The change spread . . . faster and faster as the catalyzed reaction opened its surface of contact.
The suspension of time relaxed its hold upon her, and she sensed motion. The tube spout from the sack was touched to her mouth--gently, collecting a drop of moisture.
Chani's taking the catalyst from my body to change the poison in that sack, Jessica thought. Why?
Someone eased her to a sitting position. She saw the old Reverend Mother Ramallo being brought to sit beside her on the carpeted ledge. A dry hand touched her neck.
And there was another psychokinesthetic mote within her awareness! Jessica tried to reject it, but the mote swept closer . . . closer.
They touched!
It was like an ultimate simpatico, being two people at once: not telepathy, but mutual awareness.
With the old Reverend Mother!
But Jessica saw that the Reverend Mother didn't think of herself as old. An image unfolded before the mutual mind's eye: a young girl with a dancing spirit and tender humor.
Within the mutual awareness, the young girl said, "Yes, that is how I am."
Jessica could only accept the words, not respond to them.
"You'll have it all soon, Jessica," the inward image said.
This is hallucination, Jessica told herself.
"You know better than that," the inward image said. "Swiftly now, do not fight me. There isn't much time. We . . . " There came a long pause, then; "You should've told us you were pregnant!"
Jessica found the voice that talked within the mutual awareness. "Why?"
"This changes both of you! Holy Mother, what have we done?"
Jessica sensed a forced shift in the mutual awareness, saw another mote-presence with the inward eye. The other mote darted wildly here, there, circling. It radiated pure terror.
"You'll have to be strong," the old Reverend Mother's image-presence said.
"Be thankful it's a daughter you carry. This would've killed a male fetus. Now .
. . carefully, gently . . . touch your daughter-presence. Be your daughter-presence. Absorb the fear . . . soothe . . . use your courage and your strength
. . . gently now . . . gently . . . "
The other whirling mote swept near, and Jessica compelled herself to touch it.
Terror threatened to overwhelm her.
She fought it the only way she knew: "I shall not fear. Fear is the mind killer . . . "
The litany brought a semblance of calm. The other mote lay quiescent against her.
Words won't work, Jessica told herself.
She reduced herself to basic emotional reactions, radiated love, comfort, a warm snuggling of protection.
The terror receded.
Again, the presence of the old Reverend Mother asserted itself, but now there was a tripling of mutual awareness--two active and one that lay quietly absorbing.
"Time compels me," the Reverend Mother said within the awareness. "I have much to give you. And I do not know if your daughter can accept all this while remaining sane. But it must be: the needs of the tribe are paramount."
"What--"
"Remain silent and accept!"
Experiences began to unroll before Jessica. It was like a lecture strip in a subliminal training projector at the Bene Gesserit school . . . but faster . . .
blindingly faster.
Yet . . . distinct.
She knew each experience as it happened: there was a lover--virile, bearded, with the Fremen eyes, and Jessica saw his strength and tenderness, all of him in one blink-moment, through the Reverend Mother's memory.
There was no time now to think of what this might be doing to the daughter fetus, only time to accept and record. The experiences poured in on Jessica--
birth, life, death--important matters and unimportant, an outpouring of single-view time.
Why should a fall of sand from a clifftop stick in the memory? she asked herself.
Too late, Jessica saw what was happening: the old woman was dying and, in dying, pouring her experiences into Jessica's awareness as water is poured into a cup. The other mote faded back into pre-birth awareness as Jessica watched it.
