Heretics of Dune
Шрифт:
Ambitorm went to the back of the declivity and carefully removed a layer of icy dirt and several flat rocks, which concealed a small pit. He lifted a round black object from the pit and busied himself over it.
Duncan squatted under the overhang and studied his guide. Ambitorm had a dished-in face with skin like dark brown leather. Yes, those could be the features of a Face Dancer. Deep creases cut into the skin at the edges of the man's brown eyes. Creases radiated from the sides of the thin mouth and lined the wide brow. They spread out beside the flat nose and deepened the cleft of a narrow chin. Creases of time all over his face.
Appetizing odors began to arise from the black object in front of Ambitorm.
"We will eat here and wait a bit before we continue," Ambitorm said.
He spoke Old Galach but with that guttural accent which Duncan had never heard before, an odd stress on adjacent vowels. Was Ambitorm from the Scattering or a Gammu native? There obviously had been many linguistic drifts since the Dune days of Muad'dib. For that matter, Duncan recognized that all of the people in the Gammu Keep, including Teg and Lucilla, spoke a Galach that had shifted from the one he had learned as a pre-ghola child.
"Ambitorm," Duncan said. "Is that a Gammu name?"
"You will call me Tormsa," the guide said.
"Is that a nickname?"
"It is what you will call me."
"Why did those people back there call you Ambitorm."
"That was the name I gave them."
"But why would you..."
"You lived under the Harkonnens and you did not learn how to change your identity?"
Duncan fell silent. Was that it? Another disguise. Ambi... Tormsa had not changed his appearance. Tormsa. Was it a Tleilaxu name?
The guide extended a steaming cup toward Duncan. "A drink to restore you, Wose. Drink it fast. It will keep you warm."
Duncan closed both hands around the cup. Wose. Wose and Tormsa. Tleilaxu Master and his Face Dancer companion.
Duncan lifted the cup toward Tormsa in the ancient gesture of Atreides battle comrades, then put it to his lips. Hot! But it warmed him as it went down. The drink had a faintly sweet flavor over some vegetable tang. He blew on it and drank it down as he saw Tormsa was doing.
Odd that I should not suspect poison or some drug, Duncan thought. But this Tormsa and the others last night had something of the Bashar about them. The gesture to a battle comrade had come naturally.
"Why are you risking your life this way?" Duncan asked.
"You know the Bashar and you have to ask?"
Duncan fell silent, abashed.
Tormsa leaned forward and recovered Duncan's cup. Soon, all evidence of their breakfast lay hidden under the concealing rocks and dirt.
That food spoke of careful planning, Duncan thought. He turned and squatted on the cold ground. The mist was still out there beyond the screening bushes. Leafless limbs cut the view into odd bits and pieces. As he watched, the mist began to lift, revealing the blurred outlines of a city at the far edge of the valley.
Tormsa squatted beside him. "Very old city," he said. "Harkonnen place. Look." He passed a small monoscope to Duncan. "That is where we go tonight."
Duncan put the monoscope to his left eye and tried to focus the oil lens. The controls felt unfamiliar, not at all like those he had learned as a pre-ghola youth or had been taught at the Keep. He removed it from his eye and examined it.
"Ixian?" he asked.
"No. We made it." Tormsa reached over and pointed out two tiny buttons raised above the black tube. "Slow, fast. Push left to cycle out, right to cycle back."
Again, Duncan lifted the scope to his eye.
Who were the we who had made this thing?
A touch of the fast button and the view leaped into his gaze. Tiny dots moved in the city. People! He increased the amplification. The people became small dolls. With them to give him scale, Duncan realized that the city at the valley's edge was immense... and farther away than he had thought. A single rectangular structure stood in the center of the city, its top lost in the clouds. Gigantic.
Duncan knew this place now. The surroundings had changed but that central structure lay fixed in his memory.
How many of us vanished into that black hellhole and never returned?
"Nine hundred and fifty stories," Tormsa said, seeing where Duncan's gaze was directed. "Forty-five kilometers long, thirty kilometers wide. Plasteel and armor-plaz, all of it."
"I know." Duncan lowered the scope and returned it to Tormsa. "It was called Barony."
"Ysai," Tormsa said.
"That's what they call it now," Duncan said. "I have some different names for it."
Duncan took a deep breath to put down the old hatreds. Those people were all dead. Only the building remained. And the memories. He scanned the city around that enormous structure. The place was a sprawling mass of warrens. Green spaces lay scattered throughout, each of them behind high walls. Single residences with private parks, Teg had said. The monoscope had revealed guards walking the wall tops.
Tormsa spat on the ground in front of him. "Harkonnen place."
"They built to make people feel small," Duncan said.