Chapterhouse: Dune – Entry #19

     Sometimes I wish that there were chapter numbers or names.  One of the best chapters is between pages 263 - 277.  In this chapter, Mother Superior Odrade is confronting Scytale again as she tries to negotiate for what the Sisterhood needs - the method for creating synthetic spice using the axlotl tanks.  The intricacies of the conversation are engrossing.  But the best scene is when Sheeana comes to announce that there has been a spice blow which attracted thousands of sandworms!

     Odrade remained silent.  We have done it!  But this was Sheeana's moment of triumph.  Let her make the most of it.  Scytale had never looked this defeated.
     Sheeana opened the pod and lifted the worm from it, cradling it as thought it were an infant.  It lay quiescent in her arms.
     Odrade took a deep, satisfied breath.  She still controls them.

(Chapterhouse: Dune, p. 271)

     Later in the chapter Odrade is reviewing the conversation with Tamalane, Bellonda, and Sheeana.  The importance of the conversion of Chapterhouse by the sandworms could not be understated.

     "When you spoke of Chapterhouse becoming another Dune, that was when he began to panic, " Bellonda said, her voice Mentat distant.
     Odrade had seen the reaction but had not yet made the association.  This was a Mentat's value: patterns and systems, building blocks.  Bell sensed a pattern to Scytale's behavior.
     "I ask myself: Is it the thing become real once more?" Bellonda said.
     Odrade saw it at once.  An odd thing about lost places.  As long as Dune had been a known and living planet, there existed a historical firmness about its presence in the Galactic Register.  You could point to a projection and say: "That is Dune.  Once called Arrakis and, latterly, Rakis.  Dune for its total desert character in Muad'Dib's day."
     Destroy the place, though, and a mythological patina inweighed against projected reality.  In time, such places became totally mythic.  Arthur and his Round Table.  Camelot where it only rains at night.  Pretty good Weather Control for those days!
     But now, a new Dune had appeared.

(Chapterhouse: Dune, pp. 274 - 275)