There. That was it. Odrade had her instructions, the essentials that she would accept as “the plan” even while she would recognize an incomplete pattern. Odrade would obey. The “Dar” was a nice touch, Taraza thought. Dar and Tar. That opening into Odrade’s
The long table on the right is set for a banquet of roast desert hare in sauce cepeda. The other dishes, clockwise to the right from the far end of the table, are aplomage sirian, chukka under glass, coffee with melange (note the hawk crest of the Atreides on the urn), pot-a-oie and, in the Balut crystal bottle, sparkling Caladan wine. Note the ancient poison detector concealed in the chandelier.
—DAR-ES-BALAT, DESCRIPTION AT A MUSEUM DISPLAY
Teg found Duncan in the tiny dining alcove off the no-globe’s gleaming kitchen. Pausing in the passage to the alcove, Teg studied Duncan carefully: eight days here and the lad appeared finally to have recovered from the peculiar rage that had seized him as they entered the globe’s access tube.
They had come through a shallow cave musky with the odors of a native bear. The rocks at the back of the lair were not rocks, although they would have deceived even the most sophisticated examination. A slight protrusion in the
The access tube, brilliantly lighted automatically once they sealed the portal behind them, was decorated with Harkonnen griffins on walls and ceiling. Teg was struck by the image of a young Patrin stumbling into this place for the first time (
Duncan stood growling (almost a moan), fists clenched, gaze fixed on a Harkonnen griffin along the right-hand wall. Rage and confusion warred for supremacy on his face. He lifted both fists and crashed them against the raised figure, drawing blood from his hands.
“Damn them to the deepest pits of hell!” he shouted.
It was an oddly mature curse issuing from the youthful mouth.
The instant the words were out Duncan relapsed into uncontrolled shudders. Lucilla put an arm around him and stroked his neck in a soothing, almost sensual way, until the shuddering subsided.
“Why did I do that?” Duncan whispered.
“You will know when your original memories are restored,” she said.
“Harkonnens,” Duncan whispered and blood suffused his face. He looked up at Lucilla. “Why do I hate them so much?”
“Words cannot explain it,” she said. “You will have to wait for the memories.”
“I don’t want the memories!” Duncan shot a startled look at Teg. “Yes! Yes, I do want them.”
Later as he looked up at Teg in the no-globe’s dining alcove, Duncan’s memory obviously returned to that moment.
“When, Bashar?”
“Soon.”
Teg glanced around the area. Duncan sat alone at the auto-scrubbed table, a cup of brown liquid in front of him. Teg recognized the smell: one of the many melange-laced items from the nullentropy bins. The bins were a treasure house of exotic foods, clothing, weapons, and other artifacts—a museum whose value could not be calculated. There was a thin layer of dust all through the globe but no deterioration of the things stored here. Every bit of the food was laced with melange, not at an addict level unless you were a glutton, but always noticeable. Even the preserved fruit had been dusted with the spice.
The brown liquid in Duncan’s cup was one of the things Lucilla had tasted and pronounced capable of sustaining life. Teg did not know precisely how Reverend Mothers did this, but his own mother had been capable of it. One taste and they knew the contents of food or drink.
A glance at the ornate clock set into the wall at the closed end of the alcove told Teg it was later than he thought, well into the third hour of their arbitrary afternoon. Duncan should still be up on the elaborate practice floor but they both had seen Lucilla take off into the globe’s upper reaches and Teg saw this as a chance for them to talk unobserved.
Pulling up a chair, Teg seated himself on the opposite side of the table.
Duncan said, “I hate those clocks!”
“You hate everything here,” Teg said, but he took a second look at the clock. It was another antique, a round face with two analog hands and a digital second counter. The two hands were priapean—naked human figures: a large male with enormous phallus and a smaller female with legs spread wide. Each time the two clock hands met, the male appeared to enter the female.
“Gross,” Teg agreed. He pointed to Duncan’s drink: “You like that?”
“It’s all right, sir. Lucilla says I should have it after exercise.”
“My mother used to make me a similar drink for after heavy exertions,” Teg said. He leaned forward and inhaled, remembering the aftertaste, the cloying melange in his nostrils.
