Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [78]
And throughout it all, why did this damned Reverend Mother have to be so calm, so smug?
Embarrassed, he sent away his guards and officials, purging all possible eavesdroppers from the brooding Harkonnen citadel. Where is Rabban when I need him? Off on a hunt! He sulked back to his private chambers, as ready as he would ever be. His stomach churned.
Nervous sweat glistened on his forehead as he stepped through the ornate arched doorway, then flicked on the privacy curtains. Perhaps if he extinguished the glowglobes and pretended he was doing something else. . . .
When he entered, the Baron was relieved to see that the witch had not taken off her clothes, had not reclined seductively on the mussed bedcoverings in anticipation of his return. Instead, she sat fully robed, a prim Bene Gesserit Sister, just waiting for him. But a maddeningly superior smile curved her lips.
The Baron wanted to slash that smile away with a sharp instrument. He took a deep breath, appalled that this witch could make him feel so helpless.
“The best I can offer you is a vial of my sperm,” he said, trying to be gruff and in control. “Impregnate yourself. That should be sufficient for your purposes.” He lifted his firm chin. “You Bene Gesserit will just have to accept that.”
“But it’s not acceptable, Baron,” the Reverend Mother said, sitting up straighter on the divan. “You know the strictures. We’re not Tleilaxu growing offspring in tanks. We Bene Gesserit must have birth through natural processes, with no artificial meddling, for reasons you’re incapable of understanding.”
“I’m capable of understanding plenty,” the Baron growled.
“Not this you aren’t.”
He hadn’t expected the gambit to work anyway. “You need Harkonnen blood—what about my nephew Glossu Rabban? Or better yet, his father, Abulurd. Go to Lankiveil and you could have as many children as you want through him. You won’t have to work so hard.”
“Unacceptable,” Mohiam said. She fixed him with a cold, narrow-lidded glare. Her face looked plain, pasty, and implacable. “I am not here to negotiate, Baron. I have my orders. I must return to Wallach IX carrying your child.”
“But . . . what if—”
The witch held up her hand. “I’ve made it perfectly clear what will happen if you refuse. Make your decision. We’ll have you either way.”
His private chamber had suddenly become an alien and threatening place to him. He squared his shoulders, flexed his biceps. Though a muscular man, lean of body, with fast reflexes, his only escape seemed to involve pummeling this woman into submission. But he also knew about Bene Gesserit fighting abilities, especially their arcane weirding ways . . . and felt a twinge of doubt as to whether he would be the victor in such a struggle.
She got up and glided across the room with silent steps, then sat rigidly on the edge of the Baron’s stained and unmade bed. “If it’s any consolation, I take no more pleasure in this act than you do.”
She looked at the Baron’s well-made body, his broad shoulders, his firm pectorals and flat abdomen. His face had a haughty look, clearly noble-born. In other circumstances Vladimir Harkonnen might even have been an acceptable lover, like the male trainers with whom the Bene Gesserit had matched Mohiam throughout her childbearing years.
She had already delivered eight daughters to the Bene Gesserit school, all of them raised apart from her on Wallach IX or on other training planets. Mohiam had never tried to follow their progress. That was not the Sisterhood’s way. Her daughter by Baron Harkonnen would be no different.
Like many well-trained Sisters, Mohiam had the ability to manipulate her most minute bodily functions. In order to become a Reverend Mother, she had been required to alter her own biochemistry by taking an awareness-spectrum poison. In transmuting the deadly drug within herself, she had passed inward through the long echoing bloodlines, enabling conversation with all of her female ancestors, the clamorous inner lives of Other