ChapterHouse: Dune dc-6

by Frank Herbert

  When they continued to stare at him, he said: "If Mother Superior confirms my previous knowledge of Junction, we will know our enemy's positions intimately. There should not be significant changes. Not enough time has passed."

  Surprise and the unexpected. What else did they expect from their Mentat Bashar? He stared back at Garimi, daring her to voice more doubts of his military ability.

  She had another question. "Are we to presume that Duncan Idaho advises you on weapons?"

  "When you have the best, you would be a fool not to use it," he said.

  "But will he accompany you as Weapons Master?"

  "He chooses not to leave the ship and you all know why. What is the meaning of that question?"

  He had deflected her and silenced her and she did not like it. A man should not be able to maneuver a Reverend Mother that way!

  Odrade stepped forward and put a hand on Teg's arm. "Have you all forgotten that this ghola is our loyal friend, Miles Teg?" She stared at particular faces in the throng, choosing ones she was certain watchdogged the comeyes and knew Teg was her father, moving her gaze from face to face with a deliberate slowness that could not be misinterpreted.

  Is there one among you who dares cry "nepotism"? Then look once more at his record in our service!

  Sounds of the Convocation became once more those in keeping with other graces they expected in assemblies. No more vulgar clash of demanding voices vying for attention. Now, they fitted their speech into a pattern much like plainsong and yet not quite a chant. Voices moved and flowed together. Odrade always found this remarkable. No one directed the harmony. It happened because they were Bene Gesserit. Naturally. This was the only explanation they needed. It happened because they were practiced in adjusting to each other. The dance of their everyday movements continued in their voices. Partners no matter transitory disagreements.

  I will miss this.

  "It is never enough to make accurate predictions of distressful events," she said. "Who knows this better than we? Is there one among us who has not learned the lesson of the Kwisatz Haderach?"

  No need to elaborate. Evil prediction should not alter their course. That kept Bellonda silent. The Bene Gesserit were enlightened. Not dullards who attacked the bearer of bad tidings. Discount the messenger? (Who could expect anything useful from the likes of that one?) That was a pattern to be avoided at all costs. Will we silence disagreeable messengers, thinking the deep silence of death obliterates the message? The Bene Gesserit knew better than that! Death makes a prophet's voice louder. Martyrs are truly dangerous.

  Odrade watched reflexive awareness spread through the room, even up to the highest tiers.

  We are entering hard times, Sisters, and must accept that. Even Murbella knows it. And she knows now why I was so anxious to make a Sister of her. We all know it one way or another.

  Odrade turned and glanced at Bellonda. No disappointment there. Bell knew why she was not among the chosen. It's our best course, Bell. Infiltrate. Take them before they even suspect what we're doing.

  Shifting her gaze to Murbella, Odrade saw respectful awareness. Murbella was beginning to get her first batches of good advice from Other Memory. The manic stage had passed and she was even regaining a fondness for Duncan. In time perhaps... Bene Gesserit training assured that she would judge Other Memory on her own. Nothing in Murbella's stance said: "Keep your lousy advice to yourself!" She had historical comparisons and could not evade their obvious message.

  Don't march in the streets with others who share your prejudices. Loud shouts are often the easiest to ignore. "I mean, look at them out there shouting their fool heads off! You want to make common cause with them?"

  I told you, Murbella: Now judge for yourself. "To create change you find leverage points and move them. Beware blind alleys. Offers of high positions are a common distraction paraded before marchers. Leverage points are not all in high office. They are often at economic or communications centers and unless you know this, high office is useless. Even lieutenants can alter our course. Not by changing reports but by burying unwanted orders. Bell sits on orders until she believes them ineffective. I give her orders sometimes for this purpose: so she can play her delaying game. She knows it and yet she plays her game anyway. Know this, Murbella! And after we Share, study my performance with great care."

  Harmony had been achieved but at a cost. Odrade signaled that Convocation was ended, knowing well that all questions had not been answered nor even asked. But the unasked questions would come filtering through Bell where they would get the most appropriate treatment.

  Alert ones among the Sisters would not ask. They already saw her plan.

  As she left the Great Common Room, Odrade felt herself accept full commitment for choices she had made, recognizing previous hesitancy for the first time. There were regrets, but only Murbella and Sheeana might know them.

  Walking behind Bellonda, Odrade thought about the places I will never go, the things I will never see except as a reflection in the life of another.

  It was a form of nostalgia that centered on the Scatterings and this eased her pain. There was just too much for one person to see out there. Even the Bene Gesserit with its accumulated memories could never hope to catch up with all of it, not with every last interesting detail. It was back to grand designs. The Big Picture, the Mainstream. The specialties of my Sisterhood. Here were essentials Mentats employed: patterns, movements of currents and what those currents carried, where they were going. Consequences. Not maps but the flowings.

  At least, I have preserved key elements of our jury-monitored democracy in original form. They may thank me for that one day.

  ***

  Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.

  - The Coda

  "Who expected the air machinery to break down?"

  The Rabbi asked his question of no one in particular. He sat on a low bench, a scroll clutched to his breast. The scroll had been reinforced by modern artifice but it still was old and fragile. He was not sure of the time. Midmorning probably. They had eaten not long ago food that could be described as breakfast.

  "I expected it."

  He appeared to be addressing the scroll. "Passover has come and gone and our door was locked."

  Rebecca came to stand over him. "Please, Rabbi. How does this help Joshua at his labors?"

  "We have not been abandoned," the Rabbi told his scroll. "It is we who have hidden ourselves away. When we cannot be found by strangers, where would anyone look who might help us?"

  He peered up abruptly at Rebecca, owlish behind his glasses. "Have you brought evil to us, Rebecca?"

  She knew his meaning. "Outsiders always think there's something nefarious about the Bene Gesserit," she said.

  "So now I, your Rabbi, am Outsider!"

  "You estrange yourself, Rabbi. I speak from the viewpoint of the Sisterhood you made me help. What they do is often boring. Repetitious but not evil."

  "I made you help? Yes, I did that. Forgive me, Rebecca. If evil joins us, I have done it."

  "Rabbi! Stop this. They are an extended clan. And still, they keep a touchy individualism. Does an extended clan mean nothing to you? Does my dignity offend you?"

  "I tell you, Rebecca, what offends me. By my hand you have learned to follow different books than..." He raised the scroll as though it were a bludgeon.

  "No books at all, Rabbi. Oh, they have a Coda but it's just a collection of reminders, sometimes useful, sometimes to be discarded. They always adjust their Coda to current requirements."

  "There are books that cannot be adjusted, Rebecca!"

  She stared down at him with ill-concealed dismay. Was this how he saw the Sisterhood? Or was it fear talking?

  Joshua came to stand beside her, hands greasy, black smears on forehead and cheeks. "Your suggestion was the right one. It's working again. How long I don't know. The problem is -"

  "You do not know the problem," the Rabbi interrupt
ed.

  "The mechanical problem, Rabbi," Rebecca said. "This no-chamber's field distorts machinery."

  "We could not bring in frictionless machinery," Joshua said. "Too revealing, not to mention the cost."

  "Your machinery is not all that has been distorted."

  Joshua looked at Rebecca with raised eyebrows. What's wrong with him? So Joshua trusted Bene Gesserit insights, too. That offended the Rabbi. His flock sought guidance elsewhere.

  The Rabbi surprised her then. "You think I'm jealous, Rebecca?"

  She shook her head from side to side.

  "You display talents," the Rabbi said, "that others are quick to use. Your suggestion fixed the machinery? These... these Others told you how?"

  Rebecca shrugged. This was the Rabbi of old, not to be challenged in his own house.

  "I should praise you?" the Rabbi asked. "You have power? Now, you will govern us?"

  "No one, least of all I, ever suggested that, Rabbi." She was offended and did not mind showing it.

  "Forgive me, daughter. That is what you call 'flip.' "

  "I don't need your praise, Rabbi. And of course I forgive."

  "Your Others have something to say about this?"

  "The Bene Gesserit say fear of praise goes back to an ancient prohibition against praising your child because that brings down the wrath of the gods."

  He bowed his head. "Sometimes a bit of wisdom."

  Joshua appeared embarrassed. "I'm going to try sleeping. I should be rested." He aimed a meaningful glance at the machinery area where a labored rasping could be heard.

  He left them for the darkened end of the chamber, stumbling on a child's toy as he went.

  The Rabbi patted the bench beside him. "Sit, Rebecca."

  She sat.

  "I am fearful for you, for us, for all of the things we represent." He caressed the scroll. "We have been true for so many generations." His gaze swept the room. "And we don't even have a minyan here."

  Rebecca wiped tears from her eyes. "Rabbi, you misjudge the Sisterhood. They wish only to perfect humans and their governments."

  "So they say."

  "So I say. Government, to them, is an art form. You find that amusing?"

  "You arouse my curiosity. Are these women self-deluded by dreams of their own importance?"

  "They think of themselves as watchdogs."

  "Dogs?"

  "Watchdogs, alert to when a lesson may be taught. That is what they seek. Never try to teach someone a lesson he cannot absorb."

  "Always these bits of wisdom." He sounded sad. "And they govern themselves artistically?"

  "They think of themselves as a jury with absolute powers that no law can veto."

  He waved the scroll in front of her nose. "I thought so!"

  "No human law, Rabbi."

  "You tell me these women who make religions to suit themselves believe in a... in a power greater than themselves."

  "Their belief would not accord with ours, Rabbi, but I do not think it evil."

  "What is this... this belief?"

  "They call it the 'leveling drift.' They see it genetically and as instinct. Brilliant parents are likely to have children closer to the average, for example."

  "A drift? This is a belief?"

  "That is why they avoid prominence. They are advisors, even king-makers on occasion, but they do not want to be in the target foreground. "

  "This drift... do they believe there is a Drift-Maker?"

  "They don't assume there is. Only that there is this observable movement."

  "So what do they do in this drift?"

  "They take precautions."

  "In the presence of Satan, I should think so!"

  "They don't oppose the current but seem only to move across it, making it work for them, using the back eddies."

  "Oyyy!"

  "Ancient sailing masters understood this quite well, Rabbi. The Sisterhood has what amounts to current charts telling them places to avoid and where to make their greatest efforts."

  Again, he waved the scroll. "This is no current chart."

  "You misinterpret, Rabbi. They know the fallacies about overwhelming machines." She glanced at the laboring machinery. "They see us in currents machinery cannot breast."

  "These little wisdoms. I do not know, daughter. Meddling in politics, I accept. But in holy matters..."

  "A leveling drift, Rabbi. Mass influence on brilliant innovators who move out of the pack and produce new things. Even when the new helps us, the drift catches the innovator."

  "Who is to say what helps, Rebecca?"

  "I merely tell what they believe. They see taxation as evidence of the drift, taking away free energy that might create more new things. A sensitized person detects it, they say."

  "And these... these Honored Matres?"

  "They fit the pattern. Power-closed government intent on making all potential challengers ineffectual. Screen out the bright ones. Blunt intelligence."

  A tiny beeping sound came from the machinery area. Joshua was past them before they could stand. He bent over the screen that revealed events on the surface.

  "They are back," he said. "See! They dig in the ashes directly above us."

  "Have they found us?" The Rabbi sounded almost relieved.

  Joshua watched the screen.

  Rebecca placed her head beside his, studying the diggers - ten men with that dreaming look in their eyes of those who had been bonded to Honored Matres.

  "They only dig at random," Rebecca said, straightening.

  "You're sure?" Joshua stood and looked into her face, seeking secret confirmation.

  Any Bene Gesserit could see it.

  "Look for yourself." She gestured at the screen. "They are leaving. They go to the sligsty now."

  "Where they belong," the Rabbi muttered.

  ***

  Making workable choices occurs in a crucible of informative mistakes. Thus Intelligence accepts fallibility. And when absolute (infallible) choices are not known, Intelligence takes chances with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary.

  - Darwi Odrade

  Mother Superior did not just board an outgoing lighter and transfer to any convenient no-ship. There were plans, arrangements, strategies - contingencies on contingencies.

  It took eight hectic days. Timing with Teg had to be precise. Consultations with Murbella ate up hours. Murbella had to know what she faced.

  Discover their Achilles heel, Murbella, and you have it all. Stay on the observation ship when Teg attacks but watch carefully.

  Odrade took detailed advice from all who could help. Then came the vital-signs implant with encrypting to transmit her secret observations. A no-ship and long-range lighter had to be refitted, crew chosen by Teg.

  Bellonda muttered and growled until Odrade intervened.

  "You are distracting me! Is that your intent? Weaken me?" It was late morning four days before departure and they were temporarily alone in the workroom. Weather clear but unseasonably cold and air an ochre tinge from a dust storm that had blown across Central in the night.

  "Convocation was a mistake!" Bellonda needed her parting shot.

  Odrade found herself snapping back at Bellonda, who had become a bit too caustic. "Necessary!"

  "To you, maybe! Saying goodbye to your family. Now, you leave us here taking in each other's laundry."

  "Did you just come up here to complain about the Convocation?"

  "I don't like your latest comments on Honored Matres! You should have consulted us before spreading -"

  "They're parasites, Bell! It's time we made that clear: a known weakness. And what does a body do when afflicted by parasites?" Odrade delivered this with a broad grin.

  "Dar, when you assume this... this pseudo-humorous pose, I would like to throttle you!"

  "Would you smile as you did it, Bell?"

  "Damn you, Dar! One of these days..."

  "We don't have many more days together, Bell, an
d that's what's eating you. Answer my question."

  "Answer it yourself!"

  "The body welcomes periodic delousing. Even addicts dream of freedom."

  "Ahhhhh." A Mentat peered from Bellonda's eyes. "You think addiction to Honored Matres could be made painful?"

  "In spite of your dreadful inability at humor, you still can function."

  A cruel smile flexed Bellonda's mouth.

  "I've managed to amuse you," Odrade said.

  "Let me discuss this with Tam. She has a better head for strategy. Although... Sharing softened her."

  When Bellonda had gone, Odrade leaned back and laughed quietly. Softened! "Don't go soft tomorrow, Dar, when you Share." The Mentat stumbles on logic and misses the heart. She sees the process and worries about failure. What do we do if... We open windows, Bell, and let in common sense. Even hilarity. Puts more serious matters in perspective. Poor Bell, my flawed Sister. Always something to occupy your nervousness.

  Odrade left Central on departure morning much entangled in her thinking - an introspective mood, worried by what she had learned Sharing with Murbella and Sheeana.

  I'm being self-indulgent.

  That offered no relief. Her thoughts were framed by Other Memory and almost cynical fatalism.

  Queen bees swarming?

  That had been suggested of Honored Matres.

  But Sheeana? And Tam approves?

  This carried more in it than a Scattering.

  I cannot follow into your wild place, Sheeana. My task is to produce order. I cannot risk what you have dared. There are different kinds of artistry. Yours repels me.

  Absorbing lifetimes of Murbella's Other Memory helped. Murbella's knowledge was a powerful leverage on Honored Matres but full of disturbing nuances.

  Not hypnotrance. They use cellular induction, a byproduct of their damned T-probes! Unconscious compulsion! How tempting to use it for ourselves. But this is where Honored Matres are most vulnerable - enormous unconsciousness content locked in by their own decisions. Murbella's key only emphasizes its danger to us.