Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [161]
“They took you away from me, in the Guild testing chamber,” C’tair said, his voice a husky whisper. “They wouldn’t let me see you, wouldn’t let me say goodbye. Now I realize you were the lucky one, D’murr, considering everything that’s happened here on Ix. It would break your heart to see it now.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Our city was destroyed not long after the Guild took you away from us. Hundreds of thousands are dead. The Bene Tleilax now rule here.”
D’murr paused, taking time to slide back into the limited manner of person-to-person communication. “I have guided a Heighliner through foldspace, brother. I hold the galaxy in my mind, I see mathematics.” His sluggish words garbled together. “Now I know why . . . I know . . . Uhhh, I feel pain from your connection. C’tair, how?”
“This communication hurts you?” He drew back from the transmitter, concerned, and held his breath, fearful that one of the furtive Tleilaxu spies might hear him. “I’m sorry, D’murr. Maybe I should—”
“Not important. Pain shifts, like a headache . . . but different. Swimming through my mind . . . and beyond it.” D’murr sounded distracted, his voice distant and ethereal. “What connection is this? What device?”
“D’murr, didn’t you hear me? Ix is destroyed—our world, our city is now a prison camp. Mother was killed in an explosion! I couldn’t save her. I’ve been hiding here, and I’m at great risk while making this communication. Our father is in exile somewhere . . . on Kaitain, I think. House Vernius has gone renegade. I’m trapped here, alone!”
D’murr remained focused on what he considered the primary question. “Communication directly through foldspace? Impossible. Explain it to me.”
Taken aback at his twin brother’s lack of concern over the horrendous news, C’tair nonetheless chose not to rebuke him. D’murr had, after all, undergone extreme mental changes and couldn’t be blamed for the way he was now. C’tair could never understand what his twin had been through. He himself had failed the Guild’s tests; he had been too fearful and rigid. Otherwise, he, too, might be a Navigator now.
Holding his breath, he listened to a creaking sound in the passageway overhead, distant footsteps that faded. Whispering voices. Then silence returned, and C’tair was able to continue the conversation.
“Explain,” D’murr said again.
Eager for any kind of conversation, C’tair told his brother of the equipment he had salvaged. “Do you remember Davee Rogo? The old inventor who used to take us into his laboratory and show us the things he was working on?”
“Crippled . . . suspensor crutches. Too decrepit to walk.”
“Yes, he used to talk about communicating in neutrino energy wavelengths? A network of rods wrapped in silicate crystals?”
“Uhhh . . . pain again.”
“You’re hurting!” C’tair looked around, fearful of the risk he continued to take himself. “I won’t talk much longer.”
The tone was impatient. D’murr wanted to hear more. “Continue explanation. Need to know this device.”
“One day during the fighting, when I really wanted to talk with you, bits and pieces of his conversation came back to me. In the rubble of a ruined building, I thought I saw a hazy image of him next to me. Like a vision. He was talking in that creaky old voice, telling me what to do, what parts I would require and how to put them together. He gave me the ideas I needed.”
“Interesting.” The Navigator’s voice was flat and bloodless.
His brother’s lack of emotion and compassion disturbed him. C’tair tried to ask questions about D’murr’s Spacing Guild experiences, but his twin had no patience for the queries and said that he couldn’t discuss Guild secrets, not even with his brother. He had traveled through foldspace, and it was incredible. That was all D’murr would say.
“When can we talk again?” C’tair asked. The apparatus felt dangerously warm, ready to break down. He would have to