Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [96]
Using her knowledge of the ship’s controls, Garimi worked from the hall station to bypass the observation imagers. She wanted no record of the supposed crime that she and Stuka were about to commit, though Garimi knew she could not keep her secret for long. Many of the Reverend Mothers aboard were Truthsayers. They could ferret out the murderers with proven methods of interrogation, even if they had to question all the refugees aboard.
Garimi had made her choice. Stuka, too, swore she would sacrifice her life to do what was right. And if the two of them didn’t succeed, Garimi knew of at least a dozen other Sisters who would gladly do the same, given the chance.
She looked at her friend and partner. “Are you ready for this?”
Stuka’s wide face, though young and smooth, seemed to carry an infinite age and sadness. “I have made my peace.” She took a deep breath. “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.” The two Sisters intoned the rest of the Litany together; Garimi found that it had never ceased to be useful.
With the surveillance imagers successfully deactivated, the pair entered the crèche, using all of the Bene Gesserit stealth and silence they could manage. Baby Leto lay in one of the small monitored cradles, by all appearances an innocent little child, looking so human. Innocent! Garimi sneered. How deceptive appearances could be.
She certainly did not need Stuka’s assistance. It should be simple enough to smother the little monster. Nevertheless, the two angry Bene Gesserits shored up each other’s confidence.
Stuka looked down at Leto and whispered to her companion. “In his original life, the Tyrant’s mother died in childbirth, and a Face Dancer tried to murder the twins when they were only hours old. Their father went off blind into the desert, leaving the babies to be raised by others. Neither Leto nor his twin sister were ever held warmly in their parents’ arms.”
Garimi shot her a sour glance. “Don’t start going soft on me,” she husked. “This is more than just a baby. In that crib lies a beast, not a mere child.”
“But we do not know where or when the Tleilaxu acquired the cells to make this ghola. How could scrapings have been stolen from the immense God Emperor? If that was truly where the cells came from, why wasn’t he born as a half man, half sandworm? More likely, they kept secret samplings of the boy Leto’s cells from before he underwent his transformation. That means this child is technically still an innocent, his cells taken from an innocent body. Even when he gets his memories back, he will not be the hated God Emperor.”
Garimi glowered at her. “Do we dare take that risk? Even as children, Leto II and his twin sister Ghanima had special and awesome powers of prescience. No matter what else, this is still an Atreides. He still has all the genetic markers that led to two dangerous Kwisatz Haderachs. That cannot be denied!” Her voice began to grow too loud. Glancing down at the stirring child, Garimi saw his bright eyes looking at her with a startling sentience, his mouth slightly open. Leto seemed to know why she was there. He recognized her . . . and yet he did not flinch.
“If he is prescient,” Stuka said uncertainly, “then maybe he knows what we’re going to do to him.”
“I was thinking exactly the same thing.”
As if in response, one of the monitoring alarms bleeped, and Garimi raced to the controls in order to bypass them. She could not allow a signal to alert the Suk doctors. “Quickly! We have no more time. Do it now—or I will!”
The other woman picked up a thick pillow and raised it above the baby’s face. Garimi frantically worked at the alarm panel as Stuka pushed the pillow down to smother him.
Then Stuka screamed, and Garimi whirled to see a brief flash of tan segments, a writhing shape that rose up from the monitoring cradle. Stuka recoiled in panic. The pillow in her hands was shredded, its fabric spraying out in tatters.
Garimi couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Her vision seemed to be doubled, as if two separate things