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

"When will I meet them?" She kept her gaze on the opposite parapet where Patrin
leaned idly-against a low pillar, his heavy lasgun at the ready. Lucilla
realized with an abrupt shock that Patrin was watching her. Patrin was a
message from the Bashar! Schwangyu obviously saw and understood. We guard him!
"I presume it's Miles Teg you're so anxious to meet," Schwangyu said.
"Among others."
"Don't you want to make contact with the ghola first?"
"I've already made contact with him." Lucilla nodded toward the enclosed yard
where the child once more stood almost motionless and looking up at her. "He's
a thoughtful one."
"I've only the reports on the others," Schwangyu said, "but I suspect this is
the most thoughtful one of the series."
Lucilla suppressed an involuntary shudder at the readiness for violent
opposition in Schwangyu's words and attitude. There was not one hint that the
child below them shared a common humanity.
While Lucilla was thinking this, clouds covered the sun as they often did here
at this hour. A cold wind blew in over the Keep's walls, swirling around the
courtyard. The child turned away and picked up the speed of his exercises,
getting his warmth from increased activity.
"Where does he go to be alone?" Lucilla asked.
"Mostly to his room. He has tried a few dangerous escapades, but we have
discouraged this."
"He must hate us very much."
"I'm sure of it."
"I will have to deal with that directly."
"Surely, an Imprinter has no doubts about her ability to overcome hate."
"I was thinking of Geasa." Lucilla sent a knowing look at Schwangyu. "I find
it astonishing that you let Geasa make such a mistake."
"I don't interfere with the normal progress of the ghola's instructions. If one
of his teachers develops a real affection for him, that is not my problem."
"An attractive child," Lucilla said.
They stood a bit longer watching the Duncan Idaho ghola at his training-play.
Both Reverend Mothers thought briefly of Geasa, one of the first teachers
brought here for the ghola project. Schwangyu's attitude was plain: Geasa was
a providential failure. Lucilla thought only: Schwangyu and Geasa complicated
my task. Neither woman gave even a passing moment to the way these thoughts
reaffirmed their loyalties.
As she watched the child in the courtyard, Lucilla began to have a new
appreciation of what the Tyrant God Emperor had actually achieved. Leto II had
employed this ghola-type through uncounted lifetimes -- some thirty-five hundred
years of them, one after another. And the God Emperor Leto II had been no
ordinary force of nature. He had been the biggest juggernaut in human history,
rolling over everything: over social systems, over natural and unnatural
hatreds, over governmental forms, over rituals (both taboo and mandatory), over
religions casual and religions intense. The crushing weight of the Tyrant's
passage had left nothing unmarked, not even the Bene Gesserit.
Leto II had called it "The Golden Path" and this Duncan Idaho-type ghola below
her now had figured prominently in that awesome passage. Lucilla had studied
the Bene Gesserit accounts, probably the best in the universe. Even today on
most of the old Imperial Planets, newly married couples still scattered dollops