But the antagonism between the two led eventually to Gaius Helen's confinement under guard by Paul's command, and later her execution as a traitor by Alia's order. This ignominious end to a brilliant and inspired ministry, marred somewhat by her zealousness and fanaticism, gave muted and somber inflection to the litariy of praise trumpeted from Wallach IX following Reverend Mother Gaius Helen's death. The Parchment of Sacred Adulation, a traditional memorial for Reverend Mothers, pays homage to her "discipline of self-surrender and true self-resignation, the self-naughting that is the way of greatness." The testimony of Gaius Helen's own diary, while understandably self-serving in some ways, contributes no small insight mto this extraordinary and paradoxical figure. Those dossiers dated shortly before she left the Bene Gesserit homewortd on her final ill-fated errand of complicity and political intrigue, provide invaluable clues to the character and motives of a crucial link in the history of the Imperium during those years. (To what extent the public person accurately mirrored the private one is perhaps best judged by comparing Gaius Helen's own declarations with those words and deeds ascribed to her by Harq al-Harba in his great history plays.) Those last pages of her personal diary, confiscated by Paul Atreides after her arrest, read: When I was a child, I dreamed a dream three times in succession. In my dream, I saw a hooded figure who, with an airow, shot the sun out of the sky. Have I been seeing my destiny, or Paul Atreides'? Which of us is the archer and which the sun? And though I have seen all this and more, yet I failed to see much since that tune when I first confronted the young Paul and tested him. Lately, I have been besieged by that incandescent memory whose traditions and aims I have always served. Soon I will join them, having added my own identity to that long line of silently articulate and everpresent mothers of the human being. Will Jessica guide the future men? Since I can remember, my path has ever been straight to design but, by necessity, devi- ous in execution. I have indeed been unrelenting and unyielding in my dedication to the cause nf directed human evolution in order to achieve, in the end, what was envisioned so long ago1 our Kwisatz Haderach True, I have had to pick ray way with infinite care between the shoals of contemplation and action-a difficult course. In contemplation, I made myself a vehicle for the voices of the past, the immortal spirits of the ages all devoted to the same task. I became the via vocis. But then what w as I to do? Was> I to be the forming hand of the future or the malleable material some other hands would use for achieving that end? The dilemma was confounding, but demanded resolution.