[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Victor stared wide-eyed out the viewing windows, pointing at sights and asking a
thousand questions. Rhombur answered, but deferred to Leto when the name of a
landform or clustered village exceeded his knowledge.
"I'm glad you're here, Victor." Leto good-naturedly mussed the boy's hair.
Three guards were stationed aboard, one in the main cabin and the others at the
fore and aft exits. They wore black uniforms, with the red hawk epaulets of the
Atreides honor guard. Since he had replaced one of their members for this trip,
Rhombur wore the same uniform; even Victor, who had also replaced a guard
because of weight limitations on the skyclipper, wore the epaulets on his
replica of the Duke's black jacket. On the boy, the epaulets were oversized,
but he insisted on wearing them.
Rhombur began to sing folk songs, rhymes he'd picked up from locals. In recent
months he and Gurney Halleck had shared baliset duets, playing tunes and singing
ballads. At the moment, Rhombur simply enjoyed singing in his rough voice,
without any accompaniment.
Hearing a familiar chanty, one of the guards joined in. The man had grown up on
a pundi rice farm before joining the Atreides troops, and still remembered the
songs his parents had taught him. Victor tried to sing along, too, adding the
intermittent but not always correct words of a chorus when he thought he
remembered them.
Though large, the sail-driven skyclipper was an easy craft to handle, a vessel
made for leisurely voyages. Leto promised himself that he would do this more
often. Perhaps he'd take Jessica with him . . . or even Kailea.
Yes, Kailea. Victor should see his mother and father spend more time together,
regardless of their political or dynastic differences. Leto still had feelings
for her, though she had rebuffed him at every turn. Remembering how cruel his
own parents had been to one another, he did not want to leave such a legacy for
Victor.
It had been an oversight at first, worsened by his stubbornness when Kailea
began making unreasonable demands about marriage -- but he realized he should
have at least made her his bound-concubine and given their son the Atreides
name. Leto had not yet decided to accept Archduke Ecaz's formal offer of
marriage to Ilesa, but one day he would certainly find a politically acceptable
match for himself among the Landsraad candidates.
Still, he loved Victor too much to deny the boy's status as firstborn. If he
designated the child as his official heir, perhaps Kailea would warm to him.
Eventually bored with the singing and the skyclipper's ponderous pace, Victor
craned his neck upward to look at the rippling sails outside. Leto let him
handle the control grip for a few moments, turning the rudder. The boy was
thrilled to see the skyclipper's nose nudging in response to his commands.
Rhombur laughed. "You'll be a great pilot someday, boy -- but don't let your
father teach you. I know more about piloting than he does."
Victor looked from his uncle to his father, and Leto laughed to see him ponder
the comment with such seriousness. "Victor, ask your uncle to tell you how he
set our coracle on fire once, then crashed it into a reef."
"You told me to crash it into the reef," Rhombur said.
"I'm hungry," Victor said, not surprising Leto at all. The boy had a hearty
appetite, and was growing taller every day.
"Go look in the storage cabinets in the back of the bridge deck," Rhombur said.
"That's where we keep our snacks." Anxious to explore, Victor ran to the rear
of the deck.
The skyclipper passed over pundi rice paddies, soggy green fields separated by
sluggish canals. Barges drifted along below them, filled with sacks of the
native grain. The sky was clear, the winds gentle. Leto could not imagine a
better day for flying.
Victor stood on a ledge to reach the topmost cabinets, rummaging among the
shelves. He studied iconic images on the labels; he couldn't read all the
Galach words, but recognized letters and understood the purposes of certain
things. He found dried meats, and uluus, wrapped berry pastries as a special
dessert for the evening. He gobbled one package of uluus, which satisfied his
immediate hunger, but he continued to poke about.
With the curiosity of a child, Victor moved to a bank of storage pockets built
into the gondola's lower wall against the dirigible sack that made up the bulk
of the skyclipper. Identifying the red symbol, he knew that these were
emergency supplies, first-aid equipment, medicines. He had seen such things
before, watching in awe as House surgeons bandaged cuts and scrapes.
Opening the first-aid pocket, he withdrew medical supplies, scrutinized gauze
wrappings and pill packets. A loose cover plate on the back wall rattled
intriguingly, so he popped it out to find another compartment even deeper
within. Inside a sheltered wall behind the emergency supplies, Victor found
something with blinking lights, a glowing counter, impedance-transfer mechanisms
connected to clusters of red energy-storage containers, all strung together.
Fascinated, he stared for a long time. "Uncle Rhombur! Come see what I found!"
Smiling tolerantly, Rhombur strode across the deck, ready to do his best to
explain whatever the child had encountered.
"There, behind the doctor kits." Victor pointed with a small finger. "See,
it's bright and pretty."
Rhombur stood behind the boy, bent over to squint. Proud and proprietary, Victor
reached deeper inside. "Look at how all the lights blink. I'll get it so you
can see better."
The boy grasped the device, and Rhombur suddenly sucked in a sharp breath. "No,
Victor! That's a --"
Duke Leto's son jostled the impedance leads, and activated the tamper-lock
timer.
The explosives detonated.
Knowledge is pitiless.
-Orange Catholic Bible
WHEN FLAMES ERUPTED from the aft end of the skyclipper cockpit, the shock wave
slammed into Leto like a meteor.
A burned and broken mass of flesh smashed into the front viewing wall beside
him, then dropped to the floor. Too large for a child, too small to be a man --
a whole man -- it left a smear of blackened bodily fluids. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]