Chapterhouse: Dune

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 from 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 learn 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.