Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [178]
Imperfections, if viewed in the proper light, can be extremely valuable. The Great Schools, with their incessant questing for perfection, often find this postulate difficult to understand, until it is proven to them that nothing in the universe is random.
—From The Philosophies of Old Terra,
one of the recovered manuscripts
In the darkness of her isolated and protected bedroom in the Mother School complex, Mohiam sat straight up, holding her swollen belly. Her skin felt tight and leathery, without the resilience of youth. Her bedclothes were drenched in perspiration, and the nightmare remained fresh in her mind. The back of her skull pounded with visions of blood, and flames.
It had been an omen, a message . . . a screaming premonition that no Bene Gesserit could ignore.
She wondered how much melange her nurse had given her, and if it might have interacted with some other medication they’d administered. She could still taste the bitter gingery-cinnamon flavor inside her mouth. How much spice was it safe for a pregnant woman to take? Mohiam shuddered. No matter how she tried to rationalize her terror, she could not ignore the power of the sending.
Dreams . . . nightmares . . . prescience—foretelling terrible events that would shake the Imperium for millennia. A future that must never come to pass! She dared not ignore the warning . . . but could she trust herself to interpret it correctly?
Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam was but a tiny pebble at the beginning of an avalanche.
Did the Sisterhood really know what it was doing? And what about the baby growing inside her, still a month from term? The vision’s focus had been centered on her daughter. Something important, something terrible. . . . The Reverend Mothers had not told her everything, and now even the Sisters in Other Memory were afraid.
The room smelled damp from the rain outside: The old plaster walls were wet and powdery. Though precise heaters kept her private chamber at a comfortable temperature, the homiest warmth came from the embers in the low fire opposite her bed—an inefficient anachronism, but the aroma of woodsmoke and the yellow-orange glow of coals inspired a sort of primal complacency.
The fires of destruction, the blaze of an inferno sweeping from planet to planet across the galaxy. Jihad! Jihad! That was to be the fate of humanity if something went wrong with the Bene Gesserit plans for her daughter.
Mohiam sat up in her bed, composed herself mentally, and ran a quick check through the systems of her body. No emergencies, everything functioning normally, all biochemistry optimal.
Had it only been a nightmare . . . or something more?
More rationalization. She knew she must not make excuses, but she had to heed what the premonition had shown her. Other Memory knew the truth.
Mohiam remained under close observation by the Sisters—possibly even now. A purple light in the corner of her room was attached to a night-vision comeye, with watchdogs on the other end who reported to Reverend Mother Anirul Sadow Tonkin, the young woman who seemed to carry an importance beyond her years. Finally, though, in Mohiam’s dream the secretive Other Memory Voices had hinted at Anirul’s place in the project. The nightmare had jarred them loose, shocked the reticent recollections into veiled explanations.
Kwisatz Haderach. The Shortening of the Way. The Bene Gesserit’s long-sought-after messiah and superbeing.
The Sisterhood had numerous breeding programs, build-ing upon various characteristics of humanity. Many of them were unimportant, some even served as diversions or shams. None held such prominence as the Kwisatz Haderach program, though.
As an ancient security measure at the beginning of the hundred-generation plan, the Reverend Mothers with knowledge of the scheme had sworn themselves to silence, even in Other Memory, vowing to divulge the full details to none but a rare few each generation.
Anirul was one such, the Kwisatz Mother. She knew everything about the program. That is why even Mother Superior must listen to her!
Mohiam herself had