[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.It did not pause or return.When they felt certain they had not been detected, Teg once more led them upPatrin's memory-track."That was a searcher," Lucilla said."They are beginning to suspect.orPatrin.""Save your energy for walking," Teg snapped.She did not press him.They both knew Patrin was dead.Argument over this hadbeen exhausted.This Mentat goes deep, Lucilla told herself.Teg was the child of a Reverend Mother and that mother had trained him beyondthe permitted limits before the Sisterhood took him into their manipulativehands.The ghola was not the only one here with unknown resources.Their trail turned back and forth upon itself, a game track climbing a steephill through thick forest.Starlight did not penetrate the trees.Only theMentat's marvelous memory kept them on the path.Lucilla felt duff underfoot.She listened to Teg's movements, reading them toguide her feet.How silent Duncan is, she thought.How closed in upon himself.He obeyedorders.He followed where Teg led them.She sensed the quality of Duncan'sobedience.He kept his own counsel.Duncan obeyed because it suited him to doso -- for now.Schwangyu's rebellion had planted something wildly independentin the ghola.And what things of their own had the Tleilaxu planted in him?Teg stopped at a level spot beneath tall trees to regain his wind.Lucillacould hear him breathing deeply.This reminded her once more that the Mentatwas a very old man, far too old for these exertions.She spoke quietly:"Are you all right, Miles?""I'll tell you when I'm not." "How much farther?" Duncan asked."Only a short way now."Presently, he resumed his course through the night."We must hurry," he said."This saddle-back ridge is the last bit."Now that he had accepted the fact of Patrin's death, Teg's thoughts swung like acompass needle to Schwangyu and what she must be experiencing.Schwangyu wouldfeel her world falling in around her.The fugitives had been gone four nights!People who could elude a Reverend Mother this way might do anything! Of course,the fugitives probably were off-planet by now.A no-ship.But what if.Schwangyu's thoughts would be full of what-ifs.Patrin had been the fragile link but Patrin had been well trained in the removalof fragile links, trained by a master -- Miles Teg.Teg dashed dampness from his eyes with a quick shake of his head.Immediatenecessity required that core of internal honesty which he could not avoid.Teghad never been a good liar, not even to himself.Quite early in his training,he had realized that his mother and the others involved in his upbringing hadconditioned him to a deep sense of personal honesty.Adherence to a code of honor.The code itself, as he recognized its shape in him, attracted Teg's fascinatedattention.It began with recognition that humans were not created equal, thatthey possessed different inherited abilities and experienced different events intheir lives.This produced people of different accomplishments and differentworth.To obey this code, Teg realized early that he must place himself accurately intothe flow of observable hierarchies accepting that a moment might come when hecould evolve no further.The code's conditioning went deep.He could never find its ultimate roots.Itobviously was attached to something intrinsic to his humanity.It dictated withenormous power the limits of behavior permitted to those above as well as tothose below him in the hierarchical pyramid.The key token of exchange: loyalty.Loyalty went upward and downward, lodging wherever it found a deservingattachment.Such loyalties, Teg knew, were securely locked into him.He feltno doubts that Taraza would support him in everything except a situationdemanding that he be sacrificed to the survival of the Sisterhood.And that wasright in itself.That was where the loyalties of all of them eventually lodged.I am Taraza's Bashar.That is what the code says.And this was the code that had killed Patrin.I hope you suffered no pain, old friend.Once more, Teg paused under the trees.Taking his fighting knife from its bootsheath, he scratched a small mark in a tree beside him. "What are you doing?" Lucilla demanded
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]