Frank Herbert - Heretics of Dune

"They have our view of time," Odrade agreed. "That was the final thing to convince them we share their Great Belief."

"But why the clumsiness?" Taraza asked. "They are not stupid."

"It diverted our attention from how they were really using their ghola process," Odrade said. "Who could believe stupid people would do such a thing?"

"And what have they created?" Taraza asked. "Only the image of evil stupidity?"

"Act stupid long enough and you become stupid," Odrade said. "Perfect the mimicry of your Face Dancers and..."

"Whatever happens, we must punish them," Taraza said. "I see that clearly. Have him brought up here."

After Odrade had given the order and while they waited, Taraza said: "The sequencing of the ghola's education became a shambles even before they escaped from the Gammu Keep. He leaped ahead of his teachers to grasp things that were only implied and he did this at an alarmingly accelerated rate. Who knows what he has become by now?"

***

Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They recreate the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the future as well.

Duncan followed his guide through the dawn light at a punishing clip. The man might look old but he was as springy as a gazelle and seemed incapable of tiring.

Only a few minutes ago they had put aside their night goggles. Duncan was glad to be rid of them. Everything outside the reach of the glasses had been black in the dim starlight filtering through heavy branches. There had been no world ahead of him beyond the range of the glasses. The view at both sides jerked and flowed - now a clump of yellow bushes, now two silver-bark trees, now a stone wall with a plasteel gate cut into it and guarded by the flickering blue of a burn-shield, then an arched bridge of native rock, all green and black underfoot. After that, an arched entry of polished white stone. The structures all appeared very old and expensive, maintained by costly handwork.

Duncan had no idea where he was. None of this terrain recalled his memories of the long-lost Giedi Prime days.

Dawn revealed that they were following a tree-shielded animal track up a hillside. The climb became steep. Occasional glimpses through trees on their left revealed a valley. A hanging mist stood guard over the sky, hiding the distances, enclosing them as they climbed. Their world became progressively a smaller place as it lost its connection with a larger universe.

At one brief pause, not for rest but for listening to the forest around them, Duncan studied his mist-capped surroundings. He felt dislodged, removed from a universe that possessed sky and the open features that linked it to other planets.

His disguise was simple: Tleilaxu cold-weather garments and cheek pads to make his face appear rounder. His curly black hair had been straightened by some chemical applied with heat. The hair was then bleached to a sandy blond and hidden under a dark watchcap. All of his genital hair had been shaved away. He hardly recognized himself in the mirror they held up for him.

A dirty Tleilaxu!

The artisan who created this transformation was an old woman with glittering gray-green eyes. "You are now a Tleilaxu Master," she said. "Your name is Wose. A guide will take you to the next place. You will treat him like a Face Dancer if you meet strangers. Otherwise, do as he commands."

They led him out of the cave complex along a twisting passage, its walls and ceiling thick with the musky green algae. In starlighted darkness, they thrust him from the passage into a chilly night and the hands of an unseen man - a bulky figure in padded clothing.

A voice behind Duncan whispered: "Here he is, Ambitorm. Get him through."

The guide spoke in an accent of gutturals: "Follow me." He clipped a lead cord to Duncan's belt, adjusted the night goggles and turned away. Duncan felt the cord tug once and they were off.

Duncan recognized the use of the cord. It was not something to keep him close behind. He could see this Ambitorm clearly enough with the night goggles. No, the cord was to spill him quickly if they met danger. No need for a command.

For a long time during the night they crisscrossed small ice-lined watercourses on a flatland. The light of Gammu's early moons penetrated the covering growth only occasionally. They emerged finally onto a low hill with a view of bushy wasteland all silvery with snow cover in the moonlight. Down into this they went. The bushes, about twice the height of the guide, arched over muddy animal passages little larger than the tunnels where they had begun this journey. It was warmer here, the warmth of a compost heap. Almost no light penetrated to a ground spongy with rotted vegetation. Duncan inhaled the fungal odors of decomposing plant life. The night goggles showed him a seemingly endless repetition of thick growth on both sides. The cord linking him to Ambitorm was a tenuous grip on an alien world.

Ambitorm discouraged conversation. He said "Yes," when Duncan asked confirmation of the man's name, then: "Don't talk."

The whole night was a disquieting traverse for Duncan. He did not like being thrown back into his own thoughts. Giedi Prime memories persisted. This place was like nothing he remembered from his pre-ghola youth. He wondered how Ambitorm had learned the way through here and how he remembered it. One animal tunnel appeared much like another.

In the steady, jogging pace there was time for Duncan's thoughts to roam.

Must I permit the Sisterhood to use me? What do I owe them?

And he thought of Teg, that last gallant stand to permit two of them to escape.

I did the same for Paul and Jessica.

It was a bond with Teg and it touched Duncan with grief. Teg was loyal to the Sisterhood. Did he buy my loyalty with that last brave act?

Damn the Atreides!

The night's exertions increased Duncan's familiarity with his new flesh. How young this body was! A small lurch of recollection and he could see that last pre-ghola memory; he could feel the Sardaukar blade strike his head - a blinding explosion of pain and light. Knowledge of his certain death and then... nothing until that moment with Teg in the Harkonnen no-globe.

The gift of another life. Was it more than a gift or something less? The Atreides were demanding another payment from him.

For a time just before dawn, Ambitorm led him at a sloshing run along a narrow stream whose icy chill penetrated the waterproof insulated boots of Duncan's Tleilaxu garments. The watercourse reflected bush-shadowed silver from the light of the planet's pre-dawn moon setting ahead of them.

Daylight saw them come out into the larger, tree-shielded animal track and up the steep hill. This passage emerged onto a narrow rocky ledge below a ridgetop of sawtoothed boulders. Ambitorm led him behind a screen of dead brown bushes, their tops dirty with wind-blown snow. He released the cord from Duncan's belt. Directly in front of them was a shallow declivity in the rocks, not quite a cave, but Duncan saw that it would offer some protection unless they got a hard wind over the bushes behind them. There was no snow on the floor of the place.

Ambitorm went to the back of the declivity and carefully removed a layer of icy dirt and several flat rocks, which concealed a small pit. He lifted a round black object from the pit and busied himself over it.

Duncan squatted under the overhang and studied his guide. Ambitorm had a dished-in face with skin like dark brown leather. Yes, those could be the features of a Face Dancer. Deep creases cut into the skin at the edges of the man's brown eyes. Creases radiated from the sides of the thin mouth and lined the wide brow. They spread out beside the flat nose and deepened the cleft of a narrow chin. Creases of time all over his face.

Appetizing odors began to arise from the black object in front of Ambitorm.

"We will eat here and wait a bit before we continue," Ambitorm said.

He spoke Old Galach but with that guttural accent which Duncan had never heard before, an odd stress on adjacent vowels. Was Ambitorm from the Scattering or a Gammu native? There obviously had been many linguistic drifts since the Dune days of Muad'dib. For that matter, Duncan recognized that all of the people in the Gammu Keep, including Teg and Lucilla, spoke a Galach that had shifted from the one he had learned as a pre-ghola child.

"Ambitorm," Duncan said. "Is that a Gammu name?"

"You will call me Tormsa," the guide said.

"Is that a nickname?"

"It is what you will call me."

"Why did those people back there call you Ambitorm."

"That was the name I gave them."

"But why would you..."

"You lived under the Harkonnens and you did not learn how to change your identity?"

Duncan fell silent. Was that it? Another disguise. Ambi... Tormsa had not changed his appearance. Tormsa. Was it a Tleilaxu name?

The guide extended a steaming cup toward Duncan. "A drink to restore you, Wose. Drink it fast. It will keep you warm."

Duncan closed both hands around the cup. Wose. Wose and Tormsa. Tleilaxu Master and his Face Dancer companion.

Duncan lifted the cup toward Tormsa in the ancient gesture of Atreides battle comrades, then put it to his lips. Hot! But it warmed him as it went down. The drink had a faintly sweet flavor over some vegetable tang. He blew on it and drank it down as he saw Tormsa was doing.

Odd that I should not suspect poison or some drug, Duncan thought. But this Tormsa and the others last night had something of the Bashar about them. The gesture to a battle comrade had come naturally.

"Why are you risking your life this way?" Duncan asked.

"You know the Bashar and you have to ask?"

Duncan fell silent, abashed.

Tormsa leaned forward and recovered Duncan's cup. Soon, all evidence of their breakfast lay hidden under the concealing rocks and dirt.

That food spoke of careful planning, Duncan thought. He turned and squatted on the cold ground. The mist was still out there beyond the screening bushes. Leafless limbs cut the view into odd bits and pieces. As he watched, the mist began to lift, revealing the blurred outlines of a city at the far edge of the valley.

Tormsa squatted beside him. "Very old city," he said. "Harkonnen place. Look." He passed a small monoscope to Duncan. "That is where we go tonight."

Duncan put the monoscope to his left eye and tried to focus the oil lens. The controls felt unfamiliar, not at all like those he had learned as a pre-ghola youth or had been taught at the Keep. He removed it from his eye and examined it.

"Ixian?" he asked.

"No. We made it." Tormsa reached over and pointed out two tiny buttons raised above the black tube. "Slow, fast. Push left to cycle out, right to cycle back."

Again, Duncan lifted the scope to his eye.

Who were the we who had made this thing?

A touch of the fast button and the view leaped into his gaze. Tiny dots moved in the city. People! He increased the amplification. The people became small dolls. With them to give him scale, Duncan realized that the city at the valley's edge was immense... and farther away than he had thought. A single rectangular structure stood in the center of the city, its top lost in the clouds. Gigantic.

Duncan knew this place now. The surroundings had changed but that central structure lay fixed in his memory.

How many of us vanished into that black hellhole and never returned?

"Nine hundred and fifty stories," Tormsa said, seeing where Duncan's gaze was directed. "Forty-five kilometers long, thirty kilometers wide. Plasteel and armor-plaz, all of it."

"I know." Duncan lowered the scope and returned it to Tormsa. "It was called Barony."

"Ysai," Tormsa said.

"That's what they call it now," Duncan said. "I have some different names for it."

Duncan took a deep breath to put down the old hatreds. Those people were all dead. Only the building remained. And the memories. He scanned the city around that enormous structure. The place was a sprawling mass of warrens. Green spaces lay scattered throughout, each of them behind high walls. Single residences with private parks, Teg had said. The monoscope had revealed guards walking the wall tops.

Tormsa spat on the ground in front of him. "Harkonnen place."

"They built to make people feel small," Duncan said.

Tormsa nodded. "Small, no power in you."

The guide had become almost loquacious, Duncan thought.

Occasionally during the night, Duncan had defied the order for silence and tried to make conversation.

"What animals made these passages?"

It had seemed a logical question for people trotting along an obvious animal track, even the musty smell of beasts in it.

"Do not talk!" Tormsa snapped.

Later, Duncan asked why they could not get a vehicle of some sort and escape in that. Even a groundcar would be preferable to this painful march across country where one route felt much like another.

Tormsa stopped them in a patch of moonlight and looked at Duncan as though he suspected his charge had suddenly become bereft of sense.

"Vehicles can follow!"

"No one can follow us when we're on foot?"

"Followers also must be on foot. Here, they will be killed. They know."

What a weird place! What a primitive place.

In the shelter of the Bene Gesserit Keep, Duncan had not realized the nature of the planet around him. Later, in the no-globe, he had been removed from contact with the outside. He had pre-ghola and ghola memories, but how inadequate those were! When he thought about it now, he realized there had been clues. It was obvious that Gammu possessed rudimentary weather control. And Teg had said that the orbiting monitors that guarded the planet from attack were of the best.

Everything for protection, damned little for comfort! It was like Arrakis in that respect.

Rakis, he corrected himself.

Teg. Did the old man survive? A captive? What did it mean to be captured here in this age? It had meant brutal slavery in the old Harkonnen days. Burzmali and Lucilla... He glanced at Tormsa.

"Will we find Burzmali and Lucilla in the city?"

"If they get through."

Duncan glanced down at his clothing. Was it a sufficient disguise? A Tleilaxu Master and companion? People would think the companion a Face Dancer, of course. Face Dancers were dangerous.

The baggy trousers were of some material Duncan had never before seen. It felt like wool to the hand, but he sensed that it was artificial. When he spat on it, spittle did not adhere and the smell was not of wool. His fingers detected a uniformity of texture that no natural material could present. The long soft boots and watchcap were of the same fabric. The garments were loose and puffy except at the ankles. Not quilted, though. Insulated by some trick of manufacture that trapped dead air between the layers. The color was a mottled green and gray - excellent camouflage here.