"You don't think you lost the Lady Jessica?"
"She came back to us in the end."
"Why did you really come out here to see me?"
"I thought you deserved an explanation of the Mother Superior's design. It was aimed at the destruction of Rakis, you see. What she really wanted was the elimination of almost all of the worms."
"Great Gods below! Why?"
"They were an oracular force holding us in bondage. Those pearls of the Tyrant's awareness magnified that hold. He didn't predict events, he created them."
Duncan pointed toward the rear of the ship. "But what about..."
"That one? It's just one now. By the time it reaches sufficient numbers to be an influence once more, humankind will have gone its own way beyond him. We'll be too numerous by then, doing too many different things on our own. No single force will rule all of our futures completely, never again."
She stood.
When he did not respond, she said: "Within the imposed limits, which I know you appreciate, please think about the kind of life you want to lead. I promise to help you in any way I can."
"Why would you do that?"
"Because my ancestors loved you. Because my father loved you."
"Love? You witches can't feel love!"
She stared down at him for almost a minute. The bleached hair was growing out dark at the roots and curling once more into ringlets, especially at his neck, she saw.
"I feel what I feel," she said. "And your water is ours, Duncan Idaho."
She saw the Fremen admonition have its effect on him and then turned away and was passed out of the room by the guards.
Before leaving the ship, she went back to the hold and stared down at the quiescent worm on its bed of Rakian sand. Her viewport looked down from some two hundred meters onto the captive. As she looked, she shared a silent laugh with the increasingly integrated Taraza.
We were right and Schwangyu and her people were wrong. We knew he wanted out. He had to want that after what he did.
She spoke aloud in a soft whisper, as much for herself as for the nearby observers stationed there to watch for the moment when metamorphosis began in that worm.
"We have your language now," she said.
There were no words in the language, only a moving, dancing adaptation to a moving, dancing universe. You could only speak the language, not translate it. To know the meaning you had to go through the experience and even then the meaning changed before your eyes. "Noble purpose" was, after all, an untranslatable experience. But when she looked down at the rough, heat-immune hide of that worm from the Rakian desert, Odrade knew what she saw: the visible evidence of noble purpose.
Softly, she called down to him: "Hey! Old worm! Was this your design?"
There was no answer but then she had not really expected an answer.
