Dune

A hand touched a hand and clasped it firmly. She recognized Duncan’s touch, and abruptly there was her body and agony. Her lungs pained when she exhaled. Not when she inhaled. Then they felt flat and never full enough. Her sense of presence in living flesh became a thin thread that wound through many presences. She sensed others all around her, far too many people for the tiny amphitheater.

Another human being floated into view. Murbella felt herself to be in a factory shuttle . . . in space. The shuttle was primitive. Too many manual controls. Too many blinking lights. A woman at the controls, small and untidy with the sweat of her labors. She had long brown hair and it had been bound up in a chignon from which paler strands escaped to hang around her narrow cheeks. She wore a single garment, a short dress of brilliant reds, blues, and greens.

Machinery.

There was awareness of monstrous machinery just beyond this immediate space. The woman’s dress contrasted severely with the drab and dragging sense of machinery. She spoke but her lips did not move. “Listen, you! When it comes time for you to take over these controls, don’t become a destroyer. I’m here to help you avoid the destroyers. Do you know that?”

Murbella tried to speak but had no voice.

“Don’t try so hard, girl!” the woman said. “I hear you.”

Murbella tried to shift her attention away from the woman.

Where is this place?

One operator, a giant warehouse . . . factory . . . everything automated . . . webs of feedback lines centered into this tiny space with its complex controls.

Thinking to whisper, Murbella asked: “Who are you?” and heard her own voice roar. Agony in her ears!

“Not so loud! I’m your guide of the mohalata, the one who steers you clear of the destroyers.”

Dur protect me! Murbella thought. This is no place; it’s me!

On that thought, the control room vanished. She was a migrant in the void, condemned never to be quiet, never to find a moment of sanctuary. Everything but her own fleeting thoughts became immaterial. She had no substance, only a wispy adherence that she recognized as consciousness.

I have constructed myself out of fog.

Other Memory came, bits and pieces of experiences she knew were not her own. Faces leered at her and demanded her attention but the woman at the shuttle controls pulled her away. Murbella recognized necessities but could not put them into coherent form.

“These are lives in your past.” It was the woman at the shuttle controls but her voice had a disembodied quality and came from no discernible place.

“We are descendants of people who did nasty things,” the woman said. “We don’t like to admit there were barbarians in our ancestry. A Reverend Mother must admit it. We have no choice.”

Murbella had the knack of only thinking her questions now. Why must I . . .

“The victors bred. We are their descendants. Victory often was gained at great moral price. Barbarism is not even an adequate word for some of the things our ancestors did.”

Murbella felt a familiar hand on her cheek. Duncan! The touch restored agony. Oh, Duncan! You’re hurting me.

Through the pain, she sensed gaps in the lives being revealed to her. Things withheld.

“Only what you’re capable of accepting now,” the disembodied voice said. “Others come later when you’re stronger . . . if you survive.”

Selective filter. Odrade’s words. Necessity opens doors.

Persistent wailing came from the other presences. Laments: “See? See what happens when you ignore common sense?”

Agony increased. She could not escape it. Every nerve was touched with flame. She wanted to cry, to scream threats, to implore for help. Tumbling emotions accompanied the agony but she ignored them. Everything happened along a thin thread of existence. The thread could snap!

I’m dying.

The thread was stretching. It was going to break! Hopeless to resist. Muscles would not obey. There probably were no muscles remaining to her. She did not want them anyway. They were pain. It was hell and would never end . . . not even if the thread snapped. Flames burned along the thread, licking at her awareness.

Hands shook her shoulders. Duncan . . . don’t. Each movement was pain beyond anything she had imagined possible. This deserved to be called the Agony.

The thread no longer was stretching. It was pulling back, compressing. It became one small thing, a sausage of such exquisite pain that nothing else existed. The sense of being became vague, translucent . . . transparent.

“Do you see?” the voice of her mohalata guide came from far away.

I see things.