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.To guard against these shocking suicide tactics, they discarded personal shields, and here on Ehknot they fought on a more primal level.Fremen, who had never liked to rely upon body shields, now took up hand-to-hand fighting with crysknives for close-range work, and projectile weapons to shoot down distant targets.Remembering the old Harkonnen military assault on Arrakeen, some of the commanders even used large artillery guns to blast away physical barricades.Paul could barely remember his own actions here during the fighting.Once the bloodshed started, he had lost all control of himself.His sight had become only a red haze, and he went into a frenzy more consuming than the most potent spice vision.He did not focus on the razor-thin path to a safe future, did not ponder the vast canvas of history or the requirements prescience had imposed upon him.He merely killed.Paul’s fighting skills were still superior to those of most of his warriors, for he had been taught by the best: Duncan Idaho, Thufir Hawat, and Gurney Halleck.His mother had shown him Bene Gesserit fighting methods, and among the Fremen he had learned yet another set of skills.The battle was a long, difficult moment of insanity for him, though his fellow soldiers came to regard him as a Blessed One, a fanatic of fanatics.By the time the fighting ended, the survivors glanced in his direction with awe, as if they believed he was possessed by a holy spirit.In the smoldering aftermath, he heard wailing voices call, “Muad’Dib, save me! Muad’Dib!” With a start, Paul wondered if someone had recognized him, then realized that the wounded were merely invoking any help they could imagine.No wonder a hardened Gurney gave no more than lukewarm responses when asked to lead more and more offensives.Planets fell, one after another, and now Paul became aware of the truly heavy toll he had placed on his friend.Affable Gurney, the troubadour warrior whose talent with a baliset was as well known as his skill with a sword.He had made the man an earl of Caladan, then denied him any time to settle there and make a real life.Gurney, I am sorry.And you did not complain for a moment.As far as he knew, Stilgar still felt that he belonged with his Fremen warriors, but Paul made up his mind to find a new, planetbound assignment for Gurney, a role that might give him a sense of accomplishment, something other than… this.He deserved better.Paul was covered with blood, and his borrowed uniform was torn, but he had only superficial cuts and scrapes.Suk doctors and scavengers combed the battlefield, tending the injured and harvesting the dead.He saw groups of Tleilaxu moving furtively from one fallen warrior to another, taking the most time with the greatest of the dead fighters.The Tleilaxu had always served as handlers of the dead, but these men seemed to be collecting samples….Simply one more horror among all the others.Paul looked up with eyes that were blue-within-blue from spice addiction, but dry of tears.He saw a shaven-headed man, formerly a Fremen but now a priest, a member of the Qizara.The priest seemed to be experiencing a state of rapture.He raised his hands over the clouds of dust and curls of smoke, absorbing the horror of the battlefield that still throbbed in the air.He looked directly at Paul, but did not recognize him.With Paul’s haunted eyes and blood-spattered face, and covered from head to foot with the filth of battle, he wondered if even Chani would know who he was.“You are blessed by God, protected so that you can continue our holy work,” the priest said to him.He swept his gaze slowly across the battlefield, and a smile appeared on his lips.“Ehknot, behold the invincibility of Muad’Dib.”Paul did behold, but did not see what the priest saw.And at the moment, no matter what the priest said, he did not feel at all invincible.When negotiating the dangerous waters of the Imperium, it is wise to calculate the odds of various outcomes that might follow important decisions.This is art, not science, but at the most basic level it is a methodical process, and a matter of balance.—Acolyte’s Manual of the Bene GesseritLady Margot Fenring had not been to the Bene Gesserit home-world in some time, but it had not changed.Sienna tiles still covered the roofs of the sprawling Mother School complex, which surrounded the main buildings that dated back thousands of years.To the Sisterhood, Wallach IX was a ship of constancy floating in a vast and changing cosmic sea.For all their intense study of human nature and society, the Sisterhood was an extremely conservative organization.“Adapt or die” was a primary Bene Gesserit axiom, though they seemed to have forgotten how to follow it.Margot had gradually come to realize this.As far as she was concerned, they were not her superiors.The unparalleled disaster of Paul Atreides and the almost complete loss of Bene Gesserit political power had eroded her respect for them.She and her husband had spent years in isolation among the Tleilaxu, raising Marie, developing an overall plan.And now the Mother Superior had summoned her with orders to bring her daughter in “for inspection.”Since childhood, Lady Margot had been trained to obey the commands of her superiors — commands that had required her to bear the child in the first place — but the Sisterhood might not get the answers they anticipated.Margot came to Wallach IX on her own terms.She hoped the Sisterhood had no additional breeding plans for her.Yes, Lady Margot looked considerably younger than her years, and her willowy beauty had been enhanced by careful and regular consumption of melange and a regimen of prana-bindu exercises.With good fortune, her seductive appearance and reproductive functions would last for several more decades… and Hasimir was so understanding.But little Marie should be her culminating achievement.The Sisterhood had to be made to see that.Margot had commanded the nanny Tonia Obregah-Xo to remain behind in Thalidei, though the woman had obviously expected to accompany them to Wallach IX.Tonia sent regular reports to the Mother School, using clandestine methods that were only too familiar to Margot herself.Once, Lady Margot had intercepted a message to the Sisterhood and had surreptitiously added her own postscript [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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