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"Yes. You must accept both your inability to understand and your importance in keeping the keys to such knowledge." Old Scytale sat back on his cushion. The boy was already nearly as tall as he was. "Listen while I tell you of lost Bandalong, our beautiful, sacred city on holy Tleilax, where our Great Belief was founded."
He described the glorious towers and minarets, and the secret chambers where fertile females were kept to produce the desired offspring, while others were converted into axlotl tanks for Tleilaxu laboratory needs. He talked about how the Council of Masters had quietly preserved the Great Belief through so many millennia. He explained that the sly Tleilaxu had fooled the evil outsiders by pretending to be weak and greedy so that all Tleilaxu would be seriously underestimated, a ploy to sow the seeds of eventual victory.
His ghola son drank it all in, a rapt audience for a talented storyteller.
Old Scytale had to trigger his duplicate's inner memories as soon as he could. It was a race against time. The Master's skin already showed blemishes, while his hands and legs had developed a noticeable tremor. If only he had more time!
The boy shifted restlessly. "I'm hungry. Will we eat soon?"
"We cannot afford to take a break! You must absorb everything possible."
The boy drew a deep breath, put his small, pointed chin in his hands, and gave the Master his full attention. Scytale spoke again, faster this time.
I know who I was. The historical record is quite clear on the facts. A more pertinent question to answer, though, is who I am.
--PAUL ATREIDES,
no-ship training sessions
F
rom outside the instructional chamber, peering through a spyplaz window, Duncan found himself staring at the past. The eight students of varying ages and historical significance were all earnest, continuing their daily instruction with changing degrees of restlessness, intimidation, and fascination.
Paul Atreides was a year older than his "mother," his son Leto II was a precocious toddler, and his father Duke Leto had not yet been born. One thing is certain: never in history has there been a family such as this. Duncan wondered how they would deal with the peculiar situation when their memories were restored.
Most days, Proctor Superior Garimi took each of the young gholas through a well-structured regimen of prana-bindu training, physical exercise, and mental acuity challenges. The Bene Gesserit had molded their acolytes for millennia, and Garimi knew exactly what she was doing. She had no love for her duties in charge of the ghola children, but she accepted her role, knowing she would face an even worse punishment should harm come to any of them. With such intensive physical training and mental instruction methods, these children had been rushed along in their development, making them far more mature and intelligent than equivalent boys and girls of the same age.
Today, Garimi had placed the small group in a large faux solarium and given them materials and an assignment. Though Duncan observed them surreptitiously, the group seemed to be alone. The chamber was bathed in warm yellow light, supposedly a spectrum similar to the sun of Arrakis; the smooth ceiling projected an artificial blue sky, and a coating of soft sand from the hold had been strewn on the floor. This room was meant to suggest a memory of Dune, without the harsh realities.
The perfect place for their assignment.
Using blocks of neutral sensiplaz, shapers, and historical blueprint grids, the ghola children were expected to complete a compelling and ambitious project. Working together, the gholas would assemble an accurate model of the Grand Palace of Arrakeen, which had been built by the Emperor Muad'Dib during his violent reign.
The Ithaca's archives contained a variety of images, accounts, tourist brochures, and often contradictory construction drawings. From his second life, Duncan remembered that the real Grand Palace had many secret passages and hidden rooms, necessitating falsified diagrams.
Paul bent to pick up a shaper glove, and looked at it skeptically. Testing his abilities, he began to spread the free-form material in a whisper-thin but firm layer: the foundations of his palace. The other children distributed raw-material blocks of sensiplaz; the no-ship's stores could always provide more.
In previous training sessions, the gholas had studied biographical summaries of their historical predecessors. They read and reread their own histories, familiarizing themselves with the available details, while searching their minds and hearts to understand the undocumented motivations and influences that had shaped them.
Starting out with a clean slate, would any of these cellular offspring turn out the same as they had in the past? They were certainly being raised differently.
The children reminded him of actors learning roles in a play with an immense cast. The children were forming friendships and alliances. Stilgar and Liet-Kynes already demonstrated signs of friendship. Paul sat by Chani, while Jessica kept to herself, without her Duke; Paul's son Leto II, missing his twin sister, also showed distinct signs of being a loner.
Little Leto II should have had his twin sister. The boy wasn't destined to become a monster, but without Ghani this time, he could be even more vulnerable. One day, after watching the quiet boy, Duncan had marched up to Sheeana and demanded answers. Yes, Ghanima's cells were in Scytale's reservoir, but for whatever reason, the Bene Gesserits had not brought her from the new axlotl tanks. "Not at this time," they'd said. Of course they could always do so later, but Leto II would remain separated in years from a person who should have been his twin, his other half. He felt sorry for the boy's needless pain.
Drawn together by their shared past, as well as their own instincts, Paul and six-year-old Chani sat side by side. He hunkered down on the floor, studying the layout. A holo blueprint shimmered in the air, giving far more detail than he needed. He focused on the structural walls, the main parts of the complex that was the largest man-made structure ever built.
Duncan knew that Garimi's assignment for the children had many layers of purpose, some artistic, some practical. By making a scaled-down replica of Muad'Dib's Grand Palace, these gholas could touch history. "Tactile sensations and visual stimuli evoke a different understanding than mere words and archival records," she had explained. Most of the eight gholas had been inside the actual structure in their previous lives; maybe this would feed their inner memories.
Though too small to help, Leto II could walk about clumsily and observe with fascination. Only a year earlier, Garimi and Stuka had tried to kill him in the creche. Placid and interested, Leto II spoke little, but showed a frightening level of intelligence and seemed to absorb everything around him.
The toddler sat down on the sandy floor and rocked back and forth in front of the Palace's projected main entrance, holding his knees. The two-year-old seemed to understand certain things as well as the other children did, perhaps even better.
Thufir Hawat, Stilgar, and Liet-Kynes worked together to raise the outer fortress walls. They laughed and played, seeing the task as a game instead of a lesson. Since reading of his original heroic life, Thufir had developed a bold personality. "I wish we'd just find the Enemy and get on with it. I'm sure the Bashar and Duncan could fight them."
"And now they have us to help," Stilgar said brashly and nudged his friend Liet, inadvertently knocking some of the blocks down.
Watching, Duncan muttered, "We don't exactly have you--not the you we want."
Jessica created more blocks from the sensiplaz, and Yueh dutifully helped her. Chani paced the boundaries, marking the general outline projected on the plan. Then she and Paul set up a scale representation of the huge Annex that had housed all the Atreides attendant
s and their families--thirty-five million of them, at one time! The records had not been exaggerated, but the scope was difficult for any person to grasp.
"I can't imagine us living in a home like that," Chani said, pacing around the newly marked boundaries.
"According to the Archives, we were happy there for many years."
She smiled mischievously, understanding much more than a girl should have. "This time, can we just eliminate Irulan's quarters?"
Secretly hearing this, even Duncan chuckled.
The cells of Irulan, daughter of Shaddam IV, were among those in Scytale's treasure trove, but the med-center axlotl tanks would not produce her anytime soon. No other gholas were scheduled, though Duncan had mixed feelings to know that Alia would have been next. Garimi and her conservatives certainly hadn't complained about putting a cautious halt to the ghola project.
Inside the model Palace, the children blocked out an independent structure, the Temple of St. Alia of the Knife. The temple had supported a burgeoning religion around the living Alia, and its priesthood and bureaucrats had brought down Muad'Dib's legacy. Duncan saw the great louvered window through which Alia--possessed and driven mad--had thrown herself to her death.
Studying the blueprints again, the gholas--each wearing shaper gloves--worked the sensiplaz into a quick approximation of the Palace's framework. They extruded representations of the immense entrance pillars and the capitol arch, leaving the numerous statues and staircases for later, as finishing touches. Accurately including all of the ornamentation, the gifts and adornments presented by pilgrims from hundreds of worlds conquered in Muad'Dib's jihad, would have been an impossible task. But that was another part of the training: Rub their faces in an impossible task to see how far they would carry it forward.
Tired of feeling like a voyeur, Duncan turned from the spyplaz and walked into the training room. Glancing at him, the gholas noted his presence, and then went back to work. But Paul Atreides walked right up to him.
