The mistake of Honored Matres.
What is delaying the Rabbi?
Was he seeing how much he could get for the Reverend Mother Lucilla?
A door slammed below her, shaking the floor under her feet. She heard hurried footsteps on a stairway. How primitive these people were. Stairways! Lucilla turned as the door opened. The Rabbi entered bringing a rich smell of melange. He stood by the door assessing her mood.
"Forgive my tardiness, dear lady. I was summoned for questioning by Edric, the Guild Navigator."
That explained the smell of spice. Navigators were forever bathed in the orange gas of melange, their features often fogged by the vapors. Lucilla could visualize the Navigator's tiny v of a mouth and the ugly flap of nose. Mouth and nose appeared small on a Navigator's gigantic face with its pulsing temples. She knew how threatened the Rabbi must have felt listening to the singsong ululations of the Navigator's voice with its simultaneous mechtranslation into impersonal Galach.
"What did he want?"
"You."
"Does he..."
"He does not know for sure but I am certain he suspects us. However, he suspects everybody."
"Did they follow you?"
"Not necessary. They can find me any time they want."
"What shall we do?" She knew she spoke too fast, much too loud.
"Dear lady..." He came three steps closer and she saw the perspiration on his forehead and nose. Fear. She could smell it.
"Well, what is it?"
"The economic view behind the activities of Honored Matres - we find them quite interesting."
His words crystallized her fears. I knew it! He's selling me out!
"As you Reverend Mothers know very well, there are always gaps in economic systems."
"Yes?" Profoundly wary.
"Incomplete suppression of trade in any commodity always increases the profits of the tradesmen, especially the profits of the senior distributors." His voice was warningly hesitant. "That is the fallacy of thinking you can control unwanted narcotics by stopping them at your borders."
What was he trying to tell her? His words described elementary facts known even to acolytes. Increased profits were always used to buy safe paths past border guards, often by buying the guards themselves.
Has he bought servants of the Honored Matres? Surely, he doesn't believe he can do that safely.
She waited while he composed his thoughts, obviously forming a presentation he believed most likely to gain her acceptance.
Why did he point her attention toward border guards? That certainly was what he had done. Guards always had a ready rationalization for betraying their superiors, of course. "If I don't, someone else will."
She dared to hope.
The Rabbi cleared his throat. It was apparent he had found the words he wanted and had placed them in order.
" I do not believe there is any way to get you off Gammu alive."
She had not expected such a blunt condemnation. "But the..."
"The information you carry, that is a different matter," he said.
So that was behind all of the focusing on borders and guards!
"You don't understand, Rabbi. My information is not just a few words and some warnings." She tapped a finger against her forehead. "In here are many precious lives, all of those irreplaceable experiences, learning so vital that -"
"Ahhh, but I do understand, dear lady. Our problem is that you do not understand."
Always these references to understanding!
"It is your honor upon which I depend at this moment," he said.
Ahhhh, the legendary honesty and trustworthiness of the Bene Gesserit when we have given our word!
"You know I will die rather than betray you," she said.
He spread his hands wide in a rather helpless gesture. "I am fully confident of that, dear lady. The question is not one of betrayal but of something we have never before revealed to your Sisterhood."
"What are you trying to tell me?" Quite peremptory, almost with Voice (which she had been warned not to try on these Jews).
"I must exact a promise from you. I must have your word that you will not turn against us because of what I am about to reveal. You must promise to accept my solution to our dilemma."
"Sight unseen?"
"Only because I ask it of you and assure you that we honor our commitment to your Sisterhood."
She glared at him, trying to see through this barrier he had erected between them. His surface reactions could be read but not the mysterious thing beneath his unexpected behavior.
The Rabbi waited for this fearsome woman to reach her decision. Reverend Mothers always made him uneasy. He knew what her decision must be and pitied her. He saw that she could read the pity in his expression. They knew so much and so little. Their powers were manifest. And their knowledge of Secret Israel so perilous!
We owe them this debt, though. She is not of the Chosen, but a debt is a debt. Honor is honor: Truth is truth.
The Bene Gesserit had preserved Secret Israel in many hours of need. And a pogrom was something his people knew without lengthy explanations. Pogrom was embedded in the psyche of Secret Israel. And thanks to the Unspeakable, the chosen people would never forget. No more than they could forgive.
Memory kept fresh in daily ritual (with periodic emphasis in communal sharings) cast a glowing halo on what the Rabbi knew he must do. And this poor woman! She, too, was trapped by memories and circumstances.
Into the cauldron! Both of us!
"You have my word," Lucilla said.
The Rabbi returned to the room's only door and opened it. An older woman in a long brown gown stood there. She stepped in at the Rabbi's beckoning gesture. Hair the color of old driftwood neatly bound in a bun at the back of her head. Face pinched in and wrinkled, dark as a dried almond. The eyes, though! Total blue! And that steely hardness within them...