Hunters Of Dune

  The old man looked at the symbolic wooden war galleys crowding the faux ocean all the way to the horizon. With their sails furled, the boats rocked and creaked in the gentle swells. "Our fleet is thousands of times greater than the handful of boats used in that old war. And our real battleships are infinitely superior to this primitive technology. We are conquering a universe, not a minor country on a planet that most people have now forgotten."

  Transfixed by the spectacle she had created, the old woman bent her bony legs to sit on the dock. "You have always been so maddeningly literal that metaphors are entirely beyond you. The Trojan War stands as one of the defining conflicts in human history. It is still remembered even now, tens of thousands of years later."

  "Primarily because I preserved the records," said the old man with a huff. "This is to be Kralizec, not a skirmish between barbarian armies."

  A stone appeared in the old woman's hand, and she tossed it into the water with a clear, loud splash. The spreading ripples vanished quickly in the stirring waves. "Even you want to cement your place in history, don't you? Paint yourself as a great conqueror. For that, you must pay particular attention to details."

  The man stood rigidly beside her, eschewing the informality of sitting on the dock. "After my victory, I shall write all the history I like."

  The old woman made an additional mental effort, and the illusory war galleys crystallized to the point that tiny figures appeared on their top decks, acting as crew. "I wish the Handlers had succeeded in capturing the no-ship."

  "The Handlers have been punished for their failure," said the old man. "And my confidence remains unshaken. Our recent . . . discussions with Khrone should have helped clarify his priorities."

  "It's a good thing you didn't kill him and scuttle his plans with the Paul Atreides ghola. I have warned you about impetuosity. One shouldn't throw away a possibility until all is said and done."

  "You and your inane platitudes."

  "Once more unto the breach," the old woman said.

  "Why do you bother studying these humans so much if our goal is to destroy them?"

  "Not destroy them. Perfect them."

  The old man shook his head. "And you say that I embrace impossible tasks."

  "It's time to launch."

  "At last we agree on something."

  She made a slight gesture with her pointed chin. The bare-chested commanders aboard the prows of the triremes shouted orders. Heavy war drums began thumping a resonant beat, completely synchronized across the thousands of Greek war galleys. Three rows of oars stacked on each side of the vessels lifted from the water in unison, dipped down, and pulled.

  Behind them, where the edges of the imaginary ocean faded and reality began, the sharp lines of a tall and complex city resisted the softening effects of sea mists. The great living metropolis had spread across the entire planet, and similarly on numerous other worlds.

  As the war galleys moved out, each one an icon symbolizing a space battle group, the images shifted. The sea became a black and infinite ocean of stars.

  The old man nodded with satisfaction. "The incursion will proceed with greater vigor now. Once we begin to engage in direct battles, I will not allow you to waste time, energy, or imagination on such stage shows."

  The old woman flicked her fingers as if to knock away an insect. "My amusements cost little, and I have never lost sight of our overall goal. Everything we see and do contains an element of illusion, in one form or another. We simply choose which layers to unveil." She shrugged. "But if you continue to nag me about it, I would be happy for us to revert to our original forms whenever you like."

  In a blink, all of the realistic images were gone and the two found themselves standing in the midst of the immense kaleidoscopic metropolis.

  "We have waited fifteen thousand years for this," the old man said.

  "Yes, we have. But that isn't really very long for us, is it?"

  Seeing is not knowing, and knowing is not preventing. Certainty can be as much of a curse as uncertainty. Without knowing the future, one has more options in forming a reaction.

  --PAUL MUAD'DIB,

  The Golden Chains of Prescience

  T

  he Oracle of Time kept herself aloof. She had existed since before the formation of the Spacing Guild, and in the subsequent millennia she had watched the human race grow and change. She witnessed their various struggles and dreams, their commercial ventures, the building of empires and the wars that tore them back down again.

  Within her mind, within her artificial chamber, the Oracle had seen the broad canvas of the infinite universe. The wider her temporal horizons grew, the less significant were individual events or people. Some threats, however, were simply too momentous to ignore.

  On her tireless search, the Oracle of Time left her Navigator children behind so that she could continue her solitary mission, while other parts of her vast brain considered possible defenses and methods of attack against the great ancient Enemy.

  She plunged intentionally into the twisted alternate universe where she had found and rescued the no-ship years ago. In this strange quagmire of physical laws and inside-out sensory input, the Oracle sailed along, though she already knew Duncan Idaho would never have returned here. The no-ship was not inside this universe.

  With a thought, she emerged again to normal space. There, she found the incorporeal traceries stitched through the void, a lacework of extended lines and conduits the Enemy had laid down. The strands of the tachyon net branched out farther and farther, questing like the root tendrils of an insidious weed. For centuries now, she had followed the extensions of the tachyon net in their random windings.

  She shot along one such strand from intersection point to intersection point. If the Oracle followed them long enough and far enough, she would eventually reach the nexus from which they all emanated, but the pieces were not yet in position, and the timing was not right for that battle. Following the tachyon net farther would not serve the Oracle's purposes, nor would it take her to Duncan Idaho and the no-ship. If the net had found the lost vessel, the Enemy would have seized it already; therefore, logically, she needed to look beyond the net.

  Soaring at the speed of thought, the Oracle remained amazed by the vessel's uncanny ability to elude her, yet she knew very well the power personified in a Kwisatz Haderach. And this particular one, by his very destiny, was more powerful than any previous one. The prophecies said so. Future history, when looked at from a broad enough perspective, was indeed predetermined.

  Trillions of humans over tens of thousands of years had exhibited a latent racial prescient ability. In myths and legends, the same prediction kept cropping up--the End Times, titanic battles that signaled epic changes in history and society. The Butlerian Jihad had been one such battle. She had been there, too, fighting against the terrific antagonist that threatened to obliterate humanity.

  Now, that ancient Enemy was returning, an all-powerful foe that the Oracle of Time had sworn to destroy back when she was a mere human named Norma Cenva.

  She continued her search across the universe.

  The future is not for us to see as passive observers, but for us to create.

  --the recorded speeches of Muad'Dib,

  edited by the Paul Atreides ghola

  W

  ith Chani's help, Paul easily broke into the no-ship's spice stockpiles. Because of their personal connection and their burgeoning young romance, he and the Fremen girl frequently went off by themselves. The proctors no longer saw their behavior as unusual. Paul didn't doubt that the no-ship had surveillance imagers monitoring them, that some Bene Gesserits were assigned to watch over the children. But maybe--just maybe--he and Chani could get away with what they needed to do, if they moved quickly enough.

  Paul did not falsify his affections for Chani in order to divert attention, however. Though neither of them possessed their previous life's memories, he truly cared for this girl, and he knew it would grow into something
much more. He could rely on her when he did not dare trust anyone else, not even Duncan Idaho.

  After pondering the question for weeks--especially after the Ithaca's near capture at the planet of the Handlers--Paul concluded that he had to consume the spice. The ghola children had been created for a specific purpose, and the danger remained close. If he was ever to help the people aboard the no-ship, he had to know what was really inside him.

  He had to become the real Paul Atreides again.

  The melange storage chamber was not heavily guarded. Since axlotl tanks now produced more than enough spice, the substance was no longer so rare as to warrant drastic protective measures. The spice was kept in metal cabinets protected only by simple locking mechanisms.

  Always wary, like a true Fremen, Chani checked the doorway behind them to make sure no one had been alerted to their presence. Her gaze was intense and concerned, but she harbored no doubts about Paul.

  The seals delayed him only for a few seconds. When he swung aside the metal door of the locker, a rich smell swept across him, redolent with the lure of potential memories. In preparation for their later obligations, all the ghola children received melange in carefully measured doses in their food. They were familiar with the flavor, but never consumed enough to experience any of the effects. Paul was well aware of how dangerous it could be. And how powerful.

  Touching the neatly stacked spice, Paul knew it was all chemically identical, regardless of the manufacturing processes. Still, he searched among the wafers and selected several specific ones. He didn't know why, but in his heart he could feel it was right.

  "Why those, Usul? Are the others poisoned?"

  Then he understood. "Most of this spice came from axlotl tanks. But not these--" He showed her his chosen wafers, though they all looked the same. "This spice was made by worms. Sheeana harvested it from the sands in the hold. The closest thing to spice from Rakis itself." He took out several wafers of the compressed spice, much more than he had ever before consumed.

  Chani's eyes grew wide. "Usul, that is too much!"

  "It is what I need." He touched her cheeks. "Chani, spice is the key. I am Paul Atreides. Melange opened me to my potential before. Melange made me into what I became. I'm going to explode inside unless I find a way to unlock myself." He closed the storage cabinet again. "I am the oldest of the ghola children. This could be the answer for all of us."

  When Chani set her jaw, the muscles in her lean, elfin face stood out. "As you say, Usul. Let us hurry."

  They ran through the no-ship corridors, using private passages where few surveillance imagers would be, and opened one of the thousands of empty, unused cabins. They slipped inside together. What would the Sisterhood's watchers think of that?

  "I should lie down before I start." He sat on the narrow bed. She brought him water from the wall dispenser, and he drank gratefully. "Watch over me, Chani."

  "I will, Usul."

  He sniffed the wafers of spice, merely guessing but pretending that he knew how much he had to consume. The smell was maddening, mouthwatering, terrifying.

  "Be careful, my beloved." Chani kissed him on the cheek, then hesitantly on the lips, and stood back.

  He ate the entire wafer, swallowing the burning melange before he could lose his nerve, then grabbed some more and ate it as well. Finally, feeling as if he had stepped off a cliff, he lay back and closed his eyes. A tingling numbness was already creeping in from his extremities. His body began breaking down the chemicals inside him, and he could feel the liberated energy surging through once-familiar pathways in this Atreides body.

  And he fell into a pit of Time.

  As everything grew dark and he dropped deeper into a trance, lost and searching for the road within him, Paul beheld flashes, familiar faces: his father Duke Leto, Gurney Halleck, and the icily beautiful Princess Irulan. At this level, his thoughts were unfocused. He couldn't tell if these were real flickers of memory or just stored data points boiling to the surface from accounts he had read in the Archives. He heard his mother, Jessica, reading words to him, the verse of a ribald song Gurney sang as he played his baliset, Irulan's unsuccessful attempts at seduction. But that was not enough, not what he sought.

  Paul dug deeper. The spice sharpened the images until the details were too intense, too difficult to discern. The fragments suddenly coalesced, and he saw a true vision, like a snapshot of reality exploding inside his mind: He felt himself lying on a cold floor. He was bleeding, a knife wound deep within him. He felt warm blood pouring onto the floor. His own blood. With each pulse of his slowing heart, more and more redness drained away.

  It was a mortal wound; he knew it as surely as any animal that crawls away to die. Paul's mind spun. He tried to look beyond himself to see where he was, to see who was with him. He was going to fade away and die there. . . .

  Who had killed him? Where was this place?

  At first he thought he was the ancient blind Preacher dying among crowds before the Temple of Alia in hot Arrakeen . . . but this wasn't Dune. There was no mob, no hot desert sunshine. Paul could discern the outlines of an ornate ceiling above him, a strange fountain nearby. He was in a palace somewhere, a great domed and colonnaded structure. Perhaps it was the Palace of Emperor Muad'Dib, like the model the ghola children had built in the recreation room. He could not tell.

  Then he remembered an event from his library research. Count Fenring had stabbed him . . . an assassination attempt that would have placed the daughter of Feyd-Rautha and Lady Fenring on the new throne. Paul had very nearly died then.

  Was he seeing a flashback of that crucial moment in the first years of his reign, during the bloodiest time of his jihad? It was so vivid!

  But why, of all the memories that might be locked within him, would this particular one come to the front of his mind? What was its significance?

  Something else didn't seem right. This memory felt uncrystallized and impermanent. Maybe the melange hadn't triggered his ghola memories at all. What if it had instead activated the famed Atreides prescience? Perhaps this was a vision of something deadly that was yet to occur.

  As he lay writhing on his bed, deep in the spice-induced vision, Paul felt the pain of the wound as if it were unbearably real. How can I prevent this from happening? Is this a true future I am seeing, a new vision of how my ghola body will die?

  The scene blurred before him. The dying Paul continued to bleed on the floor, his hands covered with red. Looking up, Paul was shocked to see himself, a young face very much like the one he routinely saw in a mirror. But this version of his face was pure evil, with mocking eyes and the laughter of gloating triumph.

  "You knew I would kill you!" his other self shouted. "You could just as well have driven in the dagger with your own hands." Then he greedily consumed more spice, like a victor taking his spoils.

  Paul saw himself laughing, and he felt his own life fading. . . .

  PAUL WAS BEING shaken out of the blackness. His muscles and joints ached terribly, but this was nothing like the searing pain of the deep knife wound.

  "He's coming around." Sheeana's voice, grim, almost scolding.

  "Usul--Usul! Can you feel me?" Someone was clasping his hand. Chani.

  "I don't dare risk another stimulant." It was one of the Bene Gesserit Suk doctors. Paul knew them all, since they had been so maddeningly efficient at checking the gholas for any possible physical flaw.

  His eyes flickered open, but his vision was veiled with a blue spice haze. He saw Chani now, looking worried. Her young face was so beautiful, and such a stark contrast to that evil, laughing image of himself.

  "Paul Atreides, what have you done?" Sheeana demanded, looming over him. "What were you hoping to accomplish? This was damned foolish."

  His voice was dry, barely a croak. "I was . . . dying. Stabbed. I saw it."

  This both alarmed and excited Sheeana. "You remember your first life? Stabbed? As an old blind man in Arrakeen?"

  "No. Different." He searched in h
is mind, realized the truth. He'd had a vision, but had not triggered the full return of his memories.

  Chani gave him water, which he gulped. The Suk doctor hovered over him, still trying to help, but she could accomplish little.

  Coming out of the spice haze, he said, "It was prescience, I think. But I still don't remember my real life."

  Sheeana gave the other Bene Gesserit Sister a sharp, startled look.

  "Prescience," he repeated, with more conviction this time.

  If he had meant to allay Sheeana's worries, Paul had not succeeded.

  The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not . . . yet, I occurred.

  --PAUL ATREIDES,

  Memories of Muad'Dib

  N

  ow that he was himself again, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen found that his days on Caladan were always full, though not in a way he would have preferred. Since his awakening, he had worked to understand the new situation and how descendants of the Atreides had mucked up the universe since he'd been gone.

  Once, House Harkonnen had been among the wealthiest in the Landsraad. Now the great noble house didn't even exist, except in his memory. The Baron had plenty of work to do.

  Intellectually and emotionally, he should have been pleased to lord it over the homeworld of his mortal enemies, but Caladan didn't compare to his beloved Giedi Prime. He shuddered to think what that place looked like now, and he longed to return there and restore it to its former glory. But he had no Piter de Vries, no Feyd-Rautha, not even his cloddish but useful nephew Rabban.

  Khrone had, however, promised him everything--provided that he helped the Face Dancers with their scheme.

  Now that the Baron's ghola memories were back, he was allowed some diversions. In the dungeons of the castle, the Baron had certain playthings. Humming to himself, he skittered down the stairways to the lowest levels, where he paused to listen to the enchanting whispers and moans. The moment he entered the main chamber, however, everything fell silent.