Hunters of Dune dc-7 Page 14

  But something was here. Something dangerous.

  Inside her head, the voices from Sheeana's past clamored for her to be careful. Then they backed off into necessary mental silence so that she could concentrate. She sniffed the air, took two steps farther down the hall, and stopped as the warning instinct grew more potent. Danger here!

  One of the storeroom doors was dark and almost closed, but not quite sealed.

  The tiny crack was just wide enough that an observer hiding within could keep watch on anyone who passed by.

  There! That was where the scent of blood came from, and a rank, musky, animal smell. Intent on her discovery, she could not hide her reaction.

  The door burst open, and a muscular dynamo stood there naked, pale flesh dusted with reddish-brown hair, a mouth widened to accommodate thick, tearing fangs. The muscles beneath the tight skin were as tight as coiled shigawire.

  One of the Futars! His curved claws and dark lips were stained with a bright splash of fresh blood.

  With all the force of Voice she could put behind a single word, Sheeana snapped, "Stop.'"

  The Futar froze as if a leash around his neck had suddenly been yanked taut.

  In the bright corridor light, Sheeana stood motionless, non-threatening. The creature glared at her, his lips drawn back to expose long teeth. She used Voice again, though she was aware that these creatures might have been bred to resist known Bene Gesserit skills. Sheeana cursed herself for not spending more time studying the beasts to understand their motivations and vulnerabilities. "Do not harm me."

  The Futar remained poised for attack, a bomb ready to explode. "You Handler?"

  He took a deep sniff. "Not Handler!"

  In the dim storeroom that the Futar had chosen for his den, Sheeana caught a glimpse of white flesh and torn dark robes. She saw pale fingers curled toward the ceiling, loose, in a repose of death. Who had it been?

  Until now, the four captive Futars had been surly and restless, but not murderous. Even when they had been held prisoner by the Honored Matres—their natural prey—they had not killed the whores, because apparently they would not act without instructions from their true masters. Handlers. But after their rough treatment by the Honored Matres, and then years of being held in the brig of the no-ship, could the Futars be breaking down? Even the harshest inbred training could grow fuzzy around the edges, allowing "accidents."

  Sheeana focused on her adversary, forcing herself not to see the creature as something unstable or broken. Don't underestimate him! At the moment she could not concern herself with how the creature had escaped from its high-security brig cell. Had all four broken free to roam the halls, or was this the only one?

  In a careful gesture, she lifted her chin and turned her head to one side, baring her throat. A natural predator would understand the universal signal of submission. The Futar's need for dominance, to be the leader of a pack, required him to accept the gesture.

  "You are a Futar," Sheeana said. "I am not one of your old Handlers."

  He crept forward to draw a deep sniff. "Not Honored Matre either." He growled, a low, bubbling sound that demonstrated his hatred for the whores who had enslaved him and his comrades. But Bene Gesserit Sisters were something else entirely. Even so, he had killed one.

  "We are your caretakers now. We give you food."

  "Food." The Futar licked blood from his dark lips.

  "You asked us for sanctuary on Gammu. We rescued you from the Honored Matres."

  "Bad women."

  "But we are not bad." Sheeana remained motionless, nonthreatening, facing the coiled danger of the Futar. As a child she had confronted a giant sandworm and shouted at it, heedless of her peril. She could do this. She made her voice as soothing as possible. "I am Sheeana." She spoke in a lilting, hushed voice.

  "Do you have a name?"

  The creature growled—at least she thought it was a growl. Then she realized that the confined rumble in his larynx was actually his name. "Hrrm."

  "Hrrm. Do you recall when you came to this no-ship? When you escaped from the Honored Matres? You asked us to take you away."

  "Bad women!" the Futar said again.

  "Yes, and we saved you." Sheeana edged closer. Though she wasn't entirely sure of its efficacy, she controlled her body chemistry to increase her scent, trying to match some of the markers exuded by the Futar's musk glands. She made sure he smelled that she was female, not a threat. Something to protect, not attack. She was also careful not to give off any odor of fear, to keep this predator from thinking of her as its prey.

  "You shouldn't have escaped from your room."

  "Want Handlers. Want home." With a longing in his feral eyes, Hrrm glanced back at the dark storage room where the torn body of the hapless Sister lay.

  Sheeana wondered how long Hrrm had been feeding on the corpse.

  "I need to take you back to the other Futars. You must stay together. We protect you. We are your friends. You must not hurt us."

  Hrrm grumbled. Then, taking a big chance, Sheeana reached out and touched his hairy shoulder. The Futar stiffened, but she stroked carefully, seeking pleasure centers along his vivid nerves. Though startled by her attentions, Hrrm did not draw away. Her hands drifted upward, moving with a gentle intensity. Sheeana touched Hrrm's neck, then behind his ears. The Futar's suspicious growl became a sound more like a purr.

  "We are your friends," she insisted, applying just a hint of Voice to reinforce it. "You should not hurt us." She looked meaningfully into the den chamber, at the dead Sister on the floor.

  Hrrm stiffened. "My kill."

  "You should not have killed. That is not an Honored Matre. She was one of my Sisters. She was one of your friends."

  "Futars should not kill friends."

  Sheeana stroked him again, and his coarse body hair bristled. She began to lead him down the corridor. "We feed you. There is no need for you to kill."

  "Kill Honored Matres."

  "There are no Honored Matres on this ship. We hate them, too."

  "Need to hunt. Need Handlers."

  "You can't have either right now."

  "Someday?" Hrrm sounded hopeful.

  "Someday." Sheeana could make no more of a promise than that.

  She took him away from the dead Bene Gesserit, hoping the two of them would encounter no one else on the way back to the brig, no other potential victims.

  Her hold on this creature was far too tenuous. If Hrrm was startled, he might attack. She took side passages and service lifts that few others would use, until they arrived at the deep brig level. The Futar seemed disconsolate, reluctant to go back into his cell, and she pitied him his endless confinement. Just like the seven sandworms in the hold.

  Reaching the door, she saw that a minor security circuit had failed after so many years. At first she had dreaded a systemic problem and expected to find all the Futars loose. Instead, this proved to be a minor glitch resulting from poor maintenance procedures. An accident on an old vessel.

  The year before there had been another breakdown involving a water recycling reservoir, when a corroded pipe flooded a corridor. They had also experienced recurring problems with the algae vats that were used for food and oxygen production. Maintenance was growing lax. Complacent.

  Sheeana controlled her anger, not wanting Hrrm to smell it on her. Though the Bene Gesserits lived in constant intangible peril, the danger no longer seemed immediate. She had to impose much stricter discipline from now on. A breakdown like this could have led to disaster!

  Hrrm looked saddened and beaten as he shuffled into the confinement chamber.

  "You must stay in there," Sheeana said, trying to sound encouraging. "At least for a while longer."

  "Want home," Hrrm said.

  "I will try to find your home. But right now I have to keep you safe."

  Hrrm plodded to the far wall of the brig chamber and squatted on his haunches.

  The other three Futars approached the barriers of their separate cells t
o peer out with hungry, curious eyes.

  Fixing the door shield mechanism was a simple thing. Now all would be safe, Futars and Bene Gesserits. Sheeana feared for them, though. Wandering aimlessly in the no-ship, her people had been too long without a goal.

  That would have to change. Perhaps the birth of the new gholas would give them what they needed.

  2

  To the Sisterhood, Other Memory is one of the greatest blessings and greatest mysteries. We understand only shadows of the process by which lives are transferred from one Reverend Mother to another. That vast reservoir of voices from the past is a brilliant but mysterious light.

  REVEREND MOTHER DARWI ODRADE

  Over the course of two years, the New Sisterhood had started to become a single unified organism, and all the while the planet of Chapterhouse continued to die. Mother Commander Murbella walked briskly through the brown orchards. One day this would all be desert. On purpose.

  As part of the plan to create an alternative to Rakis, sandtrout worked furiously to encapsulate water. The arid belt expanded, and now only the hardiest apple trees with the deepest roots clung to life.

  Nevertheless, the orchard was one of Murbella's favorite places, a joy she had learned from Odrade—her captor, teacher, and (eventually) respected mentor. It was mid-afternoon, and sunlight filtered through the sparse leaves and brittle branches. Even so, it was a cool day, with a stiff breeze from the north. She paused and bowed her head out of respect for the woman who lay buried beneath a small Macintosh apple tree, which struggled to grow even as the environment wasted into harsh aridity. No braz plaque identified the Mother Superior's resting place. Though Honored Matres preferred ostentation and dramatic memorials, Odrade would have been appalled by any such gesture.

  Murbella wished her predecessor could have lived long enough to see the results of her great plan of synthesis: Honored Matres and Bene Gesserits living together on Chapterhouse. The groups had learned from their differences, drawing strength from each other.

  But renegade Honored Matres on outside planets continued to be a thorn in her side, refusing to join the New Sisterhood, causing turmoil while the Mother Commander needed to face the much larger threat of the Outside Enemy. Those women rejected her as their leader, saying that she had tainted and diluted their ways. They wanted to wipe out Murbella and her followers, to the last Sister. And some of those rebels might still have their terrible Obliterators—though certainly not many, or they would have used them by now.

  When her newly formed group of fighters completed their training, Murbella intended to seize the renegades and bring them into the fold, before it was too late. The New Sisterhood would eventually have to go up against large contingents of Honored Matre holdouts on Buzzell, Gammu, Tleilax, and other worlds.

  We must break them and assimilate them, she thought. But first, we must be certain of our unity.

  Bending down, Murbella scooped up a handful of dirt near the base of the small tree. Holding the dry soil in the palm of her hand, she lifted it to her nose and inhaled the pungent, earthy aroma. At times, she wondered if she could detect, ever so faintly, the infinitesimal scent of her mentor and friend.

  "Someday I may join you here," she said aloud, looking at the struggling tree, "but not yet. First, I have important work to finish."

  Your legacy, murmured Odrade-within.

  "Our legacy. You inspired me to heal the factions and bring together women who were mortal enemies. I didn't expect it to be so hard, or to take so long." In her head Odrade remained silent.

  Murbella walked farther from the fortresslike Keep, putting it behind her, and all of her responsibilities with it. She identified the passing rows of dying trees: apples giving way to peaches, cherries, and oranges. She decided to order an active program of planting date palms, which would survive longer in the changing climate. But did they even have years?

  Climbing a nearby hill, she noted how much harder and drier the soil was. In grasslands beyond the orchards, the Sisterhood's cattle still grazed, but the pasture was sparse now, forcing the animals to range farther. She saw the flicker of a lizard running across the warm ground. Sensing danger, the tiny reptile scurried up a large stone to look back at her. Suddenly a desert hawk swooped down, snatched the creature, and carried it into the sky.

  Murbella responded with a hard smile. For some time now, the desert had been approaching, killing all growing things in its path. Windblown dust painted the normally blue skies with a constant brownish haze. As the sandworms grew out in the arid belt, so did their desert, to accommodate them. An ever-expanding ecosystem.

  In the encroaching desert ahead of her, and the faltering orchards behind her, Murbella saw two great Bene Gesserit dreams crashing into one another like opposing tides, a beginning absorbing an ending. Long before Sheeana brought a single aging sandworm here, the Sisterhood planted this orchard. The new plan, however, had far greater galactic importance than any symbolism represented by the orchard graveyards. Through their bold action, the Bene Gesserits had saved the sandworms and mélange, before the ravages of the Honored Matres.

  Wasn't that worth the loss of a few fruit trees? Mélange was both a blessing and a curse. She turned and strode back to the Keep.

  3

  The conscious mind is only the tip of the iceberg. A vast mass of subconscious thoughts and latent abilities lies beneath the surface.

  The Mentat Handbook

  Back when Duncan Idaho was held prisoner at the Chapterhouse spaceport, enough deadly mines had been placed on the no-ship to destroy it three times over.

  Odrade and Bellonda had planted the explosives throughout the grounded no-ship, ready to be triggered should Duncan try to escape. They had assumed that the deadly mines would be a sufficient deterrent. The loyal Sisters had never dreamed that Sheeana herself and her conservative allies might deactivate those mines and steal the ship for their own purposes.

  The passengers aboard the Ithaca were theoretically trustworthy, but Duncan, staunchly supported by the Bashar, insisted that these mines were simply too dangerous to leave unprotected. Only he, Teg, Sheeana, and four others had direct access to the armory.

  During his routine check, Duncan unsealed the vault and viewed the wide selection of weapons. He drew reassurance from observing his options, tallying the ways that the Ithaca could fight back, should it ever become necessary. He sensed that the old man and woman had not stopped searching, though he had not encountered the shimmering net for three years now. He could not let his guard down.

  He inspected rows of modified lasguns, pulse rifles, splinter guns, and projectile launchers. These weapons represented an edgy potential for violence that made him think of Honored Matres. The whores would not want distant and impersonal stunners; they preferred weapons that caused extreme damage up close, where they could see the carnage, and smile. He had already gained far too much insight into their tastes when he'd discovered the sealed torture chamber. He wondered what else the terrible women might have hidden aboard the great vessel.

  For the entire time Duncan had been a prisoner aboard the grounded no-ship, these weapons had been stored here, securely locked but still within reach.

  Had he wanted to, he surely could have broken into the armory and stolen them.

  He was surprised that Odrade had underestimated him… or trusted him. In the end, she had given him what history called the "Atreides choice," explaining the consequences and allowing him to decide whether or not to stay with the no-ship. She trusted his loyalties. Anyone who knew him, either personally or from history, understood that Duncan Idaho and Loyalty were synonymous.

  Now he considered the compact, sealed mines that had been meant to bring the no-ship down in a flaming collapse. A fail-safe.

  "Those aren't the only ticking bombs aboard this ship." The voice startled him, and he spun about, instinctively assuming a fighting stance. Dour, curly-haired Garimi stood at the hatch. In spite of all his experience with them, Duncan was still ast
onished by how silently the damned witches could move.

  Duncan struggled to regain his composure. "Is there another armory, a secret stash of weapons?" It was possible, he supposed, given the thousands of chambers aboard the giant ship that had never been opened or searched.

  "I was speaking metaphorically. I meant those gholas from the past."

  "That has already been discussed and decided." In the medical center, the first ghola from Scytale's sample cells would soon be decanted.

  "Simply making a decision does not make the decision correct," Garimi said.

  "You harp on it too much."

  Garimi rolled her eyes. "Even you haven't seen any sign of your hunters since the day we consigned our five tortured Sisters to space. It's time for us to find a suitable world and establish a new core for the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood."

  Duncan frowned. "The Oracle of Time also said the hunters were searching for us."

  "Another encounter that only you experienced."

  "Are you suggesting I imagined it? Or that I'm lying? Bring me any Truthsayer you like. I will prove it to you."

  She grumbled. "Even so, it has been years since the Oracle purportedly warned you. We have eluded capture all this time."

  Leaning against one of the shelves of weapons, Duncan gave her a cool stare.

  "And how do you know the Enemy isn't patient, that they won't just wait for us to make a mistake? They want this ship, or they want someone aboard it—probably me. Once these new gholas regain their knowledge and experience, they may be our greatest advantage."