Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [185]
The bull roared with triumph. To the horror of the crowd, it lifted Paulus up, thrashing him from side to side. Blood sprayed on the sand, red droplets slowed by the concave surface of the small shield. The doomed Duke flailed and twitched, impaled on the forest of horns.
The audience fell deathly silent.
Within seconds, Thufir Hawat and the Atreides guards surged out onto the field, their lasguns cutting the rampaging Salusan bull into piles of smoking meat. The creature’s own momentum caused pieces of the carcass to fly apart in different directions. The decapitated but otherwise intact head thumped onto the ground.
The Duke’s body pirouetted in the air and landed on its back in the trampled sand.
Up in the ducal box, Rhombur cried out in disbelief. Kailea sobbed. The Lady Helena let her chin sink against her chest and wept.
Leto rose to his feet, all color draining from his skin. His mouth opened and closed, but he could find no words to express his utter shock. He wanted to run down into the arena, but saw from the mangled condition of his father that he would never reach him in time. There would be no gasping and whispering of last words.
Duke Paulus Atreides, this magnificent man of his people, was dead.
Deafening wails erupted from the spectator stands. Leto could feel the vibration rumbling through the ducal box. He couldn’t tear his eyes from his father, lying broken and bloodied on the ground, and he knew it was a nightmare vision that would remain with him for the rest of his life.
Thufir Hawat stood next to the fallen Old Duke, but even a warrior Mentat could do nothing for him now.
Oddly, his mother’s quiet voice cut through the surrounding din, and Leto heard the words clearly, like ice picks. “Leto, my son,” Helena said, “you are Duke Atreides now.”
Machine-vaccine principle: Every technological device contains within it the tools of its opposite, and of its own destruction.
—GIAN KANA,
Imperial Patent Czar
It didn’t take the invaders long to make permanent changes in the prosperous underground cities. Many innocent Ixians died and many disappeared, while C’tair waited for someone to find and kill him.
During brief sojourns from his shielded hiding room, C’tair learned that Vernii, the former capital city of Ix, had been renamed Hilacia by the Tleilaxu. The fanatical usurpers had even changed Imperial records to refer to the ninth planet in the Alkaurops system as Xuttuh, rather than Ix.
C’tair wanted to strangle any Tleilaxu he found, but instead he developed a subtler plan.
He dressed like a low-level worker and doctored forms to show that he had once been a minor line supervisor, one step above a suboid, who had watched over a labor crew of twelve men. He’d read enough about hull-plate welding and sealing so that he could claim it had been his job. No one would expect much from him.
All around him, the Bene Tleilax were gutting his city and rebuilding it into a dark hell.
He abhorred the changes, loathed the Tleilaxu gall. And from what he could see, Imperial Sardaukar had actually assisted in this abomination.
C’tair could do nothing about it at the moment; he had to bide his time. He was alone here: his father exiled to Kaitain and afraid to return, his mother murdered, his twin brother taken away by the Guild. Only he remained on Ix, like a rat hiding within the walls.
But even rats could cause significant damage.
Over the months, C’tair learned to blend in, to appear to be an insignificant and cowed citizen. He kept his eyes averted, his hands dirty, his clothes and hair unkempt. He could not let it be known that he was the son of the former Ambassador to Kaitain, that he had faithfully served House Vernius—and still would, if he could find a way to do it. He had walked freely through the Grand Palais, had escorted the Earl’s own daughter. Acts that, if known, would mean a death sentence for him.
Above all, he could not let the rabid antitechnology invaders discover his shielded hiding place or the devices he had hoarded