For the time being, he would simply have to hide and let the battle flow past him. The Lost Tleilaxu man did not care which faction won, or if they all destroyed each other. He was on Tleilax. He belonged here.
With the attention of the combatants diverted, Uxtal slipped away, crawled under a fence, and raced across a churned muddy field to the nearby slig farm. No one would have the slightest interest in a filthy low-caste farmer like Gaxhar. He could be safe there and demand sanctuary from the old man!
Scrambling for shelter, Uxtal reached a section of pens on the other side of the farm, where the farmer kept his fattest sligs. Looking back toward his now-burning laboratory, he saw a group of black-uniformed Valkyries marching swiftly across the field. It was just his bad luck--they would come here soon, he was sure of it. Why would they bother with a man who raised sligs? Other female fighters searched outlying buildings, intent on rooting out Honored Matres who had gone into hiding to lay an ambush. Had they seen him?
Ducking frantically out of sight, Uxtal slid into an empty, muddy pen on the other side of a gate where the fat sligs were kept. A small feed-storage shed was elevated on stone blocks, leaving a small space beneath. Uxtal squirmed into the cramped space where the dominating women--of either faction--would not see him.
Agitated by his presence, the sligs began to slither around in the mud and squeal in peculiar high-pitched tones on the other side of the gate. Uxtal crawled toward the building. The stench and filth made him want to retch.
"It's almost feeding time," a voice said.
Twisting to look through the gap under the shed, Uxtal saw the elderly slig farmer standing at the fence, peering through the slats at him. The slig farmer began tossing bloody scraps of raw meat--more human body parts--into the empty pen. Some of them landed very close to Uxtal. He pushed them away. "Stop, you fool! I'm trying to hide. Don't call attention to me!"
"You have blood on you now," Gaxhar said in a frighteningly casual voice. "That could draw them toward you."
Nonchalantly, the farmer raised the gate and let the hungry sligs through. Five of them: a most inauspicious number. The creatures were great slabs of flesh, their flopping bodies coated with dense mucous, their flat underbellies lined with grinding mouths that could churn any biological matter into digestible mush.
Uxtal scrambled away. "Get me out of here! I command it!"
The largest slig in the pen shoved into the crawl space where the Lost Tleilaxu was trapped, and fell on him. More sligs charged forward, pushing and colliding to reach the fresh meat. The loud grunting sounds easily drowned out the Lost Tleilaxu man's screams.
"I liked it better when all the Masters were dead," Gaxhar muttered.
The slig farmer heard gunfire and explosions in the distance. The city of Bandalong was already a raging inferno, but the battle did not come close to his farm. The lower-caste menial laborers in the nearby hovels were not worthy of notice.
Later, when his sligs had finished feeding, Gaxhar killed the largest and best one, which he had raised with painstaking care. That evening, with the last few sparks of battle rumbling through the city, he invited a few friends from the village to his home for a feast.
"No need to keep such fine meat for unworthy people anymore," he told them. He had fashioned a table and chair from crates and boards. His other guests sat on the floor. In these simple surroundings, the low-caste Tleilaxus ate until their bellies ached, and then they ate even more.
Love is one of the most dangerous forces in the universe. Love weakens, while deceiving us into believing it is a good thing.
--MOTHER SUPERIOR ALMA MAVIS TARAZA
M
urbella.
He was supposed to be watching the no-ship. He knew that. But her name, her presence, her scent, her addictive control had grown even stronger since he'd started contemplating the possibility of bringing Murbella back as a ghola. It could be done; he knew it.
For him, the heart call had never entirely stopped in the nineteen years since he had broken from her. It was as if she had caught him in her own net, as deadly as the gossamer mesh cast by the old man and woman. Everything was too quiet during his lonely and tedious shift on the navigation bridge, giving him too many opportunities to think and obsess on her.
Now he intended to do something about it, to solve the problem. He pushed aside his rational assessment that it was a poor solution, a dangerous one, and he forged ahead.
Leaving the navigation bridge unattended again, he gathered up her still-fresh garments from nullentropy storage and went to the quarters of Master Scytale. The grayish Tleilaxu opened his chamber suspiciously, looking at Duncan and his armful of clothing. Behind him, the dimly lit room fuzzed with exotic scents of incense or drugs, and he caught a glimpse of the young Scytale copy. The boy was wide-eyed, both fearful and fascinated to receive a visitor. The Tleilaxu Master rarely let his ghola see or interact with anyone else aboard the ship.
"Duncan Idaho." Scytale looked him up and down, and Duncan had the distinct feeling that he was being assessed. "How may I be of service?"
Did the Tleilaxu still look on him as one of their creations? He and Scytale had been held prisoner together aboard the no-ship on Chapterhouse, but Duncan had never considered Scytale to be a comrade in arms. Now, though, he needed something from him.
"I require your expertise." He extended the rumpled garments, and Scytale flinched in confusion, as if they were weapons. "I preserved these within days of when we left Chapterhouse. I have found loose hairs, and there may be skin cells, other DNA fragments."
Scytale looked at them, frowning. He did not touch the clothing. "For what purpose?"
"To create a ghola."
The Tleilaxu Master already seemed to know the answer. "Of whom?"
"Murbella." He kept finding himself drawn back to the idea as if it were an inescapable black hole and he had already passed the event horizon in his mind. He had dark amber strands of her hair on a pale green towel. "You can grow her again. The axlotl tanks are no longer being used."
The boy Scytale stood close to his elder, who pushed him backward. The older Master appeared intimidated. "The whole program has been halted. Sheeana will not allow any new gholas."
"She will allow this one. I--I will demand it." He lowered his voice, mumbling to himself. "They owe me that much."
Sheeana's possibly prescient dream had forced her to regroup, to reconsider her plans and exercise caution. But now that several years had passed, discussions had already begun about experimenting with another ghola child or two. The fascinating cells from Scytale's nullentropy capsule were just too tempting. . . .
"Duncan Idaho, I do not believe this is wise. Murbella is an Honored Matre--"
"A former Honored Matre. And a ghola grown from these cells will . . . will be different." He didn't know if she would come back with her full memories and knowledge of a Reverend Mother, all the changes the Spice Agony had wrought. Regardless, she would be here.
"You would not understand, Scytale. Long ago, she tried to enslave me, to bond me with her sexual powers--and I did the same. We were bound together in a mutual noose, and I cannot break it. My performance and concentration has suffered for years, though I use my strength to resist."
"Why, then, would you wish to bring her back?"
Duncan pushed the rumpled clothes forward. "Because then at least I wouldn't suffer from this endless, destructive withdrawal! It will not go away, so I must find a different solution. I have ignored it for too long."
The fact that he was here at all reinforced his knowledge of the hold that she still had. Even the thought of Murbella tied his hands. He should have been on guard, watching from the navigation bridge, waiting to hear the next report from Sheeana or Teg . . . but the idea of resurrecting Murbella had reopened the festering heartache, making her loss seem fresh and painful all over again.
The Tleilaxu Master seemed to understand much more than Duncan wanted him to see. "You yourself know the danger
in your suggestion. If you were as confident as you appear to be, you would not have waited until the others were down on the planet. You would not have come here like a thief, whispering your suggestion to me where no one else can hear." Scytale crossed his arms over his chest.
Duncan stared at him in silence, promising himself that he would not plead. "Will you do it? Is it possible to bring her back?"
"It is possible. As to your other question--" He could see Scytale calculating, trying to determine what sort of payment or reciprocal action he could pry out of Duncan.
The alarms startled them both. The danger lights, the warning of an imminent attack, the approaching ships--in so many years, the alert systems had been silent, and now the sounds were both startling and terrifying.
Duncan dropped the garments on the deck and ran for the nearest lift. He should have been on the navigation bridge. He should have been watching, not secretly talking with the Tleilaxu Master.
He would have time for guilt later.
The commsystems at the piloting station buzzed with Sheeana's voice. "Duncan! Duncan, why don't you respond?"
As he threw himself into the chair, he glanced up at the front viewport. A dozen small spacecraft were rising from the planet below, burning streaks through the atmosphere and moving directly toward the no-ship. "I am here," he said. "What's happening? What is your status?" The lighter was coming back at top speed, discarding safety restrictions.
Garimi's voice came over the in-ship channel. "I am already on my way to the receiving bay. Get the ship prepared to receive them. Something has gone terribly wrong down on the planet."
Now Duncan heard a faint emergency message chattering across the commline. Miles Teg, but his voice sounded weak. "Our maneuverability is severely compromised."
Tracer fire came from the other ships that followed close behind. Teg performed evasions with masterful agility, swooping one way and then another, closing in on the orbiting Ithaca. With the no-field in place, no one should have been able to see the giant ship's location.
Cursing his distraction and the stranglehold Murbella unwittingly still had on him, Duncan dropped the Ithaca's no-field just long enough to let Teg see where to go. He was already warming up the navigation systems and the Holtzman engines.
Garimi had opened the small landing-bay doors on one of the lower decks, no more than a tiny speck on the hull of the great ship. But the Bashar knew where to go. He aimed directly toward the sanctuary, and the Handler ships closed in. Not designed as a fast military craft, the lighter was losing ground as the much swifter pursuers gained on it. More unidentified ships launched from the planet below. It had seemed to be such a bucolic civilization. . . .
Sheeana was on the commsystem again. "They're Face Dancers, Duncan. The Handlers are Face Dancers!"
Teg added, "And they are in league with the Enemy! We cannot let them have access to this ship. It's what they've wanted all along."
Sheeana joined in, her voice ragged with exhaustion. "The Handlers are not so primitive as they appeared. They have heavy weaponry that could disable the Ithaca. It was a trap."
On the screen, weapons fire barely missed the lighter, scoring the broad plane of the Ithaca's hull. Teg did not decelerate, or alter course. On the commsystem, he sounded just like the old Bashar. "Duncan, you know what you have to do. If they come too close, just fold space and get away!"
Teg plunged the lighter into the open docking bay as fast as a bullet, only seconds ahead of the Handler ships. The pursuing craft raced forward, not decelerating, fully prepared to crash headlong into the Ithaca. To what purpose? To cripple the vessel so it couldn't leave?
From the landing bay, Garimi yelled, "Now, Duncan! Get us out of here!"
Duncan reactivated the no-field, and as far as the pursuers could see, the Ithaca vanished, leaving only a hole in space. The Handler ships could not land, nor did they pull up, apparently willing to do anything to prevent the Ithaca from escaping. Six of them continued to accelerate toward where the vessel had been--and plowed into the unseen hull of the no-ship like buckshot hitting a broad wall.
The impacts rocked the immense vessel, and the deck beneath Duncan's feet reeled and tilted. Though damage lights winked on all across the control panels, he saw that the foldspace engines were intact, functional, and ready to go.
The Holtzman engines hummed, and the ship began its move between and around the fabric of the universe. Alone on the navigation bridge, he watched the aurora of colors and bending shapes that surrounded the great vessel.
But something was interfering--a shimmering, multicolored grid of energy threads. The net had found them again! Thanks to the Handlers, the Enemy had somehow known exactly where to look.
The colors and shapes began to roil in reverse, unfolding. Now the next wave of pursuing Handler vessels could fire at the aberration in space, hitting the void and disabling the no-ship without actually seeing it.
Duncan plunged back into Mentat mode, seeking a solution, and a new course finally crystallized in his mind, a random path that would let him slip free of the binding strands. He hammered the engine controls, forced the foldspace equations.
This time the fabric of space wrapped around the Ithaca, caressed it, and drew it into the void--away from the planet, away from the Handlers, and away from the Enemy.
No matter how complex human civilization becomes, there are always interludes during which the course of mankind depends upon the actions of a single individual.
--from The Tleilaxu Godbuk
A
t the laboratory complex, during the hand-to-hand fighting between Valkyries and Honored Matres, among the explosions and conflagrations and streaking attack ships, no one noticed a small adolescent escaping through a blast hole in the laboratory wall and running away through the smoke.
Concealing himself, the only surviving Waff ghola hunkered down and wondered what to do. The black-uniformed women from the New Sisterhood marched about the city, mopping up. Bandalong had already fallen. The Matre Superior was dead.
Despite significant gaps in his memories and knowledge, Waff could recall difficulties the Bene Gesserit had given his predecessors. After seeing his seven counterparts slaughtered by Honored Matres, he had no desire to be taken prisoner by either group of women. The knowledge in his mind, though fragmented, was far too valuable for that. The witches and whores were both powindah, outsiders and liars.
He ran furtively into the dangerous streets. Because he had memories of being a Master, Waff was stunned and saddened to see this sacred city burning out of control. Once, Bandalong had been full of holy sites, kept pure and clean from outsiders. No longer. He doubted if Tleilax could ever be restored.
But at the moment, that was not Waff's mission. The Guild would want him. That much was certain. The Navigator who had observed his horrific awakening grasped the importance of having an authentic Tleilaxu Master, rather than that Lost fool Uxtal. He couldn't understand why the Navigators hadn't come to rescue him during the initial attack. Maybe they had tried. There had been so much confusion.
As he kept himself hidden, Waff began to consider the first tantalizing sparks of an idea. The Heighliner must still be up there.
AFTER DARKNESS SET in, the ghola found a small, low-orbital shuttle in a repair yard at the edge of the burning city. The shuttle's engine compartment was open, and tools lay about on the pavement. He saw no one as he cautiously approached.
A door in a dilapidated shed slid open, and a low-caste Tleilaxu emerged, wearing greasy coveralls. "What are you doing, kid? You need something to eat?" He wiped his hands on a cloth, which he stuffed in his pocket.
"I am not a child. I am Master Waff."
"All the Masters are dead." The short man had uncharacteristically blond hair and matching eyebrows. "Did you get hit on the head during the attack?"
"I am a ghola, but I have a Master's memories. Master Tylwyth Waff."
The man gave him a second, less skeptical look. "All rig
ht, I'll accept the possibility, for the sake of argument. What do you want?"
"I need a spacecraft. Does that shuttle fly?" Waff pointed at the old vessel.
"Just needs a fuel cartridge. And a pilot."
"I can fly it." He had enough of those memories.
The mechanic smiled. "Somehow I believe you, kid." He trudged over to a pile of components. "I confiscated a pallet of fuel cartridges during the battle. No one will notice, and it doesn't look like the Honored Matres will be around to punish either of us." He put his hands on his hips, regarded the shuttle, then shrugged. "This rig doesn't belong to me anyway, so what do I care?"
Within the hour, Waff flew up to orbit, where the Heighliner waited for the return of the Valkyrie attack force. The immense black vessel, larger than most cities, shimmered with reflected sunlight. Another Guildship, one obviously equipped with a no-field, circled the planet in a lower orbit.
Engaging the shuttle's commline, Waff transmitted a message over the standard Spacing Guild frequency, identifying himself. "I require a meeting with a Guild representative--a Navigator, if possible." He dredged a name from his recent memories, from the bloody day when his seven identical brothers had been slaughtered before his eyes. "Edrik. He knows I have vital information about spice."
Without further argument, a guidance signal locked onto his navigation controls, and Waff found himself drawn toward the Heighliner, directed upward to the elite-level bridges. The craft floated into a small, exclusive landing bay.
A security detail of four Guildsmen in gray uniforms greeted him. Much taller than Waff, the milky-eyed Guildsmen escorted him to the viewing compartment. High overhead, Waff saw a Navigator in his tank, staring down through the plaz with oversized eyes. With his plan to regain the technique of mass-producing melange, Edrik would never inform his Bene Gesserit passengers of Waff's presence on board.
A distorted voice spoke through speakers. "Tell us about spice. Tell us what you remember about axlotl tanks, and we will keep you safe."