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Today, when the Face Dancer guards told the ghola to lie back on a different table, he didn't bother to suppress his broad grin. Such smiles seemed to make them quite uncomfortable.
Vladimir had no real interest in cooperating just for the sake of pleasing Khrone, but he was very curious to access the thoughts of the historical Baron Harkonnen. He was sure those memories would be full of excellent ideas for amusing himself. Unfortunately, the fact that he wanted to have his memories back, and the perverse pleasure he derived from the pain inflicted upon him, turned out to be a hindrance.
While waiting, he looked around the stone-walled dungeon chamber of the restored castle, envisioning what it might have been like here in ancient times. The Atreides had probably made it sunny and bright, but he wondered if some long-forgotten duke had used this very chamber to torture captive Harkonnens.
Yes, Vladimir could imagine what such devices might have been like. Electronic probes that could be inserted into living bodies, tunneling instruments that could seek and destroy specific organs. Archaic, old-fashioned, and effective . . .
When Khrone entered the chamber, his normally placid face showed tiny marks of tension around the mouth and eyes. "In our last session you were very nearly terminated. Too much cerebral stress. I shall have to gauge your limits better."
"Oh, how awful that must have been for you!" the fifteen-year-old said sarcastically and gave an exaggerated sigh. "If restoring my memories requires so much pain that it kills me, then all your hard work will be for nothing. What to do? What to do?"
The Face Dancer leaned close. "You will see soon enough."
Vladimir heard the sounds of machinery, the noise of something clattering and rolling into the room. It came toward the top of his head, but remained out of his range of vision. The anticipation and ominous fear felt delicious. What would Khrone do differently this time?
The unseen machine sounded like it was directly behind him now, but it did not stop. Vladimir turned his head from side to side and saw a thick-walled cylindrical chamber sliding slowly forward, beginning to engulf him as if he were being swallowed by a whale. The cylinder was like a large pipe or a medical diagnostic unit. Or a coffin.
Vladimir felt a thrill of pleasure as he guessed what this machine must be. A whole-body Agony Box! The Face Dancers must have built it specially for him to create a more intimate experience. The young man grinned, but asked no questions, for fear of spoiling any surprises the Face Dancers might have in store for him. From outside, Khrone watched him with an unreadable expression as the table slid entirely into the chamber. The ugly, patchwork observers were also there, but no one spoke.
The machine's end cap snapped shut and sealed with a hiss. Vladimir's ears popped as the pressure changed. Khrone's voice came over a tinny-sounding speaker system. "You are about to experience a variation on the processes used by old Tleilaxu Masters to develop their Twisted Mentats."
"Ah, I had a Twisted Mentat once." Vladimir laughed with genuine fearlessness. "Are you going to talk about the device, or use it?"
The illumination shut off inside the cylinder, plunging him into complete blackness. Indeed, something different!
"Do you think I'm afraid of the dark?" he shouted, but the walls of the cylinder were coated with a sound-absorbing substance that swallowed even the whisper of an echo. He couldn't see anything.
Surrounded by a faint hum, he felt himself growing weightless. The table dropped away beneath him and he could no longer feel it against his back. Cradled in a suspensor field that held him perfectly balanced and immobile, he could no longer feel anything or see anything. The temperature was perfect inside the chamber, imparting no sensation of heat or cold. Even the faint humming stopped, leaving him in a silence so absolute that he could hear nothing but a slight ringing in his ears, and even that faded.
"This is boring! When is it going to start?"
The darkness remained, and silence, its companion, as well. He felt nothing and could not move.
Vladimir made a rude noise. "This is ridiculous." Khrone clearly did not grasp the nuances of sadism. "You play with my body to get to my mind, and play with my mind to get to my body, twisting, contorting. Is that all you have?"
Ten minutes later--or was it an hour?--he still had no answer. "Khrone?"
Nothing happened. He remained perfectly comfortable, detached from all sensation. "I am ready! Do your worst!"
Khrone didn't answer. No pain came. Nothing. They must be trying to drive his anticipation to a fever pitch. He licked his lips. It would start any second now.
Khrone left him there in dark, weightless isolation for an eternity.
Vladimir tried to clutch at memories of previous sensations, but they kept slipping away, fading from his mind. Struggling to retrieve the thoughts, he followed a mental pathway and felt himself carried on a neural conduit deep into his own brain, a realm of total darkness. The experiences he sought were pinpoints of light ahead, and he swam toward them. But they swam away faster, and farther than he could reach.
Another eternity passed.
Hours? Days?
He could feel nothing, absolutely nothing. Vladimir didn't want to be here. He wanted to swim back out to the light that was his ghola life before this session had begun. But he couldn't. It was a trap!
Eventually, he screamed. At first, it was just to make noise, to disturb the throbbing emptiness. Then he screamed for real, and once he started he could not stop himself.
Even so, the silence remained. He thrashed and struggled, but the field kept him immobile. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't hear. Had the Face Dancers blinded him somehow? Made him deaf?
Vladimir wet himself, and for a few moments the mere sensation was a revelation, but it quickly faded. And he was left alone in empty, silent, darkness. He needed sensation, stimulus, pain, interaction, pleasure. Anything!
Finally, he became aware of a gradual change around him. Nonexistent illumination, sounds, and smells seeped in, gradually filling the stygian universe, converting it to something else. Even the tiniest glimmer was like an explosion. With that catalyst, senses poured into his conscious and unconscious mind, filling every cavity. Pain, a mental pain, made his head feel as if it would explode.
He screamed again. This time, the pain brought no semblance of pleasure whatsoever.
The full life of the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen flooded back into the ghola body with all the subtlety of an avalanche. Every thought and experience came back to him, all the way up to the moment of his first death on Arrakis. He saw the little girl Alia stabbing him with the poisoned needle, the gom jabbar--
The internal universe expanded, and he became aware of voices again. He was outside the chamber now, withdrawn from the large coffinlike device.
The Baron sat up indignantly, pleased and surprised to note his younger body, which was a bit plump from overindulgence but not ravaged by the bloating and debilitating disease the witch Mohiam had inflicted upon him. He looked down at himself, grinned up at the Face Dancers. "Oh ho! The first thing I want is a better wardrobe. And then I want to see that Atreides brat you've been raising for me."
Khrone stepped closer, his expression inquisitive. "You have access to all of your memories, Baron?"
"Of course! Baron Harkonnen is indeed back." He wandered into his thoughts, reassured by the things he had achieved in his original, glorious lifetime. He was delighted to be himself again.
But deep inside his brain, lurking at the back of his mind, he sensed that something was wrong, out of his control. An unwanted presence had joined him inside his mind, hitchhiking on his memories.
Hello, Grandfather, a girl's voice said. She giggled.
The Baron's head jerked. Where was that coming from? He didn't see her.
Did you miss me, Grandfather?
"Where are you?"
Where you won't lose me. I will always be with you now. Just like you were with me, haunting me, appearing in visions, refusing to give me rest. The
girl's giggle became more shrill. Now it's my turn.
It was the Abomination, Paul's sister. "Alia? No, no!" His mind must be playing tricks on him. He dug his fingers against his temple, but the voice was inside, unreachable. With time, she would go away.
Don't count on it, Grandfather. I am here to stay.
Each civilization, no matter how altruistic it purports to be, has its means of interrogating and torturing prisoners, as well as an elaborate system to justify such actions.
--from a Bene Gesserit report
T
hough he was genetically identical to the other seven gholas in the first batch, Waff Number One did not like being so short, small, and weak. His accelerated body had reached its mature size in less than four years, but he wanted to be strong enough to escape this maddening confinement.
As he peered out through the shimmering confinement field, Waff seethed at Uxtal and the laboratory assistants. His seven counterparts did the same. The Lost Tleilaxu researcher was like a nervous prison guard, constantly prodding and herding the eight matching gholas. All of the Waffs loathed him.
He imagined sinking his teeth into Uxtal's neck and feeling the hot blood surge into his mouth. The researcher and his assistants were too cautious now, though. The ghola brothers shouldn't have made their earlier attack on him, before they were ready to succeed. That had been a tactical mistake. A year ago they had been so much younger.
Standing safely on the other side of the confinement field, Uxtal frequently lectured the eight gholas about his Great Belief, implying that all the original Tleilaxu people had been criminals, heretics. Yet all of the Waffs could tell that he wanted something from them. Very badly. They were smart enough to realize they were pawns.
