Hunters of Dune dc-7

by Herbert Brian

  In previous training sessions, the gholas had studied biographical summaries of their historical predecessors. They read and reread their own histories, familiarizing themselves with the available details, while searching their minds and hearts to understand the undocumented motivations and influences that had shaped them.

  Starting out with a clean slate, would any of these cellular offspring turn out the same as they had in the past? They were certainly being raised differently.

  The children reminded him of actors learning roles in a play with an immense cast. The children were forming friendships and alliances. Stilgar and Liet-Kynes already demonstrated signs of friendship. Paul sat by Chani, while Jessica kept to herself, without her Duke; Paul's son Leto II, missing his twin sister, also showed distinct signs of being a loner.

  Little Leto II should have had his twin sister. The boy wasn't destined to become a monster, but without Chani this time, he could be even more vulnerable. One day, after watching the quiet boy, Duncan had marched up to Sheeana and demanded answers. Yes, Ghanima's cells were in Scytale's reservoir, but for whatever reason, the Bene Gesserits had not brought her from the new axlotl tanks. "Not at this time," they'd said. Of course they could always do so later, but Leto II would remain separated in years from a person who should have been his twin, his other half. He felt sorry for the boy's needless pain.

  Drawn together by their shared past, as well as their own instincts, Paul and six-year-old Chani sat side by side. He hunkered down on the floor, studying the layout. A holo blueprint shimmered in the air, giving far more detail than he needed. He focused on the structural walls, the main parts of the complex that was the largest man-made structure ever built.

  Duncan knew that Garimi's assignment for the children had many layers of purpose, some artistic, some practical. By making a scaled-down replica of Muad'Dib's Grand Palace, these gholas could touch history. "Tactile sensations and visual stimuli evoke a different understanding than mere words and archival records," she had explained. Most of the eight gholas had been inside the actual structure in their previous lives; maybe this would feed their inner memories.

  Though too small to help, Leto II could walk about clumsily and observe with fascination. Only a year earlier, Garimi and Stuka had tried to kill him in the crèche. Placid and interested, Leto II spoke little, but showed a frightening level of intelligence and seemed to absorb everything around him.

  The toddler sat down on the sandy floor and rocked back and forth in front of the Palace's projected main entrance, holding his knees. The two-year-old seemed to understand certain things as well as the other children did, perhaps even better.

  Thufir Hawat, Stilgar, and Liet-Kynes worked together to raise the outer fortress walls. They laughed and played, seeing the task as a game instead of a lesson. Since reading of his original heroic life, Thufir had developed a bold personality. "I wish we'd just find the Enemy and get on with it. I'm sure the Bashar and Duncan could fight them."

  "And now they have us to help," Stilgar said brashly and nudged his friend Liet, inadvertently knocking some of the blocks down.

  Watching, Duncan muttered, "We don't exactly have you—not the you we want."

  Jessica created more blocks from the sensiplaz, and Yueh dutifully helped her.

  Chani paced the boundaries, marking the general outline projected on the plan.

  Then she and Paul set up a scale representation of the huge Annex that had housed all the Atreides attendants and their families—thirty-five million of them, at one time! The records had not been exaggerated, but the scope was difficult for any person to grasp.

  "I can't imagine us living in a home like that," Chani said, pacing around the newly marked boundaries.

  "According to the Archives, we were happy there for many years."

  She smiled mischievously, understanding much more than a girl should have.

  "This time, can we just eliminate Irulan's quarters?"

  Secretly hearing this, even Duncan chuckled.

  The cells of Irulan, daughter of Shaddam IV, were among those in Scytale's treasure trove, but the med-center axlotl tanks would not produce her anytime soon. No other gholas were scheduled, though Duncan had mixed feelings to know that Alia would have been next. Garimi and her conservatives certainly hadn't complained about putting a cautious halt to the ghola project.

  Inside the model Palace, the children blocked out an independent structure, the Temple of St. Alia of the Knife. The temple had supported a burgeoning religion around the living Alia, and its priesthood and bureaucrats had brought down Muad'Dib's legacy. Duncan saw the great louvered window through which Alia—possessed and driven mad—had thrown herself to her death.

  Studying the blueprints again, the gholas—each wearing shaper gloves—worked the sensiplaz into a quick approximation of the Palace's framework. They extruded representations of the immense entrance pillars and the capitol arch, leaving the numerous statues and staircases for later, as finishing touches.

  Accurately including all of the ornamentation, the gifts and adornments presented by pilgrims from hundreds of worlds conquered in Muad'Dib's jihad, would have been an impossible task. But that was another part of the training: Rub their faces in an impossible task to see how far they would carry it forward.

  Tired of feeling like a voyeur, Duncan turned from the spyplaz and walked into the training room. Glancing at him, the gholas noted his presence, and then went back to work. But Paul Atreides walked right up to him.

  "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.

  3

  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

  Sheeana 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 mélange.

  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 t
hrough 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 still-suit 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 mélange 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 mélange 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 mélange into her impermeable basket. The worms produced only small amounts of mélange, 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 mélange. Their bodies had become nothing more than 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.

  4

  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 mélang
e—are used as hard currency, especially in times of economic turmoil and social upheaval.

  Terminology of the Imperium (Revised)

  With 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.