So it comes down to procreation.
That's a decision you make for yourself: family and what binds it. What tickles life and happiness?
Murbella began to laugh. She dropped her hands and opened her eyes to find Bellonda standing there watching.
"That's always a temptation for a new Reverend Mother," Bellonda said. "Chat a bit with Other Memory. Who was it this time? Dar?"
Murbella nodded.
"Don't trust anything they give you. It's lore and you judge it for yourself "
Odrade's words exactly. Look through the eyes of the dead at scenes long gone. What a peep show!
"You can get lost in there for hours," Bellonda said. "Exercise restraint. Be sure of your ground. One hand for yourself and one for the ship."
There it was again! The past applied to the present. How rich Other Memory made everyday life.
"It'll pass," Bellonda said. "It gets to be old hat after a time." She laid a report in front of Murbella.
Old hat! One hand for yourself and one for the ship. So much just in idioms.
Murbella leaned back in the slingchair to scan Bellonda's report, fancying herself suddenly in Odrade's idiom: Spider Queen in the center of my web. The web might be a bit frayed just now but it was still there catching things to be digested. Twitch a trigger strand and Bell came running, mandibles flexing in anticipation. The twitch-words were "Archives" and "Analysis."
Seeing Bellonda in this light, Murbella saw the wisdom in the ways Odrade had employed her, flaws as valuable as the strengths. When Murbella finished the report, Bellonda still stood there in characteristic attitude.
Murbella recognized that Bellonda looked on all who summoned her as ones who had not measured up, people who called on Archives for frivolous reasons and had to be set straight. Frivolity: Bellonda's bete noire. Murbella found this amusing.
Murbella kept amusement masked while enjoying Bellonda. The way to deal with her was to be scrupulous. Nothing to subtract from strengths. This report was a model of concise and pertinent argument. She made her points with few embellishments, just enough to reveal her own conclusions.
"Does it amuse you to summon me?" Bellonda asked.
She's sharper than she was! Did I summon her? Not in so many words but she knows when she's needed. She says here our Sisters must be models of meekness. Mother Superior may be anything she needs to be but not so the rest of the Sisterhood.
Murbella touched the report. "A starting point."
"Then we should start before your friends find the comeye center." Bellonda sank into her chairdog with familiar confidence. "Tam's gone but I could send for Sheeana."
"Where is she?"
"At the ship. Studying a collection of worms in the Great Hold, says any of us can be taught to control them."
"Valuable if true. Leave her. What of Scytale?"
"Still in the ship. Your friends haven't found him yet. We're keeping him under wraps."
"Let's continue that. He's a good reserve bargaining chip. And they're not my friends, Bell. How are the Rabbi and his party?"
"Comfortable but worried. They know Honored Matres are here."
"Keep them under wraps."
"It's uncanny. A different voice but I hear Dar."
"An echo in your head."
Bellonda actually laughed.
"Now here's what you must spread among the Sisters. We act with extreme delicacy while showing ourselves as people to admire and emulate. 'You Honored Matres may not choose to live as we live but you can learn our strengths.' "
"Ahhhhhh."
"It comes down to ownership. Honored Matres are owned by things. 'I want that place, that bauble, that person.' Take what you want. Use it until you tire of it."
"While we go along our path admiring what we see."
"And there's our flaw. We don't give ourselves easily. Fear of love and affection! To be self-possessed has its own greed. 'See what I have? You can't have it unless you follow my ways!' Never take that attitude with Honored Matres."
"Are you telling me we have to love them?"
"How else can we make them admire us? That was Jessica's victory. When she gave, she gave it all. So much bottled up by our ways and then that overwhelming wash: everything given. It's irresistible."
"We don't compromise that easily."
"No more do Honored Matres."
"That's the way of their bureaucratic origins!"
"Yet, theirs is a training ground for following the path of least resistance."
"You're confusing me, Da... Murbella."
"Have I said we should compromise? Compromise weakens us, and we know there are problems compromise cannot solve, decisions we must make no matter how bitter."
"Pretend to love them?"
"That's a beginning."
"It'll be a bloody union, this joining of Bene Gesserit and Honored Matre."
"I suggest we Share as widely as possible. We may lose people while Honored Matres are learning."
"A marriage made on the battlefield."
Murbella stood, thinking of Duncan in the no-ship, remembering the ship as she had seen it last. There it was finally, not hidden to any sense. A lump of strange machinery, oddly grotesque. A wild conglomeration of protrusions and juttings with no apparent purpose. Hard to imagine the thing lifting on its own power, enormous as that was, and vanishing into space.
Vanishing into space!
She saw the shape of Duncan's mental mosaic.
A piece that cannot be moved! Get in tune... Don't think; do it!
With an abruptness that chilled her, she knew his decision.