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Both women wore plain black singlesuits designed for permeability and cooling. Since the assassination attempt at the gathering, Murbella had made the uniform dress code mandatory across the New Sisterhood, no longer allowing the women to flaunt their different origins. "During times of peace and prosperity, freedom and diversity are considered absolute rights," Murbella said. "With a monumental crisis facing us, however, such concepts become disruptive and self-indulgent."
Every Sister on Chapterhouse now wore a black singlesuit, without any obvious identifiers of whether she originated from the Honored Matres or Bene Gesserits. Unlike the heavy, concealing Bene Gesserit robes, the fine mesh of the formfitting fabric hid none of Bellonda's lumpy bulk.
I look like the Baron Harkonnen, she thought. She felt an odd sort of pleasure whenever the ferally lean Doria looked at her with disgust.
The former Honored Matre was in a foul mood because she didn't want to go on this inspection trip--especially not with Bellonda. In perverse response, the Reverend Mother made an effort to be overly cheery.
No matter how much Bellonda tried to deny it, the two of them had similar personalities: both obstinate and fiercely loyal to their respective factions, yet grudgingly acknowledging the greater purpose of the New Sisterhood. Bellonda, always quick to notice flaws, had never hesitated to criticize Mother Superior Odrade either. Doria was similar in her own way, unafraid of pointing out faults in the Honored Matres. Both women tried to hold on to the outdated ways of their respective organizations. As the new Spice Operations Directors, she and Doria shared stewardship of the fledgling desert.
Bellonda wiped perspiration from her brow. They were almost to the desert, and with each passing moment, the heat outside increased. She raised her voice above the drone of the 'thopter's wings. "You and I should make the best of this trip--for the good of the Sisterhood."
"You make the best of it." Doria shouted her sarcasm. "For the good of the Sisterhood."
Bellonda grabbed a safety strap as the ornithopter passed through turbulence. "You are mistaken if you think I agree entirely with what the Mother Commander is doing. I never thought her mongrel alliance would survive the first year, much less six."
Scowling, Doria steadied the controls. "That does not make us in any way alike."
Below, patches of sand and dust swirled, temporarily obscuring the ground. The dunes were encroaching on a line of already dead trees. Comparing the coordinates on a bulkhead screen with her notebook, Bellonda estimated that the desert had advanced by almost fifty kilometers in only a few months. More sand meant more territory for the growing worms, and consequently more spice. Murbella would be pleased.
When the air currents smoothed, Bellonda spotted an interesting exposed rock formation that had previously been obscured by thick forest. On a sheer side of the rock, she saw a magnificent splash of primitive paintings in red and yellow ochre that had somehow endured the passage of time. She had heard of these ancient sites, supposedly indications of the mysterious, vanished Muadru people from millennia past, but she had never seen evidence of them before. It surprised her that the lost race had reached this obscure planet. What had drawn them all the way out here?
Not surprisingly, Doria showed no interest whatsoever in the archaeological oddity.
Presently the aircraft landed on a flat section of rock, near one of the first worm observatories Odrade had established. The small, blocky structure towered above them as they disembarked. When the 'thopter's canopy opened and the two stepped out onto the drifting dunes near Desert Watch Station, Bellonda felt perspiration at her temples and in the small of her back, despite the cooling properties of the black singlesuit.
She took a long sniff. The parched landscape smelled dead with all the vegetation and soil gone. This desert band was dry enough for sandworms to grow, though it had not yet achieved the flinty, sterile cleanness of the real desert on lost Rakis.
Taking a lift tube to the top of the station tower, Bellonda and Doria entered the reinforced observatory. In the distance they could see a small spice-harvesting operation where a mixed crew of men and women worked a vein of rust-colored sand.
Doria used a high-powered viewing scope to gaze out over the dunes. "Wormsign!"
Through her own scope, Bellonda watched a mound in motion just beneath the sand. Judging from the size of the moving ripple, the worm was small, only five meters or so. Farther out in the dune sea, she spotted another small sand-dweller churning in toward the spice operations. These new-generation worms did not yet have the power and ferocity to mark out their territories.
"Larger worms will create more melange," Bellonda said. "In a few years, our specimens may pose a genuine danger to the spice crews. We may have to institute the more expensive hovering harvesters."
Updating charts on her handheld data screen, Doria said, "Soon we will be able to export large enough quantities of spice to make ourselves rich. We can buy all the new equipment we like."
"The purpose of the spice is to increase the power of our New Sisterhood, not to line your pockets. What good is wealth, if none of us survives the Enemy? Given enough spice, we can build a powerful army."
Doria shot her a hard glare. "You parrot the Mother Commander so well." Gazing through the angled windows toward the faint shadows of forests smothered beneath the sand, Doria shielded her eyes against the glare. "Such devastation. When Honored Matres did a similar thing to your planets with their Obliterators, you called it senseless destruction. Yet on your own planet, you Sisters take pride in it."
"Transformation is often a messy business, and not everyone sees the end result as a good thing. It is a matter of perspective. And intelligence."
Evil can be detected by its smell.
--PAUL MUAD'DIB,
the original
K
hrone received regular reports on the child Baron's progress from his many Face Dancers in Bandalong. At first he had asked for the creation of the ghola out of mere curiosity, but by the time the baby was two years old, he had developed plans to make use of it. Face Dancer plans.
Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. What an interesting choice. Even he didn't know why the old Masters had preserved the cells of the ancient, deviously brilliant villain. But Khrone had come up with his own ideas for the ghola.
First, though, the child must be raised and analyzed for special talents. It would be another decade or so before the latent memories of the Baron's original life could be triggered. That would be another assignment for Uxtal, if the little man could possibly keep himself from getting killed for that long.
So many of the components in his overall scheme had interlocked over decades, even centuries. Khrone could see how those pieces fit together, like the thoughts of the Face Dancer myriad. He could discern the smaller patterns and larger ones, and during each step he played his appropriate part. No one else on the great stage of the universe--not the audience, not the directors, not his fellow cast members--knew the extent to which the Face Dancers controlled the whole operation.
Content that all was under control in Bandalong, Khrone slipped away to Ix for his next important opportunity there. . . .
AFTER THE PRIZED Vla
dimir Harkonnen ghola was born, hapless Uxtal's first difficult task was complete. Still, his oppression did not end.
The simpering Lost Tleilaxu researcher had not disappointed the Face Dancers. Even more surprising, Uxtal had managed to keep himself alive among the Honored Matres for nearly three years now. He had marked off every single day on the makeshift calendar in his quarters.
He lived in terror, and he always felt cold. He could barely sleep at night, shuddering, alert for any stalking noise, dreading the appearance of any Honored Matre who might come to make good on the threat to sexually bond him. He looked under his bed for any Face Dancers that might be hiding there.
He was the only one of his kind still alive. All the Lost Tleilaxu elders had been replaced by Face Dancers, all the old Masters murdered outright by the Honored Matres. And he, Uxtal, was still breathing (which was more than he could say about any of those others). Even so, he was utterly miserable.
Uxtal wished the Face Dancers would just take the diminutive Vladimir away. Why didn't they relieve him of at least one impossible burden? How long was Uxtal supposed to be responsible for the brat? What more did they want? More and more and more! One of these days he was sure to make a fatal error. He couldn't believe he had succeeded for so long.
Uxtal wanted to shout at the Honored Matres, at any person he encountered, hoping it might be a Face Dancer in disguise. How could he do his work? But he simply kept his eyes averted and tried to put on a convincing show that he was working extremely hard. Being miserable was far preferable to being dead.
Still alive. But how to remain that way?
Did even the Matre Superior know how many shape-shifters lived among her people? He doubted it. Khrone probably had insidious plans of his own. Maybe if Uxtal uncovered them and exposed the Face Dancer schemes to the Honored Matres, then Hellica would be indebted to him, would reward him--
He knew, however, that would never happen.
Sometimes Matre Superior Hellica brought visitors into the torture laboratory, preening Honored Matres who apparently ruled other worlds that still resisted the New Sisterhood's attempts to assimilate them. Hellica sold them the orange drug that Uxtal now produced in great quantities. Over the years, he had perfected the technique of harvesting their adrenaline and catecholamine neurotransmitters, dopamine, and endorphins, a cocktail used as the precursor for the orange spice substitute.
