Administration! It all came back to Mother Superior. Delegate heavily to only the same people and you fell into bureaucracy.
Odrade knew she depended too much on her inner sense of administration. A system frequently tested and revised, using automation only where essential. "The machinery" they called it. By the time they became Reverend Mothers, all of them had some sensitivity to "the machinery" and tended to use it without question thereafter. There lay the danger. Odrade pressed for constant improvements (even tiny ones) to introduce change into their activities. Randomness! No absolute patterns that others could find and use against them. One person might not see such shifts in a lifetime but differences over longer periods were sure to be measurable.
Odrade's party came down to ground level and onto the major thoroughfare of Central. "The Way," Sisters called it. An in-joke, referring to the training regimen popularly known as "The Bene Gesserit Way."
The Way reached from the square beside Odrade's tower to the southern outskirts of the urban area--straight as a lasgun beam, almost twelve klicks of tall buildings and low ones. The low ones all had something in common: they had been built strong enough to expand upward.
Odrade flagged an open transporter with empty seats and the three of them crowded into a space where they could continue to talk. Frontage on The Way carried an old-fashioned appeal, Odrade thought. Buildings such as these with their tall rectangular windows of insulating plaz had framed Bene Gesserit "Ways" through much of the Sisterhood's history. Down the center ran a line of elms genetically tailored for height and narrow profile. Birds nested in them and the morning was bright with flitting spots of red and orange--orioles, tanagers.
Is it dangerously patterned for us to prefer this familiar setting?
Odrade led them off the transporter at Tipsy Trail, thinking how Bene Gesserit humor came out in curious names. Waggish in the streets. Tipsy Trail because the foundation of one building had subsided slightly, giving that structure a curiously drunken appearance. The one member of the group stepping out of line.
Like Mother Superior. Only they don't know it yet.
Her Ear-C buzzed as they came to Tower Lane. "Mother Superior?" It was Streggi. Without stopping, Odrade signaled that she was on-line. "You asked for a report on Murbella. Suk Central says she is fit for assigned classes."
"Then assign her." They continued down Tower Lane: all one-story buildings.
Odrade spared a brief glance for the low buildings on both sides of the street. A two-story addition was being made to one of them. Might be a real Tower Lane here someday and the joke (such as it was) abandoned.
It was argued that naming was just a convenience anyway and they might as well enjoy this venture into what was a delicate subject for the Sisterhood.
Odrade stopped abruptly on a busy walkway and turned to her companions. "What would you say if I suggested we name streets and places after departed Sisters?"
"You're full of nonsense today!" Bellonda accused.
"They are not departed," Tamalane said.
Odrade resumed her prowling walk. She had expected that. Bell's thoughts could almost be heard. We carry the "departed" around in Other Memory!
Odrade wanted no argument here in the open but she thought her idea had merit. Some Sisters died without Sharing. Major Memory Lines were duplicated but you lost a thread and its terminated carrier. Schwangyu of the Gammu Keep had gone that way, killed by attacking Honored Matres. Plenty of memories remained to carry her good qualities ... and complexities. One hesitated to say her mistakes taught more than her successes.
Bellonda increased her pace to walk beside Odrade in a relatively empty stretch. "I must speak of Idaho. A Mentat, yes, but those multiple memories. Supremely dangerous!"
They were passing a morgue, the strong smell of antiseptics even in the street. The arched doorway stood open.
"Who died?" Odrade asked, ignoring Bellonda's anxiety.
"A Proctor from Section Four and an orchard maintenance man," Tamalane said. Tam always knew.
Bellonda was furious at being ignored and made no attempt to hide it. "Will you two stick to the point?"
"What is the point?" Odrade asked. Very mild.
They emerged on the south terrace and stopped at the stone rail to look over the plantations--vineyards and orchards. The morning light had a dusty haze in it not at all like the mists created of moisture.
"You know the point!" Bell would not be deflected.
Odrade stared at the vista, pressing herself against the stones. The railing was frigid. That mist out there was a different color, she thought. Sunlight came through dust with a different reflective spectrum. More bounce and sharpness to the light. Absorbed in a different way. The nimbus was tighter. The blowing dust and sand crept into every crevice they way water did but the grating and rasping betrayed its source. The same with Bell's persistence. No lubrication.
"That's desert light," Odrade said, pointing.
"Stop avoiding me," Bellonda said.
Odrade chose not to answer. The dusty light was a classical thing, but not reassuring in the way of the elder painters and their misty mornings.
Tamalane came up beside Odrade. "Beautiful in its own way." The remote tone said she made Other Memory comparisons similar to Odrade's.
If that's how you were conditioned to look for beauty. But something deep within Odrade said this was not the beauty for which she longed.
In the shallow swales below them, where once there had been greenery, now there was dryness and a sense of the earth being gutted the way ancient Egyptians had prepared their dead--dried to essential matter, preserved for their Eternity. Desert as deathmaster, swaddling the dirt in nitron, embalming our beautiful planet with all of its jewels concealed.
Bellonda stood behind them, muttering and shaking her head, refusing to look at what their planet would become.
Odrade almost shuddered in a sudden thrust of simulflow. Memory flooded her: She felt herself searching Sietch Tabr's ruins, finding desert-embalmed bodies of spice pirates left where killers had dropped them.
What is Sietch Tabr now? A molten flow solidified and without anything to mark its proud history. Honored Matres: killers of history.
"If you won't eliminate Idaho, then I must protest your using him as a Mentat."
Bell was such a fussy woman! Odrade noted that she was showing her age more than ever. Reading lenses on her nose even now. They magnified her eyes until she had the look of a great-orbed fish. Use of lenses and not one of the more subtle prostheses said something about her. She flaunted a reverse vanity that announced: "I am greater than the devices my failing senses require."
Bellonda was definitely irritated by Mother Superior. "Why are you staring at me that way?"
Odrade, caught by abrupt awareness of a weakness in her Council, shifted her attention to Tamalane. Cartilage never stopped growing and this had enlarged Tam's ears, nose and chin. Some Reverend Mothers adjusted this by metabolism control or sought regular surgical correction. Tam would not bow to such vanity. "Here's what I am. Take it or leave it."
My advisors are too old. And I ... I should be younger and stronger to have these problems on my shoulders. Oh, damn this for a lapse into self-pity!
Only one supreme danger: action against survival of the Sisterhood.
"Duncan is a superb Mentat!" Odrade spoke with all the force of her position. "But I use none of you beyond your capabilities."
Bellonda remained silent. She knew a Mentat's weaknesses.
Mentats! Odrade thought. They were like walking Archives but when you most needed answers they relapsed into questions.
"I don't need another Mentat," Odrade said. "I need an inventor!"
When Bellonda still did not speak, Odrade said: "I am freeing his mind, not his body."
"I insist on an analysis before you open all data sources to him!"
Considering Bellonda's usual stance, that was mild. But Odrade did not trust it. She detested those sessi
ons--endless rehashing of Archival reports. Bellonda doted on them. Bellonda of Archival minutiae and boring excursions into irrelevant details! Who cared if Reverend Mother X preferred skimmed milk on her porridge?
Odrade turned her back on Bellonda and looked at the southern sky. Dust! We would sift more dust! Bellonda would be flanked by assistants. Odrade felt boredom just imagining it.
"No more analysis." Odrade spoke more sharply than she had intended.
"I do have a point of view." Bellonda sounded hurt.
Point of view? Are we no more than sensory windows on our universe, each with only a point of view?
Instincts and memories of all types ... even Archives--none of these things spoke for themselves except by compelling intrusions. None carried weight until formulated in a living consciousness. But whoever produced the formulation tipped the scales. All order is arbitrary! Why this datum rather than some other? Any Reverend Mother knew events occurred in their own flux, their own relative environment. Why couldn't a Mentat Reverend Mother act from that knowledge?
"Do you refuse counsel?" That was Tamalane. Was she siding with Bell?
"When have I ever refused counsel?" Odrade let her outrage show. "I am refusing another of Bell's Archival merry-go-rounds."
Bellonda intruded. "Then, in reality--"
"Bell! Don't talk to me about reality!" Let her simmer in that! Reverend Mother and Mentat! There is no reality. Only our own order imposed on everything. A basic Bene Gesserit dictum.
There were times (and this was one of them) when Odrade wished she had been born in an earlier era--a Roman matron in the long pax of the aristocrats, or a much-pampered Victorian. But she was trapped by time and circumstances.
Trapped forever?
Must face that possibility. The Sisterhood might have only a future confined to secret hideaways, always fearing discovery. The future of the hunted. And here at Central we may be allowed no more than one mistake.
"I've had enough of this inspection!" Odrade called for private transport and hurried them back to her workroom.
What will we do if the hunters come upon us here?
Each of them had her own scenario, a little playlet full of planned reactions. But every Reverend Mother was sufficiently a realist to know her playlet might be more hindrance than help.
In the workroom, morning light harshly revealing on everything around them, Odrade sank into her chair and waited for Tamalane and Bellonda to take their seats.
No more of those damned analysis sessions. She really needed access to something better than Archives, better than anything they had ever used before. Inspiration. Odrade rubbed her legs, feeling muscles tremble. She had not slept well for days. This inspection left her feeling frustrated.
One mistake could end us and I am about to commit us to a no-return decision.
Am I being too tricky?
Her advisors argued against tricky solutions. They said the Sisterhood must move with steady assurance, the ground ahead known in advance. Everything they did lay counterpoised by the disaster awaiting them at the slightest misstep.
And I am on the tightrope over the chasm.
Did they have room to experiment, to test possible solutions? They all played that game. Bell and Tam screened a constant flow of suggestions but nothing more effective than their atomic Scattering.
"We must be prepared to kill Idaho at the slightest sign he is a Kwisatz Haderach," Bellonda said.
"Don't you have work to do? Get out of here, both of you!"
As they stood, the workroom around Odrade took on an alien feeling. What was wrong? Bellonda stared down at her with that awful look of censure. Tamalane appeared more wise than she could possibly be.
What is it about this room?
The workroom would have been recognized for its function by humans from pre-space history. What felt so alien? A worktable was a worktable and the chairs were in convenient positions. Bell and Tam preferred chairdogs. Those would have seemed odd to the early human in Other Memory she suspected was coloring her view. The ridulian crystals might glisten strangely, the light pulsing in them and blinking. Messages dancing above the table might be surprising. Instruments of her labors could appear strange to an early human sharing her awareness.
But it felt alien to me.
"Are you all right, Dar?" Tam spoke with concern.
Odrade waved her away but neither woman moved.
Things were happening in her mind that could not be blamed on the long hours and insufficient rest. This was not the first time she had felt she worked in alien surroundings. The previous night while eating a snack at this table, the surface littered with assignment orders as it was now, she had found herself just sitting and staring at uncompleted work.
Which Sisters could be spared from what posts for this terrible Scattering? How could they improve survival chances of the few sandtrout the Scattered Sisters took? What was a proper allotment of melange? Should they wait before sending more Sisters into the unknown? Wait for the possibility that Scytale could be induced to tell them how axlotl tanks produced the spice?
Odrade recalled that the alien feeling had occurred to her as she chewed on a sandwich. She had looked at it, opening it slightly. What is this thing I'm eating? Chicken liver and onions on some of the best Chapterhouse bread.
Questioning her own routines, that was part of this alien sensation.
"You look ill," Bellonda said.
"Just fatigue," Odrade lied. They knew she was lying but would they challenge her? "You both must be equally tired." Affection in her tone.
Bell was not satisfied. "You set a bad example!"
"What? Me?" The jesting was not lost on Bell.
"You know damned well you do!"
"It's your displays of affection," Tamalane said.
"Even for Bell."
"I don't want your damned affection! It's wrong."
"Only if I let it rule my decisions, Bell. Only then."
Bellonda's voice fell to a husky whisper. "Some think you're a dangerous romantic, Dar. You know what that could do."
"Ally Sisters with me for other than our survival. Is that what you mean?"
"Sometimes you give me a headache, Dar!"
"It's my duty and right to give you a headache. When your head fails to ache, you become careless. Affections bother you but hates don't."
"I know my flaw."
You couldn't be a Reverend Mother and not know it.
The workroom once more had become a familiar place but now Odrade knew a source of her alien feelings. She was thinking of this place as part of ancient history, viewing it as she might when it was long gone. As it certainly would be if her plan succeeded. She knew what she had to do now. Time to reveal the first step.
Careful.
Yes, Tar, I'm as cautious as you were.
Tam and Bell might be old but their minds were sharp when necessity required it.
Odrade fixed her gaze on Bell. "Patterns, Bell. It is our pattern not to offer violence for violence." Raising a hand to stop Bell's response. "Yes, violence builds more violence and the pendulum swings until the violent ones are shattered."
"What are you thinking?" Tam demanded.
"Perhaps we should consider baiting the bull more strongly."
"We dare not. Not yet."
"But we also dare not sit here witlessly waiting for them to find us. Lampadas and our other disasters tell us what will happen when they come. When, not if."
As she spoke, Odrade sensed the chasm beneath her, the nightmare hunter with the axe ever nearer. She wanted to sink into the nightmare, turning there to identify the one who stalked them, but dared not. That had been the mistake of the Kwisatz Haderach.
You do not see that future, you create it.
Tamalane wanted to know why Odrade raised this issue. "Have you changed your mind, Dar?"
"Our ghola-Teg is ten years old."
"Much too young for us to attempt restoring his original memories," Bellond
a said.
"Why have we recreated Teg if not for violent uses?" Odrade asked. "Oh, yes!" As Tam started to object. "Teg did not always solve our problems with violence. The peaceful Bashar could deflect enemies with reasonable words."
Tam spoke musingly. "But Honored Matres may never negotiate."
"Unless we can drive them to extremis."
"I think you are proposing to move too fast," Bellonda said. Trust Bell to reach a Mentat summation.
Odrade drew in a deep breath and looked down at her worktable. It had come at last. On that morning when she had removed the baby ghola from his obscene "tank," she had sensed this moment waiting for her. Even then she had known she would put this ghola into the crucible before his time. Ties of blood notwithstanding.