"These are lives in your past." It was the woman at the shuttle controls but her voice had a disembodied quality and came from no discernible place.
"We are descendants of people who did nasty things," the woman said. "We don't like to admit there were barbarians in our ancestry. A Reverend Mother must admit it. We have no choice."
Murbella had the knack of only thinking her questions now. Why must I...
"The victors bred. We are their descendants. Victory often was gained at great moral price. Barbarism is not even an adequate word for some of the things our ancestors did."
Murbella felt a familiar hand on her cheek. Duncan! The touch restored agony. Oh, Duncan! You're hurting me.
Through the pain, she sensed gaps in the lives being revealed to her. Things withheld.
"Only what you're capable of accepting now," the disembodied voice said. "Others come later when you're stronger... if you survive."
Selective filter. Odrade's words. Necessity opens doors.
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."