Chapterhouse: Dune

Agony receded. Only then did she realize that she had come through pain more terrible than words could describe. Agony? It seared the psyche and remolded her. One person entered and another emerged.

Duncan! She opened her eyes and there was his face directly above her. Do I still love him? He is here. He is an anchor to which I clung in the worst moments. But do I love him? Am I still balanced?

No answer.

Odrade spoke from somewhere out of view. "Strip those clothes off her. Towels. She's drenched. And bring her a proper robe!"

There were scurrying sounds, then Odrade once more: "Murbella, you did that the hard way, I'm glad to say."

Such elation in her voice. Why was she glad?

Where is the sense of responsibility? Where is the grail I'm supposed to feel in my head? Answer me, someone!

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 become 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."