Dune

No sweeteners will cloak some forms of bitterness. If it tastes bitter, spit it out. That’s what our earliest ancestors did.

—THE CODA

Murbella found herself arising in the night to continue a dream although quite awake and aware of her surroundings: Duncan asleep beside her, faint ticking of machinery, the chronoprojection on the ceiling. She insisted on Duncan’s presence at night lately, fearful when alone. He blamed the fourth pregnancy.

She sat on the edge of the bed. The room was ghostly in the dim light of the chrono. Dream images persisted.

Duncan grumbled and rolled toward her. An outflung arm draped itself across her legs.

She felt that this mental intrusion was not dreamstuff but it had some of those characteristics. Bene Gesserit teachings did this. Them and their damned suggestions about Scytale and . . . and everything! They precipitated motion she could not control.

Tonight, she was lost in an insane world of words. The cause was clear. Bellonda that morning had learned Murbella spoke nine languages and had aimed the suspicious acolyte down a mental path called “Linguistic Heritage.” But Bell’s influence on this nighttime madness provided no escape.

Nightmare. She was a creature of microscopic size trapped in an enormous echoing place labeled in giant letters wherever she turned: “Data Reservoir.” Animated words with grimacing jaws and fearsome tentacles surrounded her.

Predatory beasts and she was their prey!

Awake and knowing she sat on the edge of her bed with Duncan’s arm on her legs, she still saw the beasts. They herded her backward. She knew she was going backward although her body did not move. They pressed her toward a terrible disaster she could not see. Her head would not turn! Not only did she see these creatures (they hid parts of her sleeping chamber) but she heard them in a cacophony of her nine languages.

They will tear me apart!

Although she could not turn, she sensed what lay behind her: more teeth and claws. Threat all around! If they cornered her, they would pounce and she was doomed.

Done for. Dead. Victim. Torture-captive. Fair game.

Despair filled her. Why would Duncan not awaken and save her? His arm was a lead weight, part of the force holding her and allowing these creatures to herd her into their bizarre trap. She trembled. Perspiration poured from her body. Awful words! They united into giant combinations. A creature with knife-fanged mouth came directly toward her and she saw more words in the gaping blackness between its jaws.

See above.

Murbella began to laugh. She had no control of it. See above. Done for. Dead. Victim . . .

The laughter awakened Duncan. He sat up, activated a low glowglobe, and stared at her. How tousled he looked after their earlier sexual collision.

His expression hovered between amusement and upset at being awakened. “Why are you laughing?”

Laughter subsided in gasps. Her sides ached. She was afraid his tentative smile would ignite a new spasm. “Oh . . . oh! Duncan! Sexual collision!”

He knew this was their mutual term for the addiction that bound them but why would it make her laugh?

His puzzled expression struck her as ludicrous.

Between gasps, she said: “Two more words.” And she had to clamp her mouth closed to prevent another outburst.

“What?”

His voice was the funniest thing she had ever heard. She thrust a hand at him and shook her head. “Ohhh . . . ohhh . . .”

“Murbella, what’s wrong with you?”

She could only continue shaking her head.

He tried a tentative smile. It gentled her and she leaned against him. “No!” When his right hand wandered. “I just want to be close.”

“Look what time it is.” He lifted his chin toward the ceiling projection. “Almost three.”

“It was so funny, Duncan.”

“So tell me about it.”

“When I catch my breath.”

He eased her down onto her pillow. “We’re like a damned old married couple. Funny stories in the middle of the night.”

“No, darling, we’re different.”

“A question of degree, nothing else.”

“Quality,” she insisted.

“What was so funny?”

She recounted her nightmare and Bellonda’s influence.

“Zensunni. Very ancient technique. The Sisters use it to rid you of trauma connections. Words that ignite unconscious responses.”

Fear returned.

“Murbella, why are you trembling?”

“Honored Matre teachers warned us terrible things would happen if we fell into Zensunni hands.”

“Bullcrap! I went through the same thing as a Mentat.”

His words conjured another dream fragment. A beast with two heads. Both mouths open. Words in there. On the left, “One word,” and on the right, “leads to another.”

Mirth displaced fear. It subsided without laughter. “Duncan!”

“Mmmmmmm.” Mentat distance in the sound.

“Bell said the Bene Gesserit use words as weapons—Voice. ‘Tools of control,’ she called them.”

“A lesson you must learn almost as instinct. They’ll never trust you into the deeper training until you learn this.”

And I won’t trust you afterward.

She rolled away from him and looked at the comeyes glittering in the ceiling around the time projection.

I’m still on probation.

She was aware her teachers discussed her privately. Conversations were choked off when she approached. They stared at her in their special way, as though she were an interesting specimen.

Bellonda’s voice cluttered her mind.

Nightmare tendrils. Midmorning then and the sweat of her own exertions a stink in her nostrils. Probationer a dutiful three paces from Reverend Mother. Bell’s voice:

“Never be an expert. That locks you up tight.”

All of this because I asked if there were no words to guide the Bene Gesserit.

“Duncan, why do they mix mental and physical teaching?”

“Mind and body reinforce each other.” Sleepy. Damn him! He’s going back to sleep.

She shook Duncan’s shoulder. “If words are so damned unimportant, why do they talk about disciplines so much?”

“Patterns,” he mumbled. “Dirty word.”

“What?” She shook him more roughly.

He turned onto his back, moving his lips, then: “Discipline equals pattern equals bad way to go. They say we’re all natural pattern creators . . . means ‘order’ to them, I think.”

“Why is that so bad?”

“Gives others handle to destroy us or traps us in . . . in things we won’t change.”

“You’re wrong about mind and body.”

“Hmmmmph?”

“It’s pressures locking one to the other.”

“Isn’t that what I said? Hey! Are we going to talk or sleep or what?”

“No more ‘or what.’ Not tonight.”

A deep sigh lifted his chest.

“They’re not out to improve my health,” she said.

“Nobody said they were.”

“That comes later, after the Agony.” She knew he hated reminders of that deadly trial but there was no avoiding it. The prospect filled her mind.

“All right!” He sat up, punched his pillow into shape and leaned back against it to study her. “What’s up?”

“They’re so damned clever with their word-weapons! She brought Teg to you and said you were fully responsible for him.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“He thinks of you as his father.”

“Not really.”

“No, but . . . did you think that about the Bashar?”

“When he restored my memories? Yeah.”

“You’re a pair of intellectual orphans, always looking for parents who aren’t there. He hasn’t the faintest idea of how much you will hurt him.”

“That tends to split up the family.”

“So you hate the Bashar in him and you’re glad you’ll hurt him.”

“Didn’t say that.”

“Why is he so important?”

“The Bashar? Military genius. Always doing the unexpected. Confounds his foes by appearing where they never expect him to be.”

“Can’t anyone do that?”

“Not the way he does it. He invents tactics and strategies. Just like that!” Snapping his fingers.

“More violence. Just like Honored Matres.”

“Not always. Bashar had a reputation for winning without battle.”

“I’ve seen the histories.”

“Don’t trust them.”

“But you just said . . .”

“Histories focus on confrontations. Some truth in that but it hides more persistent things that go on in spite of upheavals.”

“Persistent things?”

“What history touches the woman in the rice paddy driving her water buffalo ahead of her plow while her husband is off somewhere, most likely a conscript, carrying a weapon?”

“Why is that persistent and more important than . . .”

“Her babies at home need food. Man’s away on this perennial madness? Someone has to do the plowing. She’s a true image of human persistence.”

“You sound so bitter . . . I find that odd.”

“Considering my military history?”

“That, yes, the Bene Gesserit emphasis on . . . on their Bashar and elite troops and . . .”

“You think they’re just more self-important people going on about their self-important violence? They’ll ride right over the woman with her plow?”

“Why not?”

“Because very little escapes them. The violent ones ride past the plowing woman and seldom see they have touched basic reality. A Bene Gesserit would never miss such a thing.”

“Again, why not?”

“The self-important have limited vision because they ride a death-reality. Woman and plow are life-reality. Without life-reality there’d be no humankind. My Tyrant saw this. The Sisters bless him for it even while they curse him.”

“So you’re a willing participant in their dream.”

“I guess I am.” He sounded surprised.

“And you’re being completely honest with Teg?”

“He asks, I give him candid answers. I don’t believe in doing violence to curiosity.”

“And you have full responsibility for him?”

“That isn’t exactly what she said.”

“Ahhhhh, my love. Not exactly what she said. You call Bell hypocrite and don’t include Odrade. Duncan, if you only knew . . .”

“As long as we’re ignoring the comeyes, spit it out!”

“Lies, cheating, vicious . . .”

“Hey! The Bene Gesserit?”

“They have that hoary old excuse: Sister A does it so if I do it that’s not so bad. Two crimes cancel each other.”

“What crimes?”

She hesitated. Should I tell him? No. But he expects some answer. “Bell’s delighted the roles are reversed between you and Teg! She’s looking forward to his pain.”

“Maybe we should disappoint her.” He knew it was a mistake to say this as soon as it was out. Too soon.

“Poetic justice!” Murbella was delighted.

Divert them! “They aren’t interested in justice. Fairness, yes. They have this homily: ‘Those against whom judgment is passed must accept the fairness of it.’”

“So they condition you to accept their judgment.”

“There are loopholes in any system.”

“You know, darling, acolytes learn things.”

“That’s why they’re acolytes.”

“I mean we talk to one another.”

“We? You’re an acolyte? You’re a proselyte!”

“Whatever I am, I’ve heard stories. Your Teg may not be what he seems.”

“Acolyte gossip.”

“There are stories out of Gammu, Duncan.”

He stared at her. Gammu? He could never think of it by any name other than the original: Giedi Prime. Harkonnen hell hole.

She took his silence as an invitation to continue. “They say Teg moved faster than the eye could see, that he . . .”

“Probably started those stories himself.”

“Some Sisters don’t discount them. They’re taking a wait-and-see attitude. They want precautions.”

“Haven’t you learned anything about Teg from your precious histories? It would be typical of him to start such rumors. Make people cautious.”

“But remember I was on Gammu then. Honored Matres were very upset. Enraged. Something went wrong.”

“Sure. Teg did the unexpected. Surprised them. Stole one of their no-ships.” He patted the wall beside him. “This one.”

“The Sisterhood has its forbidden ground, Duncan. They’re always telling me to wait for the Agony. All will become clear! Damn them!”

“Sounds like they’re preparing you for the Missionaria teaching. Engineer religions for specific purposes and selected populations.”

“You don’t see anything wrong in that?”

“Morality. I don’t argue that with Reverend Mothers.”

“Why not?”

“Religions founder on that rock. BGs don’t founder.”

Duncan, if you only knew their morality! “It annoys them that you know so much about them.”

“Bell only wanted to kill me because of it.”

“You don’t think Odrade is just as bad?”

“What a question!” Odrade? A terrifying woman if you let yourself dwell on her abilities. Atreides, for all that. I’ve known Atreides and Atreides. This one is Bene Gesserit first. Teg’s the Atreides ideal.

“Odrade told me she trusts your loyalty to the Atreides.”

“I’m loyal to Atreides honor, Murbella.” And I make my own moral decisions—about the Sisterhood, about this child they’ve thrust into my care, about Sheeana and . . . and about my beloved.

Murbella bent close to him, breast brushing his arm, and whispered in his ear. “Sometimes, I could kill any of them within my reach!”

Does she think they can’t hear? He sat upright, dragging her with him. “What set you off?”

“She wants me to work on Scytale.”

Work on. Honored Matre euphemism. Well, why not? She “worked on” plenty of men before she ran afoul of me. But he had an antique husband’s reaction. Not only that . . . Scytale? A damned Tleilaxu?

“Mother Superior?” He had to be sure.

“The one, the only.” Almost lighthearted now that she had unburdened herself.

“What’s your reaction?”

“She says it was your idea.”

“My . . . No way! I suggested we could try to pry information out of him but . . .”

“She says it’s an ordinary thing for the Bene Gesserit just as it is with Honored Matres. Go breed with this one. Seduce that one. All in a day’s work.”

“I asked for your reaction.”

“Revolted.”

“Why?” Knowing your background . . .

“It’s you I love, Duncan and . . . and my body is . . . is to give you pleasure . . . just as you . . .”

“We’re an old married couple and the witches are trying to pry us apart.”

His words ignited in him a clear vision of Lady Jessica, lover of his long-dead Duke and mother of Maud’Dib. I loved her. She didn’t love me but . . . The look he saw now in Murbella’s eyes, he had seen Jessica look at the Duke that way: blind, unswerving love. The thing the Bene Gesserit distrusted. Jessica had been softer than Murbella. Hard to the core, though. And Odrade . . . she was hard at the beginning. Plasteel all the way.

Then what of the times when he had suspected her of sharing human emotions? The way she spoke of the Bashar when they learned the old man was dead on Dune.

“He was my father, you know.”

Murbella dragged him out of reverie. “You may share their dream, whatever that is, but . . .”

“Grow up, humans!”

“What?”

“That’s their dream. Start acting like adults and not like angry children in a schoolyard.”

“Mama knows best?”

“Yes . . . I believe she does.”

“Is that how you really see them? Even when you call them witches?”

“It’s a good word. Witches do mysterious things.”

“You don’t believe it’s the long and severe training plus the spice and the Agony?”

“What’s belief have to do with it? Unknowns create their own mystique.”

“But you don’t think they trick people into doing what they want?”

“Sure they do!”

“Words as weapons, Voice, Imprinters . . .”

“None as beautiful as you.”

“What’s beauty, Duncan?”

“There’re styles in beauty, sure.”

“Exactly what she says. ‘Styles based on procreative roots buried so deeply in our racial psyche we dare not remove them.’ So they’ve thought of meddling there, Duncan.”

“And they might dare anything?”

“She says, ‘We won’t distort our progeny into what we judge to be non-human.’ They judge, they condemn.”

He thought of the alien figures in his vision. Face Dancers. And he asked: “Like the amoral Tleilaxu? Amoral—not human.”

“I can almost hear the gears whirling in Odrade’s head. She and her Sisters—they watch, they listen, they tailor every response, everything calculated.”

Is that what you want, my darling? He felt trapped. She was right and she was wrong. Ends justifying means? How could he justify losing Murbella?

“You think them amoral?” he asked.

It was as though she did not hear. “Always asking themselves what to say next to get the desired response.”

“What response?” Couldn’t she hear his pain?

“You never know until too late!” She turned and looked at him. “Exactly like Honored Matres. Do you know how Honored Matres trapped me?”

He could not suppress awareness of how avidly the watchdogs would hang on Murbella’s next words.

“I was picked off the streets after an Honored Matre sweep. I think the whole sweep was because of me. My mother was a great beauty but she was too old for them.”

“A sweep?” The watchdogs would want me to ask.

“They go through an area and people disappear. No bodies, nothing. Whole families vanish. It’s explained as punishment because people plot against them.”

“How old were you?”

“Three . . . maybe four. I was playing with friends in an open place under trees. Suddenly, there was a lot of noise and shouting. We hid in a hole behind some rocks.”

He was caught in a vision of this drama.

“The ground shook.” Her gaze went inward with the memory. “Explosions. After a while it was quiet and we peeked out. The whole corner where my house had been was a hole.”

“You were orphaned?”

“I remember my parents. He was a big, robust fellow. I think my mother was a servant somewhere. They wore uniforms for such jobs and I remember her in uniform.”

“How can you be sure your parents were killed?”

“The sweep is all I know for sure but they’re always the same. There was screaming and people running about. We were terrified.”

“Why do you think the sweep was because of you?”

“They do that sort of thing.”

They. What a victory the watchers would count in that one word.

Murbella was still deep in memory. “I think my father refused to succumb to an Honored Matre. That was always considered dangerous. Big, handsome man . . . strong.”

“So you hate them?”

“Why?” Really surprised by his question. “Without that, I would never have been an Honored Matre.”

Her callousness shocked him. “So it was worth anything!”

“Love, do you resent whatever brought me to your side?”

Touché! “But don’t you wish it had happened some other way?”

“It happened.”

What utter fatalism. He had never suspected this in her. Was it Honored Matre conditioning or something the Bene Gesserit did?

“You were just a valuable addition to their stables.”

“Right. Enticers, they called us. We recruited valuable males.”

“And you did.”

“I repaid their investment many times over.”

“Do you realize how the Sisters will interpret this?”

“Don’t make a big thing of it.”

“So you’re ready to work on Scytale?”

“I didn’t say that. Honored Matres manipulated me without my consent. The Sisters need me and want to use me the same way. My price may be too high.”

He was a moment speaking past a dry throat. “Price?”

She glared at him. “You, you’re just part of my price. No working on Scytale. And more of their famous candor about why they need me!”

“Careful, love. They might tell you.”

She turned an almost Bene Gesserit stare toward him. “How could you restore Teg’s memories without pain?”

Damn! And just when he thought they were free of that slip. No escape. He could see in her eyes that she guessed.

Murbella confirmed this. “Since I would not agree, I’m sure you’ve discussed it with Sheeana.”

He could only nod. His Murbella had gone farther into the Sisterhood than he suspected. And she knew how his multiple ghola memories had been restored by her imprinting. He suddenly saw her as a Reverend Mother and wanted to cry out against it.

“How does this make you different from Odrade?” she asked.

“Sheeana was trained as an Imprinter.” His words felt empty even as he spoke.

“That’s different from my training?” Accusing.

Anger flared in him. “You’d prefer the pain? Like Bell?”

“You’d prefer the defeat of the Bene Gesserit?” Voice milky soft.

He heard the distance in her tone, as though she already had retreated into the cold observational stance of the Sisterhood. They were freezing his lovely Murbella! There was still that vitality in her, though. It tore at him. She gave off an aura of health, especially in pregnancy. Vigor and boundless enjoyment of life. It glowed in her. The Sisters would take that and dampen it.

She became quiet under his watchful stare.

Desperate, he wondered what he could do.

“I had hoped we were being more open with each other lately,” she said. Another Bene Gesserit probe.

“I disagree with many of their actions but I don’t distrust their motives,” he said.

“I’ll know their motives if I live through the Agony.”

He went very still, caught in realization that she might not survive. Life without Murbella? Yawning emptiness deeper than anything he had ever imagined. Nothing in his many lives compared with it. Without conscious volition, he reached out and caressed her back. Skin so soft and yet resilient.

“I love you too much, Murbella. That’s my Agony.”

She trembled under his touch.

He found himself wallowing in sentimentality, building an image of grief until he recalled a Mentat teacher’s words about “emotional binges.”

“The difference between sentiment and sentimentality is easy to see. When you avoid killing somebody’s pet on the glazeway, that’s sentiment. If you swerve to avoid the pet and that causes you to kill pedestrians, that is sentimentality.”

She took his caressing hand and pressed it against her lips.

“Words plus body, more than either,” he whispered.

His words plunged her back into nightmare but now she went with a vengeance, aware of words as tools. She was filled with special relish for the experience, willingness to laugh at herself.

As she exorcised the nightmare, it occurred to her that she had never seen an Honored Matre laugh at herself.

Holding his hand, she stared down at Duncan. Mentat flickering of his eyelids. Did he realize what she had just experienced? Freedom! It no longer was a question of how she had been confined and driven into inevitable channels by her past. For the first time since accepting the possiblity that she could become a Reverend Mother, she glimpsed what it might mean. She felt awe and shock.

Nothing more important than the Sisterhood?

They spoke of an oath, something more mysterious than the Proctor’s words at the acolyte initiation.

My oath to Honored Matres was only words. An oath to the Bene Gesserit can be no more.

She remembered Bellonda growling that diplomats were chosen for ability to lie. “Would you be another diplomat, Murbella?”

It was not that oaths were made to be broken. How childish! Schoolyard threat: “If you break your word, I’ll break mine! Nyaa, nyaa, nyaaaaa!”

Futile to worry about oaths. Far more important to find that place in herself where freedom lived. It was a place where something always listened.

Cupping Duncan’s hand against her lips, she whispered: “They listen. Oh, how they listen.”