Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [42]
The evil Harkonnens had known that Wanna would be the key to breaking his Suk conditioning, and it had only worked—could only have worked—because Yueh loved her with all his heart. Bene Gesserits were not supposed to succumb to love, but he knew that she must have reciprocated.
He thought of her pictures in the archives, of all he had learned about her in his researches. “Oh, Wanna.” He yearned for her in his mind, tried to latch onto her as a lifeline.
Sheeana stroked his waist, trailed her fingers lower and climbed on top of him. Yueh’s muscles were completely out of his control. He couldn’t move. Her lips vibrated against the skin of his shoulder, his neck. Sheeana was a skilled sexual imprinter. Her body was a weapon, and he was the target.
A flood of sensations nearly drove the archival image of Wanna from his mind, but Yueh fought against what Sheeana was making him feel. Instead, he focused on what he might have done in Wanna’s loving embrace. Wanna.
As the rhythm of their lovemaking increased, real memories intruded on the information he had obtained through research. Yueh recalled those terrible moments after his wife had been seized by the Harkonnens, and saw images of the loathsome fat Baron, his thuggish nephew Rabban, the viper Feyd-Rautha, and the Mentat Piter de Vries, who had a laugh that sounded like vinegar.
Weak, helpless, and infuriated, he had been forced to watch them torture Wanna inside an isolated chamber. She was a Bene Gesserit; she could block her pain, could deflect her body’s responses. But Yueh could not so easily shunt such things aside, no matter how hard he tried.
In his nightmare memory the Baron laughed, a rumbling basso sound. “See the little chamber she’s in, Doctor? A toy with some very interesting possibilities.” As the men watched the groggy and disoriented Wanna, she stood on weak knees, but upside-down within the booth. “We can convert gravity into a thing that depends entirely on perspective.”
Rabban chuckled, a harsh release of noise. He operated artificial gravity controls in the small room, and suddenly Wanna fell with a thud to the floor. She managed to tuck her head and shoulders just enough to avoid breaking her neck. With the speed and fluidity of a serpent, Piter de Vries scurried forward carrying a pain amplifier. At the last moment, Rabban snatched it out of the Twisted Mentat’s hands and applied it to Wanna’s throat himself. She writhed with a jagged spasm of agony.
“Stop! Stop, I beg you!” Yueh cried.
“Oh, Doctor, Doctor—you know it can’t possibly be that easy . . .” In the vision, the Baron folded his pudgy arms across his chest.
Rabban twisted the gravity controls again, and Wanna was thrown like a limp doll from wall to wall, smashing into the sides of the chamber. “When one is too lovely, something must be done to correct that condition.”
My beautiful Wanna!
The memories were so vivid now, far more detailed than anything he had read in the Archives section. No mere documentation could have provided such precise clarity. . . . .
In a different, newly unlocked compartment of his brain, he lived another memory. He was artificially paralyzed, forced to watch during one of the Baron’s drunken parties while Piter played a sparking pain amplifier over Wanna’s suspended body. Each flash provoked a twitching response of agony from her. The other guests laughed at her pain and at his helpless misery.
When he was freed from his paralysis, Yueh trembled, drooled, and struggled. The Baron stood over him, a huge grin on his bloated face. He handed Yueh a projectile pistol. “As a Suk doctor, you should do everything possible to stop a patient from feeling pain. You know how to stop Wanna’s pain, Doctor.”
Unable to break his conditioning, Yueh shuddered and spasmed. He wanted nothing more than to do as the Baron demanded. “I . . . can’t!”
“Of course you can. Choose a guest, any guest. I don’t care which. See how amused