Duncan will see this. I cannot keep it from him. The Mentat will not hold to a fixed idea of what I was before the Agony. He opens his mind as I open a door. He will examine his net. "What have I caught this time?"
Was this what happened to Lady Jessica? Other Memory carried Jessica threaded into the warp and woof of Sharings. Murbella unraveled a bit and paraded elder knowledge.
Heretic Lady Jessica? Malfeasance in office?
Jessica had plunged into love as Odrade had plunged into the sea and the resultant waves had all but engulfed the Sisterhood.
Murbella sensed this taking her where she did not want to go. Pain clutched her chest.
Duncan! Ohhhh, Duncan! She dropped her face into her hands. Dar, help me. What am I to do?
Never ask why you're a Reverend Mother.
I must! The progression is clear in my memory and...
That's a sequence. Thinking of it as cause and effect beguiles you away from totality.
Tao?
Simpler: You are here.
But Other Memory goes back and back and...
Imagine it's pyramids - interlocked.
Those are just words!
Is your body still functioning?
I hurt, Dar. You don't have a body any more and it's useless to...
We occupy different niches. The pains I felt are not your pains. My joys are not yours.
I don't want your sympathy! Ohh, Dar! Why was I born?
Were you born to lose Duncan?
Dar, please!
So you were born and now you know that's never enough. So you became an Honored Matre. What else could you do? Still not enough? Now you're a Reverend Mother. You think that's enough? It's never enough as long as you're alive.
You're telling me I must always reach beyond myself.
Pah! You don't make decisions on that basis. Didn't you hear him? Don't think; do it! Will you chose the easy way? Why should you feel sad because you've encountered the inevitable? If that's all you can see, confine yourself to improving the breed!
Damn you! Why did you do this to me?
Do what?
Make me see myself and my former Sisters this way!
What way?
Damn you! You know what I mean!
Former Sisters, you say?
Oh, you are insidious.
All Reverend Mothers are insidious.
You never stop teaching!
Is that what I do?
How innocent I was! Asking you what you really do.
You know as well as I do. We wait for humankind to mature. The Tyrant only provided them time to grow but now they need care.
What's the Tyrant have to do with my pain?
You foolish woman! Did you fail the Agony?
You know I didn't!
Stop stumbling over the obvious.
Oh, you bitch!
I prefer witch. Either is preferable to whore.
The only difference between Bene Gesserit and Honored Matre is the marketplace. You married our Sisterhood.
Our Sisterhood?
You bred for power! How is that different from...
Don't twist it, Murbella! Keep your eyes on survival.
Don't tell me you had no power.
Temporary authority over people intent on survival.
Survival again!
In a Sisterhood that promotes the survival of others. Like the married woman who bears children.
So it comes down to procreation.
That's a decision you make for yourself: family and what binds it. What tickles life and happiness?
Murbella began to laugh. She dropped her hands and opened her eyes to find Bellonda standing there watching.
"That's always a temptation for a new Reverend Mother," Bellonda said. "Chat a bit with Other Memory. Who was it this time? Dar?"
Murbella nodded.
"Don't trust anything they give you. It's lore and you judge it for yourself "
Odrade's words exactly. Look through the eyes of the dead at scenes long gone. What a peep show!
"You can get lost in there for hours," Bellonda said. "Exercise restraint. Be sure of your ground. One hand for yourself and one for the ship."
There it was again! The past applied to the present. How rich Other Memory made everyday life.
"It'll pass," Bellonda said. "It gets to be old hat after a time." She laid a report in front of Murbella.
Old hat! One hand for yourself and one for the ship. So much just in idioms.
Murbella leaned back in the slingchair to scan Bellonda's report, fancying herself suddenly in Odrade's idiom: Spider Queen in the center of my web. The web might be a bit frayed just now but it was still there catching things to be digested. Twitch a trigger strand and Bell came running, mandibles flexing in anticipation. The twitch-words were "Archives" and "Analysis."
Seeing Bellonda in this light, Murbella saw the wisdom in the ways Odrade had employed her, flaws as valuable as the strengths. When Murbella finished the report, Bellonda still stood there in characteristic attitude.
Murbella recognized that Bellonda looked on all who summoned her as ones who had not measured up, people who called on Archives for frivolous reasons and had to be set straight. Frivolity: Bellonda's bete noire. Murbella found this amusing.
Murbella kept amusement masked while enjoying Bellonda. The way to deal with her was to be scrupulous. Nothing to subtract from strengths. This report was a model of concise and pertinent argument. She made her points with few embellishments, just enough to reveal her own conclusions.
"Does it amuse you to summon me?" Bellonda asked.
She's sharper than she was! Did I summon her? Not in so many words but she knows when she's needed. She says here our Sisters must be models of meekness. Mother Superior may be anything she needs to be but not so the rest of the Sisterhood.
Murbella touched the report. "A starting point."
"Then we should start before your friends find the comeye center." Bellonda sank into her chairdog with familiar confidence. "Tam's gone but I could send for Sheeana."
"Where is she?"
"At the ship. Studying a collection of worms in the Great Hold, says any of us can be taught to control them."
"Valuable if true. Leave her. What of Scytale?"
"Still in the ship. Your friends haven't found him yet. We're keeping him under wraps."
"Let's continue that. He's a good reserve bargaining chip. And they're not my friends, Bell. How are the Rabbi and his party?"
"Comfortable but worried. They know Honored Matres are here."
"Keep them under wraps."
"It's uncanny. A different voice but I hear Dar."
"An echo in your head."
Bellonda actually laughed.
"Now here's what you must spread among the Sisters. We act with extreme delicacy while showing ourselves as people to admire and emulate. 'You Honored Matres may not choose to live as we live but you can learn our strengths.' "
"Ahhhhhh."
"It comes down to ownership. Honored Matres are owned by things. 'I want that place, that bauble, that person.' Take what you want. Use it until you tire of it."
"While we go along our path admiring what we see."
"And there's our flaw. We don't give ourselves easily. Fear of love and affection! To be self-possessed has its own greed. 'See what I have? You can't have it unless you follow my ways!' Never take that attitude with Honored Matres."
"Are you telling me we have to love them?"
"How else can we make them admire us? That was Jessica's victory. When she gave, she gave it all. So much bottled up by our ways and then that overwhelming wash: everything given. It's irresistible."
"We don't compromise that easily."
"No more do Honored Matres."
"That's the way of their bureaucratic origins!"
"Yet, theirs is a training ground for following the path of least resistance."
"You're confusing me, Da... Murbella."
"Have I said we should compromise? Compromise weakens us, and we know there are problems compromise cannot solve, decisions we must make no matter how bitter."