Taraza said: "My second agenda item for this meeting is our ghola."
Waff squirmed in the sling chair.
Taraza felt repelled by Waff's tiny eyes, the round face with its snub nose and too-sharp teeth.
"You have been killing our gholas to control the movement of a project in which you have no part other than to provide a single element," Taraza accused.
Waff once more wondered if he must kill her. Was nothing hidden from these damnable witches? The implication that the Bene Gesserit had a traitor in the Tleilaxu core could not be ignored. How else could they know?
He said: "I assure you, Reverend Mother Superior, that the ghola --
"Assure me of nothing! We assure ourselves." A look of sadness on her face, Taraza shook her head slowly from side to side. "And you think we don't know that you sold us damaged goods."
Waff spoke quickly: "He meets every requirement imposed by your contract!"
Again, Taraza shook her head from side to side. This diminutive Tleilaxu Master had no idea what he was revealing here. "You have buried your own scheme in his psyche," Taraza said. "I warn you, Ser Waff, that if your alterations obstruct our design, we will wound you deeper than you think possible."
Waff passed a hand across his face, feeling the perspiration on his forehead. Damnable witches! But she did not know everything. The Tleilaxu returned from the Scattering and the Honored Matres she maligned so bitterly had provided the Tleilaxu with a sexually loaded weapon that would not be shared, no matter the promises made here!
Taraza digested Waff's reactions silently and decided on a bold lie. "When we captured your Ixian conference ship, your new Face Dancers did not die quite fast enough. We learned a great deal."
Waff poised himself on the edge of violence.
Bullseye! Taraza thought. The bold lie had opened an avenue of revelation into one of the more outrageous suggestions from her advisors. It did not seem outrageous now. "The Tleilaxu ambition is to produce a complete prana-bindu mimic," her advisor had suggested.
"Complete?"
All of the Sisters at the conference had been astonished by the suggestion. It implied a form of mental copy going beyond the memory print about which they already knew.
The advisor, Sister Hesterion from Archives, had come armed with a tightly organized list of supporting material. "We already know that what an Ixian Probe does mechanically, the Tleilaxu do with nerves and flesh. The next step is obvious."
Seeing Waff's reaction to her bold lie, Taraza continued to watch him carefully. He was at his most dangerous right now.
A look of rage came over Waff's face. The things the witches knew were too dangerous! He did not doubt Taraza's claim in the slightest. I must kill her no matter the consequences to me! We must kill them all. Abominations! It's their word and it describes them perfectly.
Taraza correctly interpreted his expression. She spoke quickly: "You are in absolutely no danger from us as long as you do not injure our designs. Your religion, your way of life, those are your business."
Waff hesitated, not so much from what Taraza said as from the reminder of her powers. What else did they know? To continue in a subservient position, though! After rejecting such an alliance with the Honored Matres. And with ascendancy so near after all of those millennia. Dismay filled him. The minority among his councillors had been right after all: "There can be no bond between our peoples. Any accord with powindah forces is a union based upon evil."
Taraza still sensed the potential violence in him. Had she pushed him too far? She held herself in defensive readiness. An involuntary jerking of his arms alerted her. Weapons in his sleeves! Tleilaxu resources were not to be underestimated. Her snoopers had detected nothing.
"We know about the weapons you carry," she said. Another bold lie suggested itself. "If you make a mistake now, the whores will also learn how you use those weapons."
Waff took three shallow breaths. When he spoke, he had himself under control: "We will not be Bene Gesserit satellites!"
Taraza responded in an even-toned, soothing voice: "I have not by word or action suggested such a role for you."
She waited. There was no change in Waff's expression, no slightest shift in the unfocused glare he directed at her.
"You threaten us," he muttered. "You demand that we share everything we --"
"Share!" she snapped. "One does not share with unequal partners."
"And what would you share with us?" he demanded.
She spoke with the chiding tone she would use to a child: "Ser Waff, ask yourself why you, a ruling member of your oligarchy, came to this meeting?"
His voice still firmly controlled, Waff countered: "And why did you, Mother Superior of the Bene Gesserit, come here?"
She spoke mildly: "To strengthen us."
"You did not say what you would share," he accused. "You still hope for advantage."
Taraza continued to watch him carefully. She had seldom sensed such suppressed rage in a human. "Ask me openly what you want," she said.
"And you will give it out of your great generosity!"
"I will negotiate."
"Where was the negotiation when you ordered me . . . ORDERED ME! to --
"You came here firmly resolved to break any agreement we made," she said. "Not once have you tried to negotiate! You sit in front of someone willing to bargain with you and you can only --"
"Bargain?" Waff's memory was hurled back to the Honored Matre's anger at that word.
"I said it," Taraza said. "Bargain."
Something like a smile twitched the corners of Waff's mouth. "You think I have authority to bargain with you?"
"Have a care, Ser Waff," she said. "You have the ultimate authority. It resides in that final ability to destroy an opponent utterly. I have not threatened that, but you have." She glanced at his sleeves.
Waff sighed. What a quandary. She was powindah! How could one bargain with a powindah?
"We have a problem that cannot be resolved by rational means," Taraza said.
Waff hid his surprise. Those were the very words the Honored Matre had used! He cringed inwardly at what that might signify. Could Bene Gesserit and Honored Matres make common cause? Taraza's bitterness argued otherwise, but when were the witches to be trusted?
Once more, Waff wondered if he dared sacrifice himself to eliminate this witch. What would it serve? Others among them surely knew what she knew. It would only precipitate the disaster. There was that internal dispute among the witches, but, again, that might just be another ruse.
"You ask us to share something," Taraza said. "What if I were to offer you some of our prize human bloodlines?"
There was no mistaking how Waff's interest quickened.
He said: "Why should we come to you for such things? We lave our tanks and we can pick up genetic examples almost anywhere."
"Examples of what?" she asked.
Waff sighed. You could never escape that Bene Gesserit incisiveness. It was like a sword thrust. He guessed that he had revealed things to her that led naturally to this subject. The damage already had been done. She correctly deduced (or spies had told her!) that the wild pool of human genes held little interest for the Tleilaxu with their more sophisticated knowledge of life's innermost language. It never paid to underestimate either the Bene Gesserit or the products of their breeding programs. God Himself knew they had produced Muad'dib and the Prophet!
"What more would you demand in exchange for this?" he asked.
"Bargaining at last!" Taraza said. "We both know, of course, that I am offering breeding mothers of the Atreides line." And she thought: "Let him hope for that! They will look like Atreides but they will not be Atreides!"
Waff felt his pulse quicken. Was this possible? Did she have the slightest idea what the Tleilaxu might learn from an examination of such source material?
"We would want first selection of their offspring," Taraza said.
"No!"
"Alternate first selection, then?"
"Perhaps. "
"What do you mean, perhaps?" She leaned forward. Waff's intensity told her she was on a hot trail.
"What else would you ask of us?"
"Our breeding mothers must have unfettered access to your genetic laboratories."
"Are you mad?" Waff shook his head in exasperation. Did she think the Tleilaxu would give away their strongest weapon just like that?
"Then we will accept a fully operational axlotl tank."
Waff merely stared at her.
Taraza shrugged. "I had to try."
"I suppose you did."
Taraza sat back and reviewed what she had learned here. Waff's reaction to that Zensunni probe had been interesting. "A problem that cannot be resolved by rational means." The words had produced a subtle effect on him. He had seemed to rise out of some place within himself, a questioning look in his eyes. Gods preserve us all! Is Waff a secret Zensunni?
No matter the dangers, this had to be explored. Odrade must be armed with every possible advantage on Rakis.
"Perhaps we have done all we can for now," Taraza said. "There is time to complete our bargain. God alone in His infinite mercy has given us infinite universes where anything may happen."
Waff clapped his hands once without thinking. "The gift of surprises is the greatest gift of all!" he said.
Not just Zensunni, Taraza thought. Sufi also. Sufi! She began to readjust her perspective on the Tleilaxu. How long have they been holding this close to their breasts?
"Time does not count itself," Taraza said, probing. "One has only to look at any circle."
"Suns are circles," Waff said. "Each universe is a circle." He held his breath waiting for her response.
"Circles are enclosures," Taraza said, picking the proper response out of her Other Memories. "Whatever encloses and limits must expose itself to the infinite."
Waff raised his hands to show her his palms then dropped his arms into his lap. His shoulders lost some of their tense upward thrust. "Why did you not say these things at the beginning?" he asked.
I must exercise great care, Taraza cautioned herself. The admissions in Waff's words and manner required careful review.
"What has passed between us reveals nothing unless we speak more openly," she said. "Even then, we would only be using words."
Waff studied her face, trying to read in that Bene Gesserit mask some confirmation of the things implied by her words and manner. She was powindah, he reminded himself. The powindah could never be trusted . . . but if she shared the Great Belief . . .
"Did God not send His Prophet to Rakis, there to test us and teach us?" he asked.
Taraza delved deep into her Other Memories. A Prophet on Rakis? Muad'dib? No . . . that did not square with either Sufi or Zensunni beliefs in . . .
The Tyrant! She closed her mouth into a grim line. "What one cannot control one must accept," she said.
"For surely that is God's doing," Waff replied.
Taraza had seen and heard enough. The Missionaria Protectiva had immersed her in every known religion. Other Memories reinforced this knowledge and filled it out. She felt a great need to get herself safely away from this room. Odrade must be alerted!
"May I make a suggestion?" Taraza asked.
Waff nodded politely.
"Perhaps there is here the substance of a greater bond between us than we imagined," she said. "I offer you the hospitality of our Keep on Rakis and the services of our commander there."
"An Atreides?" he asked.
"No," Taraza lied. "But I will, of course, alert our Breeding Mistresses to your needs."
"And I will assemble the things you require in payment," he said. "Why will the bargain be completed on Rakis?"
"Is that not the proper place?" she asked. "Who could be false in the home of the Prophet?"
Waff sat back in his chair, his arms relaxed in his lap. Taraza certainly knew the proper responses. It was a revelation he had never expected.
Taraza stood. "Each of us listens to God personally," she said.
And together in the kehl, he thought. He looked up at her, reminding himself that she was powindah. None of them could be trusted. Caution! This woman was, after all, a Bene Gesserit witch. They were known to create religions for their own ends. Powindah!
Taraza went to the hatch, opened it and gave her security signal. She turned once more toward Waff who still sat in his chair. He has not penetrated our true design, she thought. The ones we send to him must be chosen with extreme care. He must never suspect that he is part of our bait.
His elfin features composed, Waff stared back at her.
How bland he looked, Taraza thought. But he could be trapped! An alliance between Sisterhood and Tleilaxu offered new attractions. But on our terms!
"Until Rakis," she said.
What social inheritances went outward with the Scattering? We know those times intimately. We know both the mental and physical settings. The Lost Ones took with them a consciousness confined mostly to manpower and hardware. There was a desperate need for room to expand driven by the myth of Freedom. Most had not learned the deeper lesson of the Tyrant, that violence builds its own limits. The Scattering was wild and random movement interpreted as growth (expansion). It was goaded by a profound fear (often unconscious) of stagnation and death.
-The Scattering: Bene Gesserit Analysis (Archives)
Odrade lay full length on her side along the ledge of the bow window, her cheek lightly touching the warm plaz through which she could see the Great Square of Keen. Her back was supported by a red cushion, which smelled of melange as did many things here on Rakis. Behind her lay three rooms, small but efficient and well removed from both Temple and Bene Gesserit Keep. This removal had been a requirement of the Sisterhood's agreement with the priests.
"Sheeana must be guarded more securely," Odrade had insisted.
"She cannot become the ward of only the Sisterhood!" Tuek had objected.
"Nor of the priests," Odrade countered.
Six stories below Odrade's bow window vantage, an enormous bazaar spread out in loosely organized confusion, almost filling the Great Square. The silvered yellow light of a lowering sun washed the scene with brilliance, picking out the bright colors of canopies, drawing long shadows across the uneven ground. There was a dusty radiance about the light where scattered clumps of people milled about patched umbrellas and the jumbled alignments of wares.
The Great Square was not actually square. It stretched out around the bazaar a full kilometer across from Odrade's window and easily twice that distance to the left and right -- a giant rectangle of packed earth and old stones, which had been churned into bitter dust by daytime shoppers braving the heat in hopes of gaining a bargain then.
As evening advanced, a different sense of activity unfolded beneath Odrade -- more people arriving, a quickening and more frenetic pulse to the movement.
Odrade tipped her head to peer down sharply at the ground near her building. Some of the merchants directly beneath her window had wandered off to their nearby quarters. They would return soon, after a meal and short siesta, ready to make full use of those more valuable hours when people in the open could breathe air that did not burn their throats.
Sheeana was overdue, Odrade noted. The priests dared not delay much longer. They would be working frantically now, firing questions at Sheeana, admonishing her to remember that she was God's own emissary to His Church. Reminding Sheeana of many contrived allegiances that Odrade would have to ferret out and make humorous before dispatching such trivia into proper perspective.
Odrade arched her back and went through a silent minute of tiny exercises to relieve tensions. She admitted to a certain sympathy for Sheeana. The girl's thoughts would be chaos right now. Sheeana knew little or nothing about what to expect once she came fully under a Reverend Mother's tutelage. There was little doubt that the young mind was cluttered with myths and other misinformation.
As my mind was, Odrade thought.<
br />
She could not avoid remembrance at a moment such as this. Her immediate task was clear: exorcism, not only for Sheeana but for herself.
She thought the haunting thoughts of a Reverend Mother in her memories: Odrade, age five, the comfortable house on Gamma. The road outside the house is lined with what pass for middle-echelon mansions in the planet's seacoast cities -- low one-story buildings on wide avenues. The houses reach far down to an outcurving sea frontage where they are much wider than along the avenues. Only on the sea side do they become more expansive and less jealous of every square meter.
Frank Herbert - Dune Book 5 - Heretics of Dune Page 22