Hunters of Dune dc-7

by Herbert Brian

  She turned to her grim-faced daughter and the brash Kiria. "You two will take a team down to Tleilax in secret. Dress as Honored Matres and move among them, exposing their weaknesses. I give you three weeks to find ways to bring down our enemies from within their own ranks, and then to implement the scheme. Be ready in time for my full-scale assault."

  "You want me to pretend to be one of the whores?" Janess asked.

  Kiria sniffed. "It will be simple for us. No Honored Matre could control herself well enough to walk undetected among us, but the converse is not true." She flashed a feral grin at Janess. "I can show you how."

  The other young woman was already grasping the possibilities. "By moving secretly among them, we can plant explosives in key strongholds, sabotage their defenses, and transmit encoded plans with all the details of how well entrenched they are in Bandalong. We can cause chaos and disruption at a critical moment—"

  Kiria cut her off. "We will open the way for you, Mother Commander." She flexed her clawlike fingers, anxious to let herself become bloodthirsty again.

  "I look forward to it."

  Murbella stared into the distance. After Tleilax was secured, the New Sisterhood, the Spacing Guild, and all other allies of humanity could face the real Enemy. If we are to be destroyed, let it be at the hands of our true foe, rather than from a knife in the back.

  "Send for a Guild representative, immediately. I have a proposal to make."

  9

  The Scattering spread us far from the reach of any single threat. It also changed us, making our genetic lines diverge so that never again would "human" mean only one thing.

  MOTHER SUPERIOR ALMA MAVIS TARAZA, request for analysis and modification of Bene Gesserit breeding program

  Teg circled the no-ship's lighter over a forested area near one of the unusual native settlements. Sheeana noted a parklike city with cylindrical towers interspersed through thick trees, camouflaged to blend in with the forest landscape. The Handlers (if that was who they truly were) distributed their settlements evenly throughout the wooded zones. The people seemed to prefer open spaces to life in a dense, hivelike metropolis. Maybe the Scattering had quenched any desire for crowding.

  Though he'd had little opportunity to practice flying, the Bashar obviously remembered his skills from his first life. When they touched down in a flower-spangled meadow, Sheeana barely felt a bump. Young Thufir Hawat sat in the copilot's seat observing everything his mentor did.

  The forest city's main buildings were tall cylinders several stories high, made of golden-lacquered lumber like wooden organ pipes for a wilderness cathedral. Guard towers? Defensive structures? Or were these nothing more than observation platforms from which to gain an unblocked view of the serene and rolling woods?

  All around them, the thick forest of silver-barked aspen derivatives was beautiful and healthy, as if the natives tended it with loving care.

  Previously, using the curt descriptions the Futars could give her, Sheeana had done her best to make the no-ship's arboretum reminiscent of the home they remembered. As she looked at the sweeping aspen analogs around them, however, Sheeana saw that she had failed miserably.

  Secure in the cargo chamber at the back of the lighter, the four anxious Futars rumbled and yowled, as if they sensed they were home and knew the Handlers were near. When the vessel's side hatch opened and the boarding ramp extended, Sheeana stepped forward first. Teg and Thufir joined her on the soft grass, while the Rabbi hung back in the shelter of the lighter's door.

  She drew a breath of bitingly clean air laden with a resinous scent of wood pulp and old leaves, scattered sawdust, and rain. Tiny yellow and white flowers added perfume to the air. The endlessly recycled air aboard the Ithaca had never smelled so good, nor had the dry air of Rakis where Sheeana had been a child, nor even Chapterhouse.

  Not far away, Sheeana saw figures atop the towers. Other silhouettes appeared behind small windows cut through the lacquered mosaic of flat boards. Lookouts signaled from the circular roofs. Horns blew with a vibrating blat, while strobing light signals flashed to more-distant receivers. Everything looked bucolic, natural, and refreshingly primitive.

  When a delegation finally came forward, Sheeana and her companions got their first look at the supposed Handlers. As a race, the people were tall and thin with narrow shoulders and elongated heads. Their long limbs were loose, and bent easily at the joints.

  The leader was a comparatively handsome man with bristly silver-white hair.

  Most striking was the dark band of pigment that ran across his pale face and around his green eyes, like a bandit's mask. All of the natives, males and females, had the same raccoonlike pigmentation, which did not appear to be artificial.

  As the group's spokesperson, Sheeana stepped forward. Before she could say a word, she noted an instant spark of suspicion as the natives focused on her, assessing, condemning. Ignoring the Rabbi, the Bashar, and Thufir Hawat, they directed their sharp gazes at her. Only her. She became instantly alert, her mind racing. What had she done wrong?

  Then, when Sheeana considered their ambassadorial party—an old man, a young man, and a boy, all of whom accompanied a strong woman who clearly assumed command—she suddenly realized her foolishness. Handlers had bred Futars to hunt down and kill Honored Matres. Therefore, they must consider the whores their mortal enemies. And when they saw her supposedly in charge of these men—

  "I am not an Honored Matre," she blurted out before they could draw an erroneous conclusion. "And these males are not my slaves. We have all fought the Honored Matres, and now we flee them."

  The Rabbi reacted with surprise, frowning at Sheeana, as if he couldn't understand what she was talking about. "Of course you're not an Honored Matre!" He had not noticed the undercurrent of suspicion.

  Teg, though, nodded with quick understanding. "We should have known better."

  Thufir Hawat also sorted through the information, reaching the same conclusion.

  The tallest man with the raccoon eyes considered her words for a moment, glanced at the three men with Sheeana, and then bowed his elongated head. His voice was quiet but resonant, as if it emerged from deep in his chest instead of his throat. "Then we share the same enemies. I am Orak Tho, this district's Chief Handler."

  Handlers. It is true, then. Sheeana felt a rush of excitement, and relief.

  Orak Tho leaned forward, uncomfortably close to Sheeana. Instead of extending his hand in a more traditional greeting, he drew in a long, loud sniff at the base of her neck. He straightened in surprise. "You have Futars with you. I smell them on your skin and clothing."

  "Four of them, rescued from the Honored Matres. They asked us to bring them here."

  Teg whispered something to Thufir, and the young man obediently hurried back to the lighter. Showing no fear, he released the four beast-men from the secure compartment. The Futars bounded free, surging happily past the young man with Hrrm in the lead. Taking graceful leaps, he sprang across the soft meadow grass toward the Chief Handler and his companions.

  "Home!" Hrrm purred in his throat.

  Orak Tho bent his streamlined face closer to Hrrm's. The Handlers' movements also had a hint of the animal about them. Maybe such mannerisms helped the Handlers bond with the Futars, or maybe these two codependent branches of humanity were not so far apart after all.

  The freed Futars milled among the Handlers, who touched and sniffed them excitedly. Sheeana smelled the heavy, musky odor of pheromones, released either for communication or control. Hrrm broke away just long enough to turn back toward Sheeana. In the glow of his yellow predator's eyes, she could read immense gratitude.

  10

  A ghola's memories can be a treasure trove or a crouching demon waiting to strike. Never unlock a ghola's past without first taking precautions to protect yourself.

  REVEREND MOTHER SCHWANGYU, report from Gammu Keep

  After three years of unsuccessful attempts and different torture techniques to awaken his memories, Vladimir
began to fear that Khrone might be losing interest, or losing hope. Trapped in a rut of ineffective methods, the Face Dancer simply didn't know what he was doing. Even so, the fifteen-year-old ghola had come to look forward to their little "sessions of suffering." Having figured out that Khrone would never really hurt him, he had come to revel in the pain.

  Today, when the Face Dancer guards told the ghola to lie back on a different table, he didn't bother to suppress his broad grin. Such smiles seemed to make them quite uncomfortable.

  Vladimir had no real interest in cooperating just for the sake of pleasing Khrone, but he was very curious to access the thoughts of the historical Baron Harkonnen. He was sure those memories would be full of excellent ideas for amusing himself. Unfortunately, the fact that he wanted to have his memories back, and the perverse pleasure he derived from the pain inflicted upon him, turned out to be a hindrance.

  While waiting, he looked around the stone-walled dungeon chamber of the restored castle, envisioning what it might have been like here in ancient times. The Atreides had probably made it sunny and bright, but he wondered if some long-forgotten duke had used this very chamber to torture captive Harkonnens.

  Yes, Vladimir could imagine what such devices might have been like. Electronic probes that could be inserted into living bodies, tunneling instruments that could seek and destroy specific organs. Archaic, old-fashioned, and effective…

  When Khrone entered the chamber, his normally placid face showed tiny marks of tension around the mouth and eyes. "In our last session you were very nearly terminated. Too much cerebral stress. I shall have to gauge your limits better."

  "Oh, how awful that must have been for you!" the fifteen-year-old said sarcastically and gave an exaggerated sigh. "If restoring my memories requires so much pain that it kills me, then all your hard work will be for nothing.

  What to do? What to do?"

  The Face Dancer leaned close. "You will see soon enough."

  Vladimir heard the sounds of machinery, the noise of something clattering and rolling into the room. It came toward the top of his head, but remained out of his range of vision. The anticipation and ominous fear felt delicious. What would Khrone do differently this time?

  The unseen machine sounded like it was directly behind him now, but it did not stop. Vladimir turned his head from side to side and saw a thick-walled cylindrical chamber sliding slowly forward, beginning to engulf him as if he were being swallowed by a whale. The cylinder was like a large pipe or a medical diagnostic unit. Or a coffin.

  Vladimir felt a thrill of pleasure as he guessed what this machine must be. A whole-body Agony Box! The Face Dancers must have built it specially for him to create a more intimate experience. The young man grinned, but asked no questions, for fear of spoiling any surprises the Face Dancers might have in store for him. From outside, Khrone watched him with an unreadable expression as the table slid entirely into the chamber. The ugly, patchwork observers were also there, but no one spoke.

  The machine's end cap snapped shut and sealed with a hiss. Vladimir's ears popped as the pressure changed. Khrone's voice came over a tinny-sounding speaker system. "You are about to experience a variation on the processes used by old Tleilaxu Masters to develop their Twisted Mentats."

  "Ah, I had a Twisted Mentat once." Vladimir laughed with genuine fearlessness.

  "Are you going to talk about the device, or use it?"

  The illumination shut off inside the cylinder, plunging him into complete blackness. Indeed, something different!

  "Do you think I'm afraid of the dark?" he shouted, but the walls of the cylinder were coated with a sound-absorbing substance that swallowed even the whisper of an echo. He couldn't see anything.

  Surrounded by a faint hum, he felt himself growing weightless. The table dropped away beneath him and he could no longer feel it against his back.

  Cradled in a suspensor field that held him perfectly balanced and immobile, he could no longer feel anything or see anything. The temperature was perfect inside the chamber, imparting no sensation of heat or cold. Even the faint humming stopped, leaving him in a silence so absolute that he could hear nothing but a slight ringing in his ears, and even that faded.

  "This is boring! When is it going to start?"

  The darkness remained, and silence, its companion, as well. He felt nothing and could not move.

  Vladimir made a rude noise. "This is ridiculous." Khrone clearly did not grasp the nuances of sadism. "You play with my body to get to my mind, and play with my mind to get to my body, twisting, contorting. Is that all you have?"

  Ten minutes later — or was it an hour? — he still had no answer. "Khrone?"

  Nothing happened. He remained perfectly comfortable, detached from all sensation. "I am ready! Do your worst!"

  Khrone didn't answer. No pain came. Nothing. They must be trying to drive his anticipation to a fever pitch. He licked his lips. It would start any second now.

  Khrone left him there in dark, weightless isolation for an eternity.

  Vladimir tried to clutch at memories of previous sensations, but they kept slipping away, fading from his mind. Struggling to retrieve the thoughts, he followed a mental pathway and felt himself carried on a neural conduit deep into his own brain, a realm of total darkness. The experiences he sought were pinpoints of light ahead, and he swam toward them. But they swam away faster, and farther than he could reach.

  Another eternity passed.

  Hours? Days?

  He could feel nothing, absolutely nothing. Vladimir didn't want to be here. He wanted to swim back out to the light that was his ghola life before this session had begun. But he couldn't. It was a trap!

  Eventually, he screamed. At first, it was just to make noise, to disturb the throbbing emptiness. Then he screamed for real, and once he started he could not stop himself.

  Even so, the silence remained. He thrashed and struggled, but the field kept him immobile. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't hear. Had the Face Dancers blinded him somehow? Made him deaf?

  Vladimir wet himself, and for a few moments the mere sensation was a revelation, but it quickly faded. And he was left alone in empty, silent, darkness. He needed sensation, stimulus, pain, interaction, pleasure.

  Anything!

  Finally, he became aware of a gradual change around him. Nonexistent illumination, sounds, and smells seeped in, gradually filling the stygian universe, converting it to something else. Even the tiniest glimmer was like an explosion. With that catalyst, senses poured into his conscious and unconscious mind, filling every cavity. Pain, a mental pain, made his head feel as if it would explode.

  He screamed again. This time, the pain brought no semblance of pleasure whatsoever.

  The full life of the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen flooded back into the ghola body with all the subtlety of an avalanche. Every thought and experience came back to him, all the way up to the moment of his first death on Arrakis. He saw the little girl Alia stabbing him with the poisoned needle, the gom jabbar—The internal universe expanded, and he became aware of voices again. He was outside the chamber now, withdrawn from the large coffinlike device.

  The Baron sat up indignantly, pleased and surprised to note his younger body, which was a bit plump from overindulgence but not ravaged by the bloating and debilitating disease the witch Mohiam had inflicted upon him. He looked down at himself, grinned up at the Face Dancers. "Oh ho! The first thing I want is a better wardrobe. And then I want to see that Atreides brat you've been raising for me."

  Khrone stepped closer, his expression inquisitive. "You have access to all of your memories, Baron?"

  "Of course! Baron Harkonnen is indeed back." He wandered into his thoughts, reassured by the things he had achieved in his original, glorious lifetime. He was delighted to be himself again.

  But deep inside his brain, lurking at the back of his mind, he sensed that something was wrong, out of his control. An unwanted presence had joined him inside his mind, hitchhiking on his memorie
s.

  Hello, Grandfather, a girl's voice said. She giggled.

  The Baron's head jerked. Where was that coming from? He didn't see her.

  Did you miss me, Grandfather?

  "Where are you?"

  Where you won't lose me. I will always be with you now. Just like you were with me, haunting me, appearing in visions, refusing to give me rest. The girl's giggle became more shrill. Now it's my turn.

  It was the Abomination, Paul's sister. "Alia? No, no!" His mind must be playing tricks on him. He dug his fingers against his temple, but the voice was inside, unreachable. With time, she would go away.

  Don't count on it, Grandfather. I am here to stay.

  11

  Each civilization, no matter how altruistic it purports to be, has its means of interrogating and torturing prisoners, as well as an elaborate system to justify such actions.

  from a Bene Gesserit report

  Though he was genetically identical to the other seven gholas in the first batch, Waff Number One did not like being so short, small, and weak. His accelerated body had reached its mature size in less than four years, but he wanted to be strong enough to escape this maddening confinement.

  As he peered out through the shimmering confinement field, Waff seethed at Uxtal and the laboratory assistants. His seven counterparts did the same. The Lost Tleilaxu researcher was like a nervous prison guard, constantly prodding and herding the eight matching gholas. All of the Waffs loathed him.

  He imagined sinking his teeth into Uxtal's neck and feeling the hot blood surge into his mouth. The researcher and his assistants were too cautious now, though. The ghola brothers shouldn't have made their earlier attack on him, before they were ready to succeed. That had been a tactical mistake. A year ago they had been so much younger.

  Standing safely on the other side of the confinement field, Uxtal frequently lectured the eight gholas about his Great Belief, implying that all the original Tleilaxu people had been criminals, heretics. Yet all of the Waffs could tell that he wanted something from them. Very badly.