A black wave of darkness approached, but Corysta used her Bene Gesserit bodily control to maintain her consciousness. Abruptly, she was jerked to her feet and dragged down to the cove, where the women threw her onto the spray-slick rocks.
Struggling to her knees, Corysta fought the pain of her injuries. To her horror she saw Skira wade into shallow water with Sea Child. The little phibian struggled against her and kept looking toward Corysta, crying out eerily for mother.
Her own baby had not known her so well, snatched from her arms only hours after birth. Corysta had never gotten to know her own little daughter, never learned how her life had been, what she had accomplished. Corysta had known this poor, inhuman baby much more closely. She had been a real mother, for just a little while.
Restrained by two strong women, Corysta saw froth in the sea just offshore, and presently she made out hundreds of swimming shapes in the water. Phibians. Half a dozen adults emerged from the ocean and approached Matre Skira, dripping water from their unclothed bodies.
Sea Child cried out again, and reached back toward Corysta, but Skira held his arms and blocked his view with her own body.
Corysta watched helplessly as the adult phibians studied the mark of rejection on the struggling child’s forehead. Would they just kill him now? Trying to remain strong, Corysta wailed when the phibians took her child with them and swam out to sea.
Would they try to kill him again, cast him out like a tainted chick from a nest, pecked to death and cast out? Corysta already longed to see him—if the phibians were going to kill him, and if the whores were going to murder her, she wanted at least to cling to him. Her Sea Child!
Instead, she saw a remarkable thing. The phibians who had originally rejected the child, who had made their bloody mark on the baby’s forehead, were now clearly helping him to swim. Supporting him, taking him with them. They did not reject him!
Her vision hampered by tears, she saw the phibians disappear beneath the waves. “Good-bye, my darling,” she said, with a final wave. She wondered if she would ever see him again … or if the whores would just break her neck with a swift blow now, leaving her body on the shore.
Matre Skira made a gesture, and the other Honored Matres released their hold, letting Corysta drop to the ground. The evil women looked at one another, thoroughly amused by her misery. They turned about and left her there.
She and Sea Child were still prisoners of the Honored Matres, but at least she had made the phibian stronger, and his people would raise him. He would prove the phibians wrong for ever marking him.
She had given him life after all, the true maternal gift. With a mother’s love, Corysta hoped her little one would thrive in deep and uncertain waters.
FOR BEVERLY HERBERT
There is no more moving tribute in all of literature than the three pages Frank Herbert wrote about Beverly Herbert in Chapterhouse: Dune, a novel that he completed at her side in Hawaii, while she was dying. Concerning his loving wife and best friend during more than thirty-seven years of marriage, he said, “Is it any wonder that I look back on our years together with a happiness transcending anything words can describe? Is it any wonder I do not want or need to forget one moment of it? Most others merely touched her life at the periphery. I shared it in the most intimate ways and everything she did strengthened me. It would not have been possible for me to do what necessity demanded of me during the final ten years of her life, strengthening her in return, had she not given of herself in the preceding years, holding back nothing. I consider that to be my great good fortune and most miraculous privilege.”
His earlier dedication in Children of Dune spoke of other dimensions of this remarkable woman:
FOR BEV:
Out of the wonderful commitment of our love and to share her beauty and her wisdom, for she truly inspired this book.
Frank Herbert modeled Lady Jessica Atreides after Beverly Herbert, as well as many aspects of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. Beverly was his writing companion and his intellectual equal. She was Frank Herbert’s universe, his inspiration, and—more than anyone else—his spiritual guide on the Road to Dune.
COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgments are made for use of the following material:
“Dune: A Whisper of Caladan Seas” © 1999 by Herbert Limited Partnership, first published in Amazing Stories, Summer 1999.
“Dune: Hunting Harkonnens” © 2002 by Herbert Limited Partnership.
“Dune: Whipping Mek” © 2003 by Herbert Limited Partnership.
“Dune: The Faces of a Martyr” © 2004 by Herbert Properties, LLC.
“Sea Child: A Tale of Dune” © 2006 by Herbert Properties, LLC., first published in Elemental : The Tsunami Relief Anthology (Tor Books 2006).
Excerpts of letters from Lurton Blassingame, Harlan Ellison, Sterling Lanier, Damon Knight, and Chilton Books reprinted with permission.
Excerpts of letters from John W. Campell, Jr., reprinted with permission of AC Projects, Inc., 7376 Walker Road, Fairview, TN 37062.
THE DUNE SERIES
BY FRANK HERBERT
Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Chapterhouse: Dune
BY FRANK HERBERT, BRIAN HERBERT, AND KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Road to Dune (includes original short novel Spice Planet)
BY BRIAN HERBERT AND KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Atreides
Dune: House Harkonnen
Dune: House Corrino
Dune: The Butlerian Jihad
Dune: The Machine Crusade
Dune: The Battle of Corrin
Hunters of Dune
Sandworms of Dune (forthcoming)
Paul of Dune (forthcoming)
BY BRIAN HERBERT
Dreamer of Dune (biography of Frank Herbert)
“This collection of essays, stories, and selections from Herbert’s papers will certainly be high-priority reading for Dune fans … . Of particular interest are the communications between [Frank] Herbert, John Campbell, and others during and after the release of Dune, and unpublished sequences from Dune and Dune Messiah … . Dune was a social and publishing phenomenon; it moved science fiction into general publishing (and marketing) awareness and spurred a wide public awareness of ecological balance. This account of its genesis should interest not only fans but also students of popular culture.”
—Booklist on The Road to Dune
“A portrayal of an alien society more complete and deeply detailed than any other author in the field has managed … A story absorbing equally for its action and philosophical vistas … An astonishing science fiction phenomenon.”
—The Washington Post on Dune
“Powerful, convincing, and most ingenious.”
—Robert A. Heinlein on Dune
“Herbert’s creation of this universe, with its intricate development and analysis of ecology, religion, politics, and philosophy, remains one of the supreme and seminal achievements in science fiction.”
—Louisville Times on Dune
From
Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
HUNTERS OF DUNE
Available now in hardcover!
Turn the page for a preview
THREE YEARS AFTER ESCAPE FROM CHAPTERHOUSE
Memory is a weapon sharp enough to inflict deep wounds.
—THE MENTAT’S LAMENT
On the day he died, Rakis—the planet commonly known as Dune—died with him.
Dune. Lost forever!
In the archives chamber of the fleeing no-ship Ithaca, the ghola of Miles Teg reviewed the desert world’s final moments. Melange-scented steam wafted from a stimulant beverage at his left elbow, but the thirteen-year-old ignored it, descending instead into deep Mentat focus. These historical records and holo-images held great fascination for him.
This was where and how his original body had been killed. How a
whole world had been murdered. Rakis … legendary desert planet, now no more than a charred ball.
Projected above a flat table, the archival images showed Honored Matre war vessels gathering above the mottled tan globe. The immense, undetectable no-ships—like the stolen one aboard which Teg and his fellow refugees now lived—wielded firepower superior to anything the Bene Gesserit had ever employed. Traditional atomics were little more than a pinprick by comparison.
Those new weapons must have been developed out in the Scattering. Teg pursued a simple Mentat projection. Human ingenuity born out of desperation? Or was it something else entirely ?
In the floating image, the bristling ships opened fire, unleashing incineration waves with devices the Bene Gesserit had since named “Obliterators.” The bombardment had continued until the planet was devoid of life. The sandy dunes were turned to black glass; even Rakis’s atmosphere caught fire. Giant worms and sprawling cities, people and sand plankton, everything annihilated. Nothing could have survived down there, not even him.
Now, nearly fourteen years later and in a vastly changed universe, the gangly teenager adjusted the study chair to a more comfortable height. Reviewing the circumstances of my own death. Again.
By strict definition, Teg himself was a clone rather than a ghola grown of cells gathered from a dead body, though that was the word most people used to describe him. Inside his young flesh lived an old man, a veteran of numerous campaigns for the Bene Gesserit; he could not remember the last few moments of his life, but these records left little doubt.
The senseless annihilation of Dune demonstrated the true ruthlessness of the Honored Matres. Whores, the Sisterhood called them. And for good reason.
Nudging the intuitive finger controls, he called up the images yet again. It felt odd to be an outside observer, knowing that he himself had been down there fighting and dying when these images were recorded … .
Teg heard a sound at the door of the archives and saw Sheeana watching him from the corridor. Her face was lean and angular, her skin brown from a Rakian heritage, her unruly umber hair flashed with streaks of copper from a childhood spent under the desert sun. Her eyes were the total blue of lifelong melange consumption, as well as the Spice Agony that had turned her into a Reverend Mother. The youngest ever to survive, Teg had been told.
Sheeana’s generous lips held an elusive smile. “Studying battles again, Miles? It’s a bad thing for a military commander to be so predictable.”
“I have a great many of them to review,” Teg answered in his cracking young-man’s voice. “The Bashar accomplished a great deal in three hundred standard years, before I died.”
When Sheeana recognized the projected record, her expression fell into a troubled mask. Teg had watched those images of Rakis to the point of obsession since they had fled into this bizarre and uncharted universe.
“Any word from Duncan yet?” he asked, trying to divert her attention. “He was attempting a new navigation algorithm to get us away from—”
“We know exactly where we are.” Sheeana lifted her chin in an unconscious gesture she had come to use more and more often since becoming the leader of this group of refugees. “We are lost.”
Teg automatically intercepted the criticism of Duncan Idaho. It had been their intent to prevent anyone—the Honored Matres, the corrupted Bene Gesserit order, or the mysterious Enemy—from finding the ship. “At least we’re safe.”
Sheeana did not seem convinced. “So many unknowns trouble me, our location, who is chasing us … .” Her voice trailed off, and then she said, “I will leave you to your studies. We are about to have another meeting to discuss our situation.”
He perked up. “Has anything changed?”
“No, Miles. And I expect the same arguments over and over again.” She shrugged. “The other Sisters seem to insist on it.” With a quiet rustle of robes, she exited the archives chamber, leaving him with the humming silence of the great invisible ship.
Back to Rakis. Back to my death … and the events leading up to it. Teg rewound the recordings, gathering old reports and perspectives, and watched them yet again, traveling farther backward in time.
Now that his ghola memories had been awakened, he knew what he had done up to his death. He did not need these records to see how the old Bashar Teg had gotten into such a predicament on Rakis, how he himself had provoked it. Back then, he and his loyal men—veterans of his many famous campaigns—had stolen a no-ship on Gammu, a planet that history had once called Giedi Prime, homeworld of the evil but long-exterminated House Harkonnen.
Years earlier, Teg had been brought in to guard the young ghola of Duncan Idaho, after eleven previous Duncan gholas had been assassinated. The old Bashar succeeded in keeping the twelfth alive until adulthood and finally restored Duncan’s memories, then helped him escape from Gammu. When one of the Honored Matres, Murbella, tried to sexually enslave Duncan, he instead trapped her with unsuspected abilities wired into him by his Tleilaxu creators. It turned out that Duncan was a living weapon specifically designed to thwart the Honored Matres. No wonder the enraged whores were so desperate to find and kill him.
After slaughtering hundreds of Honored Matres and their minions, the old Bashar hid among men who had sworn their lives to protect him. No great general had commanded such loyalty since Paul Muad’Dib, perhaps even since the fanatical days of the Butlerian Jihad. Amidst drinks, food, and misty-eyed nostalgia, the Bashar had explained that he needed them to steal a no-ship for him. Though the task seemed impossible, the veterans never questioned a thing … .
Ensconced in the archives now, young Miles reviewed surveillance records from Gammu’s spaceport security, images taken from tall Guild Bank buildings in the city. Each step of the assault made perfect sense to him, even as he studied the records many years later. It was the only way to succeed, and we accomplished it … .
After flying to Rakis, Teg and his men had found Reverend Mother Odrade and Sheeana riding a giant old worm to meet the no-ship out in the great desert. Time was short. The vengeful Honored Matres would be coming, apoplectic because the Bashar had made fools of them on Gammu. On Rakis, he and his surviving men departed the no-ship with armored vehicles and extra weapons. Time for one last, but vital, engagement.
Before the Bashar led his loyal soldiers out to face the whores, Odrade casually but expertly scratched the skin of his leathery neck, not-so-subtly collecting cell samples. Both Teg and the Reverend Mother understood it was the Sisterhood’s last chance to preserve one of the greatest military minds since the Scattering. They realized he was about to die. Miles Teg’s final battle.
By the time the Bashar and his men clashed with Honored Matres on the ground, other groups of the whores were swiftly taking over the Rakian population centers. They slew the Bene Gesserit Sisters who remained behind in Keen. They killed the Tleilaxu Masters and the Priests of the Divided God.
The battle was already lost, but Teg and his troops hurled themselves against the enemy defenses with unparalleled violence. Since Honored Matre hubris would not allow them to accept such humiliation, the whores retaliated against the whole world, destroying everything and everyone there. Including him.
In the meantime, the old Bashar’s fighters had created a diversion so the no-ship could escape, carrying Odrade, the Duncan ghola, and Sheeana, who had tempted the ancient sandworm into the vessel’s cavernous cargo hold. Soon after the ship flew to safety, Rakis was destroyed—and that worm became the last of its kind.
That had been Teg’s first life. His real memories ended there.
WATCHING IMAGES OF the final bombardment now, Teg wondered at what point his original body had been obliterated. Did it really matter? Now that he was alive again, Miles Teg had a second chance.
Using the cells Odrade had taken from his neck, the Sisterhood grew a copy of their Bashar and triggered his genetic memories. The Bene Gesserit knew they would require his tactical genius in the war with the Honored Matres. And the boy Te
g had indeed led the Sisterhood to its victory on Gammu and Junction. He had done everything they asked of him.
Later, he and Duncan, along with Sheeana and her dissidents, had stolen the no-ship yet again and fled from Chapterhouse, unable to bear what Murbella was allowing to happen to the Bene Gesserit. Better than anyone else, the escapees understood about the mysterious Enemy that continued to hunt for them, no matter how lost the no-ship might be … .
Weary with facts and forced memories, Teg switched off the records, stretched his thin arms, and left the archives sector. He would spend several hours in vigorous physical training, then work on his weapons skills.
Though he lived in the body of a thirteen-year-old, it was his job to remain ready for everything, and never lower his guard.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Author painting Gregory Manchess
FRANK HERBERT is widely considered to be the greatest of all science-fiction writers. He was born in Tacoma, Washington, and educated at the University of Washington, Seattle. In 1952, Herbert began publishing science fiction, but he was not considered a writer of major stature until the 1965 publication of Dune. Then Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune followed, expanding the saga that the Chicago Tribune would call “one of the monuments of modern science fiction.” Herbert is also the author of some twenty other books, including The Eyes of Heisenberg, The Dosadi Experiment, and The Green Brain. Frank Herbert passed away in 1986.
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