“Exactly as it has come into our hands,” Waff said.
“Dangerous,” Mirlat said.
Waff turned his head to the right, his childlike profile outlined against the fountain for his councillors to observe. God’s hand is on my right! The sky above him was polished carnelian as though Bandalong, the most ancient city of the Tleilaxu, had been built under one of those gigantic artificial covers erected to protect pioneers on the harsher planets. When he returned his attention to his councillors, Waff’s features remained bland.
“Not dangerous to us,” he said.
“A matter of opinion,” Mirlat said.
“Then let us consider opinions,” Waff said. “Have we a need to fear Ix or the Fish Speakers? Indeed not. They are ours, although they do not know it.”
Waff let this sink in; all of them knew that new Face Dancers sat in the highest councils of Ix and Fish Speakers, the exchange undetected.
“The Guild will not move against us or oppose us because we are their only secure source of melange,” Waff said.
“Then what of these Honored Matres returned from the Scattering?” Mirlat demanded.
“We will deal with them when it is required of us,” Waff said. “And we will be helped by the descendants of our own people who voluntarily went out into the Scattering.”
“The time does appear opportune,” one of the other councillors murmured.
It was Torg the Younger who had spoken, Waff observed. Good. There was a vote secured.
“The Bene Gesserit!” Mirlat snapped.
“I think the Honored Matres will remove the witches from our path,” Waff said. “Already they growl against each other like animals in the fighting pit.”
“What if the author of that manifesto is identified?” Mirlat demanded. “What then?”
Several heads nodded among the councillors. Waff marked them: people to be won over.
“It is dangerous to be called Atreides in this age,” he said.
“Except perhaps on Gammu,” Mirlat said. “And the name Atreides has been signed to that document!”
How odd, Waff thought. The CHOAM representative at the powindah conference that had taken Waff away from the inner planets of Tleilax had emphasized that very point. But most of CHOAM’s people were secret atheists who looked on all religion as suspect, and certainly the Atreides had been a potent religious force. CHOAM worries had been almost palpable.
Waff recounted this CHOAM reaction now.
“This CHOAM hireling, damn his Godless soul, is right,” Mirlat insisted. “The document’s insidious.”
Mirlat will have to be dealt with, Waff thought. He lifted the manifesto from his lap and read the first line aloud:
“In the beginning was the word and the word was God.”
“Directly from the Orange Catholic Bible,” Mirlat said. Once more, heads nodded in worried agreement.
Waff showed the points of his canines in a brief smile. “Do you suggest that there are those among the powindah who suspect the existence of the Shariat and the Masheikhs?”
It felt good to speak these words openly, reminding his listeners that only here among the innermost Tleilaxu were the old words and the old language preserved without change. Did Mirlat or any of the others fear that Atreides words could subvert the Shariat?
Waff posed this question, too, and saw the worried frowns.
“Is there one among you,” Waff asked, “who believes that a single powindah knows how we use the language of God?”
There! Let them think on that! Every one of them here had been wakened time after time in ghola flesh. There was a fleshly continuity in this Council that no other people had ever achieved. Mirlat himself had seen the Prophet with his own eyes. Scytale had spoken to Muad’dib! Learning how the flesh could be renewed and the memories restored, they had condensed this power into a single government whose potency was confined lest it be demanded everywhere. Only the witches had a similar storehouse of experience upon which to draw and they moved with fearful caution, terrified that they might produce another Kwisatz Haderach!
Waff said these things to his councillors, adding: “The time for action has come.”
When no one spoke disagreement, Waff said: “This manifesto has a single author. Every analysis agrees. Mirlat?”
“Written by one person and that person a true Atreides, no doubt of it,” Mirlat agreed.