Dune полностью

Teg sat at his own control console, as much an observer as a participant. The consoles that guided the dangerous shadow forces in this practice had required mental adjustment by Teg, but he felt familiar with them now and moved the attack with facility and frequent inspiration.

A simmering Lucilla glanced into the hall occasionally. She watched and then left without comment. Teg did not know what Duncan was doing about the Imprinter but there was a feeling that the reawakened ghola played a delaying game with his seductress. She would not allow that to continue long, Teg knew, but it was out of his hands. Duncan no longer was “too young” for the Imprinter. That young body carried a mature male mind with experiences from which to make his own decisions.

Duncan and Teg had been on the floor with only one break all morning. Hunger pangs gnawed at Teg but he felt reluctant to halt the session. Duncan’s abilities had climbed to a new level today and he was still improving.

Teg, seated in a fixed console’s cage seat, twisted the attack forces into a complex maneuver, striking from left, right, and above.

The Harkonnen armory had produced an abundance of these exotic weapons and training instruments, some of which Teg had known only from historical accounts. Duncan knew them all, apparently, and with an intimacy that Teg admired. Hunter-seekers geared to penetrate a force shield were part of the shadow system they used now.

“They automatically slow down to go through the shield,” Duncan explained in his young-old voice. “Too fast a strike, of course, and the shield repels.”

“Shields of that type have almost gone out of fashion,” Teg said. “A few societies maintain them as a kind of sport but otherwise . . .”

Duncan executed a riposte of blurred speed that dropped three hunter-seekers to the floor damaged enough to require the no-globe’s maintenance services. He removed the cage and damped the system but left it idling while he came over to Teg, breathing deeply but easily. Looking past Teg, Duncan smiled and nodded. Teg whirled but there was only the flick of Lucilla’s gown as she left them.

“It’s like a duel,” Duncan said. “She tries to thrust through my guard and I counterattack.”

“Have a care,” Teg said. “That’s a full Reverend Mother.”

“I’ve known a few of them in my time, Bashar.”

Once more, Teg found himself confounded. He had been warned that he would have to readjust to this different Duncan Idaho but he had not fully anticipated the constant mental demands of that readjustment. The look in Duncan’s eyes right now was disconcerting.

“Our roles are changed a bit, Bashar,” Duncan said. He picked up a towel from the floor and mopped his face.

“I’m no longer sure of what I can teach you,” Teg admitted. He wished, though, that Duncan would take his warning about Lucilla. Did Duncan imagine that the Reverend Mothers of those ancient days were identical with the women of today? Teg thought that highly unlikely. In the way of all other life, the Sisterhood evolved and changed.

It was obvious to Teg that Duncan had come to a decision about his place in Taraza’s machinations. Duncan was not merely biding his time. He was training his body to a personally chosen peak and he had made a judgment about the Bene Gesserit.

He has made that judgment on insufficient data, Teg thought.

Duncan dropped the towel and looked at it for a moment. “Let me be the judge of what you can teach me, Bashar.” He turned and stared narrowly at Teg seated in the cage.

Teg inhaled deeply. He smelled the faint ozone from all of this durable Harkonnen equipment ticking away in readiness for Duncan’s return to action. The ghola’s perspiration carried a bitter dominant.

Duncan sneezed.

Teg sniffed, recognizing the omnipresent dust of their activities. It could be more tasted than smelled at times. Alkaline. Over it all was the fragrance of the air scrubbers and oxy regenerators. There was a distinct floral aroma built into the system but Teg could not identify the flower. In the month of their occupation, the globe also had taken on human odors, slowly insinuated into the original composite—perspiration, cooking smells, the never-quite-suppressed acridity of waste reclamation. To Teg, these reminders of their presence were oddly offensive. And he found himself sniffing and listening for sounds of intrusion—something more than the echoing passage of their own footsteps and the subdued metallic clashings from the kitchen area.

Duncan’s voice intruded: “You’re an odd man, Bashar.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s your resemblance to the Duke Leto. The facial identity is weird. He was a bit shorter than you but the identity . . .” He shook his head, thinking of the Bene Gesserit designs behind those genetic markers in Teg’s face—that hawk look, the crease lines and that inner thing, that certainty of moral superiority.

How moral and how superior?