Waff entered the room with a hesitant step. The Honored Matre already was there seated in a leather sling chair.
"You will call me what everyone else calls me," she greeted him. "Honored Matre."
He bowed as he had been warned to do. "Honored Matre."
No hint of hidden powers in her voice. A low contralto with overtones that spoke of disdain for him. She looked like an aged athlete or acrobat, slowed and retired but still maintaining her muscle tone and some of her skills. Her face was tight skin over a skull with prominent cheekbones. The thin-lipped mouth produced a sense of arrogance when she spoke, as though every word were projected downward onto lesser folk.
"Well, come in and sit down!" she commanded, waving at a sling chair facing her.
Waff heard the hatch hiss closed behind him. He was alone with her! She was wearing a snooper. He could see the lead for it going into her left ear. His dart throwers had been sealed and "washed" against snoopers, then maintained at minus 340° Kelvin in a radiation bath for five SY to make them proof against snoopers. Had it been enough?
Gently, he lowered himself into the indicated chair.
Orange-tinted contact lenses covered the Honored Matre's eyes, giving them a feral appearance. She was altogether daunting. And her clothing! Red leotards beneath a dark blue cape. The surface of the cape had been decorated with some pearly material to produce strange arabesques and dragon designs. She sat in the chair as though it were a throne, her clawlike hands resting easily on the arms.
Waff glanced around the room. His people had inspected this place in company with Ixian maintenance workers and representatives of the Honored Matre.
We have done our best, he thought, and he tried to relax.
The Honored Matre laughed.
Waff stared at her with as calm an expression as he could muster. "You are gauging me now," he accused. "You say to yourself that you have enormous resources to employ against me, subtle and gross instruments to carry out your commands."
"Do not take that tone with me." The words were low and flat but carried such a weight of venom that Waff almost recoiled.
He stared at the stringy muscles of the woman's legs, that deep red leotard fabric which flowed over her skin as though it were organic to her.
Their meeting time had been adjusted to bring them together at a mutually personal mid-morning, their waking hours having been balanced en route. Waff felt dislocated, though, and at a disadvantage. What if the stories of his informants were true? She must have weapons here.
She smiled at him without humor.
"You are trying to intimidate me," Waff said.
"And succeeding." Anger surged through Waff. He kept this from his voice. "I have come at your invitation."
"I hope you did not come to engage in a confrontation that you would surely lose," she said.
"I came to forge a bond between us," he said. And he wondered: What do they need from us? Surely they must need something.
"What bond can there be between us?" she asked. "Would you build an edifice on a disintegrating raft? Hah! Agreements can be broken and often are."
"For what tokens do we bargain?" he asked.
"Bargain? I do not bargain. I am interested in this ghola you made for the witches." Her tone gave away nothing but Waff's heartbeat quickened at her question.
In one of his ghola lifetimes, Waff had trained under a renegade Mentat. The capabilities of a Mentat were beyond him and besides, reasoning required words. They had been forced to kill the powindah Mentat but there had been some things of value in the experience. Waff allowed himself a small moue of distaste at the memory but he recalled the things of value.
Attack and absorb the data that attack produces!
"You offer me nothing in exchange!" he said, his voice loud.
"Recompense is at my discretion," she said.
Waff produced a scornful gaze. "Do you play with me?"
She showed white teeth in a feral grin. "You would not survive my play, nor want to."
"So I must be dependent upon your good will!"
"Dependency!" The word curled from her mouth as though it produced a distasteful sensation. "Why do you sell these gholas to the witches and then kill the gholas?"
Waff pressed his lips together and remained silent. .
"You have somehow changed this ghola while still making it possible for him to regain his original memories," she said.
"You know so much!" Waff said. It was not quite a sneer and, he hoped, revealed nothing. Spies! She had spies among the witches! Was there also a traitor in the Tleilaxu heartlands?
"There is a girl-child on Rakis who figures in the plans of the witches," the Honored Matre said.
"How do you know this?"
"The witches do not make a move without our knowing! You think of spies but you cannot know how far our arms will reach!"
Waff was dismayed. Could she read his mind? Was it something born of the Scattering? A wild talent from out there where the original human seed could not observe?
"How have you changed this ghola?" she demanded.
Voice!
Waff, armed against such devices by his Mentat teacher, almost blurted an answer. This Honored Matre had some of the witches' powers! It had been so unexpected coming from her. You expected such things from a Reverend Mother and were prepared. He was a moment recovering his balance. Waff steepled his hands in front of his chin.
"You have interesting resources," she said.
A gamin expression came over Waff's features. He knew how disarmingly elflike he could look.
Attack!
"We know how much you have learned from the Bene Gesserit," he said.
A look of rage swept over her face and was gone. "They have taught us nothing!"
Waff pitched his voice at a humorously appealing level, cajoling. "Surely, this is not bargaining."
"Isn't it?" She actually appeared surprised.
Waff lowered his hands. "Come now, Honored Matre. You are interested in this ghola. You speak of things on Rakis. What do you take us for?"
"Very little. You become less valuable by the instant."
Waff sensed the coldest machine logic in her response. There was no smell of Mentat in it but something more chilling. She is capable of killing me right here!
Where were her weapons? Would she even require weapons? He did not like the look of those stringy muscles, the calluses on her hands, the hunter's gleam in her orange eyes. Could she possibly guess (or even know) about the dart throwers in his sleeves?
"We are confronted by a problem that cannot be resolved by logical means," she said.
Waff stared at her in shock. A Zensunni Master might have said that! He had said it himself on more than one occasion.
"You have probably never considered such a possibility," she said. It was as though her words dropped a mask away from her face. Waff suddenly saw through to the calculating person behind these postures. Did she take him for some padfooted seelie fit only for collecting slig shit?
Bringing as much hesitant puzzlement into his voice as possible, he asked: "How could such a problem be resolved?"
"The natural course of events will dispose of it," she said.
Waff continued to stare at her in simulated puzzlement. Her words did not smack of revelation. Still, the things implied! He said: "Your words leave me floundering."
"Humankind has become infinite," she said. "That is the true gift of the Scattering."
Waff fought to conceal the turmoil these words created. "Infinite universes, infinite time -- anything may happen," he said.
"Ahhh, you are a bright little manikin," she said. "How does one allow for anything? It is not logical."
She sounded, Waff thought, like one of the ancient leaders of the Butlerian Jihad, which had tried to rid humankind of mechanical minds. This Honored Matre was strangely out of date.
"Our ancestors looked for an answer with computers," he ventured. Let her try that!
&nbs
p; "You already know that computers lack infinite storage capacity," she said.
Again, her words disconcerted him. Could she actually read minds? Was this a form of mind-printing? What the Tleilaxu did with Face Dancers and gholas, others might do as well. He centered his awareness and concentrated on Ixians, on their evil machines. Powindah machines!
The Honored Matre swept her gaze around the room. "Are we wrong to trust the Ixians?" she asked.
Waff held his breath.
"I don't think you fully trust them," she said. "Come, come, little man. I offer you my good will."
Belatedly, Waff began to suspect that she was trying to be friendly and candid with him. She certainly had put aside her earlier pose of angry superiority. Waff's informants from the Lost Ones said the Honored Matres made sexual decisions much in the manner of the Bene Gesserit. Was she trying to be seductive? But she clearly understood and had exposed the weakness of logic.
It was very confusing!
"We are talking in circles," he said.
"Quite the contrary. Circles enclose. Circles limit. Humankind no longer is limited by the space in which to grow."
There she went again! He spoke past a dry tongue: "It is said that what you cannot control you must accept."
She leaned forward, the orange eyes intent on his face. "Do you accept the possibility of a final disaster for the Bene Tleilax?"
"If that were the case I would not be here."
"When logic fails, another tool must be used."
Waff grinned. "That sounds logical."
"Don't mock me! How dare you!"
Waff lifted his hands defensively and assumed a placating tone: "What tool would the Honored Matre suggest?"
"Energy!"
Her answer surprised him. "Energy? In what form and how much?"
"You demand logical answers," she said.
With a feeling of sadness, Waff realized that she was not, after all Zensunni. The Honored Matre only played word games on the fringes of non-logic, circling it, but her tool was logic.
"Rot at the core spreads outward," he said.
It was as though she had not heard his testing statement. "There is untapped energy in the depths of any human we deign to touch," she said. She extended a skeletal finger to within a few millimeters of his nose.
Waff pulled back into his chair until she dropped her arm. He said: "Is that not what the Bene Gesserit said before producing their Kwisatz Haderach?"
"They lost control of themselves and of him," she sneered.
Again, Waff thought, she employed logic in thinking of the non-logical. How much she had told him in these little lapses. He could glimpse the probable history of these Honored Matres. One of the natural Reverend Mothers from the Fremen of Rakis had gone out in the Scattering. Diverse people had fled on the no-ships during and immediately after the Famine Times. A no-ship had seeded the wild witch and her concepts somewhere. That seed had returned in the form of this orange-eyed huntress.
Once more she hurled Voice at him, demanding: "What have you wrought with this ghola?"
This time, Waff was prepared and shrugged it off. This Honored Matre would have to be deflected or, if possible, slain. He had learned much from her but there was no way of telling how much she had learned from him with her unguessed talents.
They are sexual monsters, his informants had said. They enslave men by the powers of sex.
"How little you know the joys I could give you," she said. Her voice coiled like a whip around him. How tempting! How seductive!
Waff spoke defensively: "Tell me why you --"
"I need tell you nothing!"
"Then you did not come to bargain." He spoke sadly. The no-ships had, indeed, seeded those other universes with rot. Waff sensed the weight of necessity on his shoulders. What if he could not slay her?
"How dare you keep suggesting a bargain with an Honored Matre?" she demanded. "Know you that we set the price!"
"I do not know your ways, Honored Matre," Waff said. "But I sense in your words that I have offended."
"Apology accepted."
No apology intended! He stared at her blandly. Many things could be deduced from her performance. Out of his millennial experiences, Waff reviewed what he had learned here. This female from the Scattering came to him for an essential piece of information. Therefore, she had no other source. He sensed desperation in her. Well masked but definitely there. She needed confirmation or refutation of something she feared.
How like a predatory bird she was, sitting there with her claw hands so lightly on the arms of her chair! Rot at the core spreads outward. He had said it and she had not heard. Clearly, atomic humankind continued to explode on its Scatterings of Scatterings. The people represented by this Honored Matre had not found a way to trace the no-ships. That was it, of course. She hunted the no-ships just as the witches of the Bene Gesserit did.
"You seek the way to nullify a no-ship's invisibility," he said.
The statement obviously rocked her. She had not expected this from the elflike manikin seated in front of her. He saw fear, then anger, then resolution pass across her features before she resumed her predatory mask. She knew, though. She knew he had seen.
"So that is what you do with your ghola," she said.
"It is what the witches of the Bene Gesserit seek with him," Waff lied.
"I underestimated you," she said. "Did you make the same mistake with me?"
"I do not think so, Honored Matre. The breeding scheme that produced you is quite obviously formidable. I think you could kick out a foot and kill me before I blinked an eye. The witches are not in the same league with you."
A smile of pleasure softened her features. "Are the Tleilaxu to be our willing servants or compelled?"
He did not try to hide outrage. "You offer us slavery?"
"That is one of your options."
He had her now! Arrogance was her weakness. Submissively, he asked: "What would you command me to do?"
"You will take back as your guests two younger Honored Matres. They are to be bred with you and . . . teach you our ways of ecstasy."
Waff inhaled and exhaled two slow breaths.
"Are you sterile?" she asked.
"Only our Face Dancers are mules." She would already know that. It was common knowledge.
"You call yourself Master," she said, "yet you have not mastered yourself."
More than you, Honored Matre bitch! And I call myself Masheikh, a fact that may yet destroy you.
"The two Honored Matres I send with you will make an inspection of everything Tleilaxu and return to me with their report," she said.
He sighed as though in resignation. "Are the two younger women comely?"
"Honored Matres!" she corrected him.
"Is that the only name you use?"
"If they choose to give you names, that is their privilege, not yours." She leaned sideways and rapped a bony knuckle against the floor. Metal gleamed in her hand. She had a way of penetrating this room's shielding!
The hatch opened and two women dressed much like his Honored Matre entered. Their dark capes carried less decoration and both women were younger. Waff stared at them. Were they both . . . He tried not to show elation but knew he failed. No matter. The older one would think he admired the beauty of these two. By signs known only to the Masters, he saw that one of the two newcomers was a new Face Dancer. A successful exchange had been made and these Scattered Ones could not detect it! The Tleilaxu had successfully passed a hurdle! Would the Bene Gesserit be as blind to these new gholas?
"You are being sensibly agreeable about this, for which you will be rewarded," the old Honored Matre said.
"I recognize your powers, Honored Matre," he said. That was true. He bowed his head to conceal the resolution that he knew he could not keep from his eyes.
She gestured to the newcomers. "These two will accompany you. Their slightest whim is your command. They will be treated with all honor and respect."
"Of c
ourse, Honored Matre." Keeping his head bowed he lifted both arms as though in salutation and submission. A dart hissed from each sleeve. As he released the darts, Waff jerked himself sideways in his chair. The motion was not quite rapid enough. The old Honored Matte's right foot shot out, catching him in the left thigh and hurling him backward on his chair.
It was the old Honored Matre's last living act. The dart from his left sleeve caught her in the back of her throat, entering through her opened mouth, a mouth left gaping in surprise. Narcotic poison cut off any outcry. The other dart hit the non-Face Dancer of the newcomers in the right eye. His Face Dancer accomplice cut off any warning shout by a blurred chop to the throat.
Frank Herbert - Dune Book 5 - Heretics of Dune Page 10