“Ahhhh, but consider the options open to the priests. They will increase their alternative forms of punishment—whippings and certain deprivations. While fear of Shaitan eases because of Sheeana, fear of the priests will increase.”
Within two months, Tamalane’s reports to Chapter House contained confirmation of her own words.
“Short rations, especially short water rations, have become the dominant form of punishment,” Tamalane reported. “Wild rumors have penetrated the farthest reaches of Rakis and soon will find lodging on many other planets as well.”
Tamalane considered the implications of her report with care. Many eyes would see it, including some not in sympathy with Taraza. Any Reverend Mother would be able to call up an image of what must be happening on Rakis. Many on Rakis had seen Sheeana’s arrival atop a wild worm from the desert. The priestly response of secrecy had been flawed from the beginning. Curiosity unsatisfied tended to create its own answers. Guesses were often more dangerous than facts.
Previous reports had told of the children brought to play with Sheeana. The much-garbled stories of such children were repeated with increasing distortions and those distortions had been dutifully sent on to Chapter House. The two prisoners, returned to the streets in their new finery, only compounded the growing mythology. The Sisterhood, artists in mythology, possessed on Rakis a ready-made energy to be subtly amplified and directed.
“We have fed a wish-fulfillment belief into the populace,” Tamalane reported. She thought of the Bene Gesserit–originated phrases as she reread her latest report.
“Sheeana is the one we have long awaited.”
It was a simple enough statement that its meaning could be spread without unacceptable distortion.
“The Child of Shai-hulud comes to chastise the priests!”
That one had been a bit more complicated. A few priests died in dark alleys as a result of popular fervency. This had fed a new alertness into the corps of priestly enforcers with predictable injustices inflicted upon the populace.
Tamalane thought of the priestly delegation that had waited upon Sheeana as a result of turmoil among Tuek’s councillors. Seven of them led by Stiros had intruded upon Sheeana’s luncheon with a child from the streets. Knowing that this would happen, Tamalane had been prepared and a secret recording of the incident had been brought to her, the words audible, every expression visible, the thoughts quite apparent to a Reverend Mother’s trained eye.
“We were sacrificing to Shai-hulud!” Stiros protested.
“Tuek told you not to argue with me about that,” Sheeana said.
How the priestesses smiled at the discomfiture of Stiros and the other priests!
“But Shai-hulud—” Stiros began.
“Shaitan!” Sheeana corrected him and her expression was easily read:
“But we have always thought—”
“You were wrong!” Sheeana stamped a foot.
Stiros feigned the need for instruction. “Are we to believe that Shai-hulud, the Divided God, is also Shaitan?”
What a complete fool he was, Tamalane thought. Even a pubescent girl could confound him, as Sheeana proceeded to do.
“Any child of the streets knows this almost as soon as she can walk!” Sheeana ranted.
Stiros spoke slyly: “How do you know what is in the minds of street children?”
“You are evil to doubt me!” Sheeana accused. It was an answer she had learned to use often, knowing it would get back to Tuek and cause trouble.
Stiros knew this only too well. He waited with downcast eyes while Sheeana, speaking with heavy patience as one telling an old fable to a child, explained to him that either god or devil or both could inhabit the worm of the desert. Humans had only to accept this. It was not left to humans to decide such things.
Stiros had sent people into the desert for speaking such heresy. His expression (so carefully recorded for Bene Gesserit analysis) said such wild concepts were always springing up from the muck at the bottom of the Rakian heap. But now! He had to contend with Tuek’s insistence that Sheeana spoke gospel truth!
As she looked at the recording, Tamalane thought the pot was boiling nicely. This she reported to Chapter House. Doubts flogged Stiros; doubts everywhere except among the populace in their devotion to Sheeana. Spies close to Tuek said he was even beginning to doubt the wisdom of his decision to translate the historian-locutor, Dromind.
“Was Dromind right to doubt her?” Tuek demanded of those around him.
“Impossible!” the sycophants said.
What else could they say? The High Priest could make no mistake in such decisions. God would not allow it. Sheeana clearly confounded him, though. She put the decisions of many previous High Priests into a terrible limbo. Reinterpretation was being demanded on all sides.
Stiros kept pounding at Tuek: “What do we really know about her?”
