trans_9 | This Was, Now This Is

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This Was, Now This Is | [OPEN]

She had slept and dreamt the dream curled around the sand filled bin she'd found the tiny Maker in, her sandworm, the one who'd watched her take the Water of Life. Arha knew it was that one like she knew Shai-Hulud from Shai-Hulud. They sounded different in her head, a variance in hum, in pitch, in imagery. This one was barely out of its sandtrout stage, as long as her torso with the girth of it still thickening. Now, she sat Fremen style, meditating on many things and nothing all at once.

This place that she now was in was too humid and both she and the little Maker did not care for it. He opened and closed his small jaws, irritated as he let out a grumbling, if tiny roar. It was not yet impressive and she reached to slide her fingertips over his sandwashed hide, murmuring in soft sing-song hum as he rose to snap at her without malice.

Arha caught its meaning in a flash of imagery.

"I know," she whispered, covering her mouth with a soft huff. "This is not home and you have yet no room. Again, we are trapped, little Maker. I do not know if I can free you from this. I am no wormkiller, though I had no choice the last time."

Her voice was soft, barely audible as she caught the sound of someone approaching. Arha's hand was on a crysknife in an instant, her blue-within-blue eyes narrowed.

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River seems to take no notice of Arha as she walks in the room, padding quietly past on bare feet. She approaches the blast shields as they lift, revealing the stars tunneling rapidly by. River sits and stares almost serenely outside, muttering under her breath. Someone with good hearing would note that she's muttering equations. Someone equally good at math would note that she's calculating the distance and speed they're traveling.

Arha flicked a glance at the girl, her grip on the knife easing, but not yet relaxed. The equations, caught by sharp Bene Gesserit trained ears, reminded her of Guildsmen, or Mentats, perhaps both in equal parts. She followed along with the calculations and pursed her lips thoughtfully. Mathematics was order out of chaos, calculations were comforting when little else made any sort of sense. Perhaps this one sought tranquility in numbers as much as Arha sought her own within a bit of sand and a peevish, ill tempered Shai-Hulud.

"Does it help?" Arha asked in a voice that carried sharply, though it was not any louder than it should have been to carry the distance. Her control was, as always, precise. Sister Kalim would have been amused and at the same time a touch proud. Such was the old witch's way.

"No," she replies, without looking away from the window. River had been fully aware of Arha's presence before she walked in the room, she simply hadn't acknowledged it at the time. The other woman had seemed tense, so she'd left her as alone as she could while still sharing the same room. "I just want to comprehend. We're going too fast right now, but soon she'll slow down."

"I would rather this Thinking Machine return us where we belong than slow down," Arha said with a burr of a frown. "I do not know that there is much comprehension in chaos, though there be order of some kind in those calculations. Mathematics and physics, at the very least are logical. Yet now we occupy a space in which we exist in chaos of our own. I do not trust it, this machine-creature."

There was no she, only it.

"She has a mission," she tries to explain, unsure how to put it into words. "We're important. Maybe just to her, maybe to all of us. Maybe to everything. When she slows, there will be something we have to do." She leans back and turns her head to look at Arha for the first time, taking in her strange blue eyes, but making no comment. "Chaos is only order you can't comprehend. Trust isn't the issue."

River realizes, belatedly, that she isn't as coherent today as she was yesterday, or the few days before. That happens sometimes. The worst of it fell away after Miranda, but she still slips into old patterns sometimes and it's hard to break away.

"Comprehension comes with the study of patterns," Arha said automatically, "finding those patterns within said chaos simply takes further concentration." Sometimes that concentration took spice, sometimes it took silence. "I am unused to machines, much less being told where to go by them or what to do." She phrased it well, couched in the discomfort that implied unfamiliarity and the sense of ill history that backed that unfamiliarity.

"Such Thinking Machines nearly ended human existence in the known Universe nigh ten thousand years prior to my first breath in the place from whence I came. I do not take well to this enforced mission due to that very history." Arha knew it would not be the first time those words were uttered. Nor would it be the last.

"I have importance elsewhere," she murmured. "And a debt to pay my desert."

"Machines have patterns too, just like ours," she attempts, using Arha's logic in order to facilitate better understanding. "They're not so hard to understand, if you know how to listen. If you take care of them, they'll take care of you. If you treat them badly, they'll betray you. Just like ours," she repeats, hoping to get the point across.

"The mission may not be voluntary, but it may be necessary. Time is relative."

"Two generations of men, women, and children were wiped from the face of the Universe," Arha said. "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." The last was a quote and her speech patterns reflected it. "Now, we say 'thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind' for this past we have lived will yet come again. One man make care for a machine while another may abuse it. The cycle turns, the machines become aware of this abuse, they strike out at all man, all woman. The young die, the old die, the best of us die. We become lost in the darkness of our own making."

Arha folded her hands into her lap. What was simple was not as it seemed.

"I will simply observe for the moment, the necessity of this mission," she murmured. "Acting will come when the time is right for such a thing. All things are measured, weighed, and acted upon with the course as near to right as one can manage."

"Shouldn't let them think for you." She says this in such a way that clearly conveys her opinion that such a thing is utter foolishness. "Just supposed to help." She shakes her head, obviously exasperated that anyone should be so silly. "Shouldn't abuse them, either. Of course they'll know."

And that's how it should be. Kaylee would have a fit if she ever heard this woman's story. She'd probably go on for hours about how it's just proof that people should take better care of and have more respect for all things mechanical.

"The past is the past, unchangeable," Arha said. "What a group of humans did then, we have not done now. In the Universe I come from, we have trained human beings to fulfill the function of what these thinking machines once did. Men and women who calculate at speeds far faster than most could comprehend, Guildsmen who operate the great Hieghliners that bridge the gap between one world to the next from one point in the known Universe to another. We have machines, yes, just not thinking machines. It has been the way for ten thousand years in my time, though for others it is different, perhaps."

Arha put her hand over her mouth to sigh, an effort of moisture conservation as much as anything.

"Artificial intelligence, placed in a machine and made after the model of a human mind, is still a danger and will always be a danger. When you have seen a loved one cut down by a machine's lasgun, a robotic hand, a crushing tank, when you have smelled flesh burning on open fields, then you may know why those of my kind do what we do and think the way we think. I pray it will not come to that in your lifetime."

Diluted a million to one, Sheeana could still smell it. That pungent, cinnamony odor. A trained nose, Fremen and Bene Gesserit picked it up easily. This was the scent Fremen children of her time hunted the dunes for, the scent of the Spice Agony and of addiction. It was also the scent of wealth and knowledge, however. Gnosis and agony went together. A Bene Gesserit knew that better than anyone.

From the hallway, she moved rythmlessly along the bulkhead. She could command the worms of her time, but who knew what this one could do. She drew her crysknife as she did. The milky-white dagger was itself made from the tooth of a sandworm and incredibly sharp.

She stalked through the opening. There was the other Bene Gesserit, framed by the stars, seemingly talking to a juvenile worm. Arha Masaari...I don't trust you completely, but quite a bit more than that Atreides bitch.

Arha shielded the worm from view with as much of her slight body as she could. The worm hissed, but Arha knew it was just irritation with their new circumstance. There was the scent of water in the images that traversed her mind -- danger, poison, alien. Not home. She understood the complaint.

Her eyes flicked to Sheeana's exposed crysnife.

"I am no worm dancer," she murmured, "but this one and I share an understanding. Come draw my blood and sheathe your blade."

"Calm yourself, sietchmate. I didn't know it was you." She emphasizes their shared heritage with a small smile.

Is it Shai Halud or Shaitan? She thinks as she sheaths the blade. "I've already gone through the agony, I have no need of more water of life...Unless you want to see if we can induce a sietch orgy the next time there's an assembly in the mess hall." She crouches and studies the creature. It's lighter colored and larger than hers already...But more sluggish in its movement, less quick to respond. Hers would have already been upon the source of noise fifteen seconds ago. "It's not the same as the ones in my time.

"It would be quite the thing of amusement," Arha said, her voice warm with humor. The worm lifted itself up again to sway and tried to roar. "Calm yourself, little one. That is not a thing to be done." She dropped her fingers against the sand and the worm moved toward her, brushing its head into her fingers. Arha closed her eyes for a moment and pulled up images and scents of the desert. They were comforting things, familiar, and the worm ceased hissing before dropping placidly to the sand.

Curiosity dominated, now, with the flash of spice and territory.

Hiss and roar, like a kitten with its teeth bared....It had been a long time since she'd met one that reacted with anything but obsequious obedience. I'd always thought the pre-Tyrant worms had been brutes. We need to revise our understanding and I need to speak its language.

That was what she did as she raised her foot slowly to stamp to get its attention. She twirled without rythm, a derivative of the Fremen rythmless walk...this was a rythmless dance. It was the instinctual kinetic language the Worm spoke. It never failed to at least calm them.

Arha observed the worm and her fellow Sister for an intense moment. There was sharp attention from the Little Maker. Calmness, too, and curiosity that matched her own. It reminded her of the worm games she'd played on the sands of Chapterhouse -- her surrogate mother desert. Though, her dance with the young Shai-Hulud had been one to call him, one to ride him, one to soothe him when he was angry.

The little one curled slightly, bending in an attempt to coil itself around her wrist like some sort of oversized sandtrout. Arha watched, taking down the movements in her mind, slowing them, taking them apart, learning them.

"He approves," she murmured. "And I believe he is as fascinated as I."

"Siaynoq...the remnants of the Tyrant's ritual of sharing." She knew somewhere in Other Memory was the original version of that ritual, thousands of Fish Speakers screaming their fanatic devotion in that underground chamber. Arha might have noticed the tiny bit of poisonous emphasis she puts on the word tyrant. She speaks of him as a historical figure but there's clearly a deeper connection.

"I did not know if a pre-Tyrant worm would even respond to it..."

There had been many years from Arha's time to Sheeana's. Many generations, many women. One Leto II, the Tyrant, historical, yes, personal...yes. Interesting. Yes. Arha looked pensive as she felt the worm shift against her arm. He wouldn't bite her, he never would. The Fremen who had watched her called her Lady of the Sands because she had walked out of the deep desert untouched. They also called her a worm-friend and she knew some believed that she was a desert witch -- it fit well enough and she had done nothing to discourage what rumors they sowed.

"Siaynoq," Arha repeated quietly, rolling the word around to see how it fit. She was silent for a long while and then her eyes flicked to Sheeana's. "What is Shai-Hulud has always been Shai-Hulud, and some part shall always survive somewhere. We are young and old all at once, we have pasts that merge with futures that merge with pasts in an endless cycle. There is something old about it, something about the way the desert wind hisses and the air fills with sand in a proper storm, something soothing in the slide of a dune. How can we creatures of the desert not respond?"

Shaitan you clueless dupe! She thinks. Her whole life has been shaped by the failures of both Fremen and Bene Gesserit in Arha's time. She wants to teach her the lesson about the consequences of such worship, but no plans jump off of her head to inject her with their terrible purpose. If I were him i'd know already. She is forced to acknowledge.

"Ah, you make me nostalgic, sister. I want to see the sun crest the dunes again...The sensorium simply doesn't cut it anymore. I have a proposal for you..."

"There could be nothing better than the sands," Arha said in a quiet voice as she trailed her fingertips against the Little Maker's coiled body. "The sensorium is all tricks and shadow-play, it gives nothing of the true desert."

She withdrew her hand and felt as well heard the little Shai-Hulud protest, but folded her hands in her lap as the worm hissed and grumbled.

"I would hear this proposal of yours."

"Like the Kwisatz Haderach himself, there are hidden depths to this place. Stacy is vast and cannot moniter all of herself." She pauses, letting the idea soak in. She herself still hasn't entirely grasped it: They are riding a city and not some quiescent Guild heighliner either.

"I too came with a little maker. Given enough sand and lighting that simulates Arrakis' sun, sandplankton will replicate. From there we can introduce our charges, give them a place to grow. Their offspring will have the size and empathy of yours and the speed and intelligence of mine...Hybrid vigor." Or mine will eat yours. Either way it is no matter to me.

"That is a fascinating proposal." Arha said, letting her mind wander over the multitude of possibilities and lines of direction with what limited prescience she had. It was, by far, muted. "It is most agreeable to attempt, at the very least. I wonder if sand shall be a problem or if this Stacy would have some in reserve." She glanced to her worm, who was now peering at them, as much as a sandworm could peer, both with an hint of interest.

There was a sharp flicker of images in her mind.

"Such an introduction is better than many alternatives," Arha said. "This one would seek death rather than have no place to roam. I have taken one Shai-Hulud to that place already, I do not wish to have to do it again. They may yet produce offspring, or there will simply be one less Maker to worry about." She brushed a fingertip over her worm's head and felt him thrum. He was small, still, but one day, long after she was dust, he would be large.

One day.

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This Was, Now This Is | [OPEN]

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