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But he found it harder to give his loyalty now. Maybe that was why he had lost his way.
"The Tleilaxu wired a ticking time bomb into you, Duncan. You were to ensnare and destroy Bene Gesserit imprinters," Sheeana said. "I was the real target, but Murbella triggered you first, and both of you found yourselves caught in the snare."
Duncan wondered if that innate Tleilaxu programming was at the root of his inability to break free of his obsession. Did they make him that way intentionally? Damn the gods, I am stronger than this!
When he looked over at her, Duncan saw that Sheeana wore a strange, determined expression. "I can help you break those chains, Duncan. Will you trust me?"
"Trust you? An unusual thing for you to ask."
Without answering, she turned and left the navigation bridge. Duncan could only wonder what she had in mind.
INSTANTLY ALERT, HE awoke in the darkness of his quarters. He heard the familiar faint tones of the no-ship's security door code activating in his chamber. No one knew that code but him! It was sealed within the memory banks of the vessel.
Duncan slid off the bed, moving like quicksilver, his senses on guard, his eyes absorbing details. Light spilled through the doorway from the corridor, outlining a figure there . . . female.
"I have come for you, Duncan." Sheeana's voice was soft and husky.
He took a step back. "Why are you here?"
"You know why, and you know I must."
She sealed the door behind her. The glowtabs in the room increased the illumination to just above the darkness threshold. Duncan saw tantalizing shadows, and her silhouette bathed in a soft orange glow. Sheeana wore next to nothing, a wispy gown that swirled around her like windblown spice silk revealing her entire figure.
His Mentat machinery whirled and suggested the obvious answer. "I did not ask--"
"Yes, you did!" Using Voice on me? "This was your demand of me, and it is your obligation. You know we were meant for each other. It is there inside you, down to your very chromosomes." She let the filmy garment fall, and stood before him, her body all curves and shadows with the highlights of her breasts and the honey-warmth of her skin enhanced by the faint illumination.
"I refuse." He stood straight and ready to fight. "Your imprinting will not work on me. I know the tools and techniques as well as you do."
"Yes, that is why we can use our mutual knowledge to break this hold Murbella has on you, shattering it once and for all."
"And make me just as addicted to you? I will fight it."
Her teeth shone in the shadows. "And I will fight back. In some species, that's an important part of the mating dance."
Duncan resisted, afraid to face his own weakness. "I can do this myself. I don't need--"
"Yes, you do. For the sake of us all."
She came forward with a languid yet unsettling speed. He reached out to stop her, and she grasped his hand, using it as an anchor to pull herself toward him. She made a humming noise deep in her throat, one of the priming tones that played on a subconscious mind, activating an atavistic nervous system.
Duncan felt himself responding, becoming aroused. It had been so long. . . . But he pushed her away. "The Tleilaxu wanted me to do this to you. They designed it in me so that I could destroy you. It's too dangerous."
"You were meant to destroy an untrained waif from Rakis, one who had no defenses against you. And you were meant to topple a Bene Gesserit Breeding Mistress, far less experienced than I am. Now, if anyone in the universe can stand up against the great Duncan Idaho, it is me."
"You have the vanity of an Honored Matre."
As if lashing out in anger, Sheeana grasped the back of his head, dug her fingers into the wiry black hair, and pulled his face to hers. She kissed him savagely, pressing her soft breasts against his bare chest. Her fingers touched nerve clusters in his neck and back, triggering programmed responses. Duncan froze for an instant, paralyzed. Her desperate, hungry kiss became more gentle. Helplessly, Duncan responded--perhaps more than Sheeana had bargained for.
He remembered how all this had been triggered in him the first time the Honored Matre Murbella had attempted to enslave him. He had turned the tables on her using his own sexual abilities. That noose had strangled him for so many years. He couldn't let it happen again!
Sensing her danger now, Sheeana tried to push him away. Her hand struck his shoulder a sharp blow, but he caught it and knocked her backward. They both tumbled onto the already rumpled sheets of his bed, fighting, embracing. Their duel turned into aggressive lovemaking. Neither had any hint of a choice once those floodwaters were unleashed.
In numerous clinical training sessions on Chapterhouse, Duncan had instructed Sheeana in these selfsame methods, and she in turn had helped to polish uncounted Bene Gesserit males who were turned loose as sexual land mines against the Honored Matres. The havoc those men wrought had sent the whores into an even greater frenzy.
Duncan found himself using all of his powers to break her, just as she tried to break him. The two professional imprinters collided, using their mutual abilities in a tug-of-war. He fought back in the only way he knew how. A moan escaped his throat, and it formed a word, a name. "Murbella . . ."
Sheeana's spice-blue eyes flew open, burning into him even in the dimness. "Not Murbella. Murbella did not love you. You know this."
"Neither . . . do . . . you." He wrenched the words out as a counterpoint to his rhythm.
Sheeana caught at him, and he nearly lost himself in the powerful wave of her sexuality. He felt like a drowning man. Even his Mentat focus had faded to a blinding distraction. "If not love, Duncan, then duty. I am saving you. Saving you."
Afterward they lay together, panting and sweating, as exhausted as Miles Teg must have been after he put his body through its incredible acceleration. Duncan sensed that the razor thread within him had finally broken. His connection to Murbella, as tight and deadly as a strand of shigawire, no longer held his heart. He felt different now, a sensation that was both giddy freedom and lost d
rifting. Like two enormous Guild Heighliners caroming off of each other, he and Sheeana had intersected with inexorable force, and now they moved away from each other on separate courses.
He lay holding Sheeana, and she didn't speak. She didn't have to. Duncan knew that at last he was drained, and stunned . . . and cured.
We create history for ourselves, and we have a fondness for participating in grand epics.
--Bene Gesserit basic instruction,
Training Manual for Acolytes
T
hey were magnificent ships, thousands upon thousands of them lined up across a wine-dark sea. Overhead, a heavy grayness in the sky set an appropriate mood with brooding clouds of war. The tableau represented a fleet such as had never been gathered in all of history.
"Awe-inspiring, is it not, Daniel?" Smiling, the old woman stood on the weathered boards of the dock and looked across the imaginary waters at the antique-design vessels, sharp-prowed Greek war galleys with angry eyes painted on their prows. The triremes bristled with long oars to be pulled by hordes of slaves.
The old man was not so impressed, however. "I find your pretentious symbols tiresome, my Martyr. As I always have. Are you suggesting you have a face worthy of launching a thousand ships?"
The woman let out a dry chuckle. "I don't consider myself classically beautiful or handsome--or even particularly male or female, for that matter. But surely you can see how these events now are similar to the start of the epic Trojan War. Let us paint the appropriate picture to commemorate the event."
Of continuing concern to them, the one target they desperately sought--the wandering no-ship--had escaped yet again from the seeming certainty of a carefully laid trap. They still did not have the one thing the predictions said they needed.
With impatience and arrogance--decidedly human traits, though the old man would never admit that--he had decided to launch his great fleet anyway. It would take time to crush all the inhabited worlds of the Scattering and every planet of the Old Empire. By the time Kralizec neared its end, he was confident he would have what he needed. There was no logical reason to delay the expanded campaign.
