Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [161]
Vladimir heard the sounds of machinery, the noise of something clattering and rolling into the room. It came toward the top of his head, but remained out of his range of vision. The anticipation and ominous fear felt delicious. What would Khrone do differently this time?
The unseen machine sounded like it was directly behind him now, but it did not stop. Vladimir turned his head from side to side and saw a thick-walled cylindrical chamber sliding slowly forward, beginning to engulf him as if he were being swallowed by a whale. The cylinder was like a large pipe or a medical diagnostic unit. Or a coffin.
Vladimir felt a thrill of pleasure as he guessed what this machine must be. A whole-body Agony Box! The Face Dancers must have built it specially for him to create a more intimate experience. The young man grinned, but asked no questions, for fear of spoiling any surprises the Face Dancers might have in store for him. From outside, Khrone watched him with an unreadable expression as the table slid entirely into the chamber. The ugly, patchwork observers were also there, but no one spoke.
The machine’s end cap snapped shut and sealed with a hiss. Vladimir’s ears popped as the pressure changed. Khrone’s voice came over a tinny-sounding speaker system. “You are about to experience a variation on the processes used by old Tleilaxu Masters to develop their Twisted Mentats.”
“Ah, I had a Twisted Mentat once.” Vladimir laughed with genuine fearlessness. “Are you going to talk about the device, or use it?”
The illumination shut off inside the cylinder, plunging him into complete blackness. Indeed, something different!
“Do you think I’m afraid of the dark?” he shouted, but the walls of the cylinder were coated with a sound-absorbing substance that swallowed even the whisper of an echo. He couldn’t see anything.
Surrounded by a faint hum, he felt himself growing weightless. The table dropped away beneath him and he could no longer feel it against his back. Cradled in a suspensor field that held him perfectly balanced and immobile, he could no longer feel anything or see anything. The temperature was perfect inside the chamber, imparting no sensation of heat or cold. Even the faint humming stopped, leaving him in a silence so absolute that he could hear nothing but a slight ringing in his ears, and even that faded.
“This is boring! When is it going to start?”
The darkness remained, and silence, its companion, as well. He felt nothing and could not move.
Vladimir made a rude noise. “This is ridiculous.” Khrone clearly did not grasp the nuances of sadism. “You play with my body to get to my mind, and play with my mind to get to my body, twisting, contorting. Is that all you have?”
Ten minutes later—or was it an hour?—he still had no answer. “Khrone?”
Nothing happened. He remained perfectly comfortable, detached from all sensation. “I am ready! Do your worst!”
Khrone didn’t answer. No pain came. Nothing. They must be trying to drive his anticipation to a fever pitch. He licked his lips. It would start any second now.
Khrone left him there in dark, weightless isolation for an eternity.
Vladimir tried to clutch at memories of previous sensations, but they kept slipping away, fading from his mind. Struggling to retrieve the thoughts, he followed a mental pathway and felt himself carried on a neural conduit deep into his own brain, a realm of total darkness. The experiences he sought were pinpoints of light ahead, and he swam toward them. But they swam away faster, and farther than he could reach.
Another eternity passed.
Hours? Days?
He could feel nothing, absolutely nothing. Vladimir didn’t want to be here. He wanted to swim back out to the light that was his ghola life before this session had begun. But he couldn’t. It was a trap!
Eventually, he screamed. At first, it was just to make noise, to disturb the throbbing emptiness. Then he screamed for real, and once he started he could not stop himself.
Even so, the silence remained. He thrashed and struggled, but the field kept