Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [50]
After activating the receiving hall’s sound system with a wave of her hand, Murbella spoke into a microphone that dropped on a suspensor and hovered in front of her face. “I am unlike any leader the Sisterhood or the Honored Matres have ever had. It is not my purpose to please everyone, but instead to forge an army that has a chance—however slight—of survival. Our survival. We cannot afford the time for gradual changes.”
“Can we afford changes at all?” grumbled one Honored Matre. “I cannot see how they have benefited us.”
“That is because you cannot see. Will you open your eyes, or congratulate yourself on your blindness?” The other woman’s eyes flashed, though the orange flecks had long ago gone away from the lack of orange spice substitute.
Just behind her, a Bene Gesserit Sister arrived late. She approached along a narrow aisle, scanning the area around her as if searching for her seat. But every woman knew her assigned place. The latecomer should not be going in that direction.
Watching with peripheral vision as she spoke, Murbella gave no sign that she had noticed anything amiss. The dark-haired and high-cheekboned woman looked unfamiliar. Not someone I know.
She kept her gaze forward, internally counting the seconds as she mentally mapped the newcomer’s approach. Then, without looking back, using the full reflexes wired into her from both Honored Matre and Bene Gesserit training, Murbella sprang to her feet. With breathtaking speed, she spun in the air to face the woman. Before her feet could touch the floor again, the Mother Commander bent backward, just as the attacker moved in a blur, pulling something from the pocket of her robe and slashing out in a single fluid motion. Milky white and crystalline-sharp—an ancient crysknife!
Murbella’s muscular responses bypassed conscious thought. She dipped with one flattened hand, avoiding the tip of the plunging crysknife and drove upward to strike the wrist. A thin bone popped with a sound like dry wood breaking. The would-be assassin’s fingers opened, and the crysknife began to fall, but so slowly it seemed to hang suspended, like a feather. When the woman raised her other arm to fend off a second blow, Murbella hit her with a smashing punch to the throat, crushing her larynx before she could cry out.
As Murbella’s adversary collapsed, the crysknife clattered to the floor, its blade shattering. A dim part of Murbella’s mind was pleased to see both Sisters and Honored Matres leap from their cushions, instinctively jumping up to aid the Mother Commander in case the coup attempt was more widespread. In their motions, she recognized truth, just as she had seen the lies in the motions of the would-be assassin.
Both fat Bellonda and wiry Doria pounced on the fallen woman, holding her down. Now those two worked together! Still on her feet, Murbella scanned the large room and catalogued the faces, assuring herself that there were no interlopers present and no threats.
Though the lone attacker thrashed, trying to breathe, or maybe forcing herself to die, Bellonda pressed the woman’s throat, opening her air passage to keep her alive. Doria roared for a Suk doctor.
The broken crysknife lay on the floor by the writhing woman. Murbella assessed it with a glance and understood. Traditional weapon . . . ancient ways. The symbolism of the gesture was clear.
Murbella used Voice, hoping the injured woman was too weak to use standard defenses against the command. “Who are you? Speak!”
With cracked and broken words rattling through her damaged throat, the woman forced out her answer. She seemed glad to do so and wildly defiant. “I am your future. Others like me will emerge from shadows, drop from ceilings, come at you out of thin air. One of us will get you!”
“Why do you wish to kill me?” The other Bene Gesserits in the audience had fallen into an utter hush, straining to hear the attacker’s words.
“Because of what you did to the Sisterhood.” The woman managed to turn her head toward Doria as a symbol of the Honored Matres. If she’d had the strength,