsewhere. She was uncomfortable in other settings, perhaps even felt threatened. Dama did not court danger. She had done so once but that was long ago, shut off behind her somewhere. Now, she wanted only to sit here in a safe and well-organized cocoon where she could manipulate others.
Odrade found these observations a welcome affirmation of Bene Gesserit deductions. The Sisterhood knew how to exploit this leverage.
"Have you nothing more to say?" Dama asked.
Stall for time.
Odrade ventured a question. " I am extremely curious why you agreed to this meeting?"
"Why are you curious?"
"It seems so... so out of character for you."
"We determine what is in character for us!" Quite testy there.
"But what is it about us interests you?"
"You think we find you interesting?"
"Perhaps you even find us remarkable, because that is certainly how we look at you."
A pleased expression made its fleeting appearance on Dama's face. "I knew you would be fascinated by us."
"The exotic interests the exotic," Odrade said.
This brought a knowing smile to Dama's lips, the smile of someone whose pet has been clever. She stood and went to the one window. Summoning Odrade to her side, Dama gestured to a stand of trees beyond the first flowering bushes and spoke in that soft accent so difficult to follow.
Something ticked off an inner alarm. Odrade fell into simulflow, seeking the source. Something in the room or in Spider Queen? There was a lack of spontaneity about the setting matched by much that Dama did. So all of this was designed to create an effect. Carefully schemed.
Is this one really my Spider Queen? Or is there a more powerful one watching us?
Odrade explored this thought, sorting swiftly. It was a process that provided more questions than answers, a mental shorthand akin to that of Mentats. Sort for relevance and bring up the latent (but orderly) backgrounds. Order generally was a product of human activity. Chaos existed as raw material from which to create order. That was the Mentat approach, giving no unalterable truths but a remarkable lever for decision-making: orderly assemblage of data in a non-discrete system.
She arrived at a Projective.
They revel in chaos! Prefer it! Adrenaline addicts!
So Dama was Dama, Great Honored Matre. Forever the patroness, forever the superior.
There is no greater one watching us. But Dama believes this is bargaining. One would think she had never done it before. Precisely!
Dama touched an unmarked place below the window and the wall folded back, revealing that the window was but an artful projection. The way was opened onto a high balcony paved with dark green tiles. It overlooked plantations much different from those in the window projection. Here was chaos preserved, wilderness left to its own devices and made more remarkable by ordered gardens in the distance. Brambles, fallen trees, thick bushes. And beyond: evenly spaced rows of what appeared to be vegetables with automated harvesters passing back and forth, leaving bare ground behind them.
Love of chaos, indeed!
Spider Queen smiled and led the way onto the balcony.
As she emerged, Odrade once more was stopped by what she saw. A decoration on the parapet to her left. A life-size figure shaped from an almost ethereal substance, all feathery planes and curved surfaces.
When she squinted at the figure, Odrade saw it was intended to represent a human. Male or female? In some positions male, and in some female. Planes and curves responded to vagrant breezes. Thin, almost invisible wires (looked to be shigawire) suspended it from a delicately curving tube anchored in a translucent mound. The lower extremities of the figure almost touched the pebbled surface of the supporting base.
Odrade stared, captivated.
Why does it remind me of Sheeana's "The Void"?
When the wind moved it, the whole creation appeared to dance, relapsing sometimes into a graceful walk, then a slow pirouette and sweeping turns with outstretched leg.
"It is called 'Ballet Master,' " Dama said. "In some winds it will kick its feet high. I have seen it running as gracefully as a marathoner. Sometimes it is just ugly little motions, arms jerking as though they held weapons. Beautiful and ugly - it is all the same. I think the artist misnamed it. 'Being Unknown' would have been better."
Beautiful and ugly - all the same. Being Unknown.
That was a terrible thing about Sheeana's creation. Odrade felt a cold wash of fear. "Who was the artist?"
"I've no idea. One of my predecessors took it from a planet we were destroying. Why does it interest you?"
It's the wild thing no one can govern. But she said: "I presume we're both seeking a basis for understanding, trying to find similarities between us."
This brought the orange glare. "You may try to understand us but we have no need to understand you."
"Both of us come from societies of women."
"It is dangerous to think of us as your offshoots!"
But Murbella's evidence says you are. Formed in the Scattering by Fish Speakers and Reverend Mothers in extremis.
All ingenuous and fooling nobody, Odrade asked: "Why is that dangerous?"
Dama's laugh conveyed no amusement. Vindictive.