“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 sword-master 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 confi dantes,” 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 Tleilax. 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.