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Sheeana focused on her adversary, forcing herself not to see the creature as something unstable or broken. Don't underestimate him! At the moment she could not concern herself with how the creature had escaped from its high-security brig cell. Had all four broken free to roam the halls, or was this the only one?
In a careful gesture, she lifted her chin and turned her head to one side, baring her throat. A natural predator would understand the universal signal of submission. The Futar's need for dominance, to be the leader of a pack, required him to accept the gesture.
"You are a Futar," Sheeana said. "I am not one of your old Handlers."
He crept forward to draw a deep sniff. "Not Honored Matre either." He growled, a low, bubbling sound that demonstrated his hatred for the whores who had enslaved him and his comrades. But Bene Gesserit Sisters were something else entirely. Even so, he had killed one.
"We are your caretakers now. We give you food."
"Food." The Futar licked blood from his dark lips.
"You asked us for sanctuary on Gammu. We rescued you from the Honored Matres."
"Bad women."
"But we are not bad." Sheeana remained motionless, nonthreatening, facing the coiled danger of the Futar. As a child she had confronted a giant sandworm and shouted at it, heedless of her peril. She could do this. She made her voice as soothing as possible. "I am Sheeana." She spoke in a lilting, hushed voice. "Do you have a name?"
The creature growled--at least she thought it was a growl. Then she realized that the confined rumble in his larynx was actually his name. "Hrrm."
"Hrrm. Do you recall when you came to this no-ship? When you escaped from the Honored Matres? You asked us to take you away."
"Bad women!" the Futar said again.
"Yes, and we saved you." Sheeana edged closer. Though she wasn't entirely sure of its efficacy, she controlled her body chemistry to increase her scent, trying to match some of the markers exuded by the Futar's musk glands. She made sure he smelled that she was female, not a threat. Something to protect, not attack. She was also careful not to give off any odor of fear, to keep this predator from thinking of her as its prey.
"You shouldn't have escaped from your room."
"Want Handlers. Want home." With a longing in his feral eyes, Hrrm glanced back at the dark storage room where the torn body of the hapless Sister lay. Sheeana wondered how long Hrrm had been feeding on the corpse.
"I need to take you back to the other Futars. You must stay together. We protect you. We are your friends. You must not hurt us."
Hrrm grumbled. Then, taking a big chance, Sheeana reached out and touched his hairy shoulder. The Futar stiffened, but she stroked carefully, seeking pleasure centers along his vivid nerves. Though startled by her attentions, Hrrm did not draw away. Her hands drifted upward, moving with a gentle intensity. Sheeana touched Hrrm's neck, then behind his ears. The Futar's suspicious growl became a sound more like a purr.
"We are your friends," she insisted, applying just a hint of Voice to reinforce it. "You should not hurt us." She looked meaningfully into the den chamber, at the dead Sister on the floor.
Hrrm stiffened. "My kill."
"You should not have killed. That is not an Honored Matre. She was one of my Sisters. She was one of your friends."
"Futars should not kill friends."
Sheeana stroked him again, and his coarse body hair bristled. She began to lead him down the corridor. "We feed you. There is no need for you to kill."
"Kill Honored Matres."
"There are no Honored Matres on this ship. We hate them, too."
"Need to hunt. Need Handlers."
"You can't have either right now."
"Someday?" Hrrm sounded hopeful.
"Someday." Sheeana could make no more of a promise than that.
She took him away from the dead Bene Gesserit, hoping the two of them would encounter no one else on the way back to the brig, no other potential victims. Her hold on this creature was far too tenuous. If Hrrm was startled, he might attack.
She took side passages and service lifts that few others would use, until they arrived at the deep brig level. The Futar seemed disconsolate, reluctant to go back into his cell, and she pitied him his endless confinement. Just like the seven sandworms in the hold.
Reaching the door, she saw that a minor security circuit had failed after so many years. At first she had dreaded a systemic problem and expected to find all the Futars loose. Instead, this proved to be a minor glitch resulting from poor maintenance procedures. An accident on an old vessel.
The year before there had been another breakdown involving a water recycling reservoir, when a corroded pipe flooded a corridor. They had also experienced recurring problems with the algae vats that were used for food and oxygen production. Maintenance was growing lax. Complacent.
Sheeana controlled her anger, not wanting Hrrm to smell it on her. Though the Bene Gesserits lived in constant intangible peril, the danger no longer seemed immediate. She had to impose much stricter discipline from now on. A breakdown like this could have led to disaster!
Hrrm looked saddened and beaten as he shuffled into the confinement chamber. "You must stay in there," Sheeana said, trying to sound encouraging. "At least for a while longer."
"Want home," Hrrm said.
"I will try to find your home. But right now I have to keep you safe."
Hrrm plodded to the far wall of the brig chamber and squatted on his haunches. The other three Futars approached the barriers of their separate cells to peer out with hungry, curious eyes.
Fixing the door shield mechanism was a simple thing. Now all would be safe, Futars and Bene Gesserits. Sheeana feared for them, though. Wandering aimlessly in the no-ship, her people had been too long without a goal.
That would have to change. Perhaps the birth of the new gholas would give them what they needed.
To the Sisterhood, Other Memory is one of the greatest blessings and greatest mysteries. We understand only shadows of the process by which lives are transferred from one Reverend Mother to another. That vast reservoir of voices from the past is a brilliant but mysterious light.
--REVEREND MOTHER DARWI ODRADE
O
ver the course of two years, the New Sisterhood had started to become a single unified organism, and all the while the planet of Chapterhouse continued to die. Mother Commander Murbella walked briskly through the brown orchards. One day this would all be desert. On purpose.
As part of the plan to create an alternative to Rakis, sandtrout worked furiously to encapsulate water. The arid belt expanded, and now only the hardiest apple trees with the deepest roots clung to life.
Nevertheless, the orchard was one of Murbella's favorite places, a joy she had learned from Odrade--her captor, teacher, and (eventually) respected mentor. It was mid-afternoon, and sunlight filtered through the sparse leaves and brittle branches. Even so, it was a cool day, with a stiff breeze from the north. She paused and bowed her head out of respect for the woman who lay buried beneath a small Macintosh apple tree, which struggled to grow even as the environment wasted into harsh aridity. No braz plaque identified the Mother Superior's resting place. Though Honored Matres preferred ostentation and dramatic memorials, Odrade would have been appalled by any such gesture.
Murbella wished her predecessor could have lived long enough to see the results of her great plan of synthesis: Honored Matres and Bene Gesserits living together on Chapterhouse. The groups had learned from their differences, drawing strength from each other.
But renegade Honored Matres on outside planets continued to be a thorn in her side, refusing to join the New Sisterhood, causing turmoil while the Mother Commander needed to face the much larger threat of the Outside Enemy. Those women rejected her as their leader, saying that she had tainted and diluted their ways. They wanted to wipe out Murbella and her followers, to the last Sister. And some of those rebels might still have their terrible Obliterators--though certainly not many, or
they would have used them by now.
When her newly formed group of fighters completed their training, Murbella intended to seize the renegades and bring them into the fold, before it was too late. The New Sisterhood would eventually have to go up against large contingents of Honored Matre holdouts on Buzzell, Gammu, Tleilax, and other worlds.
