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These sensations and fantasies made him feel much, much better. Vladimir wondered if his memories might be ready to come back, a little at a time. He hoped so.
Hearing a clatter of stones behind him, he turned. "I've been watching you at play," Khrone said. "I am pleased to see you thinking along correct lines, just as the old Baron Harkonnen did. You will need some of these techniques when we place Paolo in your care."
"When do I get to play with him?"
"Your own survival depends on certain things. Understand this: helping us with the Paul Atreides ghola is the most important objective of your entire life. He is the key to our many plans, and your survival depends upon how well he does."
Vladimir formed a feral smile. "It is my destiny to be together with Paolo, and to succeed with him." He kissed the Face Dancer passionately on the mouth, and Khrone pushed him away.
Inside, Vladimir was not smiling at all. Even in this odd reenactment of his life, he still felt a need to strangle the Atreides ghola.
The meek see potential threats everywhere. The bold see potential profits.
--CHOAM administrative memo
M
ore pain, more torture, more spice substitute. Still no success--not even anything that qualified as minor progress--in making melange with the axlotl tanks. In other words, business as usual.
Uxtal worked in his Bandalong laboratories, serving the needs of the Honored Matres. At least the two brats had been gone for years now, two less things to be terrified about. In his quarters, he had marked off more days and searched for ways to change his situation, to escape, to hide. But none of his solutions seemed remotely viable.
With the exception of God, he hated everyone who held authority over him. Beyond the things his superiors wanted from him, beyond the excuses and lies he told them concerning his work, Uxtal searched for signs and portents, numerical patterns, anything to reveal to him the significance of his own holy mission. He had survived for so long in this nightmare that there must be a purpose behind it!
Since taking away the newborn Paul Atreides ghola, the Face Dancers had not commanded him to do anything further for them, yet the little researcher felt no relief. He was not free. They were sure to come back and demand something even more impossible. The Honored Matres still pressured him to produce real melange with axlotl tanks, so he performed extravagant sham experiments to demonstrate how hard he was working--though completely without success.
Now that the Face Dancers no longer seemed to care about him, he was completely at the mercy of Matre Superior Hellica. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and considered how difficult his life had been for so many years.
Since the New Sisterhood had conquered most of their other strongholds, the Honored Matres needed less and less of the adrenaline-based drug. That did not make life easier for him, though. What if the terrible women got it into their heads that they didn't require him at all anymore? He had achieved nothing new in quite some time and was sure they were convinced he would never make melange. (He had been convinced of that himself for several years now.)
Focused on business above all else, Guildships and CHOAM merchants flew in and out of the devastated zones on Tleilax. Necessarily neutral in the conflict, they traded without playing politics. Honored Matres required certain supplies and offworld items, especially with their extravagant tastes in clothing, jewels, rare foods.
Once, the whores had been fabulously wealthy, controlling the Guild Bank and carrying valuable currencies with them as they swept across star systems and planets, leaving scorched earth in their wake. Uxtal did not understand them, could not comprehend what could have created such monsters or what had chased them out of the Scattering. As usual, no one told him anything.
WHEN THE GUILD Navigators approached Hellica and her entrenched rebels on Tleilax with a proposal, Uxtal just knew his nightmare was about to get worse.
A messenger arrived in Bandalong from a high-orbiting Heighliner. Hellica herself came to escort Uxtal past the suspicious stares of Ingva and the browbeaten lab workers.
"Uxtal, you and I will travel to meet with Navigator Edrik. He awaits us aboard the Heighliner."
Though confused and intimidated, Uxtal could not argue. A Navigator? He gulped. He had never seen one of them before. He did not know why he was being singled out for such attention, but it couldn't be good news. How had the Navigator learned of his existence? Through prescience? He wondered if this might be an opportunity for him to escape, or get a reprieve . . . or be saddled with another impossible task.
Aboard the Guildship, though no one could overhear them inside the shielded chamber, Uxtal still did not feel safe. He stood silent, trembling, while Hellica strutted in front of the great armored tank. Behind the curved plaz walls, the mist-shrouded form of Edrik was so peculiar that Uxtal could not tell if the filtered voice carried an implied threat.
The Navigator spoke directly to him rather than to the Matre Superior, which was sure to set her off. "The old Tleilaxu Masters knew how to create melange with axlotl tanks. You will rediscover this process for us." The Navigator's distorted inhuman face floated behind the glass.
Uxtal groaned inside. He had already proved himself incapable of that.
"I have given him that command," Hellica said with a sniff. "For many years he has failed me."
"Then he must cease failing."
Uxtal wrung his hands. "It is not a trivial task. Worlds full of Tleilaxu Masters worked all throughout the Famine Times to perfect the complex process. I am only one man, and the old Masters did not share their secrets with the Lost Tleilaxu." He gulped again. Surely the Guild knew all this already?
"If your people are so ignorant, how did they create Face Dancers so superior to any previous ones?" the Navigator asked. Uxtal shuddered, knowing--now--that his people had not, after all, created Khrone or his superior breed of shape-shifters. Apparently, they had merely been found out in the Scattering.
"I am not interested in Face Dancers," Hellica snapped. She had always seemed at odds with Khrone. "I am interested in profits from melange."
Uxtal swallowed. "When the Masters all died, their knowledge died with the last one. I have been working diligently to reacquire the technique." He did not remind them that the Honored Matres themselves were responsible for losing those secrets; Hellica did not take even implied criticism well.
"Then use the indirect approach." Edrik delivered his words like a blow. "Bring one of them back."
The idea took Uxtal by surprise. He certainly had the ability to use an axlotl tank to resurrect one of the Masters, provided he had viable cells. "But . . . they are all dead. Even in Bandalong, the Masters were killed many years ago." He remembered the boy Baron and Hellica gleefully feeding body parts to the sligs. "Where am I to get cells for such a ghola?"
The Matre Superior stopped her tigerlike pacing and spun toward him as if to deliver a fatal thrust. "That is all you needed? A few cells? Thirteen years and you did not tell me you required only a few cells to solve this problem?" The orange in her eyes glowed like embers.
He quailed. The idea had never occurred to him. "I did not think it a possibility! The Masters are gone--"
She growled at him. "How stupid do you think we are, little man? We would not dispose of anything so valuable. If the Navigator's scheme will work--if we can create melange and sell it to the Guild--then I will give you the cells you need!"
Edrik's enormous head bobbed behind the plaz walls, and his bulging eyes glared at the quivering researcher. "You accept this project?"
"We accept it. This Lost Tleilaxu man works for us, and survives only at our pleasure."
Uxtal was still reeling from the revelation. "Then . . . then some of the old Masters are still alive?"
Her quirk of a smile was frightening. "Alive? After a fashion. Alive enough to provide the cells you need." She gave the Navigator a perfunctory bow and grabbed Uxtal by the arm. "I will take you to them. You must start right away."
&
nbsp; AS THE MATRE Superior led him into a lower level of the commandeered Bandalong Palace, the stench grew worse with every step. He stumbled, but she dragged him along like a rag doll. Though Honored Matres decorated themselves with colorful fabrics and gaudy adornments, they were not particularly clean or fastidious. Hellica wasn't bothered by the stink wafting out of the dim chambers ahead; to her, it was the smell of suffering.
"They still live, but you won't get anything from their minds, little man." Hellica gestured for Uxtal to precede her. "That isn't what we kept them for."
With uncertain steps, he entered the shadowy room. He heard bubbling noises, the rhythmic hiss of respirators, gurgling pumps. It reminded him of the noisome lair of some foul beast. Ruddy light seeped from glowpanels near the floor and ceiling. He drew shallow breaths to keep himself from gagging as his eyes adjusted.
Inside he saw twenty-four small men, or what remained of them. He counted quickly before absorbing other details, searching for numerical significance. Twenty-four--three groups of eight.
The gray-skinned men had the distinctive features of old Masters, higher-caste leaders of the Tleilaxu. Over many centuries, genetic drift and inbreeding had given the Lost Tleilaxu a somewhat distinctive appearance; to outsiders, the gnomish men all looked alike, but Uxtal easily noted the differences.
