Hunters Of Dune

by Frank Herbert

  His toys were arranged all around, according to his precise instructions: Torture racks with settings for pulling, squeezing, and cutting body parts. Masks on the walls with internal electronics that drove the wearers mad, could even wipe their brains if the Baron so desired. Chairs with electrocution connections and barbs to be installed in intriguing places. It was all so much better than anything Khrone had used.

  Two handsome boys--slightly younger than himself--hung from the walls, secured by chains. Eyes filled with terror and a profound sadness watched his every move. Their clothes were ripped where he had torn them away for his own enjoyment.

  "Hello, my beauties." They did not respond in words, but he saw them flinch. "Did you know that both of you have Atreides blood flowing through your veins? I have the genetic records to prove it."

  Whimpering, the pair denied the assertion, though in truth they had no way of knowing. The bloodline had become so watered down after all this time, who could tell without a full genetic workup? Well, it was the sentiment that really mattered, wasn't it?

  "You can't blame us for the sins of centuries ago!" one cried pitifully. "We will do whatever you say. We will be your loyal servants."

  "My loyal servants? Oh-ho, but you already are." He moved close to the one who had pleaded, caressed his golden hair. The boy trembled and looked away.

  The Baron felt aroused. This one was so lovely, his cheeks smooth with only a thin fuzz of undeveloped beard, his features almost feminine. Touching the soft skin of the face, he closed his eyes, and smiled.

  When he opened them again, he was shocked to see that the victim's features had changed. Now the beautiful boy was a young woman with dark hair, an oval face, and the deep blue eyes of spice addiction. She was laughing at him. The Baron backed up. "I'm not seeing this!"

  "Oh, but you are, Grandfather! Didn't I grow up to be beautiful?" The lips of the chained woman moved, but the voice came from inside his mind. I let you think you got rid of me, but that was just my little game. You like games, don't you?

  Muttering nervously, the Baron retreated from the torture chamber and scuttled down the dank hall, but Alia stayed with him. I'm your permanent companion, your lifetime playmate! She laughed, and laughed some more.

  When he reached the main floor of the castle, the Baron anxiously scanned the weapons hanging on the walls and in display cases. He would dig Alia out of his brain, even if that required killing himself. Khrone could always bring him back as a ghola. She was like a noxious weed, spreading toxins through his body.

  "Why are you here?" he shouted aloud into the ringing silence of the stone-walled banquet room. "How?"

  It seemed an impossibility to him. Harkonnen and Atreides bloodlines had crossed in centuries past, and the Atreides were known for their Abominations, their strange prescience, their peculiar way of thinking. But how had this infernal taint of Alia infested his mind? Damn the Atreides!

  He marched toward the main entrance, past several bland Face Dancers who looked at him inquisitively. Must not act up in front of them. He smiled at one, then another.

  Isn't it fun to relive old glories and vengeance? asked the Alia-within.

  "Shut up, shut up!" he hissed under his breath.

  Before he could reach a pair of tall wooden doors, they swung open on massive hinges, and Khrone entered the castle accompanied by an entourage of Face Dancers and a young dark-haired boy with oddly familiar features. He was six or seven years old.

  The voice of Alia-inside was filled with delight. Go welcome my brother, Grandfather!

  Khrone pushed the boy forward, and the Baron's generous lips curved in a hungry smile. "Ah Paolo, at last! You think I do not know Paul Atreides?"

  "He will be your ward, your student." Khrone's voice was stern. "He is the reason we have nurtured you, Baron. You are our tool, and he is our treasure."

  The Baron's spider-black eyes lit up. He went straight to the child, and studied him closely. Paolo glared back at him, which caused the teenage Baron to chuckle in delight.

  "And what, exactly, am I allowed to do with him? What is it you want?"

  "Prepare him. Raise him. See that he is primed for his destiny. There is a certain need he must fulfill."

  "And what is that?"

  "It will be explained to you in due course, when the time is right."

  Ah, Paul Atreides in my grasp, so I can ensure that he is raised properly this time. Just like my nephew Feyd-Rautha, a lovely boy in his own original lifetime. This will make up for a great many historical wrongs.

  "You now have your memories, Baron, so you can understand the true complexities and consequences. If he is harmed, we will find a very special way to see that you regret it." The Face Dancer leader was quite convincing.

  The Baron dismissively waved a pudgy hand. "Of course, of course. I was always sorry that I disconnected his axlotl tank back on Tleilax. That was foolish and impulsive of me. I didn't know any better. I have learned restraint since then."

  A burst of pain lanced through his head, making him wince. I can help you with your restraint, Grandfather, Alia said inside his skull. He wanted to scream at her.

  With a colossal mental push, the Baron drove her away, then chuckled as he bent toward the young ghola. "I've been waiting a long time for this, lovely boy. I have so many plans for the two of us."

  Command must always look confident. Respect all that faith riding on your shoulders while you sit in the critical seat, even though you must never show that you feel the burden.

  --DUKE LETO ATREIDES,

  notes for his son, recorded in Arrakeen

  T

  leilax had been conquered, and the rebel Honored Matres were no longer a threat. The Valkyries had flawlessly accomplished their most important mission, and the Mother Commander could not suppress her feelings of pride, both in her daughter and in the whole New Sisterhood.

  At last, we can move on.

  Under the domed rotunda of the Chapterhouse library, Murbella had little time to rejoice or reflect on the recent victories. She glanced out a small window toward the skeletal orchards and the ravenous desert beyond. The sun was setting on the horizon, outlining the craggy rock escarpments as an artist might. Each time she looked, the desert seemed to loom larger and closer. It never stopped advancing.

  Like the Enemy . . . except that the Bene Gesserit had intentionally put the sands in motion, sacrificing everything else to produce one substance--melange--for the ultimate victory they hoped to achieve. The war against the Honored Matres had cost humanity dearly for the past several decades, inflicting great harm and destroying many planets. And the whores were by far the lesser threat.

  Accadia, the old Archives Mother, stood in the center of the projection field in silent reverence, with a hundred of the New Sisterhood's most intelligent followers. "This shows what you need to know, and the scope of the threat we now face. I've drawn heavily on candid testimonies provided by our former Honored Matres, tracking their initial expansion into unexplored territories . . . and their recent abrupt withdrawal back into the Old Empire."

  Now that Murbella had broken through the black wall in her Other Memories, she understood exactly what the Enemy was and what the Honored Matres had done to provoke them. She knew more about the nature of the Outside Enemy than Odrade, Taraza, or any previous Bene Gesserit leader had ever guessed.

  She had lived those lives.

  In particular she saw herself as a harsh, ambitious, and successful commander, driving her squadron of ships outward, ever outward. Lenise. That was my name. In those days she'd had spiky black hair, obsidian eyes, and an array of metal adornments protruding from her cheeks and brow--battle trophies, one for each rival she had killed in her rise to power. But after failing in a bid to assassinate a higher rank, she had taken her loyal squadrons and plunged farther out into uncharted territory. Not as an act of cowardice, Lenise had assured herself. Not to flee. But to conquer new territory of her own.

  In their rapaciou
s expansion, she and her Honored Matres had blundered into the fringe of a vast and growing empire--a nonhuman empire--the existence of which had not been previously suspected. Unknown to them, this dangerous Enemy had its genesis more than fifteen thousand years ago, in the last days of the Butlerian Jihad.

  The Honored Matres had encountered a strange manufacturing outpost, a bustling interconnected metropolis inhabited entirely by machines. Thinking machines. The significance of this had been lost on Lenise and her women; they had asked few questions about the origin of what they'd found.

  The self-perpetuating, evolving computer evermind had taken root again, building and spreading a vastly networked landscape of machine intelligences. Lenise had not understood, nor had she cared. She had issued the order--lost in the vision of history now, Murbella mouthed the words again--and the Honored Matres had done what they did best: attacking without provocation, expecting to conquer and dominate.

  Never guessing the scale or strength of what she had found, Lenise and her Honored Matres had surprised the machines, stolen shiploads of powerful and exotic weapons, destroyed the outpost . . . and then left. She had added several metal adornments to her face to celebrate the victory. And then returned to reconquer the other Honored Matres who had initially defeated her.

  The machines' response had been swift and terrible. They launched a massive retaliation that swept forward into the settled worlds of the Scattering, exterminating whole Honored Matre planets with deadly new viruses. The Enemy continued to hound them, hunting down and destroying the whores in their hiding places.

  Murbella saw various generations in different memories. Never terribly subtle, the Honored Matres began their panicked flight, stampeding across star systems, plundering them before moving on. Setting bonfires and burning bridges behind them. What an embarrassment to them . . . how resoundingly they had been defeated by their foe!

  All the while, they led the Enemy toward the Old Empire.

  Murbella knew it all. She saw it vividly in her past, in her history, in her memories. She needed to Share those experiences with other Sisters who had not yet unlocked their generational secrets. The Enemy is Omnius. The Enemy is coming.

  Now, under the domed rotunda with the audience hushed, Accadia worked the display with gnarled fingers. A holoprojection of the Known Universe materialized over their heads in the great vaulted room, highlighting key star systems in the Old Empire as well as planets described by those who had returned from the Scattering. A variety of independent federations had formed out there--clustered governments, trade alliances, and isolated religious colonies, all tied together by a thin common thread of humanity.

  The Tyrant spoke of this in his Golden Path, Murbella thought. Or is our understanding imperfect, as usual?

  The old librarian's voice crackled. "Here are the planets the whores already charred, using the terrible Obliterator weapons they stole from the Enemy."

  A spangle of red spattered like blood across the star chart. Too much red! So many Bene Gesserit planets, even Rakis, all of the Tleilaxu worlds, and any other planet that happened to be in the way. Lampadas, Qalloway, Andosia, the low-gravity fairyland cities on Oalar . . . Now graveyards, all of them.

  How could she not have seen this blatant horror when she called herself an Honored Matre? We never looked behind us except to find out how close the Enemy was. We knew we had provoked something ferocious, but we still barged into the Old Empire like a hound into a chicken house, wreaking havoc in our attempt to flee.

  When the Enemy got here, the stirred-up planets would fight instinctively, and they would be annihilated. The Honored Matres used that as a stalling tactic, throwing obstructions in the path of the oncoming opponent.

  "The whores did all that?" breathed Reverend Mother Laera, one of Murbella's administrative advisors.

  Accadia seemed intrinsically fascinated by what she could show. "Look--this is far more frightening."

  Another swath of the perimeter systems turned a dull, sickly blue. The star charts displayed some as blurry points, indicating unverified coordinates. The number of affected worlds was far greater than the red wound of Honored Matre destruction.

  "These are the planets we know have already been destroyed by the Enemy out in the Scattering. Honored Matre worlds wiped out primarily through devastating plagues."

  Studying the huge, complex projection, Murbella didn't need a Mentat to draw the obvious conclusions from the patterns she saw. Her Bene Gesserit and Honored Matre advisors muttered uneasily. They had never before seen the outside threat so plainly displayed.

  Murbella could truly sense the nearness of "Arafel," the cloud-darkness at the end of the universe. With so many dark legends pointing in the same direction, she smelled her human mortality.

  Even Chapterhouse, marked on the three-dimensional holoprojection as a pristine white ball far from the Guild's main shipping lanes, would become the target of those relentless hunters.

  The unified Sisters now had the Spacing Guild to assist them, though Murbella did not fully trust the Navigators or the less-mutated Administrators. She harbored no illusions about a lasting alliance with the Guild or CHOAM, if the war went badly. The Navigator Edrik dealt with her only because she'd bribed him with spice, and he would cease to cooperate if he ever found an alternative source of melange. If the Guild's administrative faction chose to rely on Ixian mathematical compilers, then she had very little hold over them.

  "The Enemy does not seem to be in a particular hurry," Janess said.

  "Why should they be?" Kiria said. "They are coming, and nothing seems able to slow them."

  Searching, Murbella noted the general mark--a locus in space, poorly defined by only anecdotal coordinates--of the first encounter with the Enemy, where a long-dead Honored Matre named Lenise had stumbled upon the fringe outpost.

  And now we are left to clean up the mess.

  Maybe her beloved Duncan Idaho would survive far out there. She felt a pang for him in her heart. What if, at the end of fabled Kralizec, the only remnants of humanity were those few with Duncan and Sheeana aboard the no-ship? A life raft in the cosmos. She scanned the grand projection that filled the library. She had no idea where the vessel might be.

  Each life is the sum total of its moments.

  --DUNCAN IDAHO,

  Memories of More Than a Mentat

  D

  uncan looked in on the ghola children as they engaged in a role-playing game inside one of the activity chambers. They had grown old enough now to show distinct personalities, to think and interact not only with each other but with the crew members. They understood their prior relationships and tried to deal with the oddities of their existence.

  Genetically a grandmother to little Leto II, Jessica had bonded closely with him, but she acted more like his big sister. Stilgar and Liet-Kynes were close, as usual; Yueh tried to be friends with them, but he remained a perpetual outsider, though Garimi studied him very closely. Thufir Hawat seemed to have changed, matured, since his experiences on the planet of the Handlers; soon, Duncan expected the young warrior-Mentat to be very useful to their planning. Paul and Chani always stayed close to each other, though she seemed a veritable stranger to Liet, her "father."

  So many living reminders of Duncan's pasts.

  In her last assessment the Proctor Superior had offered her analysis that the Bene Gesserits should begin to awaken their memories. At least some of the ghola children were ready. Duncan felt a twinge of anxiety and anticipation.

  As he turned to walk away, he saw Sheeana standing in the empty corridor, watching him with an enigmatic smile. He felt an involuntary flush of desire, followed by embarrassment. She had bonded him, broken him . . . saved him. But he would not let himself become trapped by her the way he had been bound to Murbella. He forced out the words. "It is best if we keep our distance from each other. At least for now."

  "We're on the same ship, Duncan. We can't just hide."

  "But we can be careful." He
felt burned by the sexual cauterization that had cured him of Murbella, but knew it had been necessary. His own weakness had made it necessary. He dared not let it happen again, and Sheeana had the power to ensnare him--if he let her. "Love is too dangerous to play with, Sheeana. It is not a tool to be used."

  ONE LAST THING remained for him to do, and he couldn't avoid it any longer. Duncan had retrieved all of Murbella's belongings. Master Scytale had carefully picked over them after Duncan had unceremoniously dropped them on the deck when the alarms rang. Duncan had demanded them back, then turned a deaf ear as the Tleilaxu Master insisted that most of the cells were too old, too long out of nullentropy storage, but the possibility of usable DNA fragments--

  Duncan had cut him off, walked away with the garments. He didn't want to hear any more, didn't want to know about the possibilities. All such possibilities were unwise ones.

  He had tried to fool himself that he could just ignore the idea, make up his mind not to think about her anymore. Sheeana had freed him of his chains to Murbella . . . but, oh, the temptation! He felt like an alcoholic staring at an open bottle.

  Enough. Duncan himself had to do the last of it.

  He stared at the rumpled garments, the keepsakes, the few stray strands of amber hair. When he gathered everything in his arms, it was as if he held her--at least the essence of her, without the weight of her body. His eyes misted over.

  Murbella hadn't left much of herself behind. Despite all the time she'd spent on the no-ship with Duncan, she'd kept only a few temporary possessions here, never really calling it her home.

  Remove the threat. Remove the temptation. Remove the possibility. Only then could he finally be free.

  Marching down the corridors with intense concentration, he made his way to one of the small maintenance airlocks. Years ago, this was how they had ejected the mummified remains of Bene Gesserit Sisters into space during the memorial service. Now Duncan would perform another sort of funeral service.