THE BASHAR OF the New Sisterhood’s main forces, Wikki Aztin, devoted her time and her best resources to training Janess for her first tough assignment. Wikki had a ready sense of humor and a story for every occasion. A stooped and narrow-faced woman of uncommon energy, she suffered from a congenital heart defect that prevented her from attempting the Agony; thus, Wikki had never become a Reverend Mother. Instead, she was assigned to the Sisterhood’s military operations, where she had risen through the ranks.
Outside the Mother Commander’s shelter in the isolated training fields, spotlights illuminated the attack ’thopters Janess was preparing for their vigorous assault the following day.
Housecleaning, Murbella called it. These rebels had betrayed her. Unlike outsiders who had never heard the Sisterhood’s teachings, or misguided women who did not know the threat of the oncoming Enemy. Murbella hated the Honored Matre holdouts on Buzzell, Gammu, and Tleilax, but those women didn’t know any better. These dissidents, however—she considered their betrayal far worse. It was a personal affront.
When Janess was out of earshot, tending to her duties, Murbella came up to stand with the bashar. Wikki said, “Did you know that some of the Sisters are betting against your pup, Mother Commander?”
“I suspected as much. They feel I gave her too much responsibility too soon after becoming a Reverend Mother, but it’s only making her work harder.”
“I’ve seen her digging in with a new resolve, trying to prove them wrong. She’s got your spirit, and she reveres Duncan Idaho. With all eyes on her, she looks forward to an opportunity to shine, to set an example for others.” Wikki looked out into the night. “You sure you don’t want me to come along on the assault tomorrow? This engagement is close to home, small but important. A real exercise would be . . . gratifying.”
“I need you to stay here and watch things. While I’m away from the Keep, someone could attempt a coup.”
“I thought you had gotten them to settle their differences.”
“It is an unstable equilibrium.” Murbella sighed. “Sometimes, I wish the real Enemy would just attack us—and force those women to all fight on the same side.”
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Murbella and her squadron took off. Janess rode with her in the lead ’thopter as they flew over the surface of the planet. Despite her training, and the confidence her mother placed in her, Janess was still a green lieutenant, not yet ready to assume command.
After turning a reluctant blind eye to them for several years, the Mother Commander could no longer tolerate deserters and malcontents. Even in the remote regions, the settlement was too great a weak spot, a magnet for potential saboteurs as well as a possible foothold for a larger force of renegade Honored Matres from elsewhere.
Murbella had no doubts about what she had to do, and no sympathy. Because the New Sisterhood was desperate for competent fighters, she would invite the deserters back into the fold, but she did not have high hopes that any of them would accept. As cowards and complainers, these women had already shown their true colors. She wondered what Duncan would have done in a situation like this.
As the squadron approached the reported location of the encampment, Janess reported that she had picked up heat and transmission signatures. Without prompting, she ordered all of the aircraft to activate their shields, in case the rebels fired at them with weapons stolen from the Chapterhouse armories.
When Janess and her tactical officers scanned the area in their initial high-altitude sweep, however, they found no competing aircraft or military equipment in the vicinity, just a few hundred lightly armed women trying to hide in the thick conifer forests below. Although patches of snow made for wide variances in the thermal map of the area, the human bodies stood out like bonfires.
Converting the image to optical, Murbella panned across the deserters, many of whom she recognized; some had been gone for years, even before she had executed one of their vocal proponents, Annine.
She addressed the rebels below over the ’thopter’s booming loudspeaker. “This is Mother Commander Murbella, and I come offering an olive branch. We have transport ’thopters at the rear of our formation, ready to bring all of you back to the Keep. If you disarm and cooperate, I will grant you amnesty and the opportunity for retraining.”
She saw Caree Debrak on the ground. The bitter young woman pointed a farzee rifle at them. Tiny pinpoints of fire spat out, and the fast molten projectiles struck harmlessly against the ’thopter’s shields.
“Damn lucky it’s not a lasgun,” Murbella said.
Janess looked astonished. “Lasguns are forbidden on Chapterhouse.”
“Much is forbidden, but not everyone follows the rules.” Working her jaw angrily, Murbella spoke over the loudspeaker again, in a sharper tone. “You have deserted your Sisters in a time of crisis. Put this divisiveness behind you and return with us. Or are you cowards, afraid to face our true Enemy?”
Caree fired the farzee rifle again, splattering more molten projectiles against the ’thopter’s shields.
“At least we didn’t fire the first shot.” Janess looked at her mother. “In my opinion, Mother Commander, negotiating with them is a waste of time. With well-placed sedative darts, we could disarm them, force them back to the Keep, then try to win them over.” Below, many of the other rebels grabbed their weapons and shot ineffectively at the Sisterhood’s assault force.
Murbella shook her head. “We will never make them see reason—and we can never trust them again.”
“Should we try a limited military engagement then, just enough to strike fear into them? It would give our new squadron practice in the field. Land the soldiers and use them to attack and humiliate the holdouts. If our hand-to-hand combat skills can’t defeat this lot, we won’t have a chance against the real whores who have had years to build up their planetary defenses.”
Seeing the malcontents firing at them with rifles, Murbella felt increasing anger. Her voice broke like glass in her own ears. “No. Doing so would only risk more of our loyal Sisters. I won’t lose a single fighter here.” She shuddered to think of how much damage these women could cause if they pretended to surrender and then spread their poison from within. “No, Janess. They have made their choice. We can never trust them again. Never again.”
Her daughter’s eyes flashed with understanding. “They’re no more than insects. Shall we exterminate them?”
Below, more dissidents were running through the trees and emerging from the dense pines carrying heavier weapons.
“Drop shields and open fire,” Murbella shouted into the commsystem that connected all of the attack vessels. “Use incendiaries to light the woods.” An officer in one of the other ’thopters protested that the response was too severe, but Murbella cut her off. “There will be no debate.”
Her handpicked squadron opened fire, and the blazing bloodbath left no survivors. She took no joy in it, but the Mother Commander had showed that she would strike like a scorpion if provoked. She hoped that such knowledge would prevent further discontent and opposition.
“Let this be an example that will long be remembered,” she said. “An enemy among us can cause damage as surely as the Enemy outside.”
ELEVEN YEARS AFTER
ESCAPE FROM CHAPTERHOUSE
Caladan: third planet of Delta Pavonis; birthworld of Paul Muad’Dib. The planet was later renamed Dan.
—Terminology of the Imperium (Revised)
W
hen the ghola of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen was seven years old, the Face Dancers commanded Uxtal to take him to the ocean world of Dan.
“Dan . . . Caladan. Why are we going there?” Uxtal asked. “Does this have something to do with the fact that it was once the homeworld of House Atreides, enemy of House Harkonnen?” In his joy to be going away from Matre Superior Hellica, the Lost Tleilaxu researcher found the courage to view the Face Dancer as his rescuer.
“We have found something there. Something that could allow us to use the resurrected Baron.�
� The Face Dancer escort raised a hand, stopping the question Uxtal was about to ask. “That is all you need to know.”
While he had prayed fervently for the day when he could relinquish the difficult ghola child, Uxtal now worried that Khrone might consider his usefulness to be at an end. Maybe the Face Dancers would come up behind him, place fingers over his eyes, and squeeze, as they’d done to Elder Burah. . . .
He hurried toward the shuttle that would take him and the brat away from Tleilax. He mumbled to himself, like a personal mantra: I am still alive. Still alive!
At least he would be away from Ingva and Hellica, the stench of sligs, and the screams of torture victims being wrung dry of their paininduced chemicals.
IN THE INTERVENING years, Hellica had continued to enjoy young Vladimir Harkonnen. They were birds of a feather. Uxtal found it chilling to hear the seven-year-old boy and the Matre Superior laugh together as they discussed people who didn’t deserve to live anymore, choosing victims for the torture laboratories.
The treacherous little boy reported constantly to the pretender queen, informing her of purported mistakes or indiscretions committed by laboratory assistants. Uxtal had lost many of his best helpers that way, and the scheming child fully comprehended the power he held. Uxtal could barely master his own terror in the ghola’s presence. Though only a child, Vladimir was nearly the same size as the diminutive Tleilaxu.
Unexpectedly, though, Uxtal had managed to endear himself to the ghola in a way that had the benefit of driving a wedge between the boy and Hellica. As a Tleilaxu, he had many personal habits that outsiders considered revolting, such as his proclivity to emit coarse bodily noises. Seeing the Baron’s delight in such grossness, Uxtal began to embellish his own habits around the child, which gave the two of them a peculiar bond.
Miffed at Vladimir’s fickle attentions and showing no more maturity than the child ghola, Hellica had stopped associating with the boy. She reacted with haughty indifference when the Guildship came to take Uxtal and the ghola away to Dan. But the anxious researcher knew she would be there waiting when he returned. . . .
AFTER A FOLDSPACE journey, the Tleilaxu and his charge rode a shuttle down to the watery planet. En route they played a private game, competing with one another to see who could be the most disgusting, to see if they could get a reaction out of the bland and stony Face Dancers accompanying them. Vladimir, with an amazing repertoire of scatological talents, made more revolting sounds and noxious odors than anyone Uxtal had ever encountered. After each display, the cherubic boy grinned fiercely.
Uxtal conceded defeat, knowing it was safer to lose to a Harkonnen than to win, even without Matre Superior Hellica leering over their shoulders.
One of the Face Dancers stood at the shuttle’s viewport, pointing outside. “The ruins of Castle Caladan, the ancestral home of House Atreides.” The edifice lay in broken fragments of stone at the edge of a seaside cliff, with a landing field not far away on the outskirts of a nearby fishing village.
The Face Dancer obviously intended to bring Vladimir to a place that might evoke a visceral reaction, but Uxtal detected no glimmer of recognition in the boy’s spider-black eyes, no spark of recollection. The Baron ghola was far too young to access his memories yet, but by placing him in the environment of his archenemies, with so many potential memory triggers, maybe they would awaken something after all, or at least lay a good foundation for success.
Perhaps that was what Khrone wanted of them. Uxtal hoped so, wishing he could stay here on Dan permanently. Though somewhat austere and damp, the ocean world seemed a great improvement over Bandalong.
As soon as they stepped off the shuttle onto the paved field, Vladimir stared toward the ruined castle. His shaggy hair blew in a sea breeze. “My enemies lived here? This is where Duke Leto Atreides was from?”
Though Uxtal didn’t know the answer for certain, he knew what the ghola boy wanted to hear. “Yes, he must have been where you are standing, breathing the same air that fills your lungs now.”
“Why can’t I remember? I want to remember. I want to know more than you told me, more than I can see in filmbooks.” He stamped a foot on the ground.
“And one day you will. One day it will all come back to you.”
“I want it now!” The child looked up with a peevish expression, puckering his lips. This, Uxtal knew, signified dangerous potential.
He took the boy’s hand and led him quickly toward a waiting groundcar before the childish temper could explode. “Come, let’s see what the Face Dancers have found.”
Knowing the decisions and the mistakes made by others can be frightening. More often, though, I find it comforting.
—REVEREND MOTHER SHEEANA,
Ithaca logs
T
he van Gogh painting hung on a metal wall of Sheeana’s cabin. She had stolen the masterpiece from the Mother Superior’s quarters before escaping from Chapterhouse. Of all the crimes she had committed during her flight, taking the van Gogh was her only selfish and unjustified act. For years, she had drawn comfort from this great work of art and everything it represented.
With the glowpanels adjusted to perfect illumination, Sheeana stood unblinking before the masterpiece. Though she had studied the painting meticulously many times, she still gained new insight from the daubs of bright paint, the thick brushstrokes, the chaotic flurry of creative energy. A deeply disturbed man, van Gogh had turned these splotches and smudges of color into a work of genius. Could pure, cold sanity have done as much?
Thatched Cottages at Cordeville had survived the atomic destruction of Earth ages ago, the Butlerian Jihad and ensuing dark ages, then Muad’Dib’s Jihad, thirty-five hundred years of the Tyrant’s rule, the Famine Times, and the Scattering. Without doubt, this fragile piece of art was blessed.
But its creator had been driven to the brink of madness by his passions. Van Gogh had channeled his vision into color and form, a representational splash of reality so intense that it could only be conveyed on canvas.
One day she would show the painting to the ghola children. Paul Atreides, the oldest, was now five years old and showed every sign of being just a normal little boy. His “mother” Jessica was a year younger, the same age as the ghola of the warrior-Mentat Thufir Hawat. Paul’s love, Chani, was only three, while the historic traitor to House Atreides, Wellington Yueh, was two, born at the same time that Sheeana had finally allowed Scytale to create a ghola of himself. The great planetologist and Fremen leader Liet-Kynes was a year-old baby, and the Naib Stilgar had just been born.
It would be years before the Bene Gesserit had any chance of triggering those ghola memories, before the historical re-creations could become the weapons and tools Sheeana needed. If she showed them the van Gogh painting right now, would they react based on some instinct from their past lives, or would they view the images with fresh eyes?
A genius from Ix had restored and enhanced the original; an invisibly thin but tough coating of plaz sealed and protected the masterwork from further aging. The Ixian restorer had not only returned the painting to its original glory, he had added interactive simulations so that an appreciative observer could go through the process of every brushstroke, seeing the complex and primitive marvel as it had been created from layer upon layer of paint. Sheeana had experienced the instructional simulation enough times that she felt she could have repainted the cottages herself with her eyes closed. But even if she’d made a perfect copy, it wouldn’t have been the same as the original.
Sheeana backed up to her bed and sat down, never taking her eyes from the painting. The voices in Other Memory seemed to appreciate it, though she kept the constant clamor under control.
Odrade-within spoke to her now in a scolding tone. I am sure other Sisters consider the theft of Vincent’s painting to be more serious than stealing the no-ship or sandworms from the desert belt. Those things could be replaced, but not a masterpiece.
“Maybe I am not the person you thought I was. But then, I
—more than anyone else—can’t live up to the myth built around me. Does the Cult of Sheeana still have followers out there in the Old Empire? Does your manufactured religion still revere me as an angel and a savior?”
The Bene Gesserit knew the powers of unflagging belief among vast populations. The Sisters harnessed religions as weapons—created them, guided them, and turned them loose as one might aim an arrow from a bow.
Religions were odd things. They were born with the emergence of a strong and charismatic leader, yet somehow they grew more powerful after that keystone figure died, especially if martyred. No army ever fought harder without its bashar, no government grew stronger without its king or president, yet a religion without Sheeana spread faster as soon as the converts believed she was dead. Sheeana’s unique background had given the Missionaria Protectiva plenty to work with, enough raw material to attract fanatics in droves.
Here in her quiet, peaceful quarters, she was glad to be far from all that.
At the thought of being a supposed martyr around whom a powerful religion had grown, she felt another life awaken and rise up within her, a distant, ancient voice: Both Muad’Dib and Liet-Kynes spoke against the dangers of following a charismatic hero.
When the lives within permitted it, she liked to delve deeply into lines of Other Memory, looking farther and farther back in time, into the backwash and whitewater rapids of the river of history. “I agree. That is why those who would throw away their lives in such a cause must be watched and guided.”
Guided? Or manipulated?
Hunters of Dune Page 18
