"Thank you for bringing my food," Odrade said.
Sheeana swallowed and a wide grin came over her features. "It's delicious."
Bellonda returned to eating. "It's all right." But she had heard the unspoken comment.
Tamalane ate steadily, shifting attention from Sheeana to Bellonda and then to Odrade. Tam appeared to agree with a proposed softening of emotional strictures. At least, she voiced no objections and older Sisters were most likely to object.
The love the Bene Gesserit tried to deny was everywhere, Odrade thought. In small things and big. How many ways there were to prepare delectable, life-sustaining foods, recipes that really were embodiments of loves old and new. This bouillabaisse so smoothly restorative on her tongue; its origins were planted deeply in love: the wife at home using that part of the day's catch her husband could not sell.
The very essence of the Bene Gesserit was concealed in loves. Why else minister to those unspoken needs humanity always carried? Why else work for the perfectibility of humankind?
Bowl empty, Bellonda put down her spoon and wiped up the dregs with the last of her bread. She swallowed, looking pensive. "Love weakens us," she said. No force in her voice.
An acolyte could have said it no differently. Right out of the Coda. Odrade concealed amusement and countered with another Coda stepping-stone. "Beware jargon. It usually hides ignorance and carries little knowledge."
Respectful wariness entered Bellonda's eyes.
Sheeana pushed herself back from the table and wiped her mouth with her napkin. Tamalane did the same. Her chairdog adjusted as she leaned back, eyes bright and amused.
Tam knows! The wily old witch is still wise in my ways. But Sheeana... what game is Sheeana playing? I would almost say she hopes to distract me, to keep my attention away from her. She is very good at it, learned it at my knee. Well... two can play that game. I press Bellonda, but watch my little Dune waif.
"What price respectability, Bell?" Odrade asked.
Bellonda accepted this thrust in silence. Hidden in Bene Gesserit jargon was a definition of respectability and they all knew it.
"Should we honor the memory of the Lady Jessica for her humanity?" Odrade asked. Sheeana is surprised!
"Jessica put the Sisterhood in jeopardy!" Bellonda accuses.
"To thine own Sisters be true," Tamalane murmured.
"Our antique definition of respectability helps keep us human," Odrade said. Hear me well, Sheeana.
Her voice little more than a whisper, Sheeana said, "If we lose that we lose it all."
Odrade suppressed a sigh. So that's it!
Sheeana met her gaze. "You are instructing us, of course."
"Twilight thoughts," Bellonda muttered. "Best we avoid them."
"Taraza called us 'Latter-day Bene Gesserit,' " Sheeana said.
Odrade's mood went self-accusatory.
The bane of our present existence. Sinister imaginings can destroy us.
How easy it was to conjure a future that looked at them from glazing orange eyes of berserk Honored Matres. Fears out of many pasts crouched within Odrade, breathless moments focused on fangs that went with such eyes.
Odrade forced her attention back to the immediate problem. "Who will accompany me to Junction?"
They knew Dortujla's harrowing experience and word of it had spread throughout Chapterhouse.
"Whoever goes with Mother Superior could well be fed to Futars. "
"Tam," Odrade said. "You and Dortujla." And that may be a death sentence. The next step is obvious. "Sheeana," Odrade said, "you will Share with Tam. Dortujla and I will Share with Bell. And I also will share with you before I go."
Bellonda was aghast. "Mother Superior! I am not suited to take your place."
Odrade held her attention on Sheeana. "That is not being suggested. I will merely make you the repository of my lives." Definite fear on Sheeana's face but she dared not refuse a direct order. Odrade nodded to Tamalane. "I will Share later. You and Sheeana will do it now."
Tamalane leaned toward Sheeana. The strictures of great age and imminent death made this a welcome thing for her but Sheeana involuntarily pulled away.
"Now!" Odrade said. Let Tam judge whatever it is you hide.
There was no escape. Sheeana bent her head to Tamalane's until they touched. The flash of the exchange was electric and the entire dining room felt it. Conversation stopped, every gaze turned toward the table by the window.
There were tears in Sheeana's eyes when she withdrew.
Tamalane smiled and made a gentle caressing motion with both hands along Sheeana's cheeks. "It's all right, dear. We all have these fears and sometimes do foolish things because of them. But I am pleased to call you Sister."
Tell us, Tam! Now!
Tamalane did not choose to do that. She faced Odrade and said, "We must cling to our humanity at any cost. Your lesson is well received and you have taught Sheeana well." "When Sheeana Shares with you, Dar," Bellonda began, "could you not reduce the influence she has on Idaho?"
"I will not weaken a possible Mother Superior," Odrade said. "Thank you, Tam. I think we will make our venture to Junction without excess baggage. Now! I want a report by tonight on Teg's progress. His leech has been too long away from him."
"Will he learn that he has two leeches now?" Sheeana asked. Such joy in her!
Odrade stood.
If Tam accepts her then I must. Tam would never betray our Sisterhood. And Sheeana--of us all, Sheeana most reveals the natural traits from our human roots. Still... I wish she had never created that statue she calls "The Void. "
Religion must be accepted as a source of energy. It can be directed for our purposes, but only within limits that experience reveals. Here is the secret meaning of Free Will.
--Missionaria Protectiva, Primary Teaching
A thick cloud cover had moved over Central this morning and Odrade's workroom took on a gray silence to which she felt herself responding with inner stillness, as though she dared not move because that disturbed dangerous forces.
Murbella's day of Agony, she thought. I must not think of omens.
Weather had issued a peremptory warning about clouds. They were an accidental displacement. Corrective measures were being taken but would require time. Meanwhile, expect high winds, and there could be precipitation.
Sheeana and Tamalane stood at the window looking at this poorly controlled weather. Their shoulders touched.
Odrade watched them from her chair behind the table. Those two had become like a single person since yesterday's Sharing, not an unexpected occurrence. Precedents were known, although not many of them. Exchanges, occurring in the presence of poisonous spicy essence or at an actual moment of death, did not often allow further living contact between participants. It was interesting to observe. The two backs were oddly alike in their rigidity.
The force of extremis that made Sharing possible dictated powerful changes in personality and Odrade knew this with an intimacy that compelled tolerance. Whatever it was Sheeana concealed, Tam also concealed. Something tied to Sheeana's basic humanity. And Tam could be trusted. Until another Sister Shared with one of them, Tam's judgment must be accepted. Not that watchdogs would cease probing and observing minutiae but they needed no new crisis just now.
"This is Murbella's day," Odrade said.
"The odds are long she won't survive," Bellonda said, hunched forward in her chairdog. "What happens to our precious plan then?"
Our plan!
"Extremis," Odrade said.
In that context, it was a word with several meanings. Bellonda interpreted it as a possibility of acquiring Murbella's persona-memories at the moment of her death. "Then we must not permit Idaho to observe!"
"My order stands," Odrade said. "It's Murbella's wish and I have given my word."
"Mistake ... mistake ..." Bellonda muttered.
Odrade knew the source of Bellonda's doubts. Visible to all of them: Somewhere in Murbella lay something extremely painful
. It caused her to shy away from certain questions like an animal confronted by a predator. Whatever it was, the thing went deep. Hypnotrance induction might not explain it.
"All right!" Odrade spoke loudly to emphasize it was for all of her listeners. "It's not the way we've ever done it before. But we cannot take Duncan from the ship so we must go to him. He will be present."
Bellonda was still well and truly shocked. No man, barring the damned Kwisatz Haderach himself and his Tyrant son,
had ever known the particulars of this Bene Gesserit secret. Both of those monsters had felt the Agony. Two disasters! No matter that the Tyrant's Agony had worked its way inward a cell at a time to transform him into a sandworm symbiote (no more original worm, no more original human). And Muad'Dib! He dared the Agony and look what came of that!
Sheeana turned from the window and took one step toward the table, giving Odrade the curious feeling that the two women standing there had become a Janus figure: back to back but only one persona.
"Bell is confused by your promise," Sheeana said. How soft her voice.
"He could be the catalyst to pull Murbella through," Odrade said. "You tend to underestimate the power of love."
"No!" Tamalane spoke to the window in front of her. "We fear its power."
"Could be!" Bell still was scornful but that came naturally to her. The expression on her face said she remained implacably stubborn.
"Hubris," Sheeana murmured.
"What?" Bellonda whirled in her chairdog, causing it to squeak with indignation.
"We share a common failing with Scytale," Sheeana said.
"Oh?" Bellonda was gnawing at Sheeana's secret.
"We think we make history," Sheeana said. She returned to her position beside Tamalane, both of them staring out the window.
Bellonda returned her attention to Odrade. "Do you understand that?"
Odrade ignored her. Let the Mentat work it out for herself. The projector on the worktable clicked and a message was displayed. Odrade reported it. "Still not ready at the ship." She looked at those two rigid backs in front of the window.
History?
On Chapterhouse, there had been little of what Odrade liked to think of as history-making before the Honored Matres. Only the steady graduation of Reverend Mothers passing through the Agony.
Like a river.
It flowed and it went somewhere. You could stand on the bank (as Odrade sometimes thought they did here) and you could observe the flow. A map might tell you where the river went but no map could reveal more essential things. A map could never show intimate movements of the river's cargo. Where did they go? Maps had limited value in this age. A printout or projection from Archives; that was not the map they required. There had to be a better one somewhere, one attached to all of those lives. You could carry that map in your memory and have it out occasionally for a closer look.
Whatever happened to the Reverend Mother Perinte we sent out last year?
The map-in-the-mind would take over and create a "Perinte Scenario." It was really yourself on the river, of course, but this made little difference. It still was the map they needed.
We don't like it that we're caught in someone else's currents, that we don't know what may be revealed at the river's next bend. We always prefer overflight even though any commanding position must remain part of other currents. Every flow contains unpredictable things.
Odrade looked up to see her three companions watching her. Tamalane and Sheeana had turned their backs to the window.
"Honored Matres have forgotten that clinging to any form of conservatism can be dangerous," Odrade said. "Have we forgotten it as well?"
They continued to stare at her but they had heard. Become too conservative and you were unprepared for surprises. That was what Muad'Dib had taught them, and his Tyrant son had made the lesson forever unforgettable.
Bellonda's glum expression did not change.
In the deep recesses of Odrade's consciousness, Taraza whispered: "Careful, Dar. I was lucky. Quick to grab advantage. Just as you are. But you cannot depend on luck and that is what bothers them. Don't even expect luck. Much better to trust your water images. Let Bell have her say. "
"Bell," Odrade said, "I thought you accepted Duncan."
"Within limits." Definitely accusatory.
"I think we should go out to the ship." Sheeana spoke with demanding emphasis. "This is not the place to wait. Do we fear what she may become? "
Tam and Sheeana turned toward the door simultaneously as though the same puppet master controlled their strings.
Odrade found the interruption welcome. Sheeana's question alarmed them. What could Murbella become? A catalyst, my Sisters. A catalyst.
The wind shook them when they emerged from Central and for once Odrade was thankful for tube transport. Walking could await warmer temperatures without this blustering mini-tempest tugging at their robes.
When they were seated in a private car, Bellonda once more took up her accusatory refrain. "Everything he does could be camouflage."
Once more, Odrade voiced the oft-repeated Bene Gesserit warning to limit their reliance on Mentats. "Logic is blind and often knows only its own past."
Tamalane chimed in with unexpected support. "You are getting paranoid, Bell!"
Sheeana spoke more softly. "I've heard you say, Bell, that logic is good for playing pyramid chess but often too slow for needs of survival."
Bellonda sat in glowering silence, only a faint hissing rumble of their tube passage intruding on the quiet.
Wounds must not be taken into the ship.
Odrade matched her tone to Sheeana's: "Bell, dear Bell. We do not have time to consider all ramifications of our plight. We no longer can say, 'If this happens, then that must surely follow, and in such a case, our moves must be so and so and so ...'"
Bellonda actually chuckled. "Oh, my! The ordinary mind is such a clutter. And I must not demand what we all need and cannot have--sufficient time for every plan."
It was Bellonda-Mentat speaking, telling them she knew she was flawed by pride in her ordinary mind. What a badly organized, untidy place that was. Imagine what the non-Mentat puts up with, imposing so little order. She reached across the aisle and patted Odrade's shoulder.
"It's all right, Dar. I'll behave."
What would an outsider think, seeing that exchange? Odrade wondered. All four of them acting in concert for the needs of one Sister.
For the needs of Murbella's Agony, as well.
People saw only the outside of this Reverend Mother mask they wore.
When we must (which is most of the time these days) we function at astonishing levels of competence. No pride in that; a simple fact. But let us relax and we hear gibberish at the edges as ordinary folk do. Ours merely has more volume. We live our lives in little congeries like anyone else. Rooms of the mind, rooms of the body.
Bellonda had composed herself, hands clasped in her lap. She knew what Odrade planned and kept it to herself. It was a trust that went beyond Mentat Projection into something more basically human. Projection was a marvelously adaptable tool but a tool nonetheless. Ultimately, all tools depended on the ones who used them. Odrade was at a loss how to show her thanks without reducing trust.
I must walk my tightrope in silence.
She sensed the chasm beneath her, the nightmare image conjured by these reflections. The unseen hunter with an axe was closer. Odrade wanted to turn and identify the stalker but resisted. I will not make Muad'Dib's mistake! The prescient warning she had first sensed on Dune in the ruins of Sietch Tabr would not be exorcised until she ended or the Sisterhood ended. Did I create this terrible threat by my fears? Surely not! Still, she felt she had stared at Time in that ancient Fremen stronghold as though all past and all future were frozen into a tableau that could not be changed. I must break free of you utterly, Muad'Dib!
Their arrival at the Landing Flat pulled her from these fearful musings.
Murbella waited in rooms Proc
tors had prepared. At the center was a small amphitheater about seven meters along its enclosing back wall. Padded benches were stepped upward in a steep arc, seating for no more than twenty observers. Proctors had left her without explanation on the lowest bench staring at a suspensor-buoyed table. Straps hung over the sides to confine whoever lay on it.
Me.
An astonishing series of rooms, she thought. She had never before been permitted into this part of the ship. She felt exposed here, even more so than she had under open sky. The smaller rooms through which they had brought her to this amphitheater were clearly designed for medical emergencies: resuscitation equipment, sanitary odors, antiseptics.
Her removal to this room had been peremptory, none of her questions answered. Proctors had taken her from an advanced acolyte class in prana-bindu exercises. They said only: "Mother Superior's orders."