"Frank Herbert - Dune 1 - Dune (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

feel the trap."
"It's true the Duke knows," the Baron said, and his voice held a note of sadness. "He could
not help but know . . . more's the pity."
The Baron moved out and away from the globe of Arrakis. As he emerged from the shadows, his
figure took on dimension -- grossly and immensely fat. And with subtle bulges beneath folds of his
dark robes to reveal that all this fat was sustained partly by portable suspensors harnessed to
his flesh. He might weigh two hundred Standard kilos in actuality, but his feet would carry no
more than fifty of them.


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"I am hungry," the Baron rumbled, and he rubbed his protruding lips with a beringed hand,
stared down at Feyd-Rautha through fat-enfolded eyes. "Send for food, my darling. We will eat
before we retire."

===========================

Thus spoke St. Alia-of-the-Knife: "The Reverend Mother must combine the seductive wiles of a
courtesan with the untouchable majesty of a virgin goddess, holding these attributes in tension so
long as the powers of her youth endure. For when youth and beauty have gone, she will find that
the place-between, once occupied by tension, has become a wellspring of cunning and
resourcefulness."
-from "Muad'Dib, Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan

"Well, Jessica, what have you to say for yourself?" asked the Reverend Mother.
It was near sunset at Castle Caladan on the day of Paul's ordeal. The two women were alone in
Jessica's morning room while Paul waited in the adjoining soundproofed Meditation Chamber.
Jessica stood facing the south windows. She saw and yet did not see the evening's banked
colors across meadow and river. She heard and yet did not hear the Reverend Mother's question.
There had been another ordeal once -- so many years ago. A skinny girl with hair the color of
bronze, her body tortured by the winds of puberty, had entered the study of the Reverend Mother
Gaius Helen Mohiam, Proctor Superior of the Bene Gesserit school on Wallach IX. Jessica looked
down at her right hand, flexed the fingers, remembering the pain, the terror, the anger.
"Poor Paul," she whispered.
"I asked you a question, Jessica!" The old woman's voice was snappish, demanding.
"What? Oh . . . " Jessica tore her attention away from the past, faced the Reverend Mother,
who sat with back to the stone wall between the two west windows. "What do you want me to say?"
"What do I want you to say? What do I want you to say?" The old voice carried a tone of cruel
mimicry.
"So I had a son!" Jessica flared. And she knew she was being goaded into this anger
deliberately.
"You were told to bear only daughters to the Atreides."
"It meant so much to him," Jessica pleaded.
"And you in your pride thought you could produce the Kwisatz Haderach!"
Jessica lifted her chin. "I sensed the possibility."
"You thought only of your Duke's desire for a son," the old woman snapped. "And his desires
don't figure in this. An Atreides daughter could've been wed to a Harkonnen heir and sealed the
breach. You've hopelessly complicated matters. We may lose both bloodlines now."