SFworld 版 (精华区)
发信人: emanuel (小飞象), 信区: SFworld
标 题: Dune Book 1 - 12
发信站: 哈工大紫丁香 (Thu Jul 13 12:33:50 2000), 转信
发信人: Sandoval (Companion Protector), 信区: SciFiction
标 题: Dune Book 1 - 12
发信站: The unknown SPACE (Tue May 30 19:25:42 2000) WWW-POST
There is a legend that the instant the Duke Leto Atreides
died a meteor streaked across the skies above his ancestral
palace on Caladan.
-the Princess Irulan: "Introduction to A Child's History of
Muad'Dib"
The Baron Vladimir Harkonnen stood at a viewport of the
grounded lighter he was using as a command post. Out the
port he saw the flame-lighted night of rrakeen. His
attention focused on the distant Shield Wall where his
secret weapon was doing its work.
Explosive artillery.
The guns nibbled at the caves where the Duke's fighting
men had retreated for a last-ditch stand. Slowly measured
bites of orange glare, showers of rock and dust in the brief
illumination--and the Duke's men were being sealed off to
die by starvation, caught like animals in their burrows.
The Baron could feel the distant chomping--a drumbeat
carried to him through the ship' metal: broomp . . .
broomp. Then: BROOMP-broomp!
Who would think of reviving artillery in this day of
shields? The thought was a chuckle in his mind. But it was
predictable the Duke's men would run for those caves. And
the Emperor will appreciate my cleverness in preserving the
lives of our mutual force.
He adjusted one of the little suspensors that guarded
his fat body against the pull of gravity. A smile creased
his mouth, pulled at the lines of his jowls.
A pity to waste such fighting men a the Duke's, he
thought. He smiled more broadly, laughing at himself. Pity
should be cruel! He nodded. Failure was, by definition,
expendable. The whole universe sat there, open to the man
who could make the right decisions. The uncertain rabbits
had to be exposed, made to run for their burrows. Else how
could you control them and breed them? He pictured his
fighting men as bees routing the rabbits. And he thought:
The day hums sweetly when you have enough bees working for
you.
A door opened behind him The Baron studied the
reflection in the night-blackened viewport before turning.
Piter de Vries advanced into the chamber followed by
Umman Kudu, the captain of the Baron's personal guard. There
was a motion of men just outside the door, the mutton faces
of his guard, their expressions carefully sheep-like in his
presence.
The Baron turned.
Piter touched finger to forelock in his mocking salute.
"Good news, m'Lord. The Sardaukar have brought in the Duke."
"Of course they have," the Baron rumbled.
He studied the somber mask of villainy on Piter's
effeminate face. And the eyes: those shaded slits of bluest
blue-in-blue.
Soon I mast remove him, the Baron thought. He has almost
outlasted his usefulness, almost reached the point of
positive danger to my person. First, though, he must make
the people of Arrakis hate him. Then--they will welcome my
darling Feyd-Rautha as a savior.
The Baron shifted his attention to the guard
captain--Umman Kudu: scissors-line ofjaw muscles, chin like
a boot toe--a man to be trusted because the captain's vices
were known.
"First, where is the traitor who gave me the Duke?" the
Baron asked. "I must give the traitor his reward."
Piter turned on one toe, motioned to the guard outside.
A bit of black movement there and Yueh walked through.
His motions were stiff and stringy. The mustache drooped
beside his purple lips. Only the old eyes seemed alive. Yueh
came to a stop three paces into the room, obeying a motion
from Pite, and stood there staring across the open space at
the Baron.
"Ah-h-h, Dr. Yueh."
"M'Lord Harkonnen."
"You've given us the Duke, I hear."
"My half of the bargain, m'Lord."
The Baron looked at Piter.
Piter nodded.
The Baron looked back at Yueh. "The letter of the
bargain, eh? And I . . ." He spat the words out: "What was I
to do in return?"
"You remember quite well, m'Lord Harkonnen."
And Yueh allowed himself to think now, hearing the loud
silence of clocks in his mind. H had seen the subtle
betrayals in the Baron's manner. Wanna was indeed dead--gone
far beyond their reach. Otherwise, there'd still be a hold
on the weak doctor. The Baron's manner showed there was no
hold; it was ended.
"Do I?" the Baron asked.
"You promised to deliver my Wanna from her agony."
The Baron nodded. "Oh, yes. Now, I remember. So I did.
That was my promise. That was how we bent the Imperial
Conditioning. You couldn't endure seeing your Bene Gesserit
witch grovel in Piter's pain amplfiers. Well, the Baron
Vladimir Harkonnen always keeps his promises. I told you I'd
free her from the agony and permit you to join her. So be
it." He waved a hand at Piter.
Piter's blue eyes took a glazed look. His movement was
catlike in its sudden fluidity. The knife in his hand
glistened like a claw as it flashed into Yueh's back.
The old man stiffened, never taking his attention from
the Baron.
"So join her!" the Baron spat.
Yueh stood, swaying, His lips moved with careful
precision, an his voice came in oddly measured cadence:
"You . . . think . . . you . . . de . . . feated . . . me.
You . . . think . . . I . . . did . . . not . . . know . . .
what . . . I . . . bought . . . for . . . my . . . Wanna."
He toppled. No bending or softening. It was like a tree
falling.
"So join her," the Baron repeated. But his words were
like a weak echo.
Yueh had filled him with a sense of foreboding. He
whipped his attention to Piter, watched the man wipe the
blade on a scrap of cloth, watche.
But there was still the feeling of doubt.
What had the old fool of a doctor meant? Of course, he'd
probably known what would happen to him in the end. But that
bit about thinking he'd been defeated: "You think you
defeated me."
What had he meant?
The Duke Leto Atreides came through the door. His arms
were bound in chains, the eagle face streaked with dirt. His
uniform was torn where someone had ripped off his insignia.
There were tatters at his waist where the shield belt had
been remove without first freeing the uniform ties. The
Duke's eyes held a glazed, insane look.
"Wel-l-l-l," the Baron said. He hesitated, drawing in a
deep breath. He knew he had spoken too loudly. This moment,
long envisioned, had lost some of its savor.
Damn that cursed doctor through all eternity!
"I believe the good Duke is drugged," Piter said.
"That's how Yueh caught him for us." Piter turned to the
Duke. "Aren't you drugged, my dear Duke?"
The voice was far away. Leto could feel the chains, th
ache of muscles, his cracked lips, his burning cheeks, the
dry taste of thirst whispering its grit in his mouth. But
sounds were dull, hidden by a cottony blanket. And he saw
only dim shapes through the blanket.
"What of the woman and the boy, Piter?" the Baron asked.
"Any word yet?"
Piter's tongue darted over his lips.
"You've heard something!" the Baron snapped. "What?"
Piter glanced at the guard captain, back to the Baron.
"The men who were sent to do the job, m'Lord--they've . . .
ah .. . been . . . ah . . . found."
"Well, they report everything satisfactory?"
"They're dead, m'Lord."
"Of course they are! What I want to know is--"
"They were dead when found, m'Lord."
The Baron's face went livid. "And the woman and boy?"
"No sign, m'Lord, but there was a worm. It came while
the scene was being investigated. Perhaps it's as we
wished--an accident. Possibly--"
"We do not deal in possibilities, Piter. What of the
missing 'thopter? Does that suggest anything to my entat?"
"One of the Duke's men obviously escaped in it, m'Lord.
Killed our pilot and escaped."
"Which of the Duke's men?"
"It was a clean, silent killing, m'Lord. Hawat, perhaps,
or that Halleck one. Possibly Idaho. Or any top lieutenant."
"Possibilities," the Baron muttered. He glanced at the
swaying, drugged figure of the Duke.
"The situation is in hand, m'Lord," Piter said.
"No, it isn't! Where is that stupid planetologist? Where
is this man Kynes?"
"We've word where to findhim and he's been sent for,
m'Lord."
"I don't like the way the Emperor's servant is helping
us," the Baron muttered.
They were words through a cottony blanket, but some of
them burned in Leto's mind. Woman and boy--no sign. Paul and
Jessica had escaped. And the fate of Hawat, Halleck, and
Idaho remained an unknown. There was still hope.
"Where is the ducal signet ring?" the Baron demanded.
"His finger is bare."
"The Sardaukar say it was not on him when he was taken,
my Lord," the guard captin said.
"You killed the doctor too soon," the Baron said. "That
was a mistake. You should've warned me, Piter. You moved too
precipitately for the good of our enterprise." He scowled.
"Possibilities!"
The thought hung like a sine wave in Leto's mind: Paul
and Jessica have escaped! And there was something else in
his memory: a bargain. He could almost remember it.
The tooth!
He remembered part of it now: a pill of poison gas
shaped into a false tooth.
Someone had told him to remember th tooth. The tooth
was in his mouth. He could feel its shape with his tongue.
All he had to do was bite sharply on it.
Not yet!
The someone had told him to wait until he was near the
Baron. Who had told him? He couldn't remember.
"How long will he remain drugged like this?" the Baron
asked.
"Perhaps another hour, m'Lord."
"Perhaps," the Baron muttered. Again, he turned to the
night-blackened window. "I am hungry."
That's the Baron, that fuzzy gray shape there, Leto
thought. The shapedanced back and forth, swaying with the
movement of the room. And the room expanded and contracted.
It grew brighter and darker. It folded into blackness and
faded.
Time became a sequence of layers for the Duke. He
drifted up through them. I must wait.
There was a table. Leto saw the table quite clearly. And
a gross, fat man on the other side of the table, the remains
of a meal in front of him. Leto felt himself sitting in a
chair across from the fat man, felt the chains, the straps
that held his tingling body in the chair. He was aware there
had been a passage of time, but its length escaped him.
"I believe he's coming around. Baron."
A silky voice, that one. That was Piter.
"So I see, Piter."
A rumbling basso: the Baron.
Leto sensed increasing definition in his surroundings.
The chair beneath him took on firmness, the bindings were
sharpr.
And he saw the Baron clearly now. Leto watched the
movements of the man's hands: compulsive touchings--the edge
of a plate, the handle of a spoon, a finger tracing the fold
of a jowl.
Leto watched the moving hand, fascinated by it.
"You can hear me, Duke Leto," the Baron said. "I know
you can hear me. We want to know from you where to find your
concubine and the child you sired on her."
No sign escaped Leto, but the words were a wash of
calmness through him. It's true, then: they don't have Paul
and Jessica.
"This is not a child's game we play," the Baron rumbled.
"You must know that." He leaned toward Leto, studying the
face. It pained the Baron that this could not be handled
privately, just between the two of them. To have others see
royalty in such straits--it set a bad precedent.
Leto could feel strength returning. And now, the memory
of the false tooth stood out in his mind like a steeple in a
flat landscape. The nerve-shaped capsule within that
tooth--he poison gas--he remembered who had put the deadly
weapon in his mouth.
Yueh.
Drug-fogged memory of seeing a limp corpse dragged past
him in this room hung like a vapor in Leto's mind. He knew
it had been Yueh.
"Do you hear that noise, Duke Leto?" the Baron asked.
Leto grew conscious of a frog sound, the burred mewling
of someone's agony.
"We caught one of your men disguised as a Fremen, " the
Baron said. "We penetrated the disguise quite easily: the
eyes, you know. He insists he was sent among the Fremen to
spy on them. I've lived for a time on this planet, cher
cousin. One does not spy on those ragged scum of the desert.
Tell me, did you buy their help? Did you send your woman and
son to them?"
Leto felt fear tighten his chest. If Yueh sent them to
the desert fold . . . the search won't stop until they 're
found.
"Come, come," the Baron said. "We don't have much time
and pain is quick. Please don't bring it to this, my dear
Duke." The Baron looked up at iter who stood at Leto's
shoulder. "Piter doesn't have all his tools here, but I'm
sure he could improvise."
"Improvisation is sometimes the best, Baron."
That silky, insinuating voice! Leto heard it at his ear.
"You had an emergency plan," the Baron said. "Where have
your woman and the boy been sent?" He looked at Leto's hand.
"Your ring is missing. Does the boy have it?"
The Baron looked up, stared into Leto's eyes.
"You don't answer," he said. "Will you force me to do a
thing I do not want to do? Piter will use simple, direct
methods. I agree they're sometimes the best, but it's not
good that you should be subjected to such things."
"Hot tallow on the back, perhaps, or on the eyelids,"
Piter said. "Perhaps on other portions of the body. It's
especially effective when the subject doesn't know where the
tallow will fall next. It's a good method and there's a sort
of beauty in the pattern of pus-white blisters on naked
skin, eh, Baron?"
"Exquisite," the Baon said, and his voice sounded sour.
Those touching fingers! Leto watched the fat hands, the
glittering jewels on baby-fat hands--their compulsive
wandering.
The sounds of agony coming through the door behind him
gnawed at the Duke's nerves. Who is it they caught? he
wondered. Could it have been Idaho?
"Believe me, cher cousin," the Baron said. "I do not
want it to come to this."
"You think of nerve couriers racing to summon help that
cannot come," Piter said. "There's an artistry in this, you
know."
"You're a superb artist," the Baron growled. "Now, have
the decency to be silent."
Leto suddenly recalled a thing Gurney Halleck had said
once, seeing a picture of the Baron: " 'And I stood upon the
sand of the sea and saw a beast rise up out of the sea . . .
and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.' "
"We waste time, Baron," Piter said.
"Perhaps."
The Baron nodded. "You know, my dear Leto, you'll tell
us in the end where they are. There's a level of pin
that'll buy you."
He's most likely correct, Leto thought. Were if not for
the tooth . . . and the fact that I truly don't know where
they are.
The Baron picked up a sliver of meat, pressed the morsel
into his mouth, chewed slowly, swallowed. We must try a new
tack, he thought.
"Observe this prize person who denies he's for hire,"
the Baron said. "Observe him, Piter."
And the Baron thought: Yes! See him there, this man who
believes he cannot be bought. See him detained there by a
million shares of himself sold in dribbles every second of
his life! If you took him up now and shook him, he'd rattle
inside. Emptied! Sold out! What difference how he dies now?
The frog sounds in the background stopped.
The Baron saw Umman Kudu, the guard captain, appear in
the doorway across the room, shake his head. The captive
hadn't produced the needed information. Another failure.
Time to quit stalling with this fool Duke, this stupid soft
fool who didn't realize how much hellthere was so near
him--only a nerve's thickness away.
This thought calmed the Baron, overcoming his reluctance
to have a royal person subject to pain. He saw himself
suddenly as a surgeon exercising endless supple scissor
dissections--cutting away the masks from fools, exposing the
hell beneath.
Rabbits, all of them!
And how they cowered when they saw the carnivore!
Leto stared across the table, wondering why he waited.
The tooth would end it all quickly. Still--it had been good,
much of this life. He found himself remembering an antenna
kite updangling in the shell-blue sky of Caladan, and Paul
laughing with joy at the sight of it. And he remembered
sunrise here on Arrakis--colored strata of the Shield Wall
mellowed by dust haze.
"Too bad," the Baron muttered. He pushed himself back
from the table, stood up lightly in his suspensors and
hesitated, seeing a change come over the Duke. He saw the
man draw in a deep breath, the jawline stiffen, the ripple
of a muscle here as the Duke clamped his mouth shut.
How he fears me! the Baron thought.
Shocked by fear that the Baron might escape him, Leto
bit sharply on the capsule tooth, felt it break. He opened
his mouth, expelled the biting vapor he could taste as it
formed on his tongue. The Baron grew smaller, a figure seen
in a tightening tunnel. Leto heard a gasp beside his
ear--the silky-voiced one: Piter.
It got him, too!
"Piter! What's wrong?"
The rumbling voice was far away.
Leto sensed memories rolling in his mind--the old
toothless mutterings of hags. The room, the table, the
Baron, a pair of terrified eyes--blue within blue, the
eyes--all compressed around him in ruined symmetry.
There was a man with a boot-toe chin, a toy man falling.
The toy man had a broken nose slanted to the left: an
offbeat metronome caught forever at the start of an upward
stroke. Leto heard the crash of crockery--so distant--a
roaring in his ears. His mind was a bin without end,
catching eveything. Everything that had ever been: every
shout, every whisper, every . . . silence.
One thought remained to him. Leto saw it in formless
light on rays of black: The day the flesh shapes and the
flesh the day shapes. The thought struck him with a sense of
fullness he knew he could never explain.
Silence.
The Baron stood with his back against his private door,
his own bolt hole behind the table. He had slammed it on a
room full of dead men. His senses took in guards swarming
around him. Did I breathe it? he asked hiself. Whatever it
was in there, did it get me, too?
Sounds returned to him . . . and reason. He heard
someone shouting orders--gas masks . . . keep a door closed
. . . get blowers going.
The others fell quickly, he thought. I'm still standing.
I'm still breathing. Merciless hell! That was close!
He could analyze it now. His shield had been activated,
set low but still enough to slow molecular interchange
across the field barrier. And he had been pushing himself
away from the table . . . that and Piter's shocked gasp
wich had brought the guard captain darting forward into his
own doom.
Chance and the warning in a dying man's gasp--these had
saved him.
The Baron felt no gratitude to Piter. The fool had got
himself killed. And that stupid guard captain! He'd said he
scoped everyone before bringing them into the Baron's
presence! How had it been possible for the Duke . . . ? No
warning. Not even from the poison snooper over the
table--until it was too late. How?
Well, no matter now, the Baron thought, his mind
firming. The next guard captain will begin by finding
answers to these questions.
He grew aware of more activity down the hall--around the
corner at the other door to that room of death. The Baron
pushed himself away from his own door, studied the lackeys
around him. They stood there staring, silent, waiting for
the Baron's reaction.
Would the Baron be angry?
And the Baron realized only a few seconds ad passed
since his flight from that terrible room.
Some of the guards had weapons leveled at the door. Some
were directing their ferocity toward the empty hall that
stretched away toward the noises around the corner to their
right.
A man came striding around that corner, gas mask
dangling by its straps at his neck, his eyes intent on the
overhead poison snoopers that lined this corridor. He was
yellow-haired, flat of face with green eyes. Crisp lines
radiated from his thick-lipped mouth. He looked like some
water creature misplaced among those who walked the land.
The Baron stared at the approaching man, recalling the
name: Nefud. Iakin Nefud. Guard corporal. Nefud was addicted
to semuta, the drug-music combination that played itself in
the deepest consciousness. A useful item of information,
that.
The man stopped in front of the Baron, saluted.
"Corridor's clear, m'Lord. I was outside watching and saw
that it must be poison gas. Ventilators in your room were
pulling ir in from these corridors." He glanced up at the
snooper over the Baron's head. "None of the stuff escaped.
We have the room cleaned out now. What are your orders?"
The Baron recognized the man's voice--the one who'd been
shouting orders. Efficient, this corporal, he thought.
"They're all dead in there?" the Baron asked.
"Yes, m'Lord."
Well, we must adjust, the Baron thought.
"First," he said, "let me congratulate you, Nefud.
You're the new captain of my guard. And I hope you'll take
to heart the lesson to belearned from the fate of your
predecessor."
The Baron watched the awareness grow in his newly
promoted guardsman. Nefud knew he'd never again be without
his semuta.
Nefud nodded. "My Lord knows I'll devote myself entirely
to his safety."
"Yes. Well, to business. I suspect the Duke had
something in his mouth. You will find out what that
something was, how it was used, who helped him put it there.
You'll take every precaution--"
He broke off, his chain of thought shattered by a
disturbance in the corridor behind him-guards at the door
to the lift from the lower levels of the frigate trying to
hold back a tall colonel bashar who had just emerged from
the lift.
The Baron couldn't place the colonel bashar's face: thin
with mouth like a slash in leather, twin ink spots for eyes.
"Get your hands off me, you pack of carrion-eaters!" the
man roared, and he dashed the guards aside.
Ah-h-h, one of the Sardaukar, the Baron thought.
The colonel bashar came striding toward the Baron, whose
eyes went to slits of apprehension. The Sardaukr officers
filled him with unease. They all seemed to look like
relatives of the Duke . . . the late Duke. And their manners
with the Baron!
The colonel bashar planted himself half a pace in front
of the Baron, hands on hips. The guard hovered behind him in
twitching uncertainty.
The Baron noted the absence of salute, the disdain in
the Sardaukar's manner, and his unease grew. There was only
the one legion of them locally--ten brigades--reinforcing
the Harkonnen legions, but the Baron did not fool himself.
That one legionwas perfectly capable of turning on the
Harkonnens and overcoming them.
"Tell your men they are not to prevent me from seeing
you, Baron," the Sardaukar growled. "My men brought you the
Atreides Duke before I could discuss his fate with you. We
will discuss it now."
I must not lose face before my men, the Baron thought.
"So?" It was a coldly controlled word, and the Baron
felt proud of it.
"My Emperor has charged me to make certain his royal
cousin dies cleanly without agony," the colonel bashar said.
"Such wee the Imperial orders to me," the Baron lied.
"Did you think I'd disobey?"
"I'm to report to my Emperor what I see with my own
eyes," the Sardaukar said.
"The Duke's already dead," the Baron snapped, and he
waved a hand to dismiss the fellow.
The colonel bashar remained planted facing the Baron.
Not by flicker of eye or muscle did he acknowledge he had
been dismissed. "How?" he growled.
Really! the Baron thought. This is too much.
"By his own hand, if you must know," the Baron said. "He
took poison."
"I wil see the body now," the colonel Bashar said.
The Baron raised his gaze to the ceiling in feigned
exasperation while his thoughts raced. Damnation! This
sharp-eyed Sardaukar will see the room before a thing's been
changed!
"Now," the Sardaukar growled. "I'll see it with my own
eyes."
There was no preventing it, the Baron realized. The
Sardaukar would see all. He'd know the Duke had killed
Harkonnen men . . . that the Baron most likely had escaped
by a narrow margin. There was the evidence of the dinner
remnants on the table, and the dead Duke across from it with
destruction around him.
No preventing it at all.
"I'll not be put off," the colonel bashar snarled.
"You're not being put off," the Baron said, and he
stared into the Sardaukar's obsidian eys. "I hide nothing
from my Emperor." He nodded to Nefud. "The colonel bashar is
to see everything, at once. Take him in by the door where
you stood, Nefud."
"This way, sir," Nefud said.
Slowly, insolently, the Sardaukar moved around the
Baron, shouldered a way through the guardsmen.
Insufferable, the Baron thought. Now, the Emperor will
know how I slipped up. He'll recognize it as a sign of
weakness.
And it was agonizing to realize that the Emperor and his
Sardaukar were alike in their disdain for weakness. The
Baron chewed at his lower lip, consoling himself that the
Emperor, at least, had not learned of the Atreides raid on
Giedi Prime, the destruction of the Harkonnen spice stores
there.
Damn that slippery Duke!
The Baron watched the retreating backs--the arrogant
Sardaukar and the stocky, efficient Nefud.
We must adjust, the Baron thought. I'll have to put
Rabban over this damnable planet once more. Without
restraint. I must spend my own Harkonnen bloodto put
Arrakis into a proper condition for accepting Feyd-Rautha.
Damn that Piter! He would get himself killed before I was
through with him.
The Baron sighed.
And I must send at once to Tleielax for a new Mentat.
They undoubtedly have the new one ready for me by now.
One of the guardsmen beside him coughed.
The Baron turned toward the man. "I am hungry."
"Yes, m'Lord."
"And I wish to be diverted while you're clearing out
that room and studying its secrets for me," the Baron
rumbled.
The guardsman lowered his eyes. "What diversion does
m'Lord wish?"
"I'll be in my sleeping chambers," the Baron said.
"Bring me that young fellow we bought on Gamont, the one
with the lovely eyes. Drug him well. I don't feel like
wrestling."
"Yes, m'Lord."
The Baron turned away, began moving with his bouncing,
suspensor-buoyed pace toward his chambers. Yes, he thought.
The one with the lovely eyes, the one who looks so much like
the young Paul Atreides.
= = = = = =
--
... In 2345, on the 10th anniversary of the Shivan attack
on Ross 128, the Vasudan emperor Khonsu II addressed the
newly formed GTVA General Assembly. The emperor inaugurated
an ambiguous and unprecedented joint endeavor: the GTVA
Colossus...
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听一些老歌,才发现自己的眼泪如此容易泛滥——
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