Khrone slipped Vladimir's pale, twitching hand into the opening. 'It contains agony, in its purest form.'
'I can't wait.'
Khrone knew that this would be an interesting challenge.
For thousands of years the Tleilaxu had created gholas, and since the time of Muad'Dib they had awakened them through a combination of mental anguish and physical pain that brought the mind and body to a fundamental crisis.
Unfortunately, even Khrone didn't know exactly what was required to accomplish this. Maybe he should have brought pathetic Uxtal from Bandalong for the event, though he doubted the Lost Tleilaxu could have helped much.
The Baron ghola was particularly ripe for reawakening. Best to proceed vigorously. Khrone fitted a second Box over Vladimir's other hand. 'Here we are. Enjoy the process.'
Khrone activated both devices, and the young man's body jerked and twisted.
Vladimir's face grew white, his pouting lips pressed together over his teeth, his eyes squeezed shut. Spasms rippled through his face, his chest, his arms.
Vladimir tried to withdraw his hands. He must be feeling sheer torment, though Khrone smelled no burning flesh, observed no damaged body parts—that was the beauty of the Box. Nerve induction could evoke unendurable pain, and it need never stop until the victim's mind was overloaded.
'This may take a while,' Khrone said, a gentle whisper beside the young man's sweaty brow. He increased the level of pain.
Vladimir shuddered. His lips drew back in a rictus, but he did not cry out.
Like water from a high-pressure hose, agony streamed into the ghola's body.
Next, Khrone thrust needles into the ghola's neck, chest, and thighs, siphoning off the adrenaline-laced chemicals that could be used as precursors for the Honored Matres' orange spice substitute. Created with such intensity and purity, Khrone was sure he could sell the product to the Honored Matres on Tleilax. The Matre Superior herself would probably consider it a fine vintage.
He could always count on the insatiable needs of Hellica's whores. Under the watchful gaze of the augmented emissaries, Khrone would demonstrate a double efficiency.
After the torture went on for hours, Khrone disconnected the Boxes and looked into the bleary eyes of the sweating young Harkonnen. 'We are doing this only to help you.'
The ghola looked blankly up at him. No flash of awakened memory in the spider-black eyes. 'Not… that… easy.'
So Khrone replaced the Boxes on the ghola's hands. With barely a second thought, he directed that two more be folded around the boy's naked feet. Four unbearable agonies would hit him. The pain was pure and unfutered, seasoned with adrenaline and garnished with anguish. The torment continued to pound upon the ghola's mind, seeking to free the locked-in memories. Vladimir twisted, cursed, and finally screamed.
But nothing changed.
When it was time for dinner, Khrone invited the patchwork representatives to join him. They left the chamber and sat in the dining hall, listening to the crash of the storm outside. Expecting to celebrate success, Khrone had ordered a long and complicated feast; now they ate each of the fine courses, then returned hours later to the lower chambers. Vladimir continued to squirm, but showed no sign of becoming himself.
'This may take days,' Khrone warned the augmented emissaries.
'Then it will take days,' they answered.
The Face Dancer began to question his own assumptions, realizing a problem he had not anticipated: Physical pain was not the same as mental pain. The Agony Boxes might not be sufficient.
When he looked down at the thrashing Vladimir, his sweat-drenched clothes, and the defiant grin on his flushed face, the Face Dancer realized another possible problem. The torture might be ineffective for the simple and straightforward fact that this ghola actually enjoyed it.
Part VIII: NINETEEN YEARS AFTER
1
Those who think they see most clearly are often more blind than the rest.
Sheeana danced among the worms again as she had done as a child on Rakis.
Inside the Ithaca's huge cargo hold, the seven creatures rose around her, twisting and waving their bodies like flexible metronomes. They formed a bizarre audience as Sheeana stamped her bare feet, flailed her arms, and twirled on the crest of the dune.
Among the people of Rakis, the sacred dance had been called Siaynoq. She kicked up dust and sand with her frenzied movements, losing herself. Siaynoq burned away her emotions and her excess restless energy. The intensity was enough to drive doubts from her mind and misery from her heart.
Responding to her dance, the worms pulled themselves high above her and swayed. Sheeana drove herself harder. Sweat droplets flew from her forehead and soaked her matted hair. She had to cleanse her thoughts, to burn this fear and doubt from her mind.
Three years ago, after leaving the dead plague planet of the Honored Matres behind its failing no-shield, Sheeana had felt the dark specter of dismay building in her mind. A world full of dead women, along with their followers and slaves—wiped out by something they could not comprehend, something that had blindsided them.
Sheeana knew that the hated Honored Matres deserved whatever appalling punishment they had brought down upon themselves. But every single person on an entire planet? Surely they had not all deserved to die in such a horrific fashion.
And that was only one world. How many other strongholds had been extinguished by the Enemy's plagues? How many trillions had perished from a disease with a 100 percent mortality rate? And how many more would the Enemy kill, now that the whores had fled like a pack of wild dogs into the vulnerable Old Empire—drawing the incredible foe with their scent?
Sheeana tripped in her dance on the soft sand. Regaining her balance, she did a backflip and continued her gyrations. Despite the exertions, she did not find the inner peace she desperately sought. The endless dance only clarified her troublesome ideas. The melange-heavy breath of the sandworms drifted around her like the mist of an approaching storm.
At the brink of total exhaustion, Sheeana collapsed onto the sand. First she let her knees buckle, then she rolled over, heaving great hot breaths. She lay back, looking up at the high ceiling of the cargo hold. Her muscles ached, her limbs trembled. With her eyes shut, she could feel her heart beating to the rhythm of imagined war drums. She would have to consume a great deal of melange to restore herself.
One of the creatures came close, and she could feel the sand vibrating beneath her. She sat up as the monster glided past, pushing up a dune mound and then stopping. Finding a last scrap of energy within her, Sheeana pulled herself forward and leaned against the worm's hard, curved rings. It was encrusted with dust, and she could feel the solidity of this thing, the power it contained.
She lifted her arm and rested it against the side of the beast, wishing she could just climb up on the ring segments of this worm and ride off to the horizon. But here inside the no-ship, the horizon—the hull—was not far away.
'Old Shaitan, I wish I had your knowledge.'
Long ago, when she and the simpering Tleilaxu Master Waff and Reverend Mother Odrade had ridden into
