Of all the covert attempts C’tair Pilru had made during twenty years as a guerrilla fighter on Ix, he had never dared to disguise himself as one of the Tleilaxu Masters. Until now.

Desperate and alone, he could think of nothing else to do. Miral Alechem had vanished. The other rebels were dead, and he had lost all contact with his outside supporters, the smugglers, the transport officials willing to accept bribes. Young women continued to disappear, and the Tleilaxu operated with complete impunity.

He hated them all.

With cold calculation, C’tair waited in a deserted corridor up in the office levels and killed the tallest robed Master he could find. He preferred not to resort to murder to achieve his aims, but he did not shrink from it, either. Some actions were necessary.

Compared to the blood on the hands of the Tleilaxu, his heart and conscience remained clean.

He stole the gnomish man’s clothes and identity cards and prepared to discover the secret of the Bene Tleilax research pavilion. Why was Ix so important that the Emperor would send his Sardaukar here to support the invaders? Where had all the captive women been taken? It had to be more than simple politics, more than the petty revenge of Shaddam’s father against Earl Vernius.

The answer must lie within the high-security laboratory.

Miral had long suspected an illegal biological project, one that operated with covert Imperial support— perhaps even something that went against the strictures of the Butlerian Jihad. Why else would the Corrinos be willing to risk so much, for so long? Why else had they invested so heavily here, while overall Ixian profits diminished?

Determined to discover the answers, he donned the robes of the slain Tleilaxu Master, shifting the folds and cinching the maroon sash to hide the dark stain of drying blood. Then he disposed of the body, dumping it into the reopened field-lined shafts to the molten core of the planet. Where the garbage was supposed to go.

In a secret storeroom, he applied chemicals to his face and hands to leach the remaining color from his already-pale flesh, and smeared wrinkling substances on his face to give himself the gray-skinned, shriveled appearance of a Tleilaxu overlord. He wore thin-soled slippers to keep his height down, and hunched over a little. He wasn’t a large man, and he was aided by the fact that the Tleilaxu were not the most observant of people. C’tair needed to be most wary of the Sardaukar.

He checked his records, memorizing the passwords and override commands he had hoarded for years. His identity cards and signal jammers should be sufficient to get him past any scrutiny. Even there.

Taking on a hauteur to complete his masquerade, he emerged from his hidden chamber into the expansive grotto. He strode to the front of a crowd and stepped aboard a linked transport. After slipping his card through the scanner port, he punched in the location for the sealed research pavilion.

The private bubble closed around him and detached itself from the rest of the transport system. The vessel cruised in midair above the crisscrossed paths of surveillance pods. None of the transeyes turned toward him. The transport bubble recognized his right to travel to the laboratory complex. No alarms were raised. No one paid attention to him.

Below, workers moved about in their labors, guarded by an increasing number of Sardaukar. They did not bother to look up at the vessels drifting across the enclosed grotto sky.

One step at a time, C’tair passed through successive guarded gates and security fields, and finally into the hivelike industrial mass. The windows were sealed, the corridors glowing with an orange-tinged light. The stuffy air was warm and humid, with a putrid undertone of rotting flesh and unpleasant human residue.

Huddled in his disguise, he walked along, trying to conceal the fact he was lost and uncertain of his destination. C’tair didn’t know where the answers might lie, but he dared not hesitate or look confused. He didn’t want anyone to take notice of him.

Robed Tleilaxu moved from chamber to chamber, absorbed in their work. They pulled hoods over their ears and heads, so C’tair did the same, glad for the added camouflage. He withdrew a sheaf of ridulian-crystal reports written in a strange code that he could not decipher, and pretended to study them.

He turned down corridors at random, changing course whenever he heard other people approaching. Several gnomish men marched past him, speaking to each other in heated voices in their private Tleilaxu language, gesturing with long-fingered hands. They paid no attention to C’tair.

He located biological laboratories, research facilities with plazchrome-plated tables and surgical scanners— visible through open doorways that seemed to be protected by special scanning devices that he didn’t want to try to penetrate. Nothing, however, provided him with the answers he needed. Breathing hard and sweating with tension, he followed main corridors that led toward the heart of the research pavilion.

Finally, C’tair found a higher level, an open-windowed observation gallery. The corridor behind him was empty. The air smelled metallic with chemicals and disinfectants, a scrubbed, sterile environment.

And a faint but distinct odor reminiscent of cinnamon.

He peered through the broad window into the huge central gallery of the laboratory complex. The vast chamber was large enough to be a spacecraft hangar, holding tables and coffin-sized containers . . . row upon row of “specimens.” He stared in horror at the pipes and sample tubes, at all the bodies. All the women.

Even knowing how vile the Tleilaxu were, never before had he imagined such a nightmarish reality. The shock dried his unshed tears to a stinging acid. His mouth opened and closed, but he could form no words. He wanted to vomit.

In the gigantic complex below he saw at last what the Tleilaxu criminals were actually doing to the women of Ix. And one of them, barely recognizable, was Miral Alechem!

Staggering with revulsion, he tore himself away. He had to escape. The sheer weight of what he’d seen threatened to crush him. It was impossible, impossible, impossible! His stomach knotted, threatening to double him over— yet he dared not show any weakness.

Unexpectedly, a guard and two Tleilaxu researchers rounded the corner and came toward him. One of the researchers said something in an unrecognizable guttural language. C’tair didn’t respond. He staggered away.

Alarmed, the guard shouted after him. C’tair stumbled down a side corridor. He heard an outcry, and his need for survival burned away his stunned malaise. After penetrating this far, he had to get out. No other outsider suspected what he had now seen with his own eyes.

The truth was far worse than anything he could have imagined.

Bewildered and desperate, C’tair worked his way back to the lower levels, aiming for the external security grids. Behind him, guards rushed toward the observation galleries he had just left behind, but the Tleilaxu had not yet sounded an all-out alarm. Perhaps they didn’t want to disrupt their daily routine . . . or maybe they simply couldn’t believe that one of the foolish Ixian slaves had managed to penetrate their tightest security.

The research pavilion wing he had destroyed with wafer-bombs three years ago had been entirely rebuilt, but the self-guiding supply rail had been moved to a different portal. He raced over there, hoping to slip through lighter security.

Summoning a transport bubble, he climbed inside, using his stolen identity card and brusquely dismissing one of the guards who tried to question him. Then C’tair drifted away from the security installation toward the nearest work complex, where he could shuck his disguise and melt in among the other laborers again.

Before long, he heard a strident alarm raised behind him, but by now he had escaped the compound and the Tleilaxu secret police. He alone carried a hint of what the invaders were actually doing, why they had come to Ix.

The knowledge did not comfort him, though. Now he felt a despair deeper than any he had experienced since beginning his fight.