Dune 11 - Dune Messiah_玖贝云文库

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Dune Messiah

Frank Herbert

Excerpts from the Death Cell Interview with Bronso of IX

Q: What led you to take your particular approach to a history of Muad'dib?

A: Why should I answer your questions?

Q: Because I will preserve your words.

A: Ahhh! The ultimate appeal to a historian!

Q: Will you cooperate then?

A: Why not? But you'll never understand what inspired my Analysis of History.

Never. You Priests have too much at stake to . . .

Q: Try me.

A: Try you? Well, Again . . . why not? I was caught by the shallowness of the

common view of this planet which arises from its popular name: Dune. Not

Arrakis, notice, but Dune. History is obsessed by Dune as desert, as birthplace

of the Fremen. Such history concentrates on the customs which grew out of water

scarcity and the fact that Fremen led semi-nomadic lives in stillsuits which

recovered most of their body's moisture.

Q: Are these things not true, then?

A: They are surface truth. As well ignore what lies beneath that surface as . .

. as try to understand my birthplanet, Ix, without exploring how we derived our

name from the fact that we are the ninth planet of our sun. No . . . no. It is

not enough to see Dune as a place of savage storms. It is not enough to talk

about the threat posed by the gigantic sandworms.

Q: But such things are crucial to the Arrakeen character!

A: Crucial? Of course. But they produce a one-view planet in the same way that

Dune is a one-crop planet because it is the sole and exclusive source of the

spice, melange.

Q: Yes. Let us hear you expand on the sacred spice.

A: Sacred! As with all things sacred, it gives with one hand and takes with the

other. It extends life and allows the adept to foresee his future, but it ties

him to a cruel addiction and marks his eyes as yours are marked: total blue

without any white. Your eyes, your organs of sight, become one thing without

contrast, a single view.

Q: Such heresy brought you to this cell!

A: I was brought to this cell by your Priests. As with all priests, you learned

early to call the truth heresy.

Q: You are here because you dared to say that Paul Atreides lost something

essential to his humanity before he could become Muad'dib.

A: Not to speak of his losing his father here in the Harkonnen war. Nor the

death of Duncan Idaho, who sacrificed himself that Paul and the Lady Jessica

could escape.

Q: Your cynicism is duly noted.

A: Cynicism! That, no doubt is a greater crime than heresy. But, you see, I'm

not really a cynic. I'm just an observer and commentator. I saw true nobility in

Paul as he fled into the desert with his pregnant mother. Of course, she was a

great asset as well as a burden.

Q: The flaw in your historians is that you'll never leave well enough alone. You

see true nobility in the Holy Muad'dib, but you must append a cynical footnote.

It's no wonder that the Bene Gesserit also denounce you.

A: You Priests do well to make common cause with the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood.

They, too, survive by concealing what they do. But they cannot conceal the fact

that the Lady Jessica was a Bene Gesserit-trained adept. You know she trained

her son in the sisterhood's ways. My crime was to discuss this as a phenomenon,

to expound upon their mental arts and their genetic program. You don't want

attention called to the fact that Muad'dib was the Sisterhood's hoped for

captive messiah, that he was their kwisatz haderach before he was your prophet.

Q: If I had any doubts about your death sentence, you have dispelled them.

A: I can only die once.

Q: There are deaths and there are deaths.

A: Beware lest you make a martyr of me. I do not think Muad'dib . . . Tell me,

does Muad'dib know what you do in these dungeons?

Q: We do not trouble the Holy Family with trivia.

A: (Laughter) And for this Paul Atreides fought his way to a niche among the

Fremen! For this he learned to control and ride the sandworm! It was a mistake

to answer your questions.

Q: But I will keep my promise to preserve your words.

A: Will you really? Then listen to me carefully, you Fremen degenerate, you

Priest with no god except yourself! You have much to answer for. It was a Fremen

ritual which gave Paul his first massive dose of melange, thereby opening him to

visions of his futures. It was a Fremen ritual by which that same melange

awakened the unborn Alia in the Lady Jessica's womb. Have you considered what it

meant for Alia to be born into this universe fully cognitive, possessed of all

her mother's memories and knowledge? No rape could be more terrifying.

Q: Without the sacred melange Muad'dib would not have become leader of all

Fremen. Without her holy experience Alia would not be Alia.

A: Without your blind Fremen cruelty you would not be a priest. Ahhh, I know you

Fremen. You think Muad'dib is yours because he mated with Chani, because he

adopted Fremen customs. But he was an Atreides first and he was trained by a

Bene Gesserit adept. He possessed disciplines totally unknown to you. You

thought he brought you new organization and a new mission. He promised to

transform your desert planet into a water-rich paradise. And while he dazzled

you with such visions, he took your virginity!

Q: Such heresy does not change the fact that the Ecological Transformation of

Dune proceeds apace.

A: And I committed the heresy of tracing the roots of that transformation, of

exploring the consequences. That battle out there on the Plains of Arrakeen may

have taught the universe that Fremen could defeat Imperial Sardaukar, but what

else did it teach? When the stellar empire of the Corrino Family became a Fremen

empire under Muad'dib, what else did the Empire become? Your Jihad only took

twelve years, but what a lesson it taught. Now, the Empire understands the sham

of Muad'dib's marriage to the Princess Irulan!

Q: You dare accuse Muad'dib of sham!

A: Though you kill me for it, it's not heresy. The Princess became his consort,

not his mate. Chani, his little Fremen darling -- she's his mate. Everyone knows

this. Irulan was the key to a throne, nothing more.

Q: It's easy to see why those who conspire against Muad'dib use your Analysis of

History as their rallying argument!

A: I'll not persuade you; I know that. But the argument of the conspiracy came

before my Analysis. Twelve years of Muad'dib's Jihad created the argument.

That's what united the ancient power groups and ignited the conspiracy against

Muad'dib.

= = = = = =

Such a rich store of myths enfolds Paul Muad'dib, the Mentat Emperor, and his

sister, Alia, it is difficult to see the real persons behind these veils. But

there were, after all, a man born Paul Atreides and a woman born Alia. Their

flesh was subject to space and time. And even though their oracular powers

placed them beyond the usual limits of time and space, they came from human

stock. They experienced real events which left real traces upon a real universe.

To understand them, it must be seen that their catastrophe was the catastrophe

of all mankind. This work is dedicated, then, not to Muad'dib or his sister, but

to their heirs -- to all of us.

-Dedication in the Muad'dib Concordance as copied from The Tabla Memorium of the

Mahdi Spirit Cult

Muad'dib's Imperial reign generated more historians than any other era in

human history. Most of them argued a particular viewpoint, jealous and

sectarian, but it says something about the peculiar impact of this man that he

aroused such passions on so many diverse worlds.

Of course, he contained the ingredients of history, ideal and idealized.

This man, born Paul Atreides in an ancient Great Family, received the deep

prana-bindu training from the Lady Jessica, his Bene Gesserit mother, and had

through this a superb control over muscles and nerves. But more than that, he

was a mentat, an intellect whose capacities surpassed those of the religiously

proscribed mechanical computers used by the ancients.

Above all else, Muad'dib was the kwisatz haderach which the Sisterhood's

breeding program had sought across thousands of generations.

The kwisatz haderach, then, the one who could be "many places at once," this

prophet, this man through whom the Bene Gesserit hoped to control human destiny

-- this man became Emperor Muad'dib and executed a marriage of convenience with

a daughter of the Padishah Emperor he had defeated.

Think on the paradox, the failure implicit in this moment, for you surely

have read other histories and know the surface facts. Muad'dib's wild Fremen

did, indeed, overwhelm the Padishah Shaddam IV. They toppled the Sardaukar

legions, the allied forces of the Great Houses, the Harkonnen armies and the

mercenaries bought with money voted in the Landsraad. He brought the Spacing

Guild to its knees and placed his own sister, Alia, on the religious throne the

Bene Gesserit had thought their own.

He did all these things and more.

Muad'dib's Qizarate missionaries carried their religious war across space in

a Jihad whose major impetus endured only twelve standard years, but in that

time, religious colonialism brought all but a fraction of the human universe

under one rule.

He did this because capture of Arrakis, that planet known more often as

Dune, gave him a monopoly over the ultimate coin of the realm -- the geriatric

spice, melange, the poison that gave life.

Here was another ingredient of ideal history: a material whose psychic

chemistry unraveled Time. Without melange, the Sisterhood's Reverend Mothers

could not perform their feats of observation and human control. Without melange,

the Guild's Steersmen could not navigate across space. Without melange, billions

upon billions of Imperial citizens would die of addictive withdrawal.

Without melange, Paul-Muad'dib could not prophesy.

We know this moment of supreme power contained failure. There can be only

one answer, that completely accurate and total prediction is lethal.

Other histories say Muad'dib was defeated by obvious plotters -- the Guild,

the Sisterhood and the scientific amoralists of the Bene Tleilex with their

Face-Dancer disguises. Other histories point out the spies in Muad'dib's

household. They make much of the Dune Tarot which clouded Muad'dib's powers of

prophecy. Some show how Muad'dib was made to accept the services of a ghola, the

flesh brought back from the dead and trained to destroy him. But certainly they

must know this ghola was Duncan Idaho, the Atreides lieutenant who perished

saving the life of the young Paul.

Yet, they delineate the Qizarate cabal guided by Korba the Panegyrist. They

take us step by step through Korba's plan to make a martyr of Muad'dib and place

the blame on Chani, the Fremen concubine.

How can any of this explain the facts as history has revealed them? They

cannot. Only through the lethal nature of prophecy can we understand the failure

of such enormous and far-seeing power.

Hopefully, other historians will learn something from this revelation.

-Analysis of History: Muad'dib by Bronso of Ix

= = = = = =

There exists no separation between gods and men: one blends softly casual into

the other.

-Proverbs of Muad'dib

Despite the murderous nature of the plot he hoped to devise, the thoughts of

Scytale, the Tleilaxu Face Dancer, returned again and again to rueful

compassion.

I shall regret causing death and misery to Muad'dib, he told himself.

He kept this benignity carefully hidden from his fellow conspirators. Such

feelings told him, though, that he found it easier to identify with the victim

than with the attackers -- a thing characteristic of the Tleilaxu.

Scytale stood in bemused silence somewhat apart from the others. The

argument about psychic poison had been going on for some time now. It was

energetic and vehement, but polite in that blindly compulsive way adepts of the

Great Schools always adopted for matters close to their dogma.

"When you think you have him skewered, right then you'll find him

unwounded!"

That was the old Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit, Gaius Helen Mohiam,

their hostess here on Wallach IX. She was a black-robed stick figure, a witch

crone seated in a floater chair at Scytale's left. Her aba hood had been thrown

back to expose a leathery face beneath silver hair. Deeply pocketed eyes stared

out of skull-mask features.

They were using a mirabhasa language, honed phalange consonants and joined

vowels. It was an instrument for conveying fine emotional subtleties. Edric, the

Guild Steersman, replied to the Reverend Mother now with a vocal curtsy

contained in a sneer -- a lovely touch of disdainful politeness.

Scytale looked at the Guild envoy. Edric swam in a container of orange gas

only a few paces away. His container sat in the center of the transparent dome

which the Bene Gesserit had built for this meeting. The Guildsman was an

elongated figure, vaguely humanoid with finned feet and hugely fanned membranous

hands -- a fish in a strange sea. His tank's vents emitted a pale orange cloud

rich with the smell of the geriatric spice, melange.

"If we go on this way, we'll die of stupidity!"

That was the fourth person present -- the potential member of the conspiracy

-- Princess Irulan, wife (but not mate, Scytale reminded himself) of their

mutual foe. She stood at a corner of Edric's tank, a tall blond beauty, splendid

in a robe of blue whale fur and matching hat. Gold buttons glittered at her

ears. She carried herself with an aristocrat's hauteur, but something in the

absorbed smoothness of her features betrayed the controls of her Bene Gesserit

background.

Scytale's mind turned from nuances of language and faces to nuances of

location. All around the dome lay hills mangy with melting snow which reflected

mottled wet blueness from the small blue-white sun hanging at the meridian.

Why this particular place? Scytale wondered. The Bene Gesserit seldom did

anything casually. Take the dome's open plan: a more conventional and confining

space might've inflicted the Guildsman with claustrophobic nervousness.

Inhibitions in his psyche were those of birth and life off-planet in open space.

To have built this place especially for Edric, though -- what a sharp finger

that pointed at his weakness.

What here, Scytale wondered, was aimed at me?

"Have you nothing to say for yourself, Scytale?" the Reverend Mother

demanded.

"You wish to draw me into this fools' fight?" Scytale asked. "Very well.

We're dealing with a potential messiah. You don't launch a frontal attack upon

such a one. Martyrdom would defeat us."

They all stared at him.

"You think that's the only danger?" the Reverend Mother demanded, voice

wheezing.

Scytale shrugged. He had chosen a bland, round-faced appearance for this

meeting, jolly features and vapid full lips, the body of a bloated dumpling. It

occurred to him now, as he studied his fellow conspirators, that he had made an

ideal choice -- out of instinct perhaps. He alone in this group could manipulate

fleshly appearance across a wide spectrum of bodily shapes and features. He was

the human chameleon, a Face Dancer, and the shape he wore now invited others to

judge him too lightly.

"Well?" the Reverend Mother pressed.

"I was enjoying the silence," Scytale said. "Our hostilities are better left

unvoiced."

The Reverend Mother drew back, and Scytale saw her reassessing him. They

were all products of profound prana-bindu training, capable of muscle and nerve

control that few humans ever achieved. But Scytale, a Face Dancer, had muscles

and nerve linkages the others didn't even possess plus a special quality of

sympatico, a mimic's insight with which he could put on the psyche of another as

well as the other's appearance.

Scytale gave her enough time to complete the reassessment, said: "Poison!"

He uttered the word with the atonals which said he alone understood its secret

meaning.

The Guildsman stirred and his voice rolled from the glittering speaker globe

which orbited a corner of his tank above Irulan. "We're discussing psychic

poison, not a physical one."

Scytale laughed. Mirabhasa laughter could flay an opponent and he held

nothing back now.

Irulan smiled in appreciation, but the corners of the Reverend Mother's eyes

revealed a faint hint of anger.

"Stop that!" Mohiam rasped.

Scytale stopped, but he had their attention now, Edric in a silent rage, the

Reverend Mother alert in her anger, Irulan amused but puzzled.

"Our friend Edric suggests," Scytale said, "that a pair of Bene Gesserit

witches trained in all their subtle ways have not learned the true uses of

deception."

Mohiam turned to stare out at the cold hills of her Bene Gesserit homeworld.

She was beginning to see the vital thing here, Scytale realized. That was good.

Irulan, though, was another matter.

"Are you one of us or not, Scytale?" Edric asked. He stared out of tiny

rodent eyes.

"My allegiance is not the issue," Scytale said. He kept his attention on

Irulan. "You are wondering, Princess, if this was why you came all those

parsecs, risked so much?"

She nodded agreement.

"Was it to bandy platitudes with a humanoid fish or dispute with a fat

Tleilaxu Face Dancer?" Scytale asked.

She stepped away from Edric's tank, shaking her head in annoyance at the

thick odor of melange.

Edric took this moment to pop a melange pill into his mouth. He ate the

spice and breathed it and, no doubt, drank it, Scytale noted. Understandable,

because the spice heightened a Steersman's prescience, gave him the power to

guide a Guild heighliner across space at translight speeds. With spice awareness

he found that line of the ship's future which avoided peril. Edric smelled

another kind of peril now, but his crutch of prescience might not find it.

"I think it was a mistake for me to come here," Irulan said.

The Reverend Mother turned, opened her eyes, closed them, a curiously

reptilian gesture.

Scytale shifted his gaze from Irulan to the tank, inviting the Princess to

share his viewpoint. She would, Scytale knew, see Edric as a repellent figure:

the bold stare, those monstrous feet and hands moving softly in the gas, the

smoky swirling of orange eddies around him. She would wonder about his sex

habits, thinking how odd it would be to mate with such a one. Even the field-

force generator which recreated for Edric the weightlessness of space would set

him apart from her now.

"Princess," Scytale said, "because of Edric here, your husband's oracular

sight cannot stumble upon certain incidents, including this one . . .

presumably."

"Presumably," Irulan said.

Eyes closed, the Reverend Mother nodded. "The phenomenon of prescience is

poorly understood even by its initiates," she said.

"I am a full Guild Navigator and have the Power," Edric said.

Again, the Reverend Mother opened her eyes. This time, she stared at the

Face Dancer, eyes probing with that peculiar Bene Gesserit intensity. She was

weighing minutiae.

"No, Reverend Mother," Scytale murmured, "I am not as simple as I appeared."

"We don't understand this Power of second sight," Irulan said. "There's a

point. Edric says my husband cannot see, know or predict what happens within the

sphere of a Navigator's influence. But how far does that influence extend?"

"There are people and things in our universe which I know only by their

effects," Edric said, his fish mouth held in a thin line. "I know they have been

here . . . there . . . somewhere. As water creatures stir up the currents in

their passage, so the prescient stir up Time. I have seen where your husband has

been; never have I seen him nor the people who truly share his aims and

loyalties. This is the concealment which an adept gives to those who are his."

"Irulan is not yours," Scytale said. And he looked sideways at the Princess.

"We all know why the conspiracy must be conducted only in my presence,"

Edric said.

Using the voice mode for describing a machine. Irulan said: "You have your

uses, apparently."

She sees him now for what he is, Scytale thought. Good!

"The future is a thing to be shaped," Scytale said. "Hold that thought,

Princess."

Irulan glanced at the Face Dancer.

"People who share Paul's aims and loyalties," she said. "Certain of his

Fremen legionaries, then, wear his cloak. I have seen him prophesy for them,

heard their cries of adulation for their Mahdi, their Muad'dib."

It has occurred to her, Scytale thought, that she is on trial here, that a

Judgment remains to be made which could preserve her or destroy her. She sees

the trap we set for her.

Momentarily, Scytale's gaze locked with that of the Reverend Mother and he

experienced the odd realization that they had shared this thought about Irulan.

The Bene Gesserit, of course, had briefed their Princess, primed her with the

lie adroit. But the moment always came when a Bene Gesserit must trust her own

training and instincts.

"Princess, I know what it is you most desire from the Emperor," Edric said.

"Who does not know it?" Irulan asked.

"You wish to be the founding mother of the royal dynasty," Edric said, as

though he had not heard her. "Unless you join us, that will never happen. Take

my oracular word on it. The Emperor married you for political reasons, but

you'll never share his bed."

"So the oracle is also a voyeur," Irulan sneered.

"The Emperor is more firmly wedded to his Fremen concubine than he is to

you!" Edric snapped.

"And she gives him no heir," Irulan said.

"Reason is the first victim of strong emotion," Scytale murmured. He sensed

the outpouring of Irulan's anger, saw his admonition take effect.

"She gives him no heir," Irulan said, her voice measuring out controlled

calmness, "because I am secretly administering a contraceptive. Is that the sort

of admission you wanted from me?"

"It'd not be a thing for the Emperor to discover," Edric said, smiling.

"I have lies ready for him," Irulan said. "He may have truthsense, but some

lies are easier to believe than the truth."

"You must make the choice, Princess," Scytale said, "but understand what it

is protects you."

"Paul is fair with me," she said. "I sit in his Council."

"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."

Scytale shrugged, a gesture designed solely for the Reverend Mother. Edric

had answered her question for him. The pontificating fool was their major

weakness. To make sure the Reverend Mother understood, Scytale said: "Listening

carefully to the teacher, one acquires an education."

The Reverend Mother nodded slowly.

"Princess," Edric said, "make your choice. You have been chosen as an

instrument of destiny, the very finest . . . "

"Save your praise for those who can be swayed by it," Irulan said. "Earlier,

you mentioned a ghost, a revenant with which we may contaminate the Emperor.

Explain this."

"The Atreides will defeat himself!" Edric crowed.

"Stop talking riddles!" Irulan snapped. "What is this ghost?"

"A very unusual ghost," Edric said. "It has a body and a name. The body --

that's the flesh of a renowned swordmaster known as Duncan Idaho. The name . .

."

"Idaho's dead," Irulan said. "Paul has mourned the loss often in my

presence. He saw Idaho killed by my father's Sardaukar."

"Even in defeat," Edric said, "your father's Sardaukar did not abandon

wisdom. Let us suppose a wise Sardaukar commander recognized the swordmaster in

a corpse his men had slain. What then? There exist uses for such flesh and

training . . . if one acts swiftly."

"A Tleilaxu ghola," Irulan whispered, looking sideways at Scytale.

Scytale, observing her attention, exercised his Face-Dancer powers -- shape

flowing into shape, flesh moving and readjusting. Presently, a slender man stood

before her. The face remained somewhat round, but darker and with slightly

flattened features. High cheekbones formed shelves for eyes with definite

epicanthic folds. The hair was black and unruly.

"A ghola of this appearance," Edric said, pointing to Scytale.

"Or merely another Face Dancer?" Irulan asked.

"No Face Dancer," Edric said. "A Face Dancer risks exposure under prolonged

surveillance. No; let us assume that our wise Sardaukar commander had Idaho's

corpse preserved for the axolotl tanks. Why not? This corpse held the flesh and

nerves of one of the finest swordsmen in history, an adviser to the Atreides, a

military genius. What a waste to lose all that training and ability when it

might be revived as an instructor for the Sardaukar."

"I heard not a whisper of this and I was one of my father's confidantes,"

Irulan said.

"Ahh, but your father was a defeated man and within a few hours you had been

sold to the new Emperor," Edric said.

"Was it done?" she demanded.

With a maddening air of complacency, Edric said: "Let us presume that our

wise Sardaukar commander, knowing the need for speed, immediately sent the

preserved flesh of Idaho to the Bene Tleilaxu. Let us suppose further that the

commander and his men died before conveying this information to your father --

who couldn't have made much use of it anyway. There would remain then a physical

fact, a bit of flesh which had been sent off to the Tleilaxu. There was only one

way for it to be sent, of course, on a heighliner. We of the Guild naturally

know every cargo we transport. Learning of this one, would we not think it

additional wisdom to purchase the ghola as a gift befitting an Emperor?"

"You've done it then," Irulan said.

Scytale, who had resumed his roly-poly first appearance, said: "As our long-

winded friend indicates, we've done it."

"How has Idaho been conditioned?" Irulan asked.

"Idaho?" Edric asked, looking at the Tleilaxu. "Do you know of an Idaho,

Scytale?"

"We sold you a creature called Hayt," Scytale said.

"Ah, yes -- Hayt," Edric said. "Why did you sell him to us?"

"Because we once bred a kwisatz haderach of our own," Scytale said.

With a quick movement of her old head, the Reverend Mother looked up at him.

"You didn't tell us that!" she accused.

"You didn't ask," Scytale said.

"How did you overcome your kwisatz haderach?" Irulan asked.

"A creature who has spent his life creating one particular representation of

his selfdom will die rather than become the antithesis of that representation,"

Scytale said.

"I do not understand," Edric ventured.

"He killed himself," the Reverend Mother growled.

"Follow me well, Reverend Mother," Scytale warned, using a voice mode which

said: You are not a sex object, have never been a sex object, cannot be a sex

object.

The Tleilaxu waited for the blatant emphasis to sink in. She must not

mistake his intent. Realization must pass through anger into awareness that the

Tleilaxu certainly could not make such an accusation, knowing as he must the

Dune 11 - Dune Messiah

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