Surely it's not that simple.
Were Honored Matres so confident of overwhelming power that they ignored elementary precautions?
Planetary Station Four began calling when they were just under three hours out. "Identify yourself!"
Odrade heard an "or else" in that command.
The pilot's response obviously surprised the watchers. "You come in a little smuggler ship?"
So they recognize it. Teg is right once more.
"I'm about to burn the sensor equipment in the drive," the pilot announced. "It will add to our thrust. Make sure you're all securely harnessed."
Station Four noticed. "Why are you increasing velocity?"
Odrade leaned forward. "Repeat the countersign and say our party is fatigued from too long in cramped quarters. Add that I have equipped myself with a precautionary vital-signs transmitter to alert my people should I die."
They won't find the encryption! Clever Duncan. And wasn't Bell surprised to discover what he hid in Shipsystems. "More romantics!"
The pilot relayed her words. Back came the order: "Reduce velocity and lock onto these coordinates for landing. We are taking over your ship control at this point."
The pilot touched a yellow field on his board. "Just the way the Bashar said they would." A gloating sound in his voice. He lifted the hood off his head and turned.
Odrade was shocked.
Cyborg!
The face was a metal mask with two glittering silver balls for eyes.
We enter dangerous ground.
"They didn't tell you?" he asked. "Waste no pity. I was dead and this gave me life. It's Clairby, Mother Superior. And when I die this time, that will buy me life as a ghola."
Damn! We're trading in coin that may be denied us. Too late to change. And that was Teg's plan. But... Clairby?
The lighter landed with a smoothness that spoke of superb control by Station Four. Odrade knew the moment because a manicured landscape visible in her scanner no longer moved. The nullfield was turned off and she felt gravity. The hatch directly in front of her opened. Temperature pleasantly warm. Noise out there. Children playing some competitive game?
Luggage floating behind, she stepped onto a short flight of steps and saw that the noise did indeed come from a large group of children in a nearby field. In their high teens and female. They were butting a suspensor float-ball back and forth, shouting and screaming as they played.
Staged for our benefit?
Odrade thought it likely. There probably were two thousand young women on that field.
Look how many recruits we have coming along!
No one to greet her but Odrade saw a familiar structure down a paved lane to her left. Obvious Spacing Guild artifact with a recent tower added. She spoke of the tower as she glanced around her, giving the implanted transmitter data on a change from Teg's groundplan. Nobody who had ever seen a Guild building could mislabel this place, though.
So this was like other Junction planets. Somewhere in Guild records there doubtless was a serial number and code for it. So long under Guild control before Honored Matres that, in these first moments of debarking, getting their "ground legs," everything around them could be seen to have that special Guild flavor. Even the playing field - designed for outdoor meetings of Navigators in their giant containers of melange gas.
The Guild flavor: It was compounded of Ixian technology and Navigator design - buildings wrapped around space in the most energy-conserving way, paths direct; few slide-walks. They were wasteful and only the gravity-bound needed them. No flowery plantings near the Landing Flat. They were susceptible to accidental destruction. And that permanent grayness to all construction - not silver but as dull as Tleilaxu skin.
The structure on her left was a great bulging shape with extrusions, some rounded and some angular. This had been no lavish hostelry. Opulent little nooks, of course, but those were rare, built for VVIPs, mostly inspectors from the Guild.
Once more, Teg is right. Honored Matres kept existing structures, remodeling minimally. A tower!
Odrade reminded herself then: This is not only another world but also another society with its own social glue. She had a handle on that from Sharing with Murbella but did not think she had plumbed what held Honored Matres together. Surely not just a lusting after power.
"We'll walk," she said and led the way down the paved lane toward the giant structure.
Goodbye, Clairby. Blow your ship as soon as you can. Let it be our first great surprise for Honored Matres.
The Guild structure loomed higher as they approached.
The most astonishing thing to Odrade whenever she saw one of these functional constructions was that someone had taken a great deal of care in planning it. Intentional detail in everything although you sometimes had to dig for it. Budget dictated reduced quality in many choices, endurance preferred over luxury or eye appeal. Compromise and, like most compromise, satisfying no one. Guild comptrollers undoubtedly had complained at the price, and present occupants still could feel irritated at shortcomings. No matter. The thing was tangible substance. It was here to be used now. Another compromise.
The lobby was smaller than she had expected. Some interior changes. Only about six meters long and perhaps four meters wide. Reception slot was on their right as they entered. Odrade motioned Suipol to register their party and indicated that the rest of them should wait in the open area well within striking distance of one another. Treachery had not been ruled out.
Dortujla obviously expected it. She looked resigned.
Odrade made a careful inspection and commented on their surroundings. Plenty of comeyes but the rest of it...
Each time she entered one of these places, she had the sensation of being in a museum. Other Memory said hostelries of this sort had not changed significantly in eons. Even in early times she found prototypes. A glimpse of the past in the chandeliers - gigantic glittering things imitative of electric devices but furnished with glowglobes. Two of them dominated the ceiling like imaginary spaceships descending in splendor from the void.
There were more glimpses of the past that few transients in this age would notice. The arrangement of reception area behind grilled slots, space for waiting with its mixture of seats and inconvenient lighting, signs directing them to services - restaurants, narcoparlors, assignation bars, swimming and other exercise facilities, automassage rooms, and the like. Only language and script had changed from ancient times. Given an understanding of the language, the signs would be recognizable to pre-space primitives. This was a temporary stopping place.
Plenty of security installations. Some had the look of artifacts from the Scattering. Ix and Guild had never wasted gold on comeyes and sensors.
A frenetic dance of roboservants in the reception area - dartings here and there, cleaning, picking up litter, guiding newcomers. A party of four Ixians had preceded Odrade's group. She gave them close attention. How self-important yet fearful.
To her Bene Gesserit eye, the people of Ix were always recognizable no matter the disguises. Basic structure of their society colored its individuals. Ixians displayed a Hogbenesque attitude toward their science: that political and economic requirements determined permissible research. That said the innocent naivete of Ixian social dreams had become the reality of bureaucratic centralism - a new aristocracy. So they were headed into a decline that would not be stopped by whatever accommodation this Ixian party made with Honored Matres.
No matter the outcome of our contest, Ix is dying. Witness: no great Ixian innovations in centuries.
Suipol returned. "They ask us to wait for an escort."
Odrade decided to start negotiations immediately with a chat for the benefit of Suipol, the comeyes, and listeners on her no-ship.