Sheeana still didn't understand. "What does Piter de Vries have to do with any of this?"

Yueh made a distasteful expression. "Don't try to divert me with lies. I know who that ghola was."

"That baby was not Piter de Vries." Sheeana spoke her words in a normal tone. "It would have been Duke Leto Atreides."

Yueh looked as if he had been felled with an axe. "There was no doubt - I ran a genetic comparison!"

Jessica listened from just inside the doorway, her face flickering with a rush of hope before plunging into sadness. "M;y Leto?"

Yueh tried to sink to his knees, but Thufir held him upright.

"No! It can't be!"

With adult-sharp awareness, Alia tried to take her mother's hand, but Jessica pulled away from the two children to loom over the Suk doctor. "You killed my Duke? Again?"

He grabbed his temples. "It can't be. I saw the results myself. It was Piter de Vries."

Thufir Hawat raised his chin. "At least we have found our saboteur."

"I would never have killed the Duke! I loved Leto - "

"And now you've murdered him twice," Jessica said, stabbing with each icicle-sharp word.

"Leto, my Leto ..."

Finally, Thufir's comment seemed to sink in. "But I didn't kill the other three gholas or harm their tanks! I committed no other sabotage."

Teg said, "How can we believe you? This will require a great deal more investigation.

I will review all evidence in light of this new information."

Sheeana was clearly troubled, but her words surprised everyone. "My own truthsense leads me to believe him."

The flesh tank and unborn fetus lay on the floor, chemically decomposing. Black streaks covered all tissue and spread into the surrounding puddle. Yueh struggled to throw himself into the poisonous corrosive, as if by doing so he could kill himself.

With an iron grip, Thufir held him away from it. "Not quite yet, Traitor."

"No good will come from any of this," the old Rabbi said, standing at the doorway of the medical center. No one had heard him arrive.

Desperate, Yueh looked at him. "I tested the samples you gave me - the baby was de Vries!"

The old man backed away like a startled bird. He looked indignant at the very suggestion he might have provoked the unstable young man. "Yes, I gave you a sample I obtained from the axlotl lab. But I merely raised a question - and never suggested that you should commit murder! Murder! I am a man of God, and you are a doctor - a Suk doctor!

Who would imagine ...?" He shook his head. His gray beard looked especially wild today.

"That tank you killed might have been Rebecca! I could never suggest such a thing."

Everyone in the room exchanged glances, silently agreeing that Yueh must be the saboteur after all.

"It wasn't me," he said. "Not the other times. Why would I confess to this but deny the others?

My crime is the same."

"Not the same at all," Jessica said in a knotted voice. "This was my Duke...." She turned and left, while Yueh stared beseechingly after her.

***

- ERASMUS, Laboratory Notes

In Chapterhouse, the meeting of Reverend Mothers degenerated quickly to murderous intent.

Eyes flashing, Kiria nudged the chairdog away from her as she stood. "Mother Commander, you have to accept certain facts. Chapterhouse is more than decimated. The Ixians still haven't produced the Obliterators they promised. We simply can't win this fight.

As soon as we admit that, we can begin to make realistic plans."

Eyes bleary, Murbella gave the former Honored Matre a level look. "Such as?" The Mother Commander dealt with so many ongoing crises, obligations, and unsolvable problems that she could barely concentrate on the reports coming to the mostly empty Keep.

The plague had passed on Chapterhouse, so everyone who was going to die was already dead. With the exception of the isolated inhabitants of the deep desert Shakkad Station, the only survivors on the planet were Reverend Mothers.

All the while, the thinking machines continued to move through space, penetrating deeper into the Old Empire - though by sending scout probes and their plagues here to Chapterhouse, they had broken their previously predictable progression. Omnius must understand the significance of the New Sisterhood; a key victory here could stop the rest of humanity's scattered fighting.

"Let's take what we need," Kiria said, "copy our Archives, and vanish into the great unknown to create seed colonies. The thinking machines are relentless, but we can be swift and unpredictable. For humanity's survival and the preservation of the Sisterhood, we must disperse, reproduce, and remain alive." The other Reverend Mothers watched guardedly.

Anger boiled within Murbella. "Those old attitudes have proved wrong time and again.

We can't survive simply by running or by breeding faster than Omnius can kill us."

"Many Sisters believe as I do - the ones still living, that is. You've led us now for almost a quarter of a century, and your policies have failed. Most of Chapterhouse is dead. This crisis forces us to consider new alternatives."

"Old alternatives, you mean. There is too much work ahead of us to rehash this tired debate.

Is the identification test for Face Dancer genetics ready for distribution yet? That test is critical for all key planetary governments. Our scientists have studied the cadavers for weeks, and we must send - "

"Don't change the subject, Mother Commander! If you won't make the rational decision, if you can't see we need to adapt to circumstances, then I challenge you for leadership."

In astonishment, Laera backed away from the table, while Janess watched her mother, showing no emotion. After the plague had run its course, the female bashar had returned from the fringe battles.

Murbella allowed herself a cool smile as she faced Kiria. Her voice dripped with acid. "I thought we finished this nonsense years ago." She had fought off numerous challengers, killing each one. But Kiria was ready to put it to the test again. "Choose your time and place."

"Choose? That's just like you, Mother Commander - putting off what must be done now."

In a flash as swift as nerve impulses could travel, Kiria leapt and lashed out with one foot.

Murbella spun away, her spine bending backward with a suppleness that surprised even her. The deadly edge of Kiria's foot came within a hair's breadth of her left eye. The attacker landed on her feet, poised for further combat in the council chamber.

"We can't choose a time and place for fighting. We must always be ready, always adapt."

She lunged forward again, both hands outstretched, fingers rigid as wooden stakes to gouge Murbella's throat.

She writhed out of the way as Kiria thrust. Before her opponent could yank her hand away, Murbella grabbed the woman's arm and added her own momentum, pulling Kiria off balance and slamming her into the council table, scattering Ridulian crystal sheets. Tumbling off, Kiria crashed into a chairdog. In angry reflex, her fist broke through the placid animal's furry hide and spilled its blood on the floor. The piece of living furniture died with only the faintest peep of alarm and pain.

Murbella sprang onto the tabletop and kicked a loose holoprojector at her opponent.

The sharp edge of the device caught Kiria on the brow, making a cut that bled profusely.

The Mother Commander crouched, ready to defend herself from a frontal attack, but Kiria ducked under the table and heaved upward with her back, knocking the table over. When Murbella fell, Kiria dove over the capsized table and dropped onto the Mother Commander. She wrapped wiry hands around her throat in a primitive but effective method of assassination.

With rigid fingers, Murbella jabbed Kiria's side with enough force to fracture two ribs, but at the same time she felt the sickening snap of her own fingers breaking.

Instead of withdrawing as expected, Kiria snarled in pain, raised Murbella's neck and shoulders, and slammed her head against the floor.

Murbella's ears rang, and she felt her skull crack. Fluttering black spots of unconsciousness circled her vision like tiny vultures waiting for fresh carrion. She had to stay awake, had to keep fighting. If she faded now, Kiria would kill her. And if she was defeated here, she would lose not just her life, but the Sisterhood as well. The fate of the entire human race could be decided in this moment.

Janess watched her mother with anguish, but Laera and the other Reverend Mothers were well trained and would not interfere. The unification with Honored Matres had required certain concessions from the Bene Gesserits, including the right of anyone to challenge the Mother Commander's leadership.

Kiria continued to choke her, while Murbella strained to draw a breath. Blocking the pain of her broken fingers, she clapped her palms hard against Kiria's ears.

As the deafened woman reeled, Murbella gouged out her right eye with a crooked forefinger, leaving blood and jelly all over her face.

Kiria writhed away, pushing to her feet, but Murbella followed with a flurry of hand blows and kicks. Even so, her challenger was not defeated yet. Kiria hammered her heel into Murbella's sternum, then struck her abdomen with a side blow. Something ruptured inside; Murbella could feel the damage but didn't know how bad it was. Digging into her energy reserves, she drove Kiria aside with her shoulder.

The Honored Matre's lips were drawn back to expose bloody gums and teeth. Rallying, Kiria gathered all of her strength to strike, ignoring her mangled eye. But as she planted her foot, she slipped on a smear of the chairdog's blood on the smooth floor.

This threw off her balance for an instant - just long enough to give Murbella the advantage.

Without hesitating, the Mother Commander struck a blow so hard that her own wrist shattered - as did Kiria's neck. The challenger fell dead to the floor.

Murbella swayed, while Janess came forward, concern on her face, ready to help her mother, her superior. Murbella raised an arm. Her broken wrist flopped limply, but she banished the wince of pain from her face. "I am capable of standing by myself."

Some of the younger Reverend Mothers, with wide eyes and intense expressions, had backed up to the walls of the council chamber.

Murbella wanted so badly to fall beside her victim on the floor, letting the exhaustion and pain take control. But she could not allow that - not with so many Reverend Mothers observing. She could never reveal a moment of weakness, especially now.

Summoning her breath, dredging up the last sparks of endurance, Murbella spoke in an even voice. "I will go to my quarters now and heal." Then, in a lower voice, "Janess, have the kitchens send up a restorative energy drink." She cast a dismissive glance at the dead Kiria, then raised her eyes to Janess, Laera, and the awed spectators in the hall. "Or do any of you wish to challenge me and take advantage of my condition?"

In defiance, she held up her broken wrist. No one took the offer.

Injured inside and out, Murbella had no clear memory of how she made it back to her quarters. Her progress was slow, but she accepted no aid. The other Reverend Mothers, sensing her determination, left her alone.

In her dim room, the spice drink was already waiting for her. How long did it take me to get here?

After a single sip she could feel energy surge through her body. She murmured a thankful blessing to Janess; her daughter had made this drink extremely potent.

Leaving word that she was not to be disturbed, she sealed her door and consumed the rest of the rejuvenating beverage. It boosted the internal repairs she had already begun to make, delicately probing with her mind to judge the extent of her injuries.

Finally, allowing the flood of pain to wash into her senses, Murbella carefully assessed what Kiria had done to her. The degree of internal damage frightened her. Never in any previous challenge had she come so close to losing.

Will the rest of the Reverend Mothers rally behind me - or will they start sniffing out my weaknesses again like hungry hyenas?

She could not afford to waste time and energy battling her own people. Few enough of them remained alive after the plague. What if the Sisterhood was infiltrated by Face Dancers again? Could one of them, trained in exotic fighting techniques, pose as an Honored Matre challenger and kill Murbella? What if a Face Dancer became the Mother Commander of the Sisterhood? Then all indeed would be lost.

She lay back, closed her eyes, and plunged into a healing trance. Time was of the essence.

She had to regain her full strength. The forces of Omnius had located this world and would be coming soon.

***

- The Cant of the Shariat

While Yueh was under arrest and interrogation, yet another instance of sabotage occurred.

The Bene Gesserit Sisters summoned the passengers to the great auditorium for an emergency meeting. Garimi seemed particularly agitated; Duncan Idaho and Miles Teg were alert. Eyes intent, Scytale observed, always the outsider. What had happened now?

And will they blame me for it?

Was it worse than the murder of another ghola and axlotl tank? Had someone else been killed? Had another water reservoir dumped into space, squandering the new supplies they had acquired at Qelso? Spice stockpiles contaminated? Food vats destroyed? The seven captive sandworms harmed?

The Tleilaxu man sat back, watching everyone stream in from outside corridors and take their seats in islands of friendship or shared opinions. Palpable tension radiated from them.

More than two hundred gathered, most of them curious, alarmed, or frightened.

Only a few proctors stayed in isolated sections with the younger children that had been born during the journey; others were old enough to be treated as adults.

The Bashar himself made the announcement. "Explosive mines have disappeared from the sealed armory. Eight of the hundred and twelve - certainly enough to cause severe damage to this ship."

After a brief silence, conversation returned in a riptide of whispers, gasps, and accusations.

"The mines," Teg repeated. "Back on Chapterhouse they were placed around this ship as a self-destruct mechanism in case Duncan or anyone else tried to steal it. Now eight of them are gone."

Sheeana went to stand beside the Bashar. "I deactivated those mines myself, so that this vessel could escape. They were locked securely away, but now they've disappeared."

"If they are missing, they might have been dumped out into space ... or planted around the ship like time bombs," Duncan said. "I suspect the latter, and that our saboteur has further plans."

The Rabbi moaned loudly. "You see? More incompetence! I should have stayed on Qelso with the rest of my people."

"Maybe you stole the mines," Garimi snapped.

He looked horrified. "You dare accuse me? A holy man of my stature? First Yueh says I manipulated him to murder a ghola baby, and now you think I have stolen explosives?"

Scytale saw that the frail old man could never have lifted one of the heavy mines, much less eight of them.

"Yueh has been under the constant surveillance of Thufir Hawat and myself," Teg said.

"Even if he did kill the axlotl tank and the growing ghola, he could not have stolen the mines."

"Unless he has an accomplice," Garimi said, setting off another chain of muttering.

"We will discover who took them." Sheeana cut off the squabble. "And where they have been hidden."

"We've heard similar promises in the past three years," Garimi continued, with a meaningful glare at Teg and Thufir. "But our security has been completely ineffective."

Paul Atreides sat in one of the front rows, near Chani and Jessica. "Are we certain the mines only disappeared recently? How often is the armory checked? Maybe Liet-Kynes or Stilgar took them for their war against the sandtrout without telling us."

"We should evacuate this ship," the Rabbi said. "Find another planet, or go back to Qelso."

His voice quavered. "If you witches hadn't... hadn't... taken Rebecca, I would be safe now with my people. We all could have settled there."

Garimi scowled. "Rabbi, for years you've encouraged dissent with your sniping and destructive arguments, without offering alternatives."

"I speak the truth as I see it. The stolen mines are only the latest in a string of sabotage. My Rebecca remains alive only by chance when four other axlotl tanks have now been murdered. And who damaged the life-support systems, the water holding tanks? Who contaminated the algae vats and destroyed the air-filtration mats? Who poured acid on the seals of the observation window in the sandworm hold? There is a criminal among us, and he is growing bolder and bolder! Why don't you find him?"

Scytale remained silent and unobtrusive, listening to the debate. Everyone feared there would be more incidents of sabotage, and the stolen mines would be sufficient to cripple or destroy the great ship.

The Tleilaxu had no doubt they would eventually turn their suspicions toward him because of his race, but he could prove his innocence. He had laboratory records, surveillance images, a solid alibi. Nevertheless, someone had committed the acts of sabotage.

When the exhausting meeting broke up, the Rabbi stalked past Scytale in a huff, saying he was going to go sit in a vigil beside Rebecca, "to make certain no one else tries to kill her!"

As the old man passed close, Scytale caught the Rabbi's usual faint, strange scent, a subtly different flavor in the air.

On instinct, Scytale emitted a barely audible whistle in a complicated melody that he remembered from deep in his past lives. The Rabbi ignored him and stalked away.

Scytale frowned, not sure if he had noticed a brief hesitation as the old man walked past.

***

- The Cant of the Shariat

Every investigation of Rakis yielded the same result. Only a few insignificant pockets of its ecosystem had survived. The planet was empty and haunted, yet it seemed to have its own will to live.

Against all odds and science, Rakis still clung to its sparse atmosphere, its gasps of moisture.

Guriff's hard-bitten prospectors happily accepted supplies that Waff and the Guildsmen offered as a gesture of goodwill. Waff's primary motivation for this was to get the men to leave him alone while he conducted his innocuous "geological investigations."

The prospectors were supplied by irregular CHOAM vessels that came to check on their work, but Guriff had no idea when the next ship would come. The Tleilaxu Master had enough packaged food from the Heighliner to last for years, if his deteriorating body lasted that long.

Above all, he needed to tend to his worms.

As he'd hoped, the prospectors spent the harsh days and nights concentrating on their own digging, hoping to find the legendary lost hoard of the Tyrant's mélange. Insulated scout cruisers braved the rugged weather, carrying sensors and probes up to the polar regions, while the men bored test holes, searching unsuccessfully for any threads of spice.

The large dropbox from Edrik's Heighliner had included a wide-bed groundcar that could roll across even the roughest terrain. When the prospectors departed, Waff called his four Guildsmen to assist him. With no curious eyes watching, they wrestled the long, sand-filled test tanks aboard his groundcar. Waff would make a pilgrimage out into the charred and glassy wasteland that had once been a sea of dunes.

"I will release the specimens myself. I don't need your assistance." He directed the Guildsmen to return to the rigid-walled survival tents. "Stay and prepare our food - and make certain you follow the accepted ways." He had given them precise instructions on the proper techniques. "Once I free the worms, I intend to come back for a celebration."

He did not want Guriff and his men, nor any of these untrustworthy Guild assistants, to observe such a private and holy moment. Today he would restore the Prophet to Rakis, to the planet where He belonged. Dressed in protective clothing, he keyed in coordinates and drove off with the two long aquariums in the back of his groundcar.

Heading due east, he sped away into a ruddy orange dawn.

Although the landscape here was smeared, eroded, and unrecognizable, Waff knew exactly where he was going. Before coming to Rakis, he had dug up the old charts, and because the Honored Matres' Obliterators had altered even the planetary magnetic field, he had carefully recalibrated his maps from orbit. A long time ago, God's Messenger had purposefully carried him to the location of Sietch Tabr. The worms must consider it sacred, and Waff could think of no more appropriate place to turn loose the armored, augmented creatures. He drove there now.

Light from the dust-thickened sky bathed the glassy ground in eerie colors. From the tanks behind him, Waff could feel the thumping of the worms as they writhed, impatient to burst out onto the open desert. Home.

Back on the Heighliner, Waff had observed the bucking and thrashing creatures, measuring their growth in the lab. He knew the worms were dangerous, and that long confinement in small tanks sapped the creatures' strength. Even under carefully controlled conditions, he hadn't been able to replicate the optimal environment, and the specimens had weakened.

Something was wrong.

But hope infused him. Now that he was actually here, all would be right again. Holy Rakis! He could only pray that this injured dune world would provide what a Tleilaxu Master could not, offering some ineffable benefit to the worms, to the Prophet.

When Waff reached the plain and saw the melted rocks, he remembered the weathered line of mountains that had sheltered the buried tomb of the Fremen city. He stopped the groundcar. A vitrified crust - rocky grains melted to glass by the blasts of incomprehensible weapons - covered what had once been open sand. But the worms would know what to do.

Behind the vehicle, Waff paused a moment to close his eyes in prayer to his God and His Prophet. Then, with a flourish, he disengaged the plaz walls of the tanks and let sand spill out. Long serpentine shapes lunged free like uncoiled springs, and dropped to the ground around the vehicle. Waff gazed in wonderment at their thick, ridged bodies, and the python fluidity of their motion.

"Go, Prophet! Reclaim your world."

Eight worms slithered on the hard, smooth ground. Eight, a sacred Tleilaxu number.

The freed creatures spread out in random paths, while he watched them in awe. Waff hoped they could break through the fused sand and tunnel into softer levels below, as he had designed them to do. Each of the specimens had a tiny implanted tracer that would enable him to follow them and continue his investigations.

However, the sandworms turned and circled the vehicle, coming closer. Hunting him.

In a moment of fear, Waff froze. They were certainly large enough to attack and kill him.

"Prophet, do not harm me. I have brought you back to Rakis. You are free to make this your kingdom once again."

The worms raised their blunt heads, swaying back and forth. Are they trying to send me some sort of message?

He struggled to comprehend. Could their hypnotic movements be an alien dance? Or a predatory maneuver?

He did not move. He waited.

If this landscape was too harsh for them, if the Prophet needed to consume him in order to survive, Waff was fully prepared to donate the flesh of his own deteriorating body. If this was to be the end, so be it.

Then, as if at a silent signal, the sandworms turned in unison and sped off, their flexing ridges bumping across the glassy dunes. Presently they stopped, bent their armored heads downward, and smashed into the hard surface. They broke the crust and plunged downward, tunneling into the pristine, sterilized sands. Returning to the desert! Waff's heart swelled. He knew they would survive.

As he returned to the groundcar, he realized he had tears in his eyes.

***

- BASHAR MILES TEG, resource allocation request to the Bene Gesserit Chief Fabricator Shayama Sen agreed to come to Chapterhouse, but the Ixian dignitary remained aboard his ship high in orbit, far above the recovery operations. He would not risk exposure to any last vestiges of the plague, though the disease had burned itself out down there.

Murbella had to go to him to make her demands - but under the strictest quarantine conditions. Encased in her own decontamination sphere, like a laboratory specimen in a tank, she felt foolish and helpless. The Bene Gesserit sphere's outer hull - though scorched by its passage through the atmosphere on the way to orbit and then exposed to the vacuum of space - underwent additional irradiation and sterilization procedures up there. Fail-safes, redundancies, justified paranoia, she admitted to herself. Although Murbella did not fault him for taking such extraordinary precautions, the Ixian nevertheless had much explaining to do.

While waiting inside her sealed chamber aboard the Guildship (which was guided by a mathematical compiler rather than a Navigator), she composed herself. Still sore and battered from her duel with Kiria, she was satisfied that her violent response to the stupid power play had been necessary.

None of the other distraught Sisters would challenge her now, thus leaving her role as Mother Commander uncontested.

Once again, Murbella cursed the rebel Honored Matres and their mindless destruction of the massive shipyards and weapons shops on Richese. Had that not happened, with both Ix and Richese producing armaments, the human race could have consolidated a meaningful defense. Now that Ix was the primary industrial center, the Chief Fab-ricator felt he could be intractable. Shortsighted fools!

Shayama Sen marched into the large metal-walled room and took a comfortable seat facing her. He looked smug and safe, while she felt like a caged zoo animal. "You called me away from our work, Mother Commander?"

Despite the inherent awkwardness of her position, Murbella tried to take command of the meeting. "Chief Fabricator, you have had three years to duplicate the Obliterators we provided, but all we've received in exchange for our melange payments are reports on your tests, and promise after promise. The Enemy has destroyed more than a hundred planets, and their battleships keep coming. Chapterhouse itself was nearly eradicated by the recent plague."

Sen bowed formally. "We are fully aware of this, Mother Commander, and you have my condolences." He got up and poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher, then roamed the large meeting room, flaunting his own freedom.

Anger heated her cheeks and neck. How could this man sound so calm in the face of the crumbling human civilization? "We require the weapons you promised us - and without further delay."

Sen tapped his circuitry-imprinted fingernails together, pondering her containment sphere with a blank stare. "But we have not yet received full payment, and we hear your New Sisterhood is in dire financial straits. If we continue to devote all our resources to these Obliterators, and you renege - "

"The agreed-upon amount of melange is yours the moment you finish installing Obliterators in our new warships. You know this." She didn't dare let Sen discover that she had released a great deal of stockpiled spice to help her fellow Reverend Mothers fight the plague.

"Ah, but if your spice is contaminated by the plague, of what use is it to us? How else will you pay?"

Murbella couldn't believe his blindness. "The spice is not contaminated. We will implement any sterilization measures you require."

"And what if that destroys its efficacy?"

"Then we will give you the original spice to decontaminate in whatever manner you see fit.

Stop quibbling about nonsense when the extinction of the human race is imminent!"

Sen seemed scandalized. "You call it nonsense? The properties of spice are complex and could be harmed by such aggressive measures. The substance is of no value to us if we cannot use it."

"The plague organism has a short lifetime. Unless it is transferred from host to host, the disease dies swiftly. Place the spice on an airless moon for a year if you choose to."

"But the difficulties and the inconvenience ... I believe these circumstances merit a renegotiation of our price."

If the container wall had not prevented her, Murbella would have killed him for his insolence.

"Have you any idea of how much destruction the Enemy has spread?"

He pursed his lips, and said, "Let me dispense with subtleties, Mother Commander.

Honored Matres provoked this Enemy into launching its fleet against them, and in turn against the rest of us. Your association with the whores was your own folly, and the whole human race has paid for it. Ix has no quarrel with these robotic invaders.

Since they evolved from ancient thinking machines, it is possible that we Ixians have more in common with them than with manipulative, murderous females."

Ah. Now she was beginning to understand. Listening to the sharp voice of Odrade-within and a thousand other Reverend Mothers frantically offering advice, Murbella forced calm upon herself. It was clear that the Ixian was trying to escalate this discussion.

But why? To distract her? Had he failed to make as much progress in developing the Obliterators as he claimed? Was production running behind schedule?

She selected a gambit that she hoped would shut down his blathering. "I authorize a thirty percent increase in your spice allotment, to be put in a trust fund held in the Guild Bank of your choosing. I expect that is sufficient to make up for any inconvenience? However, payment will be contingent upon your actual delivery of the weaponry in our contract. The Guild has delivered our new warships. Now, where are my Obliterators?"

Shayama Sen bowed, accepting her offer and withdrawing his objections. "Our manufactory worlds are operating at full capacity. We can begin loading Obliterators aboard your new ships immediately."

"I'll issue the orders." She paced within the decontamination bubble like a Laza tiger. The smells of disinfectant chemicals seeping through the air filters made her want to gag. She didn't think the chamber's replenishers were working properly.

"How do we know your weapons will perform as you promise?"

"You provided the originals, and we duplicated them precisely. If the originals functioned, then these will, too."

"The originals functioned. You've seen what's left of Rakis and Richese!"

"Then you have nothing to fear."

"From now on, I insist that we place Bene Gesserit inspectors and line supervisors in your manufactories. They will keep you accountable and guard against sabotage."

Shayama Sen struggled with the demand, but could find no legitimate argument against it.

"Provided your women do not interfere, we shall allow them access. Is that all?"

"We also need to witness a successful test before going into battle."

Sen smiled again. "You would have us annihilate a world merely to prove a point?

Hmm, I see Honored Matre methods persist in your New Sisterhood." He chuckled. "I'll give you full records of our previous tests and even arrange for a new demonstration, if you like."

"We will review your data, Chief Fabricator. Transmit it to Chapterhouse, and arrange for a demonstration that I can see with my own eyes.

He tapped his silicon fingernails again, an annoying nervous habit. "Very well. I'll find a nice planetoid to blow up for your entertainment."

Murbella pressed against the curved, transparent wall of her sphere. "And there's one other thing I insist upon. Face Dancers have been found on many worlds, manipulating governments, weakening our defenses.

Some even managed to infiltrate Chapterhouse. I need to have assurance that you are not a Face Dancer."

Sen reeled backward in surprise. "You accuse me of being an Enemy, a shape-shifter operative?"

Murbella leaned against the solid wall, regarding him coolly. His indignation did nothing to convince her. She worked the internal controls, and a small, sealed container opened near the base of the Bene Gesserit chamber. It was a sterilization bin, an autoclave and chemical bath. Steam still curled from the package as it emerged for the Chief Fabricator to take.

"This is a testing device we have developed. After analyzing Face Dancer specimens found among our dead, we ran genetic tests and developed this infallible indicator.

Right now, Chief Fabricator - as I watch - you will complete this test on yourself."

"I will not." He sniffed.

"You will, or you'll receive none of our mélange."

Sen roamed again, frowning. "What is this test? What does it do?"

"It is mostly automated." Murbella explained the principle to him and the easy steps.

"As a bonus for you, we can allow Ix to produce these in great quantities. There are plenty of suspicious people who see Face Dancers everywhere. You could make a tidy profit selling these kits."

Sen considered. "You may be right."

While Murbella observed, he went through the motions, standing close enough to her bubble that she could watch his every movement. As far as the Reverend Mothers knew, the test could not easily be foiled, and the Chief Fabricator had had no time to prepare a deception.

She waited with intense interest, and was relieved when the indicators declared him fully human. Shayama Sen was not a Face Dancer.

With an irritated expression on his face, he held the chemical tab up for her to see. "Are you satisfied now?"

"I am. And I advise you to perform this test on all of your chief engineers and team leaders. Ix is a likely target for the Enemy to infiltrate. Another reason for my Sisters to supervise your vital work for us."

Sen looked genuinely disturbed, as if that possibility had not occurred to him. "I concede your point, Mother Commander. I would like to see those results myself."

"Then include them when you send your data about the Obliterator tests. In the meantime, prepare to install your weapons in all the new warships coming out of the Junction shipyards.

We are about to engage in an all-out offensive against the thinking-machine fleet."

***

- ERASMUS, contemplation notes

"Now that you have been among us for more than a year, it is time to show you my special place, Paolo." The independent robot waved a metal arm, and his majestic robes flowed around him. "And you too, of course, Baron Harkonnen."

The Baron scowled, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Your special place? I'm sure we'll be charmed by what a robot considers to be a special place."

During the time that he and Paolo had lived on Synchrony, he'd lost his awe and fear of thinking machines. They seemed plodding and grandiose, full of redundancy and very little impulsivity. Since Omnius thought he needed Paolo, along with the Baron to keep Paolo in line, the two were safe enough. Even so, the Baron felt a need to show some backbone, and turn the circumstances to his own benefit.

Around the interior of the now-familiar cathedral chamber, the walls became a wash of color, as if invisible painters were hard at work. Instead of blank metal and stone surfaces, the murky shades of green and brown sharpened into highly realistic trees and birds. The oppressive ceiling opened to the sky, and peculiar synthesized music began playing. A gemgravel pathway ran through the lush garden with comfortable reclining benches at intermittent intervals. A lily pond appeared on one side.

"My contemplation garden." Erasmus formed his artificial smile. "I enjoy this place very much. It is special to me."

"At least the flowers don't stink." Paolo ripped up one of the bright chrysanthemums, sniffed it, and discarded it at the side of the path. After a year of constant training, the Baron had finally made the boy's personality into something he could be proud of.

"This is all lovely," the Baron said drily. "And utterly pointless."

Be careful what you say to him, Grandfather, cautioned the Alia-voice within. Don't get us killed today. It was one of her continual harangues.

"Is something troubling you, Baron?" Erasmus asked. "This should be a place of peace and contemplation."

See what you've done! Get out of my head.

But I'm trapped here with you. You can't get rid of me. I killed you once with the gom jabbar, and I can do it again with a little careful manipulation.

"I see that you are often plagued by disturbing thoughts." Erasmus stepped closer.

"Would you like me to open your skull and look inside? I could fix the problem."

Be careful with me, Abomination! I just may take him up on the offer!

He forced a smile as he replied to the independent robot. "I'm just impatient to learn exactly how we can work with Omnius. Your war against humanity has gone on for some time now, and we've been your guests for a year. When will we do what you brought us here for?"

Paolo kicked a divot into the gemgravel path. "Yes, Erasmus. When do we get to have fun?"

"Soon enough." The robot swirled his robes and guided his companions through the garden.

The boy had just passed his eleventh birthday and was developing into a strong young man, well-muscled and highly trained. Thanks to the Baron's constant influence, virtually all traces of the former Atreides personality had been extinguished. Erasmus himself had supervised Paolo's vigorous combat training against fighting meks, all to prime him to become the supposed Kwisatz Haderach.

But the Baron still could not fathom why. Why would the machines care about some obscure human religious figure from ancient history?

Erasmus motioned for them to sit on the nearest bench. The synthesized music and birdsong around them grew louder and more energetic until they became intertwined melodies. The robot's expression shifted once again, as if in reverie. "Is it not beautiful? I composed it myself."

"Most impressive." The Baron despised the music as too smooth and peaceful; he preferred more cacophonous, discordant selections.

"Over the millennia, I created wondrous works of art and many illusions." Erasmus's face and body shifted, and he became entirely human in appearance. Even the gaudy and unnecessary garments altered, until the robot stood before them again as a matronly old woman in a floral-print dress holding a small hand trowel. "This is one of my favorites. I have perfected it over the years, drawing from more and more of the lives my Face Dancers bring me."

With the hand trowel she dug in the simulated soil near the bench, getting rid of weeds that the Baron was sure had not been there moments earlier. A worm crawled out of the exposed, dark dirt, and the old woman sliced it in half with the trowel.

The two parts of the squirming creature faded into the dirt.

A gentle undercurrent flowed in her voice, not unlike that of a grandmother telling bedtime stories to children. "Long ago - during your original lifetime, dear Baron - a Tleilaxu researcher named Hidar Fen Ajidica created an artificial spice that he called amal. Though the substance proved to have significant defects, Ajidica consumed huge quantities of it himself, and as a result he went increasingly mad, which led to his demise."

"Sounds like a failure," Paolo said.

"Oh, Ajidica failed spectacularly, but he did accomplish something very important.

Call it a side effect. For his special ambassadors, he created greatly improved Face Dancers, with which he intended to populate a new domain. He dispatched them into deep space as scouts, colonizers, preparers of the way. He died before he could join them. Poor foolish man."

The old woman left her trowel stuck in the ground. When she straightened, she pressed her hand against the small of her back, as if to comfort an ache. "The new Face Dancers located our machine empire, and Omnius allowed me to study them. I spent generations working with the shape-shifters, learning how to draw information from them. Lovely biological machines, far superior to their predecessors. Yes, they are proving to be extremely helpful in winning our final war."

Looking around the illusory garden, the Baron saw other forms, minor workers who appeared to be human. New Face Dancers? "So you made an alliance with them?"

The old woman pursed her lips. "An alliance? They are servants, not our partners.

Face Dancers were made to serve. To them, Omnius and I are like gods, greater Masters than the Tleilaxu ever were." Erasmus seemed to be pondering. "I do wish they had brought one of their Masters to me before the Honored Matres destroyed nearly all of them. The discussion could have been most enlightening."

Paolo brought the conversation back around to a subject that interested him. "As the final Kwisatz Haderach, I will be a god, too."

Erasmus laughed, an old woman's cachinnation. "Beware of megalomania, young man.

It has brought down many a human - such as Hidar Fen Ajidica. Soon I expect to have a key to help you reach your potential. We need to free the god that crouches inside your body.

And that requires a powerful catalyst."

"What is it?" the young man demanded.

"I keep forgetting how impatient you humans are!" The old woman brushed off her flower-print dress. "That is why I enjoy the Face Dancers so much. In them, I see the potential for perfecting humans. Face Dancers could be the sort of humans that even thinking machines might tolerate."

The Baron snorted. "Humans will never be perfect! Believe me, I've known plenty of them, and they're all disappointing in some way." Rabban, Piter ... even Feyd had failed him in the end.

Don't omit yourself, Grandfather. Remember, you were killed by a little girl with a poison needle. Ha ha!

Shut up! The Baron scratched nervously at the top of his head, as if to dig through flesh and bone to rip her out. She fell silent.

"I fear you may be right, Baron. Humans may not be salvageable, but we don't want Omnius to believe that, or he will destroy them all."

"I thought you machines were already doing that," the Baron said.

"To a certain extent. Omnius is stretching his abilities, but when we find the no-ship, I am certain he will get down to business." The old woman dug holes in the garden and planted seedlings that simply appeared in her hands.

"What's so special about one lost ship?" the Baron asked.

"Our mathematical projections suggest that the Kwisatz Haderach is aboard."

"But I am the Kwisatz Haderach!" Paolo insisted. "You already have me."

The old woman gave him a wry smile. "You are our fallback plan, young man. Omnius prefers the security of redundancy. If there are two possible Kwisatz Haderachs, he wants both of them."

His face a mask of displeasure, the Baron cracked his knuckles. "So you think there's another ghola of Paul Atreides aboard that ship? Not likely!"

"I claim only that there is another Kwisatz Haderach aboard the ship. However, since we have one Paul Atreides ghola, there could certainly be another."

***

- MOTHER SUPERIOR DARWI ODRADE, Pondering My Epitaph, sealed Bene Gesserit Archives, recorded before Battle of Junction

Highly agitated, Garimi refused to take a seat in Sheeana's private quarters, no matter how many times it was offered. Even the Van Gogh painting on the wall did not seem to interest her. The stolen mines had brought long-simmering tensions to a new, raw level. Frantic search teams had been unable to locate any of the explosive devices. Sheeana knew that the stern Proctor Superior had her own suspicions and her own set of people to blame.

"You and the Bashar didn't make a good bargain back on Qelso," Garimi said. "Leaving all those people and equipment, and getting nothing for ourselves!"

"We replenished all our stores."

"What if further sabotage hits our life-support systems? Liet-Kynes and Stilgar were the two most capable of conservation, recycling, and repairs. What if we need them to help us? Do you intend to grow new ones?"

Sheeana angered the other woman further by responding with a calm, amused smile.

"We could, but I thought you suspected all the ghola children. Yet you want Liet and Stilgar back? Besides, maybe Liet was right; maybe it's their destiny to remain on Qelso."

"Now it's obvious that neither of them was the saboteur - though I'm still not entirely convinced about Yueh."

Sheeana stared at the bright daubs of color that the ancient artist had swirled into an image of such power. Van Gogh was a genius. "I took a necessary action, based on our needs and priorities."

"Hardly! You bowed to the demands of those murderous nomads to keep all Bene Gesserits off the planet. We should have formed a new school there - and now, instead, this whole ship could explode at any moment!"

Ah, the core of what is really bothering her.

"You know very well that I would have been happy to let you and your followers settle there."

She forced a chuckle. "But I was not willing to start a war with the people of Qelso. We can train others in the nuances of our life-support systems. This ship will survive, as it has for decades."

Obviously in no mood to be brushed aside, Garimi said, "Survive how? By creating another ghola to save us? That's always your solution, whether an Abomination like Alia, a traitor like Yueh or Jessica, or a Tyrant like Leto II. At least Pandora had the good sense to close her box."

"And I want to open it wide. I want to bring back the history, especially Paul Atreides - and Thufir Hawat. We could certainly draw on the security knowledge of the Weapons Master of House Atreides."

"Hawat failed spectacularly the last time you tried to awaken him."

"Then we'll try again. And Chani could be an excellent fulcrum for awakening Paul.

Jessica is also ripe for awakening. Even Leto II is ready."

Garimi's eyes flashed. "You are playing with fire, Sheeana."

"I am forging weapons. For that, fire is necessary." Sheeana turned, letting Garimi know that the discussion was at an end. "I've heard your opinions often enough to memorize them. I will dine with the gholas today. Maybe they have fresh ideas."

Incensed, the dark-haired woman followed Sheeana out of her quarters and down the corridors toward the dining hall. Unexpectedly, young Leto II stepped out of a lift tube, alone and quiet as usual. The twelve-year-old often wandered the halls of the no-ship by himself; now he looked at the two women and blinked, but did not speak to them. Such an odd, preoccupied child.

Before Sheeana could stop her, the Proctor Superior marched toward Leto, stiff and intimidating. Garimi had a fresh target for her anger and frustration. "So, Tyrant, where is your Golden Path? Where has it led us? If you were so prescient, why didn't you warn us of the Honored Matres or the Enemy?"

"I don't know." The boy seemed genuinely perplexed. "I don't remember."

Garimi studied him in disgust. "And what if you did remember? Would you be the God Emperor, the greatest butcher in all of human history?

Sheeana thinks you could save us, but I say the Tyrant could just as easily destroy us. That's what you're best at. I don't want you or your monstrous ego back, Leto II. Your Golden Path is a blind man's road, sunk in a swamp."

"It is not this boy's Golden Path," Sheeana said, taking the other woman's arm in a viselike grip. "Leave him alone."

Leto took a quick step, darted around them, and fled down the corridor. Garimi looked triumphantly at Sheeana, who merely regarded her as a fool, condemned by her own irrational outburst.

* * *

I was the God Emperor, the Tyrant. I created the Golden Path ... but with my memories locked away, I don't truly understand what it is!

Despite all he had learned about his original lifetime, Leto felt like nothing more than a twelve-year-old who had never asked to be reborn.

He rode the transport tube to the deep lower decks, heading for a place where he felt more comfortable and safe. At first he considered slipping into the roaring winds of the recirculation chambers and the atmosphere-pumping ducts, but the strict security measures imposed by Bashar Teg and Leto's friend Thufir had closed off all access.

Before his unpleasant encounter with Garimi, Leto had planned to join Thufir for his regular session on the training floor. Though the other ghola boy was now seventeen and had his security duties with the Bashar, he still frequently sparred with Leto.

Despite his youth and size, Leto II was highly competitive even against a larger, stronger opponent. For the past few years they had provided quite a challenge for each other.

At the moment, though, Leto needed to be alone. He reached the bottom levels of the ship and stood at the main access door into the immense hold. The surveillance imagers would have spotted him already. He swallowed hard. He had never dared to go inside alone, though he had stared for hours through the plaz at the captive sandworms.

A pair of young guards stood in the hall, monitoring access to the cargo deck. Seeing the boy approach, they tensed. "This is a restricted area."

"Restricted to me? Do you know who I am?"

"You are Leto the Tyrant, the God Emperor," said the young woman, as if answering a proctor's question. She was Debray, one of the Bene Gesserit daughters who had been born in space after the no-ship's escape.

"And those worms are part of me. Don't you remember your history?"

"They're dangerous," the male guard answered. "You shouldn't go in there."

Leto gazed calmly at the pair. "Yes, I should. Especially now. I need to feel the sands, smell the mélange, the worms." He narrowed his eyes. "It could well restore my memories, as Sheeana wants."

Debray frowned as she considered this. "Sheeana did say that every means must be used to trigger the reawakening of the gholas."

The male guard turned to his companion. "Call Thufir Hawat and inform him first.

This is highly irregular."

Leto approached the heavy door. "I just need to go inside the hatch. I won't stray far. The worms stay out in the center of the habitat, don't they?" Boldly, he used the simple controls to unseal the door. "I know these worms. Thufir will understand.

He hasn't recovered his memories either."

Before the guards could agree on stopping him, Leto darted into the hold. The sand itself seemed to give off a crackling, staticky sound. The temperature was warm, the air so dry that his throat burned. The powerful smells of flint and cinnamon seared his nostrils. At the far end of the kilometer-long hold, the large worms moved toward him.

Just standing on the sandy surface took the boy back to a place he had studied extensively in the no-ship's library. The real Arrakis, which had changed from desert to garden during his first extended life. Now the dry heat baked his skin. He took deep, calming breaths of air redolent with the odor of mélange.

Not bothering to avoid making noise, Leto strode farther out on the sand, sinking up to his ankles in the soft dunes. He ignored the shouted warnings of the guards as he trudged away from the metal wall. This was the closest thing to an open desert these worms had ever known.

Climbing the crest of a dune and gazing around to the limits of the hold, Leto imagined how magnificent Arrakis must have once been. He wished he could remember. The dune on which he stood was small compared to a real one, and the seven worms in the hold were more diminutive than their unfettered ancestors as well.

Ahead of him, the largest worm churned through sand, followed by the others. Leto felt the connection with these seven worms. It was as if the magnificent beasts sensed his mental pain and wanted to help him, even if his memories were still locked away in a ghola vault.

An unexpected release of tears flowed down Leto's cheeks - not of anger toward Garimi but of joy and awe. Tears! He could not stem the flow of moisture. Perhaps if he perished right there on the sands, his body would be absorbed into the flesh of the worms, leaving behind all his fears and expectations.

These worms were his descendants, each with a nugget of his former awareness. We are the same.

Leto beckoned them. Although his ghola cells hadn't yet released memories of the thousands of years in his original lifetime, these sandworms possessed buried memories as well. "Are you dreaming in there? Am I in there?"

A hundred meters from him the worms stopped and dove back into the sand, one after the other. He sensed that their presence was not threatening, but... protective.

They did

know him!

From the hatch behind him, Leto heard a familiar voice calling his name. Looking back, he saw the ghola of Thufir Hawat standing on the verge, motioning him to come back to safety.

"Leto, watch out. Don't tempt the worms. You are my friend, but if one of them eats you I won't jump down its gullet to get you back!" Thufir tried to chuckle, but looked deeply anxious.

"I just need some time alone with them." Leto sensed something moving beneath the sands.

He felt no concern for his own well-being, but did not want to endanger his friend. He picked up a strong whiff, the cinnamon odor of spice.

"Leave! Now!"

Then, wrestling with his fear, Thufir ventured closer to the young man, a few meters away.

"Suicide by worm? Is that what you're doing out here?" He glanced at the hatch behind them, apparently wondering if he could still get back to safety if necessary.

Worry lines etched his features. He looked terrified for himself and for Leto, wrestling with something that ran against his instincts. Yet he still stepped forward, as if drawn to his friend.

"Thufir, stay back. You're in more danger than I am."

The worms knew that someone else was in their realm. But they seemed far more agitated than an intruder could account for. Leto sensed a hatred, a roiling and instinctive reaction.

He sprinted back to Thufir to save him. His friend seemed to be struggling with himself.

Sand erupted, and worms encircled him and Thufir. The creatures rose from the low dunes, their round and hollow faces questing this way and that for something.

"Leto, we have to go." Thufir grabbed the boy's sleeve. His voice was husky, ragged.

"Go!"

"Thufir, they won't harm me. And I feel... I feel as if I could make them go away. But they are deeply disturbed. Something about... you?" Leto sensed something here that he didn't understand.

Simultaneously, the worms shot like battering rams toward the two young men on the dune.

Thufir bolted away from Leto and lost his footing on the soft surface. Leto tried to go toward him, but the largest worm exploded up between them, scattering sand and dust. Another beast loomed on the other side of the transfixed Thufir, stretching its sinuous body into the air.

Thufir let out a shuddering, gut-wrenching scream. It didn't sound at all like the ghola friend Leto had known. It didn't even sound human.

The sandworms struck Thufir, but they did not simply devour him. As if in vindictive anger, the largest worm slammed down on him, smashing the young man's body into the sand. The next worm reared up and rolled over the already broken Thufir Hawat. For good measure, a third worm crushed the lifeless form. Then the trio of worms backed away, as if proud of what they had done.

Leto stumbled across the sand toward the smashed body, oblivious to the threat of the worms. He slid down a churned dune, and fell to his hands and knees beside the smashed, partially buried form. "Thufir!"

But he did not see the familiar face of his friend. The crushed features were pale and blank, the hair colorless, the expression inhuman. The black-button eyes were unfocused and dead.

In shock, Leto reeled backward.

Thufir was a Face Dancer.

***

- The Wheel of Deception, Tteilaxu commentary

Uproar in the hierarchy of the no-ship. Astonishment. Even Duncan Idaho could not grasp how such a thing could have happened. How long had the Face Dancer been watching them aboard the no-ship? The mangled, ugly corpse left no room for doubt.

Thufir Hawat had been a Face Dancer! How could it be him?

The original warrior Mentat had served House Atreides. Hawat had been Duncan's good and loyal friend - but not this faux version of him. In all this time, during the three years of sabotage and murder - and perhaps even longer - Duncan had not detected the Face Dancer in Hawat, nor had Bashar Teg who mentored him. Nor had the Bene Gesserit Sisters, nor any of the other ghola children.

But how?

An even worse question hung over them, blackening Duncan's thoughts like a solar eclipse: We have found one Face Dancer. Are there others?

He looked at Sheeana, at the stricken Leto II, and at the two shocked guards who stared at the alien body. "We have to keep this secret until we can account for everyone aboard the ship. We've got to watch them, find a way to test them somehow...."

She agreed. "If there are any other Face Dancers aboard, we need to act before they discover what happened." In Bene Gesserit Voice, using a tone that was the equivalent of a verbal blow, she said to the guards,

"Speak of this to no one."

They froze. Sheeana was already making plans to implement a crackdown and sweep of everyone on the ship. Duncan's Mentat mind raced as he tried to comprehend what could have happened, but the nagging questions defied all his attempts to impose logic.

One rose above others: How do we even know a test will work?

Thufir had already faced interrogation by the Truthsayers, just as everyone onboard had.

Somehow, these new Face Dancers could evade even the witches' truthsense.

If the young ghola had been replaced by a Face Dancer at some point, how could such a substitution have occurred without Duncan's knowledge? And when had it occurred?

Had the real Thufir accidentally encountered a hidden Face Dancer in a darkened passageway?

One of the secret survivors from the Handlers' suicide crashes in a long-term elaborate ruse? How else could a Face Dancer have gotten aboard the Ithaca?

In assuming the identity of a victim, a Face Dancer imprinted himself with a perfect copy of the original person's personality and memories, thus creating an exact duplicate.

And yet, the false Thufir had risked his life for young Leto II amongst the sandworms.

Why? How much of Thufir had actually been in the Face Dancer? Had there ever been a real Thufir ghola?

At first, with the Face Dancer exposed, Duncan had felt a sense of relief that the saboteur and murderer was at last revealed. But after a swift Mentat analysis, he quickly put together several instances of sabotage during which the Thufir Hawat ghola had a clear alibi. Duncan had himself been with him during some of the attacks.

The next projection was incontrovertible.

There is more than one Face Dancer among us.

* * *

How often had the original Honored Matres used it as such? For torture, or simply amusement?

Standing coolly at attention, Teg and Duncan faced the Reverend Mothers Sheeana, Garimi, and Elyen, who had consumed the last available doses of the truthtrance drug.

All of the women were armed and highly suspicious. Sheeana said, "Under various pretexts, we have isolated everyone aboard, using layers of observers. Most of them think we're searching for the missing explosive mines. So far, very few people know about Thufir Hawat.

Other Face Dancers would not be aware that they are at risk of exposure."

"I would have thought the entire idea absurd - until recently. Now no suspicion seems too paranoid." Duncan locked gazes with the Bashar, and both nodded.

"My truthtrance is deeper than it has been before," Elyen said, sounding distant.

"Perhaps we didn't ask the correct questions previously." Garimi put her elbows on the table.

Teg said, "Ask away, then. The sooner you clear us of suspicion, the faster we can root out this cancer. We need a different kind of test."

Normally a trained Bene Gesserit should have been able to uncover deception with a mere question or two, but this extraordinary inquiry lasted an hour. Because they were building a cadre of trustworthy allies, Sheeana and her Sisters needed to be thorough. And they needed to do a better job than before. The three Reverend Mothers watched for even the slightest flicker of evasion. Neither Duncan nor Teg gave them any.

"We believe you," Garimi finally said. "Unless you give us cause to change our minds."

Sheeana nodded. "Provisionally, we accept that you two are exactly who you say you are."

Teg seemed bitterly amused. "And Duncan and I accept you three as well. Provisionally."

"Face Dancers are mimics. They can change their appearance, but they cannot change their DNA. Now that we have cell samples from the Hawat impostor, our Suk doctors should be able to develop an accurate test."

"So we believe," Teg said. With the loss of his protégé, the Bashar seemed fundamentally disturbed. He no longer took anything at face value.

With an iron-hard scowl, Garimi said, "The obvious answer is that Hawat was born a Face Dancer, then carefully planted and manipulated by our Tleilaxu Master. Who would know Face Dancers better than old Scytale? We know he had the cells in his nullentropy tube. If that scenario is true, the deception went on for almost eighteen years."

Sheeana continued, "A Face Dancer infant could have mimicked a generic human baby from the very beginning. As he grew, he took a shape based on archival records of the young Atreides warrior-Mentat. Since no one here - not even you, Duncan - remembers the original Hawat as an adolescent, the disguise would not need to be perfect."

Duncan knew she was right. In his original lifetime, when he'd escaped from the Harkonnens and gone to Caladan, Thufir Hawat had already been a weathered battle veteran. Duncan remembered his first real conversation with Hawat. He'd been a stable boy at Castle Caladan, working with the Salusan bulls that Old Duke Paulus loved to fight in grand spectacles. Someone had drugged the bulls into a frenzy, and young Duncan had tried to raise the alarm, but no one believed him. After Paulus was gored to death, Hawat himself had led the investigation, hauling young Duncan before a board of inquiry, since evidence indicated that he was a Harkonnen spy....

And now this Thufir was a Face Dancer! Duncan still had trouble wrapping his mind around the undeniable reality.

"Then all of the ghola babies could be Face Dancers," Duncan said. "I suggest you summon Scytale. He's now our prime suspect."

"Or," Teg said in a brittle voice, "he may be our best resource. As Garimi already stated, who would know the Face Dancers better?"

When the Tleilaxu Master was brought into the copper-walled chamber, Duncan and Teg took seats at the other side of the table, part of the growing inquisition to root out the Face Dancer infiltration. Scytale appeared frightened and unsettled. The Tleilaxu ghola was fifteen years old, but he did not look like a boy. His elfin features, sharp teeth, and gray skin made him seem alien and suspicious, but Duncan realized that was only a knee-jerk response based on primitive superstitions and previous experiences.

After Scytale sat down, Elyen leaned forward. She looked the sternest of them all.

"What have you done, Tleilaxu? What is your plan? How have you tried to betray us?"

She used an edge of Voice, enough to make Scytale jerk.

"I did nothing."

"You and your genetic predecessor knew what you were growing in the axlotl tanks.

We tested the cells before allowing you to create them, but you deceived us somehow with Thufir Hawat." They showed him images of the dead Face Dancer. Duncan could see that the Tleilaxu's surprise was genuine.

"Are all of the ghola children similarly tainted?" Sheeana demanded.

"None of them are," Scytale insisted. "Unless they were replaced sometime after being decanted from the tanks."

Elyen narrowed her gaze. "He's telling the truth. I see none of the indicators."

Sheeana and Garimi silently consulted each other and nodded simultaneously. Then Sheeana said, "Unless he is himself a Face Dancer."

"Scytale isn't likely to be a Face Dancer substitute simply because so few of us trust him anyway," Duncan pointed out. "A Face Dancer would choose to be someone who could more easily move among us."

"Someone like Thufir Hawat," Teg said.

Young Scytale looked greatly disturbed. "Those new Face Dancers were brought back from the Scattering. The Lost Tleilaxu claimed to have modified them in ways we didn't understand. Much to my dismay, I have now learned that even I can't detect one of them.

Believe me, I never suspected Hawat."

"Then how did a Face Dancer get aboard, if not grown from the Face Dancer cells in your nullentropy capsule?" Sheeana asked.

"The Face Dancer could already have been posing as one of us when we left Chapterhouse,"

Duncan mused. "How carefully did you check all of the original hundred and fifty who rushed aboard during the escape?"

Teg shook his head. "But why wait more than two decades to strike? It makes no sense."

"A sleeper agent, perhaps," Sheeana suggested. "Or, could the Face Dancer have been someone else for a long time, and only recently replaced Thufir?"

"Yes, look for a scapegoat to persecute," Scytale said bitterly, slumping in the overlarge interrogation chair. "Preferably a Tleilaxu."

Sheeana had fire in her eyes. "As a precaution, we have sealed all of the ghola children in separate rooms, where they can cause no damage if another of them is a Face Dancer.

I've already directed our Suk doctors to take blood samples. They won't escape."

Duncan wondered if her vehemence might suggest that she was a Face Dancer. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously and continued to watch her.

He would have to watch everyone he could, at all times.

Garimi looked around at their small trusted cadre. "I - or another of our choosing - -will remain on the navigation bridge and monitor the no-ship while every single person aboard is brought into the main meeting chamber. Herd them in, account for every one, even the children. Lock the doors and test them all. One by one. Learn the truth."

"What definitive tests can we use?" Teg asked. "On any of us?"

Scytale piped up, "I believe I can develop a reliable method. Using a tissue sample from the Hawat Face Dancer, I will prepare a comparison panel. There are certain ... techniques I could use. He is one of the new breed brought back by the Lost Tleilaxu, and he differs from the old ones. But with this sample - "

"And why should we trust you?" Garimi said. "Your own purity hasn't yet been proven."

Scytale wore a forlorn expression. "You have to trust someone."

"Do we?"

"I would allow myself to be observed by your experts at all times during the preparations."

Duncan glanced at the Tleilaxu Master. "Scytale's suggestion is a good one."

"Or I can offer another option. When the Face Dancers betrayed my fellow Masters back on Tleilax and our other worlds, some of us had time to fight back. We created a toxin that specifically targets Face Dancers - a selective poison. If you grant me access to laboratory facilities, I can recreate that toxin and deploy it as a gas."

"To what purpose?" Teg asked. Then his expression changed to one of understanding.

"Ah, to flood the Ithaca's air systems. We would kill any Face Dancers who remain among us."

"The quantities necessary to saturate our ship would be huge," Duncan said, racing through a Mentat calculation to estimate the volume of air within the gigantic vessel, the concentration of gas that would prove lethal to the shape-shifters, the possibility of making others ill and debilitating the crew.

Garimi couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You're suggesting we let this Tleilaxu release an unknown gas into our ship? They created the Face Dancers!"

Scytale answered her in a voice heavy with scorn. "You witches fail to think. Don't you see that I myself face a dire threat? These are new Face Dancers, brought in from outside by the Lost Tleilaxu - our bastard stepbrothers who cooperated with the Honored Matres to annihilate all the old Masters like myself.

Think! If other Face Dancers are aboard the Ithaca, then I am in greater personal danger than anyone else. Can't you understand that?"

"Scytale's gas must only be a last resort," Duncan said. Sheeana looked around the room.

"I'll let him begin work on the toxin, but I'd prefer that we identify any Face Dancer directly."

"And interrogate it," Garimi said.

Scytale laughed. "You think you can interrogate a Face Dancer?"

"Never underestimate the Bene Gesserit."

Sheeana nodded. "Until we root out any other infiltrators, until we prove there are no more Face Dancers among us, our only safety lies in staying in large enough groups that the shape-shifters can't attack without being seen."

"What if an overwhelming number of us are already Face Dancers?" Teg said.

"Then we're all lost."

* * *

When the sandworms had turned on Thufir Hawat, somehow sensing the alien Face Dancer, Leto's shock had seemed genuine. The imagers showed him staring in disbelief at the ruined body that had reverted to its blank Face Dancer state. But Thu-flr had clearly placed himself in danger, voluntarily going toward Leto when he did not need to. Why would a Face Dancer put himself at risk, unless the copy was so accurate that even the friendship was real?

Leto, ghola of the Tyrant, was many extraordinary things. But he was not a Face Dancer.

Scytale's genetic analysis proved it.

Paul Atreides was also found to be clean, along with Chani, Jessica, and the three-year-old Alia, who was intrigued by the needles and samples. Despite the usual suspicions surrounding him, Wellington Yueh was also who he claimed to be.

After Scytale completed the blood and cellular tests, Sheeana was still not satisfied.

"Even if we can now trust the ghola children, that means only that other Face Dancers - if there are any more - must be hidden among the rest of us."

"Then we'll test the rest," Garimi said. "Or use Scytale's poison gas. I'll personally submit to any scrutiny, again and again, and I suggest we all do so."

Scytale raised his small hands in alarm. "This test is an intensive one. I'll need to prepare enough panels for all passengers, and that will take a great deal of time."

"Then we will take the time," Sheeana announced. "Doing anything less would be foolhardy."

***

Why do we find destruction so fascinating? When we see a terrible tragedy, do we think ourselves clever for having evaded it ourselves? Or is our fascination rooted in the thrill and fear of knowing we could be next?

- MOTHER SUPERIOR ODRADE, Documentation of Consequences Murbella and Janess - mother and daughter, Mother Commander and Supreme Bashar -

orbited the dead world of Richese. They rode in an observation ship, separate from the teams of engineers, who were still leery about the burned-out plague on Chapterhouse.

Though the disease had run its course, the Ixians refused to be in a confined space with Murbella and Janess, who had been exposed to it.

Nevertheless, alone in their small ship, the two women had a perfect view of the unfolding test.

More than five years earlier, rebel Honored Matre ships from Tleilax had bombarded Richese, erasing not only the entire population, but also the weapons industries and the half-constructed battle fleet that was to have been delivered to the New Sisterhood. Now that the planet was lifeless, however, Richese was a perfectly appropriate place for the Ixians to demonstrate their new Obliterator weapons.

Murbella opened the commline and spoke to the four accompanying test ships. "You take a smug pleasure in doing this, don't you, Chief Fabricator?"

On the screen, Shayama Sen arched his eyebrows and jerked his head back in a fine display of innocence. "We're testing the weapon you ordered from us, Mother Commander.

You asked for a demonstration, rather than taking us at our word. We must prove that our technology functions as advertised."

"And the rivalry between Ix and Richese had nothing to do with your choice of targets?"

She barely held her sarcasm in check.

"Richese is just a historical footnote, Mother Commander. Any enjoyment Ixians might have taken from our rivals' unfortunate fate has long since faded." After a pause, Sen added, "We admit, however, that the irony does not escape us."

Since last visiting her high above Chapterhouse, the factory leader sounded subtly changed.

Recently, when Sen had come back to deliver full records of all their tests on Ix, he had seemed surprised, even embarrassed. He had followed her suspicious suggestion and used the cellular test on all of his people, with the result that twenty-two Face Dancers had been exposed, all of them working in critical industries. Murbella would have liked to interrogate them, maybe even apply an Ixian T-probe.

But those Face Dancers who weren't immediately killed took their own lives, somehow using a machinelike suicide shutdown in their own brains. The lost opportunity angered her, but she doubted her Sisters would have learned anything from the shape-shifters anyway.

Nevertheless, she was glad to have installed eight trusted inspectors to watch over the industrial progress from that point onward.

"Our delivery schedule is tight, Mother Commander, as you demanded," Sen transmitted.

"We are arming the ships from Junction as quickly as possible. After seeing these four Obliterators successfully tested, you can't deny that our technology is reliable."

"It seems a shame to waste such destructive power on a target that doesn't harm the true enemy," Janess said. "But we require proof." Both of them had reviewed earlier films of the tests, but those could have been faked.

"I still want to see it with my own eyes," Murbella said. "Then we'll throw everything into a defense against the machine advance."

"Deploying the nodes now," transmitted one of the Ixian pilots. "Please observe."

Four balls of light spat from the quartet of Ixian ships, and the incandescent Obliterators spun like pinwheels toward the cracked world below. They shuddered and expanded as they descended, throwing off rippling waves that grew brighter instead of dampening.

The atmosphere of Richese had already been scorched, its forests and cities leveled in the first chain reaction. Even so, the Ixian-modified weapons found sufficient fuel to set the world ablaze all over again.

Murbella remained silent as she watched the awesome swiftness of the flame fronts.

She stared without blinking until her eyes felt dry. The planet flared like an ember in a breeze. Cracks appeared across the continents; orange rifts blazed up. Finally, she spoke to her daughter, not caring that the Ixians could overhear on the open commline. "If we deploy such a weapon in the midst of a thinking-machine battle fleet, it will wreak inconceivable havoc."

"We might actually have a chance," Janess said.

Shayama Sen interrupted through the speakers, "You assume, Mother Commander, that the thinking machines will be foolish enough to fly their ships in such a tight cluster that one weapon will suffice."

"We know a great deal about the Enemy's battle plan and how their fleet has been advancing. They do not use foldspace engines, so they move methodically from one target to the next, step by step. With the thinking machines there are few surprises."

Murbella looked at her daughter, then back at the burning planet before snapping orders to the Ixians. "Very well, no need to squander any more Obliterators. When we finally hurl them at machine battleships, that will be demonstration enough for me. I want at least ten Obliterators aboard each of our new warships. No more delays!

We have waited too long already."

"It will be done, Mother Commander," Sen said.

Murbella chewed at her lower lip as she watched Richese continue to blaze. It wasn't like the Chief Fabricator to be so cooperative, failing to demand additional payment.

Perhaps, after seeing countless worlds already destroyed, the Ixians had at last recognized their true enemy.

***

- ship's log, entry of DUNCAN IDAHO

Face Dancers aboard.

In her quarters with little Alia and twelve-year-old Leto, Jessica felt very much like a mother again - after all these centuries. The three of them had a shared past and bloodline, but no other knowledge or memories in common. Not yet. To Jessica it seemed that they were little more than actors memorizing lines and playing roles, trying to be who they were supposed to be. Her body was only seventeen, but she felt much older as she comforted the two younger ones.

"What is a Face Dancer?" three-year-old Alia asked, toying with a sharp knife she kept at her side. Since the time she could walk, the girl had harbored a fascination for weapons, and she often sought permission to practice with them, rather than playing with more appropriate toys. "Are they coming to get us?"

"They're already in the ship," Leto said, still shaken. He could not believe that Thufir had been a Face Dancer and that he hadn't known it. "That's why we were all tested."

"No others have been found yet," Jessica said. She and Thufir had been decanted in the same year. In the crèche, she had been raised with the ghola of the warrior-Mentat, and never had she noticed any change in his personality. It did not seem possible that Thufir could have been a Face Dancer from the very beginning.

The real Hawat, Master of Assassins and former weapons master of House Atreides, had been a veteran of numerous successful campaigns like Bashar Miles Teg, serving three generations of House Atreides. No wonder Sheeana and the Bene Gesserits had considered him an invaluable ally. That was why they had wanted to bring him back, and now it was obvious why their memory-triggering crisis hadn't worked. Thufir was not really Thufir, and perhaps never had been.

Now - unless clean cells were found to grow a new ghola - the people aboard the Ithaca would never have access to Hawat's Mentat and tactical skills. In fact, Jessica realized that after all this time, the ghola project had produced very little that could be used to help them.

Only Yueh, Stilgar, and Liet-Kynes had been reawakened to their past lives, but the latter two were gone. And Yueh, while a skilled Suk doctor, was not a particularly great asset to their team.

He killed my Duke Leto - again.

With the Face Dancer threat, the missing explosive mines, and the various incidents of sabotage, the need for the gholas and their old skills had become more urgent.

The remaining unawakened ghola children must have special abilities; Jessica knew they had all been brought back for a reason. Each of them. Paul, Chani, and she were all of an appropriate age; even Leto II should be old enough. Gradual, careful measures could not possibly be sufficient. Not anymore.

She sighed. If not now, then when would their historical abilities be useful? I must have my memories back!

Jessica could offer so much more to benefit the no-ship, if given the opportunity.

She felt like a husk of a person without her original life. In her quarters, she stood up so swiftly that she startled both Alia and Leto. "You two should return to your rooms." Her gruff voice invited no argument. "There's something important I have to do. These Bene Gesserits are cowards, though they don't realize it. They can no longer afford to be."

In some ways, Sheeana was brash and impetuous, but in other ways overly cautious.

Jessica knew someone, however, who would not shy away from inflicting pain upon her.

"Who are you going to see?" Leto asked. Uanmi.

* * *

"Why should I do this? Are you mad?"

"Just pragmatic."

"Do you have any understanding of how much this is going to hurt?"

"I am prepared for it." She looked at Garimi's dark, curly hair, her flat and unattractive features; Jessica, by contrast, was the very ideal of classical beauty, designed by the Bene Gesserit to play the role of a seductress, a breeding mother whose features had been copied again and again for centuries after her death. "And I know, Proctor Superior, that if anyone can inflict that pain, you are prepared to do so."

Garimi seemed caught between amusement and uneasiness. "I have imagined countless ways to twist the knife in you, Jessica. I have often considered how much harm your actions did to the old Sisterhood. You derailed our entire Kwisatz Haderach program, created a monster we couldn't control. After Paul, as a direct consequence of your defiance, we suffered thousands of years under the Tyrant. For what conceivable reason would I want to awaken you? You betrayed us."

"So you say." Garimi's words struck like hurled stones. The woman had tormented Jessica for years, as well as poor Leto II. Jessica knew all the accusations, understood how the conservative Bene Gesserit faction viewed her. But she had not previously endured the shocking depth of hatred and anger that the woman now showed toward her.

"Your own words reveal a great deal, Garimi. The old Sisterhood. Where are your thoughts?

We are already living in the future."

"That doesn't negate the terrible pain you caused."

"You keep insisting that I should bear that guilt. But how can I feel it, if I don't remember? Are you content with me as a scapegoat, a whipping boy for all the imagined wrongs of the past? Sheeana wants my memories restored so that I can help us. But you, Garimi, should be just as eager to awaken me. Admit it - can you think of a better Bene Gesserit punishment than drowning me in the unforgivable things you say I've done to the Sisterhood?

Awaken me! Make me see it for myself!"

Garimi reached out and grabbed her wrist. Instinctively, Jessica tried to pull away, but was unsuccessful. The other woman's expression hardened. "I am going to Share with you. I'm going to give you all my thoughts and memories so that you'll know."

Garimi leaned closer. "I will dump into your brain those hundreds of generations of past lives that occurred after you committed your crime, so that you can see the full scope and consequences of what you did." She pulled Jessica up against her.

"That's not possible. Only Reverend Mothers can Share." Jessica tried to scramble backward.

Garimi's eyes were steely. "And you are a Reverend Mother - or you were. Therefore, one lives within you." She clasped the back of Jessica's head, grabbed her bronze hair and yanked her closer. Garimi leaned her own forehead down, and pressed it against Jessica's.

"I can make this work. I'm strong enough. Can you imagine why I'm doing it? Perhaps the grief will be enough to paralyze you!"

Jessica fought back. "Or it will... make ... me ... stronger."

She'd wanted her own memories, yes - but had never offered to accept all of Garimi's experiences, or those numerous ancestors who had lived through the persecutions of the God Emperor of Dune, her own grandson. All those who had survived the Famine Times, struggling to overcome their addiction to mélange, which was no longer available.

The horrors of those generations had left deep scars on the human psyche.

Jessica did not want that at all. Garimi insists that I caused it.

She felt something inside her head and resisted, but Garimi was stronger, forcing the Sharing upon her, pouring memories, unleashing them. Hammers pounded Jessica's skull from the inside, strong enough to crack through bone and break out. She heard a snapping sound in the blackness, and wondered if Garimi had won....

* * *

Jessica, bound concubine to Duke Leto Atreides, Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit -

looked around herself with a new wonder she had never imagined possible. Though she saw only the walls of the no-ship, she recalled how good her life had been with the Duke and with their son Paul. She remembered the shell-blue sky of Caladan, the spectacular sunrises on Arrakis.

In the end, she had beaten Garimi. Now she marched out of the angry woman's quarters, swaying and saturated with the knowledge. That flood of memories was a mixed blessing and a new burden, for she was without her beloved Duke Leto.

The sudden emptiness made her feel as if she were plunging into an endless pit.

Leto, my Leto! Why couldn't the Sisters have brought you back at the same time, like Paul and Chani? And damn you, Yueh, for taking him from me twice!

She felt profoundly alone, her heart drained and her mind left with mere memories and knowledge. Jessica was determined to find a way to make herself useful to her Sisters once more.

Returning to her quarters, she found Alia waiting for her. Possessing a sharp intelligence far beyond her years, the girl looked her over calmly and said, "Mother, I told Dr. Yueh you would have your memories back. Now he's even more afraid of you. You could kill him with a look. I chased him and kicked him for you."

Jessica fought back her automatic hatred of Yueh. The old Yueh. "You mustn't do that.

Especially not now." The Traitor had been right to fear the return of her memories, even though she had already known of his crimes and forgiven him.

But that was with my head, not with my heart.

As she stood there, Jessica's restored memories and emotions drove the dagger in deeper.

With a rush of emotion she found herself unable to keep from reaching out and hugging Alia fiercely. Then she looked upon her daughter for the very first time. "I am your mother again."

***

- The Bene Gesserit Acolytes' Handbook

The death of the Hawat Face Dancer couldn't be kept secret for long. Everyone was accounted for and locked away while Sheeana and her cadre of tested individuals performed a full count, isolated and approved security teams, and then guided all of the ship's inhabitants into the main meeting hall. That giant chamber could easily house hundreds of people for days, if need be, and if enough food was brought in. Meanwhile, Garimi remained up on the navigation deck, monitoring the Ithaca by herself.

Since all hands - at least the known ones - were sealed in the meeting hall, any hidden traitors could very well be trapped inside. In the next few days, over the course of meticulous testing, any remaining Face Dancers among them would be rooted out.

At first, the younger children born during the journey seemed to think it was a game, but they soon grew restless; the people became uncomfortable and suspicious, wondering why only a handful of individuals were allowed to come and go on mysterious assignments.

And why was the horrid little Tleilaxu one of the trusted ones? Many of those aboard still viewed Scytale with open scorn, but he was accustomed to such treatment. The Tleilaxu race had always been despised and distrusted. Now who was to blame?

Working frantically over the past day, he and the Suk doctors had assembled enough analytical kits to perform a genetic comparison on every untested individual. As a backup plan, he had also created enough of his Face Dancer-specific toxic gas to fill numerous canisters, though Sheeana was not ready to approve such a hazardous experiment - not yet.

They didn't trust him enough and kept the gas under their strict control.

He didn't trust them entirely, either. After all, he was a Tleilaxu Master, perhaps the last one in existence. Secretly, he put together a more startling, fail-safe test, knowing full well what he was doing. He told no one of it.

When all was ready, Scytale sat in a front row for what he expected to be an important process of revelation. He watched the uneasy Bene Gesserits, Suk doctors, archivists, and proctors. Out in the audience, Teg sat next to the Rabbi and two Bene Gesserit Sisters. The ghola children were a few rows away, each of them already proven to be untainted. Duncan Idaho waited by one of the sealed doors, and male Bene Gesserits guarded the other exit points.

While the gathered passengers waited, Sheeana spoke from the front of the meeting chamber, her words clear and uncompromising, with an edge of Voice. "We have discovered a Face Dancer among us, and we believe there are more in this room."

A moment of shocked silence extended uneasily as she attempted to make eye contact with every individual. Scytale was not surprised that no one stepped forward. The old Rabbi looked simultaneously indignant and lost without the rest of his people.

From the seat next to the old man, Teg told him to be patient. The Rabbi glared but did not argue.

"We have created a foolproof test." Sheeana sounded weary even though her voice boomed.

"It will be tedious and time-consuming. But you will all submit to it."

"I hope none of you has anything better to do." Duncan crossed his arms over his chest and flashed a grim smile. "The doors will remain guarded until this process is complete."

Scytale and the Suk doctors came forward to the stage, carrying kits, syringes, and chemical swabs. "As each one of you is cleared, our ranks of reliable allies will grow. No Face Dancer can elude this scrutiny."

"Who was this Face Dancer you caught?" one of the Sisters asked, an undertone of anxiety in her voice. "And why do you assume there are others among us? What is your evidence?"

When Sheeana explained how the worms had killed Thufir Hawat, stunned murmurs rippled through the audience.

The Bashar called from his seat, with an edge of guilt and revulsion in his tone.

"We know that the false Thufir could not have been responsible for all the sabotage incidents we have on record. He was with me, in person, when several of the known incidents occurred."

"How do I know you're not all

Face Dancers?" The Rabbi rose to his feet and glared at Sheeana, the Suk doctors, and especially Scytale. "Your behavior has never been comprehensible to me." Teg tugged him back down.

Sheeana ignored the old man's question and pointed to the front row. "I will take the first subject now."

Two female Suk doctors moved forward with their kits, and Sheeana said, "Make yourselves comfortable. This will take a while."

For Scytale, though, this process was primarily a diversion - and even the Bene Gesserits didn't know it. Feeling trapped, any Face Dancer in the audience would be trying to find a way to escape detection. Therefore, the Tleilaxu Master had to act precipitously, before any hidden shape-shifters could make a move. Watching the large audience closely, he fingered the small device he carried.

While the slow analytical procedure was certainly reliable, Scytale had fashioned his secret plan based on what he knew of the old Face Dancers created by the original Tleilaxu Masters. He was betting that the new shape-shifters from the Scattering were similar, at least in their fundamental responses. They must have emerged from the same basic blueprint. If so, he might know how to expose them, a weak and secondary test... but its very unexpectedness might work in his favor.

In the center of the meeting chamber, the Suk doctors performed their first test on a submissive Sister. She extended her hand, waiting for a drop of blood to be drawn.

Without warning, Scytale activated his high-pitched whistle emit' ter. A shrill tone warbled up and down, intense but faint, above the range of most human hearing. The original Face Dancers had once communicated with the Tleilaxu in a coded whistling language, a secret set of programming notes burned into their neurological structures.

Scytale believed the irresistible noise would make any Face Dancer lose his disguise, at least temporarily.

Suddenly, out in the tiers of seats, the old Rabbi flickered, and his body convulsed.

His leathery face shifted and smoothed behind his beard. He let out a cry of surprised outrage and lunged to his feet. Now the old man was unexpectedly supple, wiry, and vicious.

His face was flat with sunken eyes and a pug nose, like a bare skull made of half-melted wax.

"Face Dancer!" someone shouted.

The Rabbi became a whirlwind and threw himself against the Bene Gesserits.

***

- MILES TEG, Memoirs of an Old Commander

Due to his constant complaints, negative attitude, and frail appearance, everyone aboard had dismissed or misjudged the old Rabbi. As had Miles Teg.

In moves as swift and deadly as a lasbeam, the Face Dancer slammed the Bashar with a blow that would have shattered his skull, if it had struck squarely. Just in time, Teg recoiled with a flash of inhuman speed. It was enough to save his life, but even so, the attack stunned him.

Abruptly, the Rabbi killed two Sisters on the other side of him, then moved in a direct, murderous line toward the nearest exit, clearing the way with a flurry of deadly blows. From hidden pockets in his dark, conservative clothes, the Face Dancer withdrew a small throwing dagger for each hand. The blades were no longer than his thumbs, but he hurled them with precision. The sharp tips, undoubtedly poisoned, pierced the throats of two male Bene Gesserits who guarded the door. With barely a sound, the Rabbi shoved their dying bodies out of the way and plunged out into the corridor.

Scytale urgently scanned the crowd to make certain that this one escaping enemy did not divert attention from any other Face Dancers hidden among those gathered in the chamber.

The Tleilaxu saw no other sudden shiftings.

Sheeana shouted for others to pursue the Rabbi. "We know who he is, but he can change his shape. Now we have to track him down."

One of the Sisters tried to use the ship's intercom to warn Garimi, but got no response.

"It's been damaged."

"Fix it." Sheeana realized that the Rabbi had had sufficient time during their quarantine in this large chamber to subtly perform more sabotage.

Dr. Yueh rushed to a groaning Teg and bent to check the severity of his injury; beside him, the two fallen Sisters were obviously dead. The look on the ghola doctor's face was of dismay rather than vindication. As he examined Teg, he murmured, as if trying to make sense of the situation. "The Rabbi gave me the sample of the ghola baby's cells. He must have taken Piter de Vries's cells from storage and tricked me. He knew what I would do, how I would react."

Duncan glanced from Yueh and Teg to Sheeana. "The connection is obvious to me now.

Thufir Hawat and the Rabbi. Why didn't I see it?"

Sheeana caught her breath as she suddenly realized the same thing. "Both went down to the planet of the Handlers!"

Duncan nodded. "Hawat and the Rabbi were alone together during the hunt of the Honored Matres. You all had to fight your way back to the lighter after you discovered that the Handlers were Face Dancers."

"Of course." Sheeana's face was grave. "Those two came running in from the forest at the last moment. It seems they didn't escape the Handlers after all."

"So the original Rabbi and Thufir - " Duncan began.

"Both dead long ago, replaced by Face Dancers on the planet, and their bodies discarded during the hunt."

Finally achieving Mentat focus, Duncan jumped to the next obvious conclusion. "Then it's been more than five years since the substitutions. Five years! In all that time, the Hawat and Rabbi duplicates must have been waiting for their opportunity, killing gholas and axlotl tanks, sabotaging our life-support systems, forcing us to stop at Qelso, where we were vulnerable to discovery by our pursuers. Did the Enemy pick up our trail there? So far, we've managed to elude the net, but now that the Face Dancers have been exposed - "

Sheeana paled. "And what about the stolen mines? What did the Rabbi do with the explosive

mines? He can set them off at any time, if he gets to them."

Starting to recover but clearly woozy, Teg was already moving toward the door. "That Face Dancer knows he has to seize the no-ship before we can kill him. He will head for the navigation bridge."

"Garimi is there," Sheeana said. "Let's hope she can stop him."

* * *

By the time the Face Dancer reached the navigation bridge, he had resumed his disguise as the Rabbi. He contained all the memories, experiences, and personality details of the old man, and much more. The frail and frightened-looking Rabbi burst into the chamber, startling Garimi. "What are you doing up here?" she asked.

His eyes were wide and panicked as if he thought she could offer him protection.

His spectacles had fallen off. "Face Dancer!" he panted, staggering toward her. "He's killing Bene Gesserits!"

Garimi spun toward the intercom panel to contact Sheeana - and the Rabbi struck.

His deadly blow came close to her neck, but she sensed the movement and turned at the last possible moment. The side of his fist drove down on her shoulder instead.

She slid from her chair, and the Rabbi dove at her again.

Garimi launched a kick up at him from the deck, aiming for one of the old man's knobby and uncertain knees, but he sprang away like a coiled panther. The Rabbi let out a feral yowl as Garimi leapt to her feet again and assumed a defensive stance. Her lower lip curled.

"Clever, Rabbi. Even now that I know what you are, I can hardly smell any Face Dancer stink on you."

With a yank and a twist, the Rabbi uprooted an anchored chair and swung it at her.

She ducked and reached up to grab the chair as it whistled over her head. Tearing it out of his hands, her pull was enough to knock him to the floor.

When the Rabbi rose to his feet again, he shifted his body to mimic the form of a ferocious Futar. His body bulged with muscles, his teeth became sharp and elongated, and his claws slashed the air. Garimi stumbled back to get out of his killing reach and hammered her hand down on the intercom. "Sisters! Face Dancer on the navigation bridge!"

The Futar lunged, and his sharp, newly grown claws ripped her robes. Using wild and frantic punches intended more to hurt her foe than protect her own life, Garimi shattered his ribs.

With an outraged kick that employed the full force of her heel, she smashed his left femur out of its hip socket.

But the Futar rolled as he collapsed, spun in a blur, and before she could feel a moment of victory, he snapped Garimi's neck. She dropped with barely a sigh. In a purely spiteful gesture, he ripped out her throat before calmly reshaping his body to his blank Face Dancer state. He wiped blood from his face with one sleeve.

More broken than even his own shape-shifter abilities could easily heal, the Rabbi crawled and then limped to the Ithaca's main controls. He heard running feet in the corridor, so he sealed the navigation bridge, applied emergency locks, and activated a mutiny-defense protocol.

In the years he had maintained his disguise, the Face Dancer had covertly sampled the skin cells of Duncan Idaho, Sheeana, and Bashar Miles Teg. Now his hands flowed into the proper identification prints so that the no-ship's highly secure controls responded to him.

The sealed doors would stand against any intrusion. Eventually the Bene Gesserits would find a way to break in, but by that time he would have completed his mission.

His thinking-machine masters would be alerted. And they would come.

Long ago, he had studied how to operate the Holtzman engines. Estimating the coordinates as best he could, not worried about the lack of a Navigator, the Face Dancer folded space and plunged the Ithaca across the galaxy. The ship tumbled out into a different stellar region, not far from Omnius's advancing forces. He reconfigured the ship's comsystems and triggered a locator beacon. His superiors knew the signal.

The thinking machines would respond swiftly. Already the Face Dancer could sense the hungry, invisible tachyon net coming closer. This time there would be no escape.

The no-ship would be completely trapped.

***

Even small opponents can be deadly.

- Bene Gesserit Analytical Report on the Tleilaxu Problem By the time Duncan, Sheeana, and Teg reached the navigation bridge, the thick hatches were sealed and locked. Impregnable. The bridge had been designed to remain secure against even an army.

Within moments, other Sisters followed, having first raced to the armory and obtained hand weapons: poisonous needle guns, stunners, and a high-powered lascutter. None of those devices would be sufficient. Rushing forward, the ghola children joined the crowd outside the sealed bridge, among them Paul, Chani, Jessica, Leto II, and young Alia.

Duncan could feel the change when the no-ship lurched through foldspace. "He's at the controls, moving us!"

"Garimi is dead, then," Sheeana concluded.

"The Face Dancer is going to take us directly to the Enemy," Teg said.

"Now is the time to use Scytale's poison gas to kill the Face Dancer." Sheeana turned to two of the Sisters standing in the corridor. "Find the Tleilaxu and take him to our guarded cabinet. Get one of the canisters, and we will flood the air on the bridge with the gas."

"No time for that," Duncan said. "We've got to get in there!"

Alia sounded eerily cool and intelligent as she announced, "I can get inside."

Duncan looked at the girl. To him, the echo-memories evoked by this child were unsettling.

The original Duncan had never known her as a youngster - he had been killed by Sardaukar while Jessica was barely pregnant. But he did have vivid memories of an older Alia as his lover, in another life. But that was all history. Now it might as well be myth or legend.

He bent down to talk to her. "How? There isn't much time."

"I'm small enough." With a flick of her eyes, the little girl indicated the narrow air-exchanger vents leading into the command deck. She was far more diminutive than even Scytale.

Sheeana was already removing the grate. "There are baffles, filters, and bars in the way.

How will you get through?"

"Give me a cutter. And a needle gun. I'll get the door open for you as soon as I can. From the inside."

When Alia had what she needed, Duncan hoisted the girl up to where she could squirm inside the tiny tunnel. Not yet four years old, she weighed very little. Jessica stood watching, looking more mature than she had been only a few days earlier, but even seeing her

"daughter" placed into such a dangerous situation, she did not protest.

Cold and intent, the child clamped the cutter between her teeth, tucked the needle pistol into her small shirt, and began to creep through the vent. The distance between the chambers was not far, but each half meter was a battle. She exhaled, making herself as small as possible so that she could wriggle ahead.

Outside, the others began pounding on the sealed door as a distraction. They used heavy cutters that sparked and fumed, screeching through the dense, armored barricade a millimeter at a time. The Face Dancer would know they'd need hours to cut through into the navigation bridge. Alia was confident the Face Dancer would not expect an ambush from her.

She encountered the first barricade, a set of plasteel bars interwoven with a filtration grid.

The dense mat was coated with neutralizing chemicals, and charged with a faint electrostatic film to scrub all drugs and poisons from the air that passed into the bridge. With the filter in place, Scytale's toxic gas would not have worked, even if they'd been able to release it.

Elbows digging into her sides, Alia took the cutter from her teeth and with jerky wrist movements sliced away the bars. Gently, she set the screen in front of her, careful not to make a noise, and crawled over it. The sharp edges scratched her chest and legs, but Alia cared nothing for the pain.

Similarly, she passed through a second grid, and then found herself at the last opening, from which she could observe the Face Dancer through the grille. His appearance flickered occasionally, sometimes reverting to the old man's shape, sometimes becoming a Futar, but primarily the Face Dancer wore a blank, skull-like visage. Even before she saw the torn body of Garimi on the deck, Alia knew not to underestimate this opponent.

With the tip of the glowing cutter, she sliced the tiny fasteners that held the last screen in place. Moving as silently as she could, she held the plate where it was and squirmed to free the needle gun from her shirt. She tensed, then drew a deep breath, waiting for the right moment.

I will have only a brief instant of surprise, so I must use it to full advantage.

The Face Dancer was working the controls, probably transmitting a signal to the mysterious Enemy, presumably more of his own kind. Every second she delayed would place the Ithaca in greater danger.

Suddenly the Face Dancer jerked his head up and snapped his gaze toward the grille.

Somehow he had sensed her. Now, without hesitating, Alia shoved the loosened screen toward him like a projectile. He dodged out of the way, reacting just as she had expected.

Still lying prone in the ventilation shaft, she extended the needle gun in front of her and fired seven times. Three of the deadly needles found their target: two in the Face Dancer's eyes, another in the artery on his neck.

He spasmed, thrashed, and fell lifeless. Wriggling out of the air shaft, Alia dropped to the floor, recovered her balance, and glanced to verify that Garimi was indeed dead, before casually walking to the door. With her nimble fingers she disarmed the internal security measures and unsealed the hatch from the inside.

Duncan and Teg stood there holding weapons, afraid of what might emerge. The little girl met them with a placid expression. "Our Face Dancer is no longer a problem."

Over Alia's shoulder they could see the inhuman form sprawled next to an overturned chair.

Small trickles of blood leaked from the dart wounds in his eyes, and he wore a full crimson collar of blood around his neck. On the floorplates lay the mangled Garimi.

Sheeana narrowed her gaze. "I see that you are a born killer."

Alia was unruffled. "So I've been told. Didn't you bring the ghola children back for our abilities? This is what I do best."

Duncan hurried to the no-ship's controls to assess what the false Rabbi had done.

He extended his senses and was dismayed to see the deadly strands of the shimmering net suddenly appear and intensify all around them. Unbreakable. The trap was bright enough, powerful enough, that everyone could see it.

Teg rushed to a scanner station. "Duncan! Ships approaching - a lot of them! The Face Dancer has brought us right to the doorstep of the Enemy. We're tagged, and the net has locked onto us."

"After all these years, we are caught in the strands." Duncan swept his gaze across all of them. "At least, we're about to find out who our Enemy really is."

***

- MOTHER COMMANDER MURBELLA, address to the New Sistethood Given the critical shortage of time, the thousands of newly equipped Guildships could not undergo thorough shakedowns and test runs. The mass-produced Obliterators were loaded aboard the heavily armored vessels that had been built at Junction as well as seventeen satellite shipyards. Crews made preparations to go to the front lines.

Fresh from conscription across hundreds of at-risk planets, novice commanders received only minimal training, barely sufficient to stand against the Enemy at numerous vulnerable points as humanity tried to draw its line in space. Murbella knew that despite their determination and bravery, and no matter how much training and practice they received, most of the human fighters would be annihilated.

In the months after the plague had run its course on Chapterhouse, the Mother Commander had opened her doors to displaced refugees from any evacuated planet. At first they were frightened to settle on the once-quarantined world, but then they had begun to stream in.

With so few options available to them, the ragtag groups accepted the Sisterhood's offer of sanctuary in exchange for performing vital labors in the war effort. Politics and old factions had to be set aside. Now every life was devoted to preparing for the last stand against the oncoming forces of Omnius.

From Buzzell, Reverend Mother Corysta sent the incredible news that the giant seaworms wreaking havoc with soostone operations also produced a kind of spice. Murbella immediately suspected some kind of Guild experiment. It could not be a natural occurrence.

Corysta suggested that the worms be hunted and harvested, but the Mother Commander could not think that far ahead. A new source of spice mattered only if the human race survived the Enemy.

Mother Commander Murbella called a grand war council for delegates of the front-line planets that were in imminent danger of attack by thinking-machine forces. Despite their indignation, every one of them had undergone cellular testing to root out hidden Face Dancers. Murbella took no chances; the insidious shape-shifters could be anywhere.

In the Keep's grand meeting room, she strode down the length of the elaccawood table to her designated seat. Using her Bene Gesserit powers of close observation, she studied those assembled, all of them driven here by desperation. Murbella tried to view these representatives in their various costumes and uniforms as military leaders, essentially generals in the last great battle for humanity. The people in this room would guide the thrown-together clusters of ships and make a thousand defiant stands.

But were they the quality of heroes the human race needed?

When she turned to face the delegates, Murbella saw the uneasiness in their eyes and smelled fear-sweat in the air. The vast Enemy fleet surged forward like a flame front across the map of the galaxy, rolling over star system after star system, heading inexorably toward Chapterhouse and the remaining worlds at the heart of the Old Empire.

After moving among the various embattled worlds and studying their preparations, Murbella had secured alliances with these planetary leaders, warlords, commercial conglomerates, and smaller units of government. Leto II's vision of the Golden Path had fragmented humanity so that they no longer followed a single charismatic leader, and now Murbella had to repair that damage. Diversity might once have been a path to survival, but unless the numerous worlds and armies could stand together against the far greater foe, they would all perish.

If the Tyrant's prescience was so formidable, how could he not have foreseen the existence of the great machine empire, no matter how far away it was? How could the God Emperor not have known that another titanic conflict awaited humankind? She felt a faint shudder. Or had he, and everything was playing out exactly as the Tyrant planned?

After considerable effort, she had won a critical internal battle when the various leaders agreed that the strongest defense came from a unified plan - her plan - rather than a hundred independent and hopeless defensive battles. To get her message across, she'd had to cut through the stubborn tentacles of various planetary bureaucracies. Nothing was easy in this war.

Feeling the burdens of her position, Murbella rapped a large spherical stone on the table, producing a loud, echoing boom that called the meeting to order. "You all know why you're here. We must make our last stands, a thousand of them across space.

Many of us will die - or all of us will die. There are no alternatives. The only questions are how soon we will die, and how it will happen. Do we choose to die free and fighting to the last... or defeated and running?"

The room resounded with a cacophony of voices, accents, and languages, though she had insisted that they all speak the common Galach tongue. She used Voice to cut through the clamor. "The machines are coming! If we cooperate and do not retreat in the face of our foe, we just might have the means of stopping them dead in their tracks."

She noted Guild officials and Ixian engineers in the audience. Given the short delivery schedule, some of the warship construction had been unavoidably slapdash, but her handful of Bene Gesserit inspectors and line supervisors had overseen the operations.

"Our weapons and ships are now ready, but before we proceed I have one question for all of you." She skewered the leaders with her gaze. If she'd still been an Honored Matre, her eyes would have blazed orange. "Do you have the resolve and courage to do what is necessary?"

"Do you?" bellowed a bearded man from a very small planet in a remote system.

Murbella rapped her sonic stone again. "My New Sisterhood will bear the brunt of the initial clash against the thinking machines. We have already fought them in one star system after another, destroying many of their ships, and we survived their plagues here on Chapterhouse. But this war will never be won on individual battlefields." She gestured, and Janess worked the controls. "Look at this, all of you."

Startling the assemblage, a large holographic projection appeared, filling the open space of the Keep's great meeting room with detailed maps of the galaxy's numerous solar systems.

An advancing blot indicated the thinking machines' conquests, like a tidal wave drowning every system in its path. The darkness of defeat and extermination had already blackened most of the known systems in the regions of the Scattering.

"We have to focus our efforts. Because they don't use foldspace engines, the Enemy proceeds from system to system. We know their path, and therefore we can put ourselves directly in their way." Murbella stood amidst the simulated stars and planets. Her finger darted from point to point, the glowing stars and habitable planets that lay in the Enemy's path. "We've got to hold the line - here, and here, and everywhere!

Only by combining all of our ships, commanders, and weapons can we hope to halt the Enemy." She swept her hand through the shimmering images that were just ahead of the encroaching thinking machines. "Any other choice would be cowardice."

"Do you call us cowards?" the bearded man roared.

A merchant stood. "Surely we can negotiate - "

Murbella cut him off. "The thinking machines do not want a particular world. Nor are they searching for gems, spice, or any other goods. There is nothing we can offer them to sue for peace. They do not compromise, and will keep pursuing us no matter where we run." She looked at the blustering man and said, "By fleeing conflict today, you could survive for a time. But there'll be no escape for your children or grandchildren.

The machines will slaughter them, down to the last infant. Do you value your life over theirs?

Then, yes, I do call you cowards."

Despite the murmurs in the hall, no one else spoke out. On the giant star display, a line of tiny fireworks erupted along the interface line between the machine-conquered territories and the vulnerable human planets.

Murbella's gaze moved across the audience. "Each of us is responsible for stopping the Enemy from crossing this line. Failure means death for the human race."

***

- DUNCAN IDAHO, A Thousand Lives

The leader of the Face Dancer myriad arrived at Synchrony, bearing a long-anticipated gift for the evermind. The thinking machines still viewed Khrone as nothing more than a servant, a delivery boy.

Omnius and Erasmus never suspected that the shape-shifters might be formulating their own schemes independent of both humanity and the thinking machines. Naive, oblivious, and so very typical. The ever-mind would treasure this new melange for his grandiose plans, and it would keep the machines from doubting Khrone and his Face Dancers.

He intended to make the most of it.

With their brutality and arrogance, the "old man and woman" had long ago given the new shape-shifters reasons to break their loyalty. Erasmus fancied himself reminiscent of a Face Dancer, but much more ... and similar to a human, but greater. And like Omnius... but infinitely more powerful.

Khrone and the rest of the myriad had never truly given their allegiance to the thinking machines. He saw no more reason to accept slavery under machine masters than to have accepted the domination of the original Tleilaxu who had created their predecessors so many centuries ago. Forced allies, second-class partners ... The evermind was merely one more layer in the grand pyramid of those who thought they controlled the Face Dancers.

After so much effort, Khrone couldn't wait until he could drop this endless deception.

He was no longer amused by the number of masks he had to wear and the complicated threads he continued to pull. Soon, though ...

Alone, he flew his small ship directly to the heart of the modern machine empire.

The location of Synchrony had been genetically programmed into all new Face Dancers, like some sort of homing beacon. As he entered the airspace over the technological metropolis, Khrone let his thoughts drift back to Ix. The fabricators and engineers had successfully completed a special demonstration at dead Richese, and now Obliterators were emerging from the production lines. Mother Commander Murbella had been impressed with the power she witnessed, and she'd been entirely convinced by the show. Fool!

But not in all things. In her prior meeting with Chief Fabricator Shayama Sen, Murbella had forced him to administer a biological test that proved he wasn't a Face Dancer.

Given what had happened, Khrone was vastly relieved that he had not replaced the man, as he'd been tempted to do many times in the past.

Face Dancers already controlled most of the important positions on Ix, and when the Chief Fabricator blithely distributed the biological tests to all the main engineers and team leaders (never suspecting there might actually be a majority of Face Dancers among them), the myriad had been forced to act precipitously. When an indignant Sen announced the Sisterhood's suspicions, the infiltrators had finally been forced to kill him and assume his identity. They had already taken care of the troublesome Bene Gesserit line supervisors and production monitors. And so the deception continued, unmarred.

Enhanced Face Dancers quickly subsumed the last humans among the leaders of Ix. Then, working together, they contrived all the necessary tests, selected the required scapegoats, substituted convincing data, and submitted everything to Chapterhouse in accordance with Murbella's demands. All in perfect order.

After surviving the plague, the Sisterhood's leadership had forced all human protectors to finally band together against the thinking-machine fleet, to defend their race rather than simply their own worlds. The hundreds of new ships that emerged from the Junction shipyards were being loaded with enough Obliterators for a final, concerted stand against the oncoming wave of Omnius's ships. So far, the evermind's forces had encountered very little significant resistance, and now they were on their way to Chapterhouse. For the last time.

Khrone had actually been tempted to let the Reverend Mothers and their last-stand defenders succeed. Given enough functional Obliterators, they could send the machine fleet reeling. Humans and thinking machines could easily annihilate each other. However, that was simply too ... easy. Kralizec demanded much more! This time, the fundamental shift in the universe would get rid of both rivals, leaving all the remnants of the Old Empire for the Face Dancers.

Khrone felt completely confident in the future as he landed his ship in the convoluted labyrinth of copper steeples, golden turrets, and interlocked silvery buildings.

Sentient structures shifted aside to allow a place for his ship to settle. When the small vessel came to rest on a smooth quicksilver plain, Khrone stepped out, breathing air that smelled of smoke and hot metal. He did not spare a moment to look around.

The central machine world was based entirely on theatrics. He suspected the touch of Erasmus in this, though Omnius had such an overblown perception of his own importance that he no doubt wanted all machine minions to bow before him as a god - even if the evermind had to program them to do so.

Rectangular plates appeared on the ground, laying down an interlocked pathway that guided Khrone to his destination in the magnificent arched cathedral. Head held high, he strode along carrying his precious package, refusing to look like a supplicant summoned before his lord. Rather, Khrone was a man on a mission with important business to complete.

Omnius would be pleased to have the concentrated ultraspice for use with his cloned Kwisatz Haderach....

Inside the ostentatious hall, the ghola of Baron Harkonnen stood with young Paolo at a nine-level pyramid chess board. Glowering, the Baron knocked over a rook on one of the top levels. "That move is not allowed, Paolo."

"It enabled me to win, didn't it?" Pleased with his ingenuity, the young man crossed his arms over his chest.

"By cheating."

"It's a new rule. If we are as important as you say, we should be allowed to make up our own rules."

A flash of anger crossed the Baron's face, and then vanished into a chuckle. "I see your reasoning - and that you are learning."

When Khrone stepped forward, they looked at him with identical expressions of distaste.

"Oh, it's you." The Baron sounded entirely different from when he'd been tormented by the Face Dancers. "I didn't think we'd be seeing you again. Bored of Caladan?"

Ignoring them, Khrone noted that the two principal thinking machines had resumed their guise of an elderly couple in gardening clothes. Why were they wearing these personas now? For the benefit of these two gholas? It wasn't as if the thinking machines were keeping secrets from anybody here. Khrone had never been able to determine a pattern in their behavior.

Perhaps it was linked to the fact that Omnius and Erasmus wanted to receive all of the lives Khrone had gathered and assimilated during his last mission among the humans.

They looked forward to the sharing of their Face Dancer "ambassadors" each time one of the far-flung representatives returned. It seemed to make them feel superior, and allowed the independent robot to feel that he belonged to the human race, somehow.

"Look, he's brought something," Paolo pointed out. "A present for us?"

Khrone went directly to the old man and woman. As the woman leaned toward him, her visage had a feral and hungry look. "I think you brought more than just a package, Khrone.

You haven't been back to Synchrony in some time. Show us the personas you've acquired.

Every little bit adds to us, makes us greater."

"I have had enough." The old man turned away. "I am beginning to find them somewhat distasteful. They are all the same."

"How can you say that, Daniel? Every human is different, so beautifully chaotic and unpredictable."

"Exactly what I mean. They are all confusing. And I am not Daniel, I am Omnius. Kralizec is upon us, and we have no time for further preparatory games."

"Sometimes I still like to consider myself Marty. In many ways it's more appealing to me than the name or guise of Erasmus." The old woman took a step closer to Khrone.

The Face Dancer didn't dare flinch, though he despised what was about to happen.

Her hand was gnarled, with large knuckles. It felt clawlike when she touched his forehead.

She pressed harder, and Khrone shuddered, unable to block the intrusion.

Each time a Face Dancer mimicked a human shape, he sampled the original subject and acquired both a genetic trace and an imprint of the memories and persona. The thinking machines had set the shape-shifters loose into the Old Empire. Infiltrating the humans, they gathered more and more lives as they subsumed useful people and played their roles.

Whenever a Face Dancer returned to the machine empire, Erasmus in particular wanted to add those lives to his vast repository of data and experience.

Out of forced subservience, Khrone and his comrades surrendered that information.

But though the thinking machines could upload the various lives the Face Dancers copied, they could not take their core personas. Khrone held onto his secrets, even as he offered up all those people he had been in recent years - an Ixian engineer, a CHOAM representative, a crewman on a Guildship, a dock worker on Caladan, and many others.

When the process was finished, the old woman's hand withdrew. Her wrinkled face wore a satisfied smile. "Oh, those were interesting ones! Omnius will certainly want to share them."

"That remains to be seen," the old man said.

Feeling drained, Khrone caught his breath and straightened himself. "That is not why I came." His voice was shamefully weak and quavering. "I have obtained a special substance you will find invaluable for your Kwisatz Haderach project." He held out the ultraspice package, as if offering a gift to a king, precisely as Omnius expected him to behave. The old man accepted the package, scrutinized it carefully.

The Face Dancer gave Paolo a condescending look. "This potent form of melange is sure to unlock the prescience in any Atreides. Then you will have your Kwisatz Haderach, as I have always promised. There is no need to continue pursuing the no-ship."

Omnius found the comment amusing. "Strange you should say that now."

"What do you mean?"

Beside him, the old woman grinned. "This is a momentous day, since both of our plans have come to fruition. Our patience and foresight have paid off. Now, what shall we do with two Kwisatz Haderachs?"

Khrone paused, startled. "Two of them?"

"After so many years, the no-ship has finally fallen into our trap."

Khrone slid his surprise back into himself and went rigid. "That is ... most excellent."

The old woman rubbed her hands together. "Everything is culminating at once. It reminds me of the climactic movement in a symphony I once wrote."

The old man began to pace around the chamber, holding the package of ultraspice in his hands. He sniffed it.

Paolo turned away from the chess game. "You don't need another Kwisatz Haderach.

You have me. Give me spice now!"

Erasmus shot him an indulgent smile. "Perhaps in a little while. First we'll see what the no-ship has for us, who their Kwisatz Haderach is. It should be interesting."

"Where is the vessel?" Khrone asked, focusing on the main question. "Are you sure you have it?"

"Our cruisers are surrounding it even now, and our operatives aboard took steps to guarantee that it could not escape again. Your Face Dancers did a fine job, Khrone."

Omnius interrupted, "And, on a greater scale, our largest battleships are closing in on human defenders in their Old Empire. We will conquer Chapterhouse soon, but that is only one of many simultaneous targets."

"It should be quite a spectacular battle." Erasmus sounded more dry than eager.

The evermind was stern. "Triumph will be assured as soon as the proper conditions are met, according to our mathematical prophecies. Success is imminent."

With glee on his flowmetal face, Erasmus beamed at Paolo and the Baron. "Two Kwisatz Haderachs are better than one!"

***

Time is a commodity more precious than mélange. Even the wealthiest man cannot buy more minutes to put into each hour.

- DUKE LETO ATREIDES, last message from Caladan

A gossamer net of jeweled colors closed around the Ithaca.

The no-ship's engines strained, but could not break away. Scrambling to reassert control over the helm and drag themselves free of the strange bonds, Duncan powered up the Holtzman engines, preparing to rip a hole through the glimmering mesh. It was their only way out.

Glaring at the dead Face Dancer on the deck, Sheeana ordered two Sisters nearby,

"Remove that thing from the navigation bridge!" Within moments, the women carried away the limp and bloody shape-shifter.

Now that the net was visible to them all, Duncan focused his Mentat awareness to study the woven grid that ensnared them. He searched frantically for holes or weak spots in the powerful structure, but found nothing to suggest the slightest defect, no frayed point that might allow them to escape.

He would try brute force, then.

Years ago, he had broken free of the net by using the Holtzman engines in ways they had never been designed to function, flying the Ithaca at just the proper angle and speed to penetrate the fabric of space. It had reminded him of a Swordmaster's move, using a slow blade against a personal shield.

"Accelerating now," he said.

Teg leaned over the navigation controls, sweating. "This is going to be close, Duncan."

The large ship pulled against the multicolored strands, tore several, and then picked up speed. "We're breaking free!"

Duncan felt a brief moment of hope, a surge of triumph.

An explosion rocked the ship, followed by another, and another. Vibrations and shock waves rang through the hull and decks as if some titan were smashing the vessel with a great hammer. The navigation bridge shuddered.

Holding his chair, Duncan called up diagnostic maps. "What was that? Is the Enemy firing on us?"

The detonations threw Teg to the floor, but he scrambled back to his feet and gripped the console for balance. "The stolen mines! I think we just found them." His words tumbled out in a rush. "Either Thufir or the Rabbi must have set them to go off -" As if to confirm his speculation, another explosion rocked the deck, much closer than before.

The Ithaca reeled out of control, its engines paralyzed. The deck tilted, as artificial gravity generators were knocked offline. Duncan felt a sickening disorientation as the vessel spun off axis.

The shimmering net grew brighter, tightening like a noose.

Finally, out in the distance, Enemy ships drew into view, like hunters approaching a trap they had set. Duncan stared at the external screens. Who had pursued them for so long? Face Dancers? Some vicious, unknown race? What could be frightening enough to drive the Honored Matres back into the Old Empire?

"The bastards think they have us." Duncan made a fist.

"Don't they?" Looking up from his status screens, the Bashar was dismayed by the severe damage indicators lighting up sections of the vessel like fireworks displays.

"The mines have ruined our most vital systems, and we're dead in space."

Using Mentat focus, Duncan studied the panels on his command console. The intricate displays showed the strangling net all around them. He jabbed his finger toward a knot in the diagram, an area of pulsing, flickering electronic signals. At first glance the tangle seemed no different from the rest of the interconnected strands, but as he studied it, he thought he might have found a weakness. "Look there."

Teg feverishly bent closer. "A loophole?"

"If only we could move!" Racking his brain, Duncan stalked back and forth in front of the controls. "It would be quite a drunkard's dance to get through that maze - if this ship could fly at all."

"If we all worked together, the entire crew, it would take a week to make repairs.

We don't have that much time." The Bashar gestured to the tactical screens that displayed data from the long-distance sensors. "Enemy ships are closing in. They know they've snared us."

Duncan accepted the grim reality. "Holtzman engines are dead. No way to make the repairs in time, no way to escape." He hammered his fists on a panel next to the tangled, pulsing loophole on the console's projections. "But I know I could do it.

Why won't this damned ship fly?"

Teg glanced at the sensor blips that indicated the encroaching Enemy, saw the automated damage reports streaming across the display, and knew exactly what had to be done.

Only he could do it.

"I can fix the ship." He had no time to explain. "Be ready." Then he simply vanished.

* * *

Re-accessing the archival records of the ship's systems would take too long, but Teg had examined them before. As a Mentat he remembered everything, and now he set to work. By himself.

Even at his accelerated speed, Teg exerted himself to run as fast as he could. On deck after deck, everyone aboard stood like statues, their expressions showing concern and confusion. Teg flashed past them to the nearest damage sites.

Where the first mine had gone off, he stared in amazement and consternation at the twisted metal, the melted craters in the machinery, the vaporized systems. Teg hurried from one explosion to the next, determining how far the damage extended and which systems were crucial for their immediate escape. The Face Dancer infiltrators had planted and hidden the eight mines well, and each detonation had resulted in a crippling blow: navigation, life-support, foldspace engines, defensive weapons.

Teg made snap decisions. His life had primed him for emergencies; on the battlefield, one could not hesitate. If Duncan couldn't manage to fly the Ithaca away right now, they would never again require life-support systems. He, or someone else, could fix those later. An acceptable gamble. The no-field generators were off-line.

Engines.

Four of the eight mines had been set to damage the fold-space engines. The Face Dancer saboteur had deliberately flown the no-ship close to the Enemy's stronghold, and the detonations had left them crippled and stranded.

With hyper speed Teg studied, analyzed, and compiled a plan using his Mentat abilities.

He inventoried spare materials, replacement components, emergency equipment. He needed to work swiftly with what he had; there was no one to help him. First, he rerouted and reprogrammed the weapons, and prepared them to launch a volley of blasts at the oncoming ships. That might grant them an extra few moments.

Teg continued to hurry. The pulsing alarm lights flickered on to off, like a sun rising and setting. Another hour gone in his own frame of reference. In real time, only a few seconds had passed since his disappearance from the bridge. Next, he turned to the engines, which were essential to their escape.

The primary linkages had been disrupted, with Holtzman catalysts shaken from their cradles, shoved out of alignment, made inoperable. Two reaction chambers were breached.

An explosion had nearly broken through the hull. He stood stunned, his arms shaking, thinking he couldn't possibly fix this. But he forced such thoughts away, went back to work.

Teg's muscles trembled with exhaustion, and his lungs burned from gasping air so fast the oxygen molecules could barely move into position.

Fixing the hull should be easy enough. Teg ran to the maintenance sectors, where he located extra plates. Since he could never make the ship's heavy-lifting machinery operate fast enough for his time-sense, he decided that suspensors would have to do. He applied the null-gravity projectors to the heavy plates and hurried with them down corridors, dodging petrified people.

With each second, the Enemy battleships were getting closer. Some of his fellow passengers were only just now learning of the mines that had been detonated. He put on another burst of speed, and the suspensor carriers kept up with him.

In a few "hours," according to his metabolism, and only a few moments in reality, he fixed the hull damage that could have resulted in an engine breach. Sweat poured off of Teg's body, and he was near collapse. But in spite of that utter exhaustion, he could not let himself slow down. Never before had he allowed himself to fall so deeply into a pit of burning metabolism.

Teg's body could not maintain this pace for long. But if he didn't, the ship would be captured, and they would all die. Fangs of hunger gnawed at his stomach. This would not do. He had to concentrate, had to fuel the engine of his body so that he could do what must be done.

Ravenous, not slowing from his superspeed, he raided the ship's stores, where he found energy bars and dense food wafers. He ate concentrated nutrients until he was gorged.

Then, burning calories as fast as he could swallow them, Teg ran again from one disaster area to the next.

He spent subjective days at these highly focused labors; to observers on the outside, caught in the glacial pace of normal time, only a minute or two passed.

When the task grew overwhelming, the Bashar struggled to reassess what the ship needed in order to function. What was the bare minimum of repairs that would let Duncan fly through the weakened loophole?

The exploding mines had led to a cascading series of damages. Teg nearly got lost in the details, but reminded himself of the immediate need and forced himself to skate the thin ice of possibilities.

Teg and his brave men had stolen this very vessel from Gammu more than three decades ago. Though it had performed admirably since then, the Ithaca had not undergone any of the usual necessary maintenance at Guild shipyards. Worn components had not been replaced; systems were breaking down from age and neglect, as well as the depredations of the saboteurs. Limited by the spare parts and materials he could find in the maintenance bays, he tried and discarded possible fixes.

Alarms continued to pulse slowly. He was moving too fast for sound waves to mean anything. In real time, there would be shrieking sirens, shouting people, conflicting orders.

Teg fixed another of the Holtzman catalyst cradles, then took the time to look at a viewer. In the image displayed between scan lines, he saw that the Enemy ships had finally arrived, massive and heavily armed ... a full fleet of monstrous, angular things that bristled with weapons, sensor arrays, and other sharp protrusions.

Though he already felt used up, Teg knew with a sickening certainty that he needed to go even faster.

He raced to the ship's melange stores and broke the locks with a twist of his hand because he was moving so fast. He removed cakes of the dark brown compressed substance, stared at it with Mentat calculation. Considering his hypermetabolism and his body churning through its biochemical machinery faster than it ever had before, what was the proper dosage? How quickly would it affect him? Teg decided on three wafers - triple the maximum he had ever consumed - and gobbled them all.

As the melange rushed through his body and poured into his senses, he felt alive again, recharged and capable of accomplishing the requisite impossibilities. His muscles and nerves were on fire, and his feet left marks on the deck as he ran.

He repaired the next system in a few moments. But in that time, the Enemy battle fleet had closed in, and the no-ship still could not fly.

Teg looked down at his forearms and saw that his skin seemed to be shriveling up, as if he was consuming every drop of energy within his flesh.

Outside, the encroaching vessels launched a volley of destructive blasts. Balls of energy tumbled forward like storm clouds approaching with exquisite slowness. Those blasts would clearly render his repairs useless, maybe even destroy the ship.

In another burst of extreme speed, Teg dashed to the defensive controls. Thankfully, he had restored a few of their weapons. The Ithaca's defensive systems were sluggish, but the firing controls were swift enough. With a scattershot cannonade, like a burst of celebratory fireworks, Teg returned fire. He launched beams carefully targeted to intercept and dissipate the oncoming projectiles. Once he had fired the volley, though, Teg turned his back on the weapons systems and raced to the next damaged engine.

Bashar Teg felt like a candle that had been burnt entirely down to a lump of discolored wax.

Despite his best efforts, the exhausted man still saw their doom closing in.

***

- BASHAR ALEF BURZMALI, A Dirge for the Soldier

On the navigation bridge, Duncan stared at the sensor projections for moments after Miles had disappeared. He knew what the Bashar must be doing.

After the internal explosions, the Ithaca hung dead in space, surrounded by Enemy ships that bristled with more weaponry than he had seen on an entire Harkonnen battle fleet. The mines had disabled the no-field generator, leaving the great ship visible and vulnerable in space.

After almost a quarter century of fleeing, they were caught. Maybe it was about damned time he faced the mysterious hunters. Who were his strange and invincible foes? He had only ever seen the ghostly shadows of the old man and old woman. And now ...

On the screens before him, the discontinuity in the gossamer net shifted, almost closed, and then strayed open again, as if taunting him.

Duncan spoke aloud, more to himself than anyone else. A prayer of sorts. "As long as we breathe, we have a chance. Our task is to identify any opportunity, however transitory or difficult it might be."

Teg had said he would fix their systems. Duncan was aware of the Bashar's closely held abilities. For years, Teg had concealed his talent from the Bene Gesserits, who feared such manifestations as the sign of a potential Kwisatz Haderach. Now those abilities might save them all. "Don't let us down, Miles."

The encroaching ships fired a series of blasts at the no-ship. Duncan barely had time to shout a curse and brace for impact - when a flurry of impossibly fast and deft defensive bursts intercepted the Enemy volley. Precisely targeted, instantly fired. All shots blocked.

Duncan blinked. Who had launched the return salvo? He shook his head. The no-ship should have been incapable of even basic maneuvers or defense. A chill of delight coursed down his spine. Miles!

Suddenly, the control deck's systems began to glow; green indicator lights winked on by themselves. One after another, systems came back online. Sensing movement, Duncan snapped his head to the left.

The Bashar materialized in front of him, but it was a different Miles Teg - not the young ghola whom Duncan had raised and awakened, but a horribly drained man, as desiccated and ancient as an ambulatory mummy. Teg looked wrung out and ready to collapse. He had exerted himself through time far beyond the point where a normal man would have already died.

"Boards ... active." His gasping voice cost him more energy than he had left. "Go!"

Everything happened in an instant, as if Duncan, too, had fallen into an accelerated time frame. His first instinct was to grab his friend. Teg was dying, might already be dead. The aged Bashar could no longer hold himself upright.

"Go - damn it!" They were the last words Teg could force out of his mouth.

Thinking with Mentat clarity, Duncan whipped back to the control panels, vowing not to waste what the Bashar had done for them. Priorities.

He reached the piloting board, where his fingers skittered like a startled spider across the controls.

Teg crumpled to the deck, arms and legs akimbo, as dead as a dried leaf, older even than the first old Bashar had been in the last moments of Rakis. Miles!

All their years together, teaching, learning, relying on each other. Few people in all of Duncan's many lives had ever mattered so much.

He drove away his thoughts of shocked grief, but Mentat memory kept every experience clear and sharp. Miles! Teg was no more than an ancient husk on the floorplates. Duncan had no time for anger or tears.

The no-ship began to accelerate. He still saw how to slip out of the cruel net, but now he also had to contend with the entire fleet of Enemy ships. They had cut loose with a second volley.

The blurred crackle ahead seemed to invite them. Duncan steered toward it, moving as fast as his human reflexes could go. The no-ship ripped the stubborn strands free.

"Come on!" Duncan said, willing it to happen.

More blasts glanced across the Ithaca's hull, grazing the ship as it yawed and rolled.

Duncan steered with all of his skill.

The Holtzman engines were hot and the diagnostic boards showed numerous errors and system failures, but none were immediately fatal faults. Duncan pushed the vessel closer and closer to the loophole. The Enemy ships couldn't head them off, couldn't move fast enough to stop them.

More of the net broke away. Duncan could see it happening.

He forced his attention back to the engines, applying acceleration far beyond what the systems normally allowed. In his frantic repairs, Teg had not bothered with the niceties of fail-safes and protective limitations. With increased velocity, they pulled free of the enclosing cordon.

"We're going to make it!" Duncan said to the fallen Bashar, as if his friend could still hear him.

A giant torpedo-shaped Enemy vessel leapt forward. No human could possibly pilot a ship so swiftly, changing directions with g-forces that would snap bones like a handful of straw in a clenched fist. Burning its engines, the attacker exhausted all of its fuel in one burst of forward motion - throwing the craft directly into their path.

With his maneuvering already hampered, Duncan could not dodge in time. The no-ship was too huge, with too much inertia. Impossibly, the suicidal Enemy vessel scraped the lower hull of the Ithaca, knocking it off course, damaging the engines yet again. The unexpected impact sent the no-ship spinning. The Enemy rammer tumbled and exploded, and the shock wave knocked them farther off course, out of control... back into the remaining strands of the net.

Duncan uttered a curse in dismay and rage.

Unable to fold space, the no-ship dropped back, its engines whining. The bridge control panels blazed red, then went dim. A small internal explosion further damaged the Holtzman engines. The Ithaca hung motionless in space. Again.

"I'm sorry, Bashar," Duncan said, heartbroken. With nothing else to do, he knelt beside the husk of his friend.

A message formed on the primary screen on the bridge, a powerful transmission from the surrounding battleships. Even in his stunned sorrow, Duncan was surprised to see the true face of the Enemy at last.

The smooth flowmetal face of a sentient machine appeared on the screen. "You are our prisoners. Your vessel is no longer capable of independent flight. We will deliver you to the evermind Omnius."

Thinking machines!

Duncan struggled to understand what he was seeing and hearing. Omnius? The evermind?

The Enemy, posing as a kindly old couple, were really thinking machines? Impossible!

Thinking machines had been outlawed for thousands of years, and the last evermind had been destroyed in the Battle of Corrin at the end of the Butlerian Jihad.

Machines? Somehow allied with the new Face Dancers?

The Enemy ships pounced like hyenas on a fresh carcass.

***

- BARON VLADIMIR HARKONNEN, the ghola

Trapped by the machine fleet, the Ithaca was held captive with its engines damaged and weapons burned out. Duncan could do nothing but wait and mourn his dead friend.

Consequences and memories roared around him. He moved methodically, relying on Mentat focus to perform even simple actions.

Sheeana was beside him on the navigation bridge. Though she prided herself in Bene Gesserit purity, holding all emotions at bay, she seemed profoundly troubled as the two of them picked up Teg's body from where it lay crumpled on the deck. Duncan couldn't believe how fragile and lightweight the Bashar's remains were. He seemed to be made of spiderwebs and sinew, dried leaves and hollow bone.

"Miles gave his life for all of us," Duncan said.

"Two times," she said.

Her remark made Duncan think of all the lives of his own he had given for the Atreides.

In a raspy voice, he said, "This time, the sacrifice was for nothing. Miles used up his entire life span to give us the repairs we needed, and I couldn't break us free. He shouldn't have done it."

Sheeana fixed a hard look on him. "He shouldn't have tried? We're humans. We have to try, no matter what the odds are. There are never any guarantees. Every action in life is a gamble. The Bashar fought to the last instant of his existence, because he believed there was a chance. I intend to do the same."

Duncan looked down at the sunken, mummified face of his friend, remembering all the determination and hard training the old Bashar had given him when he was a young ghola.

Sheeana was right. Even though Duncan hadn't been able to free the Ithaca and let them escape, he and Miles had shown the Enemy that humans were unpredictable and resilient, that they were not to be underestimated. And it wasn't over yet. Instead of a simple capture, the thinking machines had been forced to sacrifice one of their largest battleships simply to stop them.

"We'll take him to one of the small airlocks," he announced. Since their every movement was now dictated by the Enemy ships that dragged them along, it was pointless to remain at the controls. "I have no intention of letting the thinking machines have him."

The remnants of the Bashar would fly alone into the cosmos. The rest of them might be trapped, to be used in thinking-machine experiments, or for whatever reason the old man and woman had been pursuing them over the decades. But not Miles. This act would be another small victory - and enough small victories could win an entire war.

They arrived at one of the chambers, which Duncan recognized as the same airlock he had used to jettison Murbella's last possessions, items that had clung to him like cobwebs until he forced himself to let go. They placed the tragically lightweight husk of Teg's body inside the chamber and sealed it. Duncan looked through the observation port, saying his last goodbyes.

"It isn't the ceremony I would have imagined for him. Last time, the Bashar had all of Rakis for his funeral pyre. But there's no time." Before he could have second thoughts, Duncan pushed the button that evacuated the airlock, opening the outside hatch so that the body tumbled out into the void. "We should summon everyone aboard the ship and prepare our defenses."

"What defenses?"

He looked at her. "Anything we can think of." shouldered forward BY a hundred thinking-machine vessels, the battered no-ship was forced down into Synchrony, where shifting buildings moved aside to form an acceptable place for the captured craft to land.

The now-visible Ithaca descended like a trussed wild animal, the trophy of big game hunters.

Baron Harkonnen thought it a glorious sight. From an extruded balcony in one of Omnius's capricious high towers, he studied the vessel as it descended. The no-ship's configuration was unfamiliar to him, massive but not as intimidating as he'd imagined it would be. This design was much more organic and alien-looking than huge Guild Heighliners, deadly Sardaukar craft, House Harkonnen military vessels, or his own family frigates.

It seemed to be convergent evolution, eerily similar to the flow-form curves of the thinking-machine structures.

Strange ship, strange passengers.

According to initial reports from the machine scouts who had seized the no-ship, many of those aboard were gholas from his own past, annoyances resurrected from history, exactly as Erasmus had suspected - Lady Jessica, another Paul Atreides, a minor Swordmaster named Duncan Idaho, and who knew how many others? Gholas coughed up and spat out like wads of phlegm.

A keyed-up Paolo stood beside him on the balcony, facing the makeshift spaceport that waited to accommodate the new vessel. "Will we kill them all, Grandfather? I don't want there to be another Kwisatz Haderach. I'm supposed to be the only one.

I should take the ultraspice that Khrone delivered right now."

"I would have you do it if I could, dear boy, but Omnius won't permit that. Be patient.

Even if there is another version of Paul Atreides aboard that no-ship, he's probably soft and compassionate. He doesn't have the advantage of being toughened by me."

The Baron's full lips curled down in distaste. Paolo himself didn't realize just how much of his fundamental personality had been changed. "You will have no trouble defeating him."

"I have already visualized it," Paolo replied. "Real, prescient dreams - and now I understand what is going to happen."

"Then you have nothing to worry about."

The Omnius-formed buildings swayed like reeds, then embraced the battered no-ship as it landed, pulling the Ithaca down into a living metal cradle. The landing and lockdown process seemed interminable.

Was it really necessary for so many structural braces to fold around the ship like claws?

Considering the obvious damage to the engines, the captives could never find a way to launch the vessel again. However, Omnius had a penchant for doing things in a brute-force manner. The Baron could understand that.

Presently Erasmus appeared on the balcony, once again disguised as a matronly old woman. Gazing dispassionately at the robot, the Baron announced, "I will go aboard the no-ship. I want to be the first to" - his lips quirked in a smile - "greet our visitors."

The old woman's eyes twinkled. "Are you certain that would be wise, Baron? We aren't sure yet exactly who is aboard the vessel. You could be in peril if anyone recognizes you. In your past life, quite a few people were not entirely pleased with you."

"I certainly don't intend to go unprotected! In fact, I expect you to provide me with full security.

Some of your sentinel robots, perhaps - or better yet, an armed contingent of Face Dancers.

Paolo will remain here safe, but I will go aboard." He planted his hands on his hips. "In fact, I demand it."

Erasmus seemed amused. "In that case, we had better give you the Face Dancers. Go aboard, Baron, and be our ambassador. I'm sure you will employ all the diplomacy the situation requires."

***

- MOTHER COMMANDER MURBELLA, transmission to human defensive forces Ten thousand Guildships against an infinite number of Enemy vessels.

For this confrontation, the Mother Commander had prepared all the warlords, political leaders and other self-proclaimed generals, as well as her ferocious Sisters - what remained of them. Spread out across the path of the oncoming thinking-machine forces, her human defenders dug themselves in.

Guildsmen had been rushed in at the last minute to help crew the numerous battleships, launching them to their designated rendezvous points in space. The untested military commanders were as ready as the Mother Commander could make them. Like ghost soldiers, red-eyed refugees from planets already ground under the machine boot heel volunteered in droves. Each craft was loaded with Obliterators produced by the tireless Ixian factories.

Unfortunately, Omnius had been preparing for centuries.

Like a force of nature, the thinking machines advanced, not dodging or changing course, without regard to the strength of planetary defenses arrayed against them. They simply rolled over anything in their path.

For Murbella's plan to work, the line of Enemy ships had to be stopped at every point, in every star system. No battleground was unimportant. She had divided her defenders into a hundred discrete groups of one hundred new Guild warships apiece. The battle groups were positioned at widely scattered but important points outside inhabited systems, ready to fend off the approaching Enemy.

As a last line of defense, Murbella's one hundred newly constructed vessels patrolled space in the vicinity of Chapterhouse, along with a number of smaller, older vessels to flesh out the military force. They knew Omnius considered this planet a primary target. Waiting for the clash, the Mother Commander thought her new ships looked magnificent, the line formidable. The fighters aboard were more confident than afraid.

By the New Sisterhood's best estimates, though, the thinking machines outnumbered them by more than a hundred to one.

To shore up their confidence, the fighters had all watched holos of the Ixian tests of the new Obliterators on dead Richese, admiring the massive destructive force contained in each of the powerful weapons. Bene Gesserit observers had monitored the Ixian production lines, and technicians had verified the complex weapons after they were installed in Murbella's fleet. She clung to the hope that this line of last stands could turn into a rout for the forces of Omnius.

More than she had for the past quarter century, the Mother Commander wished Duncan Idaho could be at her side again, facing this final conflict with her. Feeling the loneliness of command, tempted to bow to primitive human superstition and offer up a prayer to some invisible guardian angel, she hardened herself.

This has to work!

Her great ships prowled the edge of planetary orbit, not knowing from which direction the Enemy fleet would come. Down below, the refugees who had filled temporary camps on the plague-emptied continents were anxious to evacuate from Chapterhouse, but even if there were vessels to transport them away, they had nowhere to go. Every functional craft in the sector had been commandeered to face the thinking-machine ships. It was everything the human race could rally.

"Enemy ships approaching, Mother Commander," said Administrator Gorus, receiving a message from the sensor deck. His pale braid looked somewhat frayed, his skin whiter than usual. He had been convinced to stay aboard the main ship at the central battlefield, to stand by the new ships his factories had produced; he didn't look at all happy about it.

"Exactly on time. Exactly as expected," Murbella said. "Disperse our vessels into the widest possible firing spread, so we can hit the Enemy all at once, before they can react to us.

Machines are adaptable, but they rarely take the unexpected into account."

Gorus looked at her sourly. "Are you making assumptions based on old records, Mother Commander? Extrapolating from the way Omnius reacted fifteen thousand years ago?"

"To some extent, but I trust my instincts."

As the heavily armed machine ships approached, they looked like a meteor shower that grew larger and larger. The monstrous vessels loomed huge - thousands of them against the Sisterhood's desperate hundred. All along the line, at a hundred other systems, she knew her defenders were facing similar odds.

"Prepare to launch Obliterators. Stop them before they get any closer to Chapterhouse."

Murbella crossed her arms over her chest. Across the commlines, each captain announced his or her readiness.

The oncoming machine ships slowed, as if curious to see what this small obstacle might be.

They will underestimate us, Murbella thought. "Maximize targets. Fire into close groupings of Enemy ships. Consolidate explosions."

"Targets locked, Mother Commander," Gorus said, his message transmitted immediately by his sensor technicians.

Murbella had to preempt the thinking machines before they could open fire. "Launch Obliterators." She held herself steady.

Silver sparks spat out of the launch tubes, Obliterators twirling toward the line of Enemy ships, but the glints faded. Nothing happened, though some of the heavy weapons must have struck their targets. The machine vessels seemed to be waiting for something.

She looked around. "Confirm that the Obliterators are armed. Where are the explosions?

Launch the second volley!"

Alarms began to ring. In a frenzy, Gorus ran from one station to another, shouting at the Guildsmen on the upper decks. A harried-looking Reverend Mother charged into the command center, skidding to a stop in front of Murbella. "Our Obliterators are doing nothing.

They are all useless."

"But they were tested! Our Sisters watched the manufacturing lines. How could they be faulty?"

Then, all at once, the one hundred Chapterhouse defender ships went dead in space, their engines shutting down, lights flickering. The thrum of station-keeping thrusters faded.

"What is happening?" Gorus demanded. "Sabotage? Were we betrayed?"

As if they had expected this all along, the machine ships closed in.

A Guildsman transmitted in a hollow voice over the speaking screen, "The artificial navigation systems no longer respond, Administrator. We are shut out of our own controls.

Our ships are ... nonfunctional." Emergency lights lit the decks with an eerie glow.

"Did the machines figure out how to neutralize our systems?"

Gorus turned to Murbella. "No jamming, Mother Commander. They ... they just don't work.

None of them."

Suddenly the machine forces were upon them, a thousand vessels that would easily overwhelm the defenders. Murbella prepared to die. Her fighters could not protect themselves, or Chapterhouse, which she had sworn to guard.

But instead of attacking, the Enemy fleet cruised slowly past the defenders, taunting them in their impotence. The machines did not bother to open fire, as if the Sisterhood's defenses weren't even worth noticing!

Far behind them, just arriving at the distant edge of the solar system, came another wave of thinking machines, closing in on Chapterhouse. The same thing must be happening everywhere, at all of her carefully staged last stands across a hundred star systems.

"They knew! The damned machines knew our Obliterators wouldn't work!" As if Murbella's vessels were no more than a pebble on the path, the Omnius ships flowed around them on their way to the Sisterhood's now-unprotected homeworld.

Not one of her new Guild war vessels had a living Navigator aboard; most of the Navigators and their Heighliners had disappeared. Every ship in her battle groups used Ixian mathematical compilers for guidance. Mathematical compilers! Computers ... thinking machines.

The Ixians! Now her silent curse was directed at herself for overconfidence in the new Obliterators and her own ability to predict the Enemy's tactics.

"Follow me, Administrator. I want to see these Obliterators for myself." She grabbed Gorus's arm hard enough to leave bruises.

Guided by emergency illumination, they rushed to the weapons deck where the armaments had been installed. Inside, rack upon rack held the burnished silver eggs of the planet-melters that Ix had manufactured. A distraught Guildsman intercepted them.

"We tested the weapons, Administrator, and they were installed correctly. The firing controls are operational. We just launched dozens of Obliterators, but none of them detonated."

"Why didn't they function?"

"Because ... because the Obliterators themselves ..."

Murbella marched over to where the man had opened one casing at random. Beneath a complicated labyrinth of circuitry and delicate components, the Obliterator charge was fused into the shell of the mechanism, making the whole thing inoperable. The weapon had been neutralized.

"It is useless, Mother Commander," said Gorus. "Sabotaged."

"But I saw the tests myself. How can this be?"

"A timing mechanism may have shut everything down at a prearranged time, or the Enemy fleet might have sent out a deactivating signal. Some devious trick that we could not have anticipated."

Murbella stood appalled, guilty of the same error she had been so certain the machines would fall victim to: She had failed to plan for the unexpected. Together, they opened another Obliterator to find it similarly fused and nonfunctional. A coldness froze her heart and spread into her bloodst am. These weapons had been built over the course of years by the Ixians, at a cost in melange that nearly bankrupted the Sisterhood.

She had been duped, and her fleet had been castrated by the Ixians before the battle could even begin.

"And what about our engines?"

"They can be made to function, if we operate them without the mathematical compilers."

"I don't give a damn about the compilers! Find a way to salvage some of the Obliterators.

Are they all inactive? Every single one?"

"The only way to know, Mother Commander, is to open and inspect each of them."

"We could just launch them all and hope a few still function." Murbella nodded slowly.

It was indeed an option. At this point, it cost them nothing. She had to find some way to fight, and she hoped her other battle groups were faring better than this ... but she doubted it.

Without functional Obliterators, every one of the planets on the front line was essentially unprotected in the face of certain destruction.

And it was all her responsibility.

***

- BARON VLADIMIR HARKONNEN, the ghola

On a whim, the Baron told the ten Face Dancers accompanying him to pose as Sardaukar from the old Imperium. He didn't know if anyone would even recognize the joke - fashions changed and history forgot such details - but it helped him present an air of command.

During his original lifetime he had achieved a great victory over House Atreides with illicit Sardaukar at his side.

Leaving the restless Paolo with Erasmus, supposedly "for his own protection," the Baron dressed himself in a nobleman's uniform frosted with gold braids and ornate chains of office. A ceremonial poison-tipped dagger hung at his side, and a wide-beam stunner was concealed in his sleeve for easy access. Though the imitation Sardaukar were his guards and escort, he didn't particularly trust them, either. One could never be too careful.

When the Baron's entourage marched to the imprisoned no-ship, however, they could not find a door on the kilometer-long hull - a frustrating and embarrassing moment, but Omnius was not to be hindered. Guided by the evermind, parts of nearby buildings transformed into gigantic tools that tore open the hull, peeling away plates and structural girders to leave a wide gash. Brute force was easier and more direct than locating an appropriate hatch and deciphering unfamiliar controls.

With the no-ship suitably opened, the Baron and his escort ducked under low-hanging debris and sparking circuitry. Prepared for an ambush, but moving with an outward show of confidence, they made their way through the winding corridors. Several of Omnius's floating watcheyes zoomed ahead of them down the passageways to scout out and map the interior of the vessel.

The captives would surely see that surrender was their only option. What other conclusion could they draw? Unfortunately, in his original lifetime the Baron had had considerable experience with fanatics, such as the mad Fremen bands on Arrakis. It was possible that these poor wretches intended to mount a desperate, hopeless resistance until they were all slaughtered, including the purported Kwisatz Haderach among them.

Paolo would then be the only contender, and that would be that.

Inside the no-ship, they first encountered Duncan Idaho and a defiant-looking Bene Gesserit woman who identified herself as Sheeana. The two waited for the boarding party in the middle of a wide corridor. The Baron only vaguely remembered the man from the records of House Atreides: a Swordmaster of Ginaz, one of Duke Leto's most trusted fighters, killed on Arrakis while protecting Paul and Jessica in their escape.

From the sneer on Idaho's face, he could tell that this ghola had his memories back, too.

"Oh ho, I see that you know me."

Idaho didn't budge. "I escaped from Giedi Prime as a boy, Baron. I beat Rabban on one of his hunts. I've lived many lifetimes since then. This time, I hope to watch you die with my own eyes."

"How boldly you speak, like one of those yipping dogs Emperor Shaddam used to keep at his side: full of annoying barks and growls, yet easily stepped on." Protected by the Face Dancer Sardaukar, he peered ahead down the hall. "How many people do you have aboard?" He snapped. "Bring them forward for our inspection."

"We have already assembled," Sheeana said. "We're ready for you."

The Baron sighed. "And no doubt you've scattered commandos or snipers throughout the decks? Your personnel records will have been doctored. A childish resistance that may cause us a few headaches, but will gain you nothing. We have enough troops to mow all of you down."

"It would be foolish for us to resist," Sheeana said, "at least in such obvious ways."

The Baron scowled, and he heard the little girl's voice inside his head. She is playing with your mind, Grandfather!

"So are you!" he hissed to himself, startling the others.

"Five hundred more of our men are coming aboard," said the counterfeit Sardaukar commander. "Mobile machine sensors will scour every chamber on every deck, and we'll find anything there is to find. We will locate the Kwisatz Haderach."

"A Kwisatz Haderach?" Idaho asked. "Is that what the old man and woman have been looking for? On this ship? You're welcome to waste your time."

Sheeana added harshly, "If we had a superman aboard, you would never have been able to capture us."

That remark disturbed the Baron. At the back of his mind he heard the maddening voice of Alia chuckling at his discomfiture. His face flushed, but he forced himself not to speak aloud.

What a fool, debating with the unheard voice of an invisible tormentor!

New groups came down the no-ship corridors to gather in front of him like troops for inspection.

One small-statured teenaged ghola unsettled him the most. The young man was thin and sallow-skinned, his face etched in a scowl. His eyes burned with hatred for the Baron, though he did not find the fellow at all familiar. He wondered what he had done to that one.

Look more closely, Grandfather. Surely you recognize him? He almost killed you!

I swear I will find some way to rip you out of my head!

With a neutral expression on his face, he looked again at the dour ghola, and suddenly understood the crude black diamond marked on his forehead. "Why, it's Yueh! My dear Dr.

Yueh, how good to see you again. I never got a chance to tell you how much you helped the Harkonnen cause so long ago. Glad to see that I have an unexpected ally aboard this ship."

Yueh looked skinny and ineffectual, yet the gleam in his eyes was genuinely murderous.

"I am not your ally."

"You are a weak little worm. It was easy enough to manipulate you before - I can do it again."

The Baron was surprised that the scrawny man did not back down. This version of Yueh seemed stronger, perhaps transformed by the lessons of his ignominious past.

"You no longer have leverage over me, Baron. You have no Wanna. Even if you did, I would not repeat my earlier mistakes." Crossing his arms over his narrow chest, he thrust his pointed chin forward.

The Baron turned abruptly from the Suk doctor as even more no-ship captives came forward. One bronze-haired young woman of about eighteen looked exactly like the lovely Lady Jessica. The way she viewed him with palpable revulsion proved that this ghola also had her memories restored. Did Jessica know she was really his own daughter?

What entertaining conversations they might have!

Standing protectively beside the youthful Jessica were a younger woman dressed as a Fremen and a dark-haired young man - the perfect image of Paolo, only older. "Why, is this young Paul? Another Paul Atreides?"

A swift slash, a mere nick from the poisoned dagger, and the rival Kwisatz Haderach would be gone. But he shuddered to think how Omnius would react to that. The Baron wanted Paolo to assume his position of power, of course, but he wasn't willing to sacrifice his own life for the boy. Though the Baron had raised and trained Paolo, he was still, after all, an Atreides.

"Hello, Grandfather," Paul said. "I remember you as being much older and fatter."

The Baron found the demeanor and tone irritating. And even worse, he felt an odd, swooning sensation ... as if Paul had always been meant to say this, as if he had seen it in a dozen different visions.

Still, the Baron clapped his hands in mock applause. "Isn't ghola technology marvelous?

This is like an encore at the end of one of the Emperor's tedious jongleur performances.

All back together again for a second run, eh?"

Paul stiffened. "House Atreides crushed the Harkonnens into extinction long ago.

I anticipate a similar outcome now."

"Oh, ho!" Though amused, the Baron-ghola didn't step any closer. He gestured to his Sardaukar guard. "Have a doctor and a dentist look them over before they get close to me.

Pay particular attention to their teeth. Look for poison capsules."

Having fulfilled his purpose, the Baron was about to march out of the no-ship when, among the gathered refugees, he spotted a small girl who stood quietly beside a thin boy of around twelve years, watching everything. Both had an Atreides look about them. He froze, recognizing Alia.

Not only had this bloodthirsty child jabbed him with the poison gom jabbar and haunted his thoughts, now she even stood before him! Look, Grandfather - now we can torment you inside and out!

Her voice pierced him like ice picks in his head.

The Baron reacted, not caring about consequences. Snatching the ceremonial dagger from his hip, he grabbed the little girl by the collar and raised the blade. "They called you Abomination!"

Alia fought like a rabid animal, but didn't scream. Her tiny feet drove with surprising power into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. The Baron reeled, and without a second's hesitation, thrust the poisoned tip deep into her side. It went in easily.

He yanked the knife back out and stabbed again, this time directly into Alia's heart.

Jessica screamed. Paul rushed forward, but too late. Duncan roared with anger and shock, and threw himself at the nearest Sardaukar guard, killing him with a bone-shattering blow to the throat. He struck a second guard, snapping his neck as well, and charged toward the Baron like a wild creature. The Baron didn't even have time to feel fear before his guards closed ranks around him, and four others held Duncan back. The rest of the faux Sardaukar raised their guns to keep the shocked captives at bay.

Regaining his composure, the Baron sneered down at the little girl dying swiftly in his grip.

"That's turnabout for killing me." Laughing at the blood on his hands, he tossed her to the floor like a discarded doll. And inside, not a sound from his tormentor. Was she gone as well?

Murderous desperation showed on the faces of the nearby captives, making the Baron uneasy. With Face Dancer Sardaukar surrounding him protectively, he backed away smiling.

The two dead soldiers had reverted to Face Dancers, and none of the captives seemed the least bit surprised.

The Atreides rabble gathered around the murdered child while the Sardaukar picked up their comrades.

Sheeana stopped Duncan from lunging forward in another suicidal attack. "One death is enough, Duncan."

"No it's not. It is only a start." He controlled himself with a visible effort. "But it will have to do for now."

The Baron laughed, and the Face Dancers hurried him away. When he looked at his escort, the shape-shifters showed disapproval at what he had done. "What? I don't have to justify my reasons to you. At least that Abomination is gone now."

Gone, you say? A little girl's loud titter like breaking glass inside his skull.

Gone? You can't discard me so easily! I was rooted inside your head before that ghola was ever born.

The voice grew louder. Now I shall torment you more than ever. You leave me no choice but to serve as your con* science, Grandfather.

The Baron marched away at a faster pace, trying to shut out her mocking presence.

***

- a warrior of Old Terra

While the thinking machines maintained a tight cordon around the no-ship, Sheeana watched Jessica carry little Alia's body away. How painful it must be for her. With her memories restored, Jessica knew intimately who Alia really was and understood her great potential.

How bitterly ironic, too. St. Alia of the Knife - felled by a knife.

Jessica cradled the limp child in her arms, shuddering as she fought to contain sobs.

When she looked up at Sheeana, there was a cold deadliness in Jessica's eyes. Duncan stood beside Jessica, his face a mask of grim anger. "We'll have our revenge, my Lady. So many of us despise the Baron, he can't survive for long." Even Yueh sat coiled and dangerous, like a loaded weapon.

Paul and Chani clasped hands, drawing strength from each other. Leto II watched in silence, undoubtedly holding an avalanche of conflicting thoughts in his mind. The boy always seemed to have so much more to him, like a giant iceberg whose bulk was concealed beneath the surface. Sheeana had long suspected that he might be the most powerful of all the gholas she had created.

Jessica held her head high, finding strength within her. "We'll take her to my quarters.

Duncan, would you help me?" Dr. Yueh, desperate for forgiveness, hovered close to them.

Filled with anxiety, frustration, and anger, Sheeana watched the tableau. In addition to losing the Bashar, Alia had been murdered, while three key gholas - Paul, Chani, and Leto II -

remained unawakened. Stilgar and Liet-Kynes were left on Qelso, and Thufir Hawat had been a Face Dancer. Now that they were facing the Enemy and needed the ghola children to fulfill their destinies, too many of her "weapons" were not available to her! She had only Yueh, and Jessica ... and Scytale, if she could count on the Tleilaxu.

Exhaustion threatened to overwhelm Sheeana. They had fled for so long, carrying their plans and hopes, but never finding an end. This, though, was not at all what they had hoped for.

The quiet and distant voice of Serena Butler awakened within her again, angered by the revelation about the Enemy. She spoke from firsthand knowledge.

The evil machines have always wanted to exterminate humanity. They do not know how to forget.

"But they were destroyed," Sheeana said aloud.

Apparently not. Trillions of people died during the Butlerian Jihad, but even that was not enough. In the end, I was not enough.

"I am pleased to meet you finally," said a raspy female voice. A lone old woman strolled down the no-ship's corridor, a broad grin on her wrinkled face. Despite her apparent age, she moved fluidly and had a deadly look to her.

Sheeana immediately guessed that this must be the mysterious old woman who was their relentless hunter. "Duncan has told us about you."

The woman smiled in an unnerving manner, as if she could see through Sheeana to her innermost thoughts and intentions. "You were quite a troublesome quarry. All those years wasted. Have you guessed my true identity yet?"

"You are the Enemy."

Abruptly the crone's face, body, and clothing rippled like molten, flowing metal.

At first Sheeana thought this was another Face Dancer, but the head and body took on a sheen of highly polished platinum, and the matronly clothes became a plush robe.

The face was smooth, with the same smile set in radically different features. A robot.

Deep in her consciousness, Sheeana felt a tumult in Other Memory. And out of the clamor, Serena Butler's familiar voice rose to cry, Erasmus! Destroy him!

With great effort she shunted aside the voices in Other Memory, and said, "You are Erasmus. The one who killed Serena Butler's child, setting off the centuries-long Jihad against thinking machines."

"So I am still remembered, even after all this time." The robot sounded pleased.

"Serena remembers you, all right. She is within me, and she hates you."

Pure delight shone on the robot's face. "Serena Butler herself is in there? Ah yes, I know about your Other Memory. Face Dancers have brought many of you Bene Gesserits back to us."

Inside her, the clamor of memories returned. "I am Serena Butler, and she is me.

Though thousands of years have passed, the pain is as sharp as ever. We cannot forget what you destroyed, and what you started."

"It was only one life - merely a baby. Logically, can't you see how your race overreacted?"

The robot sounded so reasonable.

Sheeana felt a change in the tenor and cadence of her own voice, as if her body were being taken over by a force within. "Only one life? Merely a baby?" Serena was speaking now, thrusting herself to the forefront of the innumerable lives. Sheeana let her talk. After such a great length of time, this was Serena's confrontation with her greatest nemesis. "That one life led to the military defeat of your entire Synchronized Empire. The Butlerian Jihad was a Kralizec in its own right. The end of that war changed the course of the universe."

Erasmus seemed delighted by the comparison. "Ah, interesting. And perhaps the end of this Kralizec will reverse that result and put thinking machines in charge again.

If so, we will be much more efficient this time."

"That is how you foresee the end of Kralizec?"

"That would be my preference. Something fundamental must change. Can I count on you to assist me?"

"Never." Serena's projected voice was cold and implacable.

Looking at the independent robot, Sheeana understood more than ever before that she was part of something far greater and more important than one life, that she was linked to a vast continuum of female ancestry stretching into the past and - hopefully - into the future. A remarkable assemblage, but would it survive?

"There is a familiar fire in your eyes. If any part of you is indeed Serena Butler, then we must catch up on old times." Erasmus's optic threads gleamed.

"She no longer wishes to converse with you," Sheeana said in her own voice.

Erasmus ignored the rebuff. "Take me to your private quarters. A human's den reveals much about the individual personality."

"I will not."

The robot's voice hardened. "Be reasonable. Or should I decapitate a few of your fellow passengers to encourage your cooperation? Ask Serena Butler inside you - she knows I will do it."

Sheeana glared at him.

The robot continued in a calm tone, "But a simple conversation with you in your quarters may slake my appetite for now. Wouldn't you prefer that to carnage?"

Motioning for the others to remain behind, Sheeana turned her back on the robot and walked to one of the still-functional lifts. With gliding footsteps, Erasmus followed.

In her chamber, the robot was intrigued by the preserved Van Gogh painting. Cottages at Cordeville was one of the oldest artifacts of human civilization. Standing rigidly, Erasmus admired the artwork. "Ah, yes! I remember this clearly. I painted it myself."

"It is the work of a nineteenth-century Terran artist, Vincent Van Gogh."

"I have studied the Madman of France with great interest, but I assure you, this is actually one of the canvases I myself painted thousands of years ago. I copied the original with the utmost attention to detail."

She wondered if he could possibly be telling the truth.

Erasmus removed the delicate painting from the wall and examined it closely, passing his metal fingertips over the thin plaz that protected the rough oil-paint surface.

"Yes, well do I remember each stroke, each whorl, each point of color. Truly, this is a work of genius."

Sheeana caught her breath, knowing how old and priceless it was. Unless it really was a forgery perpetrated long ago. "The original was a work of genius. If this is what you say, then all you did was copy someone else's masterpiece. There can be only one original."

His optic threads gleamed like a galaxy of stars. "If it is the same, exactly the same, then both are works of genius. If my copy is perfect down to every single brushstroke, does it not become a second original?"

"Van Gogh was a man of creativity and inspiration. You merely mimicked his work.

You might as well call a Face Dancer a work of art."

Erasmus smiled. "Some of them are."

Abruptly, with powerful hands, the robot ripped the painting and its frame into tiny pieces. As if putting a punctuation mark on the grotesque display, Erasmus whirled and stomped on the broken pieces, saying, "Call this artistic temperament." Moving to depart, he added,

"Omnius will summon your Kwisatz Haderach soon. We have waited a long time for this."

***

- ERASMUS, Laboratory Notebooks

The independent robot's memories of Serena were as fresh as if the events had occurred only days ago. Serena Butler ... such a fascinating woman. And just as Erasmus had survived through the millennia as a package of data nearly destroyed and then recovered, so Serena's memories and personality lived on, somehow, in the Other Memories of the Bene Gesserit.

This posed an intriguing question: No Bene Gesserits could be Serena Butler's direct descendants, for Erasmus had killed her only child. Then again, he couldn't be sure what had happened to all of his experimental clones over the years. He had tried many times to bring Serena back, with no success.

Aboard this no-ship, however, the humans had grown gholas from their past, just as his own plan had brought back Baron Harkonnen and a version of Paul Atreides. Erasmus knew that a nullentropy tube hidden in a Tleilaxu Master had contained a wealth of ancient and carefully gathered cells.

He was confident that a real Tleilaxu Master could succeed in bringing Serena back, where his own primitive experiments had failed.

Erasmus and Omnius had both absorbed enough Face Dancers to have instinctive reverence for the abilities of a Master. The independent robot knew exactly where he had to go before leaving the no-ship.

Erasmus found the medical center and the axlotl chambers where the whole library of historical cells had been catalogued and stored. If Serena Butler was among them ...

He was surprised to find a Tleilaxu already there, harried and frantic. The diminutive man had disconnected the life-support systems of the axlotl tanks. With his olfactory sensors, Erasmus noted the smells of chemicals, melange precursors, and human flesh. He grinned.

"You must be Scytale, the Tleilaxu Master! It's been a long time."

Scytale whirled, looking fearful at the sight of the robot.

Erasmus took a step closer, and studied the Tleilaxu's face. "A child? What are you doing?"

The Tleilaxu drew himself up. "I am destroying the tanks and the melange they produce.

I had to surrender that knowledge as a bargaining chip. I won't let thinking machines and traitorous Face Dancers simply take it from me - from us."

Erasmus showed no concern for the sabotaged axlotl tanks. "But you appear to be very young."

"I am a ghola. I have my memories back. I am everything that any of my previous incarnations were."

"Of course you are. Such a marvelous process, perpetuating yourself through serial ghola lives. We machines understand such things, although we have much more efficient methods of performing data transfers and backups." He looked intensely at the genetic library that held the potential ghola cells ... Serena Butler ...

Noting the robot's keen interest, the Tleilaxu sprang to stand in front of the sealed wall of specimens. "Beware! The witches placed security sensors on these gene samples to prevent anyone from tampering with or stealing them. The library has a built-in self-destruct system." He narrowed his dark, rodentlike eyes. If this Master was bluffing, he was doing a remarkably convincing job. "I need only yank on a drawer, and this entire cabinet will be flooded with gamma radiation, enough to ionize every single sample."

"Why?" The robot was perplexed. "After the Bene Gesserit took those cells from you and used them for their own purposes? Didn't they force you to cooperate? Would you truly stand on their side?" He extended a platinum hand. "Join us instead. I would greatly reward you for your assistance in growing one particular ghola - "

In a threatening motion, Scytale placed his small hand on one of the many cell containers.

Though trembling, he seemed entirely determined. "Yes, I would stand with them. I shall always stand against the thinking machines."

"Interesting. New enemies make unexpected alliances."

The Tleilaxu didn't move. "In the final assessment, we're all humans - and you are not."

Erasmus chuckled. "And what about Face Dancers? They fall between, don't they? These aren't the shape-shifters you produced long ago, but are instead far superior biological machines that I helped create. And because of them, Omnius and I are, in effect, the greatest of all Face Dancers - among many other things."

Scytale didn't move. "Haven't you noticed the Face Dancers are no longer reliable?"

"Ah, but they are reliable to me."

"Are you sure?"

The robot took a tentative step forward, testing. Scytale tensed his fingers on the handle of the sample cabinet. Erasmus amplified his voice. "Stop!" He eased himself backward, giving the Tleilaxu Master more room. There would be plenty of time to return and test Scytale's loyalties. "I leave you to this facility and your cellular samples."

Erasmus had waited more than fifteen thousand years for Serena, and could continue to do so. For now, the robot had to return to the machine cathedral and prepare for the final show.

The evermind was not quite so patient to achieve his ultimate goals as Erasmus was.

***

- from an ancient ballad by GURNEY HALLECK

The computer evermind sent his troops to bring Paul from the Ithaca to the machines'

cathedral-like nexus. New-model robotic guards swarmed down the corridors like quicksilver insects. Approaching Paul, one of them said, "Come with us to the primary cathedral."

Chani grabbed his arm and held on, as if she too had sprouted metal hands. "I will not let you go, Usul."

Looking at the inhuman escorts, he said to her, "We can't keep them from taking me."

"Then I shall come with you." He tried to argue with her, but she cut him off. "I am a Fremen woman. Would you try to stop me? You might just as easily fight these machines."

Concealing a small smile, he faced the sleek machines that clicked and flittered in front of him. "I will accompany you without resistance, but only if Chani comes with me."

Emerging from her quarters where Alias body now lay on the narrow bed, Jessica placed herself between Paul and the robots. Bloodstains still marked her shipsuit. "He is my son. I have already lost a daughter today, and cannot bear to lose him as well.

I'm going with you."

"We are here to escort Paul Atreides to the primary cathedral," one of the robots said, its freeform face flowing like heavy rain on a Caladan window. "There are no other restrictions."

Paul took that as agreement. For some reason, Omnius wanted him, even though he did not have his memories back. All other passengers and crew were apparently extraneous baggage. Had he been the subject of the hunt from the beginning?

How could that be? Had the thinking machines somehow known he would be aboard? Paul gripped Chani's hand and said to her, "It will be over soon, in whatever manner fate decides.

All along, our destinies have hurtled us toward this point, like levitating trains out of control."

"We will face it together, my love," Chani said. He only wished that he could recall all his years with her ... and that she could do the same.

"What about Duncan?" he asked. "And Sheeana?"

"We must depart now," the robots said in unison. "Omnius waits."

"Duncan and Sheeana will know soon enough," Jessica said.

Before they left, Paul made a point of taking the crysknife Chani had made for him.

Like a Fremen warrior, he wore it proudly at his waist. Although the worm-tooth blade would do nothing against the thinking machines, it made him feel more like the legendary Muad'Dib - the man who defeated powerful empires. But in his mind he again saw the horrible recurring vision, the flicker of memory or prescience in which he lay on the floor in a strange place, mortally wounded - looking up at a younger version of himself who laughed in triumph.

He blinked and sought to focus on reality, not possibilities or destiny. Following the insectile robots down the corridors, he tried to tell himself he was prepared to face whatever lay in store for him.

Before the gholas could emerge from the ship through the ragged hole the machines had made, Wellington Yueh tried to push his way past the ranks of escort robots.

"Wait! I want... I need to go with you." He fumbled for excuses. "If someone gets hurt, I'm the best Suk doctor available. I can help." He lowered his voice and pleaded,

"The Baron will be there, and he'll want to see me."

Still wrestling with her reinjured feelings toward him, Jessica sounded harsh and bitter.

"Help? Did you help Alia?" Hearing this, Yueh looked as if she had slapped him.

"Let him come, Mother." Paul felt resigned. "Dr. Yueh was a staunch childhood supporter and mentor to the original Paul. I won't turn down any ally or witness to whatever is about to occur."

Following the robots, they emerged onto flowing roadways that carried them along like floating plates. Batlike fliers streaked high overhead, and mirrored watcheyes flitted about in the air, observing the group's progress from all angles. Behind them, the huge no-ship had been incorporated into the machine metropolis. Sentient metal buildings of freeform architecture had grown around the Ithaca's hull like coral swallowing up an old shipwreck beneath the seas of Caladan. The buildings seemed to alter whenever the evermind had a fleeting thought.

"This whole city is alive and thinking," Paul said. "It's all one changeable, adapting machine."

Under her breath, his mother quoted, "'Thou shalt not create a machine in the likeness of the human mind.'"

Speakers appeared in the solid silver walls of the looming buildings, and a simulated voice mockingly repeated Jessica's words. " 'Thou shalt not create a machine in the likeness of the human mind.' What a quaint superstition!" The laughter sounded as if it had been recorded from somewhere else, distorted freakishly, and then played back. "I look forward to our encounter."

The escort robots brought them into an enormous structure with shimmering walls, curved arches, and enclosed parklike spaces. A spectacular lava fountain spouted plumes of hot, scarlet liquid into a tempered basin.

In the middle of the great cathedral hall, an elderly man and woman awaited them, dressed in loose, comfortable garments. Dwarfed by the enclosure, they certainly did not look menacing.

Paul decided not to wait for their captors to play control games. "Why have you brought me here? What do you want?"

"I want to help the universe." The old man stepped down the polished stone stairs.

"We are in the endgame of Kralizec, a watershed that will change the universe forever.

Everything that came before will end, and everything that comes in the future will be under my guidance."

The old woman explained. "Consider all the chaos that has existed over the millennia of your human civilization. Such messy creatures you are! We thinking machines could have done a much neater, more efficient job.

We have learned of your God Emperor Leto II, and the Scattering, and the Famine Times."

"At least he enforced peace for thirty-five hundred years," the old man added. "He had the right idea."

"My grandson," Jessica said. "They called him Tyrant because of the difficult decisions he made. But even he did not do as much damage as your thinking machines did during the Butlerian Jihad."

"You cast blame too loosely. Did we cause the damage and destruction, or did humans like Serena Butler? That is a matter for debate." Abruptly the old woman cast off her disguise, like a reptile shedding its dry skin. The robot's flowmetal face - male now - displayed a wide smile. "From the beginning, machines and humans have been at odds, but only we are able to observe the long span of history, and only we can understand what must be done and find a logical way to achieve it. Is that not a valid analysis of your legendary Kralizec?"

"Only an interpretation," Jessica said.

"The correct one, though. Right now we are involved in the necessary business of uprooting weeds in a garden - an apt metaphor. The weeds themselves do not appreciate it, and the dirt may be disturbed for some time, but in the end the garden is vastly improved. Machines and humans are but manifestations of a long-standing conflict that your ancient philosophers recorded, the battle between heart and mind."

Omnius retained his old man form, since he had no other familiar physical manifestation.

"Back in the Old Empire, many of your people are trying to make their last stands against us. It is futile, for my Face Dancers have ensured that your weapons will not work. Even your navigation machines are under my control. Already my fleet approaches Chapterhouse."

"Our ship has had no contact with either the Guild or Chapterhouse since before I was born,"

Paul said in a dismissive tone. He pointed to Chani, Jessica, and Yueh, all of those gholas born on the ship in flight. "None of us has ever been in the Old Empire."

"Then allow me to show you." With a wave of his hand, the old man displayed a complex holo-image of stars, indicating how far his immense fleet had progressed. Paul was stunned by the scope of the conquest and devastation; he didn't think the evermind would exaggerate what the machines had done. Omnius didn't need to. Hundreds of planets had already been destroyed or enslaved.

In a soothing voice, Erasmus said, "Fortunately, the war will soon be over."

The old man approached Paul. "And now that I have you, there is no question of the outcome. The mathematical projection states that the Kwisatz Haderach will change the battle at the end of the universe. Since I control you and the other one, we will now finish this conflict."

Erasmus stepped forward to inspect Paul, like a scientist examining a valuable specimen.

His optic threads glittered. "We know you have the potential within your genes. The challenge lies in determining which Paul Atreides will be the better Kwisatz Haderach."

***

- MOTHER COMMANDER MURBELLA, speech to the gathered Sisterhood Without Obliterators or navigation control, the human warships lay like white-bellied victims on sacrificial altars, all across the last-stand line they had drawn.

Aboard her flagship, Mother Commander Murbella shouted orders, while Guild Administrator Gorus demanded miracles from his underlings. Watching the screens on the navigation bridge, Murbella saw thinking-machine battleships cruise past the Sisterhood's pitiful vessels on their way to destroy Chapterhouse. Similar non-battles must be occurring at the hundred flashpoints across the front lines, key human-inhabited systems now completely vulnerable to the coup de grace. The gamble had failed, utterly.

Weighing heavily on Murbella's mind was her responsibility to humanity, the rest of the Sisterhood ... and her long-lost Duncan. Was he still alive, and did he even remember her? It had been almost twenty-five years. Murbella had to do this - for him, for herself, or for all those who had survived thus far in the epic war.

Without letting instinctive Honored Matre rage control her actions, Murbella whirled toward Gorus. She grabbed the front of the Administrator's loose robe and shook him so that his pale braid whipped his face.

"What other weapons do your Guildships have?"

"A few projectiles, Mother Commander. Energy weapons. Standard offensive artillery

- but that would be suicide! Only the Obliterators could have made it possible for our ships to deal a mortal blow against the Enemy!"

In disgust, she cast him away, so that he stumbled backward and fell to the deck.

"This is already a suicide mission! How dare you cringe now, when we have no alternative?"

"But... but, Mother Commander - it would waste our fleet, our lives!"

"Obviously, heroism is not your strong suit." She turned to a meek-looking Guildsman and used the power of Bene Gesserit Voice on him for good measure. "Prepare to launch our Obliterators. Blanket space with them. Maybe the saboteurs missed a few."

The Guildsman operated his weapons controls, barely bothering to choose targets.

He launched ten more Obliterators, then another ten. None exploded, and the machine ships kept coming.

Her voice low, Murbella said, "Now fire all the standard projectiles we have. And once we deplete our conventional armaments, we'll use our ships as battering rams.

Whatever we have."

"But why, Mother Commander?" Gorus said. "We should fall back and regroup. Plan some other way to fight. We must at least survive!"

"If we don't win today, we don't survive anyway. We may be outnumbered, but we can still wipe out part of the thinking-machine fleet. I will not simply abandon Chapterhouse!"

Gorus scrambled back to his feet. "To what purpose, Mother Commander? The machines can just replace themselves."

As they spoke, more Obliterators filled space. So far, all had turned out to be duds.

"The purpose is to show them we can still fight. It is what makes us human, what gives us significance. History shall not record that we abandoned Chapterhouse and tried to hide from the final confrontation between humanity and the thinking machines."

"History? Who will be left to record history?"

Within three minutes of each other, six small foldspace craft raced into the battle zone over Chapterhouse, reporting from the other clusters of ships. They transmitted urgent messages and demanded new orders from the Mother Commander. "Our Obliterators don't function!"

"All navigation systems have shut down."

"How do we fight them now, Mother Commander?"

She answered in a strong, steady tone. "We fight with everything we have."

Just then, a fabulously bright flash blew across at least fifty of the Enemy vessels, vaporizing them in an expanding arc that sent a shudder through the decks of the more distant Guild vessels. Murbella gasped, then laughed. "See! One of the Obliterators still worked! Fire the rest of them."

To her astonishment, space around them suddenly shimmered, cracked, and disgorged hundreds of giant ships. Not human defender vessels.

At first Murbella thought that the Enemy machines had sent yet another devastating fleet, but she quickly identified the cartouche on the curved hulls. Guild Heighliners!

They spilled out of foldspace from every direction, surrounding the first massive wave of thinking-machine vessels.

"Administrator, why did you hold out on us?" Murbella's voice was brittle. "There must be a thousand ships here!"

Gorus seemed just as astonished as she was.

A female voice thrummed across the commlines that linked Murbella's defenders. "I am the Oracle of Time, and I bring reinforcements. Mathematical compilers corrupted many Guild vessels, but my Navigators control these Heighliners."