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

That was the fourth person present -- the potential member of the conspiracy -- Princess
Irulan, wife (but not mate, Scytale reminded himself) of their mutual foe. She stood at a corner
of Edric's tank, a tall blond beauty, splendid in a robe of blue whale fur and matching hat. Gold
buttons glittered at her ears. She carried herself with an aristocrat's hauteur, but something in
the absorbed smoothness of her features betrayed the controls of her Bene Gesserit background.
Scytale's mind turned from nuances of language and faces to nuances of location. All around
the dome lay hills mangy with melting snow which reflected mottled wet blueness from the small
blue-white sun hanging at the meridian.
Why this particular place? Scytale wondered. The Bene Gesserit seldom did anything casually.
Take the dome's open plan: a more conventional and confining space might've inflicted the
Guildsman with claustrophobic nervousness. Inhibitions in his psyche were those of birth and life
off-planet in open space.
To have built this place especially for Edric, though -- what a sharp finger that pointed at
his weakness.
What here, Scytale wondered, was aimed at me?
"Have you nothing to say for yourself, Scytale?" the Reverend Mother demanded.
"You wish to draw me into this fools' fight?" Scytale asked. "Very well. We're dealing with a
potential messiah. You don't launch a frontal attack upon such a one. Martyrdom would defeat us."
They all stared at him.
"You think that's the only danger?" the Reverend Mother demanded, voice wheezing.
Scytale shrugged. He had chosen a bland, round-faced appearance for this meeting, jolly
features and vapid full lips, the body of a bloated dumpling. It occurred to him now, as he
studied his fellow conspirators, that he had made an ideal choice -- out of instinct perhaps. He
alone in this group could manipulate fleshly appearance across a wide spectrum of bodily shapes
and features. He was the human chameleon, a Face Dancer, and the shape he wore now invited others
to judge him too lightly.
"Well?" the Reverend Mother pressed.
"I was enjoying the silence," Scytale said. "Our hostilities are better left unvoiced."
The Reverend Mother drew back, and Scytale saw her reassessing him. They were all products of
profound prana-bindu training, capable of muscle and nerve control that few humans ever achieved.
But Scytale, a Face Dancer, had muscles and nerve linkages the others didn't even possess plus a
special quality of sympatico, a mimic's insight with which he could put on the psyche of another
as well as the other's appearance.
Scytale gave her enough time to complete the reassessment, said: "Poison!" He uttered the word
with the atonals which said he alone understood its secret meaning.
The Guildsman stirred and his voice rolled from the glittering speaker globe which orbited a
corner of his tank above Irulan. "We're discussing psychic poison, not a physical one."
Scytale laughed. Mirabhasa laughter could flay an opponent and he held nothing back now.
Irulan smiled in appreciation, but the corners of the Reverend Mother's eyes revealed a faint
hint of anger.
"Stop that!" Mohiam rasped.
Scytale stopped, but he had their attention now, Edric in a silent rage, the Reverend Mother
alert in her anger, Irulan amused but puzzled.
"Our friend Edric suggests," Scytale said, "that a pair of Bene Gesserit witches trained in
all their subtle ways have not learned the true uses of deception."
Mohiam turned to stare out at the cold hills of her Bene Gesserit homeworld. She was beginning
to see the vital thing here, Scytale realized. That was good. Irulan, though, was another matter.
"Are you one of us or not, Scytale?" Edric asked. He stared out of tiny rodent eyes.
"My allegiance is not the issue," Scytale said. He kept his attention on Irulan. "You are