Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [201]
In numerous clinical training sessions on Chapterhouse, Duncan had instructed Sheeana in these selfsame methods, and she in turn had helped to polish uncounted Bene Gesserit males who were turned loose as sexual land mines against the Honored Matres. The havoc those men wrought had sent the whores into an even greater frenzy.
Duncan found himself using all of his powers to break her, just as she tried to break him. The two professional imprinters collided, using their mutual abilities in a tug-of-war. He fought back in the only way he knew how. A moan escaped his throat, and it formed a word, a name. “Murbella . . .”
Sheeana’s spice-blue eyes flew open, burning into him even in the dimness. “Not Murbella. Murbella did not love you. You know this.”
“Neither . . . do . . . you.” He wrenched the words out as a counterpoint to his rhythm.
Sheeana caught at him, and he nearly lost himself in the powerful wave of her sexuality. He felt like a drowning man. Even his Mentat focus had faded to a blinding distraction. “If not love, Duncan, then duty. I am saving you. Saving you.”
Afterward they lay together, panting and sweating, as exhausted as Miles Teg must have been after he put his body through its incredible acceleration. Duncan sensed that the razor thread within him had finally broken. His connection to Murbella, as tight and deadly as a strand of shigawire, no longer held his heart. He felt different now, a sensation that was both giddy freedom and lost drifting. Like two enormous Guild Heighliners caroming off of each other, he and Sheeana had intersected with inexorable force, and now they moved away from each other on separate courses.
He lay holding Sheeana, and she didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. Duncan knew that at last he was drained, and stunned . . . and cured.
We create history for ourselves, and we have a fondness for participating in grand epics.
—Bene Gesserit basic instruction,
Training Manual for Acolytes
T
hey were magnificent ships, thousands upon thousands of them lined up across a wine-dark sea. Overhead, a heavy grayness in the sky set an appropriate mood with brooding clouds of war. The tableau represented a fleet such as had never been gathered in all of history.
“Awe-inspiring, is it not, Daniel?” Smiling, the old woman stood on the weathered boards of the dock and looked across the imaginary waters at the antique-design vessels, sharp-prowed Greek war galleys with angry eyes painted on their prows. The triremes bristled with long oars to be pulled by hordes of slaves.
The old man was not so impressed, however. “I find your pretentious symbols tiresome, my Martyr. As I always have. Are you suggesting you have a face worthy of launching a thousand ships?”
The woman let out a dry chuckle. “I don’t consider myself classically beautiful or handsome—or even particularly male or female, for that matter. But surely you can see how these events now are similar to the start of the epic Trojan War. Let us paint the appropriate picture to commemorate the event.”
Of continuing concern to them, the one target they desperately sought—the wandering no-ship—had escaped yet again from the seeming certainty of a carefully laid trap. They still did not have the one thing the predictions said they needed.
With impatience and arrogance—decidedly human traits, though the old man would never admit that—he had decided to launch his great fleet anyway. It would take time to crush all the inhabited worlds of the Scattering and every planet of the Old Empire. By the time Kralizec neared its end, he was confident he would have what he needed. There was no logical reason to delay the expanded campaign.
The old man looked at the symbolic wooden war galleys crowding the faux ocean all the way to the horizon. With their sails furled, the boats rocked and creaked in the gentle swells. “Our fleet is thousands of times greater than the handful of boats used in that old war. And our real battleships are infinitely