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.Odrade rested her handlight on the floor near her right knee and let her fingersexplore the threshold beside that ancient summons.The stonework appearedunbroken to the eye but her fingers detected a tiny discontinuity.She pressedthe discontinuity, twisted, turned, changed the angle of pressure several timesand repeated her effort.Nothing.Sitting back on her heels, Odrade studied the situation."Here."The warning sense had grown even more acute.She could feel it as a pressure onher breathing.Withdrawing slightly, she pulled her light back and lay full length on the floorto stare narrowly along the base of the threshold.Here! Could she place atool there beside that word and lever the threshold? No.a tool was notindicated.This thing had the smell of the Tyrant, not of a Reverend Mother.She tried to push the threshold sideways.Nothing moved.Feeling the tensions and danger sense accentuated by frustration, Odrade stoodand kicked at the threshold beside the etched word.It moved! Something gratedroughly against sand over her head.Odrade dodged backward as sand cascaded onto the floor in front of her.A deeprumbling sound filled the tiny chamber.The stones shook under her feet.Thefloor tipped downward in front of her toward the doorway, opening a space underthe door and its wall.Once more, Odrade found herself precipitated forward and down into an unknown.Her light tumbled with her, its beam rolling over and over.She saw mounds ofdark reddish brown in front of her.Cinnamon filled her nostrils.She fell beside her light onto a soft mounding of melange.The opening throughwhich she had fallen lay out of reach some five meters overhead.She grabbed upher light.Its beam picked out wide stone steps cut into the rock beside theopening.Something written on the risers but she saw only that there was a wayout.Her first panic subsided, but the sense of danger left her almostbreathless, forcing the movements of her chest muscles.Left and right she sent the beam of her light into this place where she hadfallen.It was a long room directly beneath the passage she had taken from thegreat chamber.The entire length of it was piled with melange!Odrade probed upward with her light and saw why no searcher tapping on thatpassage floor overhead had detected this chamber.Criss-crossed rock bracingstransferred all strain deep into the stone walls.Anyone tapping overhead wouldget back the sounds of solid rock.Once more, Odrade looked at the melange around her.Even at today's tank-deflated prices, she knew she was standing on a treasure.This hoard wouldmeasure many long tons.Is that the danger?The warning sense within her remained just as acute as ever.The Tyrant'smelange was not what she should fear.The triumvirate would make an equitabledistribution of this lot and that would be the end of it.A bonus in the gholaproject.Another danger remained.She could not avoid the warning.Again, she sent the light beam along the mounded melange.Her attention wasdrawn to the strip of wall above the spice.More words! Still in Chakobsa,written with a cutter in a fine flowing script, there was another message:"A REVEREND MOTHER WILL READ MY WORDS!"Something cold settled in Odrade's guts.She moved to her right with the light,plowing through an empire's ransom in melange.There was more to the message:"I BEQUEATH TO YOU MY FEAR AND LONELINESS.TO YOU I GIVE THE CERTAINTY THAT THEBODY AND SOUL OF THE BENE GESSERIT WILL MEET THE SAME FATE AS ALL OTHER BODIESAND ALL OTHER SOULS."Another paragraph of the message beckoned to the right of this one.She plowedthrough the cloying melange and stopped to read."WHAT IS SURVIVAL IF YOU DO NOT SURVIVE WHOLE? ASK THE BENE TLEILAX THAT! WHATIF YOU NO LONGER HEAR THE MUSIC OF LIFE? MEMORIES ARE NOT ENOUGH UNLESS THEYCALL YOU TO NOBLE PURPOSE!"There was more of it on the narrow end wall of the long chamber.Odradestumbled through the melange and knelt to read:"WHY DID YOUR SISTERHOOD NOT BUILD THE GOLDEN PATH? YOU KNEW THE NECESSITY.YOUR FAILURE CONDEMNED ME, THE GOD EMPEROR, TO MILLENNIA OF PERSONAL DESPAIR [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]