Herbert Brian - Hunters of Dune

Leaving the navigation bridge unattended again, he gathered up her still-fresh garments from nullentropy storage and went to the quarters of Master Scytale.

The grayish Tleilaxu opened his chamber suspiciously, looking at Duncan and his armful of clothing. Behind him, the dimly lit room fuzzed with exotic scents of incense or drugs, and he caught a glimpse of the young Scytale copy.

The boy was wide-eyed, both fearful and fascinated to receive a visitor. The Tleilaxu Master rarely let his ghola see or interact with anyone else aboard the ship.

"Duncan Idaho." Scytale looked him up and down, and Duncan had the distinct feeling that he was being assessed. "How may I be of service?"

Did the Tleilaxu still look on him as one of their creations? He and Scytale had been held prisoner together aboard the no-ship on Chapterhouse, but Duncan had never considered Scytale to be a comrade in arms. Now, though, he needed something from him.

"I require your expertise." He extended the rumpled garments, and Scytale flinched in confusion, as if they were weapons. "I preserved these within days of when we left Chapterhouse. I have found loose hairs, and there may be skin cells, other DNA fragments," Scytale looked at them, frowning. He did not touch the clothing. "For what purpose?"

"To create a ghola."

The Tleilaxu Master already seemed to know the answer. "Of whom?"

"Murbella." He kept finding himself drawn back to the idea as if it were an inescapable black hole and he had already passed the event horizon in his mind. He had dark amber strands of her hair on a pale green towel. "You can grow her again. The axlotl tanks are no longer being used."

The boy Scytale stood close to his elder, who pushed him backward. The older Master appeared intimidated. "The whole program has been halted. Sheeana will not allow any new gholas."

"She will allow this one. I—I will demand it." He lowered his voice, mumbling to himself. "They owe me that much."

Sheeana's possibly prescient dream had forced her to regroup, to reconsider her plans and exercise caution. But now that several years had passed, discussions had already begun about experimenting with another ghola child or two. The fascinating cells from Scytale's nullentropy capsule were just too tempting… "Duncan Idaho, I do not believe this is wise. Murbella is an Honored Matre—"

"A former Honored Matre. And a ghola grown from these cells will… will be different." He didn't know if she would come back with her full memories and knowledge of a Reverend Mother, all the changes the Spice Agony had wrought.

Regardless, she would be here.

"You would not understand, Scytale. Long ago, she tried to enslave me, to bond me with her sexual powers—and I did the same. We were bound together in a mutual noose, and I cannot break it. My performance and concentration has suffered for years, though I use my strength to resist."

"Why, then, would you wish to bring her back?"

Duncan pushed the rumpled clothes forward. "Because then at least I wouldn't suffer from this endless, destructive withdrawal! It will not go away, so I must find a different solution. I have ignored it for too long."

The fact that he was here at all reinforced his knowledge of the hold that she still had. Even the thought of Murbella tied his hands. He should have been on guard, watching from the navigation bridge, waiting to hear the next report from Sheeana or Teg… but the idea of resurrecting Murbella had reopened the festering heartache, making her loss seem fresh and painful all over again.

The Tleilaxu Master seemed to understand much more than Duncan wanted him to see. "You yourself know the danger in your suggestion. If you were as confident as you appear to be, you would not have waited until the others were down on the planet. You would not have come here like a thief, whispering your suggestion to me where no one else can hear." Scytale crossed his arms over his chest.

Duncan stared at him in silence, promising himself that he would not plead.

"Will you do it? Is it possible to bring her back?"

"It is possible. As to your other question—" He could see Scytale calculating, trying to determine what sort of payment or reciprocal action he could pry out of Duncan.

The alarms startled them both. The danger lights, the warning of an imminent attack, the approaching ships—in so many years, the alert systems had been silent, and now the sounds were both startling and terrifying.

Duncan dropped the garments on the deck and ran for the nearest lift. He should have been on the navigation bridge. He should have been watching, not secretly talking with the Tleilaxu Master.

He would have time for guilt later.

The commsystems at the piloting station buzzed with Sheeana's voice. "Duncan!

Duncan, why don't you respond?"

As he threw himself into the chair, he glanced up at the front viewport. A dozen small spacecraft were rising from the planet below, burning streaks through the atmosphere and moving directly toward the no-ship. "I am here," he said. "What's happening? What is your status?" The lighter was coming back at top speed, discarding safety restrictions.

Garimi's voice came over the in-ship channel. "I am already on my way to the receiving bay. Get the ship prepared to receive them. Something has gone terribly wrong down on the planet."

Now Duncan heard a faint emergency message chattering across the commline.

Miles Teg, but his voice sounded weak. "Our maneuverability is severely compromised."

Tracer fire came from the other ships that followed close behind. Teg performed evasions with masterful agility, swooping one way and then another, closing in on the orbiting Ithaca. With the no-field in place, no one should have been able to see the giant ship's location.

Cursing his distraction and the stranglehold Murbella unwittingly still had on him, Duncan dropped the Ithaca's no-field just long enough to let Teg see where to go. He was already warming up the navigation systems and the Holtzman engines.

Garimi had opened the small landing-bay doors on one of the lower decks, no more than a tiny speck on the hull of the great ship. But the Bashar knew where to go. He aimed directly toward the sanctuary, and the Handler ships closed in. Not designed as a fast military craft, the lighter was losing ground as the much swifter pursuers gained on it. More unidentified ships launched from the planet below. It had seemed to be such a bucolic civilization… Sheeana was on the commsystem again. "They're Face Dancers, Duncan. The Handlers are Face Dancers!"

Teg added, "And they are in league with the Enemy! We cannot let them have access to this ship. It's what they've wanted all along."

Sheeana joined in, her voice ragged with exhaustion. "The Handlers are not so primitive as they appeared. They have heavy weaponry that could disable the Ithaca. It was a trap."

On the screen, weapons fire barely missed the lighter, scoring the broad plane of the Ithaca's hull. Teg did not decelerate, or alter course. On the commsystem, he sounded just like the old Bashar. "Duncan, you know what you have to do. If they come too close, just fold space and get away!"

Teg plunged the lighter into the open docking bay as fast as a bullet, only seconds ahead of the Handler ships. The pursuing craft raced forward, not decelerating, fully prepared to crash headlong into the Ithaca. To what purpose? To cripple the vessel so it couldn't leave?

From the landing bay, Garimi yelled, "Now, Duncan! Get us out of here!"

Duncan reactivated the no-field, and as far as the pursuers could see, the Ithaca vanished, leaving only a hole in space. The Handler ships could not land, nor did they pull up, apparently willing to do anything to prevent the Ithaca from escaping. Six of them continued to accelerate toward where the vessel had been—and plowed into the unseen hull of the no-ship like buckshot hitting a broad wall.