AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Paul bent backward like a reed and let the Emperor's blade whistle past, within a centimeter of his neck. Young Paolo snickered. "That was just practice!" He held up the dagger, showing the rust-red stains. "I am one step ahead of you, for this knife is already blooded!"
"It's more your blood than mine," Paul said under his breath. He drove forward with the crysknife, weaving, making the blade dance.
The younger ghola responded by mirroring Paul's movements, as if the pair had an unconscious telepathic connection. He stabbed to the side, and Paul flowed in the other direction. Was this a form of prescience, Paul wondered, subconsciously foreseeing each blow, or did the two of them know and reproduce each other's fighting styles exactly? They had entirely different training, entirely different upbringings. But still . . .
Concentrating on the duel, Paul's hearing became a fuzz of static. At first he heard encouragement, gasps, shouts of concern from his mother and Chani, but he blocked everything out. Did he have the potential to become the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach that Omnius was searching for? Did he want to be? He had read the histories, knew the bloodshed and suffering that Paul Muad'Dib and Leto II had both caused as Kwisatz Haderachs. What would the machines try to accomplish by possessing an even stronger Kwisatz Haderach? Some locked-away part of Paul already had the ability to look where no one else could--into both feminine and masculine pasts. What other powers lie untapped within me? Do I dare find out? If I win this duel, what will the thinking machines demand of me afterward?
He felt like a gladiator on ancient Terra having to prove himself in an arena. And he had a fatal weakness: Omnius held Chani, Jessica, Duncan, and so many others as hostages. If Paul got his ghola memories back, his feelings for them would be even stronger.
Obviously, that was how Omnius intended to force Paul to cooperate, if he won this duel. His love for his companions would only intensify, and they would suffer because of him. Since the computer evermind had far more patience than any human, the machines could torture and kill these hostages with impunity, take cell scrapings and grow new gholas. Over and over! Perhaps Erasmus would bring back his sister Alia, his father the Duke, or Gurney, or Thufir. Kill them, resurrect them, and kill them again. Unless Paul Atreides, the Kwisatz Haderach, bowed to their demands, the thinking machines would make his life an unending hell. Or so they intended.
Now he understood the dilemma of his destiny. And again he saw himself dying in a pool of blood. Perhaps some things could not be changed. But if he was a true Kwisatz Haderach, he should be able to defeat such petty tactics.
He fought on with wild passion, driving himself into a sweaty frenzy. Paolo kicked at him with his feet and slashed with the Emperor's dagger. Paul dove, rolled, and the younger ghola pounced on him. The Emperor's blade drove down hard in what would have been a killing thrust, but Paul slipped to the side, barely in time.
The blade slashed his sleeve, cut a thin line of blood on his left shoulder, then clanged against the stone floor. Paolo, his wrist jolted by the sharp impact, barely maintained a grip on the hilt.
On the polished floor, Paul swept his feet sideways, getting them under his rival and kicking upward. He did have the advantage of being physically stronger than a twelve-year-old. Paul grabbed his counterpart's wrist and pulled himself to his feet, but Paolo locked his fingers around Paul's knife arm, preventing the crysknife from stabbing down. Paul pushed, using his leverage to maneuver them both back toward the shimmering lava fountain.
"Not very . . . innovative!" The younger ghola's breath rasped as he struggled, and Paul continued to drive him back. The heat from the fountain gushed in all directions. If he knocked Paolo into the incandescent metal, would he be killing himself--or saving himself?
Paul saw his opponent clearly and could not hate the other ghola. At the core, both of them were Paul Atreides. Paolo was not innately evil, but had been corrupted by terrible things that had been done to him, things he had been taught, not things done of his own volition. Paul did not let his sympathy for his rival weaken him. If he did, Paolo would not hesitate to kill him and claim victory. But Paul--because he was Paul--would fight with every ounce of his being to save the future of humanity.
Omnius and Erasmus observed without cheering for either fighter. They would accept whichever one proved victorious. Khrone's shadowed, olive-pit eyes held no emotion at all. The Baron was scowling. Paul didn't want to look toward Chani or his mother.
The roaring lava fountain dumped heat into the air. Paul's already sweaty body became slicker. Wiry Paolo used that to his advantage, squirmed, and Paul's grip began to slip. Suddenly, at the very verge of the fountain, the younger man allowed his knees to buckle.
Paul overcompensated, which threw him off balance. He kneed his opponent in the stomach, but young Paolo had untapped reserves. When Paul raised the crysknife in his sweat-slickened grip, Paolo brought his own hand up backward, using the jeweled hilt of his dagger to smash the base of Paul's knife hand. Tendons twitched in reflexive reaction. The crysknife dropped free, clattered on the edge of the fountain, and tumbled into the molten pool.
Gone.
With the force of dominating vision, stronger than just the knowledge of his own death, Paul realized what he should have known from the beginning: I am not the Kwisatz Haderach that Omnius wants. It isn't me!
Time seemed to slow down and freeze. Was this what Bashar Teg had experienced when he accelerated himself? But Paul Atreides could move no faster than the events around him. They held him captive and squeezed in on him like the steely embrace of Death.
Wearing a venomous grin, young Paolo swung the gold-hilted dagger around in a perfect arc and, with exquisite slowness, drove the point into Paul's side. He slipped the dagger between his opponent's ribs and kept pushing, shoving the deadly point through Paul's lung and up into his heart.
Then Paolo yanked the murderous weapon free, and time resumed its normal speed. From far away, Paul heard Chani screaming.
Blood gushed from his wound, and Paul stumbled against the base of the hot fountain. It was a mortal wound; there could be no denying it. The prescient voice in his head hammered at him to no purpose. It seemed to be mocking him. I am not the final Kwisatz Haderach!
He slithered to the floor like a broken doll, barely saw Chani and Jessica running toward him. Jessica had Yueh by the collar and was dragging the Suk doctor over to her bleeding son.
Paul had never known that one body could contain so much blood. With fading vision, he looked up and saw Paolo prancing victoriously, holding the dripping red dagger. "You knew I would kill you! You might as well have driven in the knife with your own hands!"
It was a perfect reproduction of his visions. He lay on the floor, dying as swiftly as his body would allow.
In the background he heard the Baron Harkonnen's boisterous laughter. The sound was intolerable, but Paul could do nothing to stop it.
When they pour in at once, my memories will be like a sandstorm--and just as destructive. Who can control the wind? If I am truly the God Emperor, then I can control it.
--GHOLA OF LETO II,
last preparatory assignment delivered to Bashar Miles Teg
Sand and worms poured out of the entrapped no-ship's hold into the carefully ordered machine metropolis. The writhing creatures plowed into the open streets like maddened Salusan bulls bursting from their pens. Beside Leto, watching the hold empty in a deafening rush, Sheeana opened her mouth, and her eyes went wide with surprise.
Through his strange connection to the worms, Leto II's mind surged outward with them into the sparkling city. Standing high above at the doorway to the immense cargo bay, he felt a wave of relief and freedom. Without a word to Sheeana, he dove into the sliding, flowing sand, following the worms in their wild exodus. He let the grit carry him, like a swimmer caught in an undertow being rapidly whisked out to sea.
"Leto! What are you doing? Stop!"
He could not have stopped to answer even if he had wanted to. The c
urrent of flowing powder sucked him downward--exactly where he wanted to be. Leto plunged under the sand, and his lungs somehow adapted to the dust, as did all of his senses. Like a sandworm he saw without eyes, and perceived the creatures ahead of him, as if he were looking at them through clear water. This was what he had been born to do, what he had died to do, ever so long ago.
Memories reverberated in him like echoes of the past--not a visceral recollection, but greater than the knowledge he had acquired by reading the Ithaca's archives. Those entries had been about another young man, another Leto II, but still himself. A thought surfaced: My skin is not my own. In those days, his body had been covered with interlinked sandtrout, their membranous bodies meshing with his soft flesh and nerves. They had imparted strength to him, enabling him to run like the wind.
Though still in human form, Leto II recalled some of the fantastic power, not from ghola memories but from the pearl of awareness that the original God Emperor had left within each worm descendant. They remembered, and Leto remembered with them.
Histories had been written by so many people who loathed him, who misunderstood what he had been forced to do. They decried the Tyrant's purported cruelty and inhumanity, his willingness to sacrifice everything for the extraordinary Golden Path. But none of the histories--not even his own testamentary journals--had recorded the joy and exuberance of a young man experiencing such unexpected and wondrous power. Leto remembered it all now.
