With both anger and disdain, Kiria cried, “You offer them Obliterators, Mother Commander? We can’t just hand over such destructive weapons to Ix.”
She had no patience for this. “Who else will build them for us? Holding secrets among ourselves only benefits the Enemy. You know as well as I do that only the Ixians can decipher the technology and manufacture great quantities for the coming war. Therefore, Ix must have full access. There is no other answer.”
Many worlds were building their own gigantic fleets, armoring every ship they could find, working on new weapon designs, but nothing had so far proved even remotely effective against the Enemy. The technology of the thinking machines was unsurpassed. But with a supply of new Obliterators, Murbella could turn the machines’ own destructive power against them.
After snatching the weapons from fringe machine outposts centuries ago, the Honored Matres could have formed an impenetrable line and hurled Obliterators at the oncoming Enemy. If they had stood together for the common good, they could have prevented this whole problem. Instead, those Honored Matres had fled.
Thinking about the hidden history she had excavated from deep within Other Memory, Murbella continued to be annoyed at those ancestors. They had taken the weapons, used them without understanding them, and depleted most of their stockpiles in their petty revenge against the hated Tleilaxu. Yes, many generations earlier the Tleilaxu had tormented their females, and the Honored Matres had good reason to direct vengeful violence against them.
But such a waste!
Because the Honored Matres had been so profligate in using the planet-roasting weapons against any world that offended them, only a few Obliterators remained intact. Recently, when cracking down on the rebel Honored Matre strongholds, Murbella had expected to unearth greater stockpiles. But they had found nothing. Had someone else stolen the weapons? The Guild perhaps, under their original pretext of helping the Honored Matres? Or had the whores truly used them all, holding nothing in reserve?
Now the human race had insufficient weapons left to stand against the real Enemy. The Obliterators were as incomprehensible as any device Tio Holtzman had ever created for folding space, and the women had never known how to create more. For the sake of humanity, she hoped the Ixians could do so.
Times of extremis demand extreme actions.
Under her orders, the members of the united Sisterhood now removed the powerful weapons from their no-ships, battle cruisers, and infiltration vessels. She would take them to Ix herself. Murbella cut off continued arguments as she marched with a small entourage toward the Chapterhouse spaceport.
“But Mother Commander, at least negotiate patent protections,” Laera said, a flush showing even on her dark skin. “Impose restrictions so that the technology does not become widespread.” She was one of the most businesslike Reverend Mothers, filling much of Bellonda’s old role. “Proliferation amongst planetary warlords could result in the devastation of the largest star systems. CHOAM alone, working with Ix, could wreak—”
Murbella cut her off with a disgusted noise. “I have no interest in who may or may not benefit commercially after we win this war. If the Ixians help us achieve victory, they are entitled to profit.” She rubbed her chin thoughtfully as she looked up at the ramp of her small, fast lighter. “We’ll let the planetary warlords deal with their own problems.”
You play with feelings as a child plays with toys. I know why your Sisterhood does not value emotions: You cannot value what you do not understand!
—DUNCAN IDAHO,
letter submitted to Reverend Mother Bellonda
Sheeana used an authoritative tone, just short of Voice. “ ‘Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.’ And I want the truth from you. Now.”
Garimi raised her eyebrows and said calmly, “A quote from Duke Leto Atreides to bolster the interrogation? Shall we bring in blazing lights and a Truthsayer?”
“My Truthsense is sufficient. I have always known you well enough to read you.”
The shock waves from the appalling crime in the birthing center rippled through the no-ship. The slaughter of unborn gholas, the destruction of three axlotl tanks—tanks created from volunteer Sisters!—went beyond anything Sheeana had expected from even her most vehement detractors. Her suspicions had naturally turned toward the outspoken leader of the ultraconservative faction.
Inside an interior conference chamber whose doors were sealed, Sheeana stood like a stern schoolteacher, facing nine of the most prominent dissenters. These women had opposed the ghola project since its inception, disagreeing even more vehemently after Sheeana’s decision to restart the work.
Under the blistering scrutiny, Garimi stared back, while her supporters were openly hostile—especially the squat Stuka. “Why would I damage an axlotl tank? It makes no sense.”
Within her mind, among the lives in Other Memory, she heard the now-familiar voice of the ancient Serena Butler, sounding horrified. Killing a child! Serena was an odd visitor in Other Memory, a woman whose ancient thoughts should not have traveled down the corridors of the generations, and yet she had been with Sheeana for years now.
“You have shown a previous willingness to kill ghola children.” Sheeana finally sat down.
Garimi fought to control her trembling. “I attempted to save us before Leto could become a threat, before he could become the Tyrant again. That was all, and I failed. My reasons were well known, and I stand by them. Why would I go to such extremes now? What do I care about Halleck? Or old General Xavier Harkonnen? Even Serena Butler is so far buried in our past that she’s little more than the smoke of a legend. Why would I bother with them when the worst gholas—Paul Muad’Dib, Leto II, the fallen Lady Jessica, and Alia the Abomination—already walk among us?” Garimi made a disgusted rumble in her throat. “Your suspicions offend me.”
“And the evidence offends me.”
“Despite our disagreements, we are all Sisters,” Garimi insisted.
At first the fleeing Bene Gesserits had had a common cause, a shared goal. But in a matter of months after their escape from Chapterhouse the divisions had begun, power struggles, command questions, a bifurcation of visions. Duncan and Sheeana focused on escaping from the outside Enemy, while Garimi wanted to found a new Keep and train a fresh Bene Gesserit population according to established ways.
How have we changed so dramatically? How did the divisions get so deep?
Sheeana gazed from face to face, looking for indications of guilt, particularly in the eyes. Short, curly-haired Stuka had a line of moisture on her upper lip, one of the indicators of nervousness. But she detected no hatred there, no loathing sufficient to have sparked an act of such brutality. With dismay, she had no choice but to conclude that the perpetrator was not here.
“Then I need your help. The person standing next to any of us could be a saboteur. We must interview everyone. Gather our qualified Truthsayers, and use the last stores of the truthtrance drug.” Sheeana rubbed her temples, already dreading the huge task. “Please leave me alone, so I can meditate.”
After the nine dissenters departed, Sheeana stood alone, her eyes half closed. The population aboard the Ithaca had grown, spread out in the no-ship over the years. Even she wasn’t sure how many children were aboard, but she could easily find out. Or so she presumed.
She murmured to Other Memory, “So, Serena Butler—was your murderer in the room? If not them, then who could it be?”
Serena’s voice interjected, full of sadness. A liar can hide behind barricades, but all barricades eventually fall. You will have other opportunities to discover the murderer. There is sure to be more sabotage.
THE TRUTHSAYERS TESTED each other first.
Twenty-eight qualified Reverend Mothers were gathered from Garimi’s followers and from the general population of Sisters. The women did not protest their innocence or complain about the suspicions cast upon them. Instead, they accepted mutual questioning.
Sheeana observed
coolly as the women formed triads, two individuals acting as interrogators, the third as the subject. As soon as each subject passed the rigorous questioning, the roles switched, so that everyone was questioned. One by one, the Truthsayers created an evergrowing pool of reliable investigators. Everyone passed the test.
Once the Truthsayers had confirmed each other, Sheeana allowed them to question her. Garimi and her dissident Sisters also faced the challenges and proved their innocence, as did Sheeana’s staunch followers. All of them.
Next, with a Truthsayer named Calissa beside her, Sheeana stood before a stiff-backed Duncan Idaho. The very thought of Duncan being a murderer and a saboteur struck her as absurd. Sheeana wouldn’t have believed it of anyone on board, and yet three axlotl tanks and three ghola children had been butchered.
But Duncan . . . Standing so close to him, smelling his perspiration, feeling him somehow fill the room with his presence, summoned dangerous memories in her. She had used her own sexual bonding skills to break him free of Murbella. Despite their backgrounds, both knew there had been more to that passionate encounter than just a necessary task. Duncan had been uneasy around her ever since, afraid of what he might succumb to.
But in this situation there was neither romance nor sexual tension, only accusations. “Duncan Idaho, do you know how to bypass the security imagers in the medical center?”
He looked past her, not blinking. “That is within my capabilities.”
“Did you commit this terrible act and cover your tracks?”
Now his gaze met hers. “No.”
“Did you have any reason to prevent Gurney Halleck, Serena Butler, or Xavier Harkonnen from being born?”
“I did not.”
Now that Duncan faced her and a Truthsayer, Sheeana could have asked him questions about their personal relationship to witness his reaction. He would not be able to lie to her or pretend. But she feared his answers. She didn’t dare ask.
“He speaks the truth,” said Calissa. “He’s not our saboteur.”
Duncan remained in the room when Bashar Miles Teg came for questioning. Calissa displayed images of the horrific scene from the birthing chamber. “Are you in any way responsible for this, Miles Teg?”
The Bashar stared at the images, looked up at her, turned his gaze to Duncan. “Yes.”
Sheeana was so startled that she struggled to think of another question.
“How so?” Duncan asked.
“I am responsible for security aboard this no-ship. Clearly, I failed in my duty. If I had done a better job, this atrocity never would have occurred.” He glanced at the troubled Calissa. “Since you asked me in the presence of a Truthsayer, I couldn’t lie.”
“Very well, Miles. But that isn’t what we meant. Did you commit this sabotage or authorize it? Do you know anything about it?”
“No,” he answered emphatically.
Dozens of private chambers were set up, where the interrogations could continue unabated. They asked every one of the ghola children, from Paul Atreides all the way to nine-year-old Leto II, and the Truthsayers detected no criminal falsehoods.
Then the Rabbi and all of the Jews.
And every other passenger aboard the no-ship.
Nothing. Not a single person seemed to be connected with the murderous incident. Duncan and Teg used their Mentat skills to check and recheck the lists of people aboard, yet they could find no errors. No one had evaded questioning.
Sitting across from Sheeana in the otherwise empty interrogation room, Duncan steepled his fingers. “There are two possibilities. Either the saboteur is capable of deceiving a Truthsayer . . . or someone we don’t know about is hiding aboard the Ithaca.”
IN WELL ORGANIZED teams, the Bene Gesserit blocked off, then sectioned the no-ship’s decks, methodically moving from cabin to cabin and chamber to chamber. But it was a formidable task. The Ithaca was the size of a small city, more than a kilometer long and hundreds of decks high, each filled with passages, chambers, and hidden doors.
While trying to guess how someone else might have sneaked aboard, unknown to them, Duncan remembered discovering the mummified remains of Bene Gesserit captives the Honored Matres had tortured to death. That sealed chamber of horrors had gone undetected during the whole time Duncan had been held prisoner inside the ship on the Chapterhouse landing field.
Could someone else—an unknown Honored Matre, perhaps?—have remained hidden aboard for all that time? More than thirty years! It did not seem possible, but the vessel had thousands of work bays, living quarters, corridors, and storage lockers.
Another possibility: During the escape from the planet of the Handlers, several Face Dancers had crashed small fighters into the no-ship’s hull. Mangled bodies had been pulled from the wreckage of those ships . . . but could it all have been a ruse? What if some had actually survived those kamikaze crashes and slipped away? Perhaps one or more Face Dancers were lurking in the untraveled passages of the no-ship, looking for ways to strike.
If so, it was imperative to find them.
Teg had already installed hundreds more surveillance imagers at strategic locations, but that was only a stopgap measure at best. The Ithaca was so large that even the best security equipment had thousands of blind spots, and there simply weren’t enough personnel to monitor the imagers already in place. It was an impossible task.
Still, they tried.
As Duncan accompanied a group of five searchers, he was reminded of a beating party marching through the tall grass on a big game hunt. He wondered if they would scare a deadly lion out from somewhere in the vastness of the vessel.
Deck after deck was searched, but even with a dozen teams, a complete inspection from the topmost deck to the lowest cargo hold would take a great deal of time, and in the limited searches they conducted, they found nothing. Duncan was exhausted and stressed.
And the murderer—or murderers—remained aboard.
Only two options are before us now: defend ourselves or surrender to the Enemy. But if any of you believes that surrender is a viable option, then we have already lost.
—BASHAR MILES TEG,
speech given before the Pellikor Engagement
Leaving the Obliterators on Ix for the fabricators to study and duplicate, Murbella traveled next to the main Guild shipyards on Junction.
Administrator Rentel Gorus, with long, pale hair and milky eyes, led Murbella among the construction bays, suspensor cranes, conveyors, and assemblers, all of them teeming with workers. The buildings were tall and blocky, the streets serviceable rather than beautiful. Everything on Junction was done on a breathtaking scale. Great lifters hauled components up to the skeletons of gigantic ships, assembling one vessel after another. The air held the bitter tang of hot metal, the chemical residues from welding mismatched components into huge vessels.
Gorus seemed overly proud. “As you can see, we have the facilities you request, Mother Commander, provided the price is right.”
“The price will be right.” With the New Sisterhood’s wealth in melange and soostones, Murbella could meet virtually any demand for payment. “We’ll pay you well for every ship you create, every vessel that can be placed into battle, every craft that can stand against the thinking machine army. The end of our civilization is at hand if we don’t defeat the thinking machines.”
Gorus did not seem intimidated. “Every side in every war believes their conflict is crucial to history. But most often those are delusionary and needlessly alarmist thoughts. This war may be over before you have to resort to such measures.”
She scowled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“There are other ways to solve the problem. We know that outside forces are sweeping in to many planetary systems. But what do they want? To what will they concede? We believe such discussions are worth pursuing.” He blinked his milky eyes.
“What sort of trick is the Guild trying to play on us this time?”
“No trick, just sensibility. Regardless of politics
, commerce must continue. Wartime desperation inspires technological innovation, but peace promotes profitability in the long run. Trade will go on, no matter who wins the conflict.”
Heighliners had long been the luxury ships of the universe; now Murbella forced the Spacing Guild to devote their shipyards to creating the tools of war. For centuries the Guild’s commercial fleet had been stable, and demand for trade steadily increased as people returned from the Scattering. Now, however, with Omnius’s fleet wiping out whole populations and sending refugees in panicked flight back into the heart of the Old Empire, CHOAM and the Guild were in turmoil.
A hot wind from the assembly bays blew in Murbella’s face, burning her nostrils with the acrid smoke of waste chemicals. A shiver coursed down her spine.
“Our common enemy must be rational,” Gorus continued. “We have therefore dispatched emissaries and negotiators out to the war zone. We will find the thinking machines and make our proposal. The Guild would prefer to continue its commerce regardless of the outcome of this disagreement.”
Murbella gasped. “Are you insane? Omnius seeks the extermination of all humanity. That includes you.”
“You overstate your case, Mother Commander. Some of our emissaries will, I believe, achieve our goal.”
In the background, blasts of steam curled up from the stone smokestacks. She ignored the noise and the smell. “You are a consummate fool, Administrator Gorus. Thinking machines do not follow the rules you assume.”
“Be that as it may, we feel obligated to try.”
“And what is the result so far?”
“Acceptable losses. Our first emissaries have disappeared, but we will continue the effort. We plan for all eventualities—even disaster.” Casually, he led her out onto a broad, open field under the half-assembled hulk of a huge ship. “Thus, we are comfortable with extending certain beneficial terms to the New Sisterhood. You have always been a valued customer, but the order you submitted is massive. Even under wartime conditions, you have asked for more ships than we are able to provide.”
Sandworms of Dune Page 5
