How do you guide me now, Dar?
You want guidance? A guided tour of your life? Is that why I died?
But they took the Van Gogh, too!
Is that what you'll miss?
Why did they take it, Dar?
Caustic laughter greeted this and Murbella was glad no one else heard.
Can't you see what she intends?
The Missionaria scheme!
Oh, more than that. It's the next phase: Muad'Dib to Tyrant to Honored Matres to us to Sheeana... to what? Can't you see it? The thing is right there at the lip of your thoughts. Accept it as you would swallow a bitter drink.
Murbella shuddered.
See it? The bitter medicine of a Sheeana future? We once thought all medicines had to be bitter or they were not effective. No healing power in the sweet.
Must it happen, Dar?
Some will choke on that medicine. But the survivors may create interesting patterns.
Paired opposites define your longings and those longings imprison you.
- The Zensunni Whip
"You deliberately let them get away, Daniel!"
The old woman rubbed her hands down the stained front of her garden apron. It was a summer morning around her, flowers blooming, birds calling from nearby trees. There was a misty look to the sky, a yellow radiance near the horizon.
"Now, Marty, it was not deliberate," Daniel said. He took off his porkpie hat and rubbed the bushy stubble of gray hair before replacing the hat. "He surprised me. I knew he saw us but I didn't suspect he saw the net."
"And I had such a nice planet picked out for them," Marty said. "One of the best. A real test of their abilities."
"No use moaning about it," Daniel said. "They're where we can't touch them now. He was spread so thin, though, I expected to catch him easy."
"They had a Tleilaxu Master, too," Marty said. "I saw him when they went under the net. I would have so liked to study another Master."
"Don't see why. Always whistling at us, always making it necessary to stomp them down. I don't like treating Masters that way and you know it! If it weren't for them..."
"They're not gods, Daniel."
"Neither are we."
"I still think you let them escape. You're so anxious to prune your roses!"
"What would you have said to the Master, anyway?" Daniel asked.
"I was going to joke when he asked who we were. They always ask that. I was going to say: 'What did you expect, God Himself with a flowing beard?' "
Daniel chuckled. "That would've been funny. They have such a hard time accepting that Face Dancers can be independent of them."
"I don't see why. It's a natural consequence. They gave us the power to absorb the memories and experiences of other people. Gather enough of those and..."
"It's personas we take, Marty."
"Whatever. The Masters should've known we would gather enough of them one day to make our own decisions about our own future."
"And theirs?"
"Oh, I'd have apologized to him after putting him in his place. You can do just so much managing of others, isn't that right, Daniel?"
"When you get that look on your face, Marty, I go prune my roses." He went back to a line of bushes with verdant leaves and black blooms as large as his head.
Marty called after him: "Gather up enough people and you get a big ball of knowledge, Daniel! That's what I'd have told him. And those Bene Gesserit in that ship! I'd have told them how many of them I have. Ever notice how alienated they feel when we peek at them?"
Daniel bent to his black roses.
She stared after him, hands on her hips.
"Not to mention Mentats," he said. "There were two of them on that ship-both gholas. You want to play with them?"
"The Masters always try to control them, too," she said.
"That Master is going to have trouble if he tries to mess with that big one," Daniel said, snipping off a ground shoot from the root stock of his roses. "My, this is a pretty one."
"Mentats, too!" Marty called. "I'd have told them. Dime a dozen, they are."
"Dimes? I don't think they'd have understood that, Marty. The Reverend Mothers, yes, but not that big Mentat. He didn't thin out that far back."
"You know what you let get away, Daniel?" she demanded, coming up beside him. "That Master had a nullentropy tube in his chest. Full of ghola cells, too!"
"I saw it."
"That's why you let them get away!"
"Didn't let them." His pruning shears went snick-snick. "Gholas. He's welcome to them."
Here is another book dedicated to Bev, friend, wife, dependable helper and the person who gave this one its title. The dedication is posthumous and the words below, written the morning after she died, should tell you something of her inspiration.
One of the best things I can say about Bev is there was nothing in our life together I need forget, not even the graceful moment of her death. She gave me then the ultimate gift of her love, a peaceful passing she had spoken of without fear or tears, allaying thereby my own fears. What greater gift is there than to demonstrate you need not fear death?
The formal obituary would read: Beverly Ann Stuart Forbes Herbert, born October 20, 1926, Seattle, Washington; died 5:05 P.M. February 7, 1984, at Kawaloa, Maui. I know that is as much formality as she would tolerate. She made me promise there would be no conventional funeral "with a preacher's sermon and my body on display." As she said: "I will not be in that body then but it deserves more dignity than such a display provides."
She insisted I go no further than to have her cremated and scatter her ashes at her beloved Kawaloa "where I have felt so much peace and love." The only ceremony - friends and loved ones to watch the scattering of her ashes during the singing of "A Bridge Over Troubled Waters."