Sheeana knew he had at least one other important secret, a piece of incredibly vital knowledge. The witch could sense it! But Scytale had never been driven to the extremes necessary to reveal what he carried. Not yet.

As far as he knew, he was the only surviving original Master. The Lost Ones had betrayed his people, aligning themselves with the Honored Matres who obliterated one sacred Tleilaxu world after another. As he had escaped from Tleilax, he had seen the ferocious whores launch their attack on holy Bandalong itself. Just thinking of it brought tears to his eyes. By default, am I now the Mahai, the Master of Masters?

Scytale had escaped the rampaging Honored Mattes and demanded sanctuary among the Bene Gesserit on Chapterhouse. Oh, they had kept him safe, but the witches had been unwilling to negotiate with him unless he gave up his sacred secrets.

All of them! Initially the Sisterhood had wanted Tleilaxu axlotl tanks to create their own gholas, and he had been forced to reveal the information to them. Within a year after the destruction of Rakis, they grew a ghola of Bashar Miles Teg. Next, the Mother Superior had pressured him to explain how to use the tanks to manufacture mélange, and Scytale refused, considering it too great a concession.

Unfortunately, he had hoarded his special knowledge too well, holding on to his advantage for too long. By the time he chose to reveal the workings of the axlotl tanks, the Bene Gesserits had already found their own solution. They had brought back small sandworms, and spice was sure to follow. He had been stupid to negotiate with them! To trust them! That bargaining chip had become useless until the passengers aboard the Ithaca had needed spice.

Of all the secrets Scytale had within him, only the largest one remained, and even his dire need had not been great enough to reveal it. Until now.

Everything had changed. Everything.

Scytale looked down at the untouched remnants of his meal. Powindah food, unclean outsider food. They tried to disguise it so that he would eat, yet he always suspected that their cooking contained impure substances. He had no choice, however. Would the Prophet prefer him to starve rather than eat unacceptable food& especially now, since he was the last great Master?

Scytale alone carried the future of his once-great people, the intricate knowledge of the language of God. His survival was more vital than ever.

He paced the perimeter of his private chambers, measuring the boundaries of his confinement one tiny footstep at a time. The silence weighed heavily on him. He knew exactly what he had to do. He would offer the last scraps of his dignity and his hidden knowledge in the process; he had to gain as much advantage as he could.

There wasn't much time! After a wave of dizziness passed, his stomach roiled, and he clutched his abdomen. Slumping back onto his cot, Scytale tried to drive away the pounding in his head and the twisting in his gut. He could feel the creeping death inside. The progressive bodily degenenv tion had taken root and was even now seeping through his body, winding through the tissues, the threads of muscle, the nerve fibers.

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ghola after ghola. A new copy was always growing in a tank, ready for whenever it might be needed.

As genetic wizards, the great Tleilaxu created their own path from one physical body to the next. Their schemes had continued for so many millennia that the Masters let themselves become complacent. Proud and blind, they had not considered the depths into which Fate might hurl them.

Now the Tleilaxu worlds were overrun, the laboratories ransacked, all the gholas of the Masters destroyed. No reincarnation of Scytale waited in the wings. He had nowhere to turn.

And now he was dying.

In creating one ghola after another, the Tleilaxu Masters had wasted no effort on perfection, which they believed was arrogance in the eyes of God, since any human creation must be flawed. Thus, the Masters' gholas contained cumulative genetic mistakes, errors in repe-tition that eventually resulted in a shortened life span for each body.

Scytale and his fellow Masters had allowed themselves to believe the shortened life span of each incarnation was irrelevant, since they could simply be restored in a new, fresh body. What was the signifi' cance of an extra decade or two, so long as the chain of reawakened gholas remained unbroken?

Unfortunately, Scytale now faced the fatal flaw, alone. There were no gholas of himself and no available axlotl tanks that he could use to create one. But the witches could do it&

He didn't know how much time he had left.

Closely attuned to his bodily processes, Scytale was tormented by his degeneration. If he was optimistic, he might have fifteen years remaining.

Always before, Scytale had held onto the final secret hidden inside his body, refusing to offer it in trade. But now his last resistance was broken. As the sole remaining keeper of Tleilaxu secrets and memories, he could risk no further delay. Survival was more important than secrets.

He touched his chest, knowing that implanted beneath his skin was a hitherto-undetected nullentropy capsule, a tiny treasure trove of preserved cells that the Tleilaxu had collected for thousands upon thousands of years.

Key figures from history were contained therein, obtained from secret scrapings of dead bodies: Tleilaxu Masters, Face Dancers-even Paul Muad'Dib, Duke Leto Atreides and Jessica, Chani, Stilgar, the Tyrant Leto II, Gurney Halleck, Thufir Hawat, and other legendary figures all the way back to Serena Butler and Xavier Harkonnen from the Butlerian Jihad.

The Sisterhood would be desperate to have this. Granting him complete freedom of the ship would be a minor concession compared to what he would demand as his true recompense. My own ghola. Continuation.

Scytale swallowed hard, felt the tendrils of death within him, and knew there could be no turning back. Survival is more important than secrets, he repeated to himself in the privacy of his mind.

He sent a signal to summon Sheeana. He would make the witches an offer that they could not afford to ignore.

We carry our grail in our heads. Hold it gently and reverently if it ever surfaces in your consciousness.

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MOTHER SUPERIOR DARWI ODRADE

The air smelled of spice, harsh and unprocessed, the acrid odor of the deadly Water of Life. The scent of fear and triumph, the Agony which all potential Reverend Mothers must face.

Please, Murbella thought, let my daughter survive this, as I did. She did not know to whom she was praying.

As Mother Commander, she had to show strength and confidence, regardless of what she felt inside. But Rinya was one of the twins, a last tenuous connection with Duncan. The tests had demonstrated that she was qualified, talented, and, despite her young age, ready. Rinya had always been the more aggressive of the twins, goal driven, reaching for the impossible. She wanted to become a Reverend Mother as young as Sheeana had been. Fourteen! Murbella both admired her daughter for that drive, and feared for her.

In the background, she heard the deep-voiced Bene Gesserit Bellonda engaged in a vociferous argument with her Honored Matre counterpart, Doria. A common occurrence. The pair were squabbling in the corridor of the Chapterhouse Keep.

"She is young, far too young! Only a child-" "A child?" Doria said. "She is the daughter of the Mother Commander and Duncan Idaho!"

"Yes, the genetics are strong, but it is still madness. We risk so much if we push her too soon. Give her another year."

"She is part Honored Matre. That alone should carry her through."

They all turned to watch as black-robed proctors brought Rinya from an anteroom, prepared for her ordeal. As Mother Commander and a Bene Gesserit, Murbella was not supposed to show favoritism or love toward her own daughters.

In fact, most of the Sisterhood's children did not know the identity of their parents.

Rinya had been born only a few minutes before her sister Janess. The girl-a prodigy-was ambitious, impatient, and unquestionably talented, while her sister shared the same qualities but with just a hint more caution. Rinya always had to be first.

Murbella had watched her twin daughters excel at every challenge, and acceded to Rinya's request. If anyone had superior potential, this one did-or so Rinya had convinced herself.

The current time of crisis forced the New Sisterhood to take greater risks than usual, to chance losing daughters in order to gain much-needed Reverend Mothers. If Rinya failed at this, there would be no second chance for her.

None. Murbella felt a knot in her chest.

Moving methodically, the proctors strapped Rinya's arms to a table to keep her from lashing out during the throes of the transition. One proctor gave an extra tug to the strap on her left wrist, making the girl wince and then flash a dark glare of displeasure-so like an Honored Matre! But Rinya uttered no complaint. Her lips moved faintly, and Murbella recognized the words, the age-old Litany Against Fear.

I must not fear&

Good! At least the girl was not so arrogant as to ignore the true weight and terror of what she was about to go through. Murbella remembered when she had faced the same test.

Glancing toward the door, where Bellonda and Doria had finally stopped bickering, she saw the other twin enter. Janess was named after a woman from long ago who had saved young Duncan Idaho from the Harkonnens. Duncan had told her that story one night after they'd made love, no doubt believing that Murbella would forget. He himself had never learned the names of any of their daughters: Rinya and Janess, Tanidia who was just beginning her acolyte training, and Gianne, only three years old, born just before Duncan had escaped.

Now Janess seemed reluctant to come all the way into the room, but she would not leave her sister alone during this ordeal. She brushed her curly black hair out of her face, revealing fearful eyes; she clearly didn't want to think about what could go wrong when Rinya consumed the deadly poison. Spice Agony.

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Even the words evoked mystery and terror.

Looking down at the table, Murbella saw her daughter mouth the Litany again: Fear is the mind-killer&

She didn't seem aware of Janess or any of the women in the room. The air had a close, heady scent of bitter cinnamon and possibilities. The Mother Commander could not interfere, did not even touch the girl's hand to comfort her. Rinya was strong and determined. This ritual was not about comfort, but about adaptation and survival. A fight against death.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration& Analyzing her emotions (how like a Bene Gesserit!) Murbella won-dered whether she feared losing Rinya as a potential and valuable Reverend Mother for the Sisterhood, or as a person. Or was she more afraid of losing one of her few tangible reminders of her long-lost Duncan?

Rinya and Janess had been eleven when the no-ship disappeared with their father. The twins had been acolytes, dutifully undergoing strict Bene Gesserit training. In all those years before Duncan's departure, neither girl had been allowed to meet him.

Murbella's gaze met Janess's, and a flash of emotion passed between them like roiling smoke. She turned away, concentrating on the girl on the table, reassuring Rinya by her presence. The visible strain on her daughter's face fanned the flames of her own doubt.

Flushed, Bellonda entered the room, disturbing the solemn meditations. She glanced at the imperfectly hidden anxiety on Rinya's face, then up at Murbella. "Preparations are complete, Mother Commander."

Close behind her, Doria said, "We should get on with it."

Strapped down on the table, Rinya lifted her head against the restraints, turned her gaze from her twin sister to her mother, and then flashed Janess a reassuring smile. "I am ready. You will be too, my sister." She lay back, refocused, and continued mouthing the litany.

I will face my fear&

Saying nothing, Murbella went to stand by Janess, who was clearly in turmoil, barely restraining herself. Murbella gripped her forearm, but her daughter didn't flinch. What did she know? What doubts had the twins voiced to each other in their acolyte bungalows at night?

One of the proctors swung an oral syringe into position, then used her fingers to open Rinya's mouth. The young woman let her mouth fall slack as the proctor inserted the syringe.

Murbella wanted to shout at her daughter, telling her that she did not need to prove anything. Not until she was absolutely ready. But even if she'd had doubts, Rinya would never change her mind. She was stubborn, determined to go through with the process. And Murbella was forbidden to interfere. She was Mother Commander now, not a mere mother.

Caught up in her ordeal, Rinya closed her eyes in total acceptance. The line of her jaw was firm, defying anything to harm her. Murbella had seen that expression on Duncan's face many times.

Janess burst forward unexpectedly, no longer able to contain her misgivings.

"She is not ready! Can't you see that? She told me. She knows she can't-"

Startled by the disturbance, Rinya turned her head, but the proctors had already activated the pumps. A gush of potent chemical odor stung the air just as Janess tried to yank the syringe out of her sister's mouth.

With surprising speed for her bulk, Bellonda shouldered Janess aside, knocking her to the floor.

"Janess, stop this!" Murbella snapped with all the command she could muster.

When her daughter continued to struggle, she used Voice. "Stop!" At this, the young woman's muscles involuntarily froze.

"You're wasting an insufficiently prepared Sister," Janess cried. "My sister!"

Murbella said in a withering voice, "You must not interfere with the Agony in any way. You have distracted Rinya at a vital moment."

One of the proctors announced, "We succeeded, despite the disturbance. Rinya has taken the Water of Life."

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The poison began to act. DEADLY EUPHORIA burned through her veins, challenging her cellular ability to deal with it. Rinya began to see her own future. Like a Guild Navigator, her mind was able to negotiate a safe path through the veils of time, avoiding obstacles and curtains that blocked her view. She saw herself on the table, along with her mother and twin sister, who were unable to hide their concern. It was like looking through a blurred lens.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me& Then, incontrovertibly, as if curtains had been pulled from a window to reveal a flood of blinding light, Rinya beheld her own death- and could do nothing to prevent it. Nor could Janess, who shouted. And Murbella realized: She knew.

Locked away inside her body, Rinya experienced a powerful lance of pain from the core of her body to her brain.

And when it has gone past me I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain& Rinya had recalled the entire Litany. Then she felt nothing at all.

RINYA CONVULSED on the table, trying to rip free of the restraints. The teenager's face had become a contorted mask of shock, pain, and terror. Her eyes were glazed& almost gone.

Murbella could not cry out, could not speak. She stood utterly still as a fierce storm churned within her. Janess had known! Or had she caused it?

For a moment Rinya lapsed into quiescence, her eyelids fluttered, and then she let loose a horrendous scream that cut through the room with a knife of sound.

In slow motion, Murbella reached for her dead daughter and touched the still-warm skin of her cheek. In the background, she heard Janess's anguished cry fill the room, alongside her own.

It is only through constant and diligent practice that we are able to achieve the potential-the perfection-of our lives. Those of us who have had more than one life have had more opportunity to practice.

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DUNCAN IDAHO, A Thousand Lives

Duncan faced his opponent in the neutral-walled chamber, holding a short-sword in one hand, a kindjal dagger in the other. Miles Teg, steely eyed, did not blink. The room's padding and insulation swallowed most sounds.

It would be a mistake to view this youth as a mere boy. Teg's reflexes and speed could match, or even defeat, any fighter pitted against him& and Duncan could sense something more about him, a mysterious skill set that the young Bashar kept well hidden.

But then, Duncan thought, we all do the same thing.

"Activate your shield, Miles. Always be prepared. For anything."

The two men reached to their belts and touched the power buttons. A small, humming half-shield appeared, a rectangular blur in the air that adjusted to its wearer's movements, swinging to protect vulnerable areas.

These walls and the hard floor held many memories for Duncan, like indelible stains on the impermeable plates. He and Murbella had used this as their practice room, improving their methods, fighting, colliding& and often ending in a sexual tumble. Because he was a Mentat, those individual memories would never fade, keeping him strongly connected to Murbella, as if by a fish hook caught in his chest.

Now, as part of the training dance, Duncan eased forward and touched his shield to Teg's. The crackle of polarized fields and sharp smell of ozone answered them. The two stepped back, raised their blades in a salute, and began.

"We will review the ancient Ginaz disciplines," Duncan said.

The young man slashed with his dagger. Teg reminded him very much of Duke Leto-intentionally so, thanks to generations of Bene Gesserit breeding.

Expecting a feint, Duncan parried upward, but the teenage Bashar reversed his feint and turned it into a real attack, punching the blade against the half shield. He had moved too quickly, though. Teg still wasn't accustomed to this odd method of fighting, and the Holtzman field deflected the dagger.

Duncan skipped back, cracked Teg's shield with his short-sword just to show that he could, and took a step in retreat. "It is an archaic dueling method, Miles, but one with many nuances. Though it was developed long before the time of Muad'Dib, some might say it came from a more civilized time."

"No one studies the methods of Swordmasters anymore."

"Exactly! Therefore, you will have skills in your repertoire that no one else possesses." They clashed again, the metal-clattering of sword against sword, dagger fending off dagger. "And, if Scytale's nullentropy tube truly contains what he says it does, we may soon have others who are familiar with those ancient times."

The recent and unexpected revelation by the captive Tleilaxu Master had resurrected a flood of memories from Duncan's past lives. A small implanted nullentropy capsule-perfectly preserved sample cells taken from great figures of history and legend! Sheeana and the Bene Gesserit Suk doctors had been analyzing the cells, sorting and labeling them, determining what sort of genetic treasures the Tleilaxu had given them in exchange for his freedom, in exchange for a ghola of his own.

Supposedly Thufir Hawat was in there, and Gurney Halleck, along with a number of Duncan's other long-lost comrades. Duke Leto the Just, Lady Jessica, Paul Atreides, and the "Abomination" Alia, who had once been Duncan's lover and consort. Haunted by them now, he felt achingly alone, yet filled with hope.

Was there really such a thing as the future, or was it just the past, returning over and over?

His life-lives-had always seemed to carry a definite direction. He was the legendary Duncan Idaho, a paragon of loyalty. But more than ever before, he had been feeling lost. Had the escape from Chapterhouse been the right thing to do? Who were the old man and woman, and what did they want? Were they truly the great Outside Enemy, or another threat entirely?

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eventually find a destination, or would they simply wander until the end of their days? The very idea of fleeing and hiding grated on him.

Duncan actually knew more about being hunted than anyone aboard; he'd earned a visceral understanding of it long ago. As a child in his very first lifetime under the Harkonnens, he had been used as prey in Beast Rabban's hunts. Rabban and his henchmen had turned the boy loose in a large forest preserve, where young Duncan had finally outwitted his rivals, finding a smuggler pilot who provided him with safe passage.]aness& that had been her name. He recalled telling Murbella about the escape years ago, as they lay on sweat-dampened sheets.

Sensing his distraction, Teg cut, pushed, and slid his kindjal partway through the shield before Duncan retreated, smiling with satisfaction. "Good! You are learning to control yourself."

Teg's expression did not change. Lack of control was not one of the Bashar's weak points. "You seemed distracted, so I took advantage of it."

As he looked at the young man before him, sweat dripping down his brow, Duncan saw a strangely doubled image. As an old man, the original Bashar had raised and trained the Duncan ghola child; later, after Teg's death on Rakis, the mature Duncan Idaho ghola had raised the reborn boy. Was this to be an endless cycle? Duncan Idaho and Miles Teg as eternal companions, alternating as mentor and student, each filling the same role at separate times in their lives? "I remember when I instructed young Paul Atreides in Swordmaster techniques. We had a training mek in Castle Caladan, and Paul learned to defeat it at any setting we chose. Even so, he did better against a live opponent."

"I prefer an enemy that bleeds when I defeat it." Duncan laughed. "Paul once said something just like that, too." He and Teg continued to fight for the better part of an hour, but Duncan found himself preoccupied with, and reminded of, long-past training duels. If what the Tleilaxu Master said was true and they could bring back gholas of the key comrades in Duncan's past, then these daydreams need no longer be tedious memories for him. They could become real again. Illusion, Miles. Illusion is their way.

The fashioning of false impressions to achieve real goals, that is how the Tleilaxu work.

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JANET ROXBROUGH-TEG, mother of Miles Teg

Now broken by the Face Dancers and bound by fear to do exactly as they commanded, an anxious Uxtal was dispatched to Tleilax for "an important assignment." Khrone had been expressionless as he explained to the small, frightened man, "The Honored Matres have found something in the ruins of Bandalong that interests us. We require your expertise."

Sacred Bandalong! For a moment, the thrill eclipsed his intimidation. Uxtal had heard legends of this once-great place, the heartland of his people, but he had never been there. Few of the Lost Tleilaxu had been welcomed by the suspicious original Masters. He had always hoped to make a hajj at some point in his life, a pilgrimage. But not like this&

"W-what can I do?" The Lost Tleilaxu researcher shuddered to think what the turncoat Face Dancers would demand of him. Right before his eyes, they had killed Elder Burah. By now they might well have replaced every member of the Council of Elders! Every moment was a nightmare for Uxtal; he knew that each person around him could be another hidden shape-shifter. He jumped at any startling sound, any sudden movement. He could trust no one.

But at least I am alive. He clung to that. I am still alive!

"You can work with axlotl tanks, correct? You have the knowledge necessary to grow a ghola, if we wish it?"

Uxtal knew they would kill him if he gave the wrong answer. "It requires a female body, specially adapted so that her womb becomes a factory." He swallowed hard, wondering how he could make himself appear more intelligent, more confident. A ghola? Lower-caste Tleilaxu knew nothing about the Language of God required to grow flesh, but as a member of a higher caste, Uxtal should be able to accomplish it. They would discard him otherwise. Perhaps if the Face Dancers got him just a little assistance, someone with additional knowledge&

Uxtal still cringed at the recollection of blood oozing from Elder Burah's crushed eyes, and the sickening snap as the Face Dancers broke the older man's neck. "I will do as you command."

"Good. You are the only sufficiently trained Tleilaxu still alive."

The only& ? Uxtal gulped. What had the Honored Matres found in Bandalong? And what did the Face Dancers want with it? He had not dared to ask Khrone anything else, though. He didn't want to know. Having too much knowledge could get him killed.

The Honored Matres frightened Uxtal almost as much as the turncoat Face Dancers did. The Lost Tleilaxu had been allies of the whores against the original Masters, and now Uxtal could see that Khrone and his fellow shape-shifters had made bargains of their own. He had no idea whom these new Face Dancers served. Could they possibly be& independent? Inconceivable!

ARRIVING AT THE core world of Tleilax, Uxtal was shocked at the extent of the damage. Using their terrible, unstoppable weapon, the female attackers had burned every original Tleilaxu planet in a series of horrific holocausts.

Though Bandalong itself had not been completely incinerated after all, it had been beaten nearly to death, its buildings scarred, its Masters rounded up and executed. Lower-caste workers were ground under the boot heel of the new rulers. Only the strongest structures in the capital city, including the Palace of Banda-long, had survived, and Honored Matres now occupied them.

Stepping out into the terminal of the reconstructed main shuttle station, Uxtal wavered at the unwelcome sight of the tall, dominant women. They strode about everywhere in their leotards and gaudy capes, but did no work beyond supervising and guarding the various operations. The real labor was done by surviving members of the unclean lower castes. At least Uxtal was better off than that. Khrone had chosen him for important work.

The shuttle station was hastily put together with obvious construction defects such as gaps in walls, uneven places in the floor, and doorways that did not appear to be plumb. The Honored Matres worried only about superficial Page 45

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impressions, paying little attention to details. They did not expect, or require, anything to last for long.

Two women approached him, tall and severe in their blue-and-red tights. The more dangerous-looking of the pair eyed him deprecat-ingly. He was not cheered by the fact that they seemed to know who he was. "Matre Superior Hellica awaits you." Uxtal followed at a brisk pace, eager to show his cooperation.

The two women seemed to be watching-hoping?-for him to make a wrong move.

Honored Matres enslaved males through unbreakable sexual techniques. Uxtal feared they would try to do the same to him-a process with these powindah women that he found horrifyingly unclean and disgusting. Before sending Uxtal to Tleilax, Khrone had mutilated his Lost Tleilaxu slave "as a precaution"

against the women, though Uxtal wondered if the preventive measures had not been as awful as the Honored Matres themselves& The two women shoved him into the rear passenger compartment of a groundcar and drove off. Uxtal tried to occupy himself by looking out the windows, pretending to be a sightseer or a hajji, a tourist making a pilgrimage to the most sacred of Tleilaxu cities.

The newly erected buildings had a bright vulgarity, quite unlike the grandeur of Bandalong as described in the legends. Construction activities were ongoing in every direction. Slave crews operated ground equipment, and suspensor cranes put up more buildings, working at a frenzied pace. Uxtal found it all rather disheartening.

Some shells of buildings had been reconditioned to suit the purposes of the occupying army. The groundcar sped past what once must have been a holy temple, but which now looked like a military building. Armed women filled the front plaza. An ornate statue stood blackened and forlorn, perhaps left that way as a sign of the Honored Mattes' conquest.

Uxtal felt bleaker by the moment. How was he ever going to get out of this?

What had he done to deserve his fate? While observing his surroundings, integers filled his mind as he tried to decipher codes and find a sacred mathematical explanation for what had occurred here. God always had a master plan, which could be determined if one knew the equations. He tried to count the number of holy sites that had been defiled, how many blocks they passed, how many turns they took on a winding road that led to the former Palace. It rapidly became a calculation far too complex for him to solve.

He was alert, absorbing as much information as possible, to ensure his own survival. He would do whatever was necessary to keep himself alive. It only made sense, especially if he was one of the last of his kind. God would want him to survive.

Above the west wing of the Palace, a suspensor crane floated high, lowering a bright red section of roof into place. Uxtal shuddered at the garish new look of the structure-pink columns, scarlet roofs, and lemon yellow walls. The Palace looked more like a carnival structure than a holy residence for the Masheikhs, the greatest masters.

His two escorts took Uxtal past snaking energy cables and crews of lower-caste Tleilaxu operating power tools, mounting wall hangings, installing rococo glowpanels. Uxtal entered an immense room with a high domed ceiling, which made him feel even smaller than he was. He saw charred panels and the remnants of quoted scripture from the Great Belief. The monstrous women had covered many of the verses with their sacrilegious decorations. Even hidden by lies, though, the word of God remained supremely powerful. Someday, after all this was over and he could come back, maybe he would do something about it. Make things right again.

With a noisy clatter, an ostentatious throne emerged from an opening in the floor. An older blonde woman sat back, looking like a once-beautiful queen who had been poorly preserved. The throne rose higher, until the regal woman glowered down at him. Matre Superior Hellica.

Her eyes flickered with an undertone of orange. "At this meeting, I decide whether you live or die, little man." Her words boomed so loudly that her voice must have been augmented.

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insignificant and conciliatory as possible. He wished he could disappear through an opening in the floor and escape into an underground tunnel. Or, if only he could defeat these women instead, and fight-

"Do you have vocal cords, little man? Or have they been removed? You have my permission to speak, as long as you say something intelligent."

Uxtal summoned his courage, being as brave as Elder Burah would have wanted him to be. "I-I do not know exactly why I am here, only that it is an important genetic assignment." His mind raced for a way out of his predicament. "My experience in that field is unsurpassed. If you need someone to do the work of a Tleilaxu Master, there can be no better choice."

"We have no other choice at all." Hellica sounded disgusted. "Your ego will diminish after I bond you to me sexually."

Trying not to cringe, Uxtal said, "I-I must stay focused on my work, Matre Superior, rather than be distracted by obsessive erotic thoughts."

She obviously enjoyed watching him suffer, but the Matre Superior was just toying with him. Her smile gaped red and raw, as if someone had cut a gash across her face with a razor blade. "The Face Dancers want something from you, and so do the Honored Matres. Because all Tleilaxu Masters are now dead, your specialized knowledge grants you a certain importance by default. Perhaps I won't tamper with you. Yet."

She leaned forward and glared. His two escorts stepped back, as if afraid to be in Hellica's targeting zone. "It is said you are familiar with axlotl tanks. The Masters knew how to use those tanks to create mélange. Incredible wealth! Can you do that for us?"

Uxtal felt his feet turn to ice. He couldn't stop shaking. "No, Matre Superior. The technique was not developed until after the Scattering, when my people were gone from the Old Empire. The Masters did not share that information with their Lost brothers." His heart pounded. She was obviously displeased, murderously displeased, so he continued quickly, "I do know how to grow gholas, however."

"But is that knowledge useful enough to save your life?" She heaved a disappointed sigh. "The Face Dancers seem to think so."

"And what do the Face Dancers want, Matre Superior?"

Her eyes flashed orange, and he knew he had made a mistake by blurting his question. "I have not yet finished telling you what the Honored Matres want, little man. Though we are not so weak as to be addicted to spice, like the Bene Gesserit witches, we do understand its value. You would please me most if you rediscovered how to create mélange. I will provide as many women as you need for brainless wombs." Her words carried a cruel undertone.

"There is, however, an alternative substance we use, an orange adrenaline-based chemical that is derived primarily from pain. We will show you how to manufacture it. That will be your first service for us. A repaired laboratory building will be made available to you. We can add modules, if necessary."

When Hellica rose from her throne, her presence was even more intimidating.

"Now, as for what the Face Dancers want from you: When we conquered this planet and liquidated the despicable Masters, we discovered something unusual during our autopsy and analysis of one burned corpse. A damaged nullentropy capsule was cleverly hidden inside the Master's body. It contained cellular samples, mostly destroyed, but with a small amount of viable DNA. Khrone is very interested to learn what was so important about those cells, and why the Masters protected and hid them so well."

Uxtal's mind spun forward. "He wants me to grow a ghola from those cells?" He could barely cover his relief. This was something he could indeed do! "I will allow you to do so, provided you also create our orange spice substitute. If you succeed in producing actual mélange from the axlotl tanks, then we will be even more pleased." Hellica's eyes narrowed. "From this day forth your solitary goal in life is to see how well you can please me."

DESPERATELY RELIEVED TO be away from the volatile Matre Superior-and still alive-Uxtal followed the two female escorts to his purported research center.

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Bandalong was so full of chaos and destruction, he wasn't sure what sort of facility to expect. Along the way, he and his two looming companions passed a large military convoy of purple-uniformed women, groundtrucks, and demolition equipment.

When they arrived at the commandeered lab, a locked door stood against them.

While the stern-looking females tried to deal with the problem, growing more befuddled and angry by the moment, Uxtal slipped away on trembling legs. He made a show of inspecting the grounds, primarily to keep his distance from the dangerous women as they pounded on the door and demanded entrance. He had no hope of escaping, even if he found a weapon, attacked them, and raced back to the Bandalong spaceport. Uxtal cringed, thinking up excuses if the women should challenge what he was doing.

Grasses and weeds already grew in the charred ground surrounding the facility.

He peered over a split bar fence to the adjacent property where an elderly, low-caste farmer tended to immense sligs, each larger than a man. The ugly creatures rooted around in mud, eating steaming piles of garbage and debris stripped from the burned buildings. Despite the creatures' filthy habits, slig meat was considered a delicacy. At the moment, however, the stench of excrement robbed Uxtal of all appetite.

After having been bullied for so long, he was pleased to see someone weaker than himself for a change, and shouted officiously to the low-caste slig farmer, "You! Identify yourself." Uxtal doubted if the filth-smeared worker could provide any useful information, but Elder Burah had taught him that all information was useful, especially in unfamiliar surroundings. "I am Gaxhar.

I've never heard an accent like yours." The farmer limped over to the fence and looked at Uxtal's formal high-caste uniform, which was, thankfully, much cleaner than the slig farmer's. "I thought all the Masters were dead."

"I'm not a Master, not technically." Struggling to maintain his haughty position of authority, Uxtal added sternly, "But I am still your superior.

Keep your sligs away from this side of the property. I cannot afford to have my important laboratory contaminated. Your sligs carry flies and disease."

"I wash them down every day, but I will keep them away from the fences." In their pen, the wide, sluglike animals rolled over each other, slithering and squealing.

At a loss for anything else to say, Uxtal gave a weak-sounding and unnecessary warning. "You had better watch yourself around the Honored Matres. I am safe because of my special knowledge, but they might turn on a mere farmer in an instant and tear you to pieces."

Gaxhar made a snort that was halfway between a laugh and a cough. "The old Masters were no kinder to me than the Honored Matres are. I've just gone from one cruel overlord to another."

A groundtruck rumbled up to the sligs. With a dump mechanism, it released a load of wet, reeking garbage. The hungry creatures swarmed to the putrid feast, while the farmer crossed his arms over his scrawny chest. "Honored Matres send the body parts of high-caste men for my sligs to eat. They think the flesh of my superiors makes the slig meat taste sweeter." The barest hint of a disrespectful sneer was quickly hidden by the man's generally blank expression. "Perhaps I will see you again."

What did he mean? That Uxtal would be dumped here, too, when the whores were finished with him? Or was it just innocuous conversation? Uxtal frowned, unable to take his eyes from the sligs crawling over the body parts, chewing them efficiently with their multiple mouths.

Finally, his two Honored Matre escorts came to fetch him. "You may enter your laboratory now. We have destroyed the door."

There is no escape-we pay for the violence of our ancestors.

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from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" hy the PRINCESS IRULAN

"Rinya's been gone for a month now. I miss her terribly." Walking beside Janess toward the acolytes' bungalows, Murbella could see her struggling to mask the anguish on her face.

Despite the feelings in her own heart, the Mother Commander maintained a distant expression. "Do not make me lose another daughter, or another potential Reverend Mother. When the time comes, you must be certain you are prepared for the Agony. Do not let your pride rush you."

Janess nodded stoically. She would not speak ill of her lost twin, but she and Murbella both knew that Rinya had not been as confident as she had claimed.

Instead, she had covered her doubts with a veneer of false bravado. And that had killed her.

A Bene Gesserit had to hide her emotions, to drive away any vestiges of distracting love. Once, Murbella herself had been trapped by love, tangled and weakened by her bond with Duncan Idaho. Losing him had not freed her, and the thought of him still out there in the void, unimaginably far away, gave her a constant ache. Despite their stated position, the Sisterhood had long known that love could not be eliminated completely. Like ancient priests and nuns from some long-obsolete religion, Bene Gesserits were supposed to give up love entirely for a greater cause. But in the long run, it never worked to discard everything in order to protect against one perceived weakness. One could not save humans by forcing them to surrender their humanity.

By remaining in close contact with the twins and observing their training, even revealing the identities of their parents, Murbella had broken the Sisterhood's tradition. Most daughters taken into Bene Gesserit schools were told to reach their potential "without the distractions of family ties." The Mother Commander did keep herself separate and aloof from the two younger daughters, Tanidia and Gianne, however. But she had lost Rinya and refused to cut herself off from Janess.

Now, following a training session in combined Bene Gesserit and Honored Matre fighting skills, the two of them made their way across the Keep's west garden, heading toward where Janess and her fellow acolytes lived. The girl still wore her rumpled and sweat-stained white combat suit.

The Mother Commander kept her voice neutral, though she, too, felt the pang in her heart. "We must go on with our lives. We still have many enemies to face.

Rinya would want us to."

Janess straightened as she walked. "Yes, she would. She believed you about the Enemy, and so do I."

Some Sisters doubted the Mother Commander's urgency. Honored Matres had come running back into the Old Empire, sure that the sky was falling. But before Murbella stripped away all the foundations of the Bene Gesserit, a few of the women had demanded proof that such a terrible opponent truly existed out there. No Honored Matre had ever gone deep enough into Other Memory to remember much of her past; even Murbella could not recall their origin out in the Scattering, and could not say how they had first encountered their Enemy or what had provoked them to genocidal fury.

Murbella couldn't believe such blindness. Had the Honored Matres just imagined hundreds of planets eradicated by plague? Had they simply wished into existence the great Weapons used to obliterate Rakis and so many other planets?

"We need no further evidence to know the Enemy is out there," Murbella said curtly to her daughter, as they followed a dry, thorny hedge. "And they are now coming after us. All of us. I doubt the Enemy will make any distinctions among the factions of our New Sisterhood. Chapterhouse itself is certainly within their targeting crosshairs."

"If they find us," Janess said.

"Oh, they will find us. And they will destroy us, if we are not prepared." She looked at the young woman, seeing so much potential in her daughter's face.

"Which is why we need as many Reverend Mothers as possible."

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Janess had thrown herself into her studies with a determination that would have surprised even her obsessive, driven twin. Fighting with her hands and feet, spinning, rolling, dodging, the girl could strike an adversary from all sides, encircling her with speed and power.

Earlier that day Janess had faced off against a tall, wiry girl named Caree Debrak. Caree had come in as a young student from the newly conquered Honored Matres swarming toward Chapterhouse. Harboring resentment against the Mother Commander's daughter, Caree had used the competitive event as an excuse to vent her anger. She intended to hurt. Janess had practiced the lesson's moves and expected to beat the girl in fair combat, but the youthful Honored Matre had unleashed a raw form of violence, breaking the rules and nearly breaking Janess's bones. The female bashar in charge of personal combat training, Wikki Aztin, had dragged the pair apart.

The incident troubled Murbella greatly. "You lost to Caree because the Honored Matres have no inhibitions. You must learn to match them in that, if you mean to succeed here."

In the past several months, Murbella had detected an ugly undertone, especially among the younger trainees. Though all were supposedly part of a united Sisterhood, they still insisted on segregating themselves, wearing colors and badges, separating into cliques clearly defined by their heritage as either Bene Gesserit or Honored Matre. Some of the more severe malcontents, disgusted with conciliation and refusing to learn or compromise, continued to disappear to their own settlements far to the north, even after the execution of Annine.

As they approached the acolytes' barracks, Murbella heard a clamor of angry voices through the brittle brown hedges. Rounding a turn in the garden path, they came to the commons, an expanse of withered grass and gravel walkways fronting the bungalows. Normally the acolytes gathered there for games, picnics, and sporting events, though an unexpected dust storm had left a layer of grit on the benches.

Today, most of the class was arrayed on the parched lawn as if it were a battlefield-more than fifty girls in white robes, all acolytes. The girls, divided into distinct groups of Bene Gesserits and Honored Matres, threw themselves upon each other like howling animals.

Murbella recognized Caree Debrak amidst the combatants. The girl knocked a rival down with a hard kick to the face and then pounced upon her like a hungry predator. While the fallen acolyte thrashed and fought back, Caree grabbed her hair, stepped hard on her chest, and yanked upward with enough force to uproot a tree. The sickening snap of the girl's neck carried even above the frenzy of the melee.

Grinning, Caree left the corpse on the dry ground and whirled to go after another opponent. Acolytes with orange Honored Matre arm' bands attacked their Bene Gesserit rivals with wild abandon, punching, kicking, gouging, even using teeth to rip skin. Already, more than a dozen young women lay sprawled like bloody rags on the dry grass. Shrieks of anger, pain, and defiance welled up from undisciplined throats. This was no game, nor was it practice play.

Appalled at the behavior, Murbella shouted, "Stop this! All of you!"

But the acolytes, their adrenaline surging, continued to tear and scream at each other. One girl, a former Honored Matre, staggered forward, her hands hooked into claws that lashed out at any noise; her eye sockets were unseeing, bloody pits.

Murbella saw two young Bene Gesserits knock down a thrashing Honored Matre and tear the orange band from her arm. With hard punches strong enough to shatter their victim's sternum, the Bene Gesserit acolytes killed her. Caree flew feet first at the aggressive pair. She slammed into them simultaneously and sent them rolling away. A kick crushed the larynx of one, but the other ducked a follow-through blow. While her companion collapsed, gurgling and choking, the other rolled and sprang to her feet, clutching a broken chunk of rock that had been part of the landscaping.

Guards, proctors, and Reverend Mothers came running from the Keep. Bashar Page 50

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Aztin led her own troops, and Murbella noticed that they all carried heavy stunner weapons. The Mother Commander shouted into the mayhem, using Voice to make her words strike the listeners like projectiles. But the din was so great that none of the acolytes seemed to hear her.

Side by side, Janess and Murbella waded into the acolytes who were still fighting and rained blows on them, paying no attention to whether their targets wore orange bands or not. Murbella noticed her daughter increasing her intensity, pouring her entire body into fighting moves.

Murbella tucked her own head and slammed into a gleefully victorious Caree Debrak, driving her hard to the ground. The Mother Commander could easily have landed a fatal blow, but restrained herself enough to merely knock the wind out of the girl.

Gasping and retching, Caree rolled over and glared at Murbella and Janess. She climbed to her feet, wavering. "Didn't you get enough from me earlier, Janess?

You want more of the same?" She swung a fist.

With obvious effort, Janess controlled herself, easily dodging but not retaliating. " 'There is more skill in avoiding confrontations than in engaging in them.' That's a Bene Gesserit axiom."

Caree spat. "What do I care for witches' axioms? Do you have any thoughts of your own? Or only your mother's, and quotes from an old book?"

Caree barely had the words out before she lashed out with a powerful kick.

Anticipating it, Janess darted to the left and came around on her opponent's side, striking her temples with a sharp fist. The young Honored Matre went down, and Janess gave her a stunning kick in the forehead that slammed her backward.

Finally, the skirmish petered out as more women arrived to pull the fighters apart. The whole commons was littered with the remnants of the bloody brawl. A volley of stun fire dropped several of the still-fighting acolytes together into a heap on the ground, unconscious but alive.

Heaving great breaths, Murbella surveyed the bloody field in disgust and fury.

She shouted at the young Honored Matres, "Your orange bands caused this! Why flaunt your differences instead of joining us?"

Glancing to her side, Murbella saw Janess had taken up a stance to protect the Mother Commander. The girl might not be ready for the Spice Agony yet, but she was ready for this.

The surviving acolytes began slinking toward their respective bungalows.

Voicing her mother's thoughts, Janess shouted at them, over the dead bodies strewn on the brown grass, "Look at all the wasted resources! If we keep this up, the Enemy won't need to kill any of us."

Once a plan is conceived, it takes on a life of its own. Merely considering and constructing a scheme puts a certain stamp of inevitability upon it.

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BASHAR MILES TEG, summary debriefing after the victory on Cerbol When she was confrontational, Garimi could be as stubborn as the most hardened old Bene Gesserit. Sheeana let the sober-faced Sister stand in the assembly chamber and vent against the proposed historical ghola project, hoping that she would lose steam before she reached her conclusion. Unfortunately, many of the Sisters in the seats behind Garimi muttered and nodded, agreeing with the points she raised.

And so we give birth to even more factions, Sheeana thought with an inner sigh.

In the no-ship's largest meeting chamber, more than a hundred of the refugee Sisters continued their seemingly endless debate over the wisdom of creating gholas from Scytale's mysterious cells. There seemed no room for compromise.

Because they had departed from Chapterhouse to retain Bene Gesserit purity, Sheeana insisted on preserving open discourse, but the argument had already gone on for more than a month. With so much dissent, she did not want to force a vote. Not yet. At one time, we were all bound together by a common cause& From the front row, Garimi said, "You suggest this ill-conceived scheme as if we have no other option. Even the most unschooled acolyte knows there are as many options as we choose to make."

Duncan Idaho's words glided cleanly into the brief silence, though no one had called upon him. "I did not say we had no choice. I merely suggested that this may be our best choice." He and Teg sat beside Sheeana. Who knew better the dangers, difficulties, and advantages of gholas than these two? Who understood these historical figures better than Duncan himself?

Continuing, Duncan said, "The Tleilaxu Master offers us the means to strengthen ourselves with key figures from an arsenal of past experts and leaders. We know little about the Enemy we might face, and it would be foolish to turn our backs on any possible advantage."

"Advantage? These historical figures are a veritable pantheon of shame for the Bene Gesserit," Garimi said. "Lady Jessica, Paul Muad'Dib-and, worst of all, Leto II, the Tyrant."

As Garimi's voice grew shrill, one of her companions, Stuka, added firmly,

"Have you forgotten your Bene Gesserit training, Duncan Idaho? Your reasoning is not logical. All of the gholas we're talking about are relics of the past, straight out of legend. What relevance can they possibly have to our crisis now?"

"What they lack in current relevance, they gain in perspective," Teg pointed out. "The sheer living history in those cells is enough to make religious scholars and academics dizzy. Surely, among all of those heroes and geniuses we will find useful knowledge for any situation we might encounter. The fact that the Tleilaxu worked so hard to obtain and preserve such cells for all these centuries argues for how special they must be."

Reverend Mother Calissa expressed a valid concern; she had not given any hint as to the way she intended to vote. "I am worried that the Tleilaxu modified the genetics in some way-just as they tampered with Duncan. Scytale is counting on our awe. What if there is another plan at work here? Why does he really want the gholas brought back?"

Duncan drew his gaze across the seated women. "The Tleilaxu Master is in a vulnerable position, so he must ensure that any gholas we test are perfect.

Otherwise he loses what he most wants from us. I don't trust him, but I do trust his desperation. Scytale will do anything to get what he needs. He is dying and is frantic for a ghola of himself, so we should use that to our advantage. In our perilous situation, we dare not let our fears guide our policy."

"What policy?" Garimi snorted, looking around at all the Sisters. "We wander through space, going nowhere, running from an invisible threat that only Duncan Idaho can see. For most of us, the real threat was the whores from the Scattering. They took over our Sisterhood, and we exiled ourselves to save the Bene Gesserit. We need to find a place where we can establish a new Page 52

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Chapterhouse, a new order where we can grow strong. That is why we have begun having children, cautiously expanding our numbers."

"And thereby straining the Ithaca's limited resources," Sheeana said.

Garimi and many of her supporters made rude noises. "This no-ship has enough supplies to keep ten times our number alive for a century. To preserve our Sisterhood, we need to increase our number and expand our gene pool, in preparation for colonizing a planet."

Sheeana smiled craftily. "Yet another reason to introduce the gho-las."

Garimi rolled her eyes in disgust. From behind her, Stuka called out, "The gholas will be inhuman abominations."

Sheeana had known someone would say this. "I find it curious how superstitious some of you conservative women are. Like illiterate peasants! I have heard very little rational argument from you."

Garimi looked back at her equally stern followers and seemed to draw strength from them. "Rational argument? I resist this proposal because it is patently dangerous. These are people we know from history. We know them, and what they are capable of doing. Do we dare unleash another Kwisatz Haderach upon the universe? We made that mistake once already. We should know better now."

When Duncan spoke, he had only his convictions, lacking the Bene Gesserit ability of Voice or their subtle manipulations. "Paul Atreides was a good man, but the Sisterhood and other forces sent him spinning in dangerous directions.

His much-maligned son was good and brave himself, until he allowed the worm of the desert to dominate him. I knew Thufir Hawat, Gurney Halleck, Stilgar, Duke Leto, and even Leto II. This time, we can protect them from the flaws in their pasts and let them achieve their potential. To help us!"

As the women shouted, Garimi raised her voice loudest of all. "Through Other Memory, we know what the Atreides did as well as you do, Duncan Idaho. Oh, the cruelties committed in the name of Muad'Dib, the billions who died in his jihad! The Corrino Empire that had lasted for thousands of years fell! But even the disasters of Emperor Muad'Dib were not enough. Then came his son the Tyrant and thousands of years of crushing terror! Have we learned nothing?"

Raising her voice, Sheeana used a hint of command, enough to silence the other Bene Gesserits. "Of course, we have learned. Until today, I thought we had learned wise caution. Now it seems that history has only taught us unreasoning fear. Would you discard our greatest advantage just because someone might be unintentionally injured? We have enemies who will do us intentional violence.

There is always a risk, but the ingenuity in our cellular banks at least offers us a chance."

She tried to calculate how many passengers Garimi had brought over to her side. Identifying and categorizing them in her mind, Sheeana found few surprises; all were traditionalists, ultraconservatives among the conservatives. At the moment, their numbers remained a minority, but that could change. This debate must end before more damage occurred.

Even once the project began in earnest, each ghola child would require a full gestation period, and then it must be raised and trained, with an eye toward the possibility of awakening its internal memories. It would take years. In the next decade or more, how many times would their no-ship fly headlong into crisis? What if they collided with the mysterious Enemy tomorrow? What if they were trapped in the shimmering net that Duncan said always followed them, always sought them out?

Long-term planning was what the Sisterhood did best.

Finally, Sheeana drew her generous mouth back in a firm line and stood her ground. This was a fight she did not intend to lose, but the debate had run its course, whether or not Garimi would admit it. "Enough of these circular arguments. I call for a vote. Now." And she carried the motion. Just barely.

Even our ship's no-field cannot protect us from the prescience of Guild Navigators as they search the cosmos. Only the wild genes of an Atreides can completely veil the ship.

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THE MENTAT BELLONDA, addressing a convocation of acolytes His mind numb after the shouting match among the Bene Gesserits, Duncan Idaho went through a round of solo exercises on the practice floor. To sort out his thoughts, he felt a compulsion to go to this familiar place where he had spent so many enjoyable hours. With Murbella.

In attempting to exert supreme control over his muscles and nerves, he became more conscious of his failures. There were always reminders. Employing his Mentat abilities, he recognized when he missed certain advanced prana-bindu movements by the merest hair's breadth; few observers would have noticed the errors, but he saw them. With the whole matter of the new gholas weighing heavily on him, he felt out of balance.

Again, he completed the ritualistic steps. Holding a short-sword, he tried to achieve the relaxed preparedness of prana-bindu, that inner calmness that would enable him to defend himself and strike with lightning speed. But his muscles stubbornly refused to comply with the impulses of his mind. Fighting is a matter of life and death& not of mood. Gurney Halleck had taught him that.

Taking two deep breaths, Duncan closed his eyes and slipped into a mnemonic trance in which he arrayed the data involved with this dilemma. In his mind's eye, he saw a long scratch on an adjacent wall that had previously escaped his attention. Odd that no one had repaired it in so many years& odder still that he had not noticed it in all that time.

Almost a decade and a half ago Murbella had slipped and fallen there during a knife-fighting practice with him-and very nearly died. When she'd gone down in slow motion, twisting her knife hand and falling in such a way that the blade would have penetrated her heart, Duncan had envisioned the full range of possible outcomes in his Mentat mind. He saw the many ways that she could die& and the few in which she could be saved. As she fell, he thrust a powerful kick at her, knocking the weapon away and scraping the wall.

A scratch on the wall, unnoticed and forgotten until now& Only moments after that near tragedy, he and Murbella had made love there on the floor. It had been one of their most memorable coital collisions, with his Bene Gesserit-enhanced masculine abilities pitted against her Honored Matre sexual bonding techniques. Superhuman stud against amber-haired temptress.

Did she still think of him after nearly four years?

In his private cabin and in the common areas of the no-ship, Duncan continued to find reminders of his lost love. Before the escape he had been intent on making secret plans with Sheeana, hiding necessary items aboard the vessel, surreptitiously loading the volunteer pilgrims, equipment, supplies, and seven sandworms-keeping Duncan so busy that he had been able to forget Murbella for a while.

But immediately after the no-ship successfully tore away from the old couple and their clinging web, Duncan had too much time and too many opportunities to stumble upon previously unnoticed emotional land mines. He found a few of Murbella's keepsakes, training garments, toiletry items. Though he was a Mentat and could not forget details, simply finding these leftovers of her presence had hit him hard, like memory time bombs, worse than the explosive mines that had once been rigged around the no-ship at Chapterhouse.

For his own sanity, Duncan had finally gathered every scrap, from rumpled exercise clothes caked with her dried sweat, to discarded towels she had used, to her favorite stylus. He had thrown them all into one of the no-ship's unused small storage bins. The intact nuUentropy field would keep the items exactly as they were forever, and the lock would seal them away. There, they had remained for years.

Duncan never needed to see them again, never needed to think about Murbella.

He had lost her, and could never forget.

Murbella might be gone forever, but Scytale's nuUentropy tube could bring back Duncan's old friends. Paul, Gurney, Thufir, and even Duke Leto.

Now, as he toweled himself off, he felt a surge of hope.

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It is not cowardly or paranoid to jump at shadows if a real threat exists.

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MOTHER COMMANDER MURBELLA, private journals The large unidentified battleship appeared in dead space far outside of the Chapterhouse system. It hung there, scanning cautiously before moving closer.

Using long-range sensors, an incoming Guildship detected the vessel beyond any planetary orbit, a strange ship lurking where it shouldn't have been.

Always concerned about the Enemy, never knowing when or how the first attacks might occur, the Mother Commander dispatched two Sisters in a swift scout ship to investigate. The women approached tentatively, making their intention apparent in a nonthreatening way.

The strange battleship opened fire and destroyed the scout as soon as it came within range. The pilot's last transmission said, "It's a warship of some kind. Looks like it's been through seven hells, severely damaged-" And then the message cut off in a flash of static& In a grim mood, Murbella assembled her military commanders to formulate a swift and massive response. No one knew the identity or armaments of the intruder, whether it was the long-expected Outside Enemy or some other power.

But it was a definite threat.

Many of the former Honored Matres, including Doria, had been spoiling for a fight in the four years since the Battle of Junction. Simmering with violence, the Honored Matres felt that their military abilities were growing stagnant. Now, Murbella would give them a chance to make up for it.

In a matter of hours, twenty attack ships-which had been part of the Chapterhouse space navy since the days of Bashar Miles Teg- accelerated out of the system. Murbella led them, despite the warnings and complaints of some of her more timid Bene Gesserit advisors, who wanted her to stay out of danger.

She was the Mother Commander, and she would take charge of the mission. It was her way.

As the New Sisterhood's ships swooped closer, Murbella studied the images resolving on her screens, noting the dark scoring along the intruder's hull, the bright emissions of power leakage from damaged engines, the large holes blasted where contained atmosphere had vented into space.

"It's a wreck," transmitted Bashar Wikki Aztin from her own attack ship.

"But a deadly one," noted an adjutant. "It can still shoot."

Like a wounded predator, Murbella thought. It was a large craft, much bigger than her attack ships. Studying scanner screens, she recognized part of the design as well as a battle sigil on the heat-damaged hull. "It's an Honored Matre ship, but not from any of the assimilated groups."

"Does it belong to one of the rebel enclaves?"

"No& this is from beyond the edge of the Scattering," she transmitted. "From far beyond."

Over the decades, a great many Honored Matres had swept into the Old Empire like locusts, but their numbers were far greater out among the distant worlds.

Honored Matres existed in independent cells, isolated from other groups not only for their own protection, but from a natural xenophobia.

Apparently the strange vessel had blundered into this section of space.

Judging by its appearance, the battleship had been too severely damaged to make it all the way to its intended destination. Chapterhouse, specifically?

Or just any habitable planet? "Remain outside of firing range," she warned her commanders, then adjusted her commsystem. "Honored Matres! I am Murbella, the legitimate Great Honored Matre, having assassinated my predecessor. We are not your enemy, but we do not recognize your ship or its markings. You destroyed our scouts unnecessarily. Open fire again at your own peril."

Only silence and static answered her.

"We're going to board you. This is my command as Great Honored Matre." She edged her ships forward, still receiving no response.

Finally a haggard, stern-looking woman appeared on the communications screen, her expression as sharp as broken glass. "Very well, Honored Matre. We will not open fire-yet."

"Great Honored Matre," Murbella said.

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"That remains to be seen."

Moving cautiously, with their weapons systems powered up and ready to respond, the twenty New Sisterhood ships closed in around the large battle-scarred hulk. On a private channel, Doria signaled, "We could easily just crawl through a hole in the hull."

"I'd rather not be seen as attackers," Murbella replied, then transmitted on an open channel to the unnamed captain of the Honored Matre battleship, "Do your docking bays still function? How severe is your damage?"

"One docking bay is serviceable." The captain provided instructions.

Murbella told Bashar Aztin and half of her ships to remain outside as guardians while she guided the other ten in to face the survivors of what must have surely been a horrific battle.

When she and her comrades emerged in the docking bay, Murbella faced thirteen battered-looking women, all of them in colored leotards. Many still sported bruises, barely healed injuries, and medical patches.

The woman with the broken-glass expression had her left hand wrapped in healing strips. Ever suspicious, Murbella suspected she might be hiding a weapon in the bandaging, but it was unlikely; Honored Matres considered their own bodies to be weapons. This one glowered at Murbella and her team, some of whom were dressed as Bene Gesserits, others in the trappings of Honored Matres.

"You look different& strange," the captain said. Orange flecks appeared in her eyes.

"And you look defeated," Murbella snapped. Honored Matres responded to force rather than conciliation. "Who did this to you?"

The woman answered with scorn. "The Enemy, of course. The Enemy who has been hounding us for centuries, spreading plagues, destroying our worlds." She showed skepticism in her face. "If you do not know this, then you are no Honored Matre."

"We are aware of the Enemy, but we have been in the Old Empire for a long time. Much has changed."

"And apparently much has been forgotten! You look as if you've grown soft and weak, but we know the Enemy has been in this sector. We have explored to the best of our abilities in this damaged ship. We found several planets that were clearly charred by Obliterators."

Murbella did not correct her, did not tell the captain that those planets-no doubt Tleilaxu or Bene Gesserit worlds-had been destroyed by Honored Matres themselves, and not by the Outside Enemy.

Warily, Murbella stepped forward, wondering if these thirteen Honored Matres were all that had survived on the entire battleship. "Tell us what you know of our mutual Enemy. Any information will help us in our defenses."

"Defenses? You cannot defend against an invincible foe."

"Nevertheless, we shall try."

"No one can stand against them! We must flee, seize whatever we can for our survival, and move faster than the Enemy can pursue us. You must know this."

Her bruised eyes narrowed; the broken glass of her expression seemed to sharpen even more. "Unless you are not truly an Honored Matre. I do not recognize these others or their strange clothing, and you have a foreign manner about you& " She looked as if she wanted to spit. "We all know that our Enemy has many faces. Is your face among them?"

The Honored Matre strangers tensed and coiled, then flung themselves upon Murbella and her followers. These outside Honored Matres did not know the superior fighting abilities of the unified New Sisterhood, and they were also weary and scarred. Even so, desperation heated their violence.

After the bloodbath, four of Murbella's comrades lay dead on the deck before the rest of her crew subdued and killed all of the Honored Matres, except for the captain.

When it was clear that her women would be slain, the Honored Matre leader bolted through the docking bay door toward a lift. The Bene Gesserits with Murbella were astounded. "She is a coward!"

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Murbella was already running toward the lift. "Not a coward. She's going to the bridge. She'll scuttle this ship before she lets it fall into our hands!"

The nearest lift tube was damaged and wouldn't operate. Murbella and several Sisters ran until they found a second elevator that sped them up toward the command deck. The captain could easily destroy all navigation records and perhaps blow up the engines (if they remained intact enough to respond to a self-destruct order). She had no idea how many of the battleship's systems were still functional.

By the time Murbella, Doria, and three others burst onto the command deck, the Honored Matre captain was already hammering at the panels with such force that her fingertips were bloody. Sparks and smoke curled up, erupting from short-circuited control stations. Murbella reached the woman in a flash, grabbed her shoulders and hurled her away from the station. The captain lunged back toward them, but a single reflexive blow from the Mother Commander broke her neck. No time for slow interrogations.

Doria reached the panel first and impetuously used her bare hands to rip out the control boards, disconnecting the console. Afterward, she frowned down at the smoking panels, unable to stop the damage that was already underway.

Extinguishers smothered the electrical fires.

Bene Gesserit experts combed over the systems while Murbella waited, worried that the whole battleship was still going to explode around them. One of the Sisters looked up from a navigation station. "Self-destruct sequence successfully interrupted. Most of the records were destroyed by the captain, but I was able to retrieve at least one set of coordinates from outside the Old Empire-the last place this ship went before fleeing here."

Murbella made up her mind. "We must learn what we can about what has occurred so far out there." The mystery had been gnawing at her for years. "I'll send scouts to retrace the course. After this, let no one dare suggest that I'm merely imagining the Enemy is coming to get us. If the Enemy is finally on the move, we need to know."

Naively, the Honored Matres think they have the loyalty of their enslaved Lost Tleilaxu. In reality, many of these Tleilaxu from the Scattering have their own plans. As Face Dancers, it is our task to ruin all of their schemes.

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KHRONE, message to the Face Dancers

Even by Lost Tleilaxu standards, the laboratory built in the ashes of Bandalong was primitive. Uxtal had only the most basic equipment scavenged from ruined facilities once used by old Masters, and this was the first time he had actually managed such a complex project by himself. He did not dare let the Honored Matres or Face Dancers suspect that the task might be beyond him.

Useless lab assistants were assigned to help him, generally weak-willed and low-caste males who had been sexually subjugated by the dreadful women. None of the assistants possessed any special knowledge or hints that might help.

Already, because of some imagined slight, the mercurial Honored Matres had killed one of the pathetic men, and his replacement did not seem any more talented.

Uxtal struggled not to show his anxiety, trying to appear knowledgeable, though he was confused about many things. Khrone had ordered the little researcher to obey the Face Dancers, and the Face Dancers had told him to do whatever the Honored Matres commanded. Uxtal wished he understood more of what was going on. Were the new Face Dancers really allied with the violent whores?

Or

was it another trick within a trick, cleverly veiled? He shook his aching head in dismay. The ancient scriptures warned of the impossibility of serving two masters, and now he understood that only too well.

At night Uxtal rarely had more than a few hours to rest, and when he did, his anxiety was too great to allow any real sleep. He had to fool the whores and the Face Dancers. He would grow the new ghola that Khrone insisted upon-he could do that!-and he would try to make the adrenaline-based spice alternative the Honored Matres needed, using their own formula. The manufacture of genuine mélange, however, was far beyond even his imagined capabilities.

In a magnanimous gesture, Hellica had given him plenty of female bodies to use as axlotl tanks, and he had already converted the one he needed (after botching the job three times previously). So far, so good. Along with all the equipment inside the primitive laboratory, the tank should be enough for him to achieve success. Now he simply had to create the ghola and deliver it, and Khrone would reward him (he hoped).

Unfortunately, that meant his ordeal here would last a minimum of nine months.

He didn't know if he could stand it.

Suspecting Face Dancers everywhere, he started growing a child from the mysterious cells salvaged from a dead Tleilaxu Master's damaged nullentropy capsule. Meanwhile, on a daily basis, the Matre Superior made her impatience known for her supply of mélange substitute. She was jealous of every second he diverted his attention from her needs. Panicked and exhausted, Uxtal was forced to satisfy both obligations, even though he had no experience at doing either.

As soon as the unidentified ghola baby was implanted in the first functional axlotl tank, Uxtal turned his efforts toward making the spice alternative.

Since the whores already knew how to create the substance, Uxtal required no breakthroughs or flashes of genius in that area. He simply needed to manufacture the chemical in great quantities. The Honored Matres couldn't be bothered to do it for themselves.

Gazing through a one-way security window into the gray sky, Uxtal felt as if the landscape of his soul was like the charred, lifeless hills he saw in the distance. He didn't want to be here. Someday, he would think of a way out of this.

Born to an insular religious circle, Uxtal was deeply uncomfortable around dominant women. Among the Tleilaxu race, females were raised and then converted into brainless wombs as soon as they reached reproductive maturity.

That was their only purpose. Honored Matres were the polar opposite of what Uxtal considered right and proper. No one knew the origin of the whores, but their propensity for violence seemed to have been bred into them.

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Honored Matres to hunt down the Bene Gesserits, much as Futars were supposedly bred to hunt down Honored Matres. What if the newly grown female monsters had gotten out of control, and the result was the destruction of all sacred worlds, the enslavement of a handful of Lost Tleilaxu, everything gone wrong?

Now, trying to look like a commanding administrator, Uxtal paced through the laboratory and watched two white-smocked lab assistants tend the special ghola tank.

A new modular building had just been brought in on a lift suspensor mechanism.

The new laboratory wing was three times the size of the original facility, and required tearing down the neighboring slig farmer's fences and appropriating a portion of his land. Uxtal had expected him to object and thus incur the wrath of the Honored Matres, but he had seen the fellow-was his name Gaxhar?-meekly move his sligs to another section of land. The women also demanded that the farmer provide them with a constant supply of fresh slig meat, which he did.

Uxtal took a quiet pleasure in seeing someone so downtrodden, in knowing that he was not the only one helpless in Bandalong.

In the older laboratory, captured women were chemically loboto-mized 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."

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to embrace it or to flee.

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DUNCAN IDAHO, More Than a Mentat

The 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 mélange 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 Page 62

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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 condition. 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.

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MOTHER COMMANDER MURBELLA

Murbella'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.'"

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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 around 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 sus-pensor 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."

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"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, Murhella hit her with a smashing punch to the throat, crushing her larynx before she could cry out.

As Murbella's adversary collapsed, the crysknife clattered to the floor, its blade shattering. A dim part of Murbella's mind was pleased to see both Sisters and Honored Matres leap from their cushions, instinctively jumping up to aid the Mother Commander in case the coup attempt was more widespread. In their motions, she recognized truth, just as she had seen the lies in the motions of the would-be assassin.

Both fat Bellonda and wiry Doria pounced on the fallen woman, holding her down. Now those two worked together! Still on her feet, Murhella scanned the large room and catalogued the faces, assuring herself that there were no interlopers present and no threats.

Though the lone attacker thrashed, trying to breathe, or maybe forcing herself to die, Bellonda pressed the woman's throat, opening her air passage to keep her alive. Doria roared for a Suk doctor.

The broken crysknife lay on the floor by the writhing woman. Murhella assessed it with a glance and understood. Traditional weapon& ancient ways. The symbolism of the gesture was clear.

Murbella used Voice, hoping the injured woman was too weak to use standard defenses against the command. "Who are you? Speak!"

With cracked and broken words rattling through her damaged throat, the woman forced out her answer. She seemed glad to do so and wildly defiant. "I am your future. Others like me will emerge from shadows, drop from ceilings, come at you out of thin air.

One of us will get you!

"Why do you wish to kill me?" The other Bene Gesserits in the audience had fallen into an utter hush, straining to hear the attacker's words.

"Because of what you did to the Sisterhood." The woman managed to turn her head toward Doria as a symbol of the Honored Matres. If she'd had the strength, she might have spat. "As Mother Commander you raise the alarm about an Outside Enemy, while you welcome real enemies into our midst. Fool!"

Scowling grimly, Bellonda provided the attacker's name after ransacking her Mentat mind. "She is Sister Osafa Chram. One of the orchard workers, a new arrival from across the planet."

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Honored Matres who sought to seize her position of power.

"Sheeana was right to flee& and leave the rest of us to rot here!" Looking up at the Sisters, then giving a final glare at Murbella, Osafa Chram summoned the necessary courage and willed herself to die.

As the assassin began her final spasms, Murbella shouted, "Bellonda! Share with her! We must discover what she knows! How widespread is this conspiracy?"

The Reverend Mother reacted with unexpected speed and grace, slapping her hands to the woman's temples and pressing their foreheads together. "She resists me even with her dying breath! Not letting her thoughts flow."

Bellonda winced, then withdrew. "She's gone."

Doria leaned closer and grimaced. "Smell that. Shere, and lots of it. She's made sure we can't even use a mechanical probe to pry loose her thoughts."

The gathered Sisters murmured uneasily. Murbella wondered if she needed to subject everyone to Truthsayer interrogation. A thousand of them! And if this Bene Gesserit Sister had tried to kill the Mother Commander, could Murbella trust even her Truthsayers?

Marshaling her concentration, she gave a dismissive wave toward the dead woman on the floor. "Remove that. Everyone else, resume your seats. A gathering is serious business, and we have fallen behind schedule."

"We're with you, Mother Commander!" a young woman shouted from the audience.

Murbella couldn't tell who said it.

Doria quietly returned to her seat, watching Murbella with grudging respect.

Some of the former Honored Matres in the audience were clearly surprised-some smug, others indignant-that a knife blade could have come from the coldly pacifistic Bene Gesserits.

Murbella gave no more than an annoyed glance as women hustled away with the bundled body of the dead woman. "I have fended off assassination attempts before. We have important work to do here, and we must quash these petty rebellions among us, erasing all vestiges of our past conflicts."

"For that, we would need collective amnesia," Bellonda snorted. A thin wave of laughter spread through the room, and dissipated quickly.

"I will force it upon you," Murbella said with a glare, "no matter how many heads I have to knock together."

The fabric of the universe is connected by threads of thought and tangled alliances. Others may glimpse parts of the pattern, but only we can decipher all of it. We can use that information to form a deadly net in which to trap our enemies.

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KHRONE, secret message to the Face Dancer myriad An insistent communication seized Khrone through the tachyon net as the Guildship departed Tleilax, where he had secretly inspected the progress of the new ghola in its axlotl tank.

His lackey Uxtal had indeed implanted an embryo made from the cells hidden in the burned body of the Tleilaxu Master. So, the Lost Tleilaxu was not completely incompetent. The mysterious child was growing even now. And if the ghola's identity was as Khrone suspected, the possibilities were interesting, indeed.

A year ago, Khrone had deposited Uxtal in Bandalong with strict orders, and the terrified researcher had obeyed in every way. A Face Dancer replica might have been adequate to the task, given a clear enough mental imprinting of Uxtal's knowledge, but the squirming assistant had been performing with an edge of desperation that no Face Dancer could match. Ah, the predictable instinct of humans to survive. It could easily be used against them.

As the Guildship drifted around to the nightside of Tleilax, the ship's viewers showed black scars where cities had been erased. Only a few weakly shining lights marked struggling towns that clung to life.

Somewhere down there, the greatest works of the Tleilaxu had their origins, even the primitive versions of Face Dancers, so many millennia ago. But those shape-shifting mules were little more than hand-daubed cave paintings compared to the masterpieces that Khrone and his fellows had become.

Face Dancers had taken over the crew positions on this ship, killing and replacing a handful of Guildsmen, leaving only the oblivious Navigator in his tank. Khrone was not certain whether a Face Dancer could imprint and replace a grandly mutated Navigator. That was an experiment to be considered at some later date. In the meantime, no one would know that he had come to Tleilax just to observe.

No one, except for his distant supposed controllers who watched the Face Dancers at all times.

Now, as Khrone walked down the corridor of the cruising ship, his step faltered. The burnished metal walls blurred and became less distinct. His whole view tilted at an angle, then sideways. Abruptly, the reality of the Guildship vanished, leaving him standing in an empty, cold void, with no surface visible beneath his feet. Sparkling, colorful lines of the tachyon net writhed around him, connections extending everywhere, woven through the universe. Khrone froze, his eyes widening as he looked around. He stopped himself from speaking.

In front of him he discerned a crystal-sharp image of the forms that the two entities chose for him to see: a calm and friendly looking old couple.

Actually, they were anything but gentle and harmless. The two had bright eyes, white hair, and wrinkled skin that radiated a warm glow of health. Both wore comfortable clothes: the old man a red plaid shirt, the matronly woman gray gardening overalls. But though she had assumed the shape of a woman's body, she had not the slightest air of femininity. In the vision that trapped Khrone, the two stood among fruit trees bursting with blossoms, so laden with white petals and buzzing bees that Khrone could smell the perfume and hear the sounds.

He didn't understand why this bizarre pair insisted on such a facade, certainly not for his benefit. He did not at all care about their appearance, nor was he impressed.

Despite his grandfatherly face, the old man's words were harsh. "We grow impatient with you. The no-ship got away from us when it vanished from Chapterhouse. We caught another glimpse of it a year ago, but the craft slipped away from us again. We continue our own search, but you promised that your Face Dancers would find it."

"We will find it." Khrone could no longer feel the Guildship around him. The air smelled like sweet blossoms. "The fugitives cannot evade us forever. You will have them, I assure you."

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"We do not have that long to wait. The time is nearly upon us after all these millennia."

"Now, now, Daniel," the old woman chided. "You have always been so goal-oriented. What have you learned in pursuing the no-ship? Hasn't the journey itself provided many rewards?"

The old man scowled at her. "That is beside the point. I have always worried about the unreliability of your distracting pets. Sometimes they feel the need to become martyrs. Don't they, my Martyr?" He said the name with dripping sarcasm.

The old woman chuckled as if he had merely been teasing her. "You know I prefer Marty to Martyr. It's a more human name& more personal."

She turned toward the blossom-laden fruit trees behind her, reached up with a tough brown hand and plucked a perfectly round portygul. The rest of the blossoms disappeared, and now the trees were full of fruit, all of it ripe for the picking.

Lost in this strange illusory place, Khrone stood boiling inside. He resented that his alleged masters could come upon him so unexpectedly, wherever he might be. The Face Dancer myriad was a widely extended network. The shape-shifters were everywhere, and they would catch the no-ship quarry.

Khrone himself wanted control of the lost vessel and its valuable passengers as much as the old man and woman did. He had his own agenda, which these two never guessed. The ghola being grown on Tleilax could be an important component of his secret plan.

The old man adjusted a straw hat on his head and leaned closer to Khrone, though his image came from impossibly far away. "Our detailed projections have provided us with the answer we need. There is no possibility for error.

Kralizec will soon be upon us, and our victory requires the Kwisatz Haderach, the superhuman bred by the Bene Gesserit.

According to the predictions, the no-ship is the key. He is- or will be-aboard."

"Isn't it amazing that mere humans reached the same conclusion thousands of years ago with their prophecies and their writings?" The old woman sat on a bench and began to peel the portygul. Sweet juice dripped from her fingers.

Unimpressed, the old man waved a callused hand. "They laid down so many millions of prophecies, they couldn't possibly have been wrong all the time.

We know that once we acquire the no-ship, we acquire the Kwisatz Haderach.

That has been proven."

"Predicted, Daniel. Not proven." The woman offered him a section of the fruit, but the old man declined.

"When there is no doubt, then a thing is proven. I have no doubt."

Khrone did not need to pretend confidence. "My Face Dancers will find the no-ship."

"We have faith in your abilities, dear Khrone," the old woman said. "But it has been nearly five years, and we need more than mere assurances." She smiled sweetly as if she meant to reach out and pat him on the cheek. "Don't forget your obligations."

Suddenly the multicolored lines of force around Khrone grew incandescent.

Through all the nerves of his body, penetrating every bone and muscle fiber, he felt a searing agony, an indescribable pain that went beyond his cells and beyond his mind. With his intrinsic Face Dancer control, he tried to shut down all of his receptors, but he could not escape. The agony continued, yet the old woman's voice remained exceptionally clear in the back of his thoughts:

"We can keep this up for ten million years if we choose."

Abruptly the pain was gone, and the old man reached over to take half of the peeled fruit the woman offered him. Tearing off a section, he said, "Do not give us an excuse to do it."

Then the illusory world wavered. The bucolic orchard disappeared, and the bright network of lines faded, leaving only the metal-walled corridors of the Guildship again. Khrone had collapsed to the deck, and no one else was around.

Shaking, he climbed to his feet. The throbbing agony still burst out in Page 69

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cellular echoes from dark afterimages behind his eyes. He drew several breaths to regain his strength, using his outrage as a crutch.

During the wash of pain, his features had shifted through numerous assumed guises and reverted to their blank Face Dancer appearance again. Gathering himself, Khrone vengefully formed his face into an exact replica of the old man's. But that was not enough for him. Feeling petty rage, he drew back his lips to expose teeth that he transformed into brown and decayed stumps.

Khrone's imitation of the old man's wrinkled face became decayed. Flesh hung in sagging folds, then turned yellow before separating from the muscles.

Vindictively leprous blotches covered the skin, and the face became a mass of boils, the eyes milky and blind.

If only he could project the condition, it was what the old bastard deserved!

Khrone reasserted himself again, restoring his normal appearance, though the anger remained unquenched within him. Then his smile gradually returned.

Those who considered themselves the rulers of the Face Dancers had been fooled again, just like the original Tleilaxu Masters and their offshoots, the Lost Ones. Still shaking, Khrone chuckled now as he walked along the Guildship's corridor, regathering his strength. He looked like an average crewman again.

No one could possibly understand the fine art of deception better than he did.

I am its greatest practitioner, he thought.

Damn your analyses and your infernal projections! Damn your legal arguments, your manipulations, your subtle and not'SO' subtle pressures. Talk, talk, talk! It all comes down to the same thing: When a difficult decision must be reached, the real choice is obvious.

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DUNCAN IDAHO, ninth new ghola, shortly before his death In the bright chamber that served the Jews as their temple, in a ceremony as traditional as the no-ship's stores could provide, the old Rabbi led the Seder. Rebecca watched with her new understanding of the root meanings behind the ancient ritual. She had lived it herself in her memories, ages ago. Though he would never admit it, even the Rabbi did not grasp some of the nuances, despite a lifetime of study. Rebecca would not correct him, however. Not in front of the others, not even in private. He was not a man who wished for a refinement of his understanding, not as a Suk doctor, nor as a Rabbi.

Here, isolated from many of the strict requirements of the ancient Passover service, the Rabbi followed the rule of the Seder as best he could. His people acknowledged the difficulties, accepted the truth in their hearts, and convinced themselves that everything was correct and proper, lacking in no detail.

"God will understand, so long as we do not forget," the Rabbi said in a low voice, as if uttering a secret. "We have had to make do before."

For the private observance in the Rabbi's extended quarters, which also served as their temple, they had matzahs, maror-or bitter herbs-and something resembling the right kind of wine& but no lamb. A processed meat substitute from the ship's stores was the closest he could come. His followers did not complain.

Rebecca had celebrated the Passover all her life, participating with-out questioning. Now, however, thanks to those millions from Lam-padas in her head, she could delve through countless paths of memory across a wide web of generations. Buried within her were recollections of the first true Passover, lives as slaves in an incredibly ancient civi-lization called Egypt. She knew the truth, understood which parts were the strictest historical fact and which had slowly strayed into ritual and myth, despite the best efforts of rabbis to keep faith with previous generations.

"Perhaps we should smear blood over the lintel on our quarters," she said quietly. "The angel of death is different from before, but it is death nevertheless. We are still being pursued."

"If we can believe what Duncan Idaho says." The Rabbi did not know how to respond to her often-provocative comments. He protected himself by retreating into the formal order of the Seder. Jacob and Levi helped him with the blessing on wine, the washing of hands. They all prayed again and read from the Haggadah.

These days the Rabbi frequently grew angry with Rebecca, snapping at her, challenging her every statement because he saw the work of evil within it. If he had been a different sort of man, Rebecca could have talked with him for hours, describing her memories of Egypt and Pharaoh, the awful plague, the epochal flight into the desert. She could have recounted real conversations to him in the original tongue, shared her impressions of the living man Moses.

One of her myriad ancestors had actually heard the great man speak.

If only the Rabbi were a different sort of person& His flock was small; not many of them had gotten away from the Honored Mattes on Gammu. For millennia upon millennia, their people had been persecuted, driven from one hiding place to another. Now, as they let themselves be swept up in the festive Passover ritual, their voices were few, though strong. The Rabbi would not allow himself to admit defeat. He doggedly did what he believed he must do, and he saw Rebecca as a foil against whom to test his mettle.

She did not ask for his censure or suggest a debate. With all the memories and lives within her, Rebecca could easily counter any erroneous statement he might make, but she had no wish to make him look like a fool, did not want him to grow even more resentful and defensive.

Rebecca had not yet told him of her recent decision to take on a greater responsibility, an even greater pain. The Bene Gesserits had called, and she had responded. She already knew what the Rabbi would say about it, but she had Page 71

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no intention of changing her mind. She could be as stubborn as the Rabbi, if she so chose. The horizon of her thoughts extended to the edge of history, while his thoughts were bounded by his own life.

By the time grace was spoken after their meals, then the happy Hallel and the songs, she discovered that her cheeks were wet with tears. Jacob saw this with a hushed awe. The service was moving, and with her perspective it seemed more meaningful than ever. Her weeping, though, came from the knowledge that she would not see another Seder&

Much later, after the benediction and the last reading, when the small party had finished eating and departed, Rebecca remained behind in the Rabbi's quarters. She helped the old man put away the paraphernalia of the service; the awkward distance between them told her that he knew something was troubling her. The Rabbi held his silence, and Rebecca didn't offer to speak.

She could sense him looking at her with his flashing eyes.

"Another Passover service aboard this no-ship. Four so far!" he finally said, falsely conversational. "Is this any better than being hidden like rodents under the ground while Honored Matre searchers try to uncover us?" When the old man was uncomfortable, Rebecca knew he resorted to complaints.

"How quickly you have forgotten our months of terror cramped in that hidden chamber with our air systems failing, the waste-recycling tanks overfull, the food supplies dwindling," she reminded him. "Jacob couldn't fix it. We would all have died soon, or been forced to slip away." "Maybe we could have eluded the terrible women." His words were automatic, and Rebecca could tell he didn't believe them himself.

"I think not. Overhead in the ash pit, the Honored Matre hunters were using their scanning devices, probing the soil, digging for us. They were close.

They suspected. You know it was only a matter of time before they discovered our hiding place. Our enemies always find our hiding places."

"Not all of them."

"We were lucky the Bene Gesserit chose to attack Gammu when they did. It was our chance, and we took it."

"The Bene Gesserit! Daughter, you always defend them."

"They saved us."

"Because they were obligated to. And that obligation has now made us lose you.

You are forever tainted, girl. All those memories you took within your mind corrupted you. If only you could forget them." He hung his head in a melodramatic gesture of misery, rubbing his temples. "I shall forever feel guilt because of what I made you do."

"I did it willingly, Rabbi. Do not go looking for guilt that you did not earn.

Yes, all those memories wrought great changes in me. Even I did not guess the magnitude of that weight from the past."

"They rescued us, but now we are lost again, wandering and wandering on this ship. What is to become of us? We have begun to have children, but what good does it do? Two babies so far. When will we find a new home?"

"This is like our people's sojourn in the desert, Rabbi." Rebecca actually remembered parts of it. "Perhaps God will lead us to the land of milk and honey."

"And perhaps we will vanish forever."

Rebecca had little patience for his constant moaning, his wringing of hands.

It had been easier to tolerate the old man before, to give him the benefit of the doubt and let her faith counsel her. She had respected the Rabbi, believed everything he said, never thought to question. She longed for that innocence and confidence again, but it was gone. The Lampadas Horde had made sure of that. Rebecca's thoughts were now clearer, her decision irrevocable.

"My Sisters have asked for volunteers. They have& a need."

"A need?" The Rabbi raised his bushy eyebrows, pushed his spectacles back up.

"The volunteers will submit to a certain process. They will become axlotl tanks, receptacles to bear the children they have determined are necessary for our survival."

The Rabbi looked angry and revolted. "It is clearly the work of evil."

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"Is it evil if it saves all of us?"

"Yes! No matter what excuses the witches give."

"I do not agree, Rabbi. I believe it is the work of God. If we are given tools for our survival, then God must want us to survive. But the evil inclination tricks us by sowing seeds of fear and suspicion."