Chapterhouse: Dune – Entry #22

     The chapters start getting pretty action-packed at this point as the climax for Chapterhouse: Dune is approached. Murbella successfully goes through the Agony to become a Reverend Mother.  Both Duncan and Murbella know that this has changed their relationship.  Odrade is about to share her plan for an attack on the Honored Matres leadership at Junction - a plan which will likely make her a martyr.  She has all but stated that either Sheeana or Murbella will succeed her as Mother Superior.

     Then there was an odd scene that I certainly missed on my previous readings of this book.  Duncan awakens from a dream in which he saw a scroll listing weapons and details of their construction.  He then goes to his workroom, sits at his console, and the scroll returns but this time with different weapons, including Futars and weapons he had never heard of such as Disruptors.  Then suddenly, he sees the elderly couple he has seen through the shimmering net before and they glare at him and say "Stop spying on us!" (Chapterhouse: Dune, p. 335)

     So somehow, Duncan can see through to the elderly couple ... they, with Duncan, are the key to  the climax of the entire Dune Saga.  Here is his analysis of this vision:

     Resonances and tachyon theory held his attention for a time.  Tachyon theory figured in Holzmann's original design.  "Techys," Holzmann had called his energy source.

      A wave system that ignored light speed's limits.  Light speed obviously did not limit foldspace ships.  Techys?

     "It works because it works," Idaho muttered.  "Faith.  Like any other religion."
Mentats squirreled away much seemingly inconsequential data.  He had a storehouse marked "Techys" and proceeded to go through it without satisfaction.

      Not even Guild Navigators professed knowledge of how they guided foldspace ships.  Ixian scientists made machines to duplicate Navigator abilities but still could not define what they did.

     "Holzmann's formulae can be trusted."

      No one claimed to understand Holzmann.  They merely used his formulae because they worked.  It was the "ether" of space travel.  You folded space.  One instant you were here and the next instant you were countless parsecs distant.

     Someone "out there" has found another way to use Holzmann's theories!  It was a full Mentat Projection.  He knew its accuracy from the new questions it produced.

(Chapterhouse: Dune, p. 335 - 336)

Chapterhouse: Dune – Entry #21

Become too conservative and you were unprepared for surprises.

(Chapterhouse: Dune, p. 320)

   
     This is Odrade's warning to her advisors.  This is the reason the machines lost in the Butlerian Jihad.  This is the reason that humanity is uniquely prepared at this point in the story because they have learned this lesson from Muad'Dib and the Tyrant.  And they have Odrade, Sheeana, Idaho, Teg, and Murbella ... five amazing characters.

Chapterhouse: Dune – Entry #20

     The following chapter starter says so much in so little.

Spend energies on those who make you strong.  Energy spent on weaklings drags you to doom.  (HM rule) Bene Gesserit Commentary: Who judges?

-- The Dortujla Record

(Chapterhouse: Dune, p. 300)

Note: HM stands for Honored Matre.

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)

Chapterhouse: Dune – Entry #18

     Odrade's visit to the desert observation center where Sheeana has been working as an "imprinter" and teaching young men how to resist being imprinted was quite interesting.  Odrade reminds the reader that Sheeana was the youngest-ever Reverend Mother and a descendent of Siona Atreides.

     "I have a problem with you, Sheeana.  You alarm some Sisters."  And me.  There's a wild place in you we have not found.  Atreides gene markers Duncan told us to seek are in your cells.  What have they given you?

(Chapterhouse: Dune, p. 248)

     During this conversation, Mother Superior Odrade tells Sheeana that she wants her to be in her Council to replace Tamalane who has gotten very old.  But when the Mother Superior asks about Sheeana's conversations with Duncan, Sheeana worries that Odrade sees that there is more going on at the desert observation center than she has let on.  But Sheeana successfully deflects the conversation's direction.

     No need even to waste her fallback position - truth: "We've been discussing the possibility that I might imprint Teg and restore the Bashar's memories that way." 

     Full confession avoided.  Mother Superior did not learn that I have weaseled out the way to reactivate our no-ship prison and defuse the mines Bellonda put in it.

(Chapterhouse: Dune, p. 250)

Chapterhouse: Dune – Entry #17

Creativity! 

Always dangerous to entrenched power.  Always coming up with something  new.  New things could destroy the grip of authority.  Even the Bene Gesserit approached creativity with misgivings. ... The trouble was that creative ones tended to welcome backwaters.  They called it privacy.

(Chapterhouse: Dune, p. 243)

     This is why Odrade knew how important Duncan was to their plans.  They needed his creativity.  They needed to make sure they didn't get stuck in old patterns of behavior.  They needed the element of surprise!

     Further down on this same page was a reference to "HOSPITAL FOR INCURABLE DISEASES".  This came from a "simulflow" Odrade, an Atreides, had during a conversation with Streggi.  It amazes me that either Frank Herbert had envisioned this as the first place we would meet Raquella, daughter of Vor Atreides and founder of what became the Bene Gesserit, or that Brian Herbert thought to weave this in to the prequel story.  The ability to make connections over eons amazes me.  The only other author I have known to be able to tell a story over such an expanse of time is James Michener, especially in The Source.

Chapterhouse: Dune – Entry #16

     The conversation that Duncan has with second-in-command Reverend Mother Bellonda is nothing short of amazing.  Duncan is, well, Duncan ... the most amazing character in the Dune series.  And this conversation enlightens us to the historical background and glimpses of the future that Frank Herbert envisioned.

Simulflow poured it through her awareness: Order of Mentats, founded by Gilbertus Albans; temporary sanctuary with Bene Tleilax who hoped to incorporate them into Tleilax hegemony; spread into uncounted "seed schools"; suppressed by Leto II because they formed a nucleus of independent opposition; spread into the Scattering after the Famine.

(Chapterhouse: Dune, p. 230)

And then later in the conversation ...

     "By the way, Bell," as she stood to leave, "Honored Matres could be a relatively small group."
     Small? Didn't he know how the Sisterhood was being overwhelmed by terrifying numbers on planet after planet?
     "All numbers are relative. Is there something in the universe truly immovable? Our Old Empire could be a last retreat for them, Bell.  A place to hide and try to regroup."

(Chapterhouse: Dune, p. 231)

Chapterhouse: Dune – Entry #15

The tyranny of the minority cloaked in the mask of the majority.

That was what the witch Lucilla had recognized.  No way to let her live after discovering she knew how to manipulate the masses.  The witch nests would have to be found and burned.  Lucilla's perceptiveness was clearly not an isolated example.

(Chapterhouse: Dune, p. 221)

     I tried really hard to understand what had made the Grand Honored Matre so mad to kill Lucilla.  This passage not only explains that but the rampage on all Bene Gesserit.  If the Bene Gesserit can control the masses then the tyranny of the Honored Matres could not be maintained.   Thank you Frank Herbert for explaining things every once in a while.