Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [16]
He wondered if Gurney would be an ugly baby, or if he had only become a rolling lump of a man after being battered by the Harkonnens. He hoped the Gurney ghola would have a natural skill with the baliset, too. Paul was confident that the no-ship’s stores could re-create one of the antique musical instruments. Maybe the two of them could play music together.
Others would be there for the new birth: his “mother” Jessica, Thufir Hawat, and almost certainly Duncan Idaho. Gurney had many friends aboard. No one on the ship had known Xavier Harkonnen or Serena Butler, the other two gholas who would be decanted today, but they were legends from the Butlerian Jihad. Each ghola, according to Sheeana, had a role to play, and any one of them—or all of them together—might be the key to defeating the Enemy.
Aside from the ghola children, many other boys and girls had been born over the years of the Ithaca’s long flight. The Sisters bred with male Bene Gesserit workers who had also escaped from Chapterhouse; they understood the need to increase their population and prepare a solid foundation for a new colony, if the no-ship ever found a suitable planet to settle. The Rabbi’s group of Jewish refugees, who had also married and begun families, still waited for a new home to fulfill their long quest. The no-ship was so vast, and the population aboard still so far below its capacity, that there was no real concern about running short on resources. Not yet.
As Paul and Chani approached the main birthing creche, four female proctors ran toward them down the hall, urgently calling for any qualified Suk doctor. “They’re dead! All three of them.”
Paul’s heart stuttered. At fifteen, he was already training in some of the skills that had once made him the historical leader known as Muad’Dib. Summoning all the steel he could put into his voice, he demanded that the second proctor stop. “Explain yourself!”
The Bene Gesserit blurted, surprised into her answer. “Three axlotl tanks, three gholas. Sabotage—and murder. Someone destroyed them.”
Paul and Chani rushed toward the medical center. Duncan and Sheeana were already in the doorway looking shaken. Inside the chamber, three axlotl tanks had been ripped from their life-support mechanisms and lay in puddles of burned flesh and spilled liquid. Someone had used an incinerating beam and corrosives to destroy not only the life-support machinery, but the core flesh of the tanks and the unborn gholas.
Gurney Halleck. Xavier Harkonnen. Serena Butler. All lost. And the tanks, which had once been living women.
Duncan looked at Paul, articulating the real horror here. “We have a saboteur aboard. Someone who wishes to harm the ghola project—or maybe all of us.”
“But why now?” Paul asked. “The ship has been fleeing for two decades, and the ghola project began years ago. What changed?”
“Maybe someone was afraid of Gurney,” Sheeana suggested. “Or Xavier Harkonnen, or Serena Butler.”
Paul saw that the other three axlotl tanks in the creche had not been harmed, including the one that had recently given birth to the spice-saturated Alia.
Standing by Gurney’s tank, he saw the dead, half-born baby among the burned and dissolved folds of flesh. Nauseated, he knelt to touch the few wisps of blond hair. “Poor Gurney.”
As Duncan helped Paul to his feet, Sheeana said in a coldly businesslike voice, “We still have the cellular material. We can grow replacements for all of them.” Paul could sense her deep fury, barely controlled by her strict Bene Gesserit training. “We will need more axlotl tanks. I’ll send out a call for volunteers.”
The ghola of Thufir Hawat entered and stared in disbelief at what had happened, his face an ashen mask. After the ordeal on the planet of the Handlers, he and Miles Teg had bonded closely; Thufir now helped the Bashar with