Odrade's Sword
It is said that Dionysius II, tyrant of Syracuse, the most powerful city-state of the Greek, was so afraid of being assassinated that he slept in a bed surrounded by a moat and that only his daughter could use a razor to shave his beard. One day, a courtesan named Damocles flattered the tyrant by telling him he envied his power and bliss, at which point Dionysius decided to give him a taste of power. He had Damocles seated on a golden couch, a host of servants ready to wait on him. He was treated to lavish meals, perfumes and ointments. Damocles was relishing the luxury and privilege he was experiencing, until he noticed that the tyrant had hung a sword from the ceiling, positioned over Damocles' head,and suspended only by a single strand of horsehair.
— TALES FROM OLD TERRA
In those late nights in Central, Murbella always felt like a particle of light lost in the sea of stars of the Universe.
Duncan gone, Odrade gone. And me, the only one holding Honored Matres and Bene Gesserit Sisters back from going at each other's throat. Odrade, the burden you have passed on to me!
She would stare at the window showing her the lights from the new and sprawling School buildings they had erected in a rush to accommodate the countless Matres going through training. Deep in the night, I can finally let my tears flow. Every day was a fierce battle to fight, so that she could keep herself above the crashing waves: the Bene Gesserit waves, the Honored Matres waves, and whatever else lurked out there. And I am alone. Oh, I have you Odrade, but your presence in Simulflow is rarely a soothing one. The Odrade in her Other Memory was constantly instructing, observing, and endlessly articulating the risks and needs ahead of her.
Ensure Bene Gesserit training is offered equally to the Matres of high rank, so that they may acquiesce, and to the Matres from the various Orders, so that scales can be balanced. The spice Agony is becoming a sign of prestige, the ultimate symbol of influence. Arrange Proctors' special training. Call the war council. Send envoys to the Matres' splintered cells…
"Stop, Odrade! I don't want the job anymore!" she shouted at the window. Luckily nobody could see her. She had ordered the comeyes removed shortly after becoming Reverend Mother Superior. You kept the Archives' surveillance comeyes and broadcasting system, the proctors committees, Odrade, but I need no votes to stay in charge.
And that was something all the Bene Gesserit who were left on the four, only four!, planets that had not been invaded by the Matres had come to terms with. Murbella was the first Matre to be captured, trained and converted to a Reverend Mother; the first to embrace the melange and the spice agony which brought the knowledge of all her older female ancestors. The reasons why only she could have the job was simple: she was the only one of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood who could beat a Matre in hand-to-hand combat; she was Odrade Primary, having absorbed all of Odrade's memories just before the Mother Superior's death on the Matres' headquarters on Junction; she had brought back to Chapterhouse the seven million Memories of the Lampadas Reverend Mothers. And Sheeana, while designated as an alternative successor by Odrade herself, far from becoming her competition, had instead escaped in the void of the Scattering.
Damn you Sheeana! You took my Duncan and my freedom in one act!
With Sheeana here, she used to think, she could have set the power and responsibilities aside. And Duncan! Still, she had to admit that her love for him had waned the day she had become a Reverend Mother. The spice ordeal had nullified the sexual enslavement that bonded her to him. Duncan was a psychological support, a crutch that had helped for a time, but was not needed anymore. Romantic love. Both her Honored Matres and Reverend Mother training had her curse at the notion. Worse, it had been a fierce passion, and one that had burned very quickly. He is the father of my three children. She made a mental note to check on what had become of them in the Proctors' hands.
A gentle knock on the door announced her assistant Fayela, tasked to bring her the midnight coffee. "Come in." Murbella cultivated an aura of fear on Central, and so the assistant came in silently and left swiftly like a ghost.
Like many times recently, she considered using a poison snooper, then decided to trust her Reverend Mother sensibility. Her body chemistry could always detect a poison and neutralize it. Yet one day our famous Bene Gesserit powers may once again fall short of the advances of the universe around us. I need to develop more Plan Bs.
She inhaled the smell of the warm coffee, a hint of melange, plus Matres' powder of guar-tea. Everything had to mingle together. She missed the feeling and freedom of a walk outside, but did not want to bother calling her security detail.
I remain the resting point of the scales. The Matres lived in the illusion that they had won the war against the Sisterhood. And that day on Junction, the Sisterhood army had been defeated despite Miles Teg's leadership. That part was true. Matre Murbella coming back to the Order, defeating the Supreme Honored Matre in combat, and bringing to them the Sisterhood's secrets, chiefly including the location of Bene Gesserit's Chapterhouse planet, was the illusion she had cultivated. But I am no Matre. So slowly, I have turned completely into a Bene Gesserit. But I will never drop my Matre mask.
And so we lure them with our secrets, and covertly turn them into us. Odrade, you paved the way through me. The Odrade Memory inside her did not smile. Coming to a resolution, Murbella took her light coat, azure and amber, and called for Bellonda. The Mentat-Reverend Mother's raucous answer over the intercom revealed she was in an even worse mood than the Reverend Mother Superior. Murbella could not hide a hint of cruel satisfaction. Odrade, why did you inflict me on Bell?
"Bell needed to be shaken up. Too predictable." was the answer she felt in Other Memory.
"Bell, I am taking a walk. See that I have the security I need. Discreet."
"Five minutes," was the dry reply. Of course, Bell did not sleep either.
"But, hear me. Deploy a decoy for me, would you Bell? Split the security detail. Let the decoy follow the same path I always follow. I will take a different path."
"What? Yes. Will you lend us your light coat? Give me a moment to find somebody your height and body shape." Bell sounded surprised. This was a first-time request. Well, more data for her to draw conclusions about the Mother Superior. Bell's top concern always seemed to be whether Murbella had really embraced the Sisterhood or whether she still relished her Matre origin.
"My assistant, Fayela is her name correct? She will do. It is pitch dark outside."
Murbella sipped her coffee continuing her internal dialogue. But Odrade, you had a sense of premonition, a hound's indefatigable ability to chase smells in the night until you found their owners. I am not Atreides, Dar. No prescience to guide me.
"Nor I dared use prescience, except unconsciously, to make decisions for the Sisterhood. Use your gifts," said the Odrade Memory inside her. "Your creativity is more impetuous than mine. You too can balance on strange surfaces."
She walked down to the ground floor, saw the security detail. She and the guards exchanged password-gestures, then she handed her light coat to Fayela, who left with half of the security team while she took her half out to see Dar's orchards. Sand was covering the ground where the apple trees used to grow.
And impetuous I have been, she thought. Institute formal training for the Matres! Grow our residences and schools tenfold! Suppress the Proctor committees! Ration all melange! Move the army cores from Junction to Chapterhouse!
And then some more.
Accelerate the desertification of the planet. Merge all fighting and Imprinting schools. Merge the Missionaria Protectiva with the army. Require every Matre with planetary command to be escorted to Chapterhouse to declare allegiance and receive full training, or else be replaced. Pair each one with a Sister-advisor. She had imprinted all top army generals herself to avoid mutinies. At this point, she knew the Matres were mostly under her control.
That had come naturally. They feared violence and understood the threat of violence, even from a long-lost peer, who would spend mornings bothering to discuss with (instead of ordering around!) the Reverend Mothers who were her subjects. The secrets of body-chemistry, Voice, religious control, Truthsense and prana-bindu were tempting enough for a Matre to submit to a six month period of obedience and non-violence. Enforced by their peers. Yes, a few bodies had been removed from the training grounds in the early days. A few were Reverend Mother teachers', but mostly Matres students' who had been killed by their peers as punishment and example. Do not let one bad apple bar us from grasping the secrets we seek, and the status we covet.
The higher status one would achieve with the spice agony was a ticket to a faster career. It was common knowledge that the new Matres sisters were given the most prestigious offices in Murbella's administration, to the disdain of the more qualified Reverend Mothers. And there laid the trap: as Murbella had experienced, surviving the spice Agony implied shedding the subconscious hatred and the rapid violence which had been the landmark of a Matre. The new sisters were truly Bene Gesserit, but more ruthless. Honored Matres, but their worst instincts pacified.
And still, three out of every ten Honored Matres joined a splinter cell in the months after Junction. The war had not ended there. Dissenting Matres as vicious as ever controlled entire sectors and continued to keep a full grasp of entire planets by sexually bonding key generals, functionaries, and leaders. Murbella's primacy was going to be tested on a daily basis for years to come.
Crickets were chirping in the quiet summer night. The heat was intense. Her shoes were scraping the arid soil, pushing the red sand. Red sand from the south. Dying crops. The costs of importing food from the rest of the Imperium started to weigh on their finances, notwithstanding the capital injection that the takeover of the Matres had brought.
Soon enough, the crickets will die too. And I will move the headquarters to a greener place, leaving this planet to the damned sandworms.
Most of her time was a balancing act, giving and negating support to the political currents inside the new Sisterhood she was forging out by mediating massive colliding forces. Odrade, you never told me that being at the top there is very little time to govern. The list of daily chores was incredible, even with Bellonda properly empowered and chastised. And yet massive dangers lurk just outside of our purview.
Recruit for the male harem (Matres needed to be entertained); test all Matres for Siona markers; establish standard approvals for new ghola and cyborg creation (they needed all the talent they could get). Separate Sisters from Matres in all public events. And so on…
Did you welcome your last battle, Dar? Your great gamble! How much you hated the daily chores.
Now for a few minutes she had been walking on the main streets, almost deserted given the hour but never quite; a few acolytes strolled by (late night work shifts?) toward the dorms. The summer air provided relief from the heat, giving a good reason for small groups of Sisters and workers to be out wandering, or sitting on marble benches placed at the two sides of the Way.
A full twenty minutes into her walk, Murbella came to a bend on the path to the Labs. She could sense the two guards who were cautiously shadowing her, her security detail. Bell's own agents. They were very discreet. She noted to herself to compliment Bellonda on that. Bell needed careful drops of encouragement in a sea of criticism.
As she focused her attention forward, she noticed a man sitting on a bench fifty yards away, a lamplight casting a glowing light around him. Appearance and clothing revealed he was one of the imported male companions she had ordered to keep the Matres happy.
She approached the man and noticed he was strumming a modern baliset, black in ebony and with the thirty-six string design that had surpassed long ago the design of Paul Muad'Dib's times. Not that many besides Reverend Mothers knew the difference.
The man was singing. She slowed down her pace to listen:
Eventide in the grassy marsh
Moonflowers open wide,
Shadows vanish from my heart
As the bright-eyed girl smiles;
The bright-eyed girl smiled at me
Her hair as red as fire;
With Danian words, swayed my resolve
I'd do what she required;
The bright-eyed girl smiled at me
Her mouth as sweet as pearl;
Was it heaven's joy, or an evil ploy
My heart's desire and…
He stopped there, the last chord lingering in the hot air.
"My lady, could you by chance help me complete this stanza?"
Ha, definitely a male companion in training. "Yes?"
"What rhymes with pearl?" asked the man. Murbella stopped in her tracks.
"What could possibly rhyme with that? Despair? Fair?" she replied bluntly. Let's hope our recruiters are choosing well – there have been a lot of complaints about the quality of the men lately, she thought.
"Despair? Was it heaven's joy or an evil ploy / My hear's desire and despair… a bit too too long."
"Fair? Girl? Earl? Air?" her mindly amused reply.
"My heart warms in the air? No, this is it: Was it heaven's joy or an evil ploy / Fulfilled my heart's desire." he finished, caressing the instrument. She could not but notice his physical prowess, delicate features in a muscular body. Somehow he reminded her of a jaguar.
Murbella commented: "Beautiful voice."
"Thank you, fair lady."
"Not so much the words".
"Oh, but it's not finished:
The bright-eyed girl, sweet was her smile,
Her passion burned like flame;
Her man I killed, desire-filled,
My mind she had beguiled."
"That last verse needs work, too," she could not refrain from commenting.
"So hard to finish without a muse here to inspire me! How would you change it?" inquired the man, black eyes shining in the lamplight.
"What is this thing about Danian girls you all men have to sing about?" she replied.
"A passion, a look, a gesture… the Danian girl is just a symbol of love to be sought in every lady."
"Yes? And you are?"
"Lorain is my name. Singer, poet and lover of women."
"Astonishing. Well, not many Danian girls on this planet. You may have some luck with the hundreds we land here to fill our Schools."
"I will dedicate to you my next song, lady…?"
"Find another muse, will you. Have a good night."
"See? They are so proud in their rigidity! They never melt!"
"Better not to say that to the new students," she advised while walking away. "Some itch to kill just like the man in your song."
She strode on, shaking her head. Reprimand recruiters on the quality of the male companions… She had passed the flat area where the no-ship had been. Don't dwell on that, she reminded herself. The air was pleasant, fireflies could be seen in the darkness beyond the lamplights. Then she reached the Labs, lights on day and night as the personnel were at work on the tanks. I was almost calm. That idiot turned my mood sour again. She went in and proceeded toward the axolotl tanks. Let reality shake up my feelings.
There she stood in darkness, thirty-five tanks around her, thirty-five women turned into engorged bodies with gigantic wombs, skin hanging like discolored draped fabric on all sides, metal tubes and robotic arms enveloping it like a containment frame.
That finally shocked her - where were the eyes, the mouth, the nose? Were those women awake? Conscious? She was disconcerted to realize she had never asked the question. Is that the way a woman should go? A womb? To create new flesh as the only goal in life? Are our breeders any different, or is it the same factual emptiness? Would love make a difference? We Sisters loathe love … and yet do we just fear the loss of control?
She longed for the unpredictability that had made everyday she had spent with Duncan worth it. Relinquishing control over every moment. Her loneliness grew in her heart while standing in that industrial darkness. She did not want to lay alone in bed tonight, looking for somebody who was not there.