ChapterHouse: Dune dc-6

by Frank Herbert

Tamalane answered for her. "A punishment force commanded by our Mentat Bashar. It's obvious."

  She took the bait!

  "Is that it?" Bellonda demanded.

  Odrade favored them both with a hard stare. "Teg was the best we ever had. If anyone can punish our enemies..."

  "We'd better start growing another one," Tamalane said.

  "I don't like the influence Murbella may have on him," Bellonda said.

  "Will Idaho cooperate?" Tamalane asked.

  "He will do what an Atreides asks of him."

  Odrade spoke with more confidence than she felt but the words opened her mind to another source of the alien feelings.

  I'm seeing us as Murbella sees us! I can think like at least one Honored Matre!

  ***

  We do not teach history; we recreate the experience. We follow the chain of consequences - the tracks of the beast in its forest. Look behind our words and you see the broad sweep of social behavior that no historian has ever touched.

  - Bene Gesserit Panoplia Propheticus

  Scytale whistled while he walked down the corridor fronting his quarters, taking his afternoon exercise. Down and back. Whistling.

  Get them accustomed to me whistling.

  As he whistled, he composed a ditty to go with the sound: "Tleilaxu sperm does not talk." Over and over, the words rolled in his mind. They could not use his cells to bridge the genetic gap and learn his secrets.

  They must come to me with gifts.

  Odrade had stopped by to see him earlier "on my way to confer with Murbella." She mentioned the captive Honored Matre to him frequently. There was a purpose but he had no idea what it might be. Threat? Always possible. It would be revealed eventually.

  "I hope you are not fearful," Odrade had said.

  They had been standing at his food slot while he waited for lunch to appear. The menu was never quite to his liking but acceptable. Today, he had asked for seafood. No telling what form it would take.

  "Fearful? Of you? Ahhh, dear Mother Superior, I am priceless to you alive. Why should I fear?"

  "My Council reserves judgment on your latest requests."

  I expected that.

  "It's a mistake to hobble me," he said. "Limits your choices. Weakens you."

  Those words had taken several days of planning for him to compose. He waited for their effect.

  "It depends on how one intends to employ the tool, Master Scytale. Some tools break when you don't use them properly."

  Damn you, witch!

  He smiled, showing his sharp canines. "Testing to extinction, Mother Superior?"

  She made one of her rare sallies into humor. "Do you really expect me to strengthen you? For what do you bargain now, Scytale?"

  So I'm no longer Master Scytale. Strike her with the flat of the blade!

  "You Scatter your Sisters, hoping some will escape destruction. What are the economic consequences of your hysterical reaction?"

  Consequences! They always talk about consequences.

  "We trade for time, Scytale." Very solemn.

  He gave this a silent moment of reflection. The comeyes were watching them. Never forget it! Economics, witch! Who and what do we buy and sell? This alcove by the food slot was a strange place for bargaining, he thought. Bad management of the economy. The management hustle, the planning and strategy session, should occur behind closed doors, in high rooms with views that did not distract the occupants from the business at hand.

  The serial memories of his many lives would not accept that.

  Necessity. Humans conduct their merchant affairs wherever they can - on the decks of sailing ships, in tawdry streets full of bustling clerks, in the spacious halls of a traditional bourse with information flowing above their heads for all to see.

  Planning and strategy might come from those high rooms but the evidence of it was like the common information of the bourse - there for all to see.

  So let the comeyes watch.

  "What are your intentions toward me, Mother Superior?"

  "To keep you alive and strong."

  Careful, careful.

  "But not give me a free hand."

  "Scytale! You speak of economics and then want something free?"

  "But my strength is important to you?"

  "Believe it!"

  "I do not trust you."

  The food slot took that moment to disgorge his lunch: a white fish sauteed in a delicate sauce. He smelled herbs. Water in a tall glass, faint aroma of melange. A green salad. One of their better efforts. He felt himself salivating.

  "Enjoy your lunch, Master Scytale. There is nothing in it to harm you. Is that not a measure of trust?"

  When he did not respond, she said: "What does trust have to do with our bargaining?"

  What game is she playing now?

  "You tell me what you intend for Honored Matres but you do not say what you intend for me." He knew he sounded plaintive. Unavoidable.

  "I intend to make the Honored Matres aware of their mortality."

  "As you do with me!"

  Was that satisfaction in her eyes?

  "Scytale." How soft her voice. "People thus made aware truly listen. They hear you." She glanced at his tray. "Would you like something special?"

  He drew himself up as best he could. "A small stimulant drink. It helps when I must think."

  "Of course. I'll see that it's sent down at once." She turned her attention out of the alcove toward the main room of his quarters. He watched where she paused, her gaze shifting from place to place, item to item.

  Everything in its place, witch. I am not an animal in its cave. Things must be convenient, where I can find them without thinking. Yes, those are stimpens beside my chair. So I use 'pens. But I avoid alcohol. You notice?

  The stimulant, when it came, tasted of a bitter herb he was a moment identifying. Casmine. A genetically modified blood strengthener from the Gammu pharmacopoeia.

  Did she intend to remind him of Gammu? They were so devious, these witches!

  Poking fun at him over the question of economics. He felt the sting of this as he turned at the end of his corridor and continued his exercise in a brisk walk back to his quarters. What glue had actually held the Old Empire together? Many things, some small and some large, but mostly economic. Lines of connection thought of often as conveniences. And what kept them from blasting one another out of existence? The Great Convention. "You blast anyone and we unite to blast you."

  He stopped outside his door, brought up short by a thought.

  Was that it? How could punishment be enough to stop the greedy powindah? Did it come down to a glue composed of intangibles? The censure of your peers? But what if your peers balked at no obscenity? You could do anything. And that said something about Honored Matres. It certainly did.

  He longed for a sagra chamber in which to bare his soul.

  The Yaghist is gone! Am I the last Masheikh?

  His chest felt empty. It was an effort to breathe. Perhaps it would be best to bargain more openly with the women of Shaitan.

  No! That is Shaitan himself tempting me!

  He entered his chambers in a chastened mood.

  I must make them pay. Make them pay dearly. Dearly, dearly, dearly. Each dearly accompanied a step toward his chair. When he sat, his right hand reached out automatically for a 'pen. Soon, he felt his mind driving at speed, thoughts pouring through in marvelous array.

  They do not guess how well I know the Ixian ship. It's here in my head.

  He spent the next hour deciding how he would record these moments when it came time to tell his fellows how he had triumphed over the powindah. With God's help!

  They would be glittering words, filled with drama and the tensions of his testing. History, after all, was always written by the victors.

  ***

  They say Mother Superior can disregard nothing - a meaningless aphorism until you grasp its other significance: I am the servant of all my Sisters. They watch their servant with critical
eyes. I cannot spend too much time on generalities nor on trivia. Mother Superior must display insightful action else a sense of disquiet penetrates to the farthest corners of our order.

  - Darwi Odrade

  Something of what Odrade called "my servant-self" went with her as she walked the halls of Central this morning, making this her exercise rather than take time on a practice floor. A disgruntled servant! She did not like what she saw.

  We are too tightly bound up in our difficulties, almost incapable of separating petty problems from great ones.

  What had happened to their conscience?

  Although some denied it, Odrade knew there was a Bene Gesserit conscience. But they had twisted and reshaped it into a form not easily recognized.

  She felt loath to meddle with it. Decisions taken in the name of survival, the Missionaria (their interminable Jesuitical arguments!) - all diverged from something far more demanding of human judgment. The Tyrant had known this.

  To be human, that was the issue. But before you could be human, you had to feel it in your guts.

  No clinical answers! It came down to a deceptive simplicity whose complex nature appeared when you applied it.

  Like me.

  You looked inward and found who and what you believed you were. Nothing else would serve.

  So what am I?

  "Who asks that question?" It was a skewering thrust from Other Memory.

  Odrade laughed aloud and a passing Proctor named Praska stared at her in astonishment. Odrade waved to Praska and said: "It's good to be alive. Remember that."

  Praska produced a faint smile before going on about her business.

  So who asks: What am I?

  Dangerous question. Asking it put her in a universe where nothing was quite human. Nothing matched the undefined thing she sought. All around her, clowns, wild animals and puppets reacted to the pull of hidden strings. She sensed the strings that jerked her into movement.

  Odrade continued along the corridor toward the tube that would take her up to her quarters.

  Strings. What came with the egg? We speak glibly of "the mind at its beginning." But what was I before the pressures of living shaped me?

  It wasn't enough to seek something "natural." No "Noble Savage." She had seen plenty of those in her lifetime. The strings jerking them were quite visible to a Bene Gesserit.

  She felt the taskmaster within her. Strong today. It was a force she sometimes disobeyed or avoided. Taskmaster said: "Strengthen your talents. Do not flow gently in the current. Swim! Use it or lose it."

  With a gasping sensation of near panic, she realized she had barely retained her humanity, that she had been on the point of losing it.

  I've been trying too hard to think like an Honored Matre! Manipulating and maneuvering anyone I could. And all in the name of Bene Gesserit survival!

  Bell said there were no limits beyond which the Sisterhood would refuse to go in preserving the Bene Gesserit. A modicum of truth in this boast but it was the truth of all boasting. There were indeed things a Reverend Mother would not do to save the Sisterhood.

  We would not block the Tyrant's Golden Path.

  Survival of humankind took precedence over survival of the Sisterhood. Else our grail of human maturity is meaningless.

  But oh, the perils of leadership in a species so anxious to be told what to do. How little they knew of what they created by their demands. Leaders made mistakes. And those mistakes, amplified by the numbers who followed without questioning, moved inevitably toward great disasters.

  Lemming behavior.

  It was right that her Sisters watched her carefully. All governments needed to remain under suspicion during their time of power including that of the Sisterhood itself. Trust no government! Not even mine!

  They are watching me this very instant. Very little escapes my Sisters. They will know my plan in time.

  It required constant mental cleansing to face up to the fact of her great power over the Sisterhood. I did not seek this power. It was thrust upon me. And she thought: Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect all who seek it. She knew the chances were great that such people were susceptible to corruption or already lost.

  Odrade made a mental note to scribe and transmit a Coda memo to Archives. (Let Bell sweat this one!) "We should grant power over our affairs only to those who are reluctant to hold it and then only under conditions that increase the reluctance."

  Perfect description of the Bene Gesserit!

  "Are you well, Dar?" It was Bellonda's voice from the tube door beside Odrade. "You look... strange."

  "I just thought of something to do. You getting off?"

  Bellonda stared at her as they exchanged places. The tubefield caught Odrade and whisked her away from that questioning gaze.

  Odrade entered the workroom and saw her table piled with things her aides thought only she could resolve.

  Politics, she recalled as she sat at her table and prepared to deal with responsibilities. Tam and Bell had heard her clearly the other day but they had only the vaguest idea of what they would be asked to support. They were worried and increasingly watchful. As they should be.

  Almost any subject had political elements, she thought. As emotions were whipped up, political forces came more and more into the foreground. This put lie! to that old nonsense about "separation of church and state." Nothing more susceptible to emotional heat than religion.

  No wonder we distrust emotions.

  Not all emotions, of course. Only the ones you could not escape in moments of necessity: love, hate. Let in a little anger sometimes but keep it on a short leash. That was the Sisterhood's belief. Utter nonsense!

  The Tyrant's Golden Path made their mistake no longer tolerable. The Golden Path left the Bene Gesserit in a perpetual backwater. You could not minister to Infinity!

  Bell's recurrent question had no answer. "What did he really want us to do?" Into what actions was he manipulating us? (As we manipulate others!) Why look for meaning where there is none? Would you follow a path you knew led nowhere?

  Golden Path! A track laid down in one imagination. Infinity is nowhere! And the finite mind balked. Here was where Mentats found mutable projections, always producing more questions than answers. It was the empty grail of those who, noses close to an endless circle, looked for "the one answer to all things."

  Looking for their own kind of gad.

  She found it hard to censure them. The mind recoiled in the face of infinity. The Void! Alchemists of any age were like rag pickers bent over their bundles, saying: "There must be order in here somewhere. If I keep on, I'm sure to find it."

  And all the time, the only order was the order they themselves created.

  Ahhh, Tyrant! You droll fellow. You saw it. You said: "I will create order for you to follow. Here is the path. See it? No! Don't look over there. That is the way of the Emperor-Without-Clothes (a nakedness apparent only to children and the insane). Keep your attention where I direct it. This is my Golden Path. Isn't that a pretty name? It's all there is and all there ever will be."

  Tyrant, you were another clown. Pointing us into endless recycling of cells from that lost and lonely ball of dirt in our common past.

  You knew the human universe could never be more than communities and weak glue binding us when we Scattered. A common birth tradition so far away in our past that pictures of it carried by descendants are mostly distorted. Reverend Mothers carry the original, but we cannot force it onto unwilling people. You see, Tyrant? We heard you: "Let them come asking for it! Then, and only then..."

  And that was why you preserved us, you Atreides bastard! That's why I must get to work.

  Despite the peril to her sense of humanity, she knew she would continue to insinuate herself into the ways of Honored Matres. I must think as they think.

  The hunters' problem: predator and prey shared it. Not quite needle-in-the-haystack. More a question of tracking across a terrain littered with the familiar and the unfamiliar. Bene Gesseri
t deceptions insured that the familiar would cause Honored Matres at least as much difficulty as the unfamiliar.

  But what have they done for us?

  Interplanetary communication worked for the hunted. Limited by economics for millennia. Not much of it except among Important People and Traders. Important meant what it had always meant: rich, powerful; bankers, officials, couriers. Military. "Important" labeled many categories - negotiators, entertainers, medical personnel, skilled technicians, spies, and other specialists. It was not much different in kind from the days of the Master Masons on Old Terra. Mainly a difference in numbers, quality and sophistication. Boundaries were transparent to some as they had always been.

  She felt it important to review this occasionally, looking for flaws.

  The great mass of planet-bound humanity spoke of "the silence of space," meaning they could not afford the cost of such travel or communication. Most people knew the news they received across this barrier was managed for special interests. It had always been that way.

  On a planet, terrain and avoiding telltale radiation dictated the communications systems used: tubes, messengers, lightlines, nerve riders and many permutations. Secrecy and encryption were important, not only between planets but on them.

  Odrade saw it as a system Honored Matres could tap if they found an entry point. Hunters had to begin by deciphering the system, but then: Where did a trail to Chapterhouse originate?

  Untrackable no-ships, Ixian machines, and Guild Navigators - all contributed to the blanket of silence between planets except for the privileged few. Give hunters no starting points!

  It came as a surprise then when an aging Reverend Mother from a Bene Gesserit punishment planet appeared at Mother Superior's workroom shortly before the lunch break. Archives identified her: Name: Dortujla. Sent to special perdition years ago for an unforgivable infraction. Memory said it had been a love affair of some kind. Odrade did not ask for details. Some of them were displayed anyway. (Bellonda interfering again!) Emotional upheaval at the time of Dortujla's banishment, Odrade noted. Futile attempts by the lover to prevent separation.