Chapter House had chosen this Lucilla with great care.
Lucilla felt the older woman’s careful examination but refused to let this touch that innermost sense of purpose upon which every Reverend Mother could rely in times of stress. Here. Let her look fully upon me. Lucilla turned and set her mouth in a soft smile, passing her gaze across the rooftop opposite them.
A uniformed man armed with a heavy-duty lasgun appeared there, looked once at the two Reverend Mothers and then focused on the child below them.
“Who is that?” Lucilla asked
“Patrin, the Bashar’s most trusted aide. Says he’s only the Bashar’s batman but you’d have to be blind and a fool to believe that. ”
Lucilla examined the man across from them with care. So that was Patrin. A native of Gammu, Taraza had said. Chosen for this task by the Bashar himself. Thin and blond, much too old now to be soldiering, but then the Bashar had been called back from retirement and had insisted Patrin must share this duty.
Schwangyu noted the way Lucilla shifted her attention from Patrin to the ghola with real concern. Yes, if the Bashar had been called back to guard this Keep, then the ghola was in extreme peril.
Lucilla started in sudden surprise. “Why … he’s … ”
“Miles Teg’s orders,” Schwangyu said, naming the Bashar. “All of the ghola’s play is training play. Muscles are to be prepared for the day when he is restored to his original self.”
“But that’s no simple exercise he’s doing down there,” Lucilla said. She felt her own muscles respond sympathetically to the remembered training.
“We hold back only the Sisterhood’s arcana from this ghola,” Schwangyu said. “Almost anything else in our storehouse of knowledge can be his.” Her tone said she found this extremely objectionable.
“Surely, no one believes this ghola could become another Kwisatz Haderach,” Lucilla objected.
Schwangyu merely shrugged.
Lucilla held herself quite still, thinking. Was it possible the ghola could be transformed into a male version of a Reverend Mother? Could this Duncan Idaho learn to look inward where no Reverend Mother dared?
Schwangyu began to speak, her voice almost a growling mutter: “The design of this project … they have a dangerous plan. They could make the same mistake … ” She broke off.
They, Lucilla thought. Their ghola.
“I would give anything to know for sure the position of Ix and the Fish Speakers in this,” Lucilla said.
“Fish Speakers!” Schwangyu shook her head at the very thought of the remnant female army that had once served only the Tyrant. “They believe in truth and justice.”
Lucilla overcame a sudden tightness in her throat. Schwangyu had all but declared open opposition. Yet, she commanded here. The political rule was a simple one: Those who opposed the project must monitor it that they might abort it at the first sign of trouble. But that was a genuine Duncan Idaho ghola down there on the lawn. Cell comparisons and Truthsayers had confirmed it.
Taraza had said: “You are to teach him love in all of its forms.”
“He’s so young,” Lucilla said, keeping her attention on the ghola.
“Young, yes,” Schwangyu said. “So, for now, I presume you will awaken his childish responses to maternal affection. Later … ” Schwangyu shrugged.
Lucilla betrayed no emotional reaction. A Bene Gesserit obeyed. I am an Imprinter. So … Taraza’s orders and the Imprinter’s specialized training defined a particular course of events.
To Schwangyu, Lucilla said: “There is someone who looks like me and speaks with my voice. I am Imprinting for her. May I ask who that is?”
“No.”
Lucilla held her silence. She had not expected revelation but it had been remarked more than once that she bore a striking resemblance to Senior Security Mother Darwi Odrade. “A young Odrade.” Lucilla had heard this on several occasions. Both Lucilla and Odrade were, of course, in the Atreides line with a strong backbreeding from Siona descendants. The Fish Speakers had no monopoly on those genes! But the Other Memories of a Reverend Mother, even with their linear selectivity and confinement to the female side, provided important clues to the broad shape of the ghola project. Lucilla, who had come to depend on her experiences of the Jessica persona buried some five thousand years back in the Sisterhood’s genetic manipulations, felt a deep sense of dread from that source now. There was a familiar pattern here. It gave off such an intense feeling of doom that Lucilla fell automatically into the Litany Against Fear as she had been taught it in her first introduction to the