"Sometimes out of mere pique they may eliminate someone just as an example to others." Murbella's words and they forced the question: Are they making an example of us? "See! This is what happens to those who dare oppose us!"
Murbella had said, "You've aroused them. Once aroused, they will not desist until they have destroyed you."
Get the outsiders!
Singularly direct. A weakness in them if we play it right, Odrade thought.
Xenophobia carried to a ridiculous extreme?
Quite possibly.
Odrade pounded a fist on her worktable, aware that the action would be seen and recorded by Sisters who kept constant watch on Mother Superior's behavior. She spoke aloud then for the omnipresent comeyes and watchdog Sisters behind them.
"We will not sit and wait in defensive enclaves! We've become as fat as Bellonda (and let her fret over that!) thinking we've created an untouchable society and enduring structures."
Odrade swept her gaze around the familiar room.
"This place is one of our weaknesses!"
She took her seat behind the worktable thinking (of all things!) about architecture and community planning. Well, that was a Mother Superior's right!
Sisterhood communities seldom grew at random. Even when they took over existing structures (as they had with the old Harkonnen Keep on Gammu) they did so with rebuilding plans. They wanted pneumotubes to shunt small packages and messages. Lightlines and hardray projectors to transmit encrypted words. They considered themselves masters at safeguarding communications. Acolyte and Reverend Mother couriers (committed to self-destruction rather than betray their superiors) carried the more important messages.
She could visualize it out there beyond her window and beyond this planet - her web, superbly organized and manned, each Bene Gesserit an extension of the others. Where Sisterhood survival was concerned, there was an untouchable core of loyalty. Backsliders there might be, some spectacular (as the Lady Jessica, grandmother of the Tyrant), but they slid only so far. Most upsets were temporary.
And all of that was a Bene Gesserit pattern. A weakness.
Odrade admitted a deep agreement with Bellonda's fears. But I'll be damned if I allow such things to depress all joy of living! That would be giving in to the very thing those rampaging Honored Matres wanted.
"It's our strengths the hunters want," Odrade said, looking up at the ceiling comeyes. Like ancient savages eating the hearts of enemies. Well... we will give them something to eat all right! And they will not know until too late that they cannot digest it!
Except for preliminary teachings tailored to acolytes and postulants, the Sisterhood did not go in much for admonitory sayings, but Odrade had her own private watchwords: "Someone has to do the plowing." She smiled to herself as she bent to her work much refreshed. This room, this Sisterhood, these were her garden and there were weeds to be removed, seeds to plant. And fertilizer. Mustn't forget the fertilizer.
When I set out to lead humanity along my Golden Path I promised a lesson their bones would remember. I know a profound pattern humans deny with words even while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and quiet, conditions they call peace. Even as they speak, they create seeds of turmoil and violence.
- Leto II, the God Emperor
So she calls me Spider Queen!
Great Honored Matre leaned back in a heavy chair set high on a dais. Her withered breast shook with silent chuckles. She knows what will happen when I get her in my web! Suck her dry, that's what I'll do.
A small woman with unremarkable features and muscles that twitched nervously, she looked down on the skylighted yellow-tile floor of her audience room. A Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother sprawled there in shigawire bindings. The captive made no attempt to struggle. Shigawire was excellent for this purpose. Cut her arms off, it would!
The chamber where she sat suited Great Honored Matre as much for its dimensions as for the fact that it had been taken from others. Three hundred meters square, it had been designed for convocations of Guild Navigators here on Junction, each Navigator in a monstrous tank. The captive on that yellow floor was a mote in immensity.
This weakling took too much joy in revealing what her so-called Superior named me!
But it still was a lovely morning, Great Honored Matre thought. Except that no tortures or mental probes worked on these witches. How could you torture someone who might choose to die at any moment? And did! They had ways of suppressing pain, too. Very wily, these primitives.
She's loaded with shere, too! A body infused with that damnable drug deteriorated beyond the reach of probes before it could be examined adequately.
Great Honored Matre signaled an aide. That one nudged the sprawled Reverend Mother with a foot and, at a further signal, eased the shigawire bindings to allow minimal movement.
"What is your name, child?" Great Honored Matre asked. Her voice rasped hoarsely with age and false bonhomie.
"I am called Sabanda." Clear young voice, still untouched by the pain of probings.
"Would you like to watch us capture a weak male and enslave him?" Great Honored Matre asked.
Sabanda knew the proper response to this. They had been warned. "I will die first." She said it calmly, staring up at that ancient face the color of a dried root left too long in the sun. Those odd orange flecks in the crone's eyes. A sign of anger, Proctors had told her.
A loosely hung red-gold robe with black dragon figures down its open face and red leotards beneath it only emphasized the scrawny figure they covered.
Great Honored Matre did not change expression even with a recurrent thought about these witches: Damn them! "What was your task on that dirty little planet where we took you?"