full access to data about their previous lives, in the hope of turning them into effective weapons more quickly.
These children were all double-edged swords. They could hold keys to saving the no-ship from future crises, or they could raise dangers of their own. The new gholas were more than flesh and bone, more than individual personalities.
They represented a stunning array of potential talents.
As if making a command decision, Teg marched into the room, separated the two quarreling children, and found additional toys to keep them content. As Duncan watched, he recalled how many times he had tried to assassinate the God Emperor himself, and how many times Leto II had brought him back as a ghola.
Gazing at the one-year-old child, Duncan thought, If anyone could find a way to live forever, it would be him.
2
Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.
From ocean to desert, blue world to brown sand. Leaving newly conquered Buzzell, Murbella returned to Chapterhouse to oversee the growing wasteland.
From the Keep on Chapterhouse, she took an ornithopter, piloting it herself.
Perfectly self-sufficient, she flew the 'thopter out over the fast-growing dunes where the worms' domain was spreading. She gazed down at the brittle and leafless branches of what had been a thick forest. The trees reached upward like drowning men trying to fend off a slow tidal wave of obliterating sand.
Soon, the new desert—beautiful in its own way—would engulf the whole planet, just like Rakis.
I chose to make the ecosystem die as swiftly as possible, said the voice of Odrade-within. It was the humane thing to do.
'It is easier to create a wasteland than a garden.'
There was nothing easy about this. Not easy on Chapterhouse, and not easy on my conscience.
'Or on mine.' Murbella stared down at the sterile emptiness. The bones of an environment lay down there, desiccating in the hot afternoon sun. All part of the detailed Bene Gesserit plan. 'But it is what we have to do for spice. For power. For control. To make the Spacing Guild, CHOAM, Richese, and all planetary governments do as we command.'
That is what survival is all about, child.
Only a few months ago, this area had been forest. Careful not to waste their dwindling resources, the Sisters had begun logging in the area after the trees died, but the desert had spread too quickly for them to finish. Now, with Bene Gesserit efficiency, work teams cut transient roads through the sand and drove large haulers into the dead forest. They dug out the trunks, cut the dry boughs, and removed the wood for construction material and fuel. The dead trees were no longer part of a viable ecosystem, so the Sisterhood would make use of the lumber. Murbella abhorred waste.
She veered off into the broader region of dunes that stretched in seemingly endless succession like immense ocean waves frozen in time. Sand dunes, though, were always on the move, churning countless silica particles in an excruciatingly slow tsunami. Sand and fertile land had always engaged in a great cosmic dance, each trying to lead. As Honored Matres and Bene Gesserits were doing now.
The Mother Commander's thoughts turned to Bellonda and Doria, both forced to cooperate for the good of the Sisterhood. For years the two had jointly overseen spice operations, though she knew they still hated working together.
Now, unannounced, Murbella flew far out over the sand in her unmarked 'thopter.
Below, she spotted Chapterhouse workers as well as offworlder support staff setting up a temporary spice- harvesting camp on a patch of orange sand. The vein of fresh spice was large for Chapterhouse, minuscule by the former standards of Rakis, and a mere speck compared to what the Tleilaxu had once produced in their axlotl tanks. But the patches were growing, and so were the worms that produced them.
Choosing a landing site, the Mother Commander banked the aircraft and slowed the flapping motion of the wings. She saw her two Spice Ops Directors standing together on the sand, taking silicon or bacteriological samples for laboratory analysis. Several isolated research stations had already been established far out in the desert belt, allowing scientific teams to analyze possible spice blows. Harvesting equipment waited to be deployed—small scrapers and gatherers, not the monstrous hovering carryalls and factories that had once been used on Rakis.
After landing the ornithopter, Murbella just sat in the cabin, not yet ready to emerge. Bellonda trudged over, brushing gritty dust from her work clothes.
With an expression of annoyance on her sunburned face, Doria followed, squinting into the sunlight that reflected off the cockpit.
Finally emerging, Murbella drew a warm, dry breath that smelled more of bitter dust than of melange. 'Out here in the desert, I feel a sense of serenity, of eternal calmness.'
'I wish I did.' Doria dropped her heavy pack and kit onto the dirt. 'When will you assign someone else to work the spice operations?'
'I am quite content with my responsibilities,' Bellonda said, primarily to irritate Doria.
Murbella sighed at their petulant competitiveness and bantering. 'We need spice and soostones, and we need cooperation. Show me you are worthy, Doria, and perhaps I will send you to Buzzell, where you can complain about the cold and damp, rather than the arid heat. For now, my command is that you work here. With Bellonda. And, Bell, your assignment is to remember what you are and to make Doria into a superior Sister.'
The wind blew stinging sand into their faces, but Murbella forced herself not to blink. Bellonda and Doria stood side by side, wrestling with their displeasure. The former Honored Matre was the first to give a curt nod. 'You are the Mother Commander.'
BACK IN THE Keep that evening, Murbella went to her workroom to study Bellonda's meticulous projections of how much spice they could expect to harvest in coming years from the fledgling desert, and how swiftly productivity would rise. The New Sisterhood had expended spice widely enough from their stockpiles that outsiders believed they had an inexhaustible supply. In time, though, their secret hoards could dwindle to nothing more than a cinnamony aftertaste. She compared the amount to the soostone profits starting to roll in from Buzzell, and then to the payments the Richesian weapons shops demanded.
Outside, through the Keep's windows, she saw distant, silent flashes of lightning, as if the gods had muted the sounds of the changing weather. Then, as if in response to her thoughts, dry wind began to pummel the Keep, accompanied by claps of thunder. She went to the window, looked out at the twisting tongues of dust and a few dead leaves swirling along a footpath between buildings.
The storm intensified, and a startling patter of large raindrops struck the dusty plaz, leaving streaks in the blown grit. The weather of Chapterhouse had been in upheaval for years, but she didn't recall Weather Control planning a rainstorm over the Keep. Murbella couldn't remember the last time rain had come down like this. An unexpected storm.
Many dangerous storms were out there—not just the oncoming Enemy. The most powerful strongholds of the Honored Matres remained on various worlds like festering sores. And still no one knew where the Honored Matres had come from, or what they had done to provoke the relentless Enemy.
Humanity had evolved in the wrong direction for too long, wandering down a blind path—the Golden Path— and the damage might be irreversible. With the Outside Enemy coming, Murbella feared they might well be on the threshold of the greatest storm of all: Kralizec, Arafel, Armageddon, Ragnarok—by any name, the darkness at the end of the universe.
The rain outside lasted for only a few moments, but the howling wind continued long into the night.
