and I'll go down doing the Hollywood Waltz [backdated to before current mission]

[deep_sky_diving]

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

Comments

[barefootbg]

More than anything, Murbella is curious.

She has arrived before the others, and a good thing too: the White Room is now once again worthy of its name, thanks to the efforts of her two acolytes, who as proper Bene Gesserit live to serve.

Honored Matres would've tried to enslave some hippie NPC male to make him clean the stain out of the white carpet.

The acolytes flank their Mother Superior now, one at each side, standing behind her. One holds a box, smooth featureless black plaz, looking something like this. The other holds a caddy full of cleaning supplies

[worm_dancer]

As Spice was to her. But she recognized how it limited her.

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."

[barefootbg]

Sheeana has earned a little smugness. Murbella, though, maintains the BG mask, however vindicated she too may feel.

Nor will she communicate her profound relief.

"Your teacher is my obvious successor," she says to Tess. She needn't ever have said it to Sheeana; it is, indeed, obvious, to any Sister. (What, is she going to elevate Beavis and Butthead the acolytes she brought? They're not weak, else she'd not be traveling with them. Yet they are acolytes, and even should they pass the spice agony, they will never rank beside Sheeana in strength or versatility.) "Today I've gambled my life and hers on you. That should tell you how much was at stake. Not your candidacy alone! But our judgment upon the humanity of your kind, grasshoppers, the augmented. An animal can offer sympathy. A machine can disregard the pain of a living being. That which is human in you permits compassion to co-exist with restraint and the endurance of suffering

[deep_sky_diving]

"I might be a good example, but there are others that ain't so much where I'm from," Tess warns. "The ones like us, we call'm locusts, sometimes." The linguistic connection is painfully obvious. "This wouldn't be a test to one've'm, the ones that're in deep. They get kinda..." She makes a little swirly motion next to her head. "You can't tell, just talkin' to'm."

The focus of trying to explain a topic to Murbella that's wholly unfamiliar to her is clear on her face. "You can't take just watcha see on the face at face value. It'd be nice if you do for me," she says, and she smiles self-effacingly, "but it ain't the smart thing. Not fer anybody who's got what I got. That's why we work off... friends, reputation. It's harder'n catchin' a greased pig tryin' to keep it all together."

[worm_dancer]

Sheeana narrows in on that topic. She's been thinking about parralel evolution lately...

"It seems that for every order, there is a dark mirror. Sisters, we have the Honored Matres. The Je'dai have the Sith." She pronounces it almost like 'seeth', reverting to the Fremen way of saying things when around those from her home universe and those she trusts. "And the Grasshoppers have the Locusts...how biblical. Tess, please tell us more about them."

Where did Raizo's Ninja Clan fit into this classification? Perhaps they were the dark mirror, and the benevolent counterpart had yet to be known.

[barefootbg]

"If locusts professed a wish to join our Order, we'd test their humanity in some way appropriate to them," answers Murbella mildly. "Indeed, we should hear more of these locusts, as Sheeana suggests." Tess' knowledge is a resource as surely as any Sister's mind or womb or limbs.

[deep_sky_diving]

Tess lets out a little laugh. Not cruel, but amused. "Yer reachin' again," she says to Sheeana. "We ain't no order. The words're good 'cause that's what we're like, right now. It ain't gonna mean much once everybody's doin' things like we are 'stead've just us weirdos," she continues, looking more over at Murbella. Venturing into deep space with just a thin wrapper-shell and a little god-machine to connect any two points in the universe... "But that's what it is," she adds, vaguely contemplative. "A locust's somebody who's on the bleedin' edge and don't know how to handle it. But with Friendlies they can kinda... make up fer it. Some. Enough ta get by, 'n turn awfully bad sometimes. They take advantage'a people who ain't caught up yet. They ain't all from us, y'get, but they're still awful bad-spark rep, so we do what we can ta... clean up, when somebody gets a little out there and starts droppin' rocks

[worm_dancer]

Sheeana gladly gives her mind and limbs to the Sisterhood, but she'd rather her womb not be shanghaied. Pregnancy looks incredibly aggravating and she cannot at all deal with most children. Even after Maryweather, she has almost negative maternal instinct.

"I am not. The general pattern is holding up." All things have their opposite. This is basic taosufist philosophy. "So they hold primitive societies hostage with superior technology, among many other crimes." Sheeana's Fremen ancestry fairly howls about that one. "They blackmailed us for Spice!" "Harkonnen pigs! I killed many but always there were more!" "They have denied us the Hajj!"

"Besides being like you but with no conscience, how would we recognize one?"

[barefootbg]

Murbella only waits, placidly, allowing the teacher and student exchange to unfold.

Socratic!

[deep_sky_diving]

"You don't," Tess says neatly. "Not without a long time to watch'm, pick out the details, the stuff that ain't what Bene Gesserit look for." A step beyond motivation and conscious thought, to the meta-self linked to the Friendlies that governs the self-modification routines they enable. "Or you put 'em through tests that're pokey enough ta make a pig blush."