Thump-thump! It was a sensation of movement and no sound. He could not fix the

source.

What is happening to me?

Words blazoned in brilliant white against a black background played across his

visual centers:

"I'm back to one-third."

"Leave it at that. See if we can read him through his physical reactions."

"Can he still hear us?"

"Not consciously."

None of Teg's instructions had told him a probe could do its evil work in the

presence of shere. But they called this a T-probe. Could bodily reactions

provide a clue to suppressed thoughts? Were there revelations to be explored by

physical means?

Again, words played against Teg's visual centers: "Is he still isolated?"

"Completely."

"Make sure. Take him a little deeper."

Teg tried to lift his awareness above his fears.

I must remain in control!

What might his body reveal if he had no contact with it? He could imagine what

they were doing and his mind registered panic but his flesh could not feel it.

Isolate the subject. Give him nowhere to seat his identity.

Who had said that? Someone. The sense of deja vu returned in full force.

I am a Mentat, he reminded himself. My mind and its workings are my center. He

possessed experiences and memories upon which a center could rely.

Pain returned. Sounds. Loud! Much too loud!

"He's hearing again." That was Yar.

"How can that be?" The functionary's tenor.

"Perhaps you've set it too low." Materly.

Teg tried to open his eyes. The lids would not obey. He remembered then. They

had called it a T-probe. This was no Ixian device. This was something from the

Scattering. He could identify where it took over his muscles and senses. It

was like another person sharing his flesh, preempting his own reactive patterns.

He allowed himself to follow the workings of this machine's intrusions. It was

a hellish device! It could order him to blink, fart, gasp, shit, piss --

anything. It could command his body as though he had no thinking part in his

own behavior. He was relegated to the role of observer.

Odors assailed him -- disgusting odors. He would not command himself to frown

but he thought of frowning. That was sufficient. These odors had been elicited

by the probe. It was playing his senses, learning them.

"Do you have enough to read him?" The functionary's tenor.

"He's still hearing us!" Yar.

"Damn all Mentats!" Materly.

"Dit, Dat, and Dot," Teg said, naming the puppets of the Winter Show from his

childhood on long-ago Lernaeus.

"He's talking!" The functionary.

Teg felt his awareness being blocked off by the machine. Yar was doing

something at the console. Still, Teg knew his own Mentat logic had told him

something vital: These three were puppets. Only the puppet masters were

important. How the puppets moved -- that told you what the puppet masters were

doing.

The probe continued to intrude. Despite the force being applied, Teg felt his

awareness matching the thing. It was learning him but he was also learning it.

He understood now. The whole spectrum of his senses could be copied into this

T-probe and identified, tagged for Yar to call up when needed. An organic chain

of responses existed within Teg. The machine could trace those out as though it

made a duplicate of him. The shere and his Mentat resistance shunted the

searchers away from his memories but everything else could be copied.

It will not think like me, he reassured himself.

The machine would not be the same as his nerves and flesh. It would not have

Teg-memories or Teg-experiences. It had not been born of woman. It had never

traveled down a birth canal and emerged into this astonishing universe.

Part of Teg's awareness applied a memory marker, telling him that this

observation revealed something about the ghola.

Duncan was decanted from an axlotl tank.

The observation came to Teg with a sudden sharp biting of acid on his tongue.

The T-probe again!

Teg allowed himself to flow through a multiple simultaneous awareness. He

followed the T-probe's workings and continued to explore this observation about

the ghola, all the while listening for Dit, Dat, and Dot. The three puppets

were oddly silent. Yes, waiting for their T-probe to complete its task.

The ghola: Duncan was an extension of cells that had been born of a woman

impregnated by a man.

Machine and ghola!

Observation: The machine cannot share that birth experience except in a

remotely vicarious way sure to miss important personal nuances.

Just as it was missing other things in him right now.

The T-probe was replaying smells. With each induced odor, memories revealed

their presence in Teg's mind. He felt the great speed of the T-probe but his

own awareness lived outside of that headlong rushing search, able to entangle

him for as long as he desired in the memories being called up here.

There!

That was the hot wax he had spilled on his left hand when only fourteen and a

student in the Bene Gesserit school. He recalled school and laboratory as

though his only existence were there at this moment. The school is attached to

Chapter House. By being admitted here, Teg knew he had the blood of Siona in

his veins. No prescient could track him here.

He saw the lab and smelled the wax -- a compound of artificial esters and the

natural product of bees kept by failed Sisters and their helpers. He turned his

memory to a moment when he watched bees and people at their labors in the apple

orchards.

The workings of the Bene Gesserit social structure appeared so complicated until

you saw through to the necessities: food, clothing, warmth, communication,

learning, protection from enemies (a subset of the survival drive). Bene

Gesserit survival took some adjustments before it could be understood. They did

not procreate for the sake of humankind in general. No unmonitored racial

involvement! They procreated to extend their own powers, to continue the Bene

Gesserit, deeming that a sufficient service to humankind. Perhaps it was.

Procreative motivation went deep and the Sisterhood was so thorough.

A new smell assailed him.

He recognized the wet wool of his clothing as he came into the command pod after

the Battle of Ponciard. The smell filled his nostrils and elicited the ozone of

the pod's instruments, the sweat of the other occupants. Wool! The Sisterhood

had always thought it a bit odd of him, the way he preferred natural fabrics and

shunned the synthetics turned out in captive factories.

No more did he care for chairdogs.

I don't like the smells of oppression in any form.

Did these puppets -- Dit, Dat, and Dot -- know how oppressed they were?

Mentat logic sneered at him. Were not wool fabrics also a product of captive

factories?

It was different.

Part of him argued otherwise. Synthetics could be stored almost indefinitely.

Look how long they had endured in the nullentropy bins of the Harkonnen noglobe.

"I still prefer woolens and cottons!"

So be it!

"But how did I come by such a preference?"

It is an Atreides prejudice. You inherited it.

Teg shunted the smells aside and concentrated on the total movement of the

intrusive probe. He found presently that he could anticipate the thing. It was

a new muscle. He allowed himself to flex it while he continued to examine the

induced memories for valuable insights.

I sit outside my mother's door on Lernaeus.

Teg removed part of his awareness and watched the scene: age eleven. He is

talking to a small Bene Gesserit acolyte who came as part of the escort for

Somebody Important. The acolyte is a tiny thing with red-blond hair and a

doll's face. Upturned nose, green-gray eyes. The SI is a black-robed Reverend

Mother of truly ancient appearance. She has gone behind that nearby door with

Teg's mother. The acolyte, who is named Carlana, is trying her fledgling skills

on the young son of the house.

Before Carlana utters twenty words, Miles Teg recognizes the pattern. She is

trying to pry information out of him! This was one of the first lessons in

delicate dissembling taught by his mother. There were, after all, people who

might question a young boy about a Reverend Mother's household, hoping thereby

to gain salable information. There is always a market for data about Reverend

Mothers.

His mother explained: "You judge the questioner and fit your responses

according to the susceptibilities." None of this would have served against a

full Reverend Mother, but against an acolyte, especially this one!

For Carlana, he produces an appearance of coy reluctance. Carlana has an

inflated view of her own attractions. He allows her to overcome his reluctance

after a suitable marshaling of her forces. What she gets is a handful of lies,

which, if she ever repeats them to the SI behind that closed door, are sure to

win Carlana a severe censuring if not something more painful.

Words from Dit, Dat, and Dot: "I think we have him now."

Teg recognized Yar's voice yanking him out of old memories. "Fit your responses

according to the susceptibilities." Teg heard the words in his mother's voice.

Puppets.

Puppet masters.

The functionary speaks: "Ask the simulation where they have taken the ghola."

Silence and then a faint humming.

"I'm not getting anything." Yar.

Teg hears their voices with painful sensitivity. He forces his eyes to open

against the opposing commands of the probe.

"Look!" Yar says.

Three sets of eyes stare back at Teg. How slowly they move. Dit, Dat, and Dot:

the eyes go blink . . . blink . . . at least a minute between blinks. Yar is

reaching for something on his console. His fingers will take a week to reach

their destination.

Teg explores the bindings on his hands and arms. Ordinary rope! Taking his

time, he squirms his fingers into contact with the knots. They loosen, slowly

at first, and then flying apart. He moves on to the straps holding him to the

sling litter. These are easier: simple slip locks. Yar's hand is not even a

fourth of the way to the console.

Blink . . . blink . . . blink . . .

The three sets of eyes show faint surprise.

Teg releases himself from the medusa tangle of probe contacts. Pop-pop-pop!

The grippers fly away from him. He is surprised to notice a slow start of

bleeding on the back of his right hand where it has brushed the probe contacts

aside.

Mentat projection: I am moving with dangerous speed.

But now he is off the litter. Functionary is reaching a slow-slow hand toward a

bulge in a side pocket. Teg's hand crushes the functionary's throat.

Functionary will never again touch that little lasgun he always carries. Yar's

outstretched hand is still not a third of the way to the probe console. There

is definite surprise in his eyes, though. Teg doubts that the man even sees the

hand that breaks his neck. Materly is moving a bit faster. Her left foot is

coming toward where Teg had been just the flick of an instant previously. Still

too slow! Materly's head is thrown back, the throat exposed for Teg's downchopping

hand.

How slowly they fall to the floor!

Teg became aware of perspiration pouring from him but he could not spare time to

worry about this.

I knew every move they would make before they made it! What has happened to me?

Mentat projection: The probe agony has lifted me to a new level of ability.

Intense hunger pangs made him aware of the energy drain. He pushed the

sensation aside, feeling himself return to a normal time beat. Three dull

sounds: bodies falling to the floor.

Teg examined the probe console. Definitely not Ixian. Similar controls,

though. He shorted out the data storage system, erasing it.

Room lights?

Controls beside the door from the outside. He extinguished the lights, took

three deep breaths. A whirling blur of motion erupted into the night.

The ones who had brought him here, clad in their bulky clothing against the

winter chill, barely had time to turn toward the odd sound before the whirling

blur struck them down.

Teg returned to normal time-beat more quickly. Starlight showed him a trail

leading downslope through thick brush. He slipped and slid on the snow-churned

mud for a space and then found the way to balance himself, anticipating the

terrain. Each step went where he knew it must go. He found himself presently

in an open space that looked out across a valley.

The lights of a city and a great black rectangle of building near the center.

He knew this place: Ysai. The puppet masters were there.

I am free!

There was a man who sat each day looking out through a narrow vertical opening

where a single board had been removed from a tall wooden fence. Each day a wild

ass of the desert passed outside the fence and across the narrow opening --

first the nose, then the head, the forelegs, the long brown back, the hindlegs,

and lastly the tail. One day, the man leaped to his feet with the light of

discovery in his eyes and he shouted for all who could hear him: "It is

obvious! The nose causes the tail!"

-Stories of the Hidden Wisdom, from the Oral History of Rakis

Several times since coming to Rakis, Odrade had found herself caught in the

memory of that ancient painting which occupied such a prominent place on the

wall of Taraza's Chapter House quarters. When the memory came, she felt her

hands tingle to the touch of the brush. Her nostrils swelled to the induced

smells of oils and pigments. Her emotions assaulted the canvas. Each time,

Odrade emerged from the memory with new doubts that Sheeana was her canvas.

Which of us paints the other?

It had happened again this morning. Still dark outside the Rakian Keep's

penthouse where she quartered with Sheeana: An acolyte entered softly to waken

Odrade and tell her that Taraza would arrive shortly. Odrade looked up at the

softly illuminated face of the dark-haired acolyte and immediately that memorypainting

flashed into her awareness.

Which of us truly creates another?

"Let Sheeana sleep a bit longer," Odrade said before dismissing the acolyte.

"Will you breakfast before the Mother Superior's arrival?" the acolyte asked.

"We will wait upon Taraza's pleasure."

Arising, Odrade went through a swift toilet and donned her best black robe. She

strode then to the east window of the penthouse common room and looked out in

the direction of the spacefield. Many moving lights cast a glow on the dusty

sky there. She activated all of the room's glowglobes to soften the exterior

view. The globes became reflected golden starbursts on the thick armor-plaz of

the windows. The dusky surface also reflected a dim outline of her own

features, showing the fatigue lines clearly.

I knew she would come, Odrade thought.

Even as she thought this, the Rakian sun came over the dust-blurred horizon like

a child's orange ball thrust into view. Immediately, there was the heat-bounce

that so many observers of Rakis had mentioned. Odrade turned away from the view

and saw the hall door open.

Taraza entered with a rustle of robes. A hand closed the door behind her,

leaving the two of them alone. The Mother Superior advanced on Odrade, black

hood up and the cowl framing her face. It was not a reassuring sight.

Recognizing the disturbance in Odrade, Taraza played on it. "Well, Dar, I think

we finally meet as strangers."

The effect of Taraza's words startled Odrade. She correctly interpreted the

threat but fear left her, spilling out as though it were water poured from a

jug. For the first time in her life, Odrade recognized the precise moment of

crossing a dividing line. This was a line whose existence she thought few of

her Sisters suspected. As she crossed it, she realized that she had always

known it was there: a place where she could enter the void and float free. She

no longer was vulnerable. She could be killed but she could not be defeated.

"So it's not Dar and Tar anymore," Odrade said.

Taraza heard the clear, uninhibited tone of Odrade's voice and interpreted this

as confidence. "Perhaps it never was Dar and Tar," she said, her voice icy. "I

see that you think you have been extremely clever."

The battle has been joined, Odrade thought. But I do not stand in the path of

her attack.

Odrade said: "The alternatives to alliance with the Tleilaxu could not be

accepted. Especially when I recognized what it was you truly sought for us."

Taraza felt suddenly weary. It had been a long trip despite the space-folding

leaps of her no-ship. The flesh always knew when it had been twisted out of its

familiar rhythms. She chose a soft divan and sat down, sighing in the luxurious

comfort.

Odrade recognized the Mother Superior's fatigue and felt immediate sympathy.

They were suddenly two Reverend Mothers with common problems.

Taraza obviously sensed this. She patted the cushion beside her and waited for

Odrade to be seated.

"We must preserve the Sisterhood," Taraza said. "That is the only important

thing."

"Of course."

Taraza fixed her gaze searchingly on Odrade's familiar features. Yes, Odrade,

too, is weary. "You have been here, intimately touching the people and the

problem," Taraza said. "I want . . . no, Dar, I need your views."

"The Tleilaxu give the appearance of full cooperation," Odrade said, "but there

is dissembling in this. I have begun to ask myself some extremely disturbing

questions."

"Such as?"

"What if the axlotl tanks are not . . . tanks?"

"What do you mean?"

"Waff reveals the kinds of behavior you see when a family tries to conceal a

deformed child or a mad uncle. I swear to you, he is embarrassed when we begin

to touch on the tanks."

"But what could they possibly . . .

"Surrogate mothers."

"But they would have to be . . ." Taraza fell silent, shocked by the

possibilities this question opened.

"Who has ever seen a Tleilaxu female?" Odrade asked.

Taraza's mind was filled with objections: "But the precise chemical control,

the need to limit variables . . ." She threw her hood back and shook her hair

free. "You are correct: we must question everything. This, though . . . this

is monstrous."

"He is still not telling the full truth about our ghola."

"What does he say?"

"No more than what I have already reported: a variation on the original Duncan

Idaho and meeting all of the prana-bindu requirements we specified."

"That does not explain why they killed or tried to kill our previous purchases."

"He swears the holy oath of the Great Belief that they acted out of shame

because the eleven previous gholas did not live up to expectations."

"How could they know? Does he suggest they have spies among . . ."

"He swears not. I taxed him with this and he said that a successful ghola would

be sure to create a visible disturbance among us."

"What visible disturbance? What is he . . ."

"He will not say. He returns each time to the claim that they have met their

contractual obligations. Where is the ghola, Tar?"

"What . . . oh. On Gammu."

"I hear rumors of . . ."

"Burzmali has the situation well in hand." Taraza closed her mouth tightly,

hoping that was the truth. The most recent report did not fill her with

confidence.

"You obviously are debating whether to have the ghola killed," Odrade said.

"Not just the ghola!"

Odrade smiled. "Then it's true that Bellonda wants me permanently eliminated."

"How did you . . ."

"Friendships can be a very valuable asset at times, Tar."

"You tread on dangerous ground, Reverend Mother Odrade."

"But I am not stumbling, Mother Superior Taraza. I am thinking long hard

thoughts about the things Waff has revealed about those Honored Matres."

"Tell me some of your thoughts." There was implacable determination in Taraza's

voice.

"Let us make no mistakes about this," Odrade said. "They have surpassed the

sexual skills of our Imprinters."

"Whores!"

"Yes, they employ their skills in a way ultimately fatal to themselves and

others. They have been blinded by their own power."

"Is that the extent of your long hard thoughts?"

"Tell me, Tar, why did they attack and obliterate our Keep on Gammu?"

"Obviously they were after our Idaho ghola, to capture him or kill him."

"Why would that be so important to them?"

"What are you trying to say?" Taraza demanded.

"Could the whores have been acting upon information revealed to them by the

Tleilaxu? Tar, what if this secret thing Waff's people have introduced into our

ghola is something that would make the ghola a male equivalent of the Honored

Matres?"

Taraza put a hand to her mouth and dropped it quickly when she saw how much the

gesture revealed. It was too late. No matter. They were still two Reverend

Mothers together.

Odrade said: "And we have ordered Lucilla to make him irresistible to most

women."

"How long have the Tleilaxu been dealing with those whores?" Taraza demanded.

Odrade shrugged. "A better question is this: How long have they been dealing

with their own Lost Ones returned from the Scattering? Tleilaxu speak to

Tleilaxu and many secrets could be revealed."

"A brilliant projection on your part," Taraza said. "What probability value do

you attach to it?"

"You know that as well as I do. It would explain many things."

Taraza spoke bitterly. "What do you think of your alliance with the Tleilaxu

now?"

"More necessary than ever. We must be on the inside. We must be where we can

influence those who contend."

"Abomination!" Taraza snapped.

"What?"

"This ghola is like a recording device in human shape. They have planted him in

our midst. If the Tleilaxu get their hands on him they will know many things

about us."

"That would be clumsy."

"And typical of them!"

"I agree that there are other implications in our situation," Odrade said. "But

such arguments only tell me that we dare not kill the ghola until we have

examined him ourselves."

"That might be too late! Damn your alliance, Dar! You gave them a hold on us .

. . and us a hold on them -- and neither of us dares let go."

"Is that not the perfect alliance?"

Taraza sighed. "How soon must we give them access to our breeding records?"

"Soon. Waff is pressing the matter."

"Then, will we see their axlotl . . . tanks?"

"That is, of course, the lever I am using. He has given his reluctant

agreement."

"Deeper and deeper into each other's pockets," Taraza growled.

Her tone all innocence, Odrade said: "A perfect alliance, just as I said."

"Damn, damn, damn," Taraza muttered. "And Teg has reawakened the ghola's

original memories!"

"But has Lucilla . . ."

"I don't know!" Taraza turned a grim expression on Odrade and recounted the

most recent reports from Gammu: Teg and his party located, the briefest of

accounts about them and nothing from Lucilla; plans made to bring them out.

Her own words produced an unsettling picture in Taraza's mind. What was this

ghola? They had always known the Duncan Idahos were not ordinary gholas. But

now, with augmented nerve and muscle capabilities plus this unknown thing the

Tleilaxu had introduced -- it was like holding a burning club. You knew you

might have to use the club for your own survival but the flames approached at a

terrifying speed.

Odrade spoke in a musing tone: "Have you ever tried to imagine what it must be

like for a ghola suddenly to awaken in renewed flesh?"

"What? What are you . . ."

"Realizing that your flesh was grown from the cells of a cadaver," Odrade said.

"He remembers his own death."

"The Idahos were never ordinary people," Taraza said.

"The same may be said for these Tleilaxu Masters."

"What are you trying to say?"

Odrade rubbed her own forehead, taking a moment to review her thoughts. This

was so difficult with someone who rejected affection, with someone who thrust

outward from a core of rage. Taraza had no . . . no simpatico. She could not

assume the flesh and senses of another except as an exercise in logic.

"A ghola's awakening must be a shattering experience," Odrade said, lowering her

hand. "Only the ones with enormous mental resilience would survive."

"We assume that the Tleilaxu Masters are more than they appear to be."

"And the Duncan Idahos?"

"Of course. Why else would the Tyrant keep buying them from the Tleilaxu?"

Odrade saw that the argument was pointless. She said: "The Idahos were

notoriously loyal to the Atreides and we must remember that I am Atreides."

"You think loyalty will bind this one to you?"

"Especially after Lucilla --"

"That may be too dangerous!"

Odrade sat back into a corner of the divan. Taraza wanted certainty. And the

lives of the serial gholas were like melange, presenting a different taste in

different surroundings. How could they be sure of their ghola?

"The Tleilaxu meddle with the forces that produced our Kwisatz Haderach," Taraza

muttered.

"You think that's why they want our breeding records?"

"I don't know! Damn you, Dar! Don't you see what you've done?"

"I think I had no choice," Odrade said.

Taraza produced a cold smile. Odrade's performance remained superb but she

needed to be put in her place.

"You think I would have done the same?" Taraza asked.

She still does not see what has happened to me, Odrade thought. Taraza had

expected her pliant Dar to act with independence but the extent of that

independence had shaken the High Council. Taraza refused to see her own hand in

this.

"Customary practice," Odrade said.

The words struck Taraza like a slap in the face. Only the hard training of a

Bene Gesserit lifetime prevented her from striking out violently at Odrade.

Customary practice!

How many times had Taraza herself revealed this as a source of irritation, a

constant goad to her carefully capped rage? Odrade had heard it often.

Odrade quoted the Mother Superior now: "Immovable custom is dangerous. Enemies

can find a pattern and use it against you."

The words were forced from Taraza: "That is a weakness, yes."

"Our enemies thought they knew our way," Odrade said. "Even you, Mother

Superior, thought you knew the limits within which I would perform. I was like

Bellonda. Before she even spoke, you knew what Bellonda would say."

"Have we made a mistake, not elevating you above me?" Taraza asked. She spoke

from her deepest allegiance.

"No, Mother Superior. We walk a delicate path but both of us can see where we

must go."

"Where is Waff now?" Taraza asked.

"Asleep and well guarded."

"Summon Sheeana. We must decide whether to abort that part of the project."

"And take our lumps?"

"As you say, Dar."

Sheeana was still sleepy and rubbing her eyes when she appeared in the common

room but she obviously had taken the time to splash water on her face and dress

in a clean white robe. Her hair was still damp.

Taraza and Odrade stood near an eastern window with their backs to the light.

"This is Sheeana, Mother Superior," Odrade said.

Sheeana came fully alert with an abrupt stiffening of her back. She had heard

of this powerful woman, this Taraza, who ruled the Sisterhood from a distant

citadel called Chapter House. Sunlight was bright in the window behind the two

women, shining full into Sheeana's face, dazzling her. It left the faces of the

two Reverend Mothers partly obscured, the black outlines of their figures fuzzy

in the brilliance.

Acolyte instructors had prepared her against this encounter: "You stand at

attention before the Mother Superior and speak respectfully. Respond only when

she speaks to you."

Sheeana stood at rigid attention the way she had been told.

"I am informed that you may become one of us," Taraza said.

Both women could see the effect of this on the girl. By now, Sheeana was more

fully aware of a Reverend Mother's accomplishments. The powerful beam of truth

had been focused on her. She had begun to grasp at the enormous body of

knowledge the Sisterhood had accumulated over the millennia. She had been told

about selective memory transmission, about the workings of Other Memories, about

the spice agony. And here before her stood the most powerful of all Reverend

Mothers, one from whom nothing was hidden.

When Sheeana did not respond, Taraza said: "Have you nothing to say, child?"

"What is there to say, Mother Superior? You have said it all."

Taraza sent a searching glance at Odrade. "Have you any other little surprises

for me, Dar?"

"I told you she was superior," Odrade said.

Taraza returned her attention to Sheeana. "Are you proud of that opinion,

child?"

"It frightens me, Mother Superior."

Still holding her face as immobile as she could, Sheeana breathed more easily.

Say only the deepest truth you can sense, she reminded herself. Those warning

words from a teacher carried more meaning now. She kept her eyes slightly

unfocused and aimed at the floor directly in front of the two women, avoiding

the worst of the brilliant sunlight. She still felt her heart beating too

rapidly and knew the Reverend Mothers would detect this. Odrade had

demonstrated it many times.

"Well it should frighten you," Taraza said.

Odrade asked: "Do you understand what is being said to you, Sheeana?"

"The Mother Superior wishes to know if I am fully committed to the Sisterhood,"

Sheeana said.

Odrade looked at Taraza and shrugged. There was no need for more discussion of

this between them. That was the way of it when you were part of one family as

they were in the Bene Gesserit.

Taraza continued her silent study of Sheeana. It was a heavy gaze, energydraining

for Sheeana, who knew she must remain silent and permit that scorching

examination.

Odrade put down feelings of sympathy. Sheeana was like herself as a young girl,

in so many ways. She had that globular intellect which expanded on all surfaces

the way a balloon expanded when filled. Odrade recalled how her own teachers

had been admiring of this, but wary, just the way Taraza was now wary. Odrade

had recognized this wariness while even younger than Sheeana and held no doubts

that Sheeana saw it here. Intellect had its uses.

"Mmmmmm," Taraza said.

Odrade heard the humming sound of the Mother Superior's internal reflections as

part of a simulflow. Odrade's own memory had surged backward. The Sisters who

had brought Odrade her food when she studied late had always loitered to observe

her in their special way, just as Sheeana was watched and monitored at all

times. Odrade had known about those special ways of observing from an early

age. That was, after all, one of the great lures of the Bene Gesserit. You

wanted to be capable of such esoteric abilities. Sheeana certainly possessed

this desire. It was the dream of every postulant.

That such things might be possible for me!

Taraza spoke finally: "What is it you think you want from us, child?"

"The same things you thought you wanted when you were my age, Mother Superior."

Odrade suppressed a smile. Sheeana's wild sense of independence had skated

close to insolence there and Taraza certainly recognized this.

"You think that is a proper use for the gift of life?" Taraza asked.

"It is the only use I know, Mother Superior."

"Your candor is appreciated but I warn you to be careful in your use of it,"

Taraza said.

"Yes, Mother Superior."

"You already owe us much and you will owe us more," Taraza said. "Remember

that. Our gifts do not come cheaply."

Sheeana has not the vaguest appreciation of what she will pay for our gifts,

Odrade thought.

The Sisterhood never let its initiates forget what they owed and must repay.

You did not repay with love. Love was dangerous and Sheeana already was

learning this. The gift of life? A shudder began to course through Odrade and

she cleared her throat to compensate.

Am I alive? Perhaps when they took me away from Mama Sibia I died. I was alive

there in that house but did I live after the Sisters removed me?

Taraza said: "You may leave us now, Sheeana."

Sheeana turned on one heel and left the room but not before Odrade saw the tight

smile on the young face. Sheeana knew she had passed the Mother Superior's

examination.

When the door closed behind Sheeana, Taraza said: "You mentioned her natural

ability with Voice. I heard it, of course. Remarkable."

"She kept it well bridled," Odrade said. "She has learned not to try it on us."

"What do we have there, Dar?"

"Perhaps someday a Mother Superior of extraordinary abilities."

"Not too extraordinary?"

"We will have to see."

"Do you think she is capable of killing for us?"

Odrade was startled and showed it. "Now?"

"Yes, of course."

"The ghola?"

"Teg would not do it," Taraza said. "I even have doubts about Lucilla. Their

reports make it clear that he is capable of forging powerful bonds of . . . of

affinity."

"Even as I?"

"Schwangyu herself was not completely immune."

"Where is the noble purpose in such an act?" Odrade asked. "Isn't this what the

Tyrant's warning has --"

"Him? He killed many times!"

"And paid for it."

"We pay for everything we take, Dar."

"Even for a life?"

"Never forget for one instant, Dar, that a Mother Superior is capable of making

any necessary decision for the Sisterhood's survival!"

"So be it," Odrade said. "Take what you want and pay for it."

It was the proper reply but it reinforced the new strength Odrade felt, this

freedom to respond in her own way within a new universe. Where had such

toughness originated? Was it something out of her cruel Bene Gesserit

conditioning? Was it from her Atreides ancestry? She did not try to fool

herself that this came from a decision never again to follow another's moral

guidance rather than her own. This inner stability upon which she now stationed

herself was not a pure morality. Not bravado, either. Those were never enough.

"You are very like your father," Taraza said. "Usually, it's the dam who

provides most of the courage but this time I think it was the father."

"Miles Teg is admirably courageous but I think you oversimplify," Odrade said.

"Perhaps I do. But I have been right about you at every turn, Dar, even back

there when we were student postulants."

She knows! Odrade thought.

"We don't need to explain it," Odrade said. And she thought: It comes from

being born who I am, trained and shaped the way I was . . . the way we both

were: Dar and Tar.

"It's something in the Atreides line that we have not fully analyzed," Taraza

said.

"No genetic accidents?"

"I sometimes wonder if we've suffered any real accidents since the Tyrant,"

Taraza said.

"Did he stretch out back there in his citadel and look across the millennia to

this very moment?"

"How far back would you reach for the roots?" Taraza asked.

Odrade said: "What really happens when a Mother Superior commands the Breeding

Mistresses: 'Have that one go breed with that one'?"

Taraza produced a cold smile.

Odrade felt herself suddenly at the crest of a wave, awareness pushing all of

her over into this new realm. Taraza wants my rebellion! She wants me as her

opponent!

"Will you see Waff now?" Odrade asked.

"First, I want your assessment of him."

"He sees us as the ultimate tool to create the 'Tleilaxu Ascendancy.' We are

God's gift to his people."

"They have been waiting a long time for this," Taraza said. "To dissemble so

carefully, all of them for all of those eons!"

"They have our view of time," Odrade agreed. "That was the final thing to

convince them we share their Great Belief."

"But why the clumsiness?" Taraza asked. "They are not stupid."

"It diverted our attention from how they were really using their ghola process,"

Odrade said. "Who could believe stupid people would do such a thing?"

"And what have they created?" Taraza asked. "Only the image of evil stupidity?"

"Act stupid long enough and you become stupid," Odrade said. "Perfect the

mimicry of your Face Dancers and . . ."

"Whatever happens, we must punish them," Taraza said. "I see that clearly.

Have him brought up here."

After Odrade had given the order and while they waited, Taraza said: "The

sequencing of the ghola's education became a shambles even before they escaped

from the Gammu Keep. He leaped ahead of his teachers to grasp things that were

only implied and he did this at an alarmingly accelerated rate. Who knows what

he has become by now?"

Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They recreate the

past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the

future as well.

-Leto II, His Voice, from Dar-es-Balat

Duncan followed his guide through the dawn light at a punishing clip. The man

might look old but he was as springy as a gazelle and seemed incapable of

tiring.

Only a few minutes ago they had put aside their night goggles. Duncan was glad

to be rid of them. Everything outside the reach of the glasses had been black

in the dim starlight filtering through heavy branches. There had been no world

ahead of him beyond the range of the glasses. The view at both sides jerked and

flowed -- now a clump of yellow bushes, now two silver-bark trees, now a stone

wall with a plasteel gate cut into it and guarded by the flickering blue of a

burn-shield, then an arched bridge of native rock, all green and black

underfoot. After that, an arched entry of polished white stone. The structures

all appeared very old and expensive, maintained by costly handwork.

Duncan had no idea where he was. None of this terrain recalled his memories of

the long-lost Giedi Prime days.

Dawn revealed that they were following a tree-shielded animal track up a

hillside. The climb became steep. Occasional glimpses through trees on their

left revealed a valley. A hanging mist stood guard over the sky, hiding the

distances, enclosing them as they climbed. Their world became progressively a

smaller place as it lost its connection with a larger universe.

At one brief pause, not for rest but for listening to the forest around them,

Duncan studied his mist-capped surroundings. He felt dislodged, removed from a

universe that possessed sky and the open features that linked it to other

planets.

His disguise was simple: Tleilaxu cold-weather garments and cheek pads to make

his face appear rounder. His curly black hair had been straightened by some

chemical applied with heat. The hair was then bleached to a sandy blond and

hidden under a dark watchcap. All of his genital hair had been shaved away. He

hardly recognized himself in the mirror they held up for him.

A dirty Tleilaxu!

The artisan who created this transformation was an old woman with glittering

gray-green eyes. "You are now a Tleilaxu Master," she said. "Your name is

Wose. A guide will take you to the next place. You will treat him like a Face

Dancer if you meet strangers. Otherwise, do as he commands."

They led him out of the cave complex along a twisting passage, its walls and

ceiling thick with the musky green algae. In starlighted darkness, they thrust

him from the passage into a chilly night and the hands of an unseen man -- a

bulky figure in padded clothing.

A voice behind Duncan whispered: "Here he is, Ambitorm. Get him through."

The guide spoke in an accent of gutturals: "Follow me." He clipped a lead cord

to Duncan's belt, adjusted the night goggles and turned away. Duncan felt the

cord tug once and they were off.

Duncan recognized the use of the cord. It was not something to keep him close

behind. He could see this Ambitorm clearly enough with the night goggles. No,

the cord was to spill him quickly if they met danger. No need for a command.

For a long time during the night they crisscrossed small ice-lined watercourses

on a flatland. The light of Gammu's early moons penetrated the covering growth

only occasionally. They emerged finally onto a low hill with a view of bushy

wasteland all silvery with snow cover in the moonlight. Down into this they

went. The bushes, about twice the height of the guide, arched over muddy animal

passages little larger than the tunnels where they had begun this journey. It

was warmer here, the warmth of a compost heap. Almost no light penetrated to a

ground spongy with rotted vegetation. Duncan inhaled the fungal odors of

decomposing plant life. The night goggles showed him a seemingly endless

repetition of thick growth on both sides. The cord linking him to Ambitorm was

a tenuous grip on an alien world.

Ambitorm discouraged conversation. He said "Yes," when Duncan asked

confirmation of the man's name, then: "Don't talk."

The whole night was a disquieting traverse for Duncan. He did not like being

thrown back into his own thoughts. Giedi Prime memories persisted. This place

was like nothing he remembered from his pre-ghola youth. He wondered how

Ambitorm had learned the way through here and how he remembered it. One animal

tunnel appeared much like another.

In the steady, jogging pace there was time for Duncan's thoughts to roam.

Must I permit the Sisterhood to use me? What do I owe them?

And he thought of Teg, that last gallant stand to permit two of them to escape.

I did the same for Paul and Jessica.

It was a bond with Teg and it touched Duncan with grief. Teg was loyal to the

Sisterhood. Did he buy my loyalty with that last brave act?

Damn the Atreides!

The night's exertions increased Duncan's familiarity with his new flesh. How

young this body was! A small lurch of recollection and he could see that last

pre-ghola memory; he could feel the Sardaukar blade strike his head -- a

blinding explosion of pain and light. Knowledge of his certain death and then .

. . nothing until that moment with Teg in the Harkonnen no-globe.

The gift of another life. Was it more than a gift or something less? The

Atreides were demanding another payment from him.

For a time just before dawn, Ambitorm led him at a sloshing run along a narrow

stream whose icy chill penetrated the waterproof insulated boots of Duncan's

Tleilaxu garments. The watercourse reflected bush-shadowed silver from the

light of the planet's pre-dawn moon setting ahead of them.

Daylight saw them come out into the larger, tree-shielded animal track and up

the steep hill. This passage emerged onto a narrow rocky ledge below a ridgetop

of sawtoothed boulders. Ambitorm led him behind a screen of dead brown bushes,

their tops dirty with wind-blown snow. He released the cord from Duncan's belt.

Directly in front of them was a shallow declivity in the rocks, not quite a

cave, but Duncan saw that it would offer some protection unless they got a hard

wind over the bushes behind them. There was no snow on the floor of the place.

Ambitorm went to the back of the declivity and carefully removed a layer of icy

dirt and several flat rocks, which concealed a small pit. He lifted a round

black object from the pit and busied himself over it.

Duncan squatted under the overhang and studied his guide. Ambitorm had a

dished-in face with skin like dark brown leather. Yes, those could be the

features of a Face Dancer. Deep creases cut into the skin at the edges of the

man's brown eyes. Creases radiated from the sides of the thin mouth and lined

the wide brow. They spread out beside the flat nose and deepened the cleft of a

narrow chin. Creases of time all over his face.

Appetizing odors began to arise from the black object in front of Ambitorm.

"We will eat here and wait a bit before we continue," Ambitorm said.

He spoke Old Galach but with that guttural accent which Duncan had never heard

before, an odd stress on adjacent vowels. Was Ambitorm from the Scattering or a

Gammu native? There obviously had been many linguistic drifts since the Dune

days of Muad'dib. For that matter, Duncan recognized that all of the people in

the Gammu Keep, including Teg and Lucilla, spoke a Galach that had shifted from

the one he had learned as a pre-ghola child.

"Ambitorm," Duncan said. "Is that a Gammu name?"

"You will call me Tormsa," the guide said.

"Is that a nickname?"

"It is what you will call me."

"Why did those people back there call you Ambitorm."

"That was the name I gave them."

"But why would you . . ."

"You lived under the Harkonnens and you did not learn how to change your

identity?"

Duncan fell silent. Was that it? Another disguise. Ambi . . . Tormsa had not

changed his appearance. Tormsa. Was it a Tleilaxu name?

The guide extended a steaming cup toward Duncan. "A drink to restore you, Wose.

Drink it fast. It will keep you warm."

Duncan closed both hands around the cup. Wose. Wose and Tormsa. Tleilaxu

Master and his Face Dancer companion.

Duncan lifted the cup toward Tormsa in the ancient gesture of Atreides battle

comrades, then put it to his lips. Hot! But it warmed him as it went down.

The drink had a faintly sweet flavor over some vegetable tang. He blew on it

and drank it down as he saw Tormsa was doing.

Odd that I should not suspect poison or some drug, Duncan thought. But this

Tormsa and the others last night had something of the Bashar about them. The

gesture to a battle comrade had come naturally.

"Why are you risking your life this way?" Duncan asked.

"You know the Bashar and you have to ask?"

Duncan fell silent, abashed.

Tormsa leaned forward and recovered Duncan's cup. Soon, all evidence of their

breakfast lay hidden under the concealing rocks and dirt.

That food spoke of careful planning, Duncan thought. He turned and squatted on

the cold ground. The mist was still out there beyond the screening bushes.

Leafless limbs cut the view into odd bits and pieces. As he watched, the mist

began to lift, revealing the blurred outlines of a city at the far edge of the

valley.

Tormsa squatted beside him. "Very old city," he said. "Harkonnen place.

Look." He passed a small monoscope to Duncan. "That is where we go tonight."

Duncan put the monoscope to his left eye and tried to focus the oil lens. The

controls felt unfamiliar, not at all like those he had learned as a pre-ghola

youth or had been taught at the Keep. He removed it from his eye and examined

it.

"Ixian?" he asked.

"No. We made it." Tormsa reached over and pointed out two tiny buttons raised

above the black tube. "Slow, fast. Push left to cycle out, right to cycle

back."

Again, Duncan lifted the scope to his eye.

Who were the we who had made this thing?

A touch of the fast button and the view leaped into his gaze. Tiny dots moved

in the city. People! He increased the amplification. The people became small

dolls. With them to give him scale, Duncan realized that the city at the

valley's edge was immense . . . and farther away than he had thought. A single

rectangular structure stood in the center of the city, its top lost in the

clouds. Gigantic.

Duncan knew this place now. The surroundings had changed but that central

structure lay fixed in his memory.

How many of us vanished into that black hellhole and never returned?

"Nine hundred and fifty stories," Tormsa said, seeing where Duncan's gaze was

directed. "Forty-five kilometers long, thirty kilometers wide. Plasteel and

armor-plaz, all of it."

"I know." Duncan lowered the scope and returned it to Tormsa. "It was called

Barony."

"Ysai," Tormsa said.

"That's what they call it now," Duncan said. "I have some different names for

it."

Duncan took a deep breath to put down the old hatreds. Those people were all

dead. Only the building remained. And the memories. He scanned the city

around that enormous structure. The place was a sprawling mass of warrens.

Green spaces lay scattered throughout, each of them behind high walls. Single

residences with private parks, Teg had said. The monoscope had revealed guards

walking the wall tops.

Tormsa spat on the ground in front of him. "Harkonnen place."

"They built to make people feel small," Duncan said.

Tormsa nodded. "Small, no power in you."

The guide had become almost loquacious, Duncan thought.

Occasionally during the night, Duncan had defied the order for silence and tried

to make conversation.

"What animals made these passages?"

It had seemed a logical question for people trotting along an obvious animal

track, even the musty smell of beasts in it.

"Do not talk!" Tormsa snapped.

Later, Duncan asked why they could not get a vehicle of some sort and escape in

that. Even a groundcar would be preferable to this painful march across country

where one route felt much like another.

Tormsa stopped them in a patch of moonlight and looked at Duncan as though he

suspected his charge had suddenly become bereft of sense.

"Vehicles can follow!"

"No one can follow us when we're on foot?"

"Followers also must be on foot. Here, they will be killed. They know."

What a weird place! What a primitive place.

In the shelter of the Bene Gesserit Keep, Duncan had not realized the nature of

the planet around him. Later, in the no-globe, he had been removed from contact

with the outside. He had pre-ghola and ghola memories, but how inadequate those

were! When he thought about it now, he realized there had been clues. It was

obvious that Gammu possessed rudimentary weather control. And Teg had said that

the orbiting monitors that guarded the planet from attack were of the best.

Everything for protection, damned little for comfort! It was like Arrakis in

that respect.

Rakis, he corrected himself.

Teg. Did the old man survive? A captive? What did it mean to be captured here

in this age? It had meant brutal slavery in the old Harkonnen days. Burzmali

and Lucilla . . . He glanced at Tormsa.

"Will we find Burzmali and Lucilla in the city?"

"If they get through."

Duncan glanced down at his clothing. Was it a sufficient disguise? A Tleilaxu

Master and companion? People would think the companion a Face Dancer, of

course. Face Dancers were dangerous.

The baggy trousers were of some material Duncan had never before seen. It felt

like wool to the hand, but he sensed that it was artificial. When he spat on

it, spittle did not adhere and the smell was not of wool. His fingers detected

a uniformity of texture that no natural material could present. The long soft

boots and watchcap were of the same fabric. The garments were loose and puffy

except at the ankles. Not quilted, though. Insulated by some trick of

manufacture that trapped dead air between the layers. The color was a mottled

green and gray -- excellent camouflage here.

Tormsa was dressed in similar garments.

"How long do we wait here?" Duncan asked.

Tormsa shook his head for silence. The guide was seated now, knees up, arms

wrapped around his legs, head cradled against his knees, eyes looking outward

over the valley.

During the night's trip, Duncan had found the clothing remarkably comfortable.

Except for that once in the water, his feet stayed warm but not too warm. There

was plenty of room in trousers, shirt, and jacket for his body to move easily.

Nothing abraded his flesh.

"Who makes clothing such as this?" Duncan asked.

"We made it," Tormsa growled. "Be silent."

This was no different than the pre-awakening days at the Sisterhood's Keep,

Duncan thought. Tormsa was saying: "No need for you to know."

Presently, Tormsa stretched out his legs and straightened. He appeared to

relax. He glanced at Duncan. "Friends in the city signal that there are

searchers overhead."

" 'Thopters?"

"Yes."

"Then what do we do?"

"You must do what I do and nothing else."

"You're just sitting there."

"For now. We will go down into the valley soon."

"But how --"

"When you traverse such country as this you become one of the animals that live

here. Look at the tracks and see how they walk and how they lie down for a

rest."

"But can't the searchers tell the difference between . . ."

"If the animals browse, you make the motions of browsing. If searchers come,

you continue to do what it was you were doing, what any animal would do.

Searchers will be high in the air. That is lucky for us. They cannot tell

animal from human unless they come down."

"But won't they --"

"They trust their machines and the motions they see. They are lazy. They fly

high. That way, the search goes faster. They trust their own intelligence to

read their instruments and tell which is animal and which is human."

"So they'll just go by us if they think we're wild animals."

"If they doubt, they will scan us a second time. We must not change the pattern

of movements after being scanned."

It was a long speech for the usually taciturn Tormsa. He studied Duncan

carefully now. "You understand?"

"How will I know when we're being scanned?"

"Your gut will tingle. You will feel in your stomach the fizz of a drink that

no man should swallow."

Duncan nodded. "Ixian scanners."

"Let it not alarm you," Tormsa said. "Animals here are accustomed to it.

Sometimes, they may pause, but only for an instant and then they go on as if

nothing has happened. Which, for them, is true. It is only for us that

something evil may happen."

Presently, Tormsa stood. "We will go down into the valley now. Follow closely.

Do exactly what I do and nothing else."

Duncan fell into step behind his guide. Soon, they were under the covering

trees. Sometime during the night's passage, Duncan realized, he had begun to

accept his place in the schemes of others. A new patience was taking over his

awareness. And there was excitement goaded by curiosity.

What kind of a universe had come out of the Atreides times? Gammu. What a

strange place Giedi Prime had become.

Slowly but distinctly, things were being revealed and each new thing opened a

view to more that could be learned. He could feel patterns taking shape. One

day, he thought, there would be a single pattern and then he would know why they

had brought him back from the dead.

Yes, it was a matter of opening doors, he thought. You opened one door and that

let you into a place where there were other doors. You chose a door in this new

place and examined what that revealed to you. There might be times when you

were forced to try all of the doors but the more doors you opened, the more

certain you became of which door to open next. Finally, a door would open into

a place you recognized. Then you could say: "Ahhhh, this explains everything."

"Searchers come," Tormsa said. "We are browsing animals now." He reached up to

a screening bush and tore down a small limb.

Duncan did the same.

"I must rule with eye and claw -- as the hawk among lesser birds."

-Atreides assertion (Ref: BG Archives)

At daybreak, Teg emerged from the concealing windbreaks beside a main road. The

road was a wide, flat thoroughfare -- beam-hardened and kept bare of plant life.

Ten lanes, Teg estimated, suitable for both vehicle and foot traffic. There was

mostly foot traffic on it at this hour.

He had brushed most of the dust off his clothing and made sure there were no

signs of rank on it. His gray hair was not as neat as he usually preferred but

he had only his fingers for a comb.

Traffic on the road was headed toward the city of Ysai many kilometers across

the valley. The morning was cloudless with a light breeze in his face moving

toward the sea somewhere far behind him.

During the night he had come to a delicate balance with his new awareness.

Things flickered in his second vision: knowledge of things around him before

those things occurred, awareness of where he must put his foot in the next step.

Behind this lay the reactive trigger that he knew could snap him into the

blurring responses that flesh should not be able to accommodate. Reason could

not explain the thing. He felt that he walked precariously along the cutting

edge of a knife.

Try as he might, he could not resolve what had happened to him under the Tprobe.

Was it akin to what a Reverend Mother experienced in the spice agony?

But he sensed no accumulation of Other Memories out of his past. He did not

think the Sisters could do what he did. The doubled vision that told him what

to anticipate from every movement within the range of his senses seemed a new

kind of truth.

Teg's Mentat teachers had always assured him there was a form of living-truth

not susceptible to proof by the marshaling of ordinary facts. It was carried

sometimes in fables and poetry and often went contrary to desires, so he had

been told.

"The most difficult experience for a Mentat to accept," they said.

Teg had always reserved judgment on this pronouncement but now he was forced to

accept it. The T-probe had thrust him over a threshold into a new reality.

He did not know why he chose this particular moment to emerge from hiding,

except that it fitted him into an acceptable flow of human movement.

Most of that movement on the road was composed of market gardeners towing

panniers of vegetables and fruit. The panniers were supported behind them on

cheap suspensors. Awareness of that food sent sharp hunger pains through him

but he forced himself to ignore them. With experience of more primitive planets

in his long service to the Bene Gesserit, he saw this human activity as little

different from that of farmers leading loaded animals. The foot traffic struck

him as an odd mixture of ancient and modern -- farmers afoot, their produce

floating behind them on perfectly ordinary technological devices. Except for

the suspensors this scene was very like a similar day in humankind's most

ancient past. A draft animal was a draft animal, even if it came off an

assembly line in an Ixian factory.

Using his new second vision, Teg chose one of the farmers, a squat, dark-skinned

man with heavy features and thickly calloused hands. The man walked with a

defiant sense of independence. He towed eight large panniers piled with roughskinned

melons. The smell of them was a mouth-watering agony to Teg as he

matched his stride to that of the farmer. Teg strode for a few minutes in

silence, then ventured: "Is this the best road to Ysai?"

"It is a long way," the man said. He had a guttural voice, something cautious

in it.

Teg glanced back at the loaded panniers.

The farmer looked sidelong at Teg. "We go to a market center. Others take our

produce from there to Ysai."

As they talked, Teg realized the farmer had guided (almost herded) him close to

the edge of the road. The man glanced back and jerked his head slightly,

nodding forward. Three more farmers came up beside them and closed in around

Teg and his companion until tall panniers concealed them from the rest of the

traffic.

Teg tensed. What were they planning? He sensed no menace, though. His doubled

vision detected nothing violent in his immediate vicinity.

A heavy vehicle sped past them and on ahead. Teg knew of its passage only by

the smell of burned fuel, the wind that shook the panniers, the thrumming of a

powerful engine and sudden tension in his companions. The high panniers

completely hid the passing vehicle.

"We have been looking for you to protect you, Bashar," the farmer beside him

said. "There are many who hunt you but none of them with us along here."

Teg shot a startled glance at the man.

"We served with you at Renditai," the farmer said.

Teg swallowed. Renditai? He was a moment recalling it -- only a minor skirmish

in his long history of conflicts and negotiations.

"I am sorry but I do not know your name," Teg said.

"Be glad that you do not know our names. It is better that way."

"But I'm grateful."

"This is a small repayment, which we are glad to make, Bashar."

"I must get to Ysai," Teg said.

"It is dangerous there."

"It is dangerous everywhere."

"We guessed you would go to Ysai. Someone will come soon and you will ride in

concealment. Ahhhh, here he comes. We have not seen you here, Bashar. You

have not been here."

One of the other farmers took over the towing of his companion's load, pulling

two strings of panniers while the farmer Teg had chosen hustled Teg under a tow

rope and into a dark vehicle. Teg glimpsed shiny plasteel and plaz as the

vehicle slowed only briefly for the pickup. The door closed sharply behind him

and he found himself on a soft upholstered seat, alone in the back of a

groundcar. The car picked up speed and soon was beyond the marching farmers.

The windows around Teg had been darkened, giving him a dusky view of the passing

scene. The driver was a shaded silhouette.

This first chance to relax in warm comfort since his capture almost lured Teg

into sleep. He sensed no threats. His body still ached from the demands he had

made on it and from the agonies of the T-probe.

He told himself, though, that he must stay awake and alert.

The driver leaned sideways and spoke over his shoulder without turning: "They

have been hunting for you for two days, Bashar. Some think you already offplanet."

Two days?

The stunner and whatever else they had done to him had left him unconscious for

a long time. This only added to his hunger. He tried to make the fleshembedded

chrono play against his vision centers and it only flickered as it had

done each time he consulted it since the T-probe. His time sense and all

references to it were changed.

So some thought he had left Gammu.

Teg did not ask who hunted him. Tleilaxu and people from the Scattering had

been in that attack and the subsequent torture.

Teg glanced around his conveyance. It was one of those beautiful old pre-

Scattering groundcars, the marks of the finest Ixian manufacture on it. He had

never before ridden in one but he knew about them. Restorers picked them up to

renew, rebuild -- whatever they did that brought back the ancient sense of

quality. Teg had been told that such vehicles often were found abandoned in

strange places -- in old broken-down buildings, in culverts, locked away in

machinery warehouses, in farm fields.

Again, his driver leaned slightly sideways and spoke over one shoulder: "Do you

have an address where you wish to be taken in Ysai, Bashar?"

Teg called up his memory of the contact points he had identified on his first

tour of Gammu and gave one of these to the man. "Do you know that place?"

"It is mostly a meeting and drinking establishment, Bashar. I hear they serve

good food, too, but anyone can enter if he has the price."

Not knowing why he had made that particular choice, Teg said: "We will chance

it." He did not think it necessary to tell the driver that there were private

dining rooms at the address.

The mention of food brought back sharp hunger cramps. Teg's arms began to

tremble and he was several minutes restoring calmness. Last night's activities

had almost drained him, he realized. He sent a searching gaze around the car's

interior, wondering if there might be food or drink concealed here. The car's

restoration had been accomplished with loving care but he saw no hidden

compartments.

Such cars were not all that rare in some quarters, he knew, but all of them

spoke of wealth. Who owned this one? Not the driver, certainly. That one had

all the signs of a hired professional. But if a message had been sent to bring

this car then others knew of Teg's location.

"Will we be stopped and searched?" Teg asked.

"Not this car, Bashar. The Planetary Bank of Gammu owns it."

Teg absorbed this silently. That bank had been one of his contact points. He

had studied key branches carefully on his inspection tour. This memory drew him

back into his responsibilities as guardian of the ghola.

"My companions," Teg ventured. "Are they . . ."

"Others have that in hand, Bashar. I cannot say."

"Can word be taken to . . ."

"When it is safe, Bashar."

"Of course."

Teg sank back into the cushions and studied his surroundings. These groundcars

had been built with much plaz and almost indestructible plasteel. It was other

things that went sour with age -- upholstery, headliners, the electronics, the

suspensor installations, the ablative liners of the turbofan ducts. And the

adhesives deteriorated no matter what you did to preserve them. The restorers

had made this one look as though it had just been cranked out of the factory --

all subdued glowing in the metals, upholstery that molded itself to him with a

faint sound of crinkling. And the smell: that indefinable aroma of newness, a

mixture of polish and fine fabrics with just a hint of ozone bite underneath

from the smoothly working electronics. Nowhere in it, though, was there the

smell of food.

"How long to Ysai?" Teg asked.

"Another half hour, Bashar. Is there a problem that requires more speed? I

don't want to attract . . ."

"I am very hungry."

The driver glanced left and right. There were no more farmers around them here.

The roadway was almost empty except for two heavy transport pods with their

tractors holding to the right verge and a large lorry hauling a towering

automatic fruit picker.

"It is dangerous to delay for long," the driver said. "But I know a place where

I think I can at least get you a quick bowl of soup."

"Anything would be welcome. I have not eaten for two days and there has been

much activity."

They came to a crossroads and the driver turned left onto a narrow track through

tall, evenly spaced conifers. Presently, he turned onto a one-lane drive

through the trees. The low building at the end of this track was built of dark

stones and had a blackplaz roof. The windows were narrow and glistened with

protective burner nozzles.

The driver said: "Just a minute, sir." 'He got out and Teg had his first look

at the man's face: extremely thin with a long nose and tiny mouth. The visible

tracery of surgical reconstruction laced his cheeks. The eyes glowed silver,

obviously artificial. He turned away and went into the house. When he

returned, he opened Teg's door. "Please be quick, sir. The one inside is

heating soup for you. I have said you are a banker. No need to pay."

The ground was icy crisp underfoot. Teg had to stoop slightly for the doorway.

He entered a dark hallway, wood-paneled and with a well-lighted room at the end.

The smell of food there drew him like a magnet. His arms were trembling once

more. A small table had been set beside a window with a view of an enclosed and

covered garden. Bushes heavy with red flowers almost concealed the stone wall

that defined the garden. Yellow hotplaz gleamed over the space, bathing it in a

summery artificial light. Teg sank gratefully into the single chair at the

table. White linen, he saw, with an embossed edge. A single soup spoon.

A door creaked at his right and a squat figure entered carrying a bowl from

which steam arose. The man hesitated when he saw Teg, then brought the bowl to

the table and placed it in front of Teg. Alerted by that hesitation, Teg forced

himself to ignore the tempting aroma drifting to his nostrils and concentrated

instead on his companion.

"It is good soup, sir. I made it myself."

An artificial voice. Teg saw the scars at the sides of the jaw. There was the

look of an ancient mechanical about this man -- an almost neckless head attached

to thick shoulders, arms that seemed oddly jointed at both shoulders and elbows,

legs that appeared to swing only from the hips. He stood motionless now but he

had entered here with a slightly jerking sway that said he was mostly

replacement artificials. The look of suffering in his eyes could not be

avoided.

"I know I'm not pretty, sir," the man rasped. "I was ruined in the Alajory

explosion."

Teg had no idea what the Alajory explosion might have been but it obviously was

presumed he knew. "Ruined," however, was an interesting accusation against

Fate.

"I was wondering if I knew you," Teg said.

"No one here knows anyone else," the man said. "Eat your soup." He pointed

upward at the coiled tip of quiescent snooper, the glow of its lights revealing

that it read its surroundings and found no poison. "The food is safe here."

Teg looked at the dark brown liquid in his bowl. Lumps of solid meat were

visible in it. He reached for the spoon. His trembling hand made two attempts

before grasping the spoon and even then he sloshed most of the liquid out of the

spoon before he could lift it a millimeter.

A steadying hand gripped Teg's wrist and the artificial voice spoke softly in

Teg's ear: "I do not know what they did to you, Bashar, but no one will harm

you here without crossing my dead body."

"You know me?"

"Many would die for you, Bashar. My son lives because of you."

Teg allowed himself to be helped. It was all he could do to swallow the first

spoonful. The liquid was rich, hot and soothing. His hand steadied presently

and he nodded to the man to release the wrist.

"More, sir?"

Teg realized then that he had emptied the bowl. It was tempting to say "yes"

but the driver had said to make haste.

"Thank you, but I must go."

"You have not been here," the man said.

When they were once more back on the main road, Teg sat back against the

groundcar's cushions and reflected on the curious echoing quality of what the

ruined man had said. The same words the farmer had used: "You have not been

here." It had the feeling of a common response and it said something about

changes in Gammu since Teg had surveyed the place.

They entered the outskirts of Ysai presently and Teg wondered if he should

attempt a disguise. The ruined man had recognized him quickly.

"Where do the Honored Matres hunt for me now?" Teg asked.

"Everywhere, Bashar. We cannot guarantee your safety but steps are being taken.

I will make it known where I have delivered you."

"Do they say why they hunt me?"

"They never explain, Bashar."

"How long have they been on Gammu?"

"Too long, sir. Since I was a child and I was a baltern at Renditai."

A hundred years at least, Teg thought. Time to gather many forces into their

hands . . . if Taraza's fears were to be credited.

Teg credited them.

"Trust no one those whores can influence," Taraza had said.

Teg sensed no threat to him in his present position, though. He could only

absorb the secrecy that obviously enclosed him now. He did not press for more

details.

They were well into Ysai and he glimpsed the black bulk of the ancient Harkonnen

seat of Barony through occasional gaps between the walls that enclosed the great

private residences. The car turned onto a street of small commercial

establishments: cheap buildings constructed for the most part of salvaged

materials that displayed their origins in poor fits and unmatched colors. Gaudy

signs advised that the wares inside were the finest, the repair services better

than those elsewhere.

It was not that Ysai had deteriorated or even gone to seed, Teg thought. Growth

here had been diverted into something worse than ugly. Someone had chosen to

make this place repellent. That was the key to most of what he saw in the city.

Time had not stopped here, it had retreated. This was no modern city full of

bright transport pods and insulated usiform buildings. This was random jumbles,

ancient structures joined to ancient structures, some built to individual tastes

and some obviously designed with some long-gone necessity in mind. Everything

about Ysai was joined in a proximity whose disarray just managed to avoid chaos.

What saved it, Teg knew, was the old pattern of thoroughfares along which this

hodgepodge had been assembled. Chaos was held at bay, although what pattern

there was in the streets conformed to no master plan. Streets met and crossed

at odd angles, seldom squared. Seen from the air, the place was a crazy quilt

with only the giant black rectangle of ancient Barony to speak of an organizing

plan. The rest of it was architectural rebellion.

Teg saw suddenly that this place was a lie plastered over with other lies, based

on previous lies, and such a mad mixup that they might never dig through to a

usable truth. All of Gammu was that way. Where could such insanity have had

its beginnings? Was it the Harkonnens' doing?

"We are here, sir."

The driver drew up to the curb in front of a windowless building face, all flat

black plasteel and with a single ground-level door. No salvaged material in

this construction. Teg recognized the place: the bolt hole he had chosen.

Unidentified things flickered in Teg's second vision but he sensed no immediate

menace. The driver opened Teg's door and stood to one side.

"Not much activity here at this hour, sir. I would get inside quickly."

Without a backward glance, Teg darted across the narrow walk and into the

building -- a small brightly lighted foyer of polished white plaz and only banks

of comeyes to greet him. He ducked into a lift tube and punched the remembered

coordinates. This tube, he knew, angled upward through the building to the

fifty-seventh floor rear where there were some windows. He remembered a private

dining room of dark reds and heavy brown furnishings, a hard-eyed female with

the obvious signs of Bene Gesserit training, but no Reverend Mother.

The tube disgorged him into the remembered room but there was no one to receive

him. Teg glanced around at the solid brown furnishings. Four windows along the

far wall were concealed behind thick maroon draperies.

Teg knew he had been seen. He waited patiently, using his newly learned

doubling-vision to anticipate trouble. There was no indication of attack. He

took up a position to one side of the tube outlet and glanced around him once

more.

Teg had a theory about the relationship between rooms and their windows -- the

number of windows, their placement, their size, height from the floor,

relationship of room size to window size, the elevation of the room, windows

curtained or draped, and all of this Mentat-interpreted against knowledge of the

uses to which a room was put. Rooms could be fitted to a kind of pecking order

defined with extreme sophistication. Emergency uses might throw such

distinctions out the window but they otherwise were quite reliable.

Lack of windows in an aboveground room conveyed a particular message. If humans

occupied such a room, it did not necessarily mean secrecy was the main goal. He

had seen unmistakable signs in scholastic settings that windowless schoolrooms

were both a retreat from the exterior world and a strong statement of dislike

for children.

This room, however, presented something different: conditional secrecy plus the

need to keep occasional watch on that exterior world. Protective secrecy when

required. His opinion was reinforced when he crossed the room and twitched one

of the draperies aside. The windows were tripled armor-plaz. So! Keeping

watch on that world outside might draw attack. That was the opinion of whoever

had ordered the room protected this way.

Once more, Teg twitched the drapery aside. He glanced at the corner glazing.

Prismatic reflectors there amplified the view along the adjacent wall to both

sides and from roof to ground.

Well!

His previous visit had not given him time for this closer examination but now he

made a more positive assessment. A very interesting room. Teg dropped the

drapery and turned just in time to see a tall man enter from the tube slot.

Teg's doubled vision provided a firm prediction on the stranger. This man

brought concealed danger. The newcomer was plainly military -- the way he

carried himself, the quick eye for details that only a trained and experienced

officer would observe. And there was something else in his manner that made Teg

stiffen. This was a betrayer! A mercenary available to the highest bidder.

"Damned nasty the way they treated you," the man greeted Teg. The voice was a

deep baritone with an unconscious assumption of personal power in it. The

accent was one Teg had never before heard. This was someone from the

Scattering! A Bashar or equivalent, Teg estimated.

Still, there was no indication of immediate attack.

When Teg did not answer, the man said: "Oh, sorry: I'm Muzzafar. Jafa

Muzzafar, regional commander for the forces of Dur."

Teg had never heard of the forces of Dur.

Questions crowded Teg's mind but he kept them to himself. Anything he said here

might betray weakness.

Where were the people who had met him here before? Why did I choose this place?

The decision had been made with such inner assurance.

"Please be comfortable," Muzzafar said, indicating a small divan with a low

serving table in front of it. "I assure you that none of what has happened to

you was of my doing. Tried to put a stop to it when I heard but you'd already .

. . left the scene."

Teg heard the other thing in this Muzzafar's voice now: caution bordering on

fear. So this man had either heard about or seen the shack and the clearing.

"Damned clever of you," Muzzafar said. "Having your attack force wait until

your captors were concentrating on trying to get information out of you. Did

they learn anything?"

Teg shook his head silently from side to side. He felt on the edge of being

ignited in a blurred response to attack, yet he sensed no immediate violence

here. What were these Lost Ones doing? But Muzzafar and his people had made a

wrong assessment of what had happened in the room of the T-probe. That was

clear.

"Please, be seated," Muzzafar said.

Teg took the proffered seat on the divan.

Muzzafar sat in a deep chair facing Teg at a slight angle on the other side of

the serving table. There was a crouching sense of alertness in Muzzafar. He

was prepared for violence.

Teg studied the man with interest. Muzzafar had revealed no real rank -- only

commander. Tall fellow with a wide, ruddy face and a big nose. The eyes were

gray-green and had the trick of focusing just behind Teg's right shoulder when

either of them spoke. Teg had known a spy once who did that.

"Well, well," Muzzafar said. "I've read and heard a great deal about you since

coming here."

Teg continued to study him silently. Muzzafar's hair had been cropped close and

there was a purple scar about three millimeters long across the scalp line above

the left eye. He wore an open bush jacket of light green and matching trousers

-- not quite a uniform but there was a neatness about him that spoke of

customary spit and polish. The shoes attested to this. Teg thought he probably

could see his own reflection in their light brown surfaces if he bent close.

"Never expected to meet you personally, of course," Muzzafar said. "Consider it

a great honor."

"I know very little about you except that you command a force from the

Scattering," Teg said.

"Mmmmmph! Not much to know, really."

Once more, hunger pangs gripped Teg. His gaze went to the button beside the

tube slot, which, he remembered, would summon a waiter. This was a place where

humans did the work usually assigned to automata, an excuse for keeping a large

force assembled at the ready.

Misinterpreting Teg's interest in the tube slot, Muzzafar said: "Please don't

think of leaving. Having my own medic come in to take a look at you. Shouldn't

be but a moment. Appreciate it if you'd wait quietly until he arrives."

"I was merely thinking of placing an order for some food," Teg said.

"Advise you to wait until the doctor's had his look-see. Stunners leave some

nasty aftereffects."

"So you know about that."

"Know about the whole damned fiasco. You and your man Burzmali are a force to

be reckoned with."

Before Teg could respond, the tube slot disgorged a tall man in a jacketed red

singlesuit, a man so bone-skinny that his clothing gaped and flapped about him.

The diamond tattoo of a Suk doctor had been burned into his high forehead but

the mark was orange and not the customary black. The doctor's eyes were

concealed by a glistening orange cover that hid their true color.

An addict of some kind? Teg wondered. There was no smell of the familiar

narcotics around him, not even melange. There was a tart smell, though, almost

like some fruit.

"There you are, Solitz!" Muzzafar said. He gestured at Teg. "Give him a good

scan. Stunner hit him day before yesterday."

Solitz produced a recognizable Suk scanner, compact and fitting into one hand.

Its probe field produced a low hum.

"So you're a Suk doctor," Teg said, looking pointedly at the orange brand on the

forehead.

"Yes, Bashar. My training and conditioning are the finest in our ancient

tradition."

"I've never seen the identifying mark in that color," Teg said.

The doctor passed his scanner around Teg's head. "The color of the tattoo makes

no difference, Bashar. What is behind it is all that matters." He lowered the

scanner to Teg's shoulders, then down across the body.

Teg waited for the humming to stop.

The doctor stood back and addressed Muzzafar: "He is quite fit, Field Marshal.

Remarkably fit, considering his age, but he desperately needs sustenance."

"Yes . . . well, that's fine then, Solitz. Take care of that. The Bashar is

our guest."

"I will order a meal suited to his needs," Solitz said. "Eat it slowly,

Bashar." Solitz did a smart about-face that set his jacket and trousers

flapping. The tube slot swallowed him.

"Field Marshal?" Teg asked.

"A revival of ancient titles in the Dur," Muzzafar said.

"The Dur?" Teg ventured.

"Stupid of me!" Muzzafar produced a small case from a side pocket of his jacket

and extracted a thin folder. Teg recognized a holostat similar to one he had

carried himself during his long service -- pictures of home and family.

Muzzafar placed the holostat on the table between them and tapped the control

button.

The full-color image of a bushy green expanse of jungle came alive in miniature

above the tabletop.

"Home," Muzzafar said. "Frame bush in the center there." A finger indicated a

place in the projection. "First one that ever obeyed me. People laughed at me

for choosing the first one that way and sticking with it."

Teg stared at the projection, aware of a deep sadness in Muzzafar's voice. The

indicated bush was a spindly grouping of thin limbs with bright blue bulbs

dangling from the tips.

Frame bush?

"Rather thin thing, I know," Muzzafar said, removing his pointing finger from

the projection. "Not secure at all. Had to defend myself a few times in the

first months with it. Grew rather fond of it, though. They respond to that,

you know. It's the best home in all the deep valleys now, by the Eternal Rock

of Dur!"

Muzzafar stared at Teg's puzzled expression. "Damn! You don't have frame

bushes, of course. You must forgive my crashing ignorance. We've a great deal

to teach each other, I think."

"You called that home," Teg said.

"Oh, yes. With proper direction, once they learn to obey, of course, a frame

bush will grow itself into a magnificent residence. It only takes four or five

standards."

Standards, Teg thought. So the Lost Ones still used the Standard Year.

The tube slot hissed and a young woman in a blue serving gown backed into the

room towing a suspensor-buoyed hotpod, which she positioned near the table in

front of Teg. Her clothing was of the type Teg had seen during his original

inspection but the pleasantly round face she turned to him was unfamiliar. Her

scalp had been depilated, leaving an expanse of prominent veins. Her eyes were

watery blue and there was something cowed in her posture. She opened the hotpod

and the spicy odors of the food wafted across Teg's nostrils.

Teg was alerted but he sensed no immediate threat. He could see himself eating

the food without ill effect.

The young woman put a row of dishes on to the table in front of him and arranged

the eating implements neatly at one side.

"I've no snooper, but I'll taste the foods if you wish," Muzzafar said.

"Not necessary," Teg said. He knew this would raise questions but felt they

would suspect him of being a Truthsayer. Teg's gaze locked onto the food.

Without any conscious decision, he leaned forward and began eating. Familiar

with Mentat-hunger, he was surprised at his own reactions. Using the brain in

Mentat mode consumed calories at an alarming rate, but this was a new necessity

driving him. He felt his own survival controlling his actions. This hunger

went beyond anything of previous experience. The soup he had eaten with some

caution at the house of the ruined man had not aroused such a demanding

reaction.

The Suk doctor chose correctly, Teg thought. This food had been selected

directly out of the scanner's summation.

The young woman kept bringing more dishes from hotpods ordered via the tube

slot.

Teg had to get up in the middle of the meal and relieve himself in an adjoining

washroom, conscious there of the hidden comeyes that were keeping him under

surveillance. He knew by his physical reactions that his digestive system had

speeded up to a new level of bodily necessity. When he returned to the table,

he felt just as hungry as though he had not eaten.

The serving woman began to show signs of surprise and then alarm. Still, she

kept bringing more food at his demand. Muzzafar watched with growing amazement

but said nothing.

Teg felt the supportive replacement of the food, the precise caloric adjustment

that the Suk doctor had ordered. They obviously had not thought about quantity,

though. The girl obeyed his demands in a kind of walking shock.

Muzzafar spoke finally. "Must say I've never before seen anyone eat that much

at one sitting. Can't see how you do it. Nor why."

Teg sat back, satisfied at last, knowing he had aroused questions that could not

be answered truthfully.

"A Mentat thing," Teg lied. "I've been through a very strenuous time."

"Amazing," Muzzafar said. He arose.

When Teg started to stand, Muzzafar gestured for him to remain. "No need.

We've prepared quarters for you right next door. Safer not to move you yet."

The young woman departed with the empty hotpods.

Teg studied Muzzafar. Something had changed during the meal. Muzzafar watched

him with a coldly measuring stare.

"You've an implanted communicator," Teg said. "You have received new orders."

"It would not be advisable for your friends to attack this place," Muzzafar

said.

"You think that's my plan?"

"What is your plan, Bashar?"

Teg smiled.

"Very well." Muzzafar's gaze went out of focus as he listened to his

communicator. When he once more concentrated on Teg, his gaze had the look of a

predator. Teg felt himself buffeted by that gaze, recognizing that someone else

was coming to this room. The Field Marshal thought of this new development as

something extremely dangerous to his dinner guest but Teg saw nothing that could

defeat his new abilities.

"You think I am your prisoner," Teg said.

"By the Eternal Rock, Bashar! You are not what I expected!"

"The Honored Matre who is coming, what does she expect?" Teg asked.

"Bashar, I warn you: Do not take that tone with her. You have not the

slightest concept of what is about to happen to you."

"An Honored Matre is about to happen to me," Teg said.

"And I wish you well of her!"

Muzzafar pivoted and left via the tube slot.

Teg stared after him. He could see the flickering of second vision like a light

blinking around the tube slot. The Honored Matre was near but not yet ready to

enter this room. First, she would consult with Muzzafar. The Field Marshal

would not be able to tell this dangerous female anything really important.

Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions

change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall

short.

-Mentat Handbook

Lucilla and Burzmali entered Ysai from the south into a lowerclass quarter with

widely spaced streetlights. It lacked only an hour of midnight and yet people

thronged the streets in this quarter. Some walked quietly, some chatted with

drug-enhanced vigor, some only watched expectantly. They wadded up at the

corners and held Lucilla's fascinated attention as she passed.

Burzmali urged her to walk faster, an eager customer anxious to get her alone.

Lucilla kept her covert attention on the people.

What did they do here? Those men waiting in the doorway: For what did they

wait? Workers in heavy aprons emerged from a wide passage as Lucilla and

Burzmali passed. There was a thick smell of rank sewage and perspiration about

them. The workers, almost equally divided between male and female, were tall,

heavy-bodied and with thick arms. Lucilla could not imagine what their

occupation might be but they were of a single type and they made her realize how

little she knew of Gammu.

The workers hawked and spat into the gutter as they emerged into the night.

Ridding themselves of some contaminant?

Burzmali put his mouth close to Lucilla's ear and whispered: "Those workers are

the Bordanos."

She risked a glance back at them where they walked toward a side street.

Bordanos? Ahhh, yes: people trained and bred to work the compression machinery

that harnessed sewer gases. They had been bred to remove the sense of smell and

the musculature of shoulders and arms had been increased. Burzmali guided her

around a corner and out of sight of the Bordanos.

Five children emerged from a dark doorway beside them and wheeled into line

following Lucilla and Burzmali. Lucilla noted their hands clutching small

objects. They followed with a strange intensity. Abruptly, Burzmali stopped

and turned. The children also stopped and stared at him. It was clear to

Lucilla that the children were prepared for some violence.

Burzmali clasped both hands in front of him and bowed to the children. He said:

"Guldur!"

When Burzmali resumed guiding her down the street, the children no longer

followed.

"They would have stoned us," he said.

"Why?"

"They are children of a sect that follows Guldur -- the local name for the

Tyrant."

Lucilla looked back but the children were no longer in sight. They had set off

in search of another victim.

Burzmali guided her around another corner. Now, they were in a street crowded

with small merchants selling their wares from wheeled stands -- food, clothing,

small tools, and knives. A singsong of shouts filled the air as the merchants

tried to attract buyers. Their voices had that end of the workday lift -- a

false brilliance composed of the hope that old dreams would be fulfilled, yet

colored by the knowledge that life would not change for them. It occurred to

Lucilla that the people of these streets pursued a fleeting dream, that the

fulfillment they sought was not the thing itself but a myth they had been

conditioned to seek the way racing animals were trained to chase after the

whirling bait on the endless oval of the racetrack.

In the street directly ahead of them a burly figure in a thickly padded coat was

engaged in loud-voiced argument with a merchant who offered a string bag filled

with the dark red bulbs of a sweetly acid fruit. The fruit smell was thick all

around them. The merchant complained: "You would steal the food from the

mouths of my children!"

The bulky figure spoke in a piping voice, the accent chillingly familiar to

Lucilla: "I, too, have children!"

Lucilla controlled herself with an effort.

When they were clear of the market street, she whispered to Burzmali: "That man

in the heavy coat back there -- a Tleilaxu Master!"

"Couldn't be," Burzmali protested. "Too tall."

"Two of them, one on the shoulders of the other."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

"I've seen others like that since we arrived, but I didn't suspect."

"Many searchers are in these streets," she said.

Lucilla found that she did not much care for the everyday life of the gutter

inhabitants on this gutter planet. She no longer trusted the explanation for

bringing the ghola here. Of all those planets on which the precious ghola could

have been raised, why had the Sisterhood chosen this one? Or was the ghola

truly precious? Could it be that he was merely bait?

Almost blocking the narrow mouth of an alley beside them was a man plying a tall

device of whirling lights.

"Live!" he shouted. "Live!"

Lucilla slowed her pace to watch a passerby step into the alleyway and pass a

coin to the proprietor, then lean into a concave basin made brilliant by the

lights. The proprietor stared back at Lucilla. She saw a man with a narrow

dark face, the face of a Caladanian primitive on a body only slightly taller

than that of a Tleilaxu Master. There had been a look of contempt on his

brooding face as he took the customer's money.

The customer lifted his face from the basin with a shudder and then left the

alley, staggering slightly, his eyes glazed.

Lucilla recognized the device. Users called it a hypnobong and it was outlawed

on all of the more civilized worlds.

Burzmali hurried her out of the view of the brooding hypnobong proprietor.

They came to a wider side street with a corner doorway set into the building

across from them. Foot traffic all around; not a vehicle in sight. A tall man

sat on the first step in the corner doorway, his knees drawn up close to his

chin. His long arms were wrapped around his knees, the thin-fingered hands

clasped tightly together. He wore a wide-brimmed black hat that shaded his face

from the streetlights, but twin gleams from the shadows under that brim told

Lucilla that this was no kind of human she had ever before encountered. This

was something about which the Bene Gesserit had only speculated.

Burzmali waited until they were well away from the seated figure before

satisfying her curiosity.

"Futar," he whispered. "That's what they call themselves. They've only

recently been seen here on Gammu."

"A Tleilaxu experiment," Lucilla guessed. And she thought: a mistake that has

returned from the Scattering. "What are they doing here?" she asked.

"Trading colony, so the natives here tell us."

"Don't you believe it. Those are hunting animals that have been crossed with

humans."

"Ahhh, here we are," Burzmali said.

He guided Lucilla through a narrow doorway into a dimly lighted eating

establishment. This was part of their disguise, Lucilla knew: Do what others

in this quarter did, but she did not relish eating in this place, not with what

she could interpret from the smells.

The place had been crowded but it was emptying as they entered.

"This commerciel was recommended highly," Burzmali said as they seated

themselves in a mechaslot and waited for the menu to be projected.

Lucilla watched the departing customers. Night workers from nearby factories

and offices, she guessed. They appeared anxious in their hurry, perhaps fearful

of what might be done to them if they were tardy.

How insulated she had been at the Keep, she thought. She did not like what she

was learning of Gammu. What a scruffy place this commerciel was! The stools at

the counter to her right had been scarred and chipped. The tabletop in front of

her had been scored and rubbed with gritty cleaners until it no longer could be

kept clean by the vacusweep whose nozzle she could see near her left elbow.

There was no sign of even the cheapest sonic to maintain cleanliness. Food and

other evidence of deterioration had accumulated in the table's scratches.

Lucilla shuddered. She could not avoid the feeling that it had been a mistake

to separate from the ghola.

The menu had been projected, she saw, and Burzmali already was scanning it.

"I will order for you," he said.

Burzmali's way of saying he did not want her to make a mistake by ordering

something a woman of the Hormu might avoid.

It galled her to feel dependent. She was a Reverend Mother! She was trained to

take command in any situation, mistress of her own destiny. How tiring all of

this was. She gestured at the dirty window on her left where people could be

seen passing on the narrow street.

"I am losing business while we dally, Skar."

There! That was in character.

Burzmali almost sighed. At last! he thought. She had begun to function once

more as a Reverend Mother. He could not understand her abstracted attitude, the

way she looked at the city and its people.

Two milky drinks slid from the slot onto the table. Burzmali drank his in one

swallow. Lucilla tested her drink on the tip of her tongue, sorting the

contents. An imitation caffiate diluted with a nut-flavored juice.

Burzmali gestured upward with his chin for her to drink it quickly. She obeyed,

concealing a grimace at the chemical flavors. Burzmali's attention was on

something over her right shoulder but she dared not turn. That would be out of

character.

"Come." He placed a coin on the table and hurried her out into the street. He

smiled the smile of an eager customer but there was wariness in his eyes.

The tempo of the streets had changed. There were fewer people. The shadowy

doors conveyed a deeper sense of menace. Lucilla reminded herself that she was

supposed to represent a powerful guild whose members were immune to the common

violence of the gutter. The few people on the street did make way for her,

eyeing the dragons of her robe with every appearance of awe.

Burzmali stopped at a doorway.

It was like the others along this street, set back slightly from the walkway, so

tall that it appeared narrower than it actually was. An old-fashioned security

beam guarded the entrance. None of the newer systems had penetrated to the

slum, apparently. The streets themselves were testimony to that: designed for

groundcars. She doubted that there was a roofpad in the entire area. No sign

of flitters or ,'thopters could be heard or seen. There was music, though -- a

faint susurration reminiscent of semuta. Something new in semuta addiction?

This would certainly be an area where addicts would go to ground.

Lucilla looked up at the face of the building as Burzmali moved ahead of her and

made their presence known by breaking the doorway beam.

There were no windows in the building's face. Only the faint glitterings of

surface 'eyes here and there in the dull sheen of ancient plasteel. They were

old-fashioned comeyes, she noted, much bigger than modern ones.

A door deep in the shadows swung inward on silent hinges.

"This way." Burzmali reached back and urged her forward with a hand on her

elbow.

They entered a dimly lighted hallway that smelled of exotic foods and bitter

essences. She was a moment identifying some of the things that assailed her

nostrils. Melange. She caught the unmistakable cinnamon ripeness. And yes,

semuta. She identified burned rice, higet salts. Someone was masking another

kind of cooking. There were explosives being made here. She thought of warning

Burzmali but reconsidered. It was not necessary for him to know and there might

be ears in this confined space to hear whatever she said.

Burzmali led the way up a shadowy flight of stairs with a dim glowstrip along

the slanting baseboard. At the top he found a hidden switch concealed behind a

patch in the patched and repatched wall. There was no sound when he pushed the

switch but Lucilla felt a change in the movement all around them. Silence. It

was a new kind of silence in her experience, a crouching preparation for flight

or violence.

It was cold in the stairwell and she shivered, but not from the chill.

Footsteps sounded beyond the doorway beside the patch-masked switch.

A gray-haired hag in a yellow smock opened the door and peered up at them past

her straggling eyebrows.

"It's you," she said, her voice wavering. She stood aside for them to enter.

Lucilla glanced swiftly around the room as she heard the door close behind them.

It was a room the unobservant might think shabby, but that was superficial.

Underneath, it was quality. The shabbiness was another mask, partly a matter of

this place having been fitted to a particularly demanding person: This goes

here and nowhere else! That goes over there and it stays there! The

furnishings and bric-a-brac looked a little worn but someone here did not object

to that. The room felt better this way. It was that kind of room.

Who possessed this room? The old woman? She was making her painful way toward

a door on their left.

"We are not to be disturbed until dawn," Burzmali said.

The old woman stopped and turned.

Lucilla studied her. Was this another who shammed advanced age? No. The age

was real. Every motion was diffused by unsteadiness -- a trembling of the neck,

a failure of the body that betrayed her in ways she could not prevent.

"Even if it's somebody important?" the old woman asked in her wavering voice.

The eyes twitched when she spoke. Her mouth moved only minimally to emit the

necessary sounds, spacing out her words as though she drew them from somewhere

deep within. Her shoulders, curved from years of bending at some fixed work,

would not straighten enough for her to look Burzmali in the eyes. She peered

upward past her brows instead, an oddly furtive posture.

"What important person are you expecting?" Burzmali asked.

The old woman shuddered and appeared to take a long time understanding.

"Impor-r-rtant people come here," she said.

Lucilla recognized the body signals and blurted it because Burzmali must know:

"She's from Rakis!"

The old woman's curious upward gaze locked on Lucilla. The ancient voice said:

"I was a priestess, Hormu Lady."

"Of course she's from Rakis," Burzmali said. His tone warned her not to

question.

"I would not harm you," the hag whined.

"Do you still serve the Divided God?"

Again, there was that long delay for the old woman to respond.

"Many serve the Great Guldur," she said.

Lucilla pursed her lips and once more scanned the room. The old woman had been

reduced greatly in importance. "I am glad I do not have to kill you," Lucilla

said.

The old woman's jaw drooped open in a parody of surprise while spittle dripped

from her lips.

This was a descendant of Fremen? Lucilla let her revulsion come out in a long

shudder. This mendicant bit of flotsam had been shaped from a people who walked

tall and proud, a people who died bravely. This one would die whining.

"Please trust me," the hag whined and fled the room.

"Why did you do that?" Burzmali demanded. "These are the ones who will get us

to Rakis!"

She merely looked at him, recognizing the fear in his question. It was fear for

her.

But I did not imprint him back there, she thought.

With a sense of shock she realized that Burzmali had recognized hate in her. I

hate them! she thought. I hate the people of this planet!

That was a dangerous emotion for a Reverend Mother. Still it burned in her.

This planet had changed her in a way she did not want. She did not want the

realization that such things could be. Intellectual understanding was one

thing; experience was another.

Damn them!

But they already were damned.

Her chest pained her. Frustration! There was no escaping this new awareness.

What had happened to these people?

People?

The shells were here but they no longer could be called fully alive. Dangerous,

though. Supremely dangerous.

"We must rest while we can," Burzmali said.

"I do not have to earn my money?" she demanded.

Burzmali paled. "What we did was necessary! We were lucky and were not stopped

but it could have happened!"

"And this place is safe?"

"As safe as I can make it. Everyone here has been screened by me or by my

people."

Lucilla found a long couch that smelled of old perfumes and composed herself

there to scour her emotions of the dangerous hate. Where hate entered, love

might follow! She heard Burzmali stretching out to rest on cushions against a

nearby wall. Soon, he was breathing deeply, but sleep evaded Lucilla. She kept

sensing crowds of memories, things thrust forward by the Others who shared her

inner storerooms of thinking. Abruptly, inner vision gave her a glimpse of a

street and faces, people moving in bright sunlight. It took a moment for her to

realize that she saw all of this from a peculiar angle -- that she was being

cradled in someone's arms. She knew then that this was one of her own personal

memories. She could place the one who held her, feel the warm heartbeat next to

a warm cheek.

Lucilla tasted the salt of her own tears.

She realized then that Gammu had touched her more deeply than any experience

since her first days in the Bene Gesserit schools.

Concealed behind strong barriers the heart becomes ice.

-Darwi Odrade, Argument in Council

It was a group filled with fierce tensions: Taraza (wearing secret mail under

her robe and mindful of the other precautions she had taken), Odrade (certain

that there could be violence and consequently wary), Sheeana (thoroughly briefed

on the probabilities here and shielded behind three Security Mothers who moved

with her like fleshly armor), Waff (worried that his reason might have been

clouded by some mysterious Bene Gesserit artifice), the false Tuek (giving every

evidence that he was about to erupt in rage), and nine of Tuek's Rakian

counselors (each angrily engaged in seeking ascendancy for self or family).

In addition, five guardian acolytes, bred and trained by the Sisterhood for

physical violence, stayed close to Taraza. Waff moved with an equal number of

new Face Dancers.

They had convened in the penthouse atop the Dar-es-Balat Museum. It was a long

room with a wall of plaz facing west across a roof garden of lacy greenery. The

interior was furnished with soft divans and was decorated with artful displays

from the Tyrant's no-room.

Odrade had argued against including Sheeana but Taraza remained adamant. The

girl's effect on Waff and some of the priesthood represented an overwhelming

advantage for the Bene Gesserit.

There were dolban screens over the long wall of windows to keep out the worst

glare of a westering sun. That the room faced west said something to Odrade.

The windows looked into the land of gloaming where Shai-hulud took his repose.

It was a room focused on the past, on death.

She admired the dolbans in front of her. They were flat black slats ten

molecules wide and rotating in a transparent liquid medium. Set automatically,

the best Ixian dolbans admitted a predetermined level of light without much

diminishing the view. Artists and antique dealers preferred them to polarizing

systems, Odrade knew, because they admitted a full spectrum of available light.

Their installation spoke of the uses to which this room was put -- a display

case for the best of the God Emperor's hoard. Yes -- there was a gown that had

been worn by his intended bride.

The priestly counselors were arguing fiercely among themselves at one end of the

room, ignoring the false Tuek. Taraza stood nearby listening. Her expression

said she thought the priests fools.

Waff stood with his Face Dancer entourage near the wide entrance door. His

attention shifted from Sheeana to Odrade to Taraza and only occasionally to the

arguing priests. Every movement Waff made betrayed his uncertainties. Would

the Bene Gesserit really support him? Could they together override Rakian

opposition by peaceful means?

Sheeana and her shielding escort came to stand beside Odrade. The girl still

showed stringy muscles, Odrade observed, but she was filling out and the muscles

had taken on a recognizable Bene Gesserit definition. The high planes of her

cheekbones had grown softer under that olive skin, the brown eyes more liquid,

but there were still red sunstreaks in her brown hair. The attention she spared

for the arguing priests said she was assessing what had been revealed to her in

the briefing.

"Will they really fight?" she whispered.

"Listen to them," Odrade said.

"What will the Mother Superior do?"

"Watch her carefully."

Both of them looked at Taraza standing in her group of muscular acolytes.

Taraza now looked amused as she continued to observe the priests.

The Rakian group had started their argument out in the roof garden. They had

brought it inside as the shadows lengthened. They breathed angrily, muttering

sometimes and then raising their voices. Did they not see how the mimic Tuek

watched them?

Odrade returned her attention to the horizon visible beyond the roof garden:

not another sign of life out there in the desert. Any direction you looked

outward from Dar-es-Balat showed empty sand. People born and raised here had a

different view of life and their planet than most of those priestly counselors.

This was not the Rakis of green belts and watered oases, which abounded in the

higher latitudes like flowered fingers pointing into the long desert tracks.

Out from Dar-es-Balat was the meridian desert that stretched like a cummerbund

around the entire planet.

"I have heard enough of this nonsense!" the false Tuek exploded. He pushed one

of the counselors roughly aside and strode into the middle of the arguing group,

pivoting to stare into each face. "Are you all mad?"

One of the priests (It was old Albertus, by the gods!) looked across the room at

Waff and called out: "Ser Waff! Will you please control your Face Dancer?"

Waff hesitated and then moved toward the disputants, his entourage close behind.

The false Tuek whirled and pointed a finger at Waff: "You! Stay where you are!

I will brook no Tleilaxu interference! Your conspiracy is quite clear to me!"

Odrade had been watching Waff as the mimic Tuek spoke. Surprise! The Bene

Tleilax Master had never before been addressed thus by one of his minions. What

a shock! Rage convulsed his features. Humming sounds like the noises of angry

insects came from his mouth, a modulated thing that clearly was some kind of

language. The Face Dancers of his entourage froze but the false Tuek merely

returned attention to his counselors.

Waff stopped humming. Consternation! His Face Dancer Tuek would not come to

heel! He lurched into motion toward the priests. The false Tuek saw it and

once more leveled a hand at him, the finger quivering.

"I told you to stay out of this! You might be able to do away with me but

you'll not saddle me with your Tleilaxu filth!"

That did it. Waff stopped. Realization came over him. He shot a glance at

Taraza, seeing her amused recognition of his predicament. Now, he had a new

target for his rage.

"You knew!"

"I suspected."

"You . . . you . . ."

"You fashioned too well," Taraza said. "It's your own doing."

The priests were oblivious to this exchange. They shouted at the false Tuek,

ordering him to shut up and remove himself, calling him a "damned Face Dancer!"

Odrade studied the object of this attack with care. How deep did the print go?

Had he really convinced himself that he was Tuek?

In a sudden lull, the mimic drew himself up with dignity and sent a scornful

glance at his accusers. "You all know me," he said. "You all know my years of

service to the Divided God Who is One God. I will go to Him now if your

conspiracy extends to that but remember this: He knows what is in your hearts!"

The priests looked as one man to Waff. None of them had seen a Face Dancer

replace their High Priest. There had been no body to see. Every bit of

evidence was the evidence of human voices saying things that might be lies.

Belatedly, several looked at Odrade. Her voice was one of those that had

convinced them.

Waff, too, was looking at Odrade.

She smiled and addressed herself to the Tleilaxu Master. "It suits our purposes

that the High Priesthood not pass into other hands at this time," she said.

Waff immediately saw the advantage to himself. This was a wedge between priests

and Bene Gesserit. This removed one of the most dangerous holds the Sisterhood

had on the Tleilaxu.

"It suits my purposes, too," he said.

As the priests once more lifted their voices in anger, Taraza came in right on

cue: "Which of you will break our accord?" she demanded.

Tuek thrust two of his counselors aside and strode across the room to the Mother

Superior. He stopped only a pace from her.

"What game is this?" he asked.

"We support you against those who would replace you," she said. "The Bene

Tleilax join us in this. It is our way of demonstrating that we, too, have a

vote in selecting the High Priest."

Several priestly voices were raised in unison: "Is he or is he not a Face

Dancer?"

Taraza looked benignly at the man in front of her: "Are you a Face Dancer?"

"Of course not!"

Taraza looked at Odrade, who said: "There seems to have been a mistake."

Odrade singled out Albertus among the priests and locked eyes with him.

"Sheeana," Odrade said, "what should the Church of the Divided God do now?"

As she had been briefed to do, Sheeana stepped out of her guardian enclosure and

spoke with all of the hauteur she had been taught: "They shall continue to

serve God!"

"The business of this meeting appears to have been concluded," Taraza said. "If

you need protection, High Priest Tuek, a squad of our guardians awaits in the

hall. They are yours to command."

They could see acceptance and understanding in him. He had become a creature of

the Bene Gesserit. He remembered nothing of his Face Dancer origins.

When the priests and Tuek had gone, Waff sent a single word at Taraza, speaking

in the language of the Islamiyat: "Explain!"

Taraza stepped away from her guards, appearing, to make herself vulnerable. It

was a calculated move they had debated in front of Sheeana. In the same

language, Taraza said: "We release our grip on the Bene Tleilax."

They waited while he weighed her words. Taraza reminded herself that the

Tleilaxu name for themselves could be translated as "the un-nameable." That was

a label often reserved for gods.

This god obviously had not extended the discovery in here to what might be

happening with his mimics among Ixians and Fish Speakers. Waff had more shocks

coming. He appeared quite puzzled, though.

Waff confronted many unanswered questions. He was not satisfied with his

reports from Gammu. It was a dangerous double game he played now. Did the

Sisterhood play a similar game? But the Tleilaxu Lost Ones could not be shunted

aside without inviting attack by the Honored Matres. Taraza herself had warned

of this. Did the old Bashar on Gammu still represent a force worthy of

consideration?

He voiced this question.

Taraza countered with her own question: "How did you change our ghola? What

did you hope to gain?" She felt certain she already knew. But the pose of

ignorance was necessary.

Waff wanted to say: "The death of all Bene Gesserit!" They were too dangerous.

Yet their value was incalculable. He sank into a sulking silence, looking at

the Reverend Mothers with a brooding expression that made his elfin features

even more childlike.

A petulant child, Taraza thought. She warned herself then that it was dangerous

to underestimate Waff. You broke the Tleilaxu egg only to find another egg

inside -- ad infinitum! Everything circled back to Odrade's suspicions about

the contentions that might still lead them to bloody violence in this room. Had

the Tleilaxu really revealed what they had learned from the whores and the other

Lost Ones? Was the ghola only a potential Tleilaxu weapon?

Taraza decided to prod him once more, using the approach of her Council's

"Analysis Nine." Still in the language of the Islamiyat, she said: "Would you

dishonor yourself in the land of the Prophet? You have not shared openly as you

said you would."

"We told you the sexual --"

"You do not share all!" she interrupted. "It's because of the ghola and we know

this."

She could see his reactions. He was a cornered animal. Such animals were

dangerous in the extreme. She had once seen a mongrel hound, a feral and tailtucked

survivor of ancient pets from Dan, cornered by a pack of youths. The

animal turned on its pursuers, slashing its way to freedom in totally unexpected

savagery. Two youths crippled for life and only one without injuries! Waff was

like that animal right now. She could see his hands longing for a weapon, but

Tleilaxu and Bene Gesserit had searched one another with exquisite care before

coming here. She felt sure he had no weapon. Still . . .

Waff spoke, baited suspense in his manner. "You think me unaware of how you

hope to rule us!"

"And there is the rot that the people of the Scattering took with them," she

said. "Rot at the core."

Waff's manner changed. It did not do to ignore the deeper implications of Bene

Gesserit thought. But was she sowing discord?

"The Prophet set a locator ticking in the minds of every human, Scattered or

not," Taraza said. "He has brought them back to us with all of the rot intact."

Waff ground his teeth. What was she doing? He entertained the mad thought that

the Sisterhood had clogged his mind with some secret drug in the air. They knew

things denied to others! He stared from Taraza to Odrade and back to Taraza.

He knew he was old with serial ghola resurrections but not old in the way of the

Bene Gesserit. These people were old! They seldom looked old but they were

old, old beyond anything he dared imagine.

Taraza was having similar thoughts. She had seen the flash of deeper awareness

in Waff's eyes. Necessity opened new doors of reason. How deep did the

Tleilaxu go? His eyes were so old! She had the feeling that whatever had been

a brain in these Tleilaxu Masters was now something else -- a holorecording from

which all weakening emotions had been erased. She shared the distrust of

emotions that she suspected in him. Was that a bond to unite them?

The tropism of common thoughts.

"You say you release your grip on us," Waff growled, "but I feel your fingers

around my throat."

"Then here is a grip on our throat," she said. "Some of your Lost Ones have

returned to you. Never has a Reverend Mother come back to us from the

Scattering."

"But you said you knew all of the --"

"We have other ways of gaining knowledge. What do you suppose happened to the

Reverend Mothers we sent out into the Scattering?"

"A common disaster?" He shook his head. This was absolutely new information.

None of the returned Tleilaxu had said anything at all about this. The

discrepancy fed his suspicions. Whom was he to believe?

"They were subverted," Taraza said.

Odrade, hearing the general suspicion voiced for the first time by the Mother

Superior, sensed the enormous power implicit in Taraza's simple statement.

Odrade was cowed by it. She knew the resources, the contingency plans, the

improvised ways a Reverend Mother might use to surmount barriers. Something Out

There could stop that?

When Waff did not respond, Taraza said: "You come to us with dirty hands."

"You dare say this?" Waff asked. "You who continue to deplete our resources in

the ways taught you by the Bashar's mother?"

"We knew you could afford the losses if you had resources from the Scattering,"

Taraza said.

Waff inhaled a trembling breath. So the Bene Gesserit knew even this. He saw

in part how they had learned it. Well, a way would have to be found to bring

the false Tuek back under control. Rakis was the prize the Scattered Ones

really sought and it might yet be demanded of the Tleilaxu.

Taraza moved even closer to Waff, alone and vulnerable. She saw her guards grow

tense. Sheeana took a small step toward the Mother Superior and was pulled back

by Odrade.

Odrade kept her attention on the Mother Superior and not on potential attackers.

Were the Tleilaxu truly convinced that the Bene Gesserit would serve them?

Taraza had tested the limits of it, no doubt of that. And in the language of

the Islamiyat. But she looked very alone out there away from her guards and so

near Waff and his people. Where would Waff's obvious suspicions lead him now?

Taraza shivered.

Odrade saw it. Taraza had been abnormally thin as a child and had never put on

an excess ounce of fat. This made her exquisitely sensitive to temperature

changes, intolerant of cold, but Odrade sensed no such change in the room.

Taraza had made a dangerous decision then, so dangerous that her body betrayed

her. Not dangerous to herself, of course, but dangerous to the Sisterhood.

There was the most awful Bene Gesserit crime: disloyalty to their own order.

"We will serve you in all ways except one," Taraza said. "We will never become

receptacles for gholas!"

Waff paled.

Taraza continued: "None of us is now nor will ever become . . ." she paused ".

. . an axlotl tank."

Waff raised his right hand in the start of a gesture every Reverend Mother knew:

the signal for his Face Dancers to attack.

Taraza pointed at his upraised hand. "If you complete that gesture, the

Tleilaxu will lose everything. The messenger of God --" Taraza nodded over a