"Duncan?" Tears in her eyes.
"Any help he can give, he will be permitted to give."
Murbella looked up the rows of seats and, for a brief moment, her gaze locked with Idaho's. He lifted slightly but Tamalane's hand on his shoulder restrained him.
They may kill my beloved! Idaho thought. Must I sit here and just watch it happen? But Odrade had said he would be permitted to help. There is no stopping this now. I must trust Dar. But, gods below! She does not know the depth of my grief, if... if... He closed his eyes.
"Bell." Odrade's voice carried a sense of casting off, a knife edge in its brittleness.
Bellonda took Murbella's arm and helped her onto the table. It bounced slightly adjusting to the weight.
This is the real chute, Murbella thought.
She had only the remotest sense of straps being fastened around her, of purposeful movement beside her.
"This is the usual routine," Odrade said.
Routine? Murbella had hated the routines of becoming Bene Gesserit, all of that study, listening and reacting to Proctors. She had particularly loathed the necessity to refine reactions she had believed adequate but there could be no sloughing off under those watchful eyes.
Adequate! What a dangerous word.
This recognition had been precisely what they sought. Precisely the leverage their acolyte required.
If you loathe it, do it better. Use your loathing as guidance; home in on exactly what you need.
The fact that her teachers saw so directly into her behavior, what a marvelous thing! She wanted that ability. Oh, how she wanted it!
I must excel in this.
It was a thing any Honored Matre might envy. She saw herself abruptly with a form of doubled vision: both Bene Gesserit and Honored Matre. A daunting perception.
A hand touched her cheek, moved her head and went away.
Responsibility. I am about to learn what they mean by "a new sense of history."
The Bene Gesserit view of history fascinated her. How did they look at multiple pasts? Was it something immersed in a grander scheme? The temptation to become one of them had been overwhelming.
This is the moment when I learn.
She saw an oral syringe swing into position above her mouth. Bellonda's hand moved it.
"We carry our grail in our heads," Odrade had said. "Carry this grail gently if it comes into your possession."
The syringe touched her lips. Murbella closed her eyes but felt fingers open her mouth. Cold metal touched her teeth. Odrade's remembered voice was with her.
Avoid excesses. Overcorrect and you always have a fine mess on your hands, the necessity to make larger and larger corrections. Oscillation. Fanatics are marvelous creators of oscillation.
"Our grail. It has linearity because each Reverend Mother carries the same determination. We will perpetuate this together."
Bitter liquid gushed into her mouth. Murbella swallowed convulsively. She felt fire flow down her throat into her stomach. No pain except the burning. She wondered if this could be the extent of it. Her stomach felt merely warm now.
Slowly, so slowly she was several heartbeats recognizing it, the warmth flowed outward. When it reached the tips of her fingers she felt her body convulse. Her back arched off the padded table. Something soft but firm replaced the syringe in her mouth.
Voices. She heard them and knew people were speaking but could not distinguish words.
As she concentrated on the voices she became aware she had lost touch with her body. Somewhere, flesh writhed and there was pain but she was removed from it.
A hand touched a hand and clasped it firmly. She recognized Duncan's touch, and abruptly there was her body and agony. Her lungs pained when she exhaled. Not when she inhaled. Then they felt flat and never full enough. Her sense of presence in living flesh became a thin thread that wound through many presences. She sensed others all around her, far too many people for the tiny amphitheater.
Another human being floated into view. Murbella felt herself to be in a factory shuttle... in space. The shuttle was primitive. Too many manual controls. Too many blinking lights. A woman at the controls, small and untidy with the sweat of her labors. She had long brown hair and it had been bound up in a chignon from which paler strands escaped to hang around her narrow cheeks. She wore a single garment, a short dress of brilliant reds, blues, and greens.
Machinery.
There was awareness of monstrous machinery just beyond this immediate space. The woman's dress contrasted severely with the drab and dragging sense of machinery. She spoke but her lips did not move. "Listen, you! When it comes time for you to take over these controls, don't become a destroyer. I'm here to help you avoid the destroyers. Do you know that?"
Murbella tried to speak but had no voice.
"Don't try so hard, girl!" the woman said. "I hear you."
Murbella tried to shift her attention away from the woman.
Where is this place?
One operator, a giant warehouse... factory... everything automated... webs of feedback lines centered into this tiny space with its complex controls.
Thinking to whisper, Murbella asked: "Who are you?" and heard her own voice roar. Agony in her ears!
"Not so loud! I'm your guide of the mohalata, the one who steers you clear of the destroyers."
Dur protect me! Murbella thought. This is no place; it's me!
On that thought, the control room vanished. She was a migrant in the void, condemned never to be quiet, never to find a moment of sanctuary. Everything but her own fleeting thoughts became immaterial. She had no substance, only a wispy adherence that she recognized as consciousness.
I have constructed myself out of fog.
Other Memory came, bits and pieces of experiences she knew were not her own. Faces leered at her and demanded her attention but the woman at the shuttle controls pulled her away. Murbella recognized necessities but could not put them into coherent form.