A Step Further [FMR 8]

[Cuyler Gray]

The sands went on and on. It was too much to take in, impossible to understand. Cuyler's mind was filled with so many thoughts. So many questions it could not comprehend, not as it was.

But, there was another way.

The brandy was heavily spiced, beyond the norm. She had prepared it herself. Cuyler looked at the others. They were still lost in their own thoughts. She drank from the small flask, savoring the flavor.

[Kannon]

Spice never tasted exactly the same, especially for someone of her palate. This time it was spicy fermented quaraa eggs, from Harmonthep. Harmonthep ... what was the significant of that planet?

Still hazed by her random thoughts that left her both exhilarated and confused, in a state of mind that seemed alien on one hand but only familiar on the other, she took in the powerful cocktail. The effect arrived seamlessly: sea of moonlit dunes turned into similar shapes of curved lines... and she was suddenly somewhere else.

There was water. And trees. And flowers.

[Cuyler Gray]

The sound of water. The fragrance of flowers. The cool shade of a tree. Just the ideas of such things were comforting and refreshing, as if it had been a lifetime since she'd experienced them. When was the last time she'd felt them? Where had she been?

[Kannon]

It felt... like another life.

"My mother was slicing the portyguls when the slavers came!
They brought stunners, batons and chains!
I saw my young sister flee, but they caught her and tied!
The children were sent to get pearls with small knives and rocks on their ankles!
They denied us the hajj!"

It was a chant of some sort that resonated with her more than it should. A young man was singing it as if it was something from distant past he didn't understand but wanted to present himself as a spiritual one. He didn't look like a slave. He was well-fed and tidy. He was olive-skinned but his hair were red and curly. The night was falling, and thus the flowers smelled frenetically. In the shades and scents he looked more attractive than he should, and his smile indicated he wanted to appear so.

"It was like on Bela Tegeuse when the faithful had grown soft,
Oh how many died in the jungles of Rossak!
Taskmasters whipped the restless with inkvine every day.
And the red rivers turned redder from the blood of my people!
They denied us the hajj!"

The song was penetrating! Even if the singer didn't mean it, it hurt to the core, the tragedy of generations woven into a mellow melody.

[Cuyler Gray]

She began to sing along to herself as she studied the man. This was all important somehow.

[Kannon]

The young man looked familiar to her in some ways. The intent in his eyes was clearly sexual and the heart wrenching singing seemed to be a form of wooing. On some level, no-Cuyler felt she could reciprocate that, but there was also something else, a strong sense of belonging and kinship that was deeper than any romantic bond.

The reeds and mangrove trees bent on gentle winds across the floral marshlands behind him. There were insects, annoying in their buzzing and incessant biting, but some of them had softly luminescent bodies that coloured the darkening skies with lime dots, rearranging themselves chaotically in a frenetic dance of nature.

A moving universe, which makes obsolete whatever you pattern. She could only attache her gaze to one of those insects and follow the track without rhythm or rhyme.

Still, the manboy's eyes beckoned.

[Cuyler Gray]

She followed those eyes, moving closer.

"Are you singing for me?"

[Kannon]

"Is it working?" He smiled warmly. "A Zensunni boy singing you songs from the Wanderings... What would your parents say?"

[Cuyler Gray]

"What do you think they'd say?" She gave a mischievous smile. "I'm not sure they'd have the words."

[Kannon]

"I bet he'd say something like..." The boy made a serious, sullen face. "It's enough that Pardot has lost his mind. You should know better than your brother! There is nothing interesting about Salusa or all those other worlds of Zensunni martyrdom! We won't stay here long, I want the family back on Kaitain. Thing of the future, not the past!" He dropped his act for just a breath. "Or just: You're too young for boys! Back to your studies!"

[Cuyler Gray]

"Oh, he'd say all of that." she laughed. "But, how would you respond?"

[Kannon]

"I'd tell him: you can't make a marionette by attaching just one string. Koans anger and confuse the likes of your father. I like him. But he is too reasonable. The universe is not. I don't want him to make you into someone like him. Your curiosity for life is delightful."

[Cuyler Gray]

"Best not to anger him too much." She laughed. "As for my curiosity, right now it's focused on you."

[Kannon]

"Am I not life? I can tell you, it radiates from me, with every breath..." The handsome boy leaned in. "Wander with me, Margot Kynes." He whispered.

[Cuyler Gray]

"Of course. Anywhere." she agreed, taking his hand.

[Kannon]

What followed lost some definition and was conveyed less a a scene and more a volley of emotions as if the deeper, more primal layers of the her brain below the cortex had finally got a say. This wordless reminiscence was joyous, happy, ecstatic and blissful even, and Cuyler's body relived it, if not verbatim, then close enough for it to be slightly embarrassing if someone was observing her moment of silent, now only mostly, repose.

When her spice-infused mind relinquished whatever shutoff it had imposed on her outward senses, her logical and illogical minds clashed in a fierce tug of war, jolting her out from any expected denouement. Kynes. That relatively common name was suddenly imbued with meaning. The woman was one of her ancestors, the very one who would leave Harmonthep. She had a brother though, apparently, something her family's oral histories hadn't truly conveyed. Pardot? On Salusa Secundus? This is where the laza tiger had almost killed yet another one of the female line she was now able to dip into to some extent. A dr Kynes was the Imperial Planetologist on Arrakis, that much she knew, though he had never reached out to anyone in the audit, to the best of her knowledge. What seemed odd. If the Emperor had put so much political capital into this endeavour, why wouldn't he command Kynes to get involved? Or, why wouldn't the man listen to a call of that kind if it'd been issued? The stentorian voice in her head the previous time she'd accepted a spice trance, the one who'd told her about Orgiz, could have belonged to a planetologist, it certainly displayed the knowledge and the attitude. But if the twisted logic of these visions was any indicator, it were the dead ancestors revealing themselves to her, and only female. What was going on? It could all be just a tall conjecture if not a sudden recollection of some stares Ahmina had given her when she'd been still among them, as if she'd seen a ghost.

But there was more to it. The boy, the sweet Zensunni vagabond on Harmothep, the one who'd sensitised her ancestress to the ways and fates of his people, and probably much more, how was he meaningful? The bliss that still was tantalising across her body could have been an indication of acts that had added him to her genetic ancestry. She instinctively looked at Mapes. The Fremen were Zensunni of some sort too, that much she knew. What kind of twisted fate had cast her into the middle of Arrakian desert from the bucolic landscapes of Kirana, and was now tugging at the long lines of who she was by virtue of the past she knew so little about? And how deep did it go? Was her rational mind but a facade to deeper, inherited longings and drives?

They denied us the hajj! The Zensunni call rang in her mind. Oppression only sharpened the thirst for freedom while it also made people mindful of powers beyond their ken. It was the hubris of the privileged that let them get cloistered in convictions that there is nothing more out there beyond what their educated, rational-instrumental mind could grasp.

But what lay beyond was wild, and mind could only slide across the surface of that wildness, never fully keeping up with the current unless one was a part of that current.

The spice! What was it really doing to humans?

[Cuyler Gray]

It was so much to take in, so much to understand. Like the sands, she knew there was too much for her to fully comprehend. She was certain now, however, that there was more for her to discover here.

"Kynes." she said to herself, holding the name close.

[The Shadout Mapes]

Her keen senses caught a very slight twitch in Mapes' body as the name was mentioned, but it may have been unrelated.

[Cuyler Gray]

"I need to speak to Dr Kynes, my cousin." she said after a long moment of gathering her thoughts.

[The Shadout Mapes]

There was a pause, as if Mapes even considered whether to respond. "I don't know where he is. He comes and goes as he pleases." The words were so carefully chosen that Cuyler could almost taste there was a guarded secret there. And yet, Kynes had to be some public figure here on Arrakis. Perhaps someone had even spoken about him at the banquet she'd missed.

[Cuyler Gray]

"He should have been involved from the beginning." she sighed. "But, I didn't know then."

[The Shadout Mapes]

"Who says that he should." Mapes didn't seem to be sharing Cuyler's assumption that Kynes was obligated so.

[Cuyler Gray]

She shrugged. "It may be best for him that he wasn't, but it raises questions. A man like him involved with this audit would make much more sense than a chef, even a spice sommelier."

[The Shadout Mapes]

"And yet you are here." It sounded like an assertion that making sense wasn't a definitive criterion of anything.

[Cuyler Gray]

"So I am." she sighed again. "I'm trying to understand why."