Rebecca stood in front of him, hands on her hips, a look of weary frustration on her face.
“Do not stand there like that!” the Rabbi commanded. He peered up at her from beneath the shawl.
“If you despair, then are we not lost?” she asked.
The sound of her voice angered him and he was a moment putting this unwanted emotion aside.
She dares to instruct me? But was it not said by wiser men that knowledge can come from a weed? A great shuddering sigh shook him and he dropped the shawl to his shoulders. Rebecca helped him stand.
“A no-chamber,” the Rabbi muttered. “In here, we hide from …” His gaze searched upward at a dark ceiling. “Better left unspoken even here.”
“We hide from the unspeakable,” Rebecca said.
“The door cannot even be left open at Passover,” he said. “How will the Stranger enter?”
“Some strangers we do not want,” she said.
“Rebecca.” He bowed his head. “You are more than a trial and a problem. This little cell of Secret Israel shares your exile because we understand that—”
“Stop saying that! You understand nothing of what has happened to me. My problem?” She leaned close to him. “It is to remain human while in contact with all of those past lives.”
The Rabbi recoiled.
“So you are no longer one of us? Are you a Bene Gesserit then?”
“You will know when I’m Bene Gesserit. You will see me looking at myself as I look at myself.”
His brows drew down in a scowl. “What are you saying?”
“What does a mirror look at, Rabbi?”
“Hmmmmph! Riddles now.” But a faint smile twitched at his mouth. A look of determination returned to his eyes. He stared around him at the room. There were eight of them here—more than this space should hold. A no-chamber! It had been assembled painstakingly with smuggled bits and pieces. So small. Twelve and a half meters long. He had measured it himself. A shape like an ancient barrel laid on its side, oval in cross section and with half-globe closures at the ends. The ceiling was no more than a meter above his head. The widest point here at the center was only five meters and the curve of floor and ceiling made it seem even narrower. Dried food and recycled water. That was what they must live on and for how long? One SY maybe if they were not found. He did not trust the security of this device. Those peculiar sounds in the machinery.
It had been late in the day when they crept into this hole. Darkness up there now for sure. And where were the rest of his people? Fled to whatever sanctuary they could find, drawing on old debts and honorable commitments for past services. Some would survive. Perhaps they would survive better than this remnant in here.
The entrance to the no-chamber lay concealed beneath an ash pit with a free-standing chimney beside it. The reinforcing metal of the chimney contained threads of ridulian crystal to relay exterior scenes into this place. Ashes! The room still smelled of burned things and it already had begun to take on a sewer stink from the small recycling chamber. What a euphemism for a toilet!
Someone came up behind the Rabbi. “The searchers are leaving. Lucky we were warned in time.”
It was Joshua, the one who had built this chamber. He was a short, slender man with a sharply triangular face narrowing to a thin chin. Dark hair swept over his broad forehead. He had widely spaced brown eyes that looked out at his world with a brooding inwardness the Rabbi did not trust. He looks too young to know so much about these things.
“So they are leaving,” the Rabbi said. “They will be back. You will not think us lucky then.”
“They will not guess we hid so near the farm,” Rebecca said. “The searchers were mostly looting.”
“Listen to the Bene Gesserit,” the Rabbi said.
“Rabbi.” What a chiding sound in Joshua’s voice! “Have I not heard you say many times that the blessed ones are they who hide the flaws of others even from themselves?”
“Everybody’s a teacher now!” the Rabbi said. “But who can tell us what will happen next?”
He had to admit the truth of Joshua’s words, though. It is the anguish of our flight that troubles me. Our little diaspora. But we do not scatter from Babylon. We hide in a … a cyclone cellar!
This thought restored him. Cyclones pass.
“Who is in charge of the food?” he asked. “We must ration ourselves from the