Dune

Athick cloud cover had moved over Central this morning and Odrade’s workroom took on a gray silence to which she felt herself responding with inner stillness, as though she dared not move because that disturbed dangerous forces.

Murbella’s day of Agony, she thought. I must not think of omens.

Weather had issued a peremptory warning about clouds. They were an accidental displacement. Corrective measures were being taken but would require time. Meanwhile, expect high winds, and there could be precipitation.

Sheeana and Tamalane stood at the window looking at this poorly controlled weather. Their shoulders touched.

Odrade watched them from her chair behind the table. Those two had become like a single person since yesterday’s Sharing, not an unexpected occurrence. Precedents were known, although not many of them. Exchanges, occurring in the presence of poisonous spicy essence or at an actual moment of death, did not often allow further living contact between participants. It was interesting to observe. The two backs were oddly alike in their rigidity.

The force of extremis that made Sharing possible dictated powerful changes in personality and Odrade knew this with an intimacy that compelled tolerance. Whatever it was Sheeana concealed, Tam also concealed. Something tied to Sheeana’s basic humanity. And Tam could be trusted. Until another Sister Shared with one of them, Tam’s judgment must be accepted. Not that watchdogs would cease probing and observing minutiae but they needed no new crisis just now.

“This is Murbella’s day,” Odrade said.

“The odds are long she won’t survive,” Bellonda said, hunched forward in her chairdog. “What happens to our precious plan then?”

Our plan!

“Extremis,” Odrade said.

In that context, it was a word with several meanings. Bellonda interpreted it as a possibility of acquiring Murbella’s persona-memories at the moment of her death. “Then we must not permit Idaho to observe!”

“My order stands,” Odrade said. “It’s Murbella’s wish and I have given my word.”

“Mistake . . . mistake . . .” Bellonda muttered.

Odrade knew the source of Bellonda’s doubts. Visible to all of them: Somewhere in Murbella lay something extremely painful. It caused her to shy away from certain questions like an animal confronted by a predator. Whatever it was, the thing went deep. Hypnotrance induction might not explain it.

“All right!” Odrade spoke loudly to emphasize it was for all of her listeners. “It’s not the way we’ve ever done it before. But we cannot take Duncan from the ship so we must go to him. He will be present.”

Bellonda was still well and truly shocked. No man, barring the damned Kwisatz Haderach himself and his Tyrant son, had ever known the particulars of this Bene Gesserit secret. Both of those monsters had felt the Agony. Two disasters! No matter that the Tyrant’s Agony had worked its way inward a cell at a time to transform him into a sandworm symbiote (no more original worm, no more original human). And Muad’Dib! He dared the Agony and look what came of that!

Sheeana turned from the window and took one step toward the table, giving Odrade the curious feeling that the two women standing there had become a Janus figure: back to back but only one persona.

“Bell is confused by your promise,” Sheeana said. How soft her voice.

“He could be the catalyst to pull Murbella through,” Odrade said. “You tend to underestimate the power of love.”

“No!” Tamalane spoke to the window in front of her. “We fear its power.”

“Could be!” Bell still was scornful but that came naturally to her. The expression on her face said she remained implacably stubborn.

“Hubris,” Sheeana murmured.

“What?” Bellonda whirled in her chairdog, causing it to squeak with indignation.

“We share a common failing with Scytale,” Sheeana said.

“Oh?” Bellonda was gnawing at Sheeana’s secret.

“We think we make history,” Sheeana said. She returned to her position beside Tamalane, both of them staring out the window.

Bellonda returned her attention to Odrade. “Do you understand that?”

Odrade ignored her. Let the Mentat work it out for herself. The projector on the worktable clicked and a message was displayed. Odrade reported it. “Still not ready at the ship.” She looked at those two rigid backs in front of the window.

History?

On Chapterhouse, there had been little of what Odrade liked to think of as history-making before the Honored Matres. Only the steady graduation of Reverend Mothers passing through the Agony.

Like a river.