Axlotl tank
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Axlotl tanks are a technology in the fictional Dune universe created by Frank Herbert in the Dune series. Axlotl technology is also mentioned in Herbert's novel Destination: Void but not elaborated upon. The name presumably refers to the axolotl, an aquatic salamander native to Mexico renowned for its regenerative abilities.
Axlotl tanks are produced (and initially monopolized) by the Bene Tleilax to serve as wombs in which a ghola (a kind of clone, specifically the clone of someone who has died) can be grown; in later books, the axlotl tanks have been engineered to be capable of producing the spice melange.
[edit] The original Dune series
The tanks are briefly mentioned in Dune Messiah as the source of the Duncan Idaho ghola.[1] Their nature is a well-guarded Tleilaxu secret.
In Heretics of Dune, the Bene Gesserit Lady Janet notes to her son Miles Teg that "No one outside of [the Tleilaxu] planets has ever reported seeing a Tleilaxu female." Wondering whether the Tleilaxu breed or simply rely on the tanks to reproduce, Miles asks, "Do they exist or is it just the tanks?" Janet confirms that females do indeed exist. Later in Heretics Teg's own daughter, Reverend Mother Darwi Odrade, theorizes that the axlotl tanks may be, in fact, "surrogate mothers" — Tleilaxu females somehow transformed. Soon, the current Duncan ghola recalls his repeated "births" from the tanks:
The axlotl tanks! He remembered emerging time after time: bright lights and padded mechanical hands. The hands rotated him and, in the unfocused blurs of the newborn, he saw a great mound of female flesh — monstrous in her almost immobile grossness ... a maze of dark tubes linked her body to giant metal containers.
In Chapterhouse Dune, the last remaining Tleilaxu Master Scytale is coerced into revealing the means of creating the tanks to the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood.
[edit] Prelude to Dune
In the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, the Tleilaxu invade the planet Ix on the orders of the Padishah Emperor Elrood Corrino IX. The Tleilaxu attempt to create artificial melange (called "Amal" — Arabic for "hope") using axlotl technology; the best results are gained by using a Bene Gesserit sister to create an axlotl tank. However, the project ultimately fails.
[edit] Notes
- ^ It should be noted that both mentions of the tanks are spelled "axolotl" in Dune Messiah, but Herbert spells the term "axlotl" in all later novels in the series. The non-canon (but approved by Herbert) Dune Encyclopedia, compiled and published in 1984 between God Emperor of Dune and Heretics of Dune, also uses the spelling "axolotl."
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