Bellonda said: "Why do they want us dead and not captives? That has always puzzled me."

Honored Matres might not want any Bene Gesserit alive... only the spice knowledge, perhaps. But they destroyed Dune. They destroyed the Tleilaxu. It was a cautioning thought to take into any confrontation with the Spider Queen - should Dortujla succeed.

"No useful hostages?" Bellonda asked.

Odrade saw the looks on the faces of her Sisters. They were following a single track as though all of them thought with one mind. Object lessons by Honored Matres, leaving few survivors, only made potential opposition more cautious. It invoked a rule of silence within which bitter memories became bitter myths. Honored Matres were like barbarians in any age: blood instead of hostages. Strike with random viciousness.

"Dar's right," Tamalane said. "We've been seeking allies too close to home."

"Futars did not create themselves," Sheeana said.

"The ones who created them hope to control us," Bellonda said. There was the clear sound of Prime Projection in her voice. "That's the hesitation Dortujla heard in the Handlers."

There it was and they faced it with all of its perils. It came down to people (as it always did). People - contemporaries. You learned valuable things from people living in your own time and from knowledge they carried out of their pasts. Other Memory was not the only conveyance of history.

Odrade felt that she had come home after a long absence. There was a familiarity about the way all four of them were thinking now. It was a familiarity that transcended place. The Sisterhood itself was Home. Not where they lodged in transient housing but the association.

Bellonda voiced it for them. "I fear we have been working at cross purposes."

"Fear does that," Sheeana said.

Odrade dared not smile. It could be misinterpreted and she did not want to explain. Give us Murbella as a Sister and a restored Bashar! Then we might have our fighting chance!

Right there with that good feeling in her, the message signal clicked. She glanced at the projection surface, a pure reflex, and recognized crisis. Such a small thing (relatively) to precipitate crisis. Clairby mortally injured in a 'thopter crash. Mortal unless... The unless was spelled out for her and it added up to cyborg. Her companions saw the message in reverse but you got good at reading mirrored information in here. They knew.

Where do we draw the line?

Bellonda, with her antique spectacles when she could have had artificial eyes or any of numerous other prosthetics, voted with her body. This is what it means to be human. Try to hold on to youth and it mocks you while it sprints away. Melange is enough... and perhaps too much.

Odrade recognized what her own emotions were telling her. But what of Bene Gesserit necessity? Bell could lodge her individual vote and everyone recognized it, even respected it. But Mother Superior's vote carried the Sisterhood with her.

First the axlotl tanks and now this.

Necessity said they could not afford to lose specialists of Clairby's caliber. They had few enough as it was. "Spread thin" did not describe it. Gaps were appearing. Cyborg Clairby, though, and that was the opening wedge.

The Suks were prepared. "A precautionary arrangement" should it be required for someone irreplaceable. Such as Mother Superior? Odrade knew she had approved that with her usual cautious reservations. Where were those reservations now?

Cyborg was one of those potpourri words, too. Where did mechanical additions to human flesh become dominant? When was the Cyborg no longer human? Temptations intensified - "Just this one little adjustment." And so easy to adjust until the potpourri-human became unquestioningly obedient.

But... Clairby?

Conditions of extremis said, "Cyborg him!" Was the Sisterhood that desperate? She was forced to answer in the affirmative.

There it was then - decision not entirely out of her hands, but the ready excuse at hand. Necessity dictates it.

The Butlerian Jihad had left its indelible mark on humans. Fought and won... for then. And here was another battle in that long-ago conflict.

But now, survival of the Sisterhood was in the balance. How many technical specialists remained on Chapterhouse? She knew the answer without looking. Not enough.

Odrade leaned forward and keyed for transmit. "Cyborg him," she said.

Bellonda grunted. Approval or disapproval? She would never say. This was Mother Superior's arena and welcome to it!

Who won this battle? Odrade wondered.

It was just after dawn when Odrade arrived at the no-ship but Murbella was up and working with a training mek when Mother Superior strode onto the practice floor.

Odrade had walked the last klick through ring orchards around the spacefield. Night's limited clouds had thinned at the approach of dawn, then dissipated to reveal a sky thick with stars.

She recognized a delicate weather shift to wrench another crop from this region but decreasing rainfall was barely enough to keep orchards and pastures alive.

As she walked, Odrade was overcome by dreariness. Winter just past had been a hard-bought silence between storms. Life was holocaust. Dusting of pollen by eager insects, fruiting and seeding that followed the flower. These orchards were a secret storm whose power lay hidden in torrential flows of life. But ohhh! the destruction. New life carried change. The Changer was coming, always different. Sandworms would bring the desert purity of ancient Dune.

The desolation of that transforming power invaded her imagination. She could picture this landscape reduced to windswept dunes, habitat for Leto II's descendants.

And the arts of Chapterhouse would undergo mutation - one civilization's myths replaced by another's.

The aura of these thoughts went with Odrade onto the practice floor and colored her mood as she watched Murbella complete a round of flashing exertion, then step back, panting.

A thin scratch reddened the back of Murbella's left hand where she had missed a move by the big mek. The automated trainer stood there in the center of the room like a golden pillar, its weapons flicking in and out - probing mandibles of an angry insect.

Murbella wore tight green leotards and her exposed skin glistened with perspiration. Even with the prominent mounding of her pregnancy, she appeared graceful. Her skin glowed with health. It came from within, Odrade decided, partly the pregnancy but something more fundamental as well. This had impressed itself on Odrade at their first encounter, a thing Lucilla had remarked after capturing Murbella and rescuing Idaho from Gammu. Health lived below the surface in her, there like a lens to focus attention on a deep freshet of vitality.

We must have her!

Murbella saw the visitor but refused to be interrupted.

Not yet, Mother Superior. My baby is due soon but this body's needs will continue.

Odrade saw then that the mek was simulating anger, a programmed response brought on by frustration of its circuitry. An extremely dangerous mode!

"Good morning, Mother Superior."

Murbella's voice came out modulated by her exertions as she dodged and twisted with that almost blinding speed she commanded.

The mek slashed and probed for her, its sensors darting and whirring in attempts to follow her movements.