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In reading Hunters of Dune, I realized that the Liet Kynes Ghola's cells should have been very hard to come by. Kynes dies in the desert in the first book, and I can't imagine there were any Tleilaxu around to harvest cells from the body as Kynes dies in an explosion of CO2 surfacing in the desert:

Somewhere beneath him, the pre-spice mass had accumulated enough water and organic matter from the little makers, had reached the critical stage of wild growth. A gigantic bubble of carbon dioxide was forming deep in the sand, heaving upward in an enormous “blow” with a dust whirlpool at its center. It would exchange what had been formed deep in the sand for whatever lay on the surface.

(p.446 of Dune, Kindle version).

So, I was wondering how the Tleilaxu masters would have gotten cells from Kynes to be stored and uncovered in Hunters of Dune? Is this a plot hole? Or is it to be assumed that Kynes' cells were merely harvested earlier when he was alive, sort of like with Miles Teg?

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  • plans within plans. Plans.within.plans.
    – NKCampbell
    Feb 25, 2022 at 20:01
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    You're assuming Brian and Kevin have actually read Dune and know what happened to Kynes...
    – Daniel Roseman
    Feb 25, 2022 at 20:07

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We know from Chapterhouse: Dune that the Tleilaxu have made a habit of collecting cells from important personages that may prove useful to them as slaves.

Each Master had carried this resource—a nullentropy capsule preserving the seed cells of a multitude: fellow Masters of the central kehl, Face Dancers, technical specialists and others he knew would be attractive to the women of Shaitan . . . and to many weakling powindah! Paul Atreides and his beloved Chani were there. (Oh what that had cost in searching garments of the dead for random cells!) The original Duncan Idaho was there with other Atreides minions—the Mentat Thufir Hawat, Gurney Halleck, the Fremen Naib Stilgar . . . enough potential servants and slaves to people a Tleilaxu universe.

Kynes is a VIP and certainly worthy of the attention of the Tleilaxu. It's possible that the spice blow was searched for any scrap of Kynes' clothing, or more likely just that cells were taken from him at an earlier stage by one of their operatives.

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  • I feel like this is just begging the question though. How did they know Kynes was a VIP? Don't forget, the "Liet" part of his identity was secret; to the Tleilaxu he would have just been the planetologist.
    – Daniel Roseman
    Feb 26, 2022 at 14:06
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    @DanielRoseman - He was the official Empire contact for an entire planet and Judge of the Change. That makes him a very important person. If he'd said "foul", that could have scuppered the Emperor's entire plans.
    – Valorum
    Feb 26, 2022 at 16:12
  • @Valorum - Not so. He BECAME SOMEWHAT important official becoming the JotC. He was not high enough to say anything about imperial orders to turn the blind eye to everything on Dune... He would be judged important by Tleilaxu IF they knew he was Chani's father AND they knew how important she was to Paul in foresight. That or Tleilaxu infiltrated Fremen thoroughly well before that.. But it would draw immediate BG attention. Also, in description of Kynes in connection to the welcome dinner he was definitely considered well below all minor houses on Dune - and that actually says a lot.
    – AcePL
    Mar 2, 2022 at 11:20
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    2/2 though I would agree the Tleilaxu probably harvested his cells as a matter of course. Which would happen when he was in Sardaukar captivity or they took them from Kynes' stillsuit (which he didn't have when dropped off in the desert). Atreides knew immediately who he was (or rather who he wasn't), Tleilaxu could have been interested by same things and deemed him important enough.
    – AcePL
    Mar 2, 2022 at 11:27
  • Kynes was imperial ecologist for Arrakis, the only planet containing the spice. Seems important to me, from a Tleilaxu perspective. But nevermind that, they had a multitude of cells. This implies to me they collected from all kinds, specifically so they could have access to people who become "VIPs" suddenly. I've not read the book, but I figure they'd have to reveal at what point a kynes cellular memory would end, thus revealing when they acquired the cells.
    – user15742
    Mar 16, 2022 at 16:19

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