BOOK TWO - CHAPTER ELEVEN
Learn this lesson well: Jessica Atreides, the mother of Muad'Dib, succumbed to her greatest weakness and allowed love to guide her actions. Love contaminates the ability to apply rational principles, forcing the subject to time and time again combat the result of animalistic actions rather than allowing reason to manifest its purest essence. Love has its uses within clearly defined parameters - to promote procreation and education of offspring - but only to those not competent enough to realise how this evolutionary mechanism reduces autonomy: an understanding of the true essence of love removes its necessity. The events of the past millennia have demonstrated irrefutably how even a single moment of blind loyalty to love can result in disaster.
-Bene Gesserit Analysis-
Standing near the entrance to the sietch, concealed from view by an outcropping of rock, Murbella watched the sky grow fiery yellow and red, and slowly darker as night fell. Despite the recent Bene Gesserit victory on the Honoured Matre malcontents, and though she really didn't have any definite information to base this on, she suspected there would be even darker skies in the very near future.
After Koshad had been killed, it really hadn't taken the Bene Gesserit forces much effort to eradicate the rebellion - it turned out many Honoured Matres would much rather continue to immerse themselves in the knowledge of the Sisterhood rather than go back to the barbaric ways of the past. At least in that respect the alliance of the two forces as Taraza had intended it had been a success, although the reason for the docility displayed by the Honoured Matres loyal to their new allies might not be because they truly desired to fit in, but rather because they understood absorbing the knowledge would make them stronger themselves.
Advisers had convinced Murbella that it was safer to return to the sietch - a small number of Honoured Matres still loyal to Donelid had started a guerilla war against the Sisterhood. It was only a matter of time before they would be apprehended or killed, but their activities endangered the life of the Mother Superior.
And now that this fire has been extinguished - for the moment, because there is still a lot of veiled animosity between the two factions -, a new problem could present itself: the Prometheans might come, Murbella realised. And what is Tleilax planning?
As if the idea itself was magnetic, attracting Murbella's thoughts time and time again, thinking of Tleilax made her consider gholas, which in turn compelled her to remember Duncan Idaho.
Every time I let my guard down, he is there again. What is that hold that he has on me?
She tried to remember him: his good looks, boyish smile and unruly black hair. She saw another Duncan, one who she had never seen before: a young boy, no more than eight years old. She hadn't met Duncan until he was much older, but still she knew that who she saw was her love as a young boy. He was running through the woods, and very afraid. Grown men with lasguns were chasing him! In a way she couldn't explain, it gave her pleasure thinking of Duncan like this.
Other thoughts populated her mind then, and she forgot this strange experience. She once more returned to love, and the way she had experienced this most important of emotional constellations throughout her life. The wanderings of Murbella's mind halted at what she knew of Jessica Atreides, the classic case of a Bene Gesserit who had succumbed to the temptations of the flesh - love -, and had caused tremendous problems because of what she had done under the influence of her hormones. All Bene Gesserit were required to study her life and her writings, in order to learn how to avoid making similar mistakes.
While Murbella was studying in the library at Central late one night, she had come across a transcription of a poem the Kwisatz Haderach's mother had once written - an elegy concerning the death of her daughter, the Abomination, Saint Alia-Of-The-Knife. Murbella remembered that poem:
This holiest flesh
Beauty still in life's end
How far my love has fallen
So many voices
Crowding so young a mind
Their words carried diseases
Death will cleanse her water
Return it to her tribe
But memories remain
Her ghost still clings
My eyes still drink
Her voice still carried on the wind
My carelessness caused
Her suffering forced
Conscience into grief.
Despite her conversion back to Bene Gesserit ways later in her life, she still maintained emotional ties to her offspring that were of considerable magnitude.
It pains me to say this, as Bene Gesserit Mother Superior, but I understand how she must have felt, Murbella realised. After all this time, Duncan's face and touch and voice still haunt my thoughts. I can't forget him - time nor willpower have proven able to do so. Where are you, my love? Now is when I need you most. The uncertainty is what wounds me most - are you still alive, or have you fallen prey to whatever predators lurk in the shadows outside our sphere of influence?
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Deep inside the Bene Gesserit sietch, a computer console flashed to life. Machines like this had been forbidden by the Jihad, but Odrade had considered it necessary to equip the sietch with one to process the data collected by the many sensors placed at strategic locations all over and in orbit around the planet of Chapter House.
It relayed information from the no-satellites that formed a protective belt around the planet - they carried weapons to repel any attack from outer space, and helped hide the planet from long-range scanners and prescient searchers wanting to find the central hub of the Sisterhood. The console reported a growing number of no-satellites were disappearing - either contact with these satellites was lost because of a technical failure, or the satellites themselves had been destroyed.
Concealed from all but a few sensors, a no-ship was descending towards the planet, carrying the object of Murbella's affection, a Tleilaxu Master, a number of gholas, a small sandworm and five axolotl-tanks.
In a few short moments, the assault on Chapter House would begin.