The training room was a reinforced concrete cube, illuminated by strips of yellowish light that whirred at the same frequency as my thoughts. Outside, Caladan's rain pounded against the walls, a constant reminder that we were trapped in a world of water.
Gurney Halleck moved like a caged animal. Scars, poetry, and contained violence.
"Point at the enemy, Paul!" roared Gurney, his voice echoing off the bare walls. "The shield repels the fast! It admits the slow!"
Paul, sweating, his hair plastered to his forehead, activated his Holtzman generator. The air around him distorted, glowing oily blue. He lunged forward, a swift thrust that was stopped by the CRACK of repulsive energy as it collided with Gurney's shield. Then he corrected, slowing his dagger's movement in the last microsecond and sliding the blade through the defense.
"Good," Gurney grunted, pulling the dagger away from Paul. "But hesitating is dying."
From the metal bench, I watched.
To them, the Holtzman shield was a marvel of defense. To me, with the technological knowledge of a civilization that had transcended matter, it was a primitive, almost offensive design.
I saw the force field equations floating in the air. It wasn't magic; it was a crude manipulation of subatomic forces. I saw the fluctuations in Gurney's belt generator. I saw the millisecond delay between detecting the impact and activating the field. An eternity.
"Your turn, Valerius," Gurney said, turning to face me. His smile vanished. It always did when he looked at me.
I stood up. I didn't activate my shield.
“Put on your shield, boy,” Gurney ordered, raising his inked training dagger.
“I don’t need it,” I said. My voice was flat, mechanical.
“In war, need is irrelevant. Survival is mandatory. Activate it!”
I did. The hum of the field surrounded my body. I felt the vibration in my teeth. My alien physiology rejected the sensation; my skin, thick and radiation-absorbing, felt the shield as a constant itch.
Gurney attacked.
It wasn’t a test attack. It was a swift sweep meant to teach me humility.
The world slowed down.
To Gurney, he was moving at breathtaking speed. To me, he was swimming in molasses. I saw the beads of sweat flying from his forehead in slow motion. I saw the tension in his muscles before the movement even happened.
I could have dodged it by moving at a speed that would have caused a sonic boom in the room. I could have struck him with such force that I would have disintegrated him and the wall behind him.
But I must pretend. I must be human. That is the torture.
I moved with the bare minimum of energy. A sideways step. Gurney's dagger sliced through the air where I had stood a fraction of a second before.
"Quick," Gurney murmured, pivoting on his heels. "But predictable."
He launched a series of thrusts. Left, right, low feint.
My analytical mind mapped out the trajectories before Gurney had even finished thinking them. Angle of attack: 34 degrees. Speed: 12 meters per second. Chance of impact: 0%.
I dodged everything. Without raising my hands. Just moving my torso and feet with pinpoint accuracy. There was no "art" in my movements, none of the fluid style of the Bene Gesserit school that Paul was learning. There was only mathematical efficiency. Absolute economy of movement.
Gurney grew frustrated. Frustration leads to mistakes.
He launched himself forward with all his weight, hoping to overwhelm me.
At that moment, technological knowledge gave me a solution that didn't require brute force.
I didn't need to strike "slowly" to penetrate his shield. I only needed to match the resonant frequency of his generator.
I extended my hand. My fingers vibrated imperceptibly, a controlled tremor at the molecular level that my mind calculated in nanoseconds.
I touched Gurney's shield.
It wasn't a strike. It was an intrusion of physical data.
My hand, vibrating in exact antiphase of Gurney's Holtzman field, passed through the blue barrier without any resistance, as if the shield didn't exist. There was no buzz of slow interaction. I simply canceled it out.
My fingers closed around Gurney's wrist.
Gurney's shield flickered violently, shifted to a furious red, and then, with a sound of shattering glass, the generator on his belt exploded. Black smoke billowed from the unit.
Gurney cried out in surprise, the sudden heat at his waist causing him to drop his dagger.
Silence.
Only the sound of the rain and Paul's ragged breathing.
Gurney glanced at his smoking generator, then at his wrist, where my fingers were still closed. I tightened slightly, just a little, and saw the real panic in his eyes as he felt his bone being held by a living hydraulic press.
I released him.
Duke Leto stood in the doorway. He had seen the end. He had seen me override the Empire's most fundamental technology with a touch of my fingers.
"Are you all right, Gurney?" Leto asked, but his eyes remained fixed on me.
"The... the generator failed, my Lord," Gurney said, rubbing his wrist, confused, searching for a logical explanation. "It must have been faulty. The boy... got lucky."
I knew he didn't believe me.
I walked toward the exit. As I passed Paul, he looked at me. Not with fear, but with scientific curiosity.
“How did you do that?” Paul whispered. “The shield didn’t stop you. You weren’t slow.”
I stopped. Knowledge pulsed in my head, showing me blueprints for weapons that could vaporize Caladan from orbit, engines that could bend space without spice. It was so hard being just a kid.
“The shield is a lie, Paul,” I whispered back, my voice sounding too old. “Everything they build is fragile. Only flesh lasts.”
I stepped out into the dark stone corridor.
My hands trembled. Not from exertion, but from restraint. With each passing day, the energy of the yellow sun, though faint through the clouds, accumulated in my cells. And technological knowledge kept expanding, rewriting my understanding of reality.
I needed a workshop. I needed to build something. He needed to release the pressure of knowing how the universe works and being trapped in a feudal society that fears machines.
If he didn't build something soon, he was going to end up breaking someone.