Bliss Numera, the female mentat monk-chemist who for twenty six years lived in solitary confinement, existing on vegetable broth, but failed to perfect the formulae by which House Dardan hoped to transform siverfern into melange The final point to be made about twisted mentals is that some were more twisted than others, and a few not very twisted at all Nevertheless, because the mentals produced by the Tleilaxu were so often warped and bizarre in nature, they came universally to be regarded as objects of repugnance S T MISSIONARY PROTECTIVA 385 MISSIONARIA PROTECTIVA Further references TLEILAX HTER DE VRES MENTAT entnes Itiina Grezharee Tle.ilaxu Products and Plans in the Atreides Impenum (Chusuk Salrejina) Goya Solidar Book of the Kind)d Question ed Leeman Bend (Zunaona Kinat) MISSIONARIA PROTECTTVA. The Missionaria ProtecUva's general function within the Bane Gessent was to spread "passwords' -throughout known space so that communities would be conditioned to give aid and comfort to a stranger who "said die secret word ' The Bene Gessent breeding program was set up to extend through an unprecedented number of generations Realizing that an accident or two could set back their effort drastically, redundancy was essential many offspring, many lines, many possible combinations The greatest investment of Bene Gessent resources went into the redundancy program, and the Missionaria Protective was a second-line backup, deep within the grandi ose plans Most agents of the Missionana Protectiva were "outer-circle" trainees, women whose genes or dynamism did not qualify them for even intermediate status within the organization The Missionana Protectiva corps was usually an organizational dead-end, however, the records suggest that many of the mis&onar ics were patternmakers, ' creative artists' The Missionaria Protectiva's eventual operational extravagance is dazzling Devis ing and installing elaborate password systems throughout different cultures, setting testing systems so the passwords could not be misused, and arranging both systems so that the cultures would use them innocently compounded the complexity of the operation Each separate culture needed a different set of password and test sequences Some cultures needed only the minor manipulation of a compatible mythology, but die societies farthest from "civilization" had to be completely reprogfarnmed Legends, with all the accompanying accessories of songs, rumors, and nursery rhymes, had to be invented and inserted m the primitive cultures These inventions had to mesh with existing beliefs but also soften the cultures* reflexive fear of strangers, so that a m