Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [36]
“I’m not a Master, not technically.” Struggling to maintain his haughty position of authority, Uxtal added sternly, “But I am still your superior. Keep your sligs away from this side of the property. I cannot afford to have my important laboratory contaminated. Your sligs carry flies and disease.”
“I wash them down every day, but I will keep them away from the fences.” In their pen, the wide, sluglike animals rolled over each other, slithering and squealing.
At a loss for anything else to say, Uxtal gave a weak-sounding and unnecessary warning. “You had better watch yourself around the Honored Matres. I am safe because of my special knowledge, but they might turn on a mere farmer in an instant and tear you to pieces.”
Gaxhar made a snort that was halfway between a laugh and a cough. “The old Masters were no kinder to me than the Honored Matres are. I’ve just gone from one cruel overlord to another.”
A groundtruck rumbled up to the sligs. With a dump mechanism, it released a load of wet, reeking garbage. The hungry creatures swarmed to the putrid feast, while the farmer crossed his arms over his scrawny chest. “Honored Matres send the body parts of high-caste men for my sligs to eat. They think the flesh of my superiors makes the slig meat taste sweeter.” The barest hint of a disrespectful sneer was quickly hidden by the man’s generally blank expression. “Perhaps I will see you again.”
What did he mean? That Uxtal would be dumped here, too, when the whores were finished with him? Or was it just innocuous conversation? Uxtal frowned, unable to take his eyes from the sligs crawling over the body parts, chewing them efficiently with their multiple mouths.
Finally, his two Honored Matre escorts came to fetch him. “You may enter your laboratory now. We have destroyed the door.”
There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.
—from “Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib” by the
PRINCESS IRULAN
R
inya’s been gone for a month now. I miss her terribly.” Walking beside Janess toward the acolytes’ bungalows, Murbella could see her struggling to mask the anguish on her face.
Despite the feelings in her own heart, the Mother Commander maintained a distant expression. “Do not make me lose another daughter, or another potential Reverend Mother. When the time comes, you must be certain you are prepared for the Agony. Do not let your pride rush you.”
Janess nodded stoically. She would not speak ill of her lost twin, but she and Murbella both knew that Rinya had not been as confident as she had claimed. Instead, she had covered her doubts with a veneer of false bravado. And that had killed her.
A Bene Gesserit had to hide her emotions, to drive away any vestiges of distracting love. Once, Murbella herself had been trapped by love, tangled and weakened by her bond with Duncan Idaho. Losing him had not freed her, and the thought of him still out there in the void, unimaginably far away, gave her a constant ache.
Despite their stated position, the Sisterhood had long known that love could not be eliminated completely. Like ancient priests and nuns from some long-obsolete religion, Bene Gesserits were supposed to give up love entirely for a greater cause. But in the long run, it never worked to discard everything in order to protect against one perceived weakness. One could not save humans by forcing them to surrender their humanity.
By remaining in close contact with the twins and observing their training, even revealing the identities of their parents, Murbella had broken the Sisterhood’s tradition. Most daughters taken into Bene Gesserit schools were told to reach their potential “without the distractions of family ties.” The Mother Commander did keep herself separate and aloof from the two younger daughters, Tanidia and Gianne, however. But she had lost Rinya and refused to cut herself off from Janess.
Now, following a training session in combined Bene Gesserit and Honored Matre fighting skills, the two of them made their way across the Keep’s west garden, heading