AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"I did not want it suppressed, Bell."
"Dar, what are you doing?"
"I will announce that at a Convocation."
No words but Bellonda glared her surprise.
"A Convocation is my right," Odrade said.
Bellonda leaned back and stared at Odrade, assessing, questioning ... all without words. The last Convocation of the Bene Gesserit had been at the Tyrant's death. And before that, at the Tyrant's seizure of power. A Convocation had not been thought possible since Honored Matres attacked. Too much time taken from desperate labors.
Presently, Bellonda asked: "Will you risk bringing Sisters from our surviving Keeps?"
"No. Dortujla will represent them. There is precedent, as you know."
"First, you free Murbella; now it's a Convocation."
"Free? Murbella is tied by chains of gold. Where would she go without her Duncan?"
"But you've given Duncan freedom to leave the ship!"
"Has he?"
Bellonda said, "You think that information from the ship's armory is all he'll take?"
"I know it."
"I am reminded of Jessica turning her back on the Mentat who would have killed her."
"The Mentat was immobilized by his own beliefs."
"Sometimes the bull gores the matador, Dar."
"More often he does not."
"Our survival should not depend on statistics!"
"Agreed. That is why I call Convocation."
"Acolytes included?"
"Everyone."
"Even Murbella? Does she get an acolyte's vote?"
"I think she may be a Reverend Mother by then."
Bellonda gasped, then: "You move too fast, Dar!"
"These times require it."
Bellonda glanced toward the dining room door. "Here's Tam. Later than I expected. I wonder if they took time to consult Murbella?"
Tamalane arrived, breathing hard from hurrying. She dropped into her blue chairdog, noted the new positions and said: "Sheeana will be along presently. She is showing records to Murbella."
Bellonda addressed Tamalane. "She's going to put Murbella through the Agony and call a Convocation."
"I'm not surprised." Tamalane spoke with her old precision. "The position of that Honored Matre must be resolved as soon as possible."
Sheeana joined them then and took the slingchair at Odrade's left, speaking as she sat. "Have you watched Murbella walk?"
Odrade was caught by the way this abrupt question, uttered without preamble, fixed the attention. Murbella walking in the ship. Observed just that morning. Beauty in Murbella and the eye could not avoid it. To other Bene Gesserit, Reverend Mothers and acolytes alike, she was something of an exotic. She had arrived fullgrown from the dangerous Outside. One of them. It was her movements, though, that compelled the eye. Homeostasis in her that went beyond the norms.
Sheeana's question redirected the observer's mind. Something about Murbella's quite acceptable passage required new examination. What was it?
Murbella's motions were always carefully chosen. She excluded anything not required to go from here to there. Path of least resistance? It was a view of Murbella that sent a pang through Odrade. Sheeana had seen it, of course. Was Murbella one of those who would choose an easy way every time? Odrade could see that question on the faces of her companions.
"The Agony will sort it out," Tamalane said.
Oldrade looked squarely at Sheeana. "Well?" She had asked the question, after all.
"Perhaps it's only that she does not waste energy. But I agree with Tam: the Agony."
"Are we making a terrible mistake?" Bellonda asked.
Something in the way this question was asked told Odrade that Bell had made a Mentat summation. She has seen what I intend!
"If you know a better course reveal it now," Odrade said. Or hold your peace.
Silence gripped them. Odrade looked at her companions in succession, lingering on Bell.
Help us, whatever gods there may be! And I, being Bene Gesserit, am too much agnostic to make that plea with anything more than a hope of covering all possibilities. Don't reveal it, Bell. If you know what I will do, you know it must be seen in its own time.
Bellonda brought Odrade out of reverie with a cough. "Are we going to eat or talk? People are staring."
"Should we have another go at Scytale?" Sheeana asked.
Was that an attempt to divert my attention?
Bellonda said: "Give him nothing! He's in reserve. Let him sweat."
Odrade looked carefully at Bellonda. She was fuming over the silence imposed on her by Odrade's secret decision. Avoiding a meeting of eyes with Sheeana. Jealous! Bell is jealous of Sheeana!
Tamalane said, "I am only an advisor now but--"
"Stop that, Tam!" Odrade snapped.
"Tam and I have been discussing that ghola," Bellonda said. (Idaho was "that ghola" when Bellonda had something disparaging to say.) "Why did he think he needed to talk secretly to Sheeana?" A hard stare at Sheeana.
Odrade saw shared suspicion. She does not accept the explanation. Does she reject Duncan's emotional bias?
Sheeana spoke quickly. "Mother Superior explained that!"
"Emotion," Bellonda sneered.
Odrade raised her voice and was surprised at this reaction. "Suppressing emotions is a weakness!"
Tamalane's shaggy eyebrows lifted.
Sheeana intruded: "If we won't bend, we can break."
Before Bellonda could respond, Odrade said: "Ice can be chipped apart or melted. Ice maidens are vulnerable to a single form of attack."
"I'm hungry," Sheeana said.
Peace-making? Not a role expected of The Mouse.
Tamalane stood. "Bouillabaisse. We must eat the fish before our sea is gone. Not enough nullentropy storage."
In the softest of simulflows, Odrade noted the departure of her companions to the cafeteria line. Tamalane's accusatory words recalled that second day with Sheeana after the decision to phase out the Great Sea. Standing at Sheeana's window in the early morning, Odrade had watched a seabird move against the desert background. It winged its way northward, a creature completely out of place in that setting but beautiful in a profoundly nostalgic way because of it.
White wings glistened in early sunlight. A touch of black beneath and in front of its eyes. Abruptly, it hovered, wings motionless. Then, lifting on an air current, it tucked its wings like a hawk and plummeted out of view behind the farther buildings. Reappearing, it carried something in its beak, a morsel it swallowed on the wing.
A seabird alone and adapting
.
We adapt. We do indeed adapt.
It was not a quiet thought. Nothing to induce repose. Shocking rather. Odrade had felt jarred out of a dangerously drifting course. Not only her beloved Chapterhouse but their entire human universe was breaking out of its old shapes and taking on new forms. Perhaps it was right in this new universe that Sheeana continued to conceal things from Mother Superior. And she is concealing something.
Once more, Bellonda's acidic tones brought Odrade to full awareness of her surroundings. "If you won't serve yourself, I suppose we must take care of you." Bellonda placed a bowl of aromatic fish stew in front of Odrade, a great chunk of garlic bread beside it.
When each had sampled the bouillabaisse, Bellonda put down her spoon and stared hard at Odrade. "You're not going to suggest we 'love one another' or some such debilitating nonsense?"
