Dune

Holding his hand, she stared down at Duncan. Mentat flickering of his eyelids. Did he realize what she had just experienced? Freedom! It no longer was a question of how she had been confined and driven into inevitable channels by her past. For the first time since accepting the possiblity that she could become a Reverend Mother, she glimpsed what it might mean. She felt awe and shock.

Nothing more important than the Sisterhood?

They spoke of an oath, something more mysterious than the Proctor’s words at the acolyte initiation.

My oath to Honored Matres was only words. An oath to the Bene Gesserit can be no more.

She remembered Bellonda growling that diplomats were chosen for ability to lie. “Would you be another diplomat, Murbella?”

It was not that oaths were made to be broken. How childish! Schoolyard threat: “If you break your word, I’ll break mine! Nyaa, nyaa, nyaaaaa!”

Futile to worry about oaths. Far more important to find that place in herself where freedom lived. It was a place where something always listened.

Cupping Duncan’s hand against her lips, she whispered: “They listen. Oh, how they listen.”

Enter no conflict against fanatics unless you can defuse them. Oppose a religion with another religion only if your proofs (miracles) are irrefutable or if you can mesh in a way that the fanatics accept you as god-inspired. This has long been the barrier to science assuming a mantle of divine revelation. Science is so obviously man-made. Fanatics (and many are fanatic on one subject or another) must know where you stand, but more important, must recognize who whispers in your ear.

—MISSIONARIA PROTECTIVA, PRIMARY TEACHING

The flow of time nagged at Odrade as much as did constant awareness of the hunters approaching. Years passed so quickly that days became a blur. Two months of arguments to gain approval of Sheeana as successor to Tam!

Bellonda had taken to standing day watch when Odrade was absent as she had been today, briefing a new Bene Gesserit remnant being sent Scattering. The Council continued this but with reluctance. Idaho’s suggestion that it was a futile strategy had sent shock waves through the Sisterhood. Briefings now carried new defensive plans for “what you may encounter.”

When Odrade entered the workroom late in the afternoon, Bellonda sat at the table. Her cheeks looked puffy and her eyes had that hard stare they got when she suppressed fatigue. With Bell here, the daily summation would include sharp comments.

“They’ve approved Sheeana,” she said, pushing a small crystal toward Odrade. “Tam’s support did it. And Murbella’s new one will be born in eight days, so the Suks claim.”

Bell had little faith in Suk doctors.

New one? She could be so damned impersonal about life! Odrade found her pulses quickening at the prospect.

When Murbella recovers from this birth—the Agony. She is ready.

“Duncan’s extremely nervous,” Bellonda said, vacating the chair.

Duncan yet! Those two are getting remarkably familiar.

Bell was not finished. “And before you ask, no word from Dortujla.”

Odrade took her seat behind the table and balanced the report crystal on her palm. Dortujla’s trusted acolyte, now Reverend Mother Fintil, would not risk the no-ship journey or any of the other message devices they had prepared just to stroke a Mother Superior. No news meant the bait was still out there . . . or wasted.

“Have you told Sheeana she’s confirmed?” Odrade asked.

“I left that for you. She’s late with her daily report again. Not right for someone on the Council.”

So Bell still disapproved the appointment.

Sheeana’s daily messages had taken on a repetitious note. “No wormsign. Spice mass intact.”

Everything upon which they pinned their hopes lay in terrible suspension. And nightmare hunters crept closer. Tensions accumulated. Explosive.

“You’ve seen that exchange between Duncan and Murbella enough times,” Bellonda said. “Is that what Sheeana was hiding and, if so, why?”

“Teg was my father.”

“Such delicacy! A Reverend Mother has qualms about imprinting the ghola of Mother Superior’s father!”

“She was my personal student, Bell. She has concerns for me you could not feel. Besides, this is not just a ghola, this is a child.”

“We must be certain of her!”

Odrade saw the name form on Bellonda’s lips but it remained unspoken. “Jessica.”

Another flawed Reverend Mother? Bell was right, they must be sure of Sheeana. My responsibility. A vision of Sheeana’s black sculpture flickered in Odrade’s awareness.

“Idaho’s plan has some attraction, but . . .” Bellonda hesitated.