"Of course, but most people look at the spice and say, 'How nice it is that we

can have it and it can give us so much longer lives than were enjoyed by our

ancestors.' "

"Providing they can afford it." Teg's voice had a bite in it, Odrade noted.

"As long as no single power controls all of the market, most people have

enough," Taraza said.

"I learned economics at my mother's knee," Teg said. "Food, water, breathable

air, living space not contaminated by poisons -- there are many kinds of money

and the value changes according to the dependency."

As she listened to him, Odrade almost nodded in agreement. His response was her

own. Don't belabor the obvious, Taraza! Get to your point.

"I want you to remember your mother's teachings very clearly," Taraza said. How

mild her voice was suddenly! Taraza's voice changed abruptly then and she

snapped: "Hydraulic despotism!"

She does that shift of emphasis well, Odrade thought. Memory spewed up the data

like a spigot suddenly opened full force. Hydraulic despotism: central control

of an essential energy such as water, electricity, fuel, medicines, melange . .

. Obey the central controlling power or the energy is shut off and you die!

Taraza was talking once more: "There's another useful concept that I'm sure

your mother taught you -- the key log."

Odrade was very curious now. Taraza was headed somewhere important with this

conversation. Key log: a truly ancient concept from the days before suspensors

when lumbermen sent their fallen timber rushing down rivers to central mill

sites. Sometimes the logs jammed up in the river and an expert was brought in

to find the one log, the key log, which would free the jam when removed. Teg,

she knew, would have an intellectual understanding of the term but she and

Taraza could call up actual witnesses from Other Memories, see the explosion of

broken bits of wood and water as a jam was released.

"The Tyrant was a key log," Taraza said. "He created the jam and he released

it."

The lighter began trembling sharply as it took its first bite of Gammu's

atmosphere. Odrade felt the tightness of her restraining harness for a few

seconds, then the craft's passage became steadier. Conversation stopped for

this interval, then Taraza continued:

"Beyond the so-called natural dependencies are some religions that have been

created psychologically. Even physical necessities can have such an underground

component."

"A fact the Missionaria Protectiva understands quite well," Teg said. Again,

Odrade heard that undercurrent of deep resentment in his voice. Taraza

certainly must hear it, too. What was she doing? She could weaken Teg!

"Ahhh, yes," Taraza said. "Our Missionaria Protectiva. Humans have such a

powerful need that their own belief structure be the 'true belief.' If it gives

you pleasure or a sense of security and if it is incorporated into your belief

structure, what a powerful dependency that creates!"

Again, Taraza fell silent while their lighter went through another atmospheric

buffeting.

"I wish he would use his suspensors!" Taraza complained.

"It saves fuel," Teg said. "Less dependency."

Taraza chuckled. "Oh, yes, Miles. You know the lesson well. I see your

mother's hand in it. Damn the dam when the child strikes out in a dangerous

direction."

"You think of me as a child?" he asked.

"I think of you as someone who has just had his first direct encounter with the

machinations of the so-called Honored Mattes."

So that's it, Odrade thought. And with a feeling of shock, Odrade realized that

Taraza was aiming her words at a broader target than just Teg.

She's talking to me!

"These Honored Matres, as they call themselves," Taraza said, "have combined

sexual ecstasy and worship. I doubt that they have even guessed at the

dangers."

Odrade opened her eyes and looked across the aisle at the Mother Superior.

Taraza's gaze was fixed intently on Teg, an unreadable expression except for the

eyes, which burned with the necessity for him to understand.

"Dangers," Taraza repeated. "The great mass of humankind possesses an

unmistakable unit-identity. It can be one thing. It can act as a single

organism."

"So the Tyrant said," Teg countered.

"So the Tyrant demonstrated! The Group Soul was his to manipulate. There are

times, Miles, when survival demands that we commune with the soul. Souls, you

know, are always seeking outlet."

"Hasn't communing with souls gone out of style in our time?" Teg asked. Odrade

did not like the bantering tone in his voice and noted that it aroused a

matching anger in Taraza.

"You think I talk about fashions in religion?" Taraza demanded, her highpitched

voice insistently harsh. "We both know religions can be created! I'm

talking about these Honored Matres who ape some of our ways but have none of our

deeper awareness. They dare place themselves at the center of worship!"

"A thing the Bene Gesserit always avoids," he said. "My mother said that

worshipers and the worshiped are united by the faith."

"And they can be divided!"

Odrade saw Teg suddenly fall into Mentat mode, an unfocused stare in his eyes,

his features placid. She saw now part of what Taraza was doing. The Mentat

rides Roman, one foot on each steed. Each foot is based on a different reality

as the pattern-search hurtles him forward. He must ride different realities to

a single goal.

Teg spoke in a Mentat's musing, unaccented voice: "Divided forces will battle

for supremacy."

Taraza gave a sigh of pleasure almost sensual in its natural venting.

"Dependency infrastructure," Taraza said. "These women from the Scattering

would control dividing forces, all of those forces trying mightily to take the

lead. That military officer on the Guildship, when he spoke of his Honored

Matres, spoke with both awe and hatred. I'm sure you heard it in his voice,

Miles. I know how well your mother taught you."

"I heard." Teg was once more focused on Taraza, hanging on her every word as

was Odrade.

"Dependencies," Taraza said. "How simple they can be and how complex. Take,

for example, tooth decay."

"Tooth decay?" Teg was shocked off his Mentat track and Odrade, observing this,

saw that his reaction was precisely what Taraza wanted. Taraza was playing her

Mentat Bashar with a fine hand.

And I am supposed to see this and learn from it, Odrade thought.

"Tooth decay," Taraza repeated. "A simple implant at birth prevents this bane

for most of humankind. Still, we must brush the teeth and otherwise care for

them. It is so natural to us that we seldom think about it. The devices we use

are assumed to be wholly ordinary parts of our environment. Yet the devices,

the materials in them, the instructors in tooth care and the Suk monitors, all

have their interlocked relationships."

"A Mentat does not need interdependencies explained to him," Teg said. There

was still curiosity in his voice but with a definite undertone of resentment.

"Quite," Taraza said. "That is the natural environment of a Mentat's thinking

process."

"Then why do you belabor this?"

"Mentat, look at what you now know of these Honored Matres and tell me: What is

their flaw?"

Teg spoke without hesitation: "They can only survive if they continue to

increase the dependency of those who support them. It's an addict's dead-end

street."

"Precisely. And the danger?"

"They could take much of humankind down with them."

"That was the Tyrant's problem, Miles. I'm sure he knew it. Now, pay attention

to me with great care. And you, too, Dar." Taraza looked across the aisle and

met Odrade's gaze. "Both of you listen to me. We of the Bene Gesserit are

setting very powerful . . . elements adrift in the human current. They may

jam up. They are sure to cause damage. And we.. ."

Once more, the lighter entered a period of severe buffeting. Conversation was

impossible while they clung to their seats and listened to the roaring, creaking

around them. When this interruption eased, Taraza raised her voice.

"If we survive this damnable machine and get down to Gammu, you must go aside

with Dar there, Miles. You have seen the Atreides Manifesto. She will tell you

about it and prepare you. That is all."

Teg turned and looked at Odrade. Once more, her features tugged at his

memories: a remarkable likeness to Lucilla, but there was something else. He

put this aside. The Atreides Manifesto? He had read it because it came to him

from Taraza with instructions that he do so. Prepare me? For what?

Odrade saw the questioning look on Teg's face. Now, she understood Taraza's

motive. The Mother Superior's orders took on a new meaning as did words from

the Manifesto itself.

"Just as the universe is created by the participation of consciousness, the

prescient human carries that creative faculty to its ultimate extreme. This was

the profoundly misunderstood power of the Atreides bastard, the power that he

transmitted to his son, the Tyrant."

Odrade knew those words with an author's intimacy but they came back to her now

as though she had never before encountered them.

Damn you, Tar! Odrade thought. What if you're wrong?

At the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminate place,

predictable in a statistical way only when you employ large enough numbers.

Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a

single planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play. For

the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is

a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough

of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a

filter through which chaos is sifted into order.

-Analysis of the Tyrant, the Taraza File: BG Archives

Teg's thoughts were in turmoil as he returned to Gammu from the Guildship. He

stepped from the lighter at the black-charred edge of the Keep's private landing

field and looked around him as though for the first time. Almost noon. So

little time had passed and so much had changed.

To what extent would the Bene Gesserit go in imparting an essential lesson? he

wondered. Taraza had dislodged him from his familiar Mentat processes. He felt

that the whole incident on the Guildship had been staged just for him. He had

been shaken from a predictable course. How strange Gammu appeared as he crossed

the guarded strip to the entry pits.

Teg had seen many planets, learned their ways and how they printed themselves on

their inhabitants. Some planets had a big yellow sun that sat in close and kept

living things warm, evolving, growing. Some planets had little shimmer-suns

that hung far away in a dark sky, and their light touched very little.

Variations existed within and even outside this range. Gammu was a yellow-green

variation with a day of 31.27 standard hours and a 2.6 SY. Teg had thought he

knew Gammu.

When the Harkonnens were forced to abandon it, colonists left behind by the

Scattering came from the Danian group, calling it by the Halleck name given to

it in the great remapping. The colonists had been known as Caladanian in those

days but millennia tended to shorten some labels.

Teg paused at the entryway to the protective revetments that led from the field

down beneath the Keep. Taraza and her party lagged behind him. He saw Taraza

was talking intently to Odrade.

Atreides Manifesto, he thought.

Even on Gammu, few admitted to either Harkonnen or Atreides ancestry, although

the genotypes were visible here -- especially the dominant Atreides: those

long, sharp noses, the high foreheads and sensual mouths. Often, the pieces

were scattered -- the mouth on one face, those piercing eyes on another and

countless mixtures. Sometimes, though, one person carried it all and then you

saw the pride, that inner knowledge:

"I am one of them!"

Gammu's natives recognized it and gave it walkway room but few labeled it.

Underlying all of this was what the Harkonnens had left behind -- genetic lines

tracing far away into the dawn times of Greek and Pathan and Mameluke, shadows

of ancient history that few outside of professional historians or those trained

by the Bene Gesserit could even name.

Taraza and her party caught up with Teg. He heard her say to Odrade: "You must

tell Miles all of it."

Very well, she would tell him, he thought. He turned and led the way past the

inner guards to the long passage under the pillboxes into the Keep proper.

Damn the Bene Gesserit! he thought. What were they really doing here on Gammu?

Plenty of Bene Gesserit signs could be seen on this planet: the back-breeding

to fix selected traits, and here and there a visible emphasis on seductive eyes

for women.

Teg returned a guard captain's salute without changing focus. Seductive eyes,

yes. He had seen this soon after his arrival at the ghola's Keep and especially

during his first inspection tour of the planet. He had seen himself in many

faces, too, and recalled the thing old Patrin had mentioned so many times.

"You have the Gammu look, Bashar."

Seductive eyes! That guard captain back there had them. She and Odrade and

Lucilla were alike in this. Few people paid much attention to the importance of

eyes when it came to seduction, he thought. It took a Bene Gesserit upbringing

to make that point. Big breasts in a woman and hard loins in a man (that

tightly muscular look to the buttocks) -- these were naturally important in

sexual matchings. But without the eyes, the rest of it could go for nothing.

Eyes were essential. You could drown in the right kind of eyes, he had learned,

sink right into them and be unaware of what was being done to you until penis

was firmly clasped in vagina.

He had noted Lucilla's eyes immediately after his arrival on Gammu and had

walked cautiously. No doubts about how the Sisterhood used her talents!

There was Lucilla now, waiting at the central inspection and decontamination

chamber. She gave him the flickering handsign that all was well with the ghola.

Teg relaxed and watched as Lucilla and Odrade confronted each other. The two

women had remarkably similar features despite the age difference. Their bodies

were quite different, though, Lucilla more solid against Odrade's willowy form.

The guard captain of the seductive eyes came up beside Teg and leaned close to

him. "Schwangyu has just learned who you brought back with you," she said,

nodding toward Taraza. "Ahhh, there she is now."

Schwangyu stepped from a lift tube and crossed to Taraza, giving only an angry

glare to Teg.

Taraza wanted to surprise you, he thought. We all know why.

"You don't appear happy to see me," Taraza said, addressing Schwangyu.

"I am surprised, Mother Superior," Schwangyu said. "I had no idea." She

glanced once more at Teg, a look of venom in her eyes.

Odrade and Lucilla broke off their mutual examination. "I had heard about it,

of course," Odrade said, "but it is a stopper to confront yourself in the face

of another person."

"I warned you," Taraza said.

"What are your orders, Mother Superior?" Schwangyu asked. It was as close as

she could come to asking the purpose of Taraza's visit.

"I would like a private word with Lucilla," Taraza said.

"I'll have quarters prepared for you," Schwangyu said.

"Don't bother," Taraza said. "I'm not staying. Miles has already arranged for

my transport. Duty requires my presence at Chapter House. Lucilla and I will

talk outside in the courtyard." Taraza put a finger to her cheek. "Oh, and I'd

like to watch the ghola unobserved for a few minutes. I'm sure Lucilla can

arrange it."

"He's taking the more intense training quite well," Lucilla said as the two

moved off toward a lift tube.

Teg turned his attention to Odrade, noting as his gaze passed across Schwangyu's

face the intensity of her anger. She was not trying to conceal it.

Was Lucilla a sister or a daughter of Odrade? Teg wondered. It occurred to him

suddenly that there must be a Bene Gesserit purpose behind the resemblance.

Yes, of course -- Lucilla was an Imprinter!

Schwangyu overcame her anger. She looked with curiosity at Odrade. "I was just

about to take lunch, Sister," Schwangyu said. "Would you care to join me?"

"I must have a word alone with the Bashar," Odrade said. "If it is all right,

perhaps we could remain here for our talk? I must not be seen by the ghola."

Schwangyu scowled, not trying to hide her upset from Odrade. They knew at

Chapter House where loyalties lay! But no one . . . no one! would remove her

from this post of observational command. Opposition had its rights!

Her thoughts were clear even to Teg. He noted the stiffness of Schwangyu's back

as she left them.

"It is bad When Sister is turned against Sister," Odrade said.

Teg gave a handsign to his guard captain, ordering her to clear the area.

Alone, Odrade said. Alone it would be. To Odrade, he said: "This is one of my

areas. No spies or other means of observing us here."

"I thought as much," Odrade said.

"We have a service room over there." Teg nodded to his left. "Furniture, even

chairdogs if you prefer."

"I hate it when they try to cuddle me," she said. "Could we talk here?" She

put a hand under Teg's arm. "Perhaps we could walk a bit. I got so stiff

sitting in that lighter."

"What is it you're supposed to tell me?" he asked as they strolled.

"My memories are no longer selectively filtered," she said. "I have them all,

only on the female side, naturally."

"So?" Teg pursed his lips. This was not the overture he had expected. Odrade

appeared more like one who would take off on a direct approach.

"Taraza says you have read the Atreides Manifesto. Good. You know it will

cause upset in many quarters."

"Schwangyu already has made it the subject of a diatribe against 'you Atreides.'

"

Odrade stared at him solemnly. As the reports all said, Teg remained an

imposing figure, but she had known that without the reports.

"We are both Atreides, you and I," Odrade said.

Teg came to full alert.

"Your mother explained that to you in detail," Odrade said, "when you took your

first school leave back to Lernaeus."

Teg stopped and stared down at her. How could she know this? To his knowledge,

he had never before met and conversed with this remote Darwi Odrade. Was he the

subject of special discussions at Chapter House? He held his silence, forcing

her to carry the conversation.

"I will recount a conversation between a man and my birthmother," Odrade said.

"They are in bed and the man says: 'I fathered a few children when I first

escaped from the close bondage of the Bene Gesserit, back when I thought myself

an independent agent, free to enlist and fight anywhere I chose.' "

Teg did not try to conceal his surprise. Those were his own words! Mentat

memory told him Odrade had them down as accurately as a mechanical recorder.

Even the tone!

"More?" she asked as he continued to stare at her. "Very well. The man says:

'That was before they sent me to Mentat training, of course. What an eye-opener

that was! I had never been out of the Sisterhood's sight for an instant! I was

never a free agent.' "

"Not even when I spoke those words," Teg said.

"True." She urged him by pressure on his arm as they continued their stroll

across the chamber. "The children you fathered all belonged to the Bene

Gesserit. The Sisterhood takes no chances that our genotype will be sent into

the wild gene pool."

"Let my body go to Shaitan, their precious genotype remains in Sisterhood care,"

he said.

"My care," Odrade said. "I am one of your daughters."

Again, he forced her to stop.

"I think you know who my mother was," she said. She held up a hand for silence

as he started to respond. "Names are not necessary."

Teg studied Odrade's features, seeing the recognizable signs there. Mother and

daughter were matched. But what of Lucilla?

As though she heard his question, Odrade said: "Lucilla is from a parallel

breeding line. Quite remarkable, isn't it, what careful breed-matching can

achieve?"

Teg cleared his throat. He felt no emotional attachment to this newly revealed

daughter. Her words and other important signals of her performance demanded his

primary attention.

"This is no casual conversation," he said. "Is this all of what you were to

reveal to me? I thought the Mother Superior said. . ."

"There is more," Odrade agreed. "The Manifesto -- I am its author. I wrote it

at Taraza's orders and following her detailed instructions."

Teg glanced around the large chamber as though to make sure no one overheard.

He spoke in a lowered voice: "The Tleilaxu are spreading it far and wide!"

"Just as we hoped."

"Why are you telling me this? Taraza said you were to prepare me for . . ."

"There will come a time when you must know our purpose. It is Taraza's wish

that you make your own decisions then, that you really become a free agent."

Even as she spoke, Odrade saw the Mentat glaze in his eyes.

Teg breathed deeply. Dependencies and key logs! He felt the Mentat sense of an

enormous pattern just beyond the reach of his accumulated data. He did not even

consider for an instant that some form of filial devotion had prompted these

revelations. There was a fundamentalist, dogmatic, and ritualistic essence

apparent in all Bene Gesserit training despite every effort to prevent this.

Odrade, this daughter out of his past, was a full Reverend Mother with

extraordinary powers of muscle and nerve control -- full memories on the female

side! She was one of the special ones! She knew tricks of violence that few

humans ever suspected. Still, that similarity, that essence remained and a

Mentat always saw it.

What does she want?

Affirmation of his paternity? She already had all of the confirmation she could

need.

Observing her now, the way she waited so patiently for his thoughts to resolve,

Teg reflected that it often was said with truth that Reverend Mothers no longer

were completely members of the human race. They moved somehow outside the main

flow, perhaps parallel to it, perhaps diving into it occasionally for their own

purposes, but always removed from humankind. They removed themselves. It was

an identifying mark of the Reverend Mother, a sense of extra identity that made

them closer to the long-dead Tyrant than to the human stock from which they

sprang.

Manipulation. That was their mark. They manipulated everyone and everything.

"I am to be the Bene Gesserit eyes," Teg said. "Taraza wants me to make a human

decision for all of you."

Obviously pleased, Odrade squeezed his arm. "What a father I have!"

"Do you really have a father?" he asked and he recounted for her what he had

been thinking about the Bene Gesserit removing themselves from humanity.

"Outside humanity," she said. "What a curious idea. Are Guild navigators also

outside their original humanity?"

He thought about this. Guild navigators diverged widely from humankind's more

common shape. Born in space and living out their lives in tanks of melange gas,

they distorted the original form, elongated and repositioned limbs and organs.

But a young navigator in estrus and before entering the tank could breed with a

norm. It had been demonstrated. They became non-human but not in the way of

the Bene Gesserit.

"Navigators are not your mental kin," he said. "They think human. Guiding a

ship through space, even with prescience to find the safe way, has a pattern a

human can accept."

"You don't accept our pattern?"

"As far as I can, but somewhere in your development you shift outside the

original pattern. I think you may perform a conscious act even to appear human.

This way you hold my arm right now, as though you really were my daughter."

"I am your daughter but I'm surprised you think so little of us."

"Quite the contrary: I stand in awe of you."

"Of your own daughter?"

"Of any Reverend Mother."

"You think I exist only to manipulate lesser creatures?"

"I think you no longer really feel human. There's a gap in you, something

missing, something you've removed. You no longer are one of us."

"Thank you," Odrade said. "Taraza told me you would not hesitate to answer

truthfully, but I knew that for myself."

"For what have you prepared me?"

"You will know it when it occurs; that is all I can say . . . all I am permitted

to say."

Manipulating again! he thought. Damn them!

Odrade cleared her throat. She appeared about to say something more but she

remained silent as she guided Teg around and strolled with him back across the

chamber.

Even though she had known what Teg must say, his words pained her. She wanted

to tell him that she was one of those who still felt human, but his judgment of

the Sisterhood could not be denied.

We are taught to reject love. We can simulate it but each of us is capable of

cutting it off in an instant.

There were sounds behind them. They stopped and turned. Lucilla and Taraza

emerged from a lift tube speaking idly about their observations of the ghola.

"You are absolutely right to treat him as one of us," Taraza said.

Teg heard but made no comment as they awaited the approach of the two women.

He knows, Odrade thought. He will not ask me about my birthmother. There was

no bonding, no real imprint. Yes, he knows.

Odrade closed her eyes and memory startled her by producing of itself an image

of a painting. The thing occupied a space on the wall of Taraza's morning room.

Ixian artifice had preserved the painting in the finest hermetically sealed

frame behind a cover of invisible plaz. Odrade often stopped in front of the

painting, feeling each time that her hand might reach out and actually touch the

ancient canvas so cunningly preserved by the Ixians.

Cottages at Cordeville.

The artist's name for his work and his own name were preserved on a burnished

plate beneath the painting: Vincent Van Gogh.

The thing dated from a time so ancient that only rare remnants such as this

painting remained to send a physical impression down the ages. She had tried to

imagine the journeys that painting had taken, the serial chance that had brought

it intact to Taraza's room.

The Ixians had been at their best in the preservation and restoration. An

observer could touch a dark spot on the lower left corner of the frame.

Immediately, you were engulfed in the true genius, not only of the artist, but

of the Ixian who had restored and preserved the work. His name was there on the

frame: Martin Buro. When touched by the human finger, the dot became a sense

projector, a benign spin-off of the technology that had produced the Ixian

Probe. Buro had restored not only the painting but the painter -- Van Gogh's

feeling -- accompaniment to each brush stroke. All had been captured in the

brush strokes, recorded there by human movements.

Odrade had stood there engrossed through the whole performance so many times she

felt she could recreate the painting independently.

Recalling this experience so near to Teg's accusation, she knew at once why her

memory had reproduced the image for her, why that painting still fascinated her.

For the brief space of that replay she always felt totally human, aware of the

cottages as places where real people dwelled, aware in some complete way of the

living chain that had paused there in the person of the mad Vincent Van Gogh,

paused to record itself.

Taraza and Lucilla stopped about two paces from Teg and Odrade. There was a

smell of garlic on Taraza's breath.

"We stopped for a small bite to eat," Taraza said. "Would you like anything?"

It was exactly the wrong question. Odrade freed her hand from Teg's arm. She

turned quickly and wiped her eyes on her cuff. Looking up once more at Teg, she

saw surprise on his face. Yes, she thought, those were real tears!

"I think we've done everything here that we can," Taraza said.

"It's time you were on your way to Rakis, Dar."

"Past time," Odrade said.

Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual

regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it.

-Chenoeh: "Conversations with Leto II"

Hedley Tuek, High Priest of the Divided God, had grown increasingly angry with

Stiros. Although too old himself ever to hope for the High Priest's bench,

Stiros had sons, grandsons, and numerous nephews. Stiros had transferred his

personal ambitions to his family. A cynical man, Stiros. He represented a

powerful faction in the priesthood, the so-called "scientific community," whose

influence was insidious and pervasive. They veered dangerously close to heresy.

Tuek reminded himself that more than one High Priest had been lost in the

desert, regrettable accidents. Stiros and his faction were capable of creating

such an accident.

It was afternoon in Keen and Stiros had just departed, obviously frustrated.

Stiros wanted Tuek to go into the desert and personally observe Sheeana's next

venture there. Suspicious of the invitation, Tuek declined.

A strange argument ensued, full of innuendo and vague references to Sheeana's

behavior plus wordy attacks on the Bene Gesserit. Stiros, always suspicious of

the Sisterhood, had taken an immediate dislike to the new commander of the Bene

Gesserit Keep on Rakis, this . . . what, was her name? Oh, yes, Odrade. Odd

name but then the Sisters often took odd names. That was their privilege. God

Himself had never spoken against the basic goodness of the Bene Gesserit.

Against individual Sisters, yes, but the Sisterhood itself had shared God's Holy

Vision.

Tuek did not like the way Stiros spoke of Sheeana. Cynical. Tuek had finally

silenced Stiros with pronouncements delivered here in the Sanctus with its high

altar and images of the Divided God. Prismatic beam-relays cast thin wedges of

brilliance through drifting incense from burning melange onto the double line of

tall pillars that led up to the altar. Tuek knew his words went directly to God

from this setting.

"God works through our latter-day Siona," Tuek had told Stiros, noting the

confusion on the old councillor's face. "Sheeana is the living reminder of

Siona, that human instrument who translated Him into His present Divisions."

Stiros raged, saying things he would not dare repeat before the full Council.

He presumed too much on his long association with Tuek.

"I tell you she is sitting here surrounded by adults intent upon justifying

themselves to her and --"

"And to God!" Tuek could not let such words pass.

Leaning close to the High Priest, Stiros grated: "She is at the center of an

educational system geared to anything her imagination demands. We deny her

nothing!"

"Nor should we."

It was as though Tuek had not spoken. Stiros said, "Cania has provided her with

recordings from Dar-es-Balat!"

"I am the Book of Fate," Tuek intoned, quoting God's own words from the hoard at

Dar-es-Balat.

"Exactly! And she listens to every word!"

"Why does this disturb you?" Tuek asked in his calmest tone.

"We don't test her knowledge. She tests ours!"

"God must want it so."

No mistaking the bitter anger on Stiros' face. Tuek observed this and waited

while the old councillor marshaled new arguments. Resources for such arguments

were, of course, enormous. Tuek did not deny this. It was the interpretations

that mattered. Which was why a High Priest must be the final interpreter.

Despite (or perhaps because of) their way of viewing history, the priesthood

knew a great deal of how God had come to reside on Rakis. They had Dar-es-Balat

itself and all of its contents -- the earliest known no-chamber in the universe.

For millennia, while Shai-hulud translated the verdant planet of Arrakis into

desert-Rakis, Dar-es-Balat waited under the sands. From that Holy Hoard, the

priesthood possessed God's own voice, His printed words and even holophotos.

Everything was explained and they knew that the desert surface of Rakis

reproduced the original form of the planet, the way it looked in the beginning

when it was the only known source of the Holy Spice.

"She asks about God's family," Stiros said. "Why should she have to ask about -

-"

"She tests us. Do we give Them Their proper places? The Reverend Mother

Jessica to her son, Muad'dib, to his son, Leto II -- the Holy Triumvirate of

Heaven."

"Leto III," Stiros muttered. "What of the other Leto who died at Sardaukar

hands? What of him?"

"Careful, Stiros," Tuek intoned. "You know my great-grandfather pronounced upon

that question from this very bench. Our Divided God was reincarnated with part

of Him remaining in heaven to mediate the Ascendancy. That part of Him became

nameless then, as the True Essence of God should always be!"

"Oh?"

Tuek heard the terrible cynicism in the old man's voice. Stiros' words seemed

to tremble in the incense-laden air, inviting terrible retribution.

"Then why does she ask how our Leto was transformed into the Divided God?"

Stiros demanded.

Did Stiros question the Holy Metamorphosis? Tuek was aghast. He said: "In

time, she will enlighten us."

"Our feeble explanations must fill her with dismay," Stiros sneered.

"You go too far, Stiros!"

"Indeed? You do not think it enlightening that she asks how the sandtrout

encapsulate most of Rakis' water and recreate the desert?"

Tuek tried to conceal his growing anger. Stiros did represent a powerful

faction in the priesthood, but his tone and his words raised questions that had

been answered by High Priests long ago. The Metamorphosis of Leto II had given

birth to uncounted sandtrout, each carrying a Bit of Himself. Sandtrout to

Divided God: The sequence was known and worshiped. To question this denied

God.

"You sit here and do nothing!" Stiros accused. "We are pawns of --"

"Enough!" Tuek had heard all he wanted to hear of this old man's cynicism.

Drawing his dignity around him, Tuek spoke the words of God:

"Your Lord knows very well what is in your heart. Your soul suffices this day

as a reckoner against you. I need no witnesses. You do not listen to your

soul, but listen instead to your anger and your rage."

Stiros retired in frustration.

After considerable thought, Tuek enrobed himself in his most suitable finery of

white, gold, and purple. He went to visit Sheeana.

Sheeana was in the roof garden atop the central priestly complex, there with

Cania and two others -- a young priest named Baldik, who was in Tuek's private

service, and an acolyte priestess named Kipuna, who behaved too much like a

Reverend Mother for Tuek's liking. The Sisterhood had its spies here, of

course, but Tuek did not like to be aware of it. Kipuna had taken over much of

Sheeana's physical training and there had grown a rapport between child and

acolyte priestess that aroused Cania's jealousy. Even Cania, however, could not

stand in the way of Sheeana's commands.

The four of them stood beside a stone bench almost in the shadow of a ventilator

tower. Kipuna held Sheeana's right hand, manipulating the child's fingers.

Sheeana was growing tall, Tuek noted. Six years she had been his charge. He

could see the first beginnings of breasts poking out her robe. There was not a

breath of wind on the rooftop and the air felt heavy in Tuek's lungs.

Tuek glanced around the garden to assure himself that his security arrangements

were not being ignored. One never knew from what quarter danger might appear.

Four of Tuek's own personal guards, well armed but concealing it, shared the

rooftop at a distance -- one at each corner. The parapet enclosing the garden

was a high one, just the guards' heads standing above the rim. The only

building higher than this priestly tower was Keen's primary windtrap about a

thousand meters to the west.

Despite the visible evidence that his security orders were being carried out,

Tuek sensed danger. Was God warning him? Tuek still felt disturbed by Stiros'

cynicism. Was it wrong to allow Stiros that much latitude?

Sheeana saw Tuek approaching and stopped the odd finger-flexing exercises she

was performing at Kipuna's instructions. Giving every appearance of

knowledgeable patience, the child stood silently with her gaze fixed on the High

Priest, forcing her companions to turn and watch with her.

Sheeana did not find Tuek a fearsome figure. She rather liked the old man

although some of his questions were so bumbling. And his answers! Quite by

accident, she had discovered the question that most disturbed Tuek.

"Why?"

Some of the attendant priests interpreted her question aloud as: "Why do you

believe this?" Sheeana immediately picked up on this and thereafter her

probings of Tuek and the others took the unvarying form:

"Why do you believe this?"

Tuek stopped about two paces from Sheeana and bowed. "Good afternoon, Sheeana."

He twisted his neck nervously against the collar of his robe. The sun felt hot

on his shoulders and he wondered why the child chose to be out here so often.

Sheeana maintained her probing stare at Tuek. She knew this gaze disturbed him.

Tuek cleared his throat. When Sheeana looked at him that way, he always

wondered: Is it God looking at me through her eyes?

Cania spoke. "Sheeana has been asking today about the Fish Speakers."

In his most unctuous tones, Tuek said: "God's own Holy Army."

"All of them women?" Sheeana asked. She spoke as though she could not believe

it. To those at the base of Rakian society, Fish Speakers were a name from

ancient history, people cast out in the Famine Times.

She is testing me, Tuek thought. Fish Speakers. The modern carriers of the

name had only a small trading-spying delegation on Rakis, composed of both men

and women. Their ancient origins no longer were significant to their current

activities, mostly working as an arm of Ix.

"Men always served the Fish Speakers in an advisory capacity," Tuek said. He

watched carefully to see how Sheeana would respond.

"Then there were always the Duncan Idahos," Cania said.

"Yes, yes, of course: the Duncans." Tuek tried not to scowl. That woman was

always interrupting! Tuek did not like being reminded of this aspect to God's

historical presence on Rakis. The recurrent ghola and his position in the Holy

Army carried overtones of Bene Tleilax indulgence. But there was no avoiding

the fact that Fish Speakers had guarded the Duncans from harm, acting of course

at the behest of God. The Duncans were holy, no doubt of it, but in a special

category. By God's own account, He had killed some of the Duncans himself,

obviously translating them immediately into heaven.

"Kipuna has been telling me about the Bene Gesserit," Sheeana said.

How the child's mind darted around!

Tuek cleared his throat, recognizing his own ambivalent attitude toward the

Reverend Mothers. Reverence was demanded for those who were "Beloved of God,"

such as the Saintly Chenoeh. And the first High Priest had constructed a

logical account of how the Holy Hwi Noree, Bride of God, had been a secret

Reverend Mother. Honoring these special circumstances, the priesthood felt an

irritating responsibility toward the Bene Gesserit, which was carried out

chiefly by selling melange to the Sisterhood at a price ridiculously below that

charged by the Tleilaxu.

In her most ingenuous tones, Sheeana said: "Tell me about the Bene Gesserit,

Hedley."

Tuek glanced sharply at the adults around Sheeana, trying to catch a smile on

their faces. He did not know how to deal with Sheeana calling him by his first

name that way. In one sense, it was demeaning. In another sense, she honored

him by such intimacy.

God tests me sorely, he thought.

"Are the Reverend Mothers good people?" Sheeana asked.

Tuek sighed. The records all confirmed that God harbored reservations about the

Sisterhood. God's words had been examined carefully and submitted finally to a

High Priest's interpretation. God did not let the Sisterhood threaten his

Golden Path. That much was clear.

"Many of them are good," Tuek said.

"Where is the nearest Reverend Mother?" Sheeana asked.

"At the Sisterhood's Embassy here in Keen," Tuek said.

"Do you know her?"

"There are many Reverend Mothers in the Bene Gesserit Keep," he said.

"What's a Keep?"'

"That's what they call their home here."

"One Reverend Mother must be in charge. Do you know that one?"

"I knew her predecessor, Tamalane, but this one is new. She has only just

arrived. Her name is Odrade."

"That's a funny name."

Tuek's own thought, but he said: "One of our historians tells me it is a form

of the name Atreides."

Sheeana reflected upon this. Atreides. That was the family that had brought

Shaitan into being. Before the Atreides there had been only the Fremen and

Shai-hulud. The Oral History, which her people preserved against all priestly

prohibition, chanted the begats of the most important people on Rakis. Sheeana

had heard these names many nights in her village.

"Muad'dib begat the Tyrant."

"The Tyrant begat Shaitan."

Sheeana did not feel like arguing truth with Tuek. Anyway, he looked tired

today. She said merely: "Bring me this Reverend Mother Odrade."

Kipuna hid a gloating smile behind her hand.

Tuek stepped back, aghast. How could he comply with such a demand? Even the

Rakian priesthood did not command the Bene Gesserit! What if the Sisterhood

refused him? Could he offer a gift of melange in exchange? That might be a

sign of weakness. The Reverend Mothers might bargain! No harder bargainers

lived than the Sisterhood's cold-eyed Reverend Mothers. This new one, this

Odrade, looked to be one of the worst.

All of these thoughts fled through Tuek's mind in an instant.

Cania intruded, giving Tuek the needed approach. "Perhaps Kipuna could convey

Sheeana's invitation," Cania said.

Tuek darted a glance at the young acolyte priestess. Yes! Many suspected

(Cania among them, obviously) that Kipuna spied for the Bene Gesserit. Of

course, everyone on Rakis spied for someone. Tuek put on his most gracious

smile as he nodded to Kipuna.

"Do you know any of the Reverend Mothers, Kipuna?"

"Some of them are known to me, My Lord High Priest," Kipuna said.

At least she still shows the proper deference!

"Excellent," Tuek said. "Would you be so kind as to start this gracious

invitation from Sheeana moving up through the Sisterhood's embassy."

"I will do my poor best, My Lord High Priest."

"I'm sure you will!"

Kipuna began a prideful turn toward Sheeana, the knowledge of success growing

within her. Sheeana's request had been ridiculously easy to ignite, given the

techniques provided by the Sisterhood. Kipuna smiled and opened her mouth to

speak. A movement at the parapet about forty meters behind Sheeana caught

Kipuna's attention. Something glinted in the sunlight there. Something small

and . . .

With a strangled cry, Kipuna grabbed up Sheeana, hurled her at the startled Tuek

and shouted: "Run!" With that, Kipuna dashed toward the swiftly advancing

brightness -- a tiny seeker trailing a long length of shigawire.

In his younger days, Tuek had played batball. He caught Sheeana instinctively,

hesitated for an instant and then recognized the danger. Whirling with the

squirming, protesting girl in his arms, Tuek dashed through the open door of the

stair tower. He heard the door slam behind him and Cania's rapid footsteps

close on his heels.

"What is it? What is it?" Sheeana pounded her fists against Tuek's chest as

she shouted.

"Hush, Sheeana! Hush!" Tuek paused on the first landing. Both a chute and

suspensor-drop led from this landing into the building's core. Cania stopped

beside Tuek, her panting loud in the narrow space.

"It killed Kipuna and two of your guards," Cania gasped. "Cut them up! I saw

it. God preserve us!"

Tuek's mind was a maelstrom. Both the chute and the suspensor-drop system were

enclosed wormholes through the tower. They could be sabotaged. The attack on

the roof might be only one element in a far more complex plot.

"Put me down!" Sheeana insisted. "What's happening?"

Tuek eased her to the floor but kept one of her hands clutched in his hand. He

bent over her, "Sheeana, dear, someone is trying to harm us."

Sheeana's mouth formed a silent "O," then: "They hurt Kipuna?"

Tuek looked up at the roof door. Was that an ornithopter he heard up there?

Stiros! Conspirators could take three vulnerable people into the desert so

easily!

Cania had regained her breath. "I hear a 'thopter," she said. "Shouldn't we be

getting away from here?"

"We will go down by the stairs," Tuek said.

"But the --"

"Do as I say!"

Keeping a firm hold on Sheeana's hand, Tuek led the way down to the next

landing. In addition to the chute and suspensor access, this landing had a door

into a wide curving hall. Only a few short steps beyond the door lay the

entrance to Sheeana's quarters, once Tuek's own quarters. Again he hesitated.

"Something's happening on the roof," Cania whispered.

Tuek looked down at the fearfully silent child beside him. Her hand felt

sweaty.

Yes, there was some sort of uproar on the roof -- shouts, the hiss of burners,

much running about. The roof door, now out of sight above them, crashed open.

This decided Tuek. He flung open the door into the hallway and dashed out into

the arms of a tightly grouped wedge of black-robed women. With an empty sense

of defeat, Tuek recognized the woman at the point of the wedge: Odrade!

Someone plucked Sheeana away from him and hustled her back into the press of

robed figures. Before Tuek or Cania could protest, hands were clapped over

their mouths. Other hands pinioned them against a wall of the hallway. Some of

the robed figures went through the doorway and up the stairs.

"The child is safe and that's all that's important for the moment," Odrade

whispered. She looked into Tuek's eyes. "Make no outcry." The hand was

removed from his mouth. Using Voice, she said: "Tell me about the roof!"

Tuek found himself complying without reservation. "A seeker towing a long

shigawire. It came over the parapet. Kipuna saw it and --"

"Where is Kipuna?"

"Dead. Cania saw it." Tuek described Kipuna's brave dash toward the threat.

Kipuna dead! Odrade thought. She concealed a fiercely angry sense of loss.

What a waste. There must be admiration for such a brave death, but the loss!

The Sisterhood always needed such courage and devotion, but it also required the

genetic wealth Kipuna had represented. It was gone, taken by these stumbling

fools!

At a gesture from Odrade, the hand was removed from Cania's mouth. "Tell me

what you saw," Odrade said.

"The seeker whipped the shigawire around Kipuna's neck and. . ." Cania

shuddered.

The dull thump of an explosion reverberated above them, then silence. Odrade

waved a hand. Robed women spread along the hallway, moving silently out of

sight beyond the curve. Only Odrade and two others, both chill-eyed younger

women with intense expressions, remained beside Tuek and Cania. Sheeana was

nowhere to be seen.

"The Ixians are in this somewhere," Odrade said.

Tuek agreed. That much shigawire . . . "Where have you taken the child?" he

asked.

"We are protecting her," Odrade said. "Be still." She tipped her head,

listening.

A robed woman sped back around the curve of the hallway and whispered something

in Odrade's ear. Odrade produced a tight smile.

"It is over," Odrade said. "We will go to Sheeana."

Sheeana occupied a softly cushioned blue chair in the main room of her quarters.

Black-robed women stood in a protective arc behind her. The child appeared to

Tuek quite recovered from the shock of the attack and escape but her eyes

glittered with excitement and unasked questions. Sheeana's attention was

directed at something off to Tuek's right. He stopped and looked there, gasping

at what he saw.

A naked male body lay against the wall in an oddly crumpled position, the head

twisted until the chin lay back over the left shoulder. Open eyes stared out

with the emptiness of death.

Stiros!

The shredded rags of Stiros' robe, obviously torn from him violently, lay in an

untidy heap near the body's feet.

Tuek looked at Odrade.

"He was in on it," she said. "There were Face Dancers with the Ixians."

Tuek tried to swallow in a dry throat.

Cania shuffled past him toward the body. Tuek could not see her face but

Cania's presence reminded him that there had been something between Stiros and

Cania in their younger days. Tuek moved instinctively to place himself between

Cania and the seated child.

Cania stopped at the body and nudged it with a foot. She turned a gloating

expression on Tuek. "I had to make sure he was really dead," she said.

Odrade glanced at a companion. "Get rid of the body." She looked at Sheeana.

It was Odrade's first chance for a more careful study of the child since leading

the assault force here to deal with the attack on the temple complex.

Tuek spoke behind Odrade. "Reverend Mother, could you explain please what --

Odrade interrupted without turning. "Later."

Sheeana's expression quickened at Tuek's words. "I thought you were a Reverend

Mother!"

Odrade merely nodded. What a fascinating child. Odrade experienced the

sensations she felt while standing in front of the ancient painting in Taraza's

quarters. Some of the fire that had gone into the work of art inspired Odrade

now. Wild inspiration! That was the message from the mad Van Gogh. Chaos

brought into magnificent order. Was that not part of the Sisterhood's coda?

This child is my canvas, Odrade thought. She felt her hand tingle to the

feeling of that ancient brush. Her nostrils flared to the smells of oils and

pigments.

"Leave me alone with Sheeana," Odrade ordered. "Everybody out."

Tuek started to protest but stopped when one of Odrade's robed companions

gripped his arm. Odrade glared at him.

"The Bene Gesserit have served you before," she said. "This time, we saved your

life."

The woman holding Tuek's arm tugged at him.

"Answer his questions," Odrade said. "But do it somewhere else."

Cania took a step toward Sheeana. "That child is my --"

"Leave!" Odrade barked, all the powers of Voice in the command.

Cania froze.

"You almost lost her to a bumbling lot of conspirators!" Odrade said, glaring

at Cania. "We will consider whether you get any further opportunity to

associate with Sheeana."

Tears started in Cania's eyes but Odrade's condemnation could not be denied.

Turning, Cania fled with the others.

Odrade returned her attention to the watchful child.

"We've been a long time waiting for you," Odrade said. "We will not give those

fools another opportunity to lose you."

Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal

niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the

clout?

-Bene Gesserit Council Proceedings: Archives #XOX232

Immediately after Taraza and her party left Gammu, Teg threw himself into his

work. New in-Keep procedures had to be laid out, holding Schwangyu at arm's

length from the ghola. Taraza's orders.

"She can observe all she wants. She can't touch."

In spite of the work pressures, Teg found himself staring into space at odd

moments, prey to free-floating anxiety. The experience of rescuing Taraza's

party from the Guildship and Odrade's odd revelations did not fit into any data

classification he constructed.

Dependencies . . . key logs . . .

Teg found himself seated in his own workroom, an assignment schedule projected

in front of him with shift changes to approve and, for a moment, he had no idea

of the time or even the date. It took a moment to relocate himself.

Midmorning. Taraza and her party had been gone two days. He was alone. Yes,

Patrin had taken over this day's training schedule with Duncan, freeing Teg for

the command decisions.

The workroom around Teg felt alien. Yet, when he looked at each element in it,

he found each thing familiar. Here was his own personal data console. His

uniform jacket had been draped neatly across a chair-back beside him. He tried

to fall into Mentat mode and found his own mind resisting. He had not

encountered that phenomenon since training days.

Training days.

Taraza and Odrade between them had thrown him back into some form of training.

Self-training.

In a detached way, he felt his memory offering up a long-ago conversation with

Taraza. How familiar it was. He was right there, caught in the moments of his

own memory-snare.

Both he and Taraza had been quite tired after making the decisions and taking

the actions to prevent a bloody confrontation -- the Barandiko incident.

Nothing but a hiccough in history now but at the time it had demanded all of

their combined energies.

Taraza invited him into the small parlor of her quarters on her no-ship after

the agreement was signed. She spoke casually, admiring his sagacity, the way he

had seen through to the weaknesses that would force a compromise.

They had been awake and active for almost thirty hours and Teg was glad for the

opportunity to sit while Taraza dialed her foodrink installation. It dutifully

produced two tall glasses of creamy brown liquid.

Teg recognized the smell as she handed him his glass. It was a quick source of

energy, a pick-me-up that the Bene Gesserit seldom shared with outsiders. But

Taraza no longer considered him an outsider.

His head tipped back, Teg took a long swallow of the drink, his gaze on the

ornate ceiling of Taraza's small parlor. This no-ship was an old-fashioned

model, built in the days when more care had been taken with decoration --

heavily incised cornices, baroque figures carved in every surface.

The taste of the drink pushed his memory back into childhood, the heavy infusion

of melange . . .

"My mother made this for me whenever I was overly strenuous," he said, looking

at the glass in his hand. He already could feel the calming energy flow through

his body.

Taraza took her own drink to a chairdog opposite him, a fluffy white bit of

animate furniture that fitted itself to her with the ease of long familiarity.

For Teg, she had provided a traditional green upholstered chair, but she saw his

glance flick across the chairdog and grinned at him.

"Tastes differ, Miles." She sipped her drink and sighed. "My, that was

strenuous but it was good work. There were moments when it was right on the

edge of getting very nasty."

Teg found himself touched by her relaxation. No pose, no ready-made mask to set

them apart and define their separate roles in the Bene Gesserit hierarchy. She

was being obviously friendly and not even a hint of seductiveness. So this was

just what it seemed to be -- as much as that could be said about any encounter

with a Reverend Mother.

With quick elation, Teg realized that he had become quite adept at reading Alma

Mavis Taraza, even when she adopted one of her masks.

"Your mother taught you more than she was told to teach you," Taraza said. "A

wise woman but another heretic. That's all we seem to be breeding nowadays."

"Heretic?" He was caught by resentment.

"That's a private joke in the Sisterhood," Taraza said. "We're supposed to

follow a Mother Superior's orders with absolute devotion. And we do, except

when we disagree."

Teg smiled and took a deep draught of his drink.

"It's odd," Taraza said, "but while we were in that tight little confrontation I

found myself reacting to you as I would to one of my Sisters."

Teg felt the drink warming his stomach. It left a tingling in his nostrils. He

placed the empty glass on a side table and spoke while looking at it. "My

eldest daughter . . ."

"That would be Dimela. You should have let us have her, Miles."

"It was not my decision."

"But one word from you . . ." Taraza shrugged. "Well, that's past. What about

Dimela?"

"She thinks I'm often too much like one of you."

"Too much?"

"She is fiercely loyal to me, Mother Superior. She doesn't really understand

our relationship and --"

"What is our relationship?"

"You command and I obey."

Taraza looked at him over the lip of her glass. When she put down the glass,

she said: "Yes, you've never really been a heretic, Miles. Perhaps . . .

someday . . ."

He spoke quickly, wanting to divert Taraza from such ideas. "Dimela thinks the

long use of melange makes many people become like you."

"Is that so? Isn't it odd, Miles, that a geriatric potion should have so many

side effects?"

"I don't find that odd."

"No, of course you wouldn't." She drained her glass and put it aside. "I was

addressing the way a significant life extension has produced in some people, you

especially, a profound knowledge of human nature."

"We live longer and observe more," he said.

"I don't think it's quite that simple. Some people never observe anything.

Life just happens to them. They get by on little more than a kind of dumb

persistence, and they resist with anger and resentment anything that might lift

them out of that false serenity."

"I've never been able to strike an acceptable balance sheet for the spice," he

said, referring to a common Mentat process of data sorting.

Taraza nodded. Obviously, she found the same difficulty. "We of the Sisterhood

tend to be more single-track than Mentats," she said. "We have routines to

shake ourselves out of it but the condition persists."

"Our ancestors have had this problem for a long time," he said.

"It was different before the spice," she said.

"But they lived such short lives."

"Fifty, one hundred years; that doesn't seem very long to us, but still . . ."

"Did they compress more into the available time?"

"Oh, they were frenetic at times."

She was giving him observations from her Other Memories, he realized. Not the

first time he had shared in such ancient lore. His mother had produced such

memories on occasion, but always as a lesson. Was Taraza doing that now?

Teaching him something?

"Melange is a many-handed monster," she said.

"Do you sometimes wish we had never found it?"

"The Bene Gesserit would not exist without it."

"Nor the Guild."

"But there would have been no Tyrant, no Muad'dib. The spice gives with one

hand and takes with all of its others."

"Which hand contains that which we desire?" he asked. "Isn't that always the

question?"

"You're an oddity, you know that, Miles? Mentats so seldom dip into philosophy.

I think it's one of your strengths. You are supremely able to doubt."

He shrugged. This turn in the conversation disturbed him.

"You are not amused," she said. "But cling to your doubts anyway. Doubt is

necessary to a philosopher."

"So the Zensunni assure us."

"All mystics agree on it, Miles. Never underestimate the power of doubts. Very

persuasive. S'tori holds up doubt and surety in a single hand."

Really quite surprised, he asked: "Do Reverend Mothers practice Zensunni

rituals?" He had never even suspected this before.

"Just once," she said. "We achieve an exalted form of s'tori, total. It

involves every cell."

"The spice agony," he said.

"I was sure your mother told you. Obviously, she never explained the affinity

with the Zensunni."

Teg swallowed past a lump in his throat. Fascinating! She gave him a new

insight into the Bene Gesserit. This changed his entire concept, including his

image of his own mother. They were removed from him into an unattainable place

where he could never follow. They might think of him as a comrade on occasion

but he could never enter the intimate circle. He could simulate, no more. He

would never be like Muad'dib or the Tyrant.

"Prescience," Taraza said.

The word shifted his attention. She had changed the subject but not changed it.

"I was thinking about Muad'dib," he said.

"You think he predicted the future," she said.

"That is the Mentat teaching."

"I hear the doubt in your voice, Miles. Did he predict or did he create?

Prescience can be deadly. The people who demand that the oracle predict for

them really want to know next year's price on whalefur or something equally

mundane. None of them wants an instant-by-instant prediction of his personal

life."

"No surprises," Teg said.

"Exactly. If you possessed such fore-knowledge, your life would become an

unutterable bore."

"You think Muad'dib life was a bore?"

"And the Tyrant's, too. We think their entire lives were devoted to trying to

break out of chains they themselves created."

"But they believed . . ."

"Remember your philosopher's doubts, Miles. Beware! The mind of the believer

stagnates. It fails to grow outward into an unlimited, infinite universe."

Teg sat silently for a moment. He sensed the fatigue that had been driven

beyond his immediate awareness by the drink, sensed also the way his thoughts

were roiled by the intrusion of new concepts. These were things that he had

been taught would weaken a Mentat, yet he felt strengthened by them.

She is teaching me, he thought. There is a lesson here.

As though projected into his mind and outlined there in fire, he found his

entire Mentat-attention fixated on the Zensunni admonition that was taught to

every beginning student in the Mentat School:

By your belief in granular singularities, you deny all movement -- evolutionary

or devolutionary. Belief fixes a granular universe and causes that universe to

persist. Nothing can be allowed to change because that way your non-moving

universe vanishes. But it moves of itself when you do not move. It evolves

beyond you and is no longer accessible to you.

"The oddest thing of all," Taraza said, sinking into tune with this mood she had

created, "is that the scientists of Ix cannot see how much their own beliefs

dominate their universe."

Teg stared at her, silent and receptive.

"Ixian beliefs are perfectly submissive to the choices they make on how they

will look at their universe," Taraza said. "Their universe does not act of

itself but performs according to the kinds of experiments they choose."

With a start, Teg came out of the memories and awoke to find himself in the

Gammu Keep. He still sat in the familiar chair in his workroom. A glance

around the room showed nothing moved from where he had put it. Only a few

minutes had passed but the room and its contents no longer were alien. He

dipped into and out of Mentat mode. Restored.

The smell and taste of the drink Taraza had given him so long ago still tingled

on his tongue and in his nostrils. A Mentat blink and he knew he could call up

the scene entire once more -- the low light of shaded glowglobes, the feeling of

the chair beneath him, the sounds of their voices. It was all there for replay,

frozen into a time-capsule of isolated memory.

Calling up that old memory created a magical universe where his abilities were

amplified beyond his wildest expectations. No atoms existed in that magical

universe, only waves and awesome movements all around. He was forced there to

discard all barriers built of belief and understanding. This universe was

transparent. He could see through it without any interfering screens upon which

to project its forms. The magical universe reduced him to a core of active

imagination where his own image-making abilities were the only screen upon which

any projection might be sensed.

There, I am both the performer and the performed!

The workroom around Teg wavered into and out of his sensory reality. He felt

his awareness constricted to its tightest purpose and yet that purpose filled

his universe. He was open to infinity.

Taraza did this deliberately! he thought. She has amplified me!

A feeling of awe threatened him. He recognized how his daughter, Odrade, had

drawn upon such powers to create the Atreides Manifesto for Taraza. His own

Mentat powers were submerged in that greater pattern.

Taraza was demanding a fearful performance from him. The need for such a thing

both challenged and terrified him. It could very well mean the end of the

Sisterhood.

The basic rule is this: Never support weakness; always support strength.

-The Bene Gesserit Coda

"How is it that you can order the priests around?" Sheeana asked. "This is

their place."

Odrade answered casually but picked her words to fit the knowledge she knew

Sheeana already possessed: "The priests have Fremen roots. They've always had

Reverend Mothers somewhere near. Besides, child, you order them around, too."

"That's different."

Odrade suppressed a smile.

Little more than three hours had passed since her assault force had broken the

attack on the temple complex. In that time, Odrade had set up a command center

in Sheeana's quarters, carried on the necessary business of assessment and

preliminary retaliation, all the while prompting and observing Sheeana.

Simulflow.

Odrade glanced around the room she had chosen as command center. A scrap of

Stiros' ripped garments still lay near the wall in front of her. Casualties.

The room was an oddly shaped place. No two walls parallel. She sniffed. Still

a residual smell of ozone from the snoopers with which her people had assured

the privacy of these quarters.

Why the odd shape? The building was ancient, remodeled and added to many times,

but that did not explain this room. A pleasantly rough texture of creamy stucco

on walls and ceiling. Elaborate spice-fiber hangings flanked the two doors. It

was early evening and sunlight filtered by lattice shades stippled the wall

opposite the windows. Silver-yellow glowglobes hovered near the ceiling, all

tuned to match the sunlight. Muted street sounds came through the ventilators

beneath the windows. The soft pattern of orange rugs and gray tiles on the

floor spoke of wealth and security but Odrade suddenly did not feel secure.

A tall Reverend Mother came from the adjoining communications room. "Mother

Commander," she said, "the messages have been sent to Guild, Ix, and Tleilaxu."

Odrade spoke absently. "Acknowledged."

The messenger returned to her duties.

"What are you doing?" Sheeana asked.

"Studying something."

Odrade pursed her lips in thought. Their guides through the temple complex had

brought them along a maze of hallways and stairs, glimpses of courtyards through

arches, then into a splendid Ixian suspensor-tube system, which carried them

silently to another hallway, more stairs, another curved hallway . . . finally,

into this room.

Once more, Odrade swept her gaze around the room.

"Why are you studying this room?" Sheeana asked.

"Hush, child!"

The room was an irregular polyhedron with the smaller side to the left. About

thirty-five meters long, half that at the widest. Many low divans and chairs in

various degrees of comfort. Sheeana sat in queenly splendor on a bright yellow

chair with wide soft arms. Not a chairdog in the place. Much brown and blue

and yellow fabric. Odrade stared at the white lattice of a ventilator above a

painting of mountains on the wider end wall. A cool breeze came through the

ventilators below the windows and wafted toward the ventilator above the

painting.

"This was Hedley's room," Sheeana said.

"Why do you annoy him by using his first name, child?"

"Does that annoy him?"

"Don't play word games with me, child! You know it annoys him and that's why

you do it."

"Then why did you ask?"

Odrade ignored this while continuing her careful study of the room. The wall

opposite the painting stood at an oblique angle to the outer wall. She had it

now. Clever! This room had been constructed so that even a whisper here could

be heard by someone beyond the high ventilator. No doubt the painting concealed

another airway to carry sounds from this room. No snooper, sniffer, or other

instrument would detect such an arrangement. Nothing would "beep" at a spying

eye or ear. Only the wary senses of someone trained in deception had winkled it

out.

A hand signal summoned a waiting acolyte. Odrade's fingers flickered in silent

communication: "Find out who is listening beyond that ventilator." She nodded

toward the ventilator above the painting. "Let them continue. We must know to

whom they report."

"How did you know to come and save me?" Sheeana asked. The child had a lovely

voice but it needed training, Odrade thought. There was a steadiness to it,

though, that could be shaped into a powerful instrument.

"Answer me!" Sheeana ordered.

The imperious tone startled Odrade, arousing quick anger, which she was forced

to suppress. Corrections would have to be made immediately!

"Calm yourself, child," Odrade said. She pitched the command in a precise tenor

and saw it take effect.

Again, Sheeana startled her: "That's another kind of Voice. You're trying to

calm me. Kipuna told me all about Voice."

Odrade turned squarely facing Sheeana and looked down at her. Sheeana's first

grief had passed but there was still anger when she spoke of Kipuna.

"I am busy shaping our response to that attack," Odrade said. "Why do you

distract me? I should think you would want them punished."

"What will you do to them? Tell me! What will you do?"

A surprisingly vindictive child, Odrade thought. That would have to be curbed.

Hatred was as dangerous an emotion as love. The capacity for hatred was the

capacity for its opposite.

Odrade said: "I have sent Guild, Ix, and Tleilaxu the message we always

dispatch when we have been annoyed. Three words: 'You will pay.' "

"How will they pay?"

"A proper Bene Gesserit punishment is being fashioned. They will feel the

consequences of their behavior."

"But what will you do?"

"In time, you may learn. You may even learn how we design our punishment. For

now, there is no need that you know."

A sullen look came over Sheeana's face. She said: "You're not even angry.

Annoyed. That's what you said."

"Curb your impatience, child! There are things you do not understand."

The Reverend Mother from the communications room returned, glanced once at

Sheeana and spoke to Odrade. "Chapter House acknowledges receipt of your

report. They approve your response."

When the Reverend Mother from communications remained standing there, Odrade

said: "There is more?"

A flickering glance to Sheeana spoke of the woman's reservations. Odrade held

up her right palm, the signal for silent communication.

The Reverend Mother responded, her fingers dancing with unleashed excitement:

"Taraza's message -- The Tleilaxu are the pivotal element. Guild must be made

to pay dearly for its melange. Shut down Rakian supply to them. Throw Guild

and Ix together. They will overextend selves in face of crushing competition

from the Scattering. Ignore Fish Speakers for now. They fall with Ix. Master

of Masters responds to us from Tleilaxu. He goes to Rakis. Trap him."

Odrade smiled softly to acknowledge that she understood. She watched the other

woman leave the room. Not only did Chapter House agree with actions taken on

Rakis, a suitable Bene Gesserit punishment had been fashioned with fascinating

speed. Obviously Taraza and her advisors had anticipated this moment.

Odrade allowed herself a sigh of relief. The message to Chapter House had been

terse: an outline account of the attack, the list of the Sisterhood's

casualties, identification of the attackers and a confirming note to Taraza that

Odrade already had transmitted the required warning to the guilty: "You will

pay."

Yes, those fool attackers now knew the hornet's nest had been aroused. That

would create fear -- an essential part of the punishment.

Sheeana squirmed in her chair. Her attitude said she would now try a new

approach. "One of your people said there were Face Dancers." She gestured with

her chin toward the roof.

What a vast reservoir of ignorance this child was, Odrade thought. That

emptiness would have to be filled. Face Dancers! Odrade thought about the

bodies they had examined. The Tleilaxu had finally sent their Face Dancers into

action. It was a test of the Bene Gesserit, of course. These new ones were

extremely difficult to detect. They still gave off the characteristic smell of

their unique pheromones, though. Odrade had sent that datum in her message to

Chapter House.

The problem now was to keep the Bene Gesserit knowledge secret. Odrade summoned

an acolyte messenger. Indicating the ventilator with a flick of her eyes,

Odrade spoke silently with her fingers: "Kill those who listen!"

"You are too interested in Voice, child," Odrade said, speaking down to Sheeana

in the chair. "Silence is a most valuable tool for learning."

"But could I learn Voice? I want to learn it."

"I am telling you to be silent and to learn by your silence."

"I command you to teach me Voice!"

Odrade reflected on Kipuna's reports. Sheeana had established effective Voice

control over most of those around her. The child had learned it on her own. An

intermediate level Voice for a limited audience. She was a natural. Tuek and

Cania and the others were frightened by Sheeana. Religious fantasies

contributed to that fear, of course, but Sheeana's mastery of Voice pitch and

tone displayed an admirable unconscious selectivity.

The indicated response to Sheeana was obvious, Odrade knew. Honesty. It was a

most powerful lure and it served more than one purpose.

"I am here to teach you many things," Odrade said, "but I do not do this at your

command."

"Everyone obeys me!" Sheeana said.

She's barely into puberty and already at Aristocrat level, Odrade thought. Gods

of our own making! What can she become?

Sheeana slipped out of her chair and stood looking up at Odrade with a

questioning expression. The child's eyes were on a level with Odrade's

shoulders. Sheeana was going to be tall, a commanding presence. If she

survived.

"You answer some of my questions but you won't answer others," Sheeana said.

"You said you'd been waiting for me but you won't explain. Why won't you obey

me?"

"A foolish question, child."

"Why do you keep calling me child?"

"Are you not a child?"

"I menstruate."

"But you're still a child."

"The priests obey me."

"They're afraid of you."

"You aren't?"

"No, I'm not."

"Good! It gets tiresome when people only fear you."

"The priests think you come from God."

"Don't you think that?"

"Why should I? We --" Odrade broke off as an acolyte messenger entered. The

acolyte's fingers danced in silent communication: "Four priests listened. They

have been killed. All were minions of Tuek."

Odrade waved the messenger away.

"She talks with her fingers," Sheeana said. "How does she do that?"

"You ask too many of the wrong questions, child. And you haven't told me why I

should consider you an instrument of God."

"Shaitan spares me. I walk on the desert and when Shaitan comes, I talk to

him."

"Why do you call him Shaitan instead of Shai-hulud?"

"Everybody asks that same stupid question!"

"Then give me your stupid answer."

The sullen expression returned to Sheeana's face. "It's because of how we met."

"And how did you meet?"

Sheeana tipped her head to one side and looked up at Odrade for a moment, then:

"That's a secret."

"And you know how to keep secrets?"

Sheeana straightened and nodded but Odrade saw uncertainty in the movement. The

child knew when she was being led into an impossible position!

"Excellent!" Odrade said. "The keeping of secrets is one of a Reverend

Mother's most essential teachings. I'm glad we won't have to bother with that

one."

"But I want to learn everything!"

Such petulance in her voice. Very poor emotional control.

"You must teach me everything!" Sheeana insisted.

Time for the whip, Odrade thought. Sheeana had spoken and postured sufficiently

that even a fifth-grade acolyte could feel confident of controlling her now.

Using the full power of Voice, Odrade said: "Don't take that tone with me,

child! Not if you wish to learn anything!"

Sheeana went rigid. She was more than a minute absorbing what had happened to

her and then relaxing. Presently, she smiled, a warm and open expression. "Oh,

I'm so glad you came! It's been so boring lately."

Nothing surpasses the complexity of the human mind.

-Leto II: Dar-es-Balat Records

The Gammu night, often quickly foreboding in this latitude, was almost two hours

away. Gathering clouds shadowed the Keep. At Lucilla's command, Duncan had

returned to the courtyard for an intense session of self-directed practice.

Lucilla observed from the parapet where she had first watched him.

Duncan moved in the tumbling twists of the Bene Gesserit eightfold combat,

hurling his body across the grass, rolling, flipping himself from side to side,

darting up and then down.

It was a fine display of random dodging, Lucilla thought. She could see no

predictable pattern in his movements and the speed was dazzling. He was almost

sixteen SY and already coming onto the platform potential of his prana-bindu

endowment.

The carefully controlled movements of his training exercises revealed so much!

He had responded quickly when she first ordered these evening sessions. The

initial step of her instructions from Taraza had been accomplished. The ghola

loved her. No doubt of it. She was mother-fixed to him. And it had been

accomplished without seriously weakening him, although Teg's anxieties had been

aroused.

My shadow is on this ghola but he is not a supplicant nor a dependent follower,

she reassured herself. Teg worries about it for no reason.

Just that morning, she had told Teg, "Wherever his strengths dictate, he

continues to express himself freely."

Teg should see him right now, she thought. These new practice movements were

largely Duncan's own creation.

Lucilla suppressed a gasp of appreciation at a particularly nimble leap, which

took Duncan almost to the center of the courtyard. The ghola was developing a

nerve-muscle equilibrium that, given time, might be matched to a psychological

equilibrium at least equal to Teg's. The cultural impact of such an achievement

would be awesome. Look at all those who gave instinctive allegiance to Teg and,

through Teg, to the Sisterhood.

We have the Tyrant to thank for much of that, she thought.

Before Leto II, no widespread system of cultural adjustments had ever endured

long enough to approach the balance that the Bene Gesserit held as an ideal. It

was this equilibrium -- "flowing along the blade of a sword" -- that fascinated

Lucilla. It was why she lent herself so unreservedly to a project whose total

design she did not know, but which demanded of her a performance that instinct

labeled repugnant.

Duncan is so young!

What the Sisterhood required of her next had been spelled out explicitly by

Taraza: the Sexual Imprint. Only that morning, Lucilla had posed naked before

her mirror, forming the attitudes and motions of face and body that she knew she

would use to obey Taraza's orders. In artificial repose, Lucilla had seen her

own face appear like that of a prehistoric love goddess -- opulent with flesh

and the promise of softness into which an aroused male might hurl himself.

In her education, Lucilla had seen ancient statues from the First Times, little

stone figures of human females with wide hips and sagging breasts that assured

abundance for a suckling infant. At will, Lucilla could produce a youthful

simulation of that ancient form.

In the courtyard below Lucilla, Duncan paused a moment and appeared to be

thinking out his next movements. Presently, he nodded to himself, leaped high

and twisted in the air, landing like a springbok on one leg, which kicked him

sideways into gyrations more akin to dance than to combat.

Lucilla drew her mouth into a tight line of resolution.

Sexual Imprint.

The secret of sex was no secret at all, she thought. The roots were attached to

life itself. This explained, of course, why her first command-seduction for the

Sisterhood had planted a male face in her memory. The Breeding Mistress had

told her to expect this and not be alarmed by it. But Lucilla had realized then

that the Sexual Imprint was a two-edged sword. You might learn to flow along

the edge of the blade but you could be cut by it. Sometimes, when that male

face of her first command-seduction returned unbidden into her mind, Lucilla

felt confounded by it. The memory came so frequently at the peak of an intimate

moment, forcing her to great efforts of concealment.

"You are strengthened thus," the Breeding Mistresses reassured her.

Still, there were times when she felt that she had trivialized something better

left a mystery.

A feeling of sourness at what she must do swept over Lucilla. These evenings

when she observed Duncan's training sessions had been her favorite times each

day. The lad's muscular development showed such definite progress -- moving in

the growth of sensitive muscle and nerve links -- all of the prana-bindu marvels

for which the Sisterhood was so famous. The next step was almost upon her,

though, and she no longer could sink into watchful appreciation of her charge.

Miles Teg would come out presently, she knew. Duncan's training would move

again into the practice room with its more deadly weapons.

Teg.

Once more, Lucilla wondered about him. She had felt herself more than once

attracted to him in a particular way that she recognized immediately. An

Imprinter enjoyed some latitude in selecting her own breeding partners, provided

she had no prior commitments nor contrary orders. Teg was old but his records

suggested he might still be virile. She would not be able to keep the child, of

course, but she had learned to deal with that.

Why not? she had asked herself.

Her plan had been simple in the extreme. Complete the Imprint on the ghola and

then, registering her intent with Taraza, conceive a child by the redoubtable

Miles Teg. Practical introductory seduction had been indicated, but Teg had not

succumbed. His Mentat cynicism stopped her one afternoon in the dressing

chamber off the Weapons Room.

"My breeding days are over, Lucilla. The Sisterhood should be satisfied with

what I already have given."

Teg, clad only in black exercise leotards, finished wiping his sweaty face with

a towel and dropped the towel into a hamper. He spoke without looking at her:

"Would you please leave me now?"

So he saw through her overtures!

She should have anticipated that, Teg being who he was. Lucilla knew she might

still seduce him. No Reverend Mother of her training should fail, not even with

a Mentat of Teg's obvious powers.

Lucilla stood there a moment undecided, her mind automatically planning how to

circumvent this preliminary rejection. Something stopped her. Not anger at the

rejection, not the remote possibility that he might indeed be proof against her

wiles. Pride and its possible fall (there was always that possibility) had

little to do with it.

Dignity.

There was a quiet dignity in Teg and she had the certain knowledge of what his

courage and prowess had already given to the Sisterhood. Not quite sure of her

motives, Lucilla turned away from him. Possibly it was the underlying gratitude

that the Sisterhood felt toward him. To seduce Teg now would be demeaning, not

only of him but of herself. She could not bring herself to such an action, not

without a direct order from a superior.

As she stood on the parapet, some of these memories clouded her senses. There

was movement in the shadows at the doorway from the Weapons Wing. Teg could be

glimpsed there. Lucilla took a firmer grip on her responses and focused on

Duncan. The ghola had stopped his controlled tumbling across the lawn. He

stood quietly, breathing deeply, his attention aimed upward at Lucilla. She saw

perspiration on his face and in dark blotchings on his light blue singlesuit.

Leaning over the parapet, Lucilla called down to him: "That was very good,

Duncan. Tomorrow, I will begin teaching you more of the foot-fist

combinations."

The words came out of her without censoring and she knew their source at once.

They were for Teg standing in the shadowed doorway down there, not for the

ghola. She was saying to Teg: "See! You aren't the only one who teaches him

deadly abilities."

Lucilla realized then that Teg had insinuated himself further into her psyche

than she should permit. Grimly, she swung her gaze to the tall figure emerging

from the doorway's shadows. Duncan already was running toward the Bashar.

As Lucilla focused on Teg, reaction flashed through her ignited by the most

elemental Bene Gesserit responses. The steps of this reaction could be defined

later: Something wrong! Danger! Teg is not Teg! In the reactive flash,

however, none of this took separate form. She responded, hurling all the volume

of Voice she could muster:

"Duncan! Down!"

Duncan dropped flat on the grass, his attention riveted to the Teg-figure

emerging from the Weapons Wing. There was a field-model lasgun in the man's

hands.

Face Dancer! Lucilla thought. Only hyperalertness revealed him to her. One of

the new ones!

"Face Dancer!" Lucilla shouted.

Duncan kicked himself sideways and leaped up, twisting flat in the air at least

a meter off the ground. The speed of his reaction shocked Lucilla. She had not

known any human could move that fast! The lasgun's first bolt cut beneath

Duncan as he seemed to float in the air.

Lucilla jumped to the parapet and dropped to a handhold on the window ledge of

the next lower level. Before she was stopped, her right hand shot out and found

the protruding rainspout that memory told her was there. Her body arched

sideways and she dropped to a window ledge at the next level. Desperation drove

her even though she knew she would be too late.

Something crackled on the wall above her. She saw a molten line cut toward her

as she flung herself to the left, twisting and dropping onto the lawn. Her gaze

captured the scene around her in a flashing deit-grasp as she landed.

Duncan moved toward the attacker, dodging and twisting in a terrifying replay of

his practice session. The speed of his movements!

Lucilla saw indecision in the face of the false Teg.

She darted toward the Face Dancer, feeling the creature's thoughts: Two of them

after me!

Failure was inevitable, though, and Lucilla knew it even as she ran. The Face

Dancer had only to shift his weapon into full burn at close range. He could

lace the air in front of him. Nothing could penetrate such a defense. As she

cast about in her mind, desperately seeking some way to defeat the attacker, she

saw red smoke appear on the false Teg's breast. A line of red darted upward at

an oblique angle through the muscles of the arm holding the lasgun. The arm

fell away like a piece dropping from a statue. The shoulder tipped away from

the torso in a spout of blood. The figure toppled, dissolving into more red

smoke and blood spray, crumbling into pieces on the steps, all dark tans and

blue-tinged reds.

Lucilla smelled the distinctive Face Dancer pheromones as she stopped. Duncan

came up beside her. He peered past the dead Face Dancer at movement in the

hallway.

Another Teg emerged behind the dead one. Lucilla identified the reality: Teg

himself.

"That's the Bashar," Duncan said.

Lucilla experienced a small surge of pleasure that Duncan had learned this

identity-lesson so well: how to recognize your friends even if you only saw

bits of them. She pointed to the dead Face Dancer. "Smell him."

Duncan inhaled. "Yes, I have it. But he wasn't a very good copy. I saw what

he was as soon as you did."

Teg emerged into the courtyard carrying a heavy lasgun cradled across his left

arm. His right hand held a firm grip on the stock and trigger. He swept his

gaze around the courtyard, then focused on Duncan and finally on Lucilla.

"Bring Duncan inside," Teg said.

It was the order of a battlefield commander, depending only on superior

knowledge of what should be done in the emergency. Lucilla obeyed without

question.

Duncan did not speak as she led him by the hand past the bloody meat that had

been the Face Dancer, then into the Weapons Wing. Once inside, he glanced back

at the sodden heap and asked: "Who let him in?"

Not: "How did he get in?" she observed. Duncan already had seen past the

inconsequentials to the heart of their problem.

Teg strode ahead of them toward his own quarters. He stopped at the door,

glanced inside and motioned for Lucilla and Duncan to follow.

In Teg's bedroom there was the thick smell of burned flesh and wisps of smoke

dominated by the charred barbecue odor that Lucilla so detested: cooked human

meat! A figure in one of Teg's uniforms lay face down on the floor where it had

fallen off his bed.

Teg rolled the figure over with one boot toe, exposing the face: staring eyes,

a rictus grin. Lucilla recognized one of the perimeter guards, one of those who

had come to the Keep with Schwangyu, so the Keep's records said.

"Their point man," Teg said. "Patrin took care of him and we put one of my

uniforms on him. It was enough to fool the Face Dancers because we didn't let

them see the face before we attacked. They didn't have time to make a memory

print."

"You know about that?" Lucilla was startled.

"Bellonda briefed me thoroughly!"

Abruptly, Lucilla saw the further significance of what Teg said. She suppressed

a swift flare of anger. "How did you let one of them get into the courtyard?"

His voice mild, Teg said: "There was rather urgent activity in here. I had to

make a choice, which turned out to be the right one."

She did not try to hide her anger. "The choice to let Duncan fend for himself?"

"To leave him in your care or let other attackers get themselves firmly

entrenched inside. Patrin and I had a bad time clearing this wing. We had our

hands full." Teg glanced at Duncan. "He came through very well, thanks to our

training."

"That . . . that thing almost got him!"

"Lucilla!" Teg shook his head. "I had it timed. You two could last at least a

minute out there. I knew you would throw yourself in that thing's path and

sacrifice yourself to save Duncan. Another twenty seconds."

At Teg's words, Duncan turned a shiny-eyed look on Lucilla. "Would you have

done that?"

When Lucilla did not respond, Teg said: "She would have done that. "

Lucilla did not deny it. She remembered now, though, the incredible speed with

which Duncan had moved, the dazzling shifts of his attack.

"Battle decisions," Teg said, looking at Lucilla.

She accepted this. As usual, Teg had made the correct choice. She knew,

though, that she would have to communicate with Taraza. The prana-bindu

accelerations in this ghola went beyond anything she had expected. She

stiffened as Teg straightened to full alert, his gaze on the doorway behind her.

Lucilla whirled.

Schwangyu stood there, Patrin behind her, another heavy lasgun over his arm.

Its muzzle, Lucilla noted, was aimed at Schwangyu.

"She insisted," Patrin said. There was an angry set to the old aide's face.

The deep lines beside his mouth pointed downward.

"There's a trail of bodies clear out to the south pillbox," Schwangyu said.

"Your people won't let me out there to inspect. I command you to countermand

those orders immediately."

"Not until my clean-up crews are finished," Teg said.

"They're still killing people out there! I can hear it!" A venomous edge had

entered Schwangyu's voice. She glared at Lucilla.

"We're also questioning people out there," Teg said.

Schwangyu shifted her glare to Teg. "If it's too dangerous here then we will

take the . . . the child to my quarters. Now!"

"We will not do that," Teg said. His tone was low-key but positive.

Schwangyu stiffened with displeasure. Patrin's knuckles went white on the stock

of his lasgun. Schwangyu swung her gaze past the gun and up to Lucilla's

appraising stare. The two women looked into each other's eyes.

Teg allowed the moment to hold for a beat, then said: "Lucilla, take Duncan

into my sitting room." He nodded toward a door behind him.

Lucilla obeyed, pointedly keeping her body between Schwangyu and Duncan the

whole time.

Once behind the closed door, Duncan said: "She almost called me 'the ghola.'

She's really upset."

"Schwangyu has let several things slip past her guard," Lucilla said.

She glanced around Teg's sitting room, her first view of this part of his

quarters: the Bashar's inner sanctum. It reminded her of her own quarters --

that same mixture of orderliness and casual disarray. Reading spools lay in a

clutter on a small table beside an old-fashioned chair upholstered in soft gray.

The spool reader had been swung aside as though its user had just stepped out

for a moment, intending to return soon. A Bashar's black uniform jacket lay

across a nearby hard chair with sewing material in a small open box atop it.

The jacket's cuff showed a carefully patched hole.

So he does his own mending.

This was an aspect of the famous Miles Teg she had not expected. If she had

thought about it, she would have said Patrin would absorb such chores.

"Schwangyu let the attackers in, didn't she?" Duncan asked.

"Her people did." Lucilla did not hide her anger. "She has gone too far. A

pact with the Tleilaxu!"

"Will Patrin kill her?"

"I don't know nor do I care!"

Outside the door, Schwangyu spoke with anger, her voice loud and quite clear:

"Are we just going to wait here, Bashar?"

"You can leave anytime you wish." That was Teg.

"But I can't enter the south tunnel!"

Schwangyu sounded petulant. Lucilla knew it for something the old woman did

deliberately. What was she planning? Teg must be very cautious now. He had

been clever out there, revealing for Lucilla the gaps in Schwangyu's control,

but they had not plumbed Schwangyu's resources. Lucilla wondered if she should

leave Duncan here and return to Teg's side.

Teg said: "You can go now but I advise you not to return to your quarters."

"And why not?" Schwangyu sounded surprised, really surprised and not covering

it well.

"One moment," Teg said.

Lucilla became aware of shouting at a distance. A heavy thumping explosion

sounded from nearby and then another one more distant. Dust sifted from the

cornice above the door to Teg's sitting room.

"What was that?" Schwangyu again, her voice overly loud.

Lucilla moved to place herself between Duncan and the wall to the hallway.

Duncan stared at the door, his body poised for defense.

"That first blast was what I expected them to do." Teg again. "The second, I

fear, was what they did not expect."

A whistle piped nearby loud enough to cover something Schwangyu said.

"That's it Bashar!" Patrin.

"What is happening?" Schwangyu demanded.

"The first explosion, dear Reverend Mother, was your quarters being destroyed by

our attackers. The second explosion was us destroying the attackers."

"I just got the signal, Bashar!" Patrin again. "We got them all. They came

down by floater from the no-ship just as you expected."

"The ship?" Teg's voice was full of angry demand.

"Destroyed the instant it came through the space fold. No survivors."

"You fools!" Schwangyu screamed. "Do you know what you've done?"

"I carried out my orders to protect that boy from any attack," Teg said. "By

the way, weren't you supposed to be in your quarters at this hour?"

"What?"

"They were after you when they blasted your quarters. The Tleilaxu are very

dangerous, Reverend Mother."

"I don't believe you!"

"I suggest you go look. Patrin, let her pass."

As she listened, Lucilla heard the unspoken argument. The Mentat Bashar had

been trusted here more than a Reverend Mother and Schwangyu knew it. She would

be desperate. That was clever, suggesting her quarters had been destroyed. She

might not believe it, though. Foremost in Schwangyu's mind now would be the

realization that both Teg and Lucilla recognized her complicity in the attack.

There was no telling how many others were aware of this. Patrin knew, of

course.

Duncan stared at the closed door, his head tipped slightly to the right. There

was a curious expression on his face, as though he saw through the door and

actually watched the people out there.

Schwangyu spoke, the most careful control in her voice. "I don't believe my

quarters were destroyed." She knew Lucilla was listening.

"There is only one way to make sure," Teg said.

Clever! Lucilla thought. Schwangyu could not make a decision until she was

certain whether the Tleilaxu had acted treacherously.

"You will wait here for me, then! That's an order!" Lucilla heard the swish of

Schwangyu's robes as the Reverend Mother departed.

Very bad emotional control, Lucilla thought. What this revealed about Teg,

though, was equally disturbing. He did it to her! Teg had kept a Reverend

Mother off balance.

The door in front of Duncan swung open. Teg stood there, one hand on the latch.

"Quick!" Teg said. "We must be out of the Keep before she returns."

"Out of the Keep?" Lucilla did not hide her shock.

"Quick, I say! Patrin has prepared a way for us."

"But I must --"

"You must nothing! Come as you are. Follow me or we will be forced to take

you."

"Do you really think you could take a . . ." Lucilla broke off. This was a new

Teg in front of her and she knew he would not have made such a threat unless he

was prepared to carry it out.

"Very well," she said. She took Duncan's hand and followed Teg out of his

quarters.

Patrin stood in the hallway looking to his right. "She's gone," the old man

said. He looked at Teg. "You know what to do, Bashar?"

"Pat!"

Lucilla had never before heard Teg use the batman's diminutive name.

Patrin grinned, a gleaming full-toothed smile. "Sorry, Bashar. The excitement,

you know. I'll leave you to it, then. I have my part to play."

Teg waved Lucilla and Duncan down the hallway to the right. She obeyed and

heard Teg close on her heels. Duncan's hand was sweaty in her hand. He pulled

free and strode beside her without looking back.

The suspensor-drop at the end of the hallway was guarded by two of Teg's own

people. He nodded to them. "Nobody follows."

They spoke in unison: "Right, Bashar."

Lucilla realized as she entered the drop with Duncan and Teg that she had chosen

sides in a dispute whose workings she did not fully understand. She could feel

the movements of the Sisterhood's politics like a swift current of water pouring

all around her. Usually, the movement remained mostly a gentle wave washing the

strand, but now she sensed a great destructive surge preparing to thunder its

surf upon her.

Duncan spoke as they emerged into the sorting chamber for the south pillbox.

"We should all be armed," he said.

"We will be very soon," Teg said. "And I hope you're prepared to kill anyone

who tries to stop us."

The significant fact is this: No Bene Tleilax female has ever been seen away

from the protection of their core planets. (Face Dancer mules who simulate

females do not count in this analysis. They cannot be breeders.) The Tleilaxu

sequester their females to keep them from our hands. This is our primary

deduction. It must also be in the eggs that the Tleilaxu Masters conceal their

most essential secrets.

-Bene Gesserit Analysis -- Archives #XOXTM99 ..... 041

"So we meet at last," Taraza said.

She stared across the two meters of open space between their chairs at Tylwyth

Waff. Her analysts assured her that this man was Tleilaxu Master of Masters.

What an elfin little figure he was to hold so much power. The prejudices of

appearance must be discarded here, she warned herself.

"Some would not believe this possible," Waff said.

He had a piping little voice, Taraza noted; something else to be measured by

different standards.

They sat in the neutrality of a Guild no-ship with Bene Gesserit and Tleilaxu

monitors clinging to the Guildship's hull like predatory birds on a carcass.

(The Guild had been cravenly anxious to placate the Bene Gesserit. "You will

pay." The Guild knew. Payment had been exacted from them before.) The small

oval room in which they met was conventionally copper-walled and "spy-proof."

Taraza did not believe this for an instant. She presumed also that the bonds

between Guild and Tleilaxu, forged of melange, still existed in full force.

Waff did not try to delude himself about Taraza. This woman was far more

dangerous than any Honored Matre. If he killed Taraza, she would be replaced

immediately by someone just as dangerous, someone with every essential piece of

information possessed by the present Mother Superior.

"We find your new Face Dancers very interesting," Taraza said.

Waff grimaced involuntarily. Yes, far more dangerous than the Honored Matres,

who were not yet even blaming the Tleilaxu for the loss of an entire no-ship.

Taraza glanced at the small double-faced digital clock on the low side table at

her right, a position where the clock could be read easily by either of them.

The Waff-side face had been matched to his internal clock. She noted that the

two internal-time readings stood within ten seconds of synchronization at an

arbitrary midafternoon. It was one of the niceties of this confrontation where

even the positioning and spacing between their chairs had been specified in the

arrangements.

The two of them were alone in the room. The oval space around them was about

six meters in its long dimension, half that in width. They occupied identical

sling chairs of peg-fastened wood, which supported orange fabric; not a bit of

metal or other foreign material in either of them. The only other furnishing of

the room was the side table with its clock. The table was a thin black surface

of plaz on three spindly wooden legs. Each of the principals in this meeting

had been snooped with care. Each had three personal guards outside the room's

one hatch. Taraza did not think the Tleilaxu would try a Face Dancer exchange,

not under the present circumstances!

"You will pay."

The Tleilaxu, too, were extremely aware of their vulnerability, especially now

that they knew a Reverend Mother could expose the new Face Dancers.

Waff cleared his throat. "I do not expect us to reach an agreement," he said.

"Then why did you come?"

"I seek an explanation of this odd message we have received from your Keep on

Rakis. For what are we supposed to pay?"

"I beg of you, Ser Waff, drop these foolish pretenses in this room. There are

facts known to both of us that cannot be avoided."

"Such as?"

"No female of the Bene Tleilax has ever been provided to us for breeding." And

she thought: Let him sweat that one! It was damnably frustrating not to have a

line of Tleilaxu Other Memories for Bene Gesserit investigation and Waff would

know it.

Waff scowled. "Surely you don't think I would bargain with the life of --" He

broke off and shook his head. "I cannot believe this is the payment you would

ask."

When Taraza did not respond, Waff said: "The stupid attack on the Rakian temple

was undertaken independently by people on the scene. They have been punished."

Expected gambit number three, Taraza thought.

She had participated in numerous analysis-briefings before this meeting, if one

could call them briefings. Analyses there had been in excess. Very little was

known about this Tleilaxu Master, this Tylwyth Waff. Some extremely important

optional projections had been arrived at by inference (if these proved to be

true). The trouble was that some of the most interesting data came from

unreliable sources. One salient fact could be depended upon, however: The

elfin figure seated across from her was deadly dangerous.

Waff's gambit number three engaged her attention. It was time to respond.

Taraza produced a knowing smile.

"That is precisely the kind of lie we expected from you," she said.

"Do we begin with insults?" He spoke without heat.

"You set the pattern. Let me warn you that you will not be able to deal with us

the way you dealt with those whores from the Scattering."

Waff's frozen stare invited Taraza to a daring gambit. The Sisterhood's

deductions, based partly on the disappearance of an Ixian conference ship, were

accurate! Maintaining her same smile, she now pursued the optional conjecture

line as though it were known fact. "I think," she said, "the whores might like

to learn that they have had Face Dancers among them."

Waff suppressed his anger. These damnable witches! They knew! Somehow, they

knew! His councillors had been extremely doubtful about this meeting. A

substantial minority had recommended against it. The witches were so . . . so

devilish. And their retaliations!

Time to shift his attention to Gammu, Taraza thought. Keep him off balance.

She said: "Even when you subvert one of us, as you did with Schwangyu on Gammu,

you learn nothing of value!"

Waff flared: "She thought to . . . to hire us like a band of assassins! We

only taught her a lesson!"

Ahhhh, his pride shows itself, Taraza thought. Interesting. The implications

of a moral structure behind such pride must be explored.

"You've never really penetrated our ranks," Taraza said.

"And you have never penetrated the Tleilaxu!" Waff managed to produce this

boast with passable calm. He needed time to think! To plan!

"Perhaps you would like to know the price of our silence," Taraza suggested.

She took Waff's stony glare for agreement and added: "For one thing, you will

share with us everything you learn about those Scattering-spawned whores who

call themselves Honored Matres."

Waff shuddered. Much had been confirmed by killing the Honored Matres. The

sexual intricacies! Only the strongest psyche could resist entanglement in such

ecstasies. The potential of this tool was enormous! Must that be shared with

these witches?

"Everything you learn from them," Taraza insisted.

"Why do you call them whores?"

"They try to copy us, yet they sell themselves for power and make a mockery of

everything we represent. Honored Matres!"

"They outnumber you at least ten thousand to one! We have seen the evidence."

"One of us could defeat them all," Taraza said.

Waff sat in silence, studying her. Was that merely a boast? You could never be

sure when it came to the Bene Gesserit witches. They did things. The dark side

of the magic universe belonged to them. On more than one occasion the witches

had blunted the Shariat. Was it God's will that the true believers pass through

another trial?

Taraza allowed the silence to continue building its own tensions. She sensed

Waff's turmoil. It reminded her of the Sisterhood's preliminary conference in

preparation for this meeting with him. Bellonda had asked the question of

deceptive simplicity:

"What do we really know about the Tleilaxu?"

Taraza had felt the answer surge into every mind around the Chapter House

conference table: We may know for sure only what they want us to know.

None of her analysts could avoid the suspicion that the Tleilaxu had

deliberately created a masking-image of themselves. Tleilaxu intelligence had

to be measured against the fact that they alone controlled the secret of the

axlotl tanks. Was that a lucky accident as some suggested? Then why had others

been unable to duplicate this accomplishment in all of these millennia?

Gholas.

Were the Tleilaxu using the ghola process for their own kind of immortality?

She could see suggestive hints in Waff's actions . . . nothing definite but

highly suspicious.

At the Chapter House conferences, Bellonda had returned repeatedly to their

basic suspicions, hammering at them: "All of it . . . all of it, I say!

Everything in our archives could be garbage fit only for slig fodder!"

This allusion had caused some of the more relaxed Reverend Mothers around the

table to shudder.

Sligs!

Those slowly creeping crosses between giant slugs and pigs might provide meat

for some of the most expensive meals in their universe but the creatures

themselves embodied everything the Sisterhood held repugnant about the Tleilaxu.

Sligs had been one of the earliest Bene Tleilax barter items, a product grown in

their tanks and formed with the helical core from which all life took its

shapes. That the Bene Tleilax made them added to the aura of obscenity around a

creature whose multimouths ground incessantly on almost any garbage, passing

that garbage swiftly into excrement that not only smelled of the sty but was

slimy.

"The sweetest meat this side of heaven," Bellonda had quoted from a CHOAM

promotion.

"And it comes from obscenity," Taraza had added.

Obscenity.

Taraza thought of this as she stared at Waff. For what possible reason might

people build around themselves a mask of obscenity? Waff's flare of pride could

not be fitted neatly into that image.

Waff coughed lightly into his hand. He felt the pressure of the seams where he

had concealed two of his potent dart-throwers. The minority among his

councillors had advised: "As with the Honored Matres, the winner in this

encounter with the Bene Gesserit will be the one who emerges carrying the most

secret information about the other. Death of the opponent guarantees success."

I might kill her but what then?

Three more full Reverend Mothers waited outside that hatch. Doubtless Taraza

had a signal prepared for the instant the hatch was opened. Without that

signal, violence and disaster were sure to ensue. He did not believe for an

instant that even his new Face Dancers could overcome those Reverend Mothers out

there. The witches would be on full alert. They would have recognized the

nature of Waff's guards.

"We will share," Waff said. The admissions implicit in this hurt him but he

knew he had no alternatives. Taraza's brag about relative abilities might be

inaccurate because of its extreme claim, but he sensed truth in it nonetheless.

He had no illusions, however, about what would ensue if the Honored Matres

learned what had actually happened to their envoys. The missing no-ship could

not yet be laid at the Tleilaxu door. Ships did vanish. Deliberate

assassination was another matter altogether. The Honored Matres surely would

try to exterminate such a brash opponent. If only as an example. Tleilaxu

returned from the Scattering said as much. Having seen Honored Matres, Waff now

believed those stories.

Taraza said: "My second agenda item for this meeting is our ghola."

Waff squirmed in the sling chair.

Taraza felt repelled by Waff's tiny eyes, the round face with its snub nose and

too-sharp teeth.

"You have been killing our gholas to control the movement of a project in which

you have no part other than to provide a single element," Taraza accused.

Waff once more wondered if he must kill her. Was nothing hidden from these

damnable witches? The implication that the Bene Gesserit had a traitor in the

Tleilaxu core could not be ignored. How else could they know?

He said: "I assure you, Reverend Mother Superior, that the ghola --

"Assure me of nothing! We assure ourselves." A look of sadness on her face,

Taraza shook her head slowly from side to side. "And you think we don't know

that you sold us damaged goods."

Waff spoke quickly: "He meets every requirement imposed by your contract!"

Again, Taraza shook her head from side to side. This diminutive Tleilaxu Master

had no idea what he was revealing here. "You have buried your own scheme in his

psyche," Taraza said. "I warn you, Ser Waff, that if your alterations obstruct

our design, we will wound you deeper than you think possible."

Waff passed a hand across his face, feeling the perspiration on his forehead.

Damnable witches! But she did not know everything. The Tleilaxu returned from

the Scattering and the Honored Matres she maligned so bitterly had provided the

Tleilaxu with a sexually loaded weapon that would not be shared, no matter the

promises made here!

Taraza digested Waff's reactions silently and decided on a bold lie. "When we

captured your Ixian conference ship, your new Face Dancers did not die quite

fast enough. We learned a great deal."

Waff poised himself on the edge of violence.

Bullseye! Taraza thought. The bold lie had opened an avenue of revelation into

one of the more outrageous suggestions from her advisors. It did not seem

outrageous now. "The Tleilaxu ambition is to produce a complete prana-bindu

mimic," her advisor had suggested.

"Complete?"

All of the Sisters at the conference had been astonished by the suggestion. It

implied a form of mental copy going beyond the memory print about which they

already knew.

The advisor, Sister Hesterion from Archives, had come armed with a tightly

organized list of supporting material. "We already know that what an Ixian

Probe does mechanically, the Tleilaxu do with nerves and flesh. The next step

is obvious."

Seeing Waff's reaction to her bold lie, Taraza continued to watch him carefully.

He was at his most dangerous right now.

A look of rage came over Waff's face. The things the witches knew were too

dangerous! He did not doubt Taraza's claim in the slightest. I must kill her

no matter the consequences to me! We must kill them all. Abominations! It's

their word and it describes them perfectly.

Taraza correctly interpreted his expression. She spoke quickly: "You are in

absolutely no danger from us as long as you do not injure our designs. Your

religion, your way of life, those are your business."

Waff hesitated, not so much from what Taraza said as from the reminder of her

powers. What else did they know? To continue in a subservient position,

though! After rejecting such an alliance with the Honored Matres. And with

ascendancy so near after all of those millennia. Dismay filled him. The

minority among his councillors had been right after all: "There can be no bond

between our peoples. Any accord with powindah forces is a union based upon

evil."

Taraza still sensed the potential violence in him. Had she pushed him too far?

She held herself in defensive readiness. An involuntary jerking of his arms

alerted her. Weapons in his sleeves! Tleilaxu resources were not to be

underestimated. Her snoopers had detected nothing.

"We know about the weapons you carry," she said. Another bold lie suggested

itself. "If you make a mistake now, the whores will also learn how you use

those weapons."

Waff took three shallow breaths. When he spoke, he had himself under control:

"We will not be Bene Gesserit satellites!"

Taraza responded in an even-toned, soothing voice: "I have not by word or

action suggested such a role for you."

She waited. There was no change in Waff's expression, no slightest shift in the

unfocused glare he directed at her.

"You threaten us," he muttered. "You demand that we share everything we --"

"Share!" she snapped. "One does not share with unequal partners."

"And what would you share with us?" he demanded.

She spoke with the chiding tone she would use to a child: "Ser Waff, ask

yourself why you, a ruling member of your oligarchy, came to this meeting?"

His voice still firmly controlled, Waff countered: "And why did you, Mother

Superior of the Bene Gesserit, come here?"

She spoke mildly: "To strengthen us."

"You did not say what you would share," he accused. "You still hope for

advantage."

Taraza continued to watch him carefully. She had seldom sensed such suppressed

rage in a human. "Ask me openly what you want," she said.

"And you will give it out of your great generosity!"

"I will negotiate."

"Where was the negotiation when you ordered me . . . ORDERED ME! to --

"You came here firmly resolved to break any agreement we made," she said. "Not

once have you tried to negotiate! You sit in front of someone willing to

bargain with you and you can only --"

"Bargain?" Waff's memory was hurled back to the Honored Matre's anger at that

word.

"I said it," Taraza said. "Bargain."

Something like a smile twitched the corners of Waff's mouth. "You think I have

authority to bargain with you?"

"Have a care, Ser Waff," she said. "You have the ultimate authority. It

resides in that final ability to destroy an opponent utterly. I have not

threatened that, but you have." She glanced at his sleeves.

Waff sighed. What a quandary. She was powindah! How could one bargain with a

powindah?

"We have a problem that cannot be resolved by rational means," Taraza said.

Waff hid his surprise. Those were the very words the Honored Matre had used!

He cringed inwardly at what that might signify. Could Bene Gesserit and Honored

Matres make common cause? Taraza's bitterness argued otherwise, but when were

the witches to be trusted?

Once more, Waff wondered if he dared sacrifice himself to eliminate this witch.

What would it serve? Others among them surely knew what she knew. It would

only precipitate the disaster. There was that internal dispute among the

witches, but, again, that might just be another ruse.

"You ask us to share something," Taraza said. "What if I were to offer you some

of our prize human bloodlines?"

There was no mistaking how Waff's interest quickened.

He said: "Why should we come to you for such things? We lave our tanks and we

can pick up genetic examples almost anywhere."

"Examples of what?" she asked.

Waff sighed. You could never escape that Bene Gesserit incisiveness. It was

like a sword thrust. He guessed that he had revealed things to her that led

naturally to this subject. The damage already had been done. She correctly

deduced (or spies had told her!) that the wild pool of human genes held little

interest for the Tleilaxu with their more sophisticated knowledge of life's

innermost language. It never paid to underestimate either the Bene Gesserit or

the products of their breeding programs. God Himself knew they had produced

Muad'dib and the Prophet!

"What more would you demand in exchange for this?" he asked.

"Bargaining at last!" Taraza said. "We both know, of course, that I am offering

breeding mothers of the Atreides line." And she thought: "Let him hope for

that! They will look like Atreides but they will not be Atreides!"

Waff felt his pulse quicken. Was this possible? Did she have the slightest

idea what the Tleilaxu might learn from an examination of such source material?

"We would want first selection of their offspring," Taraza said.

"No!"

"Alternate first selection, then?"

"Perhaps. "

"What do you mean, perhaps?" She leaned forward. Waff's intensity told her she

was on a hot trail.

"What else would you ask of us?"

"Our breeding mothers must have unfettered access to your genetic laboratories."

"Are you mad?" Waff shook his head in exasperation. Did she think the Tleilaxu

would give away their strongest weapon just like that?

"Then we will accept a fully operational axlotl tank."

Waff merely stared at her.

Taraza shrugged. "I had to try."

"I suppose you did."

Taraza sat back and reviewed what she had learned here. Waff's reaction to that

Zensunni probe had been interesting. "A problem that cannot be resolved by

rational means." The words had produced a subtle effect on him. He had seemed

to rise out of some place within himself, a questioning look in his eyes. Gods

preserve us all! Is Waff a secret Zensunni?

No matter the dangers, this had to be explored. Odrade must be armed with every

possible advantage on Rakis.

"Perhaps we have done all we can for now," Taraza said. "There is time to

complete our bargain. God alone in His infinite mercy has given us infinite

universes where anything may happen."

Waff clapped his hands once without thinking. "The gift of surprises is the

greatest gift of all!" he said.

Not just Zensunni, Taraza thought. Sufi also. Sufi! She began to readjust her

perspective on the Tleilaxu. How long have they been holding this close to

their breasts?

"Time does not count itself," Taraza said, probing. "One has only to look at

any circle."

"Suns are circles," Waff said. "Each universe is a circle." He held his breath

waiting for her response.

"Circles are enclosures," Taraza said, picking the proper response out of her

Other Memories. "Whatever encloses and limits must expose itself to the

infinite."

Waff raised his hands to show her his palms then dropped his arms into his lap.

His shoulders lost some of their tense upward thrust. "Why did you not say

these things at the beginning?" he asked.

I must exercise great care, Taraza cautioned herself. The admissions in Waff's

words and manner required careful review.

"What has passed between us reveals nothing unless we speak more openly," she

said. "Even then, we would only be using words."

Waff studied her face, trying to read in that Bene Gesserit mask some

confirmation of the things implied by her words and manner. She was powindah,

he reminded himself. The powindah could never be trusted . . . but if she