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"Indeed. So for each of our gholas we'll tailor an individualized agony that leverages their own fears and weaknesses."
"How can sex break Yueh the way it broke the Bashar?" Garimi asked.
"Not the sex itself, but Yueh's resistance to it. He's terrified of remembering his past. If he believes we know how to unlock his memories, he'll fight us with everything he has. As he fights, I will apply my most potent procedures, and he'll spiral over the brink into complete madness."
Garimi shrugged. "If it doesn't work, we have other ways."
THE ROOM WAS dim and the shadows cloying, which made Yueh's terror more palpable. The chamber was devoid of furniture except for a padded mat on the floor, like those that the ghola children used during physical training sessions.
The witches had not explained what to expect. The young man knew from his studies that the process of regaining one's past was painful. He was not a strong man, nor was he particularly brave. Even so, the prospect of pain did not petrify him nearly so much as the dread of remembering.
The door slid open with a gentle hiss of lubricated metal gliding in its tracks. From the corridor, blinding light flowed in, much brighter than the glowpanels in his cell. It silhouetted a woman's figure--Sheeana? He turned to face her and could see only her outline, the sensual curves of her body no longer masked by flowing robes. When the door sealed behind her, his eyes adjusted to the more comfortable illumination.
When he saw that Sheeana was completely unclothed, his fear increased. "What is this?" His voice, torn by nervousness, came out as a squeak.
She stepped closer. "You will disrobe now."
Barely a teenager, Yueh swallowed. "Not until you explain what is going to happen to me."
She used the hurricane force of Bene Gesserit Voice. "You will disrobe now!"
In a spasmodic reaction, his arms and legs jerking, he tore off his clothes. Sheeana inspected him, running her eyes up and down his thin, naked body like a hawk assessing its prey. Yueh got the impression that she found him inadequate.
"Don't hurt me," he pleaded, and hated himself for saying it.
"Of course it will hurt, but the pain won't be anything I inflict upon you." She touched his shoulder. He felt an almost electric shock, but he was transfixed, unable to move. "Your own memories will do that."
"I don't want them back. I'll fight you."
"Fight all you wish. It will do you no good. We know how to awaken you."
Yueh closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He tried to turn away, but she grasped his arms to hold him still, then released her grip and began touching him. The delicate strokings felt like the line of heat left by a lighted match down his arm and across his chest. "Your memories are stored within your cells. In order to awaken them, I must awaken your body." She stroked him, and he shuddered, unable to draw away. "I shall teach your nerve endings to do things they've forgotten how to do." Another jolt, and he gasped.
She touched him again, and his knees buckled, exactly as she wanted. Sheeana pushed him toward the mat on the floor. "I need to wrench you into the full awareness of every chromosome in every cell."
"No." The word sounded incredibly weak to him.
As she pressed herself against him, letting warm skin ignite his perspiration, Yueh tunneled backward into himself, trying to flee. From all he had learned of his past, he found one thing with which to anchor his bravery. Wanna! His beloved Bene Gesserit wife, the weak link in his long chain of betrayals, and the strongest link in his original lifetime.
The evil Harkonnens had known that Wanna would be the key to breaking his Suk conditioning, and it had only worked--could only have worked--because Yueh loved her with all his heart. Bene Gesserits were not supposed to succumb to love, but he knew that she must have reciprocated.
He thought of her pictures in the archives, of all he had learned about her in his researches. "Oh, Wanna." He yearned for her in his mind, tried to latch onto her as a lifeline.
Sheeana stroked his waist, trailed her fingers lower and climbed on top of him. Yueh's muscles were completely out of his control. He couldn't move. Her lips vibrated against the skin of his shoulder, his neck. Sheeana was a skilled sexual imprinter. Her body was a weapon, and he was the target.
A flood of sensations nearly drove the archival image of Wanna from his mind, but Yueh fought against what Sheeana was making him feel. Instead, he focused on what he might have done in Wanna's loving embrace. Wanna.
As the rhythm of their lovemaking increased, real memories intruded on the information he had obtained through research. Yueh recalled those terrible moments after his wife had been seized by the Harkonnens, and saw images of the loathsome fat Baron, his thuggish nephew Rabban, the viper Feyd-Rautha, and the Mentat Piter de Vries, who had a laugh that sounded like vinegar.
Weak, helpless, and infuriated, he had been forced to watch them torture Wanna inside an isolated chamber. She was a Bene Gesserit; she could block her pain, could deflect her body's responses. But Yueh could not so easily shunt such things aside, no matter how hard he tried.
In his nightmare memory the Baron laughed, a rumbling basso sound. "See the little chamber she's in, Doctor? A toy with some very interesting possibilities." As the men watched the groggy and disoriented Wanna, she stood on weak knees, but upside-down within the booth. "We can convert gravity into a thing that depends entirely on perspective."
Rabban chuckled, a harsh release of noise. He operated artificial gravity controls in the small room, and suddenly Wanna fell with a thud to the floor. She managed to tuck her head and shoulders just enough to avoid breaking her neck. With the speed and fluidity of a serpent, Piter de Vries scurried forward carrying a pain amplifier. At the last moment, Rabban snatched it out of the Twisted Mentat's hands and applied it to Wanna's throat himself. She writhed with a jagged spasm of agony.
"Stop! Stop, I beg you!" Yueh cried.
"Oh, Doctor, Doctor--you know it can't possibly be that easy . . ." In the vision, the Baron folded his pudgy arms across his chest.
Rabban twisted the gravity controls again, and Wanna was thrown like a limp doll from wall to wall, smashing into the sides of the chamber. "When one is too lovely, something must be done to correct that condition."
My beautiful Wanna!
The memories were so vivid now, far more detailed than anything he had read in the Archives section. No mere documentation could have provided such precise clarity. . . . .
In a different, newly unlocked compartment of his brain, he lived another memory. He was artificially paralyzed, forced to watch during one of the Baron's drunken parties while Piter played a sparking pain amplifier over Wanna's suspended body. Each flash provoked a twitching response of agony from her. The other guests laughed at her pain and at his helpless misery.
When he was freed from his paralysis, Yueh trembled, drooled, and struggled. The Baron stood over him, a huge grin on his bloated face. He handed Yueh a projectile pistol. "As a Suk doctor, you should do everything possible to stop a patient from feeling pain. You know how to stop Wanna's pain, Doctor."
Unable to break his conditioning, Yueh shuddered and spasmed. He wanted nothing more than to do as the Baron demanded. "I . . . can't!"
"Of course you can. Choose a guest, any guest. I don't care which. See how amused they are by our little game?" Grasping Yueh's shaking wrists, he helped the doctor point his projectile weapon around the room. "But don't try any tricks, or we will make the torment last a great deal longer!"
He wished he could put Wanna out of her misery, killing her instead of letting the Harkonnens have their perverted fun. He saw her eyes, the spark of pain and hope, but Rabban stopped him. "Focus, Doctor. No mistakes."
Through blurred vision he made out numerous targets, and tried to concentrate on one, a tottering old nobleman, a semuta addict. That one had lived a long life, undoubtedly with considerable debauchery. But for a Suk doctor to kill--
He fired.
Overwhelmed by the horrific
scene now playing out in his head, Yueh paid no further attention to Sheeana's ministrations. His body was drenched with sweat, but less from sexual exertion than from the extreme psychological distress. He saw Sheeana appraising him. The memories were so clear to him that his entire body felt like a raw wound: Wanna in agony and the sharp, broken-crystal pain of how his Suk conditioning had been thwarted. It had happened thousands of years ago!
The years before that watershed occurrence, and the years afterward, extended outward, filling his mind, now fresh and hungry. As the relentless memories returned, so did more anguish and guilt, accompanied by a disgust with himself.
Yueh felt as if he was about to vomit. Tears poured down his cheeks.
