Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert

“I will not wear the medals that tell what I did for you when we were comrades. I will not be anything that says I am one of you. I wear only the uniform that announces that I am still the Bashar. Kill me if that is how far you will carry your disobedience.”

When most of the attacking force threw down their arms and came forward, some of their commanders bent the knee to their old Bashar and he remonstrated: “You never needed to bow to me or get on your knees! Your new leaders have taught you bad habits.”

Later, he told the rebels he shared some of their grievances. Cerbol had been badly misused. But he also warned them:

“One of the most dangerous things in the universe is an ignorant people with real grievances. That is nowhere near as dangerous, however, as an informed and intelligent society with grievances. The damage that vengeful intelligence can wreak, you cannot even imagine. The Tyrant would seem a benevolent father figure by comparison with what you were about to create!”

It was all true, of course, but in a Bene Gesserit context, and it helped little with what he was commanded to do to the Duncan Idaho ghola — creating mental and physical agony in an almost helpless victim.

Easiest to recall was the look in Duncan’s eyes. They did not change focus, but glared directly up into Teg’s face, even at the instant of the final screaming shout:

“Damn you, Leto! What are you doing?”

He called me Leto.

Teg limped backward two steps. His left leg tingled and ached where Duncan had struck it. Teg realized that he was panting and at the end of his reserves. He was much too old for such exertions and the things he had just done made him feel dirty. The reawakening procedure was thoroughly fixed in his awareness, though. He knew that gholas once had been awakened by conditioning them unconsciously to attempt murder on someone they loved. The ghola psyche, shattered and forced to reassemble, was always psychologically scarred. This new technique left the scars in the one who managed the process.

Slowly, moving against the outcry of muscles and nerves that had been stunned by agony, Duncan slid backward off the table and stood leaning against his chair, trembling and glaring at Teg.

Teg’s instructions said: “You must stand very quietly. Do not move. Let him look at you as he will.”

Teg stood unmoving as he had been instructed. Memory of the Cerbol Revolt left his mind: He knew what he had done then and now. In a way, the two times were similar. He had told the rebels no ultimate truths (if such existed); only enough to lure them back into the fold. Pain and its predictable consequences. “This is for your own good.”

Was it really good, what they did to this Duncan Idaho ghola?

Teg wondered what was occurring in Duncan’s consciousness. Teg had been told as much as was known about these moments, but he could see that the words were inadequate. Duncan’s eyes and face gave abundant evidence of internal turmoil — a hideous twisting of mouth and cheeks, the gaze darting this way and that.

Slowly, exquisite in its slowness, Duncan’s face relaxed. His body continued to tremble. He felt the throbbing of his body as a distant thing, aches and darting pains that had happened to someone else. He was here, though, in this immediate moment — whatever and wherever this was. His memories would not mesh. He felt suddenly out of place in flesh too young, not fitted to his pre-ghola existence. The darting and twisting of awareness was all internal now.

Teg’s instructors had said: “He will have ghola-imposed filters on his pre-ghola memories. Some of the original memories will come flooding back. Other recollections will return more slowly. There will be no meshing, though, until he recalls that original moment of death.” Bellonda had then given Teg the known details of that fatal moment.

“Sardaukar,” Duncan whispered. He looked around him at the Harkonnen symbols that permeated the no-globe. “The Emperor’s crack troops wearing Harkonnen uniforms!” A wolfish grin twisted his mouth. “How they must have hated that!”

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