Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [1]
—MOTHER COMMANDER MURBELLA,
address to the New Sisterhood
Two people drift in a lifeboat on an uncharted sea. One says, “There! I see an island. Our best chance is to go ashore, build a shelter, and await rescue.” The other says, “No, we must go farther out to sea and hope to find the shipping lanes. That is our best chance.” Unable to agree, the two fight, the lifeboat capsizes, and they drown.
This is the nature of humanity. Even if only two people are left in the entire universe, they will come to represent opposing factions.
—The Bene Gesserit Acolytes’ Handbook
In re-creating particular gholas, we reweave the fabric of history. Once more, Paul Muad’Dib walks among us, with his beloved Chani, his mother the Lady Jessica, and his son Leto II, the God Emperor of Dune. The presence of Suk doctor Wellington Yueh, whose treachery brought a great house to its knees, is at once disturbing and comforting. Also with us are the warrior-Mentat Thufir Hawat, the Fremen Naib Stilgar, and the great planetologist Liet-Kynes. Consider the possibilities!
Such genius constitutes a formidable army. We will need that brilliance, because we face an opponent more terrible than we ever imagined.
—DUNCAN IDAHO,
Memories of More Than a Mentat
I have waited and planned and built my strength for fifteen thousand years. I have evolved. It is time.
—OMNIUS
SANDWORMS OF
DUNE
TWENTY-ONE YEARS AFTER
ESCAPE FROM CHAPTERHOUSE
So many people I knew in the past are not yet reborn. I still miss them, even though I do not remember them. The axlotl tanks will soon remedy that.
—LADY JESSICA,
the ghola
Aboard the wandering no-ship Ithaca, Jessica witnessed the birth of her daughter, but only as an observer. Just fourteen years old, she and many others crowded the medical center, while two Bene Gesserit Suk doctors in the adjacent creche prepared to extract the tiny girl child from an axlotl tank.
“Alia,” one of the female doctors murmured.
This was not truly Jessica’s daughter, but a ghola grown from preserved cells. None of the young gholas on the no-ship were “themselves” yet. They had regained none of their memories, none of their pasts.
Something tried to surface at the back of her mind, and though she worried at it like a loose tooth, Jessica could not remember the first time Alia had been born. In the archives, she had read and reread the legendary accounts generated by Muad’Dib’s biographers. But she couldn’t remember.
All she had were images from her studies: A dry and dusty sietch on Arrakis, surrounded by Fremen. Jessica and her son Paul had been on the run, taken in by the desert tribe. Duke Leto was dead, murdered by Harkonnens. Pregnant, Jessica had drunk the Water of Life, forever changing the fetus inside her. From the moment of her birth, the original Alia had been different from all other babies, filled with ancient wisdom and madness, able to tap into Other Memory without having gone through the Spice Agony. Abomination!
That had been another Alia. Another time and another way.
Now Jessica stood beside her ghola “son” Paul, who was chronologically a year older than she. Paul waited with his beloved Fremen mate Chani and the nine-year-old ghola of a boy who had in turn been their son, Leto II. In a prior shuffle of lives, this had been Jessica’s family.
The Bene Gesserit order had resurrected these figures from history to help fight against the terrible Outside Enemy that hunted them. They had Thufir Hawat, the planetologist Liet-Kynes, the Fremen leader Stilgar, and even the notorious Dr. Yueh. Now, after almost a decade of hiatus in the ghola program, Alia had joined the group. Others would come soon; the three remaining axlotl tanks were already pregnant with new children: Gurney Halleck, Serena Butler, Xavier Harkonnen.
Duncan Idaho gave Jessica a quizzical look. Eternal Duncan, with all of his memories restored from all of his prior lives . . . She wondered what he thought of this new ghola baby, a bubble of the past rising up to the present. Long ago, the first