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for a report on Murbella. Suk Central says she is fit for assigned classes."
"Then assign her." They continued down Tower Lane: all one-story buildings.
Odrade spared a brief glance for the low buildings on both sides of the street.
A two-story addition was being made to one of them. Might be a real Tower Lane
here someday and the joke (such as it was) abandoned.
It was argued that naming was just a convenience anyway and they might as well
enjoy this venture into what was a delicate subject for the Sisterhood.
Odrade stopped abruptly on a busy walkway and turned to her companions. "What
would you say if I suggested we name streets and places after departed Sisters?"
"You're full of nonsense today!" Bellonda accused.
"They are not departed," Tamalane said.
Odrade resumed her prowling walk. She had expected that. Bell's thoughts could
almost be heard. We carry the "departed" around in Other Memory!
Odrade wanted no argument here in the open but she thought her idea had merit.
Some Sisters died without Sharing. Major Memory Lines were duplicated but you
lost a thread and its terminated carrier. Schwangyu of the Gammu Keep had gone
that way, killed by attacking Honored Matres. Plenty of memories remained to
carry her good qualities . . . and complexities. One hesitated to say her
mistakes taught more than her successes.
Bellonda increased her pace to walk beside Odrade in a relatively empty stretch.
"I must speak of Idaho. A Mentat, yes, but those multiple memories. Supremely
dangerous!"
They were passing a morgue, the strong smell of antiseptics even in the street.
The arched doorway stood open.
"Who died?" Odrade asked, ignoring Bellonda's anxiety.
"A Proctor from Section Four and an orchard maintenance man," Tamalane said.
Tam always knew.
Bellonda was furious at being ignored and made no attempt to hide it. "Will you
two stick to the point?"
"What is the point?" Odrade asked. Very mild.
They emerged on the south terrace and stopped at the stone rail to look over the
plantations -- vineyards and orchards. The morning light had a dusty haze in it
not at all like the mists created of moisture.
"You know the point!" Bell would not be deflected.
Odrade stared at the vista, pressing herself against the stones. The railing
was frigid. That mist out there was a different color, she thought. Sunlight
came through dust with a different reflective spectrum. More bounce and
sharpness to the light. Absorbed in a different way. The nimbus was tighter.
The blowing dust and sand crept into every crevice the way water did but the
grating and rasping betrayed its source. The same with Bell's persistence. No
lubrication.
"That's desert light," Odrade said, pointing.
"Stop avoiding me," Bellonda said.
Odrade chose not to answer. The dusty light was a classical thing, but not
reassuring in the way of the elder painters and their misty mornings.
Tamalane came up beside Odrade. "Beautiful in its own way." The remote tone
said she made Other Memory comparisons similar to Odrade's.
If that's how you were conditioned to look for beauty. But something deep
within Odrade said this was not the beauty for which she longed.
In the shallow swales below them, where once there had been greenery, now there
was dryness and a sense of the earth being gutted the way ancient Egyptians had
prepared their dead -- dried to essential matter, preserved for their Eternity.
Desert as deathmaster, swaddling the dirt in nitron, embalming our beautiful
planet with all of its jewels concealed.
Bellonda stood behind them, muttering and shaking her head, refusing to look at
what their planet would become.
Odrade almost shuddered in a sudden thrust of simulflow. Memory flooded her:
She felt herself searching Sietch Tabr's ruins, finding desert-embalmed bodies
of spice pirates left where killers had dropped them.
What is Sieteh Tabr now? A molten flow solidified and without anything to mark
its proud history. Honored Matres: killers of history.
"If you won't eliminate Idaho, then I must protest your using him as a Mentat."
Bell was such a fussy woman! Odrade noted that she was showing her age more
than ever. Reading lenses on her nose even now. They magnified her eyes until
she had the look of a great-orbed fish. Use of lenses and not one of the more
subtle prostheses said something about her. She flaunted a reverse vanity that
announced: "I am greater than the devices my failing senses require. "
Bellonda was definitely irritated by Mother Superior. "Why are you staring at
me that way?"
Odrade, caught by abrupt awareness of a weakness in her Council, shifted her
attention to Tamalane. Cartilage never stopped growing and this had enlarged
Tam's ears, nose and chin. Some Reverend Mothers adjusted this by metabolism
control or sought regular surgical correction. Tam would not bow to such
vanity. "Here's what I am. Take it or leave it."
My advisors are too old. And I . . . I should be younger and stronger to have
these problems on my shoulders. Oh, damn this for a lapse into self-pity!
Only one supreme danger: action against survival of the Sisterhood.
"Duncan is a superb Mentat!" Odrade spoke with all the force of her position.
"But I use none of you beyond your capabilities."
Bellonda remained silent. She knew a Mentat's weaknesses.
Mentats! Odrade thought. They were like walking Archives but when you most
needed answers they relapsed into questions.
"I don't need another Mentat," Odrade said. "I need an inventor!"
When Bellonda still did not speak, Odrade said: "I am freeing his mind, not his
body."
"I insist on an analysis before you open all data sources to him!"
Considering Bellonda's usual stance, that was mild. But Odrade did not trust
it. She detested those sessions -- endless rehashing of Archival reports.
Bellonda doted on them. Bellonda of Archival minutiae and boring excursions
into irrelevant details! Who cared if Reverend Mother X preferred skimmed milk
on her porridge?
Odrade turned her back on Bellonda and looked at the southern sky. Dust! We
would sift more dust! Bellonda would be flanked by assistants. Odrade felt
boredom just imagining it.
"No more analysis." Odrade spoke more sharply than she had intended.
"I do have a point of view." Bellonda sounded hurt.
Point of view? Are we no more than sensory windows on our universe, each with
only a point of view?
Instincts and memories of all types . . . even Archives -- none of these things
spoke for themselves except by compelling intrusions. None carried weight until
formulated in a living consciousness. But whoever produced the formulation
tipped the scales. All order is arbitrary! Why this datum rather than some
other? Any Reverend Mother knew events occurred in their own flux, their own
relative environment. Why couldn't a Mentat Reverend Mother act from that
knowledge?
"Do you refuse counsel?" That was Tamalane. Was she siding with Bell?
"When have I ever refused counsel?" Odrade let her outrage show. "I am
refusing another of Bell's Archival merry-go-rounds." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]