Heretics of Dune

"Desperate attempts will be made to kill or capture our ghola before you can awaken him," she said.

He recognized her tone: the coldly analytic offering of data to a Mentat. She saw that he was in Mentat mode, then.

The Mentat pattern-search rolled through his mind. First, there was the Sisterhood's design for the ghola, largely unknown to him, but ranging somehow around the presence of a young female on Rakis who (so they said) could command worms. Idaho gholas: charming persona and with something else that had made the Tyrant and the Tleilaxu repeat him countless times. Duncans by the shipload! What service did this ghola provide that the Tyrant had not let him remain among the dead? And the Tleilaxu: They had decanted Duncan Idaho gholas from their axlotl tanks for millennia, even after the death of the Tyrant. The Tleilaxu had sold this ghola to the Sisterhood twelve times and the Sisterhood had paid in the hardest currency: melange from their own precious stores. Why did the Tleilaxu accept in payment something they produced so copiously? Obvious: to deplete the Sisterhood's supplies. A special form of greed there. The Tleilaxu were buying supremacy - a power game!

Teg focused on the quietly waiting Mother Superior. "The Tleilaxu have been killing our gholas to control our timing," he said.

Taraza nodded but did not speak. So there was more. Once again, he fell into Mentat mode.

The Bene Gesserit were a valuable market for the Tleilaxu melange, not the only source because there was always the trickle from Rakis, but valuable, yes; very valuable. It was not reasonable that the Tleilaxu would alienate a valuable market unless they had a more valuable market standing ready.

Who else had an interest in Bene Gesserit activities? The Ixians without a doubt. But Ixians were not a good market for melange. The Ixian presence on this ship spoke of their independence. Since Ixians and Fish Speakers made common cause, the Fish Speakers could be set aside from this pattern quest.

What great power or assemblage of powers in this universe possessed...

Teg froze that thought as though he had applied the dive brakes in a 'thopter, letting his mind float free while he sorted other considerations.

Not in this universe.

The pattern took shape. Wealth. Gammu assumed a new role in his Mentat computations. Gammu had been gutted long ago by the Harkonnens, abandoned as a festering carcass, which the Danians had restored. There was a time, though, when even Gammu's hopes were gone. Without hopes there had not even been dreams. Climbing from that cesspool, the population had employed only the basest pragmatism. If it works, it is good.

Wealth.

In his first survey of Gammu he had noted the numbers of banking houses. They were even marked, some of them, as Bene Gesserit - safe. Gammu served as the fulcrum for manipulation of enormous wealth. The bank he had visited to study its use as an emergency contact came back fully into his Mentat awareness. He had realized at once that the place did not confine itself to purely planetary business. It was a bankers' bank.

Not just wealth but WEALTH.

A Prime Pattern development did not come into Teg's mind but he had enough for a Testing Projection. Wealth not of this universe. People from the Scattering.

All of this Mentat sorting had taken only a few seconds. Having reached a testing point, Teg set himself loose-of-muscle and nerve, glanced once at Taraza and strode across to the concealed entry. He noted that, Taraza gave no sign of alarm at his movements. Whipping aside the hangings, Teg confronted a man almost as tall as himself: military-style clothing with crossed spears at the collar tabs. The face was heavy, the jaws wide; green eyes. A look of surprised alertness, one hand poised above a pocket that bulged obviously with a weapon.

Teg smiled at the man, let the hangings fall and returned to Taraza.

"We are being observed by people from the Scattering," he said.

Taraza relaxed. Teg's performance had been memorable.

The hangings swished aside. The tall stranger entered and stopped about two paces from Teg. A glacial expression of anger gripped his features.

"I warned you not to tell him!" The voice was a grating baritone with an accent new to Teg.

"And I warned you about the powers of this Mentat Bashar," Taraza said. A look of loathing flashed across her features.

The man subsided and a subtle look of fear came over his face. "Honored Matre, I -"

"Don't you dare call me that!" Taraza's body tensed in a fighting posture that Teg had never before seen her display.

The man inclined his head slightly. "Dear lady, you do not control the situation here. I must remind you that my orders -"