and I'll go down doing the Hollywood Waltz [backdated to before current mission]
Tess has come at Murbella's request, though that doesn't mean she'll be doing so in a way that quite matches any of the woman's expectations. Though called an acolyte, there's no sign of the robes characteristic of the Bene Gesserit. She has a black high-necked bodysuit, not quite a catsuit but close, under a short electric-blue jacket, its snaps
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She goes over the story-their first sparring, her training with Sheeana in physical and meditative aspects, her broadly learning the philosophy and methods of the order. All of it painted in broad strokes, and with the... unique touches of dialect and slang, a Southern girl's mannerisms smashed up with with those of some space-punk.
"It's the job've us-" -a grasshopper, not a Bene Gesserit- "-to get knowledge, learn everythin'. Find what's good'n pass it on." No complex definitions of ethics, here: just the ideal good, like some angel behind her eyes that shows through her microexpressions even with the broad encumbrance of the goggles. "You got twenty thousand more years've history than we do. Give'r'take. We don't got that time, we ain't that slow where I'm from. No offense."
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"However she still isn't entirely comfortable without that suit on." As a Fremen, Sheeana knew the feeling, but even they could relax in sietch.
She watched Murbella and her box. Surely she could tell that a conventional Gom Jabbar test wouldn't work on her? Something subtler would be needed.
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"Some people who fled Chapterhouse with your instructor, Sister Tess. They feared the Sisterhood could not remain itself if Honored Matres mixed into our timeless flow. And Honored Matres even at their most extreme are far more like unto the Bene Gesserit than a grasshopper would be."
"The box I hold is a test. It's a test to which young humans are subjected before they advance to candidacy. It has been imperative for the Sisterhood to winnow the human from the animal."
Murbella has been judged animal by many, without the benefit of the gom jabbar.
"My acolytes know that your acceptance into the Order has been provisional. My duty is to assure myself of your fitness and the good judgment of your teacher. Yet you present me with a dilemma, Sister Tess. How should I assess your humanity, when you are not merely human?"
She opens the box.
"Tess, remove your goggles. I require unobstructed view of your facial muscles."
She turns to Sheeana.
"Reverend Mother, I request that you place your hand within the box."
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"I didn't fear the Sisterhood changing. I feared the Honored Matres being recalcitrant and killing us." A reminder: Tess may still have some dilletante tendencies but she didn't come from a tradition that had a history of succession by assassination.
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In time-honored tradition, the memories of countless sisters and mothers guiding her inerrantly, Mother Superior triggers the needle to snick free of its concealment, holds it to Sheeana's jugular.
"This," she says, to Tess, "is the gom jabbar, the high-handed enemy. Because of its use in this test, the Bene Gesserit mystique holds that this poison kills only animals. In fact it will kill Sheeana if I use it, and she has already been tested. She is already known and proven human.
"Why, then, do I do this?" The question is, like so many Bene Gesserit questions, purely rhetorical, and Murbella continues without allowing time for a response. "Sheeana will keep her hand in the box. She will describe to you her experience, the experience that you might have had were you merely human. Were she being tested, the gom jabbar would ensure her compliance; I would threaten to pierce her skin and introduce the venom to flow within."
It's meta-cyanide whatever that means, Frank Herbert, you worldbuilding fool, you and acts instantaneously, too swift even for a Reverend Mother to neutralize. Or something. At least this isn't KJA!Dune with everyone carrying pathogens around in their bodies to infect the Baron and stuff
"Because she is human, I need not make this threat. She will keep her hand inside the box as long as I require it. That is the response of a human. The gom jabbar, Sister Tess, is for you. You will watch Sheeana, and listen; and I will watch you. And should you make a move to disrupt Sheeana's experience with the box, I will use the gom jabbar on your beloved teacher.
"This would be a loss greater to me than to you," she notes, dryly and somewhat anticlimactically.
"Now we begin."
The box is activated.
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"If'n you must," Tess says, and there's a fierce, wicked anger around her eyes as her hands squeeze together in front of her. But then that flash-freezes into cool resignation and acceptance as Murbella activates the box. There's something there, underneath, like disappointment. Not that Murbella would think of harming Sheeana... but that she would choose this as a test at all, after talking to Sheeana about who Tess is and what she is.
And she listens attentively to Sheeana, with a faint, aching unhappiness showing through her eyes, but she doesn't move to interrupt at all.
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"The heat builds very quickly. Already it feels as if my flesh is being scalded. This is only a tenth of what it is capable of though." She looks Murbella then Tess in the eye, determined, daring.
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Murbella is looking for tells, or a deliberate masking thereof. She is waiting to hear whether Tess will demand a stop to this, and if so, when it will occur. She is watching the tightness around Tess' eyes, and judging the message that tightness conveys.
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Part of her is aching in sympathy, but that isn't the part of her that's in control. As the process continues that split intensified. To a casual observer she'd seem only a little conflicted, holding herself in place... but with petit perception, it's like looking at two people at once, one wanting to cry out and one at an almost robotic peace, who only coincidentally happen to be in the same body.
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Her words to Tess carry neither warmth nor cold.
"Your teacher suffers," she says. "This is called the agony box, and we have used it for thousands of years." She observes. She judges.
The girl does not ask mercy for Sheeana.
The girl's dislike of this ordeal is obvious.
The girl endures. As does Sheeana Brugh.
At length, Murbella does a thing. "Kull wahad!" she murmurs, to Sheeana. It is what Gaius Helen Mohiam said to Muad'Dib - Mohiam, whose Memory they carry too. It's Sheeana's signal. He went this far.
She allows the box to work for the space of three heartbeats more. Then it is over.
"That was not an ordeal by proxy," says Murbella, to Tess. "Tell me what you think I have learned of you from this."
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It's true for all that the pain showed in the edges of Tess' face, it never touched the center of her thinking. Like a machine: this module and that module, disconnected from each other and not interfering. "You wanted ta see it," Tess continues. "Just hearing about something like that ain't enough. Not for someone like you."
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"It's a useful tool, but if you over-rely on it your psychic muscles wither. Don't think we don't know that about Spice too!" She said, forestalling her probable next question.
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Sheeana is a resource! As am I!
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"And you wanted t'see what the reaction would be," Tess continues after a moment of thought. "I coulda come from a tradition that made me like the thinking machines yer worried about." Because she is one, in a certain sense-with the Friendlies, like some halfway step between a computer and a mentat, integrated into a human mind but with long feelers of inhuman thought. "Maybe I'da just smiled and nodded and wouldn'ta cared at all 'cause it was inconvenient."
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Sheeana nodded. "Humanity is not replaceable." She turned to Murbella, looking smug that her student had been vindicated, and herself by extension. "I think Sister Tess has proven herself quite human."
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