Fielle stepped up to report, interrupting her superior’s thoughts. “I am ready to depart for Salusa, Mother Superior. My companions and I are prepared to fill the new vacancies in the Imperial Court, as you commanded. If the Emperor will have me, I will be his new Truthsayer.”
“He will have you. He needs a Truthsayer, now that Dorotea is dead.” Valya smiled at the loyal woman. “And I will be glad to have you there. We need to make sure Emperor Roderick gets the proper advice.” Valya gazed at the shuttle, while male workers moved about, testing and refueling. “As soon as the shuttle is cleared to go, you and the other Sisters may board.” The EsconTran foldspace carrier would take them back to the capital planet.
“I will gain the Emperor’s trust by providing him with the information about Josef Venport that we discussed,” Fielle said. “He is naturally concerned, as are we, about how Venport has killed so many people to maintain his spice monopoly. He presents a danger not only to Imperial operations that remain on Arrakis, but to the entire Imperium.”
“It is a fine line we walk,” Valya said. “When Venport learns what you have revealed, he will see it as a betrayal on our part. He helped the Sisterhood in its time of need, arranging for us to move to Wallach IX and saving our new school here.”
“And his wife helped us retrieve the”—Fielle looked around, to make sure no one was listening, because what she was about to say was known to only a limited number of Sisters—“computers from the jungles of Rossak. Without them, we would have lost all our breeding records.”
“Yes, Venport served our purposes.” Valya nodded. “His wife, Cioba, is one of us, and a Sorceress as well. Her personal loyalty to us is above reproach, but in marital and business matters, one can never be entirely certain. We did what we had to do. But that is in the past, and we would be better served by siding with the Emperor.”
Fielle sounded sad. “Mother Superior Raquella was always grateful to Venport for helping us.”
“I am not Raquella,” Valya said. “She did not consider the implications of obligating the Sisterhood to one commercial magnate, and he thinks he can pull our puppet strings. I would rather send Venport a monetary reward for past services and be done with him than be beholden to him, as he undoubtedly believes we are now. He does favors, expecting to be repaid with high interest, like a warlord.” She pondered with a deepening frown. “In his own way, Directeur Venport is as difficult as Manford Torondo. Two troubled, troublesome personalities.” She nodded somberly. “We don’t want either of those men as enemies.”
“I understand the importance of remaining neutral,” Fielle said with a respectful bow. “I will be careful when I speak privately with the Emperor.”
As the Mentat Sister prepared to depart for Salusa Secundus, Valya felt reasonably content that the moving parts were falling neatly into place. At the back of her mind, she heard the excited chatter of women in Other Memory, those long-dead Sisters who surfaced periodically in her consciousness. They were ancient and unpredictable, but they provided her with valuable, yet often contradictory, advice. She heard one voice after another.
“Reverend Mother Valya! You focus too much on your vengeance against the Atreides,” one voice said.
“It is your legacy to be greater than Vorian Atreides, the most famous hero of the Butlerian Jihad,” said another.
“The Sisterhood is more important than the enmity of your two families. Rise above it.”
Another wise-sounding voice added, “How better to be victorious than to overshadow that man’s legacy? Greatness is your destiny, Valya Harkonnen, not pettiness. Think of the Sisterhood — not mere revenge!”
The voices faded into the background noise of other ghost memories, but Valya was not convinced. Why can’t I advance the interests of the Sisterhood and my Great House at the same time?
She frowned as she walked away, preoccupied. The messages from Other Memory were always important, but she didn’t know whether to heed their advice. Her life and destiny were on a different course, and those long-dead women knew it. Attaining her revenge was not just a personal matter; it affected all of House Harkonnen. She had vowed to see that her family was reinstated to the prominence that had been stolen from it.
I will stay on course, she thought, no matter what the inner voices say.
6
It would be difficult, if not impossible, to write a comprehensive biography of Vorian Atreides. He has lived so long and experienced so much in so many places. He is like the wind, passing through and moving on for centuries.
Kepler might have seemed to be a dull world, but Vor had cherished his quiet, sheltered home here for many years. It was exactly the kind of calm, uneventful life he had once sought. He’d been happy, a different man who had retired from his past. He had married a woman he loved and raised a large family — it was as much as anyone could want.
Now, he feared that all these people were threatened because his own past had ricocheted outward. The Harkonnens might be coming for them.
When he and young Willem Atreides arrived in the main Kepler village, Vor recalled those happy times, but he didn’t want to be remembered, or noticed. He had left this place behind, had sworn a promise that he would never return. Now, no one on Kepler could know who he was, but he would send discreet warnings about Tula Harkonnen, alerting them to keep watch for her. What if Tula came here, hoping to seduce and murder another young Atreides man, just as she had done to Orry? If they knew ahead of time, they could stop her.
Nineteen-year-old Willem, tall and black-haired like Vor, looked to be his son but was actually a distant descendant, many generations removed. For their purposes, Willem called himself Vor’s nephew. The two of them were disguised as bearded, down-on-their-luck laborers, looking for work … the better to keep their eyes open for threats to the extended Atreides family on Kepler. Neither of them would ever forget what Tula looked like.
Even though this was the first time he had ever left Caladan, Willem was dead serious about their mission to verify that Vor’s other family was safe from the Harkonnens, that Tula had not come here. For now, the two men would lie low and keep watch for any danger.
On the transport from the landing field to the village, they asked about finding work, playing their role. Vor recognized one of the local storekeepers, but the man didn’t give Vor a second glance. “Work?” The grizzled storekeeper shrugged and gestured vaguely out of town. “Check at any orchard. Pickers are always needed at this time of year to bring in the buriak crop.”
Buriak trees bore large, juicy fruit that was good to eat raw, and a smile came to Vor’s face as he remembered the taste. He and his beloved Mariella had managed a small orchard early in their marriage. “The Tulind family orchard is a few miles out of town. I hear they need a lot of laborers.”
A woman brought a jacket up to the counter for purchase, and she joined in the conversation. “The Tulinds need pickers because they run that orchard like a police state, and there was a mass defection of workers last week.”
“Doesn’t sound like a place we want to work,” Willem said.
“Let their damned fruit rot on the trees.” The woman laid the jacket on the counter, brought out her money, and counted it. “There are plenty of better operators. Good people. The Urions are fine, except for the fact that they’ll try to convert you to their obscure religion.”
“They’re Shohkers,” the shopkeeper said. “Refused to accept the Orange Catholic Bible that Emperor Jules imposed on the Imperium.”