Dune

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 catalogue 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.

Give me a small opening that I may expand, Scytale thought. Give me my own Face Dancers. Give me servants who will do only my bidding.

“It is a small thing to ask,” he said. “I seek personal comfort, my own servants.”

Odrade continued to stare at him in that weighted way of the Bene Gesserit that always seemed to peel away the masks and see deep into you.

But I have masks you have not penetrated.

He could see that she found him repulsive—the way her gaze fixed sequentially on each of his features. He knew what she was thinking. An elfin figure with narrow face and puckish eyes. Widow’s peak. Her gaze moved down: tiny mouth with sharp teeth and pointed canines.

Scytale knew himself to be a figure out of humankind’s most dangerously disturbing mythologies. Odrade would ask herself: Why did the Bene Tleilax choose this particular physical appearance when their control of genetics could have given them something more impressive?

For the very reason that it disturbs you, powindah dirt!

He thought immediately of another typical: “The Bene Gesserit seldom scatter dirt.”

Scytale had seen the dirty aftermath of many Bene Gesserit actions. Look at what happened to Dune! Burnt to cinders because you women of Shaitan chose that holy ground to challenge the whores. Even the revenants of our Prophet gone to their reward. Everyone dead!

And he hardly dared contemplate his own losses. No Tleilaxu planet had escaped the fate of Dune. The Bene Gesserit caused that! And he must suffer their tolerance—a refugee with only God to support him.

He asked Odrade about scattered dirt on Dune.

“You find that only when we are in extremis.”

“Is that why you attracted the violence of those whores?”

She refused to discuss it.

One of Scytale’s late companions had said: “The Bene Gesserit leave straight tracks. You might think them complex, but when you look closely their way smooths.”

That companion and all the others had been butchered by the whores. His only survival lay in cells of a nullentropy capsule. So much for a dead Master’s wisdom!

Odrade wanted more technical information about axlotl tanks. Ohhhh, how cleverly she worded her questions!

Bargaining for survival, and each little bit carried a heavy weight. What had he received for his tiny measured pieces of data about the axlotl tanks? Odrade took him out of the ship occasionally now. But the whole planet was as much a prison to him as this ship. Where could he go that the witches would not find him?

What were they doing with their own axlotl tanks? He was not even sure about this. The witches lied with such facility.

Was it wrong to supply them even with limited knowledge? He realized now he had told them far more than the bare biotechnical details to which he had confined himself. They definitely deduced how Masters had created a limited immortality—always a ghola-replacement growing in the tanks. That, too, was lost! He wanted to scream this at her in his frustrated rage.

Questions . . . obvious questions.

He parried her questions with wordy arguments about “my need for Face Dancer servants and my own Shipsystem console.”

She was slyly adamant, probing for more knowledge of the tanks. “The information to produce melange from our tanks might induce us to be more liberal with our guest.”

Our tanks! Our guest!

These women were like a plasteel wall. No tanks for his personal use. All of that Tleilaxu power gone. It was a thought full of mournful self-pity. He restored himself with a reminder: God obviously tested his resourcefulness. They think they hold me in a trap. But their restrictions hurt. No Face Dancer servants? Very well. He would seek other servants. Not Face Dancers.

Scytale felt the deepest anguish of his many lives when he thought of his lost Face Dancers—his mutable slaves. Damn these women and their pretense that they shared the Great Belief! Omnipresent acolytes and Reverend Mothers always snooping around. Spies! And comeyes everywhere. Oppressive.

On first coming to Chapterhouse, he had sensed a shyness about his jailers, a privacy that became intense when he probed into the workings of their order. Later, he came to see this as a circling up, all facing outward at any threat. What is ours is ours. You may not enter!

Scytale recognized a parental posturing in this, a maternal view of humankind: “Behave or we will punish you!” And Bene Gesserit punishments certainly were to be avoided.

As Odrade continued to demand more than he would give, Scytale fastened his attention on a typical he felt sure was true: They cannot love. But he was forced to agree. Neither love nor hate were purely rational. He thought of such emotions as a dark fountain shadowing the air all around, a primitive gusher that sprayed unsuspecting humans.

How this woman does chatter! He watched her, not really listening. What were their flaws? Was it a weakness that they avoided music? Did they fear the secret play on emotions? The aversion appeared to be heavily conditioned, but the conditioning did not always succeed. In his many lives he had seen witches appear to enjoy music. When he questioned Odrade, she became quite heated, and he suspected a deliberate display to mislead him.

“We cannot let ourselves be distracted!”

“Don’t you ever replay great musical performances in memory? I’m told that in ancient times . . .”

“Of what use is music played on instruments no longer known to most people?”

“Oh? What instruments are those?”

“Where would you find a piano?” Still in that false anger. “Terrible instruments to tune and even more difficult to play.”

How prettily she protests. “I’ve never heard of this . . . this . . . piano, did you say? Is it like the baliset?”

“Distant cousins. But it could only be tuned to an approximate key. An idiosyncracy of the instrument.”

“Why do you single out this . . . this piano?”

“Because I sometimes think it too bad we no longer have it. Producing perfection from imperfection is, after all, the highest of art forms.”

Perfection from imperfection! She was trying to distract him with Zensunni words, feeding the illusion that these witches shared his Great Belief. He had been warned many times about this peculiarity of Bene Gesserit bargaining. They approached everything from an oblique angle, revealing only at the last instant what they really sought. But he knew what they bargained for here. She wanted all of his knowledge and sought to pay nothing. Still, how tempting her words were.

Scytale felt a deep wariness. Her words fitted themselves so neatly into her claim that the Bene Gesserit sought only to perfect human society. So she thought she could teach him! Another typical: “They see themselves as teachers.”

When he expressed doubt of this claim, she said, “Naturally we build up pressures in societies we influence. We do it that we may direct those pressures.”

“I find this discordant,” he complained.

“Why Master Scytale! It’s a very common pattern. Governments often do this to produce violence against chosen targets. You did it yourselves! And see where it got you.”

So she dares claim the Tleilaxu brought this calamity on themselves!

“We follow the lesson of the Great Messenger,” she said, using the Islamiyat for the Prophet Leto II. The words sounded alien on her lips, but he was taken back. She knew how all Tleilaxu revered the Prophet.

But I have heard these women call Him Tyrant!

Still speaking Islamiyat, she demanded, “Was it not His goal to divert violence, producing a lesson of value to all?”

Does she joke about the Great Belief?

“That is why we accepted Him,” she said. “He did not play by our rules but He played for our goal.”

She dared say she accepted the Prophet!

He did not challenge her, although the provocation was great. A delicate thing, a Reverend Mother’s view of herself and her behavior. He suspected they constantly readjusted this view, never bouncing far in any direction. No self-hate, no self-love. Confidence, yes. Maddening self-confidence. But that did not require hate or love. Only a cool head, every judgment ready for correction, just as she claimed. It would seldom require praise. A job well done? Well, what else did you expect?

“Bene Gesserit training strengthens the character.” That was Folk Wisdom’s most popular typical.

He tried to start an argument with her on this. “Isn’t Honored Matres’ conditioning the same as yours? Look at Murbella!”

“Is it generalities you want, Scytale?” Was that amusement in her tone?

“A collision between two conditioning systems, isn’t that a good way to view this confrontation?” he ventured.

“And the more powerful will emerge victorious, of course.” Definitely sneering!

“Isn’t that how it always works?” His anger not well bridled.

“Must a Bene Gesserit remind a Tleilaxu that subtleties are another kind of weapon? Have you not practiced deception? A feigned weakness to deflect your enemies and lead them into traps? Vulnerabilities can be created.”

Of course! She knows about the eons of Tleilaxu deception, creating an image of inept stupidities.

“So that’s how you expect to deal with our foes?”

“We intend to punish them, Scytale.”

Such implacable determination!

New things he learned about the Bene Gesserit filled him with misgivings.

Odrade, taking him for a well-guarded afternoon stroll in the cold winter outside the ship (burly Proctors just a pace behind), stopped to watch a small procession coming from Central. Five Bene Gesserit women, two of them acolytes by their white-trimmed robes, but the other three in an unrelieved gray not known to him. They wheeled a cart into one of the orchards. A frigid wind blew across them. A few old leaves whipped from the dark branches. The cart bore a long bundle shrouded in white. A body? It was the right shape.

When he asked, Odrade regaled him with an account of Bene Gesserit burial practices.

If there was a body to bury, it was done with the casual dispatch he now witnessed. No Reverend Mother ever had an obituary or wanted time-wasting rituals. Did her memory not live on in her Sisters?

He started to argue that this was irreverent but she cut him off.

“Given the phenomenon of death, all attachments in life are temporary! We modify that somewhat in Other Memory. You did a similar thing, Scytale. And now we incorporate some of your abilities in our bag of tricks. Oh, yes! That’s the way we think of such knowledge. It merely modifies the pattern.”

“An irreverent practice!”

“Nothing irreverent about it. Into the dirt they go where, at least, they can become fertilizer.” And she continued to describe the scene without giving him a chance for further protests.

They had this regular routine he now observed, she said. A large mechanical auger was wheeled into the orchard, where it drilled a suitable hole in the earth. The corpse, bound in that cheap cloth, was buried vertically and an orchard tree planted over it. Orchards were laid out in grid patterns, a cenotaph at one corner where the locations of burials were recorded. He saw the cenotaph when she pointed it out, a square green thing about three meters high.

“I think that body’s being buried at about C-21,” she said, watching the auger at work while the burial team waited, leaning against the cart. “That one will fertilize an apple tree.” She sounded ungodly happy about it!

As they watched the auger withdraw and the cart being tipped, the body sliding into the hole, Odrade began to hum.

Scytale was surprised. “You said the Bene Gesserit avoided music.”

“Just an old ditty.”

The Bene Gesserit remained a puzzle and, more than ever, he saw the weakness of typicals. How could you bargain with people whose patterns did not follow an acceptable path? You might think you understood them and then they shot off in a new direction. They were untypical! Trying to understand them disrupted his sense of order. He was certain he had not received anything real in all of this bargaining. A bit more freedom that was actually the illusion of freedom. Nothing he really wanted came from this cold-faced witch! It was tantalizing to try piecing together any substance from what he knew about the Bene Gesserit. There was, for instance, the claim they did without most bureaucratic systems and record keeping. Except for Bellonda’s Archives, of course, and every time he mentioned those, Odrade said, “Heaven guard us!” or something equivalent.

Now he asked, “How do you maintain yourselves without officials and records?” He was deeply puzzled.

“A thing needs doing, we do it. Bury a Sister?” She pointed to the scene in the orchard where shovels had been brought into play and dirt was being tamped on the grave.

“That’s how it’s done and there’s always someone around who’s responsible. They know who they are.”

“Who . . . who takes care of this unwholesome . . . ?”

“It’s not unwholesome! It’s part of our education. Failed Sisters usually supervise. Acolytes do the work.”

“Don’t they . . . I mean, isn’t this distasteful to them? Failed Sisters, you say. And acolytes. It would seem to be more of a punishment than . . .”

“Punishment! Come, come, Scytale. Have you only one song to sing?” She pointed at the burial party. “After their apprenticeship, all of our people willingly accept their jobs.”

“But no . . . ahhh, bureaucratic . . .”

“We’re not stupid!”

Again, he did not understand, but she responded to his silent puzzlement.

“Surely you know bureaucracies always become voracious aristocracies after they attain commanding power.”

He had difficulty seeing the relevance. Where was she leading him?

When he remained silent, she said: “Honored Matres have all the marks of bureaucracy. Ministers of this, Great Honored Matres of that, a powerful few at the top and many functionaries below. They already are full of adolescent hungers. Like voracious predators, they never consider how they exterminate their prey. A tight relationship: Reduce the numbers of those upon whom you feed and you bring your own structure crashing down.”

He found it difficult to believe the witches really saw Honored Matres this way and said so.

“If you survive, Scytale, you will see my words made real. Great cries of rage by those unthinking women at the necessity to retrench. Much new effort to wring the most out of their prey. Capture more of them! Squeeze them harder! It will just mean quicker extermination. Idaho says they’re already in the die-back stage.”

The ghola says this? So she was using him as a Mentat! “Where do you get such ideas? Surely this does not originate with your ghola.” Continue to believe he’s yours!

“He merely confirmed our assessment. An example in Other Memory alerted us.”

“Ohh?” This thing of Other Memory bothered him. Could their claim be true? Memories from his own multiple lives were of enormous value. He asked for confirmation.

“We remembered the relationship between a food animal called a snowshoe rabbit and a predatory cat called a lynx. The cat population always grew to follow the population of the rabbits, and then overfeeding dumped the predators into famine times and severe die-back.”

“An interesting term, die-back.”

“Descriptive of what we intend for the Honored Matres.”

When their meeting ended (without anything gained for him), Scytale found himself more confused than ever. Was that truly their intent? The damnable woman! He could not be sure of anything she said.

When she returned him to his quarters in the ship, Scytale stood for a long time looking through the barrier field at the long corridor where Idaho and Murbella sometimes came on their way to their practice floor. He knew that must be where they went through a wide doorway down there. They always emerged sweating and breathing deeply.

Neither of his fellow prisoners appeared, although he loitered there for more than an hour.

She uses the ghola as a Mentat! That must mean he has access to a Shipsystems console. Surely, she would not deprive her Mentat of his data. Somehow, I must contrive it that Idaho and I meet intimately. There’s always the whistling language we impress on every ghola. I must not appear too anxious. A small concession in the bargaining, perhaps. A complaint that my quarters are confining. They see how I chafe at imprisonment.