Chapterhouse: Dune

BY FRANK HERBERT, BRIAN HERBERT, AND KEVIN J. ANDERSON

The Road to Dune (includes the original short novel Spice Planet) BY BRIAN HERBERT AND KEVIN J. ANDERSON

Dune: House Atreides

Dune: House Harkonnen

Dune: House Corrino

Dune :The Butlerian Jihad

Dune: The Machine Crusade

Dune: The Battle of Corrin

Hunters of Dune

Sandworms of Dune

Paul of Dune (forthcoming)

BY BRIAN HERBERT

Dreamer of Dune (biography of Frank Herbert)

SANDWORMS OF DUNE

Brian Herbert

and

Kevin J. Anderson

Based on an outline by Frank Herbert

TOR

A

TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously.

SANDWORMS OF DUNE

Copyright ©2007 by Herbert Properties LLC

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

www.dunenovels.com

Tor®is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Herbert, Brian.

Sandworms of Dune / Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. - 1st ed.

p.

cm. "A Tom Doherty Associates Book." ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1293-8

ISBN-10:0-7653-1293-X

1. Dune (Imaginary place) - Fiction.

2. Life on other planets - Fiction.

3. Robots -

Fiction.

I. Anderson, Kevin J., 1962-

II. Title. PS3558.E617S26

2007 813'.54 - dc22

2006102742

First Edition: August 2007

Printed in the United States of America

We can never overstate the appreciation we owe to the genius who created this incredible series. Once again, this book is for Frank Herbert, a man of wondrous and important ideas, who has been our mentor as we continue to write new stories in his fantastic Dune universe.

Sandworms of Dune is the chronological grand finale that he envisioned, and we are pleased to finally bring it to his millions of loyal fans.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As with all of our previous Dune novels, we have depended on the efforts of a great many people to make the manuscript as good as possible. We would like to thank Pat LoBrutto, Tom Doherty, and Paul Stevens at Tor Books; Carolyn Caughey at Hodder & Stoughton; Catherine Sidor, Louis Moesta, and Diane Jones at WordFire, Inc; Penny Merritt, Kim Herbert, and Byron Merritt at Herbert Properties LLC; and Mike Anderson at the dunenovels.com Web site, as well as Dr. Attila Torkos, who worked on fact-checking and consistency.

In addition, we have had many supporters of the new Dune novels, including John Silbersack, Robert Gottlieb, and Claire Roberts at Trident Media Group; Richard Rubinstein, Mike Messina, John Harrison, and Emily Austin-Bruns at New Amsterdam Entertainment; Ron Merritt, David Merritt, Julie Herbert, Robert Merritt, Margaux Herbert, and Theresa Shackelford at Herbert Properties LLC.

And as always, these books would not exist without the unending help and support from our wives, Janet Herbert and Rebecca Moesta Anderson.

Soon after the Honored Matres careened into the Old Empire, the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood learned to hate and fear them. The intruders used their terrible Obliterator weapons to destroy Bene Gesserit and Tleilaxu planets, Richese with its vast industries and weapon shops, even Rakis itself.

But in order to survive the even greater Enemy that pursued them, the Honored Matres desperately needed knowledge that only the Sisterhood possessed. To obtain it, they struck like angry vipers, lashing out with extreme violence. After the Battle of Junction, the two opposing groups were forcibly united into a New Sisterhood, but the factions continued to wrestle for control and dominance. Such a waste of time, talent, and blood! The real threat came from outside, but we continued to fight the wrong enemy.

- MOTHER COMMANDER MURBELLA, address to the New Sisterhood Two people drift in a lifeboat on an uncharted sea. One says, "There! I see an island. Our best chance is to go ashore, build a shelter, and await rescue." The other says, "No, we must go farther out to sea and hope to find the shipping lanes. That is our best chance."

Unable to agree, the two fight, the lifeboat capsizes, and they drown. This is the nature of humanity. Even if only two people are left in the entire universe, they will come to represent opposing factions.

- The Bene Gesserit Acolytes' Handbook

In re-creating particular gholas, we reweave the fabric of history. Once more, Paul Muad'Dib walks among us, with his beloved Chani, his mother the Lady Jessica, and his son Leto II, the God Emperor of Dune. The presence of Suk doctor Wellington Yueh, whose treachery brought a great house to its knees, is at once disturbing and comforting. Also with us are the warrior-Mentat Thufir Hawat, the Fremen Naib Stilgar, and the great planetologist Liet-Kynes. Consider

the possibilities! Such genius constitutes a formidable army. We will need that brilliance, because we face an opponent more terrible than we ever imagined.

- DUNCAN IDAHO, Memories of More Than a Mentat

I have waited and planned and built my strength for fifteen thousand years. I have evolved. It is time.

- Omnius

SANDWORMS OF DUNE

Twenty-One Years After Escape from Chapterhouse

***

- LADY JESSICA, the ghola

Onboard the wandering no-ship Ithaca,

Jessica witnessed the birth of her daughter, but only as an observer. Just fourteen years old, she and many others crowded the medical center, while two Bene Gesserit Suk doctors in the adjacent crèche prepared to extract the tiny girl child from an axlotl tank.

"Alia," one of the female doctors murmured.

This was not truly Jessica's daughter, but a ghola grown from preserved cells. None of the young gholas on the no-ship were "themselves" yet. They had regained none of their memories, none of their pasts.

Something tried to surface at the back of her mind, and though she worried at it like a loose tooth, Jessica could not remember the first time Alia had been born.

In the archives, she had read and reread the legendary accounts generated by Muad'Dib's biographers. But she couldn't remember.

All she had were images from her studies: A dry and dusty sietch on Arrakis, surrounded by Fremen. Jessica and her son Paul had been on the run, taken in by the desert tribe. Duke Leto was dead, murdered by Harkonnens.

Pregnant, Jessica had drunk the Water of Life, forever changing the fetus inside her.

From the moment of her birth, the original Alia had been different from all other babies, filled with ancient wisdom and madness, able to tap into Other Memory without having gone through the Spice Agony. Abomination!

That had been another Alia. Another time and another way.

Now Jessica stood beside her ghola "son" Paul, who was chronologically a year older than she. Paul waited with his beloved Fremen mate Chani and the nine-year-old ghola of a boy who had in turn been their son, Leto II. In a prior shuffle of lives, this had been Jessica's family.

The Bene Gesserit order had resurrected these figures from history to help fight against the terrible Outside Enemy that hunted them. They had Thufir Hawat, the planetologist Liet-Kynes, the Fremen leader Stilgar, and even the notorious Dr. Yueh. Now, after almost a decade of hiatus in the ghola program, Alia had joined the group. Others would come soon; the three remaining axlotl tanks were already pregnant with new children: Gurney Halleck, Serena Butler, Xavier Harkonnen.

Duncan Idaho gave Jessica a quizzical look. Eternal Duncan, with all of his memories restored from all of his prior lives ... She wondered what he thought of this new ghola baby, a bubble of the past rising up to the present. Long ago, the first ghola of Duncan had been Alia's consort....

Concealing his age well, Duncan was a full-grown man with dark wiry hair. He looked exactly like the hero shown in so many archival records, from the time of Muad'Dib, through the God Emperor's thirty-five-century reign, to now, another fifteen centuries later.

Breathless and late, the old Rabbi bustled into the birthing chamber accompanied by twelve-year-old Wellington Yueh. Young Yueh's forehead did not bear the diamond tattoo of the famous Suk School. The bearded Rabbi seemed to think he could save the gangly young man from repeating the terrible crimes he had committed in his prior life.

At the moment the Rabbi looked angry, as he invariably did whenever he came near the axlotl tanks. Since the Bene Gesserit doctors ignored him, the old man vented his displeasure on Sheeana. "After years of sanity, you have done it again! When will you learn to stop taunting God?"

After receiving an ominous prescient dream, Sheeana had declared a temporary moratorium on the ghola project that had been her passion from its inception. But their recent ordeal on the planet of the Handlers and their near capture by the Enemy hunters had forced Sheeana to reassess that decision. The wealth of historical and tactical experience the reawakened gholas could offer might be the greatest weapon the no-ship possessed.

Sheeana had decided to take the risk.

Perhaps we will be saved by Alia one day, Jessica thought. Or by one of the other gholas ...

Tempting fate, Sheeana had performed an experiment on this unborn ghola in an effort to make it more like the Alia. Estimating the point in the pregnancy when the original Jessica had consumed the Water of Life, Sheeana had instructed Bene Gesserit Suk doctors to flood the axlotl tank with a near-fatal spice overdose. Saturating the fetus.

Trying to re-create an Abomination.

Jessica had been horrified to learn of it - too late, when she could do nothing about it. How would the spice affect that innocent baby? A melange overdose was different from undergoing the Agony.

One of the Suk doctors told the Rabbi to stay out of the birthing crèche. Scowling, the old man held up a trembling hand, as if making a blessing on the pale flesh of the axlotl tank.

"You witches think these tanks are no longer women, no longer human - but this is still Rebecca. She remains a child of my flock."

"Rebecca fulfilled a vital need." Sheeana said. "All of the volunteers knew exactly what they were doing. She accepted her responsibility. Why can't you?"

The Rabbi turned in exasperation toward the young man at his side. "Speak to them, Yueh.

Maybe they will listen to you."

Jessica thought the sallow young ghola seemed more intrigued than incensed about the tanks. "As a Suk doctor," he said, "I delivered many children. But never like this. At least I don't think so. With my ghola memories still locked away, I get confused sometimes."

"And Rebecca is human - not just some biological machine to produce melange and a brood of gholas. You have to see that." The Rabbi's voice grew in volume.

Yueh shrugged. "Because I was born in the same fashion, I cannot be entirely objective.

If my memories were restored, maybe I'd agree with you."

"You don't need original memories to think! You can think, can't you?"

"The baby is ready," one of the doctors interrupted. "We must decant it now." She turned impatiently to the Rabbi. "Let us do our work - or the tank could be harmed as well."

With a sound of disgust, the Rabbi shouldered his way from the birthing crèche. Yueh remained behind, continuing to watch.

One of the Suk women tied off the umbilical cord from the fleshy tank. Her shorter colleague cut the purplish-red whip; then she wiped off the slick infant and lifted little Alia into the air. The child let out a loud and immediate cry, as if she had been impatient to be born.

Jessica sighed in relief at the healthy sound, which told her the girl was not an Abomination this time. The original newborn Alia had purportedly looked upon the world with the eyes and intelligence of a full adult. This baby's crying sounded normal. But it stopped abruptly.

While one doctor tended the now-sagging axlotl tank, the other dried the infant and wrapped her in a blanket. Unable to help feeling a tug at her heart, Jessica wanted to reach out and hold the baby, but resisted the urge. Would Alia suddenly start speaking, uttering voices from Other Memory? Instead, the baby looked around the medical center, without seeming to focus.

Others would care for Alia, not unlike the way Bene Gesserit sisters took baby girls under their collective wing. The first Jessica, born under the close scrutiny of breeding mistresses, had never known a mother in the traditional sense. Nor would this Jessica, nor Alia, nor any of the other experimental ghola babies. The new daughter would be raised communally in an improvised society, more an object of scientific curiosity than love.

"What an odd family we all are," Jessica whispered.

***

- ERASMUS, Records and Analyses, Backup #242

In spite of a decades-long effort, the thinking machines had not yet captured the no-ship and its precious cargo. That did not, however, stop the computer evermind from launching his vast extermination fleet against the rest of humanity. Duncan Idaho continued to elude Omnius and Erasmus, who repeatedly cast their sparkling tachyon net into the nothingness, searching for their quarry. The no-ship's veiling capability normally prevented it from being seen, but from time to time the pursuers caught glimpses, as of something concealed behind shrubbery. At first the hunt had been a challenge, but now the evermind was growing frustrated.

"You have lost the ship again," Omnius boomed through wall speakers in the central, cathedral-like chamber in the technological metropolis of Synchrony.

"Inaccurate. I must first find it before I can lose it." Erasmus tried to sound carefree as he shifted his flowmetal skin, reverting from his guise as a kindly old woman to the more familiar appearance of a platinum-surfaced robot.

Like overarching tree trunks, metal spires towered above Erasmus to form a vaulted dome within the machine cathedral. Photons glittered from the activated skins of the pillars, bathing his new laboratory in light. He had even installed a glowing fountain that bubbled with lava - a useless decoration, but the robot often indulged his carefully cultivated artistic sensibilities. "Do not be impatient. Remember the mathematical projections. Everything is nicely predetermined."

"Your mathematical projections could be myths, like any prophecy. How do I know they are correct?"

"Because I have said they are correct."

With the launch of the machine fleet, the long-foretold Kralizec had begun, at last.

Kralizec ... Armageddon ... the Battle at the End of the Universe ... Ragnarok ... Azrafel... the End Times ... the Cloud Darkness. It was a time of fundamental change, of the entire universe shifting on its cosmic axis. Human legends had predicted such a cataclysmic event since the dawn of civilization. Indeed, they had already been through several iterations of similar cataclysms: the Butlerian Jihad itself, the jihad of Paul Muad'Dib, the reign of the Tyrant Leto II. By manipulating computer projections, and thus creating expectations in the mind of Omnius, Erasmus had succeeded in initiating the events that would bring about another fundamental shift. Prophecy and reality - the order of things really didn't matter.

Like an arrow, all of Erasmus's infinitely complex calculations, running trillions of data points through the most sophisticated routines, pointed to one result: The final Kwisatz Haderach -

whoever that was - would determine the course of events at the end of Kralizec. The projection also revealed that the Kwisatz Haderach was on the no-ship, so Omnius naturally wanted such a force fighting on his side. Ergo, the thinking machines needed to capture that ship. The first to exert control over the final Kwisatz Haderach would win.

Erasmus didn't fully understand exactly what the superhuman might do when he was located and seized. Though the robot was a longtime student of mankind, he was still a thinking machine, while the Kwisatz Haderach was not. The new Face Dancers, who had long infiltrated humanity and brought vital information back to the Synchronized Empire, fell somewhere in between, like hybrid biological machines. He and Omnius had both absorbed so many of the lives stolen by the Face Dancers that sometimes they forgot who they were.

The original Tleilaxu Masters had not foreseen the significance of what they had helped create.

The independent robot knew he still had to keep Omnius under control, though. "We have time. You have a galaxy to conquer before we need the Kwisatz Haderach aboard that ship."

"I am glad I did not wait for you to succeed."

For centuries Omnius had been building his invincible force. Using traditional but supremely efficient lightspeed engines, the millions and millions of machine vessels now swept forward and spread out, conquering one star system at a time. The evermind could have made use of the surrogate mathematical navigation systems, which his Face Dancers had "given" to the Spacing Guild, but one element of the Holtzman technology simply remained too incomprehensible. Something indefinably human was required to travel through foldspace, an intangible "leap of faith." The evermind would never admit that the bizarre technology actually made him ... nervous.

Following a flurry of test skirmishes, the wall of robotic battleships had encountered and swiftly destroyed fringe outpost worlds settled by humans. Vanguard drones mapped out the planets ahead and distributed deadly biological plagues that Erasmus had developed; by the time the actual machine fleet arrived at a target world, military action was often unnecessary against a dying population. Each combat engagement, even clashes with isolated groups of Honored Matres, was equally decisive.

To keep himself occupied, the independent robot reviewed the streams of data sent back to him. This was the part he enjoyed best. A buzzing watcheye flitted in front of him, and he brushed it away. "If you allow me to concentrate, Omnius, I may find some way to speed up our progress against the humans."

"How do I know you will not make another mistake?"

"Because you have confidence in my abilities."

The watcheye flitted away.

While the machine fleet crushed one human planet after another, Erasmus issued additional instructions for the invader robots. As the infected humans lay writhing, vomiting, and bleeding from their pores, machine scouts casually ransacked databases, halls of records, libraries, and other sources. This was different from the information to be winnowed from the random lives that Face Dancers had assimilated.

With ail the fresh data flowing in, Erasmus had the luxury of becoming a scientist again, as he had been long ago. The pursuit of scientific truth had always been his true reason for existence. Now the flood was greater than ever before. Glad to possess so much new information, so much undigested data, he gorged his elaborate mind on raw facts and histories.

After the supposed destruction of thinking machines more than fifteen millennia earlier, the fecund humans had spread, building civilizations and destroying them. Erasmus was intrigued by how, after the Battle of Corrin, the Butler family had founded an empire and ruled it under the name of Corrino for ten thousand years, with a few gaps and interregnums, only to be overthrown by a fanatical leader named Muad'Dib. Paul Atreides. The first Kwisatz Haderach.

A more fundamental change, however, had come from his son Leto II, called the God Emperor or Tyrant. Another Kwisatz Haderach - a unique hybrid of man and sandworm that had imposed a draconian rule for thirty-five hundred years. After his assassination, human civilization fragmented. Fleeing to the far reaches of the galaxy in the Scattering, people became hardened by their privations until the worst sort of humans - Honored Matres - had blundered into the burgeoning machine empire....

Another flitting watcheye scanned the same records Erasmus was reading. Omnius spoke through resonating plates in the walls. "I find their contradictions - posed as fact - to be unsettling."

"Unsettling perhaps, but fascinating." Erasmus disengaged himself from the stacks of historical files. "Their histories show how they view themselves and the universe around them. Obviously, these humans need someone to take firm control again."

***

- MISSIONARIA PROTECTIVA, First Primer

Two male workers appeared at the door of Murbella's coldly ostentatious council chambers during a tense meeting. Using suspensor clamps, they hauled a large, motionless robot between them. "Mother Commander? You asked for this to be delivered here."

The combat machine was built from blue and black metal, reinforced with struts and overlapping armor. Its conical head contained a suite of sensors and targeting arrays, and four engine-driven arms were wrapped with cables and augmented with weapons.

Damaged during a recent skirmish, the fighting robot had dark smears across its bulky torso where high-energy blasts had knocked out its internal processors. The robotic thing was shut down, dead, defeated. But even deactivated, it was cause for nightmares.

Murbella's advisors, startled out of their discussions and arguments, stared at the big machine. All of the gathered women wore the plain black unitard of the New Sisterhood, following a code of homogenized dress that allowed no indication of their origins as either Bene Gesserit or Honored Matre.

Murbella gestured to the intimidated-looking workers. "Bring that thing inside where we can see it every time we talk about the Enemy. It will do us good to be reminded of the adversary we're up against."

Even with the suspensor clamps, the men sweated as they wrestled the machine into the room. Murbella strode to the bulky combat robot and stared with defiance up into its dull optic sensors. She glanced proudly at her daughter. "Bashar Idaho brought this specimen back from the battle at Duvalle."

"It should be sent to the scrap heap. Or shot into space," said Kiria, a hard-edged former Honored Matre. "What if it still has passive spy programming?"

"It's been thoroughly purged," said Janess Idaho. As the newly appointed commandant of the Sisterhood's military forces, she had become a very pragmatic young woman.

"A trophy, Mother Commander?" asked Laera, a dark-skinned Reverend Mother who often quietly supported Murbella. "Or a prisoner of war?"

"This is the only one our armies found intact. We blew up four machine ships before we retreated and let them destroy the planet behind us. They had already turned their plagues loose on Ronto and Pital, leaving no survivors. Total population losses number in the billions."

Duvalle, Ronto, and Pital were just the latest casualties as the machine army continued its forward march through the outlying systems. Because of the distances involved and the sheer might of the attacking ships, reports were sketchy and often outdated.

Refugees and couriers surged away from battle zones, heading inward from the fringes of the Scattering.

Murbella turned her back on the deactivated robot and faced the Sisters. "Knowing that a tempest approaches, we have the option of simply evacuating - abandoning everything we have. That is the Honored Matre way."

Some of the Sisters flinched at the comment. Long ago, Honored Matres had chosen to run from the Enemy, pillaging on their way out, hoping to stay one step ahead of the storm. To them, the Old Empire had been no more than a crude barricade to be thrown up against the Enemy; they had simply hoped it would last long enough for them to get away.

"Or, we can board up our windows, strengthen our walls, and ride it out. And hope we survive."

"This is no mere storm, Mother Commander," said Laera. "The repercussions are already being felt. Refugees fleeing the battlefront are overwhelming the support systems of second-wave worlds, all of which are preparing for evacuation as well. The people won't stand and fight."

"Like waterlogged rats crowding to the corner of a sinking raft," Kiria muttered.

"Says the Honored Matre, who did exactly the same," Janess said from the end of the table, then tried to cover her comment by loudly sipping her spice coffee. Kiria glared at her.

"A shadow deep in our Honored Matre past," Murbella said. "Through hubris, and a violent predisposition to strike first and understand later, the whores caused all these problems."

By digging deep into her mind and history, she had been the first to remember how her long-dead sisters had stupidly provoked the thinking machines.

Kiria was indignant, clearly still associating herself with the Honored Matres. Murbella found it disturbing. "You yourself revealed why the Honored Matres are what they are, Mother Commander. Descended from tortured Tleilaxu females, rogue Reverend Mothers, and a few Fish Speakers. They had every right to be vengeful."

"They had no right to be stupid!" Murbella snapped. "A painful past did not give them the right to lash out against anything they encountered. They couldn't salve their conscience by pretending they knew what they were doing when they attacked a machine outpost and stole weapons they didn't understand." She smiled slightly.

"If anything, I can relate to - though not approve of - their revenge against the Tleilaxu worlds.

In Other Memory I know what the Tleilaxu did to my ancestors ...

I remember being one of their vile axlotl tanks. But make no mistake, that kind of provocative and poorly planned violence has caused immeasurable trouble for the human race. And now look what we face!"

"How can we strengthen ourselves against this storm, Mother Commander?" The question came from ancient Accadia, a Reverend Mother who lived in the Chapterhouse Archives.

Accadia hardly ever slept and rarely allowed sunlight to touch her parchment skin.

"What defenses do we have?" The hulking combat robot seemed to mock them from the corner of the room, where the men had left it.

"We have the weapon of religion. Especially Sheeana."

"Sheeana is of no use to us!" Janess said. "Her followers believe she died on Rakis decades ago."

The priests on Rakis had once made much of the girl who could command sandworms.

The Bene Gesserit had created a grassroots religion around Sheeana, and the annihilation of Dune had only served the Sisterhood's greater purpose. After her supposed death, the rescued girl was isolated on Chapterhouse, so that one day she might "return from the grave" to great fanfare. But the real Sheeana had escaped with Duncan on the no-ship more than twenty years ago.

"It's not necessary for us to have her, specifically. Simply find Sisters who resemble her and apply any necessary makeup and facial modifications." Murbella tapped fingers against her lips. "Yes, we shall begin with twelve new Sheeanas. Disperse them to the refugee worlds, since the displaced survivors will be our most impressionable recruits. The resurrected Sheeana will seem to appear everywhere at once - a messiah, a visionary, a leader."

Laera spoke in an eminently reasonable voice. "Genetic tests will prove that these impostors are not Sheeana. Your plan will backfire once people see we have tried to trick them."

Kiria had already thought of the obvious solution. "We can have Bene Gesserit doctors -

Suk doctors - perform the tests ... and lie for us."

"Also, don't underestimate the greatest advantage we have." Murbella held out her hand like a mendicant asking for alms. "The people want to believe. For thousands of years, our Missionaria Protectiva wove religious beliefs among populations. Now we must use those techniques not just for our own protection, but as a functional weapon, a means of influencing armies. No longer passive and protective, but an active force. A Missionaria Aggressiva."

The other women, especially Kiria, seemed to like the idea. Accadia scowled down at her Ridulian crystal sheets, as if trying to find profound answers written in the dense characters.

Murbella flashed a defiant look at the combat robot. "The twelve Sheeanas will carry spice from our stockpiles. Each will distribute extravagant amounts of melange as she makes her pronouncements. She will say that Shaitan told her in a dream that spice would flow again soon. Though Rakis was burned as lifeless as Sodom and Gomorrah, many new Dunes will appear elsewhere. Sheeana will promise them this." Years ago, groups of Reverend Mothers had been sent out on a secret Scattering, taking ships and all-important sandtrout to seed additional planets and create more desert worlds for the sandworms.

"False prophets and sightings of the messiah. It's been done before." Kiria sounded bored.

"Explain how this will benefit us."

Murbella shot her a calculated smile. "We take advantage of the superstitions that will run rampant. People believe they must endure a time of tribulation, a cycle as old as the most ancient religions, long before the First Great Movement or the Zensunni Hajj. So, we tailor that belief to our own uses. The thinking machines are the great evil we have to defeat before humanity can reap its reward."

Turning to the aged mistress of the Archives, she said, "Accadia, read everything you can find about the Butlerian Jihad and how Serena Butler led her forces. The same for Paul Muad'Dib. We could even say that the Tyrant began to prepare us for this. Study his writings and take sections out of context to support our message, so the people will be convinced that this final universal conflict has been foretold all along: Kralizec.

If they believe in the prophecies, they'll continue to fight long after any rational hope should be dashed."

She motioned for the women to go about their tasks. "In the meantime, I have setup a meeting with the Ixians and the Guild. Since Richese is destroyed, I'll demand that they devote their manufacturing capabilities to our war effort. We need every scrap of resistance the human race can muster."

As she was leaving, Accadia asked, "And what if those old prophecies prove to be correct?

What if these truly are the End Times?"

"Then our efforts are all the more justified. And we still fight. It's all we can do." Facing the robot, Murbella spoke to it as if the machine mind could still hear her. "And that's how we will defeat you."

***

I am the keeper of private knowledge and uncounted secrets. You will never know what I know! I would pity you, if you were not an infidel.

- Mirage in the Shariat Road, an apocryphal Tleilaxu writing In the enormous Guild Heighliner, no passengers ever guessed what the Navigator and his captive Tleilaxu Master were doing right under their noses.

By holding melange supplies for ransom, the Bene Gesserit witches had backed the Spacing Guild into a corner and forced them to choose drastic alternatives. Facing extinction from spice starvation, the Navigator faction urged Waff to greater speed to complete his task. The Tleilaxu Master felt the need for haste as well, since he was facing extinction himself, though for different reasons.

Turning his back on the observation lens, Waff surreptitiously consumed another dose of melange. The cinnamony powder had been provided strictly for scientific purposes.

He touched the burning substance to his lips and tongue, closed his eyes in ecstasy.

Such a small quantity - only a taste - was enough to buy a house on a colony world these days! The Tleilaxu man felt energy rush back into his ailing body. Edrik would not begrudge him this bit of melange melange to help him think straight.

Normally, Tleilaxu Masters lived from body to body in a chain of ghola immortality.

They had learned patience and long-term planning from the Great Belief. Had not God's Messenger himself lived for three and a half millennia? But forbidden techniques had accelerated this Waff's growth in the axlotl tank. The cells in his body burned through his existence like flames through a forest, sweeping him from infancy to childhood to maturity, in only a few years. Waff's memory restoration had been imperfect, bringing back only fragments of his past life and knowledge.

Escaping the Honored Matres, Waff had been forced to take refuge with the Navigator faction. Since Edrik and his fellows had financed his ghola resurrection in the first place, why not beg them for sanctuary? Though the little man did not remember how to create melange with axlotl tanks, he claimed he could do the impossible - bring back the supposedly extinct sandworms. A much more spectacular and necessary solution.

In the isolated Heighliner laboratory, Edrik had provided all of the research tools, technical equipment, and genetic raw material he could possibly need. Waff did as the Navigators demanded. Bringing back the magnificent worms that had been exterminated on Rakis offered the simultaneous possibilities of manufacturing spice, and of restoring his Prophet.

I must do this! Failure is not an option.

With his accelerated maturity, Waff would be at his peak - the best health, the sharpest mind

- for only a short while longer. Before he began the inevitable rapid degeneration, he had much to accomplish. The tremendous responsibility prodded at him.

Focus, focus!

He climbed onto a stool and peered into a plaz-walled containment tank full of sand from Rakis itself. Dune.

Because of the planet's religious significance, pilgrims who could not afford the interplanetary passage contented themselves with relics, fragments of stone chipped from the ruins of Muad'Dib's original palace or scraps of spice cloth embroidered with the sayings of Leto II. Even the poorest of devout followers wanted a sample of Rakian sand, so that they could dust their fingertips and imagine themselves closer to the Divided God. The Navigators had acquired hundreds of cubic meters of authentic Rakian sand. Though it was doubtful that the origin of the grains would have any effect on the sandworm tests, Waff preferred to remove any stray variables.

He leaned over the open tank, filled his mouth with saliva, and let a long droplet splatter onto the soft sand. Like piranhas in an aquarium, shapes stirred beneath the surface, swirling to seize the invading moisture. In another place long ago, spitting - sharing one's personal water - had been a sign of respect among the Fremen.

Waff used it to bring sandtrout to the surface.

Little makers. Sandtrout specimens, far more precious even than the sand of Dune.

Years ago, the Guild had intercepted a secret Bene Gesserit ship carrying sandtrout in its hold. When the witches aboard refused to explain their mission, they were all killed, their sandtrout seized, and Chapterhouse had been none the wiser.

Learning that the Guild possessed some of the immature sandworm vectors, Waff demanded them for his work. Though he could not remember how to create melange in an axlotl tank, this experiment had much greater potential. By resurrecting the worms, he could not only bring back spice, but the Prophet himself!

Unafraid of the sandtrout, he reached into the aquarium with a small hand. Grabbing one of the leathery creatures by its fringe, he pulled it flopping out of the sand.

Sensing the moisture in Waff's perspiration, the sandtrout wrapped itself around his fingers, palm, and knuckles. He poked and prodded the soft surface, reshaping the edges.

"Little sandtrout, what secrets do you have for me?" He formed a fist, and the creature flowed around it to form a jellylike glove. He could feel his skin drying out.

Carrying the sandtrout, Waff went to a clean research table and set out a wide, deep pan.

He tried to unwrap the sandtrout from his knuckles, but each time he moved the membrane it flowed back onto his skin. Feeling the desiccation in his hand now, he poured a beaker of fresh water into the bottom of the pan. The sandtrout, attracted by a larger supply, quickly plopped into it.

Water was deadly poison to sandworms, but not to the younger sandtrout, the larval stage of the worms. The early vector had a fundamentally different biochemistry before it underwent the metamorphosis into its mature form. A paradox. How could one stage in the life cycle be so ravenously drawn to water, while a later phase was killed by it?

Flexing his fingers to recover from the unnatural dryness, Waff was fascinated as the specimen engulfed the water. The larva instinctively hoarded moisture to create a perfectly dry environment for the adult. From previous-life memories that did remain within him, he knew of ancient Tleilaxu experiments to move and control worms. Standard attempts to transplant full-grown worms onto dry planets always failed. Even the most extreme offworld landscapes still had too much moisture to support such a fragile - fragile? - life-form as the sandworms.

Now, though, he had a different idea. Instead of changing the worlds to accommodate sandworms, perhaps he could alter the worms themselves in their immature stage, help them adapt. The Tleilaxu understood the Language of God, and their genius for genetics had achieved the impossible many times. Had not Leto II been God's Prophet?

It was Waff's duty to bring Him back.

The concept and chromosomal mechanics seemed simple. At some point in the sandtrout's development, a trigger changed the creature's chemical response toward a substance as simple as water. If he could only find that trigger and block it, the sandtrout should continue to mature, but without such a deathly aversion to liquid water. Now that would be a true miracle!

But if one prevented a caterpillar from spinning a cocoon, would it still transform into a great moth? He would have to be very careful, indeed.

If he understood what the witches had done on Chapterhouse, they had discovered a way to release sandtrout into a planetary environment - the Bene Gesserit homeworld.

Once there, the sandtrout reproduced and began an unstoppable process to destroy (remake?) the whole ecosystem. From a lush planet to an arid wasteland. They would eventually turn the world into a total desert, where the sandworms could survive and be reborn.

More questions continued to follow, one after another. Why were the fleeing Bene Gesserit Sisters carrying sandtrout samples aboard their refugee ships? Were they trying to distribute them to other worlds, and thereby create more desert planets?

Habitats for more worms? Such a plan would require a huge concerted effort, take decades to come to fruition, and kill off the native life on a planet. Inefficient.

Waff had a much more immediate solution. If he could develop a breed of sandworm that tolerated water, even thrived around it, the creatures could be transplanted onto innumerable worlds where they could grow swiftly and multiply! The worms would not need to reconstruct a whole planetary environment before they began to produce melange. That alone would save decades that Waff simply did not have. His modified worms would provide all the spice the Guild Navigators could ever desire - and serve Waff's purposes as well.

Help me, Prophet!

The sandtrout specimen had absorbed all the water in the pan and now gradually moved about the base and sides, exploring the boundaries. Waff brought research tools and chemicals to the laboratory table - his alcohols, acids, and flames, his deep sample extractors.

The first cut was the hardest. Then he began to work on the shapeless, squirming creature to pry loose its genetic secrets in any way he could.

He had the best DNA analyzers and genetic sequencers the Guild could obtain ... and they were very good, indeed. The sandtrout took a long time to die, but Waff was certain the Prophet wouldn't mind.

***

- SCYTALE, the last known Tleilaxu Master

The small, gray-skinned child looked worriedly at his older but identical counterpart.

"This is a restricted area. The Bashar will be very angry with us."

The older Scytale scowled, disappointed that a child with such a magnificent destiny could be so timid. "These people have no authority to impose their rules on me - either version of me!" Despite years of preparation, instruction, and insistence, Scytale knew that the ghola boy still did not grasp who he was. The Tleilaxu Master coughed and winced, unable to minimize his physical problems. "You must awaken your genetic memories before it is too late!"

The child followed his older self down the dim corridor of the no-ship, but his steps were too shaky to be furtive. Occasionally the degenerating Scytale needed support from his twelve-year-old "son." Each day, each lesson, should bring the younger one closer to the tipping point at which his embedded memories would cascade free. Then, finally, old Scytale could allow himself to die.

Years ago, he had been forced to offer his only bargaining chip - his secret stash of valuable cellular material - to bribe the witches. Scytale resented being put in such a position, but in return for the raw makings of heroes from the past for the witches' own purposes, Sheeana had agreed to let him use the axlotl tanks to grow a new version of himself. He hoped it wasn't too late.

For years now, every sentence, every day increased pressure on the younger Scytale.

His "father," a victim of planned cellular obsolescence, doubted he had another year before collapsing completely. Unless the boy received his memories soon, very soon, all the knowledge of the Tleilaxu would be lost. Old Scytale winced at the dire prospect, which hurt him far more than any physical pain.

They reached one of the vacant lower levels, where a testing chamber had gone unnoticed in the empty expanses of the ship. "I will use this powindah teaching equipment to show you how God meant for the Tleilaxu to live." The walls were smooth and curved, the glowpanels tuned to a dull orange. The room seemed to be full of gestating wombs, round, flaccid, mindless - the way women were supposed to serve a truly civilized society.

Scytale smiled at the sight, while the boy stared around with dark eyes. "Axlotl tanks. So many of them! Where did they all come from?"

"Unfortunately they are merely holographic projections." The high-quality simulation included mock tank sounds, as well as the odors of chemicals, disinfectants, and medicinals.

As Scytale stood surrounded by the glorious images, his heart ached to see the home he missed so much, a home now utterly destroyed. Years ago, before he was allowed to set foot again in sacred Bandalong, Scytale and all Tleilaxu had always undergone a lengthy cleansing process. Ever since the Honored Matres had forced him to flee with only his life and a few bargaining chips, he had tried to observe the rituals and practices as much as possible - and had vigorously taught them to the young ghola - but there were limitations.

Scytale had not felt sufficiently clean in a long time.

But he knew that God would understand.

"This is how a typical breeding chamber used to look. Study it. Absorb it. Remind yourself of how things were, how they should be. I created these images from my own memories, and those same memories are within you. Find them."

Scytale had said the same thing again and again, hammering it into the child. His younger version was a good student, very intelligent, and knew all the information by rote learning, but the boy didn't know it in his soul.

Sheeana and the other witches didn't grasp the immensity of the crisis he faced, or perhaps they didn't care. The Bene Gesserits understood little about the nuances of restoring a ghola's memories, could not recognize the moment when a ghola was perfectly ready ... but Scytale might not have the luxury of waiting. The child was certainly old enough. He should awaken! Soon the boy would be the only Tleilaxu left, with no one to wake his memories.

As he surveyed the rows of breeding vats, the junior Scytale's face filled with awe and intimidation. The boy was drinking it all in. Good. "That tank in the second row is the one that gave birth to me," he said. "The Sisterhood called her Rebecca."

"The tank has no name. It is not a person and never was. Even when it could speak, it was only a female. We Tleilaxu never name our tanks, nor the females that preceded them."

Expanding the image, he allowed the walls to disappear into a projection of a vast breeding house with tank after tank after tank; outside were the spires and streets of Bandalong.

These visual cues should have been sufficient, but Scytale wished he could have added other sensory details, the female reproductive smells, the feel of the sunlight of home, the comforting knowledge of countless Tleilaxu filling the streets, the buildings, the temples.

He felt achingly lonely.

"I should not still be alive and standing before you. It offends me to be old and in pain, with my body malfunctioning. The kehl of true Masters should have euthanized me long ago and let me live on in a fresh ghola body. But these are not proper times."

"These are not proper times," the boy repeated, backing through one of the detailed holo-images. "You have to do things you would not otherwise tolerate. You must use heroic means to stay alive long enough to awaken me, and I promise you, with all my heart, that I will become

Scytale. Before it is too late."

The process of awakening a ghola was neither simple nor swift. Year after year, Scytale had applied pressures, reminders, mental twists to this boy. Each lesson and each demand built, like a pebble added to the pile, higher and higher, and sooner or later he would add enough to that unstable mound to trigger an avalanche. And only God and his Prophet could know which small stone of memory would cause that barrier to come crashing down.

The boy watched the flickering moods cross his mentor's face. Not knowing what else to do, he quoted a comforting lesson from his catechism. "When one is faced with an impossible choice, one must always choose the path of the Great Belief. God guides those who wish to be led."

The very thought seemed to consume Scytale's last energy, and he slumped into a nearby chair in the simulation room, trying to recover his strength. When the ghola hurried to his side, Scytale stroked the dark hair of his alternate self. "You are young, perhaps too young."

The boy placed a comforting hand on the old man's shoulder. "I will try - I promise.

I'll work as hard as I can." He squeezed his eyes shut and seemed to push, as if wrestling with the intangible walls inside his brain. At last, perspiring heavily, he gave up the effort.

The elder Scytale felt despondent. He had already used all the techniques he knew to push this ghola to the brink. Crisis, paradox, unrelenting desperation. But he felt it more than the boy did. Clinical knowledge was simply insufficient.

The witches had used some sort of sexual twisting to bring back the Bashar Miles Teg when his ghola was only ten years old, and Scytale's successor was already two years past that mark. But he could not bear the thought of the Bene Gesserit women using their unclean bodies to break this boy. Scytale had already sacrificed so much, selling most of his soul for a glimmer of hope for his race's future. The Prophet

Himself would turn his back on Scytale in disgust. Not that!

Scytale placed his head in his hands. "You are a flawed ghola. I should have thrown away your fetus and started anew twelve years ago!"

The boy's voice was rough, like torn fiber. "I will concentrate, and push my memories out of my cells!"

The Tleilaxu Master felt a weary sadness weighing him down. "It is an instinctive process, not an intellectual one. It must come to you. If your memories don't return, then you are of no use to me. Why should I let you live?"

The boy was visibly struggling, but Scytale saw no flash of awe and relief, no sudden flood of a lifetime's experiences. Both Tleilaxu reeked of failure. With each passing moment, Scytale felt more and more of himself dying.

***

- from a Bene Gesserit study on the human condition

In his second life, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen had done well for himself. At only seventeen, the awakened ghola already commanded a large castle filled with antique relics and a retinue of servants to satisfy his every whim. Better yet, it was Castle Caladan, the seat of House Atreides. He sat upon a high throne of fused black jewels, gazing around a large audience chamber as attendants went about their duties. Pomp and grandeur, all the trappings a Harkonnen deserved.

Despite appearances, though, the ghola Baron had very little real power, and he knew it.

The Face Dancer myriad had created him for a specific purpose and, despite his reawakened memories, managed to keep him on a tight leash. Too many important questions remained unanswered, and too much was out of his control. He didn't like that.

The Face Dancers seemed much more interested in their young ghola of Paul Atreides - the one they called "Paolo." He was their real prize. Their leader Khrone said that this planet and the restored castle existed for the sole purpose of triggering Paolo's memories. The Baron was just a means to an end, of secondary importance in the "Kwisatz Haderach matter."

He resented the Atreides brat for it. The boy was only eight and still had much to learn from his mentor, though the Baron hadn't yet determined what the Face Dancers really wanted.

"Prepare him and raise him. See that he is primed for his destiny," Khrone had said.

"There is a certain need he must fulfill."

A certain need. But what need?

You are his grandfather, said the annoying voice of Alia inside the Baron's head.

Take good care of him.

The little girl taunted him incessantly. From the moment his memories were restored, she had been there waiting for him in his mind. Her voice still contained a childhood lisp, exactly as she had sounded when she'd killed him with the poisoned needle of the gom jabbar.

"I'd rather take care of you, little Abomination!" he yelled. "Wring your neck, twist your head -

once, twice, three times! Make your delicate little skull pop right off!

Ha!"

But it's your own skull, dear Baron.

He clamped his hands against his temples. "Leave me alone!"

Seeing no one else in the room with their master, the servants looked at him uneasily.

The Baron fumed and slumped back in his glittering black chair. Having embarrassed and angered him, the Alia voice whispered his name tauntingly one more time and faded away.

Just then, a jaunty and self-important Paolo strode into the chamber, followed by an entourage of androgynous Face Dancers who acted as his protectors. The child carried an air of overconfidence that the Baron found at once fascinating and disconcerting.

Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and this other Paul Atreides were inextricably meshed, simultaneously drawn together and repelled, like two powerful magnets. After the Baron's memories had been restored and he understood enough of who he was, Paolo had been brought to Caladan and handed over to the Baron's tender care ... with dire warnings should any harm befall him.

From his high black chair, the Baron glared down at the cocky youth. What made Paolo so special? What was the "Kwisatz Haderach matter"? What did the Atreides know?

For some time, Paolo had been sensitive, thoughtful, even caring; he had a stubborn streak of innate goodness that the Baron had been working diligently to eradicate. Given time, and enough harsh training, he was sure he could cure even the honorable core of an Atreides.

That would prime Paolo for his destiny, all right! Though the boy still struggled with his actions occasionally, he had made considerable progress.

Paolo came to an impertinent halt in front of the dais. One of the androgynous Face Dancers placed an antique handgun into the boy's hand.

Angrily, the Baron leaned forward for a better view. "Is that gun from my personal collection?

I told you to stay out of those things."

"This is a relic of House Atreides, so I'm entitled to use it. A disk gun, once carried by my sister Alia, according to the label."

The Baron shifted on his throne, nervous to have the loaded weapon so close to him.

"It's just a woman's gun."

Inside the thick black armrests the Baron had secreted his own weapons, any one of which could easily turn the boy into a wet smear - hmm, fresh material for growing another ghola, he thought. "Even so, it's a valuable relic, and I don't want it damaged by a reckless child."

"I won't damage it." Paolo seemed pensive. "I respect artifacts that my ancestors used."

Anxious to keep the boy from thinking too much, he stood. "Shall we take it outside, then, Paolo? Why don't we see how it works?" The Baron gave him an avuncular pat on the shoulder. "And afterward we can kill something with our bare hands, like we did to the mongrel hounds and ferrets."

Paolo seemed uncertain. "Maybe another day."

Nevertheless, the Baron hurried him out of the throne room. "Let's get rid of those noisy gulls around the midden piles. Have I mentioned how much you remind me of Feyd?

Lovely Feyd."

"More than once."

Watched over by Face Dancers, they spent the next two hours at the castle's trash heap, taking turns shooting the raucous birds with the disk gun. Oblivious to the danger, the gulls swooped and shrieked at one another, fighting over morsels of rain-splattered garbage.

Paolo took a shot, then the Baron. Despite its antiquity, the gun was quite accurate. Each spinning, microthin disk chopped a bird into bloody meat and dislodged feathers. Then the surviving gulls squabbled over the fresh gobbets.

Between them, they killed fourteen birds, although the Baron did not do nearly as well as the child, who had quite an aptitude for cool marksmanship. As the Baron raised the disk gun and aimed carefully, the girl's annoying voice rang in his head again. That's not my gun, you know.

He took the shot and missed by a wide margin. Alia giggled.

"What do you mean it's not yours?" He ignored Paolo's puzzled stare as the boy took the weapon for his turn.

It's a fake. I never had a disk gun like that.

"Leave me alone."

"Who are you talking to?" Paolo asked.

After reaching into a pocket the Baron offered several capsules of orange melange substitute to Paolo, who obediently took them. He grabbed the weapon back from the boy.

"Don't be ridiculous. The antiquities dealer provided a certificate of authenticity and documentation when he sold the weapon to me."

Grandfather, you shouldn't be so easily fooled! My own gun shot larger disks. This is a cheap imitation and doesn't even have the maker's initials on the barrel, like the original.

He studied the carved ornamental handle, turned the gun toward his face, then looked at the short barrel. No initials. "And what about my other things, the objects supposedly owned by Jessica and Duke Leto?"

Some are real, some are not. I'll let you find out which are which.

Knowing the nobleman's penchant for buying historical artifacts, the dealer would return to Caladan soon. No one made a fool of the Baron! The Baron ghola decided the next meeting would not be quite so cordial. He would ask a few incisive questions.

Alia's voice faded away, and he was glad to have a moment of peace inside his head.

Paolo had consumed two of the orange capsules, and as the melange substitute took hold, the boy dropped to his knees and stared beatifically into the sky. "I see a great victory in my future! I'm holding a knife that drips with blood. I'm standing over my enemy ... over myself."

He frowned, then beamed again, yelling, "I am the Kwisatz Haderach!" Then Paolo let out a bloodcurdling scream. "No ... now, I see myself dying on the floor, bleeding to death. But how can this be, if I am the Kwisatz Haderach?

How can this be?"

The nearest Face Dancer grew animated. "We were instructed to watch for signs of prescience. We must notify Khrone immediately."

Prescience? the Baron thought. Or insanity?

Inside his mind, the presence of Alia laughed.

* * *

He had great ambitions of turning Caladan into another Giedi Prime. The march of progress was more important than any esoteric plans the Face Dancers had for young Paolo.

On the lowest level of the restored castle, where other great houses would have prepared chambers for "policy enforcement activities," House Atreides had instead used the space for food storage rooms, a wine cellar, and an emergency shelter. Being a more traditional nobleman, the Baron had installed dungeons, interrogation rooms, and a well-equipped torture chamber. He also had a party room on that level, where he often took young boys from the fishing village.

You can't remove the marks of House Atreides with such cosmetic changes, Grandfather, said the pestering voice of Alia. I preferred the old castle.

"Shut up, devil child! You were never here in life, either."

Oh, I visited my ancestral home when my mother lived here, when Muad'Dib was Emperor and his jihad splashed blood across the star systems. Don't you remember, Grandfather?

Or weren't you inside my head then?

"I wish you weren't inside mine. I was born before you! I can't possibly have your memories inside me. You're an Abomination!"

Alia chuckled in a particularly disconcerting way. Yes, Grandfather. I'm that, and much more.

Perhaps that's why I have the power to be inside you. Or, perhaps you are just flawed completely mad. Have you considered the possibility that you might be imagining me?

That's what everyone else thinks.

Servants hurried by, glancing fearfully at him. Just then the Baron saw a groundcar negotiating the steep road from the spaceport. "Ah, here is our guest." Despite Alia's intrusion, he expected this to be an entertaining day.

After the groundcar pulled up, a tall man stepped out of the rear compartment and made his way past statues of great Harkonnens that the Baron had erected in the past year. A suspensor platform floated behind the antiquities dealer, carrying his wares.

What do you plan to do with him, Grandfather?

"You know damned well what I'm going to do." High on the wall above, the Baron rubbed his hands together in gleeful anticipation. "Make yourself useful for a change, Abomination."

Alia giggled, but it sounded as if she was laughing at him.

The Baron hurried down as a haunted-looking house servant escorted the visitor inside.

Shay Vendee was an antiquities dealer, always pleased to meet with one of his best customers. As he strolled in with his goods trailing behind him, his round face shone as radiantly as a small red sun.

The Baron greeted him with a moist handshake, clasping with both hands and holding on a little too long, squeezing a bit too hard.

The merchant extricated himself from his customer's grip. "You'll marvel at what I've brought, Baron - amazing what turns up with a little digging." He opened one of the cases on the suspensor platform. "I saved these treasures especially for you."

The Baron brushed a speck off one of the jeweled rings on his fingers. "First I have something to show you, my dear Mr. Vendee. My new wine cellar. I am quite proud of it."

A look of surprise. "Are the Danian vineyards operating again?"

"I have other sources."

After the dealer disengaged his suspensor platform, the Baron led him down a wide rock staircase into increasing gloom. Oblivious to the danger, Vendee chattered cordially.

"Caladan wines used to be quite famous, and deservedly so. In fact, I heard a rumor that a cache was found on the ruins of Kaitain, bottles perfectly preserved in a nullentropy vault.

The nullentropy field prevented the wine from aging and mellowing - in this case for thousands of years - but even so, the vintage

must be quite extraordinary. Would you like me to see if I can acquire a bottle or two for you?"

The Baron stopped at the bottom of the dim stairs and peered with spider-black eyes at his guest. "So long as you can provide the appropriate documentation. I wouldn't want to be duped into buying anything fake."

Vendee wore a look of horror. "Of course not, Baron Harkonnen!"

Finally, they passed through a narrow corridor illuminated by smoking oil lamps.

Glowglobes were too efficient and harsh for the Baron's taste. He loved the dank, gritty smell of the air; it almost masked the other odors.

"Here we are!" The Baron pushed open a heavy wooden door and led the way into his fully stocked torture chamber. It had the traditional accoutrements: racks, masks, electrified chairs, and a strappado, by which a subject could be alternately hoisted into the air and dropped. "This is one of my new playrooms. My pride and joy."

Vendee's eyes opened wide in alarm. "I thought you said we were going to your wine cellar."

"Why, over there, my good man." With a good-natured expression, the Baron pointed to a table from which loose straps hung. A wine bottle and two glasses sat on top.

He poured red wine into both glasses and handed one to his increasingly agitated guest.

Vendee glanced around, nervously eyeing the red stains on the table and rock floor.

Spilled wine? "I have just made a long journey, and I'm tired. Maybe we should go back up to the main rooms. You will be absolutely delighted with the new items I've brought. Quite valuable relics, I assure you."

The Baron fingered one of the straps on the table. "There is another matter, first."

He narrowed his eyes. From a side door a sunken-eyed boy marched in, carrying what looked like two ornate old weapons, disk handguns of ancient manufacture.

"Do these look familiar? Examine them carefully."

Vendee held one weapon to examine it. "Oh, yes. The antique gun of Alia Atreides.

Used by her own hands."

"So you said." Taking the other handgun from the serving boy, the Baron said to Vendee, "You sold me a fake. I happen to know that the gun you hold is not the original weapon used by Alia."

"I have a reputation for integrity, Baron. If anyone has told you otherwise, they are lying."

"Unfortunately for you, my source is beyond reproach."

You are lucky to have me inside you to point out your mistakes, Alia said. If you believe I am real.

Indignantly, Vendee placed the gun on the table and turned to leave. He only made it halfway to the door.

The Baron pulled the trigger of his own weapon, and a large, spinning disk shot out and hit the dealer squarely in the back of his neck, decapitating him. Swiftly, smoothly.

The Baron was sure it hadn't hurt a bit.

"Good shot, eh?" The Baron grinned at the serving boy.

The servant did not flinch at the murder. "Will that be all you desire from me, sir?"

"You don't expect me to clean up this mess myself, do you?"

"No, my Lord. I will get right to it."

"Then wash yourself afterward." The Baron looked him over. "We'll have even more fun this afternoon." Meanwhile, he went back upstairs to study what the antique dealer had brought with him.

***

- ship's log, entry of DUNCAN IDAHO

Today, Gurney Halleck would be born again. Paul Atreides had looked forward to this during the months-long gestation process.

Since the recent birth of his sister Alia, the waiting had become nearly unbearable.

But in a matter of hours, Gurney would be removed from the axlotl tank. The famed Gurney Halleck!

In his studies under Proctor Superior Garimi, Paul had read much about the troubadour warrior, had seen images of the man and heard recordings of his songs. But he wanted to know the real Gurney, his friend, mentor, and protector from an epic time. Someday, though their ages were topsy-turvy now, the two would remember how close their friendship had been.

Paul couldn't keep the grin off his face as he rushed to get ready. Whistling an old Atreides song that he'd learned from Gurney's recorded collection, he stepped into the corridor, and Chani emerged from her own quarters to join him. Two years his junior, the thirteen-year-old was whip-thin and fast, soft-spoken and beautiful, only a preview of the woman she would become again. Knowing their destinies, she and Paul were already inseparable. He took her hand, and the pair happily hurried toward the medical center.

He wondered if Gurney would be an ugly baby, or if he had only become a rolling lump of a man after being battered by the Harkonnens. He hoped the Gurney ghola would have a natural skill with the baliset, too. Paul was confident that the no-ship's stores could re-create one of the antique musical instruments. Maybe the two of them could play music together.

Others would be there for the new birth: his "mother" Jessica, Thu-fir Hawat, and almost certainly Duncan Idaho. Gurney had many friends aboard. No one on the ship had known Xavier Harkonnen or Serena Butler, the other two gholas who would be decanted today, but they were legends from the Butlerian Jihad. Each ghola, according to Sheeana, had a role to play, and any one of them - or all of them together - might be the key to defeating the Enemy.

Aside from the ghola children, many other boys and girls had been born over the years of the Ithaca's long flight. The Sisters bred with male Bene Gesserit workers who had also escaped from Chapterhouse; they understood the need to increase their population and prepare a solid foundation for a new colony, if the no-ship ever found a suitable planet to settle. The Rabbi's group of Jewish refugees, who had also married and begun families, still waited for a new home to fulfill their long quest. The no-ship was so vast, and the population aboard still so far below its capacity, that there was no real concern about running short on resources. Not yet.

As Paul and Chani approached the main birthing crèche, four female proctors ran toward them down the hall, urgently calling for any qualified Suk doctor. "They're dead!

All three of them."

Paul's heart stuttered. At fifteen, he was already training in some of the skills that had once made him the historical leader known as Muad'Dib. Summoning all the steel he could put into his voice, he demanded that the second proctor stop. "Explain yourself!"

The Bene Gesserit blurted, surprised into her answer. "Three axlotl tanks, three gholas.

Sabotage - and murder. Someone destroyed them."

Paul and Chani rushed toward the medical center. Duncan and Sheeana were already in the doorway looking shaken. Inside the chamber, three axlotl tanks had been ripped from their life-support mechanisms and lay in puddles of burned flesh and spilled liquid. Someone had used an incinerating beam and corrosives to destroy not only the life-support machinery, but the core flesh of the tanks and the unborn gholas.

Gurney Halleck. Xavier Harkonnen. Serena Butler. All lost. And the tanks, which had once been living women.

Duncan looked at Paul, articulating the real horror here. "We have a saboteur aboard.

Someone who wishes to harm the ghola project - or maybe all of us."

"But why now?" Paul asked. "The ship has been fleeing for two decades, and the ghola project began years ago. What changed?"

"Maybe someone was afraid of Gurney," Sheeana suggested. "Or Xavier Harkonnen, or Serena Butler."

Paul saw that the other three axlotl tanks in the crèche had not been harmed, including the one that had recently given birth to the spice-saturated Alia.

Standing by Gurney's tank, he saw the dead, half-born baby among the burned and dissolved folds of flesh. Nauseated, he knelt to touch the few wisps of blond hair. "Poor Gurney."

As Duncan helped Paul to his feet, Sheeana said in a coldly businesslike voice, "We still have the cellular material. We can grow replacements for all of them." Paul could sense her deep fury, barely controlled by her strict Bene Gesserit training.

"We will need more axlotl tanks. I'll send out a call for volunteers."

The ghola of Thufir Hawat entered and stared in disbelief at what had happened, his face an ashen mask. After the ordeal on the planet of the Handlers, he and Miles Teg had bonded closely; Thufir now helped the Bashar with security and defenses aboard the ship. The fourteen-year-old struggled to sound authoritative. "We will find out who did this."

"Scan the security images," Sheeana said. "The killer can't hide."

Thufir looked embarrassed, as well as angry and so very young. "I already checked.

The security imagers were deactivated, intentionally, but there must be other evidence."

"All of us were attacked, not just these axlotl tanks." Duncan's anger was plain as he turned toward young Thufir. "The Bashar has cited several previous incidents that he believes may be sabotage."

"Those were never proved," Thufir said. "They could have been mechanical breakdowns, systems fatigue, natural failures."

Paul's voice was ice as he took a last, lingering look at the infant that would have been Gurney Halleck. "This was no natural failure."

Then Paul's legs went suddenly rubbery. Dizziness rose around him, and his consciousness blurred. As Chani rushed to grab him, he reeled, lost his footing, and hit his head hard on the deck. For a moment blackness enveloped him, a gloom that brightened into a frightening vision. Paul Atreides had seen it before, but he didn't know if it was memory or prescience.

He saw himself lying on the floor in a spacious, unknown place. A knife wound deep inside him sucked out his life. A mortal wound. His life's blood poured onto the floor, and his vision turned to dark static. Gazing up, he saw his own young face looking back at him, laughing. "I have killed you!"

Chani was shaking him, shouting into his ear. "Usul! Usul, look at me!"

He felt the touch of her hand on his own, and when his vision cleared he saw another concerned face. For a moment he thought it was Gurney Halleck, complete with an inkvine scar on his jawline, the glass-splinter eyes, the wispy blond hair.

The image shifted, and he realized it was the black-haired Duncan Idaho. Another old friend and guardian. "Will you protect me from danger, Duncan?" Paul's voice hitched. "As you vowed to do when I was a child? Gurney is no longer able."

"Yes, Master Paul. Always."

***

- MOTHER COMMANDER MURBELLA, assessment of past and present strengths Weapons and battleships were as important as air and food during these supposed End Times. Murbella knew she would have to change the way she approached the problem, but she had never expected such resistance from her own Sisterhood.

With both anger and disdain, Kiria cried, "You offer them Obliterators, Mother Commander?

We can't just hand over such destructive weapons to Ix."

She had no patience for this. "Who else will build them for us? Holding secrets among ourselves only benefits the Enemy. You know as well as I do that only the Ixians can decipher the technology and manufacture great quantities for the coming war.

Therefore, Ix must have full access. There is no other answer."

Many worlds were building their own gigantic fleets, armoring every ship they could find, working on new weapon designs, but nothing had so far proved even remotely effective against the Enemy. The technology of the thinking machines was unsurpassed.

But with a supply of new Obliterators, Murbella could turn the machines' own destructive power against them.

After snatching the weapons from fringe machine outposts centuries ago, the Honored Matres could have formed an impenetrable line and hurled Obliterators at the oncoming Enemy. If they had stood together for the common good, they could have prevented this whole problem. Instead, those Honored Matres had fled.

Thinking about the hidden history she had excavated from deep within Other Memory, Murbella continued to be annoyed at those ancestors. They had taken the weapons, used them without understanding them, and depleted most of their stockpiles in their petty revenge against the hated Tleilaxu. Yes, many generations earlier the Tleilaxu had tormented their females, and the Honored Matres had good reason to direct vengeful violence against them.

But such a waste!

Because the Honored Matres had been so profligate in using the planet-roasting weapons against any world that offended them, only a few Obliterators remained intact. Recently, when cracking down on the rebel Honored Matre strongholds, Murbella had expected to unearth greater stockpiles. But they had found nothing. Had someone else stolen the weapons? The Guild perhaps, under their original pretext of helping the Honored Matres?

Or had the whores truly used them all, holding nothing in reserve?

Now the human race had insufficient weapons left to stand against the real Enemy.

The Obliterators were as incomprehensible as any device Tio Holtzman had ever created for folding space, and the women had never known how to create more. For the sake of humanity, she hoped the Ixians could do so.

Times of extremis demand extreme actions.

Under her orders, the members of the united Sisterhood now removed the powerful weapons from their no-ships, battle cruisers, and infiltration vessels. She would take them to Ix herself. Murbella cut off continued arguments as she marched with a small entourage toward the Chapterhouse spaceport.

"But Mother Commander, at least negotiate patent protections," Laera said, a flush showing even on her dark skin. "Impose restrictions so that the technology does not become widespread." She was one of the most businesslike Reverend Mothers, filling much of Bellonda's old role. "Proliferation amongst planetary warlords could result in the devastation of the largest star systems. CHOAM alone, working with Ix, could wreak - "

Murbella cut her off with a disgusted noise. "I have no interest in who may or may not benefit commercially after we win this war.

If the Ixians help us achieve victory, they are entitled to profit." She rubbed her chin thoughtfully as she looked up at the ramp of her small, fast lighter. "We'll let the planetary warlords deal with their own problems."

***

- DUNCAN IDAHO, letter submitted to Reverend Mother Bellonda Sheeana used an authoritative tone, just short of Voice. " 'Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.' And I want the truth from you.

Now."

Garimi raised her eyebrows and said calmly, "A quote from Duke Leto Atreides to bolster the interrogation? Shall we bring in blazing lights and a Truthsayer?"

"My Truthsense is sufficient. I have always known you well enough to read you."

The shock waves from the appalling crime in the birthing center rippled through the no-ship.

The slaughter of unborn gholas, the destruction of three axlotl tanks - tanks created from volunteer Sisters! - went beyond anything Sheeana had expected from even her most vehement detractors.

Her suspicions had naturally turned toward the outspoken leader of the ultraconservative faction.

Inside an interior conference chamber whose doors were sealed, Sheeana stood like a stern schoolteacher, facing nine of the most prominent dissenters. These women had opposed the ghola project since its inception, disagreeing even more vehemently after Sheeana's decision to restart the work.

Under the blistering scrutiny, Garimi stared back, while her supporters were openly hostile -

especially the squat Stuka. "Why would I damage an axlotl tank? It makes no sense."

Within her mind, among the lives in Other Memory, she heard the now-familiar voice of the ancient Serena Butler, sounding horrified. Killing a child!

Serena was an odd visitor in Other Memory, a woman whose ancient thoughts should not have traveled down the corridors of the generations, and yet she had been with Sheeana for years now.

"You have shown a previous willingness to kill ghola children." Sheeana finally sat down.

Garimi fought to control her trembling. "I attempted to save us before Leto could become a threat, before he could become the Tyrant again. That was all, and I failed.

My reasons were well known, and I stand by them. Why would I go to such extremes now?

What do I care about Halleck? Or old General Xavier Harkonnen? Even Serena Butler is so far buried in our past that she's little more than the smoke of a legend. Why would I bother with them when the worst gholas - Paul Muad'Dib, Leto II, the fallen Lady Jessica, and Alia the Abomination - already walk among us?" Garimi made a disgusted rumble in her throat.

"Your suspicions offend me."

"And the evidence offends me."

"Despite our disagreements, we are all Sisters," Garimi insisted.

At first the fleeing Bene Gesserits had had a common cause, a shared goal. But in a matter of months after their escape from Chapterhouse the divisions had begun, power struggles, command questions, a bifurcation of visions. Duncan and Sheeana focused on escaping from the outside Enemy, while Garimi wanted to found a new Keep and train a fresh Bene Gesserit population according to established ways.

How have we changed so dramatically? How did the divisions get so deep?

Sheeana gazed from face to face, looking for indications of guilt, particularly in the eyes.

Short, curly-haired Stuka had a line of moisture on her upper lip, one of the indicators of nervousness. But she detected no hatred there, no loathing sufficient to have sparked an act of such brutality. With dismay, she had no choice but to conclude that the perpetrator was not here.

"Then I need your help. The person standing next to any of us could be a saboteur.

We must interview everyone. Gather our qualified Truthsayers, and use the last stores of the truthtrance drug." Sheeana rubbed her temples, already dreading the huge task.

"Please leave me alone, so I can meditate."

After the nine dissenters departed, Sheeana stood alone, her eyes half closed. The population aboard the Ithaca had grown, spread out in the no-ship over the years. Even she wasn't sure how many children were aboard, but she could easily find out. Or so she presumed.

She murmured to Other Memory, "So, Serena Butler - was your murderer in the room?

If not them, then who could it be?"

Serena's voice interjected, full of sadness. A liar can hide behind barricades, but all barricades eventually fall. You will have other opportunities to discover the murderer. There is sure to be more sabotage.

* * *

Twenty-eight qualified Reverend Mothers were gathered from Garimi's followers and from the general population of Sisters. The women did not protest their innocence or complain about the suspicions cast upon them. Instead, they accepted mutual questioning.

Sheeana observed coolly as the women formed triads, two individuals acting as interrogators, the third as the subject. As soon as each subject passed the rigorous questioning, the roles switched, so that everyone was questioned. One by one, the Truthsayers created an evergrowing pool of reliable investigators. Everyone passed the test.

Once the Truthsayers had confirmed each other, Sheeana allowed them to question her.

Garimi and her dissident Sisters also faced the challenges and proved their innocence, as did Sheeana's staunch followers. All of them.

Next, with a Truthsayer named Calissa beside her, Sheeana stood before a stiff-backed Duncan Idaho. The very thought of Duncan being a murderer and a saboteur struck her as absurd. Sheeana wouldn't have believed it of anyone on board, and yet three axlotl tanks and three ghola children had been butchered.

But Duncan ... Standing so close to him, smelling his perspiration, feeling him somehow fill the room with his presence, summoned dangerous memories in her. She had used her own sexual bonding skills to break him free of Murbella. Despite their backgrounds, both knew there had been more to that passionate encounter than just a necessary task. Duncan had been uneasy around her ever since, afraid of what he might succumb to.

But in this situation there was neither romance nor sexual tension, only accusations.

"Duncan Idaho, do you know how to bypass the security imagers in the medical center?"

He looked past her, not blinking. "That is within my capabilities."

"Did you commit this terrible act and cover your tracks?"

Now his gaze met hers. "No."

"Did you have any reason to prevent Gurney Halleck, Serena Butler, or Xavier Harkonnen from being born?"

"I did not."

Now that Duncan faced her and a Truthsayer, Sheeana could have asked him questions about their personal relationship to witness his reaction. He would not be able to lie to her or pretend. But she feared his answers. She didn't dare ask.

"He speaks the truth," said Calissa. "He's not our saboteur."

Duncan remained in the room when Bashar Miles Teg came for questioning. Calissa displayed images of the horrific scene from the birthing chamber. "Are you in any way responsible for this, Miles Teg?"

The Bashar stared at the images, looked up at her, turned his gaze to Duncan. "Yes."

Sheeana was so startled that she struggled to think of another question.

"How so?" Duncan asked.

"I am responsible for security aboard this no-ship. Clearly, I failed in my duty.

If I had done a better job, this atrocity never would have occurred." He glanced at the troubled Calissa. "Since you asked me in the presence of a Truthsayer, I couldn't lie."

"Very well, Miles. But that isn't what we meant. Did you commit this sabotage or authorize it?

Do you know anything about it?"

"No," he answered emphatically.

Dozens of private chambers were set up, where the interrogations could continue unabated.

They asked every one of the ghola children, from Paul Atreides all the way to nine-year-old Leto II, and the Truthsayers detected no criminal falsehoods.

Then the Rabbi and all of the Jews.

And every other passenger aboard the no-ship.

Nothing. Not a single person seemed to be connected with the murderous incident.

Duncan and Teg used their Mentat skills to check and recheck the lists of people aboard, yet they could find no errors. No one had evaded questioning.

Sitting across from Sheeana in the otherwise empty interrogation room, Duncan steepled his fingers. "There are two possibilities. Either the saboteur is capable of deceiving a Truthsayer ... or someone we don't know about is hiding aboard the Ithaca."

* * *

While trying to guess how someone else might have sneaked aboard, unknown to them, Duncan remembered discovering the mummified remains of Bene Gesserit captives the Honored Matres had tortured to death. That sealed chamber of horrors had gone undetected during the whole time Duncan had been held prisoner inside the ship on the Chapterhouse landing field.

Could someone else - an unknown Honored Matre, perhaps? - have remained hidden aboard for all that time? More than thirty years! It did not seem possible, but the vessel had thousands of work bays, living quarters, corridors, and storage lockers.

Another possibility: During the escape from the planet of the Handlers, several Face Dancers had crashed small fighters into the no-ship's hull.

Mangled bodies had been pulled from the wreckage of those ships ... but could it all have been a ruse? What if some had actually survived those kamikaze crashes and slipped away? Perhaps one or more Face Dancers were lurking in the untraveled passages of the no-ship, looking for ways to strike.

If so, it was imperative to find them.

Teg had already installed hundreds more surveillance imagers at strategic locations, but that was only a stopgap measure at best. The Ithaca was so large that even the best security equipment had thousands of blind spots, and there simply weren't enough personnel to monitor the imagers already in place.

It was an impossible task.

Still, they tried.

As Duncan accompanied a group of five searchers, he was reminded of a beating party marching through the tall grass on a big game hunt. He wondered if they would scare a deadly lion out from somewhere in the vastness of the vessel.

Deck after deck was searched, but even with a dozen teams, a complete inspection from the topmost deck to the lowest cargo hold would take a great deal of time, and in the limited searches they conducted, they found nothing. Duncan was exhausted and stressed.

And the murderer - or murderers - remained aboard.

***

- BASHAR MILES TEG, speech given before the Pellikor Engagement Leaving the Obliterators on Ix for the fabricators to study and duplicate, Murbella traveled next to the main Guild shipyards on Junction.

Administrator Rentel Gorus, with long, pale hair and milky eyes, led Murbella among the construction bays, suspensor cranes, conveyors, and assemblers, all of them teeming with workers. The buildings were tall and blocky, the streets serviceable rather than beautiful.

Everything on Junction was done on a breathtaking scale. Great lifters hauled components up to the skeletons of gigantic ships, assembling one vessel after another. The air held the bitter tang of hot metal, the chemical residues from welding mismatched components into huge vessels.

Gorus seemed overly proud. "As you can see, we have the facilities you request, Mother Commander, provided the price is right."

"The price will be right." With the New Sisterhood's wealth in melange and soostones, Murbella could meet virtually any demand for payment. "We'll pay you well for every ship you create, every vessel that can be placed into battle, every craft that can stand against the thinking machine army. The end of our civilization is at hand if we don't defeat the thinking machines."

Gorus did not seem intimidated. "Every side in every war believes their conflict is crucial to history. But most often those are delusionary and needlessly alarmist thoughts. This war may be over before you have to resort to such measures."

She scowled. "I don't know what you mean."

"There are other ways to solve the problem. We know that outside forces are sweeping in to many planetary systems. But what do they want!

To what will they concede? We believe such discussions are worth pursuing." He blinked his milky eyes.

"What sort of trick is the Guild trying to play on us this time?"

"No trick, just sensibility. Regardless of politics, commerce must continue. Wartime desperation inspires technological innovation, but peace promotes profitability in the long run. Trade will go on, no matter who wins the conflict."

Heighliners had long been the luxury ships of the universe; now Murbella forced the Spacing Guild to devote their shipyards to creating the tools of war. For centuries the Guild's commercial fleet had been stable, and demand for trade steadily increased as people returned from the Scattering. Now, however, with Omnius's fleet wiping out whole populations and sending refugees in panicked flight back into the heart of the Old Empire, CHOAM and the Guild were in turmoil.

A hot wind from the assembly bays blew in Murbella's face, burning her nostrils with the acrid smoke of waste chemicals. A shiver coursed down her spine.

"Our common enemy must be rational," Gorus continued. "We have therefore dispatched emissaries and negotiators out to the war zone. We will find the thinking machines and make our proposal. The Guild would prefer to continue its commerce regardless of the outcome of this disagreement."

Murbella gasped. "Are you insane? Omnius seeks the extermination of all humanity.

That includes you."

"You overstate your case, Mother Commander. Some of our emissaries will, I believe, achieve our goal."

In the background, blasts of steam curled up from the stone smokestacks. She ignored the noise and the smell. "You are a consummate fool, Administrator Gorus. Thinking machines do not follow the rules you assume."

"Be that as it may, we feel obligated to try."

"And what is the result so far?"

"Acceptable losses. Our first emissaries have disappeared, but we will continue the effort.

We plan for all eventualities - even disaster." Casually, he led her out onto a broad, open field under the half-assembled hulk of a huge ship. "Thus, we are comfortable with extending certain beneficial terms to the New Sisterhood. You have always been a valued customer, but the order you submitted is massive. Even under wartime conditions, you have asked for more ships than we are able to provide."

"Then offer your workers more incentive."

"Ahh, Mother Commander, but will you provide enough incentive to us?"

She bristled. "How can you think solely of profits when the fate of the human race is at stake?"

"Profits determine all our fates." The Administrator gestured casually, as if to encompass the huge assembly of the ships around him.

"We'll pay what you demand, and the Guild Bank will offer us loans if necessary.

We need those ships, Gorus."

He smiled coolly. "Your credit is good, but we must address another problem. We do not have enough Guild Navigators to man so many new ships. All of the vessels we build for you will have to be equipped with Ixian mathematical compilers, rather than traditional Navigators. Is that acceptable?"

"Provided the ships function as we require, I have no objection. We don't have time to develop and train another population of Navigators."

Obviously pleased, Gorus rubbed his hands together. "Of late, Navigators have proven somewhat intractable, due to the shortage of spice - a shortage which your Sisterhood created, Mother Commander. It is because of you that we had to look for alternatives to Navigators."

"I have no fondness for Navigators, or for your obscene profits. I don't care how the Guild accomplishes it, but we need those ships."

"Of course, Mother Commander, and we shall provide what you wish."

"That is precisely the answer I need."

***

- NAVIGATOR EDRIK, message to the Oracle of Time

The Guild bureaucrats had the audacity to call Edrik's Heighliner back to the shipyards on Junction. Staring ahead with his milky eyes, Administrator Gorus blithely announced that the Heighliner would be fitted with one of the new Ixian mathematical compilers.

"Our spice supply line is undependable. We must be certain each vessel can operate safely if its Navigator fails."

Over the past two years, more and more Guildships had been outfitted with the hated artificial controls. Mathematical compilers! No simple engine or tool could adequately complete the phenomenally complex projections that a Navigator performed. Edrik and his fellows had evolved through immersion in spice, their prescient vision strengthened through the power of mélange. There could be no mechanical substitute. Nevertheless, Edrik had no choice but to accept a team of qualified and arrogant Ixian workers who shuttled up from the Junction shipyards. The tight-lipped men boarded the Heighliner under the watchful eyes of the Guild, with their smug expressions, compiler machines, and dangerous curiosity.

In his tank, Edrik was concerned that they would snoop around under the pretext of completing their installation. The Navigator faction could not risk these men finding Waff's laboratory, the genetically altered sandtrout, and the small mutated worms he was producing in his tanks. The Tleilaxu man claimed to be making excellent progress, and his work must remain a secret.

Therefore, when the Ixian installers were all safely aboard, Edrik simply folded space, informing no one in the shipyards where he was going. He carried his empty Heighliner far out into an isolated wasteland between solar systems, and there ejected the disbelieving Ixians, along with their accursed navigation machines, out into the cold vacuum.

Problem solved.

His acts would be discovered eventually, but that could not be avoided. Edrik was a Navigator. Mere human Administrators had no hold over him.

Edrik suspected that the devious Administrator and his faction saw the melange crisis as an opportunity to shift the Guild's burden away from problematic Navigators; they did not really want a new source of spice. Gorus was now an absolute ally, if not a puppet, of the Ixians.

Edrik had seen the economic projections and knew that the Administrators considered navigation machines to be more cost-effective than Navigators - and more easily controlled.

With the Ixians and their machines happily ejected, Edrik knew it was time to call another meeting with his fellow Navigators; they needed to receive fresh guidance from the Oracle of Time. Because Junction and several other Guild planets were already compromised by Gorus and his cronies, Edrik chose a place that no one but Navigators could find.

Once they had been shown how, they could fold their Guildships deep into another dimension, a nontraditional universe where the Oracle occasionally went on personal, incomprehensible explorations.

Ignited by the light of seven newborn stars, the cosmic gases swirling around his giant ship seemed inflamed. The nebula shone pink and green and blue, depending on which window of the spectrum Edrik chose to look through. The misty curtains put on a spectacular show, a great whirlpool of ionized gases - and a perfect place to hide.

When the ships gathered, the Navigators were in quite an uproar, and their numbers were less than Edrik had hoped. So far, four hundred Heighliners had been decommissioned, their parts salvaged to construct new no-ships that relied on artificial guidance systems.

Seventeen Navigators had died horribly, their tanks emptied. Edrik learned that six of his fellows had likewise murdered the Ixian engineers rather than allow them to install mathematical compilers. Four Navigators had simply disconnected the machines, and the onboard Ixian teams failed to realize that their vaunted systems were no longer functional.

"We require mélange," he transmitted. "By the grace of spice, we see through folded space."

"But the Sisterhood has denied it to us," one of the other Navigators said.

"They have spice. They spend spice. But they do not give it to us."

"The witches give it to the Guild for ships ... but the Administrators have cut us off. We are betrayed by our own."

"They control the spice."

"But they do not control us," Edrik insisted. "If we find our own source of spice, we will not need the Administrators. This is for the survival of Navigators, not simply for commerce. We have struggled with this problem for years. The Tleilaxu ghola has finally come up with a solution."

"A new source of spice? Has it been proven?"

"Is anything fully proven? If this goes well, we can destroy the corrupt old Spacing Guild and supercede them."

"We must speak to the Oracle."

Edrik waved his tiny, misshapen hands. "The Oracle already knows our problem."

"The Oracle has not deigned to help us," said another.

"The Oracle has her own reasons."

Drifting in his tank, Edrik acknowledged their conundrum. "I have spoken to her myself, but perhaps all of us together can urge her to respond. Let us summon the Oracle."

Using their spice-enhanced minds, the numerous Navigators shot a message arrow through the folds of space. Edrik knew they had no way to coerce the Oracle of Time - or the Oracle Infinity, as she was sometimes called - to respond, but he sensed her presence, and her deep uneasiness.

With a silent flash, a trapdoor opened in the vacuum, and the ancient container arrived.

It was not quite a ship, for the Oracle could travel anywhere she wished, mentally folding space without the help of Holtzman engines.

Even in that small and nonthreatening enclosure, Edrik knew full well the power and immensity of that highly advanced mind. As a human, Norma Cenva had first discovered the connection between spice and prescience. She had developed the technology of folding space, had created the incomprehensible equations that Tio Holtzman had taken as his own.

Though the Oracle used no known transmitting device, her words were loud and implacable in their minds. "Your concerns are parochial. I must find the wayward no-ship. I must determine where Duncan Idaho has taken it, before the Enemy intercepts it."

The Oracle often chose her own esoteric goals without explaining them. One of the Navigators asked, "Why is the no-ship so important, Oracle?"

"Because the Enemy wishes to have it. Our great foe is Omnius - except that he is as changed from his former computer evermind as I am evolved from the human I once was.

The machines have completed their high-order projections. The evermind knows he must have the Kwisatz Haderach, just as I know the Enemy must not have him." The Oracle let the silence hang in space like a hole, before she added a stinging rebuke. "Your appetite for spice is not the priority. I must find the ship."

Abruptly discontinuing the debate, she winked out again and vanished into her own place in an alternate universe.

Edrik and the gathered Navigators were shocked by her response. Navigators were dying, spice was dwindling away to nothing, Administrators were trying to overthrow the Guild - and the Oracle simply wanted to find a lost ship?

Twenty-Two Years After Escape from Chapterhouse

***

- Bene Gesserit report on human mutation

Though the Ixian specialists had studied the Obliterators for half a year, they still hadn't given the Sisterhood an answer. Murbella brooded in her offices on Chapterhouse, waiting. The news seemed to worsen with each passing day.

She received regular updates on the depredations of the thinking-machine fleet. The powerful Enemy ships moved inexorably through the fringe systems like a crashing tidal wave, drowning world after world. Another ten planets evacuated or contaminated by plagues, another ten lost, and more refugees flooded into the Old Empire.

A network of Sisters met with any refugee ships that came from the battleground systems.

Taking statements from groups of survivors, they compiled an exhaustive three-dimensional map of the movements of the machine fleet. The pattern seeped like a bloodstain through the galaxy.

In a single desperate stand, nineteen Sisterhood no-ships expended their last three Obliterators to destroy a whole battle group of oncoming machine ships and temporarily prevent the annihilation of one human-inhabited system. In the end, though, even that devastation amounted to only a brief delay; the machine fleet came back with greater strength and crushed the world after all, killing every inhabitant. With the last Obliterators gone, the New Sisterhood was woefully underdefended.

Unless the Ixians could help. What was taking them so long?

Finally, a lone Ixian engineer came to Chapterhouse to deliver his news. When he said he would speak to no one but the Mother Commander herself, escorts brought him to the main Keep. Waiting on her imposing throne in front of the dust-streaked, segmented window, Murbella could respect the man for bypassing bureaucracy and getting to the core of the matter.

The engineer's face was bland and unmemorable, his brown hair closely cropped, his demeanor unassuming. He had a peculiar, unpleasant odor about him, perhaps from chemical residue or the machinery of Ix's underground fabrication plants. He bowed perfunctorily and stepped in front of her. "Our best engineers and scientists have deconstructed and analyzed the sample Obliterators you provided."

Murbella leaned forward, giving him her full attention. "And you can reproduce them?"

"Better than that, Mother Commander." His confident smile held no warmth at all, was simply an imitation of a facial expression. "Our fabricators understand the underlying= concept of the weapon, and are able to concentrate its destructive power. Previously, it required several Honored Matre battleships deploying multiple Obliterators to kill a planet. With our enhanced weapon a single ship can launch enough firepower to do what was done to Rakis." He gave a perfunctory shrug. "Imagine what such an energy release would do to Enemy battleships."

Murbella tried to conceal her delight. "We need as many as you can produce. Instruct your factories to begin work on these weapons immediately." She kept her voice hard, letting her impatience seep through. "But why did you need to see me in person, when you could easily have sent a message with this information?" Her lips quirked. "Do you require a pat on the back? Shall I give you my applause? There, you have it."

The Ixian engineer remained bland. "Before we begin, Mother Commander, there is the matter of payment. Chief Fabricator Sen has instructed me to inform you that Ix must be compensated if we are to pull our profitable manufacturing centers off-line in order to create these Obliterators for your war."

"My war? All humans must share the burden of the cost."

"Unfortunately, we disagree. The only payment we will accept is spice. And the only source of spice is your New Sisterhood."

"We have other ways to pay you." Murbella tried to conceal her alarm. She wasn't sure their fledgling spice operations could supply the necessary amount. And why would Ix care about spice, in particular? Sisterhood accounts in Guild banks could be drained; CHOAM could be convinced to supply important commodities; and soostones were more valuable than ever, especially since the recent turmoil on Buzzell.

When she offered these alternatives, though, the Ixian fabricator shook his head.

"I have no flexibility in these negotiations, Mother Commander. It must be mélange.

No other coin will do."

She ground her teeth, but had no patience for further delay. "Spice it is, then.

Get started."

* * *

Khrone found it ironic to demand payment in spice, since Ix had devoted so much technological effort into installing navigation machines in Guildships. Thanks to the mathematical compilers, melange was basically obsolete when it came to folding space, and the Navigators were fading swiftly.

But by insisting on such a huge payment in spice alone, and then hoarding the commodity, Khrone would remove a large amount of it from the market, making it even rarer. That, in turn, would force more and more ships to convert to the Ixian navigation compilers, because the Guild could not support the melange needs of their Navigators.

Before long, with no way of supporting their own Navigators, the whole Spacing Guild would fall under Khrone's control. He had worked it all out in exquisite detail.

In the meantime, he and his disguised workers would make it look as if they were providing everything the Sisterhood demanded. Let them fight useless battles while the real war was already won, right under their noses! Mother Commander Murbella would be quite satisfied -

up until the moment a curtain of darkness fell on humankind.

Permanently.

***

- THUFIR HAW AT, the original

The Bashar and his protégé marched down the corridors toward the no-ship's life-support center. "I am deeply ashamed, Thufir. It has been almost a year, and I am incapable of finding a blatant saboteur and murderer."

The young Hawat looked up at him, clearly idolizing the military genius. "We have a limited pool of suspects, and a discrete area in which he - or she - could hide.

We've done everything possible, Bashar."

"And yet the saboteur is here, somewhere." Teg did not slow his pace. "Therefore, we have not done everything possible, because we still haven't found the person responsible.

The fact that there have been no further murders does not mean we can let down our guard. I am convinced our saboteur is still among us."

The Ithaca was constantly being searched and monitored. Additional surveillance imagers had been installed, but the culprit seemed to have an affinity for hiding. Teg suspected that the work of the saboteur went well beyond the murder of the gholas and the axlotl tanks. In recent months, many ship's systems had inexplicably failed - too many to be caused by random events and natural breakdowns. "Our adversary is still at work."

The Thufir ghola raised his smooth chin in a display of pride. He was strong and gangly with a heavy brow; he had let his hair grow shaggy. "Then you and I will find him."

Teg smiled at Thufir. "As soon as you regain his memories and experience as a warrior Mentat and Master of Assassins, you will be a formidable ally."

"I'm formidable now." Thufir had already proved his worth during the tense escape from the Handlers, risking his own life to help the Rabbi get away from Face Dancers in league with the Enemy. Teg believed the young ghola had the potential to do much more.

Varying his pattern, he insisted on an exhausting round of daily security inspections while he left Duncan Idaho on the navigation bridge, ever vigilant for the Enemy's glowing net.

The Ithaca continued to wander in empty space. At first, their voyage had simply been to get away from the Enemy hunters. Duncan had been forced to remain hidden behind the ship's veiling no-field, since the old man and woman seemed to want him in particular. Now, after more than two decades, the population aboard had increased, and children were growing up and being taught necessary skills without ever having set foot on a planetary surface.

Despite all the worlds settled during the Scattering, habitable systems seemed sparse indeed. For the first time, Teg wondered how many ships of refugees fleeing from the Famine Times had simply died without ever finding their destination. The Ithaca had no Guild Navigator; only pure chance brought them within range of planets. So far, they had encountered only two places that might have supported a new colony: one Honored Matre world that had been completely wiped out by Enemy plagues, and the planet of the insidious Handlers.

Nevertheless, with its recyclers, greenhouses, and algae tanks, the aging Ithaca should have been able to sustain the present number of passengers for centuries, if necessary. They -

and their successors - could effectively stay onboard forever and never stop running.

Is that our fate?

Teg asked himself. But because of leakages, losses, and "accidents," the passengers had cause for concern. Sooner or later, they would need to replenish their reserves.

Thinking of resources, the Bashar took a side corridor to the fermentation bins and adjacent algae-growth tanks. Grown in the vaulted, humid chamber, the biomass provided raw material for the food-manufacturing units. A prime vulnerability.

As he opened a hatch, Teg caught the rich, marshy smell of compost and algae. They climbed metal steps to a catwalk and looked down into the cylindrical vat filled with hairy green slime. The stinking wet mass of fecund algae digested anything organic, growing large amounts of edible, rather unpalatable, material that could be converted into better-flavored foods. Ceiling fans whirred, drawing the odorous air upward through filters and into the intricate set of ducts that acted as the no-ship's circulatory system. After taking samples and testing the chemical balance of the tanks, Teg concluded that everything was in order. No sign of sabotage since his last inspection.

The serious young man tagged along beside him. "I am not a Mentat yet, sir, but I have been giving the sabotage problem a great deal of thought."

With raised eyebrows Teg turned to his protégé. "And do you have a first-order approximation?"

"I have an idea." Thufir did not try to conceal his anger. "I suggest you have a long talk with the Yueh ghola. Perhaps he knows more than he has admitted."

"Yueh is only thirteen. He does not have his memories back."

"Maybe the weakness is in his blood. Bashar, we know that someone committed the sabotage." The young man sounded disappointed in himself for allowing it to happen. "Even the real Thufir Hawat didn't find the traitor in House Atreides before he betrayed us to the Harkonnens. That traitor was Yueh."

"I'll keep it in mind."

Back in the corridors again, the two passed a sick-looking old Scytale and his clone emerging from their quarters. Because they isolated themselves and lived with odd traditions and behavior, the Tleilaxu were natural suspects, but Teg had found no evidence against them. In fact, he believed the real saboteur would be careful to blend in perfectly and draw no attention at all. It was the only way he could have remained hidden for so long.

Two pregnant women passed by them in the corridor, chatting as they continued on their way. Both were part of Sheeana's conventional breeding program to maintain the population of the Sisterhood, providing an adequate genetic base should the splinter group ever find a place to settle.

Finally, Teg and Thufir reached the cavernous, humming engine chamber, and entered the large aft compartment through a round doorway. Apparently safe but lost again since their last passage through foldspace, the Ithaca drifted, though Duncan insisted on keeping the Holtzman engines ready at all times.

Thick clearplaz separated the Bashar and Thufir from a trio of power plants that fed the machines. Walkways laced the outside of an explosion-proof plaz chamber that contained the side-by-side engines. The two stared up at the giant mechanisms that could fold space.

A true miracle of technology. All of the readings remained within nominal range. Again, no sign of sabotage.

"We're still missing something," he mused. "I can feel it."

Once before, at the end of the Battle of Junction, Teg had failed to see the terrible and deadly "Weapon" that the Honored Matres had held in reserve. That mistake had nearly lost him the entire war. He considered their situation now.

What deadly device will I fail to see this time?

***

- REVEREND MOTHER ANGELOU, famed breeding mistress

Wellington Yueh had a powerful need to be forgiven. The blank spot in his mind was filled with guilt. He was just a ghola and only thirteen, but he knew he had done terrible things. His own history clung to him like tar to his shoe.

In his first life, he had broken his Suk conditioning. He had failed his wife Wanna by allowing the Harkonnens to use her as a pawn and had betrayed Duke Leto, bringing about the Atreides downfall on Arrakis.

After studying records of his prior existence, learning in painful detail what he had done, Yueh tried to find solace in considering the Orange Catholic Bible, along with other ancient religions, sects, philosophies, and interpretations that had developed over the millennia. The oft-repeated doctrine of Original Sin - so unfair! - was a particular thorn in his side. Yueh could have made a coward's excuse that he couldn't remember and therefore didn't deserve blame, but that was not the path to redemption.

He had to turn elsewhere.

Jessica was the only one who could forgive him.

The eight ghola children in Sheeana's project had been raised and trained together.

Because of their individual personalities they had formed personal bonds and friendships.

Even before they knew the history that should tear them apart, Yueh had tried to be a friend to Jessica.

He had read the journals and instructional writings of the original Lady Jessica, bound concubine to the Duke Leto Atreides. She'd also been a Reverend Mother, an exile, the mother of Muad'Dib, and the grandmother of the Tyrant. That long-dead Jessica had been a strong woman, a role model despite how the Bene Gesserit reviled her for her flaw, her weakness.

Love.

Together, the gholas now faced a far greater enemy than the Harkonnens. When Jessica's memories were finally awakened, would the shared threat be sufficient to keep her from wanting to murder him? He had read her own words, as written down by Princess Irulan, expressing her poignant agony of grief: "Yueh! Yueh! Yueh! A million deaths were not enough for Yueh!"

Yes, she was the only one who could offer him any hope of forgiveness. With a clean slate and an open heart, he prayed that it was possible for him to lead an honorable life this time.

Jessica often occupied herself in the main conservatory, tending the plants that served as a supplemental food source for the hundreds aboard. She had an affinity for the greenhouse work and was happy to be around the fertile dirt, the misting irrigators, the fleshy green leaves, and sweet-scented flowers. With her bronze hair and oval face, noble and young, she looked exquisitely beautiful. How she and Duke Leto must have loved each other long ago ... until Yueh destroyed it all.

Jessica looked up from the flowers and lush herbs to focus haunted eyes on Yueh.

He said, "Do you mind the company?"

"Not yours. It's refreshing to be with someone who doesn't blame me for things I don't remember doing."

"I hope you'll grant me the same consideration, my Lady."

"Please don't call me that, Wellington. At least not yet. I can't be the Lady Jessica until I ...

well, until I become the Lady Jessica."

He tried to guess the reasons for her gloomy mood. "Has Garimi been haranguing you again?"

"Some Bene Gesserits won't forgive me for having gone against the strict commands of the Sisterhood, for betraying their breeding program."

She seemed to be reciting something she had read. "The consequences of that brought down an empire and subjected the human race to thousands of years of tyrannical rule and many more centuries of privation." She let out a bitter laugh. "In fact, if your actions had actually resulted in the death of Paul and me, maybe Bene Gesserit histories would describe you as a hero."

"I am no hero, Jessica." To his credit, the original Yueh had given her and Paul the means to survive in the desert after the Harkonnens stormed Arrakeen. He had facilitated their escape, but was that enough for redemption? Could it possibly be?

She moved on, smelling the flowers, checking the moist soil. She had a habit of running her fingertips along the leaves, touching the undersides.

Yueh followed her as she walked through a small grove of dwarf citrus trees. Overhead, the segmented panes of the filtered windows showed only distant starlight and no nearby sun. "If they hate us so much, why did the Sisters bring us back?"

Her expression was one of bitter amusement. "Bene Gesserits have a terrible habit, Wellington: Even if they know a hook is hidden inside the juicy worm, they'll still bite. They always think they can avoid traps that get the rest of us."

"But you're a Bene Gesserit yourself."

"Not anymore ... or not yet."

Yueh touched his own smooth, unmarked forehead. "We're starting over, Jessica. Blank slates. Look at me. The first Yueh broke his Suk conditioning - but I was born without the diamond tattoo. Entirely unblemished."

"Maybe that means some things can be erased."

"Can they? We gholas were raised for one purpose: to become who we once were. But are we anyone in our own right? Or are gholas simply tools, temporary tenants living in houses on borrowed time until the rightful owners return? What if we don't want those old lives? Is it right for Sheeana and the others to force them upon us? What about us as we are right now?"

Abruptly the gridwork of interlocking solar panes overhead seemed to glow brighter, as if the system had absorbed a wash of outside energy.

The rows of densely arranged plants inside the greenhouse chamber became more defined, as if his eyes had suddenly become much more sensitive. Overlaying the whole chamber he saw a complex mesh of thin iridescent lines, resolving and focusing.

Something was happening - something Yueh had never experienced before. The lines became visible all around them, like fine netting that drifted through the air itself.

They crackled with energy.

"Jessica, what is this? Do you see it?"

"A web ... a net." She caught her breath. "It's what Duncan Idaho claims to see!"

Yueh's heart lurched. The hunters?

A loud security klaxon went off, accompanied by Duncan's voice. "Prepare for activation of Holtzman engines!"

Whenever the no-ship folded space, unguided by a Navigator, they risked a disaster.

Until now, Duncan's warnings had been unsupported by outside witnesses, though the Handlers had proved that the threat from the mysterious Enemy was real.

From the ship's corridors, Yueh heard the shouts of people running to emergency stations.

The gossamer stranglehold grew brighter and more powerful, surrounding and infiltrating the whole ship. Surely, everyone could see this!

He felt a shudder through the deck, a disorientation and a slipping as the immense ship folded space. Staring through the conservatory dome, he saw star systems, swirling shapes and colors ... as if the contents of the universe had been placed in a mixing bowl and stirred.

Suddenly the Ithaca cruised along elsewhere, far from the snares. Duncan's calm voice came over the intercom. "We are safe again, for the moment."

"Why did we see the net now and never before?" Jessica asked.

Yueh rubbed his chin, his thoughts in turmoil. "Perhaps the Enemy is using a different sort of net - a stronger one. Or maybe they are testing new ways of tracking and snaring us."

***

- MOTHER COMMANDER MURBELLA, private Chapterhouse Archives When Murbella's small Missionaria Aggressiva council gathered again, the meeting was tense. In the past year, the Sisterhood had sent seven Sheeana surrogates to refugee camps in order to rally the fighters. The counterfeit Sheeanas had their work cut out for them, convincing fanatics to stand firm in the face of certain defeat.

The seemingly unstoppable Enemy warships proliferated like the heads of a hydra; no matter how many vessels the humans destroyed, more and more appeared. Given millennia to prepare for his final conquest, Omnius had left nothing to chance. The dots on the star charts showed one planet after another falling under the onslaught of thinking machines.

Murbella sat in a hard and uncomfortable seat at the end of the table; most of the others selected furry chairdogs. At the head of the table, Bashar Janess Idaho waited at attention, ready to deliver her report.

"I have news."

"Good or bad?" Murbella dreaded the answer.

"Judge for yourself."

Her daughter looked haggard, weary, and considerably older than her years. Having undergone the Spice Agony and extensive Bene Gesserit training, Janess had the ability to slow her body's changes, not for the sake of appearances, but to keep herself strong and limber. The constant fighting required it. Even so, the unending crisis was taking its toll.

Murbella noticed a scar on her daughter's left cheek and a burn mark on her arm.

The female Bashar's words were unemotional, but Murbella could feel the turmoil in her clipped voice. "Even before the first Enemy battleships were seen in the Jhibraith system, the machines sent scout probes to disseminate plagues. The people of Jhibraith had already called for an evacuation, but once the first signs of disease appeared, the Guild turned their ships around and refused to come closer. One Heighliner had to be quarantined. Fortunately, the plague was contained within seven isolated frigates inside its hold. All passengers aboard those frigates died, but the rest were saved."

"What about the planet itself?" Murbella asked.

"The plague spread rapidly across all continents. As expected. The current viral strains are far worse than anything previously encountered, more deadly than even the legendary plagues during the Butlerian Jihad."

Laera skimmed a Ridulian crystal sheet in front of her. "Jhibraith has a population of three hundred twenty-eight million."

"Not anymore," said Kiria.

Janess locked her fingers together, as if to draw strength from her own grip. "One of our Sheeana surrogates was on Jhibraith. As soon as the Guild quarantined the planet, the faux Sheeana rose to her calling and spoke to crowd after crowd as the plague spread. They knew they would all die. They knew the thinking machine forces were on their way. But she convinced them that if they must die, they should die as heroes."

"But if the Guildships had already departed, how could they fight?" Kiria sounded skeptical.

"By throwing pebbles?"

"Jhibraith had its own in-system frigates, cargo vessels, and transport runners, none of them equipped with Holtzman engines or no-fields. As the disease cut people down, survivors raced to create a homegrown military force that might stand against Omnius. The people had to work faster than the epidemic killed them off." She forced her lips into a cold, hard smile as she continued her report.

"Our false Sheeana was like a demon herself. I know for a fact that she went five days without sleeping, for the records show she appeared again and again at different cities and factories, rallying the citizenry, forcing them to crawl to their assembly stations if necessary.

Nobody bothered with quarantines, since everyone was already infected. As people died in the factories, their bodies were dragged out to mass burial pits and huge bonfires. Others took their places at workstations.

"Even when the Enemy fleet surrounded the world, people did not pause. Then our Sheeana disappeared." Janess looked around the table, lowered her voice. "Afterward, I learned from a coded Bene Gesserit signal that our surrogate contracted the disease, and died from it."

Murbella was startled. "Died.7 How can that be? Any Reverend Mother knows how to fight off infection."

"That requires great concentration and significant physical resources. Our Sheeana had depleted her reserves. If she'd rested for a day or two, she might have rallied her strength and driven off the disease. But she kept going and going, using up whatever energy reserves she had. Knowing Jhibraith was doomed, that the invading machine armies would destroy her if the plague did not, Sheeana never slackened in her efforts."

Old Accadia nodded. "She had pushed the people into a fanatical fervor. No doubt she realized that if they saw her weakened and dying, they would lose their resolve.

She was wise to remove herself from public view."

Janess's thin smile showed true admiration. "As soon as her symptoms began to manifest, Sheeana delivered one last grand speech, telling them she would now ascend to heaven.

Then she isolated herself and died alone so that no one could see the horrific plague take its toll on her."

"A marvelous and brave story for the archival histories." Accadia pursed her withered lips.

"Her sacrifice will not be forgotten."

"If anyone still studies the histories after this," Kiria mumbled.

"And what of the subsequent fight on Jhibraith?" Murbella asked. "Did the people defend themselves?"

"When the Enemy came, the people fought like ancient berserkers, to the last man and woman. Nothing could stop them. They met the Enemy fleet with ship after ship flown by grandfathers, teenagers, mothers, husbands, and even criminals released from detention centers. All fought and died bravely. Their sheer ferocity drove back the machines. Even with no defined military force, the people of Jhibraith destroyed more than a thousand Enemy vessels."

Reality forced ice into Murbella's voice. "My enthusiasm is tempered by the knowledge that even after losing a thousand vessels, the thinking machines have countless others to throw against us."

"Still, if all planets fought like that, there might be a chance for humankind to survive," Janess pointed out. "The species would be pre-served."

Choosing her moment to pounce, Kiria peeled crystal sheets from another set of reports, then propped an image projector in the center of the table. The chairdog shifted subtly and compliantly to accommodate her movements. "This new report shows why we can't count on all planets. We are being attacked by a rot from within, as well as the outside fleet."

Murbella frowned. "Where did you get this?"

"Sources." Wearing a smug expression, the former Honored Matre activated the projector.

"While we face the thinking machines head-on, a more devious opponent undermines us from within."

The image resolved to show a mob scene. "This is Belos IV, but such occurrences have been documented elsewhere. Sparked by helplessness in the face of the approaching Enemy fleet, brushfire wars and political struggles are starting on planet after planet. People are afraid. When their leaders don't tell them what they want to hear, they riot, overthrow their prime ministers, and prop others in their place. More often than not, they depose the new leaders as well."

"We know this." Murbella looked at Janess, who remained rigidly at attention at the front of the table. She wished her daughter would sit down. On the images, the citizens of Belos IV

had risen up against their governor, who had advocated surrender to the oncoming thinking machines. "Obviously, the people didn't want to hear such a message.

Why is this relevant?"

Kiria jabbed a sharp-nailed finger at the image. "Observe!"

When the crowd attacked the middle-aged leader, he fought remark-ably well, using skills and speed rarely demonstrated by any bureaucrat. While Murbella watched, she decided the governor must have acquired some sort of special training. His combat methods were unusual and effective, but the mob far outnumbered him. They dragged him through the streets to the balcony of the governor's palace and threw him off onto the flagstones far below. As he lay still, the howling, cheering mob backed away. The images drew in closer.

The dead governor shifted and paled. His face became sunken and scarecrowish, somehow unformed. A Face Dancer!

"We always suspected the new Face Dancers had questionable loyalties. They allied themselves with Honored Matres and turned against the old Tleilaxu. We found them among the rebel whores on Gammu and Tleilax, and now it appears that the threat is even worse than we suspected. Listen to the governor's words. He advocated surrender to the thinking machines. Who are the Face Dancers really working for?"

Murbella reached the obvious conclusion and dragged her sharp gaze like a serrated knife across the other Sisters. "The new Face Dancers are puppets of Omnius, and have infiltrated our populace. They are far superior to the old ones, able to resist almost any Bene Gesserit technique. We always wondered how the Lost Tleilaxu could have created them, when their skills were so inferior to those the old Masters demonstrated.

It did not seem possible."

Laera said coldly, "It is possible if the thinking machines helped to create them, then sent them back among Tleilaxu returning from the Scattering."

"A first wave of scouts and infiltrators." Kiria nodded. "How far have they spread?

Could there be Face Dancers among us, undetected by Truthsayers?"

Accadia scowled. "A frightening thought, if we have no way of exposing these new Face Dancers. From what I can tell, their mimicry is perfect."

"Nothing is perfect," Murbella said. "Even thinking machines have flaws."

Without humor, Kiria said, "Oh, we can identify them easily enough. Kill them, and Face Dancers revert to their blank state."

"So you suggest we simply kill everyone?"

"That's what the Enemy intends to do anyway."

Restless, Murbella stood up. She could remain here on Chapterhouse with the other anxious Sisters, receive reports for another year, listen to summaries, and plot the advance of the thinking machines on a map, as if it were some kind of war game.

Meanwhile, the Ixian engineers struggled to build weapons equivalent to the Obliterators, and the Guild shipyards worked to produce thousands of ships, all of them equipped with mathematical compilers.

But the crisis went far beyond internal politics and power struggles. She decided to go out there herself and travel among the worlds on the edge of the war zone, not as Mother Commander, but as a keen observer. She would let a council of Reverend Mothers run the everyday activities here on Chapterhouse, dealing with bureaucratic matters and doling out spice rations to the Guild in order to ensure their cooperation.

When Murbella announced her intent, Laera cried, "Mother Commander, that's not possible.

We need you here - there's so much to do!"

"I represent more than the New Sisterhood. Since no one else will step up to the plate, I am responsible for the whole human race." She sighed. "Somebody has to be."

***

- Leto II, the ghola

Leto II and Thufir Hawat had never known each other in their original lifetimes.

To them, that was not a disadvantage. It left them free to form a friendship without any expectations or preconceptions.

Nine-year-old Leto hurried ahead, down the corridor. "Come with me, Thufir. Now that nobody's watching, I can show you a special place."

"Another one? Do you spend all your days exploring instead of studying?"

"If you're going to be deputy chief of security, you need to know everything about the Ithaca.

Maybe we'll find your saboteur down here." Leto turned sharply right, dropped into a small emergency lift, then paused at a dim, lower deck, where everything seemed larger and darker. He led Thufir to a sealed hatch that was posted with warning sand restrictions in half a dozen languages. Despite the locks, he opened it with barely a pause.

Thufir looked puzzled, even a little offended. "How did you bypass security so easily?"

"This ship is old, and systems break down all the time. Nobody even knows this one failed."

He ducked into the low passageway.

The tunnel on the other side was a whistling, cool air channel. Up ahead the roaring grew louder, and the wind became powerful. Thufir sniffed. "Where does it go?"

"To an air-exchange filtration system." The passages were smooth and curving - like worm tunnels. A shiver brushed across Leto's skin, perhaps from a memory of when he had been joined with numerous sandtrout, from when he was the God Emperor of Dune,the Tyrant....

The two reached the central recyclers where large fans drove the air through thick curtains of filter mats, scrubbing out particulates and purifying the atmosphere.

Breezes tugged at the boys' hair. Ahead, sheets of filtration material blocked further passage. The lungs of the ship, replenishing and redistributing oxygen.

Recently, Thufir had begun to mark his lips with a cranberry-red stain. As the pair stood in the bowels of the ship, listening to the roaring wind, Leto finally asked,

"Why do you do that to your mouth?"

Self-consciously, the fourteen-year-old rubbed his lips. "My original used the sapho drug, which made stains like these. The Bashar wants me to live the part. He say she's preparing to awaken my memories." Thufir didn't sound entirely pleased with the situation. "Sheeana has been talking about forcing me to remember. She has some special technique to trigger a ghola's awakening."

"Aren't you excited at the prospect? Thufir Hawat was a great man."

The other boy remained preoccupied and troubled. "It's not that, Leto. I really don't want my memories back, but Sheeana and the Bashar have their minds made up."

"That's why you were created." Leto was baffled. "Why wouldn't you want your past life? The Master of Assassins would not be afraid of the ordeal."

"I'm not afraid. I'd just rather be the person I choose to become, and not emerge fully formed.

I don't feel I've earned it."

"Trust me, they'll make you earn it, once you become the real Thufir again."

"I am the real Thufir! Or do you doubt that, too?"

Thinking of the restless worm that crouched inside him, aware of all the atrocious things he would soon remember, Leto understood completely.

***

- The Cant of the Shariat

At last Waff was ready to release his new worms, and Buzzell was a convenient ocean planet on Edrik's standard trade route. A perfect test bed.

The giant vessel carried merchants who traded in soostones. Earlier, when Honored Matres had conquered Buzzell and killed most of the exiled Reverend Mothers, the whores had taken the soostone wealth for themselves. Since then, few of the aquatic gems had been traded on the galactic market, which made their value skyrocket. Now that the New Sisterhood had recaptured Buzzell, soostone production was up again.

The witches ran tightly regimented operations there and kept smugglers at bay, thus maintaining stable but high prices for the stones. With mercenary armies to protect them, CHOAM merchants began to sell large quantities of the gems, reaping profits before a glut drove prices down again. A temporary market fluctuation.

Though pretty and desirable, soostones were not necessary.

Melange, on the other hand, was vital - as the Navigators well knew. Waff knew that his experiments would eventually produce far more wealth than these undersea baubles could ever represent. Soon, if his expectations were met, Buzzell would be home to something far more interesting than baubles....

The Heighliner appeared above the liquid sapphire world, where tiny islands dotted the expansive ocean. Buzzell's oceans were deep and fertile, a large zone where the genetically altered worms would thrive, provided they survived their initial baptism.

The Tleilaxu Master paced the cold metal floor of his laboratory chamber. Soon, Edrik would inform him that the commercial lighters and cargo transports had disembarked for the island outposts. Once they were safely gone, Waff could begin his real work on Buzzell without being observed.

Inside the lab, the smell of salt, iodine, and cinnamon had replaced harsh chemical odors.

Waff's test tanks were full of murky green water, rich with algae and plankton.

Once turned loose in the oceans, the modified worms would have to find their own sources of nourishment, but Waff was sure they could adapt. God would make it all possible.

Serpentine forms swam about in the tanks looking like ringed eels. Their ridges were an iridescent blue-green, showing a soft pink membrane between segments, a surrogate set of gills that absorbed oxygen from the water. Their mouths were round like those of lampreys.

Though they had no eyes, the new seaworms could navigate using water vibrations in much the way that Rakian worms had been attracted by tremors in the dunes. Using carefully mapped models from sandtrout chromosomes, Waff knew that these creatures had the same internal metabolic reactions as a traditional sandworm.

Therefore, they should still produce spice, but Waff didn't know what kind of spice, or how it would be harvested. He stepped back, interlocking his grayish fingers.

That wasn't his problem or concern. He had done as Edrik commanded. He only wanted the worms back.

It had taken more than a year out of his accelerated lifetime, but if Waff succeeded in resurrecting God's messengers, his destiny would be complete. Even if the little man never received another ghola lifetime, he would have earned his place beside God in the highest levels of Heaven.

Under proper conditions, sandtrout specimens reproduced swiftly. From them, he had adapted nearly a hundred seaworms, most of which he would deposit in the oceans of Buzzell. For a new species to survive, especially in an unfamiliar environment, the creatures faced quite a challenge, and Waff fully expected that many of his test specimens would die.

Maybe most of them. But he was also convinced that some would live - enough to establish a foothold.

Waff stood on his tiptoes, pressing his face to the tank. "If you are in there, Prophet, I will soon give you a whole new domain."

Five Guild assistants entered the lab without knocking. When Waff turned abruptly, the seaworms sensed his movement. With a thump, fleshy heads struck the reinforced tank walls. Startled again, Waff turned the other direction.

"Passengers have disembarked for Buzzell," said one of the gray-clothed men. "Navigator Edrik has commanded us to follow your instructions."

The five all had oddly distorted heads, swollen brows, and asymmetric facial features.

Any Tleilaxu Master could have repaired genetic flaws so that their descendants would be more physically attractive. But that would serve no purpose, and Waff had no interest in cosmetics.

He gestured to the tanks as the Guildsmen sealed them for transport. "Exercise extreme care. Those creatures are worth more than all your lives."

The reticent assistants installed handles on the crowded tanks and began lugging them along the curving halls of the Heighliner. Knowing he had only four hours to complete his task before the passenger shuttles returned, Waff urged them to hurry.

Because of the schism in the Guild between Navigators and Administrators, some people might not wish him to create this new avenue for spice production. The Ixians, the New Sisterhood, even the bureaucratic faction of the Guild might all work together, or separately, to assassinate him. Waff didn't know how or why these particular five Guildsmen had been chosen to assist him. If he expressed any misgivings about them, Waff knew that the Navigator would not hesitate to have all five killed, just to keep his Tleilaxu researcher happy. As the troupe walked to a small transport craft, Waff decided that was exactly what he would do. Get rid of these men, these witnesses.

Afterward.

The sample tanks were loaded aboard the small transport. Waff did not usually leave the safe confines of the Heighliner, but he insisted on accompanying the crew down to the open sea. It was his experiment, and he wanted to be there in person to make sure the worms were released properly. He didn't trust the five Guildsmen to be sufficiently competent or attentive.

Then his suspicions ran deeper. What was to stop these men from flying off in the ship, revealing - or selling! - the seaworms to one of the opposing factions? Could they be perfectly loyal to Edrik? Waff saw danger everywhere.

As the transport dropped out of the cargo bay, Waff wished belatedly that he had demanded additional bodyguards, or at least a sufficiently powerful hand-weapon for himself. Whom could he really trust?

Using technological apparatus connected to their throats, the silent Guildsmen communicated with each other electronically, transmitting brain signals without voicing words.

He knew they could speak aloud - why would they be so secretive? Perhaps they were plotting against him. Waff looked at the immense Heighliner far overhead and wished fervently for this to be over.

The small transport descended into the cloudy skies, fighting choppy air currents.

Waff felt ill. Finally, they broke through the moisture layers, and the oceans below sprawled out to every horizon. On charts displayed across the cockpit screens, Waff searched for a temperate zone where he could deposit the test worms, a place where the seas were rich with plankton and fish. It would give the creatures the greatest chance for survival.

He indicated a line of rocks not far from the Sisterhood's main island base and the center of their soostone-harvesting operations. "There. Safe, and close enough to monitor the worms." He smiled, already imagining the first panicked reports of eyewitnesses.

"Any rumors or wild stories should be interesting."

The Guildsmen nodded, all business. The transport ship flew low over the waves and hovered above the gentle swells. The lower cargo hatch opened, and Waff went down to observe the emptying of the tanks. He smelled the raw salt air, the tang of floating kelp, the wet breezes that whipped across the sea. A squall was about to begin.

Using the handles, two of the silent Guildsmen brought the first tank to the opening, released the plaz cover sheet, and spilled the water and writhing seaworms into the freedom of the waiting waves.

The serpentine creatures burst out like frantic snakes. Once they plunged into the green water, they streaked away. Waff watched their ridged bodies undulating, then diving and disappearing. They seemed joyous in their newfound freedom, glad to have a large world without plaz boundaries.

Brusquely, he gestured to the Guildsmen, telling them to release the rest of the worms, emptying all of the aquariums. Waff had kept one crowded tank of specimens aboard the Heighliner, and he could always create more.

As he stood by the open hatch, he suddenly shuddered, realizing his vulnerability.

Now that he had turned the worms loose, would Edrik even require his services anymore?

The Tleilaxu man feared the silent assistants might shove him overboard and leave him floating kilometers from the nearest speck of land. Warily, he backed deeper into the cargo hold and gripped a ridged wall strut.

But the Guildsmen made no move against him. They performed their work exactly as he told them to, and precisely as the Navigator had specified. Perhaps Waff was fearful only because he intended to have these men killed. He naturally suspected they would think the same about him.

Waff anticipated the seaworms would thrive here. The environment was conducive to their growth and reproduction. The worms would mark their territory, and when they grew large enough they would become leviathans of the deep. A fitting form for the Prophet.

The transport's cargo doors sealed again with a low hiss, and the Guild pilot flew away. Waff and his party would arrive back at the Heighliner well before the merchant vessels returned with their loads of soostones. No one would be the wiser.

The Tleilaxu Master glanced through the cockpit's plaz port to see the waves receding.

He saw no sign of the seaworms, but he knew they were down there somewhere.

He let out a contented sigh, confident that his Prophet would come back.

***

- from The Secret Manual of Tleilaxu Masters

The no-ship had its own time, its own cycles. Most of the people were asleep, except for off-shift watches and maintenance crews. The decks were quiet, the glowpanels dimmed. In the shadowy chamber that held the axlotl tanks, the Rabbi paced back and forth, murmuring Talmudic prayers.

On a surveillance screen Sheeana observed the old man carefully, always alert to prevent any new incident of sabotage. When the saboteur had killed the three gholas and axlotl tanks, he or she had shut down the security imagers, but Bashar Teg had made sure that was no longer possible. Everything was under observation. As a former Suk doctor, the Rabbi had access to the medical center; he often spent time with what remained of the woman he'd known as Rebecca.

Though the old man had answered all questions the Truthsayers asked him, he still hadn't earned her trust. Despite her best efforts, the saboteur and murderer remained at large. And the recent appearance of the glowing net had brought the Enemy too close, reminding the passengers of the very real threat. Everyone onboard had seen it. Their danger remained unabated.

Three relatively new axlotl tanks rested on their platforms; volunteers had come forward to answer Sheeana's call, exactly as she had expected. All three new tanks were currently producing liquid-form melange that dripped into small collecting vials, but she had begun preparations to implant one of the wombs with cells from Scytale's nullentropy tube. A new embryo to bring back yet another figure from the past. She refused to let the sabotage deflect her ghola project.

The Rabbi stood before the new tanks, his tense body exhibiting clear markers of loathing and disgust. He spoke to the fleshy mound. "I hate you. Unnatural, ungodly."

After watching the old man carefully, Sheeana left the monitor screens and entered the medical center, gliding up behind him. "Is it honorable to hate the helpless, Rabbi? Those women are no longer aware, no longer human. Why despise them?"

He whirled, lights reflecting on his polished spectacles. "Stop spying on me. I wish time alone to pray for Rebecca's soul." Rebecca had been his personal favorite, willing to pit her intellect against his; the old man had never forgiven her for volunteering to become a tank.

"Even you need to be watched, Rabbi."

Anger flushed his leathery skin. "You and your witches should have heeded the warnings and ceased your grotesque experiments. If only the Honored Matres had managed to get rid of Scytale when they destroyed all Tleilaxu worlds, then his hateful knowledge of tanks and gholas would have been lost."

"The Honored Matres also hunted down your people, Rabbi. You and the Tleilaxu share the same enemy."

"But it is not the same at all. We have been unfairly persecuted throughout history, while the Tleilaxu merely received their just desserts. Their own Face Dancers turned on them, from what I understand." He took a step away from the fleshy mound, from the chemical and biological odors that wafted from the tanks. "I can hardly recall what Rebecca once looked like, before she became this thing."

Sheeana searched for the memories, and asked the voices within to assist her. This time they did, and she found what she wanted, like accessing old archival images.

The woman had looked elegant in her brown robe and braided hair. She'd worn contact lenses to conceal the blue eyes of her spice addiction....

With a bitter expression, the Rabbi placed a hand on Rebecca's exposed flesh. A tear ran down his cheek. He muttered the same thing each time he visited her. A litany for him. "You witches did this to her, made her into a monster."

"She's not a monster, not even a martyr." She tapped her own forehead. "Rebecca's thoughts and memories are in here and inside many other Sisters, Shared with us all.

Rebecca did what was necessary, and so will we."

"By making more gholas? Will it never end?"

"You are concerned about a pebble in your shoe, while we seek to avoid the rockslide.

Sooner or later, we will no longer be able to run from the Enemy. We'll need the ingenuity and special talents of these gholas, in particular those capable of becoming another Kwisatz Haderach. But we must handle the genetic material carefully, nurturing and developing it in the proper order, at the proper pace." She strolled to one of the new tanks, a fresh young woman whose form had not yet deteriorated into unrecognizability.

As she stood there, a troubling thought refused to leave her mind, no matter how much she tried to push it away. An absurd line of reasoning, but all day long it had been percolating.

What if my own abilities could be equivalent to those of a Kwisatz Haderach? I already have a natural ability to control the great worms. I have theAtreides genes, and centuries of the Sisterhood's perfected knowledge to draw upon. Would I dare?

She felt voices surfacing from within; one rose above the others. The ancient Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, repeating something that she once said so long ago to a young Paul Atreides: "Yet, there's a place where no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye.

He will look where we cannot - into both feminine and masculine pasts ... the one who can be many places at once ..." The old crone's voice drifted away, without giving Sheeana any advice, one way or the other.

With a sneer, the Rabbi interrupted her thoughts. "And you trust that old Tleilaxu to help you, when he's desperate to achieve his own goals before dying? Scytale hid those cells for so many years. How many of them contain dangerous secrets? You've already discovered Face Dancer cells among the samples. How many of your ghola abominations are traps laid by the Tleilaxu?"

She gazed at him dispassionately, knowing that no argument would ever sway him. The Rabbi made the sign of the evil eye, and fled.

* * *

Sheeana's large eyes fixed on him like a weapon's targeting system. Feeling a tingle like static electricity on his skin, he cursed his body for being so easily tempted.

Even now, three years after Sheeana had broken the debilitating chains of Murbella's love, the two of them still found themselves drawn irresistibly into unexpected bouts of sex as frenetic as any he and Murbella had ever shared.

Duncan preferred to manage the circumstances of their casual meetings, always trying to make certain that others were present, that he had safe guardrails to prevent him from falling off a dangerous cliff. He did not like to be out of control: That had already happened too many times.

He and Sheeana had surrendered to each other like terrified people huddling in a bombed-out battle zone. She had cauterized him to cure his debility and stolen him from Murbella, yet he felt like a casualty of war.

Now as he saw Sheeana's expression flicker, Duncan thought she felt the same sense of vertigo and disorientation. She tried to sound reserved and rational. "It is better if we don't do this. We have too many concerns, too many risks. Another regenerator system has just failed. The saboteur - "

"You're right. We should not." His voice was hoarse, but they had already started down a path with ever-increasing consequences. Duncan took a hesitant step forward. The muted corridor lights reflected off the no-ship's metal walls. "We shouldn't do this," he said again.

Desire swept like a wave over both of them. As a Mentat he could observe and assess, concluding that what they were doing was simply a reaffirmation of humanity. When they touched fingertips, lips, and skin, both of them were lost....

Later, they rested on tangled sheets in Sheeana's quarters. The air carried a moist muskiness. Duncan lay sated with his fingers laced in his wiry dark hair. He was confused and disappointed in himself. "You've taken away too much of my control."

Sheeana raised her eyebrows in the dim light, showing amusement. Her breath was warm and close to his ear. "Oh? And Murbella did not?" When Duncan turned away and did not answer, she chuckled. "You're feeling guilty! You think you've betrayed her somehow.

But how many female imprinters did you train back on Chapterhouse?"

He answered the question in his own way. "Murbella and I were trapped together, and no part of our relationship was voluntary. We had a mutual addiction, two people brought to a stalemate. That isn't love or tenderness. For Murbella - for all of you witches - our love-making was supposed to be 'just business.' But I still had feelings for her, dammit! It isn't a matter of whether or not I should.

"But you - you were like a violent detoxification of my system. The Agony served the same purpose for Murbella, breaking her bond to me." He reached out and cupped Sheeana's chin. "This cannot happen again."

Now she looked even more amused. "I agree that it should not... but it will anyway."

"You're a loaded weapon, a full Bene Gesserit. Every time we make love, you could easily let yourself get pregnant. Isn't that what the Sisterhood would demand? You could carry my child whenever you allow yourself to do so."

"True. But I haven't. We are far from Chapterhouse, and I make my own decisions now."

Sheeana pulled him back to her.

***

- IMPERIAL PLANETOLOGIST PARDOT KYNES, ancient records Sheeana stood in the high observation gallery where she and Garimi had once gone to discuss the future of their journey. The kilometer-long great hold was large enough to offer the illusion of freedom, though much too small for a brood of sandworms.

The seven creatures were growing but remained stunted, waiting for the promised arid land.

They had been waiting a long time, perhaps too long.

More than two decades ago, Sheeana had brought the small worms aboard the no-ship, stealing them from the growing desert band on Chapterhouse. She had always intended to transplant them to another world, far from the Honored Matres and safe from the Enemy. For years, the worms had zigzagged endlessly in the sand-filled confines of the hold, as lost as everyone else on the Ithaca....

She wondered if the no-ship would ever find a planet where they could stop, where the Sisters could establish a new and orthodox Chapterhouse, rather than the mongrel organization that made concessions to the ways of the Honored Matres. If the ship simply fled for generations and generations, it would be impossible to find a perfect world for the sandworms, for Garimi and her conservative Bene Gesserits, for the Rabbi and his Jews.

She recalled searching Other Memory for advice the evening before. For a while, there had been no response. Then Serena Butler, the ancient leader of the Jihad, came to her just as Sheeana drifted off to sleep in her quarters. Long-dead Serena told of her experiences being lost and overwhelmed by an endless war, forced to guide vast populations when she herself didn't know where to go.

"But you found your way, Serena. You did what you had to do. You did what humanity needed."

And so will you, Sheeana.

Now, seeing the sandworms ripple the sand far below, Sheeana could sense their feelings in an indefinable way, and they could sense hers. Did they dream of endless, dry dunes in which to stake their territory? The largest of the worms, nearly forty meters long with a maw large enough to swallow three people abreast, was clearly dominant.

Sheeana had given that one a name: Monarch.

The seven worms pointed their eyeless faces toward her, displaying crystalline teeth.

The smaller ones burrowed into the shallow sand, leaving only Monarch, who seemed to be summoning Sheeana. She stared at the dominant worm, trying to understand what it wanted. The connection between them began to burn inside her, calling her.

Sheeana descended to the sand-filled cargo hold. Stepping out onto churned dunes, she strode directly toward the worm, unafraid. She had faced the creatures many times before and had nothing to fear from this one.

Monarch towered over her. Putting her hands on her hips, Sheeana looked up, and waited.

In the heady days on Rakis, she had learned to dance on the sands and control the behemoths, but she had always known she could do more. When she was ready.

The worm seemed to be playing upon her need for understanding. She was the girl who could communicate with the beasts, who could control and understand them. And now, in order to see her own future, she had to go farther. Literally and metaphorically.

It was what Monarch wanted. Dangerous and frightening, the creature exhaled a stink of inner furnaces and pure melange.

"So, now what do we do, you and I? Are you Shaitan, or just an impostor?"

The restless worm seemed to know exactly what she had in mind. Instead of rolling its body toward her so she could climb its rings to ride, Monarch faced her with its round maw open.

Each milky-white tooth in a mouth the size of a cave opening was long enough to be used as a crysknife. Sheeana did not tremble.

The sandworm laid its head on the soft dunes directly in front of her. Tempting her to a symbolic journey, like Jonah and the whale? Sheeana wrestled with her fears, but knew what she must do - not as a charlatan's performance, for she doubted anyone was watching her, but because it was necessary for her own understanding.

Monarch lay waiting for her, mouth agape. The worm itself became a secret doorway, luring her like a dangerous lover. Sheeana stepped past the portcullis of crysknife teeth and knelt inside the gullet, inhaling the rank cinnamon odor. Dizzy and nauseated, she could barely breathe. The sandworm did not move. Willingly, she worked her way deeper inside, offering herself, though convinced that her sacrifice would not be accepted. It wasn't what the worm wanted from her.

Without looking back, she crawled farther down the throat into dry, dark warmth.

Monarch did not twitch. Sheeana kept going, felt her breathing slow. Deeper and deeper she went, and soon guessed that she had gone at least half the length of the prone worm.

Without the friction heat sparked by roaming endless deserts, the worm's gullet was no longer a furnace. Her eyes became accustomed to what she realized was not total darkness, but was instead an eerie illumination that seemed more the product of another sense in her own mind than traditional eyesight. She could dimly see the rough, membranous surface around her, and as she proceeded, the undigested odor of melange precursors grew stronger, more concentrated.

Finally she reached a fleshy chamber that might have been Monarch's stomach, but without digestive acids. How did the captive sandworms survive? The odor of spice was more intense here than she had ever experienced - so much so that an ordinary person would have suffocated.

But I am no ordinary person.

Sheeana lay there, absorbing the warmth, letting the intense melange seep into every pore in her body, feeling Monarch's dim consciousness merge into hers. She inhaled deeply and felt a great, cosmic sense of calm, like being in the womb of the Great Mother of the Universe.

Unexpectedly, with the unusual visitor deep in its gullet, the sand-worm dove into the artificial desert and began to move through it; taking her on a strange journey.

As if connected directly with Monarch's nervous system, Sheeana could see through the eyeless worm to its companions beneath the sand. Working together, the seven sandworms were forming small veins of spice in the cargo hold.

Preparing.

Sheeana lost track of time and thought again of Leto II, whose pearl of awareness was now inside this beast and all of the others in the hold. She wondered where she fit into this paranormal realm. As the God Emperor's queen? As the female part of the godhead? Or as something else entirely, an entity she could not begin to imagine?

The worms all carried secrets, and Sheeana understood how much the ghola children were like that as well. They each held a treasure greater than spice within their cells: their past memories and lives. Paul and Chani, Jessica, Yueh, Leto II. Even Thufir Hawat, Stilgar, Liet-Kynes ... and now baby Alia. Each had a crucial role to play, but only if they could remember who they were.

She saw each image, but not in her own imagination. The sand-worms knew what those lost figures contained. An urgency rushed toward her like a desert wind. Time, and with it their chances for survival, was slipping away too quickly. She envisioned a succession of the possible gholas, all primed like weapons, but blurred as to what each could do.

She could not wait for the Enemy. She had to act now.

The worm resurfaced, and after moving along the sands, it jolted to a stop. Inside, Sheeana caught her balance. Then, by constricting its membranous interior, the creature gently pushed her back out. She crawled from the mouth and tumbled onto the sands.

Dust and grit clung to the film coating her body. Monarch nudged her, like a mother bird urging a chick to go out on its own. Caught up in disorienting visions, she struggled and dropped to her knees on the dry sand. The faces of the ghola children wavered around her, dissolving into bright lights.

Awaken!

She lay gasping for breath, her body and clothing drenched in spice essence. Beside Sheeana, the big worm turned, burrowed back into the shallow sand, and disappeared from view.

Reeking and reeling, Sheeana made her way back toward the cargo-hold doors, but she kept losing her footing and falling. She had to reach the ghola children... The worm had given her an important message, something that seeped into her consciousness like a wordless form of Other Memory. In moments, she was left with an overwhelming certainty of what she had to do.

***

- DR. WELLINGTON YUEH, the ghola

After being scrubbed and showered to rid her of a spice reek so strong that even the Sisters who assisted her covered their mouths and noses, Sheeana slept for two days in deep and disturbing dreams.

When she finally emerged and found Duncan Idaho and Miles Teg on the navigation bridge, she made her announcement. "The gholas are all old enough. Even Leto II is the same age as when I restored the Bashar." The smell of melange was heavy on Sheeana's breath.

"It's time to awaken them all."

Duncan turned his back on the observation window where he stood. "Triggering the process isn't like activating a subroutine or working through a bout of temporary amnesia. You can't just issue a memo and order it done."

"The ghola children have always known that we would demand this of them," she said.

"Without their past memories, without their genius, they are of no more value to us than any other children."

The Bashar nodded slowly. "To recall a ghola's past life is an experience that destroys and recreates the psyche. There are numerous proven methods, some more painful than others, but none are easy. You can't awaken the children all at once. Each critical event must be tailored to the individual. A horrible, mind-shattering crisis." Teg's face showed echoes of pain. "You thought you were using a humane awakening method with me, Sheeana ... when I was only a ten-year-old child."

Though Duncan, too, seemed uneasy at the prospect, he stepped down from the observation window and walked toward Sheeana. "She's right, Miles. We created those gholas for a purpose, and right now they're all like unloaded guns. We need to load our gholas - our unique weapons. The Enemy's net is stronger now, and it nearly snared us again.

We all saw it. Next time, we may not be able to slip away."

"We've waited long enough." Sheeana's voice was hard, brooking no argument.

"Some gholas may be more challenging than others." Teg's eyes narrowed. "You may lose some to madness. Are you prepared for that?"

"I have gone through the Spice Agony, as have all Reverend Mothers on this ship.

We survived the unbearable pain."

"I have the memories of my old life," Teg said. "Of wars and atrocities, and enduring unbearable torture. Somehow the bad details are much more vivid than the pleasant ones, but nothing is worse than the awakening."

Sheeana waved her hand. "Throughout history, men and women have had a monopoly on their own kinds of pain, each thinking theirs is the worst." She smiled grimly. "We will start with the least valuable ghola, of course. In case something goes wrong."

Wellington Yueh was summoned to stand before the Bene Gesserits in one of the no-ship's council chambers. The gangly teenager had a pointed chin and pinched lips. Already buried within his face were hints of the familiar chiseled features and broad forehead - the despised visage that had become synonymous with the word traitor for thousands of years in galactic reference works.

The young man was nervous, fidgeting. Sheeana drew herself to her full height and stepped closer. He flinched at her intimidating presence, but somehow found the courage to stand where he was. "You summoned me, Reverend Mother.

How may I assist?"

"By awakening your memories. Tomorrow you will be the first of our subjects to undergo the trigger."

Yueh's yellowish face paled. "But I'm not ready!"

"That is why we have given you a full day to prepare." Proctor Superior Garimi's tongue was sharp, as usual.

Although Garimi had never embraced the project, she now wanted to see its culmination.

Sheeana knew what she was thinking: If the awakening process failed, Garimi intended to prevent any further gholas from being grown; if the awakening succeeded, she would insist that the program had fulfilled its goal and could be discontinued. She knew that Sheeana, still intrigued by all those cells in the Tleilaxu's nullentropy capsule, was planning further ghola experiments.

Yueh's legs were locked. He seemed close to fainting and grasped a nearby chair to steady himself. "Sisters, I don't want to have my memories back. I am not the man you think you resurrected, but a new person - my own person. The old Wellington Yueh was tormented in so many ways. Even though he was in part me, how can I forgive him for what he did?"

Garimi made a dismissive gesture. "Nevertheless, we brought you back for one purpose only. Don't expect sympathy from us. You have a task to perform."

After the proctors took the distraught young man away, Sheeana looked at Garimi and two other senior Sisters - Calissa and Elyen - who had observed the discussion. "I will use the sexual method on him, the same one that worked on the ghola of the Bashar.

It is the best technique we know."

Elyen said, "Your sexual imprinting unlocked the Bashar's memories only because it precipitated a crisis in him. Teg's mother had armed him against sexual imprinting.

It wasn't your technique that stirred up his past, but his sheer resistance to it."

"Indeed. So for each of our gholas we'll tailor an individualized agony that leverages their own fears and weaknesses."

"How can sex break Yueh the way it broke the Bashar?" Garimi asked.

"Not the sex itself, but Yueh's resistance to it. He's terrified of remembering his past. If he believes we know how to unlock his memories, he'll fight us with everything he has. As he fights, I will apply my most potent procedures, and he'll spiral over the brink into complete madness."

Garimi shrugged. "If it doesn't work, we have other ways."

The room was dim and the shadows cloying, which made Yueh's terror more palpable.

The chamber was devoid of furniture except for a padded mat on the floor, like those that the ghola children used during physical training sessions.

The witches had not explained what to expect. The young man knew from his studies that the process of regaining one's past was painful. He was not a strong man, nor was he particularly brave. Even so, the prospect of pain did not petrify him nearly so much as the dread of remembering.

The door slid open with a gentle hiss of lubricated metal gliding in its tracks.

From the corridor, blinding light flowed in, much brighter than the glowpanels in his cell. It silhouetted a woman's figure - Sheeana? He turned to face her and could see only her outline, the sensual curves of her body no longer masked by flowing robes. When the door sealed behind her, his eyes adjusted to the more comfortable illumination.

When he saw that Sheeana was completely unclothed, his fear increased. "What is this?"

His voice, torn by nervousness, came out as a squeak.

She stepped closer. "You will disrobe now."

Barely a teenager, Yueh swallowed. "Not until you explain what is going to happen to me."

She used the hurricane force of Bene Gesserit Voice. "You will disrobe now!"

In a spasmodic reaction, his arms and legs jerking, he tore off his clothes. Sheeana inspected him, running her eyes up and down his thin, naked body like a hawk assessing its prey. Yueh got the impression that she found him inadequate.

"Don't hurt me," he pleaded, and hated himself for saying it.

"Of course it will hurt, but the pain won't be anything I inflict upon you." She touched his shoulder. He felt an almost electric shock, but he was transfixed, unable to move. "Your own memories will do that."

"I don't want them back. I'll fight you."

"Fight all you wish. It will do you no good. We know how to awaken you."

Yueh closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He tried to turn away, but she grasped his arms to hold him still, then released her grip and began touching him. The delicate strokings felt like the line of heat left by a lighted match down his arm and across his chest. "Your memories are stored within your cells. In order to awaken them, I must awaken your body."

She stroked him, and he shuddered, unable to draw away.

"I shall teach your nerve endings to do things they've forgotten how to do." Another jolt, and he gasped.

She touched him again, and his knees buckled, exactly as she wanted. Sheeana pushed him toward the mat on the floor. "I need to wrench you into the full awareness of every chromosome in every cell."

"No." The word sounded incredibly weak to him.

As she pressed herself against him, letting warm skin ignite his perspiration, Yueh tunneled backward into himself, trying to flee. From all he had learned of his past, he found one thing with which to anchor his bravery.

Wanna! His beloved Bene Gesserit wife, the weak link in his long chain of betrayals, and the strongest link in his original lifetime.

The evil Harkonnens had known that Wanna would be the key to breaking his Suk conditioning, and it had only worked - could only have worked - because Yueh loved her with all his heart. Bene Gesserits were not supposed to succumb to love, but he knew that she must have reciprocated.

He thought of her pictures in the archives, of all he had learned about her in his researches.

"Oh, Wanna." He yearned for her in his mind, tried to latch onto her as a lifeline.

Sheeana stroked his waist, trailed her fingers lower and climbed on top of him. Yueh's muscles were completely out of his control. He couldn't move. Her lips vibrated against the skin of his shoulder, his neck. Sheeana was a skilled sexual imprinter. Her body was a weapon, and he was the target.

A flood of sensations nearly drove the archival image of Wanna from his mind, but Yueh fought against what Sheeana was making him feel. Instead, he focused on what he might have done in Wanna's loving embrace.

Wanna.

As the rhythm of their lovemaking increased, real memories intruded on the information he had obtained through research. Yueh recalled those terrible moments after his wife had been seized by the Harkonnens, and saw images of the loathsome fat Baron, his thuggish nephew Rabban, the viper Feyd-Rautha, and the Mentat Piter de Vries, who had a laugh that sounded like vinegar.

Weak, helpless, and infuriated, he had been forced to watch them torture Wanna inside an isolated chamber. She was a Bene Gesserit; she could block her pain, could deflect her body's responses. But Yueh could not so easily shunt such things aside, no matter how hard he tried.

In his nightmare memory the Baron laughed, a rumbling basso sound. "See the little chamber she's in, Doctor? A toy with some very interesting possibilities." As the men watched the groggy and disoriented Wanna, she stood on weak knees, but upside-down within the booth. "We can convert gravity into a thing that depends entirely on perspective."

Rabban chuckled, a harsh release of noise. He operated artificial gravity controls in the small room, and suddenly Wanna fell with a thud to the floor. She managed to tuck her head and shoulders just enough to avoid breaking her neck. With the speed and fluidity of a serpent, Piter de Vries scurried forward carrying a pain amplifier.

At the last moment, Rabban snatched it out of the Twisted Mentat's hands and applied it to Wanna's throat himself. She writhed with a jagged spasm of agony.

"Stop! Stop, I beg you!" Yueh cried.

"Oh, Doctor, Doctor - you know it can't possibly be that easy ..." In the vision, the Baron folded his pudgy arms across his chest.

Rabban twisted the gravity controls again, and Wanna was thrown like a limp doll from wall to wall, smashing into the sides of the chamber. "When one is too lovely, something must be done to correct that condition."

My beautiful Wanna!

The memories were so vivid now, far more detailed than anything he had read in the Archives section. No mere documentation could have provided such precise clarity....

In a different, newly unlocked compartment of his brain, he lived another memory.

He was artificially paralyzed, forced to watch during one of the Baron's drunken parties while Piter played a sparking pain amplifier over Wanna's suspended body.

Each flash provoked a twitching response of agony from her. The other guests laughed at her pain and at his helpless misery.

When he was freed from his paralysis, Yueh trembled, drooled, and struggled. The Baron stood over him, a huge grin on his bloated face. He handed Yueh a projectile pistol. "As a Suk doctor, you should do everything possible to stop a patient from feeling pain. You know how to stop Wanna's pain, Doctor."

Unable to break his conditioning, Yueh shuddered and spasmed. He wanted nothing more than to do as the Baron demanded. "I... can't!"

"Of course you can. Choose a guest, any guest. I don't care which. See how amused they are by our little game?" Grasping Yueh's shaking wrists, he helped the doctor point his projectile weapon around the room. "But don't try any tricks, or we will make the torment last a great deal longer!"

He wished he could put Wanna out of her misery, killing her instead of letting the Harkonnens have their perverted fun. He saw her eyes, the spark of pain and hope, but Rabban stopped him. "Focus, Doctor. No mistakes."

Through blurred vision he made out numerous targets, and tried to concentrate on one, a tottering old nobleman, a semuta addict. That one had lived a long life, undoubtedly with considerable debauchery. But for a Suk doctor to kill -

He fired.

Overwhelmed by the horrific scene now playing out in his head, Yueh paid no further attention to Sheeana's ministrations. His body was drenched with sweat, but less from sexual exertion than from the extreme psychological distress. He saw Sheeana appraising him. The memories were so clear to him that his entire body felt like a raw wound: Wanna in agony and the sharp, broken-crystal pain of how his Suk conditioning had been thwarted.

It had happened thousands of years ago!

The years before that watershed occurrence, and the years afterward, extended outward, filling his mind, now fresh and hungry. As the relentless memories returned, so did more anguish and guilt, accompanied by a disgust with himself.

Yueh felt as if he was about to vomit. Tears poured down his cheeks.

In the training room, Sheeana studied the wet streaks clinically. "You're weeping.

Does that mean you've successfully regained your memories?"

"I have them back." His voice was husky and sounded infinitely old. "And damn you witches to hell for it."

***

- BASHAR MILES TEG, military assessment delivered to the Bene Gesserit After she departed from Chapterhouse, Murbella traveled to the V battle lines. That was where the Mother Commander belonged. Posing as nothing more important than an inspector for the New Sisterhood, Murbella arrived at Oculiat, one of the systems that lay directly in the path of the advancing thinking-machine fleet.

Once, Oculiat had been at the far edges of inhabited space, a jumping-off point for the Scattering after the Tyrant's death. Objectively, this sparsely populated world had little significance, just another target on the vast cosmic map. But for Murbella, Oculiat represented a genuine psychological blow: When this world fell to the machines, the Enemy would be encroaching into the Old Empire itself, not just into a distant and unknown place that had been omitted from old star maps.

Until the Ixians delivered their Obliterators and the Guild provided all the ships she had demanded, the Mother Commander had no way to stop, or even slow, the thinking machines.

Under a hazy sky illuminated by watery yellow sunlight, Murbella stepped out of her ship. The landing field seemed deserted, as if no one tended the spaceport any longer. As if they were not even watching for the Enemy.

When she made her way to the frantic crowds in the central city, though, she saw that the inhabitants had already found their own enemy. A mob surrounded the main administration building where government officials had barricaded themselves. The locals had put their leaders under siege, screaming for blood or divine intervention.

Preferably blood.

Murbella knew the raw power that their fear generated, but it was clearly not channeled properly. The people of Oculiat - and all desperate worlds facing the oncoming Enemy -

needed guidance from the Sisterhood. They were an already-charged weapon that must be aimed. Instead, they were out of control. She saw what was happening and rushed forward, but stopped short of throwing herself headlong into the mob.

They would tear her limb from limb, and they would do it for Sheeana.

The random appearances and sermons of the "resurrected Sheeana" had prepared billions of people to fight. The Sheeanas had kindled the anger and fervor of populations, so that the Sisterhood could manipulate that raw power for their own purposes. Once unleashed, however, such fanaticism became a chaotic force. Knowing they were unlikely to survive against the oncoming machines, the men and women threw themselves into violence, seeking any sort of enemy they could get their hands on ... even among their own people.

"Face Dancers!" someone shouted. Murbella pushed her way closer to the center of action, knocked aside flailing arms and fists, and cuffed someone on the side of the head. But even stunned, the wild and emboldened people surged onward. "Face Dancers!

They've been manipulating us all along - selling us out to the Enemy."

Those who recognized the Mother Commander's Bene Gesserit unitard backed away; others, either oblivious or too angry to care, were not swayed until she used Voice.

Bombarded by the irresistible command, they staggered away. Just one person against the multitude, Murbella strode toward the colonnaded doorways of the government center, which the people saw as their target. She used Voice again but could not stop them all in their tracks. The shouting and accusatory shrieks rose and fell like a thunderstorm.

As she fought her way to the front of the barricade, several of the foremost mob members noticed her uniform and let out a long cheer. "A Reverend Mother is here to support us!"

"Kill the Face Dancers! Kill them all!"

"For Sheeana!"

Murbella grabbed an elderly woman who had been yelling along with the others. "How do you know they're Face Dancers?"

"We know.

Think about their decisions, listen to their speeches. It's obvious they are traitors."

Murbella didn't believe that Face Dancers would be quite so obvious that common rabble could detect the faint subtleties. But the mob was convinced.

Six huffing men ran by, carrying a heavy plasteel pole that they proceeded to use as a battering ram. Inside the capitol building, terrified officials had piled obstructions against the doors and windows. Thrown stones shattered the ornamental plaz, but the crowd couldn't break in so easily. Bars and heavy objects blocked the way.

Wielded with the strength of panic and hysteria, the battering ram pounded the thick doors, tearing hinges loose and splintering wood. In moments, a wave of human bodies pushed forward.

Murbella called out. "Wait! Why not prove they're Face Dancers before you kill anyone - "

The old woman shoved past, eager to get to the officials. She stepped on Murbella's foot, heard her shouted cautions, then turned to her with a narrowed gaze like a serpent's. "Why do you hesitate, Reverend Mother? Help us capture the traitors. Or are you a Face Dancer yourself?"

Murbella's Honored Matre reflexes came to the fore, and her hand snapped out, cutting into the woman's neck with a blow that rendered her unconscious. She had not meant to kill the woman, but as her accuser fell to the steps a dozen people surged forward, trampling her to death.

Heart pounding, Murbella pressed against the wall to avoid the brunt of the stampede.

If the cry had been taken up - "Face Dancer! Face Dancer!" - with fingers pointing at her, the crowd would have killed her without thinking. Even with superior fighting abilities, Murbella could never fend off so many.

She backed up farther and took shelter behind the tall statue of a long-forgotten hero of the Famine Times, shielding herself with its pla-stone bulk. The screaming mob would crush many of its own members to get into the government building.

She could hear cries inside, a discharge of weapons, and small explosions. Some of the trapped officials must have been carrying personal protection. Murbella waited, knowing it would be over soon....

The bloody attack burned itself out in half an hour. The mob found and killed all twenty government officials suspected of being enemy Face Dancers. Then, still not sated in their thirst for blood, they turned against any of their own members who had not shown sufficient murderous fervor, until most of the violence drained away into guilty exhaustion....

Standing tall, Mother Commander Murbella entered the building, where she surveyed the smashed windows, display cases, and artwork. Jubilant murderers dragged bodies onto the polished tiled floor of the main legislative gallery. Almost thirty men and women were dead, some shot with projectile weapons, others beaten to death, many with such violence that their genders were hardly recognizable. The corpses on the polished stone floor wore expressions of horror and shock.

One of the bodies among the bloody mess was indeed a Face Dancer.

"We were right! You see, Reverend Mother." A man pointed at the dead shape-shifter.

"We were infiltrated, but we rooted out the enemy and killed it."

Murbella looked around, at all of the innocent humans murdered to discover one Face Dancer. What was the economy of bloodshed? She tried to assess it coolly. How much damage could that one Face Dancer have caused, exposing vulnerabilities to the oncoming Enemy forces? All of those lives? Yes, and more, she had to admit.

From their elation it was obvious that the people of Oculiat considered their uprising a victory, and Murbella could not dispute that. But if this wave of insane vigilantism continued, would all governments topple? Even on Chapterhouse? Then who would organizethe people to defend themselves?

***

- BARON VLADIMIR HARKONNEN, original recordings

Despite being unarmed, the Baron sneered into the face of the red-eyed mongrel hound.

The growling animal moved toward him on the flagstoned floor, baring its sharp fangs, ready to spring.

Fortunately, the Baron had killed the feral creature with a poison dart gun some time ago, and this stuffed mechanical version merely followed a programmed reenactment.

The simulacrum went motionless when he gave it a hand signal. An amusing toy.

Nine-year-old Paolo moved around the trophy chamber, admiring the wild animals on display. The Baron had dragged the boy out on many hunts in the pristine wilderness of Caladan, so that he could witness the killing firsthand. It was good for his development and education.

Rabban had always enjoyed such things, but Paolo had originally been reluctant to engage in the slaughter. Maybe it was some flaw in the genetics. However, the Baron was gradually breaking down his resistance. With vigorous training and a system of rewards and punishments (plenty of the latter), the Baron had almost managed to squash the core of innate goodness in this ghola of Paul Atreides.

Weathersats had predicted constant rain and wind for the rest of the week. The Baron had looked forward to going out on a fresh hunt, but the cold and wet would have made for a miserable expedition. He and Paolo were trapped inside the castle. The two had formed a remarkable bond. House Atreides and House Harkonnen - how ironic!

But though Paolo was a clone of the hated Duke's son, raised properly he was turning out more like a Harkonnen.

He is your grandson, after all, the internal voice of Alia nagged at him.

Overcoming an urge to shout back at her, the Baron watched four workmen with suspensors hoist an immense stuffed mastaphont onto a viewing stand. Yet another nearly extinct creature, this ferocious beast had charged at them across a field last autumn, slashing with its serrated horns. But the Baron, Paolo, and half a dozen guards had opened fire with lasguns, cutting disks, and poison flechettes, mangling the creature before it finally fell. What an exciting hunt that had been!

Paolo looked at the animated creatures on stands. "Instead of going outside to the wilderness, let's go hunting in here. We can pretend they're not already dead. Then we don't have to worry about getting wet and cold."

The Baron looked out at the stormy skies, wondering if the weather was the real reason for Paolo's reluctance. "I don't mind pain, but personal discomfort is another matter entirely." He looked around, assessing possibilities for damage. And grinned. "You're absolutely right, my boy!" It pleased him to hear how deep his own voice was becoming.

They ordered servants to bring a selection of lasguns, dart pistols, swords, and knives for their next ersatz adventure. When the mechanical systems were activated, the dead animals went into a frenzy all over the trophy room. The two hunters took cover, imagined their danger, and shot the mechanical creatures off of their stands, chopping through prosthetic bones, stuffing, and preserved flesh. Last of all, they activated the huge mastaphont and watched it stomp over the debris. Finally catching it in a crossfire of lasgun blasts, they amputated its legs. The beast crashed to the floor, its automatic servos writhing.

The Baron found the violence to be eminently satisfying, and even Paolo seemed to warm to the activity. Afterward, the brave hunters surveyed the damage and laughed as they marched out into the corridor. The Baron spotted three workmen, who looked as if they wanted to become invisible. "Get back in there and clean things up!"

You always make a mess of things, don't you, Grandfather?

The Baron pressed his hands against his head. "Shut up, damn you!" Alia began humming repetitive singsong tunes, designed to drive him mad, no doubt. When a bewildered Paolo pestered him with questions, the Baron slapped him away. "Leave me alone! You're as bad as your sister!"

Confused and startled, Paolo ran off.

The girl's grating voice vibrated in his mind until he couldn't stand it. He hurried out of the castle. Barely able to see where he was going, the Baron bumped into one of the blocky Harkonnen statues and rushed toward the sea cliff. "I'll hurl myself over the edge - I swear it, Abomination - unless you leave me alone!"

He got all the way to the windy, rocky brink, before the Alia voice at last faded into sweet silence. The Baron dropped to his knees on the high stone walkway, looking with delicious vertigo over the tremendous drop-off. Maybe he should just do it anyway, and fall to the wet black rocks and churning waves. If the damned Face Dancers needed him so badly, they could just grow another ghola, and maybe that one wouldn't be so flawed. The Baron Harkonnen would be back!

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Gathering his remaining shreds of dignity, he looked up to see a pug-nosed Face Dancer staring at him. Though all shape-shifters looked exactly the same to him, he somehow knew this one was Khrone. "What do you want?"

Officiously, the Face Dancer said, "You and Paolo will depart Caladan and never return.

The great war is proceeding, and the evermind has decided that he needs the Kwisatz Haderach close to him. Omnius wants you to complete the boy's preparation under his direct supervision in the heart of the machine empire. You will depart for Synchrony as soon as a ship is ready."

The Baron flicked his gaze past the Face Dancer to Paolo, who crouched by a Harkonnen statue, close enough to eavesdrop on the conversation. He chuckled to himself, for this boy was as persistent as Piter de Vries! As soon as he realized he was discovered, Paolo scampered forward. "Is he talking about me?"

"Discuss Paolo's destiny with him on the way," Khrone said to the Baron. "Do more than explain it. Make the boy believe."

"Paolo is inclined to believe anything that reinforces his delusions of grandeur," the Baron said, ignoring the boy. "So, this Kwisatz Haderach business is ... real?"

Even though the Face Dancers had finally explained the truth to him, the idea still sounded preposterous. He was not convinced that this young ghola could be so important in the grand scheme of things.

Khrone looked ghastly in his blank state. Shadows around his eyes darkened as his displeasure became evident. "I believe it, and so does Omnius. Who are you to question?"

Believe it, dear Grandfather, said the annoying voice. By his very genes, Paul Atreides has the potential to be greater than you will ever be, in any incarnation.

The Baron refused to reply, either aloud or in his own thoughts. Ignoring the Abomination often made her shut up.

And now they were going to Synchrony, the home of Omnius. He looked forward to seeing the thinking-machine empire. New challenges, new opportunities.

In spite of the sum of his first life's memories, the stories of the evil thinking machines and the Butlerian Jihad were too distant to seem relevant. Though he harbored considerable resentment toward the Face Dancers, he was glad to be on the side of greater strength.

Later, during the shuttle ride to orbit, the Baron gazed down at the coastline, thevillages, the new smokestacks and strip-mined areas of Caladan. In his excitement,Paolo bustled from window to window. "Will we have a long journey?"

"I'm not a pilot. How should I know? The thinking machines must be very far away, otherwise humans would have known about them long before now."

"What will happen when we get there?"

"Ask a Face Dancer."

"They won't talk to me."

"Then ask Omnius when you see him. In the meantime, amuse yourself."

Paolo sat down beside him in the passenger compartment and began sampling packets of syrupy packaged food. "I'm special, you know. They've been grooming me, watching over me carefully. What exactly is a Kwisatz Haderach, anyway?"

He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand.

"Don't crawl into their delusions, boy. There is no such thing as a Kwisatz Haderach.

A myth, a legend, something with a hundred vague explanations in as many prophecies.

The entire Bene Gesserit breeding program is utter nonsense." He recalled from deep memories that he had been part of that breeding program himself, forced to impregnate the vile witch Mohiam. He had humiliated her during the act, but in retaliation the hag had transmitted the debilitating disease that had made him bloated and fat..

"It can't be nonsense. I have visions, especially when I take spice tablets. I see it again and again. I've got a bloody knife in my hand, and I'm victorious. I see myself rushing to take my prize - mélange, but more than mélange. I also see myself lying on the floor, bleeding to death. Which one is right? It's so confusing!"

"Shut up and take a nap."

They docked with an unmarked ship high above Caladan. It bore no markings of the Guild and carried no Navigator. Wide hangar doors opened, drawing the shuttle up and inside.

Silvery figures moved within the cold, airless landing bay, guiding the small vessel into a docking cradle. Robots - demons from ancient history! Ah, so, at least part of Khrone's wild tale might be true.

The Baron smiled at the boy staring out the windows. "You and I are about to undertake an interesting journey, Paolo."

***

- PAUL ATREIDES, secret ghola journals

Now that the ghola of Dr. Yueh had his memories restored, Paul Atreides knew he had to attempt more innovative measures to awaken himself. Paul was the oldest of the ghola children, the one with (presumably) the greatest potential, but Sheeana and the Bene Gesserit observers had chosen Yueh as a test case. Unlike the Suk doctor, however, Paul actually wanted his past back. He longed to remember his life and love with Chani, his childhood with Duke Leto and Lady Jessica, his friendships with Gurney Halleck and Duncan Idaho.

But Paul continued to be haunted by prescient memory-visions of his own double death.

And he was growing impatient.

How could the passengers aboard the no-ship think there was still time for caution?

Only a few months ago, they had again narrowly escaped the Enemy's net, brighter and stronger than ever before. Of great concern, the saboteur still had not been caught. Though the saboteur had done nothing else as dramatic as the murder of the three axlotl tanks and unborn gholas, the danger remained.

Paul knew the Ithaca needed him, and he was tired of being just a ghola. He had an idea to attempt, one that was both desperate and dangerous, but he didn't hesitate. His real memories hovered like a mirage just beyond the heat-shimmered horizon.

With faithful Chani beside him, he stood outside the hatch that led into the great sand-filled hold. He had told no one else what he intended to do. Over the past two years, security had been tightened as much as the Bashar and an eager Thufir Hawat could manage, but no one guarded the entrance to the cargo hold. The seven sandworms were considered sufficiently dangerous to act as their own watchdogs. Only Sheeana could safely go among the large creatures, and the last time she had done so, even she had been briefly swallowed up.

Paul gazed at Chani's beautiful elfin face and her thick, dark red hair. Even without prior knowledge, without knowing his destiny was to be with her, he would have found the Fremen girl strikingly attractive. In turn, she ran a methodical eye over his body, his special new suit, his tools. "You look like a real Fremen warrior, Usul."

After studying records and working with a fabrication station in the engineering levels, Chani had fashioned an authentic stillsuit for him - probably the first one manufactured in centuries

- and provided him with a rope, maker hooks, and spreaders.

The unusual tools felt oddly familiar in his grasp. According to legend, Muad'Dib had summoned a dangerous monster for his first worm ride. These creatures in the hold, though stunted by their captivity, were still behemoths.

The hatch opened, and he and Chani stepped into the artificial desert. When the flinty odors and arid heat struck him, he said, "Stay here, where it's safe. I have to do this alone, or it won't be effective. If I face the worm and ride it, that may jar my memories."

Chani did not try to stop him. She understood the need as well as he did.

He climbed up the first rise, leaving footprints in the sand, then raised both hands and shouted, "Shai-Hulud! I have come for you!" In this confined space, he did not need a thumper to summon the worms.

A quality in the air changed. He sensed a stirring in the shallow dunes and saw seven serpentlike shapes coming toward him. Instead of running away, he sprinted toward them, selecting a place where he could set up his approach and mount one. His heart pounded.

His throat was dry despite the stillsuit mask covering his mouth and nose.

Paul had reviewed holofilms to study Fremen sandriding techniques. Intellectually he knew what to do, just as - intellectually - he knew the factual details of his past. But a theoretical understanding was far different from actual experience. It occurred to him now, as he stood small and vulnerable on the sand, that the most effective form of learning was in the actual doing, which ensured a more thorough comprehension than he could derive from dusty archives.

I shall learn well, he thought, letting fear wash past him.

The nearest worm surged toward him with a rushing sound of scattered sand. The sheer size of the worms grew more incomprehensible as they approached, cresting the dunes.

Infusing his heart with courage, Paul forced himself to face this challenge. He held up his hook and spreader and crouched for the first leap. The noise of the monsters' approach was so loud that at first he did not hear the woman shouting. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sheeana bounding across the dunes, throwing herself in front of him. The largest worm exploded through the dust and reared up, its gigantic round mouth glittering with crystalline teeth.

Sheeana held up her hands and shouted, "Stop, Shaitan!"

The worm hesitated, and quested from side to side with its fleshy head as if confused.

"Stop! This one is not for you." She placed a firm hand on the chest of Paul's stillsuit and pushed him behind her. "He is not for you, Monarch."

As if sulking, the largest worm backed away, keeping its eyeless head turned toward them.

"Get back to the hatch, foolish boy," Sheeana hissed at Paul, using just enough Voice to make his legs respond before he could think.

Duncan Idaho was also there at the hatchway, glowering. Chani looked both fearful and relieved.

Sheeana marched Paul back toward the waiting observers. "That worm would have destroyed you!"

"I'm an Atreides. Shouldn't I be able to control them like you can?"

"That isn't a theory I intend to test with you. You are too important to us. Of all the gholas, if you foolishly throw your life away, what are we to do?"

"But if you protect me too much, you'll never get what you need. Riding a worm would have brought my memories back, I'm sure of it."

"You restored Yueh," Chani pointed out to Sheeana. "Why not Usul? He's older."

"Yueh was expendable, and we weren't sure of what we were doing. We have already developed specific plans for awakening Liet-Kynes and Stilgar, and if we succeed with them, others may follow - including Thufir Hawat and you, Chani. One day, Paul Atreides will get his chance. But only after we are certain."

"What if we don't have the time?" Paul walked away from them, brushing sand and dust from his new stillsuit.

* * *

Duncan awoke to a loud signal at the door to his quarters. His initial thought was that Sheeana had come to him again, despite their mutual reservations. He slid aside the door, ready for an argument.

Paul stood there wearing a replica of an Atreides military uniform, which evoked instant respect and loyalty from Duncan. The young man had dressed that way on purpose.

Right now, the ghola Paul was almost exactly the same age as the original had been when Arrakeen had fallen to the devious Harkonnens, when the first Duncan had died defending him and his mother.

"Duncan, you say you were my close friend. You say you knew Paul Atreides. Help me now."

Grasping an ornately carved ivory hilt, the young man drew a blue-white crystalline dagger from a sheath at his waist.

Duncan stared in amazement. "A crysknife? It looks ... Is it real?"

"Chani made it from a worm tooth Sheeana found in the cargo hold."

In wonder, Duncan touched his fingers to the blade, noting how tough and sharp it was. He drew his thumb along the edge, intentionally cutting himself. He let a single drop of blood fall onto the milky-white dagger. "According to ancient tradition, a crysknife must never be drawn unless it tastes blood."

"I know." Paul was clearly troubled as he took the weapon back and returned it to its sheath.

After hesitating, he blurted out what he had come to say.

"Why won't the Bene Gesserits awaken me, Duncan? You need me. Everyone on this no-ship needs me."

"Yes, young Master Paul. We do need you, but we need you alive."

"You need my abilities, as soon as possible. I was the Kwisatz Haderach, and this ghola has the same genetics. Imagine how I could help."

"The Kwisatz Haderach ..." Duncan sighed and sat down on his bed. "The Sisterhood spent centuries creating him, but at the same time they were terrified of him. He can supposedly bridge space and time, seeing the future and the past, places even a Reverend Mother dares not look. Through brute force or guile he can forge a union between the most diverse of factions. It's a grab bag of tremendous powers."

"Whatever those powers are, Duncan, I need them. And for that I require my memories.

Convince Sheeana to try me next."

"She will do what she will do, at a time of her choosing. You overestimate the influence I have among the Sisters."

"But what if the Enemy's net ensnares us completely? What if the Kwisatz Haderach is your only hope?"

"Leto II was a Kwisatz Haderach, as well, though neither you nor your son turned out exactly the way the Bene Gesserit intended. The Sisters are very afraid of anyone who manifests unusual powers." He laughed. "After the Scattering, when the Sisterhood brought the great Duncan Idaho back, some of them even accused me of being a Kwisatz Haderach. They killed eleven of my gholas, either by Bene Gesserit heretics or Tleilaxu schemers."

"But why don't they want these powers? I thought - "

"Oh, they want the powers, Paul, but only under carefully controlled conditions."

His heart went out to the young man, who looked so lost and desperate.

"I can't do anything without my past, Duncan. Help me retrieve it! You lived through part of it with me. You remember."

"Oh, I remember you very well." Duncan laced his hands behind his head and leaned back.

"I remember your christening on Caladan after you were nearly killed by Imperial intrigues as an infant. I remember how Duke Leto's whole family was put at risk in the War of Assassins. I was given the great honor of taking you to safety, and you and I went to the wilds of Caladan. We stayed with your exiled grandmother Helena, and we hid among the Caladan primitives. That was when you and I became so close. Yes, I remember it very well."

"I don't," Paul said with a sigh.

Duncan seemed caught in a loop of his past lives. Caladan ... Dune ... the Harkonnens ...

Alia ... Hayt. "Do you know what you're asking me, about your memories, about your life?

The Tleilaxu created my first ghola as an assassination tool. They manipulated me because I was your friend. They knew you could not turn me away, even though you saw the trap."

"I wouldn't have turned you away, Duncan."

"I had the knife raised against you, ready to strike, but in the last instant, I collided with myself. The programmed assassin Hayt became the loyal Duncan Idaho.

You can't imagine the agony!" He pointed a stern finger at the young man. "Restoring your past will require a similar crisis."

Paul squared his jaw. "I'm prepared for it. I'm not afraid of pain."

Wrinkling his brow, Duncan said, "You're too content, young Paul, because your Chani grounds you. She makes you stable and happy - and that's a severe drawback. In contrast, look at Yueh. He fought against remembering with every fiber of his being, and that's what broke him. But you ... what fulcrum can they use on you, Paul Atreides?"

"We'll just have to find something."

"Are you really ready to accept it?" Duncan leaned forward, offering no mercy. "What if the only way you can have your past restored is that you must lose Chani? What if she has to die bleeding in your arms, before you can remember?"

***

- THE SCYTALE GHOLA, no-ship security interview

"It must be built according to precise standards," insisted the old Tleilaxu. His voice cracked. "Precise standards!"

"I will take care of it, Father." The ghola, only thirteen, tended the degenerating Master who sat in a stiff armchair. Old Scytale refused to lie down until a traditional bier for his body was built. He intentionally kept his austere living quarters locked to keep others away. He had no desire to be interrupted or harassed during his dying days.

The Tleilaxu Master's organs, joints, and skin had begun to fail in increasingly problematic ways. It reminded him of how the no-ship itself seemed to be breaking down, its systems failing as air leaked into space, water was inexplicably lost, food stores went missing. Some of the more paranoid refugees saw sabotage in every flickering glowpanel, and many turned their suspicious eyes toward the Tleilaxu.

It was another reason for him to grumble. At least he would soon be gone.

"I thought you said my bier was already being built. It cannot be rushed."

The teenager bowed his head. "Do not worry. I am following the strict laws of the Shariat."

"Show it to me, then."

"Your own bier? But that is meant to carry your body only after you ... after you ..."

Old Scytale glowered with his dark eyes. "Purge those useless emotions! You have become too involved in this process. It is shameful."

"Am I not supposed to care about you, Father? I see your pain - "

"Stop calling me Father. Think of me as yourself.

Once you become me, I will not be dead. No need for weeping. Each of our incarnations is disposable, so long as the memory train continues uninterrupted."

Young Scytale tried to regain his composure. "You are still a father to me, no matter what memories are buried inside me. Will I stop feeling these emotions when my old life is restored?"

"Of course. At that glorious moment you will understand the truth - and your obligations."

Scytale grabbed the young man by his shirt and pulled his face close. "Where are your memories? What if I were to die tomorrow?"

Old Scytale knew death was imminent, but he had dramatized his infirmity in an attempt to shock his replacement. The premature construction of the bier was yet another attempt to provoke a crisis. If only the two of them could be back on Tleilax, where full immersion in the holy traditions of the Great Belief would be enough to trigger even the most stubborn of gholas. Here onboard a godless no-ship, the difficulties seemed insurmountable.

"This should never have taken so long."

"I have failed you."

The rheumy eyes flashed. "You are not only failing me, you are failing your people.

If you do not awaken, our whole race - our entire history and all the knowledge in my mind -

will vanish from the universe. Do you want to be responsible for that?

I refuse to believe God has turned His back on us entirely. Our fate, lamentably, depends upon you."

The ghola looked crestfallen, as if an unsupportable weight rested on his shoulders.

"I am doing all I can to achieve that goal, Father."

He said the word deliberately. "And until I succeed, you must do all you can to remain alive."

He's finally showing a little strength, Scytale thought, bitterly. But it's not enough.

Days later, the ghola stood by his father's deathbed, his own deathbed. He felt as if he were having an out-of-body experience, watching his life slip away moment by moment. It gave the boy an oddly disconnected feeling.

Since emerging from the axlotl tank, Scytale had loved only one person: himself ... both his older self and the self he was going to be. The degenerating man had provided cells from his own body, cells that held all his memories and experiences, all the knowledge of the Tleilaxu.

But he hadn't provided the key to unlock them. No matter how hard the young ghola strained, his memories obstinately refused to emerge. He clutched the old man's hand.

"Not yet, Father. I've tried and tried."

With near-sightless eyes, old Scytale glared at his counterpart. "Why do you ... disappoint me so?"