AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"They are allies. You face an insurmountable task. With as many robot crews as you require, I can help you accomplish what you need." Duncan's dark eyes glittered, as he watched from a million eyes all at once. "We can build a barrier against the desert, stop the sandtrout from spreading, and keep the water on a portion of the continent. Shai-Hulud will have his domain, while the rest of Qelso remains relatively unscathed. Humans can have their lives and slowly learn to adapt to the desert, but only if they choose to."
"Impossible," Liet said. "How can a force of worker robots stand against the tide of the desert?"
Duncan flashed a confident smile. "Don't underestimate them--or me. I fill the roles of both Kwisatz Haderach and Omnius. I guide all the factions of humanity and control the entire Synchronized Empire." He shrugged, and smiled. "Saving one planet is well within the scope of my capabilities."
Liet couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You can stop the desert and turn back the worms?"
"Qelso will be both desert and forest, as I am both human and machine." At a gesture and a thought from Duncan, the massive excavating equipment rumbled out into the sand, heading toward the boundary where the dunes met the still-living landscape.
Liet and Stilgar followed Duncan, who walked ahead of the heavy convoy. As a planetologist, a ghola, and a human being, Liet had innumerable questions. But for now, watching the machines begin their work, he decided to wait and see what the future held.
When Leto II envisioned his Golden Path, he foresaw the direction that humankind should take, but he had blind spots. He failed to see that he was not the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach.
--Bene Gesserit fact-finding commission
In the eleven years Jessica had been back home, she had realized more and more that some things did not add up. This planet might indeed be Caladan, or Dan, but this was not the same home she and her Duke had loved so long ago.
On a stormy evening, as she walked through the restored castle, the incongruous details finally became more than she could bear. Pausing in an upper hallway, she opened a finely carved elaccawood cabinet, an antique that some decorator had placed there. This time, she stood staring at the ornate interior, and on impulse pressed a wooden extrusion in one corner. To her surprise, a panel opened, and inside she found a small blue statuette of a griffin. Perhaps placed there by the Baron ghola, the griffin was the ancient symbol of House Harkonnen. He must have hidden it there as a clever reminder of the falseness of the castle.
As she stared at the statuette, feeling the wrongness of the object, she considered all of her hard work since returning to Caladan. She had directed crews of local laborers to dismantle the Baron's torture devices and the Face Dancer Khrone's offensive laboratories from the underground chambers. Through it all she had worked side by side with the cleaning teams, sweating and angry as she scrubbed away every stain, every odor, every hint of the unwanted presence. But Castle Caladan still reeked with reminders. How could she make a fresh start when so much of the past--at least this awkward, out-of-focus echo of the past--hung all around her?
Behind her, moving silently, Dr. Yueh said, "Are you all right, my Lady?"
She looked at the Suk doctor. He wore an expression of deep concern on his buttery face; his dark lips turned downward as he waited for an answer.
"Everywhere I turn, I am reminded of the Baron." She frowned at the griffin figurine in her hand. "Some of the articles in this castle are authentic, such as that dropleaf desk with the hawk crest, but most are bad copies."
Making up her mind, Jessica stepped to a segmented window at the end of the hall and swung it open to let in the stormy night air. In a dramatic gesture, she hurled the griffin figurine out to the crashing sea. The waves would soon erode it and break it into unrecognizable pieces. A suitable fate for the Harkonnen icon.
A cold, wet wind whispered into the hall, bringing spatters of rain. Outside, scudding clouds parted to reveal a crescent moon on the horizon, casting cold yellow light on the water.
Moments later she tore down a wall tapestry that she had never liked, and was about to throw that out the window, too, but--not wanting to spoil this beautiful planet--she instead tossed the tapestry on the floor, promising herself to cast it on the trash heap the following morning. "Maybe I should just tear this whole place down, Wellington. Can we ever remove the taint?"
Yueh was shocked at the suggestion. "My Lady, this is the ancestral home of House Atreides. What would Duke Leto--"
"This is a mere reconstruction, fraught with errors." A gusting breeze blew her bronze hair away from her face.
"Maybe we waste too much time trying to recreate what we see in our old memories, my Lady. Why not build and decorate your home as you choose?"
She blinked as cold rain blew into her face, drenching her jade green dress and wetting the rug. "I thought this place would help my Leto, give him comfort, but maybe it was more for me than for him."
A ten-year-old boy with coal-black hair came running down the hall, his smoke gray eyes widening with excitement and alarm when he saw the open window. He was even more surprised when neither Jessica nor Yueh reacted to the blowing rain that drenched the rugs and tapestries. "What's happening?"
"I was considering moving somewhere else, Leto. Would you like me to find us a normal home in the village? Maybe we'd be happier down there, away from this pampered life."
"But I like this castle! It's a Duke's castle." Jessica could not think of her Leto as a child. He wore fishing dungarees and a striped shirt, just like the ones he had worn when Jessica had first come to Caladan as a concubine purchased from the Bene Gesserit. The young nobleman had put a knife to her throat that day, a bluff . . .
Yueh smiled. "A Duke . . . Such titles no longer mean anything with the Imperium long gone. Do the people of Caladan even need a Duke anymore?"
Jessica's reaction was automatic, making her realize she had not thought through her notion. "The people still need leaders, no matter what title we use. And we can be good leaders, as House Atreides has always been in the past. My Leto will be a good Duke."
The boy's eyes glittered as he listened with rapt attention. Beyond his youthful features, Jessica could see the seeds of the man she loved. This young Atreides was among the first of a new generation of gholas produced by Scytale. The baby had been shipped to Caladan and christened there--just as the original Paul had been.
Since leaving Synchrony, Jessica and Yueh had struggled to recover here, endeavoring in the process to bring back a degree of glory to the quiet water world. The tangled threads of their initial and ghola lives made them ironic allies, two people with shared tragedies and shared pasts. Finally, though he could never have his beloved Wanna back, Yueh had found some measure of peace.
Jessica, t
hough, knew that her true Duke waited for her. Eventually he would grow to manhood. When he got his memories back, his physical age would not matter.
Jessica's partnership with Leto would be unusual, but no stranger than the relationships of all the mismatched gholas that had grown up on the no-ship. As a Bene Gesserit, she could slow her own aging process, and with melange readily available from the operations on Chapterhouse, Buzzell, and Qelso, they could both enjoy extended lives. She would prepare Leto, and when the time was right, she would help trigger his true awakening. Miraculously, he would once again be the man she loved, with all his thoughts and memories.
She only had to wait a decade or two. As a Bene Gesserit, she could be patient.
Jessica grasped his small hand. This time there would be no political reason to prevent them from getting married, if that was what he wanted, and she wanted. It only mattered to her that they would be together again.
"Everything will be the same when you finally remember, Leto. And everything will be different."
The future is around all of us, and it looks very much like the past.
--MOTHER SUPERIOR SHEEANA,
at the founding of the Orthodox School on Synchrony
The mangled and permanently grounded Ithaca had become the new headquarters building for Sheeana's splinter group. Innovative human architects in conjunction with construction robots had remodeled the large vessel into a unique and imposing headquarters. The navigation bridge, the highest deck on the no-ship, had been opened up and converted into an observation tower.
Mother Superior Sheeana stared across the breathtaking, rebuilt city of Synchrony. Dipping into her deep reservoir of memories, she drew parallels to one of the original Bene Gesserit schools on Wallach IX, which had also been founded in an urban setting. Here many of the machine spires remained, and some even moved as they had before, processing materials in automated industries.
