Hunters Of Dune Read online

  In the older laboratory, captured women were chemically lobotomized and converted into breeding vats. From separate operations in the new wing, Uxtal heard the muted screams of women being tortured, because pain (technically, the adrenaline, endorphins, and other chemicals the body produced in response to pain) was a primary ingredient in the special spice the Honored Matres craved.

  Matre Superior Hellica had already gone to the new chambers to oversee the niceties. "Our facility will be ready as soon as I have properly christened it." She wore a tight-fitting gold-and-silver leotard that revealed the generous curves of her body, along with a matching cape and a jeweled headdress that looked like a crown mounted on her blonde hair.

  He didn't particularly want to know what that meant. Each time he saw the Matre Superior, Uxtal struggled not to reveal his loathing, though she must recognize it on his grayish face. For his own survival, he tried to show just the right amount of fear in her presence, but not too much. He did not grovel--at least he didn't think so.

  After a particularly loud volley of screams came from the new wing, Hellica swept through a doorway and into the laboratory section where the impregnated axlotl tank lay on its chromed table. She enjoyed looking at the single mound of sweating, odorous flesh. The Matre Superior nudged Uxtal roughly enough to knock him off balance, as if he were her comrade in arms. "Such an interesting way to treat the human body, don't you think? Only suitable for women who are worthy of nothing else."

  Uxtal had not asked where the donor women came from. It was none of his business, and he didn't want to know. He suspected the whores had captured several of their hated Bene Gesserit rivals out on other planets. Now, that would have been interesting to see! As bloated axlotl tanks, at least these women had gone to their proper place, to be receptacles for offspring. The ideal of a Tleilaxu female . . .

  Hellica scowled upon seeing both laboratory assistants tending the one pregnant tank. "Is that project more important than mine? We are in need of our drug--do not delay!"

  Both assistants froze. Bowing before her, Uxtal said immediately, "Of course not, Matre Superior. We await your pleasure."

  "My pleasure? What would you know of my pleasure?" She loomed over the little man, regarding him with her predatory gaze. "I wonder if you have the stomach for this work. All the original Masters are dead as punishment for their past crimes. Do not make me add you to that number."

  Crimes? Uxtal didn't know what the original Tleilaxu had done to the Honored Matres to earn a hatred strong enough to warrant complete extinction. "I only know genetics, Matre Superior. Not politics." He quickly bowed and scuttled out of her reach. "I am perfectly happy to serve you."

  Her pale eyebrows arched. "Your lot in life is to serve."

  When the past returns to us with all its glory and pain, we don't know whether to embrace it or to flee.

  --DUNCAN IDAHO,

  More Than a Mentat

  T

  he two axlotl tanks in the no-ship's medical center had once been Bene Gesserit females. Volunteers. Now all that remained of the women were gross mounds of flesh, their arms and legs flabby, their minds completely vacated. They were living wombs, biological factories for the creation of spice.

  Teg could not look at them without feeling bleak. The air in the med center smelled of disinfectants, medicinal chemicals, and bitter cinnamon.

  The Acolytes' Manual said, "A defined need leads to a solution." In the first year of their odyssey, the Tleilaxu Master had revealed how to manufacture melange with axlotl tanks. Knowing what was at stake, two of the refugee women had offered themselves. The Bene Gesserit always did what was necessary, even to this extent.

  Years ago on Chapterhouse, Mother Superior Odrade had permitted the creation of axlotl tanks for the Sisterhood's own ghola experiments. Volunteers were found, females who could serve the order in no better way. Fourteen years ago, his own reborn body had emerged from one of them.

  The Bene Gesserit know how to demand sacrifices of us. Somehow they make us want to do it. Teg had defeated many enemies, using his tactical genius to achieve victory after victory for the Sisterhood; his death on Rakis had been the ultimate sacrifice.

  Teg continued to look at the axlotl tanks--at these women. These Sisters had also given their lives, but in a different way. And now, thanks to Scytale and his hidden nullentropy capsule, Sheeana needed more tanks.

  When studying the contents of the nullentropy capsule, the Suk doctors had also discovered Face Dancer cells, which immediately cast suspicion upon the Tleilaxu Master. The frantic Scytale insisted that the process was controllable, that they could identify and select only those individuals they wished to resurrect as gholas. With his life beginning to ebb, the little Master had lost all of his bargaining power. In a moment of vulnerability, he explained how to separate Face Dancer cells from the others.

  Then, once again, he begged to be allowed to grow a ghola of himself before it was too late.

  Now, Sheeana paced the floor beside him in the medical center. Shoulders stiff and neck arched, she looked over at Scytale. The Tleilaxu Master was not yet comfortable with his new freedom. He seemed nervous inside the med-center, as if drowning in guilt because he had revealed so much. He had surrendered everything, and now he no longer had any control.

  "Three more tanks would be best," Scytale said, as if discussing the weather. "Otherwise, creating the group of desired gholas will take too long, one at a time, each with nine months of gestation."

  "I am confident we will find willing volunteers." Sheeana's voice was cold.

  "When you finally begin this program, my own ghola must be first." Scytale looked from one pale-skinned axlotl tank to the other like a doctor inspecting test tubes in a lab. "My need is greatest."

  "No," Sheeana said. "We must first verify that what you claim is true, that these cells are indeed samples of who you say they are."

  Scowling, the diminutive man looked at Teg as if to find support from a person who claimed to worship honor and loyalty. "You know the genetics have been verified. Your own libraries and chromosome sequencers have had months to compare and catalog the cellular material I gave you."

  "Simply sifting through all those cells and choosing the first candidates is quite a task." Sheeana sounded pragmatic. All of the identified cells had been separated into secure storage drawers in the genetic library, code-locked and placed under guard so that no one could tamper with them. "Your people were extremely ambitious in the cells they stole, dating all the way back to the Butlerian Jihad."

  "We acquired them. My people may not have had a breeding program such as yours, but we did know to watch the Atreides line. We understood that great events were about to unfold, that your longstanding search for a superhuman Kwisatz Haderach was likely to reach fruition around the time of Muad'Dib."

  "So how did you get all the cells?" Teg asked.

  "For millennia, Tleilaxu workers have been handlers of the dead. Though many consider that an unclean and despised profession, we did have unprecedented access. Unless a body is completely destroyed, it is simple enough to acquire a skin scraping or two."

  At fourteen, Teg was still gangly and on his way to becoming a tall man. His voice cracked at embarrassing moments, though the thoughts and memories in his head belonged to an old man. He spoke just loudly enough for Sheeana to hear, "I would like to meet Paul Muad'Dib and his mother, the Lady Jessica."

  "That is just the beginning of what I offer," Scytale said, aiming his glare at Sheeana. "And you did agree to my terms, Reverend Mother."

  "You will have your ghola. But I am not inclined to hurry."

  The elfin man bit his lower lip with tiny, sharp teeth. "There is a ticking clock. I must have time to create a Scytale ghola and raise it so that I can trigger his memories."

  Sheeana gave a dismissive wave. "You said yourself that you had at least a decade left, possibly fifteen years. You'll have the best medical care. Our Bene Gesserit doctors will keep watch over your cond
ition. The Rabbi is a retired Suk doctor, if you don't want females tending you. In the meantime, we will test the new cells you offer us."

  "That is why you'll need three more axlotl tanks! The conversion process will take some months, then the implantation of the embryo, then gestation. We will need to perform many tests. The sooner we produce enough gholas to allay your suspicions, the sooner you will see the truth of what I have told you."

  "And the sooner you can have your own ghola," Teg added. He stared intently at the two axlotl tanks until he could picture the women they had been before the hideous conversion process, real females with hearts and minds. They'd had lives and dreams, and people who cared about them. Yet, as soon as the Sisterhood had declared its need, they'd offered themselves without hesitation.

  Teg knew that Sheeana had only to ask for more. New volunteers would consider it an honor to give birth to heroes from the legendary days of Dune.

  We are the wellspring of human survival.

  --MOTHER COMMANDER MURBELLA

  M

  urbella's scouts returned ashen-faced from a flyby of the intact coordinates found in the scuttled Honored Matre ship. Racing out to a distant star system far beyond the known limits of the Scattering, they discovered evidence of great carnage.

  When Murbella received the recordings from the scouts, she watched them in her private chamber along with Bellonda, Doria, and the old Archives Mother Accadia.

  "Utterly wiped out," said the scout. Young and intense, she was a former Honored Matre named Kiria. "Even with all their military might and violence . . ." She couldn't seem to believe what she was saying or what she had seen. Kiria installed a shigawire spool into a viewer and projected holograms in the middle of the room. "See for yourselves."

  The unidentified planet, now a charred tomb, was obviously a former Honored Matre population center, with the remnants of dozens of large cities laid out in their characteristic fashion. The inhabitants were all dead, buildings blackened, entire metropolitan sections turned to glassy craters, structures melted, spaceports cracked, and the atmosphere turned into a dark stew of soot and poisonous vapors.

  "This is worse. Look." Deeply disturbed, Kiria switched to images that showed a battlefield in space. Strewn through the orbital zone floated the wreckage of thousands of large, heavily armored ships. Bristling with weapons, these were the Honored Matres' great vessels--all of them destroyed, littering space in a wide ring. "We scanned the wreckage, Mother Commander. All of the craft were of a similar design to the Honored Matre battleship we encountered here. We found no other types of ships. Unbelievable!"

  "What is the significance of that?" Bellonda said.

  Kiria snapped at her, "It means that the Honored Matres were annihilated--thousands of their best battleships--and they didn't manage to take out a single one of the Enemy! Not a one!" She brought a fist down on the table.

  "Unless the Enemy removed their own damaged warships, to keep their workings secret," Accadia said, though the explanation did not seem likely.

  "You discovered no clues about the nature of the Enemy? Or of the Honored Matres themselves?" Murbella had tried again to search through Other Memory, striving to delve into her Honored Matre past, but had encountered only mysteries and dead ends. She could trace back along the Bene Gesserit lines, following life upon life all the way back to Old Earth. But in the Honored Matre line, she found almost nothing at all.

  "I gathered enough evidence to be frightened," Kiria said. "This is clearly a force we cannot defeat. If that many Honored Matres were wiped out, what hope does the New Sisterhood have?"

  "There is always hope," old Accadia said unconvincingly, as if quoting a platitude.

  "And now there is incentive as well as a dire warning," Murbella said. She looked at all of her advisors. "I will call a gathering immediately."

  ALMOST A THOUSAND Sisters had been invited from all over the planet, and the receiving hall had to be substantially modified for the event. The Mother Commander's throne and all symbols of her office had been removed; soon the meaning of that gesture would become apparent to all. On the walls and vaulted ceiling, she had ordered all frescoes and other ornamentation to be covered, leaving the huge chamber with a starkly utilitarian character. A signal that they needed to focus on bare necessities.

  Without explaining why, Odrade-within reminded Murbella of a Bene Gesserit axiom: " 'All life is a series of seemingly insignificant tasks and decisions, culminating in the definition of an individual and her purpose in life.' " And she followed that with another: " 'Each Sister is part of the larger human organism, a life within a life.' "

  Remembering the stew of discontent that simmered among the factions even here on Chapterhouse, Murbella saw what Odrade was getting at. "When our own Sisters kill each other, more than just individuals die."

  At a recent supper, an altercation had left a Bene Gesserit dead and an Honored Matre in a deep coma. Murbella had decided to convert the comatose one into an axlotl tank to set an example, though even that was inadequate punishment for such continued, petty defiance.

  As she paced the speaking hall, the Mother Commander forced herself to recall the progress she had made over the past four years since their forced fusion. She herself had required years to make the fundamental change, to accept the core teachings of the Sisterhood and see the flaws in Honored Matre methods of violence and short-term goals.

  When she was held captive among the Bene Gesserit, even she had naively assumed her strength and abilities would prove to be greater than that of the witches. Such arrogance! At first she had schemed to destroy the Sisterhood from within, but the more Bene Gesserit knowledge and philosophy she received, the more she began to understand--and frown upon--her former organization. Murbella was merely the first convert, the first hybrid of Honored Matre and Bene Gesserit . . .

  On the morning of the gathering, the mixed representatives assumed their marked seats, dark green cushions arranged on the floor in ever-expanding concentric circles, like the petals of a blossoming flower. The Mother Commander placed her own cushion down among the Sisters, rather than looming over them from a high throne.

  Murbella wore a simple black singlesuit that gave her perfect freedom of movement, but without the flashy ornamentation, cape, or bright colors the Honored Matres preferred; she also eschewed the concealing robes the Bene Gesserits usually draped over themselves.

  As the representatives situated themselves in a clash of mismatched clothes and colors, Murbella decided abruptly that she would impose a dress code. She should have done so a year ago, following the bloody school-yard brawl that had left several acolytes dead. Even after four years, these women still clung to their old identities. No more armbands, no more gaudy colors or capes, no more flowing ravenlike robes. From now on, a simple black singlesuit would do for everyone.

  Both sides would have to accept changes. Not compromise, but synthesis. Compromises only drove both ends of the curve to an unacceptable and weaker average; instead, both sides must take the best from the other and discard the rest.

  Sensing their palpable uneasiness, Murbella rose to her knees and stared the women down. She had already heard of more former Honored Matres slipping away to join the outcasts in the northern regions. Other rumors--no longer so absurd--suggested that some had even joined the largest group of rebels led by Matre Superior Hellica on Tleilax. In light of what they had all just learned about the Enemy, such distractions could not be tolerated any longer.

  She knew that many of the gathered Sisters would automatically argue against the changes Murbella planned to impose. They already resented her for the turmoil she had caused in the past. For a chilling moment, she compared herself to Julius Caesar standing before the Senate to propose monumental reforms that would have benefited the Roman Empire. And the Senators had voted with their daggers.

  Before speaking, Murbella performed a Bene Gesserit breathing exercise to calm herself. She became conscious of a change in the air currents a
round her, something intangible. Narrowing her eyes, she took note of details, of the placement of seated and standing women.

  After activating the receiving hall's sound system with a wave of her hand, Murbella spoke into a microphone that dropped on a suspensor and hovered in front of her face. "I am unlike any leader the Sisterhood or the Honored Matres have ever had. It is not my purpose to please everyone, but instead to forge an army that has a chance--however slight--of survival. Our survival. We cannot afford the time for gradual changes."

  "Can we afford changes at all?" grumbled one Honored Matre. "I cannot see how they have benefited us."

  "That is because you cannot see. Will you open your eyes, or congratulate yourself on your blindness?" The other woman's eyes flashed, though the orange flecks had long ago gone away from the lack of orange spice substitute.

  Just behind her, a Bene Gesserit Sister arrived late. She approached along a narrow aisle, scanning the area around her as if searching for her seat. But every woman knew her assigned place. The latecomer should not be going in that direction.

  Watching with peripheral vision as she spoke, Murbella gave no sign that she had noticed anything amiss. The dark-haired and high-cheekboned woman looked unfamiliar. Not someone I know.

  She kept her gaze forward, internally counting the seconds as she mentally mapped the newcomer's approach. Then, without looking back, using the full reflexes wired into her from both Honored Matre and Bene Gesserit training, Murbella sprang to her feet. With breathtaking speed, she spun in the air to face the woman. Before her feet could touch the floor again, the Mother Commander bent backward, just as the attacker moved in a blur, pulling something from the pocket of her robe and slashing out in a single fluid motion. Milky white and crystalline-sharp--an ancient crysknife!

  Murbella's muscular responses bypassed conscious thought. She dipped with one flattened hand, avoiding the tip of the plunging crysknife and drove upward to strike the wrist. A thin bone popped with a sound like dry wood breaking. The would-be assassin's fingers opened, and the crysknife began to fall, but so slowly it seemed to hang suspended, like a feather. When the woman raised her other arm to fend off a second blow, Murbella hit her with a smashing punch to the throat, crushing her larynx before she could cry out.