Chapterhouse: Dune

  "I know those ... lives. It's like one lifetime."

  "That accumulation could be very valuable to us, Duncan. Do you also remember the axlotl tanks?"

  Her question sent his thoughts into the misty probings that caused him to imagine strange things about the Tieilaxu--great mounds of human flesh softly visible to the imperfect newborn eyes, blurred and unfocused images, almost-memories of emerging from birth canals. How could that accord with tanks?

  "Scytale has provided us with the knowledge to make our own axlotl system," Odrade said.

  System? Interesting word. "Does that mean you also duplicate Tleilaxu spice production?"

  "Scytale bargains for more than we will give. But spice will come in time, one way or another."

  Odrade heard herself speak firmly and wondered if he detected uncertainty. We might not have the time to do it.

  "The Sisters you Scatter are hobbled," he said, giving her a small taste of Mentat awareness. "You're drawing on your spice stockpiles to supply them and those must be finite."

  "They have our axlotl knowledge and sandtrout."

  He was shocked to silence by the possibility of countless Dunes being reproduced in an infinite universe.

  "They will solve the problem of melange supply with tanks or worms or both," she said. This she could say sincerely. It came from statistical expectation. One among those Scattered bands of Reverend Mothers should accomplish it.

  "The tanks," he said. "I have strange ... dreams." He had almost said "musings."

  "And well you should." Briefly, she told him how female flesh was incorporated.

  "For making the spice, too?"

  "We think so."

  "Disgusting!"

  "That's juvenile," she chided.

  In such moments, he disliked her intensely. Once, he had reproached her for the way Reverend Mothers removed themselves from "the common stream of human emotions," and she had given him that identical answer.

  Juvenile!

  "For which there probably is no remedy," he said. "A disgraceful flaw in my character."

  "Were you thinking to debate morality with me?"

  He thought he heard anger. "Not even ethics. We work by different rules."

  "Rules are often an excuse to ignore compassion."

  "Do I hear a faint echo of conscience in a Reverend Mother?"

  "Deplorable. My Sisters would exile me if they thought conscience ruled me."

  "You can be prodded, but not ruled."

  "Very good, Duncan! I like you much better when you're openly Mentat."

  "I distrust your liking."

  She laughed aloud. "How like Bell!"

  He stared at her dumbly, plunged by her laughter into sudden knowledge of the way to escape his warders, remove himself from the constant Bene Gesserit manipulations and live his own life. The way out lay not in machinery but in the Sisterhood's flaws. The absolutes by which they thought they surrounded and held him--there was the way out!

  And Sheeana knows! That's the bait she dangles in front of me.

  When Idaho did not speak, Odrade said: "Tell me about those other lives."

  "Wrong. I think of them as one continuous life."

  "No deaths?"

  He let a response form silently. Serial memories: the deaths were as informative as the lives. Killed so many times by Leto himself!

  "The deaths do not interrupt my memories."

  "An odd kind of immortality," she said. "You know, don't you, that Tleilaxu Masters recreated themselves? But you--what did they hope to achieve, mixing different gholas in one flesh?"

  "Ask Scytale."

  "Bell felt sure you were a Mentat. She will be delighted."

  "I think not."

  "I will see to it that she is delighted. My! I have so many questions I'm not sure where to begin." She studied him, left hand to her chin.

  Questions? Mentat demands flowed through Idaho's mind. He let the questions he had asked himself so many times move of themselves, forming their patterns. What did the Tleilaxu seek in me? They could not have included cells from all of his ghola-selves for this incarnation. Yet ... he had all of the memories. What cosmic linkage accumulated all of those lives in this one self? Was that the clue to the visions that beset him in the Great Hold? Half-memories formed in his mind: his body in warm fluid, fed by tubes, massaged by machines, probed and questioned by Tleilaxu observers. He sensed murmurous responses from semi-dormant selves. The words had no meaning. It was as though he listened to a foreign language coming from his own lips but he knew it was ordinary Galach.

  The scope of what he sensed in Tleilaxu actions awed him. They investigated a cosmos no one but the Bene Gesserit had ever dared touch. That the Bene Tleilax did this for selfish reasons did not subtract from it. The endless rebirths of Tleilaxu Masters were a reward worthy of daring.

  Face Dancer servants to copy any life, any mind. The scope of the Tleilaxu dream was as awesome as Bene Gesserit achievements.

  "Scytale admits to memories of Muad'Dib's times," Odrade said. "You might compare notes with him someday."

  "That kind of immortality is a bargaining chip," he warned. "Could he sell it to the Honored Matres?"

  "He might. Come. Let's go back to your quarters."

  In his workroom, she gestured him to the chair at his console and he wondered if she was still hunting for his secrets. She bent over him to manipulate the controls. The overhead projector produced a scene of desert to a horizon of rolling dunes.

  "Chapterhouse?" she said. "A wide band along our equator."

  Excitement gripped him. "Sandtrout, you said. But are there any new worms?"

  "Sheeana expects them soon."

  "They require a large amount of spice as catalyst."

  "We've gambled a great deal of melange out there. Leto told you about the catalyst, didn't he? What else do you remember of him?"

  "He killed me so many times it's an ache when I think about it."

  She had the records of Dar-es-Balat on Dune to confirm this. "Killed you himself, I know. Did he just throw you away when you were used up?"

  "I sometimes performed up to expectations and was allowed a natural death."

  "Was his Golden Path worth it?"

  We don't understand his Golden Path nor the fermentations that produced it. He said this.

  "Interesting choice of word. A Mentat thinks of the Tyrant's eons as fermentation."

  "That erupted in the Scattering."

  "Driven also by the Famine Times."

  "You think he didn't anticipate famines?"

  She did not reply, held to silence by his Mentat view. Golden Path: humankind "erupting" into the universe ... never again confined to any single planet and susceptible to a singular fate. All of our eggs no longer in one basket.

  "Leto thought of all humankind as a single organism," he said.

  "But he enlisted us in his dream against our will."

  "You Atreides always do that."

  You Atreides! "Then you've paid your debt to us?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "Do you appreciate my present dilemma, Mentat?"

  "How long have the sandtrout been at work?"

  "More than eight Standard Years."

  "How fast is our desert growing?"

  Our desert! She gestured at the projection. "That's more than three times larger than it was before the sandtrout."

  "So fast!"

  "Sheeana expects to see small worms any day."

  "They tend not to surface until they reach about two meters."

  "So she says."

  He spoke in a musing tone. "Each with a pearl of Leto's awareness in his 'endless dream.'"

  "So he said and he never lied about such things."

  "His lies were more subtle. Like a Reverend Mother's."

  "You accuse us of lying?"

  "Why does Sheeana want to see me?"

  "Mentats! You think your questions are answers." Odrade shook her head in mock dismay. "She must lear
n as much as possible about the Tyrant as the center of religious adoration."

  "Gods below! Why?"

  "The cult of Sheeana has spread. It's all over the Old Empire and beyond, carried by surviving priests from Rakis."

  "From Dune," he corrected her. "Don't think of it as Arrakis or Rakis. It fogs your mind."

  She accepted his correction. He was fully Mentat now and she waited patiently.

  "Sheeana talked to the sandworms on Dune," he said. "They responded." He met her questioning stare. "Up to your old tricks with your Missionaria Protectiva, eh?"

  "The Tyrant is known as Dur and Guldur in the Scattering," she said, feeding his Mentat naivete.

  "You have a dangerous assignment for her. Does she know?"

  "She knows and you could make it less dangerous."

  "Then open your data systems to me."

  "No limits?" She knew what Bell would say to that!

  He nodded, unable to allow himself the hope that she might agree. Does she suspect how desperately I want this? It was an ache where he held his knowledge of how he might escape. Unimpeded access to information! She will think I want the illusion of freedom.

  "Will you be my Mentat, Duncan?"

  "What choice do I have?"

  "I will discuss your request in Council and give you our answer."

  Is the escape door opening?

  "I must think like an Honored Matre," he said, arguing for the comeyes and the watchdogs who would review his request.

  "Who could do it better than the one who lives with Murbella?" she asked.

  Corruption wears infinite disguises.

  --Tleilaxu Thu-zen

  They do not know what I think nor what I can do, Scytale thought. Their Truthsayers cannot read me. That, at least, he had salvaged from disaster--the art of deception learned from his perfected Face Dancers.

  He moved softly through his area of the no-ship, observing, cataloguing, measuring. Every look weighed people or place in a mind trained to seek flaws.

  Each Tleilaxu Master had known that someday God might set him a task to test his commitment.

  Very well! This was such a task. The Bene Gesserit who claimed they shared his Great Belief swore it falsely. They were unclean. He no longer had companions to cleanse him on his return from alien places. He had been cast into the powindah universe, made prisoner by servants of Shaitan, was hunted by whores from the Scattering. But none of those evil ones knew his resources. None suspected how God would help him in this extremity.

  I cleanse myself, God!

  When the women of Shaitan had plucked him from the hands of the whores, promising sanctuary and "every assistance," he had known them false.

  The greater the test, the greater my faith.

  Only a few minutes ago, he had watched through a shimmering barrier as Duncan Idaho took a morning walk down the long corridor. The forcefield that kept them apart prevented the passage of sound, but Scytale saw Idaho's lips move and read the curse. Curse me, ghola, but we made you and still may use you.

  God had introduced a Holy Accident into the Tleilaxu plan for this ghola, but God always had larger designs. It was the task of the faithful to fit themselves into God's plans and not demand that God follow the designs of humans.

  Scytale set himself to this test, renewing his holy pledge. It was done without words in the ancient Bene Tleilax way of s'tori. "To achieve S'tori no understanding is needed. S'tori exists without words, without even a name."

  The magic of his God was his only bridge. Scytale felt this deeply. The youngest Master in the highest kehl, he had known from the beginning he would be chosen for this ultimate task. That knowledge was one of his strengths and he saw it every time he looked in a mirror. God formed me to deceive the powindah! His slight, childlike appearance was formed in a gray skin whose metallic pigments blocked scanning probes. His diminutive shape distracted those who saw him and hid the powers he had accumulated in serial ghola incarnations. Only the Bene Gesserit carried older memories, but he knew evil guided them.

  Scytale rubbed his breast, reminding himself of what was hidden there with such skill that not even a scar marked the place. Each Master had carried this resource--a nullentropy capsule preserving the seed cells of a multitude: fellow Masters of the central kehl, Face Dancers, technical specialists and others he knew would be attractive to the women of Shaitan ... and to many weakling powindah! Paul Atreides and his beloved Chani were there. (Oh what that had cost in searching garments of the dead for random cells!) The original Duncan Idaho was there with other Atreides minions--the Mentat Thufir Hawat, Gurney Halleck, the Fremen Naib Stilgar ... enough potential servants and slaves to people a Tleilaxu universe.

  The prize of prizes in the nullentropy tube, the ones he longed to bring into existence, made him catch his breath when he thought of them. Perfect Face Dancers! Perfect mimics. Perfect recorders of a victim's persona. Capable of deceiving even the witches of the Bene Gesserit. Not even shere could prevent them from capturing the mind of another.

  The tube he thought of as his ultimate bargaining power. No one must know of it. For now, he catalogued flaws.

  There were enough gaps in the no-ship's defenses to gratify him. In his serial lifetimes, he had collected skills the way his fellow Masters collected pleasing baubles. They had always considered him too serious but now he had found the place and time for vindication.

  Study of the Bene Gesserit had always attracted him. Over the eons, he had acquired a body of knowledge about them. He knew it held myths and misinformation, but faith in the purposes of God assured him the view he held would serve the Great Belief, no matter the rigors of Holy Testing.

  Part of his Bene Gesserit catalog he called "Typicals," from the frequent remark: "That's typical of them!"

  The typicals fascinated him.

  It was typical for them to tolerate gross but non-threatening behavior in others they would not accept in themselves. "Bene Gesserit standards are higher." Scytale had heard that even from some of his late companions.

  "We have the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us," Odrade had once said.

  Scytale included this among typicals, but her words did not accord with the Great Belief. Only God saw your ultimate self! Odrade's boast had the sound of hubris.

  "They tell no casual lies. Truth serves them better."

  He often wondered about that. Mother Superior herself quoted it as a rule of the Bene Gesserit. There remained the fact that witches appeared to hold a cynical view of truth. She dared claim it was Zensunni. "Whose truth? Modified in what way? In what context?"

  They had been seated the previous afternoon in his no-ship quarters. He had asked for "a consultation on mutual problems," his euphemism for bargaining. They were alone except for comeyes and the comings and goings of watchful Sisters.

  His quarters were comfortable enough: three plaz-walled rooms in restful green, a soft bed, chairs reduced to fit his diminutive body.

  This was an Ixian no-ship and he felt certain his warders did not suspect how much he knew of it. As much as the Ixians. Ixian machines all around but never an Ixian to be seen. He doubted there was a single Ixian on Chapterhouse. The witches were notorious for doing their own maintenance.

  Odrade moved and spoke slowly, watching him with care. "They are not impulsive. " You heard that often.

  She asked after his comfort and appeared concerned for him.

  He glanced around his sitting room. "I see no Ixians."

  She pursed her lips with displeasure. "Is this why you asked for consultation?"

  Of course not, witch! I merely practice my arts of distraction. You would not expect me to mention things I wished to conceal. Then why would I call your attention to Ixians when I know it is unlikely there are any dangerous intruders walking freely on your accursed planet? Ahhh, the much vaunted Ixian connection we Tleilaxu maintained so long. You know of that! You punished Ix memorably more than once.

  The technocrats of Ix might hesitate
to irritate the Bene Gesserit, he thought, but they would be extremely careful not to arouse the ire of Honored Matres. Secret trading was indicated by the presence of this no-ship but the price must have been ruinous and the circumlocutions exceptional. Very nasty, those whores from the Scattering. They might need Ix themselves, he guessed. And Ix might secretly defy the whores to make an arrangement with the Bene Gesserit. But the limits were tight and chances of betrayal many.

  These thoughts comforted him as he bargained. Odrade, in a brittle mood, unsettled him several times with silences during which she stared at him in that disturbing Bene Gesserit way.

  The bargaining chips were large--no less than survival for each of them and always in the pot that tenuous thing: ascendancy, control of the human universe, perpetuation of your own ways as the dominant pattern.