“Very well,” she said. She took Duncan’s hand and followed Teg out of his quarters.
Patrin stood in the hallway looking to his right. “She’s gone,” the old man said. He looked at Teg. “You know what to do, Bashar?”
“Pat!”
Lucilla had never before heard Teg use the batman’s diminutive name.
Patrin grinned, a gleaming full-toothed smile. “Sorry, Bashar. The excitement, you know. I’ll leave you to it, then. I have my part to play.”
Teg waved Lucilla and Duncan down the hallway to the right. She obeyed and heard Teg close on her heels. Duncan’s hand was sweaty in her hand. He pulled free and strode beside her without looking back.
The suspensor-drop at the end of the hallway was guarded by two of Teg’s own people. He nodded to them. “Nobody follows.”
They spoke in unison: “Right, Bashar.”
Lucilla realized as she entered the drop with Duncan and Teg that she had chosen sides in a dispute whose workings she did not fully understand. She could feel the movements of the Sisterhood’s politics like a swift current of water pouring all around her. Usually, the movement remained mostly a gentle wave washing the strand, but now she sensed a great destructive surge preparing to thunder its surf upon her.
Duncan spoke as they emerged into the sorting chamber for the south pillbox.
“We should all be armed,” he said.
“We will be very soon,” Teg said. “And I hope you’re prepared to kill anyone who tries to stop us.”
The significant fact is this: No Bene Tleilax female has ever been seen away from the protection of their core planets. (Face Dancer mules who simulate females do not count in this analysis. They cannot be breeders.) The Tleilaxu sequester their females to keep them from our hands. This is our primary deduction. It must also be in the eggs that the Tleilaxu Masters conceal their most essential secrets.
-Bene Gesserit Analysis — Archives #XOXTM99 ….. 041
“So we meet at last,” Taraza said.
She stared across the two meters of open space between their chairs at Tylwyth Waff. Her analysts assured her that this man was Tleilaxu Master of Masters. What an elfin little figure he was to hold so much power. The prejudices of appearance must be discarded here, she warned herself.
“Some would not believe this possible,” Waff said.
He had a piping little voice, Taraza noted; something else to be measured by different standards.
They sat in the neutrality of a Guild no-ship with Bene Gesserit and Tleilaxu monitors clinging to the Guildship’s hull like predatory birds on a carcass. (The Guild had been cravenly anxious to placate the Bene Gesserit. “You will pay.” The Guild knew. Payment had been exacted from them before.) The small oval room in which they met was conventionally copper-walled and “spy-proof.” Taraza did not believe this for an instant. She presumed also that the bonds between Guild and Tleilaxu, forged of melange, still existed in full force.
Waff did not try to delude himself about Taraza. This woman was far more dangerous than any Honored Matre. If he killed Taraza, she would be replaced immediately by someone just as dangerous, someone with every essential piece of information possessed by the present Mother Superior.
“We find your new Face Dancers very interesting,” Taraza said.
Waff grimaced involuntarily. Yes, far more dangerous than the Honored Matres, who were not yet even blaming the Tleilaxu for the loss of an entire no-ship.
Taraza glanced at the small double-faced digital clock on the low side table at her right, a position where the clock could be read easily by either of them. The Waff-side face had been matched to his internal clock. She noted that the two internal-time readings stood within ten seconds of synchronization at an arbitrary midafternoon. It was one of the niceties of this confrontation where even the positioning and spacing between their chairs had been specified in the arrangements.
The two of them were alone in the room. The oval space around them was about six meters in its long dimension, half that in width. They occupied identical sling chairs of peg-fastened wood, which supported orange fabric; not a bit of metal or other foreign material in either of them. The only other furnishing of the room was the side table with its clock. The table was a thin black surface of plaz on three spindly wooden legs. Each of the principals in this meeting had been snooped with care. Each had three personal guards outside the room’s one hatch. Taraza did not think the Tleilaxu would try a Face Dancer exchange, not under the present circumstances!