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But the woman at the shuttle controls was gone.
Only I remain. And I remember atrocities that might make
an Honored Matre quail. She glimpsed the grail then and it was not a thing but a question: How to set those balances aright?
Our household god is this thing we carry forward generation after generation: our message for humankind if it matures. The closest thing we have to a household goddess is a failed Reverend Mother--Chenoeh there in her niche.
--Darwi Odrade
Idaho thought of his Mentat abilities as a retreat now. Murbella stayed with him as frequently as their duties allowed--he with his weapons development and she recovering strength while she adjusted to her new status.
She did not lie to him. She did not try to tell him she felt no difference between them. But he sensed the pulling away, elastic being stretched to its limits.
"My Sisters have been taught not to divulge secrets of the heart. There's the danger they perceive in love. Perilous intimacies. The deepest sensitivities blunted. Do not give someone a stick with which to beat you."
She thought her words reassuring to him but he heard the inner argument. Be free! Break entangling bonds!
He saw her often these days in the throes of Other Memory. Words escaped her in the night.
"Dependencies ... group soul ... intersection of living awareness... Fish Speakers ..."
She had no hesitation about sharing some of this. "The intersection? Anyone can sense nexus points in the natural interruptions of life. Deaths, diversions, incidental pauses between powerful events, births ..."
"Birth an interruption?"
They were in his bed, even the chrono darkened ... but that did not hide them from comeyes, of course. Other energies fed the Sisterhood's curiosity.
"You never thought of birth as an interruption? A Reverend Mother finds that amusing."
Amusing! Pulling away ... pulling away...
Fish Speakers, that was the revelation the Bene Gesserit absorbed with fascination. They had suspected, but Murbella gave them confirmation. Fish Speaker democracy became Honored Matre autocracy. No more doubts.
"The tyranny of the minority cloaked in the mask of the majority," Odrade called it, her voice exultant. "Downfall of democracy. Either overthrown by its own excesses or eaten away by bureaucracy."
Idaho could hear the Tyrant in that judgment. If history had any repetitive patterns, here was one. A drumbeat of repetition. First, a Civil Service law masked in the lie that it was the only way to correct demagogic excesses and spoils systems. Then the accumulation of power in places voters could not touch. And finally, aristocracy.
"The Bene Gesserit may be the only ones ever to create the all-powerful jury," Murbella said. "Juries are not popular with legalists. Juries oppose the law. They can ignore judges."
She laughed in the darkness. "Evidence! What is evidence except those things you are allowed to perceive? That's what Law tries to control: carefully managed reality."
Words to divert him, words to demonstrate her new Bene Gesserit powers. Her words of love fell flat.
She speaks them out of memory.
He saw this bothered Odrade almost as much as it dismayed him. Murbella did not notice either reaction.
Odrade had tried to reassure him. "Every new Reverend Mother goes through an adjustment period. Manic at times. Think of the new ground under her, Duncan!"
How can I not think of it?
"First law of bureaucracy," Murbella told the darkness.
You do not divert me, love.
"Grow to the limits of available energy!" Her voice was indeed manic. "Use the lie that taxes solve all problems." She turned toward him in the bed but not for love. "Honored Matres played the whole routine! Even a social security system to quiet the masses, but everything went into their own energy bank."
"Murbella!"
"What?" Surprised at the sharpness of his tone. Didn't he know he was talking to a Reverend Mother?
"I know all of this, Murbella. Any Mentat does."
"Are you trying to shut me up?" Angry.
"Our job is to think like our enemy," he said. "We do have a common enemy?"
"You're sneering at me, Duncan."
"Are your eyes orange?"
"Melange doesn't allow that and you know... Oh."
"The Bene Gesserit need your knowledge but you must cultivate it!" He turned on a glowglobe and found her flaring at him. Not unexpected and not really Bene Gesserit.
Hybrid.
The word leaped into his mind. Was it hybrid vigor? Did the Sisterhood expect this of Murbella? The Bene Gesserit surprised you sometimes. You found them facing you in odd corridors, eyes unwavering, faces masked in that way of theirs and, behind the masks, unusual responses brewing. That was where Teg learned to do the unexpected. But this? Idaho thought he could grow to dislike this new Murbella.
She saw this in him, naturally. He remained open to her as to no other person.
"Don't hate me, Duncan." No pleading but something deeply hurt behind the words.
"I'll never hate you." But he turned off the light.
She nestled against him almost the way she had before the Agony. Almost. The difference tore at him.
"Honored Matres see the Bene Gesserit as competitors for power," Murbella said. "It's not so much that men who follow my former Sisters are fanatics, but they're made incapable of self-determination by their addiction."
"Is that the way we are?"
"Now, Duncan."
"You mean I could get this commodity at another store?"
She chose to assume he was talking about Honored Matre fears. "Many would abandon them if they could." Turning toward him fiercely, she demanded a sexual response. Her abandon shocked him. As though this might be the last time she could experience such ecstasy.
Afterward, he lay exhausted.
"I hope I'm pregnant again," she whispered. "We still need our babies."
We need. The Bene Gesserit need. No longer "they need."
He fell asleep to dream he was in the ship's armory. It was a dream touched by realities. The ship remained a weapons factory as it actually had become. Odrade was talking to him in the dream armory. "I make decisions of necessity, Duncan. Little likelihood you'll break out and run amok."
"I am too much the Mentat for that!" How self-important his dream voice! I'm dreaming and I know I dream. Why am I in the armory with Odrade?
A list of weapons scrolled before his eyes.
Atomics. (He saw big blasters and deadly dusts.)
Lasguns. (No counting the various models.)
Bacteriologicals.
The scroll was interrupted by Odrade's voice. "We can assume smugglers concentrate as usual on small things that bring a big price."
"Soostones, of course." Still self-important. I'm not that way!
"Assassination weapons," she said. "Plans and specifications for new devices."
"Theft of trade secrets is a big item with smugglers." I'm insufferable!
