Hunters of Dune

1

On the day he died, Rakis — the planet commonly known as Dune — died with him.

Dune. Lost forever!

In the archives chamber of the fleeing no-ship Ithaca, the ghola of Miles Teg reviewed the desert world's final moments. Mélange-scented steam wafted from a stimulant beverage at his left elbow, but the thirteen-year-old ignored it, descending instead into deep Mentat focus. These historical records and holo-images held great fascination for him.

This was where and how his original body had been killed. How an entire world had been murdered. Rakis the legendary desert planet, now no more than a charred ball.

Projected above a flat table, the archival images showed Honored Matre war vessels gathering above the mottled tan globe. The immense, undetectable no-ships-like the stolen one on which Teg and his fellow refugees now lived—wielded firepower superior to anything the Bene Gesserit had ever employed. Traditional atomics were little more than a pinprick by comparison.

Those new weapons must have been developed out in the Scattering. Teg pursued a Mentat projection. Human ingenuity born out of desperation? Or was it something else entirely?

In the floating image, the bristling ships opened fire, unleashing incineration waves with devices the Bene Gesserit had since named "Obliterators." The bombardment had continued until the planet was devoid of life. The sandy dunes were turned to black glass; even Rakis's atmosphere caught fire. Giant worms and sprawling cities, people and sand plankton, everything annihilated. Nothing could have survived down there, not even him.

Now, nearly fourteen years later and in a vastly changed universe, the gangly teenager adjusted the study chair to a more comfortable height. Reviewing the circumstances of my own death. Again.

By strict definition, Teg was a clone rather than a ghola grown of cells gathered from a dead body, though the latter was the word most people used to describe him. Inside his young flesh lived an old man, a veteran of numerous campaigns for the Bene Gesserit; he could not remember the last few moments of his life, but these records left little doubt.

The senseless annihilation of Dune demonstrated the true ruthlessness of the Honored Matres. Whores, the Sisterhood called them. And with good reason.

Nudging the intuitive finger controls, he called up the images yet again. It felt odd to be an outside observer, knowing that he himself had been down there fighting and dying when these images were recorded.

Teg heard a sound at the door of the archives and saw Sheeana watching him from the corridor. Her face was lean and angular, her skin brown from a Rakian heritage. The unruly umber hair flashed with streaks of copper from a childhood spent under the desert sun. Her eyes were the total blue of lifelong mélange consumption, as well as the Spice Agony that had turned her into a Reverend Mother. The youngest ever to survive, Teg had been told.

Sheeana's generous lips held an elusive smile. "Studying battles again, Miles?

"It's a bad thing for a military commander to be so predictable."

"I have a great many of them to review," Teg answered in his cracking young man's voice.

"The Bashar accomplished a great deal in three hundred standard years, before I died."

When Sheeana recognized the projected record, her expression fell into a troubled mask. Teg had been watching those images of Rakis to the point of obsession, ever since they fled into this bizarre and uncharted universe.

"Any word from Duncan yet?" he asked, trying to divert her attention. "He was attempting a new navigation algorithm to get us away from—"

"We know exactly where we are." Sheeana lifted her chin in an unconscious gesture she had come to use more and more often since becoming the leader of this group of refugees. "We are lost."

Teg automatically intercepted the criticism of Duncan Idaho. It had been their intent to prevent anyone—the Honored Matres, the corrupted Bene Gesserit order, or the mysterious Enemy—from finding the ship. "At least we're safe."

Sheeana did not seem convinced. "So many unknowns trouble me, where are we, who is chasing us…" Her voice trailed off, and then she said, "I will leave you to your studies. We are about to have another meeting to discuss our situation."

He perked up. "Has anything changed?"

"No, Miles. And I expect the same arguments over and over again." She shrugged. "The other Sisters seem to insist on it." With a quiet rustle of robes, she exited the archives chamber, leaving him with the humming silence of the great invisible ship.

Back to Rakis. Back to my death and the events leading up to it. Teg rewound the recordings, gathering old reports and perspectives, and watched them yet again, traveling farther backward in time.

Now that his memories had been awakened, he knew what he had done up to his death. He did not need these records to see how the old Bashar Teg had gotten into such a predicament on Rakis, how he himself had provoked it. Back then, he and his loyal men—veterans of his many famous military campaigns—had stolen a no-ship on Gammu, a planet that history had once called Giedi Prime, home world of the evil but long-exterminated House Harkonnen.

Years earlier, Teg had been brought in to guard the young ghola of Duncan Idaho, after eleven previous Duncan gholas had been assassinated. The old Bashar succeeded in keeping the twelfth alive until adulthood and finally restored Duncan 's memories, then helped him escape from Gammu. When one of the Honored Matres, Murbella, tried to sexually enslave Duncan, he instead trapped her with unsuspected abilities wired into him by his Tleilaxu creators. It turned out that Duncan was a living weapon specifically designed to thwart the Honored Matres. No wonder the enraged whores were so desperate to find and kill him.

After slaughtering hundreds of Honored Matres and their minions, the old Bashar hid among men who had sworn their lives to protect him. No great general had commanded such loyalty since Paul Muad'Dib, perhaps not even since the fanatical days of the Butlerian Jihad. Amidst drinks, food, and misty-eyed nostalgia, the Bashar had explained that he needed them to steal a no-ship for him. Though the task seemed impossible, the veterans never questioned a thing.

Ensconced in the archives now, young Miles reviewed surveillance records from Gammu's spaceport security, images taken from tall Guild Bank buildings in the city. Each step of the assault made perfect sense to him, even as he studied the records many years later. It was the only way to succeed, and we accomplished it.

After flying to Rakis, Teg and his men had found Reverend Mother Odrade and Sheeana riding a giant old worm to meet the no-ship out in the great desert.

Time was short. The vengeful Honored Matres would be coming, apoplectic because the Bashar had made fools of them on Gammu. On Rakis, he and his surviving men departed the no-ship with armored vehicles and extra weapons.

Time for one last, but vital, engagement.

Before the Bashar led his loyal soldiers out to face the whores, Odrade casually but expertly scratched the skin of his leathery neck, not-so-subtly collecting cell samples. Both Teg and the Reverend Mother understood it was the Sisterhood's last chance to preserve one of the greatest military minds since the Scattering. They realized he was about to die. Miles Teg's final battle. By the time the Bashar and his men clashed with Honored Matres on the ground, other groups of the whores were swiftly taking over the Rakian population centers. They slew the Bene Gesserit Sisters who remained behind in Keen. They killed the Tleilaxu Masters and the Priests of the Divided God.

The battle was already lost, but Teg and his troops hurled themselves against the enemy defenses with unparalleled violence. Since Honored Matre hubris would not allow them to accept such humiliation, the whores retaliated against the whole world, destroying everything and everyone there. Including him.

In the meantime, the old Bashar's fighters had created a diversion so the no-ship could escape, carrying Odrade, the Duncan ghola, and Sheeana, who had tempted the ancient sandworm into the vessel's cavernous cargo hold. Soon after the ship flew to safety, Rakis was destroyed—and that worm became the last of its kind.

That had been Teg's first life. His real memories ended there.

WATCHING IMAGES OF the final bombardment now, Miles Teg wondered at what point his original body had been obliterated. Did it really matter? Now that he was alive again, he had a second chance.

Using the cells Odrade had taken from his neck, the Sisterhood grew a copy of their Bashar and triggered his genetic memories. The Bene Gesserit knew they would require his tactical genius in the war with the Honored Matres. And the boy Teg had indeed led the Sisterhood to its victory on Gammu and Junction. He had done everything they asked of him.

Later, he and Duncan, along with Sheeana and her dissidents, had stolen the no-ship yet again and fled from Chapterhouse, unable to bear what Murbella was allowing to happen to the Bene Gesserit. Better than anyone else, the escapees understood about the mysterious Enemy that continued to hunt for them, no matter how lost the no-ship might be.

Weary with facts and forced memories, Teg switched off the records, stretched his thin arms, and left the archives sector. He would spend several hours in vigorous physical training, then work on his weapons skills.

Though he lived in the body of a thirteen-year-old, it was his job to remain ready for everything, and never lower his guard.

2

They were adrift. They were safe. They were lost.

An unidentifiable ship in an unidentifiable universe.

Alone on the navigation bridge, as he often was, Duncan Idaho knew that powerful enemies were still after them. Threats within threats within threats.

The no-ship wandered the frigid void, far from any recorded human exploration.

A different universe entirely. He couldn't decide whether they were hiding or trapped. He wouldn't have known how to get back to a familiar star system, even if he'd wanted to.

According to the bridge's independent chronometers, they had been in this strange, distorted otherwhere for years though who could say how time flowed in another universe? The laws of physics and the landscape of the galaxy might be completely altered here.

Abruptly, as if his concerns had been laced with prescience, he noticed the main instrument panel blinking erratically, while the stabilizing engines surged up and down. Though he couldn't see anything more unusual than the now-familiar twistings of gases and distorted energy ripples, the no-ship had encountered what he'd come to think of as a "rough patch." How could they encounter turbulence in space when nothing was there?

The ship shook in a whiplash of strange gravity, jarred by a spray of high-energy particles. When Duncan switched off the automatic piloting systems and altered course, the situation worsened. Barely perceptible flashes of orange light appeared in front of the vessel, like a faint, flickering fire. He felt the deck shudder, as if he had rammed into some obstacle, but he could see nothing. Nothing at all! It should have been an empty vacuum, giving them no sensation of movement or turbulence. Strange universe.

Duncan corrected course until the instruments and engines smoothed out, and the flashes disappeared. If the danger grew any worse, he might be forced to attempt yet another risky foldspace jump. Upon leaving Chapterhouse, he had flown the no-ship without guidance, having purged all navigation systems and coordinate files, using nothing but his intuition and rudimentary prescience.

Each time he activated the Holtzman engines, Duncan gambled with the whole ship, and the lives of the 150 refugees aboard. He wouldn't do it unless he had to.

Three years ago, he'd had no choice. Duncan had lifted the great craft from its landing field—not escaping per se, but stealing the entire prison where the Sisterhood had put him. And simply flying away wasn't sufficient. In his attuned mind, he had seen the trap closing around them. The Outside Enemy observers, in their bizarrely innocuous guises of an old man and an old woman, had a net they could cast across vast distances to entangle the no-ship. He'd seen the sparkling multicolored mesh begin to contract, and the strange old couple smiling with victory. They had thought he and the no-ship were in their grasp.

His fingers a blur, his concentration sharp as a diamond chip, Duncan had made the Holtzman engines do things that not even a Guild Navigator would ask of them. As the Enemy's invisible web ensnared the no-ship, Duncan had flung them away, flying the enormous vessel so deeply into the folds of space that he tore the fabric of the universe itself and slid beyond. His ancient Swordmaster training had come to his aid. Like a slow blade slipping through an otherwise impenetrable body shield.

And the no-ship had found itself somewhere else entirely. But he had remained vigilant, not allowing himself to breathe a sigh of relief. In this incomprehensible universe, what might be next?

Now he studied external images transmitted from sensors extended beyond the no-field. The view outside had not changed: twisted veils of nebula gas, inside-out streamers that would never condense into stars. Was this a young universe, not yet finished coalescing, or a universe so unspeakably ancient that all suns had burned out and been reduced to molecular ash?

The group of misfit refugees desperately wanted to get back to normal or at the very least to somewhere else. Over such a long time, their fear and anxiety had faded first to confusion, then to restlessness and malaise. They wanted more than simply being lost and unharmed. Either they looked to Duncan Idaho with hope, or they blamed him for their plight.

The ship contained a hodgepodge of humanity's factions (or did Sheeana and her Bene Gesserit Sisters view them all as mere "specimens?"). The assortment included a sprinkling of orthodox Bene Gesserits—acolytes, proctors, Reverend Mothers, even male workers—along with Duncan himself and the young Miles Teg ghola. Also aboard were a Rabbi and his group of Jews who had been rescued from an attempted Honored Matre pogrom on Gammu; one surviving Tleilaxu Master; and four animalistic Futars—monstrous human-feline hybrids created out in the Scattering and enslaved by the whores. In addition, the great hold was home to seven small sandworms.

Truly, we are a strange mixture. A ship of fools.

A year after escaping from Chapterhouse and becoming mired in this distorted and incomprehensible universe, Sheeana and her Bene Gesserit followers had joined Duncan in a christening ceremony. In light of the no-ship's endless wanderings, the name Ithaca seemed appropriate.

Ithaca, a small island in ancient Greece, had been the home of Odysseus, who had spent ten years wandering after the end of the Trojan War, trying to find his way back home. Similarly, Duncan and his companions needed a place to call home, a safe haven. These people were on their own great odyssey, and without so much as a map or a star chart, Duncan was as lost as age-old Odysseus.

No one realized how much Duncan longed to go back to Chapterhouse.

Heartstrings linked him to Murbella, his love, his slave, and his master.

Breaking free of her had been the single most difficult and painful endeavor he could remember in his multiple lifetimes. He doubted he would ever entirely recover from her. Murbella.

Yet Duncan Idaho had always placed duty above personal feelings. Regardless of the heartache, he assumed responsibility for keeping the no-ship and its passengers safe, even in a skewed universe.

At odd times, stray combinations of odors reminded him of Murbella's distinctive scent. Organic esters that drifted through the no-ship's processed air would strike his olfactory receptors, triggering memories from their eleven years together. Murbella's perspiration, her dark amber hair, the particular taste of her lips, and the seawater scent of their "sexual collisions." Their passionate, codependent encounters had been both intimate and violent for years, with neither of them strong enough to break free.

I must not confuse mutual addiction with love. The pain was at least as sharp and unendurable as the debilitating agony of drug withdrawal. Hour by hour as the no-ship flew through the void, Duncan drew farther from her.

He leaned back and opened his unique senses, reaching out, always wary that someone might find the no-ship. The danger in letting himself do this passive sentry duty was that he occasionally descended into muddled woolgathering about Murbella. To get around the problem, Duncan compartmentalized his Mentat mind. If a portion of it drifted, another portion was always alert, always on the lookout for danger.

In their years together, he and Murbella had produced four daughters. The oldest two-twins would be nearly grown now. But from the moment the Agony had transformed his Murbella into a true Bene Gesserit, she had been lost to him.

Because an Honored Matre had never before completed training—actually, retraining—to become a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother, the Sisterhood had been exceptionally pleased with her. Duncan 's shattered heart had been, and still was, merely collateral damage.

In his mind's eye, Murbella's lovely countenance haunted him. His Mentat abilities—both a skill and a curse—allowed him to call up every detail of her features: her oval face and wide brow, the hard green eyes that reminded him of jade, the willowy body that could fight and make love with equal prowess.

Then he remembered that her green eyes had become blue after the spice Agony.

Not the same person.

His thoughts wandered, and Murbella's features shifted in his mind. Like an afterimage burned onto his retinas, another woman began to take shape, and he was startled. This was an outside presence, a mind immeasurably superior to his own, searching for him, wrapping gentle strands around the Ithaca.

Duncan Idaho, a voice called, soothing and feminine.

He felt a rush of emotions, as well as an awareness of danger. Why hadn't his Mentat sentry system seen this coming? His compartmentalized mind snapped into full survival mode. He jumped toward the Holtzman controls, intending once again to fling the no-ship far away, without guidance.

The voice tried to intercede. Duncan Idaho, do not flee. I am not your enemy.

The old man and woman had made similar assurances. Though he had no idea who they were, Duncan did comprehend that they were the real danger. But this new muliebral presence, this vast intellect, had touched him from outside of the strange, unidentified universe that the no-ship currently inhabited. He struggled to get away but could not escape the voice.

I am the Oracle of Time.

In several of his lives, Duncan had heard of the Oracle—the guiding force of the Spacing Guild. Benevolent and all-seeing, the Oracle of Time was said to be a shepherding presence that had watched over the Guild since its formation fifteen thousand years ago. Duncan had always considered it an odd manifestation of religion among the hyperacute Navigators.

"The Oracle is a myth." His fingers hovered over the touchpads of the command console.

I am many things. He was surprised when the voice did not contradict his accusation. Many seek you. You will be found here.

"I trust in my own abilities." Duncan powered up the foldspace engines. From her external point of view, he hoped the Oracle wouldn't notice what he was doing. He would take the no-ship somewhere else, fleeing again. How many different powers were hunting them?

The future demands your presence. You have a role to play in Kralizec.

Kralizec… typhoon struggle… the long-foretold battle at the end of the universe that would forever change the shape of the future.

"Another myth," Duncan said, even as he activated the foldspace jump without warning the other passengers. He couldn't risk staying here. The no-ship lurched, then plunged once more into the unknown.

He heard the voice fading as the ship escaped the Oracle's clutches, but she did not seem dismayed. Here, the distant voice said, I will guide you. The intruding voice faded, ripping away like shreds of cotton.

The Ithaca careened through foldspace and, after an interminably brief instant, tumbled out again.

Stars shone all around the ship. Real stars. Duncan studied the sensors, checked the navigation grid, and saw the sparkles of suns and nebulae. Normal space again. Without further verification he knew that they had fallen back into their own universe. He couldn't decide whether to rejoice or cry out in despair.

Duncan no longer sensed the Oracle of Time, nor could he detect any of the likely searchers—the mysterious Enemy and the unified Sisterhood—though they must still be out there. They would not have given up, not even after three years.

The no-ship continued to run.

3

Like a dragon empress surveying her subjects, Murbella sat on a high throne in the large receiving hall of the Bene Gesserit Keep. Early morning sunlight poured through the tall stained-glass windows, splashing colors around the chamber.

Chapterhouse was the center of a most peculiar civil war. Reverend Mothers and Honored Matres came together with all the finesse of colliding spacecraft.

Murbella—following Odrade's grand plan—allowed them no other option.

Chapterhouse was home to both groups now.

Each faction hated Murbella for the changes she had imposed, and neither had the strength to defy her. Through their union, the conflicting philosophies and societies of the Honored Matres and the Bene Gesserits merged like horrific Siamese twins. The very concept was appalling to many of them. The potential for reigniting bloodshed always hung in the air, and the forced alliance teetered on the edge of failure.

That was a gamble some in the Sisterhood had not been willing to accept.

"Survival at the cost of destroying ourselves is no survival at all," Sheeana had said just before she and Duncan took the no-ship and flew away. "Voting with their feet," as the old saying went. Oh, Duncan! Was it possible that Mother Superior Odrade had not guessed what Sheeana planned to do?

Of course I knew, said the voice of Odrade from Other Memory. Sheeana hid it from me for a long time, but in the end I knew.

"And you chose not to warn me of it?" Murbella often sparred aloud with the voice of her predecessor, one of the many ancestral inner voices she could access since becoming a Reverend Mother.

I chose to warn no one. Sheeana made her decisions for her own reasons.

"And now we must both live with the consequences."

From her throne, Murbella watched the guards lead in a female prisoner.

Another disciplinary matter for her to handle. Another example she must make.

Though such demonstrations appalled the Bene Gesserits, the Honored Matres appreciated their value.

This situation was more important than others, so Murbella would handle it personally. She smoothed her shimmering black-and-gold robe across her lap.

Unlike the Bene Gesserits, who understood their places and required no ostentatious symbols of rank, Honored Matres demanded gaudy signs of status, like extravagant thrones or chairdogs, ornate capes in vivid colors. Thus, the self-proclaimed Mother Commander was forced to sit on an imposing throne encrusted with soostones and firegems.

Enough to purchase a major planet, she thought, if there were any I wanted to buy.

Murbella had come to hate the trappings of office, but she knew the necessity.

Women in the different costumes of the two orders attended her constantly, alert for any sign of weakness in her. Though they underwent training in the ways of the Sisterhood, Honored Matres clung to their traditional garments, serpent-scribed capes and scarves, and formfitting leotard bodysuits. By contrast, the Bene Gesserits shunned bright colors and covered themselves with dark, loose robes. The disparity was as clear as that between gaudy peacocks and camouflaged bush wrens.

The prisoner, an Honored Matre named Annine, had short blond hair and wore a canary yellow leotard with a flamboyant cape of sapphire plazsilk moiré.

Electronic restraints kept her arms folded across her midsection, as if she wore an invisible straitjacket; a nerve-deadening gag muzzled her mouth. Annine struggled ineffectively against the restraints, and her attempts to speak came out as unintelligible grunts.

Guards positioned the rebellious woman at the foot of the steps below the throne. Murbella focused on the wild eyes that screamed defiance at her. "I no longer wish to hear what you have to say, Annine. You have already said too much."

This woman had criticized the Mother Commander's leadership once too often, holding her own meetings and railing against the merging of Honored Matres and Bene Gesserits. Some of Annine's followers had even disappeared from the main city and established their own base in the uninhabited northern territories.

Murbella could not allow such a provocation to pass unchallenged.

The way Annine had handled her dissatisfaction—embarrassing Murbella and diminishing her authority and prestige from behind a cloak of cowardly anonymity—had been unforgivable. The Mother Commander knew Annine's type well enough. No negotiation, no compromise, no appeal for understanding would ever change her mind. The woman defined herself through her opposition.

A waste of human raw material. Murbella flashed an expression of disgust. If Annine had only turned her anger against a real enemy… Women of both factions observed from either side of the great hall. The two groups were reluctant to mix, instead separating into "whores" on one side and "witches" on the other. Like oil and water.

In the years since forcing this unification, Murbella had come through numerous situations in which she might have been killed, but she eluded every trap, sliding, adapting, administering harsh punishments.

Her authority over these women was wholly legitimate: She was both Reverend Mother Superior, selected by Odrade, as well as Great Honored Matre by virtue of assassinating her predecessor. She had chosen the title of Mother Commander for herself to symbolize the integration of the two important ranks, and as time passed, she noticed that the women had all become rather protective of her. Murbella's lessons were having the desired effect, albeit slowly.

Following the seesaw battle on Junction, the only way for the embattled Sisterhood to survive the violence of the Honored Matres had been to let them believe they were victorious. In a philosophical turnabout, the captors actually became captives before they realized it; Bene Gesserit knowledge, training, and wiles subsumed their competitors' rigid beliefs. In most cases.

At a hand signal, the Mother Commander caused her guards to tighten Annine's restraints. The woman's face contorted in pain.

Murbella descended the polished steps, never taking her eyes off the captive.

Reaching the floor, Murbella glared down at the shorter woman. It pleased her to see the eyes change, filling with fear instead of defiance as realization swept over her.

Honored Matres rarely bothered to hold back their emotions, choosing instead to exploit them. They found that a provocative feral expression, a clear indication of anger and danger, could make their victims prone to submission.

In sharp contrast, Reverend Mothers considered emotions a weakness and controlled them rigidly.

"Over the years, I have met many challengers and killed them all," Murbella said. "I dueled with Honored Matres who did not acknowledge my rule. I stood up to Bene Gesserits who refused to accept what I am doing. How much more blood and time must I waste on this nonsense when we have a real Enemy hunting us?"

Without releasing Annine's restraints or loosening her gag, Murbella brought forth a gleaming dagger from her sash and thrust it into Annine's throat. No ceremony or dignity… no wasting of time. The guards held the dying prisoner up as she twitched and thrashed and gurgled half words, then slumped over, her eyes glassy and dead. Annine hadn't even made a mess on the floor.

"Remove her." Murbella wiped the knife on the victim's plazsilk cape, then resumed her seat on the throne. "I have more important business to take care of."

Out in the galaxy, ruthless and untamed Honored Matres—still greatly outnumbering the Bene Gesserits—operated in independent cells, discrete groups. Many of those women refused to recognize the Mother Commander's authority and continued their original plan of slash and burn, destroy and run. Before they could face the real Enemy, Murbella would have to bring them into line. All of them.

Sensing that Odrade was once again available, Murbella said to her dead mentor in the silence of her mind, "I wish this sort of thing were not necessary."

Your way is more brutal than I'd prefer, but your challenges are great, and different from mine. I entrusted you with the task of the Sisterhood's survival. Now the work falls to you.

"You are dead and relegated to the role of observer."

Odrade-within chuckled. I find that role to be far less stressful.

Throughout the internal exchange, Murbella kept her face a placid mask, since so many in the receiving hall were watching her.

From beside the ornate throne, the aged and enormously fat Bellonda leaned over. "The Guildship has arrived. We are escorting their six-member delegation here with all due speed." Bell had been Odrade's foil and companion. The two had disagreed a great deal, especially about the Duncan Idaho project.

"I have decided to make them wait. No need to let them think we are anxious to see them." She knew what the Guild wanted. Spice. Always the same, spice.

Bellonda's chins folded together as she nodded. "Certainly. We can find endless formalities to observe, if you wish. Give the Guild a taste of their own bureaucracy."

4

Though the desert planet had been roasted clean of all life, the soul of Dune survived aboard the no-ship. Sheeana herself had seen to that.

She and her sober-faced aide Garimi stood at the viewing window above the Ithaca 's great hold. Garimi watched the shallow dunes stirring as the seven captive sandworms moved. "They have grown."

The worms were smaller than the behemoths Sheeana remembered from Rakis, but larger than any she had seen on the overly moist desert band of Chapterhouse.

The environmental controls in this ship's vast hold were precise enough to provide a perfect simulated desert.

Sheeana shook her head, knowing that the creatures' primitive memories must recall swimming through an endless sea of dunes. "Our worms are crowded, restless. They have no place to go."

Just before the whores obliterated Rakis, Sheeana had rescued an ancient sandworm and transported it to Chapterhouse. Near death when it arrived, the mammoth creature broke down soon after it touched the fertile soil, and its skin fissioned into thousands of reproducing sandtrout that burrowed into the ground. Over the next fourteen years, those sandtrout began to transform the lush world into another arid wasteland, a new home for the worms. Finally, when conditions were right, the magnificent creatures rose again—small ones at first that over time would become larger and more powerful.

When Sheeana had decided to escape from Chapterhouse, she took some of the stunted sandworms with her.

Fascinated by movement in the sand, Garimi leaned closer to the plaz observation window. The dark-haired aide's expression was so serious it belonged on a woman decades older. Garimi was a workhorse, a true Bene Gesserit conservative who had the parochial tendency to see the world around her as straightforward, black-and-white. Though younger than Sheeana, she clung more to Bene Gesserit purity and was deeply offended by the idea of the hated Honored Matres joining the Sisterhood. Garimi had helped Sheeana develop the risky plan that allowed them to escape from the "corruption."

Looking at the restless worms, Garimi said, "Now that we are out of that other universe, when will Duncan find us a world? When will he decide we're safe?"

The Ithaca had been built to serve as a great city in space. Artificially lit sectors were designed as greenhouses for produce, while algae vats and recycling ponds provided less palatable food. Because it carried a relatively small number of passengers, the no-ship's supplies and scrubbing systems would provide edibles, air, and water for decades yet. The current population barely registered on the vessel's capacity, Sheeana turned from the observation window. "I wasn't sure Duncan could ever return us to normal space, but now he's done so. Isn't that enough for now?"

"No! We must select a planet for our new Bene Gesserit headquarters, turn these worms loose, and convert it into another Rakis. We must begin reproducing, building a new core for the Sisterhood." She rested her hands on narrow hips. "We cannot keep wandering forever."

"Three years is hardly forever. You are starting to sound like the Rabbi."

The younger woman looked uncertain whether to take the comment as a joke or a rebuke. "The Rabbi likes to complain. I think it comforts him. I was simply looking to our future."

"We will have a future, Garimi. Do not worry."

The aide's face brightened, turned hopeful. "Are you speaking from prescience?"

"No, from my faith."

Day by day, Sheeana consumed more of their hoarded spice than most, a dose sufficient for her to map out vague and fog-shrouded paths ahead of them.

During the time that the Ithaca had been lost in the void, she had seen nothing, but since the recent unexpected lurch back into normal space, she had felt different… better.

The largest sandworm rose up in the cargo hold, its open maw like the mouth of a cave. The other worms stirred like a writhing nest of snakes. Two more heads emerged, and a powder of sand cascaded down.

Garimi gasped in awe. "Look, they can sense you, even up here."

"And I sense them." Sheeana placed her palms against the plaz barrier, imagining that she could smell the mélange on their breath even through the walls. Neither she nor the worms would be satisfied until they had a new desert on which to roam.

But Duncan insisted they keep running to stay one step ahead of the hunters.

Not everyone agreed with his plan, such as it was. Many aboard the ship had never wanted to come along on this journey in the first place: the Rabbi and his refugee Jews, the Tleilaxu Scytale, and the four bestial Futars.

And what about the worms? she wondered. What do they truly want?

All seven worms had surfaced now, their eyeless heads questing back and forth.

A troubled look crossed Garimi's hardened face. "Do you think the Tyrant is really in there? A pearl of awareness in an endless dream? Can he sense that you are special?"

"Because I am his hundred-times-removed great-grandniece? Perhaps. Certainly no one on Rakis expected a little girl from an isolated desert village to be able to command the great worms."

The corrupt priesthood on Rakis had seen Sheeana as a link to their Divided God. Later, the Bene Gesserit's Missionaria Protectiva created legends about Sheeana, shaping her into an earth mother, a holy virgin. As far as the population of the Old Empire knew, their revered Sheeana had perished along with Rakis. A religion had grown up around her supposed martyrdom, becoming yet another weapon for the Sisterhood to use. They were undoubtedly still exploiting her name and legend.

"All of us believe in you, Sheeana. That is why we came on this"—Garimi caught herself, as if on the verge of uttering a deprecatory word—"on this odyssey."

Below, the worms dove beneath the mounded sand, where they tested the boundaries of the hold. Sheeana watched them in their restless motion, wondering how much they understood of their strange situation.

If Leto II was indeed inside those creatures, he must be having troubled dreams.

5

Even after so many years, the Ithaca divulged its secrets like old bones rising to the surface of a battlefield after a drenching rain.

The old Bashar had stolen this great vessel from Gammu long ago; Duncan was held prisoner aboard it for over a decade on the Chapterhouse landing field, and they had been flying for three years now. But the Ithaca 's immense size, and the small number of people aboard, made it impossible to explore all its mysteries, much less keep a diligent watch everywhere.

The vessel, a compact city over a kilometer in diameter, was more than a hundred decks high, with uncounted passageways and rooms. Although the main decks and compartments were equipped with surveillance imagers, it was beyond the Sisters' capacity to monitor the entire no-ship—especially since it had mysterious electronic dead zones where the imagers did not function. Perhaps the Honored Matres or the original builders of the vessel had installed blocking devices to preserve certain secrets. Numerous code-locked doors had remained unopened since the ship left Gammu. There were, literally, thousands of chambers that no one had entered or inventoried.

Nevertheless, Duncan did not expect to discover a long-sealed death chamber on one of the rarely visited decks.

The lift tube paused at one of the deep central levels. Although he had not requested this floor, the doors opened as the tube took itself out of service for a series of self-maintenance procedures, which the old ship performed automatically.

Duncan studied the deck in front of him, noted that it was cold and barren, dimly lit, unoccupied. The metal walls had been painted with no more than a white primer layer that didn't completely cover the rough-surfaced metal underneath. He'd known about these unfinished levels but had never felt a need to investigate them, because he assumed they were abandoned or never used.

However, the Honored Matres had owned this ship for years before Teg stole it from under their noses. Duncan should not have assumed anything.

He stepped out of the lift tube and wandered alone down a long corridor that continued for a surprising distance. Exploring unknown decks and chambers was like making a blind foldspace jump: He didn't know where he would end up. As he walked, he randomly opened chambers. Doors slid aside to reveal dim, empty rooms. From the dust and lack of furnishings, he guessed that no one had ever occupied them.

At the center of the deck level, a short corridor circled an enclosed section that had two doors, each marked "Machinery Room." The doors did not open at his touch. Curious, Duncan studied the locking mechanism; his own bioprint had been keyed into the ship's systems, supposedly granting him complete access.

Using a master code, he overrode the door controls and forced open the seals.

When he stepped inside, he instantly detected a different quality to the darkness, an unpleasant long-faded odor in the air. The chamber was unlike any other he had seen aboard the ship, its walls a bright discordant red. The splash of violent color was jarring. Driving back his uneasiness, he spotted what looked like a patch of exposed metal on one wall. Duncan passed a hand over it, and abruptly the entire center section of the chamber began to slide and turn over with a groan.

As he stepped out of the way, ominous-looking devices came up from the floor, machines manufactured for the sole purpose of inflicting pain.

Honored Matre torture devices.

The lights in the dim chamber came up, as if in eager anticipation. To his right he saw an austere table and hard, flat chairs. Dirty dishes strewn on the table with what looked like the crusted, unfinished remains of a meal. The whores must have been interrupted while eating.

One machine in the array still held a human skeleton bound together with dry sinews, thorny wires, and the rags of a black robe. Female. The bones hung from the side of a large stylized vise; the victim's entire arm was still caught in the compression mechanism.

Touching long-dormant controls, Duncan opened the vise. With great care and respect, he removed the crumbling body from the harsh metal embrace and lowered it to the deck. Mostly mummified, she weighed little.

It was clearly a Bene Gesserit captive, perhaps a Reverend Mother from one of the Sisterhood planets the whores had destroyed. Duncan could tell that the unfortunate victim had not died quickly or easily. Looking at the withered iron-hard lips, he could almost hear the curses the woman must have whispered as the Honored Matres killed her.

Under the increased illumination from the glowpanels, Duncan continued to explore the large room and its labyrinth of odd machines. Near the door through which he had entered, he found a clearplaz bin, its grisly contents visible: four more female skeletons, all piled in disarray, as if thrown unceremoniously inside. Killed and discarded. All of them wore black robes.

No matter how much pain they had inflicted, the Honored Matres would not have gotten the information they demanded: the location of Chapterhouse and the key to Bene Gesserit bodily control, the ability of a Reverend Mother to manipulate her own internal chemistry. Frustrated and infuriated, the whores would have killed their Bene Gesserit prisoners one by one.

Duncan pondered his discovery in silence. Words did not seem adequate. Best to tell Sheeana about this terrible room. As a Reverend Mother, she would know what to do.

6

After executing the defiant Honored Matre, Murhella was in no hurry to meet the Guild delegation. She wanted to make sure all traces of the disturbance were cleaned up before any outsiders were allowed into the Keep's main chamber.

These little rebellions were like brushfires—as soon as she stamped one out, others flared up elsewhere. Until her rule was unchallenged on Chapterhouse, the Mother Commander could not turn her efforts to bringing the dissident Honored Matre cells on other planets into the New Sisterhood.

And she had to accomplish that before they could all stand against the unknown, oncoming Enemy that had driven Honored Matres from the fringes of the Scattering. To succeed against the ultimate threat, she would need the Spacing Guild, and they had already proved to be insufficiently motivated. She would change that.

Each step of the overall plan hummed past like connected cars on a maglev train.

Bellonda shuffled to the foot of the dais below Murbella's ornamented chair.

She demonstrated a businesslike, efficient manner, with just the right amount of deference. "Mother Commander, the Guild delegation grows impatient—as you intended. I believe they are ripe for your meeting."

Murbella regarded the obese woman. Since Bene Gesserits were able to control the most minute nuances of their body chemistry, the fact that Bellonda let herself become so fat carried a message of its own. A sign of rebellion?

Flaunting her lack of interest in being viewed as a sexual figure? Some might consider it a slap at the Honored Matres, who used more traditional methods to hone their bodies to wiry perfection. Murbella, though, suspected that Bellonda used her obesity to distract and lull any potential opponents: Assuming her to be slow and weak, they would underestimate her. But Murbella knew better.

"Bring me spice coffee. I must be at my sharpest. Those Guildsmen will no doubt attempt to manipulate me."

"Shall I send them in now?"

"My coffee first, then the Guild. And summon Doria as well. I want both of you beside me."

With a knowing smile, Bellonda lumbered away.

Preparing herself, Murbella sat forward in her great chair and squared her shoulders. Her hands gripped the hard and silky-smooth soostones on the throne's arms. After years of violence, all the men she had enslaved and the women she had killed, she knew how to look intimidating.

As soon as Murbella had her coffee, she nodded to Bellonda. The old Sister touched a communications stub in her ear, called for the Guild supplicants.

Doria hurried in, knowing she was late. The ambitious young woman, who currently served as the Mother Commander's key advisor from the Honored Matre faction, had risen in rank by killing close rivals while other Honored Matres wasted time on duels with competing Bene Gesserits. The whip-thin Doria had recognized the emerging patterns of power and decided she would rather be deputy to the victor than leader of the vanquished.

"Take your places on either side of me. Who is the formal representative? Did the Guild send someone of particular importance?" Murbella knew only that the Guild delegation had come to the New Sisterhood, demanding—no, begging for—an audience with her.

Prior to the Battle of Junction, not even the Guild had known the location of Chapterhouse. The Sisterhood kept their homeworld hidden behind a moat of no-ships, its coordinates in no Guild navigation record. However, once the floodgates were opened and Honored Matres had arrived in droves, the site of Chapterhouse was no longer a closely held secret. Even so, few outsiders came directly to the Keep.

"Their highest human administrative official," Doria said in a hard, flinty voice, "and a Navigator."

"A Navigator?" Even Bellonda sounded surprised. "Here?"

Scowling at her counterpart, Doria continued. "I've received reports from the docking center where the Guildship landed. He's an Edric-class Navigator bearing the gene markers of an old bloodline."

Murbella's wide forehead creased. She sifted through direct knowledge as well as information that had surfaced from the chain of Other Memories inside her head. "An Administrator and a Navigator?" She allowed a cold smile. "The Guild must have an important message indeed."

"Maybe it is no more than groveling, Mother Commander," Bellonda said. "The Guild is desperate for spice."

"And well they should be!" Doria snapped. She and Bellonda were always at odds. Though their heated debates occasionally produced interesting perspectives, at the moment Murbella found it juvenile.

"Enough, both of you. I will not allow the Guildsmen to see you bickering.

Such childish displays demonstrate weakness." Both advisors fell silent as if a gate had slammed shut across their mouths.

As the hall's great doors swung open, female attendants stepped aside to allow the delegation of gray-robed men to enter. The newcomers' bodies were squat, the heads hairless, their faces slightly malformed and wrong. The Guild did not breed with an eye to physical perfection or attractiveness; they focused on maximizing the potential of the human mind.

At their lead strode a tall, silver-robed man, whose bald head was as smooth as polished marble, except for a white braid that dangled from the base of his skull like a long electrical cord. The administrative official stopped to survey the room with milky eyes (though he did not seem to be blind), then stepped forward to clear a path for the bulky construction that followed.

Behind the Guildsmen levitated a great armored aquarium, a transparent distorted-bubble of a tank filled with orange spice gas. Heavy scrolled metalwork reached up like support ribs against the tank. Through the thick plaz, Murbella observed a misshapen form, no longer quite human, its limbs wasted and thin, as if the body was little more than a stem to support the expanded mind. The Navigator.

Murbella rose from her throne as a sign that she looked down upon this delegation, not as a gesture of respect. She wondered how many times such grand representatives had presented themselves before political leaders and emperors, browbeating them with the Spacing Guild's mighty monopoly on space travel. This time, though, she sensed a difference: The Navigator, the high Administrator, and five Guildsmen escorts came as cowed supplicants.

While the gray-robed escorts lowered their faces from her gaze, the braided representative put himself in front of the Navigator's tank and bowed before her. "I am Administrator Rentel Gorus. We represent the Spacing Guild."

"Obviously," Murbella said coolly.

As if afraid of being upstaged, the Navigator drifted to the curved front pane of his tank. His voice was distorted from speaker/translators in the metal support ribs. "Mother Superior of the Bene Gesserit… or do we address you as Great Honored Matre?"

Murbella knew that most Navigators were so isolated and obscure they could barely communicate with normal humans. With brains as folded as the fabric of space, they could not utter a comprehensible sentence and communed instead with their even more bizarre and exotic Oracle of Time. Some Navigators, however, clung to shreds of their genetic past, intentionally "stunting themselves" so they could act as liaisons with mere humans.

"You may address me as Mother Commander, provided you do so with respect. What is your name, Navigator?"

"I am Edrik. Many in my line have interacted with governments and individuals, dating back to the time of Emperor Muad'Dib." He swam closer to the walls of his tank, and she could see the otherworldly eyes set in his large misshapen head.

"I am less interested in history than in your present predicament," Murbella said, choosing to use the steel of the Honored Matres rather than the cool negotiating manner of the Bene Gesserits.

Administrator Gorus continued to bow, as if speaking to the floor at Murbella's feet. "With the destruction of Rakis, all of its sandworms died, and thus the desert planet produces no more spice. Compounding the problem, Honored Matres slew the old Tleilaxu Masters, so the secret of creating spice from axlotl tanks has been lost."

"Quite a quandary," Doria muttered with a bit of a sneer.

Murbella curled her own lips downward in a frown. She remained on her feet.

"You state these things as if we did not know them."

The Navigator continued, amplifying his voice in order to drown out further words from Gorus. "In days past, mélange was plentiful and we had numerous independent sources. Now, after little more than a decade, the Guild has only its own stockpiles remaining, and they are dwindling rapidly. It is becoming difficult to obtain spice even on the black market."

Murbella crossed her arms over her chest. On either side of her, Bellonda and Doria looked supremely satisfied. "But we can provide you with new spice. If we choose to do so. If you give us good reason."

Edrik drifted in his tank. The escort party of Guildsmen looked away.

The desert band girdling Chapterhouse was continuing to expand every year.

Spice blows had occurred, and the stunted sandworms were growing larger, though they were only shadows of the monsters that once churned the dunes of Rakis. Decades ago, before the Honored Matres obliterated Dune, the Bene Gesserit order had gathered huge stockpiles of the then-plentiful spice. In contrast, the Spacing Guild—assuming the days of scarce mélange were long over and the market was strong—did not make preparations for a possible shortage. Even the ancient trading conglomerate of CHOAM had been caught off guard.

Murbella stepped closer to the tank, focused on the Navigator. Gorus folded his hands and said to her, "The reason we have come is therefore obvious… Mother Commander."

Murbella said, "My Sisters and I have good reason for cutting off your supplies."

Nonplussed, Edrik waved his webbed hands in the swirling mists. "Mother Commander, what have we done to invoke your displeasure?"

She lifted her thin eyebrows in scorn. "Your Guild knew that Honored Matres bore weapons from the Scattering that were capable of destroying entire planets. And you still transported the whores against us!"

"Honored Matres had their own ships from the Scattering. Their own technologies—" Gorus began.

"But they flew blind, did not know the landscape of the Old Empire until you guided them. The Guild showed them their targets, led them to vulnerable worlds. The Guild is complicit in the eradication of billions of lives—not just on Rakis itself, but on our library world of Lampadas and countless other planets. All the worlds of the Bene Tleilax have been crushed or conquered, while our own Sisters remain enslaved on Buzzell, harvesting soostones for rebel Honored Matres who will not bow to my rule." She laced her fingers together. "The Spacing Guild is at least partly responsible for those crimes, so you must make recompense."

"Without spice, space travel and all galactic commerce will be hobbled!" Alarm rang clearly in Administrator Gorus's voice.

"So? The Guild has previously flaunted its alliance with the Ixians by using primitive navigation machines. Use them instead of Navigators, if your supply of spice is inadequate." She waited to see if he would call her bluff.

"Inferior substitutes," Edrik insisted.

Bellonda added, "Ships in the Scattering flew without spice or Navigators."

"Countless numbers were lost," Edrik said.

Gorus was quick to change his voice to a conciliatory tone. "Mother Commander, the Ixian machines were mere fallback devices, to be used in emergencies only.

"We have never relied on them. All Guild ships must carry a functional Navigator."

"So, when you showed off these machines, it was all a sham to drive down the price of mélange? To convince the Priests of the Divided God and the Tleilaxu that you didn't need what they were selling?" Her lips curled in disdain. During the years that Chapterhouse was hidden, even the Bene Gesserits had shunned Guildships. The Sisters held the location of their planet in their own minds. "And now that you do require spice, there is no one to sell it to you. No one but us."

Murbella had her own deceptions. The extravagant use of mélange on Chapterhouse was mainly for show, a bluff. So far, the worms in the desert belt provided only a trickle of spice, but the Bene Gesserit kept the market open by freely selling mélange from their copious stockpiles, implying that it came from the newborn worms in the arid belt. Eventually, the Chapterhouse desert would indeed be as rich in spice as the sands of Rakis, but for now the Sisterhood's ruse was necessary to increase the perception of power and limitless wealth.

And somewhere, eventually, there would be other planets producing mélange.

Before the long night of the Honored Matres, Mother Superior Odrade had dispersed groups of Sisters in unguided no-ships across uncharted space. They had carried sand trout specimens and clear instructions on how to seed new desert worlds. Right now, there might already be more than a dozen alternative "Dunes" being created out there. "Remove the single point of failure," Odrade often said then, and afterward from Other Memory. The spice bottleneck would once again be gone, and fresh sources of mélange would appear throughout the galaxy.

For now, though, the iron grip of monopoly was the New Sisterhood's.

Gorus bowed even more deeply, refusing to raise his milky eyes. "Mother Commander, we will pay whatever you wish."

"Then you shall pay with your suffering. Have you ever heard of a Bene Gesserit punishment?" She drew a long, cool breath of air. "Your request is denied. Navigator Edrik and Administrator Gorus, you may tell your Oracle of Time and your fellow Navigators that the Guild will have more spice when… and if… I decide you warrant it." She felt a warmth of satisfaction and guessed that it came from Odrade-within. When they were hungry enough, the Guild would be prepared to do exactly as she wished. It was all part of a great plan coming together.

Trembling, Gorus said, "Can your New Sisterhood survive without the Guild? We could bring a huge force of Heighliners and take the spice from you."

Murbella smiled to herself, knowing his threat had no teeth. "Accepting your ludicrous assertion for a moment, would you risk destroying the spice forever?

We have installed explosives, cleverly rigged to annihilate the spice sands and flood them out with our water reserves if we detect even the slightest incursion from outside. The last sand-worms would die."

"You're as bad as Paul Atreides," the Guildsman cried. "He made a similar threat against the Guild."

"I take that as a compliment." Murbella looked at the confused Navigator floating in his spice gas. The Administrator's bald head glistened with sweat.

Now she addressed the five gray-clothed Guildsmen escorts. "Raise your eyes to me. All of you!" The escorts turned their faces upward, revealing collective fear. Gorus snapped his head up as well, and the Navigator pressed his mutated face against the transparent plaz.

Although Murbella spoke to the Guild contingent, her words were also meant for the two factions of women who listened in the great hall. "Selfish fools, there is a greater danger coming—an Enemy that was powerful enough to drive the Honored Matres back from the Scattering. We all know this."

"We have all heard this, Mother Commander." The Administrator's voice dripped with skepticism. "We have seen no proof."

Her eyes flashed. "Oh, yes. They are coming, but the threat is so vast that no one—not the New Sisterhood, nor the Spacing Guild, nor CHOAM, nor even the Honored Matres—understand how to get out of the way. We have weakened ourselves and wasted our energies in meaningless struggles, while ignoring the true threat." She swirled her serpent-scribed robe. "If the Guild provides us with sufficient assistance in the coming battle, and with sufficient enthusiasm, perhaps I will reconsider opening our stockpiles to you. If we cannot stand against the relentless Enemy, then bickering over spice will be the least of our problems."

7

Face Dancer representatives came to a conference chamber aboard one of the Guildships used by the Lost Tleilaxu. The Face Dancers had been summoned by the breeding wizards from the Scattering to receive explicit new instructions.

Second-rank Uxtal attended the meeting as a note taker and observer; he did not intend to speak, since speaking would earn him a reprimand from his betters. He wasn't important enough to bear such a responsibility, especially with the equivalent of a Master present, one of those who called themselves Elders. But Uxtal was confident they would recognize his talent, sooner or later.

A faithful Tleilaxu, he was gray-skinned and diminutive, his features elfin, his flesh impregnated with metals and blockers to foil any scanners. No one could steal the secrets of genetics, the Language of God, from the Lost Tleilaxu.

Like an oversize elf, Elder Burah perched on his raised seat at the head of the table as Face Dancers began to arrive, one at a time. Eight of them—a sacred number to the Tleilaxu, which Uxtal had learned from studying ancient scriptures and deciphering secret gnostic meanings in the preserved words of the Prophet. Though Elder Burah had commanded the shape-shifters to appear, Uxtal had an uneasy feeling in their presence, one that he could not quite put into thoughts or words.

The Face Dancers looked like completely nondescript, average crewmen. Over the years, they had been planted aboard the Guildship, where they performed their duties quietly and efficiently; not even the Guild suspected that replacements had occurred. This new breed of Face Dancers had extensively infiltrated the remnants of the Old Empire; they could fool most tests, even one of the witches' Truthsayers. Burah and other Lost Tleilaxu leaders often snickered that they had achieved their victory while the Honored Matres and Bene Gesserits scrambled around preparing for some mysterious great Enemy. The real invasion was already well underway, and Uxtal was awed and impressed with what his people had accomplished. He was proud to be among them.

At Burah's command, the Face Dancers took their seats, deferring to one who seemed to be their spokesman (though Uxtal had thought that all of those creatures were identical, like drones in an insect hive). Watching them, scribbling notes, he wondered for the first time if Face Dancers might have their own secret organization, as the Tleilaxu leaders did. No, of course not.

The shape-shifters were bred to be followers, not independent thinkers.

Uxtal paid close attention, remembering not to speak. Later, he would transcribe this meeting and disseminate the information to other Elders of the Lost Tleilaxu. His job was to serve as an assistant; if he performed well enough, he could rise through the ranks, eventually achieving the title of Elder among his people. Could there be a grander dream? To become one of the new Masters!

Elder Burah and the present kehl, or council, represented the Lost Tleilaxu race and their Great Belief. Besides Burah, only six Elders existed—a total of seven, while eight was the holy number. Though he would never speak it aloud, Uxtal felt they should appoint someone else soon, or even promote him, so that the prescribed numbers were in proper balance.

As he surveyed the Face Dancers, Burah's lips pressed together in a petulant frown. "I demand a report on your progress. What records have you salvaged from the destroyed Tleilaxu worlds? We barely know enough of their technology to continue with the sacred work. Our fallen stepbrothers knew much more than we have recovered. This is not acceptable."

The placid-looking "leader" of the Face Dancers smiled in his Guildsman's uniform. He addressed his shape-shifter comrades, as if he hadn't even heard Elder Burah speak. "I have received our next set of commands. Our primary instructions remain the same. We are to find the no-ship that escaped from Chapterhouse. The search must continue."

To Uxtal's surprise, the other Face Dancers turned away from Burah, focusing instead on their own spokesman. Flustered, the Elder pounded a small fist on the table. "An escaped no-ship? What do we care about a no-ship? Who are you—which one? I can never tell you apart, not even by scent."

The Face Dancer leader looked at Burah and seemed to consider whether or not to answer the question. "At the moment, I am called Khrone."

Sitting against the copper-plated wall, Uxtal flicked his gaze from the innocent-looking Face Dancers to Elder Burah. He couldn't grasp the undercurrents here, but he sensed a strange threat. So many things were just slightly beyond the edge of his comprehension.

"Your priority," Burah doggedly continued, "is to rediscover how to manufacture mélange using axlotl tanks. From old knowledge we took with us into the Scattering, we know how to use the tanks to create gholas—but not to make spice, a technique that our stepbrothers developed during the Famine Times, long after our line of Tleilaxu departed."

When the Lost Tleilaxu returned from the Scattering, their stepbrothers had accepted them only hesitantly, allowing them back into the fold of their race as no more than second-class citizens. Uxtal didn't think it was fair. But he and his fellow outsiders, all of them prodigal sons according to the original Tleilaxu, accepted the deprecatory comments they received, remembering an important quote from the catechism of the Great Belief: "Only those who are truly lost can ever hope to find the truth. Trust not in your maps, but in the guidance of God."

As time passed, the returned Elders came to see that it was not they who were "lost," but the original Masters who had strayed from the Great Belief. Only the Lost Tleilaxu—forged in the rigors of the Scattering—had kept the veracity of God's commands, while the heretical ones wallowed in delusions. Eventually, the Lost Tleilaxu had realized that they would have to reeducate their misguided brothers, or remove them. Uxtal understood, having been told so many times, that the Lost Tleilaxu were far superior.

The original Masters were a suspicious lot, however, and they had never entirely trusted outsiders, not even outsiders of their own race. In this case, their problematic paranoia had not been misguided, for the Lost Tleilaxu were indeed in league with the Honored Matres. They used the terrible women as tools for reasserting the Great Belief upon their complacent stepbrothers. The whores had wiped out the original Tleilaxu worlds, eliminating every last original Master (a more extreme reaction than Uxtal had anticipated). Victory should have been simple enough to achieve.

During this meeting, however, Khrone and his fellows were not acting as expected. In the copper-walled chamber, Uxtal noticed subtle changes in their demeanor, and he saw the concern on Elder Burah's face.

"Our priorities are different from yours," Khrone said baldly.

Uxtal stifled a gasp. Burah was so displeased that his grayish expression turned a bruised purple. "Different priorities? How could any orders supersede mine, an Elder of the Tleilaxu?" He laughed with a sound like dull metal scraped across slate. "Oh, now I remember that silly story! Do you mean your mysterious old man and old woman who communicate with you from afar?"

"Yes," Khrone said. "According to their projections, the escaped no-ship holds something or someone supremely important to them. We must find it, capture it, and deliver it to them."

Uxtal found this all so incomprehensible that he had to speak up. "What old man and old woman?" No one ever told him the things he needed to know. Burah glanced dismissively at his assistant. "Face Dancer delusions."

Khrone looked down at the Elder as if he were a maggot. "Their projections are infallible. Aboard that no-ship is, or will be, the necessary fulcrum to influence the battle at the end of the universe. That takes precedence over your need for a convenient source of spice."

"But… but how do they know this?" Uxtal asked, surprised that he was finding the nerve to speak. "Is it a prophecy?" He tried to imagine a numerical code that might apply, one buried in the sacred writings.

Burah snapped at him. "Prophecy, prescience, or some sort of bizarre mathematical projection — it does not matter!"

As Khrone stood, he seemed to grow taller. "On the contrary, you do not matter." He turned to his fellow Face Dancers while the Elder sat in speechless shock. "We must turn our minds and our efforts to discovering where that vessel has gone. We are everywhere, but it has been three years and the trail has grown cold."

The other seven shape-shifters nodded, speaking in a sort of rapid humming undertone that sounded like the buzz of insects. "We will find them."

"They cannot escape."

"The tachyon net extends far and it draws tighter."

"The no-ship will be found."

"I do not give you permission for this foolish search!" Burah shouted. Uxtal wanted to cheer for him. "You will heed my commands. I told you to scour the conquered Tleilaxu planets, investigate the laboratories of the fallen Masters, and learn their methods of creating spice with axlotl tanks. Not only do we require it for ourselves, but it is a priceless commodity that we can use to break the Bene Gesserit monopoly and claim the commercial power that is our due." He delivered this grand speech, as if expecting the Face Dancers to stand up and shout their approval.

"No," Khrone said emphatically. "That is not our intention."

Uxtal remained aghast. He himself had never dreamed of challenging an Elder, and this was a mere Face Dancer! He shrank back against the copper wall, wishing he could melt into it. This wasn't the way things were supposed to happen. Angry and confused, Burah twisted back and forth in his chair. "We created Face Dancers, and you will follow our orders." He sniffed and got to his feet. "Why am I even discussing this with you?"

In unison, as if they shared a single mind, the entire contingent of Face Dancers stood. From their positions around the table, they blocked Elder Burah's exit. He sat back down on his high seat, and now he seemed nervous.

"Are you certain you Lost Tleilaxu created us… or did you simply find us out in the Scattering? True, in the distant shadows of the past, a Tleilaxu Master was responsible for our seed stock. He made modifications and dispatched us to the ends of the universe shortly before the birth of Paul Muad'Dib. But we have evolved since then."

As if a veil had been lifted simultaneously from their faces, Khrone and his companions blurred and shifted. Their nondescript human expressions melted away, and the Face Dancers returned to their blank state, a bland yet unnervingly inhuman set of features: sunken black-button eyes, pug noses, slack mouths. Their skin was pale and malleable, their vestigial hair bristly and white. Using a genetic map, they could form their muscles and epidermis into any desired pattern to mimic humans.

"We no longer need to expend effort on continuing illusions," Khrone announced. "That deception has become a waste of time."

Uxtal and Elder Burah stared at them.

Khrone continued, "Long ago, the original Tleilaxu Masters produced the genesis of what we have become. You, Elder Burah, and your fellows are but faded copies, diluted memories of your race's former greatness. It offends us that you consider yourselves our masters."

Three of the Face Dancers moved toward the high seat of Elder Burah. One stepped behind him and one on either side, closing him in. With each passing moment, the Elder looked more afraid.

Uxtal felt as if he would faint. He barely dared to breathe and wanted to flee, but knew there were many more Face Dancers aboard the Guildship than these eight. He would never escape alive.

"Stop this! I command you!" Burah tried to stand up, but the two flanking Face Dancers held his slumped shoulders to keep him from leaving his elevated seat.

Khrone said, "No wonder the others call you Lost. You Masters from the Scattering have always been blind."

Behind him, a third Face Dancer reached forward with both hands to cover Burah's eyes. Using his forefingers, the Face Dancer squeezed, pressing like an iron vise into Burah's skull. The Elder screamed. His eyeballs burst; blood and fluid ran down his cheeks.

Khrone let out a mild, artificial-sounding laugh. "Maybe your Tleilaxu companions could create old-fashioned metal eyes for you. Or have you lost that technology as well?"

Burah's continuing screams were abruptly cut short as the Face Dancer snapped the man's head to one side, breaking his neck. Within moments, the shape-shifter had taken a deep imprint; his body shifted, shrank, and acquired the elfin features of the dead Elder. When the transition was complete, he flexed his small fingers and smiled down at the bloodied, identical body on the floor.

"Another one replaced," the Face Dancer said.

Another one? Uxtal froze, trying to keep from screaming, and wishing he could just become invisible.

Now the shape-shifters turned to face the assistant. Unable to do more than cringe, he held up his hands in complete surrender, though he doubted that would do any good. They would kill him and replace him. No one would ever know. A quiet moan escaped from his throat.

"We will no longer pretend that you are our masters," Khrone said to Uxtal.

The Face Dancers stepped away from Burah's body. The copy bent down and wiped his bloody fingers on the crumpled Elder's garment.

"However, for the overall plan we still need to use certain Tleilaxu procedures, and for that we will retain some of the original genetic stock—if you qualify." Khrone stepped very close to Uxtal and stared hard at him. "Do you understand the hierarchy here? Do you realize who is your true master?"

Uxtal managed no more than a hoarse gasp as he answered, "Y-yes, of course."

8

The Jewish passengers were given all the freedom they could desire aboard the giant vessel, but Sheeana knew that every prison had its bars, and every camp its fences.

The only Reverend Mother among the refugee Jews, a woman named Rebecca, sought out her boundaries, diligent and quietly curious. Sheeana had always found her to be intriguing, a wild Reverend Mother, a woman who had undergone the Agony without the benefit of Bene Gesserit training. The very idea amazed her, but other such anomalies had occurred throughout history. Sheeana often accompanied Rebecca on her contemplative walks, each of which was more a journey of the mind than an effort to reach any specific room or deck.

"Are we just going to wander in circles again?" the Rabbi complained, tagging along. A former Suk doctor, he always preferred to evaluate the point of any activity before engaging in it. "Why should I waste my time in futile pursuits when one can study the word of God?"

The Rabbi acted as if they were forcing him to walk along with them. To him, he had an obligation to study the Torah for the sake of study, but Sheeana knew that Jewish women were to study for the sake of knowing the practical application of Torah law. Rebecca had gone far beyond either.

"All of life is a journey. We are carried along at life's pace, whether we choose to run or sit still," Sheeana said.

He scowled and looked to Rebecca for support, but found none. "Don't quote your Bene Gesserit platitudes to me," he said. "Jewish mysticism is far more ancient than anything you witches have developed."

"Would you rather I quoted your Kabbalah? Many of the other lives within me studied the Kabbalah extensively, even though they were technically not allowed to do so. Jewish mysticism is quite fascinating."

The Rabbi seemed nonplussed, as if she had stolen something from him. He pushed his spectacles higher on his nose and walked closer to Rebecca, trying to shut out Sheeana.

Whenever the old man joined their conversations, the debate became a clash between Sheeana and the Rabbi. The old man insisted on a battleground of scholarship, rather than any direct wisdom Sheeana carried within her from her myriad Other Memories. It made her feel practically invisible. Regardless of her clout aboard the no-ship, the Rabbi did not consider Sheeana relevant to the concerns of his Jews, and Rebecca did well holding her own.

Now they passed down the curving corridors, descending from one deck to another with Rebecca leading the way. She had bound her long brown hair into a thick braid that was shot with so many threads of gray that it resembled driftwood. She wore her usual loose, drab robe.

The Rabbi walked close beside her, jockeying his position in a not—accidental attempt to shoulder Sheeana behind the two of them. Sheeana found it amusing.

The Rabbi never missed an opportunity to lecture Rebecca when her thoughts strayed from the narrow confines of what he considered proper behavior. He often browbeat Rebecca, reminding her that she was irretrievably tainted in his eyes because of what the Bene Gesserit had done to her. Regardless of the old man's scorn and concern, Sheeana knew that Rebecca would always have the Sisterhood's gratitude. Ages ago, the secret Jews had made a pact with the Bene Gesserit for mutual protection. The Sisterhood had offered them sanctuary at times throughout history, hiding them, carrying them away from pogroms and prejudice after the violent tides of intolerance had once again swung against the children of Israel. In exchange, the Jews had been obligated to protect the Bene Gesserit Sisters from the Honored Matres.

When the ferocious whores had come to the Sisterhood's library world of Lampadas with the clear intention of destroying it, the Bene Gesserit had Shared their own memories. Millions of lives poured into thousands of minds, and those thousands distilled into hundreds, and those hundreds all Shared into one Reverend Mother, Lucilla, who escaped with that irreplaceable knowledge.

Fleeing to Gammu, Lucilla had begged sanctuary from the hidden Jews, but the Honored Matres came hunting after her. The only way to preserve the Lampadas horde in her mind had been to Share it with an unexpected recipient—the wild Reverend Mother Rebecca—and then to offer up herself as a sacrifice.

So, Rebecca had accepted all those desperate, clamoring thoughts into her brain, and preserved them even after the whores had killed Lucilla. She eventually delivered her priceless treasure to the Bene Gesserit, who accepted the rescued knowledge of Lampadas and distributed it widely among the women at Chapterhouse. Thus, the Jews had fulfilled their ancient obligations.

A debt is a debt, Sheeana thought. Honor is honor. Truth is truth.

But she knew Rebecca was forever changed by the experience. How could she not be, after living the lives of millions of Bene Gesserits—millions who thought differently, who experienced many astonishing things, who accepted behaviors and opinions that were anathema to the Rabbi? No wonder Sheeana and Rebecca frightened him, intimidated him. As for Rebecca, though she had Shared those memories with others, she still carried the kaleidoscope chains of life after life, traveling backward into myriad pasts. How could she be expected to shrug that aside and return to mere memorized knowledge? She had lost her innocence.

Even the Rabbi must understand that.

The old man had been Rebecca's teacher and mentor. Before Lampadas, she might have debated with him, sharpening wit and intellect, but she would never have doubted him. Sheeana felt sorry for what the other woman had lost. Now, Rebecca must see the immense gaps in even the Rabbi's understanding. To discover that one's mentor knows little is a terrible thing. The old man's view of the universe encompassed only the barest tip of an iceberg. Rebecca had once confided to Sheeana that she missed her prior, innocent relationship with the old man, but it could never be regained.

The Rabbi wore a white skullcap on his balding head as he walked along beside Rebecca with a fit and energetic stride. His dusky ship clothes hung loosely on his small frame, but he refused to have them refitted or new garments manufactured. His gray beard had grown paler in recent years, contrasting with his leathery skin, but he was still extremely healthy.

Though the verbal sparring did not seem to bother Rebecca, Sheeana had learned not to press the Rabbi beyond a certain point in philosophical debates.

Whenever he was about to lose an argument, the old man vehemently quoted some line from the Torah, whether or not he understood the meanings within meanings, and stalked away in feigned triumph.

The three of them wandered down deck after deck until they reached the no-ship's brig levels. This stolen vessel had been built by people from the Scattering and flown by Honored Matres, probably aided by the duplicitous Spacing Guild. Every large vessel—even from the days of sailing ships on the seas of near-forgotten Earth—contained secure cells for holding unruly people. The Rabbi appeared nervous when he noticed where Rebecca had led them.

Sheeana certainly knew what was kept in the brig: Futars. How often did Rebecca visit the creatures? Half-beasts. Sheeana wondered if the whores had used these brig cells as torture chambers, like in an ancient Bastille. Or had dangerous prisoners been kept aboard this vessel?

Dangerous. None could be more dangerous than these four Futars—beast-men created in the shadows of the Scattering, muscular hybrids as close to animals as they were to humans. They were born hunters with wiry hair, long fangs, and sharp claws, animals bred to track down and kill.

"Why do we go down here, daughter? What is it you seek from these… these inhuman things?"

"I always seek answers, Rabbi."

"An honorable pursuit," Sheeana said from behind them.

He spun to snap at her, "Some answers should never be learned."

"And some answers help protect us from the unknown," Rebecca said, but it was clear by her voice that she knew she would never convince him.

Rebecca and Sheeana stopped in front of the transparent wall of one of the holding chambers, though the Rabbi now hovered a step behind them. Sheeana always found herself intrigued and disgusted by the Futars. Even in their confinement, they maintained their muscular physiques, prowling and pacing.

The beasts moved about aimlessly, separated by brig walls, circling from side wall to plaz doorway to back wall and then around again, testing and retesting boundaries.

Predators are optimists, Sheeana realized. They have to be. She could see their stored energy, their primitive needs. The Futars longed to lope through a forest again, to track down prey and sink claws and fangs into unresisting flesh.

During a battle on Gammu, the Jewish refugees had run to the Bene Gesserit forces demanding the protection accorded them by the old agreement. At the same time, four escaped Futars had come aboard, asking to be taken to "Handlers." Afterward, the predatory half-human creatures had been held on the no-ship until the Bene Gesserit could decide what to do with them. When the no-ship flew off into nowhere, Sheeana and Duncan took everyone with them.

Sensing the visitors, one of the Futars rushed to the plaz wall of his brig cell. He pressed against it, his wiry body hair bristling, his olive-green eyes alight with fire and interest. "You Handlers?" The Futar sniffed, but the plaz barrier was impenetrable. With obvious disappointment and disdain, he hunched his shoulders and slunk away. "You not Handlers."

"It smells down here, daughter." The Rabbi's voice wavered. "There must be something wrong with the recirculation vents." Sheeana could detect no difference in the air.

Rebecca looked sidelong at him, a challenging expression on her pinched face.

"Why do you hate them so, Rabbi? They cannot help what they are." Was she referring to herself, too?

His answer was glib. "They are not God's creatures. Ki-layim. The Torah quite clearly prohibits mixing breeds. Two different animals are not even allowed to plow a field side by side on one bridle. These Futars are… wrong on many different levels." The Rabbi scowled. "As you should well know, daughter."

The four Futars continued their restless prowling. Rebecca could think of no way to help them. Somewhere out in the Scattering, the "Handlers" had bred Futars for the express purpose of hunting down and killing Honored Matres, who in turn had captured and broken a few Futars. The moment they saw a chance for freedom on Gammu, these animal-men had escaped.

"Why do you want the Handlers so badly?" Sheeana said to the Futar, not knowing if he would understand the question.

With a snakelike motion, the beast-man snapped his head up and came forward.

"Need Handlers."

Leaning closer, Sheeana saw violence in his eyes, but she also detected intelligence mixed with longing. "Why do you need the Handlers? Are they your slave masters? Or is there more of a bond between you?"

"Need Handlers. Where are Handlers?"

The Rabbi shook his head, ignoring Sheeana again. "You see, daughter? Animals can't understand freedom. They comprehend nothing more than what has been bred and trained into them."

He clutched Rebecca's lean arm, pretending to hold onto her for strength as he pulled her from the prison cell. In his demeanor Sheeana could sense the old man's revulsion, like the heat of flames from a furnace.

"These hybrids are abominations," he said in a low voice, his tone a feral growling sound of his own.

Rebecca exchanged an instant, knowing glance with Sheeana before saying, "I have seen many worse abominations, Rabbi." This was something any Reverend Mother could understand.

As they turned from the brig, Sheeana was startled to see a flushed Garimi emerge from the lift and rush forward with Bene Gesserit grace and silence.

Her face looked pale and disturbed. "Worse abominations?

"We have just found one. Something the whores left behind for us." Sheeana felt a lump harden in her throat. "What is it?"

"An old torture chamber. Duncan discovered it. He asks you to come."

9

As a veteran battlefield commander, Bashar Miles Teg had attended more than his share of funerals. This ceremony, though, seemed eerily unfamiliar, acknowledging long-ago suffering the Bene Gesserit refused to forget.

Solemnly, the ship's entire company gathered on the main deck near one of the small cargo airlocks. Though the chamber was large, the 150 attendees crowded together along the walls for the observance. Sheeana, Garimi, and two other Reverend Mothers named Elyen and Calissa stood on a raised platform at the center of the room. Near the airlock door, wrapped in black, lay the five bodies extricated from the Honored Matre torture chamber.

Not far from Teg, Duncan stood next to Sheeana, leaving the navigation bridge empty for the duration of the funeral. Although he ostensibly served as the no-ship's captain, these Bene Gesserits would never let a mere man—even a ghola with a hundred lifetimes—have command over them.

Since emerging from the oddly distorted universe, Duncan had not engaged the Holtzman engines again, or selected a course. Without navigational guidance, each jump through foldspace carried considerable risk, so now the no-ship hung in empty space without coordinates. Although he could have mapped nearby star systems on the long-range projection and flagged possible planets to explore, Duncan let the ship drift, rudderless.

In their three years in the other universe, they had encountered no sign of the old man and woman, or of the gossamer web that Duncan insisted continued to search for them. Though Teg did not disbelieve the other man's fears of the mysterious hunters that only he could see, the young Bashar also wished for an end—or just a point—to their odyssey.

Garimi's lips sank into a deep frown as she stared at the mummified corpses.

"See, we were right to leave Chapterhouse. Did we need any further proof that witches and whores do not mix?"

Sheeana raised her voice, addressing all of them. "For three years, we carried the bodies of our fallen Sisters without knowing they were here. In all that time, they have not been able to rest. These Reverend Mothers died without Sharing, without adding their lives to Other Memory. We can guess, but we cannot know, what agonies they endured before the whores killed them."

"We do know that they refused to reveal the information the whores tried to wrest from them," Garimi spoke up. "Chapterhouse remained intact and our private knowledge secure, until Murbella's unholy alliance."

Teg nodded to himself. When the Honored Matres had returned to the Old Empire, they had demanded the Bene Gesserit secret for manipulating a body's biochemistry, presumably so that they could shrug off any further epidemics such as the ones the Enemy had inflicted on them. The Sisters had all refused.

And they died for it.

No one knew the origin of the Honored Matres. After the Famine Times, somewhere out in the farthest reaches of the Scattering, perhaps some wild Reverend Mothers had collided with remnants of Leto IPs female Fish Speakers.

Yet this blending could not have accounted for the seed of vengeful violence in their genetic makeup. The whores destroyed whole planets in their fury at being rebuffed by the Bene Gesserit and then by the old Tleilaxu. Teg knew that there must have been many dead Reverend Mothers in many torture chambers over the past decade.

The old Bashar had his own experiences with Honored Matre interrogators and their appalling torture devices back on Gammu. Even a hardened military commander could not withstand the incredible agony of their T-probes, and he had been fundamentally changed by the experience, though not in a way those women had expected…

In the ceremony, Sheeana named the five victims from identifications found with their robes, then closed her eyes and lowered her head, as did everyone in the chamber. This moment of silence was the Bene Gesserit equivalent of prayer, a time when each Sister pondered a private blessing for the departed souls who lay before them. Then Sheeana and Garimi carried one of the black-wrapped bodies into the airlock chamber. Retreating from the small vault, they let Elyen and Calissa carry another dead woman into the airlock.

Sheeana had refused to let Teg or Duncan help. "This reminder of the whores' vicious cruelty is our own burden." When all of the mummified corpses had been placed reverently inside the chamber, Sheeana sealed the outer door and cycled the systems.

Everyone remained hushed, listening to the whisper of draining air. Finally, the outer door opened and the five bodies floated out along with the wispy residue of atmosphere. Drifting without a home… like everyone aboard the Ithaca. Like satellites of the no-ship, the wrapped humans accompanied the wandering vessel for a time, then slowly increased their separation until, against the night of space, the black cadavers became invisible.

Duncan Idaho stared out the windowport in the direction of the dwindling shapes. Teg could tell that finding the bodies and the torture chamber had affected him. Suddenly, Duncan stiffened with alarm and pressed closer to the plaz, though the young Bashar could see nothing in the void but faraway stars.

Teg knew him better than anyone else aboard. "Duncan, what is—?"

"The net! Can't you see it?" He whirled. "The net cast by the old man and woman. They've found us again—and nobody's on the navigation bridge!"

Shouldering aside Bene Gesserit women and the Rabbi's people, Duncan charged toward the door of the chamber. "I've got to activate the Holtzman engines and foldspace before the net closes in!"

Because of a special sensitivity—perhaps from gene markers that his Tleilaxu creators had secretly planted in his ghola body—only Duncan could see through the gauzy fabric of the universe. Now, after three years, the old couple's net had found the no-ship again.

Teg ran after him, but he knew the elevator would be far too slow. He also knew that in the chaos and sudden confusion he would be able to do something he otherwise feared to do. Rushing past the crowd of people who had come to see the burial in space and bypassing the lift tube, he ran to an empty corridor. There, out of view of too-curious eyes, Miles Teg accelerated himself.

No one here knew of his ability, though hints and rumors of impossible things the old Bashar had achieved might have raised some suspicions. During his torture by the Honored Matres, he had discovered the capacity to hypercharge his metabolism and move at incredible speeds. The mind-ripping agony of an Ixian T-probe had somehow released this unknown gift from within Teg's Atreides genes. When his body sped up, the universe seemed to slow down, and he could move with such speed that a simple tap was enough to kill his captors. In this manner he had slaughtered hundreds of Honored Matres and their minions inside one of their strongholds on Gammu. His new ghola body retained that ability.

Now he raced down the empty corridor, feeling the heat of his metabolism, the scrape of air past his face. He scrambled up the rungs of access ladders much faster than the lift tube could ever travel.

Teg didn't know how much longer he could keep his gift to himself, but knew he had to. In the past, because of a single fear, the Sisterhood had shown little tolerance for males with special abilities, and Teg was certain that the women had been responsible for killing a number of such "male abominations." Afraid of creating another Kwisatz Haderach, they threw away many potential advantages.

It reminded him of how human civilization had dispensed with all aspects of computerized technology following the Butlerian Jihad because of their hatred for evil thinking machines. He knew the old cliche "throwing the baby out with the bath water," and feared he would meet a similar fate, should the Sisterhood learn he was special.

Teg burst onto the navigation bridge and ran to the engine controls. He looked out through the broad observation plaz. Space seemed calm and peaceful. Even though he saw no sign of the deadly web closing in, he did not question Duncan's abilities.

His fingers a blur across the controls, Teg engaged the enormous Holtzman engines and picked a course at random, without Duncan and without a Navigator.

What choice did he have? He only hoped that he didn't plunge the Ithaca into a star or wayward planet. As horrible as that possibility was, he thought it preferable to letting the old man and woman seize them.

Space folded, and the no-ship dropped away, appearing elsewhere, far from where the gossamer strands had tried to wrap around them, far from the drifting bodies of the five tortured Bene Gesserits.

Finally allowing himself to feel safe, Teg slowed himself down to normal time.

Furnace-intensity body heat radiated from him, and perspiration poured from his scalp and down his face. He felt as if he had burned off a year of his life. Now the ravenous hunger slammed into him. Shuddering, Teg slumped back.

Very soon, he would have to consume enough calories to make up for the huge quantity he had just expended, mainly carbohydrates with a restorative dose of mélange.

The lift door opened and a frantic Duncan Idaho charged onto the navigation bridge. Seeing Teg at the controls, he stuttered to a halt and looked out the viewing plaz, astonished to see the new starfield.

"The net is gone." Panting, he turned his question-filled eyes toward Teg.

"Miles, how did you get here? What happened?"

"I folded space — thanks to your warning. I ran to a different lift tube, which took me here immediately. It must have been faster than yours." He wiped perspiration off his forehead. When Duncan clearly remained skeptical of the explanation, the Bashar searched for a way to distract the other man. "Have we gotten away from the web?"

Duncan looked out at the emptiness around them. "This is bad, Miles. So soon after we popped back into normal space, the hunters have picked up our scent again."

10

After the funeral in space and the emergency with the unseen net, the last original Tleilaxu Master sat in his cell and contemplated his own mortality.

Scytale had been trapped aboard the no-ship for more than a decade before Sheeana and Duncan escaped from Chapterhouse. No longer was he simply a captive shielded from the hunting Honored Mattes. The ship had been flung off into… he knew not where.

Of course, the whores swarming into Chapterhouse would surely have killed him as soon as they learned of his existence. Both he and Duncan Idaho were marked for death. At least out here, Scytale was safe from Murbella and her minions.

But other threats abounded. While back on Chapterhouse, he had been held in his inner chambers and prevented from seeing outside. Therefore, the witches could easily have modified the onboard diurnal cycles, creating some sort of insidious deception to throw off his bodily rhythms. They could have made him forget the holy days and misjudge the passage of time, though they paid lip service to the Tleilaxu Great Belief, claiming to share the sacred truths of the Islamiyat. Scytale drew his thin legs up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his bony shins. It didn't matter. Though he was now allowed to move about in a large section of the huge ship, his incarceration had become an unendurable expanse of days and years, regardless of how it was cut up into smaller segments.

And the spaciousness of his austere quarters and confinement areas could not make him forget that he was still imprisoned. Scytale was permitted to leave this deck only under close supervision. After so much time, what did they think he might do? If the Ithaca was going to wander forever, they would eventually have to let down their barriers. Still, the Tleilaxu man preferred to remain apart from the other pas' sengers.

No one had spoken with Scytale for a long time. Dirty Tleilaxu! He thought they were afraid of his taint… or maybe they simply enjoyed isolating him. No one would explain their plans to him, or tell him where this great ship was going.

The witch Sheeana knew he was holding something back. He couldn't lie to her—it did no good. At the beginning of this journey, the Tleilaxu Master had grudgingly revealed the method for making spice in axlotl tanks. With the ship's mélange supplies obviously insuf' ficient for the people aboard, he had offered a solution. That initial revelation—one of his most valuable bargaining chips—had been self-serving, since Scytale, too, feared spice withdrawal. He had bargained vigorously with Sheeana, finally agreeing on access to the library database and confinement in a much larger section of the no-ship as his reward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything had changed. Everything.

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

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

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

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

The Tleilaxu Masters never planned for an eventuality such as this. Scytale and the other Masters had survived numerous serial lifetimes. Their bodies died, but each time they were restored, their memories awakened in ghola after ghola after ghola. A new copy was always growing in a tank, ready for whenever it might be needed.

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

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

And now he was dying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11

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

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

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

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

"She is young, far too young! Only a child—"

"A child?" Doria said. "She is the daughter of the Mother Commander and Duncan Idaho!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

None. Murbella felt a knot in her chest.

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

I must not fear.

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

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

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

Even the words evoked mystery and terror.

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

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

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

Analyzing her emotions (how like a Bene Gesserit!) Murbella wondered whether she feared losing Rinya as a potential and valuable Reverend Mother for the Sisterhood, or as a person. Or was she more afraid of losing one of her few tangible reminders of her long-lost Duncan?

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

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

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

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

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

I will face my fear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The poison began to act.

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

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

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

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

And when it has gone past me I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Rinya had recalled the entire Litany. Then she felt nothing at all.

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

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

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

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

12

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No one studies the methods of Swordmasters anymore."

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

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

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

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

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

Not even Duncan knew where the Ithaca was going. Would he and his shipmates eventually find a destination, or would they simply wander until the end of their days? The very idea of fleeing and hiding grated on him.

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

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

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

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

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

13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The shuttle station was hastily put together with obvious construction defects such as gaps in walls, uneven places in the floor, and doorways that did not appear to be plumb. The Honored Matres worried only about superficial impressions, paying little attention to details. They did not expect, or require, anything to last for long.

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

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

Honored Matres enslaved males through unbreakable sexual techniques. Uxtal feared they would try to do the same to him—a process with these powindah women that he found horrifyingly unclean and disgusting. Before sending Uxtal to Tleilax, Khrone had mutilated his Lost Tleilaxu slave "as a precaution" against the women, though Uxtal wondered if the preventive measures had not been as awful as the Honored Matres themselves… The two women shoved him into the rear passenger compartment of a groundcar and drove off. Uxtal tried to occupy himself by looking out the windows, pretending to be a sightseer or a hajji, a tourist making a pilgrimage to the most sacred of Tleilaxu cities.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uxtal remained petrified as he prayed silently, trying to look as insignificant and conciliatory as possible. He wished he could disappear through an opening in the floor and escape into an underground tunnel. Or, if only he could defeat these women instead, and fight—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

14

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rinya would want us to."

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

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

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

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

"If they find us," Janess said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The surviving acolytes began slinking toward their respective bungalows.

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

15

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Garimi's voice grew shrill, one of her companions, Stuka, added firmly, "Have you forgotten your Bene Gesserit training, Duncan Idaho? Your reasoning is not logical. All of the gholas we're talking about are relics of the past, straight out of legend. What relevance can they possibly have to our crisis now?"

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

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

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

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

"What policy?" Garimi snorted, looking around at all the Sisters. "We wander through space, going nowhere, running from an invisible threat that only Duncan Idaho can see. For most of us, the real threat was the whores from the Scattering. They took over our Sisterhood, and we exiled ourselves to save the Bene Gesserit. We need to find a place where we can establish a new Chapterhouse, a new order where we can grow strong. That is why we have begun having children, cautiously expanding our numbers."

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

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

Sheeana smiled craftily. "Yet another reason to introduce the gholas."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Long-term planning was what the Sisterhood did best.

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

16

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did she still think of him after nearly four years?

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

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

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

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

He had lost her, and could never forget.

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

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