"Frank Herbert - Dune 5 - Heretics of Dune" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

Frank Herbert
Most discipline is hidden discipline, designed not to liberate but to limit. Do
not ask Why? Be cautious with How? Why? leads inexorably to paradox. How?
traps you in a universe of cause and effect. Both deny the infinite.
-The Apocrypha of Arrakis
"Taraza told you, did she not, that we have gone through eleven of these Duncan
Idaho gholas? This one is the twelfth."
The old Reverend Mother Schwangyu spoke with deliberate bitterness as she looked
down from the third-story parapet at the lone child playing on the enclosed
lawn. The planet Gammu's bright midday sunlight bounced off the white courtyard
walls filling the area beneath them with brilliance as though a spotlight had
been directed onto the young ghola.
Gone through! the Reverend Mother Lucilla thought. She allowed herself a short
nod, thinking how coldly impersonal were Schwangyu's manner and choice of words.
We have used up our supply; send us more!
The child on the lawn appeared to be about twelve standard years of age, but
appearance could be deceptive with a ghola not yet awakened to his original
memories. The child took that moment to look up at the watchers above him. He
was a sturdy figure with a direct gaze that focused intently from beneath a
black cap of karakul hair. The yellow sunlight of early spring cast a small
shadow at his feet. His skin was darkly tanned but a slight movement of his
body shifted his blue singlesuit, revealing pale skin at the left shoulder.
"Not only are these gholas costly but they are supremely dangerous to us,"
Schwangyu said. Her voice came out flat and emotionless, all the more powerful
because of that. It was the voice of a Reverend Mother Instructor speaking down
to an acolyte and it emphasized for Lucilla that Schwangyu was one of those who
protested openly against the ghola project.
Taraza had warned: "She will try to win you over."
"Eleven failures are enough," Schwangyu said.
Lucilla glanced at Schwangyu's wrinkled features, thinking suddenly: Someday I
may be old and wizened, too. And perhaps I will be a power in the Bene Gesserit
as well.
Schwangyu was a small woman with many age marks earned in the Sisterhood's
affairs. Lucilla knew from her own
assignment-studies that Schwangyu's conventional black robe concealed a skinny
figure that few other than her acolyte dressers and the males bred to her had
ever seen. Schwangyu's mouth was wide, the lower lip constricted by the age
lines that fanned into a jutting chin. Her manner tended to a curt abruptness
that the uninitiated often interpreted as anger. The commander of the Gammu
Keep was one who kept herself to herself more than most Reverend Mothers.
Once more, Lucilla wished she knew the entire scope of the ghola project.
Taraza had drawn the dividing line clearly enough, though: "Schwangyu is not to
be trusted where the safety of the ghola is concerned."
"We think the Tleilaxu themselves killed most of the previous eleven," Schwangyu
said. "That in itself should tell us something."
Matching Schwangyu's manner, Lucilla adopted a quiet attitude of almost
emotionless waiting. Her manner said: "I may be much younger than you,
Schwangyu, but I, too, am a full Reverend Mother." She could feel Schwangyu's
gaze.
Schwangyu had seen the holos of this Lucilla but the woman in the flesh was more