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"We have a common enemy," Odrade said.
"The Honored Matres!"
"You were wise to kill them and learn from them."
Waff leaned forward, completely caught up in his familiar tongue and the flow of their conversation. "They rule with sex!" he exulted. "Remarkable techniques of orgasmic amplification! We--" Belatedly, he became aware of who was sitting in front of him hearing all of this.
"We already know such techniques," Odrade reassured him. "It will be interesting to compare, but there are obvious reasons why we have never tried to ride to power on such a dangerous conveyance. Those whores are just stupid enough to make that mistake!"
"Mistake?" He was clearly puzzled.
"They are holding the reins in their own hands!" she said. "As the power grows, their control of it must grow. The thing will shatter of its own momentum!"
"Power, always power," Waff muttered. Another thought struck him. "Are you saying this was how the Prophet fell?"
"He knew what he was doing," she said. "Millennia of enforced peace followed by the Famine Times and the Scattering. A message of direct results. Remember! He did not destroy the Bene Tleilax or the Bene Gesserit."
"For what do you hope from an alliance between our two peoples?" Waff asked.
"Hope is one thing, survival another," she said.
"Always pragmatism," Waff said. "And some among you fear that you may restore the Prophet on Rakis with all of his powers intact?"
"Did I not say it?" The language of the Islamiyat was particularly potent in this questioning form. It placed the burden of proof on Waff.
"So they doubt God's hand in the creation of your Kwisatz Haderach," he said. "Do they also doubt the Prophet?"
"Very well, let us have it all out in the open," Odrade said, and launched herself on the chosen course of deception: "Schwangyu and those who supported her broke away from the Great Belief. We harbor no anger toward any Bene Tleilax for having killed them. They saved us the trouble."
Waff accepted this utterly. Given the circumstances, it was precisely what could be expected. He knew he had revealed much here that might better have been held in reserve but there were still things the Bene Gesserit did not know. And the things he had learned!
Odrade shocked him totally then by saying: "Waff, if you think your descendants from the Scattering have returned to you unchanged, then foolishness has become your way of life."
He held himself silent.
"You have all of the pieces in your hands," she said. "Your descendants belong to the whores of the Scattering. And if you think any of them will abide by an agreement, then your stupidity goes beyond description!"
Waff's reactions told her she had him. The pieces were clicking into place. She had told him truth where it was required. His doubts were refocused where they belonged: against the people of the Scattering. And it had been done in his own tongue.
He tried to speak past a constriction in his throat and was forced to massage his throat before speech returned. "What can we do?"
"It's obvious. The Lost Ones have their eyes on us as just one more conquest. They think of it as cleaning up behind them. Common prudence."
"But they are so many!"
"Unless we unite in a common plan to defeat them, they will chew us up the way a slig chews up its dinner."
"We cannot submit to powindah filth! God will not permit it!"
"Submit? Who suggests that we submit?"
"But the Bene Gesserit always use that ancient excuse: 'If you can't beat them, join them.'"
Odrade smiled grimly. "God will not permit you to submit! Do you suggest He would permit it of us?"
"Then what is your plan? What would you do against such numbers?"
"Exactly what you plan to do: convert them. When you say the word, the Sisterhood will openly espouse the true faith."
Waff sat in stunned silence. So she knew the heart of the Tleilaxu plan. Did she know also how the Tleilaxu would enforce it?
Odrade stared at him, openly speculative. Grasp the beast by the balls if you must, she thought. But what if the projection by the Sisterhood's analysts was wrong? This whole negotiation would be a joke in that case. And there was that look in the back of Waff's eyes, that suggestion of older wisdom... much older than his flesh. She spoke with more confidence than she felt:
"What you have achieved with gholas from your tanks and kept secretly for yourselves alone, others will pay a great price to achieve."
Her words were sufficiently cryptic (Were others listening?) but Waff did not doubt for an instant that the Bene Gesserit knew even this thing.
"Will you demand a share in that as well?" he asked. The words rasped in his dry throat.
"Everything! We will share everything."
"What will you bring to this great sharing?"
"Ask."
"All of your breeding records."
"They are yours."
"Breeding mothers of our choice."
"Name them."
Waff gasped. This was far more than the Mother Superior had offered. It was like a blossom opening in his awareness. She was right about the Honored Matres, naturally--and about the Tleilaxu descendants from the Scattering. He had never completely trusted them. Never!
"You will want an unrestricted source of melange, of course," he said.
"Of course."
He stared at her, hardly believing the extent of his good fortune. The axlotl tanks would offer immortality only to those who espoused the Great Belief. No one would dare attack and attempt to seize a thing they knew the Tleilaxu would destroy rather than lose. And now! He had gained the services of the most powerful and enduring missionary force known. Surely, the hand of God was visible here. Waff was first awed and then inspired. He spoke softly to Odrade.
"And you, Reverend Mother, how do you name our accord?"
"Noble purpose," she said. "You already know the Prophet's words from Sietch Tabr. Do you doubt him?"
"Never! But... but there is one thing: What do you propose with that ghola of Duncan Idaho and the girl, Sheeana?"
"We will breed them, of course. And their descendants will speak for us to all of those descendants of the Prophet."
"On all of those planets where you would take them!"
"On all of those planets," she agreed.
Waff sat back. I have you, Reverend Mother! he thought. We will rule this alliance, not you. The ghola is not yours; he is ours!
Odrade saw the shadow of his reservations in Waff's eyes but knew she had ventured as much as she dared. More would reawaken doubts. Whatever happened, she had committed the Sisterhood to this course. Taraza could not escape this alliance now.
Waff squared his shoulders, a curiously juvenile gesture belied by the ancient intelligence peering from his eyes. "Ahhhh, one thing more," he said, every bit the Master of Masters speaking his own language and commanding all of those who heard him. "Will you also help spread this... this Atreides Manifesto?"
"Why not? I wrote it."
Waff jerked forward. "You?"
"Did you think someone of lesser abilities could have done it?"
He nodded, convinced without further argument. This was fuel for a thought that had entered his own mind, a final point in their alliance: The powerful min
ds of Reverend Mothers would advise the Tleilaxu at every turn! What did it matter that they were outnumbered by those whores of the Scattering? Who could match such combined wisdom and insurmountable weapons?
"The title of the Manifesto is valid, too," Odrade said. "I am a true descendant of the Atreides."
"Would you be one of our breeders?" he ventured.
"I am almost past the age of breeding, but I am yours to command."
I remember friends from wars all but we forgot. All of them distilled into each wound we caught. Those wounds are all the painful places where we fought. Battles better left behind, ones we never sought. What is it that we spent and what was it we bought?
--Songs of the Scattering
Burzmali based his planning on the best of what he had learned from his Bashar, keeping his own counsel about multiple options and fallback positions. That was a commander's prerogative! Necessarily, he learned everything he could about the terrain.
In the time of the Old Empire and even under the reign of Muad'dib, the region around the Gammu Keep had been a forest reserve, high ground rising well above the oily residue that tended to cover Harkonnen land. On this ground, the Harkonnens had grown some of the finest pilingitam, a wood of steady currency, always valued by the supremely rich. From the most ancient times, the knowledgeable had preferred to surround themselves with fine woods rather than with the mass-produced artificial materials known then as polastine, polaz, and pormabat latterly: tine, laz, and bat). As far back as the Old Empire there had been a pejorative label for the small rich and Families Minor arising from the knowledge of a rare wood's value.
"He's a three P-O," they said, meaning that such a person surrounded himself with cheap copies made from declasse substances. Even when the supremely rich were forced to employ one of the distressful three P-Os, they disguised it where possible behind O-P (the Only P), pilingitam.
Burzmali knew all of this and more as he set his people to searching for a strategically situated pilingitam near the no-globe. The wood of the tree had many qualities that endeared it to master artisans: Newly cut, it worked like a softwood; dried and aged, it endured as a hardwood. It absorbed many pigments and the finish could be made to appear as though it occurred naturally within the grain. More important, pilingitam was anti-fungal and no known insect had ever considered it a suitable dinner. Lastly, it was fire-resistant, and aged specimens of the living tree grew outward from an enlarged and empty tube at the core.
