Dune

“We’ve been observing you with Duncan. Why are you interested in ships from the Scattering?”

“Long-haul ships have a distinctive appearance. I saw them on the flat at Gammu.”

Teg sat back and let this sink in, glad of the briskness he sensed in Odrade’s manner. Decisions! No long deliberations. That suited his needs. They must not learn the full extent of my abilities. Not yet.

“You would disguise an attack force?”

Bellonda came through the door as Odrade was speaking and growled an objection while sitting: “Impossible! They’ll have recognition codes and secret signals for—”

“Let me decide that, Bell, or remove me from command.”

“This is the Council!” Bellonda said. “You don’t—”

“Mentat?” He looked fully at her, the Bashar apparent in his gaze.

When she fell silent, he said: “Don’t question my loyalty! If you would weaken me, replace me!”

“Let him have his say.” That was Tam. “This isn’t the first Council where the Bashar has appeared as our equal.”

Bellonda lowered her chin a fractional millimeter.

To Odrade, Teg said, “Avoiding warfare is a matter of intelligence—the gathered variety and intellectual power.”

Throwing our own cant at us! She heard Mentat in his voice and Bellonda obviously heard this as well. Intelligence and intelligence: the doubled view. Without it, warfare often occurred as an accident.

The Bashar sat silently, letting them stew in their own historical observations. The urge to conflict went far deeper than consciousness. The Tyrant had been right. Humankind acted as “one beast.” The forces impelling that great collective animal went back to tribal days and beyond, as did so many forces to which humans responded without thinking.

Mix the genes.

Expand Lebensraum for your own breeders.

Gather the energies of others: collect slaves, peons, servants, serfs, markets, workers . . . The terms often were interchangeable.

Odrade saw what he was doing. Knowledge absorbed from the Sisterhood helped make him the incomparable Mentat Bashar. He held these things as instincts. Energy-eating drove war’s violence. This was described as “greed, fear (that others will take your hoard), power hunger” and on and on into futile analyses. Odrade had heard these even from Bellonda who obviously was not taking it well that a subordinate should remind them of what they already knew.

“The Tyrant knew,” Teg said. “Duncan quotes him: ‘War is behavior with roots in the single cell of the primeval seas. Eat whatever you touch or it will eat you.’”

“What do you propose?” Bellonda at her most snappish.

“A feint at Gammu, then strike their base on Junction. For that we need first-hand observations.” He stared steadily at Odrade.

He knows! The thought flared in Odrade’s mind.

“You think your studies of Junction when it was a Guild base are still accurate?” Bellonda demanded.

“They haven’t had time to change the place much from what I stored here.” He tapped his forehead in an odd parody of the Sisterhood’s gesture.

“Englobement,” Odrade said.

Bellonda looked at her sharply. “The cost!”

“Losing everything is more costly,” Teg said.

“Foldspace sensors don’t have to be large,” Odrade said. “Duncan would set them to create a Holzmann explosion on contact?”

“The explosions would be visible and would give us a trajectory.” He sat back and looked at an indefinite area on Odrade’s rear wall. Would they accept it? He dared not frighten them with another display of wild talent. If Bell knew he could see the no-ships!

“Do it!” Odrade said. “You have the command. Use it.”

There was a distinct sense of chuckling from Taraza in Other Memories. Give him his head! That’s how I got such a great reputation!

“One thing,” Bellonda said. She looked at Odrade. “You’re going to be his spy?”

“Who else can get in there and transmit observations?”

“They’ll be monitoring every means of transmission!”

“Even the one that tells our waiting no-ship we have not been betrayed?” Odrade asked.

“An encrypted message hidden in the transmission,” Teg said. “Duncan has devised an encryption that would take months to break but we doubt they’ll detect its presence.”

“Madness,” Bellonda muttered.

“I met an Honored Matre military commander on Gammu,” Teg said. “Slack when it came to necessary details. I think they’re overconfident.”

Bellonda stared at him and there was the Bashar staring back at her out of a child’s innocent eyes. “Abandon all sanity ye who enter here,” he said.

“Get out of here, all of you!” Odrade ordered. “You have work to do. And Miles . . .”

He already had slid off the chair but he stood there looking much as he always had when waiting for Mother to tell him something important.