Dune

“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.

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.”