Face Dancers
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Face Dancers are a type of human in Frank Herbert's fictional Dune universe. A servant caste of the Bene Tleilax, Face Dancers are near-perfect mimics; their name is derived from their ability to change their appearance literally at will.
Originally, Face Dancers were Tleilaxu trained to mimic others using acting and makeup, enhanced by plastic surgery. As time went on, the Tleilaxu began to use genetic manipulation to enhance natural ability in phenotypic plasticity, so that Face Dancers could change height, increase and decrease apparent mass, change coloring and texture, and change facial features. This genetic manipulation continued to such an extent that Face Dancers could be considered a sub-species of humanity or even another species entirely.
In the history of the Dune universe, Face Dancers have been employed for a number of purposes. Initially, their principal use was entertainment--they served as comedians, impersonators, and actors. However, their identity-stealing skills made them highly useful as spies and assassins, and they were hired by the Great Houses in their continual political, financial, and military conflicts.
In time the Face Dancers became genetic eunuchs. They became sterile creatures, with full sentience but no sense of self and a genetically programmed loyalty to the Tleilaxu masters. They can be controlled by being forced into a hypnotic state with some predefined sound (often a specific humming or whistling noise).
Throughout most of the Dune timeline, only the Bene Gesserit-trained can detect a Face Dancer by sight; Face Dancers are liable to give away their identities, though, since they lack the memories of the people they replace.
[edit] In the Dune series
In Dune Messiah, the second book in the series, the plot is driven by a Tleilaxu attempt to undermine the Emperor Paul Muad'dib using a ghola, in the hope the Tleilaxu can take control of the Imperium. The Tleilaxu Master involved is actually a Face Dancer who uses his talents to facilitate an assassination attempt on the Emperor. Paul can immediately detect the replacement, but lets the plot play out to see where it leads and determine its place in his prescient visions.
Face Dancers also play a role in God Emperor of Dune; they replace nearly everyone in the Ixian embassy on Arrakis, but their assassination attempt on Leto fails and they are defeated by Duncan Idaho and Leto's Fish Speaker police/army. Leto employs the Bene Gesserit Anteac to spot the Face Dancer impersonators in his midst so they can be eliminated (although Leto can detect them himself).
At the beginning of Heretics of Dune, the Bene Tleilax feel ready to take control of the Imperium. They have achieved their long-term plan of developing Face Dancers who are perfect mimics, able to take mind prints of the people they imitate and possess all their memories. This leaves an ordinary person with no real way of detecting a replacement; the Tleilaxu believe that the Bene Gesserit cannot detect these new Face Dancers either. The Tleilaxu intend to take control of the other powers in the Imperium by replacing their leaders with Face Dancers. However, the Tleilaxu plan is ultimately ruined by its flaws. The Tleilaxu have never tested the Face Dancers over long periods independent of a master's control. It develops that, after playing their roles for too long, the new Face Dancers come to think of themselves as the people they have printed and forget their Tleilaxu origins. They effectively become the people they are mimicking, passing beyond the control of the Tleilaxu. Nor are the new Face Dancers undetectable to the Bene Gesserit. By the end of the novel, it looks as if the Bene Tleilax will be forced into an alliance with the Bene Gesserit.
In Chapterhouse Dune, The Reverend Mother Dortujla describes being approached by a group of Futars and "Handlers" wishing to ally with the Bene Gesserit against the Honored Matres. Dortujla is struck with the impression that the Handlers are Face Dancers, but standard Bene Gesserit detection techniques are unable to confirm her suspicions. These Handlers supposedly bred and trained the Futars to hunt Honored Matres. In his vision of the mysterious observers Daniel and Marty, Duncan Idaho notes:
Reassuring faces. That thought aroused Idaho's suspicions because now he recognized the familiarity. They looked somewhat like Face Dancers, even to the pug noses ... And if they were Face Dancers, they were not Scytale's Face Dancers. Those two people behind the shimmering net belonged to no one but themselves.
In Hunters of Dune, the passengers of the no-ship Ithaca discover that the Handlers are indeed actually Face Dancers from The Scattering, in league with Daniel and Marty (who are not). It is also revealed that these new Face Dancers (apparently undetectable by even Bene Gesserit means) have infiltrated governments and other powers across the Old Empire in their plan to take over the universe. Murbella and the Bene Gesserit stumble upon this when they discover that the leader of the Honored Matres on Tleilax (and her inner circle) are in fact a Face Dancer duplicates.
[edit] Face Dancer Development
The final set of procedures utilized by the Tleilaxu to create the Face Dancers can only be described as dehumanizing.
In the early fetal stage of development hormonal stimulus prevents the urethral groove from closing at the proximal end, equipping the subject with both a functional penis and a functional vagina (though lacking a uterus and ovaries). Other treatments cause the celomic sacs present in a normal human body to migrate during embryonic development to particular positions within the body.
Injections shortly after birth slow and stop the ossification of the facial bones, and stimulate replacement of the membranes of the face with a muscle-like tissue, followed by localized injections that reverse the cartiliage-to-bone process in limited areas. The face softens into a structure of cartilage and muscle. In place of certain facial bones, the subject has envelopes of elastic cartilage filled with material of a putty-like consistency. The muscles that replace the membranes between the large bones of the vault of the skull can be manipulated to increase or decrease the size of the skull within narrow limits, or change somewhat the shape of the skull.
During the years before puberty biofeedback exercises allowing the differential stimulation of the genetically and surgically altered muscles are performed daily.
The subject can change such things as the size and shape of his "cheekbones" as easily and quickly as one might smile. For longer-lasting disguises, the subject, working with the likeness of the victim, molds the matter within the cartilage envelopes to the desired form, which would then be retained indefinitely barring some trauma.
Height can be increased by a maximum of 15 cm by stretching certain back muscles; by constricting the same muscles, the discs in the spinal column can be squeezed to reduce height by a maximum of about 7 or 8 cm. These changes could be maintained for some hours, though not indefinitely. Even the strongest need to relax the back muscles several times a day.
Skin color to be changed through the alteration of bodily hormones through willful control of the pineal gland, the pituitary gland and others.
After puberty, when the subject achieves maximum growth, tubes of artificial tissue are implanted connecting the respiratory system to the repositioned celomic sacs. The tubes contain internal valves. The subject opens the valves by muscular action and, by closing the glottis, pumps air from the lungs into the expanding sacs. When the desired size had been achieved, the valve muscles were relaxed and the valves closed, trapping the air inside the sac until such time as the dancer decided to "deflate." Pumping varying amounts of air into the pleural sacs alone gives an accurate appearance of breasts of the desired size. The size of the arms and legs can be increased somewhat through controllable edemas. Through this technique, a subject can look like he weighs anywhere between 120-280 pounds.
Relatively minor surgery produces a fold in the mons veneris in which the penis is hidden. The disguise is completed by the voluntary control the subject possesses over cremaster muscles in the scrotum, which allows the retraction of the testes into the abdomen. Penile size is altered through control of the blood flow.
Natural hair is replaced with a liquid crystal strand which responds to varying temperature by changing color. The subject can control the amount of blood flow to his skin and thus the color of his hair.
