had done then and now. In a way, the two times were similar. He had told the rebels no ultimate truths (if such existed); only enough to lure them back into the fold. Pain and its predictable consequences. 'This is for your own good.'
Was it really good, what they did to this Duncan Idaho ghola?
Teg wondered what was occurring in Duncan's consciousness. Teg had been told as much as was known about these moments, but he could see that the words were inadequate. Duncan's eyes and face gave abundant evidence of internal turmoil - a hideous twisting of mouth and cheeks, the gaze darting this way and that.
Slowly, exquisite in its slowness, Duncan's face relaxed. His body continued to tremble. He felt the throbbing of his body as a distant thing, aches and darting pains that had happened to someone else. He was here, though, in this immediate moment - whatever and wherever this was. His memories would not mesh. He felt suddenly out of place in flesh too young, not fitted to his pre-ghola existence. The darting and twisting of awareness was all internal now.
Teg's instructors had said: 'He will have ghola-imposed filters on his pre-ghola memories. Some of the original memories will come flooding back. Other recollections will return more slowly. There will be no meshing, though, until he recalls that original moment of death.' Bellonda had then given Teg the known details of that fatal moment.
'Sardaukar,' Duncan whispered. He looked around him at the Harkonnen symbols that permeated the no-globe. 'The Emperor's crack troops wearing Harkonnen uniforms!' A wolfish grin twisted his mouth. 'How they must have hated that!'
Teg remained silently watchful.
'They killed me,' Duncan said. It was a flatly unemotional statement, all the more chilling for its positive delivery. A violent shudder passed through him and the trembling subsided. 'At least a dozen of them in that little room.' He looked directly at Teg. 'One of them got through at me like a meat cleaver right down on my head.' He hesitated, his throat working convulsively. His gaze remained on Teg. 'Did I buy Paul enough time to escape?'
'Answer all of his questions truthfully.'
'He escaped.'
Now, they came to a testing moment. Where had the Tleilaxu acquired the Idaho cells? The Sisterhood's tests said they were original, but suspicions remained. The Tleilaxu had done something of their own to this ghola. His memories could be a valuable clue to that thing.
'But the Harkonnens...' Duncan said. His memories from the Keep meshed. 'Oh, yes. Oh, yes!' A fierce laugh shook him. He sent a roaring victory shout at the long-dead Baron Vladimir Harkonnen: 'I paid you back, Baron! Oh, I did it to you for all of the ones you destroyed!'
'You remember the Keep and the things we taught you?' Teg asked.
A puzzled frown drew deep crease lines across Duncan's forehead. Emotional pain warred with his physical pains. He nodded in response to Teg's question. There were two lives, one that had been walled off behind the axlotl tanks and another... another... Duncan felt incomplete. Something remained suppressed within him. The reawakening was not finished. He stared angrily at Teg. Was there more? Teg had been brutal. Necessary brutality? Was this how you had to restore a ghola?
'I...' Duncan shook his head from side to side like a great wounded animal in front of the hunter.
'Do you have all of your memories?' Teg insisted.
'All? Oh, yes. I remember Gammu when it was Giedi Prime - the oil-soaked, blood-soaked hell hole of the Imperium! Yes, indeed, Bashar. I was your dutiful student. Regimental commander!' Again, he laughed, throwing his head back in an oddly adult gesture for that young body.
Teg experienced the sudden release of a deep satisfaction, far deeper than relief. It had worked as they said it would.
'Do you hate me?' he asked.
'Hate you? Didn't I tell you I would be grateful?'
Abruptly, Duncan lifted his hands and peered at them. He shifted his gaze downward at his youthful body. 'What a temptation!' he muttered. He dropped his hands and focused on Teg's face, tracing the lines of identity. 'Atreides,' he said. 'You're all so damned alike!'
'Not all,' Teg said.
'I'm not talking about appearance, Bashar.' His eyes went out of focus. 'I asked my age.' There was a long silence, then: 'Gods of the deep! So much time has passed!'
Teg said what he had been instructed to say: 'The Sisterhood has need of you.'
'In this immature body? What am I supposed to do?'
'Truly, I don't know, Duncan. The body will mature and I presume a Reverend Mother will explain matters to you.'
'Lucilla?'
Abruptly, Duncan looked up at the ornate ceiling, then at the alcove and its baroque clock. He remembered coming here with Teg and Lucilla. This place was the same but it was different. 'Harkonnens,' he whispered. He sent a glowering look at Teg. 'Do you know how many of my family the Harkonnens tortured and killed?'
'One of Taraza's Archivists gave me a report.'
'A report? You think words can tell it?'
'No. But that was the only answer I had to your question.'
'Damn you, Bashar! Why do you Atreides always have to be so truthful and honorable?'
'I think it's bred into us.'
'That's quite right.' The voice was Lucilla's and came from behind Teg.
Teg did not turn. How much had she heard? How long had she been there?
Lucilla came up to stand beside Teg but her attention was on Duncan. 'I see that you've done it, Miles.'
'Taraza's orders to the letter,' Teg said.
'You have been very clever, Miles,' she said. 'Much more clever than I suspected you could be. That mother of yours should have been severely punished for what she taught you.'
'Ahhhh, Lucilla the seductress,' Duncan said. He glanced at Teg and returned his attention to Lucilla. 'Yes, now I can answer my other question - what she's supposed to do.'
'They're called Imprinters,' Teg said.
'Miles,' Lucilla said, 'if you have complicated my task in ways that prevent me from carrying out my orders, I will have you roasted on a skewer.'
The emotionless quality of her voice sent a shudder through Teg. He knew her threat was a metaphor, but the implications in the threat were real.
'A punishment banquet!' Duncan said. 'How nice.'
Teg addressed himself to Duncan: 'There's nothing romantic about what we've done to you, Duncan. I've assisted the Bene Gesserit in more than one assignment that left me feeling dirty, but never dirtier than this one.'
'Silence!' Lucilla ordered. The full force of Voice was in the command.
Teg let it flow through him and past him as his mother had taught, then: 'Those of us who give our true loyalty to the Sisterhood have only one concern: survival of the Bene Gesserit. Not survival of any individual but of the Sisterhood itself. Deceptions, dishonesties - those are empty words when the question is the Sisterhood's survival.'
'Damn that mother of yours, Miles!' Lucilla paid him the compliment of not hiding her rage.
Duncan stared at Lucilla. Who was she? Lucilla? He felt his memories stirring of themselves. Lucilla was not the same person... not the same at all, and yet... bits and pieces were the same. Her voice. Her features. Abruptly, he saw again the face of the woman he had glimpsed on the wall of his room at the Keep.
'Duncan, my sweet Duncan.'
Tears fell from Duncan's eyes. His own mother - another Harkonnen victim. Tortured... who knew what else? Never seen again by her 'sweet Duncan.'
'Gods, I wish I had one of them to kill right now,' Duncan moaned.
Once more, he focused on Lucilla. Tears blurred her features and made the comparisons easier. Lucilla's face blended with that of the Lady Jessica, beloved of Leto Atreides. Duncan glanced at Teg, back to Lucilla, shaking the tears from his eyes as he moved. The memory faces dissolved into that of the real Lucilla standing in front of him.
