“I’m not the man in the image,” Gilbertus insisted. He stared calmly at the Salusan Sister.
“You’re lying, aren’t you?” she said.
“The fact that you have framed that as a question shows your uncertainty.” A small smile worked at the edges of his mouth.
“You’re probably the best liar I’ve ever seen, but you are lying. I hear it in your voice, a tremor so slight that no one but a Truthsayer would ever notice it. But it is there, nonetheless. And I see the soft glistening of your skin. Not perspiration, but a barely perceptible change on the surface of the epidermis. These things are even more apparent to me, Headmaster Albans, because I have watched recordings of you giving speeches and talking to your students — obtained by the Butlerian students in your midst. Your voice and skin were never like they are now, because you were not lying on those occasions.” She looked even more intently at him. “There is something in your eyes, too. Fear, perhaps.”
“I am not afraid of the truth,” Gilbertus said.
“Fear for the fate of your school, then,” she said. “Fear that Manford will destroy it because of your crimes.”
After a long, tense silence that seemed like a void, Gilbertus said, “Manford has promised he will not harm the school or my students. But perhaps you are right, Sister Woodra, perhaps I am still worried for their safety.”
“You are only worrying because of your true identity. You are the Gilbertus Albans from Corrin. You were the ward of the robot Erasmus. You are an enemy of humanity.”
“I am not an enemy of humanity,” he said, but pointedly did not deny the rest.
Manford stared. “This is not possible.” His gaze intensified, like a scalpel cutting away the Headmaster’s secrets, and he cut deep. “But I can see it is true.”
Gilbertus remained silent for a long moment, and then turned to the Butlerian leader with a solemn nod. “Yes, I am the man in the image, and I am more than one hundred eighty years old.”
Chapter 70 (Even an Emperor must)
Even an Emperor must earn respect before he is entitled to receive it.
— EMPEROR FAYKAN CORRINO I
When Taref arrived aboard the Imperial Barge, dressed in an approved maintenance uniform for servicing the FTL and Holtzman engines, the ghost of Manford Torondo accompanied him.
Not long ago, he had celebrated killing the Butlerian leader in Arrakis City, pleased to report his triumph to Directeur Venport. But afterward, Taref had suffered terrible, recurrent nightmares of the whizz-clack of the Maula pistol, the screams of the crowd, the legless body sprawled on the dusty street. Dead. The man’s skull had exploded, his blood and brains spraying in all directions.
Dead!
It was not possible that Manford could have survived. And yet he was back, and very much alive. The Butlerian leader said he was blessed by God and indestructible, and Taref had seen the proof of that claim. His entire view of the universe had shifted.
Life was hard and cheap in the desert, and Taref had been familiar with killing … though he had never done it in such a personal way before. Even all those people lost aboard the pilgrim ship and the other EsconTran spacefolders he had sent off into the depthless nowhere of the universe … those were just distant casualties. Now Directeur Venport wanted him to do the same thing to the Emperor’s ship. But this was personal, too — like killing Manford Torondo. Another important name and face, the leader of the Imperium, a man with so much power that he could simply annex the entire planet of Arrakis on a whim.
As the third son of a Naib, Taref had little status in his tribe, but he had always scorned status because it measured things he did not care about. Directeur Venport had offered him an escape from Arrakis — and now a return to it — which came with a price he was willing to pay. A price that was, in its own way, quite high. But one more mission and he would be free. Directeur Venport had promised to release him from any remaining obligations.
According to Venport’s orders, the Emperor of the Known Universe must be irrevocably lost on his journey home.
Taking his diagnostic tools, Taref worked in the engine room of the Imperial Barge with two other mechanics, workers from Arrakis City he had never seen before. They didn’t know about his special mission. Directeur Venport trusted only him, and he had impressed upon Taref how terribly dangerous, yet necessary, this mission was.
The ghost of Manford Torondo mocked him: “Once more you try to kill a great leader, and again you will fail, because God Himself does not wish it. You are a tool of God, not a tool of that evil man.”
“You cannot speak to me,” Taref muttered aloud. The hum of the resting engines drowned out his words. It was a large and complex engine compartment, crowded with both types of stardrives. The barge was practically empty, with the Emperor’s entourage gone as Taref spoke aloud in the emptiness. “You are not even truly dead.”
“Because you failed,” said the voice. It was not really a ghost, couldn’t be. It was just Taref’s conscience, his own imagination.
He went to the FTL and foldspace diagnostic panels, the latter of which looked similar to the EsconTran panels he had serviced and sabotaged on several ships at Junction Alpha. He ignored the voice as he selected his tools, made adjustments to one of the engine couplings, then altered a programming flow. Regardless of which engines the pilots chose to use when departing, the navigational calibration was now corrupted.
“I serve myself,” he said. “I make my own decisions.”
Manford’s presence found the comment amusing, and laughed inside Taref’s head. “No matter how strong you think you are, if you try to do something God does not wish, you will not succeed.”
Feeling a knot in his stomach, the young man reconsidered. He studied the engine control board, not wanting his conscience haunted by the Emperor’s ghost, in addition to the other one.
What did it all matter to him? What did a lowly desert man know, or care, about interplanetary politics? Before leaving his sietch, he’d never thought much about the Corrino Emperors, nor had he ever heard of Manford Torondo.
The Butlerian movement had nothing to do with the timeless ways of the desert, nor did Emperor Salvador and the politics of seizing the spice operations. Would Imperial control be any different from that of the offworld industrialists? Taref couldn’t understand Directeur Venport’s hunger for riches and power either. Once a person had everything, how could he keep wanting more?
Through all these thoughts, Taref decided he would no longer be a pawn, doing whatever he was ordered to do.
Anxious to get back to the purity of the desert, he packed up his tools, leaving his work only partially done, without the backup sabotage he customarily performed on each vessel. Even so, what he’d done should be enough to destroy the navigation system and send the ship careening wildly into deep space, with no way for the pilots to reach any inhabited world. Taref was the first to board the return shuttle. That was enough. He had one last message to send to Directeur Venport.
EMPEROR SALVADOR HAD made a string of poor decisions, and now he was asserting himself in a grand and irritating way. Josef could barely control his annoyance.
What might have been a simple expedition to the spice fields became an operation as complex and cumbersome as a planetary invasion. The preparations and sheer dithering made Josef want to scream, yet he maintained his smile through it all. It was one of the greatest challenges he had ever faced.