Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [38]
He accepted the snifter but stared at the liquid suspiciously, swirling it around. Was there another color to it, something not quite mixed in? He put his nose over the lip, inhaling the aroma as if he were a connoisseur—though he was actually trying to detect any foreign chemical. The brandy smelled normal. But then Fenring would have made sure of that. He was a subtle and devious man.
“I can drag out the snooper if you like, but you never need worry about poison from me, Shaddam,” Fenring said with a maddening smile. “Your father, however, is in an entirely different position.”
“Ah, yes. A slow-acting poison, you say? I suspect you already have a substance in mind. How long will my father live after you begin the process? If we do this at all, I mean.”
“Two years, maybe three. Long enough to make his decline appear natural.”
Shaddam raised his chin, trying to look regal. His skin was perfumed, his reddish hair pomaded and slicked back. “You understand, I might only entertain such a treasonous idea for the sake of the Imperium—to avoid continued calamities at the hands of my father.”
A crafty smile worked at the edges of the weasel face. “Of course.”
“Two or three years,” Shaddam mused. “Time for me to prepare for the great responsibilities of leadership, I suppose . . . while you attend to some of the more unpleasant tasks of empire.”
“Aren’t you going to drink your brandy, Shaddam?”
Shaddam met the hard gaze of the oversize eyes, and felt fear course along his spine. He was in too deep not to trust Fenring now. He drew another shaky breath and sipped the rich liqueur.
Three days later, Fenring slipped like a ghost through the shields and poison-snoopers of the Palace and stood over the sleeping Emperor, listening to the smooth purr of his snores.
Not a care in the universe, this one.
No one else could have gotten into the most secure sleeping chamber of the ancient Emperor. But Fenring had his ways: a bribe here, a manipulated schedule there, a concubine made ill, a doorman distracted, the Chamberlain sent off on an urgent errand. He had done this many times before, practicing for the inevitable. Everyone in the Palace was used to Fenring slinking around, and they knew better than to ask too many questions. Now, according to his precise assessment—which would have made even a Mentat proud—Fenring had three minutes. Four, if he was lucky.
Enough time to change the course of history.
With the same perfect timing he had demonstrated during the shield-ball game, as well as during his rehearsals on mannequins and two unfortunate servingwomen from the kitchen storehouses, Fenring froze in place and waited, gauging the breathing of his victim like a Laza tiger about to pounce. In one hand he cradled a long microhair needle between two slender fingers, while in the other hand he held a mist-tube. Old Elrood lay on his back, in the precisely correct position, looking like a mummy, his parchment skin stretched tight over his skull.
Guided by a certain hand, the mist-tube moved closer. Fenring counted to himself, waiting. . . .
In a space between Elrood’s breaths, Fenring squeezed a lever on the tube and sprayed a powerful anesthetic mist in the old man’s face.
There was no discernible change in Elrood, but Fenring knew the nerve deadener had taken effect, instantaneously. Now he made his thrust. A fiber-fine, self-guiding needle snaked up the old man’s nose, through sinus cavities, and into the frontal lobe of his brain. Fenring paused no more than an instant to dispense the chemical time bomb, then withdrew. A few seconds and it was done. Without any evidence or even any pain. Undetectable and multilayered, the internal machinery had been set in motion. The tiny catalyst would grow and do its damage, like the first rotten cell in an apple.
Each time the Emperor consumed his favorite beverage—spice beer—his own brain would release tiny doses of cataly-tic poison into his bloodstream. Thus an ordinary component of the old man’s diet would be chemically