Taraza was having similar thoughts. She had seen the flash of deeper awareness in Waff’s eyes. Necessity opened new doors of reason. How deep did the Tleilaxu go? His eyes were so old! She had the feeling that whatever had been a brain in these Tleilaxu Masters was now something else — a holorecording from which all weakening emotions had been erased. She shared the distrust of emotions that she suspected in him. Was that a bond to unite them?
The tropism of common thoughts.
“You say you release your grip on us,” Waff growled, “but I feel your fingers around my throat.”
“Then here is a grip on our throat,” she said. “Some of your Lost Ones have returned to you. Never has a Reverend Mother come back to us from the Scattering.”
“But you said you knew all of the –”
“We have other ways of gaining knowledge. What do you suppose happened to the Reverend Mothers we sent out into the Scattering?”
“A common disaster?” He shook his head. This was absolutely new information. None of the returned Tleilaxu had said anything at all about this. The discrepancy fed his suspicions. Whom was he to believe?
“They were subverted,” Taraza said.
Odrade, hearing the general suspicion voiced for the first time by the Mother Superior, sensed the enormous power implicit in Taraza’s simple statement. Odrade was cowed by it. She knew the resources, the contingency plans, the improvised ways a Reverend Mother might use to surmount barriers. Something Out There could stop that?
When Waff did not respond, Taraza said: “You come to us with dirty hands.”
“You dare say this?” Waff asked. “You who continue to deplete our resources in the ways taught you by the Bashar’s mother?”
“We knew you could afford the losses if you had resources from the Scattering,” Taraza said.
Waff inhaled a trembling breath. So the Bene Gesserit knew even this. He saw in part how they had learned it. Well, a way would have to be found to bring the false Tuek back under control. Rakis was the prize the Scattered Ones really sought and it might yet be demanded of the Tleilaxu.
Taraza moved even closer to Waff, alone and vulnerable. She saw her guards grow tense. Sheeana took a small step toward the Mother Superior and was pulled back by Odrade.
Odrade kept her attention on the Mother Superior and not on potential attackers. Were the Tleilaxu truly convinced that the Bene Gesserit would serve them? Taraza had tested the limits of it, no doubt of that. And in the language of the Islamiyat. But she looked very alone out there away from her guards and so near Waff and his people. Where would Waff’s obvious suspicions lead him now?
Taraza shivered.
Odrade saw it. Taraza had been abnormally thin as a child and had never put on an excess ounce of fat. This made her exquisitely sensitive to temperature changes, intolerant of cold, but Odrade sensed no such change in the room. Taraza had made a dangerous decision then, so dangerous that her body betrayed her. Not dangerous to herself, of course, but dangerous to the Sisterhood. There was the most awful Bene Gesserit crime: disloyalty to their own order.
“We will serve you in all ways except one,” Taraza said. “We will never become receptacles for gholas!”
Waff paled.
Taraza continued: “None of us is now nor will ever become . . .” she paused “. . . an axlotl tank.”
Waff raised his right hand in the start of a gesture every Reverend Mother knew: the signal for his Face Dancers to attack.
Taraza pointed at his upraised hand. “If you complete that gesture, the Tleilaxu will lose everything. The messenger of God –” Taraza nodded over a shoulder toward Sheeana “– will turn her back upon you and the words of the Prophet will be dust in your mouths.”
In the language of the Islamiyat, such words were too much for Waff. He lowered his hand but he continued to glower at Taraza.
“My ambassador said we would share everything we know,” Taraza said. “You said you, too, would share. The messenger of God listens with the ears of the Prophet! What pours forth from the Abdl of the Tleilaxu?”