Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [18]
Elder Burah and the present kehl, or council, represented the Lost Tleilaxu race and their Great Belief. Besides Burah, only six Elders existed—a total of seven, while eight was the holy number. Though he would never speak it aloud, Uxtal felt they should appoint someone else soon, or even promote him, so that the prescribed numbers were in proper balance.
As he surveyed the Face Dancers, Burah’s lips pressed together in a petulant frown. “I demand a report on your progress. What records have you salvaged from the destroyed Tleilaxu worlds? We barely know enough of their technology to continue with the sacred work. Our fallen stepbrothers knew much more than we have recovered. This is not acceptable.”
The placid-looking “leader” of the Face Dancers smiled in his Guildsman’s uniform. He addressed his shape-shifter comrades, as if he hadn’t even heard Elder Burah speak. “I have received our next set of commands. Our primary instructions remain the same. We are to find the no-ship that escaped from Chapterhouse. The search must continue.”
To Uxtal’s surprise, the other Face Dancers turned away from Burah, focusing instead on their own spokesman. Flustered, the Elder pounded a small fist on the table. “An escaped no-ship? What do we care about a no-ship? Who are you—which one? I can never tell you apart, not even by scent.”
The Face Dancer leader looked at Burah and seemed to consider whether or not to answer the question. “At the moment, I am called Khrone.”
Sitting against the copper-plated wall, Uxtal flicked his gaze from the innocent-looking Face Dancers to Elder Burah. He couldn’t grasp the undercurrents here, but he sensed a strange threat. So many things were just slightly beyond the edge of his comprehension.
“Your priority,” Burah doggedly continued, “is to rediscover how to manufacture melange using axlotl tanks. From old knowledge we took with us into the Scattering, we know how to use the tanks to create gholas—but not to make spice, a technique that our stepbrothers developed during the Famine Times, long after our line of Tleilaxu departed.”
When the Lost Tleilaxu returned from the Scattering, their stepbrothers had accepted them only hesitantly, allowing them back into the fold of their race as no more than second-class citizens. Uxtal didn’t think it was fair. But he and his fellow outsiders, all of them prodigal sons according to the original Tleilaxu, accepted the deprecatory comments they received, remembering an important quote from the catechism of the Great Belief: “Only those who are truly lost can ever hope to find the truth. Trust not in your maps, but in the guidance of God.”
As time passed, the returned Elders came to see that it was not they who were “lost,” but the original Masters who had strayed from the Great Belief. Only the Lost Tleilaxu—forged in the rigors of the Scattering—had kept the veracity of God’s commands, while the heretical ones wallowed in delusions. Eventually, the Lost Tleilaxu had realized that they would have to reeducate their misguided brothers, or remove them. Uxtal understood, having been told so many times, that the Lost Tleilaxu were far superior.
The original Masters were a suspicious lot, however, and they had never entirely trusted outsiders, not even outsiders of their own race. In this case, their problematic paranoia had not been misguided, for the Lost Tleilaxu were indeed in league with the Honored Matres. They used the terrible women as tools for reasserting the Great Belief upon their complacent stepbrothers. The whores had wiped out the original Tleilaxu worlds, eliminating every last original Master (a more extreme reaction than Uxtal had anticipated). Victory should have been simple enough to achieve.
During this meeting, however, Khrone and his fellows were not acting as expected. In the copper-walled chamber, Uxtal noticed subtle changes in their demeanor, and he saw the concern on Elder Burah’s face.
“Our priorities are different from yours,” Khrone said baldly.
Uxtal stifled a gasp. Burah was so displeased