Sandworms of Dune by Frank Herbert

  The Baron snorted. "Humans will never be perfect! Believe me, I've known plenty of them, and they're all disappointing in some way." Rabban, Piter . . . even Feyd had failed him in the end.

  Don't omit yourself, Grandfather. Remember, you were killed by a little girl with a poison needle. Ha ha!

  Shut up! The Baron scratched nervously at the top of his head, as if to dig through flesh and bone to rip her out. She fell silent.

  "I fear you may be right, Baron. Humans may not be salvageable, but we don't want Omnius to believe that, or he will destroy them all."

  "I thought you machines were already doing that," the Baron said.

  "To a certain extent. Omnius is stretching his abilities, but when we find the no-ship, I am certain he will get down to business." The old woman dug holes in the garden and planted seedlings that simply appeared in her hands.

  "What's so special about one lost ship?" the Baron asked.

  "Our mathematical projections suggest that the Kwisatz Haderach is aboard."

  "But I am the Kwisatz Haderach!" Paolo insisted. "You already have me."

  The old woman gave him a wry smile. "You are our fallback plan, young man. Omnius prefers the security of redundancy. If there are two possible Kwisatz Haderachs, he wants both of them."

  His face a mask of displeasure, the Baron cracked his knuckles. "So you think there's another ghola of Paul Atreides aboard that ship? Not likely!"

  "I claim only that there is another Kwisatz Haderach aboard the ship. However, since we have one Paul Atreides ghola, there could certainly be another."

  Are we on the Golden Path, or have we strayed from it? For three and a half millennia we prayed for deliverance from the Tyrant, but now that he is gone, have we forgotten how to live without such stern guidance? Do we know how to make the necessary decisions, or will we become hopelessly lost in the wilderness and starve of our own failings?

  --MOTHER SUPERIOR DARWI ODRADE,

  Pondering My Epitaph, sealed Bene Gesserit Archives, recorded

  before Battle of Junction

  Highly agitated, Garimi refused to take a seat in Sheeana's private quarters, no matter how many times it was offered. Even the Van Gogh painting on the wall did not seem to interest her. The stolen mines had brought long-simmering tensions to a new, raw level. Frantic search teams had been unable to locate any of the explosive devices. Sheeana knew that the stern Proctor Superior had her own suspicions and her own set of people to blame.

  "You and the Bashar didn't make a good bargain back on Qelso," Garimi said. "Leaving all those people and equipment, and getting nothing for ourselves!"

  "We replenished all our stores."

  "What if further sabotage hits our life-support systems? Liet-Kynes and Stilgar were the two most capable of conservation, recycling, and repairs. What if we need them to help us? Do you intend to grow new ones?"

  Sheeana angered the other woman further by responding with a calm, amused smile. "We could, but I thought you suspected all the ghola children. Yet you want Liet and Stilgar back? Besides, maybe Liet was right; maybe it's their destiny to remain on Qelso."

  "Now it's obvious that neither of them was the saboteur--though I'm still not entirely convinced about Yueh."

  Sheeana stared at the bright daubs of color that the ancient artist had swirled into an image of such power. Van Gogh was a genius. "I took a necessary action, based on our needs and priorities."

  "Hardly! You bowed to the demands of those murderous nomads to keep all Bene Gesserits off the planet. We should have formed a new school there--and now, instead, this whole ship could explode at any moment!"

  Ah, the core of what is really bothering her.

  "You know very well that I would have been happy to let you and your followers settle there." She forced a chuckle. "But I was not willing to start a war with the people of Qelso. We can train others in the nuances of our life-support systems. This ship will survive, as it has for decades."

  Obviously in no mood to be brushed aside, Garimi said, "Survive how? By creating another ghola to save us? That's always your solution, whether an Abomination like Alia, a traitor like Yueh or Jessica, or a Tyrant like Leto II. At least Pandora had the good sense to close her box."

  "And I want to open it wide. I want to bring back the history, especially Paul Atreides--and Thufir Hawat. We could certainly draw on the security knowledge of the Weapons Master of House Atreides."

  "Hawat failed spectacularly the last time you tried to awaken him."

  "Then we'll try again. And Chani could be an excellent fulcrum for awakening Paul. Jessica is also ripe for awakening. Even Leto II is ready."

  Garimi's eyes flashed. "You are playing with fire, Sheeana."

  "I am forging weapons. For that, fire is necessary." Sheeana turned, letting Garimi know that the discussion was at an end. "I've heard your opinions often enough to memorize them. I will dine with the gholas today. Maybe they have fresh ideas."

  Incensed, the dark-haired woman followed Sheeana out of her quarters and down the corridors toward the dining hall. Unexpectedly, young Leto II stepped out of a lift tube, alone and quiet as usual. The twelve-year-old often wandered the halls of the no-ship by himself; now he looked at the two women and blinked, but did not speak to them. Such an odd, preoccupied child.

  Before Sheeana could stop her, the Proctor Superior marched toward Leto, stiff and intimidating. Garimi had a fresh target for her anger and frustration. "So, Tyrant, where is your Golden Path? Where has it led us? If you were so prescient, why didn't you warn us of the Honored Matres or the Enemy?"

  "I don't know." The boy seemed genuinely perplexed. "I don't remember."

  Garimi studied him in disgust. "And what if you did remember? Would you be the God Emperor, the greatest butcher in all of human history? Sheeana thinks you could save us, but I say the Tyrant could just as easily destroy us. That's what you're best at. I don't want you or your monstrous ego back, Leto II. Your Golden Path is a blind man's road, sunk in a swamp."

  "It is not this boy's Golden Path," Sheeana said, taking the other woman's arm in a viselike grip. "Leave him alone."

  Leto took a quick step, darted around them, and fled down the corridor. Garimi looked triumphantly at Sheeana, who merely regarded her as a fool, condemned by her own irrational outburst.

  HIS EYES AND ears burned from the Proctor Superior's accusations, but Leto refused to allow a tear. A wise person didn't waste water trying to drown his emotions; he knew that much about old Dune. As he moved away from Sheeana and the insufferable Proctor Superior, and everyone else who thought they knew what to expect from him, the boy silently denied what Garimi had said, trying to block away what he himself knew.

  I was the God Emperor, the Tyrant. I created the Golden Path . . . but with my memories locked away, I don't truly understand what it is! Despite all he had learned about his original lifetime, Leto felt like nothing more than a twelve-year-old who had never asked to be reborn.

  He rode the transport tube to the deep lower decks, heading for a place where he felt more comfortable and safe. At first he considered slipping into the roaring winds of the recirculation chambers and the atmosphere-pumping ducts, but the strict security measures imposed by Bashar Teg and Leto's friend Thufir had closed off all access.

  Before his unpleasant encounter with Garimi, Leto had planned to join Thufir for his regular session on the training floor. Though the other ghola boy was now seventeen and had his security duties with the Bashar, he still frequently sparred with Leto. Despite his youth and size, Leto II was highly competitive even against a larger, stronger opponent. For the past few years they had provided quite a challenge for each other.

  At the moment, though, Leto needed to be alone. He reached the bottom levels of the ship and stood at the main access door into the immense hold. The surveillance imagers would have spotted him already. He swallowed hard. He had never dared to go inside alone, though he had stared for hours through the plaz at the captive sandw
orms.

  A pair of young guards stood in the hall, monitoring access to the cargo deck. Seeing the boy approach, they tensed. "This is a restricted area."

  "Restricted to me? Do you know who I am?"

  "You are Leto the Tyrant, the God Emperor," said the young woman, as if answering a proctor's question. She was Debray, one of the Bene Gesserit daughters who had been born in space after the no-ship's escape.

  "And those worms are part of me. Don't you remember your history?"

  "They're dangerous," the male guard answered. "You shouldn't go in there."

  Leto gazed calmly at the pair. "Yes, I should. Especially now. I need to feel the sands, smell the melange, the worms." He narrowed his eyes. "It could well restore my memories, as Sheeana wants."

  Debray frowned as she considered this. "Sheeana did say that every means must be used to trigger the reawakening of the gholas."

  The male guard turned to his companion. "Call Thufir Hawat and inform him first. This is highly irregular."

  Leto approached the heavy door. "I just need to go inside the hatch. I won't stray far. The worms stay out in the center of the habitat, don't they?" Boldly, he used the simple controls to unseal the door. "I know these worms. Thufir will understand. He hasn't recovered his memories either."

  Before the guards could agree on stopping him, Leto darted into the hold. The sand itself seemed to give off a crackling, staticky sound. The temperature was warm, the air so dry that his throat burned. The powerful smells of flint and cinnamon seared his nostrils. At the far end of the kilometer-long hold, the large worms moved toward him.

  Just standing on the sandy surface took the boy back to a place he had studied extensively in the no-ship's library. The real Arrakis, which had changed from desert to garden during his first extended life. Now the dry heat baked his skin. He took deep, calming breaths of air redolent with the odor of melange.

  Not bothering to avoid making noise, Leto strode farther out on the sand, sinking up to his ankles in the soft dunes. He ignored the shouted warnings of the guards as he trudged away from the metal wall. This was the closest thing to an open desert these worms had ever known.

  Climbing the crest of a dune and gazing around to the limits of the hold, Leto imagined how magnificent Arrakis must have once been. He wished he could remember. The dune on which he stood was small compared to a real one, and the seven worms in the hold were more diminutive than their unfettered ancestors as well.

  Ahead of him, the largest worm churned through sand, followed by the others. Leto felt the connection with these seven worms. It was as if the magnificent beasts sensed his mental pain and wanted to help him, even if his memories were still locked away in a ghola vault.

  An unexpected release of tears flowed down Leto's cheeks--not of anger toward Garimi but of joy and awe. Tears! He could not stem the flow of moisture. Perhaps if he perished right there on the sands, his body would be absorbed into the flesh of the worms, leaving behind all his fears and expectations.

  These worms were his descendants, each with a nugget of his former awareness. We are the same. Leto beckoned them. Although his ghola cells hadn't yet released memories of the thousands of years in his original lifetime, these sandworms possessed buried memories as well. "Are you dreaming in there? Am I in there?"

  A hundred meters from him the worms stopped and dove back into the sand, one after the other. He sensed that their presence was not threatening, but . . . protective. They did know him!

  From the hatch behind him, Leto heard a familiar voice calling his name. Looking back, he saw the ghola of Thufir Hawat standing on the verge, motioning him to come back to safety. "Leto, watch out. Don't tempt the worms. You are my friend, but if one of them eats you I won't jump down its gullet to get you back!" Thufir tried to chuckle, but looked deeply anxious.

  "I just need some time alone with them." Leto sensed something moving beneath the sands. He felt no concern for his own well-being, but did not want to endanger his friend. He picked up a strong whiff, the cinnamon odor of spice.

  "Leave! Now!"

  Then, wrestling with his fear, Thufir ventured closer to the young man, a few meters away. "Suicide by worm? Is that what you're doing out here?" He glanced at the hatch behind them, apparently wondering if he could still get back to safety if necessary. Worry lines etched his features. He looked terrified for himself and for Leto, wrestling with something that ran against his instincts. Yet he still stepped forward, as if drawn to his friend.

  "Thufir, stay back. You're in more danger than I am."

  The worms knew that someone else was in their realm. But they seemed far more agitated than an intruder could account for. Leto sensed a hatred, a roiling and instinctive reaction. He sprinted back to Thufir to save him. His friend seemed to be struggling with himself.

  Sand erupted, and worms encircled him and Thufir. The creatures rose from the low dunes, their round and hollow faces questing this way and that for something.

  "Leto, we have to go." Thufir grabbed the boy's sleeve. His voice was husky, ragged. "Go!"

  "Thufir, they won't harm me. And I feel . . . I feel as if I could make them go away. But they are deeply disturbed. Something about . . . you?" Leto sensed something here that he didn't understand.

  Simultaneously, the worms shot like battering rams toward the two young men on the dune. Thufir bolted away from Leto and lost his footing on the soft surface. Leto tried to go toward him, but the largest worm exploded up between them, scattering sand and dust. Another beast loomed on the other side of the transfixed Thufir, stretching its sinuous body into the air.

  Thufir let out a shuddering, gut-wrenching scream. It didn't sound at all like the ghola friend Leto had known. It didn't even sound human.

  The sandworms struck Thufir, but they did not simply devour him. As if in vindictive anger, the largest worm slammed down on him, smashing the young man's body into the sand. The next worm reared up and rolled over the already broken Thufir Hawat. For good measure, a third worm crushed the lifeless form. Then the trio of worms backed away, as if proud of what they had done.

  Leto stumbled across the sand toward the smashed body, oblivious to the threat of the worms. He slid down a churned dune, and fell to his hands and knees beside the smashed, partially buried form. "Thufir!"

  But he did not see the familiar face of his friend. The crushed features were pale and blank, the hair colorless, the expression inhuman. The black-button eyes were unfocused and dead.

  In shock, Leto reeled backward.

  Thufir was a Face Dancer.

  Here is my mask--it looks just like yours. We cannot see what our masks look like while we are wearing them.

  --The Wheel of Deception, Tleilaxu commentary

  Uproar in the hierarchy of the no-ship. Astonishment. Even Duncan Idaho could not grasp how such a thing could have happened. How long had the Face Dancer been watching them aboard the no-ship? The mangled, ugly corpse left no room for doubt.

  Thufir Hawat had been a Face Dancer! How could it be him?

  The original warrior Mentat had served House Atreides. Hawat had been Duncan's good and loyal friend--but not this faux version of him. In all this time, during the three years of sabotage and murder--and perhaps even longer--Duncan had not detected the Face Dancer in Hawat, nor had Bashar Teg who mentored him. Nor had the Bene Gesserit Sisters, nor any of the other ghola children. But how?

  An even worse question hung over them, blackening Duncan's thoughts like a solar eclipse: We have found one Face Dancer. Are there others?

  He looked at Sheeana, at the stricken Leto II, and at the two shocked guards who stared at the alien body. "We have to keep this secret until we can account for everyone aboard the ship. We've got to watch them, find a way to test them somehow . . . ."

  She agreed. "If there are any other Face Dancers aboard, we need to act before they discover what happened." In Bene Gesserit Voice, using a tone that was the equivalent of a verbal blow, she said to the guards
, "Speak of this to no one."

  They froze. Sheeana was already making plans to implement a crackdown and sweep of everyone on the ship. Duncan's Mentat mind raced as he tried to comprehend what could have happened, but the nagging questions defied all his attempts to impose logic.

  One rose above others: How do we even know a test will work? Thufir had already faced interrogation by the Truthsayers, just as everyone onboard had. Somehow, these new Face Dancers could evade even the witches' truthsense.

  If the young ghola had been replaced by a Face Dancer at some point, how could such a substitution have occurred without Duncan's knowledge? And when had it occurred? Had the real Thufir accidentally encountered a hidden Face Dancer in a darkened passageway? One of the secret survivors from the Handlers' suicide crashes in a long-term elaborate ruse? How else could a Face Dancer have gotten aboard the Ithaca?

  In assuming the identity of a victim, a Face Dancer imprinted himself with a perfect copy of the original person's personality and memories, thus creating an exact duplicate. And yet, the false Thufir had risked his life for young Leto II amongst the sandworms. Why? How much of Thufir had actually been in the Face Dancer? Had there ever been a real Thufir ghola?

  At first, with the Face Dancer exposed, Duncan had felt a sense of relief that the saboteur and murderer was at last revealed. But after a swift Mentat analysis, he quickly put together several instances of sabotage during which the Thufir Hawat ghola had a clear alibi. Duncan had himself been with him during some of the attacks. The next projection was incontrovertible.

  There is more than one Face Dancer among us.

  DUNCAN AND TEG met in a small copper-walled room designed for private meetings, blocked from all known scanning devices. Subtle indications implied that this had originally been designed as an interrogation chamber. How often had the original Honored Matres used it as such? For torture, or simply amusement?