A woman said that. He could not remember the woman.
He tried to reach up and touch his hair but his hands would not obey. He remembered then that his hair had been bleached. Who did that? An old woman. His hair was no longer a cap of dark ringlets.
There was the Duke Leto staring at him in the doorway to the dining room on Caladan.
“We will eat now,” the Duke said. It was a royal command saved from arrogance by a faint grin that said: “Somebody had to say it.”
What is happening to my mind?
He remembered following Tormsa to the place where Tormsa said the no-ship would meet them.
It was a large building bulking in the night. There were several smaller outbuildings below the larger structure. They appeared to be occupied. Voices and machine sounds could be heard in them. No faces showed at the narrow windows. No door opened. Duncan smelled cooking as they passed the larger of the outbuildings. This reminded him that they had only eaten dry strips of leathery stuff that Tormsa called “travel food” that day.
They entered the dark building.
Light flared.
Tormsa’s eyes exploded in blood.
Darkness.
Duncan looked at a woman’s face. He had seen a face like this one before: a single tride taken from a longer holo sequence. Where was that? Where had he seen that? It was an almost oval face with just a small widening at the brow to mar its curved perfection.
She spoke: “My name is Murbella. You will not remember that but I share it now as I mark you. I have selected you.”
I do remember you, Murbella.
Green eyes set wide under arched brows gave her features a focal region that left chin and small mouth for later examination. The mouth was full-lipped and he knew it could become pouting in repose.
The green eyes stared into his eyes. How cold that look. The power in it.
Something touched his cheek.
He opened his eyes. This was no memory! This was happening to him. It was happening now!
Murbella! She had been here and she had left him. Now she was back. He remembered awakening naked on a soft surface . . . a sleeping pad. His hands recognized it. Murbella unclothed just above him, green eyes staring at him with a terrible intensity. She touched him simultaneously in many places. A soft humming issued from between her lips.
He felt the swift erection, painful in its rigidity.
No power of resistance remained in him. Her hands moved over his body. Her tongue. The humming! All around him, her mouth touching him. The nipples of her breasts grazed his cheeks, his chest. When he saw her eyes, he saw conscious design.
Murbella had returned and she was doing it once more!
Over her right shoulder, he glimpsed a wide plaz window — Lucilla and Burzmali behind that barrier. A dream? Burzmali pressed his palms against the plaz. Lucilla stood with folded arms, a look of mingled rage and curiosity on her face.
Murbella murmured in his right ear: “My hands are fire.”
Her body hid the faces behind the plaz. He felt the fire wherever she touched him.
Abruptly, the flame engulfed his mind. Hidden places within him came alive. He saw red capsules like a string of gleaming sausages passing before his eyes. He felt feverish. He was an engorged capsule, excitement flaring throughout his awareness. Those capsules! He knew them! They were himself . . . they were . . .
All of the Duncan Idahos, original and the serial gholas flowed into his mind. They were like bursting seedpods denying all other existence except themselves. He saw himself crushed beneath a great worm with a human face.
“Damn you, Leto!”
Crushed and crushed and crushed . . . time and again.
“Damn you! Damn you! Damn you! . . .”
He died under a Sardaukar sword. Pain exploded into a bright glare swallowed by darkness.
He died in a ‘thopter crash. He died under the knife of a Fish Speaker assassin. He died and died and died.
And he lived.
The memories flooded him until he wondered how he could hold them all. The sweetness of a newborn daughter held in his arms. The musky odors of a passionate mate. The cascade of flavors from a fine Danian wine. The panting exertions of the practice floor.