Dune Book 2 Messiah by Frank Herbert

Author:Frank Herbert [Herbert, Frank]
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi
Published: 2010-02-01T13:38:13+00:00

Its terrible purpose gave him no choice.

The flesh surrenders itself, he thought. Eternity takes back its own. Our

bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before

the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the

instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not . . . yet, I

occurred.

= = = = = =

"You do not beg the sun for mercy."

-Maud'dib's Travail from The Stilgar Commentary

One moment of incompetence can be fatal, the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen

Mohiam reminded herself.

She hobbled along, apparently unconcerned, within a ring of Fremen guards.

One of those behind her, she knew, was a deaf-mute immune to any wiles of Voice.

No doubt he'd been charged to kill her at the slightest provocation.

Why had Paul summoned her? she wondered. Was he about to pass sentence? She

remembered the day long ago when she'd tested him . . . the child kwisatz

haderach. He was a deep one.

Damn his mother for all eternity! It was her fault the Bene Gesserit had

lost their hold on this gene line.

Silence surged along the vaulted passages ahead of her entourage. She sensed

the word being passed. Paul would hear the silence. He'd know of her coming

before it was announced. She didn't delude herself with ideas that her powers

exceeded his.

Damn him!

She begrudged the burdens age had imposed on her: the aching joints,

responses not as quick as once they'd been, muscles not as elastic as the

whipcords of her youth. A long day lay behind her and a long life. She'd spent

this day with the Dune Tarot in a fruitless search for some clue to her own

fate. But the cards were sluggish.

The guards herded her around a corner into another of the seemingly endless

vaulted passages. Triangular meta-glass windows on her left gave a view upward

to trellised vines and indigo flowers in deep shadows cast by the afternoon sun.

Tiles lay underfoot -- figures of water creatures from exotic planets. Water

reminders everywhere. Wealth . . . riches.

Robed figures passed across another hall in front of her, cast covert

glances at the Reverend Mother. Recognition was obvious in their manner -- and

tension.

She kept her attention on the sharp hairline of the guard immediately in

front: young flesh, pink creases at the uniform collar.

The immensity of this ighir citadel began to impress her. Passages . . .

passages . . . They passed an open doorway from which emerged the sound of

timbur and flute playing soft, elder music. A glance showed her blue-in-blue

Fremen eyes staring from the room. She sensed in them the ferment of legendary

revolts stirring in wild genes.

There lay the measure of her personal burden, she knew. A Bene Gesserit

could not escape awareness of the genes and their possibilities. She was touched

by a feeling of loss: that stubborn fool of an Atreides! How could he deny the

jewels of posterity within his loins? A kwisatz haderach! Born out of this time,

true, but real -- as real as his abomination of a sister . . . and there lay a

dangerous unknown. A wild Reverend

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