. . ."

"They believe that by risking death they pay the price of any violent behavior

against enemies of their own choosing. They have the invader mentality. Nunepi

does not believe himself responsible for anything done against aliens."

Idaho looked at the portal where the guards had taken Nunepi. "He tried and he

lost, m'Lord."

"But he cut himself loose from the restraints of the past and he objects to

paying the price."

"To his people, he's a patriot."

"And how does he see himself, Duncan'? As an instrument of history."

Idaho lowered his voice and leaned closer to Leto.

"How are you different, m'Lord?"

Leto chuckled. "Ahhh, Duncan, how I love your perceptiveness. You have observed

that I am the ultimate alien. Do you not wonder if I also can be a loser'?"

"The thought has crossed my mind."

"Even losers can shroud themselves in the proud mantle of `the past,' old

friend."

"Are you and Nunepi alike in that'?"

"Militant missionary religions can share this illusion of the `proud past,' but

few understand the ultimate peril to humankind-that false sense of freedom from

responsibility for your own actions."

"These are strange words, m'Lord. How do I take their meaning?"

"Their meaning is whatever speaks to you. Are you incapable of listening?"

"I have ears, m'Lord!"

"Do you now'? I cannot see them."

"Here, m'lord. Here and here!" Idaho pointed at his own ears as he spoke.

"But they do not hear. Therefore you have no ears. neither here nor hear."

"You make a joke of me, m'Lord?"

"To hear is to hear. That which exists cannot be made into itself for it already

exists. To be is to be."

"Your strange words. . ."

"Are but words. I spoke them. They are gone. No one heard them, therefore they

no longer exist. If they no longer exist, perhaps they can be made to exist

again and then perhaps someone will hear them."

"Why do you poke fun at me, m'Lord'?"

"I poke nothing at you except words. I do it without fear of offending because I

have learned that you have no ears."

"I don't understand you, m'Lord."

"That is the beginning of knowledge-the discovery of something we do not

understand."

Before Idaho could respond, Leto gave a hand signal to a nearby guard who waved

a hand in front of a crystalline control panel on the wall behind the God

Emperor's dais. A three-dimensional view of Nunepi's punishment appeared in the

center of the chamber.Idaho stepped down to the floor of the chamber and peered

closely at the scene. It was shown from a slight elevation looking down on the

plaza, and was complete with sounds of the swelling throng who had run to the

scene at the first signs of excitement. Nunepi was bound to two legs of a

tripod, his feet spread wide, his arms tied together above him almost at the

apex of the tripod. His clothing had been ripped from his body and lay around

him in rags. A bulky, masked Fish Speaker stood nearby holding an improvised

whip fashioned of elacca rope which had been frayed at the end into wire-like

fine strands. Idaho thought he recognized the masked woman as the Friend of his

first interview.

At a signal from a Guard officer, the masked Fish Speaker stepped forward and

brought the elacca whip down in a slashing arc onto Nunepi's exposed back.

Idaho winced. The crowd gasped.

Welts appeared where the whip had struck, but Nunepi remained silent.

Again, the whip descended. Blood betrayed the lines of this second stroke.

Once more, the whip flayed Nunepi's back. More blood appeared.

Leto felt remote sadness. Nayla is too ardent, he thought. She will kill him and

that will cause problems.

"Duncan!" Leto called.

Idaho turned from his fascinated examination of the projected scene just as a

shout lifted from the crowd-response to a particularly bloody stroke.

"Send someone to stop the flogging after twenty lashes,"' Leto said. "Have it

announced that the magnanimity of the God Emperor has reduced the punishment."

Idaho raised a hand to one of the guards, who nodded and ran from the chamber.

"Come here, Duncan," Leto said.

Still smarting under what he believed was Leto's poking fun at him, Idaho

returned to Leto's side.

"Whatever I do," Leto said, "it is to teach a lesson."

Idaho rigidly willed himself not to look back at the scene of Nunepi's

punishment. Was that the sound of Nunepi groaning? The shouts of the crowd

pierced Idaho. He stared up into Leto's eyes.

"There is a question in your mind," Leto said.

"Many questions, m'Lord."

"Speak them."

"What is the lesson in that fool's punishment? What do we say when asked?"

"We say that no one is permitted to blaspheme against the God Emperor."

"A bloody lesson, m'Lord."

"Not as bloody as some I've taught."

Idaho shook his head from side to side in obvious dismay. "Nothing good's going

to come of this!"

"Precisely!"

===

Safaris through ancestral memories teach me many things. The patterns, ahhh, the

patterns Liberal bigots are the ones who trouble me most. I distrust the

extremes. Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over

any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It's true! Liberal

governments always develop into aristocracies The bureaucracies betray the true

intent of people who form such governments. Right from the first, the little

people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens

found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies. Of course,

all bureaucracies follow this pattern. but what a hypocrisy to find this even

under a communized banner Ahhh, well, if patterns teach me anything it's that

patterns are repeated. My oppressions. by and large, are no worse than any of

the others and, at least. I teach a new lesson.

-The Stolen Journals

T was well into the darkness of Audience Day before Leto could meet with the

Bene Gesserit delegation. Moneo had prepared the Reverend Mothers for the delay,

repeating the God Emperor's reassurances.

Reporting back to his Emperor, Moneo had said: "They expect a rich reward."

"We shall see," Leto had said. "We shall see. Now, tell me what it was the

Duncan demanded of you as you entered."

"He wished to know if you had ever before had someone flogged."

"And you replied?"

"That there was no record of, nor had I ever before witnessed, such a

punishment."

"His response?"

"This is not Atreides."

"Does he think I'm insane?"

"He did not say that."

"There was more to your encounter. What else troubles our new Duncan?"

"He has met the Ixian Ambassador, Lord. He find Hwi Noree attractive. He

inquired of. . ."

"That must be prevented, Moneo! I trust you to raise barriers against any

liaison between the Duncan and Hwi."

"My Lord commands."

"Indeed I do! Go now and prepare for our meeting with the women of the Bene

Gesserit. I will receive them at False Sietch."

"Lord, is there significance in this choice of a meeting place?"

"A whim. On your way out, tell the Duncan he may take out a troop of guards and

scour the City for trouble."

Waiting for the Bene Gesserit delegation at False Sietch, Leto reviewed this

exchange, finding some amusement in it. He could imagine the reactions through

the Festival City at the approach of a disturbed Duncan Idaho in command of a

Fish Speaker troop.

Like the quick silence of frogs when a predator comes.

Now that he was in False Sietch, Leto found himself pleased by the choice. A

free-form building of irregular domes at the edge of Onn, False Sietch was

almost a kilometer across. It had been the first abode of the Museum Fremen and

now was their school, its corridors and chambers patrolled by alert Fish

Speakers.

The reception hall where Leto waited, an oval about two hundred meters in its

long dimension, was illuminated by giant glowglobes which floated in blue-green

isolation some thirty meters above the floor. The light muted the dull browns

and tans of the imitation stone from which the entire structure had been

fashioned. Leto waited on a low ledge at one end of the

chamber, looking outward through a half-circle window longer than his body. The

opening, four stories above the ground, framed a view which included a remnant

of the ancient Shield Wall preserved for its cliff-side caves where Atreides

troops had once been slaughtered by Harkonnen attackers. The frosty light of

First Moon silvered the cliff's outlines. Fires dotted the cliff-side, the

flames exposed where no Fremen would have dared betray his presence. The fires

winked at Leto as people passed in front of them-Museum Fremen exercising their

right to occupy the sacred precincts.

Museum Fremen! Leto thought.

'They were such narrow thinkers with near horizons.

But why should I object? They are what l made them.

Leto heard the Bene Gesserit delegation then. They chanted as they approached, a

heavy sound all a-jostle with vowels.

Moneo preceded them with a guard detail which took up position on Leto's ledge.

Moneo stood on the chamber floor just below Leto's face, glanced at Leto. turned

to the open hall.

The women entered in a double file, ten of them led by two Reverend Mothers in

traditional black robes.

"That is Anteac on the left, Luyseyal on the right," Moneo said.

The names recalled for Leto the earlier words about the Reverend Mothers brought

in by Moneo, agitated and distrustful. Moneo did not like the witches.

"They're both Truthsayers," Moneo had said. "Anteac is much older than Luyseyal,

but the latter is reputed to be the best Truthsayer the Bene Gesserit have. You

may note that Anteac has a scar on her forehead whose origin we have been unable

to discover. Luyseyal has red hair and appears remarkably young for one of her

reputation."

As he watched the Reverend Mothers approach with their entourage, Leto felt the

quick surge of his memories. The women wore their hoods forward, shrouding their

faces. The attendants and acolytes walked at a respectful distance behind . . .

it was all of a piece. Some patterns did not change. These women might have been

entering a real sietch with real Fremen here to honor them.

Their heads know what their bodies deny, he thought.

Leto's penetrating vision saw the subservient caution in their eyes, but they

strode up the long chamber like people confident of their religious power.

It pleased Leto to think that the Bene Gesserit possessed only such powers as he

permitted. The reasons for this indulgence were clear to him. Of all the people

in his Empire, Reverend Mothers were most like him-limited to the memories of

only their female ancestors and the collateral female identities of their

inheritance ritual-still, each of them did exist as somewhat of an integrated

mob.

The Reverend Mothers came to a stop at the required ten paces from Leto's ledge.

The entourage spread out on each side.

It amused Leto to greet such delegations in the voice and persona of his

grandmother, Jessica. The Bene Gesserit had come to expect this and he did not

disappoint them.

"Welcome, Sisters," he said. The voice was a smooth contralto, definitely

Jessica's controlled feminine tones with just a hint of mockery-a voice recorded

and often studied in the Sisterhood's Chapter House.

As he spoke, Leto sensed menace. Reverend Mothers were never pleased when he

greeted them this way, but the reaction here carried different undertones.

Moneo, too, sensed it. He raised n finger and the guards moved closer to Leto.

Anteac spoke first: "Lord, we watched that display in the plaza this morning.

What do you gain by such antics?"

So that's the tone we wish to set, he thought.

Speaking in his own voice, he said: "You are temporarily in my good graces.

Would you change that?"

"Lord," Anteac said, "we are shocked that you could thus punish an Ambassador.

We do not understand what you gain by this."

"I gain nothing. I am diminishes:."

Luyseyal spoke up: "This can only reinforce thoughts of oppression."

"I wonder why so few ever thought of the Bene Gesserit as oppressors?" Leto

asked.

Anteac spoke to her companion: "If it pleases the God Emperor to inform us, he

will do so. Let us get to the purposes of our Embassy."

Leto smiled. "The two of you can come closer. Leave your attendants and

approach."

Moneo stepped two paces to his right as the Reverend Mothers moved in

characteristic silent gliding to within three paces of the ledge.

"It's almost as though they had no feet:" Moneo had once complained.

Recalling this, Leto observed how carefully Moneo watched the two women. They

were menacing, but Moneo dared not object to their nearness. The God Emperor had

ordered it; thus it would be.

Leto lifted his attention to the attendants waiting where the Bene Gesserit

entourage had first stopped. The acolytes wore hoodless black gowns. He saw tiny

clues to forbidden rituals about them-an amulet, a small trinket, a colorful

corner of a kerchief so arranged that more color might be flashed carefully.

Leto knew that the Reverend Mothers allowed this because they no longer could

share the spice as once they had.

Ritual substitutes.

There were significant changes across the past ten years. A new parsimony had

entered the Sisterhood's thinking.

They are coming out, Leto told himself. The old, old mysteries are still here.

The ancient patterns had lain dormant in the Bene Gesserit memories for all of

those millennia.

Now, they emerge. I must warn my Fish Speakers.

He returned his attention to the Reverend Mothers.

"You have requests?"

"What is it like to be you'?" Luyseyal asked.

Leto blinked. That was an interesting attack. They had not tried it in more than

a generation. Well . . . why not?

"Sometimes my dreams are blocked off and redirected into strange places," he

said. "If my cosmic memories are a web, as you two certainly know, then think

about the dimensions of my web and where such memories and dreams might lead."

"You speak of our certain knowledge," Anteac said, "Why can't we join forces at

last'? We are more alike than we are different."

"I would sooner link myself to those degenerate Great Houses bewailing their

lost spice riches'."

Anteac held herself still, but Luyseyal pointed a finger at Leto. "We offer

community!"

"And I insist on conflict?"

Anteac stirred, then: "It is said that there is a principle of conflict which

originated with the single cell and has never deteriorated."

"Some things remain incompatible," Leto agreed.

"Then how does our Sisterhood maintain its community?" Luyseyal demanded.

Leto hardened his voice. "As you well know, the secret of community lies in

suppression of the incompatible."

"There can be enormous value in cooperation," Anteac said.

"To you, not to me."

Anteac contrived a sigh. "Then, Lord, will you tell us about the physical

changes in your person?"

"Someone besides yourself should know about and record such things," Luyseyal

said.

"In case something dreadful should happen to me?" Leto asked.

"Lord!" Anteac protested. "We do not. .."

"You dissect me with words when you would prefer sharper instruments," Leto

said. "Hypocrisy offends me."

"We protest, Lord," Anteac said.

"Indeed you do. I hear you."

Luyseyal crept a few millimeters closer to the ledge, bringing a sharp stare

from Moneo, who glanced up at Leto then. Moneo's expression demanded action, but

Leto ignored him, curious now about Luyseyal's intentions. The sense of menace

was centered in the red-haired one.

What is she? Leto wondered. Could she be a Face Dancer, after all?

No. None of the telltale signs were there. No. Luyseyal presented an elaborately

relaxed appearance, not even a little twist of her features to test the God

Emperor's powers of observation.

"Will you not tell us about your physical changes, Lord?" Anteac asked.

Diversion! Leto thought.

"My brain grows enormous," he said. "Most of the human skull has dissolved away.

There are no severe limits to the growth of my cortex and its attendant nervous

system."

Moneo darted a startled glance at Leto. Why was the God Emperor giving away such

vital information? These two would trade it.

But both women were obviously fascinated by this revelation, hesitating in

whatever plan they had evolved.

"Does your brain have a center?" Luyseyal asked.

"I am the center," Leto said.

"A location?" Anteac asked. She gestured vaguely at him. Luyseyal glided a few

millimeters closer to the ledge.

"What value do you place on the things I reveal to you?" Leto asked.

The two women betrayed no change of expression, which was betrayal enough by

itself. A smile flirted across Leto's lips.

"The marketplace has captured you," he said. "Even the Bene Gesserit has been

infected by the suk mentality."

"We do not deserve that accusation,-" Anteac said.

"But you do. The suk mentality dominates my Empire. The uses of the market have

only been sharpened and amplified by the demands of our times. We have all

become traders."

"Even you, Lord?" Luyseyal asked.

"You tempt my wrath," he said. "You're a specialist in that, aren't you?"

"Lord?" Luyseyal's voice was calm, but overly controlled.

"Specialists are not to be trusted," Leto said. "Specialists are masters of

exclusion, experts in the narrow."

"We hope to be architects of a better future." Anteac said.

"Better than what?" Leto asked.

Luyseyal eased herself a fractional pace closer to Leto.

"We hope to set our standards by your judgment, Lord," Anteac said.

"But you would be architects. Would you build higher walls? Never forget,

Sisters, that I know you. You are efficient purveyors of blinders."

"Life continues, Lord," Anteac said,

"Indeed? And so does the universe."

Luyseyal eased herself a bit closer, ignoring the fixity of Moneo's attention.

Leto smelled it then and almost laughed aloud.

Spice-essence!

They had brought some spice-essence. They knew the old stories about sandworms

and spice-essence, of course. Luyseyal carried it. She thought of it as a

specific poison for sandworms. That was obvious. Bene Gesserit records and the

Oral History agreed on this. The essence shattered the worm, precipitating its

dissolution and resulting (eventually) in sandtrout which would produce more

sandworms etcetera, etcetera, etcetera . . .

"There is another change in me that you should know about," Leto said. "I am not

yet sandworm, not fully. Think of me as something closer to a colony creature

with sensory alterations."

Luyseyal's left hand moved almost imperceptibly toward

a fold in her gown. Moneo saw it and looked to Leto for instructions, but Leto

only returned the hooded glare of Luyseyal's eyes.

"There have been fads in smells," Leto said.

Luyseyal's hand hesitated.

"Perfumes and essences," he said. " I remember them all, even the cults of the

non-smells are mine. People have used underarm sprays and crotch sprays to mask

their natural odors. Did you know that? Of course you knew it!"

Anteac's gaze moved toward Luyseyal.

Neither woman dared speak.

"People knew instinctively that their pheromones betrayed them," Leto said.

The women stood immobile. They heard him. Of all his people, Reverend Mothers

were best equipped to understand his hidden message.

"You'd like to mine me for my riches of memory," Leto said, his voice accusing.

"We are jealous, Lord," Luyseyal confessed.

"You have misread the history of spice-essence," Leto said. "Sandtrout sense it

only as water."

"It was a test, Lord," Anteac said. "That is all."

"You would test me?"

"Blame our curiosity, Lord," Anteac said.

"I, too, am curious. Put your spice-essence on the ledge beside Moneo. I will

keep it."

Slowly, demonstrating by the steadiness of her movements that she intended no

attack, Luyseyal reached beneath her gown and removed a small vial which

glistened with an inner blue radiance. She placed the vial gently on the ledge.

Not by any sign did she indicate that she might try something desperate.

"Truthsayer, indeed," Leto said.

She favored him with a faint grimace which might have been a smile, then

withdrew to Anteac's side.

"Where did you get the spice-essence?" Leto asked.

"We bought it from smugglers," Anteac said.

"There've been no smugglers for almost twenty-five hundred years."

"Waste not, want not," Anteac said.

" I see. And now you must reevaluate what you think of as your own patience, is

that not so?"

"We have been watching the evolution of your body, Lord," Anteac said. "We

thought..." She permitted herself a small

shrug, the level of gesture warranted for use with a Sister and not given

lightly.

Leto pursed his lips in response. "I cannot shrug," he said.

"Will you punish us?" Luyseyal asked.

"For amusing me?"

Luyseyal glanced at the vial on the ledge.

"I swore to reward you," Leto said. " shall."

"We would prefer to protect you in our community, Lord," Anteac said.

"Do not seek too great a reward," he said.

Anteac nodded. "You deal with the lxians, Lord. We have reason to believe they

may venture against you."

"I fear them no more than I fear you."

"Surely you've heard what the lxians are doing," Luyseyal said.

"Moneo brings me an occasional copy of a message between persons or groups in my

Empire. I hear many stories."

"We speak of a new Abomination, Lord"' Anteac said.

"You think the lxians can produce an artificial intelligence?" he asked.

"Conscious the way you are conscious?"

"We fear it, Lord," Anteac said.

"You would have me believe that the Butlerian Jihad survives among the

Sisterhood?"

"We do not trust the unknown which can arise from imaginative technology,"

Anteac said.

Luyseyal leaned toward him. "The lxians boast that their machine will transcend

Time in the way that you do it, Lord."

"And the Guild says there's Time-chaos around the lxians,'* Leto mocked. "Are we

to fear all creation, then?"

Anteac drew herself up stiffly.

" I speak truth with you two," Leto said. " I recognize your abilities. Will you

not recognize mine?"

Luyseyal gave him a curt nod. "Tleilax and Ix make alliance with the Guild and

seek our full cooperation."

"And you fear Ix the most?"

"We fear anything we do not control," Anteac said.

"And you do not control me."

"Without you, people would need us!" Anteac said.

"Truth at last!" Leto said. "You conic to me as your Oracle and you ask me to

put your fears to rest."

Anteac's voice was frigidly controlled. "Will Ix make a mechanical brain?"

"A brain`? Of course not!"

Luyseyal appeared to relax, but Anteac remained unmoving. She was not satisfied

with the Oracle.

Why is it that foolishness repeats itself with such monotonous precision? Leto

wondered. His memories offered up countless scenes to match this one-caverns,

priests and priestesses caught up in holy ecstasy, portentous voices delivering

dangerous prophecies through the smoke of holy narcotics.

He glanced down at the iridescent vial on the ledge beside Moneo. What was the

current value of that thing`? Enormous. It was the essence. Concentrated wealth

concentrated.

"You have already paid the Oracle," he said. "It amuses me to give you full

value."

How alert the women became!

"Hear me!" he said. "What you fear is not what you fear."

Leto liked the sound of that. Sufficiently portentous for any Oracle. Anteac and

Luyseyal stared up at him, dutiful supplicants. Behind them, an acolyte cleared

her throat.

That one will be identified and reprimanded later, Leto thought.

Anteac had now had sufficient time to ruminate on Leto's words. She said: "An

obscure truth is not the truth."

"But I have directed your attention correctly," Leto said.

"Are you telling us not to fear the machine?" Luyseyal asked.

"You have the power of reason.," he said. "Why come begging to me?"

"But we do not have your powers," Anteac said.

"You complain then that you do not sense the gossamer waves of Time. You do not

sense my continuum. And you fear a mere machine!"

"Then you will not answer us," Anteac said.

"Do not make the mistake of thinking me ignorant about your Sisterhood's ways,"

he said. "You are alive. Your senses are exquisitely tuned. I do not stop this,

nor should you."

"But the lxians play with automation!" Anteac protested.

"Discrete pieces, finite bits linked one to another," he agreed. "Once set in

motion, what is to stop it?"

Luyseyal discarded all pretense of Bene Gesserit self-control, a fine comment on

her recognition of Leto's powers. Her voice almost screeched: "Do you know what

the lxians boast? That their machine will predict your actions!"

"Why should I fear that? The closer they come to me, the

more they must be my allies. They cannot conquer me, but I can conquer them."

Anteac made to speak but stopped when Luyseyal touched her arm.

"Are you already allied with Ix?" Luyseyal asked. "We hear that you conferred

overlong with their new Ambassador, this Hwi Noree."

"I have no allies," he said. "Only servants, students and enemies."

"And you do not fear the lxians' machine?" Anteac insisted.

"Is automation synonymous with conscious intelligence?" he asked.

Anteac's eyes went wide and filmy as she withdrew into her memories. Leto found

himself caught by fascination with what she must be encountering there within

her own internal mob.

We share some of those memories, he thought.

Leto felt then the seductive attraction of community with Reverend Mothers. It

would be so familiar, so supportive. . . and so deadly. Anteac was trying to

lure him once more.

She spoke: "The machine cannot anticipate every problem of importance to humans.

It is the difference between serial bits and an unbroken continuum. We have the

one; machines are confined to the other."

"You still have the power of reason," he said.

"Share!" Luyseyal said. It was a command to Anteac and it revealed with sharp

abruptness who really dominated this pair-the younger over the older.

Exquisite, Leto thought.

"Intelligence adapts," Anteac said.

Parsimonious with her words, too, Leto thought, hiding his amusement.

"Intelligence creates," Leto said. "That means you must deal with responses

never before imagined. You must confront the new."

"Such as the possibility of the Ixian Machine," Anteac said. It was not a

question.

"Isn't it interesting," Leto asked, "that being a superb Reverend Mother is not

enough?"

His acute senses detected the sudden fearful tightening in both of the women.

Truthsayers, indeed!

"You are right to fear me," he said. Raising his voice, he demanded: "How do you

know you're even alive?"

As Moneo had done so many times, they heard in his voice the deadly consequences

of failure to answer him correctly. It fascinated Leto that both women glanced

at Moneo before either responded.

"I am the mirror of myself," Luyseyal said, a pat Bene Gesserit answer which

Leto found offensive.

"I don't need pre-set tools to deal with my human problems." Anteac said. "Your

question is sophomoric`."

"Hah, hah!" Leto laughed. "How would you like to quit the Bene Gesserit and join

me'?"

He could see her consider and then reject the invitation, but she did not hide

her amusement.

Leto looked at the puzzled Luyseyal. "If it falls outside your yardsticks, then

you are engaged with intelligence, not with automation," he said. And he

thought: That Luyseyal will ill newer again dominate old Anteac.

Luyseyal was angry now and not bothering to conceal it. She said: "The lxians

are rumored to have provided you with machines that simulate human thinking. If

you have such a low opinion of them, why. . ."

"She should not be let out of the Chapter House without a guardian," Leto said,

addressing Anteac. "Is she afraid to address her own memories?"

Luyseyal paled, but remained silent.

Leto studied her coldly. "Our ancestors' long unconscious relationship with

machines has taught us something, don't you think?"

Luyseyal merely glared at him, not ready yet to risk death through open defiance

of the God Emperor.

"Would you say we at least know the attraction of machines'?" Leto asked.

Luyseyal nodded.

"A well-maintained machine can be more reliable than a human servant," Leto

said. "We can trust machines not to indulge in emotional distractions."

Luyseyal found her voice. "Does this mean you intend to remove the Butlerian

prohibition against abominable machines?"

"I swear to you," Leto said, speaking in his icy voice of disdain, "that if you

display further such stupidity, I will have you publicly executed. I am not your

Oracle!"

Luyseyal opened her mouth and closed it without speaking.

Anteac touched her companion's arm, sending a quick

tremor through Luyseyal's body. Anteac spoke softly in a exquisite demonstration

of Voice: "Our God Emperor will never openly defy the proscriptions of the

Butlerian Jihad."

Leto smiled at her, a gentle commendation. It was such a pleasure to see a

professional performing at her best.

"That should be obvious to any conscious intelligence," he said. "There are

limits of my own choosing, places where I will not interfere."

He could see both women absorbing the multi-pronged thrust of his words,

weighing the possible meanings and intents. Was the God Emperor distracting

them, focusing their attention on the lxians while he maneuvered elsewhere? Was

he telling the Bene Gesserit that the time had come to choose sides against the

lxians? Was it possible his words had no more than their surface motivations?

Whatever his reasons, they could not be ignored. He was undoubtedly the most

devious creature the universe had ever spawned.Leto scowled at Luyseyal, knowing

he could only add to their confusion. "I point out to you, Marcus Claire

Luyseyal, a lesson from past over-machined societies which you appear not to

have learned. The devices themselves condition the users to employ each other

the way they employ machines."

He turned his attention to Moneo. "Moneo?"

"I see him, Lord."

Moneo craned his neck to peer over the Bene Gesserit entourage. Duncan Idaho had

entered the far portal, and strode across the open floor of the chamber toward

Leto. Moneo did not relax his wariness, his distrust of the Bene Gesserit, but

he recognized the nature of Leto's lecture. He is testing, always testing.

Anteac cleared her throat. "Lord, what of our reward?"

"You are brave," Leto said. "No doubt that's why you were chosen for this

Embassy. Very well, for the next decade I will continue your spice allotment at

its present level. As for the rest, I will ignore what you really intended with

the spice essence. Am I not generous?"

"Most generous, Lord," Anteac said, and there was not the slightest hint of

bitterness in her voice.

Duncan Idaho brushed past the women then and stopped beside Moneo to peer up at

Leto. "M'Lord, there's. . ." He broke off and glanced at the two Reverend

Mothers.

"Speak openly," Leto commanded.

"Yes, m'Lord." There was reluctance in him, but he obeyed.

"We were attacked at the southeast edge of the City, a distraction I believe

because there now are reports of more violence in the City and in the Forbidden

Forest-many scattered raiding parties."

"They are hunting my wolves," Leto said. "In the forest and in the City, they

are hunting my wolves."

Idaho's brows contracted into a puzzled frown. "Wolves in the City, m'Lord?"

"Predators," Leto said. "Wolves-to me there is no essential difference."

Moneo gasped.

Leto smiled at him, thinking how beautiful it was to observe a moment of

realization-a veil pulled away from the eyes, the mind opened.

"I have brought a large force of guards to protect this place," Idaho said.

"They are posted through the. . ."

"I knew you would," Leto said. "Now pay close attention while I tell you where

to send the rest of your forces."

As the Reverend Mothers watched in awe, Leto laid out for Idaho the exact points

for ambushes, detailing the size of each force and even some of the specific

personnel, the timing, the necessary weapons, the precise deployments at each

place. Idaho's capacious memory catalogued each instruction. He was too caught

up in the recital to question it until Leto fell silent, but a look of puzzled

fear came over Idaho then.

For Leto, it was as though he peered directly into Idaho's most essential

awareness to read the thoughts there. l was a trusted soldier of the original

Lord Leto, Idaho was thinking. That Leto, the grandfather of this one, .saved me

and took me into his household like a sun. But even though that Leto still has

some kind of existence in this one . . . this is not him.

"M'Lord, why do you need me?" Idaho asked.

"For your strength and loyalty."

Idaho shook his head. "But..."

"You obey," Leto said, and he noted the way these words were being absorbed by

the Reverend Mothers. Truth, only truth, for they are Truthsayers.

"Because I owe a debt to the Atreides," Idaho said.

"That is where we place our trust," Leto said. "And Duncan?"

"M'Lord?" Idaho's voice said he had found ground where he could stand.

"Leave at least one survivor at each place," Leto said. "Otherwise, our efforts

are wasted."

Idaho nodded once, curtly, and left, striding back across the hall the way he

had come. And Leto thought it would take an extremely sensitive eye indeed to

see that it was a different Idaho leaving, far different from the one who had

entered.

Anteac said: "This comes of flogging that Ambassador."

"Exactly," Leto agreed. "Recount this carefully to your Superior, the admirable

Reverend Mother Syaksa. Tell her for me that I prefer the company of predators

above that of the prey." He glanced at Moneo, who drew himself to attention.

"Moneo, the wolves are gone from my forest. They must be replaced by human

wolves. See to it."

===

The trance-state of prophecy is like no other visionary experience. It is not a

retreat from the raw exposure of the senses (as are many trance-states) but an

immersion in a multitude of new movements. Things moue. It is an ultimate

pragmatism in the midst of Infinity, a demanding consciousness where you come at

last into the unbroken awareness that the universe moves of itself, that it

changes, that its rules change. that nothing remains permanent or absolute

throughout all such movement, that mechanical explanations for anything can work

only within precise confinements and, once the walls are broken down, the old

explanations shatter and dissolve, blown away by new movements. The things you

see in this trance are sobering, often shattering They demand your utmost effort

to remain whole and. even so, you emerge from that state profoundly changed.

-The Stolen Journals

THAT NIGHT of Audience Day, while others slept and fought and dreamed and died,

Leto took his repose in the isolation of his audience chamber, only a few

trusted Fish Speaker guards at the portals.

He did not sleep. His mind whirled with necessities and disappointments.

Hwi! Hwi!

He knew why Hwi Noree had been sent to him now. How well he knew!

My most secret secret is exposed.

They had discovered his secret. Hwi was the evidence of it.

He thought desperate thoughts. Could this terrible metamorphosis be reversed?

Could he return to a human state?

Not possible.

Even if it were possible, the process would take him just as long as it had

taken to reach this point. Where would Hwi be in more than three thousand years?

Dry dust and bones in the crypt.

I could breed something like her and prepare that one for me . . . but that

would not be my gentle Hwi.

And what of the Golden Path while he indulged in such selfish goals?

To hell with the Golden Path! Have these folly-bound idiots ever thought once of

me? Not once!

But that was not true. Hwi thought of him. She shared his torture.

These were thoughts of madness and he tried to put them away while his senses

reported the soft movement of the guards and the flow of water beneath his

chamber.

When I made this choice, what were my expectations?

How the mob within laughed at that question! Did he not have a task to complete?

Was that not the very essence of the agreement which kept the mob in check?

"You have a task to complete," they said. "You have but one purpose."

Single purpose is the mark of the fanatic and I am not a fanatic!

"You must be cynical and cruel. You cannot break the trust."

Why not?

"Who took that oath? You did. You chose this course."

Expectations!

"The expectations which history creates for one generation are often shattered

in the next generation. Who knows that better than you?"

Yes . . . and shattered expectations can alienate whole populations. I alone am

a whole population!

"Remember your oath!"

Indeed. I am the disruptive force unleashed across the centuries. I limit

expectations . . . including my own. I dampen the pendulum.

"And then release it. Never forget that."

I am tired. Oh, how tired I am. If only I could .sleep . . really

sleep. -

"You're full of self-pity, too."

Why not? What am ' The ultimate loner forced to look at what might have been.

Every day I look at it . . . and now. Hwi!

"Your original unselfish choice fills you now with selfishness."

There is danker all around. I must wear my selfishness like a .suit of armor.

"There's danger for everyone who touches you. Isn't that your very nature'?"

Danger even for Hwi. Dear, delectable, dear Hwi

"Did you build high walls around you only to sit within them and indulge in

self-pity'?"

The walls were built because great forces have been unleashed in my Empire.

"You unleashed them. Will you now compromise with them?"

It's Hwi's doing. These feelings have never before been this powerful in me.

It's the damnable lxians.'

"How interesting that they should assault you with flesh rather than with a

machine."

Because they have discovered my secret.

"You know the antidote."

Leto's great body trembled through its entire length at this thought. He well

knew the antidote which had always worked before: lose himself for a time in his

own past. Not even the Bene Gesserit Sisters could take such safaris, striking

inward along the axis of memories-back, back to the very limits of cellular

awareness, or stopping by a wayside to revel in a sophisticated sensory delight.

Once, after the death of a particularly superb Duncan, he had toured great

musical performances preserved in his memories. Mozart had tired him quickly.

Pretentious! But Bach . . . ahhh, Bach.

Leto remembered the joy of it.

I sat at the organ and let the music drench me.

Only three times in all memory had there been an equal to Bach. But even Licallo

was not better; as good, but not better.

Would female intellectuals be the proper choice for this night? Grandmother

Jessica had been one of the best. Experience told him that someone as close to

him as Jessica would not be the proper antidote for his present tensions. The

search would have to venture much farther.

He imagined then describing such a safari to some awestruck visitor, a totally

imaginary visitor because none would dare question him about such a holy matter.

"I course backward down the flight of ancestors, hunting along the tributaries,

darting into nooks and crannies. You would not recognize many of their names.

Who has ever heard of Norma Cenva? I have lived her!"

"Lived her?" his imaginary visitor asked.

"Of course- Why else would one keep one's ancestors around'' You think a man

designed the first Guild ship:' Your history books told you it was Aurelius

Venport? They lied. It was his mistress, Norma. She gave him the design, along

with five children. He thought his ego would take no less. In the end. the

knowledge that he had not really fulfilled his own image, that was what

destroyed him."

"You have lived him, too?"

"Naturally. And I have traversed the far wanderings of the Fremen. Through my

father's line and the others, I have gone right back to the House of Atreus."

"Such an illustrious line!"

"With its fair share of fools."

Distraction is what I need, he thought.

Would it be a tour through sexual dalliances and exploits, then'?

"You have no idea what internal orgies are available to me! I am the ultimate

voyeur-participant(s) and observer(s). Ignorance and misunderstandings about

sexuality have caused so much distress. How abysmally narrow we have been--how

miserly."

Leto knew he could not make that choice, not this night, not with Hwi out there

in his City.

Would he choose a review of warfare, then'?

"Which Napoleon was the greater coward?" he asked his imaginary visitor. "I will

not reveal it, but I know. Oh, yes, I know."

Where can I go." With all of the past open to me, where can I go'

The brothels, the atrocities, the tyrants, the acrobats, nudists, surgeons, male

whores, musicians, magicians, ungenciers, priests, artisans, priestesses . . .

"Are you aware," he asked his imaginary visitor that the hula preserves an

ancient sign language which once belonged only to males? You've never heard of

the hula'' Of course. Who dances it anymore? Dancers have preserved many things,

though. The translations have been lost, but I know them.

"One whole night I was a series of caliphs moving eastward and westward with

Islam-a traverse of centuries. I will not bore you with the details. Be gone

now, visitor'"

How seductive it is, he thought, this call of the siren which would have me live

only in the past.

And how useless that past now, thanks to the damnable lxians How boring the past

when Hwi is here. She would come to me right now if I summoned her. But I cannot

call for her . . . not now. . . not tonight.

The past continued to beckon.

I could make a pilgrimage into my past. It does not have to be a safari. I could

go alone. Pilgrimage purifies. Safaris make me into a tourist. That's the

difference. I could go alone into my inner world.

And never return.

Leto felt the inevitability of it, that the dream-state would eventually trap

him.

create a special dream-state throughout my Empire. Within this dream, new myths

form, new directions appear and new movements. New . . . new . . . new . . . The

things emerge a from my own dreams, out of my myths. Who more .susceptible to

them than l? The hunter is caught in his own net.

Leto knew then that he had encountered a condition for which no antidote

existed-past. present or future. His great body trembled and shivered in the

gloom of his audience chamber.

At the portal, one Fish Speaker guard whispered to another: "Is God troubled?"

And her companion replied: "The sins of this universe would trouble anyone."

Leto heard them and wept silently.

===

When I set out to lead humankind along my Golden Path. I promised them a lesson

their bones would remember. I know a profound pattern which humans deny with

their words even while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and

quiet, the condition they call peace. Even as they speak. they create the seeds

of turmoil and violence. If they find their quiet security. they squirm in it.

How boring they find it. Look at them now. Look at what they do while I record

these words. Hah! I give them enduring eons of enforced tranquility which plods

on and on despite their every effort to escape into chaos. Believe me, the

memory of Leto's Peace shall abide with them forever. They will seek their quiet

security thereafter only with extreme caution and steadfast preparation.

-The Stolen Journals

MUCH AGAINST his will, Idaho found himself at dawn with Siona beside him being

taken to "a safe place" in an Imperial ornithopter It raced eastward toward the

golden arc of sunlight which lifted over a landscape carved into rectangular

green plantations.

The 'thopter was a big one, large enough to carry a small squad of Fish Speakers

with their two guests. The pilot captain of the squad, a brawny women with a

face Idaho could believe had never smiled, had given her name as Inmeir. She sat

in

the pilot's seat directly ahead of Idaho, two muscular Fish Speaker guards on

either side of her. Five more guards sat behind Idaho and Siona.

"God has ordered me to take you away from the City," Inmeir had said, coming up

to him in the command post beneath the central plaza. "It is for your own

safety. We will return by tomorrow morning for Siaynoq."

Idaho, fatigued by a night of alarms, had sensed the futility of arguing against

the orders of "God Himself." Inmeir appeared quite capable of trundling him off

under one of her thick arms. She had led him from the command post into a chilly

night canopied with stars like stone edged facets of shattered brilliants. It

was only when they reached the 'thopter and Idaho recognized Siona waiting there

that he had begun to question the purpose of this outing.

During the night, Idaho had come to realize that not all of the violence in Onn

had originated with the organized rebels. When he had inquired after Siona,

Moneo had sent word that "my daughter is safely out of the way," adding at the

end of the message: "I commend her to your care."

In the 'thopter, Siona had not responded to Idaho's questions. Even now, she sat

in sullen silence beside him. She reminded him of himself in those first bitter

days when he had vowed vengeance against the Harkonnens. He wondered at her

bitterness. What drove her'?

Without knowing why, Idaho found himself comparing Siona with Hwi Noree. It had

not been easy to encounter Hwi, but he had managed it in spite of the

importunate demands of Fish Speakers that he attend to duties elsewhere.

Gentle, that was the word for Hwi. She acted from a core of unchanging

gentleness which was, in its own way, a thing of enormous power. He found this

intensely attractive.

I must see more of her.

For now, though, he had to contend with the sullen silence of Siona seated

beside him. Well. . . silence could be met with silence.

Idaho peered down at the passing landscape. Here and there he could see the

clustered lights of villages winking out as the sunlight approached. The desert

of the Sareer lay far behind and this was land that, by its appearance, might

never have been parched.

Some things do not change very much, he thought. They are merely taken from one

place and reformed in another place.

This landscape reminded him of Caladan's lush gardens and made him wonder what

had become of the verdant planet where the Atreides had lived for so many

generations before coming to Dune. He could identify narrow roads, market roads

with a scattered traffic of vehicles drawn by six-legged animals which he

guessed were thorses. Moneo had said that thorses tailored to the needs of such

a landscape were the main work beasts not only here but throughout the Empire.

"A population which walks is easier to control."

Moneo's words rang in Idaho's memory as he peered downward. Pastureland appeared

ahead of the 'thopter, softly rolling green hills cut into irregular patterns by

black stone walls. Idaho recognized sheep and several kinds of large cattle. The

'thopter passed over a narrow valley still in gloom and with only a hint of the

water coursing down its depths. A single light and a blue plume of smoke lifting

out of the valley's shadows spoke of human occupation.

Siona suddenly stirred and tapped their pilot on the shoulder. pointing off to

the right ahead of them.

"Isn't that Goygoa over there'?" Siona asked.

"Yes." Inmeir spoke without turning, her voice clipped and touched by some

emotion which Idaho could not identify.

"Is that not a safe place'?" Siona asked.

"It is safe."

Siona looked at Idaho. "Order her to take us to Goygoa."

Without knowing why he complied, Idaho said: "Take us to that place."

Inmeir turned then and her features, which Idaho had thought a square block of

non-emotion during the night, revealed the clear evidence of some deep feeling.

Her mouth was drawn down into a scowl. A nerve twitched at the corner of her

right eye.

"Not Goygoa, Commander," Inmeir said. "There are better..."

"Did the God Emperor tell you to take us to a specific place?" Siona demanded.

Inmeir glared her anger at this interruption, but did not look directly at

Siona. "No, but He..."

"Then take us to this Goygoa," Idaho said.

Inmeir jerked her attention back to the 'thopter's controls and Idaho was thrown

against Siona as the craft banked sharply and flew toward a round pocket nestled

in the green hills.

Idaho peered over Inmeir's shoulder to took at their destination. At the very

center of the pocket lay a village built of the same black stones as the

surrounding fences. Idaho saw orchards on some of the slopes above the village,

terraced gardens rising in steps toward a small saddle where hawks could be seen

gliding on the day's first updrafts.

Looking at Siona, Idaho asked: "What is this Goygoa?"

"You will see."

Inmeir set the 'thopter into a shallow glide which brought them to a gentle

landing on a flat stretch of grass at the edge of the village. One of the Fish

Speakers opened the door on the village side. Idaho's nostrils were immediately

assaulted by a heady mixture of aromas-crushed grass, animal droppings, the

acridity of cooking fires. He slipped out of the 'thopter and looked up a

village street where people were emerging from their houses to stare at the

visitors. Idaho saw an older woman in a long green dress bend over and whisper

something to a child who immediately turned and went dashing away up the street.

"Do you like this place?" Siona asked. She dropped down beside him.

"It appears pleasant."

Siona looked at Inmeir as the pilot and the other Fish Speakers joined them on

the grass. "When do we go back to Orin?"

"You do not go back," Inmeir said. "My orders are to take you to the Citadel.

The Commander goes back."

"I see." Siona nodded. "When will we leave?"

"At dawn tomorrow. I will see the village leader about quarters." Inmeir strode

off into the village.

"Goygoa," Idaho said. "That's a strange name. I wonder what this place was in

the Dune days?"

"I happen to know," Siona said. "It is on the old charts as Shuloch, which means

'haunted place.' The Oral History says great crimes were committed here before

all of the inhabitants were wiped out."

"Jacurutu," Idaho whispered, recalling the old legends of the water stealers. He

glanced around, looking for the evidence of dunes and ridges; there was nothingonly

two older men with placid faces returning with lnmeir. The men wore faded

blue trousers and ragged shirts. Their feet were bare.

"Did you know this place?" Siona asked.

"Only as a name in a legend."

"Some say there are ghosts," she said, "but I do not believe

Inmeir stopped in front of Idaho and motioned the two barefooted men to wait

behind her. "The quarters are poor but adequate," she said, "unless you would

care to stay in one of the private residences." She turned and looked at Siona

as she said this.

"We will decide later," Siona said. She took Idaho's arm. "The Commander and I

wish to stroll through Goygoa and admire the sights."

Inmeir shaped her mouth to speak, but remained silent.

Idaho allowed Siona to lead him past the peering faces of the two local men.

"I will send two guards with you," Inmeir called out.

Siona stopped and turned. "Is it not safe in Goygoa?"

"It is very peaceful here," one of the men said.

"Then we will not need guards,' Siona said. "Have them guard the 'thopter."

Again, she led Idaho toward the village.

"All right," Idaho said, disengaging his arm from Siona's grasp. "What is this

place'.'"

"It is very likely that you will find this a very restful place." Siona said.

"It is not like the old Shuloch at all. Very peaceful."

"You're up to something," Idaho said, striding beside her. "What is it?"

"I've always heard that gholas were full of questions," Siona said. ", too, have

questions."

`Oh'?'

"What was he like in your day, the man Leto?"

"Which one?"

"Yes, I forget there were two-the grandfather and our Leto. I mean our Leto, of

course."

"He was just a child, that's all I know."

"The Oral History says one of his early brides carne from this village."

"Brides? I thought. . ."

"When he still had a manly shape. It was after the death of his sister but

before he began to change into the Worm. The Oral History says the brides of

Leto vanished into the maze of the Imperial Citadel, never to be seen again

except as faces and voices transmitted by holo. He has not had a bride for

thousands of years."

They had arrived at a small square at the center of the village, a space about

fifty meters on a side and with a low walled pool of clear water in its center.

Siona crossed to the

pool's wall and sat on the rock ledge, patting beside her for Idaho to join her

there. Idaho looked around at the village first, noting how people peered out at

him from behind curtained windows, how the children pointed and whispered. He

turned and stood looking down at Siona.

"What is this place'?"

"I've told you. Tell me what Muad'Dib was like."

"He was the best friend a man could ever have."

"So the Oral History is true, but it calls the caliphate of his heirs The

Desposyni, and that has an evil sound."

She's baiting me. Idaho thought.

He allowed himself a tight smile, wondering at Siona's motives. She appeared to

be waiting for sonic important event, anxious . . . even dreading . . . but with

an undertone of some thing like elation. It was all there. Nothing she said now

could be accounted as more than small talk, a way of occupying the moments until

. . . until what'?

The light sound of running feet intruded on his reverie. Idaho turned and saw a

child of perhaps eight years racing toward him out of a side street. The child's

bare feet kicked up little dust geysers as he ran and there was the sound of a

woman shouting, a despairing sound somewhere up the street The runner stopped

about ten paces away and stared up at Idaho with a hungering look, an intensity

which Idaho found disturbing. The child appeared vaguely familiar-a boy, a

stalwart figure with dark curly hair, an unfinished face but with hints of the

man to be-rather high cheekbones, a flat line across the brows. He wore a faded

blue singlesuit which betrayed the effects of much laundering but obviously had

begun as a garment of excellent material. It had the look of punji cotton woven

in a cordlock that did not permit even the frayed edges to unravel.

"You're not my father," the child said. Whirling away. he raced back up the

street and vanished around a corner.

Idaho turned and scowled at Siona, almost afraid to ask the question: Was that a

child of my predecessor? He knew the answer without asking that familiar face,

the genotype carried true. Myself as a child. Realization left him with an empty

feeling, a sense of frustration. What is my responsibility?

Siona put both hands over her face and hunched her shoulders. It had not

happened at all the way she had imagined it might. She felt betrayed by her own

desires for revenge. Idaho was not simply a ghola, something alien and unworthy

of

consideration. She had felt him thrown against her in the 'thopter, had seen the

obvious emotions on his face. And that child . . .

"What happened to my predecessor?" Idaho asked. His voice came out flat and

accusatory.

She lowered her hands. There was suppressed rage in his face.

"We are not certain," she said, "but he entered the Citadel one day and never

emerged."

"That was his child?"

She nodded.

"You're sure you did not kill my predecessor?"

"I..." She shook her head, shocked by the doubts, the latent accusation in him.

"That child, that is the reason we came here?"

She swallowed. "Yes."

"What am I supposed to do about him?"

She shrugged, feeling soiled and guilty because of her own actions.

"What about his mother?" Idaho asked.

"She and the others live up that street." Siona nodded in the direction the boy

had gone.

"Others?"

"There is an older son . . . a daughter. Will you. . . I mean, I could arrange.

. ."

"No! The boy was right. I'm not his father."

"I'm sorry," Siona whispered. "I should not have done this."

"Why did he choose this place?" Idaho asked.

"The father. . . your. . ."

"My predecessor!"

"Because this was Irti's home and she would not leave. That is what people

said."

"Irti . . . the mother?"

"Wife, by the old rite, the one from the Oral History."

Idaho looked around at the stone fronts of the buildings which enclosed the

square, the curtained windows, the narrow doors. "So he lived here?"

"When he could."

"How did he die, Siona?"

"Truly, I do not know . . . but the Worm has killed others. We know that for

sure!"

"How do you know it?" He centered a probing stare on her face. The intensity of

it forced her to look away.

"I do not doubt the stories of my ancestors," she said. "They are told in bits

and pieces, a note here, a whispered account there, but I believe them. My

father believes them, too!"

"Moneo has said nothing to me of this."

"One thing you can say about the Atreides," she said. "We're loyal and that's a

fact. We keep our word."

Idaho opened his mouth to speak, closed it without making a sound. Of course!

Siona, too, was Atreides. The thought shook him. He had known it, but he had not

accepted it. Siona was some kind of a rebel, a rebel whose actions were almost

sanctioned by Leto. The limits of his permission were unclear, but Idaho sensed

them.

"You must not harm her," Leto had said. "She is to be tested."

Idaho turned his back on Siona.

"You don't know anything for sure," he said. "Bits and pieces, rumors!"

Siona did not respond.

"He's an Atreides!" Idaho said.

"He's the Worm!" Siona said and the venom in her voice was almost palpable.

"Your damned Oral History is nothing but a bunch of ancient gossip!" Idaho

accused. "Only a fool would believe it."

"You still trust him," she said. "That will change."

Idaho whirled and glared at her.

"You've never talked to him!"

"I have. When I was a child."

"You're still a child. He's all of the Atreides who were, all of them. It's a

terrible thing, but I knew those people. They were my friends."

Siona only shook her head.

Again, Idaho turned away. He felt that he had been wrung dry of emotion. He was

spiritually boneless. Without willing it, he began walking across the square and

up the street where the boy had gone. Siona came running after him and fell into

step, but he ignored her.

The street was narrow, enclosed by the one-story stone walls, the doors set back

within arched frames, all of the doors closed. The windows were small versions

of the doors. Curtains twitched as he passed.

At the first cross-street, Idaho stopped and looked to the right where the boy

had gone. Two gray-haired women in long black skirts and dark green blouses

stood a few paces away

down the street, gossiping with their heads close together. They fell silent

when they saw Idaho and stared at him with open curiosity. He returned their

stare, then looked down the sidestreet. It was empty.

Idaho turned toward the women, passed them within a pace. They drew closer

together and turned to watch him. They looked only once at Siona, then returned

their attention to Idaho. Siona moved quietly beside him, an odd expression on

her face.

Sadness? he wondered. Regret? Curiosity?

It was difficult to say. He was more curious about the doorways and windows they

were passing.

"Have you ever been to Goygoa before?" Idaho asked.

"No." Siona spoke in a subdued voice, as though afraid of it.

Why am I walking down this .street? Idaho wondered. Even as he asked himself the

question, he knew the answer. This woman, this Irti: What kind of a woman would

bring me to Goygoa:'

The corner of a curtain on his right lifted and Idaho saw a face-the boy from

the square. The curtain dropped then was flung aside to reveal a woman standing

there. Idaho stared speechlessly at her face, stopped in a completed step. It

was the face of a woman known only to his deepest fantasies-a soft oval with

penetrating dark eyes, a full and sensuous mouth . . .

"Jessica," he whispered.

"What did you say?" Siona asked.

Idaho could not answer. It was the face of Jessica resurrected out of a past he

had believed gone forever, a genetic prank Muad'Dib's mother recreated in new

flesh.

The woman closed the curtain, leaving the memory of her features in Idaho's

mind, an after-image which he knew he could never remove. She had been older

than the Jessica who had shared their dangers on Dune--age-lines beside the

mouth and eyes, the body a bit more full . . .

More motherly, Idaho told himself. Then: Did I ever tell her. . . who .she

resembled?

Siona tugged at his sleeve. "Do you wish to go in, to meet her?"

"No. This was a mistake."

Idaho started to turn back the way they had come, but the door of Irti's house

was flung open. A young man emerged

and closed the door behind him, turning then to confront Idaho. Idaho guessed

the youth's age at sixteen and there was no denying the parentage-that karakul

hair, the strong features.

"You are the new one," the youth said. His voice had already deepened into

manhood.

"Yes." Idaho found if difficult to speak.

"Why have you come?" the youth asked.

"It was not my idea," Idaho said. He found this easier to say, the words driven

by resentment against Siona.

The youth looked at Siona. "We have had word that my father is dead."

Siona nodded.

The youth returned his attention to Idaho. "Please go away and do not return.

You cause pain for my mother."

"Of course," Idaho said. "Please apologize to the Lady Irti for this intrusion.

I was brought here against my will."

"Who brought you?"

"The Fish Speakers," Idaho said.

The youth nodded once, a curt movement of the head. He looked once more at

Siona. "I always thought that you Fish Speakers were taught to treat your own

more kindly." With that, he turned and reentered the house, closing the door

firmly behind him.

Idaho turned back the way they had come, grabbing Siona's arm as he strode away.

She stumbled, then fell into step, disengaging his grasp.

"He thought I was a Fish Speaker," she said.

"Of course. You have the look." He glanced at her. "Why didn't you tell me that

Irti was a Fish Speaker?"

"It didn't seem important."

"Oh."

"That's how they met."

They came to the intersection with the street from the square. Idaho turned away

from the square, striding briskly up to the end where the village merged into

gardens and orchards. He felt insulated by shock, his awareness recoiling from

too much that could not be assimilated.

A low wall blocked his path. He climbed over it, heard Siona follow. Trees

around them were in bloom, white flowers with orange centers where dark brown

insects worked. The air was full of insect buzzing and a floral scent which

reminded Idaho of jungle flowers from Caladan.

He stopped when he reached the crest of a hill where he

could turn and look back down at Goygoa's rectangular neatness. The roofs were

flat and black.

Siona sat down on the thick grass of the hilltop and embraced her knees.

"That was not what you intended, was it?" Idaho asked.

She shook her head and he saw that she was close to tears. "Why do you hate him

so much?" he asked.

"We have no lives of our own!"

Idaho looked down at the village. "Are there many villages like this one?"

"This is the shape of the Worm's Empire!"

"What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing-if that's all you want."

"You're saying that this is all he allows?"

"This, a few market cities . . . Onn. I'm told that even planetary capitals are

just big villages."

"And I repeat: What's wrong with that?"

"It's a prison!"

"Then leave it."

"Where'? How? You think we can just get on a Guild ship and go anywhere else,

anywhere we want'?" She pointed down toward Goygoa where the 'thopter could be

seen off to one side, the Fish Speakers seated on the grass nearby. "Our jailers

won't let us leave!"

"They leave," Idaho said. "They go anywhere they want." "Anywhere the Worm sends

them!"

She pressed her face against her knees and spoke, her voice muffled. "What was

it like in the old days?"

"It was different, often very dangerous." He looked around at the walls which

set off pastureland, gardens and orchards. "Here on Dune, there were no

imaginary lines to show the limits of ownership on the land. It was all the

Dukedom of the Atreides."

"Except for the Fremen."

"Yes. But they knew where they belonged-on this side of a particular escarpment.

. . or beyond where the pan turns white against the sand."

"They could go wherever they wanted!"

"With some limits."

"Some of us long for the desert," she said.

"You have the Sareer."

She lifted her head to glare at him. "That little thing!"

"Fifteen hundred kilometers by five hundred-not so little."

Siona got to her feet. "Have you asked the Worm why he confines us this way?"

"Leto's Peace, the Golden Path to insure our survival. That's what he says."

"Do you know what he told my father? I spied on them when I was a child. I heard

him."

"What did he say'?"

"He said he denies us most crises, to limit our forming forces. He said: `People

can be sustained by affliction. but I am the affliction now. Gods can become

afflictions.' Those were his words, Duncan. The Worm is a sickness!"

Idaho did not doubt the accuracy of her recital, but the words failed to stir

him. He thought instead of the Corrino he had been ordered to kill. Affliction.

The Corrino, descendant of a Family which once had ruled this Empire, had been

revealed as a softly fat middle-aged man who hungered after power and conspired

for spice. Idaho had ordered a Fish Speaker to kill him, an act which had

aroused Moneo to a fit of intense questioning.

"Why didn't you kill him yourself?"

"I wanted to see how the Fish Speakers performed."

"And your judgment of their performance?"

"Efficient."

But the death of the Corrino had inflicted Idaho with a sense of unreality. A

fat little man lying in a pool of his own blood, an undistinguished shadow among

the night shadows of a plastone street. It was unreal. Idaho could remember

Muad'Dib saying: "The mind imposes this framework which it calls `reality.' That

arbitrary framework has a tendency to be quite independent of what your senses

report." What reality moved the Lord Leto'?

Idaho looked at Siona standing against the orchard background and the green

hills of Goygoa. "Let's go down to the village and find our quarters. I'd like

to be alone."

"The Fish Speakers will put us in the same quarters."

"With them?"

"No, just the two of us together. The reason's simple enough. The Worm wants me

to breed with the great Duncan Idaho."

"I pick my own partners," Idaho growled.

"I'm sure one of our Fish Speakers would be delighted," Siona said. She whirled

away from him and set off down the hill.

Idaho watched her for a moment, the lithe young body swaying like the limbs of

the orchard trees in the wind.

"I'm not his stud," Idaho muttered. "That's one thing he'll have to understand."

===

As each day passes, you become increasingly unreal, more alien and remote from

what I find myself to be on that new day. I am the only reality and, as you

differ from me, you lose reality. The more curious I become, the less curious

are those who worship me. Religion suppresses curiosity. What I do subtracts

from the worshipper. Thus it is that eventually I will do nothing, giving it all

back to frightened people who will ,find themselves on that day alone and forced

to act for themselves.

-The Stolen Journals

IT was a sound like no other, the sound of a waiting mob. and it came down the

long tunnel to where Idaho marched ahead of the Royal Cart-nervous whispers

magnified into an ultimate whisper, the shuffling of one gigantic foot, the

stirring of an enormous garment. And the smell-sweet perspiration mixed with the

milky breath of sexual excitement.

Inmeir and the others of his Fish Speaker escort had brought Idaho here in the

first hour after dawn, coming down to the plaza of Onn while it lay in cold

green shadows. They had lifted off immediately after turning him over to other

Fish Speakers, Inmeir obviously unhappy because she was required to take Siona

to the Citadel and thus would miss the ritual of Siaynoq.

The new escort, vibrant with repressed emotion, had taken him into a region deep

beneath the plaza, a place not on any of the city charts Idaho had studied. It

was a maze-first one direction and then another through corridors wide enough

and high enough to accommodate the Royal Cart. Idaho lost track

of directions and fell to reflecting on the preceding night.

The sleeping quarters in Goygoa, although Spartan and small, had been

comfortable-two cots to a room, each room a box with white-washed walls, a

single window and a single door. The rooms were strung along a corridor in a

building designated as Goygoa's "Guest House."

And Siona had been right. Without asking if it suited him, Idaho had been

quartered with her, Inmeir acting as though this were an accepted thing.

When the door closed on them, Siona said: "If you touch me, I will try to kill

you."

It was uttered with such dry sincerity that Idaho almost laughed. "I would

prefer privacy," he said. "Consider yourself alone."

He had slept with a light wariness, remembering dangerous nights in the Atreides

service, the readiness for combat. The room was seldom truly dark-moonlight

coming through the curtained window, even starlight reflecting from the chalkwhite

walls. He had found himself nervously sensitive to Siona, to the smell of

her, the stirrings, her breathing. Several times he had come fully awake to

listen, aware on two of those occasions that she, too, was listening.

Morning and the flight to Onn had come as a relief. They had broken their fast

with a drink of cold fruit juice, Idaho glad to enter the predawn darkness for a

brisk walk to the 'thopter. He did not speak directly to Siona and he found

himself resenting the curious glances of the Fish Speakers.

Siona spoke to him only once, leaning out of the 'thopter as he left it in the

plaza.

"It would not offend me to be your friend," she said.

Such a curious way of putting it. He had felt vaguely embarrassed. "Yes . . .

well, certainly."

The new escort had led him away then, coming at last to a terminal in the maze.

Leto awaited him there on the Royal Cart. The meeting place was a wide spot in a

corridor which stretched off into the converging distance on Idaho's right. The

walls were dark brown streaked with golden lines which glittered in the yellow

light of glowglobes. The escort took up positions behind the cart, moving

smartly and leaving Idaho to stand confronting Leto's cowled face.

"Duncan, you will precede me when we go to Siaynoq," Leto said.

Idaho stared into the dark blue wells of the God Emperor's eyes, angered by the

mystery and secrecy, the obvious air of private excitement in this place. He

felt that everything he had been told about Siaynoq only deepened the mystery.

"Am I truly the Commander of your Guard, m' Lord?" Idaho asked, resentment heavy

in his voice

"Indeed! And I bestow a signal honor upon you now. Few adult males ever share

Siaynoq."

"What happened in the city last night?"

"Bloody violence in some places. It is quite calm this morning, however."

"Casualties'?"

"Not worth mentioning."

Idaho nodded. Leto's prescient powers had warned of sonic peril to his Duncan.

Thus, the flight into the rural safety of Goygoa.

"You have been to Goygoa," Leto said. "Were you tempted to stay' '"

,No,,

"Do not be angry with me," Leto said. "I did not send you to Goygoa.'.

Idaho sighed. "What was the danger which required that you send me away'?"

"It was not to you," Leto said. "But you excite my guards to excessive displays

of their abilities. Last night's activities did not require this."

"Oh?" This thought shocked Idaho. He had never thought of himself as one to

inspire particular heroism unless he personally demanded it. One whipped up the

troops. Leaders such as the original Leto, this one's grandfather, had inspired

by their presence.

"You are extremely precious to me, Duncan," Leto said.

"Yes . . . well, I'm still not your stud!"

"Your wishes will be honored, of course. We will discuss it another time."

Idaho glanced at the Fish Speaker escort, all of them wide-eyed and attentive.

"Is there always violence when you come to Orin"" Idaho asked.

"It goes in cycles. The malcontents are quite subdued now. It will be more

peaceful for a time."

Idaho looked back at Leto's inscrutable face. "What happened to my predecessor?"

"Haven't my Fish Speakers told you?"

"They say he died in defense of his God."

"And you have heard a contrary rumor."

"What happened?"

"He died because he was too close to me. I did not remove him to a safe place in

time."

"A place like Goygoa."

"I would have preferred him to live out his days there in peace, but you well

know, Duncan, that you are not a seeker after peace."

Idaho swallowed, encountering an odd lump in his throat. "I would still like the

particulars of his death. He has a family..."

"You will get the particulars and do not fear for his family. They are my wards.

I will keep them safely at a distance. You know how violence seeks me out. That

is one of my functions. It is unfortunate that those I admire and love must

suffer because of this."

Idaho pursed his lips, not satisfied with what he heard.

"Set your mind at ease, Duncan," Leto said. "Your predecessor died because he

was too close to me."

The Fish Speaker escort stirred restively. Idaho glanced at them, then looked to

the right up the tunnel.

"Yes, it is time," Leto said. "We must not keep the women waiting. March close

ahead of me, Duncan, and I will answer your questions about Siaynoq."

Obedient because he could think of no suitable alternative, Idaho turned on his

heel and led off the procession. He heard the cart creak into motion behind him,

the faint footsteps of the escort following.

The cart fell silent with an abruptness which jerked Idaho's attention around.

The reason was immediately apparent.

"You're on the suspensors," he said, returning his attention to the front.

"I have retracted the wheels because the women will press close around me," Leto

said. "We can't crush their feet."

"What is Siaynoq? What is it really?" Idaho asked.

"I have told you. It is the Great Sharing."

"Do I smell spice?"

"Your nostrils are sensitive. There is a small amount of melange in the wafers."

Idaho shook his head.

Trying to understand this event, Idaho had asked Leto directly at the first

opportunity after their arrival in Onn, "What is the Feast of Siaynoq'?"

"We share a wafer, no more. Even I partake."

"Is it like the Orange Catholic ritual?"

"Oh, no! It is not my flesh. It is the sharing. They are reminded that they are

only female, as you are only male, but I am all. They-share with the all,"

Idaho had not liked the tone of this. "Only male`?"

"Do you know who they lampoon at the Feast, Duncan'?"

"Who?"

"Men who have offended them. Listen to them when they talk softly among

themselves."

Idaho had taken this as a warning: Don't offend the Fish

Speakers. You incur their wrath at your mortal peril!

Now, as he marched ahead of Leto in the tunnel, Idaho felt that he had heard the

words correctly but learned nothing from them. He spoke over his shoulder.

" I don't understand the Sharing."

"We are together in the ritual. You will see it. You will feel it. My Fish

Speakers are the repository of a special knowledge, an unbroken line which only

they share. ;Vow, you will partake of it and they will love you for it. Listen

to them carefully. They are open to ideas of affinity. Their terms of endearment

for each other have no reservations."

More words. Idaho thought. More mystery.

He could discern a gradual widening in the tunnel: the ceiling sloped higher.

There were more glowglobes, tuned now into the deep orange. He could see the

high arch of an opening about three hundred meters away, rich red light there in

which he could make out glistening faces which swayed gently left and right.

Their bodies below the faces presented a dark wall of clothing. The perspiration

of excitement was thick here.

As he neared the waiting women, Idaho saw a passage through them and a ramp

slanting up to a low ledge on his right. A great arched ceiling curved away

above the women, a gigantic space illuminated by glowglobes tuned high into the

red.

"Go up the ramp on your right," Leto said. "Stop just beyond the center of the

ledge and turn to face the women."

Idaho lifted his right hand in acknowledgment. He was emerging into the open

space now and the dimensions of this enclosed place awed him. He set his trained

eyes the task of estimating the dimensions as he mounted to the ledge and

guessed the hall to be at least eleven hundred meters on a side-a square with

rounded corners. It was packed with women, and Idaho reminded himself that these

were only the chosen representatives of the far scattered Fish Speaker

regiments-three women from each planet. They stood now, their bodies pressed so

closely together that Idaho doubted one of them could fall. They had left only a

space about fifty meters wide along the ledge where Idaho now stopped and

surveyed the scene. The faces looked up at him-faces, faces.

Leto stopped his cart just behind Idaho and lifted one of his silver-skinned

arms.

Immediately, a roaring cry of "Siaynoq! Siaynoq!" filled the great hall.

Idaho was deafened by it. Surely that sound must be heard throughout the City,

he thought. Unless we are too far underground.

"My brides," Leto said. " I welcome you to Siaynoq."

Idaho glanced up at Leto, saw the dark eyes glistening, the radiant expression.

Leto had said: "This cursed holiness!" But he basked in it.

Has Moneo ever seen this gathering? Idaho wondered. It was an odd thought, but

Idaho knew its origin. There had to be some other mortal human with whom this

could be discussed. The escort had said Moneo was dispatched on "affairs of

state" whose details they did not know. Hearing this, Idaho had felt himself

sense another element in Leto's government. The lines of power extended directly

from Leto out into the populace, but the lines did not often cross. That

required many things, including trusted servants who would accept responsibility

for carrying out orders without question.

"Few see the God Emperor do hurtful things," Siona had said. "is that like the

Atreides you knew?"

Idaho looked out over the massed Fish Speakers as these thoughts flitted through

his mind. The adulation in their eyes! The awe! How had Leto done this'? Why'?

"My beloveds," Leto said. His voice boomed out over the upturned faces. carried

to the farthest corners by subtle Ixian amplifiers concealed in the Royal Cart.

The steaming images of the women's faces filled Idaho with memory of Leto's

warning. Incur their wrath at Your mortal peril!

It was easy to believe that warning in this place. One word from Leto and these

women would tear an offender to pieces.

They would not question. They would act. Idaho began to feel a new appreciation

of these women as an army. Personal peril would not stop them. They served God!

The Royal Cart creaked slightly as Leto arched his front segments upward,

lifting his head.

"You are the keepers of the faith!" Leto said.

They replied as one voice: "Lord, we obey!"

"In me you live without end!" Leto said.

"We are the Infinite!" they shouted.

"I love you as I love no others!" Leto said.

"Love!" they screamed.

Idaho shuddered.

" I give you my beloved Duncan!" Leto said.

"Love!" they screamed.

Idaho felt his whole body trembling. He felt that he might collapse from the

weight of this adulation. He wanted to run away and he wanted to stay and accept

this. There was power in this room. Power!

In a lower voice, Leto said: "Change the Guard."

The women bowed their heads, a single movement, unhesitating. From off to

Idaho's right a line of women in white gowns appeared. They marched into the

open space below the ledge and Idaho noted that some of them carried babies and

small children, none more than a year or two old.

From the outline explanation provided him earlier, Idaho recognized these women

as the ones leaving the immediate service of the Fish Speakers. Some would

become priestesses and some would spend full time as mothers. . . but none would

truly leave Leto's service.

As he looked down on the children, Idaho thought how the buried memory of this

experience must be impressed on any of the male children. They would carry the

mystery of it throughout their lives, a memory lost to consciousness but always

present, shading responses from this moment onward.

The last of the newcomers came to a stop below Leto and looked up at him. The

other women in the hall now lifted their faces and focused on Leto.

Idaho glanced left and right. The white-clad women filled the space below the

ledge for at least five hundred meters in both directions. Some of them lifted

their children toward Leto. The awe and submission was something absolute. If

Leto or-

,red it, Idaho sensed, these women would smash their babies death against the

ledge. They would do anything!

Leto lowered his front segments onto the cart, a gentle rippling motion. He

peered down benignly and his voice came as a soft caress. "I give you the reward

which your faith and service have earned. Ask and it shall be given."

The entire hall reverberated to the response: "It shall be given!"

"What is mine is thine," Leto said.

"What is mine is thine," the women shouted.

"Share with me now," Leto said, "the silent prayer for my intercession in all

things-that humankind may never end."

As one, every head in the hall bowed. The white-clad women cradled their

children close, looking down at them. Idaho felt the silent unity, a force which

sought to enter him and take him over. He opened his mouth wide and breathed

deeply, fighting against something which he sensed as a physical invasion. His

mind searched frantically for something to which he could cling, something to

shield him.

These women were an army whose force and union Idaho had not suspected. He knew

he did not understand this force. He could only observe it, recognize that it

existed.

This was what Leto had created.

Leto's words from a meeting at the Citadel came back to Idaho: "Loyalty in a

male army fastens onto the army itself rather than onto the civilization which

fosters the army. Loyalty in a female army fastens onto the leader."

Idaho stared out across the visible evidence of Leto's creation, seeing the

penetrating accuracy of those words, fearing that accuracy.

He offers me a share in this, Idaho thought.

His own response to Leto's words struck Idaho now as puerile.

"I don't see the reason," Idaho had said.

"Most people are not creatures of reason."

"No army, male or female, guarantees peace! Your Empire isn't peaceful! You

only. . .

"My Fish Speakers have provided you with our histories?"

"Yes, but I've also walked about in your city and I've watched your people. Your

people are aggressive!"

"You see, Duncan? Peace encourages aggression."

"And you say that your Golden Path. . ."

"Is not precisely peace. It is tranquility, a fertile ground for the growth of

rigid classes and many other forms of aggression."

"You talk riddles!"

" I talk accumulated observations which tell me that the peaceful posture is the

posture of the defeated. It is the posture of the victim. Victims invite

aggression."

"Your damned enforced tranquility! What good does it do?"

"If there is no enemy, one must be invented. The military force which is denied

an external target always turns against its own people."

"What's your game?"

"I modify the human desire for war."

"People don't want war!"

"They want chaos. War is the most readily available form of chaos."

" don't believe any of this! You're playing some dangerous game of your own."

"Very dangerous. I address ancient wellsprings of human behavior to redirect

them. The danger is that I could suppress the forces of human survival. But I

assure you that my Golden Path endures."

"You haven't suppressed antagonism!"

"I dissipate energies in one place and point them toward another place. What you

cannot control, you harness."

"What's to keep your female army from taking over?"

"I am their leader."

As he looked out over the massed women in the great hall, Idaho could not deny

the focus of leadership. He saw also that part of this adulation was directed at

his own person. The temptation in this held him fixated-anything he wanted from

them . . . anything! The latent power in this great hall was explosive. This

realization forced him into a deeper questioning of Leto's earlier words.

Leto had said something about exploding violence. Even as he watched the women

at their silent prayer, Idaho recalled what Leto had said: "Men are susceptible

to class fixations. They create layered societies. The layered society is an

ultimate invitation to violence. It does not fall apart. It explodes."

"Women never do this?"

"Not unless they are almost completely male dominated or locked into a male-role

model."

"The sexes can't be that different!"

"But they are. Women make common cause based on their sex, a cause which

transcends class and caste. That is why I let my women hold the reins."

Idaho was forced to admit that these praying women held the reins.

What part of that power would he pass into my hands?

The temptation was monstrous! Idaho found himself trembling with it. With

chilling abruptness, he realized that this must be Leto's intention-to tempt me!

On the floor of the great hall, the women finished their prayer and lifted their

gaze to Leto. Idaho felt that he had never before seen such rapture in human

faces-not in the ecstasy of sex, not in glorious victory-at-arms-nowhere had he

seen anything to approach this intense adulation.

"Duncan Idaho stands beside me today," Leto said. "Duncan is here to declare his

loyalty that all may hear it. Duncan?"

Idaho felt a physical chill shoot through his intestines. Leto gave him a simple

choice: Declare your loyalty to the God Emperor or die!

If I sneer, vacillate or object in any way, the women will kill me with their

own hands.

A deep anger suffused Idaho. He swallowed, cleared his throat, then: "Let no one

question my loyalty. I am loyal to the Atreides."

He heard his own voice booming out over the room, amplified by Leto's Ixian

device.

The effect startled Idaho.

"We share!" the women screamed. "We share! We share!"

"We share," Leto said.

Young Fish Speaker trainees, identifiable by their short green robes, swarmed

into the hall from all sides, little knots of movement which eddied throughout

the pattern of the adoring faces. Each trainee carried a tray piled high with

tiny brown wafers. As the trays moved through the throng, hands reached out in

waves of graceful grasping, an undulant dancing of the arms. Each hand took a

wafer and held it aloft. When a tray bearer came to the ledge and lifted her

burden toward Idaho, Leto said:

"Take two and pass one into my hand."

Idaho knelt and took two wafers. The things felt crisp and fragile. He stood and

passed one gently to Leto.

In a stentorian voice, Leto asked: "Has the new Guard been chosen?"

"Yes, Lord!" the women shouted.

"Do you keep my faith?"

"Yes, Lord!"

"Do you walk the Golden Path'""

"Yes. Lord"

The vibration of the women's ` (;bouts sent shock waves through Idaho, stunning

him.

"Do we share?" Leto asked.

"Yes, Lord!"

As the women responded, Leto popped his wafer into his mouth. Each mother below

the ledge took a bite from her wafer and offered the rest to her child. The

massed Fish Speakers behind the white-clad women lowered their arms and ate

their wafers.

"Duncan, eat your wafer," Leo said.

Idaho slipped the thing into his mouth. His ghola body had not been conditioned

to the spice but memory spoke to his senses. The wafer tasted faintly bitter

with a soft undertone of melange. The taste swept old memories through Idaho's

awareness-meals in sietch, banquets at the Atreides Residency . . . the way

spice flavors permeated everything in the old days.

As he swallowed the wafer, Idaho grew conscious of the stillness in the hall, a

breath-held quiet into which came a loud click from Leto's cart. Idaho turned

and sought the source of the sound. Leto had opened a compartment in the bed of

his cart and was removing a crystal box from it. The box glowed with a blue-gray

inner light. Leto placed the box on the bed of his cart, opened the glowing lid

and removed a crysknife. Idaho recognized the blade immediately-the hawk

engraved on the handle's butt, the green jewels at the hilt.

The crysknife of Paul Muad'Dib!

Idaho found himself deeply moved at the sight of this blade. He stared at it as

though the image in his eyes might reproduce the original owner.

Leto lifted the blade and held it high, revealing the elegant curve and milky

iridescence.

"The talisman of our lives," Leto said.

The women remained silent, raptly attentive.

"The knife of Muad'Dib," Leto said. "The tooth of Shai-Hulud. Will Shai-Hulud

come again?"

The response was a subdued murmur made deeply powerful by contrast with the

previous shouting.

"Yes, Lord."

Idaho returned his attention to the enraptured faces of the Fish Speakers.

"Who is Shai-Hulud?" Leto asked.

Again, that deep murmur: "You, Lord."

Idaho nodded to himself. Here was undeniable evidence that Leto had tapped into

a monstrous reservoir of power never before unleashed in quite this way. Leto

had said it but the words were a meaningless noise compared to the thing seen

and felt in this great hall. Leto's words came back to Idaho, though, as if they

had waited for this moment to cloak themselves in their true meaning. Idaho

recalled that they had been in the crypt, that dank and shadowy place which Leto

seemed to find so attractive but which Idaho found so repellent-the dust of

centuries there and the odors of ancient decay.

"I have been forming this human society, shaping it for more than three thousand

years, opening a door out of adolescence for the entire species," Leto had said.

"Nothing you say explains a female army!" Idaho had protested.

"Rape is foreign to women, Duncan. You ask for a sexrooted behavioral

difference? There's one."

"Stop changing the subject!"

"I do not change it. Rape was always the pay-off in male military conquest.

Males did not have to abandon any of their adolescent fantasies while engaging

in rape."

Idaho recalled the glowering anger which had come over him at this thrust.

"My houris tame the males," Leto said. "It is domestication, a thing that

females know from eons of necessity."

Idaho stared wordlessly at Leto's cowled face.

"To tame," Leto said. "To fit into some orderly survival pattern. Women learned

it at the hands of men; now men learn it at the hands of women."

"But you said. . ."

"My houris often submit to a form of rape at first only to convert this into a

deep and binding mutual dependence."

"Dammit! You're. . ."

"Binding, Duncan! Binding."

"I don't feel bound to. . ."

"Education takes time. You are the ancient norm against which the new can be

measured."

Leto's words momentarily flushed Idaho of all emotion except a deep sense of

loss.

"My houris teach maturation," Leto said. "They know that they must supervise the

maturation of males. Through this they find their own maturation. Eventually,

houris merge into wives

and mothers and we wean the violent drives away from their adolescent

fixations."

"I'll have to see it to believe it!"

"You will see it at the Great Sharing."

As he stood beside Leto in the hall of Siaynoq, Idaho admitted to himself that

he had seen something of enormous power, something which might create the kind

of human universe Leto's words projected.

Leto was restoring the crysknife to its box, returning the box to its

compartment in the bed of the Royal Cart. The women watched in silence, even the

small children quiet everyone subdued by the force which could be felt in this

great hall.

Idaho looked down at the children, knowing from Leto's explanation that these

children would be rewarded with positions of power-male or female, each in a

puissant niche. The male children would be female-dominated throughout their

lives, making (in Leto's words) "an easy transition from adolescence into

breeding males."

Fish Speakers and their progeny lived lives "possessed of a certain excitement

not available to most others."

What will happen to Irti's children? Idaho wondered. Did my predecessor stand

here and watch his white-clad wife share in Leto's ritual?

What does Leto offer me here?

With that female army, an ambitious commander could take over Leto's Empire. Or

could he? No . . . not while Leto lived. Leto said the women were not militarily

aggressive "by nature."

He said: "I do not foster that in them. They know a cyclical pattern with a

Royal Festival every ten years, a changing of the Guard, a blessing for the new

generation, a silent thought for fallen sisters and loved ones gone forever.

Siaynoq after Siaynoq marches onward in predictable measure. The change itself

becomes non-change."

Idaho lifted his gaze from the women in white and their children. He looked

across the mass of silent faces, telling himself that this was only a small core

of that enormous female force which spread its feminine web across the Empire.

He could believe Leto's words:

"The power does not weaken. It grows stronger every decade."

To what end? Idaho asked himself.

He glanced at Leto who was lifting his hands in benediction over the hall of his

houris.

"We will move among you now," Leto said.

The women below the ledge opened a path, pressing backward. The path opened

deeper into the throng like a fissure spreading through the earth after some

tremendous natural upheaval.

"Duncan, you will precede me," Leto said.

Idaho swallowed in a dry throat. He put a palm on the lip of the ledge and

dropped down into the open space, moving out into the fissure because he knew

only that could end this trial.

A quick glance backward showed him Leto's cart drifting majestically down on its

suspensors.

Idaho turned and quickened his pace.

The women narrowed the path through their ranks. It was done in an odd

stillness, with fixity of attention-first on Idaho and then on that gross preworm

body riding behind Idaho on the Ixian cart.

As Idaho marched stoically ahead, women reached from all sides to touch him, to

touch Leto, or merely to touch the Royal Cart. Idaho felt the restrained passion

in their touch and knew the deepest fear in his experience.

===

The problem of leadership is inevitably: Who will play God?

-Muad'Dib.

From the Oral History

Hwi NOREE followed a young Fish Speaker guide down a wide ramp which spiraled

into the depths of Onn. The summons from the Lord Leto had come in late evening

of the Festival's third day, interrupting a development which had taxed her

ability to maintain emotional balance.

Her first assistant, Othwi Yake, was not a pleasant mana sandy-haired creature

with a long, narrow face and eyes which never looked long at anything and never

ever looked directly into the eyes of someone he addressed. Yake had presented

her with a single sheet of memerase paper containing what he described as "a

summation of recently reported violence in the Festival City."

Standing close to the desk at which she was seated, he had stared down somewhere

to her left and said: "Fish Speakers are slaughtering Face Dancers throughout

the City." He did not appear particularly moved by this.

"Why?" she demanded.

"It is said that the Bene Tleilax made an attempt on the God Emperor's life."

A thrill of fear shot through her. She sat back and glanced around the

ambassadorial office-around room with a single half-circle desk which concealed

the controls for many Ixian devices beneath its highly polished surface. The

room was a darkly important-appearing place with brown wood panels covering

instruments which shielded it from spying. There were no windows.

Trying not to show her upset, Hwi looked up at Yake. "And the Lord Leto is. . ."

"The attempt on his life appears to have been totally without effect. But it

might explain that flogging."

"Then you think there was such an attempt?"

"Yes."

The Fish Speaker from the Lord Leto entered at that moment, hard on the

announcement of her presence in the outer office. She was followed by a Bene

Gesserit crone, a person she introduced as "The Reverend Mother Anteac." Anteac

stared intently at Yake while the Fish Speaker, a young woman with smooth,

almost childlike features, delivered her message:

"He told me to remind you: 'Return quickly if I summon you.' He summons you."

Yake began fidgeting as the Fish Speaker spoke. He darted his attention all

around the room as though looking for something which was not there. Hwi paused

only to pull a dark blue robe over her gown, instructing Yake to remain in the

office until she returned.

In orange evening light outside the Embassy, on a street oddly empty of other

traffic, Anteac looked at the Fish Speaker and said simply: "Yes." Anteac left

them then and the Fish Speaker had brought Hwi through empty streets to a tall,

windowless building whose depths contained this down-plunging spiral ramp.

The tight curves of the ramp made Hwi dizzy. Brilliant tiny white glowglobes

drifted in the central well, illuminating a purple-green vine with elephantine

leaves. The vine was suspended on shimmering golden wires.

The soft black surface of the ramp swallowed the sounds of their feet, making

Hwi extremely conscious of the faint abrasive swishing caused by the movements

of her robe.

"Where are you taking me?" Hwi asked.

"To the Lord Leto."

"I know, but where is he?"

"In his private room."

"It's awfully far down."

"Yes, the Lord often prefers the depths."

"It makes me dizzy walking around and around like this."

"It helps if you do not look at the vine."

"What is that plant?"

"It is called a Tunyon Vine and is supposed to have absolutely no smell."

"I've never heard of it. Where does it come from?"

"Only the Lord Leto knows."

They walked on in silence, Hwi trying to understand her own feelings. The God

Emperor filled her with sadness. She could sense the man in him, the man who

might have been.

Why had such a man chosen this course for his life? Did anyone know? Did Moneo

know?

Perhaps Duncan Idaho knew.

Her thoughts gravitated to Idaho-such a physically attractive man. So intense!