Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [134]
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