Sheeana turned from the window and took one step toward the table, giving Odrade the curious feeling that the two women standing there had become a Janus figure: back to back but only one persona.

"Bell is confused by your promise," Sheeana said. How soft her voice.

"He could be the catalyst to pull Murbella through," Odrade said. "You tend to underestimate the power of love."

"No!" Tamalane spoke to the window in front of her. "We fear its power."

"Could be!" Bell still was scornful but that came naturally to her. The expression on her face said she remained implacably stubborn.

"Hubris," Sheeana murmured.

"What?" Bellonda whirled in her chairdog, causing it to squeak with indignation.

"We share a common failing with Scytale," Sheeana said.

"Oh?" Bellonda was gnawing at Sheeana's secret.

"We think we make history," Sheeana said. She returned to her position beside Tamalane, both of them staring out the window.

Bellonda returned her attention to Odrade. "Do you understand that?"

Odrade ignored her. Let the Mentat work it out for herself. The projector on the worktable clicked and a message was displayed. Odrade reported it. "Still not ready at the ship." She looked at those two rigid backs in front of the window.

History?

On Chapterhouse, there had been little of what Odrade liked to think of as history-making before the Honored Matres. Only the steady graduation of Reverend Mothers passing through the Agony.

Like a river.

It flowed and it went somewhere. You could stand on the bank (as Odrade sometimes thought they did here) and you could observe the flow. A map might tell you where the river went but no map could reveal more essential things. A map could never show intimate movements of the river's cargo. Where did they go? Maps had limited value in this age. A printout or projection from Archives; that was not the map they required. There had to be a better one somewhere, one attached to all of those lives. You could carry that map in your memory and have it out occasionally for a closer look.

Whatever happened to the Reverend Mother Perinte we sent out last year?

The map-in-the-mind would take over and create a "Perinte Scenario." It was really yourself on the river, of course, but this made little difference. It still was the map they needed.

We don't like it that we're caught in someone else's currents, that we don't know what may be revealed at the river's next bend. We always prefer overflight even though any commanding position must remain part of other currents. Every flow contains unpredictable things.

Odrade looked up to see her three companions watching her. Tamalane and Sheeana had turned their backs to the window.

"Honored Matres have forgotten that clinging to any form of conservatism can be dangerous," Odrade said. "Have we forgotten it as well?"

They continued to stare at her but they had heard. Become too conservative and you were unprepared for surprises. That was what Muad'Dib had taught them, and his Tyrant son had made the lesson forever unforgettable.

Bellonda's glum expression did not change.

In the deep recesses of Odrade's consciousness, Taraza whispered: "Careful, Dar. I was lucky. Quick to grab advantage. Just as you are. But you cannot depend on luck and that is what bothers them. Don't even expect luck. Much better to trust your water images. Let Bell have her say."

"Bell," Odrade said, "I thought you accepted Duncan."

"Within limits." Definitely accusatory.

"I think we should go out to the ship." Sheeana spoke with demanding emphasis. "This is not the place to wait. Do we fear what she may become?"

Tam and Sheeana turned toward the door simultaneously as though the same puppet master controlled their strings.

Odrade found the interruption welcome. Sheeana's question alarmed them. What could Murbella become? A catalyst, my Sisters. A catalyst.

The wind shook them when they emerged from Central and for once Odrade was thankful for tube transport. Walking could await warmer temperatures without this blustering minitempest tugging at their robes.

When they were seated in a private car, Bellonda once more took up her accusatory refrain. "Everything he does could be camouflage."

Once more, Odrade voiced the oft-repeated Bene Gesserit warning to limit their reliance on Mentats. "Logic is blind and often knows only its own past."

Tamalane chimed in with unexpected support. "You are getting paranoid, Bell!"

Sheeana spoke more softly. "I've heard you say, Bell, that logic is good for playing pyramid chess but often too slow for needs of survival. "

Bellonda sat in glowering silence, only a faint hissing rumble of their tube passage intruding on the quiet.

Wounds must not be taken into the ship.

Odrade matched her tone to Sheeana's: "Bell, dear Bell. We do not have time to consider all ramifications of our plight. We no longer can say, 'If this happens, then that must surely follow, and in such a case, our moves must be so and so and so...' "

Bellonda actually chuckled. "Oh, my! The ordinary mind is such a clutter. And I must not demand what we all need and cannot have - sufficient time for every plan."

It was Bellonda-Mentat speaking, telling them she knew she was flawed by pride in her ordinary mind. What a badly organized, untidy place that was. Imagine what the non-Mentat puts up with, imposing so little order. She reached across the aisle and patted Odrade's shoulder.

"It's all right, Dar. I'll behave."

What would an outsider think, seeing that exchange? Odrade wondered. All four of them acting in concert for the needs of one Sister.

For the needs of Murbella's Agony, as well.

People saw only the outside of this Reverend Mother mask they wore.

When we must (which is most of the time these days) we function at astonishing levels of competence. No pride in that; a simple fact. But let us relax and we hear gibberish at the edges as ordinary folk do. Ours merely has more volume. We live our lives in little congeries like anyone else. Rooms of the mind, rooms of the body.

Bellonda had composed herself, hands clasped in her lap. She knew what Odrade planned and kept it to herself. It was a trust that went beyond Mentat Projection into something more basically human. Projection was a marvelously adaptable tool but a tool nonetheless. Ultimately, all tools depended on the ones who used them. Odrade was at a loss how to show her thanks without reducing trust.

I must walk my tightrope in silence.

She sensed the chasm beneath her, the nightmare image conjured by these reflections. The unseen hunter with an axe was closer. Odrade wanted to turn and identify the stalker but resisted. I will not make Muad'Dib's mistake! The prescient warning she had first sensed on Dune in the ruins of Sietch Tabr would not be exorcised until she ended or the Sisterhood ended. Did I create this terrible threat by my fears? Surely not! Still, she felt she had stared at Time in that ancient Fremen stronghold as though all past and all future were frozen into a tableau that could not be changed. I must break free of you utterly, Muad'Dib!

Their arrival at the Landing Flat pulled her from these fearful musings.

Murbella waited in rooms Proctors had prepared. At the center was a small amphitheater about seven meters along its enclosing back wall. Padded benches were stepped upward in a steep arc, seating for no more than twenty observers. Proctors had left her without explanation on the lowest bench staring at a suspensor-buoyed table. Straps hung over the sides to confine whoever lay on it.

Me.

An astonishing series of rooms, she thought. She had never before been permitted into this part of the ship. She felt exposed here, even more so than she had under open sky. The smaller rooms through which they had brought her to this amphitheater were clearly designed for medical emergencies: resuscitation equipment, sanitary odors, antiseptics.