"Frank Herbert - Dune 3 - Children of Dune (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

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Children of Dune
Frank Herbert


Copyright 1976


Muad'Dib's teachings have become the playground of scholastics, of the superstitious and the
corrupt. He taught a balanced way of life, a philosophy with which a human can meet problems
arising from an ever-changing universe. He said humankind is still evolving, in a process which
will never end. He said this evolution moves on changing principles which are known only to
eternity. How can corrupted reasoning play with such an essence?
-Words of the Mentat Duncan Idaho

A spot of light appeared on the deep red rug which covered the raw rock of the cave floor. The
light glowed without apparent source, having its existence only on the red fabric surface woven of
spice fiber. A questing circle about two centimeters in diameter, it moved erratically -- now
elongated, now an oval. Encountering the deep green side of a bed, it leaped upward, folded itself
across the bed's surface.
Beneath the green covering lay a child with rusty hair, face still round with baby fat, a
generous mouth -- a figure lacking the lean sparseness of Fremen tradition, but not as water-fat
as an off-worlder. As the light passed across closed eyelids, the small figure stirred. The light
winked out.
Now there was only the sound of even breathing and, faint behind it, a reassuring drip-drip-
drip of water collecting in a catch basin from the windstill far above the cave.
Again the light appeared in the chamber -- slightly larger, a few lumens brighter. This time
there was a suggestion of source and movement to it: a hooded figure filled the arched doorway at
the chamber's edge and the light originated there. Once more the light flowed around the chamber,
testing, questing. There was a sense of menace in it, a restless dissatisfaction. It avoided the
sleeping child, paused on the gridded air inlet at an upper corner, probed a bulge in the green
and gold wall hangings which softened the enclosing rock.
Presently the light winked out. The hooded figure moved with a betraying swish of fabric, took
up a station at one side of the arched doorway. Anyone aware of the routine here in Sietch Tabr
would have suspected at once that this must be Stilgar, Naib of the Sietch, guardian of the
orphaned twins who would one day take up the mantle of their father, Paul Muad'Dib. Stilgar often
made night inspections of the twins' quarters, always going first to the chamber where Ghanima
slept and ending here in the adjoining room, where he could reassure himself that Leto was not
threatened.
I'm an old fool, Stilgar thought.
He fingered the cold surface of the light projector before restoring it to the loop in his
belt sash. The projector irritated him even while he depended upon it. The thing was a subtle
instrument of the Imperium, a device to detect the presence of large living bodies. It had shown
only the sleeping children in the royal bedchambers.
Stilgar knew his thoughts and emotions were like the light. He could not still a restless
inner projection. Some greater power controlled that movement. It projected him into this moment
where he sensed the accumulated peril. Here lay the magnet for dreams of grandeur throughout the
known universe. Here lay temporal riches, secular authority and that most powerful of all mystic
talismans: the divine authenticity of Muad'Dib's religious bequest. In these twins -- Leto and his