"Frank Herbert - Dune 4 - God Emporer of Dune" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

Something in the Idaho cells had rebelled at killing an Atreides. He had found
himself standing with a knife in one hand, the bound form of the pseudo-Paul
staring up at him in angry terror.
Memories had gushered into his awareness. He remembered Ghola and he remembered
Duncan Idaho.
am Duncan Idaho, swordmaster of the Atreides.
He clung to this memory as he stood in the yellow room.
I died defending Paul and his mother in a cave-sietch beneath the sands of Dune.
I have been returned to that planet, but Dune is no more. Now it is only
Arrakis.
He had read the truncated history which the Tleilaxu provided, but he did not
believe it. More than thirty-five hundred years? Who could believe his flesh
existed after such a time? Except . . . with Tleilaxu it was possible. He had to
believe his own senses.
"There have been many of you," his instructors had said.
"How many?"
"The Lord Leto will provide that information."
The Lord Leto?
The Tleilaxu history said this Lord Leto was Leto II, grandson of the Leto whom
Idaho had served with fanatical devotion. But this second Leto (so the history
said) had become something . . . something so strange that Idaho despaired of
understanding the transformation.
How could a human slowly turn into a sandworm? How could any thinking creature
live more than three thousand years? Not even the wildest projections of
geriatric spice allowed such a lifespan.
Leto II, the God Emperor?
The Tleilaxu history was not to be believed!
Idaho remembered a strange child-twins, really: Leto and Ghanima, Paul's
children, the children of Chani, who had died delivering them. The Tleilaxu
history said Ghanima had died after a relatively normal life, but the God
Emperor Leto lived on and on and on ....
"He is a tyrant," Idaho's instructors had said. "He has ordered us to produce
you from our axlotl tanks and to send you into his service. We do not know what
has happened to your predecessor."
And here I am.
Once more, Idaho let his gaze wander around the featureless walls and ceiling.
The faint sound of voices intruded upon his awareness. He looked at the door.
The voices were muted, but at least one of them sounded female.
Women of the Imperial Guard?
The door swung inward on noiseless hinges. Two women entered. The first thing to
catch his attention was the fact that one of the women wore a mask, a cibus hood
of shapeless, light-drinking black. She would see him clearly through the hood,
he knew, but her features would never reveal themselves, not even to the most
subtle instruments of penetration. The hood said that the Ixians or their
inheritors were still at work in the Imperium. Both women wore one-piece
uniforms of rich blue with the Atreides hawk in red braid at the left breast.
Idaho studied them as they closed the door and faced him.
The masked woman had a blocky, powerful body. She moved with the deceptive care
of a professional muscle fanatic. The other woman was graceful and slender with
almond eyes in sharp, high-boned features. Idaho had the feeling that he had