Heretics of Dune

Teg follows a road leading to Ysai and tries to make sense of his new skills. He believes the pain he experienced from the probe must be like the spice agony the Reverend Mothers endure to unlock their Other Memories. The pain triggered Teg’s “second vision,” an ability to anticipate actions before they occur and move at an accelerated speed. He meets farmers on the road who reveal loyal allies who once served under his command. They help him sneak into a vehicle to reach his contact point.

Famished from the exertion over the past two days, Teg stops for a simple meal of soup. The server tells him that many would give their lives to protect Teg. Teg learns that the Honored Matres have been on Gammu for at least 100 years. At Ysai, he meets Muzzafar, a Field Marshal from the Scattering who presents himself as an ally. Teg’s instincts warn him of danger. A Suk doctor examines Teg and finds him fit but famished. The doctor orders special meals, and Teg eats a startling amount of food to match his newly accelerated metabolism. He senses an Honored Matre’s presence nearby.

Lucilla and Birzmali enter Ysai disguised as an Honored Matre and her client. Lucilla is appalled by the everyday life of its inhabitants. Some people are bred without a sense of smell to work in the sewers, and people use hypnobongs, a concave-based device, and eerie, atonal semuta music to induce a drug-like state. She sees a futar, a hybrid of a human crossed with a predatory animal, and meets a haggard old priestess, a descendant of the once mighty Fremen. Lucilla realizes that she hates everything about Gammu and its people. She fears that her intense anger is just as dangerous as love. Lucilla and Birzmali find a room for the night, and she has a vision from her memories of being cradled in someone’s arms. Lucilla cries and realizes that Gammu has touched her deeply.

On Rakis, Taraza assembles a meeting with Odrade, Sheeana, Waff, the false Tuek, and nine priests who vie for Tuek’s position. Tuek argues with the priests and challenges Waff’s authority. To Waff’s surprise, Tuek denies being an imposter and has no memory of being a Face Dancer. Taraza ensures that Tuek remains as the High Priest and gives him guards for protection. Waff refuses to answer Taraza’s question about what he has changed in their Duncan ghola. To himself, Waff wishes death upon all the Bene Gesserit.

Taraza agrees to an alliance with the Tleilaxu but vows that she will never permit using a Bene Gesserit as a receptacle or axolotl tank for their projects. She offers Odrade for breeding, and Waff finalizes their agreement by sharing his knowledge of the Honored Matres’ sexual powers. His Face Dancers demonstrate the Honored Matres’ sexual techniques to subjugate men. Odrade thinks about Sheeana’s recent test of humanity with the Sisterhood’s agony box, a device that inflicts pain through nerve induction, and the gom jabbar, a handheld needle tipped with meta-cyanide poison that can deliver almost instantaneous death when driven into a person. She regards the experience as soft compared to other pains.

Birzmali and Lucilla walk to an abandoned factory where they expect to find Duncan. The safe house has been compromised, and a Great Honored Matre named Murbella greets them. Murbella mistakes Lucilla and Birzmali for an Honored Matre and her client. She tells Lucilla that Duncan has been captured, and she plans to seduce him. Lucilla orders Murbella to leave the ghola to her, but Murbella retorts that she has already marked and subdued him in a room. She tells them they can watch.

Duncan tries to remember where he is as his mind flits back and forth between ghola and pre-ghola memories. Tormsa is dead, and Duncan recalls moments in the past with Teg, Duke Leto I, and Paul Atreides. He suddenly becomes aware of the present and realizes Murbella is seducing him. Lucilla and Birzmali are locked inside another room and can see him from their window. Murbella’s stimulations trigger the memories of all the Duncan Idaho gholas, and Duncan suddenly remembers each death and rebirth. He remembers that the axolotl tank is a mass of female flesh with tubes connected to metal receptacles. 

Duncan realizes that the Tleilaxu has altered him by giving him the Honored Matres’ sexual powers. The Tleilaxu had intended Duncan to use his talent on a Bene Gesserit imprinter and kill her. Instead, Duncan seduces Murbella and weakens her into a state of ecstasy. Murbella struggles to gain self-control and unlocks the door to get Lucilla’s help. She tells Lucilla that the ghola has forbidden skills, and he must be killed. Lucilla retorts that she will take Duncan to Rakis. She presses the nerves on Murbella’s neck and renders her unconscious.

Teg is taken to a building he recognizes was once a bank and a Bene Gesserit safehouse. An old Honored Matre gives Teg the option to join her as a commander or die. She describes herself as a banker who transfers and sells the power to subjugate people. Teg retorts that governments and societies do the same. The Honored Matre refers to the masses as “muck” and argues that they must be kept in “protective ignorance.”

Muzzafar enters the room and appears drugged. Teg regards the Honored Matre and Muzzafar as people who will never experience genuine joy. The Honored Matre tells him that one of her women will mark him, just as they had done to Muzzafar. Teg deduces their plan to seduce him to submission, and his second vision grows and expands. He sees his future in which he kills everyone in the building. Teg also sees the Tyrant’s long-term design and the necessary pain he must endure.

Taraza instructs Sheeana to perform her worm dance before a large audience and facetiously calls the demonstration a “holy event.” She believes the Tyrant exists in the worms and that Sheeana speaks to him. Taraza regards the dance as the “worm’s language” that the Bene Gesserit must learn. Odrade tells Sheeana that Leto II’s Golden Path employed sex to encourage endless genetic diversity in the Scattering, whereas the Honored Matres use sex for control. Taraza eavesdrops on their lesson and approves of Odrade’s claim that the Honored Matres are good for them by urging them to join the resistance in the Scattering and not remain static. 

Taraza hears ornithopters, small transport vessels, fly overhead and thinks that more observers are arriving. Instead, a laser beam shoots down and severs her legs. Taraza thinks to herself that she has won. Odrade races to her, and Taraza transfers all her memories to her by touching their heads together. Odrade escapes with Sheeana and tells her that the Honored Matres have attacked and that Taraza is dead. Odrade serves as the temporary Mother Superior.

Teg kills over 50 people in the building with incredible speed and leaves behind some survivors as witnesses to his power. He thinks about his education and how the Bene Gesserit preferred the term procreation to sexuality. They taught him that the secret of all religions is the redirection of sexual energy. Teg returns to normal time and notices that his blood from a wound is more oxygenated and blacker. He credits his newfound skills to his Atreides lineage and their tradition of genetic transgressions. Teg rallies a group of his former soldiers, and the men welcome the opportunity to serve the Bashar and fight against the Honored Matres. Teg feels a deep reluctance but knows he must persevere. He calls on the men to help him capture a no-ship from the Scattering which he locates with his second vision.

Teg arrives on Rakis in a no-ship after rescuing Duncan, Birzmali, and Lucilla. Murbella is also taken into custody. Teg does not tell his crew about his second vision and his knowledge that they will all fight and die. He wonders if he is no better than the Honored Matres who treat the commoners as muck. He senses one of his soldier’s bitterness and thinks about how people are eager to be led and how easily they create a scapegoat to cope with their resentment. Teg’s ship picks up Odrade, Sheeana, and the worm. He instructs Odrade to take the ship to Chapter House and bring Duncan and the others. He and his men will stay behind to create a diversion. Teg knows that the Honored Matres will think Duncan is with him and destroy the entire planet. He kisses his daughter’s cheek and tells her to do what she must. The worm may be the last one in the universe.

Odrade sits in Taraza’s old room in Chapter House and learns from her Other Memories that Taraza had leaked information about the altered ghola to the Honored Matres to lure them. Determined to kill Duncan, the Honored Matres destroyed the entire planet of Rakis. Teg and his men are dead along with Waff and his Face Dancers. Odrade thinks about how little she knew of her father and ponders commissioning a bust of Teg titled “the Great Heretic!” (661).

Duncan is confined to the grounded no-ship since the Bene Gesserit cannot determine if his cells possess the Siona gene that will hide him. He refuses to be a breeding stud for the Bene Gesserit, but Murbella is pregnant with his child. Odrade explains to Duncan that Taraza’s plan was to destroy the planet Rakis and most of its worms to free themselves from the Tyrant’s “oracular force.” The single sandworm will one day metamorphose and multiply on Chapter House Planet but will never have control over humanity as Leto II once had. Humans will evolve and diversify beyond the reach of a single ruler.

Odrade tells Duncan that her father and ancestors loved him, and she vows to help him fulfill the kind of life he wants to live. Duncan denies that the Bene Gesserit can feel love, but Odrade tells him his water is theirs, an allusion to the original Duncan’s pledge of allegiance to the Fremen Stilgar. Odrade looks down at the worm in the ship’s hold and thinks of the creature as physical evidence of “noble purpose.” She tells the worm that she knows its language and asks if this was its design, not expecting to hear a reply.