The Winds of Dune (51 page)

“It does make me think of the once-worthy goals of the Sisterhood . . . as opposed to its subsequent tactics . . . to what is going on now.”

Mohiam scowled in the low light of her candle. “Mother Superior Harishka has made you a generous offer. I know you’ve had your complaints and criticisms of our Sisterhood, but now you can fix them all, and we ask little in return.” The old woman stared across the dark-muddied landscape. “From this place, your view of the future reaches far . . . and your decision should be clear.”

“Clear? You are asking me to kill my son.” Jessica was beginning to lose patience. The edge of the cliff seemed symbolic of the choice they wanted her to make. Accept or leap. But was there another choice?

“A son you never should have had.”

Jessica turned away and walked down the rough trail, picking her way back down the hill. She did not slow as the old woman hurried to follow her. “We will bring down Muad’Dib, one way or another. We will use his own violence against him.” As the surprisingly agile woman caught up, her dark eyes sparkled in the candlelight. “You need to know these things if you are to become our new Mother Superior. You need to know that we will succeed. Cast your lot with us.”

At her side, the old woman lowered her voice, but her words carried an undertone of excitement. “Already Bene Gesserit operatives have made preparations to launch scattered revolts around the Imperium. Caladan will be the first spark. There’s nothing you can do about it. When that flame takes hold there, more than a hundred other planets will rise up simultaneously and declare their independence.

“The Emperor will have to withdraw his armies from other battles to deal with these unexpected problems and—if his fanatics perform as they always have—the sheer excesses of those crackdowns will ignite a cascade of other revolts, real ones that do not need our encouragement.

“Landsraad representatives will demand immediate reparations and unanimously push through legislation that imposes restraint. If Muad’Dib ignores or vetoes it, then he will lose the support of all the nobles who
have sided with him. His government will not be able to contain them all. You see, Jessica? We will succeed with or without you.”

Suddenly, Mayor Horvu’s surprising and naïve idea of declaring Caladan’s independence made sense. He had been led to it by a manipulative Bene Gesserit operative. Jessica fired words at Mohiam like projectiles: “How dare you try to start a revolt on Caladan.
My
Caladan!”

“Your Sisterhood should matter more to you than a mere planet. We want you to take power away from a tyrant who has already killed more people than any other leader in recorded history. What is one mother’s love in comparison to that?” Mohiam sniffed, as if offended that she even had to convince Jessica. “whatever decision you make, we will still bring him down.”

Jessica tried to shake her away, but Mohiam kept up. The Sisters saw Paul only as a dangerous and destructive force . . . but she knew her son as kind, caring, intelligent, and clever, full of curiosity and love. That was the real Paul, not any adverse perceptions of him that had sprung up in the backwash of the Jihad!

The two women paused together, allowing other Sisters to pass in their progression downhill. Jessica stared into her burning candle, smelled the smoke, and struggled to control her emotions.

Grabbing her by the arm with surprising strength, Mohiam rasped, “You
owe
the Sisterhood. Your very life belongs to us! Remember that we saved you from drowning in your childhood. A woman died for you. How can you forget that?
Remember
.”

As if the Reverend Mother’s voice triggered a long-suppressed memory, Jessica suddenly recalled struggling for her life, going underwater in a fast-flowing river, the raging torrent all around her, in her mouth, in her lungs . . . and so cold. She couldn’t swim against the swift current, remembered being swept against a large rock and bumping her head. She couldn’t recall how she had fallen into the river, but she was just a child, no more than five or six years old.

Two brave Sisters had jumped into the raging river to rescue her. Jessica remembered being dragged to the shore and resuscitated. She’d learned later that one of the Sisters had lost her life in the attempt. Mohiam was right; she would have died that day if those women hadn’t helped her.

Oddly, however, Jessica could not recall the name of the Sister who
had perished, and couldn’t remember the location of the river. Suddenly, as she slowed her thoughts and crystallized her memories of the event, she clearly remembered
two
Sisters dragging her onto the bank, both of them taking turns to clear water from her lungs, breathing into her mouth.

Two Sisters? How then, had one of them died in the rescue?

And why were other details faint? The Sisterhood left nothing to chance. Somehow her memory had been altered.

“Maybe I do owe the Bene Gesserit my life, or maybe you long ago planted that story in my mind to be used exactly in circumstances like this.”

From the flicker of shadowy expression on the old woman’s face, Jessica thought she had her confirmation. The near drowning had never occurred! What schemes did this old woman and her cohorts have in place, and what falsehoods did they hide?

Peering down her nose at Mohiam, Jessica said, “Thank you for helping me make up my mind. This night I have indeed achieved clarity. I owe the Sisterhood nothing!”

Mohiam grabbed Jessica’s sleeve. “You will
listen
. You will make the correct choice.” Jessica heard the commanding Voice, the importunate tone that she should not have been able to resist. Because she knew Mohiam so well, she identified the fringes of it, the dangerous undertones, and knew how to prepare herself mentally for the onslaught.

Another Reverend Mother stepped out of the tree-latticed shadows, a looming form whose wrinkled face became recognizable in the candlelight.
Stokiah,
a woman she had seen long ago on Ix . . . the woman Tessia had warned her about. Her heart stuttered with instinctive fear.
I must not fear
. . . .

Stokiah’s voice was like a rough bone saw. “You disappoint us further by refusing to rectify your mistakes, Jessica. How can you bear such guilt?” The words were drawn out like a long, strained note on a tortured violin.

Powerful waves of psychic energy struck Jessica, infusing her with an awful, dragging despair that sapped her strength and hammered her with shame. Several Sisters had stepped off the trail nearby and drew in around her and Mohiam, joining in the attack. Stokiah pressed closer.

Jessica felt intense pain in her head, the demanding sensation that she
must
do what Mother Superior Harishka wanted and turn against her own son.

But Tessia had prepared her, showing her survival skills to use against such an attack. Rhombur’s wife had been pummeled and damaged, but not defeated; she had found her own thread of strength, had resisted even as the Sisters tried to break her. And Jessica now shared that knowledge.

Rallying her strength and fury against what Stokiah, Mohiam, and these other women were trying to do to her—and to Paul!—Jessica steeled her mind and followed the mental channels she had prepared with Tessia’s help, shoring up her defenses and drawing upon her own strength.

She fought the guilt, using the strongest aspect of her core, the foundation of her life. She did it with her abiding love for Duke Leto Atreides and for their son—and drew strength from them. In memory, she saw Leto’s ruggedly handsome face, with his woodsmoke gray eyes looking at her so tenderly, so protectively—and she focused on that for a moment. With Leto’s memory beside her, with his nobility and strength saturating every cell in her body, she had an armor that the Sisters could not penetrate.

With great effort, Jessica shouted, “Save . . . your guilt . . .
for yourselves
!”

Making a concerted surge, she threw off the attack, and as she focused harder and harder, Jessica felt the psychic pummeling recede, and heard screams of pain as she inflicted echoes of guilt on her attackers. As moments passed and she gained the upper hand, she stalked off down the trail, leaving the Sisters reeling and moaning.

Halfway to Sietch Tabr, the grounded ’thopter perched on its outcropping in the middle of the desert. The wind picked up, making the hull plates creak and rattle, which Jessica could hear from their sheltered place a short distance away. A hiss of sand scattered across the rocks, but the sound only deepened the sad silence as Jessica paused in her story.

Upon hearing the startling revelations, Gurney showed more overt emotion than Irulan did. “ ‘A memory can be sharper than a dagger and can cut more deeply.’ Those were sad times, my Lady, and difficult for both of us, but I was not aware of the vile things the witches asked of you. It doesn’t surprise me that you’ve distanced yourself from the Sisterhood.”

“Oh, I’ve more than distanced myself, Gurney. I have turned my back on the Bene Gesserit entirely.”

Irulan shifted uncomfortably on the rock. “The Sisters ask many things, without regard to the damage they may do. They’re concerned only with their own goals.” She drew a long breath through her filter. “But I still don’t see how any of this changes or excuses
Bronso’s
crimes. And I don’t understand why you insist that you must keep this information from Alia. The Regent certainly has no love for the Bene Gesserit, nor did Paul. In fact, I think she’d be pleased to hear how you thwarted them.”

Gurney said in a rumbling voice, “I am happy enough that you refused to
do what the witches demanded, my Lady. Compelling a mother to kill her own son is appalling and inhuman.”

“It’s worse than that, Gurney.” Jessica leaned back against the hard, rough rock and forced herself to say the words aloud. “Not long afterward, I decided they were right, and I
did
make up my mind to kill him. And because of that, I did even more terrible things.”

Reverend Mothers are not
mothers
in the human sense. A real mother loves, understands, and forgives her child for almost anything.

But not everything.

—
LADY JESSICA
, private journal note

E
ven though Jessica had turned against them, the words of the militant Sisters had still penetrated, stirring her thoughts until they reinforced her own doubts.

As the Heighliner carried her away from Wallach IX, she isolated herself, in no mood for visitors or conversation. She had always clung to the certainty—perhaps delusion?—that Paul was right, that he did indeed know what he was doing, even if she didn’t understand it fully.

In the quiet of her private stateroom, she meditated to calm her fears, while trying to reach a resolution in her mind. If love and misplaced kindness prevented her from doing a terrible but necessary thing, then how much more death and destruction would occur? How many more lives would be lost?

How could she even understand what Paul was trying to do?

Her son could be extremely persuasive, with charismatic and oratory skills he had learned from Duke Leto, from the Bene Gesserit instruction she had given him, and from his time among the skilled Jongleurs. Paul could make his followers believe in him and react in whatever ways he deemed necessary—mass persuasion.