The quality of her guardian Proctors told her much. Gentle but firm. They were here to prevent flight and to make sure she went where ordered. I won't try to escape!
Where was Duncan?
Odrade had promised he would be with her for the Agony. Did his absence mean this was not to be her ultimate trial? Or had they concealed him behind some secret wall through which he could see and not be seen?
I want him at my side!
Didn't they know how to rule her? Certainly they did!
Threaten to deprive me of this man. That's all it takes to hold me and satisfy me. Satisfy! What a useless word. Complete me. That's better. I am less when we're apart. He knows it, too, damn him.
Murbella smiled. How does he know it? Because he is completed in the same way.
How could this be love? She felt no weakening from the tugs of desire. Bene Gesserit and Honored Matres alike said love weakened. She felt strenghened by Duncan. Even his small attentions were strengthening. When he brought her a steaming cup of stimtea in the morning, it was better coming from his hands. Perhaps we have something more than love.
Odrade and companions entered the amphitheater at the uppermost tier and stood a moment looking down at the figure seated below them. Murbella wore the white-trimmed long robe of a senior acolyte. She sat with elbow on knee, chin resting on fist, her attention concentrated on the table.
She knows.
"Where is Duncan?" Odrade asked.
At her words, Murbella stood and turned. The question confirmed what she had suspected.
"I'll find out," Sheeana said and left them.
Murbella waited in silence, matching Odrade stare for stare.
We must have her, Odrade thought. Never had the Bene Gesserit need been greater. What an insignificant figure Murbella was down there to carry so much in her person. The almost oval face with its widening at the brows revealed new Bene Gesserit composure. Widely set green eyes, arched brows --no squinting--no more orange. Small mouth--no more pouting.
She is ready.
Sheeana returned with Duncan at her side.
Odrade spared him a brief glance. Nervous. So Sheeana had told him. Good. That was an act of friendship. He might need friends here.
"You will sit up here and remain here unless I call you," Odrade said. "Stay with him, Sheeana."
Without being told, Tamalane flanked Duncan, one of them on each side. At a gentle gesture from Sheeana, they sat.
Bellonda beside her, Odrade descended to Murbella's level and went to the table. Oral syringes on the far side were ready to lift into position but remained empty. Odrade gestured at the syringes and nodded to Bellonda, who went out a side door in search of the Suk Reverend Mother in charge of spice essence.
Moving the table away from the back wall, Odrade began laying out straps and adjusting pads. She moved methodically, checking that everything had been provided on the small ledge beneath the table. Mouth pad to keep the Agonized One from biting her tongue. Odrade felt it to be sure it was strong. Murbella had a muscular jaw.
Murbella watched Odrade work, keeping silent, trying to make no disturbing noises.
Bellonda returned with spice essence and proceeded to fill the syringes. The poisonous essence had a pungent odor--bitter cinnamon.
Catching Odrade's attention, Murbella said, "I'm grateful that you're supervising this yourself."
"She's grateful!" Bellonda sneered, not looking up from her work.
"Leave this to me, Bell." Odrade kept her attention on Murbella.
Bellonda did not pause but something withdrawn took over her movements. Bellonda effacing herself? It never ceased to astonish Murbella how acolytes effaced themselves when they entered Mother Superior's presence. There but not there. Murbella had never quite achieved this even when she left probation and entered advanced status. Bellonda, too?
Staring hard at Murbella, Odrade said: "I know what reservations you hold in your breast, limits you place on your commitment to us. Well and good. I make no argument about that because, by and large, your reservations are very little different from those held by any of us."
Candor.
"The difference, if you would know it, is in the sense of responsibility. I am responsible for my Sisterhood... as much of it as still survives. They are a deep responsibility and one I sometimes look at with a jaundiced eye."
Bellonda sniffed.
Odrade appeared not to notice this as she continued. "The Bene Gesserit Sisterhood has gone somewhat sour since the Tyrant. Our contact with your Honored Matres has not improved matters. Honored Matres have the stench of death and decadence about them, going downhill into the great silence."
"Why do you tell me these things now?" Fear in Murbella's voice.
"Because, somehow, the worst of Honored Matre decadence did not touch you. Your spontaneous nature, perhaps. Although that has been dampened somewhat since Gammu."
"Your doing!"
"We've just taken a little wildness out of you, given you a better balance. You can live longer and healthier because of it."
"If I survive this!" Jerk of her head toward the table behind her.
"Balance is what I want you to remember, Murbella. Homeostasis. Any group choosing suicide when it has other options does so out of insanity. Homeostasis gone haywire."
When Murbella looked at the floor, Bellonda snapped: "Listen to her, fool! She's doing her best to help you."
"All right, Bell. This is between us."
When Murbella continued to stare at the floor, Odrade said: "This is Mother Superior giving you an order. Look at me!"
Murbella's head snapped up and she stared into Odrade's eyes.
It was a tactic Odrade had used infrequently but with excellent results. Acolytes could be reduced to hysteria by it and then taught how to deal with their excessive response to emotions. Murbella appeared to be more angered than fearful. Excellent! But now was a time for caution.
"You have complained about the slow pacing of your education," Odrade said. "It was done with your needs foremost in our minds. Your key teachers all were chosen for steadiness, none of them impulsive. My instructions were explicit: 'Don't give you too many abilities too rapidly. Don't open a flood-gate of powers that might be more than she can handle.'"
"How do you know what I can handle?" Still angry.
Odrade only smiled.
When Odrade continued silent, Murbella appeared flustered. Had she made a fool of herself before Mother Superior, before Duncan and these others? How humiliating.
Odrade reminded herself it was not good to make Murbella too conscious of her vulnerability. A bad tactic just now. No need to provoke her. She had a sharp sense of the germane, fitting herself into needs of the moment. That was the thing they feared might have its source in a motivation always to choose the path of least resistance. Let it not be that. Complete honesty now! The ultimate tool of Bene Gesserit education. The classical technique that bound acolyte to teacher.
"I will be at your side throughout your Agony. If you fail, I will grieve."
"Duncan?" Tears in her eyes.
"Any help he can give, he will be permitted to give."
Murbella looked up the rows of seats and, for a brief moment, her gaze locked with Idaho's. He lifted slightly but Tamalane's hand on his shoulder restrained him.
They may kill my beloved! Idaho thought. Must I sit here and just watch it happen? But Odrade had said he would be permitted to help. There is no stopping this now. I must trust Dar. But, gods below! She does not know the depth of my grief, if... if... He closed his eyes.
"Bell." Odrade's voice carried a sense of casting off, a knife edge in its brittleness.
Bellonda took Murbella's arm and helped her onto the table. It bounced slightly adjusting to the weight.
This is the real chute, Murbella thought.
She had only the remotest sense of straps being fastened around her, of purposeful movement beside her.
"This is the usual routine," Od
rade said.
Routine? Murbella had hated the routines of becoming Bene Gesserit, all of that study, listening and reacting to Proctors. She had particularly loathed the necessity to refine reactions she had believed adequate but there could be no sloughing off under those watchful eyes.
Adequate! What a dangerous word.
This recognition had been precisely what they sought. Precisely the leverage their acolyte required.
If you loathe it, do it better. Use your loathing as guidance; home in on exactly what you need.
The fact that her teachers saw so directly into her behavior, what a marvelous thing! She wanted that ability. Oh, how she wanted it!
I must excel in this.
It was a thing any Honored Matre might envy. She saw herself abruptly with a form of doubled vision: both Bene Gesserit and Honored Matre. A daunting perception.
A hand touched her cheek, moved her head and went away.
Responsibility. I am about to learn what they mean by "a new sense of history. "
The Bene Gesserit view of history fascinated her. How did they look at multiple pasts? Was it something immersed in a grander scheme? The temptation to become one of them had been overwhelming.
This is the moment when I learn.
She saw an oral syringe swing into position above her mouth. Bellonda's hand moved it.
"We carry our grail in our heads," Odrade had said. "Carry this grail gently if it comes into your possession. "
The syringe touched her lips. Murbella closed her eyes but felt fingers open her mouth. Cold metal touched her teeth. Odrade's remembered voice was with her.
Avoid excesses. Overcorrect and you always have a fine mess on your hands, the necessity to make larger and larger corrections. Oscillation. Fanatics are marvelous creators of oscillation.
"Our grail. It has linearity because each Reverend Mother carries the same determination. We will perpetuate this together."
Bitter liquid gushed into her mouth. Murbella swallowed convulsively. She felt fire flow down her throat into her stomach. No pain except the burning. She wondered if this could be the extent of it. Her stomach felt merely warm now.
Slowly, so slowly she was several heartbeats recognizing it, the warmth flowed outward. When it reached the tips of her fingers she felt her body convulse. Her back arched off the padded table. Something soft but firm replaced the syringe in her mouth.
Voices. She heard them and knew people were speaking but could not distinguish words.
As she concentrated on the voices she became aware she had lost touch with her body. Somewhere, flesh writhed and there was pain but she was removed from it.
A hand touched a hand and clasped it firmly. She recognized Duncan's touch, and abruptly there was her body and agony. Her lungs pained when she exhaled. Not when she inhaled. Then they felt flat and never full enough. Her sense of presence in living flesh became a thin thread that wound through many presences. She sensed others all around her, far too many people for the tiny amphitheater.
Another human being floated into view. Murbella felt herself to be in a factory shuttle ... in space. The shuttle was primitive. Too many manual controls. Too many blinking lights. A woman at the controls, small and untidy with the sweat of her labors. She had long brown hair and it had been bound up in a chignon from which paler strands escaped to hang around her narrow cheeks. She wore a single garment, a short dress of brilliant reds, blues, and greens.
Machinery.
There was awareness of monstrous machinery just beyond this immediate space. The woman's dress contrasted severely with the drab and dragging sense of machinery. She spoke but her lips did not move. "Listen, you! When it comes time for you to take over these controls, don't become a destroyer. I'm here to help you avoid the destroyers. Do you know that?"
Murbella tried to speak but had no voice.
"Don't try so hard, girl!" the woman said. "I hear you."
Murbella tried to shift her attention away from the woman.
Where is this place?
One operator, a giant warehouse... factory... everything automated ... webs of feedback lines centered into this tiny space with its complex controls.
Thinking to whisper, Murbella asked: "Who are you?" and heard her own voice roar. Agony in her ears!
"Not so loud! I'm your guide of the mohalata, the one who steers you clear of the destroyers."
Dur protect me! Murbella thought. This is no place; it's me!
On that thought, the control room vanished. She was a migrant in the void, condemned never to be quiet, never to find a moment of sanctuary. Everything but her own fleeting thoughts became immaterial. She had no substance, only a wispy adherence that she recognized as consciousness.
I have constructed myself out of fog.
Other Memory came, bits and pieces of experiences she knew were not her own. Faces leered at her and demanded her attention but the woman at the shuttle controls pulled her away. Murbella recognized necessities but could not put them into coherent form.
"These are lives in your past." It was the woman at the shuttle controls but her voice had a disembodied quality and came from no discernible place.
"We are descendants of people who did nasty things," the woman said. "We don't like to admit there were barbarians in our ancestry. A Reverend Mother must admit it. We have no choice."
Murbella had the knack of only thinking her questions now. Why must I...
"The victors bred. We are their descendants. Victory often was gained at great moral price. Barbarism is not even an adequate word for some of the things our ancestors did."
Murbella felt a familiar hand on her cheek. Duncan! The touch restored agony. Oh, Duncan! You're hurting me.
Through the pain, she sensed gaps in the lives being revealed to her. Things withheld.
"Only what you're capable of accepting now," the disembodied voice said. "Others come later when you're stronger ... if you survive."
Selective filter. Odrade's words. Necessity opens doors.
Persistent wailing came from the other presences. Laments: "See? See what happens when you ignore common sense?"
Agony increased. She could not escape it. Every nerve was touched with flame. She wanted to cry, to scream threats, to implore for help. Tumbling emotions accompanied the agony but she ignored them. Everything happened along a thin thread of existence. The thread could snap!
I'm dying.
The thread was stretching. It was going to break! Hopeless to resist. Muscles would not obey. There probably were no muscles remaining to her. She did not want them anyway. They were pain. It was hell and would never end ... not even if the thread snapped. Flames burned along the thread, licking at her awareness.
Hands shook her shoulders. Duncan ... don't. Each movement was pain beyond anything she had imagined possible. This deserved to be called the Agony.
The thread no longer was stretching. It was pulling back, compressing. It became one small thing, a sausage of such exquisite pain that nothing else existed. The sense of being became vague, translucent... transparent.
"Do you see?" the voice of her mohalata guide came from far away.
I see things.
Not exactly seeing. A distant awareness of others. Other sausages. Other Memory encased in the skins of lost lives. They extended behind her in a train whose length she could not determine. Translucent fog. It ripped apart occasionally and she glimpsed events. No ... not events themselves. Memory.
"Share witness," her guide said. "You see what our ancestors have done. They debase the worst curse you can invent. Don't make excuses about necessities of the times! Just remember: There are no innocents!"
Ugly! Ugly!
She could hold on to none of it. Everything became reflections and ripping fog. Somewhere there was a glory that she knew she might attain.
Absence of this Agony.
That was it. How glorious that would be!
Where is that glorious condition?
Lips
touched her forehead, her mouth. Duncan! She reached up. My hands are free. Her fingers slipped into remembered hair. This is real!
Agony receded. Only then did she realize that she had come through pain more terrible than words could describe. Agony? It seared the psyche and remolded her. One person entered and another emerged.
Duncan! She opened her eyes and there was his face directly above her. Do I still love him? He is here. He is an anchor to which I clung in the worst moments. But do I love him? Am I still balanced?
No answer.
Odrade spoke from somewhere out of view. "Strip those clothes off her. Towels. She's drenched. And bring her a proper robe!"
There were scurrying sounds, then Odrade once more: "Murbella, you did that the hard way, I'm glad to say."
Such elation in her voice. Why was she glad?
Where is the sense of responsibility? Where is the grail I'm supposed to feel in my head? Answer me, someone!