XXXIII.
Blood and Sand

Dissent will make you smarter.

– DARWI ODRADE, BENE GESSERIT CODA

The dunes had broken through the spaceport fences and invaded the landing pads to its southern side. Forty feet high, their white and saffron sand sparkled brightly under Chapterhouse's sun., looking like giants about to engulf the empty tarmac where the carriers were expected to land that morning. Bellonda wore the customary black aba and cursed about the heat, while Matre Angelika's skin sought the sun through the light ultramarine short-sleeve blouse and pants, which had undoubtedly been chosen to underscore her recently acquired spice-blue eyes. The light face make-up in silver and pink gave a touch of exotic to her natural beauty. Her long hair moved in the hot wind of the open plains. The odd couple walked in sync, with the steady, functional stride of the Reverend Mother-Mentat rhythmically offset by the cat-like moves of the Reverend Mother-Matre. They made their way to the other side of the landing pad where the ever-impatient Mother Superior was waiting for them.

Murbella greeted them briefly and dove right into the the agenda of the day. "Angelika, remind me of the names of the Great Matres we are welcoming here".

"I have the list, Mother Superior," she answered, offering a document that she knew was redundant given Bellonda's capient memory. Yet with these little gestures, Angelika had resolved to stand out from the scores of Reverend Mothers who had her initiated to the mysteries of Voice, of body control, and of spice-awakened ancestral memories. Here is our new breed of Reverend Mothers, thought Murbella, more balanced, but wild. She smiled to herself. Just like I was, before I had to don the leader's mantle. She took the document and scanned it.

"Keep in mind that five of the twenty-seven Great Ones we are receiving today are not regular Reverend Mother trainees. They instead belong to the splinter Order of Reo which surrendered to us only three months ago", Bellonda pointed out.

"And they already come running? Hungry for our secrets?" said Angelika, ending in a cruel smile.

"Just like you were, my dear," noted Murbella, looking at Angelika's smile turning into a frown.

"But with excellent results, Mother Superior," she came back.

"Indeed."

Bellonda's face betrayed the faintest hint of reproach. Murbella could read her like an open book. Indeed, Angelika is excellent at getting into our Mother Superior's graces, she read.

Together the trio moved toward the area where several white tents had been erected, and a half dozen ground transports were sitting idle; all seemed ready for the welcome ceremony.

"Arrival in ten minutes, Murbella," observed Bellonda taking advantage of her prerogative to call the Mother Superior by name. That was to remind everyone that she had befriended Murbella back when they were equals. "And might I add, you should not care about coming here in person for every new wave of trainees. It is a chore and our security is stretched thin."

"I will come here as long as there will be Great Matres arriving, Bell," stated Murbella. Observe me, Dar, she silently told her inner Memories. This is my ritual imprinting of the females, how I nudge my future competitors to subservience. She had carefully studied every detail, from the geometry of the reception area, to the line of guards around the pedestal, to the orientation of the sun and the way it was going to light her figure up; the purposefully picked shade of sunflower yellow of the mantle she wore, and the black velvet below. Stunning, she walked around, and was ready to stun her audience once again. Her gaze swept through the area like a hawk surveying its territory. All was well. She noticed how the mountains to the southwest had completely lost the green cover of the forest, now turned to the black and ochre of the dead trunks and burned grass.

"Here they come," warned Angelika pointing a long finger to the sky. Twenty shiny dots were arching down toward the ground, their size increasing, and their surface gradually adding granular details as they descended. Bellonda was busy with their manifest: "Three dozen diplomats from recently freed planets; a CHOAM representative, the Ixian Ambassador; one hundred seventy-five full Matres and Matres-in-training, plus twenty-seven Great Matres, all come for induction and initiation; three dozen technicians, two dozen pleasure men..."

"Pleasure men?" asked Angelika.

"I recall you complained about our stock, my dear," replied Bellonda.

"Yes. I am growing weary of yesterday's meat."

"... a security force of thirty-five privates, two sergeants, and one lieutenant; two shuttle loads of goods including food and hardware; a load of captured T-probes, samples of various botanical specimen used by the Matres' as palace defenses on Junction, seven Futars, a thousand pairs of Salusa desert bats and critters, intelligence records recovered from Lampadas..."

"Hold on, Bell. We will continue later," said Murbella raising her gaze.

The three hundred passengers were disembarking from the carriers, following the walkways down to the tarmac; many of them were still squinting to adjust to the stark sunlight. Murbella returned the paper to Angelika, observed the newcomers as they were screened by local security. The logistics team was piling up large crates of goods on the outside perimeter, no more than a hundred yards away. A tractor deposited two large metal structures inside which Murbella glimpsed the striped yellow of three semi-intelligent felines, Futars, nervously moving within the confines of their cages and bewildered by the new atmosphere. Several distressed snarls revealed it had not been a pleasant journey for them. Murbella paused to ask herself how the Futars could play into her hand, simply due to how they could be trained to hunt down and kill laiz-addicted Matres. The small figure of Miles Teg, the seven year-old ghola (do not let him know they were already growing a spare one), could be inferred by the presence of a gap among a group of military officers, who surely were accompanying him during a field inspection. Teg was unyielding in confronting the local personnel about gaps in their operations, when they were lucky, or the more serious security gaps they had not patched, when they weren't. The group walked toward the cargo area.

"All is ready," noted Angelika, diverting her attention.

Readying her mask of proud-and-fierce-but-benevolent Queen, Murbella entered the stage via a long uphill walkway which allowed her and the two aides to impress on the audience their importance, and chiefly their prerogative to make them wait. They slowly approached the stage. Murbella paused to take in the crowd in front of her. Two hundred Matres were standing still, exhausted after a long space journey led by a security force made only of men; that by itself was exceptional. They come like pilgrims in search of the well of knowledge.

"Angelika, if you please."

Angelika took a deep breath in, standing straight as an arrow on the main pedestal, blue eyes proudly showing, clearly embodying to the women below the promise implied in their long voyage and reluctant obedience. She projected out her high-pitched Voice with the effect of instantly shaking up the audience into full alertness: "Sisters, hear me now!"

Two hundred faces looked up in surprise. Whispers could be heard among the crowd.

"I am Angelika, Mother Councilor. It is my honor to introduce you to the Honored Great Matre, and Reverend Mother Superior, our famed Murbella."

Per the tried-and-true routine, Murbella joined Angelika on the pedestal and started her address: "Great Matres, ordained Sisters, and Sisters-in-training!".

The rest of the speech, the pacing, the subtle use of Voice to shock and awe her audience was something Murbella could recite automatically at this point, while her inner awareness watched from above, assessing the reactions. There was her, on the flat grounds of the spaceport, ushering in the new era of the Sisterhood one cohort at a time. How am I doing, Odrade? she asked her Other Memory. She noticed the impression she was making by the ladies' faces, the fear and admiration. How many of them will survive the agony? She felt the Odrade-Within stir, her thoughts going in a direction she preferred not to explore. "Do you remember your training, Murbella? The constant teaching, your unyielding resistance?"

I remember it, Dar.

"We enticed you, we co-opted you into working with us against your own self. Never once we lied. You did try to trick us. You thought to be bargaining for the powers you so badly wanted, and in the end you embraced us because of what we simply were. Is your training program effective?"

Not yet, Dar.

She could tell apart who would be a conduit for the Way among the women below – for example, that young trainee with curious eyes to the right might not have been so deeply conditioned yet – but the Great Matres, their deeply entrenched fear and violent desires, they were going to be the hardest pupils of all. The ones, too, who had recently surrendered – a word that had only recently entered the Matres vocabulary – were the most dangerous of all.

How do I turn the power-hungry into humble servants?

"Within every power monger there is a scared child, Murbella."

Back to your ever-green lessons, Dar.

"You heard me in person and now in your awareness. But you evade me. The Sisterhood is not enough. Me leading it highlighted its weakness. We become dry husks if we don't make room for vulnerabilities like love and pain."

A fit took Murbella. Her voice cringed for a single moment, then recovered. She gazed to her side. Not even Bellonda had noticed.

It's early for me, Dar.

"You don't have to let go of Duncan, even if he left you. But let go of calling love a weakness."

It is a lesson that is tough to swallow..

"My primary lesson, Murbella. And the second is..."

...Only the heretic will survive?

"Yes. As I was. Adapt or die, that's the first rule of life."

But, you did not survive, Sister.

"A tough rule to learn nevertheless!"

All of a sudden a shuttle ignited its engines, drowning Murbella's voice in the noise. Vibrations filled the air. Irked by the unplanned interruption, Murbella paused in mid-sentence while the shuttle lifted up in the air, less than half a mile away, disappearing in the stratosphere in less than a minute. But the magic was broken now, and the crowd below was out of its receptive state and back into uncoordinated behavior. "And in conclusion," she ventured...

A woman in gray stepped out of the first row, raised a fist and screamed with a contralto voice so powerful that Murbella's words stopped in her throat: "Hai! I, Bessah of the Order of Reo, have come here to challenge the witch!"

The woman advanced again two steps, screamed again: "I only serve the Great Matres! You are Bene Gesserit filth in disguise! Stop hiding up there and come to feel Bessah's touch. Weasel words won't work for us blooded warriors!"

The fighter turned around to face the crowd, their pride suddenly aroused by the woman's loud voice. "Come down and I will show my Sisters the wimp that you are. And you Great Matres! Surrounded by men-soldiers and slow witches! I will crush this Murbella and we will put this planet to the fork!"

Silence overcame them. Like the veil of illusion had been torn, two hundred Matres started to look around restlessly, eyes flashing orange, hesitating.

"You don't have to..." whispered Bellonda, signaling to the nearby guards.

"Enough." Murbella raised her hand. There had been challenges in the past. It was not surprising that a newly subjugated Order would press the matter. Well then, we will have a bit of a show, some blood on the tarmac, and the sacrificial victim will feed the cult of Murbella. The Order of Reo will become the subject of jokes in other Matres' conversations. All will be well. She considered other necessities, too. Being challenged was customary among the Honored Matres. Only the strongest led. She could not openly defy a public challenge. Rumors would spread. Worse, a riot could develop here in front of her eyes. Granted, her armed soldiers would overwhelm the Matres gathered here – try to outrun a lasgun – but the losses on both sides would be bad for morale; and after all even a lasgun could only be as fast as its owner. They are looking at me. I must answer now.

"I accept," was Murbella's answer, delivered with a matter-of-fact voice loaded with spite as she climbed down from the stage, cursing her mantle and shoes – half heels, good for public events, not so much in combat. Shouts erupted from the crowd; the warrior named Bessah laughed. Walking across the open space to meet her, Murbella studied her body, slightly overweight but muscular. Surely slow. What did she remember of the Order of Reo? Fierce fighters, inclined to self-harm. This one will be dispatched quickly, like the others, she thought.

Angelika and Bellonda remained on the stage, looking alarmed. And Bellonda will reprimand me later. Where was Miles Teg?

Murbella signaled the guards to make way. Only a few paces away from her opponent, and still wearing a mantle and heels, she waited. "Anything to say before we start?" she asked the sturdy woman in front of her, noticing how her body looked more like a wrestler than a typical light-on-her feet Matre martial artist. Murbella had never observed Reo's fighting style. Her opponent shouted: "In life, prepare to die. In death, regret nothing!", stood there biting the air, her eyes flaring orange. "Pity." Murbella had heard and seen just enough to try her Voice and commanded: "You, on your knees!"

Bessah stood unmoved.

Murbella stood there in surprise. The choice of tones had not been wrong: the ladies standing right behind her opponent but in the cone of her voice were down on their knees. She noticed the fighter stood still, looking down at her with a mask of contrived rage, eyes wide open. A Voice-resistant enhancing drug, maybe? This was going to get mildly interesting.

"Fighter, come here!" she commanded again, and this time Bessah barely inched a step toward her, legs moving slowly like following contradicting orders. This show will take a little longer, then.

Murbella stepped out of her shoes and dropped the mantle to the ground of concrete and sand. No reason to ruin my clothing with blood. She kept the black jumpsuit underneath.

In the few moments that separated them from the explosion of violence, she looked inward, regulating her adrenaline, syncing her breath to her heartbeat. Her shoulders relaxed, then she scanned her environment once again, noted the irregular shape of the tarmac and the slight slope downward... the placement of her shoes, with deadly metal heels… felt her little trick ready in her hands…

They started circling, slowly moving increasingly closer. The bystanders were holding their breath.

To the unsuspecting onlooker, this was going to look like an unusual fight, made of quick bursts of activity followed by breaks. Matres moved faster than the eye, but only for stretches of a few seconds.

Murbella leapt first, feinted to the left, then blurred away on her feet and delivered a mortal kick aimed at breaking the woman's ankle. But her opponent's ankle was not there anymore, moving a tad too slow to find purchase on the ground to counterkick, but fast enough to connect her elbow with Murbella's shoulder, sending her sprawling a five feet away on the tarmac. Murbella stood up and leaped back, catching her breath. That was a Bene Gesserit move!, she thought while bringing the pain under control. This warrior was more than she appeared. Someone prepared her well! Hence, Voice resistance.

For another moment they circled, Murbella focusing on reading her opponent. The woman surely could not match Murbella's speed; weight notwithstanding, her synaptic bypasses were still impressively fast. Bessah jumped ahead, avoided the Reverend Mother's open palm coming for her temple, lowered her body, whirled and landed an elbow – again! – on Murbella's ribs, breaking one. Pain flashed and burst into her, taking her breath away. She whirled away, not followed.

First minute down. Now a little break. She is up two to one.

Bessah's orange eyes were still open wide like a scared animal.

The Odrade-Within inserted herself in her consciousness to observe: "She has been planted by one of the factions who wants you out."

Changing approach, Murbella started circling in the other direction, trusting that the sun would blind her opponent at the right moment. She leaped forward at normal speed this time, but to her surprise Bessah was undeterred by the sunlight, deflected Murbella's fist, grasped it, torqued her body with such momentum that Murbella was sent to the ground again, her body bouncing on the broken rib. She let a scream out, jumping back.

I am not the Murbella I remembered, she realized. I am an over stretched, overworked Mother Superior. No special faculty of hers, she realized, could compensate for lack of practice.

She did not have the opportunity to think it through though, because Bessah came charging forward once again. Murbella blurred and jumped back, gained an arm-length of distance while her opponent's formidable biceps failed to lock her in a hold. Inserting herself far below the woman's center of mass, Murbella hit hard on the knee sending Bessah down, but the woman's hand blurred at an incredible speed once again, caught Murbella's foot and twister her ankle almost to a crack before letting it go as Murbella punched her on her mouth. They rapidly separated, pausing to noisily catch their breaths. Sweat dropped down their bodies as the blurring speed made huge demands on their physiology. A line of red decorated now Bessah's cheek, a shallow cut made by Murbella's nails, and blood was dripping from her mouth. A tooth was missing. My little trick. Razor sharp blades under my nails, smiled the Reverend Mother. And right then she suppressed a sudden urge to throw up. An unbearable smell - as foul as a rotten carcass' – wafted in the air. Murbella was forced to back several steps away before she could control her instinctual response. The putrid odor was so revolting it acted at the biological level, bypassing her conscious control. Gooseflesh appeared on her skin, the olfactory memory took over her mind. She was completely disoriented. Immediately, Bessah was on her, under her guard and delivering a powerful punch Murbella avoided by chance by involuntarily stepping back due to the incoming stench. She ran, and thankfully a gust of wind allowed her to get her mind clear. "An enhancing drug with an overpowering effect on body chemistry?" dropped the Odrade-Within. So strong I was overwhelmed. She commanded her nerves to ignore her sense of smell. But her training could not completely put her revulsion aside. Stink! Overpowering her instinctual responses! Brilliant.

Murbella sprang back in action, bridging the space between the two of them in a fraction of a second. Two feints later she found a gap in Bessah's guard, hit, retreated, swung her arm to deflect a punch while pirouetting to the woman's right and hitting the neck with the side of the left palm in a way that should have severed the jugular, but only left a cut because Murbella's body had refused to lunge farther while so close to the terrible reek. Bessah fell down clutching her neck with the right, but managed to sweep her other arm just under Murbella's knees, now too close together, and down went the Reverend Mother – another Bene Gesserit trademark move!

The wrestler's body was on Murbella who had failed to roll away in time. Blocked on the ground, the overpowering stink made her body shake and kick violently while her searching hand managed to grasp something: her carefully prepared shoe! She swung the plasteel heel and pierced her opponent's eye. Bessah's scream filled the air, allowing Murbella to get back on her feet, retreat, shake off the smell.

Both opponents hung back in pain, their bodies overheated to their limit and panting for oxygen. This time Murbella went deep into her body-sense, found the olfactory receptors straining in the revulsion and blocked the capillaries to them. Done. No more sense of smell for the time being.

"Remember the ground. Wrestlers fight down on the ground," reminded her Odrade-Within.

Back in control of her nerves, Murbella launched in a series of feints, kicks and punches that took advantage of her opponent's injured eye, mostly making contact but not penetrating Bessah's guard. The wrestler deflected, counterattacked, evaded her again and again, while humming softly in a low tone. Murbella took hold of the woman's hand, her second-nature re-enacting a move Duncan had taught her, twisted Bessah's arm and dragged her to the ground, jaw touching the tarmac, arm locked, and no way to break free.

She is done. And we can still interrogate her, Dar.

The Matre tried to get up, blocked by the shoulder lock Murbella held on her. The Reverend Mother Superior held wrist and arm firmly down, though the sweat was making it hard to grasp tightly. She instinctively used Voice again: "Freeze!".

The Matre's glazed eyes showed pure panic, then with a mad laughter Bessah blurred and rolled on her locked arm at superspeed, against the Voice order and against body mechanics…

... the crack of broken bones and a dislocated shoulder...

And there was the wrestler on her knees, her body disfigured by a monstrous bulge where the shoulder should have been, unnaturally dragging the arm that Murbella had pinned down a moment before. In shock and disbelief, Murbella attempted to step back. What was monster this woman? But she had moved slowly and Bessah's other arm came down on her, slamming her on the ground once again. Murbella got out from underneath the arm, rolled two paces away while feeling long gashes and blood spilling from her abdomen. She scooted away only to realize in horror that Bessah held a thread of shigawire around her fist, the wire being responsible for taking a piece of skin away from her body, and yet a miracle, for it could have sliced her in two. The woman was punching the air in front of her, a mad smile on her face, looking for a hit that would have meant the end of the struggle. She looked in a rapture, her good eye a golden orange; and there she continued to hum.

Shigawire – in her clothing? Her hair? Trick after trick after trick... how many more has she been packing?

The answer came at her fast – they packed in her all they could to kill me.

Moving at drug-enhanced speed, Bessah grabbed Murbella's foot lurching too close to her good arm and while the Reverend Mother was barking ineffective Voice commands, Bessah dragged her close to the side, lifting the fist enveloped in the sharp wire. Murbella pressed her index finger firmly in a specific spot in Bessah's groin, hit a surface nerve, causing a ripple of muscles to spasm... Bessah's own reflexes altered the trajectory of her fist, making it land on the ground, where it cut the tarmac like butter. Copious blood dripped from the open capillaries, but there Murbella laid, unable to shake herself off as Bessah's weight pinned her down.

On the ground again! And she feels no pain. She is drugged to die with me.

There she was, in front of her, a drugged Reo fighter, Voice-immune, trained by some complicit Reverend Mother. Murbella could not overcome a sense of profound exhaustion now. For how long had she been blurring at speed?

I don't have it in me!

Yet her mad nemesis was there, had her pinned on the floor with the weight of her body, despite the wounds and cut eye and seemingly lifeless arm, a true monster... Murbella flailed to shake herself out, to avoid the shigawire-enveloped fist that was threatening to fall on her still... and the humming.

The humming?

For a second, time slowed down as she considered the slow, soft, hypnotic quality of that hum, so low it seemed a vibration more than a sound, soothing, slowing down her attention.

Why is time so slow?

"Save your life," whispered the Odrade-Within.

The hum, similar in all to the Imprinter's ritual, was enveloping her mind, inviting it to slumber. How could such a low voice tone come from a woman? If I die now, it will be just like endless sleep… She genuinely felt it would be deliverance.

Time sped up.

Bessah was whispering close to her ear. What had she just said? The words were slurred as a trickle of blood was still coming out her mouth: "Die, bitch! Die with me!"

Murbella, exhausted, defenseless, searched for a way...

The fist, Bessah's oppressive body and lifeless arm pressed against her, the shigawire...

... wrapped around the fist that was coming for her face...

... Murbella's arm freed up...

The tail of the shigawire whipped down, making contact with her finger in a clean, effortless cut...

... the humming continued to echo in her head...

Odrade, I am about to join you.

A part of her observed in slow motion the events occurring all around her.

Shigawire... Orange eye... Fading sensation...

A sudden shrieking noise tore through the air at a hundred-decibels, so alien that her awareness was jolted out of her body, observing herself down from a vantage point up in the sky...

... then the immediate sensation of feeling, of breathing, it all came back, her heart madly pumping blood; her pierced ears she could feel again, and realized that Bessah's fist had stopped an inch from her face, a fist that was attached to a spasming body which was slowly falling down forward toward her, pushing its arm and hand and shigawire with it...

Odrade-Within, screaming inside her: "Futars!"

Murbella called upon her the last of her energy, and in one desperate motion she kicked and blurred away from under her unresisting opponent, extended her arm, cut Bessah's neck with her fake metal nails. Blood exploded. The Futars' hundred-decibel scream raged on, keeping Bessah and all the spectating Matres in a terrified paralysis, while blood continued to squirt out of Bessah's neck who stood rigid on the ground, with wind-swept sand swirling all around. Down next to her went Murbella as her own body and hand bled; she was unable to even extend a hand to soften the fall. The Futar's supernatural scream still pierced the air when multiple hands appeared out of nowhere, grasped her body firmly. A sticker slapped on her chest injected into her the gift of sleep right just as the Odrade-Within shrieked "You did not have to kill her now!"

A real-life voice, outside of her head, commanded: "Eliminate them all!"

Odrade-Within whispered: "A close call. But remember, dissent will make you smarter."

Murbella thought: "If it does not kill us first."

Gracefully, all sensations were lost, all awareness faded into black.