[Dune7:
Advent]
*
[Book Two - Chapter Four]
Arrakis
presents an exquisite challenge to anyone with an interest in or understanding
of ecology. I don’t necessarily mean the difficulties one encounters while
trying to turn the desert planet into a green world, but rather the delicate
balance one must attempt to find between the spheres of influence that collide
there. The desire to see the land grow fertile, the way the Fremen are a part of
the desert, the role of the giant worms in the formation of the Spice and their
intolerance of water, the power the Spice allows the Fremen to wield over the
Guild, the Empire and the Houses Major and Minor… all these factors oppose,
enforce and balance eachother in different ways. Remove or alter one, and the
entire structure might collapse.
-Pardot
Kynes, First Planetologist of Arrakis.
Murbella was at the desk in her study, attempting to analyse the
implications of what she had learnt the past few days.
Now the attack comes from three
sides, she realised. The Tyrant’s dreams might still control the unfolding of history,
continuing to lead us along his accursed Golden Path, Donelid and her allies
plot to overthrow me, and the Prometheans might very well destroy us all.
A loud thud against the other side of the door that opened to the hallway
forced Murbella to abandon her ponderings. She rose, walked over to the door and
opened it to see what had happened. On the floor lay a young, brown-haired girl,
looking no older than sixteen, dressed in the robe of a first stage Bene
Gesserit acolyte - dead. Beyond her in the hallway, leaning against the wall,
was Bellonda, panting heavily.
“This one put up quite a fight,” she said.
“What happened here?”, Mother Superior demanded.
“Assassin.”
“An Honoured Matre?”
“Yes. She was too zealous. She wanted to see you
dead above all else, and this made her careless,” Bellonda said in a casual
manner. “Her hate for you was counterproductive. By the way she moved, I could
see she was an Honoured Matre attempting to mask what had been conditioned into
her all throughout her life with poorly learned Bene Gesserit mannerisms.”
Her hate
for me was counterproductive, Murbella mentally repeated. How
interesting that you, of all people, would say such a thing, Bellonda.
“Was it really necessary to kill her?”, Murbella asked. “We could
have interrogated her.”
“It was either kill or be killed, Mother Superior.”
The formal title again. She still
doesn’t trust me! “Odrade chose me as her successor, Bellonda. And
Taraza was in full agreement with that decision.”
“I am loyal to the Sisterhood’s cause!”
“This would mean that you are loyal to me,”
Murbella said, almost angrily.
Bellonda started to say something, but decided to remain silent at the
last moment. Murbella noticed this, and felt compelled to slightly modify her
assessment of Bellonda’s character and motives because of it.
“It is good to see that in this case your priorities are in order. The
same cannot be said in reference to the way in which you handled this… situation,”
the Mother Superior said, indicating the lifeless form on the floor between
them. The deformed expression on the
Honoured Matre’s face caused by the death spasms were already relaxing, but it
was still apparent a rather nasty toxin had been used to kill her.
“Yes. Tragic.” Not a shred of remorse could be sensed in Bellonda’s
voice.
“Regardless of what you might think, Honoured Matres do have a code of
honour. She was unarmed, and you killed her with a poisoned blade.”
“It seems Mother Superior is forgetting
that ethical conduct is based on mutual respect, or at least the respect of the
fact the other is a human being similar to oneself. An open declaration of war
dissolves such respect: when encountered with unprovoked life-threatening
hostility, common rules of conduct cease to apply. In war, the preservation of
the Sisterhood and its members take precedence over being nice to one
another.”
Having said this, Bellonda turned and walked away,
leaving a mildly baffled Murbella behind. After a short distance, she turned and
said: “Don’t you think it’s time we left?”
** ** **
** **
The Bene Gesserit sisters moved as swiftly and silently as possible.
Murbella led a small group to safety - fifty Reverend Mothers and acolytes, as
well as a handful of loyal Honoured Matres.
Many thousands
of valuable Bene Gesserit remain at Central, and all over the planet - The
training they’ve been given should be enough to save them,
Murbella hoped.
They ran through a dark tunnel - an escape route
leading away from Central, built in secret according to Odrade’s
specifications around the time the plan to integrate the Honoured Matres into
the ranks of the Bene Gesserit had been set in motion.
She knew, even back then,
Murbella thought. The alliance with the
whores never had a chance. Once more she surprised herself by renouncing her
former sisters so forcefully. I grow less Honoured Matre and more Bene Gesserit every day.
As you should, the voice of
Odrade-within said.
What
was the point of this puppet-show, if you already knew the two groups would
eventually turn against eachother again?
I didn’t know, Odrade
answered. Both Taraza and I thought there
was a definite possibility that things would eventually go awry, but we hoped
the alliance would last just as much as you. It is sad that this apparently was
not meant to be, but at least we got a decade of relative peace to refortify our
position.
And
the tunnel was a safety measure.
Exactly.
And a nice tunnel it is,
Murbella thought mockingly.
Are you aware of where it leads?
Odrade’s persona retreated, and Murbella knew she would not be able to
ask what the answer was supposed to be. Odrade had told her this tunnel would
lead to ‘safety, and lesser dangers’, but in the frantic atmosphere of her
escape from Central, Murbella hadn’t bothered to ask what this meant.
We’re already quite far away from
Central, Murbella calculated, recalling the approximate number of steps that
had brought her to this point, and we’re
moving south. Of course! This tunnel will lead us into the desert! She was right
- the desert has its own set of rules, and anyone who dares to stray from the
paths it dictates, will not survive for very long.
She remembered the lectures she had received about Rakis, and the
filmbook images of that planet of when it was still called Arrakis, a long time
ago. Many pictures and movie fragments of Paul Atreides and his son she had
seen, fewer of the Fremen and their blue-in-blue eyes, and only a handful of the
giant sandworms - once, the planet had housed specimens of over 400 metres! How
pathetic the small worms of Chapter House - ten metres for the largest ones that
have so far been observed - are compared to those magnificent creatures!
What had most impressed Murbella about those lectures were the reports of
a phenomenon that was taking place on Chapter House as well - as yet on a much
smaller scale -: the unforgiving aridity of the planet. In order to survive,
stillsuits had to be worn in the open air at all times.
Adapting to such an environment
must have been an enormous task for the first Zensunni Wanderers to reach the
planet, Murbella thought. It seems our small group will be forced to do it as well. Perhaps it’s
in my blood, my genes. Or would that be too much to hope for?
I am an Atreides, Murbella
realised, letting this important but oft-forgotten fact sink in again. I
carry the Mark Of Siona - prescient searchers cannot see me. I am an Atreides.
I
warned you about the dangers of your plan!
Murbella looked back, wondering who had spoken - it
certainly wasn’t Odrade. In the almost-darkness she saw her Bene Gesserit
sisters following her, and not one of them made a sound - they even managed to
control their breathing, despite the exertion.
I told you it
was too dangerous, and you wouldn’t listen.
It took a moment before Murbella realised the voice
she heard came from inside her -
apparently one of the personas in her Other Memory was trying to offer her
advice. The voice sounded rather young, unlike most of the other personas in her
Other Memory - most prominent
Reverend Mothers were quite old when they shared.
I did what I thought was right at
the time.
Another voice?
Murbella thought. This one sounds much
older. They’re not talking to me, but to eachother. Simulflow allowed
Murbella to eavesdrop on this conversation while she continued to lead her group
through the dark corridors, Odrade telling her the complex sequence of twists
and turns the only correct path to safety contained.
You forced my brother along the
first part of the Golden path too quickly. He wasn’t ready!
He was as ready as he was ever
going to be!
In
that case he shouldn’t have accepted his burden at all. What you did to him,
and what he did to himself because of that: it has only led to disaster.
Humanity
was saved!, the older voice said, almost angrily.
It was saved, so it could die a few
thousand years later. Don’t you understand what is happening right now?
Ghanima,
calm down.
No,
grandmother! I hold you responsible. You don’t know the fear I had to endure.
I was afraid of him, I dreaded the coming of the worm. The worm doomed the
entire universe, and is still doing so.
Alia
ordered his kidnapping, not me.
But
you didn’t hesitate to take advantage of it when it happened!
It
was in the best interest of the Sisterhood that his potential was tested. We had
to know whether or not he was a Kwisatz Haderach like his father.
Aaah,
the Kwisatz Haderach-scheme! Bad things always happen when small but arrogant
humans toy with forces they only barely understand.
The older voice remained silent.
Don’t you have any witty
comebacks, or condescending lectures?
It
wasn’t me.
What?
It
wasn’t me. The Jessica Atreides that did all those things was a very different
woman than I. When I separated while I was giving birth to Paul, my Duke was
still alive, and I hadn’t transformed the Water Of Life yet - my Other
Memories hadn’t been awakened at that point.
My
brother - before his transformation, and during his more lucid moments after it
- and I always had difficulty identifying the persona of you we carried with us
with the real you.
Yes.
Acquiring Other Memory changed me.
And
grandfather wasn’t there anymore to make you understand how much you had
changed.
A short silence followed, and Murbella felt the sadness. Jessica spoke
again. Paul changed as well, after ingesting the Spice Poison. He could have
stopped the Jihad if he had wanted to.
That
would have required…
Yes.
But what price is one death when it buys you the lives of billions?
There
is another side to the Jihad. Your defense of the Golden Path earlier suggests
you would understand this, and would even approve of it.
Purging
the species? That might have been part of the intent of the operation, but the
Fremen army was too blunt an instrument to perform such a delicate task.
He
did try to repair the damage he had done later in life.
You
mean the Preacher? That was a desperate man’s effort to undo what could not be
undone.
The confusion Murbella had felt when the conversation started had been
replaced with a feeling of triumph. Elation swept through her for a few brief
moments as she first realised what treasures from the past she might have found
here, despite the dangers that the present still held.
Ghanima and Jessica Atreides, Murbella thought. It took an awful battle to enable me to acquire their knowledge - true to the younger’s name -, and it came when least expected. The Sisterhood has been trying to find a way to tap into this knowledge for centuries, and now it seems I have it.
[Dune7:
Advent]
*
[Book Two - Chapter Five]
What
do your memories teach you about your current state of mind? It’s impossible
to avoid a regression into an infinity of intended (but never achieved) levels
of objectivity, but the unknowable might be felt by the way it eludes your
understanding.
-The
Apocrypha Of Muad’Dib.
Murbella led the group through a veritable maze of
rock formations. After Odrade-within had briefed her completely, she was one of
a very select group of people who knew the access route to the sietch - the
passageways used in constructing it had been blocked by controlled explosions
after construction was finished.
Many hundreds of advanced acolytes had worked on it in complete secrecy,
their specific training having conditioned them to intense loyalty and the sense
of duty needed to keep the secret. A pyramid of deaths - many of them voluntary
because of that same training - with Odrade at the summit ensured that very few
still alive knew it even existed.
The tunnel that had taken them far away from central had been destroyed
as well, an explosion causing many tons of rock to seal the escape route behind
Murbella and her allies. The tunnel had brought them several kilometres into the
desert, where even now it was dangerous to travel alone, or untrained: although
most of the worms were not large enough to swallow an entire person, as they had
been on Rakis, carelessness and a lack of respect for the desert dwellers could
result in the loss of a leg.
The crossing of the open bled that seperated the relative safety of the
rock formations along the route to the sietch was therefore a dangerous
undertaking. All Bene Gesserit carried the Mark Of Siona, and were therefore in
some way related to the Atreides, which meant that they all had Fremen amongst
their ancestry - the real Fremen of Muad’Dib’s days. Even though none of the
Bene Gesserit had Other Memory that could access the thoughts and dreams of the
Kwisatz Haderach or his daughter, most had at least some measure of genetically
imprinted instinct that enabled them to cross the open stretches of sand in a
way similar to how the Fremen would have done it, thus minimising the chances of
attracting the violent worms.
This had become a real problem, as the Tyrant had promised: the
aggressive nature of the new worms. Collecting the small amounts of Spice the
worms had already started to produce was extremely dangerous, because unlike the
way the worms of Dune had behaved, the worms on Chapter House defended the Spice
fields as their territory, and did not hesitate to kill anyone who dared come
where they were not wanted. Sturdy mining equipment - smaller versions of the
gigantic sandcrawlers that had mined Spice on Rakis - would generally be
sufficient to protect any prospectors from the fury of the Old Man Of The
Desert, but the miners feared the future, when the worms would grow considerably
larger and stronger, and possibly even more ferocious.
The group had now reached the entrance to the sietch. Helped by Odrade,
Murbella entered the complex code that would unlock the main moisture seal: a
reinforced plasteel door rather than the plastic membranes that used to seal off
the traditional sietches. When they entered, those amongst them sufficiently
familiar with Fremen culture immediately noted how sterile everything smelled:
not at all like the overwhelming stench of sweat, Melange and food aromas that
permeated any true Fremen dwelling place.
There are three large windtraps and
seven smaller ones installed all throughout the area, capable of supplying
enough water for five thousand people, Odrade-within explained, if
they were to adopt Fremen efficiency. They have been functional for some time
now, so there should be enough water in the basins to last you through a
transitional period, especially considering the small size of the group.
On
this level you will find hunting equipment and a stillsuit manufacturing plant -
one hundred suits in varying sizes have already been made -, as well as an
armory and a deathstill. The middle level contains private quarters and supply
rooms. On the lowest level you will find the water basins and the main hall.
Our sietch, Murbella thought,
looking around while wandering through the various sections of the complex. What
did a sietch mean to the Fremen of Paul Atreides’ days? She knew the
etymology: ‘sietch’ meant ‘place of assembly in time of danger’, and
that was exactly the function this place now had for them.
** ** **
** **
All members of the group had gathered in one of the larger rooms - the
main hall was far too big to hold a meeting. Everyone had been assigned their
own quarters, and had started familiarising themselves with the layout of the
sietch and the workings of the equipment in it.
Bellonda had asked them all to be present, wanting to discuss the current
situation, and what their course of action for the near future would have to be.
Murbella watched the full-figured Reverend Mother rising from her seat and
walking to the front of the crowd, observing how she intentionally moved slowly,
attempting to create a situation in which she was the one dictating the course
of the meeting, instead of submitting to the whims of her audience.
Fondalar was part of their group as well, Murbella noticed. The way the
face Dancer that had accompanied her had managed to impersonate Sekil so well
still troubled Murbella. Discussing these feelings with Bellonda earlier, they
had agreed that there was nothing to suggest that Fondalar was a Face Dancer too
- during subsequent debriefings she had supplied much valuable information on
the Prometheans, and had passed all tests some of the more suspicious Proctors
had deemed necessary to subject her to -, but still Murbella had thought it wise
to keep an eye on her, moreso even than on the Honoured Matres of their group.
“Welcome all,” Bellonda began. “I realise this new situation might
present us with several problems - new patterns always manage to generate their
own limitations. However, the essence of a Bene Gesserit is adaptability - this
has allowed our Sisterhood to survive for many millennia. We will prevail.”
A soft murmur rose from the crowd, but Bellonda
gestured for silence. Her first words demonstrated subtlety and consideration of
feelings was not what she had in mind this time.
“The Honoured Matres obviously failed to grasp the gravity of our collective
predicament”, she continued, drawing angered stares from Murbella and the
handful of Honoured Matres that sympathised with the Bene Gesserit cause, and
had come along to the sietch. “Not only do they not realise that the civil war
they’ve instigated might mean the end of both factions - even if one were to
emerge victorious, the resulting force would in all probability be unable to do
anything against the Prometheans, who will most likely arrive within the next
decade. Quite possibly sooner than that.”
Murbella’s reaction to Bellonda’s borderline inflammatory words was
confused. On the one hand her Bene Gesserit training told her Bellonda was
correct, if perhaps lacking in diplomacy. Her Honoured Matre ego however, pure
rage and arrogance having been forged into her personality by years of training,
indoctrination and the ingestion of an aggression-stimulating Melange-substitute,
made her want to kill the witch right then and there.
An Honoured Matre in the audience had apparently experienced similar
emotions. She had risen from her seat, and was screaming at Bellonda: “You are
a bigot, witch! I should kill you for what you said.”
Bellonda did not seem to be impressed, and reacted calmly. “It is
exactly this kind of behaviour that is causing so much trouble right now.”
This did not appease the Honoured Matre, and it took
a very angry glare from Murbella to make Bellonda apologise. In a way, seeing
Bellonda swallowing her pride was amusing to her, despite the guilt this made
her feel.
“I apologise. I was out of line,” Bellonda
managed to mumble.
The meeting continued, but Murbella’s thoughts
drifted elsewhere. Whatever diplomacy
might dictate, there is no getting around the fact the problems we have to face
are legion, she realised. The Bene
Gesserit/Honoured Matre alliance cannot be allowed to dissolve, but whether or
not that can actually be prevented might not depend on us so much as on dumb
luck - our group is certainly skilled and a powerful force in and of itself, but
also very small. Apart from that, the worms cannot be controlled: Sheeana and
the secrets of Siaynoq are gone, and so is the one that was to control her. I
imprinted him… Would he have stayed if Lucilla’s scheme to bind him to her
had succeeded? Was I the weak link?
[Marco
van Leeuwen - Dune7: Advent - Page x]
[Dune7:
Advent]
*
[Book Two - Chapter Six]
To
know the Fremen is to understand the formation of their culture. The histories
tell of their distant ancestors living on the paradise world of Poritrin, where
they grew water-fat and soft. Imperial forces harvested the strongest and sent
them to Salusa Secundus as slaves, thus starting the Zensunni migration. They
struggled on that unforgiving planet for nine generations, until they staged a
revolt against their cruel masters and traveled to Bela Tegeuse to free the
Zensunni who had been sent there. Pursued by the vengeful Imperial forces, the
Zensunni migrated to Ishia and then to Rossak, never eluding detection by their
pursuers for more than a few decades. From Rossak they traveled to Harmonthep,
their continued refusal to enter subservience increasingly infuriating to the
Empire. The official sources claim Harmonthep was destroyed by the impact of an
asteroid, the detection of this impending catastrophe forcing the Zensunni to
migrate for the final time - to Arrakis -, but it is rumoured that the planet
was destroyed by an Imperial weapon in an attempt to finally deal with the
renegade Zensunni. Any evidence in favour of this latter claim does not exist,
either because the claim itself is untrue, or because the evidence was carefully
destroyed. Hardened by many generations of being scorned and pursued, the
Zensunni adapted quickly to the inhospitable wastes of Arrakis, at first
averting dehydration by carefully emulating the behaviour and
water-management-processes of indigenous animals, but gradually developing a
highly specialised industry unsurpassed in craftsmanship. Their ways of adapting
to the harsh desert environment also bled into their demeanour: focused on their
own tribe on a social level, their distrust towards outsiders imprinted into
them during generations of being oppressed, and inwardly directed on a
psychological level. This was compounded by an unconscious resonance with their
environment nurturing a ferocity unequalled in the Empire, not even amongst the
feared Sardaukar. On Arrakis, the Zensunni finally found autonomy and privacy,
and in combination with the integration of the priceless Spice into their lives
they truly became Fremen. The absence of freedom was traded for the absence of
what most people would consider acceptable living conditions, forcing the Fremen
to fall back on their own abilities in the most fundamental manner imaginable.
It is here that we find the key to understanding the Fremen: pride. Pride in
what they, as a people, had accomplished.
-from
“The Roots Of Muad’Dib” by Harq al-Ada.
Murbella realised the emergence of Ghanima and Jessica Atreides a few
days ago needed to be investigated. They hadn’t reappeared since that initial
discussion, but the simple fact that she apparently had access to her Ancestral
Memories now, albeit not at will, filled Murbella with both fear and elation.
There was a slight possibility that certain personas in her Other Memory were
playing tricks on her: they could be simulating the Kwisatz Haderach’s mother
and her granddaughter to either make Murbella understand something or to somehow
harm her. Which of these possibilities applied here was as yet unclear - the
margin of error in reconstructing personas from the distant past from barely
stable configurations of synaptic weights was considerable, after all, making
memories less accurate the older they were.
However, if she had in fact gained access to her
Ancestral Memories, this marked an important new step in the evolution of the
Bene Gesserit. A reliable representation or log of the memories, thoughts and
visions of Paul Atreides could be extremely valuable to the Sisterhood. After
all this time and all these speculations, even the foremost minds of the Bene
Gesserit were still unable to construct a coherent picture of what exactly had
gone wrong - in what way did the many causal chains meet during Paul Atreides’
life on Arrakis and the subsequent reign of his son? That is, if causality was
preserved at all.
Even the Bene Gesserit breeding records could not
explain why Paul Atreides had turned out to be who he was. He had previously
impossible abilities, most of which were unexpected, and had not been intended
to emerge in him at all. In a way, he
was the Kwisatz Haderach, but he was born a generation early. What had happened
to activate his powers, instead of allowing them to remain dormant for another
generation? What had made his seed so rich with potential, that the Tyrant could
be born from it?
I need to find
out,
Murbella thought. For my own sanity, and
the future of the Sisterhood - perhaps even the future of humanity.
She opened her mind up to the wisdom of the past, attempting to coerce
one or more of the personas from her Other Memory to acknowledge her plea for
help, to divulge their secrets. Instead of the appearance of a voice, as was
most often the case, her mind was now filled with constellations of the
stimulation of several different senses: images joined by smells, sounds and
tactile sensations. She felt she had descended deeper than she ever had dared to
go before.
She saw Bene Gesserit from the past, undergoing the ritual that would
awaken their Other Memory. Many generations of Reverend Mothers passed her by,
all of them mining the knowledge of their predecessors, and a fear pervading all
of their minds: Abomination. She saw many deaths, intended to prevent the
madness the acquisition of Other Memory sometimes led to, but there were many
more than the handful the official reports spoke of.
A shift in the conglomerate of sensations showed her the past of the
Honoured Matres: Bene Gesserit and Fish Speakers meeting eachother in the
Scattering, forging an unholy alliance that would cause so much death and
suffering in so many places… Their ferocity was a defense-mechanism - the
Prometheans were there from the very beginning, hunting them down with Futars
and other, much more sinister… things.
A strange sensation overcame Murbella. The mating of Bene Gesserit and Fish Speakers to form the Honoured
Matres was not an accident, she realised. The Melange substitute that increased the Honoured Matres’ speed and
strength, but also made them irrational and aggressive… Someone made it with
that express purpose in mind!
Leto!, she cried out. This all your
fault! See what you have done?
Leto
gave his life for you!,
a voice said. Murbella recognised it as belonging to Ghanima.
I don’t believe you, Murbella
returned. Everything that worm has ever
done has only brought more ruin and destruction to the universe. He was a
megalomaniac who desired absolute power and eternal life.
Very
well. I will show you the truth,
Ghanima said.
Two children appeared in front of Murbella’s mind’s eye - a girl
dressed in a Fremen stillsuit, and a boy, a long cloak barely hiding his sleek
silvery skin. They were sitting on a ledge overlooking a great desert plain, the
sun setting in the distance. Murbella realised she was watching Ghanima and Leto,
not long after he had accepted his sandtrout skin. It seemed to Murbella as if
she was right next to them, taking part in the conversation, until she realised
she could not speak.
“Very few people understand the terrible
transformation you’ve subjected yourself to,” Ghanima told her brother.
“Many interpret the fact you felt forced to choose this fate for yourself as
the ultimate sign the Atreides dynasty has descended into madness. They think
insanity is your weakness, and they will either disregard you on that basis, or
use this as leverage in attempts to overthrow your rule. They misunderstand:
your insanity is your strength, it is love that is your greatest weakness. The
people will ridicule your loss of humanity and call it your greatest tragedy,
but they fail to understand your tragedy is that you are more human than anyone
who has ever lived.”
Leto took his sister’s hands, tears appearing in
the corners of his eyes. The water trickled down across his cheeks, the cowl
surrounding his face flinching every time a tear would touch it. Leto felt the
pain, but did not stop crying.
Murbella dismissed the image, banned it from her mind. She descended
deeper into Other Memory, still looking for answers that would satisfy her.
The dark place that Reverend Mothers feared to enter approached in the
distance, the pandaemonium that would emerge to threaten everyone who had lived
through the Spice Agony at one point.. Murbella broke out in panic and tried to
move away, but the terrible darkness was upon her in an instant and swallowed
her.
A voice greeted her there, the once-proud timbre broken by remorse,
filled with grief. You have to believe me, the voice said. I only tried to mend what I had broken. I thought he could help.
Who
could help?, Murbella managed to ask after a while, her fear
having subsided.
The Count. He wanted to help me. He
said he understood me, and that I was the only one who would understand him. I
knew the Golden Path would have to be built, but I just… I prayed for another
possibility. I had seen what would happen on the Path. So terrible…
Something else - a dark shape - appeared. Arrogance and evil given form,
a fearsomely dangerous persona leading a revolt of the vast collecton of
malignant personas present in Murbella’s Other Memory. Odrade-within, who had
been unable to stop Murbella’s descent, didn’t stand a chance against the
overwhelming power of the invaders, Taraza and the other well-willing Bene
Gesserit already having been defeated, and was quickly contained and left to
wither away from disuse, as the least-used personas in Other Memory sometimes
did.
I am an Atreides, I am an
Atreides…, Murbella kept telling herself, trying to ward off the evil that
she felt was approaching.
Exactly, Murbella’s new
primary said.
Murbella emerged from her visions, and sat up in her
bed, for a moment thinking that it had all been just a dream. Still shaken up
from her harrowing experiences, she let herself fall back again, wishing to rest
for a while before returning to her duties.
Still filled with nervous energy, Murbella unwittingly tapped the fingers of her right hand. Little finger twice, index finger thrice, ring finger twice, little finger once, ring finger twice, and then the whole sequence all over again.