Deceptions
This information I acquired as an agent for the Republic of Xintaro. The republic is long gone, destroyed by the male-devourers, the Honored Matres. May Dur curse them! My cover on planet Higamore was that of a smuggler. Smugglers hide their past, but have deep connections planetside. The Handlers had a school on the planet. There, a student talked too much while under the effect of the semuta I was so generously providing. The Handlers, he said, can tune their hunters to detect the chemistry of different types of humans. That the Matres were one of the targets was already known. With selective breeding, appropriate stimulation with odors and sounds they could train their predators to target even a single individual. The Futars are a product of their skills and training. They genuinely have a bond with that formidable animal. I never had the time to verify the student's story. A day later my cover was blown and I ran for my life off-planet, narrowingly escaping two Futars in their hot chase to get me. They watched me intently as I took off from the landing pad. I only glimpsed at them briefly as my lighter gained height. What formidable creatures! What beauty in those fiery eyes!
- MY SERVICE IN THE XINTARO REPUBLIC
Scytale-quater sat on a plain chair in the presence of another Master. He was deep in thought, weighing the suspicions he was harboring. Master Zoel spoke up: "You do not know me as a brother, because I was not a Master in the kehl".
"You have the smell of the Scattering," observed Master Scytale. His gaze lingered on the bald head, the round ears pierced with metal earrings, the small canines enclosed in perfect supple lips, the puffy cheeks, and down to the simple but alien-looking black vest adorned with metal spikes. He could smell the musky perfume of the Tleilaxu of old, a hint of chemicals showing thisMaster had recently worked near the tanks. He smiled weakly, not liking what he saw. True Masters did not wear metal, or cared about appearances.
Master Zoel broke the silence: "No, I was not in the kehl. I came to Bandalong to pay homage to the brothers, Master Scytale. I performed the ghufran rites to purify myself from the contact with the unbelievers. Thirty days Master Donze had me wait before I was admitted, but I could not shake the thought that reservations lingered in his mind. The Masters doubted my purity, for they did not know what had happened to me and my brothers in the Scattering."
"The Scattering is impure," whispered the true Tleilaxu Master, trying to make sense of Zoel's musical accent.
"Powindah feet trample soil and pollute rivers," confirmed Zoel. "Everything they touch. Except our holy soil."
"Do you have cities? Planets?"
"We cram into well guarded communities."
"And now you… revived… me?" continued Master Scytale with a challenging expression.
"Master Scytale, there are many Scattered Tleilaxu, and there are some who have left the purity of the kehl, as you suspected. Even so, the rest of us adhere to the code."
"And so have you stayed true to the teachings and the seeking?"
"It is for you to decide. I was the only one the Masters admitted to the Tleilaxu core."
"And how come I have never met you?"
"Master Scytale, were you in Bandalong when the Matres attacked?"
They both paused, remembering the viciousness of those savage fighters.
"I had left the system just before. And we are...?"
"The Honored whores, the ones who perfected sex as their way to rule, found the Bene Gesserit planet and destroyed it. We are presently in a safe-house, just outside the Million Worlds. Our presence is masked by a no-globe. Your predecessor met me and I asked him whether he would want to be revived, should an untimely death happen to him."
"Ha!" Scytale felt elated and lost at the same time. Bene Gesserit he loathed, and could not care less about their demise, but the Matres he was afraid of. "But I… my predecessor would have never consented to that."
"In fact he did not. The no-ship you were on escaped in time from the Bene Gesserit planet. A group of us and other forces were not many stars away. We helped."
"And how come you found yourselves so conveniently close?"
"We were searching. For the last true Master. For you. We came from the Scattering to re-associate ourselves with the old secrets, but could not prevent the obliteration of our brothers of old. I witnessed the beginning of the destruction as I was sent away by your brothers with a message to my brethren. You need to know that a Guild Navigator, one of the few surviving ones, is in our service. We had been searching for you."
"How could you find me, if I was a prisoner in a no-ship?"
"Ha, but see," smiled Master Zoel, "the Navigator saw you as soon as you stepped outside of it. You were on walks. He could not see others, but the Navigator told us you were conversing with powindah people of Siona's blood."
Scytale eyes opened wide.
"How did I die? My predecessor, I mean."
He clutched his skin where the nullentropy capsule should have been. But this must have been a new body, it seemed, grown from the cells of his last one. Where was the capsule?
"Your no-ship was destroyed en route, but not before we had made contact with you".
"And you left us and fled? Why did you not let me on your ship?"
"I offered, but you refused, Master Scytale. I do not know that I would have trusted myself in the same situation."
"So, my former incarnation, and body, is gone."
"It is gone."
Scytale nodded, keeping a sense of loss at bay. And so is my nullentropy capsule. And my brothers' seeds of rebirth. I will never talk to Waff again, and tell him he was an overzealous fool.
"Why do I not remember any of this?" he wondered.
"We have revived you, Master, but the cell strands we cultivated did not come from the body of yours that died. You did not let us graft any tissue from your body. You told to my face that I was impure and imperfect. Master Scytale, my Face Dancers took from you some clothing without your knowledge while on the ship, and that was all we could work with. Seek your last memory. What is it?"
Scytale paused for a moment, then uttered: "I remember coming back from one of the many walks with the Mother Superior Darwi Odrade on Chapterhouse. The witches wanted," he hesitated. The witches knew, but this impure Master may not know about our spice-making secret yet. "... wanted to learn our secrets."
"That must have been in the days immediately before the attack to the Bene Gesserit planet, then. The cells were far and few, and attached themselves to your clothing in the sweat of that last walk. I regret I wasn't more convincing with your former self. I would have saved his body and memories for you to remember."
Scytale sniffed the air. Scents that were familiar, of Tleilaxu perfumes and body odor. No more home, no more brothers, no more kehl. No more capsule, to grow Bandalong's best and recreate anew. To rebuild an entire civilization, millennia of tradition and faith. No more the brothers will meet in kehl and feel the presence of God. Only half-brothers, impure, twisted ones. A deep sorrow shook him. God! I had no idea to what lengths and depths you were going to test me. And yet back I am, and I need to build.
"Who told you to look for me?" Scytale replied.
"We got in touch with the Bene Gesserit – the witches – on many planets as they were retreating," continued the Master from the Scattering, "we still have our ways to acquire information". Scytale nodded; certainly a Face Dancer had taken over a witches' Acolyte messenger and passed the information. The new Dancers would not copy a Reverend Mother, but would otherwise steer clear of them. Maybe one of them had made it all the way to the witches' secret planet? He gave Master Zoel a questioning stare.
"Our Dancers did not make it so far as the witches' planet, Master, but they reported surprising news. We learned that the witches had their own axolotl tanks. Thanks to the Last Master," Zoel replied in a subtly accusing tone. "And that is of course how we learned the last Master still lived. We cannot let our Tradition die."
"What are you insinuating? I shared my knowledge at the instruction of Master Waff, the Mahai and Abdl. So, do you expect us to work together?"
"Master Scytale, I will be your Brother in kehl if you will let me; we came back from the Seeking to share our secrets and learn the Old Tradition; to come back into communion with God. If our ways have deviated, only you can tell us. If our conscience is impure, only you can cleanse us. I bow to the last of the True Masheikhs. The Mahai and Abdl. What you need will be yours. What wisdom you decide to share, we will treasure."
Scytale paused. "Say I find you unworthy? Not in God's Grace?"
Zoel switched to the sacred language of the Islamiyat: "If I am not in His Grace, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me." A faint smile came upon Scytale's lips. The burden was his. He was the last true Master. Among impure, maybe unfaithful imitations. Yet useful.
"I thank you," he concluded, "I will need resources to restore my power, my tanks. I ask two of your Face Dancers to change hands so that I will be their Master."
"They are yours, Master."
"And you will teach me the secret of your Futars."
Zoel hesitated. Then replied, submissively: "It is yours."
Very well, Scytale thought. The capsule is destroyed in the void of space, and if truly I am the last true Master, we will do what we must do. And so it will be the path that God has chosen for me. But the loss!
Master Zoel, once dismissed, left quickly by the door, ordering the Face Dancer servants to put themselves at Scytale's service. "Don't reveal anything critical", he whispered.
He walked a great length, turning corner after corner, climbed flights of stairs until he reached the observation room, sat into a chair with a sigh.
"Is it done?" Reverend Mother Bellonda asked with a hoarse voice from behind the chair.
"It is done." sighed Scattered Tleilaxu Master Zoel.
"Pride worked. He likes to be the last pure Master. In his thoughts."
"He believed the story, yes. Oh, he will test it. There will be doubts. Our Face Dancers will play along. He does not suspect how different my Dancers are from his. We will keep him confined with the excuse of keeping him in the fake safehouse, far from the Matres' threat. He will build his own tanks. And that way, he will betray his own secrets."
"Master Zoel, you have my thanks," offered Bellonda.
"At your service. We serve the Supreme Honored Matre."
"That's Murbella, and you should call her Mother Superior now."
"As you wish."
"Your allegiance to the Matres is recognized and appreciated. But the Matres now are Reverend Mothers".
"Understood." How meekly, Bellonda noted. The imprinting Murbella performed on this one is easily all that stands between him and my death. "Zoel?", she asked with a commanding tone that was just a bit shy of true Voice. The Master stopped himself, his back already turned to Bellonda as he approached the door. "Yes, Reverend Mother?"
"You were bound to the Honored Matres just like you are bound to us now. We merged, and we are one. I am Bene Gesserit. Do not think I cannot read you. The nature of this exchange is not lost on us. You get the secret of the spice-producing tanks, which your kind never attained in the Scattering. Scytale will demand to learn the secret of the Futars. We will learn of both. Nothing escapes our eyes. Remember that."
"So I am told, and so I will."
And this is the most daring plan I could come up with, Miles Teg, Bellonda thought gloomily.