Heretics of Dune (Page 149)

"I shall kill him now," she said.

Lucilla, not knowing what might happen next, folded her body sideways, barely avoiding the woman’s suddenly outthrust foot, and countered with a standard Bene Gesserit sabard that dumped the young woman on her back doubled up where the blow had caught her in the abdomen.

"A suggestion that you kill my guide is uncalled for, whatever your name is," Lucilla said.

The young woman gasped for breath, then, panting between words: "I am called Murbella, Great Honored Matre. You shame me by defeating me with such a slow attack. Why do you do that?"

"You needed a lesson," Lucilla said.

"I am only newly robed, Great Honored Matre. Please forgive me. I thank you for the splendid lesson and will thank you every time I employ your response, which I now commit to memory." She bowed her head, then leaped lightly to her feet, an impish grin on her face.

In her coldest voice, Lucilla asked: "Do you know who I am?" Out of the corners of her eyes, she saw Burzmali regain his feet with painful slowness. He remained at one side, watching the women, but anger burned his face.

"From your ability to teach me that lesson, I see that you are who you are, Great Honored Matre. Am I forgiven?" The impish grin had vanished from Murbella’s face. She stood with head bowed.

"You are forgiven. Is there a no-ship coming?"

"So they say here. We are prepared for it." Murbella glanced at Burzmali.

"He is still useful to me and it is required that he accompany me," Lucilla said.

"Very good, Great Honored Matre. Does your forgiveness include your name?"

"No!"

Murbella sighed. "We have captured the ghola," she said. "He came as a Tleilaxu from the south. I was just about to bed him when you arrived."

Burzmali hobbled toward them. Lucilla saw that he had recognized the danger. This "completely safe" place had been infested by enemies! But the enemies still knew very little.

"The ghola was not injured?" Burzmali asked.

"It still speaks," Murbella said. "How odd."

"You will not bed the ghola," Lucilla said. "That one is my special charge!"

"Fair game, Great Honored Matre. And I marked him first. He is already partly subdued."

She laughed once more, with a callous abandonment that shocked Lucilla. "This way. There is a place where you can watch."

May you die on Caladan!

– Ancient Drinking Toast

Duncan tried to remember where he was. He knew Tormsa was dead. Blood had spurted from Tormsa’s eyes. Yes, he remembered that clearly. They had entered a dark building and light had flared abruptly all around them. Duncan felt an ache in the back of his head. A blow? He tried to move and his muscles refused to obey.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

He remembered sitting at the edge of a wide lawn. There was some kind of bowling game in progress – eccentric balls that bounced and darted with no apparent design. The players were young men in a common costume of… Giedi Prime!

"They are practicing to be old men," he said. He remembered saying that.

His companion, a young woman, looked at him blankly.

"Only old men should play these outdoor games," he said.

"Oh?"

It was an unanswerable question. She put him down with only the simplest of verbal gestures.

And betrayed me the next instant to the Harkonnens!

So that was a pre-ghola memory.

Ghola!

He remembered the Bene Gesserit Keep on Gammu. The library: holophotos and triphotos of the Atreides Duke, Leto I. Teg’s resemblance was not an accident: a bit taller but otherwise it was all there – that long, thin face with its high-bridged nose, the renowned Atreides charisma…

Teg!

He remembered the old Bashar’s last gallant stand in the Gammu night.

Where am I?

Tormsa had brought him here. They had been moving along an overgrown track on the outskirts of Ysai. Barony. It started to snow before they were two hundred meters up the track. Wet snow that clung to them. Cold, miserable snow that set their teeth chattering within a minute. They paused to bring up their hoods and close the insulated jackets. That was better. But it would be night soon. Much colder.

"There is a shelter of sorts up ahead," Tormsa said. "We will wait there for the night."

When Duncan did not speak, Tormsa said: "It won’t be warm but it will be dry."

Duncan saw the gray outline of the place in about three hundred paces. It stood out against the dirty snow some two stories tall. He recognized it immediately: a Harkonnen counting outpost. Observers here had counted (and sometimes killed) the people who passed. It was built of native dirt turned into one giant brick by the simple expedient of preforming it in mud bricks and then superheating it with a wide-bore burner, the kind the Harkonnens had used to control mobs.

As they came up to it, Duncan saw the remains of a full-field defensive screen with fire-lance gaps aimed at the approaches. Someone had smashed the system a long time ago. Twisted holes in the field net were partly overgrown with bushes. But the fire-lance gaps remained open. Oh, yes – to allow people inside a view of the approaches.

Tormsa paused and listened, studying their surroundings with care.

Duncan looked at the counting station. He remembered them well. What confronted him was a thing that had sprouted like a deformed growth from an original tubular seed. The surface had been baked to a glassine finish. Warts and protrusions betrayed where it had been superheated. The erosion of eons had left fine scratches in it but the original shape remained. He looked upward and identified part of the old suspensor lift system. Someone had jury-rigged a block and tackle to the outbar.