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"I thought as much," Odrade said.

"We have a service room over there." Teg nodded to his left. "Furniture, even chairdogs if you prefer."

"I hate it when they try to cuddle me," she said. "Could we talk here?" She put a hand under Teg's arm. "Perhaps we could walk a bit. I got so stiff sitting in that lighter."

"What is it you're supposed to tell me?" he asked as they strolled.

"My memories are no longer selectively filtered," she said. "I have them all, only on the female side, naturally."

"So?" Teg pursed his lips. This was not the overture he had expected. Odrade appeared more like one who would take off on a direct approach.

"Taraza says you have read the Atreides Manifesto. Good. You know it will cause upset in many quarters."

"Schwangyu already has made it the subject of a diatribe against 'you Atreides.' "

Odrade stared at him solemnly. As the reports all said, Teg remained an imposing figure, but she had known that without the reports.

"We are both Atreides, you and I," Odrade said.

Teg came to full alert.

"Your mother explained that to you in detail," Odrade said, "when you took your first school leave back to Lernaeus."

Teg stopped and stared down at her. How could she know this? To his knowledge, he had never before met and conversed with this remote Darwi Odrade. Was he the subject of special discussions at Chapter House? He held his silence, forcing her to carry the conversation.

"I will recount a conversation between a man and my birthmother," Odrade said. "They are in bed and the man says: 'I fathered a few children when I first escaped from the close bondage of the Bene Gesserit, back when I thought myself an independent agent, free to enlist and fight anywhere I chose.' "

Teg did not try to conceal his surprise. Those were his own words! Mentat memory told him Odrade had them down as accurately as a mechanical recorder. Even the tone!

"More?" she asked as he continued to stare at her. "Very well. The man says: 'That was before they sent me to Mentat training, of course. What an eye-opener that was! I had never been out of the Sisterhood's sight for an instant! I was never a free agent.' "

"Not even when I spoke those words," Teg said.

"True." She urged him by pressure on his arm as they continued their stroll across the chamber. "The children you fathered all belonged to the Bene Gesserit. The Sisterhood takes no chances that our genotype will be sent into the wild gene pool."

"Let my body go to Shaitan, their precious genotype remains in Sisterhood care," he said.

"My care," Odrade said. "I am one of your daughters."

Again, he forced her to stop.

"I think you know who my mother was," she said. She held up a hand for silence as he started to respond. "Names are not necessary."

Teg studied Odrade's features, seeing the recognizable signs there. Mother and daughter were matched. But what of Lucilla?

As though she heard his question, Odrade said: "Lucilla is from a parallel breeding line. Quite remarkable, isn't it, what careful breed-matching can achieve?"

Teg cleared his throat. He felt no emotional attachment to this newly revealed daughter. Her words and other important signals of her performance demanded his primary attention.

"This is no casual conversation," he said. "Is this all of what you were to reveal to me? I thought the Mother Superior said..."

"There is more," Odrade agreed. "The Manifesto - I am its author. I wrote it at Taraza's orders and following her detailed instructions."

Teg glanced around the large chamber as though to make sure no one overheard. He spoke in a lowered voice: "The Tleilaxu are spreading it far and wide!"

"Just as we hoped."

"Why are you telling me this? Taraza said you were to prepare me for..."

"There will come a time when you must know our purpose. It is Taraza's wish that you make your own decisions then, that you really become a free agent."

Even as she spoke, Odrade saw the Mentat glaze in his eyes.

Teg breathed deeply. Dependencies and key logs! He felt the Mentat sense of an enormous pattern just beyond the reach of his accumulated data. He did not even consider for an instant that some form of filial devotion had prompted these revelations. There was a fundamentalist, dogmatic, and ritualistic essence apparent in all Bene Gesserit training despite every effort to prevent this. Odrade, this daughter out of his past, was a full Reverend Mother with extraordinary powers of muscle and nerve control - full memories on the female side! She was one of the special ones! She knew tricks of violence that few humans ever suspected. Still, that similarity, that essence remained and a Mentat always saw it.

What does she want?

Affirmation of his paternity? She already had all of the confirmation she could need.

Observing her now, the way she waited so patiently for his thoughts to resolve, Teg reflected that it often was said with truth that Reverend Mothers no longer were completely members of the human race. They moved somehow outside the main flow, perhaps parallel to it, perhaps diving into it occasionally for their own purposes, but always removed from humankind. They removed themselves. It was an identifying mark of the Reverend Mother, a sense of extra identity that made them closer to the long-dead Tyrant than to the human stock from which they sprang.

Manipulation. That was their mark. They manipulated everyone and everything.

"I am to be the Bene Gesserit eyes," Teg said. "Taraza wants me to make a human decision for all of you."

Obviously pleased, Odrade squeezed his arm. "What a father I have!"

"Do you really have a father?" he asked and he recounted for her what he had been thinking about the Bene Gesserit removing themselves from humanity.

"Outside humanity," she said. "What a curious idea. Are Guild navigators also outside their original humanity?"