Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [94]
“You look disturbed, Rabbi,” Sheeana noted.
“Not disturbed. Sad.” To Teg he appeared crestfallen, and his watery old eyes seemed redder than usual, as if from crying. “I will not be with them. I cannot leave the no-ship.”
Black-bearded Isaac draped a consoling arm around the elderly man’s shoulders. “This will be the new Israel for us, Rabbi, under my leadership. Won’t you reconsider?”
“Why aren’t you staying with your people?” Teg asked.
The Rabbi lowered his gaze, and tears dropped on the hardscrabble ground. “I have a higher obligation to one of my followers whom I failed.”
Isaac explained to Sheeana and Teg in a soft voice, “He wishes to remain with Rebecca. Though she is an axlotl tank now, he refuses to leave her.”
“I shall watch over her for all my remaining days. My followers will be in good hands here. Isaac and Levi are their future, while I am their past.”
The rest of the Jews surrounded the Rabbi, saying their goodbyes and wishing him well. Then the weeping old man joined Teg, Sheeana, and the others on the waiting shuttle, which took them back up to the no-ship.
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AFTER
ESCAPE FROM CHAPTERHOUSE
We are wounded, but undefeated. We are hurt, but can endure great pain. We are driven to the end of our civilization and our history—but we remain human.
—MOTHER COMMANDER MURBELLA,
address to the survivors of Chapterhouse
As the epidemic burned itself out, the survivors—all of them Reverend Mothers—struggled to hold the Sisterhood together. No vaccines, immunity treatments, diets, or quarantines had any effect as the general populace died.
It required only three days for Murbella’s heart to turn to stone. Around her, she watched thousands of promising young acolytes perish, diligent students who had not yet learned enough to become Reverend Mothers. Every one of them died either from the plague or from the Agony that was rushed upon them.
Kiria slipped into her former Honored Matre viciousness. On many occasions she argued vehemently that it was a waste of time to care for anyone who had contracted the plague. “Our resources are better spent on more important things, on activities that have some chance of success!”
Murbella could not dispute her logic, though she did not agree with the opinion. “We’re not thinking machines. We are humans, and we will care for humans.”
It was a sad irony that as more and more of the population died, fewer Reverend Mothers were needed to tend the remaining sick. Gradually, those women were able to turn to other crucial activities.
From a nearly empty chamber in the Keep, Murbella peered through the broad, arched window segments behind her throne chair. Chapterhouse had once been a bustling administrative complex, the pulsing heart of the New Sisterhood. Before the plague struck, Mother Commander Murbella had been in charge of hundreds of defensive measures, monitoring the constant progress of the Enemy fleet, dealing with the Ixians, the Guild, refugees and warlords, anyone who could fight on her side.
Far away, she could see the brown hills and dying orchards, but what concerned her was the eerie, unnatural silence of the city itself. The dormitories and support buildings, the nearby spaceport field, the markets, gardens, and dwindling herds . . . all should have been tended by a population of hundreds of thousands. Sadly, most normal activity around the Keep and the city had halted. Far too few remained alive to cover even the most basic work. The world itself was virtually vacant, with all hope dashed in a matter of days. So shockingly sudden!
The air in the surrounding city was heavy with the stench of death and burning. Black smoke rose from dozens of bonfires—not funeral pyres, for Murbella had other ways to dispose of the bodies, but simply the incineration of contaminated garments and other materials, including