Persistent wailing came from the other presences. Laments: "See? See what happens when you ignore common sense?"

Agony increased. She could not escape it. Every nerve was touched with flame. She wanted to cry, to scream threats, to implore for help. Tumbling emotions accompanied the agony but she ignored them. Everything happened along a thin thread of existence. The thread could snap!

I'm dying.

The thread was stretching. It was going to break! Hopeless to resist. Muscles would not obey. There probably were no muscles remaining to her. She did not want them anyway. They were pain. It was hell and would never end . . . not even if the thread snapped. Flames burned along the thread, licking at her awareness.

Hands shook her shoulders. Duncan . . . don't. Each movement was pain beyond anything she had imagined possible. This deserved to be called the Agony.

The thread no longer was stretching. It was pulling back, compressing. It became one small thing, a sausage of such exquisite pain that nothing else existed. The sense of being became vague, translucent . . . transparent.

"Do you see?" the voice of her mohalata guide came from far away.

I see things.

Not exactly seeing. A distant awareness of others. Other sausages. Other Memory encased in the skins of lost lives. They extended behind her in a train whose length she could not determine. Translucent fog. It ripped apart occasionally and she glimpsed events. No . . . not events themselves. Memory.

"Share witness," her guide said. "You see what our ancestors have done. They debase the worst curse you can invent. Don't make excuses about necessities of the times! Just remember: There are no innocents!"

Ugly! Ugly!

She could hold on to none of it. Everything became reflections and ripping fog. Somewhere there was a glory that she knew she might attain.

Absence of this Agony.

That was it. How glorious that would be!

Where is that glorious condition?

Lips touched her forehead, her mouth. Duncan! She reached up. My hands are free. Her fingers slipped into remembered hair. This is real!

Agony receded. Only then did she realize that she had come through pain more terrible than words could describe. Agony? It seared the psyche and remolded her. One person entered and another emerged.

Duncan! She opened her eyes and there was his face directly above her. Do I still love him? He is here. He is an anchor to which I clung in the worst moments. But do I love him? Am I still balanced?

No answer.

Odrade spoke from somewhere out of view. "Strip those clothes off her. Towels. She's drenched. And bring her a proper robe!"

There were scurrying sounds, then Odrade once more: "Murbella, you did that the hard way, I'm glad to say."

Such elation in her voice. Why was she glad?

Where is the sense of responsibility? Where is the grail I'm supposed to feel in my head? Answer me, someone!

But the woman at the shuttle controls was gone.

Only I remain. And I remember atrocities that might make an Honored Matre quail. She glimpsed the grail then and it was not a thing but a question: How to set those balances aright?





Our household god is this thing we carry forward generation after generation: our message for humankind if it matures. The closest thing we have to a household goddess is a failed Reverend Mother-Chenoeh there in her niche.

-DARWI ODRADE

Idaho thought of his Mentat abilities as a retreat now. Murbella stayed with him as frequently as their duties allowed-he with his weapons development and she recovering strength while she adjusted to her new status.

She did not lie to him. She did not try to tell him she felt no difference between them. But he sensed the pulling away, elastic being stretched to its limits.

"My Sisters have been taught not to divulge secrets of the heart. There's the danger they perceive in love. Perilous intimacies. The deepest sensitivities blunted. Do not give someone a stick with which to beat you."

She thought her words reassuring to him but he heard the inner argument. Be free! Break entangling bonds!

He saw her often these days in the throes of Other Memory. Words escaped her in the night.

"Dependencies . . . group soul . . . intersection of living awareness . . . Fish Speakers . . ."

She had no hesitation about sharing some of this. "The intersection? Anyone can sense nexus points in the natural interruptions of life. Deaths, diversions, incidental pauses between powerful events, births . . ."

"Birth an interruption?"

They were in his bed, even the chrono darkened . . . but that did not hide them from comeyes, of course. Other energies fed the Sisterhood's curiosity.

"You never thought of birth as an interruption? A Reverend Mother finds that amusing."

Amusing! Pulling away . . . pulling away . . .

Fish Speakers, that was the revelation the Bene Gesserit absorbed with fascination. They had suspected, but Murbella gave them confirmation. Fish Speaker democracy became Honored Matre autocracy. No more doubts.

"The tyranny of the minority cloaked in the mask of the majority," Odrade called it, her voice exultant. "Downfall of democracy. Either overthrown by its own excesses or eaten away by bureaucracy."

Idaho could hear the Tyrant in that judgment. If history had any repetitive patterns, here was one. A drumbeat of repetition. First, a Civil Service law masked in the lie that it was the only way to correct demagogic excesses and spoils systems. Then the accumulation of power in places voters could not touch. And finally, aristocracy.

"The Bene Gesserit may be the only ones ever to create the all-powerful jury," Murbella said. "Juries are not popular with legalists. Juries oppose the law. They can ignore judges."

She laughed in the darkness. "Evidence! What is evidence except those things you are allowed to perceive? That's what Law tries to control: carefully managed reality."

Words to divert him, words to demonstrate her new Bene Gesserit powers. Her words of love fell flat.

She speaks them out of memory.

He saw this bothered Odrade almost as much as it dismayed him. Murbella did not notice either reaction.

Odrade had tried to reassure him. "Every new Reverend Mother goes through an adjustment period. Manic at times. Think of the new ground under her, Duncan!"

How can I not think of it?

"First law of bureaucracy," Murbella told the darkness.

You do not divert me, love.

"Grow to the limits of available energy!" Her voice was indeed manic. "Use the lie that taxes solve all problems." She turned toward him in the bed but not for love. "Honored Matres played the whole routine! Even a social security system to quiet the masses, but everything went into their own energy bank."

"Murbella!"

"What?" Surprised at the sharpness of his tone. Didn't he know he was talking to a Reverend Mother?

"I know all of this, Murbella. Any Mentat does."

"Are you trying to shut me up?" Angry.

"Our job is to think like our enemy," he said. "We do have a common enemy?"

"You're sneering at me, Duncan."

"Are your eyes orange?"

"Melange doesn't allow that and you know . . . Oh."

"The Bene Gesserit need your knowledge but you must cultivate it!" He turned on a glowglobe and found her flaring at him. Not unexpected and not really Bene Gesserit.

Hybrid.

The word leaped into his mind. Was it hybrid vigor? Did the Sisterhood expect this of Murbella? The Bene Gesserit surprised you sometimes. You found them facing you in odd corridors, eyes unwavering, faces masked in that way of theirs and, behind the masks, unusual responses brewing. That was where Teg learned to do the unexpected. But this? Idaho thought he could grow to dislike this new Murbella.

She saw this in him, naturally. He remained open to her as to no other person.

"Don't hate me, Duncan." No pleading but something deeply hurt behind the words.

"I'll never hate you." But he turned off the light.

She nestled against him almost the way she had before the Agony. Almost. The difference tore at him.

"Honored Matres see the Bene Gesserit as competitors for power," Murbella said. "It's not so much that men who follow my former Sisters are fanatics, but they're made incapable of self-determination by their addiction."

"Is that the way we are?"

"Now, Duncan."

"You mean I could get this commodity at another store?"

She chose to assume he was talking about Honored Matre fears. "Many would abandon them if they could." Turning toward him fiercely, she demanded a sexual response. Her abandon shocked him. As though this might be the last time she could experience such ecstasy.

Afterward, he lay exhausted.

"I hope I'm pregnant again," she whispered. "We still need our babies."

We need. The Bene Gesserit need. No longer "they need."

He fell asleep to dream he was in the ship's armory. It was a dream touched by realities. The ship remained a weapons factory as it actually had become. Odrade was talking to him in the dream armory. "I make decisions of necessity, Duncan. Little likelihood you'll break out and run amok."

"I am too much the Mentat for that!" How self-important his dream voice! I'm dreaming and I know I dream. Why am I in the armory with Odrade?

A list of weapons scrolled before his eyes.

Atomics. (He saw big blasters and deadly dusts.)

Lasguns. (No counting the various models.)

Bacteriologicals.

The scroll was interrupted by Odrade's voice. "We can assume smugglers concentrate as usual on small things that bring a big price."

"Soostones, of course." Still self-important. I'm not that way!

"Assassination weapons," she said. "Plans and specifications for new devices."

"Theft of trade secrets is a big item with smugglers." I'm insufferable!

"There are always medicines and the diseases that require them," she said.

Where is she? I can hear her but I can't see her. "Do Honored Matres know our universe harbors blackguards not above sowing the problem before providing the solution?" Blackguards? I never use that word.

"All things relative, Duncan. They burned Lampadas and butchered four million of our finest."

He awoke and sat upright. Specifications for new devices! There it was in delicate detail, a way to miniaturize Holzmann generators. Two centimeters, no more. And much cheaper! How was that smuggled into my mind?

He slipped out of bed, not awakening Murbella, and groped his way to a robe. He heard her snuffle as he let himself out into the workroom.

Seating himself at his console, he copied the design from his mind and studied it. Perfect! Englobement for sure. He transmitted to Archives with a flag for Odrade and Bellonda.

With a sigh, he sat back and examined his design once more. It vanished in a return to his dream scroll. Am I still dreaming? No! He could feel the chair, touch the console, hear the field buzzing. Dreams do that.

The scroll produced cutting and stabbing weapons, including some designed to introduce poisons or bacteria into enemy flesh.

Projectiles.

He wondered how to stop the scroll and study details.

"It's all in your head!"

Humans and other animals bred for attack scrolled past his eyes, hiding the console and its projection. Futars? How did Futars get in there? What do I know about Futars?

Disruptors replaced the animals. Weapons to cloud mental activity or interfere with life itself. Disruptors? I've never heard that name before.

Disruptors were succeeded by null-G "seekers" designed to hunt specific targets. Those I know.

Explosives next, including ones to spread poisons and bacteriologicals.

Deceptives, to project false targets. Teg had used those.

Energizers appeared next. He had a private arsenal of those: ways of increasing capacities of your troops.

Abruptly, the s