Hunters Of Dune

by Frank Herbert

  "Excuse me, Duncan. I have a question."

  "Only one?"

  "Can you tell me how our memories will be restored? What techniques will the Bene Gesserit use, and how old will we be when it happens? I'm already eight. Miles Teg was only ten when they reawakened him."

  Duncan stiffened. "They were forced to do that. A time of extremis."

  Sheeana had done it herself, using a twisted variation of sexual imprinting techniques. Miles had been in the body of a ten-year-old boy, with the buried mind of an old, old man. The Bene Gesserits were willing to risk scarring his psyche because they had needed his military genius to defeat the Honored Matres. The young Bashar had been given no say in the matter.

  "Aren't we in a time of extremis right now?"

  Duncan studied the front of the model palace. "You need know only that the restoration of your memories will be a traumatic process. We know of no other way to accomplish it. Because you each have a separate personality"--he glanced around at the children--"the awakening will be different for each of you. Your best defense is to understand who you were, so that when the memories come flooding back, you're ready for them."

  Young Wellington Yueh, five years old, piped up in a wavering childish voice. "But I don't want to be who I was."

  Duncan felt the heaviness in his chest. "I'm sorry, but none of us has that luxury."

  Chani always stayed close to Paul. Her voice was small but the words were large. "Do we have to live up to the Sisterhood's expectations?"

  Duncan shrugged and forced a smile. "Why not exceed them?"

  Together, they continued to build the walls of the Grand Palace.

  Our aimless wandering is a metaphor for all of human history. The participants in great events do not see their place in the overall design. Our failure to see the larger pattern, however, does not disprove that one exists.

  --REVEREND MOTHER SHEEANA,

  Ithaca logs

  S

  heeana walked the sands again. Her bare toes sank into the soft, grainy powder. The enclosed air held brittle flint odors and the fertile, cinnamony smell of fresh melange.

  She had still not forgotten the strange Other Memory vision in which she had spoken to Sayyadina Ramallo and received her cryptic warning about the gholas. Be careful what you create. Sheeana had taken the admonition seriously; as a Reverend Mother, she could do nothing else.

  But exercising caution was not the same as stopping entirely. What had Ramallo meant? Despite searching through her mind, she was unable to find the ancient Fremen Sayyadina again. The clamor was too loud. She did, however, again encounter the even-more-ancient voice of Serena Butler. The legendary Jihad leader offered much wise advice.

  Inside the no-ship's kilometer-long great hold, Sheeana trudged across the stirred sand, not bothering to use the careful stutter-step of Fremen on Dune. The captive worms instinctively knew she had entered their domain, and Sheeana could sense them coming.

  While waiting for the worms to charge toward her in a froth through the dunes, Sheeana lay down on the sand. She wore no stillsuit as she had done as a little girl. Her legs and arms were bare. Free. She felt the sandy grains pressing against the skin of her arms and legs. Dust clung to the prickles of perspiration from her pores. With the soft dust all around her, she imagined what it would be like to be one of the sandworms in the wild, plunging beneath the surface like a big fish in a great arid sea.

  Sheeana got to her feet as the first three worms arrived. She picked up the empty spice-gathering basket from where she had set it and stood to face the sinuous creatures. They extended their round heads, their mouths glittering with crystal teeth and tiny flickers of flame fueled by an inner friction furnace.

  The original worms of Arrakis had been aggressively territorial. After the God Emperor went "back into the sand," each of the new worms he spawned contained a pearl of his awareness, and they could work together when they wished to do so.

  She cocked her head and lifted her sealed basket to show them. "I have come to gather spice, Shaitan." Long ago, the priests on Rakis had been horrified to hear her speak thus to their Divided God.

  Unafraid, Sheeana walked between their ringed bodies, as if they were only towering trees. She and the sandworms had always had an understanding. Few others aboard the no-ship dared to enter the hold now that the creatures had grown so large. Sheeana was the only one who could gather natural spice from the sands, some of which she added to the much greater supply of fresh melange created in the ship's axlotl tanks.

  Sniffing, she followed the scent to where a fresh cinnamony bloom might be found. Children from her village had done the same thing long ago. The fragments of windblown melange they scavenged from the dunes helped to buy supplies and tools. Now that whole way of life was gone, as was Rakis itself. . . .

  Inside her head, the fascinating and ancient voice of Serena Butler once again bubbled up from deep within her Other Memories. Sheeana carried on her conversation aloud. "Tell me one thing: How can Serena Butler be among my ancestors?"

  If you dig deep enough, I am there. Ancestor after ancestor, generation after generation . . .

  Sheeana was not so easily convinced. "But Serena Butler's only child was murdered by thinking machines. That was the trigger of the Jihad. You had no heirs, no other descendants. How can you be in my Other Memories, regardless of how far back I go?"

  She looked up at the strange forms of the sandworms, as if the martyred woman's face might be there.

  Because, Serena said, I am. The ancient voice said no more, and Sheeana knew she would get no better answer.

  Brushing past the nearest worm, Sheeana stroked one of the hard, encrusted ring segments. She sensed that these worms dreamed of freedom, too, longing to find a great open landscape through which they could burrow, where they could claim their own territory, fight battles of dominance, and propagate.

  Day by day, Sheeana observed them from the viewing gallery above. She saw the worms circling the hold, testing their boundaries, knowing that they must wait . . . wait! Just like the Futars pacing in their arboretum, or the refugee Bene Gesserits and Jews, or Duncan Idaho, Miles Teg, and the ghola children. They were all trapped here, caught in the odyssey. There must be someplace safe where they could go.

  Finding a rusty blotch on the sand, she stooped to brush fresh melange into her impermeable basket. The worms produced only small amounts of melange, but because it was fresh and genuine, Sheeana kept much of it for her own uses. Though the axlotl-produced spice was chemically identical, she preferred the close connection to the sandworms, even if it was all in her imagination. Like Serena Butler? Or Sayyadina Ramallo?

  The worms passed her and began to plow their great bodies through the sand. Sheeana bent to gather more spice.

  INSIDE THE MEDICAL center--torture chamber, more like!--the Rabbi knelt beside the gross female form and prayed, as he did so often.

  "May our Ancient God bless and forgive you, Rebecca." Though she was brain dead and her body no longer resembled the woman he had known, he insisted on using her given name. She had said she would be dreaming, living among those myriad lives within her. Was it true? Despite what he saw and smelled in this chamber of horrors, he would remember who she had been and honor her.

  Ten years as a tank! "Mother of monsters. Why did you allow them to do this, daughter?" And now, with the ghola project on hiatus, her body no longer even served the purpose for which she had sacrificed it. What a terrible thing.

  Her naked abdomen, adorned with tubes and monitors, was no longer swollen, but he had seen her several times as a mound carrying a pregnancy so unnatural that even God must turn his eyes from it. Rebecca and the other two Bene Gesserit women who had volunteered to become such horrors lay on sterile beds. Axlotl tanks! Even the name sounded unnatural, stripped of all humanity.

  For years these "tanks" had produced gholas; now they simply secreted chemical precursors that were processed into melange. Their bodies had become nothing more th
an detestable factories. The women were maintained with a constant stream of fluids, nutrients, and catalysts.

  "Is any goal worth such a price?" the Rabbi whispered, not sure if he was beseeching the Almighty in prayer or asking Rebecca directly. In either event, he received no answer.

  With a shudder, he let his fingers touch Rebecca's belly. The Bene Gesserit doctors had often scolded him, telling him not to touch "the tank." But, though he despised what Rebecca had done to herself, he would never harm her. He was resigned to the fact that he could no longer save her, either.

  The Rabbi had looked in on the ghola children. They seemed innocent enough, but he was not fooled. He knew why these genetically ancient babies had been born, and he wanted no part of such an insidious plan.

  He heard someone arrive in the humming silence of the medical chamber and looked up to see a bearded man. Quiet, intelligent, and competent, Jacob had taken it upon himself to watch over the Rabbi, as Rebecca had once done.

  "I knew I would find you here, Rabbi." His expression was stern and scolding--one the old man himself might have used when he disapproved of someone else's behavior. "We have been waiting for you. It is time."

  The Rabbi glanced at a chronometer and realized how late it was. According to their calculations and the habits they followed, this was sunset on Friday, time to begin the twenty-four hours of Shabbat. He would say the prayers in their makeshift synagogue; he would read Psalm 29 from the original text (not the horribly bastardized version in the Orange Catholic Bible), and then his small group would sing.

  Preoccupied with his prayers and wrestling with his conscience, the old man had lost track of time. "Yes, Jacob. I am coming. I'm sorry."

  The other man took the Rabbi by the arm and helped him along, though he needed no assistance. Jacob leaned closer and reached out to brush unexpected tear streaks from the older man's cheeks. "You are crying, Rabbi."

  The old man glanced back at what had once been a vibrant woman, Rebecca. He stopped for a long, uncertain moment, and then permitted his companion to lead him from the medical chamber.

  Soostones: Highly valued jewels produced by the abraded carapace of a monoped sea creature, the cholister, found only on Buzzell. Soostones absorb rainbows of color, depending upon the touch of flesh or how light falls on them. Because of their high value and portability, the small and perfectly round stones--like melange--are used as hard currency, especially in times of economic turmoil and social upheaval.

  --Terminology of the Imperium (Revised)

  W

  ith the smell of salt air around her--so different from the Chapterhouse desert!--Mother Commander Murbella surveyed the continuing operations on Buzzell. In the past year, Reverend Mother Corysta had sent the New Sisterhood many shipments of soostones, which covered other expenses while the spice production was devoted to paying for the armaments Richese had begun to produce. Murbella had distributed her spies widely, gathering information about the remaining rebel Honored Matre strongholds, preparing her long-term plan. Soon, she would be ready to move against the main enclaves in earnest.

  Recapturing Buzzell and seizing all soostone production had cut off the rest of the Honored Matres from a primary source of wealth. It had both provoked and weakened the strongest remaining bastions of rebellious women.

  So far, the New Sisterhood had subsumed five rebel strongholds in addition to Buzzell. For every hundred thousand that her female soldiers killed, they captured only a thousand. For every thousand captured, maybe a hundred were successfully converted to the New Sisterhood. Murbella had declared to her advisors, "Rehabilitation is never guaranteed, but death is certain. No one needs to remind us how Honored Matres think. Would they respect our pleas for unification? No! They need to be broken first."

  The last strongholds of the violent women would be tough nuts to crack, but Murbella convinced herself that the Valkyries were up to the task. Not every conquest could be as clean and simple as the recapture of Buzzell.

  Over the past several months, Corysta had made many changes to the operations on the ocean planet, and the Mother Commander approved. From the beginning, Corysta--"the woman who had lost two babies"--had been willing to help. Even before Sharing with Murbella, she seemed to remember a good deal about being a Bene Gesserit.

  The Buzzell settlements consisted of only a few buildings and defensive towers on the patchy outcroppings of rock and hardscrabble islands, along with large boats, processing barges, and anchored rafts. Under Corysta's supervision, many of the resentful Bene Gesserit exiles had initially demanded to be transferred away from the rough soostone labor. Some had been petulant and wanted revenge on the vicious whores. Pointedly leaving the most strident exiles in their old assignments, Corysta--thinking much like Murbella--had promoted others to be special local advisors.

  She had commandeered the reasonably comfortable quarters that Matre Skira and her whores had taken from the Bene Gesserit exiles and ordered the remaining handful of Honored Matres to erect their own thin tents on the rocky ground. Murbella understood that this was a means of control, rather than revenge. Skira and her group, as well as the Bene Gesserit exiles, had been isolated from outside politics for a long time. Clearly, uniting these particular women was another difficult task, and a significant challenge to Corysta's leadership abilities, but gradually the women were learning the benefits of working together. It was like a microcosm of what had happened at Chapterhouse.

  Now, on the afternoon of the second day of her follow-up inspection, the Mother Commander toured the revamped soostone operations, accompanied by Corysta and the Honored Matre Skira. Nearby, a dozen workers--all Honored Matre survivors--continued washing and sorting stones according to their size and color, the work they had once forced the Bene Gesserit exiles to do. Phibian guards no longer stood over the workers; Murbella wondered if the aquatic people had noticed, or cared, that their female masters had changed.

  Beneath the surface of the water, Phibian divers trapped and corralled the large slow-moving shellfish. Cholisters had a fleshy, probing body covered by a thick and lumpy carapace; persistent abrasions of that casing produced hard milky scars that could be chipped off like gems embedded in rock. The slow growth of the nodules, the scarcity of the sea creatures themselves, and the difficulty of harvesting deep underwater all contributed to the rarity and value of the gems.

  When the Honored Matres brought in the hybrid Phibians, production increased dramatically. The amphibious people lived in the sea, swam deep without any special equipment, and ranged far from the island outcroppings as they hunted for the slowly wandering cholisters.

  Standing on the dock with her new advisors, Murbella turned toward a large Phibian male who stood at the reef's edge; apparently he had once been a guard, for he still carried his barbed whip. Four other Phibian deep divers crouched together on the rocky beach, where they had just delivered a load of soostones.

  The Honored Matres did not know exactly where the Phibians had come from, just "somewhere out in the Scattering, a long time ago." Skira said that the amphibious half-breeds were an insular species with only limited vocabularies, but Murbella's Bene Gesserit instincts told her otherwise. The memories she had Shared with Corysta added evidence to this; the Phibians were more than they appeared to be.

  Ordering her two escorts to accompany her, Murbella descended a spray-slick rock stairway to the shingle beach.

  "This is not safe." Skira ran to catch up with the Mother Commander. "Phibians can be violent. Last week, one of them drowned an Honored Matre. Took her out and pulled her underwater."

  "She probably deserved it. Do you doubt that the three of us can defend ourselves?" Nearby, a squad of Murbella's Valkyries also watched over their commander, weapons at the ready.

  Corysta pointed to the group. "The tallest one is our best producer. See the scar on his forehead? He dives the deepest and brings back the most soostones."

  From a flash of Corysta's memory, Murbella recalled the abandoned Phibi
an baby she had rescued from a tide pool. He'd had a scar on his forehead, a claw mark. Could this be the same one, from so many years ago? The one she called "Sea Child?" She recalled other instances, other encounters. Yes, this aquatic male definitely knew who Corysta was.

  The scarred Phibian was the first to notice the women approaching. All of the creatures turned warily, blinking their slitted eyes. Three smaller Phibians retreated into the foaming water, where they hovered out of reach. The scarred one, though, held his ground.

  Murbella regarded him carefully, trying to read his alien body language for some clue as to what he was thinking. Though shorter than the creature, she assumed a confident fighting posture.

  For a long moment, the Phibian regarded her with his membranous eyes. Then he spoke in a throaty voice that sounded like a dripping rag drawn through a pipe. "Boss boss."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You. Boss boss."

  Corysta interpreted. "He knows you are the boss of all the bosses."

  "Yes. I am your boss now."

  He bowed his head deferentially.

  "I think you're a good deal smarter than you let on. Are you a good Phibian?"

  "Not good. Best."

  Boldly, Murbella took a step closer. Other than what she knew from Corysta, she had no idea about the Phibians' social inclinations or taboos. "You and I are both leaders in our own way. And as one leader to another, I promise that we will no longer treat you the way the Honored Matres did. You have already seen the changes. We won't use the lash on you, or let you use it on anyone else. Work for all. Benefit for all."

  "No more lash." He lifted his chin, proud and stern. "No more soostones for smugglers."

  Murbella tried to process what he was implying. Was it a promise, or a threat? Surely, after a year the Phibians must have noticed a significant difference in their lives.

  "Smugglers are always a problem," Corysta explained to her. "We can't stop them from taking soostones out in the open water."