Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert

Ghola?

He probed the library for elaborations on this peculiar word. Ghola. The library produced for him no more than bare-boned accounts: “Gholas: humans grown from a cadaver’s cells in Tleilaxu axlotl tanks.”

Axlotl tanks?

“A Tleilaxu device for reproducing a living human being from the cells of a cadaver.”

“Describe a ghola,” he demanded.

“Innocent flesh devoid of its original memories. See Axlotl Tanks.”

Duncan had learned to read the silences, the blank places in what the people of the Keep revealed to him. Revelation swept over him. He knew! Only ten and he knew!

I am a ghola.

Late afternoon in the library, all of the esoteric machinery around him faded into a sensory background, and a ten-year-old sat silently before a scanner hugging the knowledge to himself.

I am a ghola!

He could not remember the axlotl tanks where his cells had grown into an infant. His first memories were of Geasa picking him up from his cradle, the alert interest in those adult eyes that had so soon faded into wary lidding.

It was as though the information so grudgingly supplied him by the Keep’s people and records had at last defined a central shape: himself.

“Tell me about the Bene Tleilax,” he demanded of the library.

“They are a people self-divided into Face Dancers and Masters. Face Dancers are mules, sterile and submissive to the Masters.”

Why did they do this to me?

The information machines of the library were suddenly alien and dangerous. He was afraid, not that his questions might meet more blank walls, but that he would receive answers.

Why am I so important to Schwangyu and the others?

He felt that they had wronged him, even Miles Teg and Patrin. Why was it right to take the cells of a human and produce a ghola?

He asked the next question with great hesitation. “Can a ghola ever remember who he was?”

“It can be done.”

“How?”

“The psychological identity of ghola to original pre-sets certain responses, which can be ignited by trauma.”

No answer at all!

“But how?”

Schwangyu intruded at this point, arriving at the library unannounced. So something about his questions had been set to alert her!

“All will be made clear to you in time,” she said.

She talked down to him! He sensed the injustice in it, the lack of truthfulness. Something within him said he carried more human wisdom in his unawakened self than the ones who presumed themselves so superior. His hatred of Schwangyu reached a new intensity. She was the personification of all who tantalized him and frustrated his questions.

Now, though, his imagination was on fire. He would recapture his original memories! He felt the truth of this. He would remember his parents, his family, his friends . . . his enemies.

He demanded it of Schwangyu: “Did you produce me because of my enemies?”

“You have already learned silence, child,” she said. “Rely on that knowledge.”

Very well. That’s how I will fight you, damned Schwangyu. I will be silent and I will learn. I won’t show you how I really feel.

“You know,” she said, “I think we’re raising a stoic.”

She patronized him! He would not be patronized. He would fight them all with silence and watchfulness. Duncan ran from the library and huddled in his room.

In the following months, many things confirmed that he was a ghola. Even a child knew when things around him were extraordinary. He saw other children occasionally beyond the walls, walking along the perimeter road, laughing and calling. He found accounts of children in the library. Adults did not come to those children and engage them in rigorous training of the sort imposed on him. Other children did not have a Reverend Mother Schwangyu to order every smallest aspect of their lives.

His discovery precipitated another change in Duncan’s life. Luran Geasa was called away from him and did not return.

She was not supposed to let me know about gholas.

The truth was somewhat more complex, as Schwangyu explained to Lucilla on the observation parapet the day of Lucilla’s arrival.

“We knew the inevitable moment would come. He would learn about gholas and ask the pointed questions.”

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