It was written large in their minds: "Did renegade Bene Gesserit create the Honored Matres?" Much suggested it. Then why did they resort to sexual enslavement of males? Murbella's historical prattlings did not satisfy. Everything about this went against Bene Gesserit teaching.
"We have to learn," Bellonda insisted. "What little we know is very disturbing."
Odrade recognized the concern. How much of a lure was this ability? Very big, she thought. Acolytes complained that they dreamed about becoming Honored Matres. Bellonda was rightly worried.
Create or arouse such unbridled forces and you built carnal fantasies of enormous complexity. You could lead whole populations around by their desires, by their fantasy projections.
There was the terrible power the Honored Matres dared use. Let it be known that they had the key to blinding ecstasy and they had won half the battle. The simple clue that such a thing existed, that was the beginning of surrender. People at Murbella's level in that other Sisterhood might not understand this but the ones at the top ... Was it possible they merely used this power without caring or even suspecting its deeper force? If that were the case, how were our first Scattered Ones lured into this dead end?
Earlier, Bellonda had offered her hypothesis:
Honored Matre with captive Reverend Mother taken prisoner in that first Scattering. "Welcome, Reverend Mother. We would like you to witness a small demonstration of our powers." Interlude of sexual demonstration followed by a display of Honred Matre physical speed. Then--withdrawal of melange and injection of the adrenaline-based substitute laced with a hypnodrug. In that hypothetical trance, the Reverend Mother was sexually imprinted.
That coupled to the selective agony of melange withdrawal (Bell suggested) might make the victim deny her origins.
Fates help us! Were the original Honored Matres all Reverend Mothers? Do we dare test this hypothesis on ourselves? What can we learn of this from that pair in the no-ship?
Two sources of information lay there under the Sisterhood's watchful eyes but the key had yet to be found.
Woman and man no longer just breeding partners, no longer a comfort and support to each other. Something new has been added. The stakes have been escalated.
In the comeye record playing at the worktable, Murbella said something that caught the Mother Superior's full attention.
"We Honored Matres did this to ourselves! Can't blame anyone else."
"You hear that?" Bellonda demanded.
Odrade shook her head sharply, wanting all of her attention on this exchange.
"You can't say the same about me," Idaho objected.
"That's an empty excuse," Murbella accused. "So you were conditioned by the Tleilaxu to snare the first Imprinter you encountered!"
"And to kill her," Idaho corrected. "That's what they intended."
"But you didn't even try to kill me. Not that you could have."
"That's when ..." Idaho broke off with an involuntary glance at the recording comeyes.
"What was he about to say there?" Bellonda pounced. "We must find out!"
But Odrade continued her silent observation of the captive pair. Murbella demonstrated a surprising insight. "You think you caught me through some accident in which you were not involved?"
"Exactly."
"But I see something in you that accepted all of it! You didn't just go along with your conditioning. You performed to your limits."
An inward look filmed Idaho's eyes. He tipped his head back, stretching his chest muscles.
"That's a Mentat expression!" Bellonda accused.
All of Odrade's analysts suggested this but they had yet to wrest an admission from Idaho. If he was a Mentat, why withhold that information?
Because of the other things implied by such abilities. He fears us and rightly so.
Murbella spoke with a sneer. "You improvised and improved on what the Tleilaxu did to you. There was something in you that made no complaint whatsoever!"
"That's how she deals with her own guilt feelings," Bellonda said. "She has to believe it's true or Idaho would not have been able to trap her."
Odrade pursed her lips. The projection showed Idaho amused. "Perhaps it was the same for both of us."
"You can't blame the Tleilaxu and I can't blame the Honored Matres."
Tamalane entered the workroom and sank into her chairdog beside Bellonda. "I see it has your interest, too." She gestured at the projected figures.
Odrade shut down the projector.
"I've been inspecting our axlotl tanks," Tamalane said. "That damned Scytale has withheld vital information."
"There's no flaw in our first ghola, is there?" Bellonda demanded.
"Nothing our Suks can find."
Odrade spoke in a mild tone: "Scytale has to keep some bargaining chips."
Both sides shared a fantasy: Scytale was paying the Bene Gesserit for rescue from the Honored Matres and sanctuary on Chapterhouse. But every Reverend Mother who studied him knew something else drove the last Tleilaxu Master.
Clever, clever, the Bene Tleilax. Far more clever than we suspected. And they have dirtied us with their axlotl tanks. The very word "tank"--another of their deceptions. We pictured containers of warmed amniotic fluid, each tank the focus of complex machinery to duplicate (in a subtle, discrete and controllable way) the workings of the womb. The tank is there all right! But look at what it contains.
The Tleilaxu solution was direct: Use the original. Nature already had worked it out over the eons. All the Bene Tleilax need do was add their own control system, their own way of replicating information stored in the cell.
"The Language of God," Scytale called it. Language of Shaitan was more appropriate.
Feedback. The cell directed its own womb. That was more or less what a fertilized ovum did anyway. The Tleilaxu merely refined it.
A sigh escaped Odrade, bringing sharp glances from her companions. Does Mother Superior have new troubles?
Scytale's revelations trouble me. And what those revelations have done to us. Oh, how we recoiled from the "debasement. " Then, rationalizations. And we knew they were rationalizations! "If there is no other way. If this produces the gholas we need so desperately. Volunteers probably can be found." Were found! Volunteers!
"You're woolgathering!" Tamalane grumbled. She glanced at Bellonda, started to say something and thought better of it.
Bellonda's face went soft-bland, a frequent accompaniment to her darker moods. Her voice came out little more than a guttural whisper. "I strongly urge that we eliminate Idaho. And as for that Tleilaxu monster ..."
"Why do you make such a suggestion with a euphemism?" Tamalane demanded.
"Kill him then! And the Tleilaxu should be subjected to every persuasion we--"
"Stop it, both of you!" Odrade ordered.
She pressed both palms briefly against her forehead and, staring at the bow window, saw icy rain out there. Weather Control was making more mistakes. You couldn't blame them, but there was nothing humans hated more than the unpredictable. "We want it natural!" Whatever that means.
When such thoughts came over her, Odrade longed for an existence confined to the order that pleased her: an occasional walk in the orchards. She enjoyed them in all seasons. A quiet evening with friends, the give and take of probing conversations with those for whom she felt warmth. Affection? Yes. The Mother Superior dared much-even love of companions. And good meals with drinks chosen for their enhancement of flavors. She wanted that, too. How fine it was to play upon the palate. And later ... yes, later--a warm bed with a gentle companion sensitive to her needs as she was sensitive to his.
Most of this could not be, of course. Responsibilities! What an enormous word. How it burned.
"I'm getting hungry," Odrade said. "Shall I order lunch served here?"
Bellonda and Tamalane stared at her. "It's only half past eleven," Tamalane complained.
"Yes or no?" Odrade insisted.
Bellonda and Tamalane exchanged a private
look. "As you wish," Bellonda said.
There was a saying in the Bene Gesserit (Odrade knew) that the Sisterhood ran smoother when Mother Superior's stomach was satisfied. That had just tipped the scales.
Odrade keyed the intercom to her private kitchen. "Lunch for three, Duana. Something special. You choose."
Lunch, when it came, featured a dish Odrade especially enjoyed, a veal casserole. Duana displayed a delicate touch with herbs, a bit of rosemary in the veal, the vegetables not overcooked. Superb.
Odrade savored every bite. The other two plodded through the meal, spoon-to-mouth, spoon-to-mouth.
Is this one of the reasons I am Mother Superior and they are not?
While an acolyte cleared away the remains of lunch, Odrade turned to one of her favorite questions: "What is the gossip in the common rooms and among the acolytes?"
She remembered in her own acolyte days how she had hung on the words of the older woman, expecting great truths and getting mostly small talk about Sister So-and-so or the latest problems of Proctor X. Occasionally, though, the barriers came down and important data flowed.
"Too many acolytes talk of wanting to go out in our Scattering," Tamalane rasped. "Sinking ships and rats, I say."
"There's a great interest in Archives lately," Bellonda said. "Sisters who know better come looking for confirmation --whether such and so acolyte has a heavy Siona gene-mark."
Odrade found this interesting. Their common Atreides ancestor from the Tyrant's eons, Siona Ibn Fuad al-Seyefa Atreides, had imparted to her descendants this ability that hid them from prescient searchers. Every person walking openly on Chapterhouse shared that ancestral protection.
"A heavy mark?" Odrade asked. "Do they doubt that the ones in question are protected?"
"They want reassurance," Bellonda growled. "And now may I return to Idaho? He has the genetic mark and he does not. It worries me. Why do some of his cells not have the Siona marker? What were the Tleilaxu doing?"
"Duncan knows the danger and he's not suicidal," Odrade said.
"We don't know what he is," Bellonda complained.
"Probably a Mentat, and we all know what that could mean," Tamalane said.
"I understand why we keep Murbella," Bellonda said. "Valuable information. But Idaho and Scytale ..."
"That's enough!" Odrade snapped. "Watchdogs can bark too long!"
Bellonda accepted this grudgingly. Watchdogs. Their Bene Gesserit term for constant monitoring by Sisters to see that you did not fall into shallow ways. Very trying to acolytes but just another part of life to Reverend Mothers.
Odrade had explained it one afternoon to Murbella, the two of them alone in a gray-walled interview chamber of the no-ship. Standing close together facing each other. Eyes at a level. Quite informal and intimate. Except for the knowledge of those comeyes all around them.
"Watchdogs," Odrade said, responding to a question from Murbella. "It means we are mutual gadflies. Don't make that more than it is. We seldom nag. A simple word can be enough."
Murbella, her oval face drawn into a look of distaste, the wide-set green eyes intent, obviously thought Odrade referred to some common signal, a word or saying the Sisters used in such situations.
"What word?"
"Any word, dammit! Whatever's appropriate. It's like a mutual reflex. We share a common 'tic' that comes not to annoy us. We welcome it because it keeps us on our toes."
"And you'll watchdog me if I become a Reverend Mother?"
"We want our watchdogs. We'd be weaker without them."
"It sounds oppressive."
"We don't find it so."
"I think it's repellent." She looked at the glittering lenses in the ceiling. "Like those damned comeyes."
"We take care of our own, Murbella. Once you're a Bene Gesserit, you're assured of lifelong maintenance."
"A comfortable niche." Sneering.
Odrade spoke softly. "Something quite different. You are challenged throughout your life. You repay the Sisterhood right up to the limits of your abilities."
"Watchdogs!"
"We're always mindful of one another. Some of us in positions of power can be authoritarian at times, familiar even, but only to a point carefully measured for the requirements of the moment."
"Never really warm or tender, eh?"
"That's the rule."
"Affection, maybe, but no love?"
"I've told you the rule." And Odrade could see the reaction clearly on Murbella's face: "There it is! They will demand that I give up Duncan!"
"So there's no love among the Bene Gesserit." How sad her tone. There was hope for Murbella yet.
"Loves occur," Odrade said, "but my Sisters treat them as aberrations."
"So what I feel for Duncan is aberration?"
"And Sisters will try to treat it."
"Treat! Apply correctional therapy to the afflicted!"
"Love is considered a sign of rot in Sisters."
"I see signs of rot in you!"
As though she followed Odrade's thoughts, Bellonda dragged Odrade out of reverie. "That Honored Matre will never commit herself to us!" Bellonda wiped a bit of luncheon gravy from the corner of her mouth. "We're wasting our time trying to teach her our ways."
At least Bell was no longer calling Murbella "whore," Odrade thought. That was an improvement.
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.
--Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)
Rebecca knelt on the yellow tile floor as she had been ordered to do, not daring to look up at Great Honored Matre seated so remotely high, so dangerous. Two hours Rebecca had waited here almost in the center of a giant room while Great Honored Matre and her companions ate a lunch served by obsequious attendants. Rebecca marked the manners of the attendants with care and emulated them.
Her eye sockets still ached from transplants the Rabbi had given her less than a month ago. These eyes showed a blue iris and white sclera, no clue to the Spice Agony in her past. It was a temporary defense. In less than a year, the new eyes would betray her with total blue.
She judged the ache in her eyes to be the least of her problems. An organic implant fed her metered doses of melange, concealing her dependence. The supply was gauged to last about sixty days. If these Honored Matres held her longer than that, withdrawal would plunge her into an agony that would make the original appear mild by comparison. The most immediately dangerous thing was the shere being metered to her with the spice. If these women detected it, they certainly would be suspicious.
You are doing well. Be patient. That was Other Memory from the horde of Lampadas. The voice rang softly in her head. It had the sound of Lucilla but Rebecca could not be sure.
It had become a familiar voice in the months since the Sharing when it had announced itself as "Speaker of your Mohalata." These whores cannot match our knowledge. Remember that and let it give you courage.
The presence of Others Within who subtracted none of her attention from what went on around her had filled her with awe. We call it Simulflow, Speaker had said. Simulflow multiplies your awareness. When she had tried to explain this to the Rabbi, he had reacted in anger.
"You have been tainted by unclean thoughts!"
They had been in the Rabbi's study late at night. "Stealing time from the days alloted us," he called it. The study was an underground room, its walls lined with old books, ridulian crystals, scrolls. The room was protected from probes by the best Ixian devices and they had been modified by his own people to improve them.
She was allowed to sit beside his desk at such times while he leaned back in an old chair. A glowglobe placed low beside him cast an antique yellow light on his bearded face, glinting off the spectacles he wore almost as badge of office.
Rebecca pretended confusion. "But you sa
id it was required of us to save this treasure from Lampadas. Have the Bene Gesserit not been honorable with us?"
She saw the worry in his eyes. "You heard Levi talking yesterday of the questions being asked here. Why did the Bene Gesserit witch come to us? That is what they ask."
"Our story is consistent and believable," Rebecca protested. "The Sisters have taught us ways that even Truthsay cannot penetrate."
"I don't know ... I don't know." The Rabbi shook his head sadly. "What is a lie? What is truth? Do we condemn ourselves with our own mouths?"
"It is pogrom that we resist, Rabbi!" That usually stiffened his resolve.
"Cossacks! Yes, you are right, daughter. There have been cossacks in every age and we are not the only ones who have felt their knouts and swords as they rode into the village with murder in their hearts."
It was odd, Rebecca thought, how he managed to give the impression that these events were of recent occurrence and that his eyes had seen them. Never to forgive, never to forget. Lidiche was yesterday. What a powerful thing that was in the memory of Secret Israel. Pogrom! Almost as powerful in its continuity as these Bene Gesserit presences she carried in her awareness. Almost. That was the thing the Rabbi resisted, she told herself.
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