Dune

“In the twelve years you’ve been his Princess Consort,” Edric asked, “has he shown you the slightest warmth?”

Irulan shook her head.

“He deposed your father with his infamous Fremen horde, married you to fix his claim to the throne, yet he has never crowned you Empress,” Edric said.

“Edric tries to sway you with emotion, Princess,” Scytale said. “Is that not interesting?”

She glanced at the Face Dancer, saw the bold smile on his features, answered it with raised eyebrows. She was fully aware now, Scytale saw, that if she left this conference under Edric’s sway, part of their plot, these moments might be concealed from Paul’s oracular vision. If she withheld commitment, though . . .

“Does it seem to you, Princess,” Scytale asked, “that Edric holds undue sway in our conspiracy?”

“I’ve already agreed,” Edric said, “that I’ll defer to the best judgment offered in our councils.”

“And who chooses the best judgment?” Scytale asked.

“Do you wish the Princess to leave here without joining us?” Edric asked.

“He wishes her commitment to be a real one,” the Reverend Mother growled. “There should be no trickery between us.”

Irulan, Scytale saw, had relaxed into a thinking posture, hands concealed in the sleeves of her robe. She would be thinking now of the bait Edric had offered: to found a royal dynasty! She would be wondering what scheme the conspirators had provided to protect themselves from her. She would be weighing many things.

“Scytale,” Irulan said presently, “it is said that you Tleilaxu have an odd system of honor: your victims must always have a means of escape.”

“If they can but find it,” Scytale agreed.

“Am I a victim?” Irulan asked.

A burst of laughter escaped Scytale.

The Reverend Mother snorted.

“Princess,” Edric said, his voice softly persuasive, “you already are one of us, have no fear of that. Do you not spy upon the Imperial Household for your Bene Gesserit superiors?”

“Paul knows I report to my teachers,” she said.

“But don’t you give them the material for strong propaganda against your Emperor?” Edric asked.

Not “our” Emperor, Scytale noted. “Your” Emperor. Irulan is too much the Bene Gesserit to miss that slip.

“The question is one of powers and how they may be used,” Scytale said, moving closer to the Guildsman’s tank. “We of the Tleilaxu believe that in all the universe there is only the insatiable appetite of matter, that energy is the only true solid. And energy learns. Hear me well, Princess: energy learns. This, we call power.”

“You haven’t convinced me we can defeat the Emperor,” Irulan said.

“We haven’t even convinced ourselves,” Scytale said.

“Everywhere we turn,” Irulan said, “his power confronts us. He’s the kwisatz haderach, the one who can be many places at once. He’s the Mahdi whose merest whim is absolute command to his Qizarate missionaries. He’s the mentat whose computational mind surpasses the greatest ancient computers. He is Muad’Dib whose orders to the Fremen legions depopulate planets. He possesses oracular vision which sees into the future. He has that gene pattern which we Bene Gesserits covet for—”

“We know his attributes,” the Reverend Mother interrupted. “And we know the abomination, his sister Alia, possesses this gene pattern. But they’re also humans, both of them. Thus, they have weaknesses.”

“And where are those human weaknesses?” the Face Dancer asked. “Shall we search for them in the religious arm of his Jihad? Can the Emperor’s Qizara be turned against him? What about the civil authority of the Great Houses? Can the Landsraad Congress do more than raise a verbal clamor?”

“I suggest the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles,” Edric said turning in his tank. “CHOAM is business and business follows profits.”

“Or perhaps the Emperor’s mother,” Scytale said. “The Lady Jessica, I understand, remains on Caladan, but is in frequent communication with her son.”

“That traitorous bitch,” Mohiam said, voice level. “Would I might disown my own hands which trained her.”

“Our conspiracy requires a lever,” Scytale said.

“We are more than conspirators,” the Reverend Mother countered.

“Ah, yes,” Scytale agreed. “We are energetic and we learn quickly. This makes us the one true hope, the certain salvation of humankind.” He spoke in the speech mode for absolute conviction, which was perhaps the ultimate sneer coming, as it did, from a Tleilaxu.

Only the Reverend Mother appeared to understand the subtlety. “Why?” she asked, directing the question at Scytale.

Before the Face Dancer could answer, Edric cleared his throat, said: “Let us not bandy philosophical nonsense. Every question can be boiled down to the one: ‘Why is there anything?’ Every religious, business and governmental question has the single derivative: ‘Who will exercise the power?’ Alliances, combines, complexes, they all chase mirages unless they go for the power. All else is nonsense, as most thinking beings come to realize.”