Dune: The Machine Crusade (94 page)

The Grand Patriarch showed exhilaration, boundless energy and optimism. He had maintained his youthful health and vitality through massive consumption of Aurelius Venport’s imported spice, melange, an exotic drug that continued to be popular among the most prominent League nobles.

In contrast, as he stood watching, Xavier felt the weight of his years and his own tragedies. Nothing more than stage-dressing himself, Xavier looked about at the strange Tlulaxa— all of them men— who had come to attend this event. No sign of females anywhere. Even though he noticed nothing he could identify as directly suspicious, he felt as if he were trespassing in a den of predators. Their sharp little teeth and black, rodent eyes only added to the effect.

A secret triumph reflected in Iblis Ginjo’s own dark eyes. His broad-shouldered Jipol officers stood by, scanning the crowd, watching everything. Only the youthful Quinto Paolo seemed to accept this celebration at face value.

“We have guaranteed the Tlulaxa their privacy, and we respect their wishes to restrict outside visitors,” the Grand Patriarch continued. “Still, we welcome them as our brothers in the holy struggle against thinking machines.”

Xavier stood in front of the organ farms, surveying the masses of carefully bred tissue. He drew a deep breath into his own lungs, which had themselves been taken from similar tanks four decades ago. He focused on spherical eyeballs drifting in murky nutrient containers. They all seemed to be staring at him like accusing ghosts.

IN A HIGH-RISE dwelling complex outside the Bandalong city perimeter, the Tlulaxa provided Xavier with a suite located in the middle of a maze of corridors, exterior balconies, and catwalks. His private room contained pleasant furniture and unusual art objects, but the basic design seemed austere and industrial; Xavier wondered if the Tlulaxa had simply added the decorations for his benefit.

Following his attendance at the organ farms ceremony, the Tlulaxa and Iblis Ginjo seemed to have no further interest in him. They sat together at a banquet table and ate a spiced meal, accompanied by strained conversation. Then the Grand Patriarch clearly dismissed Xavier, citing the veteran’s “weariness from the demands of the day” and suggesting that he retire to his own quarters for the evening.

Quinto Paolo bunked in a small room nearby. The Jipol had no business with the young adjutant, and the spaceport and business sectors of this suburban section did not offer much nightlife for an energetic military man. The core of Bandalong itself was off-limits to outsiders for purported religious reasons, although Xavier could not get a straight answer to any of his inquiries as to the reasons why.

Xavier brooded in his rooms, not wanting to sleep. He felt mentally weary, but his body was not tired. He resented having too much time to sit alone, where he had nothing to do but think and remember. Under such circumstances doubts and suspicions could run rampant….

Though Serena Butler had written passionate tracts and Iblis Ginjo had released his own popular essays and memoirs, Xavier had never felt the need to boast about his own life or military heroics. Despite his prominence, he had never bothered to document or justify his work for future generations to read. He preferred to let his actions speak for themselves.

Now Xavier spent hours far into the Tlulaxan night, poring over the last writings of Serena Butler. He found nothing new or enlightening, since he knew her thoughts and arguments so well. Nonetheless, Xavier savored the cadence and poetry of her words, as if she were speaking aloud to him once more. He opened his memories about her as if they were a separate, treasured book inside his mind, and thought of the remarkable accomplishments of her life.

Too short a life
.

He heard a noise, a desperate tapping on the hard window plate of the folding door of his high balcony. Startled, Xavier noticed a shadow moving outside, the silhouette of a human form.

He might have been suspicious or afraid, but curiosity got the better of him. When he opened the balcony door and a cold, sour breeze slapped his face, he saw his mysterious visitor, a skeletal man with cadaverous, gray skin, except where livid scars embroidered it. The man had only one eye; the other hollow socket was a ghastly crater. Translucent tubes ran from his neck into packets of gelatinous fluids strapped to his waist.

Somehow the man had made his way across the catwalks and then dropped down here with the use of a wet, knotted rope. Xavier couldn’t imagine how this desiccated person had summoned the strength to accomplish such a task.

The stranger trembled as if in exhaustion or desperation. “Primero Harkonnen… I have found you.” He nearly collapsed with relief.

Xavier supported the unfortunate soul and led him into the room. Instinctively, the Primero kept his voice low. “Who are you? Does anyone know you’re here?”

The stranger shook his head, and the effort seemed to cost him a great deal. His chin sagged onto his own sunken chest. He looked like a giant mass of wounds, a shambling collection of scars. Not battle scars—
surgical
scars. Xavier helped him to one of the chairs in his room.

“Primero Harkonnen…” The man took deep breaths between words. “You may not remember me. I served with you at IV Anbus, thirteen years ago. I led one of the detachments against the thinking machines. I am Tercero Hondu Cregh.”

Narrowing his eyes, Xavier brought the recollection into focus. This officer had arranged the second ground ambush in a Zenshiite village, but the locals had sabotaged the artillery, leaving Cregh and his commandos vulnerable to robotic attack. Like Vergyl.

“Yes, I remember you well.” His brows knitted. “But I thought you’d been reassigned to your homeworld… Balut?” He drew in a quick breath. “Balut! And you survived the devastating attack there?”

“Balut was my home… once.”

Full of questions, Xavier leaned closer. “I saw the tactical report, the summary images. Awful! The thinking machines destroyed everyone, not a living soul left— but how did you escape?”

“We were not attacked by… thinking machines.” Hondu Cregh shook his head. “You were meant to believe that, but it wasn’t Omnius at all. It was Iblis Ginjo and the Tlulaxa.”

Xavier’s heart skipped a beat. “What are you saying?”

“There is something I must show you, if my body can withstand the effort.” Cregh lifted his head, blinking his oversized, bloodshot eye. “But I warn you, this knowledge places you in great danger, and you will not thank me for it.”

“I am not concerned about danger, not anymore.” Xavier set his jaw. “And if you have the courage to come here in your condition and tell me— how can I do less than listen to what you have to say?”

Tercero Cregh hung his head again, and his shoulders sagged. “I did it because I have nothing to lose, Primero. I am dead already.” He fondled the gelatinous packets strapped to his waist, touched the intravenous tubes running into his chest and neck. His single, intense eye fixed on Xavier. “They have stolen both of my kidneys, and my liver. The Tlulaxa hooked me up to temporary preservation systems and machines so that I would not deteriorate too quickly, while they waited to harvest the rest of my usable components.”

Xavier could not comprehend everything he was hearing. “What? They have the organ farms. They can grow anything they need. Why would—”

“I am an organ donor… Tlulaxa-style,” the emaciated man said, with a gruesome smile. He raised himself from the chair and stood on shaky legs. “Yes, the Tlulaxa have organ farms, but the operations are not very productive. Adequate to generate expensive replacement body parts during peacetime, perhaps— but never with the capacity to weather the demands of a Jihad.”

“But… that’s impossible!” Xavier felt a deep revulsion growing in his soul. “I myself have replacement lungs—”

Cregh’s head continued to sag, as if his neck was too weak to hold it up. “Perhaps it’s true that your lungs came from one of the tank trees… or they may have been ripped from a poor slave who happened to have compatible tissues. When all of the veterans and injured of the Jihad demanded fresh organs, the Tlulaxa were forced to find… alternative sources. Who would care about a few colonists and insignificant Buddislamic slaves?”

Xavier swallowed hard. “So the organ farms Serena and I visited— those were all a sham?”

“No, those were functional tanks, but they provide only a fraction of the Jihad’s biological needs. And the Tlulaxa certainly did not wish to lose all that business, all that profit. The flesh merchants want you to believe in their technological prowess, while they sell you their organs at exorbitant prices.”

Even worse, Xavier knew that if the League had known the truth all along, many organ recipients probably would still have made the same choice. He himself might have considered it a necessarily evil, for the good of the Jihad.

Cregh heaved a deep, angry sigh. “So, when orders come in, the Tlulaxa harvest the needed organs from those who no longer serve any other purpose for them. People like me.”

Struggling to comprehend the immensity of what he was hearing, Xavier wondered about Iblis Ginjo’s role. “And the Grand Patriarch… knows about this scheme?”

The man squinted his lone eye, and laughed coarsely. “Knows about it? He
created
it.”

L
ike a man in a daze, Xavier followed Tercero Cregh out onto a narrow balcony high above the streets of the Tlulaxan suburb. The night was misty-wet and cold. The two of them made a treacherous, laborious ascent on railings and by knotted rope, crossing dim walkways and over-passes, Xavier offering assistance when he could.

Xavier was sure there must be guards outside the door to his room and Quinto Paolo’s. He hoped no one would check on him before he could see what this desperate soldier had to show him. Worse, he hoped his suite had not been bugged with microscopic surveillance imagers. But it was too late for such concerns now.

At night the Tlulaxa city— at its core a forbidden zone— was dark and sinister, brooding behind its blockades. “Are we going inside there?” Xavier asked the barely alive veteran. He kept his voice low. “It’s a blocked security area—”

“There are ways to enter. The Tlulaxa have so few offworld visitors, they don’t know the weak spots in their own security.” Cregh heaved a gurgling breath, visibly forcing back his pain. “But I suspect it will be more difficult getting in than it was slipping out. Most of the prisoners, like me, aren’t very… ambulatory. Shhh! Look.” He pointed.

Crouching, they watched three Tlulaxa men pass them, each one carrying an electronic device. When the way was clear, Hondu Cregh hurried through shadows, followed by Xavier.

In a cramped alley outside a hangar-sized metal building, Cregh propped open an access hatch and ducked low. Both men entered through a supply chute. The effort was obviously difficult and painful to Cregh, but he did not slow.

Inside the large building, the stench of chemicals and death was powerful even to Xavier’s dulled sense of smell. But what he saw made him wish he had lost his eyesight long ago.

The confinement beds were like coffins equipped with diagnostics and artificial systems that kept the pathetic, mewling forms alive by pumping fluids into them. The cavernous facility extended as far as he could see, under dim lights.

Thousands of human bodies lay trapped there. Living specimens. Some were nothing but butchered torsos or severed limbs, kept fresh through injections of nutrients and bubbling liquids, mere scraps of dissected humanity. Other bodies were fresh acquisitions, strapped down and held captive while their pieces were removed one by one to fill orders.

The real “organ farms” of the Tlulaxa.

Xavier drew in a hitching, sobbing breath, felt a wave of nausea. As he tasted the air, he wondered if he had been kept alive through the unwilling sacrifice of some unknown victim who had provided a fresh set of lungs.

Most of the captives had the distinctive dark hair and tan skin that marked them as Buddislamic captives, like the ones on IV Anbus or those who had risen up on Poritrin. The Zensunni and Zenshiite prisoners who did not have their eyes removed looked at him with desperation, hope, or hatred.

“I escaped from my bed,” Cregh said in a rattling voice. “With most of my vital organs taken from me, the flesh merchants knew I could not stay alive away from this place— only an hour or two at most. But when one of the other donor bodies died, I was able to steal his nutrient and stimulant packs. That provided me with the strength I needed to go out and locate you. I knew you were here. I overheard two of the Tlulaxa butchers talking.” He inhaled deeply, like bellows inflating, then he coughed. “I had to give my life… so that you would
know,
Primero Harkonnen.”

Xavier wanted to collapse in despair. He wanted to flee, but instead he steeled himself and looked at the horrific survivor. “But how did the Tlulaxa capture you? We thought that you and the other colonists were killed on Balut.”

“The Grand Patriarch’s Jipol and dozens of Tlulaxa slaver ships came at night and bombarded the central village,” said Cregh. “They sprayed paralytic gas in the air, rendering us senseless and unable to resist. Like on Rhisso. They killed a handful of us for good measure, just so they could strew the slaughtered bodies around. Then they took us captive and slagged the buildings, leaving no traces except for a handful of destroyed combat robots they had picked up on some old battlefield. The League assumed it was a thinking machine attack.”

Xavier reeled with the information. Then weakness overcame the dying man, and finally Cregh sagged to his knees. “That was how the Tlulaxa acquired fresh materials for their organ farms, and Iblis Ginjo was able to cry out against the thinking machines. His people rallied to the cause, suspecting nothing.”

“An abominable scheme,” Xavier said.