Beneath another glorious Imperial sunset, Mohiam crept up behind Jessica, who sat beside a small pool in an ornamental garden. For a long moment, the Truthsayer observed her secret daughter. The young woman carried her advanced pregnancy well, comfortable with the new awkwardness of her body. The baby would be born soon.
Jessica reached forward to swirl her fingertips in the pool, blurring her reflection. She spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “I must be very entertaining, Reverend Mother, for you to stand there watching me.”
Mohiam wrinkled her lips in a small smile. “I expected you to sense I was here, child. After all, who taught you to observe the world around you?” She came to the edge of the pool and held out a memory crystal. “Lady Anirul has asked me to give this to you. There are certain things she would have you know.”
Jessica took the glittering object, studied it. “Is the Lady well?”
Mohiam’s tone was guarded. “I believe her condition will improve considerably once your daughter is born. She is most concerned about the child, and this is causing her great distress.”
Jessica looked away, afraid Mohiam might see her flush. “I don’t understand, Reverend Mother. Why should the baby of a Duke’s concubine be of such importance?”
“Come to a place where we can sit. In private.” They walked toward a solar-operated carousel that a previous Emperor had installed for his amusement.
Jessica wore a maternity dress in Atreides colors that reminded her of Leto. The bodily changes from her pregnancy had unleashed many conflicting emotions inside her, shifting moods she could barely control even with her Bene Gesserit training. Each day she had poured her loving thoughts into the bound parchment journal Anirul had given her. The Duke was a proud man, but Jessica knew in her heart that he missed her.
Mohiam took a seat on the gilded carousel bench, and Jessica joined her, still holding the memory crystal. Activated by their weight, the mechanism began to spin slowly. Jessica watched the changing garden view as it passed in front of her. On a nearby post draped with bougainvillea, a dangling glowglobe flickered on, though the sun had not yet dropped below the horizon.
Since her arrival on Kaitain, especially after Tyros Reffa’s surprise stunt in front of the Imperial Box, Jessica had been watched constantly by hovering Bene Gesserit guardians. Though she gave no sign of annoyance, Jessica could not have failed to notice their doting protection.
Why am I so special? What does the Sisterhood want with my baby?
Jessica turned the memory crystal over in her hands. It was octagonal, glimmering with lavender facets. Mohiam brought out a companion crystal and held it. “Go ahead, child. Activate it.”
Jessica rolled the sparkling device between her palms and then cupped it in her hands, warming it with her body heat, moistening it with her perspiration to energize the custom memories stored inside.
As she looked into it, staring with focused attention, the crystal began to project image beams that intersected across her retinas. Beside her, Mohiam activated the companion crystal.
Jessica closed her eyes and felt a bone-deep hum, like that of a Guild ship entering foldspace. When she opened her eyes again, her vision had changed. She seemed to be inside the Bene Gesserit Archives, far from Kaitain. Deep within the translucent cliffs of Wallach IX, the walls and ceilings of the huge library facility reflected prismatic illumination, shuttling light across billions of jeweled surfaces. Immersed in a sensory projection, she and Mohiam stood together at the virtual entrance. The illusion felt incredibly real.
Mohiam said, “I will be your guide, Jessica, so that you can understand your importance.”
Jessica stood silently, intrigued yet intimidated.
“When you left the Mother School,” Mohiam began, “had you learned everything there was to know?”
“No, Reverend Mother. But I had learned how to obtain the information I needed.”
When Mohiam’s image took Jessica by the hand, she seemed to feel the older woman’s strong grip and dry skin. “Quite so, child, and this is one of the important places to look. Come, I will show you amazing things.”
They passed through a tunnel into darkness that expanded around Jessica. She sensed, but could not see, an immense black chamber with walls and ceiling far beyond reach. Jessica wanted to cry out. Her pulse raced. She used her training to slow it down, but too late. The other woman had noticed.
Mohiam’s dry voice broke the silence. “Are you frightened?”
“ ’Fear is the mind-killer,’ Reverend Mother. ‘I will allow it to pass over me and through me.’ What is this darkness, and what can I learn from it?”
“This represents what you still do not know. This is the universe you have not yet seen and which you cannot possibly imagine. At the beginning of time, darkness reigned. In the end, it will be the same. Our lives are but pinpoints of light in between, like the smallest stars in the heavens.” Mohiam’s voice came close to her ear. “Kwisatz Haderach. Tell me what that name means to you.”
The Reverend Mother let go of her hand, and Jessica felt herself float off the ground, blind in the saturated blackness. She shivered, fought panic. “It is one of the Sisterhood’s breeding programs. That is all I know.”
“This black pit of hidden knowledge around you contains every secret in the universe. The fears, hopes, and dreams of humanity. All that we have ever been and can ever achieve. This is the potential of the Kwisatz Haderach. He is the culmination of our most exacting breeding programs, the powerful male Bene Gesserit who can bridge space and time. He is the human of all humans, a god in man-form.”
Unconsciously, Jessica held her hands over her rounded belly, where her unborn child— the Duke’s son— curled in the security of her womb, where it must be as dark as this chamber.
Her old teacher’s voice was brittle, as dry as sticks. “Hear me, Jessica— after thousands of years of careful Bene Gesserit planning, the daughter you carry is destined to give birth to the Kwisatz Haderach. That is why such care has been taken to ensure your safety. Lady Anirul Sadow-Tonkin Corrino is the Kwisatz Mother, your sworn protector. It is by her command that you now learn your place in the events unfolding around you.”
Jessica was too overwhelmed to speak. Her knees buckled in the weightless blackness. For the love of Leto, she had defied the Bene Gesserit. She was carrying a son, not a daughter! And her Sisters did not know.
“Do you understand what has been revealed to you, child? I have taught you many things. Do you grasp the importance?”
Jessica’s voice was small. “I understand, Reverend Mother.” She didn’t dare admit her transgression now, could think of no one in whom she could confide her terrible secret, especially not her stern teacher. Why didn’t they tell me before?
Steeling herself, Jessica thought of Leto, and of his anguish following the death of Victor, caused by the treachery of his concubine Kailea. I did it for him!
Despite the Bene Gesserit strictures against being swayed by emotions, Jessica had come to believe that her superiors had no right to interfere with the love between a man and a woman. Why were they so afraid of it? Nothing in her training answered this question.
Had Jessica single-handedly destroyed the Kwisatz Haderach program, ruining millennia of work? Confusion, anger, and fear mixed within her. I can always have other daughters. If it was so important, why hadn’t she been told earlier? Damn them and their schemes!
She sensed her teacher behind her and recalled a day on Wallach IX when she had been forced to undergo a test of her own humanity. Reverend Mother Mohiam had held a poisonous gom jabbar at her creamy neck. One slip, and the deadly needle would have penetrated her skin, killing her instantly.
When they discover I am not carrying a daughter…
The intensely black room spun slowly, as if connected to the carousel in the Imperial garden. She lost her sense of direction and place, until she realized she was following Mohiam through shadows into a tunnel of light. The two women emerged into a large, bright room. The floor beneath them was a projection screen filled with a dizzying forest of words.
Mohiam said, “These are names and numbers depicting the genetic programs of the Sisterhood. See how they all branch from a core bloodline? This is the line that culminates, inexorably, in the Kwisatz Haderach, at its pinnacle.”
The floor glowed. The Reverend Mother gestured, demonstrating where Jessica fit in. The young woman saw her own name, and above that a name designating her birth-mother, Tanidia Nerus. Possibly real, or more likely a code designation. The Sisterhood held so many secrets. The bonds between birth-parents and children did not exist among the Bene Gesserit.
One name, among others, surprised Jessica… Hasimir Fenring. She had seen him in the Imperial Court, a strange man always whispering in the Emperor’s ear. On the chart, his bloodline approached the desired pinnacle, but tapered off to a genetic dead end.
Noting her scrutiny, Mohiam said, “Yes, Count Fenring was very nearly our success. His mother was one of us, carefully chosen. But his breeding ultimately failed. He became a talented but useless experiment. To this day, he does not know his place among us.”
Jessica sighed, wishing her own life could be less complicated, with straightforward answers instead of deceits and mysteries. She wanted to give birth to Leto’s son— but now she knew an ancient house of cards had been built upon this one birth. It was not fair.
She could not endure this sensory projection for much longer. Her burdens were already immense and so very private that she could discuss them with no one. She needed time to think, a desperate feeling. She wanted to be away from the scrutiny of Mohiam.
Finally, the memory crystal stopped glowing, and Jessica found herself once more on the slowly spinning carousel bench in the Imperial garden. High over their heads, stars encrusted the roof of the night sky. She and Reverend Mother Mohiam sat in a pool of glowglobe illumination.
Inside her belly, Jessica felt the baby kick, harder than ever before.
Mohiam extended her hand, palm open, over the concubine’s protruding stomach and smiled as she, too, felt the unborn baby kick. Her normally flat eyes twinkled. “Yes, it is a strong child… one with a great destiny.”