Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [186]
Throughout the grottoes of the city, C’tair watched signs being torn down, streets and districts being renamed, and the little gnomes—all men, no women—occupying huge research facilities for their secret, nefarious operations. The streets, walkways, and facilities were guarded by diligent, thinly disguised Imperial Sardaukar or the invaders’ own shape-shifting Face Dancers.
Shortly after their victory was secured, the Tleilaxu Masters had showed themselves and encouraged the suboid rebels to vent their anger on carefully selected and approved targets. Standing back, clothed in a simple workman’s jumpsuit, C’tair had watched the smooth-skinned laborers cluster around the facility that had manufactured the new self-learning fighting meks.
“House Vernius has brought this upon themselves!” screamed a charismatic suboid agitator, almost certainly a Face Dancer infiltrator. “They would bring back the thinking machines. Destroy this place!”
While the helpless Ixian survivors had watched in horror, the suboids smashed the plaz windows and used thermal bombs to ignite the small manufactory. Filled with religious fervor, they howled and threw rocks.
A Tleilaxu Master on a hastily erected podium had bellowed into comspeakers and amplifiers. “We are your new masters, and we will make certain the manufacturing abilities of Ix are fully in accord with the strictures of the Great Convention.” The flames continued to crackle, and some of the suboids had cheered, but most didn’t seem to be listening. “As soon as possible, we must repair this damage and return this world to normal operations—with better conditions for the suboids, of course.”
C’tair had looked around, watched the building burn, and felt sick inside.
“All Ixian technology must henceforth be scrutinized by a strict religious review board, to assure its suitability. Any questionable technology will be scrapped. No one will ask you to endanger your souls by working on heretical machines.” More cheering, more smashed plaz, a few screams.
C’tair had realized, though, that the cost of this takeover would be enormous for the Tleilaxu, even with Imperial support. Since Ix was one of the major powerhouse economies in the Imperium, the new rulers could not afford to let the production lines remain idle. The Tleilaxu would make a show of destroying some of the questionable products, such as the reactive meks, but he doubted any of the truly profitable Ixian devices would be discontinued.
Despite the promises of the new masters, the suboids had been put back to work—as they were bred to do—but this time they followed only Tleilaxu designs and orders. C’tair realized that, before long, the manufactories would begin pouring out merchandise again; and shiploads of solaris would flow back into the Bene Tleilax coffers to pay them for this costly military adventure.
Now, though, the secrecy and security developed by generations of House Vernius would work against them. Ix had always shrouded itself in mystery, so who would notice the difference? Once the paying customers were satisfied with the exports, no one in the Imperium would much care about internal Ixian politics. Anyone on the outside would forget all that had happened here. It would be cleanly swept under the rug.
That must be what the Tleilaxu were counting on, C’tair thought. The entire world of Ix—he would never refer to it, not even in his mind, as Xuttuh—was walled off from the Imperium as an enigma . . . much as the homeworlds of the Bene Tleilax had been for centuries.
The new masters restricted travel off-planet and imposed curfews with deadly force. Face Dancers rooted out “traitors” from hiding rooms similar to C’tair’s and executed them without fanfare or ceremony. He saw no end to the repression, but he vowed not to give up. This was his own world, and he would fight for it, in any way he could.
C’tair told no one his name, called little attention to himself—but he listened, absorbed every whispered story or rumor, and he planned. Not