'Then here is a grip on our throat,' she said. 'Some of your Lost Ones have returned to you. Never has a Reverend Mother come back to us from the Scattering.'
'But you said you knew all of the -'
'We have other ways of gaining knowledge. What do you suppose happened to the Reverend Mothers we sent out into the Scattering?'
'A common disaster?' He shook his head. This was absolutely new information. None of the returned Tleilaxu had said anything at all about this. The discrepancy fed his suspicions. Whom was he to believe?
'They were subverted,' Taraza said.
Odrade, hearing the general suspicion voiced for the first time by the Mother Superior, sensed the enormous power implicit in Taraza's simple statement. Odrade was cowed by it. She knew the resources, the contingency plans, the improvised ways a Reverend Mother might use to surmount barriers. Something Out There could stop that?
When Waff did not respond, Taraza said: 'You come to us with dirty hands.'
'You dare say this?' Waff asked. 'You who continue to deplete our resources in the ways taught you by the Bashar's mother?'
'We knew you could afford the losses if you had resources from the Scattering,' Taraza said.
Waff inhaled a trembling breath. So the Bene Gesserit knew even this. He saw in part how they had learned it. Well, a way would have to be found to bring the false Tuek back under control. Rakis was the prize the Scattered Ones really sought and it might yet be demanded of the Tleilaxu.
Taraza moved even closer to Waff, alone and vulnerable. She saw her guards grow tense. Sheeana took a small step toward the Mother Superior and was pulled back by Odrade.
Odrade kept her attention on the Mother Superior and not on potential attackers. Were the Tleilaxu truly convinced that the Bene Gesserit would serve them? Taraza had tested the limits of it, no doubt of that. And in the language of the Islamiyat. But she looked very alone out there away from her guards and so near Waff and his people. Where would Waff's obvious suspicions lead him now?
Taraza shivered.
Odrade saw it. Taraza had been abnormally thin as a child and had never put on an excess ounce of fat. This made her exquisitely sensitive to temperature changes, intolerant of cold, but Odrade sensed no such change in the room. Taraza had made a dangerous decision then, so dangerous that her body betrayed her. Not dangerous to herself, of course, but dangerous to the Sisterhood. There was the most awful Bene Gesserit crime: disloyalty to their own order.
'We will serve you in all ways except one,' Taraza said. 'We will never become receptacles for gholas!'
Waff paled.
Taraza continued: 'None of us is now nor will ever become...' she paused '... an axlotl tank.'
Waff raised his right hand in the start of a gesture every Reverend Mother knew: the signal for his Face Dancers to attack.
Taraza pointed at his upraised hand. 'If you complete that gesture, the Tleilaxu will lose everything. The messenger of God -' Taraza nodded over a shoulder toward Sheeana '- will turn her back upon you and the words of the Prophet will be dust in your mouths.'
In the language of the Islamiyat, such words were too much for Waff. He lowered his hand but he continued to glower at Taraza.
'My ambassador said we would share everything we know,' Taraza said. 'You said you, too, would share. The messenger of God listens with the ears of the Prophet! What pours forth from the Abdl of the Tleilaxu?'
Waff's shoulders sagged.
Taraza turned her back on him. It was an artful move but both she and the other Reverend Mothers present knew she did it now in perfect safety. Looking across the room at Odrade, Taraza allowed herself a smile that she knew Odrade would interpret correctly. Time for a bit of Bene Gesserit punishment!
'The Tleilaxu desire an Atreides for breeding,' Taraza said. 'I give you Darwi Odrade. More will be supplied.'
Waff came to a decision. 'You may know much about the Honored Matres,' he said, 'but you -'
'Whores!' Taraza whirled on him.
'As you will. But there is a thing from them that your words reveal you do not know. I seal our bargain by telling you this. They can magnify the sensations of the orgasmic platform, transmitting this throughout a male body. They elicit the total sensual involvement of the male. Multiple orgasmic waves are created and may be continued by the... the female for an extended period.'
'Total involvement?' Taraza did not try to hide her astonishment.
Odrade, too, listened with a sense of shock that she saw was shared by her Sisters present, even the acolytes. Only Sheeana seemed not to understand.
'I tell you, Mother Superior Taraza,' Waff said, a gloating smile on his face, 'that we have duplicated this with our own people. Myself even! In my anger, I caused the Face Dancer who played the... female part to destroy itself. No one... I say, no one! may have such a hold on me!'
'What hold?'
'If it had been one of these... these whores, as you call them, I would have obeyed her without question in anything.' He shuddered. 'I barely had the will to... to destroy...' He shook his head in bewilderment at the memory. 'Anger saved me.'
Taraza tried to swallow in a dry throat. 'How...'
'How is it done? Very well! But before I share this knowledge I warn you: If one of you ever tries to use this power over one of us, bloody slaughter will follow! We have prepared our Domel and all of our people to respond by killing all Reverend Mothers they can find at the slightest sign that you seek this power over us!'
'None of us would do that, but not because of your threat. We are restrained by the knowledge that this would destroy us. Your bloody slaughter would not be necessary.'
'Oh? Then why does it not destroy these... these whores?'
'It does! And it destroys everyone they touch!'
'It has not destroyed me!'
'God protects you, my Abdl,' Taraza said. 'As He protects all of the faithful.'
Convinced, Waff glanced around the room and back to Taraza. 'Let all know that I fulfill my bond in the land of the Prophet. This is the way of it, then...' He waved a hand to two of his Face Dancer guards. 'We will demonstrate.'
Much later, alone in the penthouse room, Odrade wondered if it had been wise to let Sheeana see the whole performance. Well, why not? Sheeana already was committed to the Sisterhood. And it would have aroused Waff's suspicions to send Sheeana away.
There had been obvious sensual arousal in Sheeana as she watched the Face Dancer performance. The Training Proctors would have to call in their male assistants earlier than usual for Sheeana. What would Sheeana do then? Would she try this new knowledge on the men? Inhibitions must be raised in Sheeana to prevent that! She must be taught the dangers to herself.
The Sisters and acolytes present had controlled themselves well, storing what they learned firmly in memory. Sheeana's education must be built on that observation. Others mastered such internal forces.
The Face Dancer observers had remained inscrutable, but there had been things to see in Waff. He said he would destroy the two demonstrators but what would he do first? Would he succumb to temptation? What thoughts went through his mind as he watched the Face Dancer male squirm in mind-blanking ecstasy?
In a way, the demonstration reminded Odrade of the Rakian dance she had seen in the Great Square of Keen. In the short term, the dance had been deliberately unrhythmic but the progression created a long-term rhythm that repeated itself in some two hundred... steps. The dancers had stretched out their rhythm to a remarkable degree.
As had the Face Dancer demonstrators.
Siaynoq become a sexual grip on uncounted billions in the Scattering!
Odrade thought about the dance, the long rhythm followed by chaotic violence. Siaynoq's glorious focusing of religious energies had devolved into a different kind of exchange. She thought about Sheeana's excited response to her glimpses of that dance in the Great Square. Odrade remembered asking Sheeana: 'What did they share down
