ChapterHouse: Dune

"So you think."

"And I trust you!"

"Listen to me! We are servants of the Bene Gesserit. Reverend Mothers did not build their order on trust."

"Shouldn't I trust Mother... Superior?"

"Within limits you will learn and appreciate. For now, I warn you the Bene Gesserit work under a system of organized distrust. Have they taught you about democracy?"

"Yes, sir. That's where you vote for -"

"That's where you distrust anyone with power over you! The Sisters know it well. Don't trust too much."

"Then I should not trust you, either?"

"The only trust you can place in me is that I will do my best to restore your original memories."

"Then I don't care how much it hurts." He looked up at the comeyes, knowledge of their purpose in his expression. "Do they mind that you say these things about them?"

"Their feelings don't concern a Mentat except as data."

"Does that mean fact?"

"Facts are fragile. A Mentat can get tangled in them. Too much reliable data. It's like diplomacy. You need a few good lies to get at your projections."

"I'm... confused." He used the word hesitantly, not sure it was what he meant.

"I said that once to Mother Superior. She said: 'I've been behaving badly.' "

"You're not supposed to... confuse me?"

"Unless it teaches." And when Teg still looked puzzled, Idaho said: "Let me tell you a story. "

Teg immediately sat on the floor, an action revealing that Odrade often used the same technique. Good. Teg already was receptive.

"In one of my lives I had a dog that hated clams," Idaho said.

"I've had clams. They come from the Great Sea."

"Yes, well, my dog hated clams because one of them had the temerity to spit in his eye. That stings. But even worse, it was an i

"What'd your dog do?" Leaning forward, chin on fist.

"He dug up the offender and brought it to me." Idaho gri

Teg laughed and clapped his hands.

"But look at it from the dog's viewpoint. Go after the spitter! Then - glorious reward: Master is pleased."

"Did your dog dig more clams?"

"Every time we went to the beach. He went growling after spitters and Master took them away never to be seen again except as empty shells with bits of meat still clinging to the insides."

"You ate them."

"See it as the dog did. Spitters get their just punishment. He has a way to rid his world of offensive things and Master is pleased with him."

Teg demonstrated his brightness. "Do the Sisters think of us as dogs?"

"In a way. Never forget it. When you get back to your rooms, look up 'lese majeste.' It helps place our relationship to our Masters."

Teg looked up at the comeyes and back to Idaho but said nothing.

Idaho lifted his attention to the door behind Teg and said: "That story was for you, too."

Teg jumped to his feet, turning and expecting to see Mother Superior. But it was only Murbella.

She was leaning against the wall near the door.

"Bell won't like you talking about the Sisterhood that way," she said.

"Odrade told me I have a free hand." He looked at Teg. "We've wasted enough time on stories! Let me see if your body has learned anything."

An odd feeling of excitement had come over Murbella as she entered the training area and saw Duncan with the child. She watched for a time, aware that she was seeing him in a new and almost Bene Gesserit light. Mother Superior's briefing came out in Duncan's candor with Teg. Extremely odd sensation, this new awareness, as though she had come a full step away from her former associates. The feeling was poignant with loss.

Murbella found herself missing strange things in her former life. Not the hunting in the streets, seeking new males to captivate and bring under Honored Matre control. The powers that came from creating sexual addicts had lost their savor under Bene Gesserit teaching and her experiences with Duncan. She admitted to missing one element of that power, though: the sense of belonging to a force nothing could stop.

It was both abstract and specific. Not the recurrent conquests but the expectation of inevitable victory that came in part from the drug she shared with Honored Matre Sisters. As the need waned in the shift to melange, she saw the old addiction from a different perspective. Bene Gesserit chemists, tracing the adrenaline substitute from samples of her blood, held it ready if she required it. She knew she did not. Another withdrawal plagued her. Not the captivated males but the flow of them. Something within her said this was gone forever. She would never re-experience it. New knowledge had changed her past.

She had prowled the corridors between her quarters and the practice floor this morning, wanting to watch Duncan with the child, afraid her presence might interfere. This prowling was a thing she often did these days after the more strenuous of her morning lessons with a Reverend Mother teacher. Thoughts of Honored Matres were much with her at these times.

She could not escape this feeling of loss. It was an emptiness such that she wondered if anything could possibly fill it. The sensation was worse than that of growing old. Growing old as an Honored Matre had offered its compensations. Powers gathered in that Sisterhood had a tendency to grow rapidly with age. Not that. It was an absolute loss.

I have been defeated.

Honored Matres never contemplated defeat. Murbella felt herself forced to it. She knew Honored Matres were sometimes slain by enemies. Those enemies always paid. It was the law: whole planets blackened to get one offender.

Murbella knew Honored Matres hunted for Chapterhouse. As a matter of former loyalties, she was aware she should be assisting those hunters. The poignancy of her personal defeat lay in the fact that she did not want the Bene Gesserit to pay the remembered price.

The Bene Gesserit are too valuable.

They were infinitely valuable to Honored Matres. Murbella doubted that any other Honored Matre even suspected this.

Vanity.

That was the judgment she attached to her former Sisters. And to myself as I was. A terrible pride. It had grown out of being subjugated so many generations before they gained their own ascendancy. Murbella had tried to convey this to Odrade, recounting from history taught by Honored Matres.

"The slave makes an awful master," Odrade said.

There was an Honored Matre pattern, Murbella realized. She had accepted it once but now rejected it and could not give all of her reasons for this change.

I have grown out of those things. They would be childish to me now.

Duncan once more had stopped the practice session. Perspiration poured from both teacher and student. They stood panting, regaining breath, an odd exchange of looks between them. Conspiracy? The child looked strangely mature.

Murbella recalled Odrade's comment: "Maturity imposes its own behavior. One of our lessons - make those imperatives available to consciousness. Modify instincts."

They have modified me and will do so even more.

She could see the same thing at work in Duncan's behavior with the ghola-child.

"This is an activity that creates many stresses in the societies we influence," Odrade had said. "That forces us to constant adjustments."

But how can they adjust to my former Sisters?

Odrade revealed characteristic sangfroid when braced with this question.

"We face major adjustments because of our past activities. It was the same during the reign of the Tyrant."

Adjustments?

Duncan was talking to the child. Murbella moved closer to listen.

"You've been exposed to the story of Muad'Dib? Good. You're an Atreides and that includes flaws."

"Does that mean mistakes, sir?"