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"Any sign of Mother Superior or her Spider Queen?"
"Negative. We can't tell. I mean it's a real mess. Shall I screen a view?"
"Get me a dispatch. And keep looking for Odrade!"
"I tell you nothing survived here, Bashar." There was a click and a low hum, then another voice: "Dispatch."
Teg brought his voice-print coder from beneath his chin and barked quick orders. "Scramble a hammership over the Citadel. Put the scene at the Landing Flat and their other disasters on open relay. All bands. Make sure they can see it. Announce no survivors at the Flat."
The double click of received-confirmed broke the link. Haker said: "Do you really think you can terrify them?"
"Educate them." He repeated Odrade's parting words: "Their education has been sadly neglected."
What had happened to Odrade? He felt sure she must be dead, perhaps the first casualty here. She had expected that. Dead but not lost if Murbella could restrain her impetuosity.
Odrade, at that moment, had Teg in direct sight from the tower. Logno had silenced her vital signs transmissions with a countersignal shield and had brought her to the tower shortly after the arrival of the first refugees from Gammu. No one questioned Logno's supremacy. A dead Great Honored Matre and a live one could only be something familiar.
Expecting to be killed at any moment, Odrade still gathered data as she went up in a nulltube with guards. The tube was an artifact from the Scattering, a transparent piston in a transparent cylinder. Few obstructing walls at the floors they passed. Mostly views of living areas and esoteric hardware Odrade surmised had military purposes. Lush evidence of comfort and quiet increased the higher they went.
Power climbs physically as well as psychologically.
Here they were at the top. A section of the tube cylinder swung outward and a guard pushed her roughly onto a thickly carpeted floor.
The workroom Dama showed me down there was another set piece.
Odrade recognized secrecy. Equipment and furnishings here would have been almost unrecognizable were it not for Murbella's knowledge. So other action centers were for show. Potemkin villages built for Reverend Mother.
Logno lied about Dama's intentions. I was expected to leave unharmed... carrying no useful information.
What other lies had they paraded in front of her?
Logno and all but one guard went to a console on Odrade's right. Pivoting on one foot, Odrade looked around. This was the real center. She studied it with care. Odd place. An aura of the sanitary. Treated with chemicals to make it clean. No bacterial or viral contaminants. No strangers in the blood. Everything debugged like a showcase for rare viands. And Dama showed interest in Bene Gesserit immunity to diseases. There was bacterial warfare in the Scattering.
They want one thing from us!
And just one surviving Reverend Mother would satisfy them if they could wrest information from her.
A full Bene Gesserit cadre would have to examine the strands of this web and see where they led.
If we win.
The operations console where Logno concentrated her attention was smaller than the showcase ones. Fingerfield manipulation. The hood on a low table beside Logno was smaller and transparent, revealing the medusa tangle of probes.
Shigawire for sure.
The hood showed a close affinity to T-probes from the Scattering Teg and others had described. Did these women possess more technological marvels? They must.
A glittering wall behind Logno, windows on her left opening onto a balcony, a far vista of Junction visible out there with movement of troops and armor. She recognized Teg in the distance, a figure on the shoulders of an adult, but gave no sign she saw anything extraordinary. She continued her slow study. Door to a passage with another nulltube partly visible in a separate area to her immediate left. More green tile on the floor there. Different functions in that space.
A sudden burst of noises erupted beyond the wall. Odrade identified some of them. Boots of soldiers made a distinctive sound on tiles. Swish of exotic fabrics. Voices. She distinguished accents of Honored Matres responding to each other in tones of shock.
We're winning!
Shock was to be expected when the invincible were brought low. She studied Logno. Would it be a plunge into despair?
If so, I may survive.
Murbella's role might be changed. Well, that could wait. Sisters had been briefed on what to do in the event of victory. Neither they nor anyone else in the attack force would lay rough hands on an Honored Matre--erotic or otherwise. Duncan had prepared the men, making the perils of sexual entrapment thoroughly known.
Risk no bondage. Raise no new antagonisms.
The new Spider Queen was revealed now as someone even stranger than Odrade had suspected. Logno left her console and came to within a pace of Odrade. "You have won this battle. We are your prisoners."
No orange in her eyes. Odrade swept her gaze around at the women who had been her guards. Blank expressions, clear eyes. Was this how they showed despair? It did not feel right. Logno and the others revealed no expected emotional responses.
Everything under wraps?
Events of the past hours should create emotional crisis. Logno gave no sign of it. Not a twitch of revealing nerve or muscle. Perhaps a casual concern and that was all.
A Bene Gesserit mask!
It had to be unconscious, something automatic ignited by defeat. So they did not really accept defeat.
We are still in there with them. Latent... but there! No wonder Murbella almost died. She was confronting her own genetic past as a supreme prohibition.
"My companions," Odrade said. "The three women who came with me. Where are they?"
"Dead." Logno's voice was as dead as the word.
Odrade suppressed a pang for Suipol. Tam and Dortujla had lived long and useful lives, but Suipol ... dead and never Shared.
Another good one lost. And isn't that a bitter lesson!
"I will identify the ones responsible if you desire revenge," Logno said.
Lesson two.
"Revenge is for children and the emotionally retarded."
A small return of orange in Logno's eyes.
Human self-delusion took many forms, Odrade reminded herself. Aware that the Scattering would produce the unexpected, she had armed herself accordingly with a protective remoteness that would allow her a space to assess new places, new things and new people. She had known she would be forced to put many things in different categories to serve her or deflect threats. She took Logno's attitude as a threat.
"You do not seem disturbed, Great Honored Matre."
"Others will avenge me." Flat, very self-composed.
The words were even stranger than her composure. She held everything under that close cover, bits and pieces revealed now in flickering movements aroused by Odrade's observation. Deep and intense things, but buried. It was all inside there, masked the way a Reverend Mother would mask it. Logno appeared to have no power at all and yet she spoke as though nothing essential had changed.
"I am your captive but that makes no difference."
Was she truly powerless? No! But that was the impression she wished to convey and all of the other Honored Matres around her mirrored this response.
"See us? Powerless except for the loyalty of our Sisters and the followers they have bonded to us. "
Were Honored Matres that confident of their vengeful legions? Possible only if they had never before suffered a defeat of this kind. Yet someone had driven them back into the Old Empire. Into the Million Planets.
Teg found Odrade and her captives while seeking a place to assess victory. Battle always required its analytical aftermath, especially from a Mentat commander. It was a comparison test this battle demanded of him more than any other in his experience. This conflict would not be lodged in memory until assessed and shared as far as possible among those who depended on him. It was his invariable pattern and he did not care what it revealed about him. Break that link
of interlocking interests and you prepared yourself for defeat.
I need a quiet place to assemble the threads of this battle and make a preliminary summary.
In his estimation, a most difficult problem of battle was to conduct it in a way that did not release human wildness. A Bene Gesserit dictum. Battle must be conducted to bring out the best in those who survived. Most difficult and sometimes all but impossible. The more remote the soldier from carnage, the more difficult. It was one reason Teg always tried to move to the battle scene and examine it personally. If you did not see the pain, you could easily cause greater pain without second thoughts. That was the Honored Matre pattern. But their pains had been brought home. What would they make of this?
