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

to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous."
"But will I be left with something to father a royal dynasty?" Irulan asked.
They all heard the commitment in her voice, but only Edric smiled at it.
"Something," Scytale said. "Something."
"It means the end of this Atreides as a ruling force," Edric said.
"I should imagine that others less gifted as oracles have made that prediction," Scytale said.
"For them, 'mektub al mellah', as the Fremen say."
"The thing was written with salt," Irulan translated.
As she spoke, Scytale recognized what the Bene Gesserit had arrayed here for him -- a
beautiful and intelligent female who could never be his. Ah, well, he thought, perhaps I'll copy
her for another.

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

Every civilization must contend with an unconscious force which can block, betray or countermand
almost any conscious intention of the collectivity.
-Tleilaxu Theorem (unproven)

Paul sat on the edge of his bed and began stripping off his desert boots. They smelled rancid
from the lubricant which eased the action of the heel-powered pumps that drove his stillsuit. It
was late. He had prolonged his nighttime walk and caused worry for those who loved him.
Admittedly, the walks were dangerous, but it was a kind of danger he could recognize and meet
immediately. Something compelling and attractive surrounded walking anonymously at night in the
streets of Arrakeen.
He tossed the boots into the corner beneath the room's lone glowglobe, attacked the seal
strips of his stillsuit. Gods below, how tired he was! The tiredness stopped at his muscles,
though, and left his mind seething. Watching the mundane activities of everyday life filled him
with profound envy. Most of that nameless flowing life outside the walls of his Keep couldn't be
shared by an Emperor -- but . . . to walk down a public street without attracting attention: what
a privilege! To pass by the clamoring of mendicant pilgrims, to hear a Fremen curse a shopkeeper:
"You have damp hands!" . . .
Paul smiled at the memory, slipped out of his stillsuit.
He stood naked and oddly attuned to his world. Dune was a world of paradox now -- a world
under siege, yet the center of power. To come under siege, he decided, was the inevitable fate of
power. He stared down at the green carpeting, feeling its rough texture against his soles.
The streets had been ankle deep in sand blown over the Shield Wall on the stratus wind. Foot
traffic had churned it into choking dust which clogged stillsuit Filters. He could smell the dust
even now despite a blower cleaning at the portals of his Keep. It was an odor full of desert
memories.
Other days . . . other dangers.
Compared to those other days, the peril in his lonely walks remained minor. But, putting on a
stillsuit, he put on the desert. The suit with all its apparatus for reclaiming his body's


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moisture guided his thoughts in subtle ways, fixed his movements in a desert pattern. He became
wild Fremen. More than a disguise, the suit made of him a stranger to his city self. In the
stillsuit, he abandoned security and put on the old skills of violence. Pilgrims and townfolk