Dune

“I ask myself: Is it the thing become real once more?” Bellonda said.

Odrade saw it at once. An odd thing about lost places. As long as Dune had been a known and living planet, there existed a historical firmness about its presence in the Galactic Register. You could point to a projection and say: “That is Dune. Once called Arrakis and, latterly, Rakis. Dune for its total desert character in Muad’Dib’s day.”

Destroy the place, though, and a mythological patina in-weighed against projected reality. In time, such places became totally mythic. Arthur and his Round Table. Camelot where it only rains at night. Pretty good Weather Control for those days!

But now, a new Dune had appeared.

“Myth power,” Tamalane said.

Ahhhh, yes. Tam, close to her final departure from flesh, would be more sensitive to workings of myths. Mystery and secrecy, tools of the Missionaria, had been used also on Dune by Muad’Dib and the Tyrant. The seeds were planted. Even with priests of the Divided God gone to their own perdition, myths of Dune proliferated.

“Melange,” Tamalane said.

The other Sisters in the workroom knew immediately what she meant. New hope could be injected into the Bene Gesserit Scattering.

Bellonda said: “Why do they want us dead and not captives? That has always puzzled me.”

Honored Matres might not want any Bene Gesserit alive . . . only the spice knowledge, perhaps. But they destroyed Dune. They destroyed the Tleilaxu. It was a cautioning thought to take into any confrontation with the Spider Queen—should Dortujla succeed.

“No useful hostages?” Bellonda asked.

Odrade saw the looks on the faces of her Sisters. They were following a single track as though all of them thought with one mind. Object lessons by Honored Matres, leaving few survivors, only made potential opposition more cautious. It invoked a rule of silence within which bitter memories became bitter myths. Honored Matres were like barbarians in any age: blood instead of hostages. Strike with random viciousness.

“Dar’s right,” Tamalane said. “We’ve been seeking allies too close to home.”

“Futars did not create themselves,” Sheeana said.

“The ones who created them hope to control us,” Bellonda said. There was the clear sound of Prime Projection in her voice. “That’s the hesitation Dortujla heard in the Handlers.”

There it was and they faced it with all of its perils. It came down to people (as it always did). People—contemporaries. You learned valuable things from people living in your own time and from knowledge they carried out of their pasts. Other Memory was not the only conveyance of history.

Odrade felt that she had come home after a long absence. There was a familiarity about the way all four of them were thinking now. It was a familiarity that transcended place. The Sisterhood itself was Home. Not where they lodged in transient housing but the association.

Bellonda voiced it for them. “I fear we have been working at cross purposes.”

“Fear does that,” Sheeana said.

Odrade dared not smile. It could be misinterpreted and she did not want to explain. Give us Murbella as a Sister and a restored Bashar! Then we might have our fighting chance!

Right there with that good feeling in her, the message signal clicked. She glanced at the projection surface, a pure reflex, and recognized crisis. Such a small thing (relatively) to precipitate crisis. Clairby mortally injured in a ’thopter crash. Mortal unless . . . The unless was spelled out for her and it added up to cyborg. Her companions saw the message in reverse but you got good at reading mirrored information in here. They knew.

Where do we draw the line?

Bellonda, with her antique spectacles when she could have had artificial eyes or any of numerous other prosthetics, voted with her body. This is what it means to be human. Try to hold on to youth and it mocks you while it sprints away. Melange is enough . . . and perhaps too much.

Odrade recognized what her own emotions were telling her. But what of Bene Gesserit necessity? Bell could lodge her individual vote and everyone recognized it, even respected it. But Mother Superior’s vote carried the Sisterhood with her.

First the axlotl tanks and now this.

Necessity said they could not afford to lose specialists of Clairby’s caliber. They had few enough as it was. “Spread thin” did not describe it. Gaps were appearing. Cyborg Clairby, though, and that was the opening wedge.