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lowered her head, shook it from side to side.
"How much of the spice did you take?" he asked.
"Nature abhors prescience," she said, raising her head. "Did you know that,
Duncan?"
He spoke softly, reasonably, as to a small child: "Tell me how much of the
spice you took." He took hold of her shoulder with his left hand.
"Words are such gross machinery, so primitive and ambiguous," she said. She
pulled away from his hand.
"You must tell me," he said.
"Look at the Shield Wall," she commanded, pointing. She sent her gaze along
her own outstretched hand, trembled as the landscape crumbled in an overwhelming
vision -- a sandcastle destroyed by invisible waves. She averted her eyes, was
transfixed by the appearance of the ghola's face. His features crawled, became
aged, then young . . . aged . . . young. He was life itself, assertive, endless
. . . She turned to flee, but he grabbed her left wrist.
"I am going to summon a doctor," he said.
"No! You must let me have the vision! I have to know!"
"You are going inside now," he said.
She stared down at his hand. Where their flesh touched, she felt an electric
presence that both lured and frightened her. She jerked free, gasped: "You can't
hold the whirlwind!"
"You must have medical help!" he snapped.
"Don't you understand?" she demanded. "My vision's incomplete, just
fragments. It flickers and jumps. I have to remember the future. Can't you see
that?"
"What is the future if you die?" he asked, forcing her gently into the
Family chambers.
"Words . . . words," she muttered. "I can't explain it. One thing is the
occasion of another thing, but there's no cause . . . no effect. We can't leave
the universe as it was. Try as we may, there's a gap."
"Stretch out here," he commanded.
He is so dense! she thought.
Cool shadows enveloped her. She felt her own muscles crawling like worms --
a firm bed that she knew to be insubstantial. Only space was permanent. Nothing
else had substance. The bed flowed with many bodies, all of them her own. Time
became a multiple sensation, overloaded. It presented no single reaction for her
to abstract. It was Time. It moved. The whole universe slipped backward,
forward, sideways.
"It has no thing-aspect," she explained. "You can't get under it or around
it. There's no place to get leverage."
There came a fluttering of people all around her. Many someones held her
left hand. She looked at her own moving flesh, followed a twining arm out to a
fluid mask of face: Duncan Idaho! His eyes were . . . wrong, but it was Duncan -
- child-man-adolescent-child-man-adolescent . . . Every line of his features
betrayed concern for her.
"Duncan, don't be afraid," she whispered.
He squeezed her hand, nodded. "Be still," he said.
And he thought: She must not die! She must not! No Atreides woman can die!
He shook his head sharply. Such thoughts defied mentat logic. Death was a
necessity that life might continue.
The ghola loves me, Alia thought.
The thought became bedrock to which she might cling. He was a familiar face
with a solid room behind him. She recognized one of the bedrooms in Paul's
suite.
A fixed, immutable person did something with a tube in her throat. She
fought against retching.
"We got her in time," a voice said, and she recognized the tones of a Family
medic. "You should've called me sooner." There was suspicion in the medic's
voice. She felt the tube slide out of her throat -- a snake, a shimmering cord.
"The slapshot will make her sleep," the medic said. "I'll send one of her
attendants to --"
"I will stay with her," the ghola said.
"That is not seemly!" the medic snapped.
"Stay . . . Duncan," Alia whispered.
He stroked her hand to tell her he'd heard.
"M'Lady," the medic said, "it'd be better if . . ."
"You do not tell me what is best," she rasped. Her throat ached with each
syllable.
"M'Lady," the medic said, voice accusing, "you know the dangers of consuming
too much melange. I can only assume someone gave it to you without --"
"You are a fool," she rasped. "Would you deny me my visions? I knew what I
took and why." She put a hand to her throat. "Leave us. At once!"
The medic pulled out of her field of vision, said: "I will send word to your
brother."
She felt him leave, turned her attention to the ghola. The vision lay
clearly in her awareness now, a culture medium in which the present grew
outward. She sensed the ghola move in that play of Time, no longer cryptic,
fixed now against a recognizable background.
He is the crucible, she thought. He is danger and salvation.
And she shuddered, knowing she saw the vision of her brother had seen.
Unwanted tears burned her eyes. She shook her head sharply. No tears! They
wasted moisture and, worse, distracted the harsh flow of vision. Paul must be
stopped! Once, just once, she had bridged Time to place her voice where he would
pass. But stress and mutability would not permit that here. The web of Time
passed through her brother now like rays of light through a lens. He stood at
the focus and he knew it. He had gathered all the lines to himself and would not
permit them to escape or change.
"Why?" she muttered. "Is it hate? Does he strike out at Time itself because
it hurt him? Is that it . . . hate?"
Thinking he heard her speak his name, the ghola said: "M'Lady?"
"If I could only burn this thing out of me!" she cried. "I didn't want to be
different."
"Please, Alia," he murmured. "Let yourself sleep."
"I wanted to be able to laugh," she whispered. Tears slid down her cheeks. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
