Hunters Of Dune

  These sensations and fantasies made him feel much, much better. Vladimir wondered if his memories might be ready to come back, a little at a time. He hoped so.

  Hearing a clatter of stones behind him, he turned. "I've been watching you at play," Khrone said. "I am pleased to see you thinking along correct lines, just as the old Baron Harkonnen did. You will need some of these techniques when we place Paolo in your care."

  "When do I get to play with him?"

  "Your own survival depends on certain things. Understand this: helping us with the Paul Atreides ghola is the most important objective of your entire life. He is the key to our many plans, and your survival depends upon how well he does."

  Vladimir formed a feral smile. "It is my destiny to be together with Paolo, and to succeed with him." He kissed the Face Dancer passionately on the mouth, and Khrone pushed him away.

  Inside, Vladimir was not smiling at all. Even in this odd reenactment of his life, he still felt a need to strangle the Atreides ghola.

  The meek see potential threats everywhere. The bold see potential profits.

  --CHOAM administrative memo

  M

  ore pain, more torture, more spice substitute. Still no success--not even anything that qualified as minor progress--in making melange with the axlotl tanks. In other words, business as usual.

  Uxtal worked in his Bandalong laboratories, serving the needs of the Honored Matres. At least the two brats had been gone for years now, two less things to be terrified about. In his quarters, he had marked off more days and searched for ways to change his situation, to escape, to hide. But none of his solutions seemed remotely viable.

  With the exception of God, he hated everyone who held authority over him. Beyond the things his superiors wanted from him, beyond the excuses and lies he told them concerning his work, Uxtal searched for signs and portents, numerical patterns, anything to reveal to him the significance of his own holy mission. He had survived for so long in this nightmare that there must be a purpose behind it!

  Since taking away the newborn Paul Atreides ghola, the Face Dancers had not commanded him to do anything further for them, yet the little researcher felt no relief. He was not free. They were sure to come back and demand something even more impossible. The Honored Matres still pressured him to produce real melange with axlotl tanks, so he performed extravagant sham experiments to demonstrate how hard he was working--though completely without success.

  Now that the Face Dancers no longer seemed to care about him, he was completely at the mercy of Matre Superior Hellica. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and considered how difficult his life had been for so many years.

  Since the New Sisterhood had conquered most of their other strongholds, the Honored Matres needed less and less of the adrenaline-based drug. That did not make life easier for him, though. What if the terrible women got it into their heads that they didn't require him at all anymore? He had achieved nothing new in quite some time and was sure they were convinced he would never make melange. (He had been convinced of that himself for several years now.)

  Focused on business above all else, Guildships and CHOAM merchants flew in and out of the devastated zones on Tleilax. Necessarily neutral in the conflict, they traded without playing politics. Honored Matres required certain supplies and offworld items, especially with their extravagant tastes in clothing, jewels, rare foods.

  Once, the whores had been fabulously wealthy, controlling the Guild Bank and carrying valuable currencies with them as they swept across star systems and planets, leaving scorched earth in their wake. Uxtal did not understand them, could not comprehend what could have created such monsters or what had chased them out of the Scattering. As usual, no one told him anything.

  WHEN THE GUILD Navigators approached Hellica and her entrenched rebels on Tleilax with a proposal, Uxtal just knew his nightmare was about to get worse.

  A messenger arrived in Bandalong from a high-orbiting Heighliner. Hellica herself came to escort Uxtal past the suspicious stares of Ingva and the browbeaten lab workers.

  "Uxtal, you and I will travel to meet with Navigator Edrik. He awaits us aboard the Heighliner."

  Though confused and intimidated, Uxtal could not argue. A Navigator? He gulped. He had never seen one of them before. He did not know why he was being singled out for such attention, but it couldn't be good news. How had the Navigator learned of his existence? Through prescience? He wondered if this might be an opportunity for him to escape, or get a reprieve . . . or be saddled with another impossible task.

  Aboard the Guildship, though no one could overhear them inside the shielded chamber, Uxtal still did not feel safe. He stood silent, trembling, while Hellica strutted in front of the great armored tank. Behind the curved plaz walls, the mist-shrouded form of Edrik was so peculiar that Uxtal could not tell if the filtered voice carried an implied threat.

  The Navigator spoke directly to him rather than to the Matre Superior, which was sure to set her off. "The old Tleilaxu Masters knew how to create melange with axlotl tanks. You will rediscover this process for us." The Navigator's distorted inhuman face floated behind the glass.

  Uxtal groaned inside. He had already proved himself incapable of that.

  "I have given him that command," Hellica said with a sniff. "For many years he has failed me."

  "Then he must cease failing."

  Uxtal wrung his hands. "It is not a trivial task. Worlds full of Tleilaxu Masters worked all throughout the Famine Times to perfect the complex process. I am only one man, and the old Masters did not share their secrets with the Lost Tleilaxu." He gulped again. Surely the Guild knew all this already?

  "If your people are so ignorant, how did they create Face Dancers so superior to any previous ones?" the Navigator asked. Uxtal shuddered, knowing--now--that his people had not, after all, created Khrone or his superior breed of shape-shifters. Apparently, they had merely been found out in the Scattering.

  "I am not interested in Face Dancers," Hellica snapped. She had always seemed at odds with Khrone. "I am interested in profits from melange."

  Uxtal swallowed. "When the Masters all died, their knowledge died with the last one. I have been working diligently to reacquire the technique." He did not remind them that the Honored Matres themselves were responsible for losing those secrets; Hellica did not take even implied criticism well.

  "Then use the indirect approach." Edrik delivered his words like a blow. "Bring one of them back."

  The idea took Uxtal by surprise. He certainly had the ability to use an axlotl tank to resurrect one of the Masters, provided he had viable cells. "But . . . they are all dead. Even in Bandalong, the Masters were killed many years ago." He remembered the boy Baron and Hellica gleefully feeding body parts to the sligs. "Where am I to get cells for such a ghola?"

  The Matre Superior stopped her tigerlike pacing and spun toward him as if to deliver a fatal thrust. "That is all you needed? A few cells? Thirteen years and you did not tell me you required only a few cells to solve this problem?" The orange in her eyes glowed like embers.

  He quailed. The idea had never occurred to him. "I did not think it a possibility! The Masters are gone--"

  She growled at him. "How stupid do you think we are, little man? We would not dispose of anything so valuable. If the Navigator's scheme will work--if we can create melange and sell it to the Guild--then I will give you the cells you need!"

  Edrik's enormous head bobbed behind the plaz walls, and his bulging eyes glared at the quivering researcher. "You accept this project?"

  "We accept it. This Lost Tleilaxu man works for us, and survives only at our pleasure."

  Uxtal was still reeling from the revelation. "Then . . . then some of the old Masters are still alive?"

  Her quirk of a smile was frightening. "Alive? After a fashion. Alive enough to provide the cells you need." She gave the Navigator a perfunctory bow and grabbed Uxtal by the arm. "I will take you to them. You must start right away."

&
nbsp; AS THE MATRE Superior led him into a lower level of the commandeered Bandalong Palace, the stench grew worse with every step. He stumbled, but she dragged him along like a rag doll. Though Honored Matres decorated themselves with colorful fabrics and gaudy adornments, they were not particularly clean or fastidious. Hellica wasn't bothered by the stink wafting out of the dim chambers ahead; to her, it was the smell of suffering.

  "They still live, but you won't get anything from their minds, little man." Hellica gestured for Uxtal to precede her. "That isn't what we kept them for."

  With uncertain steps, he entered the shadowy room. He heard bubbling noises, the rhythmic hiss of respirators, gurgling pumps. It reminded him of the noisome lair of some foul beast. Ruddy light seeped from glowpanels near the floor and ceiling. He drew shallow breaths to keep himself from gagging as his eyes adjusted.

  Inside he saw twenty-four small men, or what remained of them. He counted quickly before absorbing other details, searching for numerical significance. Twenty-four--three groups of eight.

  The gray-skinned men had the distinctive features of old Masters, higher-caste leaders of the Tleilaxu. Over many centuries, genetic drift and inbreeding had given the Lost Tleilaxu a somewhat distinctive appearance; to outsiders, the gnomish men all looked alike, but Uxtal easily noted the differences.

  All of them lay strapped to flat, hard tables, as if they'd been mounted on racks. Though the victims were naked, so many tubes and sensors were connected to them that he could see little of their gaunt forms.

  "The Tleilaxu Masters had a nasty habit of constantly growing gholas of themselves as replacements. Like regurgitating food again and again." Hellica walked up to one of the tables, looked down at the slack-faced man there. "These were gholas of one of the last Tleilaxu Masters, spare bodies to be exchanged when he grew too old." She pointed. "This one was called Waff and had dealings with the Honored Matres. He was killed on Rakis, I believe, and never had the chance to reawaken his ghola."

  Uxtal was reluctant to approach. Stunned, he looked at all the silent, identical men in the room. "Where did they come from?"

  "We found them stored and preserved after we had eliminated all the other Masters." She smiled. "So, we chemically destroyed their brains and put them to a better use here."

  The twenty-four sets of machinery hummed and hissed. Snakelike tentacles and tubes mounted to the groins of the mindless gholas began to pump; the strapped-down bodies twitched as the machinery made loud sucking sounds.

  "Now the only thing they're good for is to provide sperm, should we ever decide to use it. Not that we particularly value your race's disappointing genetic material, but decent males seem to be in short supply here on Tleilax." Scowling, she turned away as Uxtal looked on in horror. She seemed to be hiding something; he sensed she hadn't told him all of her reasons.

  "They are like your axlotl tanks, in a way. A good use for the males of your race. Isn't it what you Tleilaxu have done to females for so many millennia? These men deserved nothing better." She looked down her nose. "I'm sure you agree."

  Uxtal struggled to cover his revulsion. How they must despise us! To do such a thing to males--even to a Tleilaxu Master, his enemy--was monstrous! The words of the Great Belief made clear that God had created females for the sole purpose of reproduction. A female could serve God in no greater way than to become an axlotl tank; her brain was merely extraneous tissue. But to think of males in similar terms was inconceivable. If he hadn't been so terrified of her, he might have told Hellica a thing or two!

  This sacrilege would surely bring down the wrath of God. Uxtal had loathed these Honored Matres before. Now he could barely keep himself from fainting. The machines continued to milk the mindless males on the tables.

  "Hurry up and take your cell scrapings," Hellica snapped. "I don't have all day, and neither do you. Guild Navigators aren't as pleasant to work with as I am."

  Axlotl tanks have brought forth gholas and melange, as well as Face Dancers and Twisted Mentats. Out in the Scattering, Lost Tleilaxu genetic work was most likely responsible for creating Futars and Phibians. What other axlotl-grown creatures did they concoct in those fecund wombs? What else remains out there that is still unknown to us?

  --Bene Gesserit Symposium, opening remarks by

  MOTHER COMMANDER MURBELLA

  I

  n the two years since Gammu, one Honored Matre stronghold had fallen after another, a total of twelve smaller rebel enclaves eradicated in maneuvers that would have made even the best Swordmaster of Ginaz proud. Murbella's Valkyries had proven themselves time and again.

  Soon, the last festering wound would be cauterized. Then humanity would be ready to face the far worse challenge.

  Recently, Chapterhouse had made another substantial spice payment to the weapon shops of Richese. For years, the Richesian industries had been dedicated to building armaments for the New Sisterhood, retooling their manufacturing centers and ramping up to full-scale production. Although they regularly delivered warships and weaponry, their factories were still gearing up for the majority of items the Sisters had ordered. Within a few years, the Mother Commander would have an overwhelming armada of ships to stand together and defend against the Outside Enemy. She hoped it would be soon enough.

  Inside her private chambers, working through reams of administrative matters, Murbella was relieved to be interrupted by a report from Gammu. Since the original crackdown there, Janess--promoted to regimental commandant--had been in charge of the consolidation, strengthening the Sisterhood's hold on the industries and population.

  But her daughter was not among the three Valkyries who strode into her office. All three, she noted, had originally been Honored Matres. One was Kiria, the hard-edged scout who had investigated the distant Enemy-devastated planet, home of the damaged Honored Matre battleship that had come to Chapterhouse years ago. Given the opportunity, Kiria had been eager to help quash the insurgents on Gammu.

  Murbella sat up straight. "Your report? Have you rooted out, killed, or converted the remaining rebel whores?"

  The former Honored Matres flinched at the term, especially when used by someone who had previously been one of their own. Kiria stepped forward to speak. "The regimental commandant is not far behind us, Mother Commander, but she wanted us to report to you immediately. We have made an alarming discovery."

  The other two women nodded, as if conceding Kiria's authority. Murbella noted one of them had a dark bruise on her neck.

  Kiria turned toward the hall and barked orders to a pair of male workers standing outside. They entered carrying a heavy, lifeless form wrapped crudely in preserving sheets. Kiria tore the covering away from the head. The face was turned away, but the body had the shape and clothing of a man.

  Intrigued, Murbella stood up. "What is this? Is he dead?"

  "Quite dead, but it is not a man. Nor a woman."

  The Mother Commander came around from behind her cluttered desk. "What do you mean? Is it not human?"

  "It is whatever it chose to be, man or woman, boy or girl, hideous or pleasing in appearance." She turned the thing's head toward Murbella. The facial features were bland and humanoid, with staring black-button eyes, a pug nose, and pallid waxy skin.

  Murbella narrowed her eyes. "I have never seen a Face Dancer so close. Nor one so dead. I presume this is their natural state?"

  "Who can tell, Mother Commander? When we rooted out and killed many of the rebel . . . whores, we found several shape-shifters among the dead. Alarmed, we brought in Truthsayers to interrogate the surviving Honored Matres, but found no more Face Dancers that way." Kiria pointed at the body. "This was one of the survivors. When she tried to escape, we killed her--and that is when her true identity came out."

  "Undetectable by Truthsayers? Are you certain?"

  "Absolutely."

  Murbella wrestled with the complex implications. "Astounding."

  Face Dancers were creatures made by the Tleilaxu, and the new ones who had returned
with the Lost Tleilaxu were far superior to any the Bene Gesserit had previously encountered. Apparently, the new ones worked with, or for, the Honored Matres. And now she knew they could fool Truthsayers!

  The questions fell faster than the answers. Why then had the Honored Matres destroyed the Tleilaxu worlds, attempting to exterminate all of the original Masters? Murbella had been an Honored Matre herself, and she still did not understand.

  Intrigued, she touched the skin of the corpse, the coarse white hair on the head; each strand was rough against her fingertips. She inhaled deeply, sifting and sorting with her olfactory senses, but could find no distinctive smell. Bene Gesserit archives claimed that a Face Dancer could be detected by a very subtle odor. But she wasn't sure.

  After a long silence, Kiria said, "We conclude that more of the rebel Honored Matres may indeed be Face Dancers, but we found no telltale indicators. No way to detect them whatsoever."

  "Except for killing them," one of the other two Sisters said. "That was the only way to be sure."

  Murbella frowned. "Effective, perhaps, but not entirely useful. We can't just execute everyone."

  Kiria matched her frown. "That leads to a different kind of crisis, Mother Commander. Though we killed hundreds of Face Dancers among the rebels on Gammu, we were unable to capture a single one of them alive--not that we know of. They are perfect mimics. Absolutely perfect."

  Deeply troubled, Murbella paced in her office. "You killed hundreds of Face Dancers? Does that mean you slaughtered thousands of rebels? What percentage of them are these . . . infiltrators?"

  Kiria shrugged. "Posing as Honored Matres, they formed an attack squadron and tried to retake Gammu by force. They had a very complex and detailed plan, striking at vulnerabilities, and they rallied a great many of the rebel women to their cause. Fortunately, we found the viper's nest and struck. The Valkyries would have killed them either way, whether they were Face Dancers or whores."

  One of the other women added, "Ironically, the Honored Matres who followed them were just as surprised as we were when their leaders turned into . . . this." She gestured toward the inhuman cadaver. "Even they did not know they had been infiltrated."