Dune 15 - Chapterhouse Dune

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Chapterhouse: Dune
Frank Herbert
April 1985
Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history.
-Bene Gesserit Coda
When the ghola-baby was delivered from the first Bene Gesserit axlotl tank,
Mother Superior Darwi Odrade ordered a quiet celebration in her private dining
room atop Central. It was barely dawn, and the two other members of her Council
-- Tamalane and Bellonda -- showed impatience at the summons, even though Odrade
had ordered breakfast served by her personal chef.
"It isn't every woman who can preside at the birth of her own father," Odrade
quipped when the others complained they had too many demands on their time to
permit of "time-wasting nonsense."
Only aged Tamalane showed sly amusement.
Bellonda held her over-fleshed features expressionless, often her equivalent of
a scowl.
Was it possible, Odrade wondered, that Bell had not exorcised resentment of the
relative opulence in Mother Superior's surroundings? Odrade's quarters were a
distinct mark of her position but the distinction represented her duties more
than any elevation over her Sisters. The small dining room allowed her to
consult aides during meals.
Bellonda glanced this way and that, obviously impatient to be gone. Much effort
had been expended without success in attempts to break through Bellonda's coldly
remote shell.
"It felt very odd to hold that baby in my arms and think: This is my father,"
Odrade said.
"I heard you the first time!" Bellonda spoke from the belly, almost a baritone
rumbling as though each word caused her vague indigestion.
She understood Odrade's wry jest, though. The old Bashar Miles Teg had, indeed,
been the Mother Superior's father. And Odrade herself had collected cells (as
fingernail scrapings) to grow this new ghola, part of a long-time "possibility
plan" should they ever succeed in duplicating Tleilaxu tanks. But Bellonda
would be drummed out of the Bene Gesserit rather than go along with Odrade's
comment on the Sisterhood's vital equipment.
"I find this frivolous at such a time," Bellonda said. "Those madwomen hunting
us to exterminate us and you want a celebration!"
Odrade held herself to a mild tone with some effort. "If the Honored Matres
find us before we are ready perhaps it will be because we failed to keep up our
morale."
Bellonda's silent stare directly into Odrade's eyes carried frustrating
accusation: Those terrible women already have exterminated sixteen of our
planets!
Odrade knew it was wrong to think of those planets as Bene Gesserit possessions.
The loosely organized confederation of planetary governments assembled after the
Famine Times and the Scattering depended heavily on the Sisterhood for vital
services and reliable communications, but old factions persisted -- CHOAM,
Spacing Guild, Tleilaxu, remnant pockets of the Divided God's priesthood, even
Fish Speaker auxiliaries and schismatic assemblages. The Divided God had
bequeathed humankind a divided Empire -- all of whose factions were suddenly
moot because of rampaging Honored Matre assaults from the Scattering. The Bene
Gesserit -- holding to most of their old forms -- were the natural prime target
for attack.
Bellonda's thoughts never strayed far from this Honored Matre threat. It was a
weakness Odrade recognized. Sometimes, Odrade hesitated on the point of
replacing Bellonda, but even in the Bene Gesserit there were factions these days
and no one could deny that Bell was a supreme organizer. Archives had never
been more efficient than under her guidance.
As she frequently did, Bellonda without even speaking the words managed to focus
Mother Superior's attention on the hunters who stalked them with savage
persistence. It spoiled the mood of quiet success Odrade had hoped to achieve
this morning.
She forced herself to think of the new ghola. Teg! If his original memories
could be restored, the Sisterhood once more would have the finest Bashar ever to
serve them. A Mentat Bashar! A military genius whose prowess already was the
stuff of myths in the Old Empire.
But would even Teg be of use against these women returned from the Scattering?
By whatever gods may be, the Honored Matres must not find us! Not yet!
Teg represented too many disturbing unknowns and possibilities. Mystery
surrounded the period before his death in the destruction of Dune. He did
something on Gammu to ignite the unbridled fury of the Honored Matres. His
suicidal stand on Dune should not have been enough to bring this berserk
response. There were rumors, bits and pieces from his days on Gammu before the
Dune disaster. He could move too fast for the human eye to see! Had he done
that? Another outcropping of wild abilities in Atreides genes? Mutation? Or
just more of the Teg myth? The Sisterhood had to learn as soon as possible.
An acolyte brought in three breakfasts and the sisters ate quickly, as though
this interruption must be put behind them without delay because time wasted was
dangerous.
Even after the others had gone, Odrade was left with the aftershock of
Bellonda's unspoken fears.
And my fears.
She arose and went to the wide window that looked across lower rooftops to part
of the ring of orchards and pastures around Central. Late spring and already
fruit beginning to form out there. Rebirth. A new Teg was born today! No
feeling of elation accompanied the thought. Usually she found the view
restorative but not this morning.
What are my real strengths? What are my facts?
The resources at a Mother Superior's command were formidable: profound loyalty
in those who served her, a military arm under a Teg-trained Bashar (far away now
with a large portion of their troops guarding the school planet, Lampadas),
artisans and technicians, spies and agents throughout the Old Empire, countless
workers who looked to the Sisterhood to protect them from Honored Matres, and
all the Reverend Mothers with Other Memories reaching into the dawn of life.
Odrade knew without false pride that she represented the peak of what was
strongest in a Reverend Mother. If her personal memories did not provide needed
information, she had others around her to fill the gaps. Machine-stored data as
well, although she admitted to a native distrust of it.
Odrade found herself tempted to go digging in those other lives she carried as
secondary memory -- these subterranean layers of awareness. Perhaps she could
find brilliant solutions to their predicament in experiences of Others.
Dangerous! You could lose yourself for hours, fascinated by the multiplicity of
human variations. Better to leave Other Memories balanced in there, ready on
demand or intruding out of necessity. Consciousness, that was the fulcrum and
her grip on identity.
Duncan Idaho's odd Mentat metaphor helped.
Self-awareness: facing mirrors that pass through the universe, gathering new
images on the way -- endlessly reflexive. The infinite seen as finite, the
analogue of consciousness carrying the sensed bits of infinity.
She had never heard words come closer to her wordless awareness. "Specialized
complexity," Idaho called it. "We gather, assemble, and reflect our systems of
order."
Indeed, it was the Bene Gesserit view that humans were life designed by
evolution to create order.
And how does that help us against these disorderly women who hunt us? What
branch of evolution are they? Is evolution just another name for God?
Her Sisters would sneer at such "bootless speculation."
Still, there might be answers in Other Memory.
Ahhhh, how seductive!
How desperately she wanted to project her beleaguered self into past identities
and feel what it had been to live then. The immediate peril of this enticement
chilled her. She felt Other Memory crowding the edges of awareness. "It was
like this!" "No! It was more like this!" How greedy they were. You had to
pick and choose, discreetly animating the past. And was that not the purpose of
consciousness, the very essence of being alive?
Select from the past and match it against the present: Learn consequences.
That was the Bene Gesserit view of history, ancient Santayana's words resonating
in their lives: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat
it."
The buildings of Central itself, this most powerful of all Bene Gesserit
establishments, reflected that attitude wherever Odrade turned. Usiform, that
was the commanding concept. Little about any Bene Gesserit working center was
allowed to become nonfunctional, preserved out of nostalgia. The Sisterhood had
no need for archeologists. Reverend Mothers embodied history.
Slowly (much slower than usual) the view out her high window produced its
calming effect. What her eyes reported, that was Bene Gesserit order.
But Honored Matres could end that order in the next instant. The Sisterhood's
situation was far worse than what they had suffered under the Tyrant. Many of
the decisions she was forced to make now were odious. Her workroom was less
agreeable because of actions taken here.
Write off our Bene Gesserit Keep on Palma?
That suggestion was in Bellonda's morning report waiting on the worktable.
Odrade fixed an affirmative notation to it. "Yes."
Write it off because Honored Matre attack is imminent and we cannot defend them
or evacuate them.
Eleven hundred Reverend Mothers and the Fates alone knew how many acolytes,
postulants, and others dead or worse because of that one word. Not to mention
all of the "Ordinary lives" existing in the Bene Gesserit shadow.
The strain of such decisions produced a new kind of weariness in Odrade. Was it
a weariness of the soul? Did such a thing as a soul exist? She felt deep
fatigue where consciousness could not probe. Weary, weary, weary.
Even Bellonda showed the strain and Bell feasted on violence. Tamalane alone
appeared above it but that did not fool Odrade. Tam had entered the age of
superior observation that lay ahead of all Sisters if they survived into it.
Nothing mattered then except observations and judgments. Most of this was never
uttered except in fleeting expressions on wrinkled features. Tamalane spoke few
words these days, her comments so sparse as to be almost ludicrous:
"Buy more no-ships."
"Brief Sheeana."
"Review Idaho records."
"Ask Murbella."
Sometimes, only grunts issued from her, as though words might betray her.
And always the hunters roamed out there, sweeping space for any clue to the
location of Chapterhouse.
In her most private thoughts, Odrade saw the no-ships of Honored Matres as
corsairs on those infinite seas between the stars. They flew no black flags
with skull and crossbones, but that flag was there nonetheless. Nothing
whatsoever romantic about them. Kill and pillage! Amass your wealth in the
blood of others. Drain that energy and build your killer no-ships on ways
lubricated with blood.
And they did not see they would drown in red lubricant if they kept on this
course.
There must be furious people out there in that human Scattering where Honored
Matres originated, people who live out their lives with a single fixed idea:
Get them!
It was a dangerous universe where such ideas were allowed to float around
freely. Good civilizations took care that such ideas did not gain energy, did
not even get a chance for birth. When they did occur, by chance or accident,
they were to be diverted quickly because they tended to gather mass.
Odrade was astonished that the Honored Matres did not see this or, seeing it,
ignored it.
"Full-blown hysterics," Tamalane called them.
"Xenophobia," Bellonda disagreed, always correcting, as though control of
Archives gave her a better hold on reality.
Both were right, Odrade thought. The Honored Matres behaved hysterically. All
outsiders were the enemy. The only people they appeared to trust were the men
they sexually enslaved, and those only to a limited degree. Constantly testing,
according to Murbella (our only captive Honored Matre), to see if their hold was
firm.
"Sometimes out of mere pique they may eliminate someone just as an example to
others." Murbella's words and they forced the question: Are they making an
example of us? "See! This is what happens to those who dare oppose us!"
Murbella had said, "You've aroused them. Once aroused, they will not desist
until they have destroyed you."
Get the outsiders!
Singularly direct. A weakness in them if we play it right, Odrade thought.
Xenophobia carried to a ridiculous extreme?
Quite possibly.
Odrade pounded a fist on her worktable, aware that the action would be seen and
recorded by Sisters who kept constant watch on Mother Superior's behavior. She
spoke aloud then for the omnipresent comeyes and watchdog Sisters behind them.
"We will not sit and wait in defensive enclaves! We've become as fat as
Bellonda (and let her fret over that!) thinking we've created an untouchable
society and enduring structures."
Odrade swept her gaze around the familiar room.
"This place is one of our weaknesses!"
She took her seat behind the worktable thinking (of all things!) about
architecture and community planning. Well, that was a Mother Superior's right!
Sisterhood communities seldom grew at random. Even when they took over existing
structures (as they had with the old Harkonnen Keep on Gammu) they did so with
rebuilding plans. They wanted pneumotubes to shunt small packages and messages.
Lightlines and hardray projectors to transmit encrypted words. They considered
themselves masters at safeguarding communications. Acolyte and Reverend Mother
couriers (committed to self-destruction rather than betray their superiors)
carried the more important messages.
She could visualize it out there beyond her window and beyond this planet -- her
web, superbly organized and manned, each Bene Gesserit an extension of the
others. Where Sisterhood survival was concerned, there was an untouchable core
of loyalty. Backsliders there might be, some spectacular (as the Lady Jessica,
grandmother of the Tyrant), but they slid only so far. Most upsets were
temporary.
And all of that was a Bene Gesserit pattern. A weakness.
Odrade admitted a deep agreement with Bellonda's fears. But I'll be damned if I
allow such things to depress all joy of living! That would be giving in to the
very thing those rampaging Honored Matres wanted.
"It's our strengths the hunters want," Odrade said, looking up at the ceiling
comeyes. Like ancient savages eating the hearts of enemies. Well . . . we will
give them something to eat all right! And they will not know until too late
that they cannot digest it!
Except for preliminary teachings tailored to acolytes and postulants, the
Sisterhood did not go in much for admonitory sayings, but Odrade had her own
private watchwords: "Someone has to do the plowing." She smiled to herself as
she bent to her work much refreshed. This room, this Sisterhood, these were her
garden and there were weeds to be removed, seeds to plant. And fertilizer.
Mustn't forget the fertilizer.
When I set out to lead humanity along my Golden Path I promised a lesson their
bones would remember. I know a profound pattern humans deny with words even
while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and quiet,
conditions they call peace. Even as they speak, they create seeds of turmoil
and violence.
-Leto II, the God Emperor
So she calls me Spider Queen!
Great Honored Matre leaned back in a heavy chair set high on a dais. Her
withered breast shook with silent chuckles. She knows what will happen when I
get her in my web! Suck her dry, that's what I'll do.
A small woman with unremarkable features and muscles that twitched nervously,
she looked down on the skylighted yellow-tile floor of her audience room. A
Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother sprawled there in shigawire bindings. The captive
made no attempt to struggle. Shigawire was excellent for this purpose. Cut her
arms off, it would!
The chamber where she sat suited Great Honored Matre as much for its dimensions
as for the fact that it had been taken from others. Three hundred meters
square, it had been designed for convocations of Guild Navigators here on
Junction, each Navigator in a monstrous tank. The captive on that yellow floor
was a mote in immensity.
This weakling took too much joy in revealing what her so-called Superior named
me!
But it still was a lovely morning, Great Honored Matre thought. Except that no
tortures or mental probes worked on these witches. How could you torture
someone who might choose to die at any moment? And did! They had ways of
suppressing pain, too. Very wily, these primitives.
She's loaded with shere, too! A body infused with that damnable drug
deteriorated beyond the reach of probes before it could be examined adequately.
Great Honored Matre signaled an aide. That one nudged the sprawled Reverend
Mother with a foot and, at a further signal, eased the shigawire bindings to
allow minimal movement.
"What is your name, child?" Great Honored Matre asked. Her voice rasped
hoarsely with age and false bonhomie.
"I am called Sabanda." Clear young voice, still untouched by the pain of
probings.
"Would you like to watch us capture a weak male and enslave him?" Great Honored
Matre asked.
Sabanda knew the proper response to this. They had been warned. "I will die
first." She said it calmly, staring up at that ancient face the color of a
dried root left too long in the sun. Those odd orange flecks in the crone's
eyes. A sign of anger, Proctors had told her.
A loosely hung red-gold robe with black dragon figures down its open face and
red leotards beneath it only emphasized the scrawny figure they covered.
Great Honored Matre did not change expression even with a recurrent thought
about these witches: Damn them! "What was your task on that dirty little
planet where we took you?"
"A teacher of the young."
"I'm afraid we didn't leave any of your young alive." Now why does she smile?
To offend me! That's why!
"Did you teach your young ones to worship the witch, Sheeana?" Great Honored
Matre asked.
"Why should I teach them to worship a Sister? Sheeana would not like that."
"Would not . . . Are you saying she has come back to life and you know her?"
"Is it only the living we know?"
How clear and fearless the voice of this young witch. They had remarkable self-
control, but even that could not save them. Odd, though, how this cult of
Sheeana persisted. It would have to be rooted out, of course, destroyed the way
the witches themselves were being destroyed.
Great Honored Matre lifted the little finger of her right hand. A waiting aide
approached the captive with an injection. Perhaps this new drug would free a
witch's tongue, perhaps not. No matter.
Sabanda grimaced when the injector touched her neck. In seconds she was dead.
Servants carried the body away. It would be fed to captive Futars. Not that
Futars were much use. Wouldn't breed in captivity, wouldn't obey the most
ordinary commands. Sullen, waiting.
"Where Handlers?" one might ask. Or other useless words would spill from their
humanoid mouths. Still, Futars provided some pleasures. Captivity also
demonstrated they were vulnerable. Just as these primitive witches were. We'll
find the witches' hiding place. It's only a matter of time.
The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can
terrify. We do not want our ideas changed. We feel threatened by such demands.
"I already know the important things!" we say. Then Changer comes and throws
our old ideas away.
-The Zensufi Master
Miles Teg enjoyed playing in the orchards around Central. Odrade had first
taken him here when he could just toddle. One of his earliest active memories:
hardly more than two years old and already aware he was a ghola, though he did
not understand the word's full meaning.
"You are a special child," Odrade said. "We made you from cells taken from a
very old man."
Although he was a precocious child and her words had a vaguely disturbing sound,
he was more interested then in running through tall summer grass beneath the
trees.
Later, he added other orchard days to that first one, accumulating as well
impressions about Odrade and the others who taught him. He recognized quite
early that Odrade enjoyed the excursions as much as he did.
One afternoon in his fourth year, he told her: "Spring is my favorite time."
"Mine, too."
When he was seven and already showing the mental brilliance coupled to
holographic memory that had caused the Sisterhood to place such heavy
responsibilities on his previous incarnation, he suddenly saw the orchards as a
place touching something deep inside him.
This was his first real awareness that he carried memories he could not recall.
Deeply disturbed, he turned to Odrade, who stood outlined in light against the
afternoon sun, and said: "There are things I can't remember!"
"One day you will remember," she said.
He could not see her face against the bright light and her words came from a
great shadow place, as much within him as from Odrade.
That year he began studying the life of the Bashar Miles Teg, whose cells had
started his new life. Odrade had explained some of this to him, holding up her
fingernails. "I took tiny scrapings from his neck-cells of his skin and they
held all we needed to bring you to life. "
There was something intense about the orchards that year, fruit larger and
heavier, bees almost frenetic.
"It's because of the desert growing larger down there in the south," Odrade
said. She held his hand as they walked through a dew-fresh morning beneath
burgeoning apple trees.
Teg stared southward through the trees, momentarily mesmerized by leaf-dappled
sunlight. He had studied about the desert, and he thought he could feel the
weight of it on this place.
"Trees can sense their end approaching," Odrade said. "Life breeds more
intensely when threatened."
"The air is very dry," he said. "That must be the desert."
"Notice how some of the leaves have gone brown and curled at the edges? We've
had to irrigate heavily this year."
He liked it that she seldom talked down to him. It was mostly one person to
another. He saw curled brown on leaves. The desert did that.
Deep in the orchard, they listened quietly for a time to birds and insects.
Bees working the clover of a nearby pasture came to investigate but he was
pheromone-marked, as were all who walked freely on Chapterhouse. They buzzed
past him, sensed identifiers and went away about their business with blossoms.
Apples. Odrade pointed westward. Peaches. His attention went where she
directed. And yes, there were the cherries east of them beyond the pasture. He
saw resin ribbing on the limbs.
Seeds and young shoots had been brought here on the original no-ships some
fifteen hundred years ago, she said, and had been planted with loving care.
Teg visualized hands grubbing in dirt, gently patting earth around young shoots,
careful irrigation, the fencing to confine the cattle to wild pastures around
the first Chapterhouse plantations and buildings.
By this time he already had begun learning about the giant sandworm the
Sisterhood had spirited from Rakis. Death of that worm had produced creatures
called sandtrout. Sandtrout were why the desert grew. Some of this history
touched accounts of his previous incarnation -- a man they called "The Bashar."
A great soldier who had died when terrible women called Honored Matres destroyed
Rakis.
Teg found such studies both fascinating and troubling. He sensed gaps in
himself, places where memories ought to be. The gaps called out to him in
dreams. And sometimes when he fell into reverie, faces appeared before him. He
could almost hear words. Then there were times he knew the names of things
before anyone told him. Especially names of weapons.
Momentous things grew in his awareness. This entire planet would become desert,
a change started because Honored Matres wanted to kill these Bene Gesserit who
raised him.
Reverend Mothers who controlled his life often awed him -- black-robed, austere,
those blue-in-blue eyes with absolutely no white. The spice did that, they
said.
Only Odrade showed him anything he took for real affection and Odrade was
someone very important. Everyone called her Mother Superior and that was what
she told him to call her except when they were alone in the orchards. Then he
could call her Mother.
On a morning walk near harvest time in his ninth year, just over the third rise
in the apple orchards north of Central, they came on a shallow depression free
of trees and lush with many different plants. Odrade put a hand on his shoulder
and held him where they could admire black stepping-stones in a meander track
through massed greenery and tiny flowers. She was in an odd mood. He heard it
in her voice.
"Ownership is an interesting question," she said. "Do we own this planet or
does it own us?"
" I like the smells here," he said.
She released him and urged him gently ahead of her. "We planted for the nose
here, Miles. Aromatic herbs. Study them carefully and look them up when you
get back to the library. Oh, do step on them!" when he started to avoid a
plant runner in his path.
He placed his right foot firmly on green tendrils and inhaled pungent odors.
摘要：

Chapterhouse:DuneFrankHerbertApril1985Thosewhowouldrepeatthepastmustcontroltheteachingofhistory.-BeneGesseritCodaWhentheghola-babywasdeliveredfromthefirstBeneGesseritaxlotltank,MotherSuperiorDarwiOdradeorderedaquietcelebrationinherprivatediningroomatopCentral.Itwasbarelydawn,andthetwoothermembersofh...

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