Dune

They are watching me this very instant. Very little escapes my Sisters. They will know my plan in time.

It required constant mental cleansing to face up to the fact of her great power over the Sisterhood. I did not seek this power. It was thrust upon me. And she thought: Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect all who seek it. She knew the chances were great that such people were susceptible to corruption or already lost.

Odrade made a mental note to scribe and transmit a Coda memo to Archives. (Let Bell sweat this one!) “We should grant power over our affairs only to those who are reluctant to hold it and then only under conditions that increase the reluctance.”

Perfect description of the Bene Gesserit!

“Are you well, Dar?” It was Bellonda’s voice from the tube door beside Odrade. “You look . . . strange.”

“I just thought of something to do. You getting off?”

Bellonda stared at her as they exchanged places. The tube-field caught Odrade and whisked her away from that questioning gaze.

Odrade entered the workroom and saw her table piled with things her aides thought only she could resolve.

Politics, she recalled as she sat at her table and prepared to deal with responsibilities. Tam and Bell had heard her clearly the other day but they had only the vaguest idea of what they would be asked to support. They were worried and increasingly watchful. As they should be.

Almost any subject had political elements, she thought. As emotions were whipped up, political forces came more and more into the foreground. This put lie! to that old nonsense about “separation of church and state.” Nothing more susceptible to emotional heat than religion.

No wonder we distrust emotions.

Not all emotions, of course. Only the ones you could not escape in moments of necessity: love, hate. Let in a little anger sometimes but keep it on a short leash. That was the Sisterhood’s belief. Utter nonsense!

The Tyrant’s Golden Path made their mistake no longer tolerable. The Golden Path left the Bene Gesserit in a perpetual backwater. You could not minister to Infinity!

Bell’s recurrent question had no answer. “What did he really want us to do?” Into what actions was he manipulating us? (As we manipulate others!)

Why look for meaning where there is none? Would you follow a path you knew led nowhere?

Golden Path! A track laid down in one imagination. Infinity is nowhere! And the finite mind balked. Here was where Mentats found mutable projections, always producing more questions than answers. It was the empty grail of those who, noses close to an endless circle, looked for “the one answer to all things.”

Looking for their own kind of god.

She found it hard to censure them. The mind recoiled in the face of infinity. The Void! Alchemists of any age were like rag pickers bent over their bundles, saying: “There must be order in here somewhere. If I keep on, I’m sure to find it.”

And all the time, the only order was the order they themselves created.

Ahhh, Tyrant! You droll fellow. You saw it. You said: “I will create order for you to follow. Here is the path. See it? No! Don’t look over there. That is the way of the Emperor-Without-Clothes (a nakedness apparent only to children and the insane). Keep your attention where I direct it. This is my Golden Path. Isn’t that a pretty name? It’s all there is and all there ever will be.”

Tyrant, you were another clown. Pointing us into endless recycling of cells from that lost and lonely ball of dirt in our common past.