Dune [Frank Herbert's Dune Saga Collection: Books 1 - 6]
- Автор: Херберт Фрэнк
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: Penguin Publishing Group
- Жанр: Эпическое фэнтези
Электронная книга - «Dune [Frank Herbert's Dune Saga Collection: Books 1 - 6]». Краткое содержание книги:
*DUNE* IS SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE directed by Denis Villeneuve, starring Timothée Chalamet, Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Javier Bardem, Dave Bautista, Stellan Skarsgård, and Charlotte Rampling.
In the far future, on a remote planet, an epic adventure awaits. Here are the first six novels of Frank Herbert’s magnificent Dune saga—a triumph of the imagination and one of the bestselling science fiction series of all time.
The Dune Saga begins on the desert planet Arrakis with the story of the boy Paul Atreides—who would become known as Muad’Dib—and of a great family’s ambition to bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream....
Includes Books 1 - 6: DUNE • DUNE MESSIAH • CHILDREN OF DUNE • GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE • HERETICS OF DUNE • CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE
“Stilgar!” Paul shouted, waving an arm. “Over here!”
“Thanks to Shai-hulud,” Stilgar cried, running up to Paul. “You’re not . . .” In the sudden silence, Paul’s vision showed him Stilgar staring with an expression of agony at the ruined eyes of his friend and Emperor. “Oh, m’Lord,” Stilgar groaned. “Usul . . . Usul . . . Usul . . .”
“What of the stone burner?” one of the newcomers shouted.
“It’s ended,” Paul said, raising his voice. He gestured. “Get up there now and rescue the ones who were closest to it. Put up barriers. Lively now!” He turned back to Stilgar.
“Do you see, m’Lord?” Stilgar asked, wonder in his tone. “How can you see?”
For answer, Paul put a finger out to touch Stilgar’s cheek above the stillsuit mouthcap, felt tears. “You need give no moisture to me, old friend,” Paul said. “I am not dead.”
“But your eyes!”
“They’ve blinded my body, but not my vision,” Paul said. “Ah, Stil, I live in an apocalyptic dream. My steps fit into it so precisely that I fear most of all I will grow bored reliving the thing so exactly.”
“Usul, I don’t, I don’t . . .”
“Don’t try to understand it. Accept it. I am in the world beyond this world here. For me, they are the same. I need no hand to guide me. I see every movement all around me. I see every expression of your face. I have no eyes, yet I see.”
Stilgar shook his head sharply. “Sire, we must conceal your affliction from—”
“We hide it from no man,” Paul said.
“But the law . . .”
“We live by the Atreides Law now, Stil. The Fremen Law that the blind should be abandoned in the desert applies only to the blind. I am not blind. I live in the cycle of being where the war of good and evil has its arena. We are at a turning point in the succession of ages and we have our parts to play.”
In a sudden stillness, Paul heard one of the wounded being led past him. “It was terrible,” the man groaned, “a great fury of fire.”
“None of these men shall be taken into the desert,” Paul said. “You hear me, Stil?”
“I hear you, m’Lord.”
“They are to be fitted with new eyes at my expense.”
“It will be done, m’Lord.”
Paul, hearing the awe grow in Stilgar’s voice, said: “I will be at the Command ’thopter. Take charge here.”
“Yes, m’Lord.”
Paul stepped around Stilgar, strode down the street. His vision told him every movement, every irregularity beneath his feet, every face he encountered. He gave orders as he moved, pointing to men of his personal entourage, calling out names, summoning to himself the ones who represented the intimate apparatus of government. He could feel the terror grow behind him, the fearful whispers.
“His eyes!”
“But he looked right at you, called you by name!”
At the Command ’thopter, he deactivated his personal shield, reached into the machine and took the microphone from the hand of a startled communications officer, issued a swift string of orders, thrust the microphone back into the officer’s hand. Turning, Paul summoned a weapons specialist, one of the eager and brilliant new breed who remembered sietch life only dimly.
“They used a stone burner,” Paul said.
After the briefest pause, the man said: “So I was told, Sire.”
“You know what that means, of course.”
“The fuel could only have been atomic.”
Paul nodded, thinking of how this man’s mind must be racing. Atomics. The Great Convention prohibited such weapons. Discovery of the perpetrator would bring down the combined retributive assault of the Great Houses. Old feuds would be forgotten, discarded in the face of this threat and the ancient fears it aroused.
“It cannot have been manufactured without leaving some traces,” Paul said. “You will assemble the proper equipment and search out the place where the stone burner was made.”
“At once, Sire.” With one last fearful glance, the man sped away.
“M’Lord,” the communications officer ventured from behind him. “Your eyes . . .”
Paul turned, reached into the ’thopter, returned the command set to his personal band. “Call Chani,” he ordered. “Tell her . . . tell her I am alive and will be with her soon.”
Now the forces gather, Paul thought. And he noted how strong was the smell of fear in the perspiration all around.
He has gone from Alia,
The womb of heaven!
Holy, holy, holy!
Fire-sand leagues
Confront our Lord.
He can see
Without eyes!
A demon upon him!
Holy, holy, holy
Equation:
He solved for
Martyrdom!
—THE MOON FALLS DOWN
SONGS OF MUAD’DIB
After seven days of radiating fevered activity, the Keep took on an unnatural quiet. On this morning, there were people about, but they spoke in whispers, heads close together, and they walked softly. Some scurried with an oddly furtive gait. The sight of a guard detail coming in from the forecourt drew questioning looks and frowns at the noise which the newcomers brought with their tramping about and stacking of weapons. The newcomers caught the mood of the interior, though, and began moving in that furtive way.
Talk of the stone burner still floated around: “He said the fire had blue-green in it and a smell out of hell.”
“Elpa is a fool! He says he’ll commit suicide rather than take Tleilaxu eyes.”
“I don’t like talk of eyes.”
“Muad’Dib passed me and called me by name!”
“How does He see without eyes?”
“People are leaving, had you heard? There’s great fear. The Naibs say they’ll go to Sietch Makab for a Grand Council.”
“What’ve they done with the Panegyrist?”
“I saw them take him into the chamber where the Naibs are meeting. Imagine Korba a prisoner!”
Chani had arisen early, awakened by a stillness in the Keep. Awakening, she’d found Paul sitting beside her, his eyeless sockets aimed at some formless place beyond the far wall of their bedchamber. What the stone burner had done with its peculiar affinity for eye tissue, all that ruined flesh had been removed. Injections and unguents had saved the stronger flesh around the sockets, but she felt that the radiation had gone deeper.
Ravenous hunger seized her as she sat up. She fed on the food kept by the bedside—spicebread, a heavy cheese.
Paul gestured at the food. “Beloved, there was no way to spare you this. Believe me.”
Chani stilled a fit of trembling when he aimed those empty sockets at her. She’d given up asking him to explain. He spoke so oddly: “I was baptized in sand and it cost me the knack of believing. Who trades in faiths anymore? Who’ll buy? Who’ll sell?”
What could he mean by such words?
He refused even to consider Tleilaxu eyes, although he bought them with a lavish hand for the men who’d shared his affliction.
Hunger satisfied, Chani slipped from bed, glanced back at Paul, noted his tiredness. Grim lines framed his mouth. The dark hair stood up, mussed from a sleep that hadn’t healed. He appeared so saturnine and remote. The back and forth of waking and sleeping did nothing to change this. She forced herself to turn away, whispered: “My love . . . my love . . .”
He leaned over, pulled her back into the bed, kissed her cheeks. “Soon we’ll go back to our desert,” he whispered. “Only a few things remain to be done here.”
She trembled at the finality in his voice.
He tightened his arms around her, murmured: “Don’t fear me, my Sihaya. Forget mystery and accept love. There’s no mystery about love. It comes from life. Can’t you feel that?”