Dune: Advent

Table of Contents

Dune: Advent

About this eBook

Forewords

Introduction

Sentinel

Prologue : the Gate

Book 1 : the Dream

chapter 01 / chapter 02 / chapter 03 / chapter 04 / chapter 05 / chapter 06 / chapter 07 / chapter 08 / chapter 09 / chapter 10 / chapter 11 / chapter 12 / chapter 13 / chapter 14

Interlude : the Maelstrom

Book 2 : the Awakening

chapter 01 / chapter 02 / chapter 03 / chapter 04 / chapter 05 / chapter 06 / chapter 07 / chapter 08 / chapter 09 / chapter 10 / chapter 11

Interlude 2 : the Path

Junction

Book 3 : the Dark

chapter 01 / chapter 02 / chapter 03 / chapter 04 / chapter 05 / chapter 06 / chapter 07 / chapter 08 / chapter 09 / chapter 10

Epilogue 1 : the Sleeper

Epilogue 2 : the Seed

Marco van Leeuwen

DUNE: ADVENT

FOREWORDS

"I am Marco van Leeuwen (principal construction of this unit was completed on January 25th, 1976), an unusual person on the Net and downright odd in real life - but in a decidedly non-threatening way (don't worry, I'm harmless). One of the oddities I like to indulge in is philosophy (because there is nothing so strange as a consequenceless heap of protoplasm, cartilage and mucus attempting to understand himself), another the written word. I also like Katie Holmes, Transformers (the toys, not the electrical devices) and chocolate, but that is currently beside the point.

Since I'd love to be an actual, honest-to-gosh writer one day, I decided to construct the thing you're about to start reading: one of the texts with which I intend to express my (almost) boundless admiration of Frank Herbert and his wonderful Dune Chronicles. I sincerely hope there are a few people out there with strong enough stomachs to endure the madness that I felt compelled to unleash upon the electronic page, and make it all the way to the end of the 43th part.

Don't hesitate to contact me at to let me know - naturally in a calm and civil manner - how much you'd like to kick my ass for abusing Frank's creations the way I did, but I honestly hope what I came up with manages to entertain and/or stimulate you somehow. If, like me, you love Dune, Twin Peaks and The Sandman (comic book series by Neil Gaiman), you might like my story. Or not."

— Marco van Leeuwen

Dedicated to Frank Herbert, whose amazing imagination brought the universe of Dune to life.

This fanfic novel was written by Marco van Leeuwen in early 2000 incorporating and expanding upon characters, settings and concepts created by Frank Herbert.

The purpose of this story is to pay tribute to him and his work, and in no way aims to infringe upon any copyrights held by the Herbert Estate.

ABOUT THIS EBOOK

This eBook is for the use of anyone, anywhere at anytime. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the edicts of the Butlerian Jihad. If you are not located in the Known Universe, you'll have to check the laws of your local Butlerian Jihad's Office prior to use it.

Title: Dune Advent

Author: Marco van Leeuwen

1st Release Date: early 2000

epub Release Date: November, 2014

Language: English

Production & Edition: Dune SF

please visit us at

http://forum.dune-sf.fr

INTRODUCTION

Five thousand years ago on the desert planet Arrakis (also known as Dune), Paul Atreides fulfilled two separate prophecies: he was the Kwisatz Haderach - the product of the breeding program of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood -, as well as the long-awaited messiah that would free the people of Dune, the Fremen, from the oppression they had been subject to for many generations. The Jihad he unleashed on the galaxy was unprecedented in its ferocity, only to be overshadowed by the cruelty of the Golden Path of his son Leto II - The God Emperor. A symbiosis with sandtrout, the larva-stage of Dune's giant sandworms, allowed him to rule for over 35 centuries, and turn the course of humanity away from the armageddon he had seen in his visions. After his death the Empire crumbled, and its inhabitants spread far beyond the boundaries of the known universe: the Scattering. Recently, Dune was destroyed by a new breed of humans from the Scattering, the Honoured Matres. Now a fragile alliance between these fearsome women and the Bene Gesserit has been formed, but both internal and external forces are threatening to upset the balance. In addition, two people vital to the sisterhood's plans, Duncan Idaho and Sheeana, are lost in an unknown region of the universe, the mysterious power that chased the Honoured Matres back to the Old Empire is coming ever closer, and now even more factions are preparing to execute the plans they've been preparing. All the lines are converging ...

This is what might happen next.

SENTINEL

After a long silence the storyteller spoke once more, but his voice sounded very different now.

"Remember that a story is not a rigidly defined sequence of occurences, but a multidimensional space of ideas you are invited to explore. Wander around in it, taste the texture of that reality and digest it - transform it into something you can call your own. But beware - you can get lost in that place! Of course, for some people that is exactly the reason they seek out storytellers; others desire only entertainment. Whatever your objective, know that if you feel you need it, this is here for you: a map."

"Go now," he said. "See what I have seen, but look for it in your own way. Your experiences are your own, and I am merely offering you an opportunity to briefly partake in some of mine. Perhaps you will enjoy it, and perhaps you will not - I have no desire to enforce my vision upon you. I hope to see you again one day, but for now I wish you well on your travels."

PROLOGUE - THE GATE

The period of ideologically fueled, socio-cultural galaxy-wide upheaval over six millennia ago known as the Butlerian Jihad freed mankind of its unhealthy entanglement in the webs of constraints created by the omnipresence of machines, thinking as well as non-thinking. The founders of our Sisterhood understood this surge in the fabric of history as a return to a reliance on natural cognitive capabilities, forced upon us by the balancing tendencies of the universe itself. Apart from inspiring the development of our training methods, helping us control the awakening and maintenance of Other Memories in our Reverend Mothers, the effects of the Jihad eventually also supplied us with the means with which to fulfill our goal of ushering our society into maturity. The solution we have found is genetic in nature. We believe the provisionary breeding program we have constructed will generate a male with the desired characteristics within fifty generations. The necessary changes to the activities of the Missionaria Protectiva which will prepare a place for him in the various parts of the Empire are already in development.

— Reverend Mother Superior Saldosa Wend, adressing the Council of Proctors. From the Bene Gesserit Archives

How cruel this desert is, to allow such destructive forces to find sustenance in it.

Alia's thoughts flowed mercilessly onward, the events to come fueling their advance. In appearance she was still a toddler, but her mind was a match for the most experienced and wise. While still in the womb, the acceptance of the Other Memories of generations of Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers by her mother had awakened her own mind to full maturity in an instant, effectively making her a Reverend Mother as well. She had always thought of her misleading physical appearance as a useful tool, allowing her to defeat most intellectual opponents quickly by taking advantage of their lowered defenses, but now the stress of what she had experienced recently and knew she had yet to experience was exacting its toll on her fragile physique. She was frightened by what she had seen, but she understood the necessity of those events.

The lack of some of the most basic necessities the desert confronted its inhabitants with often hindered the growth of life on its own terms, but stimulated the rise to dominance of other aspects. Tendencies developed under severe pressure were the most powerful of all, and could wreak havoc when supplied with an appropriate target, as well as a compatible conduit for the energies generated by them.

My brother is such a conduit, and soon I will be one as well, Alia realised. Shaped by a past they had not wished for, both would have to play out their parts in a much larger play - a play that would reach a vital plot twist soon.

She suspected her brother understood that something of great importance was about to happen, but failed to see what it was exactly, and what role he himself would play in the coming events.

Alia had not felt the need to be subtle about her inquiries. "My brother, are you the Kwisatz Haderach?", she had asked him.

Paul and Alia had been in his private quarters in Sietch Tabr - a dimly lit cave cut out of the rock, its walls covered with large spice-fibre rugs and pillows of various sizes scattered across the floor. Paul sat in a corner, immersed in thought.

Half an hour earlier, both had been present at a meeting with all the Fremen Naibs, intended to remove the last few obstacles impeding the advancement of the military strike on Arrakeen. The obstinance a few of the Fremen leaders continued to display, despite their obvious respect for their Lisan al-Gaib, had not improved Paul's mood, nor the faith he had in himself and his plan.

Alia's question startled him in its honesty and bluntness. It took a while for him to process the inquiry, and consider its implications. Despite the fact she's my sister and I've known her for as long as she has been alive, the way someone of her age can unerringly reach for anyone's sore spots is still unsettling to me. What does she intend to say here? She knows about my insecurities, and, technically being a Reverend Mother, most certainly understands better than most how I fit into the Bene Gesserit scheme.

Before Paul could react, Alia continued. "My Reverend Mothers-within fear you. They want me to attempt to kill you."

"It is wise of them to fear me. The Bene Gesserit manipulate politics, and my plan does not allow them to continue their activities on the current scale."

"That is not the reason, dear brother."

Paul eyes went wide, and he had to restrain himself from bursting into laughter. How condescending she could be! She wanted it to be clear there was a lesson he needed to learn. Typical Bene Gesserit behaviour.

Alia moved towards Paul, and stared into his eyes. "What do you see in your trances?"

Paul gazed into his sister's eyes, seeing a ferocious clarity there that scared him. Fremen strength and tenacity combined with the knowledge and abilities of a Reverend Mother. Dangerous! Her question cuts right to the heart of the matter.

"I see my death, and the deaths of many others. I see disaster."

A number of different strands originated at this point in time, and one of them inevitably lead to the Jihad - Fremen troops washing over the Empire, killing millions upon millions in his name. He feared that future, but the alternatives were infinitely worse.

"I am not the Kwisatz Haderach, sister. I am a seed, and this planet and the Fremen are the soil that will give what will grow from me sustenance and stability."

A seed. Does he realise the full meaning of the word he uses to describe himself? Alia walked towards the curtain separating the room from the hallway, swung it aside, and turned to speak. "Every organism will claim a certain portion of the available energy in a system. Every organism does so to the disadvantage of the other organisms competing for a place in the same niche. Still, no organism merely consumes - a fundamental aspect of life consists in the exchange of energy with the environment."

"I don't have time to rehash lessons in ecology, sister. Please get to the point or leave."

"I only have one question: What is it that you extract from your environment, and what happens to the environment because of that?" Alia stepped into the hallway and walked away, leaving Paul behind in confusion.

Remembering that discussion, Alia realised her brother was on the verge of a breakthrough in understanding, but did not quite see the details yet. Perhaps he isn't supposed to fully understand.

Even the beauty of the vista that presented itself to her now could not soften the pain of her realisation that the Fates were harsh mistresses. She stood on a ledge at one of the lesser southern entrances of Sietch Tabr, and looked out across the Funeral Plain. The wind carried red streaks of sand across the silvery sky, dissipating the harsh light of one of Arrakis' suns. Her black, body-length robe danced in the wind, and she could feel the grains of sand stinging her cheeks, the irritation failing to subside into numbness while the flux of the sand on her face gradually increased. The storm would be intense.

This was her land, and in her personal experience as well as her Other Memories she had seen such storms many times before. Still, the scene currently impressed upon her senses failed to generate a sensation of familiarity. The way one perceives the world is not only determined by outside stimulus, but also by one's internal constitution - one's feelings and thoughts at a certain moment. These were in turn influenced by both the composition of the socio-cultural context in which one had been conditioned to respond to outward stimuli in a certain way, as well as the immediately pertinent personal history.

That last factor was most influential in the processes that led to Alia's current state of mind, but it was compounded by a fairly unique ability she shared with her brother, an emergent property of their Atreides heritage - her prescience. While a similar faculty could be found in the steersmen of the Guild, the consortium regulating interplanetary travel in the Empire, their ability was enforced by a combination of biogenetic engineering and the workings of the Spice, the powerful awareness spectrum narcotic only found on Arrakis.

Exactly therein lies the danger! Alia thought. I'm not supposed to know these things, even with my prescience. The things she had seen struck fear in her heart, but at the same time she realised they needed to come to pass. My role is not to spearhead the natural unfolding of the universe. My brother and his son will do that. I can only be a rock that slightly bends the stream, not the source of the stream itself.

What an odd analogy for a Fremen to use, she realised after a moment. She once again swept her gaze over the Funeral Plain. So dry?

She suddenly felt the dryness in her mouth. The implications of her decision to decline wearing the proscribed nose plugs and mouth mask while venturing outside the sietch's moisture seals manifested themselves now: she reckoned she had lost at least a quarter of a liter of water. Before returning inside, she glanced west to see a Sardaukar contingent approaching in the distance. They concealed themselves well, but weren't nearly careful enough to fool her desert-honed Fremen senses.

She walked through the twisting corridors of rock towards her private quarters, and briefly looked in on her nephew - sleeping, unaware of the fate that was about to befall him.

"This is how it needs to be, young Leto", she whispered. "Don't worry, it is for the best. Your namesake will assume the burden for you."

She approached the sleeper, a boy even younger than she. For a moment, she admired the resemblance to his father, which was striking even at his young age. She pulled out her crysknife, and silently slit the boy's throat. "Find the gate of ivory, and be free. You'll be back soon enough."

Alia sheathed the knife, and sat down beside the bed. In the distance she heard sietch guards struggling with the imperial troops. I must forget. My knowledge and abilities cannot be allowed to overshadow those of my brother and his future son. They need to become the architects, not I.

With three short breaths, Alia entered a trance, and shortly conversed with her mother-within. It is time, mother. I give you these memories. Guard them well.

My daughter, do you not see the dangers of the path you've chosen for yourself? Doing this vastly increases the risk of ...

Alia intervened sharply, and immediately regretted her loss of composure. I know, but we talked about what needed to be done. I has to be this way!

Very well. Please be careful.

She awakened only a few seconds after she had entered the trance, just as two Sardaukar burst into the room.

BOOK ONE

THE DREAM

BOOK ONE - CHAPTER ONE

A stare that is not met turns inward on itself. An expanding circular wave will rush back towards its point of origin if it happens to meet the sudden end of the water, and will interfere with the subsequent waves, either amplifying them or inhibiting their natural movement, but always causing changes.

— Bene Gesserit Coda

Every time he would almost reach his goal, only to have the waters rise and swallow him, after which he would again find himself back where he had started. It almost seemed as if the water was sentient and was actively trying to keep him from leaving.

He awoke once more in the center of the darkness, as he had done countless times before. Nothing had changed. Beneath him he could feel fine-grained, red sand, while above black clouds raged, mixing in an eerie dark red flickering, swirling violently and flowing to his current left.

He let out a scream of frustration, a high-pitched sound that lasted several seconds. There was no echo. There never was an echo. There never were any sounds, except the ones he produced himself. The darkness around him absorbed everything - except for the ceiling of clouds appearing to stretch into infinity in all directions, the information his sensory organs processed never originated more than a few meters away. Still, he knew the water was always there, just beyond the reach of his senses. It usually kept its distance, but it was out there - waiting, watching him, ready to encircle him once more without warning.

His hope of once finding a way out of wherever he had spent longer than he could fathom was the only thing that still remained to supply him with a semblance of sanity. He was utterly alone, but once there had been others. Other beings - resembling him ... He could not recall - whom he could talk to, and who would talk to him. If he could just get beyond the walls of water, he would find them again, and he wouldn't be alone anymore.

Whatever hardship he might have had to face before, he knew loneliness must be one of the most cruel. Every intelligent being needed to continually balance between autonomy, which meant finding origin, cause and goal within oneself, and an unimpeded exchange of ideas and feelings with one's environment. The way these two tendencies even each other out forms the basis of one's interaction with the environment.

He had dim memories of the fact that a person is supposed to be entangled in a wide variety of social roles, to such an extent that he might display quite different personalities in different situations. However, each of these personalities would be defined from the Identity, a single constellation of thoughts, feelings, convictions and experiences, which might not agree with the social role played. He felt the Identity as a point mass just beyond his field of vision, in a way similar to the back of his head: eternally present but impossibly seen from the outside - he could only feel it was there.

He theorised that Identity and an idiosyncratic catalog of interlinked but distinctive personalities had to form the Self. In a normal interchange of information the personalities would usually change the fastest, being dependent on and in intense interaction with the outer world, forming somewhat of a buffer to the more stable Identity, which in turn would be modified by the changing personalities, but much more slowly. A sense of Self would be derived from both introspection - which could only take place by creating a virtual copy of oneself, simulating regarding the Self from the outside but in the process distorting the truth - and reflection in the attitudes of others towards one's actions.

He understood that this was where his current problem originated. However self-sufficient a mind could believe itself to be, it needed to have its own output reflected back to it, as well as a constant stream of new, outwardly generated ideas - this is how a person grows and learns. Apart from a severely limited environment of red sand and dark skies - unchanging, therefore trivial to his current needs -, he had lacked such input for longer than his recollection allowed him to measure. Nothing around him spoke to him, in whatever language one would care to define. Total silence, lack of significant change - loneliness.

No echoes. Nothing to keep the understanding of his Self coherent. Who am I?, he often silently asked himself, and every time the question became of a greater significance while the answer seemed farther away.

Sometimes brief flashes of new impressions entered his mind, but they would never last. Or were they memories, resurfacing after being submerged but quickly sinking again?

A bridge.

Something covering his mouth, making it impossible for him to breathe.

A face. Who was that? So beautiful...

A smile of understanding.

A dull thumping in the distance.

Running for hours on end.

Water engulfing him, invading his body.

Falling through the air.

A man, reflected again and again.

Death, his own as well as of others.

A cascade of such impressions besieged him now, the images and sensations flashing through his narrow consciousness, stimulating it to once again expand and soak up the newness like a sponge. He thought he saw the shadows around him retreating a bit, and this infused him with new hope. He rose, and started running.

As always happened whenever he walked a sufficient distance, he reached the water. He could see the intensely dark stream was still motionless at first, but small waves formed almost immediately, quickly increasing in size and aggressively moving in his direction as if guided by a predator's mind. The total lack of sound while this happened increased the sinister atmosphere.

He came to a halt and watched the wall formed by the water rise higher and bend over him, preparing to once again submerge him and send him back to where had spent the past eternity, when suddenly he heard a scream. The mass of water froze, still liquid but unmovingly hanging over him.

It was a shriek coming from far away, and it took a while to subside. He recognised the voice. It was his own.

Then the barrage of voices came.

BOOK ONE  - CHAPTER TWO

You subject yourselves to the Atreides rulership because of one single reason: the understanding Muad'Dib had and his sister has of the future. Muad'Dib was the Lisan Al-Gaib, and this fact seduced you into betrothal, but his prescient faculty lures you back to this place to seal the wedding. I tell you your Mahdi is no more, but still you insist on remaining in the trap his prescience created! He accepted a single future for all of us and set us on a course, but you are not powerless to prevent his scenario from running its full course! You can always reinterpret the universe, choose a different set of axioms and build a new existence for yourself on that basis. He created a deterministic system out of a chaotic multitude, but I give you the advice to seek out the chaos once more!

—The Preacher at Arrakeen

The night sky glimmered with many faint stars, distributed in patterns not even Miles Teg could recognise. The young ghola Bashar had access to the memories of all the journeys the original Teg had undertaken in service of the Sisterhood throughout his long life, but he knew he had never been in this sector of space. Whatever Duncan Idaho had done at the ship's controls after lifting off from Chapter House, the Bene Gesserit core planet, it had caused the no-ship to travel far from the Old Empire.

They had been stranded on the planet for three months. From information gathered on his many scouting missions, Teg had managed to form a fairly reliable map of the area the damaged no-ship had been forced to touch down in. The ship itself rested on a plateau overlooking a valley overgrown with lush vegetation, the gigantic mass of machinery and plasteel covered with oddly shaped protrusions looking rather out of place in this particular environment.

His feelings of uneasiness, a disconcerting mixture of knowing he didn't belong here and an unexpectedly nasty form of homesickness caused by the fact he recognised none of the plants and animals he had seen, were alleviated slightly by the discovery he had made eventually that the totality of lifeforms around him followed somewhat familiar patterns. Whatever combination of molecules might lie at the basis of the evolution of life on a planet, apparently the universe was permeated by certain principles that guided the development of life into a limited set of possible manifestations.

Divine intervention appeared unlikely to him, the great number of contingencies attached to the existence of a higher being having forced him away from any religious anthropomorphic projections onto the natural order of things, but to have these guiding principles be a higher-order manifestation of the fundamental forces of nature was a workable hypothesis.

Statistics is the key, he thought. Despite the uncertainties involved with interactions of elementary particles, chaos does not rule. The very laws of nature are simply examples of inductive reasoning, based on observations of the movement of sufficiently large quantities of particles. The forces governing the movements and transmutations of those particles need not be deterministic, but could be merely propensities to develop from one state towards any one of a finite set of closely related states. Laws are abstractions, and merely apparently universal within a certain realm. It is in this apparent contradiction that the great mystery of the universe becomes knowable for a short time - resembling a brief but overwhelmingly bright flash of light rather than a clear, detailed image -, and dissolves into a mystery again. It is important that I retain this perceptual and mental malleability.

He could find the proof for his reasoning all around him. He was unfamiliar with all but a few of the types of organisms in the area around the no-ship, but they were all easliy classified into the same set of phyla that was prevalent on all the worlds of the Old Empire he had visited. Still, none of us belongs on this world, Teg realised.

It was quite a colourful collection of people that had been dragged along into the unknown - into a new Scattering - because of Idaho's actions a few months earlier. They all understood the threat they had fled from - a fragile alliance of Bene Gesserit and Honoured Matres under the leadership of Murbella - but many of them disputed the wisdom of the ghola Mentat's actions. He had deliberately lost all information about their position relative to familiar space in a massive data dump.

One if his most adamant opponents was the Rabbi, but this in itself was not surprising. The head of a group of Jews that had always lived a life according to rules that were already ancient when the God-Emperor's reign was still young, an important part of the past few months he had spent trying to protect his people against being tainted by the heretical beliefs of the Bene Gesserit. His people had had an agreement with the Sisterhood for a long time, members of one group helping the other in times of great peril, but this mutual obligation didn't mean in the slightest that he agreed with the many heretical theories his allies had constructed.

"My people are certainly no stranger to fleeing from overwhelming evil - our diaspora is the fulfillment of a prophecy, and continues to this day - but never did we relinquish the hope that one day we might return to the Holy Land." His powerful voice echoed through one of the larger storage rooms in which most of the ship's inhabitants had gathered that night. "Retaining the purity of our beliefs and culture is the main pillar supporting our existence. This ghola's actions have severed the ties with the rest of our people."

"His impetuosity might very well have saved us all", Bene Gesserit Proctor Garimi said, even though she didn't fully believe this herself. "The alliance between Bene Gesserit and Honoured Matres was extremely fragile, and inherently explosive. Nothing good could come of it."

What chance do we have of surviving here?, Garimi thought. I don't foresee any problems staying alive in a physical sense, but this group is too ill-equipped to realise any of the goals Reverend Mothers of the Second Scattering would pursue. Any Reverend Mother is trained to be autonomous and highly adaptive to new circumstances, but even the most talented ones do need certain resources in order to continue to develop. Melange is one! Our supplies have reached dangerously low levels.

She looked around her. She realised the absence of certain people at this meeting provided important clues about the shifting balance of power and allegiances in their group. Miles Teg was out exploring, as he often was. His mysterious powers continue to develop, no matter how much he tries to hide it from us. And I must not forget this is the Bashar - he most certainly has an agenda of his own.

Duncan Idaho was somewhere else in the no-ship. He had a very powerful bond with Sheeana, and this relationship had become much stronger lately, with them keeping to themselves most of the time. What are those two up to?

"We do appreciate your efforts in trying to protect us from peril - I too recognised the dangers of the path your Mother Superior had chosen." The Rabbi glared at the small group of Reverend Mothers sitting to Garimi's left, who were trying not to participate in this particular conversation, having learnt the futility of attempting to educate the Rabbi in Bene Gesserit ways of thinking over the past few months. "The arrogance the ghola displayed by making such a far-reaching decision for us is what bothers me. This does not prove to me he has a particularly well-developed sense of ethics, and I will not allow myself or my people to be tainted by it."

"Still, his presence and abilities supplied the Sisterhood with exactly that: a sense of ethics, a conscience." Garimi decided to explore this subject with the Rabbi one more time. "Navigating uncharted territory in our quest to improve the human race required a strong sense of direction. A course is laid out on a basis formed by everything that came before, and Idaho provided us with the proper feedback-mechanism on multiple levels."

"Improving the human race ... Pah!"

So it's time for the insult again, Garimi thought. The Rabbi had followed this particular thread of reasoning before, his rant always resulting in an insult to the Bene Gesserit. He's still trying to distance himself from us as much as he can, despite the fact the understanding between his people and the Sisterhood has been in place for many generations. However, I can't think of him as an isolationist blinded by his own preconceptions - he's much more intelligent than that.

"His behaviour is typical of someone indoctrinated by the Bene Gesserit," the Rabbi spat out. "With great reluctance I agreed to let Rebecca, one of my people, submerge herself in your ways, because our plans demanded it. She explained many things about you to me, and every bit of new information strengthened my original opinion. You are unclean. The Sisterhood does not acknowledge a personal saviour - there is just a faceless, unthinking current underlying reality you presume to control. And your Missionaria Protectiva, creating religions to further your own goals - you think you yourself are divine!"

Garimi sighed. "Perhaps we're divine in the sense that a prophet is. The essence of the prohet is that he's a servant - we chose that role for ourselves, realising we should not be the ones being worshipped, but that the focus needed to be on the better world we long for."

"Still, you claim to be able to decide whether or not someone is human - you even devised a test for it. Calling someone human or not is a divine act."

Garimi detected that a small measure of resignation had settled over the Rabbi, but that this particular duel wasn't over yet. "The Bene Gesserit did not create the distinction, we merely recognised the criteria."

"It is not your place to judge."

He chooses this tactic again? A peculiar gleam in the Rabbi's eyes caught Garimi's attention. Suddenly she realised what he was doing. He's not trying to convince me. He wants me to react a certain way, to act out a particular routine. It's a lesson for the other members of his group!

She knew now how to respond. "Oh, but it is. We realised how outsiders could accuse us of extreme arrogance in assuming our plan was the only correct one, and we recognised the trap we had created for ourselves - that's one of the reasons the Duncans were so valuable to us."

The Rabbi barely managed to surpress a smile. I might not agree with these Bene Gesserits on many points, but one has to admire their perceptiveness. "Resurrecting mortal flesh should not be the work of men."

"The Sisterhood saw the necessity of utilising extreme measures in executing our plans - even if that meant using gholas and religious beliefs as tools."

"One does not use religion."

"The scope of the goals the Sisterhood set out to reach at its conception required a method involving religious elements. These are what gave the Sisterhood its longevity. Our plans were intended to span several millennia. Surely you of all people recognise the endurance religious beliefs provide?"

"Rebecca tells me the Tleilaxu used a similar strategy. The complete lack of an acceptable system of ethics in their way of life proves longevity based on religious beliefs is not always a good thing."

"The Tleilaxu fell into the trap of not evolving, but instead letting the elements of a flawed ideological system fall prey to inbreeding. The Sisterhood never fell into this trap because our God is not a person but an idea, a potential, and our religion no more than pure rationality. This opened up our convictions to internal scrutiny, allowing us to develop rather than stagnate. Your own people felt compelled to travel a different path, but your involvement with us proves you never entered the cul-de-sac the Tleilaxu found themselves in."

Garimi watched the Rabbi sit back, and understood this discussion was now over. Clever man! He has managed to make our alliance stronger - necessary if we want to survive - while retaining the religious identity for his group. She saw Rebecca realised this, and watched the first signs of understanding emerge on the faces of the other members of the group of Jews.

Still, it might not be enough to save us if Idaho and Sheeana continue to follow their own agenda. Do they realise I know of their increased interest in the Tleilaxu Master in the holding cell? Sheeana was able to communicate with the sandworms on Rakis. How much of The Tyrant's awareness is still present in the worm we took with us from Chapter House? What do they want? I should attempt to find out soon.

BOOK ONE - CHAPTER THREE

Religion has been a force of almost limitless power in all cultures since the dawn of humanity, the vast majority of the members of any given society being subordinate to it, simultaneously cursing its oppression and welcoming its promises of salvation from potentially greater evils lurking in the world-without-a-saviour. However, there has always been a minority of people that controlled the flow of power and goods within the system the prevalent religion in their particular culture created, consolidating their position by manipulating the contents of the official belief-system and the way this gospel was interpreted by the masses. There is enormous potential in this strategy, especially when the rulers themselves do not fall prey to whatever beliefs prevail - this allows them to better tailor the ecclesiastical edicts to the necessities and possibilities of their culture. Our Missionaria Protectiva preys on the weakness of the masses that drives them to seek out the help of higher powers, and moulds it to increase the potential of advancing the Sisterhood's needs. As well as creating fertile soil for the development of ours plans, the Missionaria forms the ultimate test to separate the humans from the animals. The sceptics, those that managed to achieve relatively independent thought despite omni-present ideological oppression, are the most dangerous, but also potentially the most valuable. They should be sought out, tested, and either assimilated or killed, depending on the results of the test.

— Excerpt from a lecture on the Panoplia Propheticus for advanced Bene Gesserit acolytes

What a weak-looking little man, Sheeana thought. She shuddered, realising the danger of thinking this way about the captive facing her inside the prison cell. Latent danger often takes the least remarkable form.

The Tleilaxu Master Scytale, a small, unappealing creature with an unhealthy-looking grayish skin, intrigued her to no end. Darwi Odrade, whose persona resided within Sheeana's Other Memory, had managed to learn much about the Bene Tleilax and their religious beliefs during her dealings with the Master of Masters Tylwyth Waff a decade earlier on Rakis. They adhere to Zensunni and Sufi beliefs, which have been kept unchanged in their society for millennia. Knowledge of these belief systems from Other Memory should allow you to understand and predict his thinking patterns. Use this as leverage, Odrade-within said.

Sheeana, while still a young girl, had witnessed several of those meetings between Waff and Odrade in the Bene Gesserit keep in Keen, and had guided the sandworm that had taken them to the remains of the ancient Sietch Tabr one time, where a large store of the Tyrant's Spice had been found. She tried to recall what Odrade had done to pry loose so much important information from the xenophobic Tleilaxu Master.

This one is considerably smarter than Waff. Sheeana did not delude herself into thinking it would be easy to wrestle away secrets from Scytale, but she knew she had to try. The Tleilaxu have been planning something for many centuries - the abilities they hid in the Duncan gholas ordered by the Sisterhood are somehow a part of this. Their religion preaches an eventual ascendancy of the true believers - how will this come to pass, and when?

Don't worry, I will help you, Odrade-within comforted her.

"Many of your kind have already tried during my years of captivity", Scytale said suddenly in his high-pitched, childlike voice, "but no one has managed to convince me, and I will not tolerate being insulted by yet another transparent attempt."

Sheeana did not expect such a strong dismissal at the very beginning of the conversation. His initial surprise at encountering non-Tleilaxu claiming to share his beliefs has completely faded away, strengthening his distrust towards the Bene Gesserit in the process. This presents me with rather serious problems. Feigning ignorance of what he was talking about, she asked: "In what way have we insulted you?"

"You know exactly what I mean!", Scytale shrieked, looking like a spoiled child having a temper tantrum.

This sudden outburst revealed much to Sheeana. He is so intent on not co-operating that he might be susceptible to subtler means of persuasion.

Or more forceful methods, Odrade suggested.

It's too soon!, Sheeana protested.

Not at all. He is hiding something, and he knows it would be very valuable to us if we would find out what it was. He thinks this gives him a certain measure of control over us. This is all about the distribution of power to him, and despite his incarceration he believes he has the upper hand. Remember, an enemy is most vulnerable when he believes he has defeated you.

Very well, Sheeana reluctantly agreed.

"The time of Mabak Ghisharat is near", she said, and immediately observed the revelation take effect on Scytale's face. So it's true! Just like the Bene Gesserit, the Bene Tleilax have been executing a plan spanning many hundreds of generations. And now it seems "The New Dawn" is about to become a reality. The fact Scytale knows this even though he has been our captive for so long means it's very close.

"How dare you speak of this! You cannot know-". Scytale stopped mid-sentence, realising what he had said. If this was another trick of these powindah witches, I have just given them the confirmation they needed.

"We are not on Chapter House anymore, you know." Sheeana knew this was still unknown to the Tleilaxu Master. The no-ship's systems did not only prevent any energy from spilling outward, effectively making the ship invisible to any and all sensors, but were also capable of masking any energy from being transmitted in the opposite direction. The Bene Gesserit on the ship had agreed to allow Scytale to continue to believe they were on the Sisterhood's central planet, making no changes in his daily routine. Garimi intended to use this piece of information in her own attempts at finding out what Scytale knows. I could not allow her to create that monodirectional dependency relationship with him - if she would gain that influence over him it would severely hinder my plans.

"We're far from the Empire", Sheeana added. "The star formations outside are completely unknown to us."

She saw this revelation stripped away some of the confidence Scytale had built up with his religion-fueled arrogance. The proximity to his homeworld was obviously very important to him, even if it gave him no practical gain because of his incarceration.

No amount of cleansing will suffice to wash the powindah filth from my body, Scytale despaired, but he kept silent. What are these demons doing to me?

Sheeana let Odrade prepare her for the release of yet another bombshell. He will not openly tell us what we need to know, but he has poor control of his reflexes. His reactions to our shocking "revelations" will tell us what we need to know. Mention our speculations about Tleilaxu involvement with the Ixians next.

Sheeana complied. "Will the deployment of Ixian artifacts not taint the coming of Mabak Gisharat?"

Scytale's mouth fell open and his eyes went wide. He let out a short, uncontrolled guttural sound. The shock he experienced was so great he almost collapsed onto the floor of his holding cell, but he managed to regain control of his limbs just in time. His right hand reflexively clutched his chest where the nulltube with many priceless ghola cells was hidden. He removed the hand as soon as the conscious part of his thought processes caught up with the situation. These accursed witches know everything! Do they know about the treasure trove I carry within my chest? No, they can't - my skin is impervious to their scanning equipment. Did my unconscious reaction just now give away too much? I must control myself. Scytale straightened his narrow shoulders and prepared to ward off Sheeana's next blow.

Odrade-within noted the succession of gestures. Did you see him rubbing a certain spot on his chest? He has done this before.

Sheeana agreed. Yes, I noticed it - it was clearly a reflex, perhaps protective.

Perhaps. He is not hurt, and he shows no sign of having been operated on in that location. Then again, we should take into account the fact that the Tleilaxu are highly skilled genetic engineers - who knows what they're capable of?

In a infinitesimally short flash of enlightenment, Sheeana tought she had found a suitable explanation - an exhilarating sensation, but a very brief one. It took a moment for her to reconstruct her insight in the realm of conscious thought. What is it Scytale wants most of all of us?, she asked Odrade.

His freedom, or, if that's impossible, an axolotl tank for his personal use, Odrade answered.

Exactly. He would probably be very reluctant to breed with "tainted" Bene Gesserit cells, so he needs some other source of material to work with.

This is certainly an interesting change of roles, Sheeana. I'm supposed to give you these little insights, not the other way around, Odrade joked. I suggest you use this bit of speculation.

"Scytale", Sheeana said, "I will grant your request. We will provide you with an axolotl tank."

Another trick? These witches cannot be trusted! "You cannot fool me as easily as you could fool Waff. He might have believed you at one point, but his reports clearly show his capacity for rational thought was severely impaired," Scytale spat out. She's preparing to launch another attack. I will be ready.

"This is not an attempt to deceive you, Malik Brother, I speak the truth. But -" She emphasized this word, and allowed for a short pause. "- I get to determine which of the ghola cells in your possession is used first."

This revelation, the greatest one yet, was expected to drive Scytale into insanity, but Sheeana detected not even the slightest flinching. What? Was our analysis wrong? Not even his eyes betrayed anything!

Sheeana's frustration at failing at this crucial moment caused her to relapse into old behavioural patterns which had been neatly tucked away in unconscious levels of her mind by Bene Gesserit training, but apparently not thoroughly enough - irrational rage flooded her thoughts, suffocating even Odrade's warnings.

"Admit it, you repulsive little weasel! There's something inside your chest! Tell me!", she shrieked, almost attempting to claw through the energy barrier separating her from the startled Tleilaxu Master.

Excellent, Scytale thought. The balance of power shifts again. Considering the advanced training these witches receive, this outburst is especially telling. I can use this ...

After a few moments, Odrade finally managed to get through to Sheeana. Get a grip, child! You just destroyed everything we have accomplished with him in the last few years!

Sheeana took a few deep breaths, and looked at the Tleilaxu Master again. He was visibly pleased with the way things had turned out for him.

"I will accept your offer," he said, barely restraining himself from bursting into laughter. "However, I will not comply with your demands."

Sheeana's rage emerged again. "The offer is retracted," she growled.

"Would you not like to contribute some genetic material ... Alyama?"

'Blessed One!' He uses the ancient Islamiyat again, knowing that you will understand the words. Despite your outburst, we still have this leverage over him, Odrade said.

"The Prophet resides in a hold in this ship, Malik Brother," Sheeana tried, slowly beginning to realise the potential of what the priests of Rakis and later the Sisterhood had built around her.

The Tleilaxu Master's smile disappeared, a look of religious awe replacing it. "Take me to him."

Retake control. Now! Odrade said.

A gloating expression appeared on Sheeana's face. "Maybe later ..."

Sheeana walked towards her quarters, leaving Scytale behind at the mercy of the implications the things she had said could have. The worms? Of course! This power I have over the worms needs to be utilised somehow.

Odrade intervened, sensing the earlier outburst might have released some of Sheeana's old demons. The only "power" you have is what those worms give you. Don't abuse this privilege.

Sheeana ignored her advisor. I was born with this power for a reason. The Sisterhood's plans of creating a new religion around me could still be realised - the ultimate accomplishment of the Missionaria Protectiva!

It had taken much time and effort to condition Sheeana to such an extent that her megalomaniacal tendencies retreated into her unconsciousness. Odrade realised that some of the things she had learnt during her formative years under guidance of the priests on Rakis were apparently too persistent. She attempted to reason with her host. You're not a god, Sheeana.

Sheeana shunted Odrade's persona away to a place where she would be least effective. Poor Duncan! He thinks I will help him create a new and better society. She grinned. He's so gullible...

BOOK ONE - CHAPTER FOUR

I know the names my subjects use to describe me when no one else is listening. Many people hate me, and with good reason - I intended it that way. Even my most loyal Fish Speakers hate me on a subconscious level: they hate the power I have over them, and unwittingly bend that hate into complete and utter dedication to my cause, even if they don't understand exactly what it is they're building in my name. Simultaneously, I am the worst thing and the best thing that has ever happened to humanity. I am evil. My Golden Path demands it.

— Leto II, The God Emperor. From The Stolen Journals

"I warned you about the dangers of your plan!", a voice bellowed. The authority that resided in those words made the screams of the legions subside. Even the light appeared to react, recoiling in terror, leaving him in deepest darkness.

The voice sounded familiar, and not dissimilar to his own. "Who is that?", he asked.

There was no audible reaction, but he sensed something stirring in the dark recesses of his mind. An image emerged, so vivid that the stark contrast with the complete lack of sensory input made it appear as if the depicted events were taking place around him at this very moment.

He was in a brightly lit room, dark red hangings covering the walls, and he was lying down. The air felt strange to him, and breathing was an odd sensation, almost painful - as if he had just learned how to do it. He saw a newborn girl next to him, and next to her a woman, her white robe stained with blood - she was dead. Standing in the distance were several people - one of them a strange-looking woman who was walking around, holding a knife. A great evil lurks behind that one's eyes, and it's about to manifest itself. Am I the only one who notices this?

A young girl was there, and two men. He felt a deep kinship with one of them, the one with the scarred face. He has no eyes! Does he sense the danger? He felt his mind reaching out to the blind man, sharing what he saw. He saw a change taking place in the man's demeanour, a controlled tension building in his muscles, and suddenly a knife flashing through the air into the right eye of the woman with the knife, the force of the blow throwing her against the wall. She collapsed forward onto the floor, the life having left her.

This is a memory, he realised. I lived that moment. I had just been born, and already I could understand what was happening. Memories of my life! And as memories are wont to do, the contemplation of one stimulated the rise of another, and another one after that. Brief flashes of the past assaulted him then, images replacing each other too fast for him to drink in their contents individually.

The many voices that had retreated to just beyond his sensory periphery moments before returned, whispering to him in many different languages, none of which he recognised. However, the voices did not appear to be hostile in intent, and their presence did not frighten him.

Another clear image emerged in his mind, and this appeared to excite the many voices. He saw a grossly obese man. There was a woman, seducing him, the man finally giving in to her demands but deriving more pleasure from the power game the merger of the flesh represented than the hormone-triggered aspects of it. The woman - she is more than she appears to be at first glance. A name ... Tanidia Nerus ... Who is she?

Many more women like her appeared, all of them in possession of highly developed abilities and much secret knowledge. They had been executing a plan, a project of crossbreeding certain bloodlines with the intent of one day producing a male with their abilities, and more. This organisation of women was very old, and their plan had taken many generations to reach its conclusion ... Was I somehow part of this plan?, he wondered.

More fragments of knowledge about this sisterhood surfaced. They appeared to focus on developing the abilities of the body and the mind, resonating along with and expanding upon a large-scale ideological paradigm shift.

What had caused this massive revolution?

He saw a sun dipping beneath the horizon, taking the light with it - an eerily lit landscape surrounded him now. Suddenly, at the edge of his universe, beyond the setting sun, small shapes appeared, which quickly grew larger as they approached his position.

The voices around him started shrieking loudly, the confusion this caused making him even more vulnerable to the shocking images that brutally invaded his consciousness at that moment. Millions of mechanical devices - some shaped like daggers zipping through the air, others humanoid in appearance, but armed with energy weapons and large swords with jagged edges - relentlessly hunting humans. Scared, huddling together in poorly hidden caverns and basements of buildings, they listened to the ominous whirring of servos approaching, realising their death was imminent.

When and where did this happen? Or is this still to take place? This should be prevented at all cost. He saw then that this terrible war had spread across an entire planet, giving rise to an even more apocalyptic weapon - a biological weapon robbing warriors of their cognitive functions! -, and eventually a series of nuclear explosions preventing it from escalating and migrating to the planet's colonies. An entire planet, uninhabitable for millennia. It had been left to rot, it's beauty now long forgotten ... An image of the planet formed in front of him: much blue interspersed with brownish green, with swirling white clouds. This is where human life began, he realised.

The vision took him deeper, showing him some of the people that had lived on the planet. Terrible brutality had dominated some of their minds - eating and sacrificing one's own children was an image that returned several times. Perhaps these barbarians deserved to die ... This thought brought back the horrible machines, the overwhelming shock causing him to collapse in fear.

When he looked up again, the nightmareish vision was suddenly torn aside as if it had been a mere projection on a screen, and replaced with an image of a road, glistening in the sunlight, meandering through a desert with many dangers surrounding it but leading away from the terrible events he had witnessed. He walked along that path for a while, and noticed a change in himself - he was unable to determine what was happening exactly, but he felt different.

After a while, he encountered a man on that road, dressed in a black uniform. He recognised him. He was present in my earlier vision - this is not the blind man, but the other one. The man said nothing, but walked with him for a while, occasionally looking at him, a mischievous grin forming on the man's face.

Suddenly, the man stopped. "I have pledged my allegiance to your family, but I will not be your stud!", the man said.

He noticed a reflection in the man's eye. Looking more closely, he saw another image of the same man, whose eyes revealed yet another image of that man, and another, and another ad infinitum. The endless row of reflections, one following the other at an increasing rate, produced a hazy patch of black.

The blackness grew, surrounding him, once again depriving his senses of all input, until a new object appeared in front of him. A large jar, filled with a clear liquid, possibly water. There was a inscription on its side, and he leaned towards the jar to read it.

The water is the ultimate essence,

a source of outward streaming creativity.

Though motionless, this water is the means of all movement.

Water as the unmoved mover.

A crack appeared in the jar, spreading swiftly until the water broke free, surging outward and engulfing him. The water felt like acid on his skin and caused him terrible pain, clouds of blue smoke rising from the wounds. The flow of water stopped, and as he lay there, the pain forced his attention inward.

He was falling through the air, his consciousness copied several dozen times and spread out over just as many bodies, a single mind emerging from the mental echoes. There was another mind there, ancient and strong, controlling him, but it could not prevent him from seeing. Spinning around, he saw a green and blue planet approaching, two moons accompanying it in its procession around a single star. Canopus, he sensed the dominant mind thought.

He saw he was falling towards one of the planet's many seas, the deep blue approaching faster and faster. When the salt water engulfed him, he once again experienced terrible pain, his body being torn apart. Mechanical devices surrounded him in the water, but they quickly sank away in the currents. He felt the singular consciousnesses of his many bodies disengaging, the loss of coherence destroying all but the most basic capability of thought, nothing but animal instinct remaining.

He emerged from this vision, seeing long corridors of personae, generation upon generation stretching into the future. He gazed into the distance, past countless personae, and saw a lone figure standing there with its back turned to him. He raised his hand to his forehead to shield the light from his eyes, and saw the man in the distance do the same. He started running towards the man, but the man started running as well at the exact same pace.

He suddenly realised the structure he was caught in, and immediately felt trapped. A parallel structure emerged, of a lesser scope but equally harrowing in its implications. A god saw his progeny being born from his brain, but suddenly the perspective shifted, the child now giving birth to its father.

The voices returned, screaming, but the powerful voice that had initiated his string of visions intervened. "Silence!"

The screams ceased, and he felt millions upon millions of minds moving, rearranging and opening up to him, focused by a single persona. He realised now who this focal point had to be.

"Thank you ... father", he said.

In a flash, his memories returned to him, and with them the specifics of the plan he had set in motion while he was still alive. Ascension? Of course!

He fully realised what he needed to do now - find her. The red sand and the dark sky that had formed his world for such a long time returned, but this time he knew how to get out. He started walking towards where he knew she would be.

Yes, there she is.

"You understand me, don't you?", he said to her. "For such a long time, you were the only one who could talk to me, and now you will be the first to do so again. You're finally ready."

She didn't move, but continued to stare at him. She was guarded by a moat of water, but this time that didn't scare him. He waded through, and simply ignored the pain shooting up through his legs. He walked up to her, and took her hand.

BOOK ONE - CHAPTER FIVE

The current stretch of my Golden Path has forced upon me a role that I abhor, yet I do everything in my power to encourage this particular development. In order to supply the human race with a future and make them truly free, I need to take away their autonomy for a sufficiently long period of time. My status as a living God takes away an element vital to humanity's continued existence, and their worship combined with my acts of divine intervention that burrow towards the very core of the self of each ensures that at one time they will actually see they've never had complete possession of that element. It's all about contrast, and I trust upon the most basic qualities ofthe human psyche to subconsciously carry humanity along my Golden Path after I'm gone. Ancestral Memory supplied me with an ancient story just now, which I'm certain only you and I remember. Slightly altered, it would be remarkably appropriate: "Oh my, what impressive temples and monuments you have!" -"Of course, my child, those are to better give you a future with."

— Leto Atreides II, recounting a conversation with his sister, Ghanima. From The Stolen Journals

The barrage of blurry images, shards of words, incomprehensible sounds and tiny but highly annoying pangs of nausea that engulfed Sheeana reminded her of the Spice Agony. What's happening?

You lost control. Odrade-within, her essence safely walled-off from the maelstrom of sensations but aware of what was plaguing Sheeana, broke free of the constraints that her host had implemented earlier, and attempted to comfort the young Reverend Mother. The Spice Agony is an unleashing of information that lies locked inside. This comes from elsewhere. It originates deeper, much deeper.

"What should I do?", Sheeana cried out loud. She rose from her bed, and stumbled into her private sitting room.

I ... I'm not sure.

The influx of images increased, causing great pain for Sheeana, but suddenly all was silent in her mind. A single image emerged, harrowing in its intensity, releasing old fears Sheeana thought she had mastered long ago.

A ... a worm, Sheeana thought.

The giant worm violently rose up from the sand, the terrible maw with its sharp teeth snapping at an imaginary prey, a strong melange odour pervading the air.

Cause and effect, and earlier and later invaded each other's territories in Sheeana's mind. She was a child now, eight years old. She was in the desert not far from the village where she lived, looking for small deposits of melange in the sand like Fremen children often did. Of course she heard the screams mixed in with the sounds of the wind and the sand, but when your attention is focused on something else it often takes some time before you truly realise the composition and meaning of the information being offered to your senses for interpretation.

The worm did not stop when she commanded him to, continuing to take Reverend Mother Darwi Odrade, Tleilaxu Master Tylwyth Waff and herself deeper into the desert. Eventually, the beast halted at a wall of rock approximately fifty meters high.

Odrade's persona managed to wrestle herself back to prominence in Sheeana's mind again the moment the memory of her manifested itself. Sheeana? Listen to me. I can help you. Remember he left us a message in the place you just saw.

Odrade hoped reminding Sheeana of the discovery she had made in the ruins of Sietch Tabr would help restore the disturbed girl's ability to think properly, which had somehow been severely tainted during the discussion with Scytale. Remember his warning! Noble purpose was-

"Shaitan has brought me nothing but pain!", Sheeana growled out loud. She collapsed in pain when another series of powerful images surfaced in her mind.

She turned, and watched her village being destroyed, her father being pulled down in an avalanche of sand, into the dark pit below.

The priests worshipped her, because she could communicate with the worms.

Cradling a small worm, she entered the working chamber of Mother Superior Darwi Odrade. Finally the next stage of the cycle had been reached on Chapter House!

The worm loomed over her. She screamed at it, cursing it for causing her so much grief, but it would not take her. She rans towards its gaping mouth, coming so close she could see the smouldering fires of the furnace inside, but the beast backed away.

She danced, long and complex strings of movements and rythms of her feet on the sand, very rarely repeating themselves.

"Shaitan is everywhere!", Sheeana cried. She stumbled out of her quarters and started running, in a vain attempt at getting away from the pain inside her head.

Everywhere she looked, the worm appeared: elongated reflections in polished black plaz wall panels, the steel guiding rail along the walls of the corridors - running away from Shaitan appeared impossible.

Odrade had a revelation then, a flowing together of different fragments of knowledge and memories, the resulting gestalt revealing and hiding its various facets in such a way that a powerful realisation emerged. Siaynoq - of course!

She attempted to address her host. Sheeana, listen! Do you recall that day in Keen, when we observed the dancers on the Great Square? Their dance - the patterns in which they moved, the sounds, the pheromones - it was a language. A complex interplay of cultural phenomena had imprinted a language in their unconsciousness, a more subtle version of how most languages are learnt. We don't understand the words, we just use them in combinations that are acceptable in a certain situation.

Sheeana's hysteria retreated somewhat. Odrade continued. Entrenched in the deepest recesses of their minds, those dancers had very little control over when and where these words would emerge, the activation depending on impulses and sensory input they could not control. You were like that too! You could communicate with the worms somehow.

Now the worms return in your thoughts. Don't you see? It's the emergence of a new awareness! Every time the essence of language and communication changed in the past, new abilities were unlocked in the human mind. The invention of written text allowed the mind to allocate more of its capacity to thinking, and less to remembering. The thinking machines stimulated man's creativity, the machines having relieved man of tedious mental tasks. The Butlerian Jihad changed that, pointing out the dangers of surrendering too many abilities to machines, and forced us to expand our minds rather than restructuring existing capabilities. Now you are at the threshold of another breakthrough! He foretold your arrival, and only now do we understand what he meant.

A new image of a worm forced Odrade's speculations into the background. It was a small worm this time, squirming on its bed of sand. This is not a vision ... This is real, Sheeana thought.

She saw then that she had walked to the hold of the no-ship where the small worm that had been taken from Chapter House was being kept. She walked up to it, and saw the beast turning its mouth towards her, but not hissing at her like it would at anyone else.

"Why are you doing this to me, Shaitan? Stop hurting me!", Sheeana shouted. "What do you want from me?"

Sheeana walked around the pen, the worm turning to follow her with its head.

"I won't be a part of your Golden Path! I'm breaking free of it, you hear me?" She spat on the worm, the moisture landing on the worm's hide, trickling down onto the sand along one of the beast's segments. A puff of blue smoke rose from the small wound the water caused, accompanied by a fizzing sound.

A final image burst into Sheeana's mind, its intensity causing her to lose consciousness. She saw herself lying squirming on the sand, her arms and legs severed from her body, screaming for help. No help came. The hiss of a worm approaching under the sand grew louder.

BOOK ONE - CHAPTER SIX

Why do I bring back Duncan Idaho again and again, you ask? Most of them eventually rebel against me, so my loneliness as the only living remnant from an earlier era can't possibly be the reason. Unless I order the Tleilaxu to make certain modifications, they're physically inferior to the latest products of my breeding program, so the necessity for a strong military leader is not met by him either. If you truly understand my Golden Path, you will see how vital his continued presence in history is. Any progressive system needs backwardly propagating loops to disallow uncontained and uncontrolled growth of the whole, while simultaneously containing a catalyst for accelerated development of key aspects of that system. My Duncans so far have served the former goal, and will take over my role as the latter once I'm gone.

— Leto II, the God Emperor. From the journals found at Dar-es-Balat

The feelings that plagued Duncan Idaho had surfaced before in the past few months, but they had never been as intense as they were right now. Sitting at one of the data consoles in the gigantic no-ship, he had been trying to retrieve some of the information he had deleted from the ship's memory systems shortly after leaving Chapter House. The self-doubt forced on him by way of constant psychological warfare by the majority of the other refugees he had taken along with him into the unknown had finally accumulated into a force potent enough to make him disregard all his mental warning signs.

They don't know about the net and the old couple, Idaho thought. My actions might have appeared radical, but they were absolutely necessary. The net was about to trap me.

Idaho realised his attempts to restore the information he had lost were futile - he had been too thorough. All the data he had been storing in the ship's systems was gone. I was on the verge of a breakthrough. All the memories of my former ghola lives are still present in my brain somewhere, but for the sake of myself as well as my companions, I should never again attempt to access them. They might find me.

A powerful longing engulfed him then, making him feel the absence of what he had given up to escape the net in a most painful way. Oh, Murbella, he thought, I know a Mentat should be able to transcend feelings such as these, but I can't help it. I long to feel your body against mine once more!

Being separated from her, with the knowledge that a reunion was impossible, allowed him to realise the true extent of his love for her: for the first time he truly understood their bond was not just the result of their mutual sexual imprinting. Of course it had started out that way, as so many romantic relationships do - a mutual and all-overpowering need to experience the other's body often permeates the first stages of any romance, and in this case Honoured Matre techniques had amplified this thousandfold - but it had developed into so much more.

Murbella had managed to resist Bene Gesserit training - conditioning her to distrust love and instead utilise it as a tool - for a long time, but after she had survived the Spice Agony she had started to move away from him. It was clear to Idaho the awakening of Other Memory was not a simple supplement to a Bene Gesserit sister's personality, but formed a fundamental modification of it.

Brief flashes of the true extent of the Sisterhood's goal of educating humanity surfaced in his mind: the Kwisatz Haderach was supposed to have been the ancestor of a new breed of human, endowed with Other Memories saturated by Bene Gesserit personas - a very subtle version of mind control. The Missionaria Protectiva had ensured the presence of a fundamental religious bias against any hint of Abomination - the dominance of a malignant persona - thus allowing the Sisterhood to weed out any potentially threatening elements to their intellectual and ideological rule before they could reach maturity.

Idaho understood how the execution of this plan could benefit humanity, but he also saw the vast potential for disaster in it. The Tyrant ... Leto probably understood this as well: he suppressed the Bene Gesserit and controlled their breeding program for 3500 years, but he did not eradicate them. His modifications to the genetic code of his breeding stock and the Scattering following his death might have been an attempt at containing the inherent flaws of the Sisterhood's plan. And I am somehow an important factor in both the Golden Path and the Bene Gesserit program.

That's probably my greatest weakness. Despite my rebellious nature, I allow myself to be used time and time again - not in the least by women. Murbella is merely the latest in a long line. Siona, Hwi Noree, Jessica Atreides ... He tried to picture the face of the concubine of his Duke - beloved of Leto, Paul's father. She must've known of my feelings for her, she might even have felt similar things in return, but we knew there was never any chance of a real romantic relationship.

He lingered in contemplation of her for a moment, but quickly called himself to order. It doesn't matter - she is long gone. They all are, even Murbella. The alliance she was meant to forge has probably already imploded. All I have now are my memories ...

A wry smile formed on his face. A poor consolation. Memories can be immensely powerful - images, sounds and smells from the past resonating along with emotions of the now, evoking new, multifaceted monads of mindstuff, gestalt-like structures unfolding in ever-changing patterns - but in the end they're just that, memories. They're degraded representations of reality, current interpretations of fragmented remnants of infinitely more vivid impressions. Memories affirm the fact the past has slipped through our fingers, never to enter within reach again.

Idaho suddenly felt trapped - an ominous sensation he couldn't really explain. It took him a moment before he realised what was happening. All around him in his mind he saw shimmering threads growing and intertwining. The net is reforming! They've found me again!

He realised he could not escape. Beyond the net the hazy background flickered, and slowly but unstoppably an image formed. It became clearer - he could discern two shapes, unmoving - until he saw the old couple again, staring back at him. Before, the old man and woman had appeared unthreatening, even friendly, but a very different expression dominated their faces now, subtle, but quite clear to Idaho's trained perception - rage.

He could sense another entity from the corners of his mind's eye, forming beyond the elderly couple - a black hole probing its surroundings, warping the fabric of mindspace around it, the patterns of its motion revealing conscious decisions. Danger!

The net had completely formed now, and started to close in around Idaho, inducing powerful feelings of claustrophobia. He blindly lashed out in an effort to break free, and saw mindspace all around him changing in reaction to his movement. He felt a new correspondence between his will and his surroundings, an integration that granted him a limited measure of control of his mental environment. At his command the net disintegrated, to the surprise of the two observers beyond it. However, the new entity was not affected. It hovered in the distance for a while, and then, of its own volition, slowly merged with the background.

Idaho calmed down a bit, but could not shake a feeling of unspecified dread. Just beyond his mental reach, Idaho could feel there was an immense power present. Dangerous! But oh so tempting! He wanted to plunge into it, experience the new sensations he knew awaited him there, but regained control of his impulses before he could do it.

He had seen the old couple again. Did they see me?, he asked himself against all better judgment. They did. They had always looked friendly, almost inviting before, but now a malignant atmosphere had settled over them, almost imperceptible to regular observers, but frightening in its harshness.

And then there was the other. He was familiar in some way, yet not at all comforting. This was not a friend. Idaho resolved to prevent him from gaining any measure of control at any cost.

A bellowing laughter echoed in Idaho's mind, and then someone spoke. "The Duncans were always at least somewhat rebellious. I'm very pleased to see this character trait was not lost over the centuries."

Idaho recoiled, his mind almost instanly flowing back into consciousness. Throughout the vast majority of hundreds of ghola lifetimes, this one thing had been a constant. That voice! It was unmistakeable. But how was this possible?

He could only whisper. "Leto?"

BOOK ONE - CHAPTER SEVEN

Controlled doubt is the tool reason can utilise to dissect lies, illusions and falsehoods, but it's imperative to let your actions guide the tool rather allow yourself to be ruled by such a mental makeshift.

— Bene Gesserit Coda

So much power and knowledge in such a misleadingly young body. Scytale could never prevent his face from contorting into an expression of supreme loathing whenever confronted with one of the Bene Gesserit. Perhaps Waff was right to covet their abilities for the Bene Tleilax, but he foolishly allowed himself to be soiled by their powindah beliefs. He was weak, and permitted these witches to influence him, to taint and distort his adherence to the true belief.

Scytale said nothing, watching Sheeana while she approached, and wondered what the witch wanted now. These blasphemers never followed the one and only God. Waff's reports clearly show they used trickery to simulate their involvement, and he was simply too incompetent to fully realise what they were doing to him.

Sheeana stopped in front of the holding cell. Scytale could smell her, so close was she to the semipermeable force field separating them. Do these witches control their body chemistry to such an extent they can emit pheromones at will? Her closeness was strangely, unexpectedly arousing to him.

This one is able to communicate with the Prophet! I must know of His plans for us. Scytale straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath, once again being overwhelmed by Sheeana's seductive scent. I can't let her manipulate me again. I need to request an audience with the Prophet. He will guide me.

"You promised to take me to see the Prophet", Scytale said.

Sheeana grinned. "I did no such thing. I said that I might take you to see Him."

"What is it that you want from me?", Scytale asked.

"Very good, I do want something that you might be able to give me." Sheeana leaned even closer to her captive, and whispered: "But remember that my need for your services is not nearly as great as the other way around."

Could she be after the ghola cells in my possession? Almost all Tleilaxu intelligence reports about this accursed sisterhood state that at all cost they want to prevent another disaster like the one they had to endure when they finally got their Kwisatz Haderach. Still, they continue to breed with Atreides genes, exploiting that bloodline's potential and finding new, previously unsuspected combinations of recessives in practically every generation. On the other hand, she doesn't know which cells I have - she can only guess, and even though she proved she could be quite successful at that game during our last conversation, I can still use her lack of knowledge to my own benefit.

"How may I be of service?", he said as mockingly as he was able.

"I have told you already," Sheeana replied, somewhat annoyed.

"Refresh my memory. I am an old man, and I tend to forget things."

"I will supply you with an axolotl tank to exploit, as long as I'm allowed to decide which cells you use first."

"What do you hope to gain from this?", Scytale inquired.

"Our goals are very similar," Sheeana lied. "You seek ascendancy for your people, and helping you reach that goal serves my own purposes as well."

She is lying. She cannot be speaking the truth, can she? No! These powindah witches have tried to deceive me in a similar manner so many times before, that their words have lost all connection with what is true and holy. Nothing they say can be trusted. Still, I might have to feign my compliance in order to get out of this holding cell and see the Prophet. And yes, it is there that I should focus my actions right now, considering the special bond she has with Him. "Has the Prophet spoken to you on my behalf?"

"Indeed he has. He has made me understand the righteousness of your mission, and has demanded of me that I function as an intermediary when he speaks to you." He will do anything to receive some sort of confirmation or justification of his actions from his Prophet - that disgusting beast down in the hold. Shaitan will help me get my army ...

Sheeana walked over to a small console with a variety of knobs and switches to the side of the cell, and started keying in the code that would dissolve the energy barrier keeping the Tleilaxu Master inside. "Remember that I can - and will - kill you without thinking twice."

"If you do that the ghola cells you covet so die at the same moment I release my last breath," Scytale countered.

Barely concealing his triumphant facial expression, Scytale was led to the hold where the small sandworm was being kept. For the first time he got a good impression of the size of the no-ship, walking through the corridors with their numerous twists and turns: after having been confined to a small space for so long almost anything would have seemed big to him, but this ship really was quite large.

Sheeana didn't use the dropchutes to traverse to other levels, but used the stairways instead, always keeping Scytale in front of her. You never know what that little rat is capable of, she thought.

When they entered the hold, they noticed Idaho was already there, standing transfixed in front of the worm's holding pen.

The ghola is here!, Scytale thought. This is excellent.

Good, he is already here, Sheeana thought. I hope he performs his part as he's supposed to.

After the initial elation of finding what he perceived to be an ally in that hold had worn off, Scytale turned his attention to the worm - a manifestation of Leto II, the Prophet of his religion - and was utterly overwhelmed with religious awe. He dropped to his knees, and started praying in a language Sheeana had trouble identifying at first.

Idaho turned towards Scytale. "With the help of Alyama, the Prophet has made me see the truth. Master, I am here to serve you."

Scytale rose from his prayer. Another trick? No, this is a ghola - a Tleilaxu creation. He will obey me. However, he might have been tainted by his long association with the witches. I need to consolidate my control over him. He started whistling, a complex pattern of long and short tones, and a rapid succession of high and low.

Scytale's whistling had a peculiar effect on Idaho. He felt his flesh attempting to overthrow the Bene Gesserit conditioning and the stability of his multifaceted, many-layered memories, certain failsafes imprinted by his Tleilaxu creators into the most basic and primitive aspect of his being awakened from their slumber. He felt the tendencies that nudged him to do the Tleilaxu Master's bidding were causally prior to his conscious mind and therefore extremely threatening to his intellectual autonomy, in the same way that a physically based causal agent such as libido can override any and all conscious decision-making processes. He realised he could not eradicate this class of impulses - he could only hope to contain it, and attempt to initiate countermeasures.

The Tleilaxu clearly had not foreseen any one of their gholas growing strong enough to withstand their conditioning, because however overwhelming the impulse to obey Scytale was, it appeared to be decidedly limited in its effective range, merely impairing the freedom of thought in that part of the mental spectrum reserved for the activities of a convential human intellect. Idaho was Bene Gesserit-trained, and had access to the memories of many lifetimes of previous Idaho-gholas, which had been unlocked during Murbella's initial attempt at imprinting him - his mind was far from conventional.

A multitude of memories came to his aid, in a way similar to the support a Reverend Mother's Other Memory could offer in times of peril, and the many different perspectives on the situation offered to him allowed him to withstand the primitive urge - they enabled him to design his actions from a mental vantage point, freed from the constraints programmed into his ghola body.

He thinks he can still control me. His belief is not entirely unwarranted - the method he attempted to use is quite powerful, and would have overwhelmed any other ghola. Perhaps it would be advantageous to allow him to believe he actually does still exert influence over me.

"We will help you build and exploit your axolotl tank. The necessary equipment is stored in a smaller hold several levels down," Idaho explained to his would-be master, a hint of mechanical subservience in is voice, as if his responses hadn't been produced in complete freedom. "We brought it with us when we left Chapter House."

Sheeana was perceptive enough to note the deception in Idaho's voice, and observed Scytale's reaction - which conformed to their expectations quite nicely. She was pleased their scheme was working - lack of knowledge of the relationship between Tleilaxu Masters and their gholas had constituted a potential gap in their plan, but apparently Idaho had managed to override Scytale's attempts at reinstating the hierarchy, in accordance with the Mentat projection he had made earlier.

"We need to put you back in your holding cell again," Idaho told Scytale. "Not everyone in this ship shares our convictions, and until we have dealt with this minor problem, you should-"

Scytale interupted, holding up his hands in a reassuring gesture. "I understand, my friends." It took him a considerable amount of willpower to produce this last word, but he hoped it sounded convincing anyway.

While Idaho was leading him back to his cell, Scytale leaned over and said: "I think I know who to use as the central component of the axolotl tank."

Idaho nodded. "I agree, Master. I already know how to do it, but she is needed for one other task. It will happen soon."

BOOK ONE - CHAPTER EIGHT

There is one place where Reverend Mothers dare not see - the fundamental female vulnerability to the dangers of Abomination prevents it. The Kwisatz Haderach will have access to this place, but no male has ever survived ingesting the awareness spectrum narcotic that unlocks the access to ancestors' memories. When our breeding program generates the male who can tolerate the mind expansion drug, the current plan provides no guarantee he will be able to find the balance to avert descending into Abomination. We will need to choose exponents of desirable genetic lines not only for their physical characteristics per se, but also consider the presence of potential benign primaries in their ancestry - preferably several different mentally powerful individuals capable of spearheading a qualitative, multi-planular Extremis Progressiva.

— Reverend Mother Superior Saldosa Wend, adressing the Council of Proctors. From the Bene Gesserit Archives

She found Teg several miles from the no-ship, in a small, well-hidden outpost he had been using for about a month. In a cave overlooking a valley he had fashioned a sparsely equipped base for his many recon missions in the area.

"How did you find me here?" he cried when Sheeana entered the cave. His composure suggested maturity, intelligence and skill his young body and vocal cords - undergoing radical changes on the threshold of physical manhood - were not yet able to adequately reflect. Still, despite the fact the control he had over this body had not yet reached optimum efficiency, she realised the immense physical speed he was capable of since his original body survived a session with an Honoured Matre T-Probe made him a supremely dangerous opponent.

I can't let him see I fear him. "Simple tracking", Sheeana said, attempting to sound casual. "You're growing careless, Bashar."

Faster than Sheeana's eyes could follow, he circled around her and placed a poisoned knife against her throat. Sheeana could feel his arm trembling. He is terrified! What has he seen that could frighten him so?

"I am not the enemy, Bashar." Sheeana sensed Teg's muscles relaxing slightly upon hearing this confession. He probably believes me. She understood that, emotionally, he was rather fragile right now, but still her pride could not let her resist punishing his lack of discipline. She sensed him lowering his guard, and immediately grabbed his knife arm with both hands, flinging the - at least physically - young boy, who was slightly smaller and lighter than she, over her shoulder and against the rock wall of the cave. She pinned him down to the floor, positioning the knife in such a way that any movement - even at the immense speed he was capable of - would cause him serious injuries.

"I can kill you know, if I want to. You do realise that?"

He nodded.

"I won't. Is that proof enough for you?"

"Yes," he whispered.

The paranoid behaviour he displayed did not come as a surprise to Sheeana. When she asked Garimi where she could find Teg earlier, the Proctor was unable to tell her much. Sheeana could sense the animosity towards her beneath Garimi's carefully controlled composure, but could also see her denial of having knowledge about Teg's whereabouts was genuine. The Bashar had effectively cut the ties with everyone, even the highest representative of the order he had dedicated his life to serving. He must have felt compelled to do so by something that had happened to him, or something that he had discovered on this mysterious planet.

Sheeana had known from the start that confronting Teg would be dangerous, but the plan required that the meeting would take place, and would develop in a very specific manner. She did not doubt she could get what she wanted considering the state the Bashar was currently in, but it would not be easy.

She remembered Duncan's warnings. "Teg has grown increasingly paranoid in the last few months," he had said. "It is quite obvious he doesn't fully trust Garimi and her group anymore, and I'm certain someone of his capabilities will have noticed our hidden agenda by now."

Sheeana nodded. "He stays away longer every time."

"Exactly. Despite his deep commitment to the Sisterhood, something has caused him to grow suspicious of everyone here. Find out what he knows - or thinks he knows. Use extreme caution when approaching him - an important part of our plan depends on your success, so we can't have you getting yourself killed right now. Also, remember his deep aversion against imprinting."

That will be the most difficult part of the plan, Sheeana thought. But even the maturity of his mind might not be able to withstand the primal urges contained within his young body. He is just the right age!

At that moment a strange sensation overcame Sheeana - Odrade-within attempting to reassert her influence as the primary of Sheeana's Other Memory. Her effort failed to result in a clear message to her host, her attempts thwarted by another presence - a powerful influence not originating from Sheeana's Other Memory.

Resist her influence, Sheeana, it said. Other Memory is not a blessing - it's a curse. Submitting to the unleashing of these other personas in the Spice Agony opens one up to mind control by malignant personas. Let me show you the truth about the Bene Gesserit.

In her mind, Sheeana saw a young Reverend Mother, the Spice Agony a recent memory to her, being executed by a Bene Gesserit Proctor, and an acolyte, no more than ten years old, befalling a similar fate. These scenarios repeated themselves hundreds, thousands, even millions of times in an ever-increasing rate of succession - countless individuals killed in fear of Abomination.

These were your sisters, Sheeana, the internal voice continued. The acquisition of Other Memory is a highly dangerous procedure, and the success rate is low - it has always been so. In the millennia prior to the emergence of the Kwisatz Haderach, as many as three out of every five new Reverend Mothers were put to death - even more after Paul Atreides proved to the Sisterhood the potential threat even the successful ones presented.

And consider the definition of "Abomination" these killers used to justify their acts: being driven insane by dominance of malignant primaries in Other Memory was not the only cause for a death sentence; finding a benign primary who somehow decided to disagree with the current policies of the Sisterhood was also enough in many cases. This is still going on today, and the socalled Second Scattering has proven to be a very useful facade for such executions.

I ... I didn't know ..., Sheeana stammered.

Of course you didn't. The ones responsible for this went to great lengths to keep this knowledge confined to a very select group of people.

Educating someone is a very dangerous enterprise - the Sisterhood realises this, of course, but not to the extent that they should. When you're a teacher, which apparently is the role the Bene Gesserit have sought out for themselves, it is in many instances necessary to impose some of your own views on your student. Imprinting more or less coherent thought structures on one's mind is a very important part of the formation of that mind, but there's a fundamental insincerity involved in the practice of presenting him with opinion disguised as truth - this is indoctrination.

Ideally, each and every person should be able to decide for himself what he wants to believe, since no one has the resources to tell him with confidence that what he believes is the absolute truth. The problem is that in order to get someone to a point where he is capable of making his own decisions, he needs to have been taught, which can only be done while adhering to a certain worldview. Disclosing one system of knowledge obscures all the other ways of looking at the world, so getting someone to a point where he can form an opinion effectively reduces his chances of formulating an opinion truly his own to nil.

Educators lie and are immeasurably arrogant, and education is riddled with life-threatening risks - for the method the Sisterhood has chosen to educate mankind this is especially true. Your primary knows, that Odrade - not only does she realise the dangers of teaching, but she also knows the extent of the Sisterhood's cruelty in performing this function. You do realise that if she by any chance would regain access to your active mind, she will deny these facts in every conceivable manner. Do not trust her - she teaches, therefore she lies.

A small measure of independence reasserted itself in Sheeana. Can't the same be said of you?

Clever!, the presence answered. But you misunderstand, and in doing so, you prove you have the capabilities needed to learn my lesson. I merely revealed a most probable truth, and now it is up to you to decide what you want to do with the knowledge I gave you. I do not teach - I make it possible for you to uncover your own truths.

My own truths?, Sheeana asked, but no answer came. She returned to actuality, and noticed only a moment had passed while she traveled inside her mind - the young Bashar was still lying on the ground, pressed down by her weight, held down by the knife in her hand.

"What is it that you're afraid of?", Sheeana asked him. She removed the knife from his throat and moved back, her hands seductively stroking his chest and arms. "Come on, you can tell me."

Teg realised divulging what he suspected about the planet could be dangerous, but Sheeana somehow managed to put his fears and suspicions to rest. What is it about her that makes her appear so non-threatening right now? This is a potential Mother Superior, and there's nothing more dangerous than one of those - immense skill and knowledge combined with the ambition to prevail at all cost of someone who senses vast political power just beyond her reach. Still, my instincts tell me to trust her unconditionally. Can I?

Sheeana noticed her subliminal manipulating take effect. Despite his mature mind, he too must succumb to this - effectively universal - rule: hormones will overpower reason every time when tweaked in an appropriate manner. And in his pubescent body, the strength of the libido doesn't have an equal.

"I have surveyed this area quite extensively during the past few months," he answered.

"What did you find?" She gave him another tempting look - almost undetectable, but obviously sufficient. I must be careful now, she thought. His deep-seated aversion against imprinting could manifest itself at any moment.

What is it that she wants?, Teg thought. It is clear she's attempting to influence me - perhaps she's trying to get me to take her side when the current tension between her and Garimi escalates, or perhaps she suspects I have information that could be useful to either side.

Which side deserves my alliance? Garimi represents the Sisterhood in this situation, the organisation I've dedicated almost all of my former life to. Duncan and Sheeana - what do they want? On the surface, the ghola appears to want to starts a new and better life - move forward instead of dwelling on the past like the Bene Gesserit sometimes tend to do. The way in which they attempt to design their future enforces such a mindset in all but the most aware amongst them. Duncan's aversion to most of his many pasts endows him with a different perspective, and it appears to be the most sensible in the current situation.

This choice to some extent depends on the definition of evil one holds - depending on which perspective is chosen, it can be argued that either side incorporates a touch of the demonic.

Teg remembered a discussion between the Rabbi and Garimi on the subject of evil he had witnessed a few weeks after their arrival on this planet.

"Evil needs to exist as a counterbalance against good, to make its existence possible, but we can take comfort from the knowledge that one day the evil in our lives will be eradicated," the Rabbi said.

"Evil is a relative notion - isn't the distribution of good and evil across the totality of possible experiences different for each person?", Garimi countered.

"Perfect knowledge enables one to make the definition of good and evil. There is only one who can claim to be able to do this: the One who planted the Tree, and crafted the seeds it grew from. The ones who ate from it did not get what they sought - digestion is a very crude process - and the snake was a liar; he knew nothing."

"All available evidence points towards a fundamentally inconclusive, unfixed and non-absolute universe, in which different sets of axioms can be utilised to construct a coherent theory in any field one desires, including that of ethics: there are many different systems of values, all valid," Garimi answered, recapturing the Bene Gesserit stance on the issue.

"This is a very convenient philosophy to adhere to for your Sisterhood, isn't it? Is internal consistency the only acceptable criterium? What an arid, poor world of ideas you must live in," the Rabbi taunted.

"That would entail the formation of a balance pros and cons in each situation, either geared towards the greater good or personal gain. In both cases, this will often lead to the shortchanging of a minority, while not taking into account their qualitative value - you of all people should understand this. The Sisterhood's answer is the application of a fundamental tolerance, and a clear understanding of the consequences our actions have as derived from the balancing powers of the allstream itself."

"This tells me you are unclear on what you believe," the Rabbi said. "Subconsciously you want to believe in the unnamed One, but you've been led astray by theories of your own making."

Teg snapped out of his reverie, his question about who to ally with still unanswered, just as Sheeana was undressing. "What the hell are you doing?", he cried in that odd combination of young voice and old words.

"Attempting to please you," she said.

Her behaviour is not consistent with that of an imprinter, he thought. Could she be genuinely interested in me?

Whatever the case may be, it seems obvious Sheeana somehow needs whatever it is she thinks I know - this gives me the leverage I need to make her cause coincide with mine. Perhaps I could toss her a few scraps.

"Certain parts of the area appeared familiar somehow, as if I've seen some of it before."

"How is that possible? You've said yourself none of the star patterns look familiar in any way. We're far from the Old Empire."

It's time to tear down some of that Bene Gesserit arrogance. "You Bene Gesserit are not the only ones who have access to ancient memories," he said. "The emergence of memories in the conscious mind is not just the result of other activities of the mind - certain sensations and experiences particular to the unique constitution of one's mind can unlock long-hidden memories, and uncover previously undisclosed and personal truths."

Uncovering personal truths!, Sheeana repeated mentally.

Teg continued. "I have found certain landmarks here, which triggered - subliminally or not - specific, potentially archetypical images in my mind."

"How did you do this?" This could be a new form of Other Memory, Sheeana realised. One that bypasses the use of the Spice poison, no less.

"I suspect this is an emergent ability that transcends the synthesis of Mentat data organising algorithms and Bene Gesserit memory retrieval techniques. But that's not really the point -" Of course it is, at least to you! But changing subjects like this will keep you off balance. "- I have discovered that the wilderness around us is not as wild as it may seem - it has been carefully maintained. Some of the plants are synthetic."

Teg hesitated. Should I tell her? A small measure of doubt still plagued his mind. He looked at her, her naked form so close to him, so beautiful. After a while he suspended his misgivings. I can trust her, I'm sure of it.

"Not too far from here, I've found giant rock carvings depicting the heads of four powerful warlords. The images these conjured up were consistent with data I assimilated in my youth, from filmbooks in a Bene Gesserit library. I think I know what planet we're on."

Sheeana was shocked and excited at the same time. Amazing! His abilities should be made to serve our cause. "Tell me!"

He pretended not to have heard. "That's not all. About twenty kilometers north of here, there's an underground base, hidden under the rock, cloaked by a no-field. I have found small traces of human - or at least humanlike - activity, and I have seen the base's plasteel hull."

"But you just said the base is underground. How were you able to see the structure's wall? Was the soil that normally covers it removed?"

"I can see cloaked no-ships". The words had already passed his lips before he realised exactly what it was that he had revealed to her.

Excellent!, Sheeana thought, extremely pleased with the fact her manipulations were bearing such succulent fruit, but restraining her body from making this known in any way. She noticed the level of her control was adequate: the expression of shock and shame that had appeared on Teg's face immediately after his revelation had almost completely subsided, and she could see he did not begrudge her the knowledge he had inadvertantly given out.

Sheeana decided it was time to complete the transaction, as she mockingly called it. She helped him enter her, and both quickly reached a powerful orgasm. Sheeana was rather surprised at the fact she quite enjoyed it.

They lay there on the floor of the small cave, still breathing heavily in the afterglow of the intense merger of their bodies. A shudder ran through Sheeana's body - not just a reaction to the physical ecstasy she had just experienced, but also the result of a conglomerate of highly confusing thoughts that arose in her consciousness at that moment.

I let myself get carried away. The Bene Gesserit breeding mistresses conditioned me to avoid getting involved emotionally with my partners - they always advised us to think of them as producers of potentially interesting genetic material rather than actual people - but all that training failed me this time. Could it be that I actually love him?

Sheeana remembered the face of the one person she had truly loved, a long time ago. Alia she was called, named after the Kwisatz Haderach's sister. She was one of the women specifically intended by the Sisterhood to relieve the stress caused by purely functional sexual encounters experienced by breeders.

She hadn't even been that attractive, Sheeana remembered. Physical beauty can grow boring very quickly if the personality is lacking. Alia was fairly plain-looking and perhaps a bit plump, her soft curves contrasting with Sheeana's own wiry frame - which was so common on Rakis - but her capacity for soothing someone else's pain was unparalleled.

In some way, I guess the Sisterhood does understand that sex without love is potentially draining on an emotional level, they just feel any adept should either learn to outgrow such a vulnerability, or they deem it relatively irrelevant.

As the residual excitement of their meeting slowly faded away, Sheeana's thoughts returned to the information she had managed to extract from Teg, and what it might entail. He was holding something back - he had yet to reveal the synthesis of the various clues.

I need to know! She once more started to kiss him, and shortly after she felt him responding under her touch.

"You haven't told me everything yet, have you?", she whispered.

The compulsion to reveal his findings was too great, his resistance to her manipulations too weak. "I think we're on Terra."

BOOK ONE - CHAPTER NINE

Many different explanations have been offered for the prescient faculty of Muad'Dib. Some have theorised that his training as a Mentat combined with an unusual compatibility with the Spice have given him an uncanny ability of extrapolating the future from minutiae detected in the present. Others say he is God, who creates the future, and therefore knows what will happen. Mathematics allows us to see both these theories contain pearls of wisdom, but do not supply the entire picture. In a previous lecture I explained Muad'Dib is capable of reducing a multiplicity of independent dimensions of time into a single temporal inertial system, but I failed to explicate how this worked exactly. Of the two mentioned theories, the former is partly true because his Mentat mind can construct an n-dimensional vector space, n being the number of parameters used to quantify and represent the aspects of the present pertinent to Muad'Dib's inquiry at a given time. The values these parameters assume he calculates through parallel processing of data supplied by his senses - Mentat computation to the extreme -, having abstracted this sensory information to represent the dominant processes underlying reality - the Spice allows him to perceive these. Based on the constitution of this vector space, he calculates a multitude of scenarios representing the future developments in the main temporal dimensions, and actively chooses one of the possibilities based on both the statistical properties of this future itself and the harmony the actual content of that future creates with his own plans - this is why the second of the described theories is not completely false. Being the most powerful prescient being in the universe, Muad'Dib's visions form our future.

— Palimbasha: Lectures at Sietch Tabr

Idaho entered the Mentat trance. The events of the past period had spun a complex web that had managed to trap him - its structure needed to be analysed, and much depended on the success with which that could be done.

He felt the sensory impressions decrease in strength, the signals that his body absorbed from its environment being largely ignored, to allow the mind to function in as uninhibited a fashion as was possible. For safety reasons, Idaho did not allow the trance to immerse him completely; the circumstances - the risks his recent actions were exposing him to, in particular in the form of the wrath of Garimi - dictated that he needed to be able to awaken from it at a moment's notice.

His mind was now virtually self-contained, in absence of outward stimulation nothing left to think for it except the mind itself, and its contents; Idaho had reached the mental state in which Mentat computations were possible. To most effectively pursue the answers to the questions he had, Idaho virtually divided his mind: one part would ask, others - representing different points of view, if necessary - would answer.

*** Mentat Session No. 3582. Session title: To be determined.

= = = = =

*** Query Directives:

-Recent developments and acquired data;

-Access of malignants to my mind;

-Syntheses of recent Mentat Sessions;

-Face Dancers and Ix;

-Report of Miles Teg;

-Potential convergence of above;

*** Query Format:

Associative.

= = = = =

*** Commence.

Datum 1:

The old couple can still see me.

Interrogative 1:

By what mechanism?

Conjecture 1 [Re: Interrogative 1]:

Insufficient data. Required input: Your perception data of manifestation of occurence in question.

Datum 2:

They use what, in my mind, manifested itself as a net.

SubInterrogative 1:

With what purpose?

SubConjecture 1 [Re: SubInterrogative 1]:

To attempt to trap your mind Internal.

SubConjecture 2 [Re: SubInterrogative 1]:

To attempt to influence your actions External.

Datum 3:

Their method of access to my mind allowed me to extract information from them.

Datum 4:

Their access to me and/or my mind was not prevented by no-shields.

Datum 5:

Their access to me and/or my mind was not in any significant way hindered by physical distance (my current location could not protect me).

Conjecture 2 [Re: Interrogative 1]:

They used a mental link [Re: Data 1,2], possibly by manipulating reality on a level different from the one customarily perturbed by no-shields [Re: Datum 4]. They do not control their ability well [Re: Datum 3], OR wanted you to access information of theirs [Re: Datum 3], OR the access to the memories of your previous ghola lifetimes has triggered the emergence of new, as yet poorly controlled and understood abilities [Re: Data 1,2,3,4,5] AND Synthesis Mentat Session No. 2106, "Analysis Of Self No. 135".

Datum 6:

Highly evolved Face Dancers from The Scattering [Re: Synthesis Mentat Session No. 3478, "Honoured Matre Origins And Weaknesses"] might have developed previously unimagined abilities.

Interrogative 2:

Are these Face Dancers?

Conjecture 3 [Re: Interrogative 2]:

This is not impossible.

Datum 7:

Aforementioned Face Dancers assimilated Ixians during their formative stages in The Scattering OR have already infiltrated several key planets in the Old Empirium, including Ix [Re: Synthesis Mentat Session No. 3483, "Technology And The Scattering"].

Datum 8:

Face Dancers are customarily controlled by Tleilaxu Masters. Their subservience has been bred into them.

SubInterrogative 2:

Could any Face Dancer hope to break free of this influence?

SubConjecture 3 [Re: SubInterrogative 2]:

Insufficient data. Required input: Abilities of Face Dancers.

Datum 9:

The newest generations of Face Dancers are capable of extracting the mind of another by touch.

SubConjecture 4 [Re: SubInterrogative 2]:

A sufficiently large number of absorbed minds might produce an emergent perception/knowledge-system that is capable of independent thought.

Datum 10 [Re: SubConjecture 4]:

A number of Face Dancers might have asserted their independence.

Datum 11:

Miles Teg reports the presence of an underground base in the vicinity, utilising no-fields.

Interrogative 3:

Given an alliance between (exponents of) Tleilax and Ix, can the identity of the occupants of the base be determined?

Conjecture 3 [Re: Interrogative 3]:

Uncertainty accumulation. Required input: sufficient corroboration of Mentat Session Syntheses No. 3329, 3483, 3501.

*** Override processing constraints No. 34, 36, 47.

Conjecture 3 [Re-evaluation a]:

Ixian involvement possible (Unknown accuracy).

*** Effect Session Synthesis.

Synthesis [Re: Conjecture 1,2,3; SubConjecture 1,2,3,4]:

Possible threat of alliance of (exponents of) Tleilax and Ix on this planet. Recommend accumulation of more data.

Interrogative 4:

Can this synthesis be upgraded to a Prime Computation?

Terminus:

No. Format and uncertainty accumulation of utilised data disallow this.

= = = = =

Mentat Session No. 3582 terminated. Determine session title: "New Face Dancers No. 27".

Disappointed with the meager results of this Mentat session, Duncan re-entered the realm of normal thought. Still, a desire to understand, to know remained, a common byproduct of disappointing Mentat projections.

Teg thinks we might be on Terra. Why would Fate lead me to this planet?, Duncan wondered. Supposing he is correct, would there be a specific reason why we would end up here? My intent was to start a new life, a new society - nay, humanity far away from the many poisonous relations and detestable habits that had been fused into the structure of the Old Empire - even Leto's Golden Path couldn't change that.

When I made an effort to start over, I was led back to the place where all evil began. The emergence of malignant, envious thought, of the ability of twisting the neutrality of the interaction of matter into the drive to destroy the other in service of one's own advance - it all began here! Why would I not be allowed to break free of these trappings?

Despair overcame him now. What kind of universe would continually circle in upon its own rotten heart like this? What god would allow such self-destructive processes to continue?

In the past, this line of questioning and ones similar to it had proven fruitless within the confines of Mentat algorithmic analysis - demanding the limited amounts of information a human being is capable of possessing to yield definite anwers to questions pertaining to the irreducible, primitive essence of reality always drives the seeker up against the cliffs that are formed by the flawed basis of any system of knowledge: any set of empirical propositions allows the formation of multiple, mutually exclusive but nonetheless in and of themselves sufficiently explanatory theoretical systems. However, Idaho felt he needed to find an answer - he allowed a decidedly unscientific but quite necessary element to enter as a tiebreaker: emotion. Personal preference and consistency with beliefs chosen previously on the basis of not completely rational argument balances are sometimes the only things capable of forcing a decision either way.

Tapping into a well of un-Mentatlike but decidely human qualities, his version of what Bene Gesserit would call Other Memory fashioned the part of his mind that had been dedicated to answering his questions in his Mentat trance with a rudimentary personality: a guiding principle accompanying him in his travels deeper into darkness the questions generated - a principle which he perceived as a human being.

He turned to her against the backdrop of swirling red and flaming gold that was spiraling into the black hole he felt he needed to enter but had to resist for a little while longer, and asked his first question. "Is there a god?"

"Would you like to believe there was one?", she asked in return, her voice pleasantly warm in his mind.

Duncan hesitated. "Yes and no. Knowing that there's a higher power controlling your life gives you a sense of reassurance that there's something or someone making sure everything is in order, but having witnessed the kind of cruelty that permeates every place that I have been in my many ghola-lifetimes, I would much rather believe our existence is the product of chance than that there's a being out there with the power to stop the suffering, but who allows it to continue anyway, and perhaps even actively promotes it."

"These arguments focus on your sense of what is right and wrong, and do not touch upon whether or not there's actually any proof that is able to decide for you what is actually the case," she reprimanded him.

"Is there such proof?"

"Whether or not it exists depends wholly on your willingness to accept the theoretical framework in which that proof is coherent."

"Are there no absolutes?"

"Each person creates his or her own absolutes."

"And if I decide to 'create' a god to inhabit my worldview?"

"That would be your decision. However, you should remember that you cannot force others to adhere to the same beliefs."

"You haven't answered my question."

"You have asked several questions."

"My first question," Duncan said, slightly annoyed.

"I have answered that one: there are many gods. The question should be: do you have a god?"

"I don't know. How should I define him?"

"Part of the power the idea 'god' has lies in the fact that most people don't attempt to define him. They say what he does, and what we should do to be more like him, but they can not - and will not - try to define who or what he is."

"And what if I don't want to believe in a god?"

"You have the right to make that choice."

"Doesn't the emergence of life and intelligence require the intervention of a force higher than the rules of ordered chaos?"

"What do you propose?"

"If god is not an actual person, perhaps it is a semi-conscious force controlling the evolution of the universe."

"Does this mean you subscribe to the anthropic principle?"

"I'm not familiar with that term," Duncan admitted.

"It's very old. In its strong form, this principle states the universe organises itself in such a way, that at one point in time the emergence of consciousness will occur."

"That does appear likely. The chance that life would emerge purely by accident is too slim."

"I see no reason to suppose this principle is true in this form," she said, the fire of fanaticism suddenly in her voice. "The fact that consciousness did emerge in no way means that at the beginning of the universe - granting that there actually was a beginning the way we would understand the concept - it was a necessary truth that at one point life and consciousness would become reality.

You use the word 'chance', but use it incorrectly. The universe is not governed by completely random interactions of matter - the fact that we're here is enough proof of that. The most effective cosmological theories, some of which date back to before the Butlerian Jihad, clearly state the universe is governed by a set of fundamental forces - gravitation, electromagnetic force and the weak and strong nuclear interaction forces - which generate the totality of forces and tendencies that organise the motions and interactions of particles our universe."

"On what grounds can we suppose that these theories are true?", Duncan taunted with a smirk on his face, bending the relativism she for argued earlier back on her own words.

"We can't, but for the sake of argument we will suppose the most promising theory - the one just described - to be true, because otherwise there really would be no way for us to have this conversation. In any exchange of ideas, there needs to be a set of organising principles to give our thoughts direction and substance."

"I see."

"Despite the non-random character of the most fundamental levels of reality - however, it might be the case that each interaction or transformation on that level can be described by projecting a probability distribution onto the system in question, listing the various potential developments, the propensities of the system -, still the emergence of life would be a very rare event: all sentient and semi-sentient lifeforms in the Empire, with the possible exception of the sandworms from Arrakis, originated on Terra. At this point, there are very few reasons to believe life is not a rather unique occurance. However, given the enormity of the universe, even a minuscule chance of life emerging on a single planet becomes rather likely if considered on a universal scale. Saying that the chances of it happening on Terra were extremely small, and therefore there should be a regulative principle beyond or more fundamental than the forces of nature is committing a fallacy: the existence of life and consciousness on Terra was a given, it cannot be denied. The conditions were such that life could emerge, and the question why this is so supposes a measure of consciousness in the universe, as if it decided to create life. This explains why people assume there must be a conscious superbeing somewhere: the way they ask their questions already presupposes this. However, this kind of anthropomorphic projection is not warranted by the empirical facts - inasmuch as anything empirical can be called a 'fact'."

"Once again there are several suppositions implicit in your line of reasoning," Duncan remarked.

"Very perceptive! In this case the coherence of this way of thinking grants the arguments their effectiveness, but of course this does mean there might be other ways of constructing a coherent world-view, logically incompatible with this one. However, the burden of proof is on the person wishing to construct such a system. My conclusion remains that one cannot ascribe a will or a consciously pursued goal to tendencies of elementary particles - that would be committing a category mistake. Now, the theory positing the existence of four forces indicates it's extremely difficult, perhaps even impossible to know exactly how the unified force that controlled the movements in the universe at the very earliest stages of its existence came to be. We can theorise about how the various disengagements of that unified force into the four forces that exist now occurred, but the events leading up to the 'creation' of the initial force itself - if it is even coherent to talk about such events - are inaccessible to us. Perhaps the way the forces in our universe are distributed is the only possible way, perhaps the 'choice' depended entirely on chance - the only thing that's fairly certain is that the theory that a supreme being created it the way it is, is completely without foundation beyond what some people would like to be true. Only ways of explaining empirical data in a very peculiar fashion, likening naturally occuring events to events caused by conscious beings, might produce such an hypothesis, but even in that case the resulting 'theory' is highly unstable, and requires the truth of many unexplaneable propositions - a dogmatic approach that's infinitely less satisfying than a coherent system of propositions and laws which are provable withing a certain axiomatic system."

"Circles," Duncan said. "I'm seeing circles." The accretion disk surrounding the black hole in the distance increased in size, it's circular structure being mirrored everywhere around it in the mindscape Duncan's query had conjured up.

"You are correct. Circularity looms over my reasoning, which might indicate the effect of the underdetermination of theories by data, causing the acceptance of any theory to require a so-called leap of faith. In other words, as I implied earlier, it all comes down to what you want to believe."

"I'm looking for certainty - something to provide my existence with a solid foundation. Your answers do not help."

"Remember that you are doing this," she said. "I am you - I do not represent a way of thinking mirroring the purely mathematical, nor do my words reflect unstructured emotion. I personify your attempt at reaching a synthesis of the two."

"Am I incapable of finding deep soil in which my knowledge and beliefs can find root?"

"You can make your beliefs as strong as you like, even in the absence of absolute proof. Aesthetics raises similar issues: there is no absolute right or wrong, but someone who can make a strong case for himself, with many arguments supporting his position, and is able to refute the beliefs of the other, will ultimately generate the most useful, comprehensive and coherent theory. And these aspects - usefulness, comprehensiveness and coherence - are positively charged in and of themselves. Religion fails on all three accounts when compared with the best of what science has to offer, where the question of approximate truth about the world is concerned."

"Your world-view is cold, without soul," Duncan said, contempt in his voice.

"On the contrary - it is part of a vast system of beliefs that enable you - not me - to find the most constructive balance of emotion and reason available in the life that you have chosen for yourself. It's impossible to demand a reason for being from strict materiality, which allows you to generate those reasons yourself."

Having said this, the entity disappeared, and the circular, black-hole-like center filled Duncan's vision, as a representation of that which cannot be named and in essence does not exist other than as a relationship to the very horizon of what can be asked. The singularity's pull increased, and Duncan fell into it, all his questions flashing through his mind, their answers impossible to put into words but there for him to feel just beyond the reach of his senses.

Suddenly infinitely many shapes appeared around him, and it took him a while to realise where he was.

I'm in the Hall Of Mirrors!, he knew. The shapes he thought he had recognised a moment before were reflections of the many different parts of the totality of his being - images from the past, the present and the future, his hidden thoughts and emotions given visible form: everything his mind had ever produced was there. Being confronted with oneself in such an overwhelming manner was painful and mesmerising at once, and he knew that if he couldn't leave this place, he could be trapped here forever, his body reduced to a vegetative state, unable to respond to any impulse.

The mirror merely contains a reflection, Duncan analysed, while the more fundamental reality exists in the synthesis of the many reflections, resulting in a this-transcending unity.

He tried to achieve such a unity, looking for the invisible center of the circle of his life that the many reflections formed, and found it: the mirrors disappeared, and the resulting darkness offered his senses a short relief.

Weak light of many colours appeared around him - a complex structure of strange clouds of translucent colours connected by streams of differently coloured substances, matter constantly being exchanged between the various parts of the structure: this was the way his mind represented the most fundamental building blocks of reality to him. He was at the center of it all, seeing past and future and the formation of reality stretch out in all directions. His births were there, many hundreds of them, Paul and Leto and the Golden Path, the Butlerian Jihad, the creation of life and the infinitely stretched-out moment that had preceded the formation of this universe.

He saw other things there: the planet of Chapter House, surrounded by a fleet of very large no-ships, the worms, Murbella, his death! He held up a hand before his eyes to protect himself from the horrors he witnessed there, subconsciously wishing the images to leave him, and they did: the unreality around him reacted to his gesture, collapsing onto itself as if he had forced it to do so. He did not understand what it was exactly he had done to force his environment to respond to his wishes or why it worked; he just knew instinctively what to do to get the desired result.

In the distance the other appeared once more, as he had once before, and Duncan found he could not control the other as he could the rest of his environment. Again the laughter resounded, and this made Duncan recoil in terror. He emerged from his vision, lingering at the point just before awakening for a few moments. The other had not left him, and the terrifyingly familiar voice once more filled his mind.

You have served me well so far - you have been executing plans that benefit my cause, even if you don't realise it. I will increase my influence on you now, to allow you to grow. You will forget it is I who controls you. Every decision I make for you will to you simply seem to be the best choice in that particular situation. You will not be able to think beyond the boundaries I set for you, but you will be able to expand beyond the boundaries you have been trapped in until now. Learn to control your new powers - I will have need of them shortly.

BOOK ONE - CHAPTER TEN

The earliest experiments of the Sisterhood with awareness spectrum narcotics are well-documented in our archives, and with good reason: they serve to remind us of the necessity of enforcing a strict policy wherever our influence extends to eradicate Abomination. Defining this affliction as unholy in any and all manifestations of the Panoplia Propheticus and as a major destructive force in our political activities allows us to maintain complete control over any potential Kwisatz Haderach.

— Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam

For the first time in years, Bene Gesserit Proctor Garimi was afraid - or, more accurately, positively terrified of what might go wrong if the impending confrontation would spiral out of control. A coalition of members from the Rabbi's group and malcontent Bene Gesserit sisters had finally worn her down over the past few days, forcing her to intervene in a very delicate but potentially disastrous development without having been able to gather sufficient information.

Flanked by Rebecca, the Jewish Bene Gesserit adept who had accepted the responsibility of Other Memory independently, without intervention or assistance of the Sisterhood - a wild Reverend Mother -, and Shaj, a Proctor, Garimi entered the relatively small cargo hold she had arranged to meet Idaho in to "discuss matters of grave importance", as she had called it. He was already present, casually leaning against a large cargo crate. From his facial expression Garimi could see that whatever fear he might have had once of any Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother had completely disappeared. Garimi still believed her training gave her a definite edge in any direct physical confrontation, but she was careful not to underestimate the power despair or - worse still - lunacy could provide him with.

Considering the temper and pride of the Duncans, this Mentat in particular, this could turn out to be a very messy affair, Garimi feared.

"You requested an audience?", Duncan asked tauntingly.

"I would like to discuss certain matters with you," Garimi began.

"That much was already obvious," Duncan interrupted. Then harshly: "State your business, and don't waste time with padding, build-ups and amateuristic attempts at manipulation."

Garimi was taken aback by his ferocity and needed a moment to recover, but decided to reciprocate by being brutally honest, instead of slowly easing into her demands as she had originally intended. "You will break off your unholy alliance with the Tleilaxu Master," she said, voicing her suspicions.

"Why?"

The casual air with which Duncan had both confirmed her suspicions and made it obvious he didn't care what she thought of what he did surprised her. The fact she had been playing catch-up since the start of the conversation instead of dominating it as she was used to bothered her - no, genuinely annoyed her. She lost her composure, and let some of the anger she had kept hidden so well for the sake of the sisters who looked up to her shine through in her next comment. "We made you what you are! You cannot betray us like this!"

An evil-looking grin appeared on Duncan's face. "You locked me inside this damned ship for ten years! That in itself is more than enough reason to defy you. Now you're telling me I also need your permission to blame you for being dragged from death into this accursed life time and time again, kicking and screaming I might add, to perform tricks at the Sisterhood's command?"

"Why did you lock us out of such a large part of the ship? Scytale, Sheeana and the worm are in there, as well as the components needed to make an axolotl tank. What are you doing there?"

"Now that would be telling, wouldn't it?"

Duncan stepped aside, and willed the heavy cargo crate he had been leaning against to slide across the floor towards Garimi and her two escorts. Garimi and Rebecca managed to jump aside, but Shaj was driven into a corner by the crate, and was unable to escape. Protrusions appeared on the walls near them, looking like metal tentacles that attempted to grab them. The swiftness their training had outfitted them with saved them, allowing them to exit the hold. As he ran past the trapped Proctor in pursuit of the two escapees, Duncan casually said: "Stay there."

Several levels down, Garimi and Rebecca entered the hold. Their allies - the Bene Gesserit and the Jews - were waiting, hoping the meeting with Idaho would not result in the disaster many of them were expecting.

"We must leave the ship!", Garimi shouted, and added "Now!" when she noticed some were not getting up quickly enough. She ushered them towards the passageway that led outside. Looking over her shoulder, she could see Duncan entering the hold, not running, his almost relaxed pace adding to the danger she felt he radiated.

The Rabbi and most of his people had already left the ship - several Bene Gesserit, including Garimi, were still inside. Beneath them, the plasteel plates that formed the floor of the hold started to move and turned to liquid, swallowing two Proctors and an acolyte up to their knees, and then solidifying again, trapping them there. Garimi realised she could not help them anymore and fled, the last of her group to escape the ship. Behind her, the thick plasteel door closed with a loud bang.

What allowed him to manipulate matter like that?, Garimi wondered. We knew the newer gholas like Duncan and Teg have proven able to do previously-unheard-of things, but this is ... I don't have words for it.

Teg... We need to get to him first. His speed and knowledge makes him an extremely valuable ally, but he has been close to the Duncan for a long time, and the similarities in their origin as well as their inhuman abilities might forge an even stronger bond.

Garimi could not suppress a shudder as she thought of what might happen if Teg failed to choose her side. In our latest conversation he did express concern over what Idaho and Sheeana were planning, but that was several days ago - the confusion he tried so hard to hide from me might have already driven him to another viewpoint. I know Sheeana spoke to him shortly before I did, and he was very reluctant to discuss that meeting with me... What happened between those two?

**********

I wish I could leave everything behind and go live in that cottage, Sheeana thought. It looks as if life would be much easier there.

Sheeana sat in a chair in her private quarters, the Van Gogh painting she had taken from Chapter House hanging on the wall facing her.

There is such serenity in that image. It is often said that in the past everything was better, and this remnant from an earlier time, this relic that some might say has become obsolete in this time - a rudiment -, shows us exactly that in the most powerful manner possible.

She tilted her head, and tried to look at the painting in a different way, as good works of art customarily allow the spectator to do. New combinations of impressions and thoughts made her see the flipside of the artist's expression. However, there's another aspect to this painting. It depicts a menacing chaos threatening to break free, those wild, erratic brush strokes covering up the serenity of the depicted scene with thick, multicoloured scar tissue.

This avenue of thought evoked faint feelings of fear in her - a source of reassurance was revealed to be yet another catalyst for the developments that filled her life with so much pain. She forced her eyes to let go of the painting and closed them for a brief moment. She opened them again and stared into nothingness.

Sheeana noticed a stirring in the periphery of her perception - an almost undetectable sound, the visual fluctuations of a shadow pulling away, the vague agitation of all senses simultaneously yet none of them specifically, by the presence of someone - and rose from her reverie. Before she could get up to see what or who was there, Duncan entered her room.

**********

In the room next to the hold the worm was being kept five glass basins stood, half-filled with a clear, green-blue fluid, the composition of which Scytale had kept secret from Idaho, and was still conscientiously guarding against the ghola's attempts at learning more. All Idaho knew one of the components was a substance secreted by the worm.

"Did you have worms on Tleilax to extract this substance from?", Idaho asked while Scytale was connecting odd-looking devices to each other.

Telling him what he wants to know will not jeopardise my mission, Scytale thought. He is still a ghola, and under my control.

"Yes - at first. They were paid for dearly - smugglers on Arrakis and the Guild helped us. Later axolotl tank technology progressed to a point where we could synthesize the substance ourselves, without the intervention of sandworms."

"Were you able to synthesize the Water of Life?"

What a sharp mind this little ghola has!, Scytale thought. The time he spent amongst the witches was not completely wasted, it seems. Perhaps we should redefine what the acceptable levels of powindah contamination can be.

"Yes. It took several centuries of experimenting, but eventually we found a way."

"Did you create any Tleilaxu Reverend Mothers?"

"The Bene Gesserit witches are powindah!"

"I meant: did you manage to awaken Other Memory in anyone?"

"You know what Tleilaxu women look like," Scytale said, indicating the tanks, "so we would not have been able to access those memories in any way that would have been useful to us. We did try, but the products of the experimental samples were without exception gruesomely diseased and malformed, and the tanks themselves would not respond to our commands properly."

"Did any Tleilaxu males ever attempt the Spice Agony?"

"Yes, but they all died."

"Did you try?"

Scytale was taken aback by the audacity of the question, and silence fell while he debated whether or not to answer this question. "Yes. I had observed Paul Atreides and thought I could do what he had done."

The Tleilaxu Master tried to recall what had happened - memory extraction from a corpse and transferring that data to a new body was already possible at that time, but unlike the ability bred into recent Face Dancers it was a complex process involving many specialised machines. It didn't matter: he knew he could be resurrected if the Spice Poison killed him.

He remembered extremely painful visions of death and destruction, being haunted by voices from the past and mechanical horrors so overpowering he had killed himself before the pain could do it for him. The voice of Idaho brought him back to the present.

"How can we be sure that in Sheeana's case the same does not happen?"

"She is a Reverend Mother - she has already conquered the Spice Poison."

"Will her ... products not be deformed?"

"Some of them will, but for a very different reason."

"What do you mean?"

"You will learn soon enough. Go get her."

Idaho walked back to where he had left Sheeana's unconscious form, and carried it in, remembering how he had managed to overpower her. She had been weak, mentally, so it hadn't been difficult to use a combination of an Honoured Matre modification of a Bindu technique he had learnt from Murbella a lifetime ago and his new abilities to render her unconscious. Something had happened to make her more susceptable to this type of influence - her immunity to imprinting and related techniques hadn't been able to save her this time.

"Why is it that we need to use her for this?", Duncan asked.

"She is the one whose coming was foretold by the Prophet. She is Alyama, the Blessed One. She is blessed, for inside of her will grow a most important product." He walked over to an elevated platform. "Put her down here."

He opened a case standing next to the platform, and took out a small lasgun. He activated it, a bright energy lance of about a quarter of a meter protruding from it like a blade of fire. With four quick movements, he cut off her arms and legs, the lasgun beam instantly searing up the wounds.

"Those would only get in the way," the Tleilaxu explained.

For a moment, Idaho wondered why it was this gruesome sight did not startle him, but this sensation disappeared quickly. "Your people programmed certain memories and abilities into me. How does that work?"

"This device," Scytale said, holding up a small, elongated object, "enables me to program her to modify her product through a mental link. The technique is similar to the one Face Dancers use to make memory prints."

He pressed a button on the object, and a long needle flicked out, extending to twice the length of the device. He pressed the needle into Sheeana's skull through her right temple. Seeing Idaho's startled expression, he said: "There are many things we Tleilaxu can do that no one knows about."

Idaho helped Scytale carry Sheeana to her tank, and they lowered her into the fluid. While Scytale continued to work on Sheeana, attaching tubes that would inject nourishment and other substances into her body, Idaho remembered his own birth from a similar "tank" - the experience so early in his life that nothing else from that period survived in his memory, but so harrowing and overwhelmingly alien that the image had been engraved in his mind, magnified by similar memories from the many other ghola lifetimes accessible to him.

How will she experience all this?, Duncan wondered. Will she feel any pain? Will she even be aware of what we are doing to her?

However, his concern for her safety did now last - a subtle, subliminal force gently pushed these thoughts from his consciousness. A short while later, he had forgotten all about his misgivings, and returned to helping Scytale with the preparations of the other axolotl tanks.

BOOK ONE - CHAPTER ELEVEN

His prescience adds an unforeseen element to the equation, the potential solution to which I remind you is in all likelihood still one generation into the future. However, the Lady Jessica's desires in this matter became abundantly clear once her son was born, and the aforementioned new faculty combined with the training she's been giving him could very well compensate for any genetic imperfections he might possess, at least in appearance to the untrained eye and perhaps even when compared to our goals with the program he forms such an integral part of. As you all know, his mother's disobedience caused great turmoil amongst us when we first learnt of it, and while the latest news has prompted many sisters to modify their opinion towards the positive, I would like to stress the danger that is still present in this situation. We must bring him into contact with the Spice, but this needs to occur under the strictest of guidance - the number of potentially chaotic variables is too great.

— Bene Gesserit memorandum

It was a long time ago, in a place far away

Or perhaps it was here, the time yesterday

It's not that important, but you must understand:

The place was a strange one, a magical land.

Sheeana, a young girl, had found her way here

But home it was not, too strong was her fear

The desert was cruel, Shaitan could attack

This day she would leave, and would not go back.

Sheeana lived in a small village with her parents in the land of sand and silvery skies. Her family was poor, as many families in small villages all across the land were, but she loved her mother and father very much, and was happy with what she had. Every day she would go out into the desert and collect pieces of something the grown-ups called "Spice", which was hidden in the sand everywhere.

"It's a gift from God," her father had explained when she had asked where the Spice came from. "He gives it to us so we can sell it to the Out-Freyn - the Fremen of the city."

Her parents always liked it when she brought back a lot of this Spice, so she always did her best to find more than any of the other children. One day she was digging for Spice close to the village where she lived, the mixture of Spice and sand sticking to her hands and feet and staining her skin light blue. She hadn't been able to collect much yet - other children had arrived at the spot first and had already claimed the Yarig-Hoyd, the biggest gift God would give that day.

Sheeana had just found a fairly large Spice deposit, when suddenly she heard a loud sound that filled her with fear, like a thousand of the snakes that she sometimes found under rocks all hissing together. She started to run back to her village, until suddenly the ground moved, and a gigantic monster rose from the sand, swallowing the tents and houses of the village. It was Shaitan - the Underdweller that punished the sinners - come to pass judgment on the village. Sheeana saw her parents trying to escape, but Shaitan swallowed them and their house, as well as all the other villagers. Sheeana was now alone.

Mad with anger, she jumped up and down on the sand, because she knew that would attract Shaitan. The monster approached, but stopped right in front of her.

"Swallow me, Shaitan!", she screamed at the beast, because she didn't want to live any longer. But Shaitan did not do what she asked of Him; He took her with Him instead, and carried her to the edge of the desert, where He left her alone.

Nearby, she could see green plants and trees, and just beyond those trees, a small house. The door of the house opened, and many men dressed in strange robes came out, and invited Sheeana to stay with them.

"She's a gift from the heavens," they said to each other. "She speaks to the holy Shai-Hulud!"

They gave her the most delicious food: pies and milk and juicy fruit and all the candy she could eat, and gave her beautiful new clothes to wear, and let her bathe - such a strange sensation to let precious water run all over your body! Sheeana wasn't sure what was happening, but she liked her new friends very much.

The next day, the men came to Sheeana, and asked her: "Oh holy One, can you protect us from the fury of Shai-Hulud? We will give you more clothes and candy and toys if you do." Sheeana really liked her new friends, so she said yes. Every once in a while, she would go into the desert and talk to Shaitan, and sometimes even ride on his back.

One day, a woman came to the house, looking for Sheeana. The men called her a witch. "What a pretty little girl you are," the witch said to her. "I think I want you to be my daughter."

Sheeana didn't like the witch at first, but this woman taught her everything she knew - she wanted to make Sheeana a witch as well.

Then the house was attacked - strange men without faces came and tried to take Sheeana away, but the witch helped her escape. It was at that moment that Sheeana decided this had to be a good witch.

The good witch took her away to a land far from there, and brought Sheeana to her new house - and a beautiful house it was. The image unfroze in front of her eyes, crude brushstrokes of green and yellow, brown and blue dissolving and painting her a new home - a small house on the hill face, surrounded by waving grass and trees and terraced gardens with meandering walls built up of irregular stones.

"I have a surprise for you," the good witch said, and she pointed at the door of the house. "I have found a prince for you to marry, and he loves you very much."

In the doorway, Sheeana saw Duncan Idaho, the most handsome man she had ever seen. She ran up to him and they kissed, and both felt as if they had always belonged together - destiny had been fulfilled. However, their happiness was not allowed to last: their house was besieged. The men without faces had found her again, but this time they were dressed in armour, and there were many more of them.

Duncan took Sheeana by the hand, and led her into a room in the house Sheeana did not know was there - it had been hidden from her. There was a large wicker basket there, and Duncan told her to climb inside. He pulled a few strings, pushed a number of buttons and turned a large wheel, and suddenly the roof of the house opened, and the basket with Sheeana and Duncan inside rose up into the air: they were in a hot-air balloon.

The balloon flew through the air for days, much higher than the mountains and even higher than the clouds - but still far from the places where Solar the firefly lived - and took them far away, to yet another land. About a week later, the balloon finally started to descend again, and after a while it set down, next to a small house on a hill face, surrounded by waving grass and trees and terraced gardens with meandering walls built up of irregular stones. Sheeana knew she had traveled a great distance and could not have ended up at her old house, but felt right at home there anyway.

Sheeana and Duncan had a wonderful time there, and they loved each other very much. Everything was like a fairytale to her, as if her deepest desires had become reality.

One night, when Sheeana and Duncan were sleeping, Waldemar the Wendelward visited their house. Waldemar the Wendelward was a strange little man with a long beard - at least, that was what the old women of the tribe whispered to their grandchildren when they thought the parents weren't around to overhear them... No one had ever actually seen him. They said he collected the Spice in the desert at night, when no one was looking, and used it to grow babies in little glass jars in his secret sietch, which was hidden somewhere in the rocks in an area where no one ever traveled. When a man loved his wife enough - more than life itself, with all his heart and for all eternity - Waldemar would visit them at night and give them one of the babies.

When Sheeana and Duncan woke up the next morning, they heard the baby crying - an awful noise to most people, but to Sheeana this was like the most beautiful music she had ever heard. She ran over to the crib Duncan had made, just in case Waldemar would pay them a visit, wanting to hold the little baby and give it all the love in the world. They already had a name picked out if it was a boy: Teg.

When he heard the terrible scream, Duncan came running. "What's the matter?"

As soon as he had asked, he saw what had made Sheeana so afraid. In the crib there wasn't a cute and cuddly little person, but a monster: Shaitan! Duncan grabbed the crib, ran outside to the nearby lake, and threw in the monster, an ear-piercing cry signalling its death.

**********

After only a week, Sheeana gave birth to the first ghola. Duncan had stayed away from the tanks, something in the way Sheeana had bloated causing him pain in a way he hadn't expected. Thick veins were showing through her skin all over her body, and her face had an unchanging look of terror and pain on it.

Why does her fate matter to me?, Duncan thought. She was never more than a tool. Still, seeing her like this...

Scytale had demanded his presence, having need of his services in delivering the first product to be produced by their axolotl tanks. With metal clamps the Tleilaxu widened the opening the ghola would emerge from, causing large tears in the tank's flesh, the sheer disregard for the inherent sanctity of the living being Sheeana still was offending Duncan.

"Shouldn't you be more careful with her?", Duncan asked.

"The tank will regenerate within days," Scytale said matter-of-factly.

"How is it possible that the ghola is ready so soon?"

"I've increased the growth rate; we need this one operational as soon as possible. I've saturated the tank's systems with synthetic Spice - and a variety of other chemicals."

"Synthetic? We do have a supply of real Spice."

"That Spice is contaminated, not nearly pure enough to be useable. Ah, here he comes!"

A small, ugly little boy emerged. Scytale held him up, and inspected its many deformities: cancerous growths covered its body.

"That ... thing is hideous!", Duncan cried.

"Of course. That is the price we need to pay for the increased growth rate. In another few weeks, he will be fully grown. He won't survive past his first year, but we probably won't need him any longer than that."

"Who is this? I don't even recognise him."

Scytale laughed. "Duncan, please welcome a new Miles Teg into the world."

**********

The next summer, when Solar climbed higher and higher in the sky and the air grew less moist every day, the love Sheeana and Duncan felt for each other was so strong that Waldemar the Wendelward returned one night and gave them a new baby - a boy the happy parents named Paul. Paul was a perfect little boy, with a cute little nose and cute little hands and feet, and bright blue eyes, without any white. Sheeana and Duncan were so happy that after a short while they had forgotten all about Teg, the awful monster that had scared them so.

Sheeana and Duncan raised the boy to the best of their knowledge, and taught him many important lessons: never talk to strangers, be friendly and honest and always do what's right. Paul was a very bright young boy, learning all his parents' lessons well.

One day, Sheeana and Duncan took Paul to the lake for a day of laughter and fun. However, the moment Sheeana first saw the water, a strange sensation overcame her.

"There is danger in that water," she whispered, Duncan just out of earshot but perceptive enough to notice something was amiss.

"What's the matter, my love?"

"There is danger in that water," she said, louder this time.

Duncan was by her side just in time to catch her as she lost consciousness. Strange and violent dreams plagued her then, of Death Himself crawling out of the water to grab her, and Shaitan watching her from the shadows under the trees on the opposite side of the lake. In her nightmare she fell down on the ground, unable to feel her arms and legs.

**********

"I would say she's dreaming," Scytale said. "The images her subconscious conjures up are very primitive, as if she has tapped into a source of childlike wonder and innocence - they're generated by a lot of creative thought, and very little truly rational thought processes. She seems to be retrieving data from the very oldest images and sensations available to her in her Other Memory."

Idaho stroked his chin in thought. "Is it possible that this change in her brain activity will affect the growth of the new ghola?"

Scytale hesitated, stalling for time by fiddling with the controls of one of the other axolotl tanks. My answer might betray more about the way gholas are constructed than I am willing to divulge. On the other hand: the lure of more information about his own genesis might enable me to increase my influence over him. I will grant him this morsel.

"The subroutines necessary for the physical construction of the ghola are programmed into the permanent memory of the tank. The non-permanent memory - her thoughts and memory and the processing of impressions - is always regulated by certain prime directives we also program into the brain. This ensures the mental qualities that were bred into the tank continue to function to the benefit of the gholas. If you recall, Sheeana was chosen to be the, ah ... mother of the Prophet's new vessel. Her current mental state changes nothing."

Something Scytale had said disturbed Idaho. The construction of the ghola, Idaho thought. That's what we are to the Tleilaxu - mere products. We're custom-made - which implies they think they control us on a fundamental level -, creations, sub-standard forms of life. I knew this, of course, but Scytale's less than implicit message is clear. He thinks he still owns me.

Scytale was still talking. "You needn't worry - Sheeana's dreams are powerless."

BOOK ONE - CHAPTER TWELVE

Muad'Dib is not the one you seek, he is merely the one who comes before. He is the first drop of water that will form the sea, the initial step of a long journey on a dangerous road. He prepares the soil, but does not cause the growth. I now ask you: how will the organism that is about to emerge die?

— The Preacher at Arrakeen

A short distance away from the no-ship, the Bene Gesserit and the group of Jews had fashioned a primitive shelter for themselves, somewhat hidden from the ship's spying devices by some shrubbery that had survived the inferno of the ship's touchdown and was now desperately attempting to grow back what had been destroyed, but close enough to be able to see and hear all that happened at the strangely shaped craft.

Garimi glanced over to the mountain of metal, at the same time hoping to see some kind of activity there, and praying all would remain silent. Idaho's hostile takeover of the ship a month ago had proven that even those most carefully conditioned for rational behaviour were capable of destructive acts of despair.

With more physical longing than she wished, Garimi thought of the Spice stored inside the no-ship, and how some of her sisters had already started showing the first signs of deficiency disease.They masked it well, but unless they found some Spice soon, the health of most Bene Gesserit would start declining rapidly. The time-release capsules with a small supply of melange implanted in each, programmed to activate in time of emergency, were all but depleted.

Apart from that, the change in nourishment had not been easy on them. Bene Gesserit claimed to be able to display extreme adaptability, but the parsimonious diet of what the forest supplied them would take some getting used to. Round-the-clock watch duty to make sure Duncan would not be able to launch an unexpected attack had worn them down as well.

The Rabbi was once more lecturing his audience. What does he intend to achieve this time?, Garimi wondered. Is this one of his theological lessons, another attempt to solidify our alliance, or just a way to pass the time?

"I have noticed you Bene Gesserits pride yourselves on being able to exert great control over the tool of language," he said. "In my culture, language has also been awarded a central place. This is how I understand better than most in what way language can be extremely dangerous. Using it without knowing how to live it constricts the meaning of words, and guides the thoughts of the user into rigid patterns. This way the use of a certain language might prevent the speaker from understanding concepts and viewpoints expressed in a different language, and even those who have mastered many languages, oftentimes are still unable to understand the wordlessness that permeates life. Can you afford to submit yourselves to such restrictions?"

A Bene Gesserit Proctor - an archivist called Heshilta, Garimi remembered - answered. "Our Other Memory offers liberation from such limitations."

"Rebecca has explained this faculty of yours to me, and based on the extent to which I understand this 'Other Memory', I can see you have not fully grasped what I've been trying to say. Thoughts are not necessarily verbal, but this 'Other Memory' of yours does manifest itself in the form of words, perceived as if they were spoken by the personas of your predecessors. There are fundamental gaps between these non-verbal thoughts and the words you classify them with, and nothing I have heard suggests to me you're able to properly perform the translation between the two - and even if you were, the translation itself would mean destruction. As I have said before, words classify reality, and force impressions into previously constructed categories. They destroy those impressions. The words from your Other Memory merely constitute the unrecogniseably altered debris of your world."

"I think you are mistaken," Heshilta started to say, but the Rabbi continued.

"Your many years of mental and physical training weave similar webs. The ways in which you've been taught to react might prove dangerously inadequate in unexpectedly different situations."

"Now, I know this is incorrect," Heshilta interjected sharply. "Other Memory allows for a nigh-infinite number of permutations of the techniques we've been trained in. In any Bene Gesserit, simulflow will develop to such an extent that thoughts and pieces of advice from past sisters will integrate into current mental processes, to help us adapt to any new situation imagineable."

Suddenly, Heshilta bent over, groaning and clutching her chest in intense pain.

"What's the matter?", the Rabbi asked, despite his earlier polemic habits betraying real compassion for the woman.

"Spice deficiency," Garimi said.

"One should never allow oneself to become so dependent on a rare substance," the Rabbi muttered, but making sure Garimi was able to hear it.

"She might die soon!", Garimi said, almost losing her temper.

"One need not fear death. Death is a part of life. It is life's final stage in which a story that one's existence constitutes receives closure."

"All important knowledge is passed on via Other Memory, so in effect a Bene Gesserit never dies as long as the Sisterhood exists," Garimi reacted smugly.

"Does this type of immortality not invalidate the original life?"

"It doesn't when the old memories get the chance to form new interaction-patterns with other personalities and experiences."

"The original life should be unique, and allowed to receive a worthy end. One should not attempt to trick death."

Death. Garimi allowed the concept to permeate her thoughts, silently mouthing the word several times, realising the mnemonic powers spoken language had. What a strange thing that is - the end of life. After death there is nothing. Of course, one could say death exists in life as its complement - a true understanding of life yielding a workable concept of non-life as its negative - but whether or not it is correct to equate non-life with death is debateable.

Existence - being - carries with it death, in the sense that throughout life one must prepare for its termination, feeling the end coming ever closer. Nothingness is still something that can be thought, while not-being should retreat to just beyond the horizon of what can be grasped with thought-categories functional in and formed because of life.

Sadness overcame Garimi then. Everything that has happened, and all the things that have yet to take place - not one of them evokes any response from me anymore, only the realisation that this response somehow fails to come incites the emergence of a shadow of an emotion in me. When that too has disappeared, will that truly be death?

BOOK ONE - CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Music is highly evocative of emotions and thoughts, and should therefore be avoided by all but the strongest among us. The place a Reverend Mother derives much of her power from - her Other Memories - has proven to be a disadvantage when it comes to music: cascading associations and confusing memory-emotions are stimulated by listening to it. Music, like love, removes substantial parts of free will and negates clarity of thought. Music enslaves.

— Bene Gesserit Analysis

"There's still no change?"

For the first time in many weeks, Miles Teg and Garimi met. All attempts to track down the Bashar after the expulsion from the no-ship had proven fruitless - it was obvious he did not want to be found. Now Teg came to her of his own volition. She could sense there was something bothering him, although he masked it well.

"They haven't tried anything since we were chased out," Garimi answered.

"This was six weeks ago, correct?"

"Yes. How do you know this?"

Teg did not look at the Proctor once, but watched the no-ship and the surrounding area intently. "I've been in the area several times the past few weeks. As much as you girls are skilled in many things, you really aren't very well-versed in the art of reconaissance."

"Girls?", Garimi asked, as if she had been insulted in the most offensive manner possible.

A boyish grin formed on the Bashar's face, but it quickly disappeared. "I'm going to take a closer look."

"Wait! Where have you been all those weeks?" Garimi sounded slightly more desperate than she wanted.

Can I tell them?, Teg wondered. I have to!

"This rift in our group," he said. "It couldn't have come at a worse time. I've found traces of human-like life not too far from this location. I suspect they, whomever they are, wanted me to find out that they were here. There's a vast underground base."

"They wanted you to discover them?"

"Yes. Several clues suggest they have something to do with Face Dancers - perhaps they are Face Dancers themselves. The fact I was allowed to find them is also consistent with their custom to offer any opponent a way out of a confrontation."

He walked a few paces and scanned the area, spotting a plateau in the distance that he thought would be be relatively easy to defend. He pointed at it, and said: "Take everyone there, making sure not to come too close to the no-ship. I'll join you later."

He ran over to the no-ship under cover of a rock ledge, the size of the ship dwarfing him, the many oddly-shaped protrusions on its hull hiding him as he tried to make his way to a hatch without being detected by any of the ship's scanners.

What a peculiar invention a no-ship is, Teg couldn't help thinking. These metal rods help fold electromagnetic radiation in such a way to suggest to any observer the ship isn't really there. Ix is very secretive about their inventions, and has not disclosed how this process works, but Bene Gesserit research indicates they might have found a way to influence the movements and interaction of matter and energy on the most fundamental level.

A creaking sound made Teg emerge from his thoughts. A few metres away from him a man-sized hatch opened, and a tall form appeared. With incredible speed, it ran around one of the gigantic metal spikes attached to the hull of the ship, wanting to confront Teg, but the Bashar, using the speed the Honoured Matre T-Probe had unlocked in him, had already positioned himself a short distance away in the clearing that stretched out at this side of the ship, ready to fight.

Faster than even Teg could follow, the attacker approached him, and struck him down to the ground with incredible force. Teg got up, barely managing to evade a second blow, and spun around, succeeding in tripping his assailant with his outstretched leg.

For a brief moment, Teg looked at the attacker, seeing not the cancerous growths and ill-smelling sores, but a very familiar face - his own!

The shock that this realisation caused stunned Teg for a split-second, and this was all Scytale's Teg-ghola needed. A powerful blow broke the Bashar's jaw, and a violent kick splintered his right kneecap.

The attacker moved in for the kill, but suddenly stopped and looked around, his nose pointed up and sniffing the air, as if he sensed something coming closer. He grunted once, a strange sound conveying an intense fear, turned around and ran back to the no-ship, entering through the open hatchway, closing it behind him.

While Teg lay on the ground, hovering just this side of the line between consciousness and unconsciousness, he noticed Garimi and her group approaching. For a moment, all was silent - the wind had died down and the customarily omnipresent birds and insects either didn't make a sound or had fled the area. All Bene Gesserit and Jews stood unmoving, listening, waiting for someone or something to arrive - its presence could be felt all around rather than detected with the senses, an undefined but unmistakeably real sensation. Dusk fell quickly, and in the retreating light the shadows of the trees distorted before dissolving into the darkness.

In the distance a rustling could be heard, like many beings - man or animal, this wasn't immediately apparent - moving through the dry shrubbery surrounding the trees of the forest, but taking care not to make too much noise. The sounds grew louder, the visitors apparently coming closer, until the sound had grown so loud as to suggest they had to be almost upon them. Suddenly, all was quiet again. Still, no one or nothing could be seen.

BOOK ONE - CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Space travel is the limiting factor of the Imperium. Without interstellar transport, opposing Houses are trapped on their respective worlds, thus preventing war. Growth, internal shifts of power and exchanges of goods are ultimately dependent on space travel, and are therefore determined by those who control transport. The Guild, as the sole provider of this service on a galaxy-wide scale, is a most important balancing force in this particular structure of dependencies and limitations. However, it would be counterproductive to exploit this monopoly to the point where the structure itself dissolves. The desire for an increase of wealth must be balanced by the intent to perpetuate the current status of the Guild.

— Spacing Guild Analysis

Teg awoke, the sudden and intense awareness of pain almost causing him to lose consciousness again, and noticed he was being dragged across a metal-plated floor. His arms and legs were tied by bounds too strong for him to break free from.

He tried to look around, the pain in his jaw limiting the movement of his head. While he was being lifted onto what he thought to be some sort of examining table, he saw who had abducted him.

Face Dancers, hidden by no-fields! Despite their unusual attire, Teg recognised the undifferentiated features these creatures possessed when not impersonating another.

For a moment, he thought he he had been taken to the underground base, but the fact the no-field signature was different - small disturbances in the way the cloaked objects appeared to him allowed him to infer certain qualities of the no-fields that hid them - made him retract this hypothesis.

Where the hell am I?

"We know you can see us," one of the Face Dancers, possibly the leader, said in a strange accent. The Face Dancers present became visible one by one, indicating they were not cloaked by a collective field, but had somehow found a way to make no-generators small enough to be carried around.

I had no idea Ix had managed to refine no-technology to this extent!, Teg thought. The smallest no-generators Ix had offered to the Bene Gesserit weighed as much as a full-grown man. In his visions, Idaho had somehow managed to tap into knowledge on how to make smaller ones, but that technology was believed to be from beyond the Old Empire.

The Bashar could not speak, but fervently wished bad things would happen to his abductors, and knew that his mental maledictions would manifest themselves on his face in the type of angry look that had even managed to intimidate Alma Mavis Taraza once.

The leader appeared to notice this, but did not react beyond displaying a barely detectable frown, betraying no emotions. He reached for something outside Teg's field of vision, and moved his hands towards Teg's temples. The intense pain Teg felt while the probes were inserted into his skull through his temples was the last sensation he ever experienced.

**********

The Net has reappeared! Idaho almost began to panic. They've found me again! I need to get away from them!

The Teg-ghola had just returned to its cage in the bowels of the no-ship, when the hyper-sensitive scanners picked up minuscule disturbances all around the vessel.

"What does it mean?", Scytale asked, having joined Idaho in the control room.

"After Sheeana returned with the information she heard from Teg, I rigged the ship's no-generator to respond if any resonance with another no-field was detected."

"There's a no-field out there?"

Idaho produced a fake laugh. "Several thousand of them, actually. We need to leave."

He activated the no-ship's engines and lifted off, seeing the world that had been their home for the past months drop away beneath him. He watched the Bene Gesserit and the Jews flee from the boosters ... hot exhaust gases, and felt no remorse at leaving them there to die. When he was far away enough from the planet to execute a space fold, he punched in a set of coordinates at random, and watched the planet and the stars disappear, the viewscreen briefly showing static as the outward sensors failed to register anything they could process.

In his vision, he could see the old couple behind the net fading away, and soon thereafter the net itself disappearing as well.

Do you know where we're going?, a familiar voice inside his head asked him tauntingly.

Leto?

Yes.

You want to know where we are going? I don't know. Far away, I hope.

Certainly, far away from here. But perhaps it's time to visit some old friends. I need to be with my children again and many events will converge where we are going. I helped you choose this destination. I hope you don't mind.

All of a sudden the no-ship's engines stopped humming, and the viewscreen showed stars all around them winking back into existence. Idaho panned the viewscreen image to the right, absorbing the relative positions of the stars, his Mentat brain computing the observable patterns telling him where the spacefold had brought them. A planet came into view, a wide desert belt flaring outward from the equator.

"Chapter House!", Idaho shouted in amazement.

Scytale gasped, and walked up next to Idaho. "Is this Chapter House?"

"Yes."

"But the desert - it's so large! You said they had released the sandtrout a mere decade ago. The time I was allowed to venture outside the no-ship I observed there was still a lot of moisture in the air."

Idaho started to speak, but his first words were drowned out by the blare of the ship's alarm. "Proximity alert!", he yelled.

"Is it one of the no-ships from the planetary defense barrier?"

Idaho checked a monitor on his left displaying data from the external sensors. "No, these objects are much larger."

"Well, what are they?"

Idaho and Scytale looked up to the viewscreen, where large black shapes appeared all around Chapter House, their individual size and sheer number blotting out many of the stars.

Idaho sighed. "I've seen this before."

"What?"

"In a vision. The enemies of many faces - the threat that chased the Honoured Matres back to the Old Empire. I've led them straight to Chapter House."

INTERLUDE ONE - THE MAELSTROM

What ties bind you to this place? Any pledge of allegiance to Muad'Dib lost its power long ago, because he is gone, and these are not his priests. He attempted to teach you strength of charachter, pride in your inheritance, and integrity of values, but instead you gave him chaos unleashed and over 70 billion deaths! If you jump on the sand, the worm will come eventually, and it will devour you. What will be that worm for you" If outwardly directed acts fail to elicit a response, the angry eye will look inward. Will you turn on each other once the rest of the known universe has been eradicated? I teach you expansion and integration instead. Scatter, my children! The Womb Of Heaven is barren, and you need to go out and find more fertile land!

— The Preacher at Arrakeen

Stilgar followed his friend across the red sand of the Funeral Plain southward, away from Sietch Tabr. They moved in the erratic walking style the Fremen had invented to simulate the sounds the wind and the sand would naturally generate, to prevent a sandworm from noticing them. Step .. slide .. wait .. step .. step .. skip .. slide ... an extremely tiring way of traveling, but the only safe one in this unforgiving environment.

Despite being much more experienced in Fremen ways, Stilgar was growing tired and had trouble keeping up with his companion, but pride prevented him from asking for a slower pace. Aaah, the strength of youth, he thought. Still, I must not feel sorrow for being past my physical prime. I still have many good years left in me.

He looked at the back of his companion. The fact he feels he can turn his back to me in the open desert proves he trusts me completely. He's the emperor of the known universe, and he still calls me his friend.

The old Naib had no idea why Paul Atreides had taken him into the desert just now. They had been traveling for over three hours, and Paul hadn't said anything since waking Stilgar from a barely restful night's sleep with the words "Follow me".

"My Lord ...", Stilgar started to say, but Paul interrupted him, looking over his shoulder and smiling.

"Please, we're Fremen together in the desert - equals. You know my name, old friend."

"Paul ..." the startled Naib said hesitatingly, "where are we going?"

"To the end."

"The end of what?"

Suddenly Paul halted, unslung the Fremkit from his shoulders and removed a thumper. He planted it in the sand and unlatched the safety, watching the spring-driven clapper gain momentum. Thump-thump-thump, it sounded. He was calling Shai-Hulud.

It wasn't long until they sensed the approach of a worm, a hissing sound combined with a tremor they felt through the soles of their boots. They moved away from the thumper, and saw the beast's giant mouth rise from the sand, swallowing the small device that had attracted him.

"This is a big one, My Paul," Stilgar shouted over the terrifying noise the arrival of the Old Man Of The Desert generated. "I can't recall ever seeing one this large. 500 metres at least."

Paul did not respond, but ran up to the passing beast, and planted a maker hook between two of the worm's pockmarked segments, exposing the soft tissue underneath. Stilgar immediately did the same several segments further from the head. The worm turned to prevent sand from reaching the vulnerable spots, pulling the two sandriders upward. Paul was first on his feet, and ran to the front of the worm to plant the hooks used for steering the beast. He forced the worm on a course southward, into the deep desert.

Stilgar walked up beside Paul, fighting against the air currents the worm's high speed generated. "Have you seen the marks on this worm? This one must be very old."

Paul nodded. "This is probably one of the oldest worms still alive." A look of sadness came over his face.

"What is the matter?"

Paul forced the worm to increase the speed. "Our plantation projects, the quanats ... We're killing these magnificent creatures, Stilgar."

The old Fremen gasped. Of course he knew about the worms' intolerance of moisture, but the extreme pessimism of the scenario Paul's remark hinted at came as a rather unpleasant surprise to him. "The desert will not survive?"

Paul appeared to not have heard the question. "Have you ever thought about how many deaths my reign has cost so far? Seven years of Atreides rulership of the known universe, and already billions are dead."

Paul contemplated this himself now. The Jihad was inevitable? Or wasn't it? Could I have done something to prevent all these deaths? The Fremen were a suppressed force ready to be unleashed, and my presence gave them a rallying point. I'm merely a product of my environment - the Bene Gesserit breeding programme, the environment the meddling of the Sisterhood's Missionaria Protectiva created on Dune - and I was powerless to turn the tide I was swept away in.

Paul noticed Stilgar's questioning glance, but ignored it. The ideas and their consequences whirled around in his head, each new realisation leading to new questions. I must face it - my arrival on this planet was both a blessing and a curse to the Fremen. For uncounted generations they had been stepped on, disregarded, ridiculed and persecuted - an unrelenting drive to compensate for these influences is partly why they became such formidable fighters - but for them to be given a Messiah? I blatantly tapped into the powerful religious forces seething just beneath the surface to ensure my own survival, to further my own goals. In all honesty, the prospect of being a god didn't sound unappealing to me, and I swallowed the bait greedily.

What gave me the right to do all the things I did? The religion in my empire is not pure and honest, but a tool devoid of all intrinsic worth, something that is used to create leverage to enforce my laws. This religion was constructed, and as the basis of a system of political and sociological beliefs permeating the entire empire, it is shoddy indeed.

The laws governing my subjects ... are they my laws? Is a tool ever merely what the user intends it to be, or does one get trapped within the structure of dependencies and opened or closed-off possibilities a tool generates? On another level, to what extent am I the one wielding the tools of my rule? The Bene Gesserit teach one must attempt to avoid dependencies whenever possible - how much of a slave am I to the organisation that has grown around me, instead of the ruler I'm supposed and percieved to be.

What is my real power based on? My Fremen follow me because I personify the fulfillment of a prophecy. In the rest of the Imperium they fear the punishment my Fremen are capable of dispensing, and our control of the Spice. Such a dangerous substance ... Not only does it create an irreversable dependency relation, it is the only thing that binds together the highly unstable political tripod: the Great Houses of the Landsraad, the Guild and the Imperial House. Religion will only function as a strengthening factor for a limited amount of time, especially when it's built on contingencies and lies.

Only the Spice remains, but is Dune's monopoly strong enough to withstand the storm that could be unleashed once the Jihad exceeds certain tolerancy levels? There are so many unknowns, even with my prescience. When I see more in one direction this obscures the view everywhere else ...

The worm was old but very strong, and slowed no signs of tiring yet. Stilgar was starting to get restless. Paul wasn't goading the worm towards a sietch - there was nothing but open desert ahead of them -, and they had neither the supplies nor the free time to travel all the way to the south pole, where the palmaries were.

"Paul, where are we going?", he inquired once more.

Once again, Paul did not react to the question, immersed in his own thoughts.

"Paul?" Almost angrily now.

"Stilgar, do you resent me?"

"Resent you?"

"Yes. Do you hate me for becoming the leader of the Fremen, even though I was born a water-fat offworlder?" The vast oceans of his homeworld Caladan seemed farther away and more alien to him every day, and his immersion in the lifestyle of the Fremen had given his memories of swimming and boats almost mythical qualities. Being the emperor, he could choose to return to Caladan whenever he wished, but his integration with the Fremen and their planet was too thorough. Still, sometimes he would dream of roaring rivers, and running across them on the rocks that bent the stream. Once, he had fallen in, and the water had taken him away to a most frightening place. Thousands of years of enforced peace - stagnation under total oppression! Was that one of my prescient dreams?

For a brief moment, it appeared to him as if the worm he was on was a ship, and the dunes around him waves of brightest blue. Stilgar's voice brought him back to reality.

"Certainly not! You are our Lisan al-Gaib, and you have proven yourself in battle many times. No one is more worthy to lead the Fremen."

"Do you think I'm holy?"

What in Liet's name is he trying to say? Stilgar thought. Is this a lesson? "You and your sister are the prophets that have been sent to Dune to lead the Fremen to glory."

"Ah yes, my sister. Alia does not even remember herself what she sacrificed for me and my son."

Stilgar thought he understood now why Paul was acting so strangely. After all this time, he's still mourning the loss of little Leto. As before, bringing him back to harsh reality could be the best strategy. "Your son is dead."

"I thank you for your candour, old friend, but you misunderstand." He once more shifted the topic of conversation. "What do you know of Ix?"

Stilgar decided to stop trying to understand his master, and simply move along to wherever the wind would take him. "I've seen the people of the cities sometimes buy their technological devices, but most of these are useless. Fremen products are vastly superior."

Paul smiled, but sadness overcame him once more when a line of thought discarded a few minutes ago wrestled its way back to consciousness. When religion fails to hold together the political tripod, and the Fremen control of the Spice is not enough, what will happen? What elements remain hidden in my empire? Were my visions correct - machines hunting people? I cannot do what my vision demands of me to prevent this.

The worm started to lose speed, and Paul allowed to it come to a halt. It is time, he thought. He turned to face Stilgar. "When I'm gone, will you take care of the Atreides legacy for me?"

"When you're gone ... What are you planning to do?"

"That moment won't come for a long time, but when it happens?"

"You know I will be loyal to the death, but I'm old. I'm certain you will survive long ..."

Paul interrupted sharply. "Remember this! Be careful in picking the alliances you build your life around. You are human. You are defined by the way you relate to your environment. Don't forget that."

Before Stilgar could respond, Paul ran towards the back of the worm, jumping down onto the sand before getting too close to the tail where hot oxygen, formed by reactions deep inside the worm, wafted into the air. When Stilgar joined him on the sand, he noticed something strange.

"Paul, the worm is not burrowing into the sand. Surely he can't be that tired?"

"He is dead."

"Dead?"

"He was old, Stilgar. He called me to ride him once before he died. Never again shall there be a worm this large on Dune - the younger worms are already becoming less numerous and not as large as before."

"The plantation projects ...", Stilgar realised. Water.

Sweeping his gaze across the horizon, the terrible future of the course that had been chosen engulfed Paul completely for the first time. He shuddered at the cruelty he witnessed in the vision. I've seen mere fragments prior to this moment. I'm not strong enough to accept that terrible fate. It shouldn't happen ... but it will.

Looking around him, Stilgar saw nothing but a continuously changing sea of sand surrounding the dead worm, the first stages of a terrible coriolis storm obscuring all reference points. "Paul ... Where are we?"

Paul emerged from his vision, and sat down, leaning against the corpse of the worm. "We're at the beginning of the end."

BOOK TWO

THE AWAKENING

BOOK TWO - CHAPTER ONE

The Bene Gesserit witches indulge in word-games and passive manipulation. The methods they choose to maintain the self-delusion of being able to exert what little influence they might have had once have driven them into a trap they built themselves: millennia of puppeteering rather than actively influencing people and cleansing their environment of unwanted elements have engrained into their policies a propensity for assuming the position of the weakest, the inept. Their inability to react to an outside force of unexpected size and power will be the instrument of their undoing.

— Great Honoured Matre Dama

Murbella looked out the window of her study, over the rooftops of the Sisterhood's central complex on Chapter House, towards the orchards. Other Memory showed her what the view from this window had been like a century ago: long rows of large, strong trees bearing flawless fruit, supplying food for all of Central and many parts of the surrounding areas. The contrast with the current situation was saddening, in a way. The activities of the sandtrout that facilitated the growth of the desert had removed most of the moisture on the planet from places accessible to the roots of the vast majority of plants and trees. The few moderately healthy trees that remained in the orchard were stocky, and bore small, ill-tasting fruit. Still, Murbella continued to insist these last few reminders of the fact Chapter House had once been a very fertile planet would not be removed.

There is something strangely compelling about watching the degeneration of life at the hands of another species, she thought. Let my sisters think I'm morbid. The resilience of these trees - still succeeding in staying alive under these conditions - actually teaches us an important lesson: death will come eventually, but that does not give us an excuse to stop living.

She was both Bene Gesserit Mother Superior and Great Honoured Matre, thus combining both factions into a single sisterhood. The alliance was still fragile, Bene Gesserit and Honoured Matres continually strugling to find a balance between hate, fear, admiration and common sense. The plan constructed and executed by Alma Mavis Taraza and Darwi Odrade had worked - just barely.

Murbella had ruled the alliance for almost a decade now, and still members of both factions clashed regularly - the recent influx of new Honoured Matres from farther away in the realms of the Scattering had only made matters worse. These new arrivals had not lived through the events that had brought the two forces together - they had only heard about them, and they appeared not to understand the necessity of the alliance.

Murbella sat back in her chairdog. The education of the Honoured Matres is progressing, but the first acolyte from their ranks has yet to survive the Spice Agony - the three that have tried so far did not make it. They were impetuous, not ready at all to endure the extreme pain that accompanies the unlocking of Other Memory - but how do you explain the necessity of many years of intense training to people who alread think themselves to be superior?

She turned towards her desk, and saw the map on the wall Odrade's aide Streggi had started so many years ago, detailing the growth of the desert. And then there's the Spice, she thought.

The desert covered a large part of the planet, leaving only the regions far to the north and south able to sustain any plant life of significance. The vast majority of the crops that fed the inhabitants of Chapter House were grown in enormous greenhouses, or underground caverns lit by sunlight filtering down through prisms for the plant species less tolerant of extreme heat. Water conserving policies reminiscent of those practiced by the ancient Fremen of Dune were already being implemented in some instances: special clothing was required for anyone staying outdoors for long amounts of time, and buildings were being installed with airlocks, keeping the precious moisture inside.

These measures were not strictly necessary yet, but Murbella had thought it wise the sisters on Chapter House would start getting used to a tight water discipline. Being a Reverend Mother, I can't do anything but plan for the long term, she thought.

Everything was being sacrificed for Taraza's vision. Murbella understood that vision involved the best possible future for the Sisterhood, but still she couldn't help wondering if all the sacrifices were worth it. Even though Odrade was present in her Other memory, and with her Taraza, she still had trouble understanding the finer points of the plan that was supposed to turn the vision into reality.

The presence of the worms on Chapter House will give the Sisterhood its own source of the Spice, as well as the control over any religion surrounding either Shai-Hulud or The Tyrant. The former part of the plan has already worked, albeit on a very small scale, but Sheeana and Duncan are gone - even the most potent tools of the Missionaria Protectiva have so far proven unable to compensate for that particular loss. The persona of neither Taraza nor Odrade had felt compelled to help Murbella solve this problem in all these years, and at this moment they again refused to offer their advice.

The worms on Rakis needed to be destroyed to free the universe from the constraints of Leto's vision, but what if his hold still hasn't been broken? Here on Chapter House the worms are multiplying again, and hundreds of Reverend Mothers disappeared into the Second Scattering, carrying sandtrout with them to possibly start a similar transformation on another planet. Who knows how many worms were stolen from Rakis and taken elsewhere, and Arrakis before the Tyrant's reign? We know the Spacing Guild tried several times - do we know for a fact they did not succeed? Silence remained.

Murbella glanced at her desk, and saw the stacks of files there, still waiting to be read, begging to be approved or otherwise processed by the Mother Superior. Bellonda kept bringing them in, regardless of how much had yet to be done from the previous batch. She let out a long sigh, a telling gesture she would never allow herself to make in front of an acolyte. Of course the watchdogs spying on her right now would speculate about this lack of discipline on her part, perhaps even spreading rumours about how tired the Mother Superior was and how this weakened her authority, but Murbella had realised very early on that showing herself to be human on carefully chosen moments could actually strengthen her leadership. Perhaps this is the influence of Odrade ..., she wondered.

Murbella knew the work was important, and she assured herself she would eventually catch up with the recently increased workload, but at that moment a different priority emerged: the need to eat. It was supper time, and even though Murbella, being a Reverend Mother, had the ability to modify her body chemistry to compensate for a temporary lack of nourishment, she realised the act of eating itself would envigorate her in many ways.

She went down to the common mess hall and sat down at a table of acolytes, just like Odrade had done many times while she was Mother Superior. Murbella was upholding a tradition, one she rather enjoyed because it gave her access to sources of information about the atmosphere in Central other than her personal advisors, and allowed her to maintain a connection with her lower-ranked sisters.

After a short while an acolyte presented her with a variety of small plates and bowls of food, without any doubt carefully tuned to what she needed at that moment. The enchanting aromas of a spicy soup, rice and a mixture of meat and various vegetables greeted her - she almost couldn't prevent her mouth from watering. The speed with which her meal had been prepared demonstrated the skill and dedication of the cooking staff, but it also pointed out a potential flaw in her behaviour.

Have I slipped into predictable patterns?, Murbella thought. What food I prefer might be a relatively unimportant aspect of my life, but what if this means I'm creating both easily recognizable behavioural patterns and unconscious dependency structures on much more fundamental levels?

A discussion at the far end of Murbella's table caught her attention. Usually, acolytes would eat in silence whenever Mother Superior was present, occasionally whispering something to someone close by, but this was different: these two acolytes were speaking loudly, and Murbella could detect a hint of animosity in their voices.

Aaah, Bene Gesserit versus Honoured Matre, she thought, noting the small embroidered dragon on the white acolyte robe of one, where the robe of the other had no markings. The rift still exists.

"It takes many years of training to prepare for the Agony. The Water Of Life unleashes your deepest fears," the Bene Gesserit acolyte explained. She was a beautiful, graceful young girl with curly red hair cascading down her back and bright blue eyes set in a delicate, light-skinned face - a rare combination indeed.

She is called Natalia, Murbella remembered. Very young, but she has definite potential.

"I don't fear," the Honoured Matre said.

This one is a recent arrival, Murbella noted.

"Everyone fears. It's a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human," Natalia paraphrased the Bene Gesserit lesson she had once learnt.

The Honoured Matre snorted. "I have heard your Litany Against Fear. Face the fear, let it pass through you, only you remain - was that it? A children's verse, a trick, that is all. It's a sign of weakness that you would need such a thing."

It was clear Natalia was insulted. "The intent is not to ignore or destroy the fear, but to learn from it and avoid being dominated by it."

She should learn to better control her facial expressions, Murbella thought.

"Fear is a warning mechanism - trust the wisdom of your own body," the Honoured Matre said.

"Fear is not meant to incapacitate - if it does, that points out a deficit in your intuition, a blunting by false security. It is meant to increase physical power as well as your awareness of your surroundings."

"Of course!", the Honoured Matre said in the most derisive way she could manage. "There is hope for you yet, witch."

Murbella could see the Bene Gesserit acolytes straining to repress a gasp. Some of the Honoured Matre acolytes showed the same reaction, but a small number appeared to enjoy what had happened. Natalia briefly glanced towards the Mother Superior, but otherwise retained her composure admirably.

She continued, as if she hadn't heard the insult. "Sadly, fear also forces you to make a decision which more often than not leans towards the side of impetuousity and animal instinct. The real achievement lies in restraining that unconscious drive and conditioning it to let only the important information filter through to the consciousness, while relapsing into safe behavioural patterns in the short span of time the consciousness requires to catch up."

"Honoured Matres wouldn't know how to do that," a Bene Gesserit acolyte blurted out, and immediately covered her mouth with her hands when she realised what she had said.

A real Bene Gesserit acolyte would never have said that, Murbella thought, no matter how inexperienced she was. She looked closer. That isn't one of ours ..., and immediately Murbella realised how what she had thought revealed where her real allegiances lay, no matter how much she tried to be a leader to both factions.

The Honoured Matre laughed. Tiny flecks of orange appeared in her eyes, signaling that she was getting angry. "Ah yes. You refer to the theory that you witches constructed about us. We have a large unconsciousness, don't we?"

This was news to many at the table, and Murbella was suprised that an Honoured Matre knew about it. Records from before the merger detailing Bene Gesserit knowledge of and speculations about Honoured Matres had intentionally been kept secret.

"Ah, no ...," Natalia began.

The Honoured Matres at the table rose, their eyes blazing orange. The leader, the one who had spoken, prepared to attack Natalia, but another Honoured Matre in her party stopped her, their movements almost too fast to follow.

Immediately guards from all sides intervened, and started clearing the mess hall, Bene Gesserit acolytes and Honoured Matres leaving through different exits.

Murbella briefly looked at the Bene Gesserit acolyte who had made the careless remark while she was being ushered away to a safe place by Reverend Mother guards. It's very subtle, but she has minute traces of surgery around the eyes. They wanted to mask the typical orange flecks that would appear in Honoured Matre eyes when provoked and give her the blue eyes of longtime Melange addiction, but they also wanted someone to notice these alterations had been made.

Despite the recent increase in intelligence reports about a possible Honoured Matre uprising - a few sceptics amongst the Bene Gesserit watchdogs had been producing a steady stream of such reports since the start of the alliance - Murbella was genuinely surprised. This entire incident was planned - a show for my benefit! Poor Natalia ... unwittingly a pawn in this game. And whoever was behind it has somehow managed to access confidential Bene Gesserit files ...

While Murbella was being led to her study, she realised what had just happened. I have been given an open declaration of war.

BOOK TWO - CHAPTER TWO

Unbridled expansion of living space and the interaction with new cultures and environments in the Scattering have allowed for the emergence of new abilities - the few encounters of our allies with Honoured Matres confirm this. However physically powerful these whores might be, there are even more powerful beings out there, chasing them back to the Old Empire. Rumours of human-beast hybrids, the fact these beings are referred to as "the enemies of many faces" and the contents of the recently intercepted "Prometheus Manifesto" provide us with clues about their origin an extent of their powers. Prime computation of every Bene Gesserit Mentat paints the same picture: an alliance of descendants of Scattered Ixians and Tleilaxu, who have a functional network of spies in the Old Empire. Traces of our own influence on the ancestors of this new superpower have been detected, which suggests it is likely that slight modifications to Missionaria Protectiva protocols for dealing with Ix and the Bene Tleilax will prove to be effective in overcoming this threat.

— Bene Gesserit Analysis

Murbella knew that she was being watched. Without knowing exactly by who or from where (surely the "why?" had been made abundantly clear in the mess hall a week ago), she could sense the presence of an observer. Not deriving this knowledge from any concrete sense data, she theorised the extraction of information from the environment by this observer somehow caused a transformation in the aura of the space around her, but quickly dismissed this line of thought as pure fabrication. Perhaps it was interesting as an example of how a particular problem might give rise to an odd array of theories to choose from, each one of them perhaps acceptable within a theoretical frame formed by freely chosen axioms, but the vast majority of them ultimately untenable if one chose to maintain certain relatively uncontestable assertions about the world - the principle of underdetermination of theories by data in action.

She had gotten used to the cameras of the Bene Gesserit watchdogs during her years in the no-ship with Duncan and in her function as Mother Superior since then, but the eyes following her movements now were much more vicious than Bellonda could be, even during her most inspired rants. It was exactly because of such potential threats that recently security surrounding Mother Superior had been tightened considerably.

Murbella had assured Bellonda time and time again that she was in no real danger - she was the most powerful Honoured Matre fighter, after all. Honoured Matre code of conduct - the mere mention of the concept had sent Bellonda into a fit of laughter - dictated anything other than direct confrontation in matters of succession was forbidden. Of course, there was a history of Great Honoured Matres being poisoned by ambitious underlings, but Murbella counted on her Bene Gesserit-trained metabolism to be able to take care of such coup-attempts.

Deep inside Murbella knew that Bellonda's fears were justified, and she herself had started feeling increased tension since the incident in the mess hall, at times bordering on fear. However, a combination of blind pride and being determined to provide both Honoured Matres and Bene Gesserit with a strong leader prevented her from admitting to having these feelings.

Where are you, Duncan?, Murbella thought. I could always talk to you about these things. You were so strong, and I could be weak in your presence if that was what I needed ... Our love was not merely physical.

It was shortly after dusk and Murbella was walking in the garden, which was still relatively green, despite the continuing drought. Small, ornamented glowglobes illuminated the paths. She entered the maze, the tall hedges concealing her movements from the observers she knew were posted on several places in the garden. Two dark figures appeared around a bend; one of them swiftly but silently pulled Murbella into the shadows, while the other continued along the path Murbella had been following - a decoy to mask her disappearance.

She was ushered along dark, hidden passages in the maze, and through a tiny, cleverly concealed door at the base of a large statue. A cramped hallway led to a small, brightly lit chamber.

"Welcome, Mother Superior," Bellonda said. She gestured Murbella to enter and take a seat at the conference table. Her escorts disappeared again, carefully sealing the door behind them. Across the table from Murbella and Bellonda two other Reverend Mothers sat, their eyes betraying nervousness.

"Deliver your report, Sekil," Bellonda said curtly.

When the response did not come quickly enough, Bellonda said: "We realise you must have grown suspicious because of what you've seen and experienced, but we can guarantee you you are safe. This -," she gestured, "- is a no-room. We cannot be detected by anyone outside."

Murbella remembered Sekil: she was one of her instructors during the initial stages of her Bene Gesserit education, but had been sent into the Second Scattering later. The other was called Fondalar - Murbella had no personal recollections of her, but had read her file while preparing for this meeting.

Sekil began, her voice wavering. "We have returned from an assignment on Ard, a small and cold planet in the Kesel cluster. We bring you important information on the Prometheans."

"This is what the so called 'enemies of many faces' call themselves," Bellonda explained for Murbella's benefit.

"The armies of the Prometheans have already overrun many worlds," Sekil continued. "Nothing appears to be able to stop them. Survivors are few, and the vast majority of those have been rendered effectively braindead by some type of biological weapon."

"The Honoured Matres had stolen one of these weapons, and used it during our attack at their headquarters on one of the Guild's old Junction planets," Murbella said.

"This would be a logical extrapolation," Sekil said.

"Thank you so much for deeming our analysis acceptable," Bellonda sneered.

Sekil looked at Bellonda for a moment from the corners of her eyes, betraying that she felt intimidated by the physically large and verbally aggressive woman, but promptly continued her report.

"We have been able to gather that in virtually all cases, the Prometheans were aided by operatives they had placed in high places in governments and important organisations on those planets - it seems at least some of their numbers are Face Dancers even the most highly trained cannot unmask."

"Prometheans ...," Murbella muttered. "That name sounds so familiar."

"The Archives contain very little information on the name, as it concerns a period of the history of ancient Terra - many millennia prior to the point in time the earliest Other Memories originate from. Apparently 'Prometheus' was the son of a powerful ruler, who taught his father's slaves the secrets of technology. They had been purposely kept in the dark, being allowed to know barely enough to perform their function. Prometheus was severely punished for his betrayal."

"I see. In what way are these Prometheans related to the Tleilaxu?", Murbella asked.

"That is not exactly clear," Fondalar said. "The ability of at least some of the Prometheans to modify their physical appearance certainly must have originated in Tleilaxu science, but it doesn't appear likely they are actually the Tleilaxu we know. Their use of technology and the way this violates the rules of the Jihad suggests they either stole Tleilaxu knowledge, or somehow assimilated rogue Tleilaxu in the Scattering."

Bellonda briefly leafed through a file she picked up from the conference table before turning towards the two Reverend Mothers again. "Not long ago a document called 'The Prometheus Manifesto' was found circulating amongst recent Honoured Matre arrivals. It appears to be an answer to 'The Atreides Manifesto' of over a decade ago, enticing its readers to abolish the fundament of our society, the decrees of the Butlerian Jihad. It seems obvious this document was written by the ... Prometheans, as you call them. Based on your experiences, can you either confirm or deny this?"

Fondalar nodded. "This does appear likely. Unsubstatiated rumours tell of cyborgs amongst the Prometheans' ranks, which together with our earlier comments would corroborate the theory that this new force somehow contains Ixians and Tleilaxu that met in the Scattering, but the apparent animosity between the two peoples that has been in place for millennia doesn't seem conducive to such a mating."

"The origin of the Honoured Matres suggests strange things have been happening in the Scattering - no one would have predicted an alliance of Fish Speakers and Bene Gesserit beforehand. Still Reverend Mothers did allow themselves to be contaminated like that," Bellonda said. She glanced over to her Mother Superior, and quickly added: "No offense intended, of course."

"Whatever happened in the Scattering to produce the Prometheans, it seems they are not the only faction we need to worry about," Murbella said, attempting not to show her amusement with Bellonda's uneasiness. "The Old Empire factions of both Ix and Tleilax have started mobilising as well. This might have something to do with the Tleilaxu plans for ascendancy - perhaps they want to eradicate the Ixians, who are grave sinners in their eyes, before they turn their attention to the rest of the Old Empire."

Murbella looked at each of the faces of those present, finding total agreement. She continued. "However, this new information appears to change that, suggesting that if the circumstances are extreme enough, as they must have been in the Scattering, ideological barriers such as the ones between Ix and Tleilax might be breached. The secretive nature of both these groups does not improve the potential success rate of our projections, but our contact with the Tleilaxu Masters Waff and Scytale strongly suggests at least the Tleilaxu would not attempt to look for any allies in any of their core activities, even while feigning to do so anyway."

Fondalar nodded. "Still, the Tleilaxu are probably planning something on their own. We have heard of Tleilaxu Face Dancers that could not be unmasked by even the most capable Reverend Mothers either, and some of them have reportedly infiltrated Bene Gesserit colonies."

Murbella considered this. The Tleilaxu have certainly improved their Face Dancers considerably in the past few decades, and even though Reverend Mothers have always been able to detect them - at least when aware of what characteristics to scan for if faced with a suspect subject - it is not inconceivable that they have finally succeeded in their efforts. This could prove to be very dangerous. Anyone could be suspect.

What about these two?, she thought. Are they who they say they are?

Murbella looked at Fondalar. She was nervous, but that was to be expected when faced with the Mother Superior, delivering such important information. Murbella's gaze then moved over to Sekil. Small drops of perspiration were starting to form on the forehead of the old, small and sinewy Reverend Mother. Sekil noticed the Mother Superior watching her, and looked away - it was clearly making her feel uncomfortable.

For the tiniest fragment of a second, Murbella noticed an unfamiliar expression on Sekil's face - a tightening of facial muscles not consistent with what she remembered of her instructor during her first few years on Chapter House.

Age or any other natural development could not have wrought such a change!, Murbella thought. A closer look at the old face of the increasingly nervous Sekil revealed another of these tiny slips.

In a fraction of a second, Murbella lept across the table, her right leg outstretched, demonstrating her deadly speed by crushing the Face Dancer's windpipe. As the creature lay on the floor suffocating, Murbella bowed over it and demanded: "Who sent you?"

The creature's muscles relaxed, the outspoken shapes of Sekil being replaced by bland, nauseatingly neutral features. A smile formed on its face, its raspy breathing growing shallow, and shortly thereafter stopping entirely.

BOOK TWO - CHAPTER THREE

After the Worm died, humanity was freed from the oppression of the sword that could drop at the slightest provocation, the Fish Speaker army. In a reaction to the disappearance of the constraints of his reign the Tyrant had undoubtably foreseen, the human race expanded outward, into the uncharted territory far beyond the bounds of the Old Empire. While preserving the future of humanity this way, it also opened up the people remaining behind to a world of unknowns - a detachment of the development of various factions, with no guarantee of intent to cooperate and share between them. This was one of the major flaws of the Tyrant's socalled Golden Path which the Sisterhood detected early on, and it seems the recent emergence of the Honoured Matres has proven this analysis was correct. Our own Scattering will be an attempt to prevent the destruction of our millennia-spanning program of educating humanity by decentralising our resources, and it will not fall in the same trap. Bene Gesserit training will ensure that.

— Mother Superior Darwi Odrade, argument in council

"The last time you were all summoned here," Murbella began, "the Sisterhood was in peril of being eradicated by the Honoured Matres." She sought out a few of the more prominent Honoured Matres in the crowd, and polled their reaction to her referring to this particular episode of recent history. Mazibul, an old but tall and very strong Honoured Matre, returned her stare with barely veiled animosity.

She can't be the mastermind of the recent declaration of war against me, Murbella thought. She's certainly ambitious, as she should be on her age and at her particular station - old and of relatively low rank, but still intent on securing a better position for herself. However, she's not too intelligent. She's mainly where she is now because of her physical strength and a good sense of which more competent would-be leaders to ally with.

The atmosphere in the great Common Room of Central was not what Murbella had hoped for. A feeling of unity and sisterhood would have been much more conducive of a proper reception of what it was she had to say - even collective fear of the Bene Gesserit and Honoured Matres' common enemy would have been preferable over the current situation. There was a palpable tension between the two factions, characterised by a strict segregation, even during this gathering: seen from the stage, the Bene Gesserit present today occupied the right half of the hall, Honoured Matres - slightly less in number - the left half. Murbella did spot a few of the Sisterhood's operatives amongst the Honoured Matre crowd.

It's not unlikely that the converse is the case as well, Murbella realised. Honoured Matre agents have probably infiltrated what are thought to be purely Bene Gesserit groups. A decade ago they would have been uncovered almost immediately, but it appears they've learnt a lot since the start of the alliance.

"Our alliance is in danger of being attacked by a force of unthinkable power - those amongst the Honoured Matres who have been in contact with the Prometheans know that the threat they represent eclipses anything we might be able to generate by way of defense. I have devised a plan that might save our combined forces from their fury." Murbella paused, recalling the argumentative structure in which the still dormant thought elements referring to the details of the plan would find their general support, particular meaning and persuasive force.

"I will keep this brief. You all understand the structure of the Bene Gesserit as an organisation." It was not a question - the lessons detailing the way the Sisterhood was built up were taught in the earliest stages of the education of a Bene Gesserit acolyte. Even the Honoured Matres present in the hall had all been required to learn this.

"Cells of our alliance will scatter to locations undisclosed to their parallel cells, each taking with them a unique blend of knowledge and abilities tuned to the environment they will encounter, as well as a supply of Melange, Water Of Life and several sandtrout. Each group will attempt to form a new base, a center of Bene Gesserit and Honoured Matre power from which to expand and develop as the specific circumstances allow. Desert forming experiments with the intent of eventually producing Spice and Spice-products are part of this."

A murmur rose from the crowd as others from Murbella's entourage took center stage to expand on what the Mother Superior had said.

No! This is not the solution. For the first time in years, Odrade-within entered Murbella's thoughts.

Murbella listened to a Bene Gesserit Proctor working through her list of arguments detailing why she felt Murbella's plan would be effective in principle, but needed a few modifications to be able to achieve the desired effect in full. Simulflow allowed her to also confront Odrade. So there you are ... finally.

To be blunt, you're really starting to make a mess of things.

I'm merely extrapolating the plan you yourself implemented! Our own Scattering-

Odrade interrupted sharply. I was wrong - I see that now. You have no excuse for making the same mistakes I made.

I'm sure you know I've questioned the wisdom of a Second Scattering many times in the past decade, but you never felt compelled to either agree or disagree with me then - why should I listen to you now?

Have you studied the Mentat teachings?

The Mentat Handbook ... Of course.

What do they teach about memories?

Many things.

Odrade groaned. What do they say about the relationship between memories and reality?

Murbella needed a moment to reconstruct the appropriate phrasing of the tenet. They say: 'Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference which inevitably fall short.'

Very good.

Thank you. Murbella could not suppress a smile, which drew a surprised glance from Bellonda. Murbella decided she could explain later.

Odrade continued. Don't be so damned clever! It means that whatever you experience in real life is much more powerful and effective than anything you can experience in your mind.

I know what it means, and I don't agree. The majority of mental representations of external events have been integrated over one's personal belief system, built up from the interpretations of past occurances that were formed in close interaction with reality. As such, those mental representations might differ rather profoundly from what was really the case - if it is even possible to speak of this - but that does mean they might resonate along perfectly with your identity, creating an effect a raw experience - also a notion riddled with conceptual problems - can never hope to cause.

Very well. I do agree with the Mentat Handbook on this, which is why I wanted to let you find out for yourself what was wrong with my plan.

Don't you think it would have been much safer to warn me before I presented this plan to the Bene Gesserit and to the Sisterhood?

I'm warning you now.

Thanks. You're a big help.

Quit feeling sorry for yourself! Taraza's master plan had a terminal weakness, stimulating a development it was supposed to suppress, and I failed to see this. I even expedited this development further, by starting the desert-forming process here on Chapter House.

What is that weakness?, Murbella demanded. It seems you're trying to tell me I'm about to make the same mistake.

Exactly! Part of Taraza's plan was to release the universe from the grip the worms' dreams.

The worms' dreams?

Don't act ignorant, because I know you're not. The visions of both the Tyrant and his father determined the flow of history, and this influence did not subside after the Tyrant's death, because his visions lived on in the worms his corpse spawned. The success of Taraza's plan hinged on Sheeana and the knowledge she had of the language that controlled these worms, but as you might have noticed, she has been gone for quite some time. None of her students have mastered enough of the complex combinations of movements, chanting and excretion of pheromones to such an extent that they can be effective in communicating with or controlling these beasts. And the one we intended to control her with has left as well.

Idaho, Murbella realised.

Yes.

I see. The gholas of Sheeana and Idaho that have been born in the past ten years were all deformed. Apart from that, the children of Duncan and Murbella are all unremarkable, as if there's a force preventing them from growing and developing in the way we hoped they would. They are being trained, but even now they're not showing any signs of extraordinary abilities yet - the youngest is almost eleven!

They would have already shown their gifts if they'd had any, Odrade agreed.

Perhaps we have indeed underestimated the power of Leto's visions, as you are suggesting.

Of course. I didn't come up with this last night, you know. This is akin to a prime computation, based on painstakingly gathered data.

Considering your admission of negligence earlier I really don't see how you can justify being arrogant about this.

Odrade decided to swallow her pride, and said: The advisable course of action is probably to attempt to modify the axolotl tanks to produce Melange and the Spice Poison - this will lessen our dependence on the worms. In Sheeana's absence, the Missionaria Protectiva's role in Taraza's plan has no real chance of succeeding anyway.

You're contemplating killing the worms?

It might be the only option left to us.

I have two rather big problems with this. One: we have been trying to get our tanks to produce Spice for years, but we haven't booked any real results. Two: how will your suggestion help us defeat the Prometheans, or, if not defeat, than at least survive their arrival in this sector?

I think I have found a way in which Spice production by axolotl tanks is possible. It will require an appropriately talented sister to sacrifice her mental and physical freedom, but I'm sure we can find someone that's suited to the task. As for your other point: you're giving up too easily. The Honoured Matres are the most feared fighters from the Scattering, we are the most dangerous of the socalled Old Empire. Do I need to continue?

Yes. We ... The Honoured Matres conquered world after world after they arrived in this sector of space in force. I can remember that each and every one of them who had come into contact with the Prometheans was positively terrified of ever having to face them again. A new Scattering is the only way the Sisterhood and its activities stand a chance of surviving this threat.

We will speak about this later. Right now the worms present a much bigger problem.

How do we know the worms' dreams really influence the course of history? All we have are the Tyrant's own words, and we can't trust him - he was a pathological liar.

Be careful with such thoughts!, Odrade reprimanded her host. Dismissing the Worm as a liar or a madman tempts one to ignore the things he taught us about ourselves as well as the profound influence he still has on us, and as a Reverend Mother you should know there is nothing more dangerous than refusing to learn the lessons history forces upon us.

If the Tyrant's dreams indeed influence the unfolding of history, the worms on Chapter House might not be the only ones we need to worry about, Murbella remarked. Can we be sure that no worms remain elsewhere in the universe?

Before Odrade could answer, a disturbance in front of the stage demanded Murbella's full attention. Mazibul had worked her way forward, and now addressed the Mother Superior directly.

Pointing her finger, she said: "You are unfit to lead. Your plan to supposedly save us reeks of cowardice." Gesturing towards the other side of the hall, where the Bene Gesserit were gathered, she sneered: "You have been contaminated by the flawed teachings of these witches. What you propose is not the Honoured Matre way."

She looked around her, demanding support from her peers, and did find a few eager glances, but Murbella understood not all of these expressed agreement with the course of action Mazibul had chosen - some wanted to see this annoying old Honoured Matre put in her place for once, perhaps even killed.

With a leap that appeared effortless, Mazibul was on the stage, facing Murbella. Bellonda attempted to intervene, but Murbella gestured her to stand back.

"A duel is not necessary, Mazibul," Murbella tried. "If you have any suggestions on how to improve my plan, you can express them now."

Mazibul noticed the vaguely patronising tone at which Murbella had said this, and this enraged her. She charged, jumping up into the air, her left leg stretched forward. Murbella stepped aside, catching Mazibul's kick in the fabric of her robe between her right arm and chest, preventing the deadly foot from hitting any part of the body beneath it. Taking hold of the leg, she used Mazibul's momentum to swing her around and throw her against the floor. Realising the Honoured Matre would not accept an offer to cease hostilities, Murbella immediately dropped down, breaking the attacker's neck from behind with a powerful blow of her left fist.

"Is anyone else as foolish as Mazibul here? Does anyone else feel the need to challenge me or the decisions I have made?", Murbella shouted, at the same time trying to assess the dominant opinion amongst the present Honoured Matres. No answer came, and the crowd appeared to respect the way this dispute had been settled - for now.

Murbella caught a quick glance of an older Honoured Matre, whom a quick perusal of her knowledge of Honoured Matre adept files revealed to be called Donelid.

Apparently this was a name she had chosen for herself, referring to an obscure myth about a woman who became a witch, ate her children, poisoned her husband and conquered an entire planet before disappearing forever, reportedly to another plane of reality. A relatively short-lived religion had formed around the demon she had thus become in the eyes of some, which had caused the deaths of thousands - the religious practice included ritual rape and human sacrifice.

It appears this Honoured Matre has cultivated the story that she has come into contact with that demon, perhaps even housing its spirit, Murbella recalled. What is recorded of her career suggests her ferocity matches that of her namesake.

The smile that shaped Donelid's lips suggested she had an agenda of her own, at once mocking Murbella by insinuating there were things even she didn't know, and commending the Mother Superior for performing her role so well in a plan eclipsing her own. Murbella watched her leave the hall. Could she be the one?

BOOK TWO - CHAPTER FOUR

Arrakis presents an exquisite challenge to anyone with an interest in or understanding of ecology. I don't necessarily mean the difficulties one encounters while trying to turn the desert planet into a green world, but rather the delicate balance one must attempt to find between the spheres of influence that collide there. The desire to see the land grow fertile, the way the Fremen are a part of the desert, the role of the giant worms in the formation of the Spice and their intolerance of water, the power the Spice allows the Fremen to wield over the Guild, the Empire and the Houses Major and Minor ... all these factors oppose, enforce and balance each other in different ways. Remove or alter one, and the entire structure might collapse.

— Pardot Kynes, First Planetologist of Arrakis

Murbella was at the desk in her study, attempting to analyse the implications of what she had learnt the past few days.

Now the attack comes from three sides, she realised. The Tyrant's dreams might still control the unfolding of history, continuing to lead us along his accursed Golden Path, Donelid and her allies plot to overthrow me, and the Prometheans might very well destroy us all.

A loud thud against the other side of the door that opened to the hallway forced Murbella to abandon her ponderings. She rose, walked over to the door and opened it to see what had happened. On the floor lay a young, brown-haired girl, looking no older than sixteen, dressed in the robe of a first stage Bene Gesserit acolyte - dead. Beyond her in the hallway, leaning against the wall, was Bellonda, panting heavily.

"This one put up quite a fight," she said.

"What happened here?", Mother Superior demanded.

"Assassin."

"An Honoured Matre?"

"Yes. She was too zealous. She wanted to see you dead above all else, and this made her careless," Bellonda said in a casual manner. "Her hate for you was counterproductive. By the way she moved, I could see she was an Honoured Matre attempting to mask what had been conditioned into her all throughout her life with poorly learned Bene Gesserit mannerisms."

Her hate for me was counterproductive, Murbella mentally repeated. How interesting that you, of all people, would say such a thing, Bellonda.

"Was it really necessary to kill her?", Murbella asked. "We could have interrogated her."

"It was either kill or be killed, Mother Superior."

The formal title again. She still doesn't trust me! "Odrade chose me as her successor, Bellonda. And Taraza was in full agreement with that decision."

"I am loyal to the Sisterhood's cause!"

"This would mean that you are loyal to me," Murbella said, almost angrily.

Bellonda started to say something, but decided to remain silent at the last moment. Murbella noticed this, and felt compelled to slightly modify her assessment of Bellonda's character and motives because of it.

"It is good to see that in this case your priorities are in order. The same cannot be said in reference to the way in which you handled this ... situation," the Mother Superior said, indicating the lifeless form on the floor between them. The deformed expression onthe Honoured Matre's face caused by the death spasms were already relaxing, but it was still apparent a rather nasty toxin had been used to kill her.

"Yes. Tragic." Not a shred of remorse could be sensed in Bellonda's voice.

"Regardless of what you might think, Honoured Matres do have a code of honour. She was unarmed, and you killed her with a poisoned blade."

"It seems Mother Superior is forgetting that ethical conduct is based on mutual respect, or at least the respect of the fact the other is a human being similar to oneself. An open declaration of war dissolves such respect: when encountered with unprovoked life-threatening hostility, common rules of conduct cease to apply. In war, the preservation of the Sisterhood and its members take precedence over being nice to one another."

Having said this, Bellonda turned and walked away, leaving a mildly baffled Murbella behind. After a short distance, she turned and said: "Don't you think it's time we left?"

**********

The Bene Gesserit sisters moved as swiftly and silently as possible. Murbella led a small group to safety - fifty Reverend Mothers and acolytes, as well as a handful of loyal Honoured Matres.

Many thousands of valuable Bene Gesserit remain at Central, and all over the planet - The training they've been given should be enough to save them, Murbella hoped.

They ran through a dark tunnel - an escape route leading away from Central, built in secret according to Odrade's specifications around the time the plan to integrate the Honoured Matres into the ranks of the Bene Gesserit had been set in motion.

She knew, even back then, Murbella thought. The alliance with the whores never had a chance. Once more she surprised herself by renouncing her former sisters so forcefully. I grow less Honoured Matre and more Bene Gesserit every day.

As you should, the voice of Odrade-within said.

What was the point of this puppet-show, if you already knew the two groups would eventually turn against each other again?

I didn't know, Odrade answered. Both Taraza and I thought there was a definite possibility that things would eventually go awry, but we hoped the alliance would last just as much as you. It is sad that this apparently was not meant to be, but at least we got a decade of relative peace to refortify our position.

And the tunnel was a safety measure.

Exactly.

And a nice tunnel it is, Murbella thought mockingly.

Are you aware of where it leads?

Odrade's persona retreated, and Murbella knew she would not be able to ask what the answer was supposed to be. Odrade had told her this tunnel would lead to "safety, and lesser dangers", but in the frantic atmosphere of her escape from Central, Murbella hadn't bothered to ask what this meant.

We're already quite far away from Central, Murbella calculated, recalling the approximate number of steps that had brought her to this point, and we're moving south. Of course! This tunnel will lead us into the desert! She was right - the desert has its own set of rules, and anyone who dares to stray from the paths it dictates, will not survive for very long.

She remembered the lectures she had received about Rakis, and the filmbook images of that planet of when it was still called Arrakis, a long time ago. Many pictures and movie fragments of Paul Atreides and his son she had seen, fewer of the Fremen and their blue-in-blue eyes, and only a handful of the giant sandworms - once, the planet had housed specimens of over 400 metres! How pathetic the small worms of Chapter House - ten metres for the largest ones that have so far been observed - are compared to those magnificent creatures!

What had most impressed Murbella about those lectures were the reports of a phenomenon that was taking place on Chapter House as well - as yet on a much smaller scale -: the unforgiving aridity of the planet. In order to survive, stillsuits had to be worn in the open air at all times.

Adapting to such an environment must have been an enormous task for the first Zensunni Wanderers to reach the planet, Murbella thought. It seems our small group will be forced to do it as well. Perhaps it's in my blood, my genes. Or would that be too much to hope for?

I am an Atreides, Murbella realised, letting this important but oft-forgotten fact sink in again. I carry the Mark Of Siona - prescient searchers cannot see me. I am an Atreides.

I warned you about the dangers of your plan!

Murbella looked back, wondering who had spoken - it certainly wasn't Odrade. In the almost-darkness she saw her Bene Gesserit sisters following her, and not one of them made a sound - they even managed to control their breathing, despite the exertion.

I told you it was too dangerous, and you wouldn't listen.

It took a moment before Murbella realised the voice she heard came from inside her - apparently one of the personas in her Other Memory was trying to offer her advice. The voice sounded rather young, unlike most of the other personas in her Other Memory - mostprominent Reverend Mothers were quite old when they shared.

I did what I thought was right at the time.

Another voice ... Murbella thought. This one sounds much older. They're not talking to me, but to each other. Simulflow allowed Murbella to eavesdrop on this conversation while she continued to lead her group through the dark corridors, Odrade telling her the complex sequence of twists and turns the only correct path to safety contained.

You forced my brother along the first part of the Golden path too quickly. He wasn't ready!

He was as ready as he was ever going to be!

In that case he shouldn't have accepted his burden at all. What you did to him, and what he did to himself because of that: it has only led to disaster.

Humanity was saved!, the older voice said, almost angrily.

It was saved, so it could die a few thousand years later. Don't you understand what is happening right now?

Ghanima, calm down.

No, grandmother! I hold you responsible. You don't know the fear I had to endure. I was afraid of him, I dreaded the coming of the worm. The worm doomed the entire universe, and is still doing so.

Alia ordered his kidnapping, not me.

But you didn't hesitate to take advantage of it when it happened!

It was in the best interest of the Sisterhood that his potential was tested. We had to know whether or not he was a Kwisatz Haderach like his father.

Aaah, the Kwisatz Haderach-scheme! Bad things always happen when small but arrogant humans toy with forces they only barely understand.

The older voice remained silent.

Don't you have any witty comebacks, or condescending lectures?

It wasn't me.

What?

It wasn't me. The Jessica Atreides that did all those things was a very different woman than I. When I separated while I was giving birth to Paul, my Duke was still alive, and I hadn't transformed the Water Of Life yet - my Other Memories hadn't been awakened at that point.

My brother - before his transformation, and during his more lucid moments after it - and I always had difficulty identifying the persona of you we carried with us with the real you.

Yes. Acquiring Other Memory changed me.

And grandfather wasn't there anymore to make you understand how much you had changed.

A short silence followed, and Murbella felt the sadness. Jessica spoke again. Paul changed as well, after ingesting the Spice Poison. He could have stopped the Jihad if he had wanted to.

That would have required?

Yes. But what price is one death when it buys you the lives of billions?

There is another side to the Jihad. Your defense of the Golden Path earlier suggests you would understand this, and would even approve of it.

Purging the species ... That might have been part of the intent of the operation, but the Fremen army was too blunt an instrument to perform such a delicate task.

He did try to repair the damage he had done later in life.

You mean the Preacher? That was a desperate man's effort to undo what could not be undone.

The confusion Murbella had felt when the conversation started had been replaced with a feeling of triumph. Elation swept through her for a few brief moments as she first realised what treasures from the past she might have found here, despite the dangers that the present still held.

Ghanima and Jessica Atreides, Murbella thought. It took an awful battle to enable me to acquire their knowledge - true to the younger's name -, and it came when least expected. The Sisterhood has been trying to find a way to tap into this knowledge for centuries, and now it seems I have it.

BOOK TWO - CHAPTER FIVE

What do your memories teach you about your current state of mind? It's impossible to avoid a regression into an infinity of intended (but never achieved) levels of objectivity, but the unknowable might be felt by the way it eludes your understanding.

— The Apocrypha Of Muad'Dib

Murbella led the group through a veritable maze of rock formations. After Odrade-within had briefed her completely, she was one of a very select group of people who knew the access route to the sietch - the passageways used in constructing it had been blocked by controlled explosions after construction was finished.

Many hundreds of advanced acolytes had worked on it in complete secrecy, their specific training having conditioned them to intense loyalty and the sense of duty needed to keep the secret. A pyramid of deaths - many of them voluntary because of that same training - with Odrade at the summit ensured that very few still alive knew it even existed.

The tunnel that had taken them far away from central had been destroyed as well, an explosion causing many tons of rock to seal the escape route behind Murbella and her allies. The tunnel had brought them several kilometres into the desert, where even now it was dangerous to travel alone, or untrained: although most of the worms were not large enough to swallow an entire person, as they had been on Rakis, carelessness and a lack of respect for the desert dwellers could result in the loss of a leg.

The crossing of the open bled that seperated the relative safety of the rock formations along the route to the sietch was therefore a dangerous undertaking. All Bene Gesserit carried the Mark Of Siona, and were therefore in some way related to the Atreides, which meant that they all had Fremen amongst their ancestry - the real Fremen of Muad'Dib's days. Even though none of the Bene Gesserit had Other Memory that could access the thoughts and dreams of the Kwisatz Haderach or his daughter, most had at least some measure of genetically imprinted instinct that enabled them to cross the open stretches of sand in a way similar to how the Fremen would have done it, thus minimising the chances of attracting the violent worms.

This had become a real problem, as the Tyrant had promised: the aggressive nature of the new worms. Collecting the small amounts of Spice the worms had already started to produce was extremely dangerous, because unlike the way the worms of Dune had behaved, the worms on Chapter House defended the Spice fields as their territory, and did not hesitate to kill anyone who dared come where they were not wanted. Sturdy mining equipment - smaller versions of the gigantic sandcrawlers that had mined Spice on Rakis - would generally be sufficient to protect any prospectors from the fury of the Old Man Of The Desert, but the miners feared the future, when the worms would grow considerably larger and stronger, and possibly even more ferocious.

The group had now reached the entrance to the sietch. Helped by Odrade, Murbella entered the complex code that would unlock the main moisture seal: a reinforced plasteel door rather than the plastic membranes that used to seal off the traditional sietches. When they entered, those amongst them sufficiently familiar with Fremen culture immediately noted how sterile everything smelled: not at all like the overwhelming stench of sweat, Melange and food aromas that permeated any true Fremen dwelling place.

There are three large windtraps and seven smaller ones installed all throughout the area, capable of supplying enough water for five thousand people, Odrade-within explained, if they were to adopt Fremen efficiency. They have been functional for some time now, so there should be enough water in the basins to last you through a transitional period, especially considering the small size of the group.

On this level you will find hunting equipment and a stillsuit manufacturing plant - one hundred suits in varying sizes have already been made -, as well as an armory and a deathstill. The middle level contains private quarters and supply rooms. On the lowest level you will find the water basins and the main hall.

Our sietch, Murbella thought, looking around while wandering through the various sections of the complex. What did a sietch mean to the Fremen of Paul Atreides' days? She knew the etymology: "sietch" meant "place of assembly in time of danger", and that was exactly the function this place now had for them.

**********

All members of the group had gathered in one of the larger rooms - the main hall was far too big to hold a meeting. Everyone had been assigned their own quarters, and had started familiarising themselves with the layout of the sietch and the workings of the equipment in it.

Bellonda had asked them all to be present, wanting to discuss the current situation, and what their course of action for the near future would have to be. Murbella watched the full-figured Reverend Mother rising from her seat and walking to the front of the crowd, observing how she intentionally moved slowly, attempting to create a situation in which she was the one dictating the course of the meeting, instead of submitting to the whims of her audience.

Fondalar was part of their group as well, Murbella noticed. The way the face Dancer that had accompanied her had managed to impersonate Sekil so well still troubled Murbella. Discussing these feelings with Bellonda earlier, they had agreed that there was nothing to suggest that Fondalar was a Face Dancer too - during subsequent debriefings she had supplied much valuable information on the Prometheans, and had passed all tests some of the more suspicious Proctors had deemed necessary to subject her to -, but still Murbella had thought it wise to keep an eye on her, moreso even than on the Honoured Matres of their group.

"Welcome all," Bellonda began. "I realise this new situation might present us with several problems - new patterns always manage to generate their own limitations. However, the essence of a Bene Gesserit is adaptability - this has allowed our Sisterhood to survive for many millennia. We will prevail."

A soft murmur rose from the crowd, but Bellonda gestured for silence. Her first words demonstrated subtlety and consideration of feelings was not what she had in mind this time.

"The Honoured Matres obviously failed to grasp the gravity of our collective predicament", she continued, drawing angered stares from Murbella and the handful of Honoured Matres that sympathised with the Bene Gesserit cause, and had come along to the sietch. "Not only do they not realise that the civil war they've instigated might mean the end of both factions - even if one were to emerge victorious, the resulting force would in all probability be unable to do anything against the Prometheans, who will most likely arrive within the next decade. Quite possibly sooner than that."

Murbella's reaction to Bellonda's borderline inflammatory words was confused. On the one hand her Bene Gesserit training told her Bellonda was correct, if perhaps lacking in diplomacy. Her Honoured Matre ego however, pure rage and arrogance having been forged into her personality by years of training, indoctrination and the ingestion of an aggression-stimulating Melange-substitute, made her want to kill the witch right then and there.

An Honoured Matre in the audience had apparently experienced similar emotions. She had risen from her seat, and was screaming at Bellonda: "You are a bigot, witch! I should kill you for what you said."

Bellonda did not seem to be impressed, and reacted calmly. "It is exactly this kind of behaviour that is causing so much trouble right now."

This did not appease the Honoured Matre, and it took a very angry glare from Murbella to make Bellonda apologise. In a way, seeing Bellonda swallowing her pride was amusing to her, despite the guilt this made her feel.

"I apologise. I was out of line," Bellonda managed to mumble.

The meeting continued, but Murbella's thoughts drifted elsewhere. Whatever diplomacy might dictate, there is no getting around the fact the problems we have to face are legion, she realised. The Bene Gesserit/Honoured Matre alliance cannot be allowed to dissolve, but whether or not that can actually be prevented might not depend on us so much as on dumb luck - our group is certainly skilled and a powerful force in and of itself, but also very small. Apart from that, the worms cannot be controlled: Sheeana and the secrets of Siaynoq are gone, and so is the one that was to control her. I imprinted him ... Would he have stayed if Lucilla's scheme to bind him to her had succeeded? Was I the weak link?

BOOK TWO - CHAPTER SIX

To know the Fremen is to understand the formation of their culture. The histories tell of their distant ancestors living on the paradise world of Poritrin, where they grew water-fat and soft. Imperial forces harvested the strongest and sent them to Salusa Secundus as slaves, thus starting the Zensunni migration. They struggled on that unforgiving planet for nine generations, until they staged a revolt against their cruel masters and traveled to Bela Tegeuse to free the Zensunni who had been sent there. Pursued by the vengeful Imperial forces, the Zensunni migrated to Ishia and then to Rossak, never eluding detection by their pursuers for more than a few decades. From Rossak they traveled to Harmonthep, their continued refusal to enter subservience increasingly infuriating to the Empire. The official sources claim Harmonthep was destroyed by the impact of an asteroid, the detection of this impending catastrophe forcing the Zensunni to migrate for the final time - to Arrakis -, but it is rumoured that the planet was destroyed by an Imperial weapon in an attempt to finally deal with the renegade Zensunni. Any evidence in favour of this latter claim does not exist, either because the claim itself is untrue, or because the evidence was carefully destroyed. Hardened by many generations of being scorned and pursued, the Zensunni adapted quickly to the inhospitable wastes of Arrakis, at first averting dehydration by carefully emulating the behaviour and water-management-processes of indigenous animals, but gradually developing a highly specialised industry unsurpassed in craftsmanship. Their ways of adapting to the harsh desert environment also bled into their demeanour: focused on their own tribe on a social level, their distrust towards outsiders imprinted into them during generations of being oppressed, and inwardly directed on a psychological level. This was compounded by an unconscious resonance with their environment nurturing a ferocity unequalled in the Empire, not even amongst the feared Sardaukar. On Arrakis, the Zensunni finally found autonomy and privacy, and in combination with the integration of the priceless Spice into their lives they truly became Fremen. The absence of freedom was traded for the absence of what most people would consider acceptable living conditions, forcing the Fremen to fall back on their own abilities in the most fundamental manner imaginable. It is here that we find the key to understanding the Fremen: pride. Pride in what they, as a people, had accomplished.

— from "The Roots Of Muad'Dib" by Harq al-Ada

Murbella realised the emergence of Ghanima and Jessica Atreides a few days ago needed to be investigated. They hadn't reappeared since that initial discussion, but the simple fact that she apparently had access to her Ancestral Memories now, albeit not at will, filled Murbella with both fear and elation. There was a slight possibility that certain personas in her Other Memory were playing tricks on her: they could be simulating the Kwisatz Haderach's mother and her granddaughter to either make Murbella understand something or to somehow harm her. Which of these possibilities applied here was as yet unclear - the margin of error in reconstructing personas from the distant past from barely stable configurations of synaptic weights was considerable, after all, making memories less accurate the older they were.

However, if she had in fact gained access to her Ancestral Memories, this marked an important new step in the evolution of the Bene Gesserit. A reliable representation or log of the memories, thoughts and visions of Paul Atreides could be extremely valuable to the Sisterhood. After all this time and all these speculations, even the foremost minds of the Bene Gesserit were still unable to construct a coherent picture of what exactly had gone wrong - in what way did the many causal chains meet during Paul Atreides' life on Arrakis and the subsequent reign of his son? That is, if causality was preserved at all.

Even the Bene Gesserit breeding records could not explain why Paul Atreides had turned out to be who he was. He had previously impossible abilities, most of which were unexpected, and had not been intended to emerge in him at all. In a way, he was the Kwisatz Haderach, but he was born a generation early. What had happened to activate his powers, instead of allowing them to remain dormant for another generation? What had made his seed so rich with potential, that the Tyrant could be born from it?

I need to find out, Murbella thought. For my own sanity, and the future of the Sisterhood - perhaps even the future of humanity.

She opened her mind up to the wisdom of the past, attempting to coerce one or more of the personas from her Other Memory to acknowledge her plea for help, to divulge their secrets. Instead of the appearance of a voice, as was most often the case, her mind was now filled with constellations of the stimulation of several different senses: images joined by smells, sounds and tactile sensations. She felt she had descended deeper than she ever had dared to go before.

She saw Bene Gesserit from the past, undergoing the ritual that would awaken their Other Memory. Many generations of Reverend Mothers passed her by, all of them mining the knowledge of their predecessors, and a fear pervading all of their minds: Abomination. She saw many deaths, intended to prevent the madness the acquisition of Other Memory sometimes led to, but there were many more than the handful the official reports spoke of.

A shift in the conglomerate of sensations showed her the past of the Honoured Matres: Bene Gesserit and Fish Speakers meeting each other in the Scattering, forging an unholy alliance that would cause so much death and suffering in so many places! Their ferocity was a defense-mechanism - the Prometheans were there from the very beginning, hunting them down with Futars and other, much more sinister ... things.

A strange sensation overcame Murbella. The mating of Bene Gesserit and Fish Speakers to form the Honoured Matres was not an accident, she realised. The Melange substitute that increased the Honoured Matres' speed and strength, but also made them irrational and aggressive! Someone made it with that express purpose in mind!

Leto!, she cried out. This all your fault! See what you have done!

Leto gave his life for you!, a voice said. Murbella recognised it as belonging to Ghanima.

I don't believe you, Murbella returned. Everything that worm has ever done has only brought more ruin and destruction to the universe. He was a megalomaniac who desired absolute power and eternal life.

Very well. I will show you the truth, Ghanima said.

Two children appeared in front of Murbella's mind's eye - a girl dressed in a Fremen stillsuit, and a boy, a long cloak barely hiding his sleek silvery skin. They were sitting on a ledge overlooking a great desert plain, the sun setting in the distance. Murbella realised she was watching Ghanima and Leto, not long after he had accepted his sandtrout skin. It seemed to Murbella as if she was right next to them, taking part in the conversation, until she realised she could not speak.

"Very few people understand the terrible transformation you've subjected yourself to," Ghanima told her brother. "Many interpret the fact you felt forced to choose this fate for yourself as the ultimate sign the Atreides dynasty has descended into madness. They think insanity is your weakness, and they will either disregard you on that basis, or use this as leverage in attempts to overthrow your rule. They misunderstand: your insanity is your strength, it is love that is your greatest weakness. The people will ridicule your loss of humanity and call it your greatest tragedy, but they fail to understand your tragedy is that you are more human than anyone who has ever lived."

Leto took his sister's hands, tears appearing in the corners of his eyes. The water trickled down across his cheeks, the cowl surrounding his face flinching every time a tear would touch it. Leto felt the pain, but did not stop crying.

Murbella dismissed the image, banned it from her mind. She descended deeper into Other Memory, still looking for answers that would satisfy her.

The dark place that Reverend Mothers feared to enter approached in the distance, the pandaemonium that would emerge to threaten everyone who had lived through the Spice Agony at one point ... Murbella broke out in panic and tried to move away, but the terrible darkness was upon her in an instant and swallowed her.

A voice greeted her there, the once-proud timbre broken by remorse, filled with grief. You have to believe me, the voice said. I only tried to mend what I had broken. I thought he could help.

Who could help?, Murbella managed to ask after a while, her fear having subsided.

The Count. He wanted to help me. He said he understood me, and that I was the only one who would understand him. I knew the Golden Path would have to be built, but I just ... I prayed for another possibility. I had seen what would happen on the Path. So terrible ...

Something else - a dark shape - appeared. Arrogance and evil given form, a fearsomely dangerous persona leading a revolt of the vast collecton of malignant personas present in Murbella's Other Memory. Odrade-within, who had been unable to stop Murbella's descent, didn't stand a chance against the overwhelming power of the invaders, Taraza and the other well-willing Bene Gesserit already having been defeated, and was quickly contained and left to wither away from disuse, as the least-used personas in Other Memory sometimes did.

I am an Atreides, I am an Atreides ..., Murbella kept telling herself, trying to ward off the evil that she felt was approaching.

Exactly, Murbella's new primary said.

Murbella emerged from her visions, and sat up in her bed, for a moment thinking that it had all been just a dream. Still shaken up from her harrowing experiences, she let herself fall back again, wishing to rest for a while before returning to her duties.

Still filled with nervous energy, Murbella unwittingly tapped the fingers of her right hand. Little finger twice, index finger thrice, ring finger twice, little finger once, ring finger twice, and then the whole sequence all over again.

BOOK TWO - CHAPTER SEVEN

The rule of the God-Emperor was nigh-absolute, dissolving the political tripod structure that characterised the Empire prior to the rise to prominence of House Atreides, greatly diminishing the power of the Guild. In its current distribution of controlling power, space travel continues to determine the structure of our existence as a society dependent on exchange of goods and services between different planets and planetary systems, the instruments that channel this influence being the limitations of the technology utilised. Ix, having gained nearly complete control of the market for sophisticated machine products during the God-Emperor's reign at the expense of Richese, will attain dominance in the power void the demise of the Guild creates because of two innovative developments: no-technology and transluminal navigation systems. A new political tripod will be formed: the Bene Gesserit with their mental training and the Bene Tleilax with their Spice-producing axolotl tanks will be balanced out by the new technological reign of Ix.

— from "Beyond The Tyrant", Vendalma of Ix

Murbella completed a complex sequence of kicks, full-body spins and punches, traversing the practice floor in the process. They had been living in the sietch for a week now, all of them preparing for the moment they would strike back at Donelid and her malcontents. A big miltary operation had been planned, communicating with Bene Gesserit operatives still amongst the Honoured Matres, and those in the sietch would be central to it all.

From the sidelines, Bellonda watched her Mother Superior practice, she herself having just finished her excercises - low-impact ones, since she preferred to let her mind and voice do the fighting rather than her body.

How odd it is that we still rely on the infantry, on hand-to-hand combat techniques to fight wars, Bellonda suddenly realised. In Paul Atreides' days this particular decision was born out of necessity, considering the ban on atomics as well as the destructive potential of the interaction of lasgun and Holtzmann shield - they couldn't fight effectively in any other way, especially on Arrakis, where the use of shields was unwise for yet another reason.

I guess I do understand the reason - after all these millennia, still the Butlerian Jihad manages to cast its shadow across the galaxy. The use of machines and other kinds of technological artifacts is frowned upon by many - to use an understatement - and the exploitation of natural abilities is stimulated. This of course is the essence of the Sisterhood's modus operandi, and the dedication of many lifetimes to unlocking the abilities and potentialities currently available to Bene Gesserit adepts has certainly enriched humanity, even if the greater part of it doesn't quite realise how much we sacrificed and continue to sacrifice to prepare a better future for everyone.

Murbella was now working her way through a sequence of leg excercises from an ancient martial arts technique. Bellonda continued to develop her current train of thought. Still, one might wonder why the Sisterhood continues to submit to those rules and regulations, explicit as well as implicit - of all people, we should understand the true value of any religiously inspired regimen. Religion is fabricated, and as such merely useful as long as its axioms continue to be coherent within a certain stable socio-cultural context, and its implementation continues to produce situations in which power is distributed in such a way that the entire system is permitted to develop and grow. The policies that emerged from the Butlerian Jihad have certainly served that particular purpose in the past, but I feel the time might have come for the Sisterhood to redefine some of our basic guidelines.

The Prometheus Manifesto, as pretentious and potentially dangerous as it is, does contain a number of rather astute observations. The Kwisatz Haderach program has indeed caused an awful lot of destruction, and it could be argued that it - as well as the Sisterhood's subsequent damage control measures, including the Second Scattering and the Duncan program - should be written off as a failure.

When you consider the way Ix tests the boundaries of the Jihad's prohibitions and the level of success they've attained doing this, while still managing to get away with it, perhaps the next step of human evolution does lie within the carefully controlled exploitation of the possibilities of technology. Human flesh has been pushed to its functional limits by the Bene Gesserit, the Tleilaxu and even the whores of the Honoured Matres - to gain a competitive edge, perhaps the Sisterhood should explore the regions as yet actively avoided by us. The resurrection of Clairby a decade ago proves both that the knowledge is present, at least in theoretical form, and that the Sisterhood isn't afraid to try such experiments when the circumstances demand it.

On the practice floor, Murbella had finished warming up, and demanded a sparring partner. She gestured for a young Bene Gesserit acolyte to approach her. Her name is Nejilwen, Bellonda recalled. She was an inexperienced fighter and no match for Murbella - who was widely regarded to be the best fighter of both Bene Gesserit and Honoured Matres - but equipped with an unusually sharp mind, and of vast potential value to the future of the Sisterhood.

Nejilwen approached the Mother Superior, quite obviously feeling out of her element, and struck a defensive stance. Murbella taunted her, jumping from one foot on the other, trying to get her to attack first.

What is she doing?, Bellonda thought. The fact she was an Honoured Matre once might explain some immature behaviour, but this is ridiculous. Is she really going to fight that poor girl?

She has changed lately, Bellonda realised. Over the last few days of practice sessions, her fighting style has changed: not quite as refined and graceful as before, and more than once relying on a rather ... charitative interpretation of the rules of hand-to-hand combat. Her physical appearance is changing as well. Despite a very parsimonious diet and increased excercise time, she appears to be putting on weight.

She's definitely less forgiving, almost cruel at times. Perhaps this is exactly what we need: for the coming month, several strikes have been planned, intended to weaken or eliminate strategic elements of the Honoured Matre organisation.

At that moment, Nejilwen charged, jumping up in the air, aiming her heel at Murbella's side. Murbella easily evaded this attack, and let her opponent land without touching her. Several other, similar attacks followed, Nejilwen hitting nothing and merely exhausting herself, Murbella smiling broadly thoughout it all.

She's toying with the girl!, Bellonda knew.

"I'm growing tired of this," Murbella said. "Let's finish the fight."

No one had suspected that Mother Superior had meant this in a literal sense: with a powerful jump and a virtuoso feint she was behind Nejilwen, and clamped her hands around the acolyte's head.

"A lesson!", Murbella exclaimed, and broke the young girl's neck with very little effort. She walked away, never once looking back at what she had done, showing no remorse.

BOOK TWO - CHAPTER EIGHT

An idea is never autonomous. One always needs to wonder: where did this come from? What concatenation of thoughts produced this insight? A proper understanding of cause and effect and mutual dependence structures of signifiers helps form the basis of Mentat abilities, and reflects the workings of the mind itself. Every idea is embedded in an ecological system that needs to be understood completely before even its tiniest element can be used to its fullest potential.

— from "The Wisdom Of Muad'Dib", by the Princess Irulan

Donelid wiped the blood from her right hand with a sleeve of the robe of the acolyte standing right next to her, gently rubbing the spot on her hand that would undoubtably turn into a bruise.

She addressed the acolyte. "What is your name, child?"

The girl, a young Honoured Matre as yet relatively untainted by Bene Gesserit indoctrination, stammered, unsure of how to carry herself in the presence of one of the most powerful of her kind. "Ah, I ... Mersil, Great Honoured Matre."

Donelid raised her thin eyebrows, genuinely surprised. "Great Honoured Matre, even? Well, I guess I am. Murbella certainly doesn't qualify any longer, does she?"

"No, Great Honoured Matre."

"Good." She gestured to the limp form on the floor, the lifeless remains of Xolud, who had dared challenge the leadership of Donelid mere minutes earlier. "Merlin, could you please get rid of that thing?"

"Mersil, Great Honoured Matre."

"What?"

"My name, its-"

"I don't care. Do as you are told." Donelid flexed her right hand, feeling the pain intensifying in it. This was the third one this week. I might have to start killing these foolish pretenders to the throne with my feet.

"Should we give Xolud the standard burial?", Mersil dared.

Donelid turned sharply, flecks of orange appearing in her eyes. "Traitors are not true Honoured Matres, and do not deserve to be treated as such! She dared defy me, which makes her a mindless animal, no better than cattle!"

A smile formed on Donelid's face. Cattle ... yes! It has been a long time since I did that last. "Take the body to Sherek in the kitchen - she'll know what to do." She counted the number of people sitting at the conference table. "Tell her I expect a meal for eight one hour from now."

She turned towards the other Honoured Matres in the conference room. "Think of it as a lesson".

After Mersil, carrying her cargo, had exited the room, she sat down at the head of the table, enjoying the startled expressions on the faces of those present. Tauntingly, she said: "Next?"

No one reacted - they all knew better than to challenge Donelid when she was in this mood.

"Good. I want to talk about the highly annoying Murbella and her troop of assorted freaks and half-wits. They've been gone for half a year, but it seems they've returned fom the grave. Their strikes have caused us much discomfort over the past month." Recalling the report she had been given earlier that day, Donelid recounted the damage that had been suffered at the rogues' hands. "They've destroyed five large windtraps and Central's solar power plant, contaminated the crops in three of the seven underground greenhouses, detonated our main armory and sabotaged my groundcar."

A suppressed chuckle was heard at the other side of the table. Very calmly, Donelid said: "Koshad, dear girl. You will die if you do that again."

Donelid continued. "Resistance of Bene Gesserit forces south of the desert continues, but here up north it seems everything is in Honoured Matre hands. Of course, there's also the matter of the 'Prometheans', as it seems they're called. Their Futars are certainly dangerous beasts, but we Honoured Matres have come a long way since they chased us across the galaxy. However repulsive the witches might be, they did manage to teach us many interesting things. In light of our recent advancements, I very much doubt the Prometheans will cause us much trouble."

All at the table nodded, either in agreement or out of fear - which possibility applied to which person wasn't clear, and Donelid didn't care.

"The Bene Gesserit in our custody present us with a bigger problem. They might be useful somehow, but I really wouldn't know what they could do for us. Should we just dispose of them?"

"No." Koshad rose from her seat, pointing a small gun at Donelid.

"A weapon?", the self-appointed Great Honoured Matre exclaimed, full of disbelief. "How did you get that thing past all the sensors?" Turning to her aide sitting to her right, she said: "Get me the head of whomever told me those sensors would help protect me!"

"Special alloy," Koshad said. "You wouldn't understand if I explained it to you." Koshad squeezed the trigger, the weapon unleashing a short but powerful burst of energy. Donelid tried to evade it, dropping sideways and towards the floor, but the blast hit her in the side, doing more than enough damage to be lethal.

"It seems I am the new Great Honoured Matre now," Koshad said dryly. All present in the room expressed their silent agreement.

Moraten, or rather the Face Dancer impersonating the Honoured Matre Moraten, observed these events with growing approval - amusement, even. The events were unfolding exactly as it - she, currently - intended. This is excellent - even better than we projected. I hope our other operatives are equally successful. The players are moving into position ...

BOOK TWO - CHAPTER NINE

Margot Fenring's reports about her husband confirm what earlier Bene Gesserit analyses already stated: the Count displays certain traits we seek in the Kwisatz Haderach, but his genetically caused physical inadequacy, apart from disqualifying him outright for that part of the program geared towards future generations, also manifested itself in a failure to achieve the proper mental balance necessary to survive the Agony. Instead of being able to function as a focal point, collecting multiple streams of thoughts and memories, forming a harmonious synthesis and distributing new streams over potential futures, his defect forced his personality inward, possibly the result of the activities of a coping mechanism fed by feelings of shame and failure. The case of Hasimir Fenring clearly shows that no matter how precise our breeding records are, the unpredictable influence of the activations of recessives forces us to incorporate a substantial margin of error in our calculations, and shows us it is imperative that we continue to develop parallel bloodlines.

— Bene Gesserit Analysis

"It appears everything is going as planned," Adros said.

"Yes." Aerope didn't betray any form of involvement with what they observed on their viewscreens. She had grown tired of the whole affair. She knew it would be over soon, and that gave her a small measure of strength.

"However, there do appear to be some problems down below," she continued.

"What do you mean?"

"Earlier today, there was a disturbance amongst some of the Netherdwellers. It appears they didn't understand the necessity of terminating the life of a genetic failure."

"There was another one?"

"Yes. I think we know whose genes are to blame, don't we?", she teased.

Adros laughed, not insulted by his wife's remark. "Blame the witches for that."

"Don't we always?", she said with a devious smile.

"Whatever the case may be," he said, attempting to bring the conversation back on track, "I trust the incident has been resolved?"

"Of course. Control educated them about the situation in the broadcast earlier this evening."

Adros pointed at a display with a long list of symbols, interspersed with several graphs. "The Net caught him again."

"But he evaded it - again."

"It took him here, didn't it? That was the intention. It will also help guide us to Chapter House."

"And you are sure he didn't figure out what was going on - who was watching him?"

"To him, we appeared as an old couple - a man and his wife."

"But he was a smart one - he accessed weapons specifications. Antique ones, but advanced compared to what he was used to nonetheless."

"I intended that to happen."

"Did you also intend those aliens to appear? They were a strange blend - Ix and Tleilax working together?"

"I didn't wish for that to happen, but realised deep inside that it had to."

"How did they find them?"

"They followed the no-ship."

"Don't you remember how difficult it was for us to figure out how to do that? I doubt that those primitives were capable of doing the same."

"The no-field wasn't complete - a barely detectable trace of tachyons was leaking from it. They traced that."

"And they probably knew that this leak existed."

"Of course. The Ixians built that no-ship. It's a safety measure - every one of their products has one for them to exploit as they see fit."

"But they captured only the Bashar - they let the others go free."

"The Bashar was all they needed."

"Why?"

"I'm not sure."

Adros did know at least part of the reason, but realised disclosing too much of his vision right now would jeopardise the proper unfolding of the events to come. I do not know everything - entering the deepest regions of my vision is simply too dangerous, and I dare not upset the delicate balance -, but I do know that currently everything is behaving as it should.

For almost my entire life, I have been preparing for what is now just around the corner. All those millennia ... and now it will finally come to an end. I could possibly truly end it, but that would mean relinquishing my responsibilities - failing to correct what my own mistakes threw into disarray. I cannot do that.

"Is Guldur aware of this?", Aerope asked.

"No."

Adros did not want to release his chain of thoughts just yet. Guldur ... He needs to be reinserted into his circles. He cannot be allowed to break free of the structure time itself dictates the way he's planning to.

Time ... What a strange thing it is. Not so much a property of something as it is an ordering principle, projected onto reality by more or less sentient beings - a mental construct whose properties were induced by the ability to remember and predict, mated to impressions and then abstracted from them again, and given independent existence within a theoretical framework born out of ignorance. Theoretically, it allows the existence of such atrocities as empty time, or infinitely expanded moments - the tunneling process that eventually resulted in the birth of the universe was not governed by time, instead creating it along with matter and force. Time is as dense as one would care to define it, but its direction is given: the experience of a single moment reveals the succession encapsulated within duration.

The motion of the allstream, the most fundamental level of reality underlying everything, is circular - I understand that now. He cannot be allowed to break the circle, but should remain trapped inside his double loop - perhaps eventually the loops will spiral upward, the quality of the events contained within them enhancing with each rotation. That is my goal.

"Guldur ...," Adros said, at last. "My greatest triumph, and my most destructive mistake."

"Haven't you traveled that road enough times already?", Aerope said, sounding slightly annoyed. "I know they exploited you, that you were merely flotsam on the waves of their plan, but aren't you now attempting to mend the damage that has been done?"

"Yes ..."

"Besides, apart from your own sins, it seems to me your choice of a mate caused the most problems," Aerope said, a mixture of hurt, anger and disappointment in her voice.

"You do know exactly how to hurt me the most," he said, memories of an earlier existence coming back to him.

But even more pain is caused by the knowledge I'm trapped within my own loop, Adros realised. The necessity of it all is most painful: time is circular, but history might not be. Despite the damage the Spice and the Golden Path caused, they need to be present in some form in each consecutive rotation to ensure the survival of the human race.

"What will happen to the ones still left on this planet?"

"You'll see. I think you'll be pleased."

His sleek, silvery left hand clasped her right hand tenderly, his blue-in-deepest-blue eyes gliding across the graceful curves of her face. "I really do love you, Aerope."

"But you could never love me quite as much as you loved her."

Sidestepping the issue that had come up many times in the past, he said: "You have sacrificed so much for our plan over the millennia. I don't think anyone else would have done that."

"You're avoiding having to say it again. I don't like it."

Adros once more pretended not to have heard her annoyed remark. "Soon I will be able to set you free. I will be able to grant you death."

Aerope's tone of voice changed drastically, shifting from angered to concerned. "But you won't die."

He released her hand and sat back, painful resignation in his voice. "No."

BOOK TWO - CHAPTER TEN

The backlash against thinking machines of the Butlerian Jihad forced humanity to find means of cognitive expansion not involving technological aid. The discovery of certain powerful awareness spectrum narcotics by members of an intentionally nameless female cult several centuries after the end of the Jihad prompted the formation of the Sisterhood, which endures to this day. Those narcotics, similar in effect to the Spice but considerably less potent, unlocked memories in those who ingested them that had been locked into the genetic code. The earliest Reverend Mothers worthy of the name were quite unprepared for the barrage of knowledge and memories unleashed by the drugs, and generally did not survive for very long. Borrowing heavily from ancient religious cults, strict rituals were integrated into the daily routine of the earliest members of the Sisterhood to tame the destructive powers of the Other Memories, but within centuries it became apparent this reliance on outside help shunted power away from the personal sphere of influence, substantially weakening the Sisterhood as a whole. One advantage of this strategy was that valuable time was bought in which to construct a training program to enable the proper use of Other Memories, many integral parts of that curriculum surviving to this day. The inital goal formulated at the inception of the Sisterhood, the education of mankind towards maturity, was given the necessary tools when Other Memory was brought under control, an achievement that also contributed significantly to the Kwisatz Haderach program. The exact machinations that enable Other Memory are unknown to this day, but valiant efforts have been made to formulate some semblance of an explanation. The most promising project suggests certain awareness spectrum narcotics enable the brain's neuronal structures to resonate along with pertinent dimensions of the perturbations of each person's local time stream, as well as vastly increasing the number of possible activation threshold configurations of individual neurons to increase the brain's storage capacity.

— Excerpt of a lecture on Other Memories for advanced Bene Gesserit acolytes

Under cover of night, the light of the stars obscured by a layer of clouds - the existence of which was an extremely rare occurence in these increasingly dry times on Chapter House -, a small group of Bene Gesserit approached the Central complex.

Hidden in the orchard just outside Central, very close to what used to be the Mother Superior's study, Murbella, Bellonda and a small group of other Bene Gesserit - amongst them Ghos, Sardiki, Fondalar, Arelmo and Oket - were waiting. Soon, an explosion at the other side of the complex would create the diversion they needed to carry out their mission.

Tonight, it will be all or nothing, Bellonda realised. If we want to be prepared for the arrival of the Prometheans, we need to retake and fortify Central - the knowledge and hardware stored in it is vital to our cause.

Bellonda knew that operations like this would always be dangerous, but they stood a very good chance of being victorious tonight. Koshad did us a great favour, eliminating Donelid. That one was dangerous! I hope that, once Koshad has been removed, most Honoured Matres will let themselves be convinced that a fission in our alliance is exactly what we don't need right now.

Every intelligence report I've gotten suggests Koshad rules because she strikes fear in the hearts of those whom she cannot convince, and truly inspires only those who can't even be trusted to dispose of their own excrements without supervision. Every promise that she has made concerning a new rise to greatness for the Honoured Matres has been a lie, and even amongst her most trusted allies her authority is being questioned more frequently every day.

Bellonda remembered the spy that had given them so much useful information, a young Reverend Mother named Kendra that had infiltrated the highest echelons of the Honoured Matre rebellion. This will be her victory. If she survives tonight, she will go on to great things.

She glanced over to Murbella, who was sitting next to her, unmovingly staring forward. Luckily, her nasty streak seems to have subsided somewhat.

"Nejilwen was an Honoured Matre agent," Murbella had claimed in a meeting in which several of the Proctors had demanded an explanation for the incident on the training floor. "I killed her in public instead of quietly because I needed to make a point."

Most of those present had appeared to accept that explanation - Murbella still was the Mother Superior, and her dedication to the Sisterhood had never been called into question. Bellonda suspected there might be something else going on, but decided to keep quiet about it for the sake of the missions they had been planning, which needed Murbella's strength, sharp mind and talent for inspiration.

The explosion made the ground beneath them tremble. In the distance, alarms could be heard and powerful lights flashed on. In the resulting confusion, Murbella and her group emerged from their hiding place and relatively effortlessly overwhelmed the two guards at Central's garden entrance.

They reached the conference room where Kendra had promised Koshad and her inner circle would be within minutes. Lasguns gave them a relatively unimpeded passage inside - the Honoured Matre predilection for short-range weapons such as feet and hands proved to be a definite disadvantage for them.

Once inside, Murbella appeared to go berserk, overwhelming the dangerous but decidedly overclassed Honoured Matre leaders, killing one after the other with lightning-fast kicks and punches and not hesitating to break the rules that governed Honoured Matre close-combat in favour of quick results.

While Murbella attacked Moraten with a series of quick hand-feet combinations, Fondalar and Oket reacted in unison, leveling their lasgun at their Mother Superior. Without hesitation Bellonda intervened, cutting off the outstretched arms of both with a bright lance of energy from her own lasrifle. As they lay there on the ground, in shock and bleeding to death, their muscles relaxed, revealing the suspicions about Fondalar had been correct: she had been a Face Dancer, as had Oket.

To what extent have we been infiltrated?, Bellonda despaired. Anyone could be a Face Dancer! Would that explain Murbella's behaviour?

Koshad immediately took advantage of the fact these thoughts distracted Bellonda and attacked her, breaking her neck with the first kick. Jumping over the dead body, she managed to reach a hidden door and escape the room. Shocked by the death of one of the very few people she had allowed to become her friend and consumed with rage, Murbella followed Koshad.

Murbella found Koshad in the communications room. She could not control her actions anymore, and almost immediately killed Koshad, a kick breaking the Great Honoured Matre's spine.

As she stood there, watching the life flow from her prey, Murbella realised what had happened in those few short minutes. Where did all that anger come from? This was beyond anything I have ever felt, even as an Honoured Matre!

Looking at Koshad, she saw the Face Dancer's real face appear. Another one! It's almost like a plague!

She didn't have time to ponder the consequences of this discovery, because another, more pressing matter attracted her attention. She ... it managed to send a message. The language in which the message had been composed was ancient, but Murbella's Other Memory allowed her to understand it. Islamiyat!

The message contained coordinates - those of Chapter House! -, and the recommendation to expedite the execution of Mabak Ghisharat.

An ominous feeling overcame Murbella. This message was sent to Tleilax.

BOOK TWO - CHAPTER ELEVEN

Learn this lesson well: Jessica Atreides, the mother of Muad'Dib, succumbed to her greatest weakness and allowed love to guide her actions. Love contaminates the ability to apply rational principles, forcing the subject to time and time again combat the result of animalistic actions rather than allowing reason to manifest its purest essence. Love has its uses within clearly defined parameters - to promote procreation and education of offspring - but only to those not competent enough to realise how this evolutionary mechanism reduces autonomy: an understanding of the true essence of love removes its necessity. The events of the past millennia have demonstrated irrefutably how even a single moment of blind loyalty to love can result in disaster.

— Bene Gesserit Analysis

Standing near the entrance to the sietch, concealed from view by an outcropping of rock, Murbella watched the sky grow fiery yellow and red, and slowly darker as night fell. Despite the recent Bene Gesserit victory on the Honoured Matre malcontents, and though she really didn't have any definite information to base this on, she suspected there would be even darker skies in the very near future.

After Koshad had been killed, it really hadn't taken the Bene Gesserit forces much effort to eradicate the rebellion - it turned out many Honoured Matres would much rather continue to immerse themselves in the knowledge of the Sisterhood rather than go back to the barbaric ways of the past. At least in that respect the alliance of the two forces as Taraza had intended it had been a success, although the reason for the docility displayed by the Honoured Matres loyal to their new allies might not be because they truly desired to fit in, but rather because they understood absorbing the knowledge would make them stronger themselves.

Advisers had convinced Murbella that it was safer to return to the sietch - a small number of Honoured Matres still loyal to Donelid had started a guerilla war against the Sisterhood. It was only a matter of time before they would be apprehended or killed, but their activities endangered the life of the Mother Superior.

And now that this fire has been extinguished - for the moment, because there is still a lot of veiled animosity between the two factions -, a new problem could present itself: the Prometheans might come, Murbella realised. And what is Tleilax planning?

As if the idea itself was magnetic, attracting Murbella's thoughts time and time again, thinking of Tleilax made her consider gholas, which in turn compelled her to remember Duncan Idaho.

Every time I let my guard down, he is there again. What is that hold that he has on me?

She tried to remember him: his good looks, boyish smile and unruly black hair. She saw another Duncan, one who she had never seen before: a young boy, no more than eight years old. She hadn't met Duncan until he was much older, but still she knew that who she saw was her love as a young boy. He was running through the woods, and very afraid. Grown men with lasguns were chasing him! In a way she couldn't explain, it gave her pleasure thinking of Duncan like this.

Other thoughts populated her mind then, and she forgot this strange experience. She once more returned to love, and the way she had experienced this most important of emotional constellations throughout her life. The wanderings of Murbella's mind halted at what she knew of Jessica Atreides, the classic case of a Bene Gesserit who had succumbed to the temptations of the flesh - love -, and had caused tremendous problems because of what she had done under the influence of her hormones. All Bene Gesserit were required to study her life and her writings, in order to learn how to avoid making similar mistakes.

While Murbella was studying in the library at Central late one night, she had come across a transcription of a poem the Kwisatz Haderach's mother had once written - an elegy concerning the death of her daughter, the Abomination, Saint Alia-Of-The-Knife. Murbella remembered that poem:

This holiest flesh

Beauty still in life's end

How far my love has fallen

So many voices

Crowding so young a mind

Their words carried diseases

Death will cleanse her water

Return it to her tribe

But memories remain

Her ghost still clings

My eyes still drink

Her voice still carried on the wind

My carelessness caused

Her suffering forced

Conscience into grief.

Despite her conversion back to Bene Gesserit ways later in her life, she still maintained emotional ties to her offspring that were of considerable magnitude.

It pains me to say this, as Bene Gesserit Mother Superior, but I understand how she must have felt, Murbella realised. After all this time, Duncan's face and touch and voice still haunt my thoughts. I can't forget him - time nor willpower have proven able to do so. Where are you, my love? Now is when I need you most. The uncertainty is what wounds me most - are you still alive, or have you fallen prey to whatever predators lurk in the shadows outside our sphere of influence?

**********

Deep inside the Bene Gesserit sietch, a computer console flashed to life. Machines like this had been forbidden by the Jihad, but Odrade had considered it necessary to equip the sietch with one to process the data collected by the many sensors placed at strategic locations all over and in orbit around the planet of Chapter House.

It relayed information from the no-satellites that formed a protective belt around the planet - they carried weapons to repel any attack from outer space, and helped hide the planet from long-range scanners and prescient searchers wanting to find the central hub of the Sisterhood. The console reported a growing number of no-satellites were disappearing - either contact with these satellites was lost because of a technical failure, or the satellites themselves had been destroyed.

Concealed from all but a few sensors, a no-ship was descending towards the planet, carrying the object of Murbella's affection, a Tleilaxu Master, a number of gholas, a small sandworm and five axolotl-tanks.

In a few short moments, the assault on Chapter House would begin.

INTERLUDE TWO - THE PATH

My distant ancestors were cursed by the gods. I am now the God-Emperor, and I have neither the intention nor the desire to lift that curse. History is a roughly circular motion of unfixed velocity of the now across a set of logically allowable processes, and this shows itself quite clearly in the past of the Atreides. Tantalos offered the flesh of his own son as a meal to the gods, Atreus forced his enemy Thyestes to eat his own children and Agamemnon was prepared to sacrifice his own daughter. The actions of my grandmother, the Lady Jessica, and my father, Muad'Dib, are not that dissimilar to those of our ancestors. I too am a cannibal, and all the travelers on the Golden Path are my children.

— Leto II, the God-Emperor. From The Stolen Journals

Moneo was thrust into the darkness and unto the rock floor by two strong Fish Speaker guards. They threw something after him, and closed the door.

It took a while for Moneo's eyes to adapt to the darkness. He slowly rose, feeling the bruises on his arms where the Fish Speakers had held him, and looked around. The cavern was very dimly lit, the light of a glowglobe around a corner ahead of him spilling into the space he was currently in.

Next to him lay a bag of soft brown leather - the object that had been thrown in after him. He opened it carefully, and found a small supply of food - a few pieces of dried, spiced meat wrapped in the leathery leaves of a plant, a piece of fruit, the moisture in which would keep him alive for a short period, some bread - and a small bottle of a deep blue liquid.

"Welcome", a voice said.

"What?", Moneo asked, his eyes still adjusting to the relative darkness. "Who is that?"

"I think you know," the voice said again.

Moneo had trouble determining whether he heard the voice with his ears or with his mind - his disoriented state prevented him from making an accurate distinction between the two. However, he did recognise the voice - he had studied records of the Worm's speeches often enough to know what he sounded like. "Leto?"

"Very good."

"Where are you?"

"I can't tell you that. You're going to have to find your way to me yourself." Leto paused. "I must warn you that your voyage won't be an easy one: I'm still quite far from you in many ways. I'm using thought-projection to speak to you right now."

"Thought-projection?"

"I use it sparingly - it's rather tiring."

"Why am I here?"

"I need you to serve me."

"Serve you?", Moneo said, his voice pregnant with contempt. "Now I'm quite certain that at least one of us has gone insane, because I thought that over the years it has become rather clear that I hate you, and would sooner see you dead than breathe the same air as you."

"I'm afraid you don't have much of a choice in the matter."

"I see. You're talking to me in my mind, and now you're going to control my thoughts as well?"

"I could, but I won't. You will reach this decision of your volition."

"Of course," Moneo said mockingly. "How do you read minds?"

"I have developed the ability to sense subliminal signals transmitted by members of more recent generations of key bloodlines. I have also developed a device capable of transmitting such signals to individuals properly outfitted to receive such data - such as you."

"That's in direct violation of the rules of the Butlerian Jihad!"

"I won't deny it. However, there's something else we need to talk about. I notice you haven't started walking yet. If you stay here you will die."

Moneo rose, realising playing along with the Worm's game for a while wouldn't do any harm, and started walking. Each passage or corridor revealed another passage at its end - small, dim glowglobes attached to the walls at regular intervals illuminated Moneo's path. "This is a maze! Where am I supposed to be going?"

"I told you - you need to find me."

"And what will happen once I do - will you kill me?"

"No. You will most likely kill yourself - in a manner of speaking."

"I can assure you that will not happen. What's in the bag your slaves gave me?"

"A choice."

"Don't give me riddles! What's in the bottle?"

"It contains a small amount of Spice Essence."

"That's a poison!"

"Of course it is. That is why I would like to urge you to choose wisely."

"You poisoned the food as well." It was not a question.

"Perhaps, perhaps not. Perhaps the food itself is the poison: taking it will deny you your birthright."

"What do you mean?"

"You are an Atreides - you are my family. You're capable of seeing what I have seen, of understanding why I do what I do."

"I don't think I could ever understand the tyranny, the cruelty you've subjected so many people to."

"Don't worry, you will outgrow your ignorance."

Moneo started laughing. "You are so disgustingly arrogant it's amusing. You are your own parody."

Leto continued as if he hadn't heard Moneo's intended insult. "The choice you need to make is an important one - all decisions affect the motion of the allstream, yours more than those of most others."

Here, Leto had touched upon an area of great interest to Moneo. "The allstream ... I've read about that theory."

"Of course. I wrote the dissertation, and made sure you got to see it."

Moneo was too mesmerised with what he could remember of the theory that he failed to remark on the implications of Leto's claim. "Does your mental link function on that principle?"

"Very good!"

"How does it work? How do you influence the allstream?"

"You certainly are inquisitive, young Moneo. Are you sure you're not going to use what I say to you to somehow bring about my downfall?"

"I'm interested in the theory, that is all."

Leto chuckled. "You're a terrible liar - but that's one of the reasons I chose you to be my servant."

"I will never be your servant!"

"We'll see. In the mean time, I will tell you what you want to know - you need to understand." After a short pause, in which Moneo descended down a very steep slope into a larger tunnel, Leto continued. "I've developed a specific mode of cogitation only I am capable of - an intense cooperation of many of the personas present in me - which allows me to create certain interference patterns in the substratum of reality on the sub-quantum level.

These mental acts require extremely precise calculations - I've constructed appropriate algorithms based on old Mentat theories. This way I'm able to influence the motion of superstrings, the vibrations and energy transformations of which consitute space-time. My influence is holistic: I manipulate processes based on a profound understanding of the motions of the most basic elements that form our reality - I understand the way the parts relate to the whole and the whole relates to the parts."

"You've adapted Palimbasha's theories," Moneo noted with a mixture of amazement and admiration in his voice. "What is your intent with all this?"

"My ultimate goal - and you may take notes at this point if you want to - is to become one with the universe: my own mind will provide the laws that govern all of reality."

"Is this somehow linked to your prescience?"

"Wonderful! The intelligence operatives of your organisation have been quite effective, I see. I may have to draft them into my service as well." Leto revealed a certain measure of pride in his voice while he said this. A father's pride, he remarked to himself. I guess I do think of them as my children, in a way. "Indeed, prescience the way my father and myself inherited it works in a similar way, but the effective range is quite different. Prescience influences large underlying developments in an almost subliminal way, while the localised, specific control of macroreality I'm breeding into the Duncans is much more subtle."

"Duncan Idaho? What does he have to do with anything?"

"One of the Duncans will some day develop a similar ability - I will have need of his help then. His control is akin to the way many scientists understand reality - that is, in a mechanical way: they don't understand the way the forces do their work, but they do know what one needs to do in order to stimulate a system to respond in a particular way."

"But the Duncan's are gholas, bred from the body of a normal man. The original Duncan didn't have this ability, did he?"

"No, but whe I first ordered a Duncan ghola I understood the potential of certain recessive genes of his - their potential development simply needed to be expedited somehow. A few centuries later I had my agents infiltrate Tleilax and destroy the cells of the original Duncan they had in their possession, and sold them a batch of cells I had modified to my own specifications."

"Couldn't they tell?"

"Perhaps they did, perhaps they didn't - it doesn't matter. I told them I extracted the cells from a carefully preserved possession of the original Duncan, and they at least gave the impression they believed that."

"You said you 'modified' the Duncan-cells in your possession - do you have an axolotl tank?"

"Yes."

"How is that possible? Very little is know about the Tleilaxu, and they're extremely secretive about their technology."

"You continue to amaze me with your knowledge! I am certain you will make an excellent servant. To answer your question: Intelligence reports, combined with the knowledge of many of the finest scientists of all time told me all I needed to know."

"The finest scientists of all time" Oh yes, your memories." Moneo stopped walking for a moment. "Why wouldn't you simply use your own axolotl tank to make the Duncans?"

"This would upset the balance in my empire. If the Tleilaxu learnt I had an axolotltank, they would undoubtably launch a war against me, which would force me to eradicate them. This would be most unfortunate, since I still have need of them - or rather, what they will become in the future and what they will produce at one point."

"Why do you do these things?"

"It is the one way left for me to develop further. I understand all of history intimately, and I've explored philosophy, science and art to the boundaries of those realms. I need to feel what lies beyond this life."

"And you think you can force that to happen?"

"My mind is a multitude forged into a singularity. I have tamed the many and forced them to merge into one. All of reality will eventually spiral into my well of gravity. I will become one. Plotinus was correct."

"Plotinus?"

"You don't know him. I'll tell you about him one day."

"Why would you be so candid with me? You do realise I can and will use this information against you."

"I need you to understand what it is like to be me."

"Trust me, I have no desire to find out. I know all I need to know already."

"I doubt that. You should want to get to know me - I know what it is like to be you, for instance."

"Do you?"

"Certainly. I understand everyone intimately."

"That's quite impossible. Each person operates under a uniquely configured set of axioms that acts as the foundation of one's opinions about the composition and behaviour of reality - there's a fundamental paradigm gap between the way of thinking of one person and that of the next."

"This is true, to some extent. However, the spectrum of such theoretical bases available to people of normal intellect is much more limited than is often assumed - it is possible to understand someone else's thoughts on even the most fundamental level. You're also forgetting that I am not one, but billions of minds. I am quite sure the full range of potential categories of worldviews is represented by these, and my unique perspective as lord and ruler of all those voices gives me the power to transcend all the various ways of understanding, seeing reality in ways that have never been even imagined or suspected before, and will never be after my death again," Leto lectured.

Moneo was rather offended by the hint of pleasure in the Worm's voice as he was explaining his views - apparently the megalomaniac enjoyed correcting others, thus assuming the dominant position in the verbal exchange - but he considered another element of what had just been to be more important.

"Your death?"

"Of course. Nothing lasts forever."

"I thought your Golden Path would?"

"Mere propaganda. I thought you of all people would be smart enough to understand that."

How odd it is that he reveals these things to me, Moneo thought. Could these simply be more lies? He decided to address the issue. "Why do you trust me? I want to see you dead."

"I have ways of making you see things my way."

"Is that a threat?"

"Yes. But it is also a privilege."

"We're digressing. You said you understand me. Prove it."

"'I give my life in dedication to the greater glory of God'. During your childhood, you spoke these words quite often. Isn't this so?"

"Yes. It was part of a prayer my mother taught me."

"The time has come to make good on your promise. What would you offer your God?"

"You're not a god!"

"I've assumed the task of a God."

"Who gave you that right?"

"What I do, my Golden Path - this is not something I wanted or asked for. It is something that I realised needed to be done, and I was the only one capable of doing it. I can make you see if you want to."

"How?"

"Make the choice."

"What choice? Earlier you said I didn't have a choice."

"Only in complete freedom can categorical laws exist. The possibility to use reason dissolves all choices and leaves only one path open, giving you a truly free choice."

"That doesn't really help me. What choice do you mean?"

There was no answer.

"What choice, you despicable worm?", Moneo screamed. "You throw me into a cave with nothing but poison, spout your propaganda and then leave me to die. How will I survive in this maze? This food will last me only a few days, and -"

Moneo looked down to the bag in his hands, opened it and considered its contents, a realisation of what it was Leto wanted from him forming in his mind. 'You are an Atreides', the Worm said, 'You are my family'. The Oral History explains in detail how certain Atreides have experienced illuminating visions under the influence of the Spice Essence - could he intend me to take it?

No! Ingesting this liquid could kill me, and that is what he wants. I will not do it! But ... I've been at his mercy all this time - he has had ample opportunity to kill me. He repeatedly stated he wants me to be his servant, and I don't think he was being untruthful when he said that. He has need of me somehow, and the Spice Essence will help me see whatever it is he wants me to see.

Moneo removed the stopper from the small vial, and let a tiny drop of the blue liquid flow onto his left index finger. He moved the finger up to his mouth, but stopped just short of licking off the drop, holding it up in front of his eyes instead. If I swallow this, that might mean the end. But oh, the curiosity!

Moneo forced himself to make a decision: he ingested the Spice Essence. He felt the drop burning in his throat, trickling down into his stomach. Suddenly he felt a powerful pain flashing through his entire body, causing him to collapse onto the hard rock floor.

Many differently coloured shapes invaded his mind, inducing a sensation of vertigo in him. The images - because that's what he thought they had to be - grew progressively sharper.

Dirty, disease-ridden, malnourished humans huddling together in dark basements, fear grossly distorting their faces.

Human soldiers, fighting valiantly but being killed by the dozens / hundreds / thousands / millions / too many to count!

Machines!

A path of gold that leads away from this armageddon.

The sacrifices: being dehumanised by accepting symbiosis with the sandtrout.

The Worm's - Leto's - death! His mind divided into many parts, each of them submerged in an eternal slumber.

The water: powerful streams thrusting the clear liquid everywhere, washing all the filth away but bringing with it death and destruction as well.

Violent women, more dangerous than the Bene Gesserit, spreading their detestable rule.

An even greater danger beyond that ...

Moneo awoke in a gigantic hold, dimly lit by floating glowglobes. He couldn't see the ceiling or any of the sides, but, turning around, he spotted many large storage bins and enormous piles of a blue substance. The smell of cinnamon was thick in the air.

"Welcome back."

Moneo spun around to face the direction from which the voice had come, and saw a large shape gliding into the light. On a floating platform lay the God-Emperor himself, his gross, segmented worm-body strangely discordant with the intensely human face staring at Moneo with friendly eyes.

Moneo tried to speak, but noticed his mouth was extremely dry. "I have arranged that some nourishment be brought for you," Leto said, pointing at a flask of water and a few pieces of fruit to Moneo's right. "You've been in trance for five days. Did you find what you were looking for?"

Moneo drank and ate, looking at Leto, suspicions haunting his thoughts. "You're a worm," he said after a while, "and in my hand I have a flask of water. In my vision, I have seen what water does to worms. I could kill you."

Leto laughed loudly, the sound reverberating against the distant walls. "You're still rebellious, after all you've seen? And even if you would decide to carry out your threat you might hurt me somewhat, but kill me? I don't think so."

"Where are we?"

"This is the place where my grandmother and my aunt each found their awareness, and where my father started his empire. This is the place where my spice hoard is stored."

"This is all Melange?", Moneo said, indicating various bins to his right.

"Yes. What you see here is valuable enough to buy a million planets. But -," Leto inserted a pause for effect, "- we have business to attend to. With what you know now, I must ask you again: what would you offer your God? What would you give up if your life were not enough?"

"What more could I give? My life is the most valuable thing I have! I can't surrender any more to you."

"What is your life when you hold back the greater gift?", Leto shouted. "You have seen what I have done, and what I have yet to do. How can you do any less?"

"I am but a man, and you are ... you are more than that." Moneo was close to tears. "I just wish I could do what you want me to do."

Leto moved his cart closer, bowed down and looked Moneo straight in the eyes. "I look at you now and if I could shed tears, I would. Consider the wish to be the act!"

He speaks the truth, Moneo realised. He understood now. "Leto - Lord Leto ... I will serve you."

JUNCTION

I could not fulfill the purpose projected onto me through my descent - I realised this soon. My physical inadequacy prevented the execution of the plan the Sisterhood intended me to be a part of on two different levels: the physical and the mental level. I couldn't give the Sisterhood my offspring, and while I was and still am the central node in a structure of many outward relations, I realise I'm unable to form a similar structure on the mental plane like the Sisterhood intended me to. However, one ability the Sisterhood might have hoped for has indeed manifested itself in me, and in her reports to her Sisters about me, my wife deliberately kept this from them. We both realised the part this faculty would need to play in the future.

— Count Hasimir Fenring, in conversation with Adros

Slowly the static retreats, moving coloured patches growing sharper.

A sphere of yellowish brown - a planet - softly slides into focus.

Smaller objects, darker, form its army of cosmic companions.

More of them are winking into existence every second.

Still, all is silent.

Fifteen centuries they've lived there - black-clad widows at the center of their web.

The web's strands led to all parts of everything, wrapping around each cornerstone.

"One thousand five hundred years is a long time", they sometimes said to themselves.

"For our own safety it might be best to go somewhere else."

Now it's too late.

Strange music swells as the planet's surface grows nearer.

An odd composition of sounds corresponding to the movements of this world.

Sound makes experiencing death so much more cruel.

Only the worms can hear the arrival of the end.

They cannot scream.

He led them to this planet - the wisdom of a hundred lifetimes could not prevent this.

Overwhelming love and the Dreamer's subtle strength helped destiny unfold.

Now, unseen by normal eyes, he floats down to the sand.

This desert is a faint reflection of where he gave his first life.

Will he now give his last?

The ones of many faces assemble, their gambit almost ended.

Adros dreads what will transpire here, but knows it must.

The players are moving into their predestined positions.

Many developments are nearing their point of convergence.

Will there be a family reunion?

Inside his hiding place, the Dreamer senses the approaching danger.

His is another plan that is nearing completion.

His father, his priestess's son - a vessel for his mind.

His servant of many incarnations - a tool for his aspirations.

He knows he will not fail.

The witches have fled back to their place of assembly in time of danger.

The head of the whores has been crushed under their heel.

The remnants of the body are engaging the new threat.

Their blinding speed of sinew and muscle has helped bring down empires.

It is not enough.

Heretics of the Jihad, merging man and machine.

And many amongst them have followed the path of the Tyrant.

The worms of the sand heed their call.

Shai-Hulud synchronized with choreographed destruction.

The desert stains red.

BOOK THREE

THE DARK

BOOK THREE - CHAPTER ONE

With the proper guidance from within, averting the liberating but highly dangerous lack of responsibilities Abomination offers is possible - the Bene Gesserit know this, and purposefully bred for the ability to utilise this knowledge in their breeding program. However, they failed to realise what horrors the ascent out of Abomination would unlock.

— Leto II, the God Emperor. From The Stolen Journals

The no-ship had set down on a patch of rock surrounded by high stone walls, a secluded spot located not far from the Bene Gesserit sietch. Inside, Idaho and Scytale followed the battle, information being delivered to them periodically by small spy drones cloaked by the effects of tiny no-generators. The semi-sentient central processor of each drone constituted a direct violation of the edicts of the Butlerian Jihad, but the Ixians who had constructed the no-ship and its complement of training droids, mood-sensitive furniture and spy drones apparently hadn't cared about these restrictions. Less conceptually offensive methods of reconaissance were much more dangerous than the current method, Idaho realised: using the no-ship's scanners could give away their position, because the active sensor signals could be intercepted, and to outside observers passive data intake by the no-ship would create anomalies in radiation fields that would indicate the presence of a no-ship.

Idaho and Scytale observed how both Honoured Matre and Bene Gesserit troops were being decimated, despite the fact these consisted of some of the most powerful fighters of the Old Empire. Up until a few hours earlier, both factions had been involved in a furious civil war, the Bene Gesserit superior in numbers but lacking the beastlike ferocity the Honoured Matres were capable of displaying - neither side had had the clear upper hand. Currently it seemed the animosity between the groups had been suspended, their aggression instead focused on the common threat. Still, both Bene Gesserit and Honoured Matres preferred to fight amongst their own kind, apparently not trusting the other half of their alliance with their life yet.

The first invader craft to set down on the planet had been relatively small, but their appearance - dark as night, sleek and outfitted with many powerful, lasgun-like weapons - induced fear in the hearts and minds of all Honoured Matres and Bene Gesserit. There were thousands of them, landing at strategic places all across the planet, clearing a perimeter with their on-board weapons, allowing the troopers to disembark. They were humanoid in appearance, but demonstrated extraordinary strength, speed and agility, outclassing even the most accomplished Honoured Matre fighters. Being shot with maula pistols didn't stop their advance, their wounds healing within minutes, and many a defender paid for this knowledge with her life.

It wasn't until after the first of them had been killed by a Bene Gesserit acolyte carrying a heavy lasgun that the cause of their apparently superhuman abilities became apparent - they were in fact not human, or at least not completely: the troopers had been enhanced with mechanical implants and additions.

Witnessing the carnage, seeing how the defenders continued to rise up against the Prometheans but were destined to lose time and time again, Duncan was reminded of a song Gurney Halleck had written once:

Through shrouds of mist

Seas rising high

And darkly scented waters

My eyes tear down

This wall of clouds

The sounds of swords intruding.

Serpents lashing at our flesh

Our shields will not be broken

Spectres soaring all around

Will sanity surrender?

Venom burning in our veins

Blade sinking into the heart

Demon god whose will directs

Do our lives yield to nightmares?

After the Honoured Matre and Bene Gesserit forces had been weakened by the first assault wave, a second group of nightmares appeared: incredibly fast and agile beasts burst from the ships, dodging lasgun blasts with ease and actively chasing the defenders, killing them with claws and flesh-tearing teeth. The sight of these Futars - genetically engineered hybrids of man and feline - made some of the Honoured Matres run away in terror: they had been pursued by these beasts before.

Advancing behind the Futars were the beasts' Handlers: much less fearsome in appearance, but possessing much greater physical power than their size would suggest, and carrying weapons that immediately and without exception turned any successfully hit sentient target into a mental vegetable. Within minutes, the battlefields were littered with Honoured Matre and Bene Gesserit soldiers unable to move or even think, just barely hanging on to life without being aware of anything around them.

The defenders retreated to fortified positions, and managed to fight most of the invaders to a standstill with heavy lasgun blasts. Suddenly, the Prometheans' infantry retreated, the small landing ships taking off again and setting down beyond the reach of the defenders' weapons, leaving only a few Futars and their Handlers behind to finish up. The first of the Honoured Matres emerged from their hiding places, wondering if they had perhaps won, and prepared to turn on the Prometheans that had stayed behind.

Their advance hadn't yet gotten underway, when new landing ships appeared in the sky, much larger ones than the first wave. For a while, everything was silent: the ships did not open to release more troopers. Suddenly, manny bigger and smaller tremors shook the ground - sandworms were coming in from the desert, and entering the relatively moisture-rich areas surrounding Central, not deterred by the water barriers which usually kept them at a distance. Like demons unleashed, fueled by the intense pain of the moisture burning through their skin, the worms attacked the armoured groundcars and grounded ornithopters, broke through thick stone walls and destroyed plasteel bunkers even a heavy lasgun would not penetrate. The worms were dying, killing themselves in their mindless fury, but the damage they wrought was extreme.

The ship's hatches opened, and what looked like tanks emerged: black blocks of superdense alloy on treads, bristling with weapons. Once on the sand, the treads retracted and the armour opened, part of each structure revealing a human shape. Duncan Idaho, having seen a similar being throughout many of his hundreds of ghola lifetimes, realised almost immediately what these troopers were.

They've merged with the sandtrout!, he tried to explain to himself, not quite believing what he was seeing. They accepted the transformation Leto underwent, and moved beyond that, becoming cyborgs as well! Remembering the destruction Leto had been capable of, Idaho realised any hopes the defenders might have had to win this battle would now completely vaporise.

Seeing these beings, Idaho was overwhelmed by a barrage of sensations, the pain and suffering of the many lifetimes as a servant of the God-Emperor returning to him all at once. He felt himself being crushed by that gross body over and over, and briefly realised that he was being crushed again, mentally this time, the Tyrant having come back from beyond the grave to once more take hold of him. For a moment, his rebellious nature appeared to overpower the influence the worm had over him, but soon after the ignorance returned, making him forget his

lack of freedom once more.

Idaho heard an ear-piercing shriek right next to him. Scytale, having returned from the axolotl-tanks which demanded his attention so often now that the new gholas were almost ready to be born, recoiled in terror from the image of thousands of cyborg-versions of his Prophet causing death and destruction on a grand scale. He fell to the floor, hugging his knees, whispering something in a language Idaho did not recognise over and over.

Madness, Idaho thought. How easy it would be to retreat to that world without logic, and release all responsibilities! To be able to design your own universe, not bothering with consistency - to push subjectivity, the only viable world-view in this non-absolute universe, beyond all rational constraints! My own Abomination awaits!

BOOK THREE - CHAPTER TWO

In my youth I succumbed to love, and I understand the dangers I created for the Sisterhood. However, my actions have not caused irrepaireable damage - the preparations I've made for the future of my grandson will ensure that. Despite what many Sisters believe, love does not destroy indiscriminately. Subservience to an emotion might not diminish once you understand the relation of dependence you are trapped in, if that particular relationship - or the propensity to it - makes you stronger. The love I still feel for my Duke makes me stronger.

— Reverend Mother Jessica Atreides

Murbella!

The latest video material delivered by the spy drones showed Duncan images of the Mother Superior struggling to get away from a Futar, the loose sand impeding her escape. She had killed three of the man-cat hybrids already, but exhaustion was taking its toll on her now.

Without hesitation Idaho exited the no-ship, his desire to save her greater than his concern for his own safety. She was quite close to the ship and was attempting to reach the Bene Gesserit sietch.

She sank away up to her knees in a small dust basin, the material in it having the consistency of water, and fell forward onto the sand. The Futar halted, savoring what it thought would be the final moments of the chase. Further back, the beast's Handler was looking on with a satisfed smirk on his face.

Turning around, Murbella saw the Futar coming closer, and this sight filled her with intense fear. She had been pursued by one of these beasts once before, and had barely escaped with her life. Her patrol's mission had been to secure the base of a group of rebels on a world rich in valuable ore, but instead of the easy victory they had imagined, they found themselves caught in an ambush, Futars suddenly attacking them from all sides. Murbella had been the only one to get away.

Fear of the ferocious animals grew wild amongst Honoured Matre ranks, every battle proving that despite their immense speed and strength, not even the best Honoured Matre fighters were a match for the claws and teeth of the Futars.

Fully expecting to die at that moment, Murbella was rather surprised to see the Futar suddenly sink away into the sand, disappearing entirely, and a large moving dune covering the Handler. Strong hands grabbed her from behind, and she whirled around, ready to combat whatever threat this would turn out to be.

"Murbella, my love," a familiar voice said.

**********

Under cover of a hail of sand Duncan saw fit to generate, he and Murbella managed to find their way to the Bene Gesserit sietch. Stunned by the fear she had experienced in battle, as well as the sudden reapperance of the man she had not seen in such a long time, she failed to wonder about the strange powers Duncan displayed.

Duncan sat down next to Murbella, took her hands in his and wordlessly requested intimate eye-contact. She seemed distracted and somewhat unwilling to share such a moment with him right now, requiring some time to meet his gaze.

"Murbella, I love you," he said softly. "I realise now that what we had - what we have - transcends the purely physical dependency of our mutual imprinting. I left Chapter House to safeguard the future of the Sisterhood, and coming back here now is not a course of action I actively chose, but I am extremely happy to be here, and see you again."

Murbella turned away, her posture containing the slightest hint of revulsion. "I ... I missed you too."

Duncan failed to notice what Murbella's body language transmitted. "You cannot imagine how terrible our months apart have been for me."

Murbella's facial expression underwent a radical change, angry contortions Duncan had never seen before. "Months? I suffered for three years before I was finally able to not think of you for the greater part of the day!"

"Three years?" Duncan was lost.

"I haven't seen you in over a decade," Murbella spat back. Not allowing Duncan to ask her about the discrepancy between his experiences and hers - although her comment did corroborate his suspicions -, she continued. "I can't just go back to loving you. You should leave."

In Murbella's mind, a vortex of conflicting emotions, inherent propensities and conditioned responses drove away all clear thoughts. The Imprinting she shared with him told her to take him in her arms; her own emotions wanted her to process the shock of his reappearance first, but simultaneously made her rejoice at his return after all these years; her Honoured Matre conditioning told her to either use this lowly male or discard of him, preferably in a violent manner; and her Bene Gesserit conditioning warned her about the dangers of love, and drove her to question the circumstances of his reappearance.

"You mentioned you didn't actively choose to come back," Murbella said, her Bene Gesserit curiosity emerging the victor from her inner turmoil. "What then made you return to Chapter House?"

"I ... I don't recall." Idaho failed to remember exactly what he had meant.

He has changed, Murbella realised. The Duncan I knew would know. His actions since our reunion suggest it's as if his intelligence has dropped considerably: he's simply unable to think of certain things, while believing he has thought of everything.

Suddenly Murbella's arrogance escalated into anger, realising what might have happened. "The Prometheans - you led them here!"

"No!"

The answer was a reflex, but Idaho knew that she was essentially correct. The guilt he felt for the destruction he had indirectly caused consumed him, but something else attracted his attention.

She is different, he noticed. She is immersed in a strange aura, a subtle atmosphere of evil that was never there before. Did our time apart effect such a drastic change? Still, I cannot deny my feelings. She hasn't divulged what she feels yet.

"Do you love me?", he asked, carefully.

Love ..., Murbella thought. How can such a primitive tendency have such a profound effect on our lives? Perhaps it really is a vital element of our existence. In their efforts to realise the widespread emergence of humanity, the Sisterhood might have gotten rid of one of the more useful and vital animal relics in humanity - perhaps the aversion I've been taught to harbour against love really is born out of an incomplete understanding of what it means to be human.

Love will provide one with a passion for things in life, and without such passion nothing is possible. On the other hand, the way love creates dependencies on people, carnal pleasures, places and things will limit ones rational development and cloud ones judgment. Perhaps a proper balance needs to be found between the propensities of the flesh and the logic of the mind - the latter existing in the knowledge of when to relinquish control.

"I do not love," Murbella lied, not wishing to accept the pain that would accompany a return to Duncan's arms and heart. "Emotions will only serve to lead us to damnation."

Idaho started humming one of Gurney Halleck's old love songs, partly to annoy her, and partly because the situation reminded him of the pain Gurney had been so skilled at conveying in his music.

"Stop it!", Murbella cried. "Singing unlocks emotions."

"Is this the reason why the Bene Gesserit despise music?" Idaho taunted her.

Duncan continued humming. The human voice is an extraordinarily expressive instrument. No two voices are exactly the same, and within a good vocalist's range there are numerous possibilities for unique variations in sound. However, the thing that makes the voice so special, is it's potential to form words, a word being a sonic constructum that has a certain "meaning" beyond the immediately apparent by virtue of it being part of a larger practice. Within a certain social and cultural context, some concatenations of sounds can refer to objects, states of affairs, concepts or operations because the people have agreed to partake in that particular context, which enables them to reconstruct and interpret part of the intentions and thoughts of the speaker based on what he or she said.

The fact that words can be used by appropriately conditioned listeners to create links to entities outside the boundaries of the conversation or the song in which these words appear, vastly increases the scope of said conversation or song, and because the act of reconstruction while trying to apprehend a sentence or group of sentences is such a personal process - despite the need to submit to the whims of the collective precisely because language is a communal practice -, a song with great lyrics can touch the attentive listener on many other levels than just the immediately and viscerally aesthetical. The ability of the human voice to inflict these words with many different shades of meaning by way of intonation and such only increases the range of emotions, thoughts and feelings that can be expressed in a song.

However, it cannot be the lyrics set to the music that offend or intimidate the Bene Gesserit so - they use words more effectively and intensively than anyone else. It has to be the music itself.

The absence of vocals does not need to create a void - rather, letting the instruments do the talking creates that space pregnant with associations that would normally have emerged from the use of lyrics.

In a similar fashion, a real musical artist can create soundscapes rich with meaning and imagery. The lack of words in such a case is not a flaw, but an asset: it gives the listener the space to enjoy the music and let the mind wander on the unique flow the interplay of instruments creates. Gurney Halleck had this ability - his skill on the baliset was unparallelled.

"That's it, isn't it?" Idaho exclaimed triumphantly, normal-thought derivatives of some of his Mentat abilities having enabled him to reach his conclusions in a matter of seconds. "Music is a language you Bene Gesserit cannot control! The voice, religion, the ritual and many other cultural elements lie within the Sisterhood's sphere of influence, but music has always managed to evade you. Anything beyond your control is a potential threat - that's why you wanted to exorcise it, at least within your own ranks."

Upon witnessing Duncan's outburst, Murbella was at first confused because of what was apparently a non sequitur, but she quickly constructed a hypothetical scenario that was in accordance with his behaviour, and decided this explanation was satisfying enough for her to not want to press the matter any further. However, the melody of Halleck's song had awakened something inside of her, something unexpected and utterly overwhelming as music is wont to do.

To Duncan, still rather pleased with himself for uncovering yet another element of the Bene Gesserit mystery, she appeared excessively nervous - much more nervous than was warranted by the revelation of this minor secret.

Once again, Idaho noticed a change in Murbella, a slight shift in her posture, a way of moving coupled with a facial expression that disturbed him deeply.

That's when he noticed the tapping of her fingers, and he immediately recognised what had to be the source of this compulsion.

No!, he cried in his mind. A heart-tearing conflict of love and repulsion filled him. I lost my precious Alia to you - I will not let you take Murbella as well!

BOOK THREE - CHAPTER THREE

Our studies of Murbella have taught us much. The Honoured Matres, usually rather appropriately referred to as "whores" in less formal exchanges, have developed highly effective techniques akin to sexual imprinting they use to subjugate the males of any world they conquer. They utilise an adrenalin-based Melange-substitute, which allowed them to develop unprecedented physical speed, no doubt extrapolations from Bene Gesserit Prana-Bindu techniques. The entire conscious persona of an Honoured Matre is directed outward, constantly scanning for an event that is in some way offensive to them to latch on to, to use this as a foothold for a customarily explosive expression of rage. The structure of the organisation in its entirety reflects this: whoever is strongest or most devious will rule. In order to accomodate the extreme arrogance these traits generate, the subconscious and unconscious regions of the mind need to be extremely large, shunting away any and all signs of personal ineptitude from the minuscule consciousness. Any Reverend Mother, when given the opportunity to converse, will be able to control even the strongest of them within minutes.

— Bene Gesserit memorandum

Slowly, the sietch filled with refugees as the battle outside raged on. Honoured Matres, on the run from the terrible forces of the Prometheans, were found wandering the wastes, and were brought in by concerned Bene Gesserit. Despite the differences that had divided them in the past, the current circumstances had made them reconsider their loyalties.

"Which of you was insane enough to give Honoured Matres the location of this sietch?", Murbella demanded.

"We didn't," a Bene Gesserit Proctor said. "They had heard we had a sietch somewhere in the area, but they did not know where. We brought them in."

"They are Honoured Matres - whores!", Mother Superior cried.

"With all due respect: you are an Honoured Matre yourself."

"And I am also Bene Gesserit Mother Superior. These Honoured Matres knew this sietch existed! That should not have happened."

Murbella walked over to an Honoured Matre acolyte standing nearby, took her right arm and casually broke it. The young girl cramped up in pain, but tried to stand up again, trying to appear not to be bothered by her injury after noticing Murbella's angry glare.

"Once more, a lesson."

"She's in pain!", one of the other Honoured Matre acolytes yelled.

"Of course. Pain needs to be endured to be valuable," she recited the Bene Gesserit tenet. "It reminds you of your limitations. Pain is a blessing disguised as a curse: it blunts your senses, but raises your tolerance. The ultimate pain is the Spice Agony - the greatest pain which promises the greatest rewards. All other pain is tolerable after the Agony, and carries its own compensation."

Murbella commended the acolyte she had hurt for her bravery she displayed with a nod, and continued to lecture her audience on the necessities the situation had created, and how to plan a counterattack against the invaders.

To the side, Idaho stood, contemplating Murbella's actions. Is this his influence? She has degenerated even faster than I feared! She is no longer the woman I loved!

Taking in the reactions of the crowd, he realised that most Bene Gesserit were at once repulsed by the actions of their Mother Superior, and secretly pleased by her apparent lack for the well-being of the Honoured Matres. Their hatred goes deep, he realised. The Honoured Matres present were used to such behaviour from their superiors, and in some cases enjoyed the return to more familiar leadership tactics.

Deeply saddened, Idaho slipped away, and left the sietch.

BOOK THREE - CHAPTER FOUR

The initial goal of the Kwisatz Haderach program was to find a genetic solution to the enduring problems of mankind. Achieving the Kwisatz Haderach was only the first step of the process towards a solution. Paul Atreides and his son, the God Emperor, did follow the second part of the plan, at least in intent - as much as they deviated from our original projections, they did follow that part of their genetic programming quite nicely. What they lacked, however, was the necessary perspective to continue the plan in a proper manner - a perspective that the Sisterhood, as the originator of the program, does possess. We suspect The Tyrant's Ancestral Memories, as described in the recently discovered journals at Dar-es-Balat, failed to integrate some of the better-guarded subtleties of the Bene Gesserit plans from the memories of the Sisters in his ancestry - the contrast with the living, continuously developing tradition of the Sisterhood with his static, consistently overestimated array of Ancestral Memories is clear. It appears even The Tyrant himself overestimated the lucidity and comprehensiveness of his access to his ancestry, a realisation that to us has both positive and negative aspects: it allows us to silence most of our fears about his powers and his resemblance to us, but it also increases the potential damage his mismanagement has done to our breeding program. However, the biggest mistake The Tyrant made was to accept his metamorphosis before reaching the age of sexual maturity. The use of his sister as the basis of his breeding program has proven to be misguided: her mastering of the Ancestral Memories involved a method that locked them away rather than allowing them to develop, thus minimising the desirable traits the Kwisatz Haderach's seed would have perpetuated.

— from "Atreides Atrocity - An Analysis", Bene Gesserit Archives

"I've lost her," Duncan despaired. For all intents and purposes, my love is dead.

"I don't care, ghola," Scytale said. "We have more pressing matters to take care of."

They were in the hold with the axolotl tanks, the five bloated, malformed bodies floating in the Melange liquid, creating new life out of old cells. What had once been Sheeana was ready to give birth again.

Scytale took a large syringe filled with a light-blue substance, and injected the contents straight into a tube that led into Sheeana's skull through one of her temples. Soon after, labour began, and the head of the new ghola became visible. Despite the differences in appearance, Duncan immediately recognised the face from his distant past. Why would he resurrect him, of all people?, he wondered.

Idaho decided to ask. "What purpose does giving him new life serve?"

"It was foretold in a prophecy that it would have to be this way," Scytale answered. "I am merely performing the task I have been given."

The very moment the ghola was born, loud noises reached them from the adjoining hold, where the worm was being kept - a bonking sound, over and over again. Without fully realising why he did it, Idaho cradled the crying baby - still wet with axolotl-tank fluid - in his arms and took it to the worm.

As soon as they entered the hold, the worm stopped its violent movements, turning its head to the two gholas. Idaho walked over to the pen and lay the baby on the bed of Spice. The infant was completely calm now.

"Our new son," he whispered.

The worm carefully moved closer to the small form, appearing to determine what kind of strange object it was that had entered his territory. Some of the sandtrout that formed its front segment partly detached and encapsulated the ghola baby, completely hiding it from view.

**********

Finally ... Your mind, still undeveloped but full of potential, is available to me. Your young limbs I will reconfigure, and soon I will have my true body again!

**********

"Where is our son?"

Sheeana came storming from the house, in panic, looking for Duncan. She found him in the garden next to the house, where they grew the giant pumpkins and the baby carrots and the candy tree.

"What's the matter?", Duncan asked.

"Paul! Paul is gone!"

Duncan knew they had raised their son to be responsible, and always do the right thing. "Where could he have gone? He doesn't know the way around here. He is just a little boy."

Pulling Duncan's arm, trying to get him to stop his work, she yelled: "Perhaps he is lost, or Shaitan came and kidnapped him!"

Duncan appeared not to share her concern. "If that's true, I'm sure we will get a new one. Waldemar will come again."

"You don't love our son! I hate you!" Sheeana dashed off towards the woods, where she thought Paul could have ran away to, when suddenly she tripped and fell. A severe illness overcame her.

Duncan walked over, and said: "Something's not right."

**********

"The new Teg gholas are almost ready to be born," Scytale said, inspecting the readouts on some of the strange-looking displays he had attached to the tanks. "We will soon have a small army of our own."

Will that be enough?, Idaho wondered. The power of the Prometheans might be too great.

Suddenly, violent convulsions shook the axolotl tank that had once been Sheeana. Scytale pushed Idaho aside as he approached the tank. He looked at Idaho. "Something's not right."

**********

As Solar the firefly started his climb up to the roof of the sky again, Sheeana realised this day would bring many changes. She had been ill for a few days, but was starting to feel a bit better now. She got up out of bed and looked for Duncan, but she couldn't find him anywhere in the house. She was starting to get a little worried.

Suddenly, immense pain shot through Sheeana's body, causing her to collapse onto the floor of the kitchen. Duncan rushed over from outside, alarmed by Sheeana's cry for help, and supported her while she tried to stand up. "What's the matter, my love?", he asked.

Another jolt of pain shook Sheeana. His hands felt very uncomfortable on her body. "Don't touch me!", she screamed, breaking free of Duncan's embrace. She turned to look at his face, finding genuine concern there, and something ... more. For a brief moment, Sheeana understood what he felt for the very first time. He loves me! However, she could not bring herself to admit to feeling the same. "I ... Don't follow me. Please ...", she stammered. She hesitated for a moment, then ran out the door, crying loudly.

She passed the vegetable gardens with the giant pumpkins and the baby carrots and the candy tree, entered the Forest Of The Howling Spirits, and didn't stop until she reached the small lake where the fairies lived, occasionally stumbling as pain once more seared through her body.

Strange visions flared up inside her mind, the pain providing her with moments of perceptional clarity. Through rifts in the sky, she could see Shaitan trying to reach her, hunting her, his crystal teeth tearing the clouds. The trees that surrounded her dissolved, and dunes of red sand rose up all around her.

Then the thoughts came.

Shaitan killed my parents - devoured my village!

Shaitan listened to me.

The black-robed women made me one of them. She remembered a face. Her name was ... Odrade?

A brief flash of clarity pervaded her mind then, the memory of a former life restoring some of her old thoughts, elements of the suppressed Odrade-within attempting to reassert her influence over Sheeana's traumatised consciousness. For a few short moments, she almost realised what was happening to her, and what was supposed to have happened to her, if the Sisterhood had had its way.

I'm ... an axolotl tank. Resignation in her fate filled her mind, a powerlessness that wasn't depressing but made her understand something of the motion of the allstream, and her role in history.

Odrade ... What was it that she wanted from me? Sheeana remembered she was an important part of a plan this woman had hatched. Why? What did she want me to do?

The contours of a structure of actions and reactions appeared. A religion? Shaitan ... his world had been destroyed, all but one of the giant worms killed.

Shaitan listened to me.

There lies the value I had to the Sisterhood.

They needed the Missionaria Protectiva to reach a new stage! The Sisterhood has been manipulating many cultures for millennia by infecting them with religious dogmas, preparing those societies for exploitation. The Atreides Manifesto had been the final element of the old strategy, preparing the Tleilaxu to share their valuable knowledge with the Sisterhood.

The painting! "Thatched Cottages At Cordeville" - it pointed out the new path. This artist of long ago, a deeply disturbed individual by normal standards, was the hunter that captured this array of emotions and locked it inside an object for us to look at and relive some of the most basic sensations we are capable of having. Irrationality and raw creative expression frozen in a carefully composed manner - the chaos not contained but not allowed to run rampant either.

I have to make the choice. Bene Gesserit rationality, or raw emotion, or perhaps a combination of the two? Or ... Is there a fourth choice?

Sheeana. The voice sounded soothing.

Who is that?, Sheeana wondered.

I have found you again.

Odrade?

Yes. I'm here to remind you of your duties as a Bene Gesserit. You have been given immense knowledge, and unique abilities. Remember the obligations the acquisition of power force upon you. You have sworn to serve mankind, to carve out a better future for humanity.

I see no future for humanity.

You cannot think such things!

I will think whichever way I want. I have made my choice.

You are the centrepiece of the Sisterhood's future!

Not any longer. I'm taking back my own life.

A dark shape appeared, for both Odrade and Sheeana to see: a large piece of black plaz, sharp tentacles reaching upward as if in despair from a massive curved base.

Odrade recognised the object, and remembered feeling the danger and pain encapsulated in the sculpture when she first saw it in Sheeana's quarters, such a long time ago. Void.

It moved, the rigid material having gained malleability. The tentacles shot out, encircling the concepts, emotions and sensations in Sheeana's mind, and then capturing her will to live.

Sheeana returned to her vision, the tangible appearance of the house in the distance, the one she had lived in with Duncan, losing its consistency, the painting's crude brushstrokes and vibrant colours reappearing.

The water of the lake called her, invited her to enter it. Looking back one more time, silently saying goodbye to all that she had loved and hated in her life, she walked forward. With each step, the water rose higher around her legs and chest, until it reached her chin.

She hesitated. She heard footsteps approaching, and Duncan's voice calling out to her. She ignored him.

Suddenly, she was submerged, looking upwards to the light, seeing the air bubbles rising to the surface.

What a strange sensation!, she thought. A Fremen drowning.

Slowly, she felt her mind go black, the oxygen in her lungs running out, until finally she embraced the darkness, and was no more.

**********

Because of the connection he had with the tanks through his peculiar devices, Scytale sensed what had happened, and ran towards the hold where the axolotl tanks were. When he arrived he saw that Idaho was already there, standing next to the tank with the monstrously deformed body of Sheeana. He was stroking her face, gently wiping her long hair away from her eyes, his hands wet with the fluid that filled the tank. Her hair had started falling out and her face was bloated and carried an expression of pain, but Idaho looked at her as if she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

He lifted his head towards Scytale, and spoke softly. "She's dead."

BOOK THREE - CHAPTER FIVE

Always keep your opponent off balance - uncertainty makes one susceptable to suggestions that appear to restore order, and this hope causes carelessness. Use every tool at your disposal to attain your goals - everything from all-out terror and blackmail to a carefully dosed use of certain key words. Even a virtually undetectable mannerism or the way you dress can be highly effective. Offend your enemy when it's safe to do so. Causing changes in the distribution of power is a game, and, as is the case with every game, the goal is to increase pleasure - your own. Control of the distribution of pleasure and displeasure is the ultimate power.

— Siridar Baron Vladimir Harkonnen

Inside the cocoon formed by the sandtrout, the baby ghola's body was changing, merging with the worm, the limbs and head developing at an increased rate. The Melange supply in the pen was quickly growing smaller as well, the substance being an integral fuel source for the drastic transformations.

Slowly but steadily, the past was opening up to him, both Other Memory and Ancestral Memory unfolding in his mind, giving him the access even his recent reawakening hadn't been able to give him, the ghola baby's brain giving him the neural potential needed to properly organise and store the inpouring knowledge.

He felt confident enough now to dare to look back, tracing history to its earliest stages, and beyond into prehistory. The events of the past millennia revealed themselves to him, how the discovery of the Spice had created a structure in which certain developments were unavoidable. He understood that the events that had taken place were supposed to have happened, all developments converging at this point in history, all processes leading to the same goal.

Does the Spice have a plan of its own?, he wondered. Does its power serve the purposes of a higher will or order?

Looking farther back, a pattern emerged, suggesting this was indeed the case. Soon, I will know the designer of this pattern. I will be the designer of the pattern!

The earliest stages of evolution flashed in front of his mind's eye, the most distant points to which he was permitted to see. The circle appeared again, and this strenghtened his resolve to remove himself from that damnable structure forever.

All the elements are in place now: my servant and the powers I helped unlock, my new body, my recaptured awareness ... I still need to find a way for him to unleash his full potential, but that is merely a matter of time.

A new sensation arose in his mind - an awareness of a new presence. Ah, the kindred spirit arrives!

The image was unclear - muddled by the limitations of his prescience. The presence carried with it the unknown beyond. However, this did not fill him with fear. My new existence - I cannot see there. For now ...

A dominant persona of his Ancestral Memory protested. Your plan is evil!

My plan is necessary!, he responded.

Your actions will make you worse than your great-grandfather. He was a glutton: power, young bodies, food - he devoured everything, but at least he knew he was evil. I know my actions were wrong - I had the power to stop the Jihad, and I didn't. I mourn for my ignorance and lack of willpower every day. Your Golden Path was even worse, but you understood its cruelty. What you're planning now transcends all that!

Of course it does! One final act of cruelty to end all cruelty. The universe will be a better place once I'm done.

BOOK THREE - CHAPTER SIX

Memories populate the continuum formed by our understanding of our personal history. The way this continuum is constructed is highly subjective, due to the unique blend of presuppositions, opinions and fragments of knowledge each of us possesses. This means that, barring the use of more or less objective recording tools, the way we're situated in reference to the past as well as the future is highly subjective as well. The past is only know to us in memories, the future is only understood by us based on extrapolations of the now that use our understanding of the way similar situations developed in the past. In other words: our memories define our understanding of time. Events that were personally important will be remembered well and will be appointed a relatively large amount of "memory space", but might be altered considerably due to our constant revisiting and modifying those events in memories - after all, we perceive those scenes from the past through the filter of the present: the way we understand and rate those memories is influenced by our current mood and intellectual advancement. Occurances we considered unimportant will be remembered poorly or not at all and will be appointed very little "memory space", but might survive relatively unscathed if inadvertantly remembered much later in life. This way meaningful periods in effect expand in our memories, and meaningless periods deflate. Strangely enough the inverse is true for the immediate appraisal of such periods as we experience them, which becomes clear when you consider the ancient saying "time flies when you're having fun", which is still in use today. Conversely, when living it, a boring period lasts unbearably long, but in retrospect such a period will have flown by because nothing of importance happened in it. This is how normal memory works - how different it is for me, in whom prescience and ancestral memory reaching back to the earliest evolutionary stages meet! There is no qualitative criterium to differentiate the memories of my physical life from my boundless knowledge of the past as well as the future. Do you understand my godhood now? Do you see my terrible burden?

— Leto II, the God Emperor. From The Stolen Journals

Almost a week had passed since the Prometheans first attacked Chapter House. After the first devastating assault, many small Bene Gesserit and Honoured Matre groups had scattered across the habitable parts of the planet, launching counterattacks where they could. Despite the valiant efforts of the defenders, the invaders were simply too powerful: now all but a few groups had been either eradicated or captured.

Idaho and Scytale were still inside the no-ship, having been spared from detection by the many patrols of the Prometheans. The axolotl tanks had generated a small army of Teg gholas, each of them as malformed and diseased as the first one, but staggeringly powerful and fast.

Leto had awakened the day before: the ghola-baby's limbs had grown larger and stronger and the vocal chords had developed, but he was still weak. He now resembled a smaller version of what he had looked like while he ruled his Empire, up to a millennium-and-a-half before.

Only the face is not Leto's, Duncan realised at their first meeting.

A warning light flashed on the main console on the bridge of the ship. Idaho checked the readings, an angry frown appearing on his face.

"What is it?", the Tleilaxu Master asked.

"Yesterday I managed to establish an uplink with one of the few no-sattelites that is still functional. It was keeping an eye on the enemy flagship for me."

"Has something happened to it?"

"You could say that. A large section has separated from it, and is descending towards the planet."

Another screen came alive, displaying several lines of symbols and the images delivered to them by a returning spy drone. "It seems we have more immediate problems," Duncan said. "There's an enemy patrol out there, and they've found us."

**********

A groundcar carrying Idaho, Scytale, the reborn Leto and five Teg gholas burst from a hatch in the no-ship, crashing through the Promethean patrol. The troopers got up, not one of them injured, and gave pursuit.

"Wait," the leader said, a strange accent modifying his pronunciation of Galach. "There's a Bagishar amongst them."

Another trooper checked a small sensor device. "It does appear consistent with a Bagishar's signature, but it's lacking all implants and enhancements. It could be just a worm."

"No matter. Follow them!"

They pursued on foot, quickly lagging behind, but moving much faster than any human could. They were quickly joined by an actual Bagishar, one of the armoured worm-human hybrids who functioned as generals in the invaders' army, whose affinity with the sand enabled them to travel much more quickly. The strange creature was catching up with the heavily burdened groundcar.

Leto looked back, and saw the Bagishar approaching. Part of him is probably part of me, he realised.

Leto attempted to contact the shadows of his mind within the sandtrout that covered the pursuer. He felt the few regular sandworms still alive on the planet responding, and he shared in the pain caused by the injuries they had sustained during the attacks they had been forced to carry out under the Bagishars' influence, but could not penetrate the pearls of his consciousness in the sandtrout covering the officer itself.

What manner of beast is that? He resembles me, but the parts of my mind that should be present in him have been changed.

For a brief moment, Leto could sense the truth about these creatures. Machines have been fused with organics, keeping the transformation from man to worm at an equilibrium. There's another mind beyond that, controlling the worms! He's the one I'm looking for.

At that moment, the pursueing Bagishar fired two well-placed shots at the groundcar with a side-mounted energy discharge weapon, causing it to crash.

**********

"We should attack once more!" The Mother Superior's mind had been made up. "We cannot allow these filthy creatures to win this easily!"

A Proctor - Dional - was attempting to reason with her superior. "We have suffered terrible losses. The only course of action is to evacuate. If we can only reach the no-ship ..."

"I will not retreat," Murbella screamed. "This planet is mine."

"Clearly your primitive Honoured Matre rhetoric has contaminated your capacity for rational thought."

As soon Dional had said this, she realised the mistake she had made. Even though she was an accomplished fighter amongst the Bene Gesserit, she knew she would not stand a chance against an infuriated Murbella.

Murbella was ready to pounce, when the discharge of an energy weapon could be heard outside the room's entrance. A Promethean trooper entered. In Galach, barely understandable because of the heavy accent, he said: "The Bene Gesserit Mother Superior will come with me."

"I will do no such thing," Murbella said. In an impossibly quick movement, she lunged at the trooper, her hand outstretched. The trooper casually stepped aside, evading the attack effortlessly, paralysing Murbella with a small dart ejected from a hidden launcher on his right arm.

"Bah!", the Promethean exclaimed. "Obsolescent organic."

BOOK THREE - CHAPTER SEVEN

For the first time in my life, I had found a kindred spirit: trapped by his past, being forced into a frighteningly unstable future, unable - and to a certain extent unwilling - to stop, to crawl out of the stream. Make no mistake: we both did have that option, but understood the alternative to our acceptance of the position that had been prepared for us, and shrunk back from the horrors we anticipated on that path. I disobeyed the order to kill him because I understood he could accept the position that I had been intended for. He became "the shortening of the way", preparing the universe for the one who came after. However, my vision told me that the intended course would be followed only in part. My "death" allowed me the freedom of movement to rectify this potential mistake.

— Count Hasimir Fenring, on his death bed, in conversation with his wife

Idaho, Scytale, Leto and Murbella were led into the throne room simultaneously. Neither a sietch filled with Bene Gesserit and Honoured Matres nor the group of Teg-gholas protecting the Leto and his companions had been sufficient to effect their escape from the Promethean troopers.

"Welcome," their host said after the guests' escorts had left the throne room, closing the gigantic, heavily ornamented doors behind them.

Leto froze in his tracks. That voice! I recognise that voice! Buried deep within the memories of his past, this same voice resounded, warning him not to continue with his Golden Path. The voice had been much older then, having been broken by the desert, the unforgiving passage of time and billions of deaths worth of guilt. That day in the desert, Leto had been superior, both physically and mentally, the strength of Shai-Hulud and the wisdom of millions at his command. Right now however, Leto felt that the situation had been reversed, and a profound fear of what might happen next filled his mind.

Leto didn't need to ask who this powerful warlord was, so what would have been a question was now a statement of fact.

"Father."

**********

"You're a father!"

The sounds had grown from muffled and soft to sharp and loud. It had also suddenly become a lot colder. Air rushed into his lungs, painful air cutting into the delicate tissue, expelling the warm liquid from within. He found it was difficult to open his eyes, but something told him that he should.

The first blurry images to reach his retina were odd, much different from the dreams he had been used to up to that point. He remembered ... nothing. But the new impressions were definitely different. A big mound of a pinkish substance, soft and safe; a greenish liquid with a sharp smell; many tubes, rods and other devices leading from everywhere to many other places ...

And then: a voice. Controlled expulsions of air to generate sounds carrying a specific meaning within a certain context, if perceived by appropriately configured beings. "His beginnings are humble, but his deeds will be great," it sounded from far away. "He will save us all."

"Come, Hasimir," another, more melodic voice said, closer this time. "Come look at our son."

**********

"My son. After all this time, we meet again."

It can't be!, Duncan thought. The man sitting before him on the throne, his body covered by patches of silver - his many years with Leto allowed him to recognise this as the skin of sandtrout - and strange mechanical devices, looked, and sounded, terribly familiar. "Paul!"

"Hello, Duncan."

Duncan was speechless for a moment, but quickly regained his voice. "You died! Your body was taken to the deathstills. Leto showed me your water many times."

"That wasn't me."

"You're a ghola," Murbella said.

"Indeed. And I haven't been called Paul in a very long time. My people call me Adros."

"The author of the Prometheus Manifesto!"

"Very good, Mother Superior."

Leto decided to ask his most pressing question right away. "Why did you come back?"

Adros laughed. "You don't waste any time, do you, son? I was brought back to repair the damage the original Paul had caused, and to control the immense damage you would do."

"My Golden Path saved humanity!", Leto said.

Suddenly, Adros was enraged. "You failed! You failed, my son. Your inability to properly execute your plan; your arrogance, which prevented you from repairing what was rotten about it, your cowardice, which stopped you from doing what was really necessary; your weakness, which made you fly straight into your adversaries" trap; your egoism and selfglorification, which made you disregard your priorities - you haven't saved humanity from itself, you helped destroy it! Yes, child, you doomed mankind."

**********

"If this plan fails, mankind will be doomed." His father, Hasimir Fenring, had said this to his wife, and Paul had accidentally overheard it last night.

What plan? What was it that threatened humanity? These questions occupied Paul's mind while his mother led him through a tunnel he had never been in before, a dark passage deep inside the old complex of buildings that had been his home all his life - all twelve years of it.

Margot Fenring led young Paul into a dimly lit room with gray plastered walls, and ordered him to sit down on the chair that had been placed in one of the corners. Paul immediately noted the pervasive smell of Melange in the room - a heavy, almost oppressive cinnamon-like smell mixed with the acrid stench of damp, rotting waste. Over the years his body had been conditioned to tolerate greater and greater amounts of the Spice by way of the constitution of his diet - Paul suspected his parents wanted him to experience Fremen culture in all its aspects, not just from words in texts and images from filmbooks about Arrakis and its inhabitants which constituted such a large part of his education -, but at that moment he was rather overwhelmed by the strong sensation of vertigo the high dose of Melange induced in him.

"Is this part of a Fremen ritual?", Paul asked her, but she did not react.

"Do not resist," Margot said while she tied his arms and legs to the chair with shigawire, which he knew would grow tighter at his slightest movement, and were capable of cutting deep into his wrists if enough force was applied. After having checked the bonds, Margot walked over to the opposite corner of the room where she put a small package down on the floor. She returned to Paul's corner, bent over him, pointed back to the package and whispered: "More death for when the dying begins."

She moved away, and just before she exited the room she turned once more and said: "Deep down inside, you have always known that you are not my son."

The door closed behind her and the room went dark - now everything was silent around Paul, making his own confused thoughts appear that much louder. Not her son? What does she mean? I've lived with her and father all my life? Was I adopted? And why did she mention death? Am I going to die here?

"Mother? Father? Can you hear me?", he said, calmly at first, but louder and with much more despair in his voice when he repeated it.

Three days and nights he was left there in the darkness, devoid of all sensory stimulation. He knew he could not risk falling asleep - because of the shigawire bonds, any involuntary movement could lethally injury him. His mouth was dry, his stomach growled and his entire body ached from having been in the same position for too long, but he had resolved to persevere - to prove his strength.

His mother's comments - If she isn't my mother, who is she? - had planted the seeds of doubt in his mind, and the resulting growth of confused introspection mercilessly dominated his thoughts.

Suddenly, the door opposite to Paul opened, and two men entered. The lights came on, dimly illuminating the room. One of the men was tall and proud, with strong features that somehow triggered unclear memories in Paul's mind. The other was much shorter, and grossly fat, his enormous belly supported by antigravity devices. Dark memories just beyond the horizon of his perception cast their shadow over Paul's thoughts then, and he instantly hated the fat man, even though he could not say why.

The fat man raised his right hand, and it was at that moment that Paul noticed he had a weapon. A burst of energy lept forth from the gun, hitting the taller man in the back. The man whinced with pain, but did not fall. Another burst made him slump to the ground, and a third made him fall flat on his back.

Paul wanted to jump up, run over to the package in the corner - which he now believed to contain a weapon -, and kill the fat man for attacking the other in such a cowardly manner. He could hear the tall man's strained breathing, the sound of suffering and approaching death infuriating Paul. The fat man fired again, this time killing the other.

"Father!", Paul yelled. He managed to undo his ties, the shigawire cutting deeply into his wrists and ankles, and ran to the corner where the package lay. He opened it, and found a strange-looking, milky white knife inside, with graceful curves offset by razor-sharp notches.

He plunged the knife into the enormous mound of flesh that was the fat man, and felt the life leave the gross body. The kill - the first time he had taken another's life - felt strangely satisfying to him.

After the fat man had stopped breathing, Paul's adrenalin-induced high subsided, and he collapsed. As he lay there bleeding, the fatigue, thirst and hunger collaborating with the sensory deprivation, his doubt-filled introspection and the death he felt approaching, made him understand.

"I am Paul Atreides," he said to himself, and he knew it to be true.

**********

"It is the truth! All your damnable Golden Path did was perpetuate the destruction caused by House Atreides," Adros yelled. "Your goal should have been to educate humanity to take care of itself, to teach it expansion of intellect and diversion of life. Instead you taught them fear - fear of you, of leaders, of life."

"That was the point!" , Leto returned. "Besides, your own actions - the things you had your troops do - teach exactly the same lesson!"

"You misunderstand, dear son. I do not teach anymore. I simply remove those parts of the body carrying the disease."

**********

"Humanity is diseased," Hasimir Fenring said, the gravity of his claim mirrored by the troubled expression on his face.

They were in the Count's private quarters, resting after a long day of strenuous excercise. Paul felt his wrists - the wounds he had sustained several years earlier had healed, but the recently installed cybernetic implants that enhanced the performance of his nervous system still itched sometimes.

Today, Count Fenring would reveal the final details of his plan to his protégé. "The Sisterhood intended me to be their Kwisatz Haderach. A ... physical deformity and the psychological consequences this had prevented me from realising my destiny, as you know, but my visions remained - a byproduct of the witches' genetic tampering that your original incarnation inherited as well."

"What did your visions show you?", Paul asked.

"Some of the same things the visions you've been having of late have taught you."

"The cloud-darkness of holy judgment."

"Indeed. And more: the rule of your son will deteriorate quite rapidly after your daughter dies."

"In what way?"

"I did not dare immerse myself in the visions too deeply - many dangers lurk in the darkness, only some of which have to do with my own mental health. I strongly urge you to practice similar restraint - the lessons the life of your original incarnation teach us should be sufficiently persuasive."

Paul considered this for a moment. My predecessor? I made the mistake of letting the visions guide my life, which were tricking me into believing there was no way to avoid the Jihad, and Kralizec beyond that. The Sisterhood trapped me - their breeding scheme and their manipulations created a teleological structure which forced me onto a certain path. They intended me to be the tool with which they would stop humanity's advance to self-annihilation, but I ended up expediting the destruction. I could have removed myself from the path, but they would have found a new Kwisatz Haderach.

The Kwisatz Haderach ... the Messiah they created for the universe's benefit - and their own. The tool with which to test humanity's human-ness ... I failed at that task!

"I was not the Kwisatz Haderach," Paul said, his conclusion definite.

With a grin on his face, the Count agreed: "We are very much alike in that respect."

After coughing loudly, he continued. "My supposed death allowed me the freedom of movement I needed to prepare my ... our plan."

"Did no one notice?"

"No. My friend - and whatever opinion you may hold of Shaddam, he was my friend - had died over two decades earlier, and there was no one left on Salusa that I considered to be anything more than an tolerable nuisance," Fenring said, a hint of sadness entering his voice while speaking of the former Padisha Emperor. "Except my wife, of course," he added quickly, jokingly looking over his shoulder to see if she was perhaps there, listening.

"With some of my closest allies, I left that planet and joined the Prometheans, with whom I had been communicating about certain matters for many decades."

"Prometheans? That is what the people who have been training and educating me call themselves."

"Yes."

"Who are they?"

"They will tell you of their own volition, in due time. All you need to know right now is that they and their ancestors have been expecting your arrival for many millennia. They've been preparing this planet for the execution of a plan that will save the universe, rebuilding it after the disaster and keeping it well-hidden from those who had scattered to elsewhere."

"Why?"

"An ancient prophecy compelled them to do so. They claim the founder is the father of your bloodline: Atreus. He was visited in a dream by two apparitions - an old man and a young boy - who told him the horrors his descendants would have to endure, and, more tragic still, would cause. He wanted to make sure his sin - the one that compelled Thyestes to curse your family - would not doom all of mankind."

"Why was Terra chosen as the place for this?"

"Don't you think it's poetic" The birth of humanity - and thus the genesis of its demise, for life is merely the onset of death - and its rebirth will occur in the same location! An added advantage is the fact very few people in the Empire know where to look for this place."

Circles, Paul realised. Here, as it is everywhere else, events circle back in on themselves. Time is moving in circles, the past affecting the future and the other way around.

"Soon, you will marry my wife's daughter - Aerope, she is called," Fenring said, changing the subject.

This surprised Paul. He knew that this wife had been picked for him, and, having heard of her intelligence and beauty, he did not mind this is how it had to be, but he had also found out about the composition of her family tree. "She's also the daughter of ..."

"Indeed. Well, she's a ghola bred from the same cellular material - the original was killed."

"Why?"

"The timing wasn't right."

"Still, her father-"

"Remember that you are part Harkonnen as well," Fenring interrupted sharply.

"My mother," Paul realised, his voice sullen.

"There's no shame in being of that house - its members can be found amongst my ancestors as well. The bloodline contains a few very valuable elements - my wife made sure many of those would manifest themselves in your future wife. Reciprocal breeding with her will provide your progeny with many excellent and - in the context of our plan - quite necessary qualities."

"Aerope ... that name sounds familiar."

"As it should. It is a name from your family's distant past."

Paul tried to recall the origin of the name, initially with little success, untill suddenly the solution presented itself to his consciousness. "Of course: she was Atreus' wife!"

"Exactly."

"The fact you chose this name for her - is that a sign of providence on your part or proof that this plan of yours was hatched long ago?"

"Yes." Fenring chuckled, but his laugh quickly degenerated into a nasty-sounding cough.

"Friend! You need to rest," Paul said, the concern apparent in his voice. "You should go back to bed."

"I know, I will," the Count said, making dismissive gestures with his hands. Carefully and slowly, he rose from his seat and walked out onto the balcony, admiring the dark gold and red of the sunset contrasting with the green and brown of the hills in the distance. He realised this would be his last evening. He coughed once more. "I need to rest."

**********

"You knew that neither Ix nor Tleilax would rest before having found a way to implement their plans," Adros said.

"I had need of their services," Leto answered. "They did nothing I forbade them to do."

"You could have given the Empire navigation machines and synthetic Spice yourself. The method you chose ensured the survival of the Ixians and the Tleilaxu."

"Why is this such a bad thing?", Duncan interjected.

I can see my son's hand in his every action, Adros thought, observing the ghola. What a waste of such a talented Mentat!

"Those were Tleilaxu and Ixians that assaulted Garimi and her group on Terra, Duncan!", Adros explained. "Ix has ignored the edicts of the Butlerian Jihad ever since their rise to prominence. The fact these edicts were embedded within a widespread religious system caused the Ixians to be social outcasts; the human need for expansion of power and ever-present sloth ensured their continued usefulness. Understand this well: technology is dangerous. In its purest form, it is a natural extension of the human body - the ability to use tools is what makes us human, even. However, each tool creates its own space of limitation and stimulation: tools force the user to do one thing and not the other. This means that without the support of a solid ethical system, tools will control the user rather than the other way around."

"There is no need to educate me in the power balance of technology and human, father," Leto said.

"That is where I fear you're mistaken, child. In your no-chamber, you hid a number of writings which made it very clear to me that you had absolutely no idea what you were doing."

The Rakis Hoard, Murbella realised. What was in there changed the Sisterhood forever. Sifting the lies, manipulative rhetoric and half-truths from the valuable material managed to drive several Archivists mad - literally.

Adros continued. "More than once, you casually explain that the idea of a convergence of technology and man amuses you. I can tell you that being amused by such things is the most moronic thing one can do."

Leto started to speak, but was violently interrupted by Adros.

"Look at me! Do you understand what you see before you?"

Duncan did. He saw past the improved reflexes, the increased strength and data processing capacity, but also understood the terrible tragedy, the sadness underneath -the small prey trapped in an enormous web of dependency structures, in that unfortunate place only because of the necessity forced upon it by the rules of life and evolution itself. Duncan saw Paul, still pinned down by his past, as he had been so many centuries ago on Arrakis, whe he had been inable to stop the terrible Jihad.

Adros had allowed his audience a few moments to reflect, but resumed speaking, glaring angrily at Leto. "The Tleilaxu would never allow themselves to be tainted by the machine-makers of Ix. That's what you thought, wasn't it? You, who wielded religion like a sword, cutting off the head of anyone who failed to bow to your godhood, failed to understand this about religious fanaticism: whatever revulsion, belief or rule of conduct might find its ground in and grow from a certain ideological system, the prophecy that is always the centrepiece of such a system has the power to uproot such saplings."

**********

Where lies the root of this tragedy?, Paul wondered. Everything that has happened - to me, my family, the human race; how did it commence? Why did it have to be this way?

Paul stood on the balcony looking towards the hills, and swept his gaze to his right towards a clearing in the woods, where a small shuttle was scheduled to land soon. Margot Fenring would arrive, bringing with her her daughter, Aerope - "the seed of a new mankind", as the Count had described her.

A new chapter will begin today, Paul thought. Just like the very first chapter also began here.

He panned his view along the vista again, taking in the atmosphere of the place. The history that wanders around on these hills, the unbroken chain of generations retreating into the past represented by these woods - life begetting death begetting life: inspiring! The beauty of nature has such evocative power!

The primal aspect of this controlled chaos, the force that governs it, is erotic: an interchange of power expressing the most fundamental reality of life. Everything that happens is the result of such processes.

In the distance, a small vessel approached over a hilltop - a dropship carrying his future wife.

How very Bene Gesserit of Margot to choose the hill her husband was buried on to pass over during her approach today, Paul thought, appreciating the hidden meaning his surrogate mother always managed to inject into so many aspects of her life.

The dropship descended onto the clearing, clouds of dust being blown upward by its thrusters. The door opened, and she emerged.

There she is, Paul said to himself. The daughter of the man who almost killed the original Paul. He immediately wondered why this sudden shift of perspective had to emerge in his mind. Had he not been looking forward to her arrival?

My mother was also an Harkonnen, Paul reminded himself. That makes me part Harkonnen. Seeing Aerope's beauty as she approached the house, another slight shift of perspective occured. How can a royal House which had spawned a plethora of ugly males produce such stunningly attractive females?

Paul could see a look of anticipation in Aerope's eyes as she walked up the stairs that led to the main entrance of the house, and this filled Paul with sadness. I might never be able to give her what she wants, he realised. The memory of my Chani is simply too powerful. And she's a Harkonnen.

I'm a Harkonnen!, he immediately chastised himself. I should not let either my personal past or my ancestry overpower my sense of duty. This is exactly what doomed the original Paul - he could not overcome the forces that had shaped him.

As he watched Aerope approach him from across the balcony, her smile betraying her excitement with their first meeting, Paul once more felt as if he was being swept away in a powerful stream.

**********

"A powerful force is building which, when unleashed, will sweep away all in its path," Adros said. Looking at Murbella, he continued: "The cloud-darkness of holy judgment will be a terrible stream that will carry with it all you and your kind have built up over the millennia. This stream was unleashed once before, but could be contained to a single planet - a planet that will provide the soil for new growth."

"Isn't there a way to avert this disaster?", Murbella asked.

"There is always a way," Adros answered, "but I will not show it to you, nor will I travel it. A new form of life will be given a chance. The downward spiral needs to be bent around. It's time something changed."

**********

"It is time, my love," Paul said. It was late in the afternoon, and long shadows lay across the contents of his wife's private quarters. A deep yellow glow engulfed the room, a soft, warm breeze playing with the curtains framing the open window overlooking the garden.

"Do not say such things when you don't mean them, Paul," Aerope answered. She knew this day had to come, and she had feared it ever since she learned of the plan her father and her mate had constructed.

"There are many different ways in which one can love another."

"I know this, but it is quite clear you are unable to love me the way I love you."

"I apologise deeply if I have caused you grief in any way, but know that I do love you."

Over the years, Aerope had learnt to live with the fact he still loved the Fremen who had been his wife in another lifetime. His ghola body had never felt Chani's touch, but still the memories of many a kiss or caress lingered in his thoughts.

Aerope had not expected to develop these feelings for the husband that had been appointed to her, yet she did, and the rejection she had to endure day after day, mild though it was, had not diminished her love - rather, it had strengthened it, making it painful for her to be around him, knowing that she would never experience his love. In the ten years they had been together, he had given her three children, but having access to his body without having his mind dedicated to her left her feeling even worse. Still, out of loyalty to her father she endured her pain and stayed with Paul: she knew how much depended on the successful unfolding of the plan.

A new stage of that plan had to commence today. For the most part of the time it took for both of them to travel downward, descending staircases and riding elevators deep into their ever-expanding underground complex, she remained silent, pondering the drastic changes her mind and body would be submitted to. Finally, she addressed her husband.

"Explain it to me one more time, Paul."

"The procedure? You know what will happen to us."

"But why is it necessary?"

"The path my son has chosen is a wise one - in principle. We will emulate its strong points, and improve upon its weaknesses."

His son, Aerope thought. He doesn't often show it, but he's concerned. Concerned about what he did to him - the legacy he left him, both the genetic and the political aspect of it -, and what has yet to happen to the boy.

She understood the technical aspects of what was about to happen to them: similar to the fate Paul's son Leto had accepted, she and Paul would be saturated with the Spice, every cell permeated by the precious substance. A small worm, smuggled from Arrakis during the Harkonnen fief and kept alive underground all that time, would be forced to enter its larva stage. Their bodies would be covered in the sandtrout.

"You said Leto will slowly transform into a sandworm. Will that happen to us?"

"No. We will receive cybernetic implants which will mediate in the symbiosis between human and sandtrout, as well as an appropriately configured neural network to aid our mind in absorbing and managing the Ancestral Memory the saturation with the Spice and the symbiosis with the sandtrout will trigger. We will retain our humanoid appearance - the plan demands it."

"The breeding programm."

"Exactly. However, you won't have to carry any more children. That part of your task has been completed."

A short, but awkward silence followed.

"Will we live forever?", Aerope asked.

"No. Everything needs to come to an end at some point."

"Including House Atreides."

"In a way, yes. That is what my name change signifies: a new name to mark the beginning of the end, as well as the beginning of something new."

"Circles."

"I understand your fascination with that shape - I feel this myself. Just be sure to prevent a devolving of this fascination into an adherence to Zensufi beliefs. I will divorce you if that happens," he joked, trying to break the tension.

They stepped into the cavern that housed the worm, the Spice and the machinery that would transform them completely over the following six months.

That day, Paul Atreides died, and Adros was born - he took the first step in accepting the role that would make him reshape the universe.

**********

"The Bene Gesserit have played an important role in the development of humanity in the past millennia, reshaping history, religion and politics in the service of a greater goal. They used these things and themselves as tools, more than once deluding themselves into believing they had actually obtained full control over those tools. This is what fed their arrogance, and their arrogance caused their carelessness, their reliance on odds that carried too much risk.

However, the role of the Bene Gesserit has not been played out yet. Duncan, despite the rather heartless way in which you departed from Terra, something I don't hold you responsible for," Adros said, looking at Leto, "your mind might be put at ease by the knowledge that Garimi and her group are safe: they have found my underground base. They are well-protected there: no one will be able to find them. The grandchildren of their and my children will emerge in a hundred years, and start over. Isn't that in line with what you originally intended, Duncan?"

Idaho tried to understand these remarks, his mental searches turning up only very vague memories of what his intentions had been when he left Chapter House in the no-ship what seemed like a lifetime ago. Garimi, the Rabbi and their companions were easier to recall.

"Will those Tleilaxu not find them?", Duncan asked.

"The ones that hunted them down are mindless drones - they were there for one purpose, and one purpose only. They've done what they came there to do, and this had nothing to do with Garimi and her group. This is why they were allowed to escape."

"What were the drones there for?", Murbella asked, remembering Garimi. She was a talented one. It was a shame she felt compelled to leave Chapter House.

"You will learn soon enough," Adros replied. "All you need to know now is that Ix and Tleilax will know only a short time of prosperity. "Mabak Ghisharat" will be no more than a death-spasm."

I hope I'm correct about this, Adros thought. My vision is so unclear about what is to happen next, and I dare not immerse myself in the vision too deeply.

Thinking of what he thought was yet to happen, and realising the necessity of those events within the frame of events he had chosen, Paul felt sadness and anger overcome him.

**********

Anger and sadness flared up in Adros' mind. Despite the fact he had always claimed he did not love her in the most fundamental sense of the word, Aerope's impending death was having a profound effect on him.

Her cybernetic implants had been taken off line, and a poison had been administered. After having been alive for longer than any other lifeform except Adros himself, Aerope would finally be able to taste the gentle release of death.

"Force yourself to not transform the poison," Adros told her. "Let it spread through your body, allow it to give you the rest you so covet."

As he watched the life flowing from her, he struggled to keep his emotions under control. I must be strong - for her sake. "Ignore the voices that scream out to you. They cannot harm you, and they will be silent soon."

Sooner than Adros had expected, it was done. Alone, he took her body up to the hill where her adoptive father lay buried. It was a beatiful, clear day, and several dozen kilometres away he could see the scorched earth where the no-ship had been resting up until several days earlier, his bionics amplifying the image.

They are still out there, wandering around, trying to build a life for themselves. Soon, they will find my base. This will be their salvation,as well as the hope of a new beginning for the human race.

He looked up to the sky. I must leave soon, and join my army. We will travel to Chapter House. It is there that the processes that have dominated the universe for so long will finally converge.

Your help was instrumental in the execution of the plan, sweet Aerope. I will not forget you in the time that is left for me to live.

Briefly, he also paid his respect to the one resting next to her. In failure - yours and mine - you found the seed of a new future.

**********

"Bene Gesserit history calls Count Fenring "the failed Kwisatz Haderach", and describes my original incarnation as what he could have been. The entire empire called Paul Atreides their Messiah, but no one was perceptive enough to understand that he too was a failure," Adros said.

"I was? I am the real Kwisatz Haderach!", Leto exclaimed.

Adros laughed. "You had the potential to perform the function the Sisterhood intended the Kwisatz Haderach to fulfill. However, instead of educating humanity, you became a vulgar megalomaniac."

"I was the living Gom Jabbar! I gave up my humanity for the sake of humanity."

"That's exactly it. The Gom Jabbar does not test a being to see whether or not it is human, but evokes fear and suppresses honesty. It is a tool of power, of which the Bene Gesserit have so many, forcing the specimen being tested to display behaviour the Bene Gesserit would like to see. The problem with this method is that what is defined as "desired behaviour" depends on the criteria of the one who tests. Your criteria were born from selfishness and insanity."

"You lie! You do not understand my Golden Path!", Leto cried.

"Oh, but I do. You aimed to overthrow the instable tripod structure of the Old Empire, and train its citizens to be independent. You chose a number of different stategies to help you attain this goal. You removed the Spice as the impetus destabilising the tripod structure, by killing the sandworms and taking control of the distribution of the leftover supplies yourself. You confiscated the Bene Gesserit breeding programme, and used it to breed a new type of human. Your crowning achievement was Siona Atreides, she who was invisible to prescient searchers. You allowed the Bene Gesserit to continue their activities, but on a much smaller scale than before, making sure the historical knowledge and wisdom they possessed in the Other Memory of their Reverend Mothers would be available to guide the universe after your death. At the same time, you rewrote history, teaching those who would come after you the limits structures of knowledge and memories can build. You sowed fear all throughout your empire: your Fish Speakers repressed all opposition. This way you prepared the explosion of supressed potential that took place in the Scattering. You allowed both Ix and Tleilax to continue their activities, even commissioning their services many times. You knew, and in some cases even stimulated, their attempts at increasing their power base, which they did by manipulating the same forces that made both Paul Atreides and you so dangerous. How am I doing so far?"

Leto was silent for a moment, but managed to exclaim: "My Golden Path is straight! It continues to save humanity to this day."

"And it certainly has been doing a fine job lately," Adros taunted. "Your Golden Path contained far too many contingencies, Leto. Your own self-satisfaction prevented you from understanding your own legacy. Alia, your aunt and my sister, understood the dangers of the path we were about to take perfectly, before she fell prey to her own inner demons. She came to me once, and made me understand something that I see you have yet to grasp. I remember her exact words. She told me that 'every organism will claim a certain portion of the available energy in a system. Every organism does so to the disadvantage of the other organisms competing for a place in the same niche. Still, no organism merely consumes - a fundamental aspect of life consists in the exchange of energy with the environment'. After this, she asked me a question: 'what is it that you extract from your environment, and what happens to the environment because of that?'. Do you have an answer, son?"

Leto ignored the question, instead latching on to Alia's ecology-analogy, saying: "I was the main predator in the ecosystem of the Empire! My actions generated a stabilising effect, that prepared humanity for its adulthood."

"Simply being the top consumer is not enough to create a healthy ecosystem - your great-grandfather proved that many times," Adros said, briefly glancing at Murbella. "Your egoism caused you to drain the system, and you failed to truly eradicate all diseased organisms."

"You stimulated that development," Murbella suddenly said. "We - the Honoured Matres: you helped create us!"

"Of course! And let me commend you on your perceptiveness, Mother Superior."

"Create the Honoured Matres?", Duncan asked, remembering the immense threat these warrior women had presented to himself and the Sisterhood. "Why would you do such a thing?"

"Sometimes, the only way to eradicate a disease is to let it grow to be as strong as possible. When all carriers have fallen, the disease will die out as well," Adros explained.

Duncan wanted to answer, but a quick glance at Leto made him forget his remark. Leto's eyes were glazing over and his hands were trembling - many lifetimes of memories of being around the God-Emperor enabled Duncan to recognise the signs, and fear them greatly. He staggered back in terror. The approach of the worm!

Adros was enraged at this sight. "Leto! Retain control of yourself! Stop acting like a spoiled brat!"

His father's outburst stunned Leto, and the overpowering presence of the worm's animal instinct inside of him subsided almost immediately.

"Have you not learnt the immense danger present in letting the instincts of others guide your life? The many Bene Gesserit present in your Ancestral Memory should teach you at least that."

"Other Memory is the single greatest blessing the Sisterhood has received," Murbella said defiantly.

"How ironic that you should say this, Mother Superior. Abomination has been a far bigger problem for the Sisterhood than it would ever dare admit."

Turning to Duncan, he said: "You know this too, don't you? There's one individual you have hated most in all your incarnations, and he has returned to take your lover away from you. Again."

Seeing the terrible truth take its effect on Duncan, Leto suddenly realised how the final part of his plan would be carried out. I see the presence in her eyes now, Leto thought. Duncan's love for her, and his repulsion - a powerful tension!

Murbella wanted to speak, but couldn't. Adros looked at her. "He loves you, doesn't he? My good friend and mentor loves you. He never could resist a young, firm body and inviting eyes."

Adros glanced over to Leto, and saw the expected response to the discussion of the past few minutes on his son's face. He finally understands! He thinks he knows how to complete his plan. Let's help him along.

Facing Murbella again, he taunted: "The Bene Gesserit, reprehensible as they might be in some respects, were quite correct in their assessment of your kind. The Honoured Matres really are whores, in more than one sense of the word. If they hadn't been contained, they would have destroyed humanity."

"You created us!", Murbella exploded, barely resisting the urge to attempt physical retribution for the insult, but realising the futility of and danger that lay in such an action.

"I merely stimulated a development that had already been set in motion."

"But why? I still can't understand the soullessness of such an action."

"Leto understands. Don't you, son?" Accentuating the last word, Adros released a low-yield lasgun blast from the weapon concealed below his lower left arm, hitting Murbella in the chest.

Idaho watched these events taking place, but somehow felt detached from it all, as if it wasn't really happening.

It's all just a dream, he said to himself. This isn't actually happening. Somewhere, a demented demon is dreaming all these things, perverting what he has heard and seen and read, twisting it all into a nightmare of his own devising, and when he wakes up, it will all be gone.

His mind went blank for a brief period. He shot Murbella, he finally realised. He looked down at her, seeing her pain and hearing her breathing grow shallow. This is my love, my reason for being, and he killed her.

Rage flowed into him, a sea of anger engulfing his mind, drowning the voice that called out against all hope, demanding the use of rational thought. He poured that anger outward in the way that seemed most natural to him, the way something or someone was telling him to release his rage.

Suddenly, the walls started trembling. All around Idaho, the plasteel deck plates liquidified, spastic tentacles shooting up from them. In the throne room, reality started to dissolve.

BOOK THREE - CHAPTER EIGHT

My extraordinary lifespan and unusual abilities have shown me the way to a cognitive vantage point from which to infiltrate deeply into the answers to some of the most persistently puzzling questions humans have been able to ask. What is time? I do not fall victim to the usual human limitations that distort the past and the future, allowing me to see right through to the heart of the matter. I am not limited to one single perspective - the gestalt of the viewpoints of all the different intellects at my disposal filters out all traces of subjectivity my judgment might contain. To me, time is not an emergent property, emanating from the mating of the understanding of physical processes and the ability to remember and predict, but a visible and on particularly lucent moments even almost tangible substratum of sensible reality. Events materialise into the present in what we would consider an unmeasurably short period of time, emerging into the now before sliding back into the unformed matter of time, in itself timeless but the cause of all temporal phenomena. Space-time as we know is formed by the fluctuations of this chaotic stream of infinitely many zero-dimensional structures. To become one with it is to become the universe. I feel this will soon lie within my grasp.

— Leto II, the God Emperor, to Moneo, his last Majordomo

Weakened by the realitystorm Idaho's rage had unleashed, the boundaries of the physical plane were growing transparent to Leto's mind. His astral body, a representation of what he had looked like prior to the symbiosis with the sandtrout, floated in a universe of amazing, unimaginable shapes and colours. Beyond the limitations of four-dimensional space-time other realms revealed themselves to him, places and non-places filled with radically new experiences and endless possibilities, their splendour beckoning him to come closer and immerse himself in Otherness.

He saw that, once there, he could ponder the taste of the different shades of the colour green for all eternity if he so wished, or create a world in which the direction left would only exist on Sundays, or give a detailed recollection of what he would say three years into the future - not even the constraints of logic would impede his omnipotence.

He sensed that his ultimate transsubstantiation was near, until suddenly he heard a voice talking to him - the voice of a child. His ascension came to a halt, and he looked down to see what was holding him back.

A young boy was there, whom he immediately recognised as his father as a six-year-old. Young Paul pulled him back, saying: "You're not allowed to go there."

Leto struggled to break free of the boy's grip, but to his surprise learnt that he couldn't. "Why not?", he asked.

"My parents said so," the young boy said.

"I'm sure they didn't," Leto said, in the most patronising tone he could muster.

"Yes, they did. They always said I should never talk to strangers, be friendly and honest and always do what's right," young Paul said, counting the elements of the advice on his fingers. "What you're doing is not right."

"What did I do?"

"You stole my body."

Next to Leto, another presence materialised. At first, the sight of him scared Leto beyond comprehension. He has followed me here! The friendly facial expression and the accompanying tone of voice made Leto reconsider.

"I can help. Take my hand," Adros said.

Sensing how close he was to realising the final stage of his plan, the excitement driving him almost mad, Leto did not care to question Adros' sincerity, and accepted the outstretched hand after a few moments of contemplation.

Paul released Leto, trusting the judment of his older, other self. Leto saw the throne room of Adros' ship rematerialising around him, Duncan's rage still tearing through the boundaries of normal space. He felt himself rising from his body, and, floating towards a vertigo of brilliant colours, saw himself dying, the humanlike upper body of the worm-human hybrid he had been toppling forward.

As he felt the power inside the vertigo, he looked back one more time, and saw Idaho collapse as well, the life having left the ghola who had aided him in his transcendence so well. The vertigo of colours came ever closer, and his excitement at entering a new stage in his existence reached almost unbearable levels.

Suddenly, he understood where Adros was sending him, and terror assaulted his mind.

BOOK THREE - CHAPTER NINE

Man is an animal permeated by technology - this cannot be denied. Technology is the cause, the catalyst and the product of human intellectual ascension. The moment the symbiosis between protohuman and artifact became a reality, he became human, compensating for his physical deficiences and in effect laying the groundwork for the growth of his intellect and the expansion of his potential spheres of influence. In denying technology the possbility of expanding into the realm of independent thought- a period that has become known as the Butlerian Jihad - vital but ultimately temporary limitations were imposed on the advancement of humanity, enforcing the emergence of schools focusing on allegedly natural abilities. The God-Emperor's Golden Path formed the final stage of this development, educating mankind to such an extent that the archaic regulations of the Jihad could finally be laid to rest. The essence of the Golden Path is to avert stagnation, and the acceptance of technology as an integral part of human existence, compounded by the expansion of awareness necessary for such a transition, accomodates the optimum extrapolation of the God-Emperor's plan. Biochemical wetware contains inherent vulnerabilities that can be compensated for by a symbiosis with intelligent hardware - multiple backup systems, exponential expansion of memory space and vastly increased physical abilities. The translation of abilities formerly captured in training and education into tangible alterations to one's body signifies laying the foundation for an even further increase of potential for humanity's continued evolution, thus forming the ultimate realisation of the essence of man itself.

— from "The Prometheus Manifesto"

Murbella was dying.

She didn't feel pain anymore - the shock to her nervous system had been too severe. All that was left for her to experience was the slow disappearance of the sensation of being alive - a cold, dark numbness replacing the intimate awareness of her body and its functioning Bene Gesserit training had programmed into her.

The apparent liquidification of reality around her had stopped. At first she had thought the strange events she had observed around her were somehow part of the process of dying - it was fitting that exiting life would be accompanied by the perception of its desintegration - but now she remembered. Duncan's mysterious abilities.

The strangeness of that concept did not offend her. Instead, the resignation that life was over muddled the experience of all strong emotions. The end being so near, her mind felt compelled to travel back to the past, listing the highlights and low points of her life one last time before leaving it, drawing up the inventory for whomever was in charge of assigning the places in the afterlife. Brief flashes of feeling returned at some of the things she remembered.

Her birth was there, which seemed strange to her, since she hadn't been aware of anything of importance during the first few stages of her life, the process of learning basic perception and motor skills having not progressed far enough to enable the absorption of lasting impressions or memories.

Terrible rage was there, the years amongst the Honoured Matres clouding her judgment with uncontrollable anger - a tragic veil that was finally lifted by her Bene Gesserit education.

The most powerful memories emerged then. Duncan, my sweet Duncan, she thought. It seems we were not meant to be together after all. If only I could hold you one last time ...

The aversion against love the Bene Gesserit had imprinted in her briefly emerged, but she managed to silence that voice. Odrade was much weaker than I. She fell in love during her first imprinting, was unusually mild to erring acolytes, and pretended she was Sea Child in her dreams. Don't lecture me on emotional weakness!

The Van Gogh painting was there as well, and Taraza holding it up for her, saying: "You didn't understand, did you? It was right at the edge of your mind, and you didn't have the strength to reach past that edge!"

All images disappeared then, and Murbella could see all the way to the end of her life. It was then that she understood her future. There is nothing beyond death, despite what religions have been claiming for millennia! All there is, all that is left of my life, is awaiting the approach of the abyss.

BOOK THREE - CHAPTER TEN

It is an affront to all that is sacred to make a machine in the likeness of the human mind. Machines are constructed by mortal men and are as such prevented from attaining purity by both the fundamental shortcomings of the creators as well as the contingent defects of the methods used in the act of creation. This is the danger that a thinking machine represents: piling acts born out of chaos upon decisions forged in unpredictability will cause the creators' products to break free of their control, resulting in the possession of power absolved from the restraints of naturally-grown rationality. In contrast, the human mind is born, not made, and develops gradually while interacting with a stable and natural phenomenological context. It is in tune with both its direct environment as well as the totality of the universe. It deserves to be there. It is sacred, and should not be diminished by the occurence of mechanical facsimiles.

— Gardel Kwai, "Foundations Of The Butlerian Jihad"

Duncan is dead, Murbella is dying and Leto is on his way to where I wanted him to go, Adros thought. Only one thing remains ...

Relative peace having returned to the throne room, Scytale stepped out from his hiding place behind a large pillar. He didn't pretend to understand what had just happened, but he did know that he was still alive, and for now that was sufficient to increase his self-confidence enough to make him more than a little impudent, despite the obvious difference in any quality useful in single combat between himself and Adros.

"Are you going to kill me as well?", he asked the overlord of the Prometheans.

"As well?", Adros said, almost - but not quite - laughing. "Of the ones in this throne room, I haven't killed anyone." Except perhaps myself, he added without speaking the words.

"What are you going to do with me, then?"

"I am going to show you something."

Adros stepped down from his throne, walked to a door hidden from sight by a cleverly positioned ornamented panel, and gestured Scytale to follow him. "Come with me."

A suspensortube-ride upwards, the duration of which suggested the flagship was many times larger than Scytale would have guessed, brought them to an observation deck on top of the ship's hull, overlooking the Bene Gesserit Central complex on one side, and the ever-expanding desert on the other. The desert's edge was littered with Bene Gesserit and Honoured Matre vehicles, weapons and bodies. On the ground surrounding the flagship, many Promethean troopers could be seen, standing there without moving, apparently waiting for something to happen.

"What are they waiting for?", Scytale asked.

"I think you already know."

"I don't," Scytale lied.

"Mabak Ghisharat is about to arrive," Adros said, not in the mood to argue about the Tleilaxu Master's lie.

Scytale's eyes went wide. Initially, he was surprised that Adros not only knew about "The New Dawn", but apparently also knew the event was near. After brief reflection, the fact the Promethean knew seemed far less surprising to him considering the power he obviously wielded, and elation replaced that surprise - an intense feeling of happiness and anticipation that the final ascension of his race was about to take place.

"Your troops will bow before the Tleilaxu might," Scytale dared, drunken with the prospect of the power his people would have soon.

"Everybody will," Adros said matter-of-factly. "Even the Ixians, once you dissolve your alliance."

"The Tleilaxu would never cooperate with the machine builders!"

"You know they would, and they have. Your imprisonment started a long time ago, but the plans that will bear their fruit very soon had already been set in motion long before that. You know what the tools that will bring about your 'New Dawn' are, and who made them. You know you're protected against their fury."

"Are you going to kill me now?", Scytale asked.

"No. Leaving you with your life will be punishment enough."

Adros spotted something approaching over the hills in the distance. "There it comes."

Despite the cavalier attitude his words conveyed, Adros was starting to feel rather nervous. And so this chapter ends, he thought as he watched the swarm come closer. Resignation filled his mind, a knowing that, despite the cruelty of this ending, this is how it was supposed to be.

However, as the mechanised death approached, the realisation that after so many centuries his own end was terrifyingly near made him panic. Whenever death comes, it always leaves so much unfulfilled potential, he thought. I'm not ready to die!

Within seconds, the thousands upon thousands of hunter-seekers had reached them, the flying, razor-sharp shards of metal - some of them as large as a man, others as small as a needle - killing everyone in their path. All of those present possessed the genetic quality known as "the mark of Siona" which made them invisible to prescient searchers, but despite this no one was invisible to the killing machines.

This is one of the ways in which the Golden Path proves to be a cul-de-sac, Adros thought. The configuration of the brain of the Teg clone told them all they needed to know. Even I am not safe from them!

Adros was starting to panic. As a cloud of hunter-seekers shot up towards him, Adros activated the Holtzmann-generator that had been implanted in him. There was insufficient time to carefully calculate a destination, so he dumped a random set of coordinates from his memory into the navigation computer. Anywhere but here is fine, he thought.

All of a sudden, Scytale was alone, seeing the hunter-seekers coming closer. The greater part of the group of killing machines broke free of the formation, returning to dispensing death below. The remainder continued along their path.

Fear clawed its way into Scytale's mind - fear of dying, of not being allowed to participate in his race's ascension. When the foremost of the hunter-seekers was mere metres away from Scytale, the devices suddenly stopped. Scytale felt a tingling sensation in his head, a sign he knew meant a cerebral scan was being performed on him.

After a few moments that Scytale thought would never end, the drones turned around and flew off in search of other targets.

The universe is ours!, Scytale realised.

In the throne room, Murbella had found new strength, the fury of the Baron inside of her pulling her away from death. Outside the throne room, she could hear the sounds of Ragnarök raging. Lifting her head, she saw the large doors of the room burst open, and a Bagishar sliding across the floor and crashing against the throne, dozens of hunter-seekers stuck in his armour and his exposed organics. His cries were weakening, and the lethal drones which were still airborne broke off their attack, as if they could detect the onset of death in the once powerful creature. They converged on Murbella now.

On countless worlds throughout the universe, similar swarms descended from the skies. Arafel engulfed the universe.

EPILOGUE ONE - THE SLEEPER

I have seen everything before - boredom assaults me regularly. History moves in cycles, repeating itself after the set of available processes has been exhausted. This universe is trapped in a system of self-perpetuating cycles, and I'm growing weary of it.

— Leto II, the God-Emperor. From The Stolen Journals

"Yes! It is happening!"

Leto reveled in the sensations his mind underwent - finally his deepest wish would be granted. I'm tearing loose from the limitations of ordinary reality, my endless dream of depression and powerlessness finally coming to an end!

All of history unfolded in front of his mind's eye and all the mysteries of the universe were solved after only a moment's contemplation. He could feel all matter down to the very last quark and superstring awaiting his commands.

History solidified, manifesting itself as long corridors of personae, generation upon generation stretching into the future and the past. He gazed into the distance, past countless personae, and saw a lone figure standing there with its back turned to him. He raised his hand to his forehead to shield the light from his eyes, and saw the man in the distance do the same. He started running towards the man, but the man started running as well at the exact same pace.

He suddenly realised the structure he was caught in, and immediately felt trapped. A parallel structure emerged, of a lesser scope but equally harrowing in its implications. A god saw his progeny being born from his brain, but suddenly the perspective shifted, the child now giving birth to its father.

Leto now understood what Adros had tried to do, and he struggled to get out of his trap. He felt the ties that bound him dissolve, and for a moment, everything was dark.

Whe Leto could see again, he found he was in a long corridor, the walls, floor and ceiling coloured dark green and red in repeating shapes - the Atreides hawk copied uncountable times, the form of one fitting into that of another. He felt his body, and noticed it was that of a young boy - it was what he had looked like before he accepted the symbiosis with the sandtrout, so many lifetimes ago on Dune.

Against the walls of the corridor, Leto could see many jars, in many different shapes and colours, each of them filled with liquid. He walked past a few of them, reading the small metal tags that identified the jars' contents, and each of them said the same: "This is the water of Leto Atreides II". Many people walked down the corridor, their footsteps and their voices without sound, all of them stricken with grief, but none of them paying any attention to Leto. He saw his mother, Chani, and his grandmother - each of the passers-by was in one way or another known to him, part of his old life.

Leto could hear strange music playing - a succession of tones repeating itself over and over, capable of hypnotising the listeners with its deceptive simplicity, throwing their thinking into disarray.

He spotted a young girl, about his own age, coming down the corridor. As she came closer, he recognised her as his sister, Ghanima.

"Where am I?", he asked her, clutching her left arm, but no answer came. Feelings of despair mounting inside of him, he yelled: "Will someone tell me where I am?"

"Come with me," a well-worn voice behind him said. The man that gestured him to come along, his face hidden in the shadows of a cowl, was dressed in rags and looked old, but his body-posture betrayed a deep-seated sense of pride.

"Who are you?", Leto asked while following the man.

"I think you know. We've met many times. We are family."

Leto suddenly recognised the voice. "Father?"

"I am called the Preacher now."

"How is it possible that you're here?"

"Alia's priests just killed me, but my work was not finished. I am here to perform my final task."

"Who are these people?", Leto asked while making a gesture that indicated the mourners around him. "Are they mourning my death?"

A bellowing laughter erupted from the Preacher. "No, Leto. It is so typical of you that you would think that. They mourn the many your reign has killed."

Without warning, the Preacher pushed Leto through a door in the corridor wall where moments before a collection of flasks of water had been. They entered a room shaped like the interior of an egg. Looking back, Leto could discern no seams or irregularities in the room's wall to indicate where the door might have been.

"Why are we here?", Leto asked.

"You will know soon enough. For now, we wait."

Hours passed, the Preacher remaining motionless and ignoring Leto's questions. Anticipation, restlessness and dread fought for control of Leto's thoughts. Suddenly, the wall at the opposite side of the room appeared to turn to liquid, and slowly a man stepped through it. The man, relatively small and fairly handsome, had familiar features, but he was unknown to Leto. The man sat down.

"I come protected by Morpheus, son of Hypnos. Icelos directed me to this place," he said. "He showed me ... many things."

"Meet Atreus," the Preacher said to Leto. "He is here to observe."

"Observe what?", Leto asked.

"Your judgment."

"What is there to judge? I did what I had to do, what the Golden Path demanded of me. Crimes are only defined as such within particular socio-cultural reference frames, with their own rules to perpetuate their own stability. Normal laws do not apply to me."

"You will be held accountable for your actions, and with you, all of House Atreides," the Preacher answered angrily.

"You're a member of the Atreides. Your actions were just as reprehensible as mine."

"The acts committed by my younger self were worse than yours - they lacked even the justification the plan to save humanity supplied your actions with -, but I have my own burden to carry, my own price to pay."

"If that is true, what gives you the right to judge me?"

"I've already served part of my sentence."

"How?"

"I sent you here."

"Adros! He tricked me!"

"He helped you. You could not be allowed to carry out your plan."

"The Prometheans denied me my destiny! And you are to blame as well," Leto said, looking at Atreus.

"He will do what he has to. As we all did," the Preacher said.

"I tire of this. What is supposed to happen?", Leto asked.

"The sleeper must awaken," the Preacher replied. "The circle must be closed."

The Preacher reached through the wall, and pulled in a bundle of cloth. He lay it down at the center of the room, and as the cloth fell away, Leto could see there was a baby inside.

"He looks like you as a baby," Leto said, but noticed the Preacher had vanished - only Atreus was there left with him in the room, watching him.

Suddenly the infant started growing, his body elongating and turning a dull silver. In a matter of seconds, he had completely passed through the process the God-Emperor had taken more than three thousand years to traverse only to the halfway-point: he had become a small sandworm.

With a sequence of lightning-fast movements strangely discordant with its sluggish appearance, the worm swallowed Leto. Inside, Leto felt the heat of the inner furnace coming closer, and his own body starting to decay, the rotting of his flesh taking mere seconds.

His mind did not die, but was transferred across space and time, to a spatial and temporal location on which the universe started its most radical change ever. His last independent thoughts were curses, directed at Adros, but soon his mind became dormant, mere potential, destined to partly re-manifest itself later in the life of its new host.

"The father is the son is the father," the Preacher said, petting the worm. "The desert gives and the desert takes. Eventually, all will return to its origin."

**********

Cries of pain wandered through the halls and passageways of Castle Caladan, crashing against the walls of cold, dark stone, the continuing assault of the waves on the cliffs far below barely overpowering them. Outside, the darkness and the rainstorms conspired to give the impending birth an ominous accent.

Duke Leto Atreides, head of House Atreides, paced up and down the hall outside the birthing room, his mind torn between the wish to intervene - to relieve his love from her pain -, and the knowledge that she was currently in good hands and his presence at her side would do more harm than good. After all, she herself had requested his absence.

Ah, the stubbornness of that woman!, Leto thought with a strange mixture of anger, amusement and admiration. She wants a natural childbirth, while I could have demanded the services of the finest surgeons on Caladan! Another scream came from behind the heavy wooden door. I hate it when she's in pain!

Crying sounded, but not Jessica's: his son had been born! After a few minutes, one of the midwives opened the door. "The Lady Jessica demands your presence, my Lord."

Leto entered the room, seeing Jessica radiant with joy, a small child cradled in her arms.

"Did you worry, my love?", Jessica asked, knowing very well that the answer she was about to receive would be a blatant lie.

"No. I was confident you and our son would be fine." A smile rich with meaning on Jessica's face told him he hadn't fooled her.

"Aedelos, come in here," Leto called out to an aide standing outside the room. "Take this message down to Communications, and have them transmit it all over Caladan. 'Today, in the year of the Guild 10,176, my son, the na-Duke Paul Atreides, was born at Castle Caladan. Forever after, this day of the year will be a day of celebration!'."

I so wish that will be true, Jessica thought. The Sisterhood will not be pleased with my decision, but my Duke wanted a son so badly ... Little Paul's future is rich with possibilities - there is a chance that he is the one. Yes, I know it to be true in my heart of hearts: Paul Atreides will change the course of history.

EPILOGUE TWO - THE SEED

Here the reign of the flesh came to an end, and the dawn of a new existence arrived. Finally we broke free of the shackles that had bound us since man began, and the ascension to a new plane of being was possible. The Cleansing set us free.

— Inscription on the monument on Kapteros, constructed in honour of the 5,000th birthday of "The Cleansing"

Weakly lit strings of differently sized globes, shades of orange and red offset against the darkness, surrounded him for a while, his enhanced vision allowing him to see far beyond the boundaries of the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. As he emerged from his spacefold, immense cold engulfed his body, and it was difficult for him to breathe. He was falling.

Pain seared through him - much more intense than any of the other times he had attempted a spacefold by himself. It took him a few moments to realise what his internal diagnostic system was trying to tell him: his bloodstream had been invaded by millions of nanite machines, and they were killing him, slowly but steadily overpowering even the regenerative ability his symbiosis with the sandtrout supplied him with. He looked down at his chest, and saw three hunter-seekers had managed to hit him - these were the devices that had injected the aggressive microscopic machines that were killing him from within.

His physical pain was not what bothered him the most: the knowledge that time had caught up with his vision was many times more painful. The way it happened was the way it was meant to be, Adros realised. Soon, the final circle will be completed. But the price that had to be paid! The products of hundreds of millennia of evolution - almost completely destroyed. Only the seeds I planted will remain after Ix and Tleilax have died.

He continued to fall through the air. Just outside his awareness, another consciousness copied several dozen times and spread out over just as many bodies, a single mind emerging from the mental echoes, was trying to awaken.

Spinning around, he saw a green and blue planet approaching, two moons accompanying it in its procession around a single star. Canopus, he thought. So this is where I was destined to go. To this place the workings of the Spice converge time and time again, forcing the universe to act out a prewritten script.

He saw he was falling towards one of the planet's many seas, the deep blue approaching faster and faster. When the salt water engulfed him, Adros experienced terrible pain, his body being torn apart: the sandtrout detaching, hungry for water. Mechanical devices surrounded him in the water, his bionic implants being released by his rapidly decaying body, but they quickly sank away in the currents.

Adros felt the singular consciousnesses of the other's many bodies disengaging, the loss of coherence destroying all but the most basic capability of thought, after a while nothing but animal instinct remaining.

The last thoughts before Adros died contained the realisation that now the second circle had been completed.

One day, the worms will rule the deserts of Dune.

Table of Contents

Dune: Advent

About this eBook

Forewords

Introduction

Sentinel

Prologue : the Gate

Book 1 : the Dream

chapter 01

chapter 02

chapter 03

chapter 04

chapter 05

chapter 06

chapter 07

chapter 08

chapter 09

chapter 10

chapter 11

chapter 12

chapter 13

chapter 14

Interlude : the Maelstrom

Book 2 : the Awakening

Interlude 2 : the Path

Junction

Book 3 : the Dark

Epilogue 1 : the Sleeper

Epilogue 2 : the Seed