to invoke your displeasure?'
She lifted her thin eyebrows in scorn. 'Your Guild knew that Honored Matres bore weapons from the Scattering that were capable of destroying entire planets. And you still transported the whores against us!'
'Honored Matres had their own ships from the Scattering. Their own technologies—' Gorus began.
'But they flew blind, did not know the landscape of the Old Empire until you guided them. The Guild showed them their targets, led them to vulnerable worlds. The Guild is complicit in the eradication of billions of lives—not just on Rakis itself, but on our library world of Lampadas and countless other planets. All the worlds of the Bene Tleilax have been crushed or conquered, while our own Sisters remain enslaved on Buzzell, harvesting soostones for rebel Honored Matres who will not bow to my rule.' She laced her fingers together. 'The Spacing Guild is at least partly responsible for those crimes, so you must make recompense.'
'Without spice, space travel and all galactic commerce will be hobbled!' Alarm rang clearly in Administrator Gorus's voice.
'So? The Guild has previously flaunted its alliance with the Ixians by using primitive navigation machines. Use them instead of Navigators, if your supply of spice is inadequate.' She waited to see if he would call her bluff.
'Inferior substitutes,' Edrik insisted.
Bellonda added, 'Ships in the Scattering flew without spice or Navigators.'
'Countless numbers were lost,' Edrik said.
Gorus was quick to change his voice to a conciliatory tone. 'Mother Commander, the Ixian machines were mere fallback devices, to be used in emergencies only.
'We have never relied on them. All Guild ships must carry a functional Navigator.'
'So, when you showed off these machines, it was all a sham to drive down the price of melange? To convince the Priests of the Divided God and the Tleilaxu that you didn't need what they were selling?' Her lips curled in disdain. During the years that Chapterhouse was hidden, even the Bene Gesserits had shunned Guildships. The Sisters held the location of their planet in their own minds. 'And now that you do require spice, there is no one to sell it to you. No one but us.'
Murbella had her own deceptions. The extravagant use of melange on Chapterhouse was mainly for show, a bluff. So far, the worms in the desert belt provided only a trickle of spice, but the Bene Gesserit kept the market open by freely selling melange from their copious stockpiles, implying that it came from the newborn worms in the arid belt. Eventually, the Chapterhouse desert would indeed be as rich in spice as the sands of Rakis, but for now the Sisterhood's ruse was necessary to increase the perception of power and limitless wealth.
And somewhere, eventually, there would be other planets producing melange.
Before the long night of the Honored Matres, Mother Superior Odrade had dispersed groups of Sisters in unguided no-ships across uncharted space. They had carried sand trout specimens and clear instructions on how to seed new desert worlds. Right now, there might already be more than a dozen alternative 'Dunes' being created out there. 'Remove the single point of failure,' Odrade often said then, and afterward from Other Memory. The spice bottleneck would once again be gone, and fresh sources of melange would appear throughout the galaxy.
For now, though, the iron grip of monopoly was the New Sisterhood's.
Gorus bowed even more deeply, refusing to raise his milky eyes. 'Mother Commander, we will pay whatever you wish.'
'Then you shall pay with your suffering. Have you ever heard of a Bene Gesserit punishment?' She drew a long, cool breath of air. 'Your request is denied. Navigator Edrik and Administrator Gorus, you may tell your Oracle of Time and your fellow Navigators that the Guild will have more spice when… and if… I decide you warrant it.' She felt a warmth of satisfaction and guessed that it came from Odrade-within. When they were hungry enough, the Guild would be prepared to do exactly as she wished. It was all part of a great plan coming together.
Trembling, Gorus said, 'Can your New Sisterhood survive without the Guild? We could bring a huge force of Heighliners and take the spice from you.'
Murbella smiled to herself, knowing his threat had no teeth. 'Accepting your ludicrous assertion for a moment, would you risk destroying the spice forever?
We have installed explosives, cleverly rigged to annihilate the spice sands and flood them out with our water reserves if we detect even the slightest incursion from outside. The last sand-worms would die.'
'You're as bad as Paul Atreides,' the Guildsman cried. 'He made a similar threat against the Guild.'
'I take that as a compliment.' Murbella looked at the confused Navigator floating in his spice gas. The Administrator's bald head glistened with sweat.
Now she addressed the five gray-clothed Guildsmen escorts. 'Raise your eyes to me. All of you!' The escorts turned their faces upward, revealing collective fear. Gorus snapped his head up as well, and the Navigator pressed his mutated face against the transparent plaz.
Although Murbella spoke to the Guild contingent, her words were also meant for the two factions of women who listened in the great hall. 'Selfish fools, there is a greater danger coming—an Enemy that was powerful enough to drive the Honored Matres back from the Scattering. We all know this.'
'We have all heard this, Mother Commander.' The Administrator's voice dripped with skepticism. 'We have seen no proof.'
Her eyes flashed. 'Oh, yes. They are coming, but the threat is so vast that no one—not the New Sisterhood, nor the Spacing Guild, nor CHOAM, nor even the Honored Matres—understand how to get out of the way. We have weakened ourselves and wasted our energies in meaningless struggles, while ignoring the true threat.' She swirled her serpent-scribed robe. 'If the Guild provides us with sufficient assistance in the coming battle, and with sufficient enthusiasm, perhaps I will reconsider opening our stockpiles to you. If we cannot stand against the relentless Enemy, then bickering over spice will be the least of our problems.'
7
Do the Masters truly control the strings—or can we use the strings to ensnare the Masters?
Face Dancer representatives came to a conference chamber aboard one of the Guildships used by the Lost Tleilaxu. The Face Dancers had been summoned by the breeding wizards from the Scattering to receive explicit new instructions.
Second-rank Uxtal attended the meeting as a note taker and observer; he did not intend to speak, since speaking would earn him a reprimand from his betters. He wasn't important enough to bear such a responsibility, especially with the equivalent of a Master present, one of those who called themselves Elders. But Uxtal was confident they would recognize his talent, sooner or later.
A faithful Tleilaxu, he was gray-skinned and diminutive, his features elfin, his flesh impregnated with metals and blockers to foil any scanners. No one could steal the secrets of genetics, the Language of God, from the Lost Tleilaxu.
Like an oversize elf, Elder Burah perched on his raised seat at the head of the table as Face Dancers began to arrive, one at a time. Eight of them—a sacred number to the Tleilaxu, which Uxtal had learned from studying ancient scriptures and deciphering secret gnostic meanings in the preserved words of the Prophet. Though Elder Burah had commanded the shape-shifters to appear, Uxtal had an uneasy feeling in their presence, one that he could not quite put into thoughts or words.
The Face Dancers looked like completely nondescript, average crewmen. Over the years, they had been planted aboard the Guildship, where they performed their duties quietly and efficiently; not even the Guild suspected that replacements had occurred. This new breed of Face Dancers had extensively infiltrated the remnants of the Old Empire; they could fool most tests, even one of the witches' Truthsayers. Burah and other Lost Tleilaxu leaders often snickered that they had achieved their victory while the Honored Matres and Bene Gesserits scrambled around preparing for some mysterious great Enemy. The real invasion was already well underway, and Uxtal was awed and impressed with what his people had accomplished. He was proud to be among them.
At Burah's command, the Face Dancers took their seats, deferring to one who seemed to be their
