Flaunting her lack of interest in being viewed as a sexual figure? Some might consider it a slap at the Honored Matres, who used more traditional methods to hone their bodies to wiry perfection. Murbella, though, suspected that Bellonda used her obesity to distract and lull any potential opponents: Assuming her to be slow and weak, they would underestimate her. But Murbella knew better.
'Bring me spice coffee. I must be at my sharpest. Those Guildsmen will no doubt attempt to manipulate me.'
'Shall I send them in now?'
'My coffee first, then the Guild. And summon Doria as well. I want both of you beside me.'
With a knowing smile, Bellonda lumbered away.
Preparing herself, Murbella sat forward in her great chair and squared her shoulders. Her hands gripped the hard and silky-smooth soostones on the throne's arms. After years of violence, all the men she had enslaved and the women she had killed, she knew how to look intimidating.
As soon as Murbella had her coffee, she nodded to Bellonda. The old Sister touched a communications stub in her ear, called for the Guild supplicants.
Doria hurried in, knowing she was late. The ambitious young woman, who currently served as the Mother Commander's key advisor from the Honored Matre faction, had risen in rank by killing close rivals while other Honored Matres wasted time on duels with competing Bene Gesserits. The whip-thin Doria had recognized the emerging patterns of power and decided she would rather be deputy to the victor than leader of the vanquished.
'Take your places on either side of me. Who is the formal representative? Did the Guild send someone of particular importance?' Murbella knew only that the Guild delegation had come to the New Sisterhood, demanding —no, begging for—an audience with her.
Prior to the Battle of Junction, not even the Guild had known the location of Chapterhouse. The Sisterhood kept their homeworld hidden behind a moat of no-ships, its coordinates in no Guild navigation record. However, once the floodgates were opened and Honored Matres had arrived in droves, the site of Chapterhouse was no longer a closely held secret. Even so, few outsiders came directly to the Keep.
'Their highest human administrative official,' Doria said in a hard, flinty voice, 'and a Navigator.'
'A Navigator?' Even Bellonda sounded surprised. 'Here?'
Scowling at her counterpart, Doria continued. 'I've received reports from the docking center where the Guildship landed. He's an Edric-class Navigator bearing the gene markers of an old bloodline.'
Murbella's wide forehead creased. She sifted through direct knowledge as well as information that had surfaced from the chain of Other Memories inside her head. 'An Administrator and a Navigator?' She allowed a cold smile. 'The Guild must have an important message indeed.'
'Maybe it is no more than groveling, Mother Commander,' Bellonda said. 'The Guild is desperate for spice.'
'And well they should be!' Doria snapped. She and Bellonda were always at odds. Though their heated debates occasionally produced interesting perspectives, at the moment Murbella found it juvenile.
'Enough, both of you. I will not allow the Guildsmen to see you bickering.
Such childish displays demonstrate weakness.' Both advisors fell silent as if a gate had slammed shut across their mouths.
As the hall's great doors swung open, female attendants stepped aside to allow the delegation of gray-robed men to enter. The newcomers' bodies were squat, the heads hairless, their faces slightly malformed and wrong. The Guild did not breed with an eye to physical perfection or attractiveness; they focused on maximizing the potential of the human mind.
At their lead strode a tall, silver-robed man, whose bald head was as smooth as polished marble, except for a white braid that dangled from the base of his skull like a long electrical cord. The administrative official stopped to survey the room with milky eyes (though he did not seem to be blind), then stepped forward to clear a path for the bulky construction that followed.
Behind the Guildsmen levitated a great armored aquarium, a transparent distorted-bubble of a tank filled with orange spice gas. Heavy scrolled metalwork reached up like support ribs against the tank. Through the thick plaz, Murbella observed a misshapen form, no longer quite human, its limbs wasted and thin, as if the body was little more than a stem to support the expanded mind. The Navigator.
Murbella rose from her throne as a sign that she looked down upon this delegation, not as a gesture of respect. She wondered how many times such grand representatives had presented themselves before political leaders and emperors, browbeating them with the Spacing Guild's mighty monopoly on space travel. This time, though, she sensed a difference: The Navigator, the high Administrator, and five Guildsmen escorts came as cowed supplicants.
While the gray-robed escorts lowered their faces from her gaze, the braided representative put himself in front of the Navigator's tank and bowed before her. 'I am Administrator Rentel Gorus. We represent the Spacing Guild.'
'Obviously,' Murbella said coolly.
As if afraid of being upstaged, the Navigator drifted to the curved front pane of his tank. His voice was distorted from speaker/translators in the metal support ribs. 'Mother Superior of the Bene Gesserit… or do we address you as Great Honored Matre?'
Murbella knew that most Navigators were so isolated and obscure they could barely communicate with normal humans. With brains as folded as the fabric of space, they could not utter a comprehensible sentence and communed instead with their even more bizarre and exotic Oracle of Time. Some Navigators, however, clung to shreds of their genetic past, intentionally 'stunting themselves' so they could act as liaisons with mere humans.
'You may address me as Mother Commander, provided you do so with respect. What is your name, Navigator?'
'I am Edrik. Many in my line have interacted with governments and individuals, dating back to the time of Emperor Muad'Dib.' He swam closer to the walls of his tank, and she could see the otherworldly eyes set in his large misshapen head.
'I am less interested in history than in your present predicament,' Murbella said, choosing to use the steel of the Honored Matres rather than the cool negotiating manner of the Bene Gesserits.
Administrator Gorus continued to bow, as if speaking to the floor at Murbella's feet. 'With the destruction of Rakis, all of its sandworms died, and thus the desert planet produces no more spice. Compounding the problem, Honored Matres slew the old Tleilaxu Masters, so the secret of creating spice from axlotl tanks has been lost.'
'Quite a quandary,' Doria muttered with a bit of a sneer.
Murbella curled her own lips downward in a frown. She remained on her feet.
'You state these things as if we did not know them.'
The Navigator continued, amplifying his voice in order to drown out further words from Gorus. 'In days past, melange was plentiful and we had numerous independent sources. Now, after little more than a decade, the Guild has only its own stockpiles remaining, and they are dwindling rapidly. It is becoming difficult to obtain spice even on the black market.'
Murbella crossed her arms over her chest. On either side of her, Bellonda and Doria looked supremely satisfied. 'But we can provide you with new spice. If we choose to do so. If you give us good reason.'
Edrik drifted in his tank. The escort party of Guildsmen looked away.
The desert band girdling Chapterhouse was continuing to expand every year.
Spice blows had occurred, and the stunted sandworms were growing larger, though they were only shadows of the monsters that once churned the dunes of Rakis. Decades ago, before the Honored Matres obliterated Dune, the Bene Gesserit order had gathered huge stockpiles of the then-plentiful spice. In contrast, the Spacing Guild— assuming the days of scarce melange were long over and the market was strong—did not make preparations for a possible shortage. Even the ancient trading conglomerate of CHOAM had been caught off guard.
Murbella stepped closer to the tank, focused on the Navigator. Gorus folded his hands and said to her, 'The reason we have come is therefore obvious… Mother Commander.'
Murbella said, 'My Sisters and I have good reason for cutting off your supplies.'
Nonplussed, Edrik waved his webbed hands in the swirling mists. 'Mother Commander, what have we done
