ihad, the TIeilaxu exercised great secrecy in then operations At the same time, they endeavored to make themselves indispensable to the Padishah emperors by providing them with items of forbidden technology The TIeilaxu devoted themselves to the soft sciences medicine, biology, genetics, psychology and sociology This course held fewer risks, required fewer raw materials and resources and was expected to pay greater dividends than the hardwarc-oneoted technology of the planet Ix The TIeilaxu were the supreme ^moralists of their time, approaching every question with total self interest and cold pragmatism Their expenences in the Jihad, witnessing the obliteration of scientific partners and colleagues on other planets, generated a global paranoia which their ostracism from the life of the Impenum sustained Few of the TIeilaxu artifacts and services have been remembered by history, since their purchasers were loath to advertise where they shopped Exceptions to this oblivion include the axolotl tanks, used for producing gholas, the department of religious engineering, whose existence was disclosed by Scytale and whose actual activities remain unknown, and, of course, the face dancers, Tleilax s best-known work Legends from almost mythical times tell of the shape shifters, the werewolf, the loop garou But if we discount these stones as baseless, then the first face dancers were those produced by the TIeilaxu in the sixth millennium They appeared as entertainers at the court of Corrm XIV in 5122 Apparently these first face dancers were little more than exceptionally skilled mimics with remark able body control, very crude artifacts com pared to their successors Nevertheless, some students of the period believe that they accomplished their purposes with skill The historian C Suf Milar has argued that the face dancers were conspirators or hirelings m the plot to assassinate Cornn XIV The Landsraad discovered their involvement, but the Great Houses feanng the complete obliteration of technology as much as Tleilax did, Milar conjectures, kept their findings secret What warning they sent to the TIeilaxu, if any is not known FACE DANCERS 207 FACE DANCERS In the centuries that followed, the face dancers used the role of traveling entertainer to great advantage The cost of a troupe of dancers was astronomical, and their appearance at state occasions was the mark of the most conspicuous consumption There can be no doubt that the face dancers, were mar-velous performers, as a few surviving mimfilms show They were therefore valuable to the Tleilaxu as a nch source of foreign currency Yet no one supposes that monetary considerations were ever primary in decisions to let the face dancers travel, for the face dancers were the most competent intelligence gathering network the Impenum ever endured ABILITIES OF THE FACE DANCERS In a matter of minutes, a face dancer could change his height, build, facial features, hair color and apparent length, and even sex.