Chapterhouse: Dune (Dune Chronicles #6)

Chapterhouse: Dune (Dune Chronicles #6) Page 31

Our Sisterhood?

You bred for power! How is that different from...

Don't twist it, Murbella! Keep your eyes on survival.

Don't tell me you had no power.

Temporary authority over people intent on survival.

Survival again!

In a Sisterhood that promotes the survival of others. Like the married woman who bears children.

So it comes down to procreation.

That's a decision you make for yourself: family and what binds it. What tickles life and happiness?

Murbella began to laugh. She dropped her hands and opened her eyes to find Bellonda standing there watching.

"That's always a temptation for a new Reverend Mother," Bellonda said. "Chat a bit with Other Memory. Who was it this time? Dar?"

Murbella nodded.

"Don't trust anything they give you. It's lore and you judge it for yourself "

Odrade's words exactly. Look through the eyes of the dead at scenes long gone. What a peep show!

"You can get lost in there for hours," Bellonda said. "Exercise restraint. Be sure of your ground. One hand for yourself and one for the ship."

There it was again! The past applied to the present. How rich Other Memory made everyday life.

"It'll pass," Bellonda said. "It gets to be old hat after a time." She laid a report in front of Murbella.

Old hat! One hand for yourself and one for the ship. So much just in idioms.

Murbella leaned back in the slingchair to scan Bellonda's report, fancying herself suddenly in Odrade's idiom: Spider Queen in the center of my web. The web might be a bit frayed just now but it was still there catching things to be digested. Twitch a trigger strand and Bell came running, mandibles flexing in anticipation. The twitch-words were "Archives" and "Analysis."

Seeing Bellonda in this light, Murbella saw the wisdom in the ways Odrade had employed her, flaws as valuable as the strengths. When Murbella finished the report, Bellonda still stood there in characteristic attitude.

Murbella recognized that Bellonda looked on all who summoned her as ones who had not measured up, people who called on Archives for frivolous reasons and had to be set straight. Frivolity: Bellonda's bete noire. Murbella found this amusing.

Murbella kept amusement masked while enjoying Bellonda. The way to deal with her was to be scrupulous. Nothing to subtract from strengths. This report was a model of concise and pertinent argument. She made her points with few embellishments, just enough to reveal her own conclusions.

"Does it amuse you to summon me?" Bellonda asked.

She's sharper than she was! Did I summon her? Not in so many words but she knows when she's needed. She says here our Sisters must be models of meekness. Mother Superior may be anything she needs to be but not so the rest of the Sisterhood.

Murbella touched the report. "A starting point."

"Then we should start before your friends find the comeye center." Bellonda sank into her chairdog with familiar confidence. "Tam's gone but I could send for Sheeana."

"Where is she?"

"At the ship. Studying a collection of worms in the Great Hold, says any of us can be taught to control them."

"Valuable if true. Leave her. What of Scytale?"

"Still in the ship. Your friends haven't found him yet. We're keeping him under wraps."

"Let's continue that. He's a good reserve bargaining chip. And they're not my friends, Bell. How are the Rabbi and his party?"

"Comfortable but worried. They know Honored Matres are here."

"Keep them under wraps."

"It's uncanny. A different voice but I hear Dar."

"An echo in your head."

Bellonda actually laughed.

"Now here's what you must spread among the Sisters. We act with extreme delicacy while showing ourselves as people to admire and emulate. 'You Honored Matres may not choose to live as we live but you can learn our strengths.' "

"Ahhhhhh."

"It comes down to ownership. Honored Matres are owned by things. 'I want that place, that bauble, that person.' Take what you want. Use it until you tire of it."

"While we go along our path admiring what we see."

"And there's our flaw. We don't give ourselves easily. Fear of love and affection! To be self-possessed has its own greed. 'See what I have? You can't have it unless you follow my ways!' Never take that attitude with Honored Matres."

"Are you telling me we have to love them?"

"How else can we make them admire us? That was Jessica's victory. When she gave, she gave it all. So much bottled up by our ways and then that overwhelming wash: everything given. It's irresistible."

"We don't compromise that easily."

"No more do Honored Matres."

"That's the way of their bureaucratic origins!"

"Yet, theirs is a training ground for following the path of least resistance."

"You're confusing me, Da... Murbella."

"Have I said we should compromise? Compromise weakens us, and we know there are problems compromise cannot solve, decisions we must make no matter how bitter."

"Pretend to love them?"

"That's a beginning."

"It'll be a bloody union, this joining of Bene Gesserit and Honored Matre."

"I suggest we Share as widely as possible. We may lose people while Honored Matres are learning."

"A marriage made on the battlefield."

Murbella stood, thinking of Duncan in the no-ship, remembering the ship as she had seen it last. There it was finally, not hidden to any sense. A lump of strange machinery, oddly grotesque. A wild conglomeration of protrusions and juttings with no apparent purpose. Hard to imagine the thing lifting on its own power, enormous as that was, and vanishing into space.

Vanishing into space!

She saw the shape of Duncan's mental mosaic.

A piece that cannot be moved! Get in tune... Don't think; do it!

With an abruptness that chilled her, she knew his decision.

When you think to take determination of your fate into your own hands, that is the moment you can be crushed. Be cautious. Allow for surprises. When we create, there are always other forces at work.

- Darwi Odrade

"Move with extreme care," Sheeana had warned him.

Idaho did not think he needed warning but appreciated it nonetheless.

Presence of Honored Matres on Chapterhouse eased his task. They made the ship's Proctors and other guards nervous. Murbella's orders kept her former Sisters out of the ship but everyone knew the enemy was here. Scanner relays showed a seemingly endless stream of lighters disgorging Honored Matres on the Flat. Most of the new arrivals appeared curious about that monstrous no-ship sitting there but no one disobeyed Great Honored Matre.

"Not while she's alive," Idaho muttered where Proctors could hear him. "They have a tradition of assassinating their leaders to replace them. How long can Murbella hold out?"

Comeyes did his work for him. He knew his muttering would spread through the ship.

Sheeana came to him in his workroom shortly afterward and made a show of disapproval. "What are you trying to do, Duncan? You're upsetting people."

"Go back to your worms!"

"Duncan!"

"Murbella's playing a dangerous game! She's all that stands between us and disaster."

He already had voiced this worry to Murbella. It was not new to the watchers but reinforcement made everyone who heard him edgy - comeye monitors in Archives, ship guards, everyone.

Except Honored Matres. Murbella was keeping them out of Bellonda's Archives.

"Time for that later," she said.

Sheeana had her cue. "Duncan, either stop feeding our worries or tell us what we should do. You're a Mentat. Function for us."

Ahhh, the Great Mentat performs for all to see.

"What you should do is obvious but it's not up to me. I can't leave Murbella."

But I can be taken away.

Now it was up to Sheeana. She left him and went to spread her own brand of change.

"We have the Scattering for our example."

By evening, she had the Reverend Mothers in the ship neutralized and gave him a hand-signal that they could take the next step.

"They will follow my lead."

Without intending it, the Missionaria had set the stage for Sheeana's ascendancy. Most Sisters knew the power latent in her. Dangerous. But it was there.

Unused power was like a marionette with visible strings, nobody holding them. A compelling attraction: I could make it dance.

Feeding the deception, he called Murbella.

"When will I see you?"

"Duncan, please." Even in projection, she looked harried. "I'm busy. You know the pressures. I'll be out in a few days."

Projection showed Honored Matres in the background scowling at this odd behavior in their leader. Any Reverend Mother could read their faces.

"Has Great Honored Matre gone soft? That's nothing but a man out there!"

When he broke off; Idaho emphasized what every monitor on the ship had seen. "She's in danger! Doesn't she know it?"

And now, Sheeana, it's up to you.

Sheeana had the key to reinstate the ship's flight controls. The mines were gone. No one could destroy the ship at the last instant with a signal to hidden explosives. There was only the human cargo to consider, Teg especially.

Teg will see my choices. The others - the Rabbi's party and Scytale - will have to take their chances with us.

The Futars in their security cells did not worry him. Interesting animals but not significant at the moment. For that matter, he gave only a passing thought to Scytale. The little Tleilaxu remained under the eyes of guards, who were not relaxing their watch on him no matter their other worries.

He went to bed with a nervousness that had ready explanation for any watchdog in Archives.

His precious Murbella is in peril.

And she was in peril but he could not protect her.

My very presence is a danger to her now.

He was up at dawn, back to the armory dismantling a weapons factory. Sheeana found him there and asked him to join her in the guard section.

A handful of Proctors greeted them. The leader they had chosen did not surprise him. Garimi. He had heard about her performance at the Convocation. Suspicious. Worried. Ready to make her own gamble. She was a sober-faced woman. Some said she seldom smiled.

"We have diverted the comeyes in this room," Garimi said. "They show us having a snack and questioning you about weapons."

Idaho felt a knot in his stomach. Bell's people would spot a simulation quickly. Especially a projected mock-up of himself.

Garimi responded to his frown. "We have allies in Archives."

Sheeana said: "We are here to ask if you wish to leave before we escape in this ship."

His surprise was genuine.

Stay behind?

He had not considered it. Murbella was no longer his. The bond had been broken in her. She did not accept it. Not yet. But she would the first time she was asked to make a decision putting him in danger for Bene Gesserit purposes. Now, she merely stayed away from him more than was necessary.

"You're going to Scatter?" he asked, looking at Garimi.

"We'll save what we can. Voting with our feet, it was called once. Murbella is subverting the Bene Gesserit."

There was the unspoken argument he had trusted to win them. Disagreement over Odrade's gamble.

Idaho took a deep breath. "I will go with you."

"No regrets!" Garimi warned.

"That's stupid!" he said, venting his repressed grief.

Garimi would not have been surprised by that response from a Sister. Idaho shocked her and she was several seconds recovering. Honesty compelled her.

"Of course it's stupid. I'm sorry. You're sure you won't stay? We owe you the chance to make your own decision."

Bene Gesserit fastidiousness with those who served them loyally!

"I'll join you."

The grief they saw on his face was not simulated. He wore it openly when he returned to his console.

My assigned position.

He did not try to hide his actions when he coded for the ship's ID circuits.

Allies in Archives.

The circuits came flashing up on his projections - colored ribbons with a broken link into flight systems. The way around that breakage was visible after only a few moments' study. Mentat observations had been prepared for it.

Multiples through the core!

Idaho sat back and waited.

Lift-off was a skull-rattling moment of blankness that stopped abruptly when they were far enough clear of the surface to engage nullfields and enter foldspace.

Idaho watched his projection. There they were: the old couple in their garden setting! He saw the net shimmering in front of them, the man gesturing at it, smiling in round-faced satisfaction. They moved in a transparent overlay that revealed ship circuits behind them. The net grew larger - not lines but ribbons thicker than the projected circuits.

The man's lips shaped words but there was no sound. "We expected you."

Idaho's hands went to his console, fingers splayed in the comfield to grasp required elements of the circuit control. No time for niceties. Gross disruption. He was into the core within a second. From there, it was a simple matter to dump entire segments. Navigation went first. He saw the net begin to thin, the look of surprise on the man's face. Nullfields were next. Idaho felt the ship lurching in foldspace. The net tipped, becoming elongated with the two watchers foreshortened and thinned. Idaho wiped out star-memory circuits, taking his own data with them.

Net and watchers vanished.

How did I know they would be there?

He had no answer except a certainty rooted in the repeated visions.

Sheeana did not look up when he found her at the temporary flight-control board in the guard quarters. She was bent over the board, staring at it in consternation. The projection above her showed they had emerged from foldspace. Idaho recognized none of the visible star patterns but he had expected that.

Sheeana swiveled and looked at Garimi standing over her. "We've lost all data storage!"

Idaho tapped his temple with a forefinger. "No we haven't."

"But it'll take years to recover even the essentials!" Sheeana protested. "What happened?"

"We're an unidentifiable ship in an unidentifiable universe," Idaho said. "Isn't that what we wanted?"

There's no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.

- Darwi Odrade

Murbella felt that an age had passed since she recognized Duncan's decision.

Vanish into space! Leave me!

The unvarying time sense of the Agony told her only seconds had elapsed since awareness of his intentions but she felt she had known this from the first.

He must be stopped!

She was reaching for her comboard when Central began to shudder. The quaking continued for an interminable time and subsided slowly.

Bellonda was on her feet. "What..."

"The no-ship at the Flat has just lifted," Murbella said.

Bellonda reached for the comboard but Murbella stopped her.

"It's gone."

She must not see my pain.

"But who..." Bellonda fell silent. She had her own assessments of consequences and saw then what Murbella saw.

Murbella sighed. She had all of the curses of history at her disposal and wanted none of them.

"At lunchtime, I will eat in my private dining room. with councillors and I want you present," Murbella said. "Tell Duana oyster stew again."

Bellonda started to protest but all that came out was: "Again?" "You will recall I ate alone downstairs last night?" Murbella resumed her seat.

Mother Superior has duties!

There were maps to change and rivers to follow and Honored Matres to domesticate.

Some waves throw you, Murbella. But you get back up and go on with it. Seven times down, eight times up. You can balance on strange surfaces.

I know, Dar. Willing participation in your dream.

Bellonda stared at her until Murbella said, "I made my councillors sit at a distance from me at dinner last night. It was strange - only the two tables in the whole dining room."

Why do I continue this inane chatter? What excuses do I have for my extraordinary behavior?

"We wondered why none of us were permitted in our own dining room," Bellonda said.

"To save your lives! But you should have seen their interest. I read their lips. Angelika said: 'She's eating some kind of stew. I heard her discussing it with the chef. Isn't this a marvelous world we've acquired? We must sample that stew she ordered.' "

"Samples," Bellonda said. " I see." Then: "You know, don't you, Sheeana took the Van Gogh painting from... your sleeping chamber?"

Why does that hurt?

"I noticed it was missing."

"Said she was borrowing it for her room in the ship."

Murbella's lips went thin.

Damn them! Duncan and Sheeana! Teg, Scytale... all of them gone and no way to follow. But we still have axlotl tanks and Idaho cells from our children. Not the same... but close. He thinks he's escaped!

"Are you all right, Murbella?" Concern in Bell's voice.

You warned me about wild things, Dar, and I didn't listen.

"After we've eaten, I will take my councillors on an inspection tour of Central. Tell my acolyte I'll want cider before retiring."

Bellonda left, muttering. That was more like her.

How do you guide me now, Dar?

You want guidance? A guided tour of your life? Is that why I died?

But they took the Van Gogh, too!

Is that what you'll miss?

Why did they take it, Dar?

Caustic laughter greeted this and Murbella was glad no one else heard.

Can't you see what she intends?

The Missionaria scheme!

Oh, more than that. It's the next phase: Muad'Dib to Tyrant to Honored Matres to us to Sheeana... to what? Can't you see it? The thing is right there at the lip of your thoughts. Accept it as you would swallow a bitter drink.

Murbella shuddered.

See it? The bitter medicine of a Sheeana future? We once thought all medicines had to be bitter or they were not effective. No healing power in the sweet.

Must it happen, Dar?

Some will choke on that medicine. But the survivors may create interesting patterns.

Paired opposites define your longings and those longings imprison you.

- The Zensunni Whip

"You deliberately let them get away, Daniel!"

The old woman rubbed her hands down the stained front of her garden apron. It was a summer morning around her, flowers blooming, birds calling from nearby trees. There was a misty look to the sky, a yellow radiance near the horizon.

"Now, Marty, it was not deliberate," Daniel said. He took off his porkpie hat and rubbed the bushy stubble of gray hair before replacing the hat. "He surprised me. I knew he saw us but I didn't suspect he saw the net."

"And I had such a nice planet picked out for them," Marty said. "One of the best. A real test of their abilities."

"No use moaning about it," Daniel said. "They're where we can't touch them now. He was spread so thin, though, I expected to catch him easy."

"They had a Tleilaxu Master, too," Marty said. "I saw him when they went under the net. I would have so liked to study another Master."

"Don't see why. Always whistling at us, always making it necessary to stomp them down. I don't like treating Masters that way and you know it! If it weren't for them..."

"They're not gods, Daniel."

"Neither are we."

"I still think you let them escape. You're so anxious to prune your roses!"

"What would you have said to the Master, anyway?" Daniel asked.

"I was going to joke when he asked who we were. They always ask that. I was going to say: 'What did you expect, God Himself with a flowing beard?' "

Daniel chuckled. "That would've been funny. They have such a hard time accepting that Face Dancers can be independent of them."

"I don't see why. It's a natural consequence. They gave us the power to absorb the memories and experiences of other people. Gather enough of those and..."

"It's personas we take, Marty."

"Whatever. The Masters should've known we would gather enough of them one day to make our own decisions about our own future."

"And theirs?"

"Oh, I'd have apologized to him after putting him in his place. You can do just so much managing of others, isn't that right, Daniel?"

"When you get that look on your face, Marty, I go prune my roses." He went back to a line of bushes with verdant leaves and black blooms as large as his head.

Marty called after him: "Gather up enough people and you get a big ball of knowledge, Daniel! That's what I'd have told him. And those Bene Gesserit in that ship! I'd have told them how many of them I have. Ever notice how alienated they feel when we peek at them?"

Daniel bent to his black roses.

She stared after him, hands on her hips.

"Not to mention Mentats," he said. "There were two of them on that ship-both gholas. You want to play with them?"

"The Masters always try to control them, too," she said.

"That Master is going to have trouble if he tries to mess with that big one," Daniel said, snipping off a ground shoot from the root stock of his roses. "My, this is a pretty one."

"Mentats, too!" Marty called. "I'd have told them. Dime a dozen, they are."

"Dimes? I don't think they'd have understood that, Marty. The Reverend Mothers, yes, but not that big Mentat. He didn't thin out that far back."

"You know what you let get away, Daniel?" she demanded, coming up beside him. "That Master had a nullentropy tube in his chest. Full of ghola cells, too!"

"I saw it."

"That's why you let them get away!"

"Didn't let them." His pruning shears went snick-snick. "Gholas. He's welcome to them."

Here is another book dedicated to Bev, friend, wife, dependable helper and the person who gave this one its title. The dedication is posthumous and the words below, written the morning after she died, should tell you something of her inspiration.

One of the best things I can say about Bev is there was nothing in our life together I need forget, not even the graceful moment of her death. She gave me then the ultimate gift of her love, a peaceful passing she had spoken of without fear or tears, allaying thereby my own fears. What greater gift is there than to demonstrate you need not fear death?

The formal obituary would read: Beverly Ann Stuart Forbes Herbert, born October 20, 1926, Seattle, Washington; died 5:05 P.M. February 7, 1984, at Kawaloa, Maui. I know that is as much formality as she would tolerate. She made me promise there would be no conventional funeral "with a preacher's sermon and my body on display." As she said: "I will not be in that body then but it deserves more dignity than such a display provides."

She insisted I go no further than to have her cremated and scatter her ashes at her beloved Kawaloa "where I have felt so much peace and love." The only ceremony - friends and loved ones to watch the scattering of her ashes during the singing of "A Bridge Over Troubled Waters."

She knew there would be tears then as there are tears while I write these words but in her last days she often spoke of tears as futile. She recognized tears as part of our animal origins. The dog howls at the loss of its master.

Another part of human awareness dominated her life: Spirit. Not in any mawkish religious sense nor in anything most Spiritualists would associate with the word. To Bev, it was the light shining from awareness onto everything she encountered. Because of this, I can say despite my grief and even within grief that joy fills my spirit because of the love she gave and continues to give me. Nothing in the sadness at her death is too high a price to pay for the love we shared.

Her choice of a song to sing at the scattering of her ashes went to what we often said to each other - that she was my bridge and I was hers. That epitomizes our married life.

We began that sharing with a ceremony before a minister in Seattle on June 20, 1946. Our honeymoon was spent on a firewatch lookout atop Kelley Butte in Snoqualmie National Forest. Our quarters were twelve feet square with a cupola above only six feet square and most of that filled by the firefinder with which we located any smoke we saw.

In cramped quarters with a spring-powered Victrola and two portable typewriters taking up considerable space on the one table, we pretty well set the pattern of our life together: work to support music, writing and the other joys living provides.

None of this is to say we experienced constant euphoria. Far from it. We had moments of boredom, fears, and pains. But there was always time for laughter. Even at the end, Bev still could smile to tell me I had positioned her correctly on her pillows, that I had eased the aching of her back with a gentle massage and the other things necessary because she could no longer do them for herself.

In her final days, she did not want anyone but me to touch her. But our married life had created such a bond of love and trust she often said the things I did for her were as though she did them. Though I had to provide the most intimate care, the care you would give an infant, she did not feel offended nor that her dignity had been assaulted. When I picked her up in my arms to make her more comfortable or bathe her, Bev's arms always went around my shoulders and her face nestled as it often had in the hollow of my neck.

It is difficult to convey the joy of those moments but I assure you it was there. Joy of the spirit. Joy of life even at death. Her hand was in mine when she died and the attending doctor, tears in his eyes, said the thing I and many others had said of her.

"She had grace."

Many of those who saw that grace did not understand. I remember when we entered the hospital in the pre-dawn hours for the birth of our first son. We were laughing. Attendants looked at us with disapproval. Birth is painful and dangerous. Women die giving birth. Why are these people laughing?

We were laughing because the prospect of new life that was part of both of us filled us with such happiness. We were laughing because the birth was about to occur in a hospital built on the site of the hospital where Bev was born. What a marvelous continuity!

Our laughter was infectious and soon others we met on the way to the delivery room were smiling. Disapproval became approval. Laughter was her grace note in moments of stress.

Hers was also the laughter of the constantly new. Everything she encountered had something new in it to excite her senses. There was a naivete about Bev that was, in its own way, a form of sophistication. She wanted to find what was good in everything and everyone. As a result, she brought out that response in others.

"Revenge is for children," she said. "Only people who are basically immature want it."

She was known to call people who had offended her and plead with them to put away destructive feelings. "Let us be friends." The source of none of the condolences that poured in after her death surprised me.

It was typical of her that she wanted me to call the radiologist whose treatment in 1974 was the proximate cause of her death and thank him "for giving me these ten beautiful years. Make sure he understands I know he did his best for me when I was dying of cancer. He took the state of the art to its limits and I want him to know my appreciation."

Is it any wonder that I look back on our years together with a happiness transcending anything words can describe? Is it any wonder I do not want or need to forget one moment of it? Most others merely touched her life at the periphery. I shared it in the most intimate ways and everything she did strengthened me. It would not have been possible for me to do what necessity demanded of me during the final ten years of her life, strengthening her in return, had she not given of herself in the preceding years, holding back nothing. I consider that to be my great good fortune and most miraculous privilege.

FRANK HERBERT,

Port Townsend, WA

April 6, 1984