Watching Moneo, Leto felt the flow of an observational awareness, a thought
process which occurred so rarely but with such vivid amplication when it did
occur, that Leto did not stir lest he cause a ripple in the flow.
The primate thinks and, by thinking, survives. Beneath his thinking is a thing
which came with his cells. It is the current of human concerns for the species.
Sometimes, they cover it up, wall it off and hide it behind thick barriers, but
I have deliberately sensitized Moneo to these workings of his innermost self. He
follows me because he believes I hold the best course for human survival. He
knows there is a cellular awareness. It is what I find when I scan the Golden
Path. This is humanity and both of us agree: it must endure!
"Where, when and how will the wedding ceremony be conducted?" Moneo asked.
Not why? Leto noted. Moneo no longer sought to understand the why. He had
returned to safe ground. He was the majordomo, the director of the God Emperor's
household, the First Minister.
He has names and verbs and modifiers with which he can perform. The words will
work for him in their usual ways. Moneo may never glimpse the transcendental
potential of his words, but he well understands their everyday, mundane uses.
"What of my question?" Moneo pressed.
Leto blinked at him, thinking: , on the other hand, feel that words are mostly
useful if they open for me a glimpse of attractive and undiscovered places. But
the use of words is so little understood by a civilization which still believes
unquestioningly in a mechanical universe of absolute cause and effect-obviously
reducible to one single root-cause and one primary seminal-effect.
"How like a limpet the Ixian-Tleilaxu fallacy clings to human affairs," Leto
said.
"Lord, it disturbs me deeply when you don't pay attention."
"But I do pay attention, Moneo."
"Not to me."
"Even to you."
"Your attention wanders, Lord. You do not have to conceal that from me. I would
betray myself before I would betray
you."
"You think I'm woolgathering?"
"What gathering, Lord?" Moneo had never questioned this word earlier, but now .
. .
Leto explained the allusion, thinking: How ancient! The looms and shuttles
clicked in Leto's memory. Animal fur to human garments . . . huntsman to
herdsman . . . the long steps up the ladder of awareness . . . and now they must
make another long step, longer even than the ancient ones.
"You indulge in idle thoughts," Moneo accused.
"I have time for idle thoughts. That's one of the most interesting things about
my existence as a singular multitude."
"But, Lord, there are matters which demand our. . ."
"You'd be surprised what comes of idle thinking, Moneo. I've never minded
spending an entire day on things a human would not bother with for one minute.
Why not? With my life expectancy of some four thousand years, what's one day
more
or less? How much time does one human life count? A million minutes? I've
already experienced almost that many days."
Moneo stood frozen in silence, diminished by this comparison. He felt his own
lifetime reduced to a mote in Leto's eye. The source of the allusion did not
escape him.
Words . . . words . . . words, Moneo thought.
"Words are often almost useless in sentient affairs," Leto said.
Moneo held his breathing to a shallow minimum. The Lord can read thoughts!
"Throughout our history," Leto said, "the most potent use of words has been to
round out some transcendental event, giving that event a place in the accepted
chronicles, explaining the event in such a way that ever afterward we can use
those words and say: "This is what it meant."
Moneo felt beaten down by these words, terrified by unspoken things they might
make him think.
"That's how events get lost in history," Leto said.
After a long silence, Moneo ventured: "You have not answered my question, Lord.
The wedding?"
How tired he sounds, Leto thought. How utterly defeated.
Leto spoke briskly: "I have never needed your good offices more. The wedding
must be managed with utmost care. It must have the precision of which only you
are capable."
"Where, Lord?"
A bit more life in his voice.
"At Tabur Village in the Sareer."
"When?"
"I leave the date to you. Announce it when all things are arranged."
"And the ceremony itself ?"
"I will conduct it."
"Will you need assistants, Lord? Artifacts of any kind?"
"The trappings of ritual?"
"Any particular thing which I may not. . ."
"We will not need much for our little charade."
"Lord! I beg of you! Please. . ."
"You will stand beside the bride and give her in marriage," Leto said. "We will
use the Old Fremen ritual."
"We will need water rings then," Moneo said.
"Yes! I will use Ghani's water rings."
"And who will attend, Lord?"
"Only a Fish Speaker guard and the aristocracy."
Moneo stared at Leto's face. "What . . . what does my Lord mean by
`aristocracy'?"
"You, your family, the household entourage, the courtiers of the Citadel."
"My fam . . ." Moneo swallowed. "Do you include Siona?"
"If she survives the test."
"But. . .
"Is she not family?"
"Of course, Lord. She is Atreides and. . ."
"Then by all means include Siona!"
Moneo brought a tiny memocorder from his pocket, a dull black Ixian artifact
whose existence crowded the proscriptions of the Butlerian Jihad. A soft smile
touched Leto's lips. Moneo knew his duties and would now perform them.
The clamor of Duncan Idaho outside the portal grew more strident, but Moneo
ignored the sound.
Moneo knows the price of his privileges, Leto thought. It is another kind of
marriage-the marriage of privilege and duty. It is the aristocrat's explanation
and his excuse.
Moneo finished his note taking.
"A few details, Lord," Moneo said. "Will there be some special garb for Hwi?"
"The stillsuit and robe of a Fremen bride, real ones."
"Jewelry or other baubles?"
Leto's gaze locked on Moneo's fingers scrabbling over the tiny recorder, seeing
there a dissolution.
Leadership, courage, a .sense of knowledge and order Moneo has these in
abundance. They surround him like a holy aura, but they conceal from all eyes
except mine the rot which eats from within. It is inevitable. Were I gone, it
would be visible to everyone.
"Lord?" Moneo pressed. "Are you woolgathering?"
Ahhh! He likes that word!
"That is all," Leto said. "Only the robe, the stillsuit and the water rings."
Moneo bowed and turned away.
He is looking ahead now, Leto thought, but even this new thing will pass. He
will turn toward the past once more. And I had such high hopes for him once.
Well . . . perhaps Siona . . .
===
"Make no heroes," my father said.
-The voice of Ghanima,
From the Oral History
JUST BY the way Idaho strode across the small chamber, his loud demands for
audience now gratified, Leto could see an important transformation in the ghola.
It was a thing repeated so many times that it had become deeply familiar to
Leto. The Duncan had not even exchanged words of greeting with the departing
Moneo. It all fitted into the pattern. How boring that pattern had become!
Leto had a name for this transformation of the Duncans. He called it "The Since
Syndrome."
The gholas often nurtured suspicions about the secret things which might have
been developed across the centuries of oblivion since they last knew awareness.
What had people been doing all that time? Why could they possibly want me, this
relic from their past? No ego could overcome such doubts forever-especially in a
doubting man.
One of the gholas had accused Leto: "You've put things in my body, things I know
nothing about! These things in my body tell you everything I'm doing! You spy on
me everywhere!"
Another had charged him with possessing a "manipulative machine which makes us
want to do whatever you want."
Once it started, the Since Syndrome could never be entirely eliminated. It could
be checked, even diverted, but the dormant seed might sprout at the slightest
provocation.
Idaho stopped where Moneo had stood and there was a veiled look of nonspecific
suspicions in his eyes, in the set of his shoulders. Leto allowed the situation
to simmer, bringing the condition to a head. Idaho locked gazes with him, then
broke away to dart his glances around the room. Leto recognized the manner
behind the gaze.
The Duncans never forget!
As he studied the room, using the sightful ways he had been taught centuries
before by the Lady Jessica and the Mentat Thufir Hawat, Idaho began to feel a
giddy sense of dislocation. He thought the room rejected him, each thing-the
soft cushions: big bulbous things in gold, green and a red that was almost
purple; the Fremen rugs, each a museum piece, lapping over each other in thick
piles around Leto's pit; the false sunlight of Ixian glowglobes, light which
enveloped the Emperor's face in dry warmth, making the shadows around it deeper
and more mysterious; the smell of spice-tea somewhere nearby; and that rich
melange odor which radiated from the worm-body.
Idaho felt that too much had happened to him too fast since the Tleilaxu had
abandoned him to the mercies of Luli and Friend in that featureless prison-cell
room.
Too much . . . too much . . .
Am I really here? he wondered. Is this me? What are these thoughts that I think?
He stared at Leto's quiescent body, the shadowy and enormous mass which lay so
silently there on its cart within the pit. The very quietness of that fleshly
mass only suggested mysterious energies, terrible energies which might be
unleashed in ways nobody could anticipate.
Idaho had heard the stories about the fight at the Ixian Embassy, but the Fish
Speaker accounts had an aura of miraculous visitation about them which obscured
the physical data.
"He flew down from above them and executed a terrible slaughter among the
sinners."
"How did he do that?" Idaho had asked.
"He was an angry God," his informant had said.
Angry, Idaho thought. Was it because of the threat to Hwi? The stories he had
heard! None were believable. Hwi wedded to this gross . . . It was not possible!
Not the lovely Hwi, the Hwi of gentle delicacy. He is playing some terrible
game, testing us . . . testing us . . . There was no honest reality in these
times, no peace except in the presence of Hwi. All else was insanity.
As he returned his attention to Leto's face-that silently waiting Atreides facethe
sense of dislocation grew stronger in Idaho. He began to wonder if, by a
slight increase in mental
effort along some strange new pathway, he might break through ghostly barriers
to remember all of the experiences of the other Ghola Idahos.
What did they think when they entered this room? Did they feel this dislocation,
this rejection?
Just a little extra effort.
He felt dizzy and wondered if he were going to faint.
"Is something wrong, Duncan?" It was Leto's most reasonable and calming tone.
"It's not real," Idaho said. "I don't belong here."
Leto chose to misunderstand. "But my guard tells me you came here of your own
accord, that you flew back from the Citadel and demanded an immediate audience."
"I mean here, now! In this time!"
"But I need you."
"For what?"
"Look around you, Duncan. The ways you can help me are so numerous that you
could not do them all."
"But your women won't let me fight! Every time I want to go where.. ."
"Do you question that you're more valuable alive than dead?" Leto made a
clucking sound, then: "Use your wits, Duncan! That's what I value."
"And my sperm. You value that."
"Your sperm is your own to put where you wish."
"I will not leave a widow and orphans behind me the way...
"Duncan! I've said the choice is yours."
Idaho swallowed, then: "You've committed a crime against us, Leto, against all
of us=the gholas you resurrect without ever asking us if that's what we want."
This was a new turn in Duncan-thinking. Leto peered at Idaho with renewed
interest.
"What crime?"
"Oh, I've heard you spouting your deep thoughts," Idaho accused. He hooked a
thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the room's entrance. "Did you know you can
be heard out there in the anteroom?"
"When I wish to be heard, yes." But only my journals hear it all! "I would like
to know the nature of my crime, though."
"There's a time, Leto, a time when you're alive. A time when you're supposed to
be alive. It can have a magic, that
time, while you're living it. You know you're never going to see a time like
that again."
Leto blinked, touched by the Duncan's distress. The words were evocative.
Idaho raised both hands, palms up, to chest-height, a beggar Asking for
something he knew he could not receive.
"Then . . . one day you wake up and you remember dying . . . and you remember
the axlotl tank . . . and the Tleilaxu nastiness which awakened you . . . and
it's supposed to start all over again. But it doesn't. It never does, Leto.
That's a crime!"
"I have taken away the magic?"
"Yes!"
Idaho dropped his hands to his sides and clenched them into fists. He felt that
he stood alone in the path of a millrace tide which would overwhelm him at his
slightest relaxation.
And what of my time? Leto thought. This, too, will never happen again. But the
Duncan would not understand the difference.
"What brought you rushing back from the Citadel?" Leto asked.
Idaho took a deep breath, then: "Is it true? You're to be married?"
"That's correct."
"To this Hwi Noree, the Ixian Ambassador?"
"True."
Idaho darted a quick glance along Leto's supine length.
They always look for genitalia, Leto thought. Perhaps I should have something
made, a gross protuberance to shock them. He choked back the small burst of
amusement which threatened to erupt from his throat. Another emotion amplified.
Thank you, Hwi. Thank you, lxians.
Idaho shook his head. "But you. . ."
"There are strong elements to a marriage other than sex," Leto said. "Will we
have children of our flesh? No. But the effects of this union will be profound."
"I listened while you were talking to Moneo," Idaho said. "I thought it must be
some kind of joke, a . . ."
"Careful, Duncan!"
"Do you love her?"
"More deeply than any man ever loved a woman."
"Well, what about her? Does she.. ."
"She feels . . . a compelling compassion, a need to share
with me, to give whatever she can give. It is her nature."
Idaho suppressed a feeling of revulsion.
"Moneo's right. They'll believe the Tleilaxu stories."
"That is one of the profound effects."
"And you still want me to . . . to mate with Siona!"
"You know my wishes. I leave the choice to you."
"Who's that Nayla woman?"
"You've met Nayla! Good."
"She and Siona act like sisters. That big hunk! What's going on there, Leto?"
"What would you want to go on? And what does it matter?" "I've never met such a
brute! She reminds me of Beast Rabban. You'd never know she was female if she
didn't. . ."
"You have met her before," Leto said. "You knew her as Friend."
Idaho stared at him in quick silence, the silence of a burrowing creature who
senses the hawk.
"Then you trust her," Idaho said.
"Trust? What is trust?"
The moment arrives, Leto thought. He could see it shaping in Idaho's thoughts.
"Trust is what goes with a pledge of loyalty," Idaho said. "Such as the trust
between you and me?" Leto asked.
A bitter smile touched Idaho's lips. "So that's what you're doing with Hwi
Noree? A marriage, a pledge..."
"Hwi and I already have trust for each other."
"Do you trust me, Leto?"
"If I cannot trust Duncan Idaho, I cannot trust anyone."
"And if I can't trust you?"
"Then I pity you."
Idaho took this as almost a physical shock. His eyes were wide with unspoken
demands. He wanted to trust. He wanted the magic which would never come again.
Idaho indicated his thoughts were taking off in an odd tangent then.
"Can they hear us out in the anteroom?" he asked.
"No." But my journals hear!
"Moneo was furious. Anyone could see it. But he went away like a docile lamb."
"Moneo is an aristocrat. He is married to duty, to responsibilities. When he is
reminded of these things, his anger vanishes."
"So that's how you control him," Idaho said.
"He controls himself," Leto said, remembering how Moneo had glanced up from the
note-taking, not for reassurances, but to prompt his sense of duty.
"No," Idaho said. "He doesn't control himself. You do it."
"Moneo has locked himself into his past. I did not do that."
"But he's an aristocrat . . . an Atreides."
Leto recalled Moneo's aging features, thinking how inevitable it was that the
aristocrat would refuse his final duty-which was to step aside and vanish into
history. He would have to be driven aside. And he would be. No aristocrat had
ever overcome the demands of change.
Idaho was not through. "Are you an aristocrat, Leto?"
Leto smiled. "The ultimate aristocrat dies within me." And he thought: Privilege
becomes arrogance. Arrogance promotes injustice. The seeds of ruin blossom.
"Maybe I will not attend your wedding," Idaho said. "I never thought of myself
as an aristocrat."
"But you were. You were the aristocrat of the sword."
"Paul was better," Idaho said.
Leto spoke in the voice of Muad'Dib: "Because you taught me!" He resumed his
normal tones: "The aristocrat's unspoken duty-to teach, and sometimes by
horrible example."
And he thought: Pride of birth trails out into penury and the weaknesses of
interbreeding. The way is opened for pride of wealth and accomplishment. Enter
the nouveaux riches, riding to power as the Harkonnens did, on the backs of the
ancient regime.
The cycle repeated itself with such persistence that Leto felt anyone should
have seen how it must be built into long forgotten survival patterns which the
species had outgrown, but never lost.
But no, we still carry the detritus which I must weed out.
"Is there some frontier?" Idaho asked. "Is there some frontier where I could go
and never again be a part of this?"
"If there is to be any frontier, you must help me create it," Leto said. "There
is now no place to go where others of us cannot follow and find you."
"Then you won't let me go."
"Go if you wish. Others of you have tried it. I tell you there is no frontier,
no place to hide. Right now, as it has been for a long, long time, humankind is
like a single-celled creature, bound together by a dangerous glue."
"No new planets? No strange.. ."
"Oh, we grow, but we do not separate."
"Because you hold us together!" he accused.
"I do not know if you can understand this, Duncan, but if there is a frontier,
any kind of frontier, then what lies behind you cannot be more important than
what lies ahead."
"You're the past!"
"No, Moneo is the past. He is quick to raise the traditional aristocratic
barriers against all frontiers. You must understand the power of those barriers.
They not only enclose planets and land on those planets, they enclose ideas.
They repress change."
"You repress change!"
He will not deviate, Leto thought. One more try.
"The surest sign that an aristocracy exists is the discovery of barriers against
change, curtains of iron or steel or stone or of any substance which excludes
the new, the different."
"I know there must be a frontier somewhere," Idaho said. "You're hiding it."
"I hide nothing of frontiers. I want frontiers! I want surprises!"
They come right up against it, Leto thought. Then they refuse to enter.
True to this prediction, Idaho's thoughts darted off on a new tack. "Did you
really have Face Dancers perform at your betrothal?"
Leto felt a surge of anger, followed immediately by a wry enjoyment of the fact
that he could experience the emotion in such depth. He wanted to let it shout at
Duncan . . . but that would solve nothing
"The Face Dancers performed," he said.
.Why?"
"I want everyone to share in my happiness."
Idaho stared at him as though just discovering a repellent insect in his drink.
In a flat voice, Idaho said: "That is the most cynical thing I have ever heard
an Atreides say."
"But an Atreides said it."
"You're deliberately trying to put me off! You're avoiding my question."
Once more into the fray, Leto thought. He said: "The Face Dancers of the Bene
Tleilax are a colony organism. Individually, they are mules. This is a choice
they made for and by themselves."
Leto waited, thinking: I must be patient. They have to discover it for
themselves. If I say it, they will not believe. Think, Duncan. Think!
After a long silence, Idaho said: "I have given you my oath. That is important
to me. It is still important. I don't know what you're doing or why. I can only
say I don't like what's happening. There! I've said it."
"Is that why you returned from the Citadel?"
"Yes!"
"Will you go back to the Citadel now?"
"What other frontier is there?"
"Very good, Duncan! Your anger knows even when your reason does not. Hwi goes to
the Citadel tonight. I will join her there tomorrow."
"I want to get to know her better," Idaho said.
"You will avoid her," Leto said. "That is an order. Hwi is not for you."
"I've always known there were witches," Idaho said. "Your grandmother was one."
He turned on his heel and, not asking leave, strode back the way he had come.
How like a little boy he is, Leto thought, watching the stiffness in Idaho's
back. The oldest man in our universe and the youngest-both in one flesh.
===
The prophet is not diverted by illusions of past, present and future. The fixity
of language determines such linear distinctions. Prophets hold a key to the lock
in a language. The mechanical image remains only an image to them. This is not a
mechanical universe. The linear progression of events is imposed by the
observer. Cause and effect? That's not it at all. The prophet utters fateful
words. You glimpse a thing "destined to occur." But the prophetic instant
releases something of infinite portent and power. The universe undergoes a
ghostly shift. Thus, the wise prophet conceals actuality behind shimmering
labels. The uninitiated then believe the prophetic language is ambiguous. The
listener distrusts the prophetic messenger. Instinct tells you how the utterance
blunts the power of such words. The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and
let you peer through for yourself.
-The Stolen Journals
LETO ADDRESSED Moneo in the coldest voice he had ever used: "The Duncan disobeys
me."
They were in the airy room of golden stone atop the Citadel's south tower,
Leto's third full day back from the Decennial Festival in Onn. An open portal
beside him looked out over the harsh noonday of the Sareer. The wind made a deep
humming sound through the opening. It stirred up dust and sand which made Moneo
squint. Leto seemed not to notice the irritation. He stared out across the
Sareer, where the air was alive with heat movements. The distant flow of dunes
suggested a mobility in the landscape which only his eyes observed.
Moneo stood immersed in the sour odors of his own fear, knowing that the wind
conveyed the message of these odors to Leto's senses. The arrangements for the
wedding, the upset among the Fish Speakers-everything was paradox. It reminded
Moneo of something the God Emperor had said in the first days of their
association.
"Paradox is a pointer telling you to look beyond it. If paradoxes bother you,
that betrays your deep desire for absolutes. The relativist treats a paradox
merely as interesting, perhaps amusing or even, dreadful thought, educational. "
"You do not respond," Leto said. He turned from his examination of the Sareer
and focused the weight of his attention on Moneo.
Moneo could only shrug. How near is the Worm? he wondered. Moneo had noticed
that the return to the Citadel from Onn sometimes aroused the Worm. No sign of
that awful shift in the God Emperor's presence had yet betrayed itself, but
Moneo sensed it. Could the Worm come without warning?
"Accelerate arrangements for the wedding," Leto said. "Make it as soon as
possible."
"Before you test Siona?"
Leto was silent for a moment, then: "No. What will you do about the Duncan,"
"What would you have me do, Lord?"
"I told him not to see Noree, to avoid her. I told him it was an order."
"She has sympathy for him, Lord. Nothing more."
"Why would she have sympathy for him?"
"He is a ghola. He has no connection to our times, no roots."
"He has roots as deep as mine!"
"But he does not know this, Lord."
"Are you arguing with me, Moneo?"
Moneo backed away a half step, knowing that this did not remove him from danger.
"Oh, no, Lord. But I always try to tell you truly what I believe is happening."
"I will tell you what is happening. He is courting her."
"But she initiates their meetings, Lord."
"Then you knew about this!"
"I did not know you had absolutely prohibited it, Lord."
Leto spoke in a musing voice: "He is clever with women,
Moneo, exceedingly clever. He sees into their souls and makes them do what he
wants. It has always been that way with the Duncans."
"I did not know you had prohibited all meetings between them, Lord!" Moneo's
voice was almost strident.
"He is more dangerous than any of the others," Leto said. "It is the fault of
our times."
"Lord, the Tleilaxu do not have a successor for him ready to deliver."
"And we need this one?"
"You said it yourself, Lord. It is a paradox which I do not understand, but you
did say it."
"How long until there could be a replacement?"
"At least a year, Lord. Shall I inquire as to a specific date?"
"Do it today."
"He may hear about it, Lord. The previous one did."
"I do not want it to happen this way, Moneo!"
"I know, Lord."
"And I dare not speak of this to Noree," Leto said. "The Duncan is not for her.
Yet, I cannot hurt her!" This last was almost a wail.
Moneo stood in awed silence.
"Can't you see this?" Leto demanded. "Moneo, help me."
"I see that it is different with Noree," Moneo said. "But I do not know what to
do."
"What is different?" Leto's voice had a penetrating quality which cut right
through Moneo.
"I mean your attitude toward her, Lord. It is different from anything I have
ever seen in you."
Moneo noted then the first signs-twitching in the God Emperor's hands, the
beginning glaze in the eyes. Gods! The Worm is coming! Moneo felt totally
exposed. A simple flick of the great body would crush Moneo against a wall. I
must appeal to the human in him.
"Lord," Moneo said, "I have read the accounts and heard your own words about
your marriage to your sister, Ghanima."
"If only she were with me now," Leto said.
"She was never your mate, Lord."
"What're you suggesting?" Leto demanded.
The twitching of Leto's hands had become a- spasmodic vibration.
"She was . . . I mean, Lord, that Ghanima was Harq al-Ada's mate."
"Of course she was! All of you Atreides are descended from them!"
"Is there something you have not told me, Lord? Is it possible . . . that is,
with Hwi Noree . . . could you mate?"
Leto's hands shook so strongly Moneo wondered that their owner did not know it.
The glazing of the great blue eyes deepened.
Moneo backed another step toward the door to the stairs leading down from this
deadly place.
"Do not question me about possibilities," Leto said, and his voice was hideously
distant, gone somewhere into the layers of his past.
"Never again, Lord," Moneo said. He bowed himself back to only a single pace
from the door. "I will speak to Noree, Lord. . . and to the Duncan."
"Do what you can." Leto's voice was far away in those interior chambers which
only he could enter.
Softly, Moneo let himself out of the door. He closed it behind him and placed
his back against it, trembling. Ahhh, that was the closest ever.
And the paradox remained. Where did it point? What was the meaning of the God
Emperor's odd and painful decisions? What had brought The Worm Who Is God?
A thumping sounded from within Leto's aerie, a heavy beating against stone.
Moneo dared not open the door to investigate. He pushed himself away from the
surface which reflected that dreadful thumping -and went down the stairs, moving
cautiously, not drawing an easy breath until he reached ground level and the
Fish Speaker guard there.
"Is he disturbed?" she asked, looking up the stairs.
Moneo nodded. They both could hear the thumping quite plainly.
"What disturbs him?" the guard asked.
"He is God and we are mortal," Moneo said. This was an answer which usually
satisfied Fish Speakers, but new forces were at work now.
She looked directly at him and Moneo saw the killer training close to the
surface of her soft features. She was a relatively young woman with auburn hair
and a face usually dominated by a turned-up nose and full lips, but now her eyes
were hard and demanding. Only a fool would turn his back on those eyes.
"I did not disturb him," Moneo said.
"Of course not," she agreed. Her look softened slightly.
"But I would like to know who or what did."
"I think he is impatient for his marriage," Moneo said. "I think that's all it
is."
"Then hurry the day!" she said.
"That's what I'm about," Moneo said. He turned and hurried away down the long
hall to his own area of the Citadel. Gods! The Fish Speakers were becoming as
dangerous as the God Emperor.
That stupid Duncan! He puts us all in peril. And Hwi Noree! What's to be done
about her?
===
The pattern of monarchies and similar systems has a message of value for all
political forms. My memories assure me that governments of any kind could profit
from this message. Governments can be useful to the governed only so long as
inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained. Monarchies have some good
features beyond their star qualities. They can reduce the size and parasitic
nature of the management bureaucracy. They can make speedy decisions when
necessary. They fit an ancient human demand for a parental (tribal/feudal)
hierarchy where every person knows his place. It is valuable to know your place,
even if that place is temporary. It is galling to be held in place against your
will. This is why I teach about tyranny in the best possible way by example.
Even though you read these words after a passage of eons, my tyranny will not be
forgotten. My Golden Path assures this. Knowing my message, I expect you to be
exceedingly careful about the powers you delegate to any government.
-The Stolen Journals
Leto PREPARED with patient care for his first private meeting with Siona since
her childhood banishment to the Fish Speaker schools in the Festival City. He
told Moneo that he would see her at the Little Citadel, a vantage tower he had
built in the
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central Sareer. The site had been chosen to provide views of old and new and
places between. There were no roads to the Little Citadel. Visitors arrived by
'thopter. Leto went there as though by magic. '
With his own hands, in the early days of his ascendancy, Leto has used an Ixian
machine to dig a secret tunnel under the Sareer to his tower, doing all of the
work himself. In those days, a few wild sandworms still roamed the desert. He
had lined his tunnel with massive walls of fused silica and had imbedded
countless bubbles of worm-repelling water in the outer layers. The tunnel
anticipated his maximum growth and the requirements of a Royal Cart which, at
that time, had been only a figment of his visions,
In the early predawn hours of the day assigned to Siona, Leto descended to the
crypt and gave orders to his guard that he was not to be disturbed by anyone.
His cart sped him down one of the crypt's dark spokes where he opened a hidden
portal, emerging in less than an hour at the Little Citadel.
One of his delights was to go out alone onto the sand. No cart. Only his preworm
body to carry him. The sand felt luxuriously sensuous against him. The heat
of his passage through the dunes in the day's first light sent up a wake of
steam which required him to keep moving. He brought himself to a stop only when
he found a relatively dry pocket about five kilometers out. He lay there at the
center of an uncomfortable dampness from the trace-dew, his body just outside
the long shadow of the tower which stretched eastward from him across the dunes.
From a distance, the three thousand meters of the tower could be seen as an
impossible needle stabbing the sky. Only the inspired blend of Leto's commands
and Ixian imagination made the structure conceivable. One hundred and fifty
meters in diameter, the tower sat on a foundation which plunged as deeply under
the sand as it climbed above. The magic of plasteel and superlight alloys kept
it supple in the wind and resistant to sandblast abrasions.
Leto enjoyed the place so much that he rationed his visits, making up a long
list of personal rules which had to be met. The rules added up to "Great
Necessity."
For a few moments while he lay there, he could shed the loads of the Golden
Path. Moneo, good and reliable Moneo, would see that Siona arrived promptly,
just at nightfall. Leto had a full day in which to relax and think, to play and
pretend
that he possessed no cares, to drink up the raw sustenance of the earth in a
feeding frenzy which he could never indulge in at Onn or at the Citadel. In
those places, he was required to confine himself to furtive burrowings through
narrow passages where only prescient caution kept him from encountering
waterpockets. Here, though, he could race through the sand and across it, feed
and grow strong.
Sand crunched beneath him as he rolled, flexing his body in pure animal
enjoyment. He could feel his worm-self being restored, an electric sensation
which sent messages of health all through him.
The sun was well above the horizon now, painting a golden line up the side of
the tower. There was the smell of bitter dust in the air and an odor of distant
spiny plants which had responded to the morning's trace-dew. Gently at first,
then more rapidly, he moved out in a wide circle around the tower, thinking
about Siona as he went.
There could be no more delays. She had to be tested. Moneo knew this as well as
Leto did.
Just that morning, Moneo had said: "Lord, there is terrible violence in her."
"She has the beginnings of adrenalin addiction," Leto had said. "It's coldturkey
time."
"Cold what, Lord?"
"It's an ancient expression. It means she must be subjected to a complete
withdrawal. She must go through a necessity shock."
"Oh . . . I see."
For once, Leto realized, Moneo did see. Moneo had gone through his own coldturkey
time.
"The young generally are incapable of making hard decisions unless those
decisions are associated with immediate violence and the consequent sharp flow
of adrenalin," Leto had explained.
Moneo had held himself in reflexive silence, remembering, then: "It is a great
peril."
"That's the violence you see in Siona. Even old people can cling to it, but the
young wallow in it."
As he circled his tower in the growing light of the day, enjoying the feel of
the sand even more as it dried, Leto thought about the conversation. He slowed
his passage over the sand. A wind from behind him carried the vented oxygen and
a burnt flint smell over his human nostrils. He inhaled deeply, lifting
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his magnified awareness to a new level.
This preliminary day contained a multiple purpose. He thought of the coming
encounter much as an ancient bullfighter had thought about the first examination
of a horned adversary. Siona possessed her own version of horns, although Moneo
would make certain that she brought no physical weapons to this encounter. Leto
had to be sure, though, that he knew Siona's every strength and every weakness.
And he would have to create special susceptibilities in her wherever possible.
She had to be prepared for the test, her psychic muscles blunted by well-planted
barbs.
Shortly after noon, his worm-self satiated, Leto returned to the tower, crawled
back onto his cart and lifted on suspensors to the very tip of a portal there
which opened only at his command. Throughout the rest of the day, he lay there
in the aerie, thinking, plotting.
The fluttering wings of an ornithopter whispered on the air just at nightfall to
signal Moneo's arrival.
Faithful Moneo.
Leto caused a landing-lip to extrude from his aerie. The 'thopter glided in, its
wings cupped. It settled gently onto the lip. Leto stared out through the
gathering darkness. Siona emerged and darted in toward him, fearful of the
unprotected height. She wore a white robe over a black uniform without insignia.
She stole one look backward when she stopped just inside the tower, then she
turned her attention to Leto's bulk waiting on the cart almost at the center of
the aerie. The 'thopter lifted away and jetted off into the darkness. Leto left
the lip extruded, the portal open.
"There is a balcony on the other side of the tower," he said. "We will go
there."
"Why?"
Siona's voice carried almost pure suspicion.
"I'm told it's a cool place," Leto said. "And there is indeed a faint sensation
of cold on my cheeks when I expose them to the breeze there."
Curiosity brought her closer to him.
Leto closed the portal behind her.
"The night view from the balcony is magnificent," Leto said.
"Why are we here?"
"Because here we will not be overheard."
Leto turned his cart and moved it silently out to the balcony.
The faintest of hidden illumination within the aerie showed her his movement. He
heard her follow.
The balcony was a half-ring on the southeast arc of the tower, a lacy railing at
chest-height around the perimeter. Siona moved to the rail and swept her gaze
around the open land.
Leto sensed the waiting receptivity. Something was to be spoken here for her
ears alone. Whatever it was, she would listen and respond from the well of her
own motives. Leto looked across her toward the edge of the Sareer where the
manmade boundary wall was a low flat line just barely visible in the light of
First Moon lifting above the horizon. His amplified vision identified the
distant movement of a convoy from Onn, a dull glow of lights from the beastdrawn
vehicles pacing along the high road toward Tabur Village.
He could call up a memory-image of the village nestled among the plants which
grew in the moist area along the inner base of the wall. His Museum Fremen
tended date palms, tall grasses and even truck gardens there. It was not like
the old days when any inhabited place, even a tiny basin with a few low plants
fed by a single cistern and windtrap, could appear lush by comparison with the
open sand. Tabur Village was a water-rich paradise when compared with Sietch
Tabr. Everyone in today's village knew that just beyond the Sareer's boundary
wall the Idaho River slid southward in a long straight line which would be
silver now in the moonlight. Museum Fremen could not climb the wall's sheer
inner face, but they knew the water was there. The earth knew, too. If a Tabur
inhabitant put an ear against the ground, the earth spoke with the sound of
distant rapids.
There would be nightbirds along the bankment now, Leto thought, creatures which
would live in sunlight on another world. Dune had worked its evolutionary magic
on them and they still lived at the mercies of the Sareer. Leto had seen the
birds draw dumb shadows across the water and, when they dipped to drink, there
were ripples which the river took away.
Even at this distance, Leto sensed a power in that faraway water, something
forceful out of his past which moved away from him like the current slipping
southward into the reaches of farm and forest. The water searched through
rolling hills, along the margins of an abundant plant life which had replaced
all of Dune's desert except for this one last place, this Sareer, this sanctuary
of the past.
Leto recalled the growling thrust of Ixian machines which
had inflicted that watercourse upon the landscape. It seemed such a short time
ago, little more than three thousand years.
Siona stirred and looked back at him, but Leto remained silent, his attention
fixed beyond her. A pale amber light shone above the horizon, reflection of a
town on faraway clouds. From its direction and distance, Leto knew it to be the
town of Wallport transplanted far into a warmer clime of the south from its
once-austere location in the cold, low-slanted light of the north. The glow of
the town was like a window into his past. He felt the beam of it striking
through to his breast, straight through the thick and scaled membrane which had
replaced his human skin.
am vulnerable, he thought.
Yet, he knew himself to be the master of this place. And the planet was the
master of him.
I am part of it.
He devoured the soil directly, rejecting only the water. His human mouth and
lungs had been relegated to breathing just enough to sustain a remnant humanity
. . . and talking.
Leto spoke to Siona's back: "I like to talk and I dread the day when I no longer
will be able to engage in conversations."
With a certain diffidence, she turned and stared at him in the moonlight, quite
obvious distaste in her expression.
"I agree that I am a monster in many human eyes," he said.
"Why am I here?"
Directly to the point! She would not deviate. Most of the Atreides had been that
way, he thought. It was a characteristic which he hoped to maintain in the
breeding of them. It spoke of a strong inner sense of identity.
"I need to find out what Time has done to you," he said.
"Why do you need that?"
A little fear in her voice there, he thought. She thinks I will probe after her
puny rebellion and the names of her surviving associates.
When he remained silent, she said: "Do you intend to kill me the way you killed
my friends?"
So she has heard about the fight at the Embassy. And she assumes I know all
about her past rebellious activities. Moneo has been lecturing her, damn him!
Well. . .I might have done the same in his circumstances.
"Are you really a god?" she demanded. "I don't understand why my father believes
that."
She has some doubts, he thought. I still have room to maneuver.
"Definitions vary," he said. "To Moneo, I am a god . . . and that is a truth."
"You were human once."
He began to enjoy the leaps of her intellect. She had that sure, hunting
curiosity which was the, hallmark of the Atreides.
"You are curious about me," he said. "It is the same with me. I am curious about
you."
"What makes you think I'm curious?"
"You used to watch me very carefully when you were a child. I see that same look
in your eyes tonight."
"Yes, I have wondered what it's like to be you."
He studied her for a moment. The moonlight drew shadows under her eyes,
concealing them. He could let himself imagine that her eyes were the total blue
of his own eyes, the blue of spice addiction. With that imaginative addition,
Siona bore a curious resemblance to his long-dead Ghani. It was in the outline
of her face and the placement of the eyes. He almost told Siona this, then
thought better of it.
"Do you eat human food?" Siona asked.
"For a long time after I put on the sandtrout skin, I felt stomach hunger," he
said. "Occasionally, I would attempt food. My stomach mostly rejected it. The
cilia of the sandtrout spread almost everywhere in my human flesh. Eating became
a bothersome thing. These days, I only ingest dry substances which sometimes
contain a bit of the spice."
"You . . . eat melange?"
"Sometimes."
"But you no longer have human hungers?"
"I didn't say that."
She stared at him, waiting.
Leto admired the way she let unspoken questions work for her. She was bright and
she had learned much during her short life.
"The stomach hunger was a black feeling, a pain I could not relieve," he said.
"I would run then, run like an insane creature across the dunes."
"You . . . ran?"
"My legs were longer in proportion to my body in those days. I could move myself
about quite easily. But the hungry pain has never left me. I think it's hunger
for my lost humanity."
B$
He saw the beginnings of reluctant sympathy in her, the questioning.
"You still have this . . . pain?"
"It's only a soft burning now. That's one of the signs of my final
metamorphosis. In a few hundred years, I'll be back under the sand."
He saw her clench her fists at her sides. "Why?" she demanded. "Why did you do
this?"
"This change isn't all bad. Today, for example, has been very pleasant. I feel
quite mellow."
"There are changes we cannot see," she said. "I know there must be." She relaxed
her hands.
"My sight and hearing have become extremely acute, but not my sense of touch.
Except for my face, I don't feel things the way I could once. I miss that."
Again, he noted the reluctant sympathy, the striving toward an empathic
understanding. She wanted to know!
"When you live so long," she said, "how does the passage of Time feel? Does it
move more rapidly as the years go by?"
"That's a strange thing, Siona. Sometimes, Time rushes by me; sometimes, it
creeps."
Gradually, as they spoke, Leto had been dimming the concealed lights of his
aerie, moving his cart closer and closer to Siona. Now, he shut off the lights,
leaving only the moon. The front of his cart protruded onto the balcony, his
face only about two meters from Siona.
"My father tells me," she said, "that the older you get, the slower your time
goes. Is that what you told him?"
Testing my veracity, he thought. She's not a Truthsayer, then.
"All things are relative, but compared to the human timesense, this is true."
"Why?"
"It is involved in what I will become. At the end, Time will stop for me and I
will be frozen like a pearl caught in ice. My new bodies will scatter, each with
a pearl hidden within it."
She turned and looked away from him, peering out at the desert, speaking without
looking at him.
"When I talk to you like this here in the darkness I can almost forget what you
are."
"That's why I chose this hour for our meeting."
"But why this place?" .
"Because it is the last place where I can feel at home."
Siona turned against the rail, leaning on it and looking at him. "I want to see
you."
He turned on all of the aerie's lights, including the harsh white globes along
the roof of the balcony's outer edge. As the light came on, an Ixian-made
transparent mask slid out of wall recesses and sealed off the balcony behind
Siona. She felt it move behind her and was startled, but nodded as though she
understood. She thought it was a defense against attack. It was not. The wall
merely kept out the damp insects of the night.
Siona stared at Leto, sweeping her gaze along his body, pausing at the stubs
which once had been his legs, bringing her attention then to his arms and hands,
then to his face.
"Your approved histories tell us that all Atreides are descended from you and
your sister, Ghanima," she said. "The Oral History disagrees."
"The Oral History is correct. Your ancestor was Harq al Ada Ghani and I were
married only in name, a move to consolidate the power."
"Like your marriage to this Ixian woman?"
"That is different."
"You will have children?"
"I have never been capable of having children. I chose the metamorphosis before
that was possible."
"You were a child and then you were-" she pointed "this?"
"Nothing between."
"How does a child know what to choose?"
"I was one of the oldest children this universe has ever seen. Ghani was the
other."
"That story about your ancestral memories!"
"A true story. We're all here. Doesn't the Oral History agree?"
She whirled away and held her back stiffly presented to him. Once more, Leto
found himself fascinated by this human gesture: rejection coupled to
vulnerability. Presently, she turned around and concentrated on his features
within the hooded folds.
"You have the Atreides look," she said.
"I come by it just as honestly as you do."
"You're so old . . . why aren't you wrinkled?"
"Nothing about the human part of me ages in a normal way."
"Is that why you did this to yourself?"
"To enjoy long life? No."
"I don't see how anyone could make such a choice," she muttered. Then louder:
"Never to know love. . ."
"You're playing the fool!" he said. "You don't mean love, you mean sex."
She shrugged.
"You think the most terrible thing I gave up was sex? No, the greatest loss was
something far different."
"What?" She asked it reluctantly, betraying how deeply he touched her.
"I cannot walk among my fellows without their special notice. I am no longer one
of you. I am alone. Love? Many people love me, but my shape keeps us apart. We
are separated, Siona, by a gulf that no other human dares to bridge."
"Not even your Ixian woman?"
"Yes, she would if she could, but she cannot. She's not an Atreides."
"You mean that I . . . could?" She touched her breast with a finger.
"If there were enough sandtrout around. Unfortunately, all of them enclose my
flesh. However, if I were to die. . ."
She shook her head in dumb horror at the thought.
"The Oral History tells it accurately," he said. "And we must never forget that
you believe the Oral History."
She continued to shake her head from side to side.
"There's no secret about it," he said. "The first moments of the transformation
are the critical ones. Your awareness must drive inward and outward
simultaneously, one with Infinity. I could provide you with enough melange to
accomplish this. Given enough spice, you can live through those first awful
moments . . . and all the other moments."
She shuddered uncontrollably, her gaze fixed on his eyes.
"You know I'm telling you the truth, don't you?"
She nodded, inhaled a deep trembling breath, then: "Why did you do it?"
"The alternative was far more horrible."
"What alternative?"
"In time, you may understand it. Moneo did."
"Your damned Golden Path!"
"Not damned at all. Quite holy."
"You think I'm a fool who can't..."
"I think you're inexperienced, but possessed of great capability whose potential
you do not even suspect."
She took three deep breaths and regained some of her composure, then: "If you
can't mate with the Ixian, what. . ."
"Child, why do you persist in misunderstanding? It's not sex. Before Hwi, I
could not pair. I had no other like me. In all of the cosmic void, I was the
only one."
"She's like . . . you?"
"Deliberately so. The lxians made her that way."
"Made her.. ."
"Don't be a complete fool!" he snapped. "She is the essential god-trap. Even the
victim cannot reject her."
"Why do you tell me these things?" she whispered.
"You stole two copies of my journals," he said. "You've read the Guild
translations and you already know what could catch me."
"You knew?"
He saw boldness return to her stance, a sense of her own power. "Of course you
knew," she said, answering her own question.
"It was my secret," he said. "You cannot imagine how many times I have loved a
companion and seen that companion slip away . . . as your father is slipping
away now."
"You love . . . him?"
"And I loved your mother. Sometimes they go quickly; sometimes with agonizing
slowness. Each time I am wracked. I can play callous and I can make the
necessary decisions, even decisions which kill, but I cannot escape the
suffering. For a long, long time-those journals you stole tell it truly-that was
the only emotion I knew."
He saw the moistness in her eyes, but the line of her jaw still spoke of angry
resolution.
"None of this gives you the right to govern," she said.
Leto suppressed a smile. At last they were down to the root of Siona's
rebellion.
By what right? Where is justice in my rule? By imposing my rules upon them with
the weight of Fish Speaker arms, am I being fair to the evolutionary thrust of
humankind? I know all of the revolutionary cant, the catch-prattle and the
resounding phrases.
"Nowhere do you see your own rebellious hand in the power I wield," he said.
Her youth still demanded its moment.
"I never chose you to govern," she said.
"But you strengthen me."
"How?"
"By opposing me. I sharpen my claws on the likes of you."
She shot a sudden glance at his hands.
"A figure of speech," he said.
"So I've offended you at last," she said, hearing only the cutting anger in his
words and tone.
"You've not offended me. We're related and can speak bluntly to each other
within the family. The fact is, I have much more to fear from you than you from
me."
This took her aback, but only momentarily. He saw belief stiffen her shoulders,
then doubt. Her chin lowered and she peered upward at him.
"What could the great God Leto fear from me?"
"Your ignorant violence."
"Are you saying that you're physically vulnerable?"
"I will not warn you again, Siona. There are limits to the word games I will
play. You and the lxians both know that it's the ones I love who are physically
vulnerable. Soon, most of the Empire will know it. This is the kind of
information which travels fast."
"And they'll all ask what right you have to rule!"
There was glee in her voice. It aroused an abrupt anger in Leto. He found it
difficult to suppress. This was a side of human emotions he detested. Gloating!
It was some time before he dared answer, then he chose to slash through her
defenses at the vulnerability he already had seen.
"I rule by the right of loneliness, Siona. My loneliness is part-freedom and
part-slavery. It says I cannot be bought by any human group. My slavery to you
says that I will serve all of you to the best of my lordly abilities."
"But the lxians have caught you!" she said.
"No. They have given me a gift which strengthens me."
"It weakens you!"
"That, too," he admitted. "But very powerful forces still obey me."
"Ohhh, yes." she nodded. "I understand that."
"You don't understand it."
"Then I'm sure you'll explain it to me," she taunted.
He spoke so softly that she had to lean toward him to hear: "There are no others
of any kind anywhere who can call upon me for anything-not for sharing, not for
compromise, not even for the slightest beginning of another government. I am the
only one."
"Not even this Ixian woman can. . ."
"She is so much like me that she would not weaken me in that way."
"But when the Ixian Embassy was attacked. . ."
"I can still be irritated by stupidity," he said.
She scowled at him.
Leto thought it a pretty gesture in that light, quite unconscious. He knew he
had made her think. He was sure she had never before considered that any rights
might adhere to uniqueness.
He addressed her silent scowl: "There has never before been a government exactly
like mine. Not in all of our history. I am responsible only to myself, exacting
payment in full for what I have sacrificed."
"Sacrificed!" she sneered, but he heard the doubts. "Every despot says something
like that. You're responsible only to yourself!"
"Which makes every living thing my responsibility. I watch over you through
these times."
"Through what times?"
"The times that might have been and then no more."
He saw the indecision in her. She did not trust her instincts, her untrained
abilities at prediction. She might leap occasionally as she had done when she
took his journals, but the motivation for the leap was lost in the revelation
which followed.
"My father says you can be very tricky with words," she said.
"And he ought to know. But there is knowledge you can only gain by participating
in it. There's no way to learn it by standing off and looking and talking."
"That's the kind of thing he means," she said.
"You're quite right," he agreed. "It's not logical. But it is a light, an eye
which can see, but does not see itself."
"I'm tired of talking," she said.
"As am L" And he thought: l have seen enough, done enough. She is wide open to
her doubts. How vulnerable they are in their ignorance!
"You haven't convinced me of anything," she said.
"That was not the purpose of this meeting."
"What was the purpose?"
"To see if you are ready to be tested."
"Test. . ." She tipped her head a bit to the right and stared at him.
"Don't play the innocent with me," he said. "Moneo has told you. And I tell you
that you are ready!"
She tried to swallow, then: "What are. . ."
"I have sent for Moneo to return you to the Citadel," he said. "When we meet
again, we will really learn what you are made of."
===
You know the myth of the Great Spice Hoard? Yes, I know about that story, too. A
majordomo brought it to me one day to amuse me. The story says there is a hoard
of melange, a gigantic hoard, big as a great mountain. The hoard is concealed in
the depths of a distant planet. It is not Arrakis, that planet. It is not Dune.
The spice was hidden there long ago, even before the First Empire and the
Spacing Guild. The story says Paul Muad'Dib went there and lives yet beside the
hoard, kept alive by it, waiting. The majordomo did not understand why the story
disturbed me.
-The Stolen Journals
IDAHO TREMBLED with anger as he strode along the gray plastone halls toward his
quarters in the Citadel. At each guard post he passed, the woman there snapped
to attention. He did not respond. Idaho knew he was causing disturbance among
them. Nobody could mistake the Commander's mood. But he did not abate his
purposeful stride. The heavy thumping of his boots echoed along the walls.
He could still taste the noon meal-oddly familiar Atreides chopstick-fare of
mixed grains herb-seasoned and baked around a pungent morsel of pseudomeat, all
of it washed down with a drink of clear cidrit juice. Moneo had found him at
table in the Guard Mess, alone in a corner with a regional operations schedule
propped up beside his plate.
Without invitation, Moneo had seated himself opposite
Idaho and had pushed aside the operations schedule.
"I bring a message from the God Emperor," Moneo said.
The tightly controlled tone warned Idaho that this was no casual encounter.
Others sensed it. Listening silence settled over the women at nearby tables,
spreading out through the room.
Idaho put down his chopsticks. "Yes?"
"These were the words of the God Emperor," Moneo said. "`It is my bad luck that
Duncan Idaho should become enamored of Hwi Noree. This mischance must not
continue."'
Anger thinned Idaho's lips, but he remained silent.
"Such foolishness endangers us all," Moneo said. "Noree is the God Emperor's
intended."
Idaho tried to control his anger, but the words were a betrayal: "He can't marry
her!"
"Why not?"
"What game is he playing, Moneo?"
"I am a messenger with a single message, no more," Moneo said.
Idaho's voice was low and threatening. "But he confides in you."
"The God Emperor sympathizes with you," Moneo lied.
"Sympathizes!" Idaho shouted the word, creating a new depth to the room's
silence.
"Noree is a woman of obvious attractions," Moneo said. "But she is not for you."
"The God Emperor has spoken," Idaho sneered, "and there is no appeal."
"I see that you understand the message," Moneo said.
Idaho started to push himself away from the table.
"Where are you going?" Moneo demanded.
"I'm going to have this out with him right now!"
"That is certain suicide," Moneo said.
Idaho glared at him, aware suddenly of the listening intensity in the women at
the tables around them. An expression which Muad'Dib would have recognized
immediately came over Idaho's face: "Playing to the Devil's Gallery," Muad'Dib
had called it.
"D'you know what the original Atreides Dukes always said?" Idaho asked. There
was a mocking tone in his voice.
"Is it pertinent?"
"They said your liberties all vanish when you look up to any absolute ruler."
Rigid with fear, Moneo leaned toward Idaho. Moneo's lips barely moved. His voice
was little more than a whisper. "Don't say such things."
"Because one of these women will report it?"
Moneo shook his head in disbelief. "You are more reckless than any of the
others."
"Really?"
"Please! It is perilous in the extreme to take this attitude."
Idaho heard the nervous stirring that swept through the room.
"He can only kill us," Idaho said.
Moneo spoke in a tight whisper: "You fool! The Worm can dominate him at the
slightest provocation!"
"The Worm, you say?" Idaho's voice was unnecessarily loud.
"You must trust him," Moneo said.
Idaho glanced left and right. "Yes, I think they heard that."
"He is billions upon billions of people united in that one body," Moneo said.
"So I've been told."
"He is God and we are mortal," Moneo said.
"How is it a god can do evil things?" Idaho asked.
Moneo thrust his chair backward and leaped to his feet. "I wash my hands of
you!" Whirling away, he dashed from the room.
Idaho looked out into the room, finding himself the center of attention for all
of the guards' faces.
"Moneo doesn't judge, but I do," Idaho said.
It surprised him then to glimpse a few wry smiles among the women. They all
returned to their eating.
As he strode down the hall of the Citadel, Idaho replayed the conversation,
seeking out the oddities in Moneo's behavior. The terror could be recognized and
even understood, but it had seemed far more than fear of death . . . far, far
more.
The Worm can dominate him.
Idaho felt that this had slipped out of Moneo, an inadvertent betrayal. What
could it mean?
More reckless than any of the others.
It galled Idaho that he should have to bear comparisons to himself-as-anunknown.
How careful had the others been?
Idaho came to his own door, put a hand on the palm-lock and hesitated. He felt
like a hunted animal retreating to his den. The guards in the mess surely would
have reported that
conversation to Leto by now. What would the God Emperor do? Idaho's hand moved
across the lock. The door swung inward. He entered the anteroom of his apartment
and sealed the door, looking at it.
Will he send his Fish Speakers for me?
Idaho glanced around the entry area. It was a conventional space-racks for
clothing and shoes, a full-length mirror, a weapons cupboard. He looked at the
closed door of the cupboard. Not one of the weapons behind that door offered any
real threat to the God Emperor. There wasn't even a lasgun . . . although even
lasguns were ineffectual against the Worm, according to all the accounts.
He knows I will defy him.
Idaho sighed and looked toward the arched portal which led into the sitting
area. Moneo had replaced the soft furniture with heavier, stiffer pieces, some
of them recognizably Fremen culled from the coffers of the Museum Fremen.
Museum Fremen!
Idaho spat and strode through the portal. Two steps into the room he stopped,
shocked. The soft light from the north windows revealed Hwi Noree seated on the
low sling-divan. She wore a shimmering blue gown which draped itself revealingly
around her figure. Hwi looked up at his entrance.
"Thank the gods you've not been harmed," she said.
Idaho glanced back at his entry, at the palm-locked door. He returned a
speculative look at Hwi. No one but a few selected guards should be able to open
that door.
She smiled at his confusion. "We lxians manufactured those locks," she said.
He found himself filled with fear for her. "What are you doing here?"
"We must talk."
"About what?"
"Duncan. . ." She shook her head. "About us."
"They warned you," he said.
"I've been told to reject you."
"Moneo sent you!"
"Two guardswomen who overheard you in the mess-they brought me. They think you
are in terrible danger."
"Is that why you're here?"
She stood, one graceful motion which reminded him of the way Leto's grandmother,
Jessica, had moved-the same fluid control of muscles, every movement beautiful.
Realization came as a shock. "You're Bene Gesserit. . ."
"No! They were among my teachers, but I am not Bene Gesserit."
Suspicions clouded his mind. What allegiances were really at work in Leto's
Empire? What does a ghola know about such things?
The changes since last I lived...
"I suppose you're still just a simple Ixian," he said.
"Please don't sneer at me, Duncan."
"What are you?"
"I am the intended bride of the God Emperor."
"And you'll serve him faithfully!"
"I will."
"Then there's nothing for us to talk about."
"Except this thing between us."
He cleared his throat. "What thing?"
"This attraction." She raised a hand as he started to speak. "I want to hurl
myself into your arms, to find the love and shelter I know is there. You want
it, too."
He held himself rigid. "The God Emperor forbids!"
"But I am here." She took two steps toward him, the gown rippling across her
body.
"Hwi. . ." He tried to swallow in a dry throat. "It's best you leave."
"Prudent, but not best," she said.
"If he finds that you've been here. . ."
"It is not my way to leave you like this." Again, she stopped his response with
a lifted hand. "I was bred and trained for just one purpose."
Her words filled him with icy caution. "What purpose?"
"To woo the God Emperor. Oh, he knows this. He would not change a thing about
me."
"Nor would L"
She moved a step closer. He smelled the milky warmth of her breath.
"They made me too well," she said. "I was designed to please an Atreides. Leto
says his Duncan is more an Atreides than many born to the name."
"Leto?"
"How else should I address the one I'll wed?"
Even as she spoke, Hwi leaned toward Idaho. As though a magnet had found its
point of critical attraction, they moved together. Hwi pressed her cheek against
his tunic, her arms
around him feeling the hard muscles. Idaho rested his chin in her hair, the musk
filling his senses.
"This is insane," he whispered.
"Yes."
He lifted her chin and kissed her.
She pressed herself against him.
Neither of them doubted where this must lead. She did not resist when he lifted
her off her feet and carried her into the bedroom.
Only once did Idaho speak. "You're not a virgin."
"Nor are you, love."
"Love," he whispered. "Love, love, love. . ."
"Yes . . . yes!"
In the post-coital peace, Hwi put both hands behind her head and stretched,
twisting on the rumpled bed. Idaho sat with his back to her looking out the
window.
"Who were your other lovers?" he asked.
She lifted herself on one elbow. "I've had no other lovers." "But. . ." He
turned and looked down at her.
"In my teens," she said, "there was a young man who needed me very much." She
smiled. "Afterward, I was very ashamed. How trusting I was! I thought I had
failed the people who depended on me. But they found out and they were elated.
You know, I think I was being tested."
Idaho scowled. "Is that how it was with me? I needed you?" "No, Duncan." Her
features were grave. "We gave joy to each other because that's how it is with
love."
"Love!" he said, and it was a bitter sound.
She said: "My Uncle Malky used to say that love was a bad bargain because you
get no guarantees."
"Your Uncle Malky was a wise man."
"He was stupid! Love needs no guarantees."
A smile twitched at the corners of Idaho's mouth.
She grinned up at him. "You know it's love when you want to give joy and damn
the consequences."
He nodded. "I think only of the danger to you."
"We are what we are," she said.
"What will we do?"
"We'll cherish this for as long as we live."
"You sound. . . so final."
"I am."
"But we'll see each other every. . .
"Never again like this."
"Hwi!" He hurled himself across the bed and buried his face in her breast.
She stroked his hair.
His voice muffled against her, he said: "What if I've impreg...
"Shush! If there's to be a child, there will be a child."
Idaho lifted his head and looked at her. "But he'll know for sure!"
"He'll know anyway."
"You think he really knows everything?"
"Not everything, but he'll know this."
"How?"
"I will tell him."
Idaho pushed himself away from her and sat up on the bed. Anger warred with
confusion in his expression.
"I must," she said.
"If he turns against you... Hwi, there are stories. You could be in terrible
danger!"
"No. I have needs, too. He knows this. He will not harm either of us."
"But he..."
"He will not destroy me. He will know that if he harms you that would destroy
me."
"How can you marry him?"
"Dear Duncan, have you not seen that he needs me more than you do?"
"But he cannot. . . I mean, you can't possibly. . .
"The joy that you and I have in each other, I'll not have that with Leo. It's
impossible for him. He has confessed this to me."
"Then why can't. . . If he loves you . . ."
"He has larger plans and larger needs." She reached out and took Idaho's right
hand in both of hers. "I've known that since I first began to study about him.
Needs larger than either of us have."
"What plans? What needs?"
"Ask him."
"Do you know?" "Yes.., "You mean you believe those stories about. . ." "There is
honesty and goodness in him. I know it by my
own responses to him. What my Ixian masters made in me was, I think, a reagent
which reveals more than they wanted me to know."
"Then you believe him!" Idaho accused. He tried to pull his hand away from her.
"If you go to him, Duncan, and..."
"He'll never see me again!"
"He will."
She pulled his hand to her mouth and kissed his fingers.
"I'm a hostage," he said. "You've made me fearful . . . the two of you together.
. ."
"I never thought it would be easy to serve God," she said. "I just didn't think
it would be this hard."
===
Memory has a curious meaning to me, a meaning I have hoped others might share.
It continually astonished me how people hide from their ancestral memories,
shielding themselves behind a thick barrier of mythos. Ohhh, I do not expect
them to seek the terrible immediacy of every living moment which I must
experience. I can understand that they might not want to be submerged in a mush
of petty ancestral details. You have reason to fear that your living moments
might be taken over by others. Yet, the meaning is there within those memories.
We carry all of our ancestry forward like a living wave, all of the hopes and
joys and griefs, the agonies and the exultations of our past. Nothing within
those memories remains completely without meaning or influence, not as long as
there is a humankind somewhere. We have that bright Infinity all around us, that
Golden Path of forever to which we can continually pledge our puny but inspired
allegiance.
-The Stolen Journals
"I HAVE summoned yon, Moneo, because of what my guards tell me," Leto said.
They stood in the darkness of the crypt where, Moneo reminded himself, some of
the God Emperor's most painful decisions originated. Moneo, too, had heard
reports. He had been expecting the summons all afternoon and, when it came
shortly after the evening meal, a moment of terror had engulfed him.
"Is it about... about the Duncan, Lord?"
"Of course it's about the Duncan!"
"I'm told, Lord . . . his behavior. . ."
"Terminal behavior, Moneo?"
Moneo bowed his head. "If you say it, Lord."
"How long until the Tleilaxu could supply us with another one?"
"They say they have had problems, Lord. It might be as much as two years."
"Do you know what my guards tell me, Moneo?"
Moneo held his breath. If the God Emperor had learned about this latest . . .
No! Even the Fish Speakers were terrified by the affront. Had it been anyone but
a Duncan, the women would have taken it upon themselves to eliminate him.
"Well, Moneo?"
"I am told, Lord, that he called out a levy of guards and questioned them about
their origins. On what worlds were they born? What of their parentage, their
childhood?"
"And the answers did not please him."
"He frightened them, Lord. He kept insisting."
"As though repetition could elicit the truth, yes."
Moneo allowed himself to hope that this might be the whole of his Lord's
concern. "Why do the Duncans always do this, Lord?"
"It was their early training, the Atreides training."
"But how did that differ from.. ."
"The Atreides lived in the service of the people they governed. The measure of
their government was found in the lives of the governed. Thus, the Duncans
always want to know how the people live."
"He has spent a night in one village, Lord. He has been to some of the towns. He
has seen.. ."
"It's all in how you interpret the results, Moneo. Evidence is nothing without
judgments."
"I have observed that he judges, Lord."
"We all do, but the Duncans tend to believe that this universe is hostage to my
will. And they know that you cannot do wrong in the name of right."
"Is that what he says you. . ."
"It is what I say, what all of the Atreides in me say. This
universe will not permit it. The things you attempt will not endure if you. . ."
"But, Lord! You do no wrong!"
-"Poor Moneo. You cannot see that I have created a vehicle
of injustice."
Moneo could not speak. He realized that he had been diverted by a seeming return
to mildness in the God Emperor. But now, Moneo sensed changes moving in that
great body, and at this proximity . . .Moneo glanced around the crypt's central
chamber, reminding himself of the many deaths which had occurred here and which
were enshrined here.
Is it my time?
Leto spoke in a musing tone. "You cannot succeed by taking hostages. That is a
form of enslavement. One kind of human cannot own another kind of human. This
universe will not permit it."
The words lay there, simmering in Moneo's awareness, a terrifying contrast to
the rumblings of transformation which he sensed in his Lord.
The Worm comes!
Again, Moneo glanced around the crypt chamber. This place was far worse than the
aerie! Sanctuary was too remote.
"Well, Moneo, do you have any response?" Leto asked.
Moneo ventured a whisper: "The Lord's words enlighten me."
"Enlighten? You are not enlightened!"
Moneo spoke out of desperation. "But I serve my Lord!"
"You claim service to God?"
"Yes, Lord."
"Who created your religion, Moneo?"
"You did, Lord."
"That's a sensible answer."
"Thank you, Lord."
"Don't thank me! Tell me what religious institutions perpetuate!"
Moneo backed away four steps.
"Stand where you are!" Leto ordered.
Trembling all through his body, Moneo shook his head dumbly. At last, he had
encountered the question without answer. Failure to answer would precipitate his
death. He waited for it, head bowed.
"Then I will tell you, poor servant," Leto said.
Moneo dared to hope. He lifted his gaze to the God Emperor's face, noting that
the eyes were not glazed . . . and the hands were not trembling. Perhaps the
Worm did not come.
"Religious institutions perpetuate a mortal master-servant relationship," Leto
said. "They create an arena which attracts prideful human power-seekers with all
of their nearsighted prejudices!"
Moneo could only nod. Was that a trembling in the God Emperor's hands? Was the
terrible face withdrawing slightly into its cowl?
"The secret revelations of infamy, that is what the Duncans ask after," Leto
said. "The Duncans have too much compassion for their fellows and too sharp a
limit on fellowship."
Moneo had studied holos of Dune's ancient sandworms, the gigantic mouths full of
crysknife teeth around consuming fire. He noted the tumescence of the latent
rings on Leto's tubular surface. Were they more prominent? Would a new mouth
open below that cowled face?
"The Duncans know in their hearts," Leto said, "that I have deliberately ignored
the admonition of Mohammed and Moses. Even you know it, Moneo!"
It was an accusation. Moneo started to nod, then shook his head from side to
side. He wondered if he dared renew his retreat. Moneo knew from experience that
lectures in this tenor did not long continue without the coming of the Worm.
"What might that admonition be?" Leto asked. There was a mocking lightness in
his voice.
Moneo allowed himself a faint shrug.
Abruptly, Leto's voice filled the chamber with a rumbling baritone, an ancient
voice which spoke across the centuries: "You are servants unto God, not servants
unto servants!"
Moneo wrung his hands and cried out: "I serve you, Lord!"
"Moneo, Moneo," Leto said, his voice low and resonant, "a million wrongs cannot
give rise to one right. The right is known because it endures."
Moneo could only stand in trembling silence.
"I had intended Hwi to mate with you, Moneo," Leto said. "Now, it is too late."
The words took a moment penetrating Moneo's consciousness. He felt that their
meaning was out of any known context. Hwi? Who was Hwi? Oh, yes-the God
Emperor's Ixian bride-to-be. Mate . . . with me?
Moneo shook his head.
Leto spoke with infinite sadness: "You, too, shall pass away.
Will all your works be as dust forgotten?"
Without any warning, even as he spoke, Leto's body convulsed in a thrashing roll
which heaved him from the cart. The speed of it, the monstrous violence, threw
him within centimeters of Moneo, who screamed and fled across the crypt.
"Moneo!"
Leto's call stopped the majordomo at the entrance to the lift
"The test, Moneo! I will test Siona tomorrow!"
===
The realization of what I am occurs in the timeless awareness which does not
stimulate nor delude. I create a field without self or center, a field where
even death becomes only analogy. I desire no results. I merely permit this field
which has no goals nor desires, no perfections nor even visions of achievements.
In that field, omnipresent primal awareness is all. It is the light which pours
through the windows of my universe.
-The Stolen Journals
THE SUN came up, sending its harsh glare across the dunes. Leto felt the sand
beneath him as a soft caress. Only his human ears, hearing the abrasive rasp of
his heavy body, reported otherwise. It was a sensory conflict which he had
learned to accept.
He heard Siona walking behind him, a lightness in her tread, a gentle spilling
of sand as she climbed to his level atop a dune.
The longer I endure, the more vulnerable I become, he thought.
This thought often occurred to him these days when he went into his desert. He
peered upward. The sky was cloudless with a blue density which the old days of
Dune had never seen.
What was a desert without a cloudless sky? Too bad it could not have Dune's
silvery hue.
Ixian satellites controlled this sky, not always to the perfection he might
desire. Such perfection was a machine-fantasy which faltered under human
management. Still, the satellites held a sufficiently steady grip to give him
this morning of
desert stillness. He gave his human lungs a deep breath of it and listened for
Siona's approach. She had stopped. He knew she was admiring the view.
Leto felt his imagination like a conjurer calling up everything which had
produced the physical setting for this moment. He felt the satellites. Fine
instruments which played the music for the dance of warming and cooling air
masses, perpetually monitoring and adjusting the powerful vertical and
horizontal currents. It amused him to recall that the lxians had thought he
would use this exquisite machinery in a new kind of hydraulic despotismwithholding
moisture from those who defied their ruler, punishing others with
terrible storms. How surprised they had been to f-and themselves mistaken!
My controls are more subtle.
Slowly, gently, he began to move, swimming on the sand surface, gliding down off
the dune, never once looking back at the thin spire of his tower, knowing that
it would vanish presently into the haze of daytime heat.
Siona followed him with an uncharacteristic docility. Doubt had done its work.
She had read the stolen journals. She had listened to the admonitions of her
father. Now, she did not know what to think.
"What is this test?" she had asked Moneo. "What will he do?"
"It is never the same."
"How did he test you?"
"It will be different with you. I would only confuse you if I told you my
experience."
Leto had listened secretly while Moneo prepared his daughter, dressing her in an
authentic Fremen stillsuit with a dark robe over it, fitting the boot-pumps
correctly. Moneo had not forgotten.
Moneo had looked up from where he bent to adjust her boots. "The Worm will come.
That is all I can tell you. You must find a way to live in the presence of the
Worm."
He had stood then, explaining about the stillsuit, how it recycled her body's
own waters. He made her pull the tube from a catchpocket and suck on it, then
reseal the tube.
"You will be alone with him on the desert," Moneo had said. "Shai-Hulud is never
far away when you're on the desert."
"What if I refuse to go?" she asked.
"You will go . . . but you may not return."
This conversation had occurred in the ground-level chamber
of the Little Citadel while Leto waited in the aerie. He had come down when he
knew Siona was ready, drifting down in the predawn darkness on his cart's
suspensors. The cart had gone into the ground level room after Moneo and Siona
emerged. While Moneo marched across-the flat ground to his 'thopter and left in
a whispering of wings, Leto had required Siona to test the sealed portal of the
ground-level chamber, then look upward at the tower's impossible heights.
"The only way out is across the Sareer," he said.
He led her away from the tower then, not even commanding her to follow,
depending on her good sense, her curiosity and her doubts.
Leto's swimming progress took him down the dune's slipface and onto an exposed
section of the rocky basement complex, then up another sandy face at a shallow
angle, creating a path for Siona to follow. Fremen had called such compression
tracks "God's gift to the weary." He moved slowly, giving Siona plenty of time
in which to recognize that this was his domain, his natural habitat.
He came out atop another dune and turned to watch her progress. She held to the
track he had provided and stopped only when she reached the top. Her glance went
once to his face then she turned a full circle to examine the horizon. He heard
the sharp intake of her breath. Heat haze hid the spire's top. The base might
have been a distant outcropping.
"This is how it was," he said.
There was something about the desert which spoke to the eternal soul of people
who possessed Fremen blood, he knew. He had chosen this place for its desert
impact-a dune slightly higher than the others.
"Take a good look at it," he said, and he slipped down the dune's other side to
remove his bulk from her view.
Siona took one more slow turn, looking outward.
Leto knew the innermost sensation of what she saw. Except for that
insignificant, blurred blip of his tower's base, there was not the slightest
lift of horizon-flat, everywhere flat. No plants, no living movement. From her
vantage, there was a limit of approximately eight kilometers to the line where
the planet's curvature hid everything beyond.
Leto spoke from where he had stopped, just below the dune's crest. "This is the
real Sareer. You only know it when you're down here afoot. This is all that's
left of the bahr bela ma."
"The ocean without water," she whispered.
Again, she turned and examined the entire horizon.
There was no wind and, Leto knew, without wind, the silence ate at the human
soul. Siona was feeling the loss of all familiar reference points. She was
abandoned in dangerous space.
Leto glanced at the next dune. In that direction, they would come presently to a
low line of hills which originally had been mountains but now were broken into
remnant slag and rubble. He continued to rest quietly, letting the silence do
his work for him. It was even pleasant to imagine that these dunes went on, as
they once had, without end completely around the planet. But even these few
dunes were degenerating. Without the original Coriolis storms of Dune, the
Sareer saw nothing stronger than a stiff breeze and occasional heat vortices
which had no more than local effect.
One of these tiny "wind devils" danced across the middle distance to the south.
Siona's gaze followed its track. She spoke abruptly: "Do you have a personal
religion?"
Leto took a moment composing his reply. It always astonished him how a desert
provoked thoughts of religion.
"You dare ask me if I have a personal religion?" he demanded.
Betraying no surface sign of the fears he knew she felt, Siona turned and stared
down at him. Audacity was always an Atreides hallmark, he reminded himself.
When she didn't answer, he said: "You are an Atreides for sure."
"Is that your answer?" she asked.
"What is it you really want to know, Siona?"
"What you believe!"
"Ho! You ask after my faith. Well, now-I believe that something cannot emerge
from nothing without divine intervention."
His answer puzzled her. "How is that an. . ."
"Natura non facit saltus," he said.
She shook her head, not understanding the ancient allusion which had sprung to
his lips. Leto translated:
"Nature makes no leaps."
"What language was that?" she asked.
"A language no longer spoken anywhere else in my universe."
"Why did you use it then?"
"To prod your ancient memories."
"I don't have any! I just need to know why you brought me here."
"To give you a taste of your past. Come down here and climb onto my back."
She hesitated at first, then seeing the futility of defiance, slid down the dune
and clambered onto his back.
Leto waited until she was kneeling atop him. It was not the same as the old
times he knew. She had no Maker hooks and could not stand on his back. He lifted
his front segments slightly off the surface.
"Why am I doing this?" she asked. Her tone said she felt silly up there.
"I want you to taste the way our people once moved proudly across this land,
high atop the back of a giant sandworm."
He began to glide along the dune just below the crest. Siona had seen holos. She
knew this experience intellectually, but the pulse of reality had a different
beat and he knew she would resonate to it.
Ahhh, Siona, he thought, you do not even begin to suspect how I will test you.
Leto steeled himself then. I must have no pity. If she dies, she dies. If any of
them dies, that is a required event, no more.
And he had to remind himself that this applied even to Hwi Noree. It was just
that all of them could not die.
He sensed it when Siona began to enjoy the sensation of riding on his back. He
felt a faint shift in her weight as she eased back onto her legs to lift her
head.
He drove outward then along a curving barracan, joining Siona in enjoyment of
the old sensations. Leto could just glimpse the remnant hills at the horizon
ahead of him. They were like a seed from the past waiting there, a reminder of
the self-sustaining and expanding force which operated in a desert. He could
forget for a moment that on this planet where only a small fraction of the
surface remained desert, the Sareer's dynamism existed in a precarious
environment.
The illusion of the past was here, though. He felt it as he moved. Fantasy, of
course, he told himself, a vanishing fantasy as long as his enforced tranquility
continued. Even the sweeping barracan which he traversed now was not as great as
the ones of the past. None of the dunes were that great.
This whole maintained desert struck him suddenly as ridiculous. He almost
stopped on a pebbled surface between the dunes, continuing but more slowly as he
tried to conjure up
the necessities which kept the whole system working. He imagined the planet's
rotation setting up great air currents which shifted cold and heated air to new
regions in enormous volume-everything monitored and ruled by those tiny
satellites with their Ixian instruments and heat-focusing dishes. If the high
monitors saw anything, they saw the Sareer partly as a "relief desert" with both
physical and cold-air walls girdling it. This tended to create ice at the edges
and required even more climatic adjustments.
It was not easy and Leto forgave the occasional mistakes for that reason.
As he moved once more out onto dunes, he lost that sense of delicate balance,
put aside memories of the pebbly wastelands outside the central sands, and gave
himself up to enjoyment of his "petrified ocean" with its frozen and apparently
immovable waves. He turned southward, parallel to the remnant hills.
He knew that most people were offended by his infatuation with desert. They were
uneasy and turned away. Siona, however, could not turn away. Everywhere she
looked, the desert demanded recognition. She rode silently on his back, but he
knew her eyes were full. And the old-old memories were beginning to churn.
He came within three hours to a region of cylindrical whaleback dunes, some of
them more than one hundred and fifty kilometers long at an angle to the
prevailing wind. Beyond them lay a rocky corridor between dunes and into a
region of star dunes almost four hundred meters high. Finally, they entered the
braided dunes of the central erg where the general high pressure and
electrically charged air gave his spirits a lift. He knew the same magic would
be working on Siona.
"Here is where the songs of the Long Trek originated," he said. "They are
perfectly preserved in the Oral History."
She did not answer, but he knew she heard.
Leto slowed his pace and began to speak to Siona, telling her about their Fremen
past. He sensed the quickening of her interest. She even asked questions
occasionally, but he could also feel her fears building. Even the base of his
Little Citadel was no longer visible here. She could recognize nothing manmade.
And she would think he engaged now in small talk, unimportant things to put off
something portentous.
"Equality between our men and women originated here," he said.
"Your Fish Speakers deny that men and women are equal," she said.
Her voice, full of questioning disbelief, was a better locator than the
sensation of her crouched on his back. Leto stopped at the intersection of two
braided dunes and let the venting of his heat-generated oxygen subside.
"Things are not the same today," he said. "But men and women do have different
evolutionary demands upon them. With the Fremen, though, there was an
interdependence. That fostered equality out here where questions of survival can
become immediate."
"Why did you bring me here?" she demanded.
"Look behind us," he said.
He felt her turn. Presently, she said: "What am I supposed to see?"
"Have we left any tracks? Can you tell where we've been?"
"There's a little wind now."
"It has covered our tracks?"
"I guess so . . . yes."
"This desert made us what we were and are," he said. "It's the real museum of
all our traditions. Not one of those traditions has really been lost."
Leto saw a small sandstorm, a ghibli, moving across the southern horizon. He
noted the narrow ribbons of dust and sand moving out ahead of it. Surely, Siona
had seen it.
"Why won't you tell me why you brought me here?" she asked. Fear was obvious in
her voice.
"But I have told you."
"You have not!"
"How far have we come, Siona?"
She thought about this. "Thirty kilometers? Twenty?"
"Farther," he said. "I can move very fast in my own land. Didn't you feel the
wind on your face?"
"Yes." Sullen. "So why ask me how far?"
"Come down and stand where I can see you."
..Why?"
Good, he thought. She believes I will abandon her here and speed off faster than
she can follow.
"Come down and I'll explain," he said.
She slid off his back and came around to where she could look into his face.
"Time passes swiftly when your senses are full," he said.
"We have been out almost four hours. We have come about sixty kilometers."
"Why is that important?"
"Moneo put dried food in the pouch of your robe," he said. "Eat a little and I
will tell you."
She found a dried cube of protomor in the pouch and chewed on it while she
watched him. It was the authentic old Fremen food even to the slight addition of
melange.
"You have felt your past," he said. "Now, you must be sensitized to your future,
to the Golden Path."
She swallowed. "I don't believe in your Golden Path."
"If you are to live, you will believe in it."
"Is that your test? Have faith in the Great God Leto or die?"
"You need no faith in me whatsoever. I want you to have faith in yourself."
"Then why is it important how far we've come?"
"So you'll understand how far you still have to go."
She put a hand to her cheek. "I don't. . ."
"Right where you stand," he said, "you are in the unmistakable midst of
Infinity. Look around you at the meaning of Infinity."
She glanced left and right at the unbroken desert.
"We are going to walk out of my desert together," he said. "Just the two of us."
"You don't walk," she sneered.
"A figure of speech. But you will walk. I assure you of that."
She looked in the direction they had come. "So that's why you asked me about
tracks."
"Even if there were tracks, you could not go back. There is nothing at my Little
Citadel that you could get to and use for survival."
"No water?"
"Nothing."
She found the catchpocket tube at her shoulder, sucked at it and restored it. He
noted the care with which she sealed the end, but she did not pull the face flap
across her mouth, although Leto had heard her father warning her about this. She
wanted her mouth free for talking!
"You're telling me I can't run away from you," she said.
"Run away if you want."
She turned a full circle, examining the wasteland.
"There is a saying about the open land," he said, "that one direction is as good
as another. In some ways, that's still true, but I would not depend on it."
"But I'm really free to leave you if I want?"
"Freedom can be a very lonely estate," he said.
She pointed to the steep side of the dune on which they had stopped. "But I
could just go down there and. . ."
"Were I you, Siona, I would not go down where you are pointing."
She glared at him. "Why?"
"On the dune's steep side, unless you follow the natural curves, the sand may
slide down upon you and bury you."
She looked down the slope, absorbing this.
"See how beautiful words can be?" he asked.
She returned her attention to his face. "Should we be going?"
"You learn to value leisure out here. And courtesy. There's no hurry."
"But we have no water except the..
."
"Used wisely, that stillsuit will keep you alive."
"But how long will it take us to. . ."
"Your impatience alarms me."
"But we have only this dried food in my pouch. What will we eat when..."
"Siona! Have you noticed that you are expressing our situation as mutual. What
will we eat? We have no water. Should we be going? How long will it take us?"
He sensed the dryness of her mouth as she tried to swallow.
"Could it be that we're interdependent?" he asked.
She spoke reluctantly. "I don't know how to survive out here."
"But I do?"
She nodded.
"Why should I share such precious knowledge with you?" he asked.
She shrugged, a pitiful gesture which touched him. How quickly the desert cut
away previous attitudes.
"I will share my knowledge with you," he-said. "And you must find something
valuable that you can share with me."
Her gaze traversed his length, paused a moment at the flippers which once were
his legs and feet, then came back to his face.
"Agreement bought with threats is no agreement," she said.
"I offer you no violence."
"There are many kinds of violence," she said.
"And I brought you out here where you may die?"
"Did I have a choice in it?"
"It is difficult to be born an Atreides," he said. "Believe me, I know."
"You don't have to do it this way," she said.
"And there you are wrong."
He turned away from her and set off in a sinusoidal track down the dune. He
heard her slipping and stumbling as she followed. Leto stopped well into the
dune shadow.
"We'll wait out the day here," he said. "It uses less water to travel by night."