“The ghola children have always known that we would demand this of them,” she said. “Without their past memories, without their genius, they are of no more value to us than any other children.”
The Bashar nodded slowly. “To recall a ghola’s past life is an experience that destroys and recreates the psyche. There are numerous proven methods, some more painful than others, but none are easy. You can’t awaken the children all at once. Each critical event must be tailored to the individual. A horrible, mind-shattering crisis.” Teg’s face showed echoes of pain. “You thought you were using a humane awakening method with me, Sheeana . . . when I was only a ten-year-old child.”
Though Duncan, too, seemed uneasy at the prospect, he stepped down from the observation window and walked toward Sheeana. “She’s right, Miles. We created those gholas for a purpose, and right now they’re all like unloaded guns. We need to load our gholas—our unique weapons. The Enemy’s net is stronger now, and it nearly snared us again. We all saw it. Next time, we may not be able to slip away.”
“We’ve waited long enough.” Sheeana’s voice was hard, brooking no argument.
“Some gholas may be more challenging than others.” Teg’s eyes narrowed. “You may lose some to madness. Are you prepared for that?”
“I have gone through the Spice Agony, as have all Reverend Mothers on this ship. We survived the unbearable pain.”
“I have the memories of my old life,” Teg said. “Of wars and atrocities, and enduring unbearable torture. Somehow the bad details are much more vivid than the pleasant ones, but nothing is worse than the awakening.”
Sheeana waved her hand. “Throughout history, men and women have had a monopoly on their own kinds of pain, each thinking theirs is the worst.” She smiled grimly. “We will start with the least valuable ghola, of course. In case something goes wrong.”
WELLINGTON YUEH WAS summoned to stand before the Bene Gesserits in one of the no-ship’s council chambers. The gangly teenager had a pointed chin and pinched lips. Already buried within his face were hints of the familiar chiseled features and broad forehead—the despised visage that had become synonymous with the word traitor for thousands of years in galactic reference works.
The young man was nervous, fidgeting. Sheeana drew herself to her full height and stepped closer. He flinched at her intimidating presence, but somehow found the courage to stand where he was. “You summoned me, Reverend Mother. How may I assist?”
“By awakening your memories. Tomorrow you will be the first of our subjects to undergo the trigger.”
Yueh’s yellowish face paled. “But I’m not ready!”
“That is why we have given you a full day to prepare.” Proctor Superior Garimi’s tongue was sharp, as usual.
Although Garimi had never embraced the project, she now wanted to see its culmination. Sheeana knew what she was thinking: If the awakening process failed, Garimi intended to prevent any further gholas from being grown; if the awakening succeeded, she would insist that the program had fulfilled its goal and could be discontinued. She knew that Sheeana, still intrigued by all those cells in the Tleilaxu’s nullentropy capsule, was planning further ghola experiments.
Yueh’s legs were locked. He seemed close to fainting and grasped a nearby chair to steady himself. “Sisters, I don’t want to have my memories back. I am not the man you think you resurrected, but a new person—my own person. The old Wellington Yueh was tormented in so many ways. Even though he was in part me, how can I forgive him for what he did?”
Garimi made a dismissive gesture. “Nevertheless, we brought you back for one purpose only. Don’t expect sympathy from us. You have a task to perform.”
After the proctors took the distraught young man away, Sheeana looked at Garimi and two other senior Sisters—Calissa and Elyen—who had observed the discussion. “I will use the sexual method on him, the same one that worked on the ghola of the Bashar. It is the best technique we know.”
Elyen said, “Your sexual imprinting unlocked the Bashar’s memories only because it precipitated a crisis in him. Teg’s mother had armed him against sexual imprinting. It wasn’t your technique that stirred up his past, but his sheer resistance to it.”
“Indeed. So for each of our gholas we’ll tailor an individualized agony that leverages their own fears and weaknesses.”
“How can sex break Yueh the way it broke the Bashar?” Garimi asked.
“Not the sex itself, but Yueh’s resistance to it. He’s terrified of remembering his past. If he believes we know how to unlock his memories, he’ll fight us with everything he has. As he fights, I will apply my most potent procedures, and he’ll spiral over the brink into complete madness.”
Garimi shrugged. “If it doesn’t work, we have other ways.”
THE ROOM WAS dim and the shadows cloying, which made Yueh’s terror more palpable. The chamber was devoid of furniture except for a padded mat on the floor, like those that the ghola children used during physical training sessions.
The witches had not explained what to expect. The young man knew from his studies that the process of regaining one’s past was painful. He was not a strong man, nor was he particularly brave. Even so, the prospect of pain did not petrify him nearly so much as the dread of remembering.
The door slid open with a gentle hiss of lubricated metal gliding in its tracks. From the corridor, blinding light flowed in, much brighter than the glowpanels in his cell. It silhouetted a woman’s figure—Sheeana? He turned to face her and could see only her outline, the sensual curves of her body no longer masked by flowing robes. When the door sealed behind her, his eyes adjusted to the more comfortable illumination.
When he saw that Sheeana was completely unclothed, his fear increased. “What is this?” His voice, torn by nervousness, came out as a squeak.
She stepped closer. “You will disrobe now.”
Barely a teenager, Yueh swallowed. “Not until you explain what is going to happen to me.”
She used the hurricane force of Bene Gesserit Voice. “You will disrobe now!”
In a spasmodic reaction, his arms and legs jerking, he tore off his clothes. Sheeana inspected him, running her eyes up and down his thin, naked body like a hawk assessing its prey. Yueh got the impression that she found him inadequate.
“Don’t hurt me,” he pleaded, and hated himself for saying it.
“Of course it will hurt, but the pain won’t be anything I inflict upon you.” She touched his shoulder. He felt an almost electric shock, but he was transfixed, unable to move. “Your own memories will do that.”
“I don’t want them back. I’ll fight you.”
“Fight all you wish. It will do you no good. We know how to awaken you.”
Yueh closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He tried to turn away, but she grasped his arms to hold him still, then released her grip and began touching him. The delicate strokings felt like the line of heat left by a lighted match down his arm and across his chest. “Your memories are stored within your cells. In order to awaken them, I must awaken your body.” She stroked him, and he shuddered, unable to draw away. “I shall teach your nerve endings to do things they’ve forgotten how to do.” Another jolt, and he gasped.
She touched him again, and his knees buckled, exactly as she wanted. Sheeana pushed him toward the mat on the floor. “I need to wrench you into the full awareness of every chromosome in every cell.”
“No.” The word sounded incredibly weak to him.
As she pressed herself against him, letting warm skin ignite his perspiration, Yueh tunneled backward into himself, trying to flee. From all he had learned of his past, he found one thing with which to anchor his bravery. Wanna! His beloved Bene Gesserit wife, the weak link in his long chain of betrayals, and the strongest link in his original lifetime.
The evil Harkonnens had known that Wanna would be the key to breaking his Suk conditioning, and it had only worked—could only have worked—because Yueh loved her with all his heart. Be
ne Gesserits were not supposed to succumb to love, but he knew that she must have reciprocated.
He thought of her pictures in the archives, of all he had learned about her in his researches. “Oh, Wanna.” He yearned for her in his mind, tried to latch onto her as a lifeline.
Sheeana stroked his waist, trailed her fingers lower and climbed on top of him. Yueh’s muscles were completely out of his control. He couldn’t move. Her lips vibrated against the skin of his shoulder, his neck. Sheeana was a skilled sexual imprinter. Her body was a weapon, and he was the target.
A flood of sensations nearly drove the archival image of Wanna from his mind, but Yueh fought against what Sheeana was making him feel. Instead, he focused on what he might have done in Wanna’s loving embrace. Wanna.
As the rhythm of their lovemaking increased, real memories intruded on the information he had obtained through research. Yueh recalled those terrible moments after his wife had been seized by the Harkonnens, and saw images of the loathsome fat Baron, his thuggish nephew Rabban, the viper Feyd-Rautha, and the Mentat Piter de Vries, who had a laugh that sounded like vinegar.
Weak, helpless, and infuriated, he had been forced to watch them torture Wanna inside an isolated chamber. She was a Bene Gesserit; she could block her pain, could deflect her body’s responses. But Yueh could not so easily shunt such things aside, no matter how hard he tried.
In his nightmare memory the Baron laughed, a rumbling basso sound. “See the little chamber she’s in, Doctor? A toy with some very interesting possibilities.” As the men watched the groggy and disoriented Wanna, she stood on weak knees, but upside-down within the booth. “We can convert gravity into a thing that depends entirely on perspective.”
Rabban chuckled, a harsh release of noise. He operated artificial gravity controls in the small room, and suddenly Wanna fell with a thud to the floor. She managed to tuck her head and shoulders just enough to avoid breaking her neck. With the speed and fluidity of a serpent, Piter de Vries scurried forward carrying a pain amplifier. At the last moment, Rabban snatched it out of the Twisted Mentat’s hands and applied it to Wanna’s throat himself. She writhed with a jagged spasm of agony.
“Stop! Stop, I beg you!” Yueh cried.
“Oh, Doctor, Doctor—you know it can’t possibly be that easy . . .” In the vision, the Baron folded his pudgy arms across his chest.
Rabban twisted the gravity controls again, and Wanna was thrown like a limp doll from wall to wall, smashing into the sides of the chamber. “When one is too lovely, something must be done to correct that condition.”
My beautiful Wanna!
The memories were so vivid now, far more detailed than anything he had read in the Archives section. No mere documentation could have provided such precise clarity. . . . .
In a different, newly unlocked compartment of his brain, he lived another memory. He was artificially paralyzed, forced to watch during one of the Baron’s drunken parties while Piter played a sparking pain amplifier over Wanna’s suspended body. Each flash provoked a twitching response of agony from her. The other guests laughed at her pain and at his helpless misery.
When he was freed from his paralysis, Yueh trembled, drooled, and struggled. The Baron stood over him, a huge grin on his bloated face. He handed Yueh a projectile pistol. “As a Suk doctor, you should do everything possible to stop a patient from feeling pain. You know how to stop Wanna’s pain, Doctor.”
Unable to break his conditioning, Yueh shuddered and spasmed. He wanted nothing more than to do as the Baron demanded. “I . . . can’t!”
“Of course you can. Choose a guest, any guest. I don’t care which. See how amused they are by our little game?” Grasping Yueh’s shaking wrists, he helped the doctor point his projectile weapon around the room. “But don’t try any tricks, or we will make the torment last a great deal longer!”
He wished he could put Wanna out of her misery, killing her instead of letting the Harkonnens have their perverted fun. He saw her eyes, the spark of pain and hope, but Rabban stopped him. “Focus, Doctor. No mistakes.”
Through blurred vision he made out numerous targets, and tried to concentrate on one, a tottering old nobleman, a semuta addict. That one had lived a long life, undoubtedly with considerable debauchery. But for a Suk doctor to kill—
He fired.
Overwhelmed by the horrific scene now playing out in his head, Yueh paid no further attention to Sheeana’s ministrations. His body was drenched with sweat, but less from sexual exertion than from the extreme psychological distress. He saw Sheeana appraising him. The memories were so clear to him that his entire body felt like a raw wound: Wanna in agony and the sharp, broken-crystal pain of how his Suk conditioning had been thwarted. It had happened thousands of years ago!
The years before that watershed occurrence, and the years afterward, extended outward, filling his mind, now fresh and hungry. As the relentless memories returned, so did more anguish and guilt, accompanied by a disgust with himself.
Yueh felt as if he was about to vomit. Tears poured down his cheeks.
In the training room, Sheeana studied the wet streaks clinically. “You’re weeping. Does that mean you’ve successfully regained your memories?”
“I have them back.” His voice was husky and sounded infinitely old. “And damn you witches to hell for it.”
We have so little trouble finding enemies because violence is an innate part of human nature. Our greatest challenge, then, is to choose the most significant enemy, for we cannot hope to fight them all.
—BASHAR MILES TEG,
military assessment delivered to the Bene Gesserit
After she departed from Chapterhouse, Murbella traveled to the battle lines. That was where the Mother Commander belonged. Posing as nothing more important than an inspector for the New Sisterhood, Murbella arrived at Oculiat, one of the systems that lay directly in the path of the advancing thinking-machine fleet.
Once, Oculiat had been at the far edges of inhabited space, a jumping-off point for the Scattering after the Tyrant’s death. Objectively, this sparsely populated world had little significance, just another target on the vast cosmic map. But for Murbella, Oculiat represented a genuine psychological blow: When this world fell to the machines, the Enemy would be encroaching into the Old Empire itself, not just into a distant and unknown place that had been omitted from old star maps.
Until the Ixians delivered their Obliterators and the Guild provided all the ships she had demanded, the Mother Commander had no way to stop, or even slow, the thinking machines.
Under a hazy sky illuminated by watery yellow sunlight, Murbella stepped out of her ship. The landing field seemed deserted, as if no one tended the spaceport any longer. As if they were not even watching for the Enemy.
When she made her way to the frantic crowds in the central city, though, she saw that the inhabitants had already found their own enemy. A mob surrounded the main administration building where government officials had barricaded themselves. The locals had put their leaders under siege, screaming for blood or divine intervention. Preferably blood.
Murbella knew the raw power that their fear generated, but it was clearly not channeled properly. The people of Oculiat—and all desperate worlds facing the oncoming Enemy—needed guidance from the Sisterhood. They were an already-charged weapon that must be aimed. Instead, they were out of control. She saw what was happening and rushed forward, but stopped short of throwing herself headlong into the mob.
They would tear her limb from limb, and they would do it for Sheeana.
The random appearances and sermons of the “resurrected Sheeana” had prepared billions of people to fight. The Sheeanas had kindled the anger and fervor of populations, so that the Sisterhood could manipulate that raw power for their own purposes. Once unleashed, however, such fanaticism became a chaotic force. Knowing they were unlikely to survive against the oncoming machines, the men and women threw themselves into violence, seeking any sort of enemy they could get
their hands on . . . even among their own people.
“Face Dancers!” someone shouted. Murbella pushed her way closer to the center of action, knocked aside flailing arms and fists, and cuffed someone on the side of the head. But even stunned, the wild and emboldened people surged onward. “Face Dancers! They’ve been manipulating us all along—selling us out to the Enemy.”
Those who recognized the Mother Commander’s Bene Gesserit unitard backed away; others, either oblivious or too angry to care, were not swayed until she used Voice. Bombarded by the irresistible command, they staggered away. Just one person against the multitude, Murbella strode toward the colonnaded doorways of the government center, which the people saw as their target. She used Voice again but could not stop them all in their tracks. The shouting and accusatory shrieks rose and fell like a thunderstorm.
As she fought her way to the front of the barricade, several of the foremost mob members noticed her uniform and let out a long cheer. “A Reverend Mother is here to support us!”
“Kill the Face Dancers! Kill them all!”
“For Sheeana!”
Murbella grabbed an elderly woman who had been yelling along with the others. “How do you know they’re Face Dancers?”
“We know. Think about their decisions, listen to their speeches. It’s obvious they are traitors.” Murbella didn’t believe that Face Dancers would be quite so obvious that common rabble could detect the faint subtleties. But the mob was convinced.
Six huffing men ran by, carrying a heavy plasteel pole that they proceeded to use as a battering ram. Inside the capitol building, terrified officials had piled obstructions against the doors and windows. Thrown stones shattered the ornamental plaz, but the crowd couldn’t break in so easily. Bars and heavy objects blocked the way.
Wielded with the strength of panic and hysteria, the battering ram pounded the thick doors, tearing hinges loose and splintering wood. In moments, a wave of human bodies pushed forward.
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