Hunters of Dune Read online

  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 moire. 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.”

  Legend holds that a pearl of Leto II’s awareness remains within each of the sandworms that arose from his divided body. The God Emperor himself said he would henceforth live in an endless dream. But what if he should waken? When he sees what we have done with ourselves, will the Tyrant laugh at us?

  —PRIESTESS ARDATH,

  the Cult of Sheeana on the planet Dan

  T

  hough 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 cre
atures 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 melange 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.

  Some like to live in complacency, hoping for stability without upset. I much prefer to turn over rocks and see what scurries out.

  —MOTHER SUPERIOR DARWIL ODRADE,

  Observations on Honored Matre Motivations

  E

  ven 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 e
ntire 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.