Dune

“Let’s continue that. He’s a good reserve bargaining chip. And they’re not my friends, Bell. How are the Rabbi and his party?”

“Comfortable but worried. They know Honored Matres are here.”

“Keep them under wraps.”

“It’s uncanny. A different voice but I hear Dar.”

“An echo in your head.”

Bellonda actually laughed.

“Now here’s what you must spread among the Sisters. We act with extreme delicacy while showing ourselves as people to admire and emulate. ‘You Honored Matres may not choose to live as we live but you can learn our strengths.’”

“Ahhhhhh.”

“It comes down to ownership. Honored Matres are owned by things. ‘I want that place, that bauble, that person.’ Take what you want. Use it until you tire of it.”

“While we go along our path admiring what we see.”

“And there’s our flaw. We don’t give ourselves easily. Fear of love and affection! To be self-possessed has its own greed. ‘See what I have? You can’t have it unless you follow my ways!’ Never take that attitude with Honored Matres.”

“Are you telling me we have to love them?”

“How else can we make them admire us? That was Jessica’s victory. When she gave, she gave it all. So much bottled up by our ways and then that overwhelming wash: everything given. It’s irresistible.”

“We don’t compromise that easily.”

“No more do Honored Matres.”

“That’s the way of their bureaucratic origins!”

“Yet, theirs is a training ground for following the path of least resistance.”

“You’re confusing me, Da . . . Murbella.”

“Have I said we should compromise? Compromise weakens us, and we know there are problems compromise cannot solve, decisions we must make no matter how bitter.”

“Pretend to love them?”

“That’s a beginning.”

“It’ll be a bloody union, this joining of Bene Gesserit and Honored Matre.”

“I suggest we Share as widely as possible. We may lose people while Honored Matres are learning.”

“A marriage made on the battlefield.”

Murbella stood, thinking of Duncan in the no-ship, remembering the ship as she had seen it last. There it was finally, not hidden to any sense. A lump of strange machinery, oddly grotesque. A wild conglomeration of protrusions and juttings with no apparent purpose. Hard to imagine the thing lifting on its own power, enormous as that was, and vanishing into space.

Vanishing into space!

She saw the shape of Duncan’s mental mosaic.

A piece that cannot be moved! Get in tune . . . Don’t think; do it!

With an abruptness that chilled her, she knew his decision.

When you think to take determination of your fate into your own hands, that is the moment you can be crushed. Be cautious. Allow for surprises. When we create, there are always other forces at work.

—DARWI ODRADE

“Move with extreme care,” Sheeana had warned him.

Idaho did not think he needed warning but appreciated it nonetheless.

Presence of Honored Matres on Chapterhouse eased his task. They made the ship’s Proctors and other guards nervous. Murbella’s orders kept her former Sisters out of the ship but everyone knew the enemy was here. Scanner relays showed a seemingly endless stream of lighters disgorging Honored Matres on the Flat. Most of the new arrivals appeared curious about that monstrous no-ship sitting there but no one disobeyed Great Honored Matre.

“Not while she’s alive,” Idaho muttered where Proctors could hear him. “They have a tradition of assassinating their leaders to replace them. How long can Murbella hold out?”

Comeyes did his work for him. He knew his muttering would spread through the ship.

Sheeana came to him in his workroom shortly afterward and made a show of disapproval. “What are you trying to do, Duncan? You’re upsetting people.”

“Go back to your worms!”

“Duncan!”

“Murbella’s playing a dangerous game! She’s all that stands between us and disaster.”

He already had voiced this worry to Murbella. It was not new to the watchers but reinforcement made everyone who heard him edgy—comeye monitors in Archives, ship guards, everyone.

Except Honored Matres. Murbella was keeping them out of Bellonda’s Archives.

“Time for that later,” she said.

Sheeana had her cue. “Duncan, either stop feeding our worries or tell us what we should do. You’re a Mentat. Function for us.”

Ahhh, the Great Mentat performs for all to see.

“What you should do is obvious but it’s not up to me. I can’t leave Murbella.”

But I can be taken away.

Now it was up to Sheeana. She left him and went to spread her own brand of change.

“We have the Scattering for our example.”

By evening, she had the Reverend Mothers in the ship neutralized and gave him a hand-signal that they could take the next step.

“They will follow my lead.”

Without intending it, the Missionaria had set the stage for Sheeana’s ascendancy. Most Sisters knew the power latent in her. Dangerous. But it was there.