AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Even the way they conveyed food to their mouths said something. Where did the eyes go as the chopsticks progressed mouthward? Was it a quick stab and a rapid chew before a convulsive swallow? That was a one to watch. She was brewing upsets. And that thoughtful one over there who looked at each mouthful as though wondering how they hid the poison in such slop? A creative mind behind those eyes. Test her for a more sensitive position.
Odrade entered the hall.
The floor had a large checkerboard pattern, black and white plaz, virtually unscratchable. Acolytes said the pattern was for Reverend Mothers to use as a game board: "Place one of us here and another over there and some along that central line. Move them thus--winner take all."
Odrade took a seat near the corner of a table beside the western windows. The acolytes made room for her, their movements quietly unobtrusive.
This hall was part of the oldest construction on Chapterhouse. Built of wood with clear-span beams overhead, enormously thick and heavy things finished in dull black. They were some twenty-five meters long without a joint. Somewhere on Chapterhouse there was a grove of genetically tailored oaks reaching up to sunlight in their carefully tended plantations. Trees going up thirty meters at least without a limb, and more than two meters through the boles. They had been planted when this hall was built, replacements for these beams when age weakened them. Nineteen hundred SY the beams were supposed to endure.
How carefully the acolytes around her watched Mother Superior without ever appearing to look directly at her.
Odrade turned her head to peer out the western windows at the sunset. Dust again. The spreading intrusion from the desert inflamed the setting sun and set it glowing like a distant ember that might explode into uncontrollable fire at any instant.
Odrade suppressed a sigh. Thoughts such as these recreated her nightmare: the chasm ... the tightrope. She knew if she closed her eyes she would feel herself swaying on the rope. The hunter with the axe was nearer!
Acolytes eating close by stirred nervously as though they sensed her disquiet. Perhaps they did. Odrade heard the movement of fabrics and this dragged her out of her nightmare. She had become sensitized to a new note in the sounds of Central. There was a grating noise behind the most commonplace movements--that chair being shifted behind her ... and the opening of that kitchen door. Rasping grit. Cleaning crews complained of sand and "the damnable dust."
Odrade stared out the window at the source of that irritation: wind from the south. A dull haze, something between tan and earth brown, drew a curtain across the horizon. After the wind, dustings of its deposits would be found in building corners and on lee sides of hills. There was a flinty aroma to it, something alkaline that irritated the nostrils.
She looked down at the table as a serving acolyte placed her meal in front of her.
Odrade found herself enjoying this change from quick meals in her workroom and private dining room. When she ate alone up there, acolytes brought food so quietly and cleared away with such silent efficiency that sometimes she was surprised to find everything gone. Here, dining was bustle and conversation. In her quarters, Chef Duana might come in clucking, "You are not eating enough." Odrade generally heeded such admonitions. Watchdogs had their uses.
Tonight's meal was sligpork in a sauce of soy and molasses, minimal melange, a touch of basil and lemon. Fresh green beans cooked al dente with peppers. Dark red grape juice to drink. She took a bite of sligpork with anticipation and found it passable, a bit overcooked for her taste. Acolyte chefs had not missed it by much.
Then why this feeling of too many such meals?
She swallowed and hypersensitivity identified additives. This food was not here just to replenish Mother Superior's energy. Someone in the kitchen had asked for her day's nutrition list and adjusted this plate accordingly.
Food is a trap, she thought. More addictions. She did not like the cunning ways Chapterhouse chefs concealed things they put in the food "for the good of the diners." They knew, of course, that a Reverend Mother could identify ingredients and adjust metabolism within her limits. They were watching her right now, wondering how Mother Superior would judge tonight's menu.
As she ate, she listened to the other diners. None intruded on her--not physically or vocally. Sounds returned almost to what they had been before her entrance. Waggling tongues always changed their tone slightly when she entered and resumed at lower volume.
An unspoken question lay in all of those busy minds around her: Why is she here tonight?
Odrade sensed quiet awe in some nearby diners, a reaction Mother Superior sometimes employed to her advantage. Awe with an edge on it. Acolytes whispered among themselves (so the Proctors reported), "She has Taraza." They meant Odrade possessed her late predecessor as Primary. The two of them were a historical pair, required study for postulants.
Dar and Tar, already a legend.
Even Bellonda (dear old vicious Bell) came at Odrade obliquely because of this. Few frontal attacks, very little blaring in her accusatory arguments. Taraza was credited with saving the Sisterhood. That silenced much opposition. Taraza had said Honored Matres were essentially barbarians and their violence, although not totally deflectable, could be guided into bloody displays. Events had more or less verified this.
Correct up to a point, Tar. None of us anticipated the extent of their violence.
Taraza's classical veronica (how apt the bullring image) had aimed the Honored Matres into such episodes of carnage that the universe was mordant with potential supporters of their brutalized victims.
How do I defend us?
It was not so much that defensive plans were inadequate. They could become irrelevant.
That, of course, is what I seek. We must be purified and made ready for a supreme effort.
Bellonda had sneered at that idea. "For our demise? Is that why we must be purified?"
Bellonda would be ambivalent when she discovered what Mother Superior planned. Bellonda-vicious would applaud. Bellonda-Mentat would argue for delay "until a more propitious moment."
But I will seek my own peculiar way despite what my Sisters think.
And many Sisters thought Odrade quite the strangest Mother Superior they had ever accepted. Elevated more with the left hand than with the right. Taraza Primary. I was there when you died, Tar. No one else to gather your persona. Elevation by accident?
Many disapproved of Odrade. But when opposition arose, back they went to "Taraza Primary--the best Mother Superior in our history."
Amusing! Taraza Within was the quickest to laugh and ask: Why don't you tell them about my mistakes, Dar? Especially about how I misjudged you.
Odrade chewed reflectively on a bite of sligpork. I'm overdue for a visit to Sheeana. South into the desert and that soon. Sheeana must be made ready to replace Tam.
The changing landscape loomed large in Odrade's thoughts. More than fifteen hundred years of Bene Gesserit occupancy on Chapterhouse. Signs of us everywhere. Not just in special groves or vineyards and orchards. What it must be doing to the collective psyche, seeing such changes come over their familiar land.
The acolyte seated beside Odrade made a soft throat-clearing sound. Was she about to address Mother Superior? A rare occurrence. The young woman continued to eat without speaking.
Odrade's thoughts returned to the prospective journey into the desert. Sheeana must have no forewarning. I must be sure she is the one we need. There were questions for Sheeana to answer.
Odrade knew what she would find on inspection stops en route. In Sisters, in plant and animal life, in the very foundations of Chapterhouse, she would see changes gross and changes subtle, things to wrench at Mother Superior's vaunted serenity. Even Murbella, never out of the no-ship, sensed these changes.
Only that morning, seated with her back to her console, Murbella had listened with new attentiveness to Odrade standing over her. Edgy alertness in the captive Honored Matre. Her voice betrayed doubts and unbalanced judgments.
"All is transient, Mother Superior?"
"That is knowledge impressed on you by Other Memory. No planet, no land or sea, no part of any land or sea is here forever."
"A morbid thought!" Rejection.
"Wherever we stand, we are only stewards."
"A useless viewpoint." Hesitant, questioning why Mother Superior chose this moment to say such things.
"I hear Honored Matres talking through you. They gave you greedy dreams, Murbella."
"So you say!" Deeply resentful.
"Honored Matres think they can buy infinite security: a small planet, you know, with plenty of subservient population."
Murbella produced a grimace.
"More planets!" Odrade snapped. "Always more and more and more! That's why they come swarming back."
"Poor pickings in this Old Empire."
"Excellent, Murbella! You're beginning to think like one of us."
"And that makes me a nothing!"
"Neither fish nor fowl, but your own true self? Even there, you're only a steward. Beware, Murbella! If you think you own something, that's like walking on quicksand."
This got a puzzled frown. Something would have to be done about the way Murbella allowed her emotions to play so openly on her face. It was permissible here, but someday...
"So nothing is safely owned. So what!" Bitter, bitter.
"You speak some of the right words but I don't think you've yet found a place in yourself where you can endure for your lifetime."
