here before."

Idaho felt himself almost overcome with desire to cleanse this place even if it

cost him his life, this diminished life which could be repeated endlessly by

people who had no real concerns for him. An older model, yes! But this was no

Fremen.

"Draw that knife or take your hand off it," Idaho said.

Garun jerked his hand away from the knife. "It is not a real knife," he said.

"Only for decoration." His voice became eager. "But we have real knives, even

crysknives! They are kept locked in the display cases to preserve them."

Idaho could not help himself. He threw his head back in laughter. Siona smiled,

but Nayla looked thoughtful and the rest of the Fish Speaker troop drew into a

close, watchful circle around them.

The laughter had an odd effect on Garun. He lowered his head and clasped his

hands tightly together, but not before Idaho saw them trembling. When Garun

peered upward once more, it was to look at Idaho from beneath heavy brows. Idaho

felt abruptly sobered. It was as though some terrible boot had crushed Garun's

ego into fearful subservience. There was watchful waiting in the man's eyes. And

for no reason he could explain, Idaho remembered a passage from the Orange

Catholic Bible. He asked himself: Are these the meek who will outwait us all and

inherit the universe?

Garun cleared his throat, then: "Perhaps the ghola Duncan Idaho will witness our

ways and our ritual and judge them?"

Idaho felt shamed by the plaintive request. He spoke without thinking: "I will

teach you anything Fremen that I know." He looked up to see Nayla scowling at

him. "It will help to pass the time," he said. "And who knows? It may return

something of the true Fremen to this land."

Siona said: "We've no need to play old cultish games! Take us to our quarters."

Nayla lowered her head in embarrassment and spoke without looking at Siona.

"Commander, there is a thing I have not ventured to tell you."

"That you must make sure we stay in this filthy place," Siona said.

"Oh, no!" Nayla looked up at Siona's face. "Where could you go? The Wall cannot

be climbed and there is only the river beyond it, anyway. And in the other

direction, it is the Sareer. Oh, no . . . it is something else." Nayla shook her

head.

"Out with it!" Siona snapped.

"I am under the strictest orders, Commander, which I dare not disobey." Nayla

glanced at the other members of the troop then back to Siona. "You and the . . .

Duncan Idaho are to be quartered together."

"My father's orders?"

"Lady Commander, they are said to be the orders of the God Emperor himself and

we dare not disobey."

Siona looked full at Idaho. "You will remember my warning, Duncan, when last we

spoke at the Citadel?"

"My hands are mine to do with as I wish," Idaho snarled. "I don't think you have

any doubts about my wishes!"

She turned away from him after a curt nod and looked at Garun. "What does it

matter where we bed in this disgusting place? Take us to our quarters."

Idaho found Garun's response fascinating-a turning of the head toward the ghola,

shielding the face behind the Fremen hood, then a secret conspiratorial wink.

Only then did Garun lead them away down the ditty street.

===

What is the most immediate danger to my stewardship? I will tell you. It is a

true visionary, a person who has stood in the presence of God with the full

knowledge of where he stands. Visionary ecstasy releases energies which are like

the energies of sex-uncaring for anything except creation. One act of creation

can be much like another. Everything depends upon the vision.

-The Stolen Journals

LETO LAY without his cart on the high, sheltered balcony of his Little Citadel

tower, subduing a fretfulness which he knew came from the necessary delays

putting off the date of his wedding to Hwi Noree. He stared toward the

southwest. Somewhere off there beyond the darkening horizon, the Duncan, Siona

and their companions had been six days in Tuono Village.

The delays are my own fault, Leto thought. I am the one who changed the place

for the wedding, making it necessary for poor Moneo to revise all of his

preparations.

And now, of course, there was the matter of Malky.

None of these necessities could be explained to Moneo, who could be heard

stirring about within the central chamber of the aerie, worrying about his

absence from the command post where he directed the festive preparations. Moneo

was such a worrier!

Leto looked toward the setting sun. It floated low to the horizon, faded a dim

orange by a recent storm. Rain crouched low in the clouds to the south beyond

the Sareer now. In a prolonged silence, Leto had watched the rain there for a

time

which had stretched out with no beginning or end. The clouds had grown out of a

hard gray sky, rain walking in visible lines. He had felt himself clothed in

memories that came unbidden. The mood was hard to shake off and, without even

thinking, he muttered the remembered lines of an ancient verse.

"Did you speak, Lord?" Moneo's voice came from close beside Leto. By merely

turning his eyes, Leto could see the faithful majordomo standing attentively

waiting.

Leto translated into Galach as he quoted: "The nightingale nests in the plum

tree, but what will she do with the wind?"

"Is that a question, Lord?"

"An old question. The answer is simple. Let the nightingale keep to her

flowers."

"I don't understand, Lord."

"Stop mouthing the obvious, Moneo. It disturbs me when you do that."

"Forgive me, Lord."

"What else can I do?" Leto studied Moneo's downcast features. "You and I, Moneo,

whatever else we do, we provide good theater."

Moneo peered at Leto's face. "Lord?"

"The rites of the religious festival of Bacchus were the seeds of Greek theater,

Moneo. Religion often leads to theater. They will have fine theater out of us."

Once more, Leto turned and looked at the southwest horizon.

There was a wind there now piling up the clouds. Leto thought he could hear

driven sand blustering along the dunes, but there was only resonant quiet in the

tower aerie, a quiet with the faintest of wind hiss behind it.

"The clouds," he whispered. "I would take a cup of moonlight once more, an

ancient sea barge at my feet, thin clouds clinging to my darkling sky, the bluegray

cloak around my shoulders and horses neighing nearby."

"My Lord is troubled," Moneo said. The compassion in his voice wrenched at Leto.

"The bright shadows of my pasts," Leto said. "They never leave me in peace. I

listened for a soothing sound, the bell of a country town at nightfall, and it

told me only that I am the sound and soul of this place."

As he spoke, darkness enclosed the tower. Automatic lights came on around them.

Leto kept his attention directed outward where a thin melon slice of First Moon

drifted above the clouds with orange planet-light revealing the satellite's full

circle.

"Lord, why have we come out here?" Moneo asked. "Why won't you tell me?"

"I wanted the benefit of your surprise," Leto said. "A Guild lighter will land

beside us out here soon. My Fish Speakers bring Malky to me."

Moneo inhaled a quick breath and held it a moment before exhaling. "Hwi's . . .

uncle? That Malky?"

"You are surprised that you had no warning of this," Leto said.

Moneo felt a chill all through his body. "Lord, when you wish to keep things

secret from. . ."

"Moneo?" Leto spoke in a softly persuasive tone. "I know that Malky offered you

greater temptations than any other. . ."

"Lord! I never. . ."

"I know that, Moneo." Still in that soft tone. "But surprise has shocked your

memories alive. You are armed for anything I may require of you."

"What . . . what does my Lord..."

"Perhaps we will have to dispose of Malky. He is a problem."

"Me? You want me to..."

"Perhaps."

Moneo swallowed, then, "The Reverend Mother..."

"Anteac is dead. She served me well, but she is dead. There was extreme violence

when my Fish Speakers attacked the . . . place where Malky lay hidden."

"We are better off without Anteac," Moneo said.

"I appreciate your distrust of the Bene Gesserit, but I would that Anteac had

left us in another way. She was faithful to us, Moneo."

"A Reverend Mother was..."

"Both the Bene Tleilax and the Guild wanted Malky's secret," Leto said. "When

they saw us move against the lxians, they struck ahead of my Fish Speakers.

Anteac . . . well, she could only delay them a bit, but it was enough. My Fish

Speakers invested the place. . ."

"Malky's secret, Lord?"

"When a thing vanishes," Leto said, "that is as much of a message as when a

thing suddenly appears. The empty spaces are always worthy of our study."

"What does my Lord mean, empty..."

"Malky did not die! Certainly I would have known that. Where did he go when he

vanished?"

"Vanished . . . from you, Lord? Do you mean that the lxians..."

"They have improved upon a device they gave me long ago. They improved it slowly

and subtly, hidden shells within hidden shells, but I noted the shadows. I was

surprised. I was pleased."

Moneo thought about this. A device which concealed . . . Ahhh! The God Emperor

had mentioned a thing on several occasions, a way of concealing the thoughts he

recorded. Moneo spoke:

"And Malky brings the secret of. . ."

"Oh, yes! But that is not Malky's real secret. He holds another thing in his

bosom which he does not think that I suspect."

"Another . . . but, Lord, if they can hide even from you. . ."

"Many can do that now, Moneo. They scattered when my Fish Speakers attacked. The

secret of the lxian device is spread far and wide."

Moneo's eyes went wide with alarm. "Lord, if anyone..."

"If they learn to be clever, they will leave no tracks," Leto said. "Tell me,

Moneo, what does Nayla say about the Duncan? Does she resent reporting directly

to you?"

"Whatever my Lord commands..." Moneo cleared his throat. He could not fathom why

his God Emperor spoke of hidden tracks, the Duncan and Nayla in the same breath.

"Yes, of course," Leto said. "Whatever I command, Nayla obeys. And what does she

say of the Duncan?"

"He has not tried to breed with Siona, if that is my Lord's. . .

"But what does he do with my puppet Naib, Garun, and the other Museum Fremen?"

"He speaks to them of the old ways, of the wars against the Harkonnens, of the

first Atreides here on Arrakis."

"On Dune!"

"Dune, yes."

"It's because there's no more Dune that there are no more Fremen," Leto said.

"Have you conveyed my message to Nayla?"

"Lord, why do you add to your peril?"

"Did you convey my message?"

"The messenger has been sent to Tuono, but I could still call her back."

"You will not call her back!"

"But, Lord.. ."

"What will she say to Nayla?"

"That . . . that is your command for Nayla to continue in absolute and

unquestioning obedience of my daughter except insofar. . . Lord! This is

dangerous!"

"Dangerous? Nayla is a Fish Speaker. She will obey me."

"But Siona . . . Lord, I fear that my daughter does not serve you with all of

her heart. And Nayla is. . ."

"Nayla must not deviate."

"Lord, let us hold your wedding in some other place."

"No!"

"Lord, I know that your vision has revealed. . ."

"The Golden Path endures, Moneo. You know that as well as L"

Moneo sighed. "Infinity is yours, Lord. I do not question the. . ." He broke off

as a monstrous shuddering roar shook the tower, louder and louder.

Both of them turned toward the sound- a descending plume of blue-orange light

filled with swirling shockwaves came down to the desert less than a kilometer

away to the south.

"Ahhh, my guest arrives," Leto said. "I will send you down on my cart, Moneo.

Bring only Malky back with you. Tell the Guildsmen this has earned my

forgiveness, then send them away."

"Your for... yes, Lord. But if they have the secret of. . ."

"They serve my purpose, Moneo. You must do the same. Bring Malky to me."

Obediently, Moneo went to the cart which lay in shadows at the far side of the

aerie chamber. He clambered on it, watched a mouth of night appear in the Wall.

A landing-lip extruded into that night. The cart drifted outward, feather-light,

and floated at an angle to the sand beside a Guild lighter which stood upright

like a distorted miniature of the Little Citadel's tower.

Leto watched from the balcony, his front segments lifted slightly to provide him

a better viewing angle. His acute eyesight identified the white movement of

Moneo standing on the cart in the moonlight. Long-legged Guild servitors came

out with a litter which they slid onto the cart, standing there a moment in

conversation with Moneo. When they left, Leto closed the cart's bubble cover and

saw moonlight reflected from it. At his beckoning thought, the cart and its

burden returned to the landing-lip. The Guild lighter lifted in its noisy

rumbling while Leto was bringing the cart into the chamber's lights, closing the

entrance behind it. Leto opened the bubble cover. Sand grated beneath him as he

rolled to the litter and lifted his front segments to peer in at Malky who lay

as though sleeping, lashed into the litter by broad gray elastic bindings. The

man's face was ashen under dark gray hair.

Haw he has aged, Leto thought.

Moneo stepped down off the cart and looked back at the litter's occupant. "He is

injured, Lord. They want to send a medical. . ."

"They wanted to send a spy."

Leto studied Malky the dark wrinkled skin, the sunken cheeks, that sharp nose at

such contrast with the rounded oval of his face. The heavy eyebrows had turned

almost white. There but for a lifetime of testosterone . . . yes.

Malky's eyes opened. Such a shock to find evil in those doe-like brown eyes! A

smile twitched Malky's mouth.

"Lord Leto." Malky's voice was little more than a husky whisper. His eyes turned

right, focusing on the majordomo. "And Moneo. Forgive me for not rising to the

occasion."

"Are you in pain?" Leto asked.

"Sometimes." Malky's eyes moved to study his surroundings. "Where are the

houris?"

"I'm afraid I must deny you that pleasure, Malky."

"Just as well," Malky husked. "I don't really feel up to their demands. Those

were not houris you sent after me, Leto."

"They were professional in their obedience to me," Leto said.

"They were bloody hunters!"

"Anteac was the hunter. My Fish Speakers were merely the clean-up crew."

Moneo shifted his attention from one speaker to the other, back and forth. There

were disturbing undertones in this conversation. Despite the huskiness, Malky

sounded almost flippant . . . but then he had always been that way. A dangerous

man!

Leto said: "Just before your arrival, Moneo and I were discussing Infinity."

"Poor Moneo," Malky said.

Leto smiled. "Do you remember, Malky? You once asked me to demonstrate

Infinity."

"You said no Infinity exists to be demonstrated." Malky

swept his gaze toward Moneo. "Leto likes to play with paradox. He knows all the

tricks of language that have ever been discovered."

Moneo put down a surge of anger. He felt excluded from this conversation, an

object of amusement by two superior beings. Malky and the God Emperor were

almost like two old friends reliving the pleasures of a mutual past.

"Moneo accuses me of being the sole possessor of Infinity," Leto said. "He

refuses to believe that he has just as much of Infinity as I have."

Malky stared up at Leto. "You see, Moneo? You see how tricky he is with words?"

"Tell me about your niece, Hwi Noree," Leto said.

"Is it true, Leto, what they say? That you are going to wed the gentle Hwi?"

"It is true."

Malky chuckled, then grimaced with pain. "They did terrible damage to me, Leto,"

he whispered, then: "Tell me, old worm. . ."

Moneo gasped.

Malky took a moment to recover from pain, then: "Tell me, old worm, is there a

monster penis hidden in that monster body of yours? What a shock for the gentle

Hwi!"

"I told you the truth about that long ago," Leto said.

"Nobody tells the truth," Malky husked.

"You often told me the truth," Leto said. "Even when you didn't know it."

"That's because you're cleverer than the rest of us."

"Will you tell me about Hwi?"

"I think you already know it."

"I want to hear it from you," Leto said. "Did you get help from the Tleilaxu?"

"They gave us knowledge, nothing more. Everything else we did for ourselves."

"I thought it was not the Tleilaxus' doing."

Moneo could no longer contain his curiosity. "Lord, what is this of Hwi and

Tleilaxu? Why do you..."

"Here there, old friend Moneo," Malky said, rolling his gaze toward the

majordomo. "Don't you know what he. . ."

"I was never your friend!" Moneo snapped.

"Companion among the houris then," Malky said.

"Lord," Moneo said, turning toward Leto, "why do you speak of..."

"Shhh, Moneo," Leto said. "We are tiring your old companion and I have things to

learn from him yet."

"Did you ever wonder, Leto," Malky asked, "why Moneo never tried to take the

whole shebang away from you?"

"The what?" Moneo demanded.

"Another of Leto's old words," Malky said. "She and bang-shebang. It's perfect.

Why don't you rename your Empire, Leto? The Grand Shebang!"

Leto raised a hand to silence Moneo. "Will you tell me, Malky? About Hwi?"

"Just a few tiny cells from my body," Malky said. "Then the carefully nurtured

growth and education-everything an exact opposite to your old friend, Malky. We

did it all in the no-room where you cannot see!"

"But I notice when something vanishes," Leto said.

"No-room?" Moneo asked, then as the import of Malky's words sank home. "You? You

and Hwi . . ."

"That is the shape I saw in the shadows," Leto said.

Moneo looked full at Leto's face. "Lord, I will call off the wedding. I will

say..."

"You will do nothing of the kind!"

"But Lord, if she and Malky are. . ."

"Moneo," Malky husked. "Your Lord commands and you must obey!"

That mocking tone! Moneo glared at Malky.

"The exact opposite of Malky," Leto said. "Didn't you hear him?"

"What could be better?" Malky asked.

"But surely, Lord, if you now know..."

"Moneo," Leto said, "you are beginning to disturb me."

Moneo fell into abashed silence.

Leto said: "That's better. You know, Moneo, once tens of thousands of years ago

when I was another person, I made a mistake."

"You, a mistake?" Malky mocked.

Leto merely smiled. "My mistake was compounded by the beautiful way in which I

expressed it."

"Tricks with words," Malky taunted.

"Indeed! This is what I said: `The present is distraction; the future a dream;

only memory can unlock the meaning of life.' Aren't those beautiful words,

Malky?"

"Exquisite, old worm."

Moneo put a hand over his mouth.

"But my words were a foolish lie," Leto said. "I knew it at the time, but I was

infatuated with the beautiful words. No memory unlocks no meanings. Without

anguish of the spirit, which is a wordless experience, there are no meanings

anywhere."

"I fail to see the meaning of the anguish caused me by your bloody Fish

Speakers," Malky said.

"You're suffering no anguish," Leto said.

"If you were in this body, you'd. . ."

"That's just physical pain," Leto said. "It will end soon."

"Then when will I know the anguish?" Malky asked.

"Perhaps later."

Leto flexed his front segments away from Malky to face Moneo. "Do you really

serve the Golden Path, Moneo?"

"Ahhh, the Golden Path," Malky taunted.

"You know I do, Lord," Moneo said.

"Then you must promise me," Leto said, "that what you have learned here must

never pass your lips. Not by word or sign can you reveal it."

"I promise, Lord."

"He promises, Lord," Malky sneered.

One of Leto's tiny hands gestured at Malky, who lay staring up at the blunt

profile of a face within its gray cowl. "For reasons of old admiration and. . .

many other reasons, I cannot kill Malky. I cannot even ask it of you . . . yet

he must be eliminated."

"Ohhh, how clever you are!" Malky said.

"Lord, if you will wait at the other end of the chamber," Moneo said. "Perhaps

when you return Malky no longer will be a problem."

"He's going to do it," Malky husked. "Gods below! He's going to do it."

Leto squirmed away and went to the shadowed limit of the chamber, keeping his

attention on the faint arc of a line which would become an opening into the

night if he merely converted the wish into a thought-of-command. What a long

drop that would be out there-just roll off the landing-lip. He doubted that even

his body would survive it. But there was no water in the sand beneath his tower

and he could feel the Golden Path winking in and out of existence merely because

he allowed himself to think of such an end.

"Leto!" Malky called from behind him.

Leto heard the litter grating on the wind-scattered sand which peppered the

floor of his aerie.

Once more, Malky called: "Leto, you are the best! There's no evil in this

universe which can surpass. . ."

A sodden thump shut off Malky's voice. A blow to the throat, Leto thought. Yes,

Moneo knows that one. There came the sound of the balcony's transparent shield

sliding open, the rasping of the litter on the rail, then silence.

Moneo will have to bury the body in the sand, Leto thought. There is as yet no

worm to come and devour the evidence. Leto turned then and looked across the

chamber. Moneo stood leaning over the railing, peering down . . . down . . .

down . . .

I cannot pray for you, Malky, nor for you, Moneo, Leto thought. l may be the

only religious consciousness in the Empire because I am truly alone . . . so I

cannot pray.

===

You cannot understand history unless you understand its flowings, its currents

and the ways leaders move within such forces. A leader tries to perpetuate the

conditions which demand his leadership. Thus, the leader requires the outsider.

I caution you to examine my career with care. I am both leader and outsider. Do

not make the mistake of assuming that I only created the Church which was the

State. That was my function as leader and I had many historical models to use as

pattern. For a clue to my role as outsider, look at the arts of my time. The

arts are barbaric. The favorite poetry? The Epic. The popular dramatic ideal?

Heroism. Dances? Wildly abandoned. From Moneo's viewpoint, he is correct in

describing this as dangerous. It stimulates the imagination. It makes people

feel the lack of that which I have taken from them. What did I take from them?

The right to participate in history.

-The Stolen Journals

IDAHO, STRETCHED out on his cot with his eyes closed, heard a weight drop onto

the other cot. He sat up into the midafternoon light which slanted through the

room's single window at a sharp angle, reflecting off the white-tiled floor onto

the light yellow walls. Siona, he saw, had come in and stretched herself on her

cot. She already was reading one of the books she carried around with her in a

green fabric pack.

Why books? he wondered.

He swung his feet to the floor and glanced around the room. How could this highceilinged,

spacious box be considered even remotely Fremen? A wide table/desk of

some dark brown local plastic separated the two cots. There were two doors. One

led directly outside across a garden. The other admitted them to a luxurious

bath whose pale blue tiles glistened under a broad skylight. The bath contained,

among its many functional services, a sunken tub and a shower, each at least two

meters square. The door to this sybaritic space remained open and Idaho could

hear water running out of the tub. Siona appeared oddly fond of bathing in an

excess of water.

Stilgar, Idaho's Naib of the ancient days on Dune, would have looked on that

room with scorn. "Shameful!" he would have said. "Decadent! Weak!" Stilgar would

have used many scornful words about this entire village which dared to compare

itself with a true Fremen sietch.

Paper rustled as Siona turned a page. She lay with her head propped on two

pillows, a thin white robe covering her body. The robe still revealed clinging

wetness from her bath.

Idaho shook his head. What was it on those pages which held her interest this

way? She had been reading and re-reading since their arrival at Tuono. The

volumes were thin but numerous, bearing only numbers on their black bindings.

Idaho had seen a number nine.

Swinging his feet to the floor, he stood and went to the window. There was an

old man out there at a distance, digging in flowers. The garden was protected by

buildings on three sides. The flowers bore large blossoms-red on the outside

but, when they unfolded, white in the center. The old Man's uncovered gray hair

was a kind of blossom waving among the floral white and jeweled buds. Idaho

smelled moldering leaves and freshly turned dirt against a background of pungent

floral perfume.

A Fremen tending flowers in the open!

Siona volunteered nothing about her strange reading matter. She's taunting me,

Idaho thought. She wants me to ask.

He tried not to think about Hwi. Rage threatened to engulf him when he did. He

remembered the Fremen word for that intense emotion: kanawa, the iron ring of

jealousy. Where is Hwi? What is she doing at this moment?

The door from the garden opened without a knock and Teishar, an aide to Garun,

entered. Teishar had a dead colored

face full of dark wrinkles. His eyes were sunken with pale yellow around the

pupils. Teishar wore a brown robe. He had hair like old grass that had been left

out to rot. He seemed unnecessarily ugly, like a dark and elemental spirit.

Teishar closed the door and stood there looking at them.

Siona's voice came from behind Idaho. "Well, what is it?"

Idaho noticed then that Teishar seemed strangely excited, vibrating with it.

"The God Emperor. . ." Teishar cleared his throat and began again. "The God

Emperor will come to Tuono!"

Siona sat upright on the bed, folding her white robe over her knees. Idaho

glanced back at her, then once more to Teishar.

"He will be wed here, here in Tuono!" Teishar said. "It will be done in the

ancient Fremen way! The God Emperor and his bride will be guests of Tuono!"

Full in the grip of kanawa, Idaho glared at him, fists clenched. Teishar bobbed

his head briefly, turned and let himself out, shutting the door hard.

"Let me read you something, Duncan," Siona said.

Idaho was a moment understanding her words. Fists still clenched at his sides,

he turned and looked at her. Siona sat on the edge of her cot, a book in her

lap. She took his attention as agreement.

"Some believe," she read, "that you must compromise integrity with a certain

amount of dirty work before you can put genius to work. They say the compromise

begins when you come out of the sanctus intending to realize your ideals. Moneo

says my solution is to stay within the sanctus, sending others to do my dirty

work."

She looked up at Idaho. "The God Emperor-his own words."

Slowly, Idaho relaxed his fists. He knew he needed this distraction. And it

interested him that Siona had emerged from her silence.

"What is that book?" he asked.

Briefly, she told him how she and her companions had stolen the Citadel charts

and the copies of Leto's journals.

"Of course you knew about that," she said. "My father has made it plain that

spies betrayed our raid."

He saw the tears latent in her eyes. "Nine of you killed by the wolves?"

She nodded.

"You're a lousy Commander!" he said.

She bristled but before she could speak, he asked: "Who translated them for

you?"

"This is from Ix. They say the Guild found the Key."

"We already knew our God Emperor indulged in expedience," Idaho said. "Is that

all he has to say?"

"Read it for yourself." She rummaged in her pack beside the cot and came up with

the first volume of the translation, which she tossed across to his cot. As

Idaho returned to the cot, she demanded: "What do you mean I'm a lousy

Commander'?"

"Wasting nine of your friends that way."

"You fool!" She shook her head. "You obviously never saw those wolves!"

He picked up the book and found it heavy, realizing then that it had been

printed on crystal paper. "You should have armed yourselves against the wolves,"

he said, opening the volume.

"What arms?" Any arms we could get would've been useless!"

"Lasguns?" he asked, turning a page.

"Touch a lasgun on Arrakis and the Worm knows it!"

He turned another page. "Your friends got lasguns eventually."

"And look what it got them!"

Idaho read a line, then: "Poisons were available."

She swallowed convulsively.

Idaho looked at her. "You did poison the wolves after all, didn't you?"

Her voice was almost a whisper: "Yes."

"Then why didn't you do that in advance?" he asked.

"We . . . didn't . . . know . . . we . . . could."

"But you didn't test it," Idaho said. He turned back to the open volume. "A

lousy Commander."

"He's so devious!" Siona said.

Idaho read a passage in the volume before returning his attention to Siona.

"That hardly describes him. Have you read all of this?"

"Every word! Some of them several times."

Idaho looked at the open page and read aloud: "I have created what I intended-a

powerful spiritual tension throughout my Empire. Few sense the strength of it.

With what energies did I create this condition? I am not that strong. The only

power

I possess is the control of individual prosperity. That is the sum of all the

things I do. Then why do people seek my presence for other reasons? What could

lead them to certain death in the futile attempt to reach my presence? Do they

want to be saints? Do they think that thus they gain the vision of God?"

"He's the ultimate cynic," Siona said, tears apparent in her voice.

"How did he test you?" Idaho asked.

"He showed me a . . . he showed me his Golden Path."

"That's convenient. . ."

"It's real enough, Duncan." She looked up at him, her eyes glistening with

unshed tears. "But if it was ever a reason for our God Emperor, it is not reason

for what he has become!"

Idaho inhaled deeply, then: "The Atreides come to this!"

"The Worm must go!" Siona said.

"I wonder when he's arriving?" Idaho said.

"Garun's little rat friend didn't say."

"We must ask," Idaho said.

"We have no weapons," Siona said.

"Nayla has a lasgun," he said. "We have knives . . . rope. I saw rope in one of

Garun's storage rooms."

"Against the Worm?" she asked. "Even if we could get Nyala's lasgun, you know it

won't touch him."

"But is his cart proof against it?" Idaho asked.

"I don't trust Nayla," Siona said.

"Doesn't she obey you?"

"Yes, but.. .

"We will proceed one step at a time," Idaho said. "Ask Nayla if she would use

her lasgun against the Worm's cart."

"And if she refuses?"

"Kill her."

Siona stood, tossing her book aside.

"How will the Worm come to Tuono?" Idaho asked. "He's too big and heavy for an

ordinary 'thopter."

"Garun will tell us," she said. "But I think he will come as he usually

travels." She looked up at the ceiling which concealed the Sareer's perimeter

Wall. "I think he will come on peregrination with his entire crew. He will come

along the Royal Road and drop down to here on suspensors." She looked at Idaho.

"What of Garun?"

"A strange man," Idaho said. "He wants most desperately to be a real Fremen. He

knows he is not anything like what they were in my day."

"What were they like in your day, Duncan?" "They had a saying which describes

it," Idaho said. "You should never be in the company of anyone with whom you

would not want to die." "Did you say this to Garun?" she asked. "Yes." "And his

response?" "He said I was the only such person he had ever met." "Garun may be

wiser than any of us," she said.

===

You think power may be the most unstable of all human achievements? Then what of

the apparent exceptions to this inherent instability? Some families endure. Very

powerful religious bureaucracies have been known to endure. Consider the

relationship between faith and power. Are they mutually exclusive when each

depends upon the other? The Bene Gesserit have been reasonably secure within the

loyal walls of faith for thousands of years. But where has their power gone?

-The Stolen Journals

MONEO SPOKE in a petulant tone: "Lord, I wish you had given me more time."

He stood outside the Citadel in the short shadows of noon. Leto lay directly in

front of him on the Imperial Cart, its bubble hood retracted. He had been

touring the environs with Hwi Noree, who occupied a newly installed seat within

the bubble cover's perimeter and just beside Leto's face. Hwi appeared merely

curious about all the bustle which was beginning to increase around them.

How calm she is, Moneo thought. He repressed an involuntary shudder at what he

had learned of her from Malky. The God Emperor was right. Hwi was exactly what

she appeared to be-an ultimately sweet and sensible human being. Would she

really have mated with me? Moneo wondered.

Distractions drew his attention away from her. While Leto had toured Hwi around

the Citadel on the suspensor-borne cart, a great troop of courtiers and Fish

Speakers had been assembled here, all the courtiers in celebration finery,

brilliant reds and golds dominant. The Fish Speakers wore their best dark blues,

distinguished only by the different colors in the piping and hawks. A baggage

caravan on suspensor sleds had been drawn up at the rear with Fish Speakers to

pull it. The air was full of dust and the sounds and smells of excitement. Most

of the courtiers had reacted with dismay when told their destination. Some had

immediately purchased their own tents and pavilions. These had been sent on

ahead with the other impediments piled now on the sand just outside Tuono's

view. The Fish Speakers in the entourage were not taking this in a festive mood.

They had complained loudly when told they could not carry lasguns.

"Just a little more time, Lord," Moneo was saying. "I still don't know how we

will..."

"There's no substitute for time in solving many problems," Leto said. "However,

you can place too much reliance on it. I can accept no more delays."

"We will be three days just getting there," Moneo complained.

Leto thought about that time-the swift walk-trot-walk of a peregrination . . .

one hundred and eighty kilometers. Yes, three days.

"I'm sure you've made good arrangements for the waystops," Leto said. "Plenty of

hot water for the muscle cramps?"

"We'll be comfortable enough," Moneo said, "but I don't like leaving the Citadel

in these times! And you know why!"

"We have communications devices, loyal assistants. The Guild is suitably

chastened. Calm yourself, Moneo."

"We could hold the ceremony in the Citadel!"

For answer, Leto closed the bubble cover around him, isolating Hwi with him.

"Is there danger, Leto?" she asked.

"There's always danger."

Moneo sighed, turned and trotted toward where the Royal Road began its long

climb eastward before turning south around the Sareer. Leto set his cart in

motion behind the majordomo, heard his motley troop fall into step behind them.

"Are we all moving?" Leto asked.

Hwi glanced backward around him. "Yes." She turned toward his face. "Why was

Moneo being so difficult?"

"Moneo has discovered that the instant which has just left him is forever beyond

his reach."

"He has been very moody and distracted since you returned from the Little

Citadel. He's not the same at all."

"He is an Atreides, my love, and you were designed to please an Atreides."

"It's not that. I would know if it were that."

"Yes . . . well, I think Moneo has also discovered the reality of death."

"What's it like at the Little Citadel when you're there with Moneo?" she asked.

"It's the loneliest place in my Empire."

"I think you avoid my questions," she said.

"No, love. I share your concern for Moneo, but no explanation of mine will help

him now. Moneo is trapped. He has learned that it is difficult to live in the

present, pointless to live in the future and impossible to live in the past."

"I think it's you who have trapped him, Leto."

"But he must free himself."

"Why can't you free him?"

"Because he thinks my memories are his key to freedom. He thinks I am building

our future out of our past."

"Isn't that always the way of it, Leto?"

"No, dear Hwi."

"Then how is it?"

"Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past,

a past which never in fact existed."

"And you with all of your memories know otherwise."

Leto turned his face within its cowl to stare at her, probing . . . remembering.

Out of the multitudes within him, he could form a composite, a genetic

suggestion of Hwi, but the suggestion fell far short of the living flesh. That

was it, of course. The past became row-on-row of eyes staring outward like the

eyes of gasping fish, but Hwi was vibrant life. Her mouth was set in Grecian

curves designed for a Delphic chant, but she hummed no prophetic syllables. She

was content to live, an opening person like a flower perpetually unfolding into

fragrant blossom.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked.

"I was basking in the love of you."

"Love, yes." She smiled. "I think that since we cannot share the love of the

flesh, we must share the love of the soul. Would you share that with me, Leto?"

He was taken aback. "You ask about my soul?"

"Surely others have asked."

He spoke shortly: "My soul digests its experiences, nothing more."

"Have I asked too much of you?" she asked.

"I think that you cannot ask too much of me."

"Then I presume upon our love to disagree with you. My Uncle Malky talked about

your soul."

He found that he could not respond. She took his silence as an invitation to

continue. "He said that you were the ultimate artist at probing the soul, your

own soul first."

"But your Uncle Malky denied that he had a soul of his own!"

She heard the harshness in his voice, but was not deterred. "Still, I think he

was right. You are the genius of the soul, the brilliant one."

"You need only the plodding perseverance of duration," he said. "No brilliance."

They were well onto the long climb to the top of the Sareer's perimeter Wall

now. He lowered his cart's wheels and deactivated the suspensors.

Hwi spoke softly, her voice barely audible above the grating sound of the cart's

wheels and the running feet all around them. "May I call you Love, anyway?"

He spoke around a remembered tightness in a throat which was no longer

completely human. "Yes."

"I was born an Ixian, Love," she said. "Why don't I share their mechanical view

of our universe? Do you know my view, Leto my love?"

He could only stare at her.

"I sense the supernatural at every turning," she said.

Leto's voice rasped, sounding angry even to him: "Each person creates his own

supernatural."

"Don't be angry with me, Love."

Again, that awful rasping: "It is impossible for me to be angry with you."

"But something happened between you and Malky once," she said. "He would never

tell me what it was, but he said he often wondered why you spared him."

"Because of what he taught me."

"What happened between you two, Love?"

"I would rather not talk about Malky."

"Please, Love. I feel that it's important for me to know."

"I suggested to Malky that there might be some things men should not invent."

"And that's all?"

"No." He spoke reluctantly. "My words angered him. He

said: `You think that in a world without birds, men would not invent aircraft!

What a fool you are! Men can invent anything!"'

"He called you a fool?" There was shock in Hwi's voice.

"He was right. And although he denied it, he spoke the truth. He taught me that

there was a reason for running away from inventions."

"Then you fear the lxians?"

"Of course I do! They can invent catastrophe."

"Then what could you do?"

"Run faster. History is a constant race between invention and catastrophe.

Education helps but it's never enough. You also must run."

"You are sharing your soul with me, Love. Do you know that?"

Leto looked away from her and focused on Moneo's back, the motions of the

majordomo, the tucked-in pretenses of secrecy so apparent there. The procession

had come off the first gentle incline. It turned now to begin the climb onto

Ringwall West. Moneo moved as he had always moved, one foot ahead of another,

aware of the ground where he would place each step, but there was something new

in the majordomo. Leto could feel the man drawing away, no longer content to

march beside his Lord's cowled face, no longer trying to match himself to his

master's destiny. Off to the east, the Sareer waited. Off to the west, there was

the river, the plantations. Moneo looked neither left nor right. He had seen

another destination.

"You do not answer me," Hwi said.

"You already know the answer."

"Yes. I am beginning to understand something of you," she said. "I can sense

some of your fears. And I think I already know where it is that you live."

He turned a startled glance on her and found himself locked in her gaze. It was

astonishing. He could not move his eyes away from her. A profound fear coursed

through and he felt his hands begin to twitch.

"You live where the fear of being and the love of being are combined, all in one

person," she said.

He could not blink.

"You area mystic," she said, "gentle to yourself only because you are in the

middle of that universe looking outward, looking in ways that others cannot. You

fear to share this, yet you want to share it more than anything else."

"What have you seen?" he whispered.

"I have no inner eye, no inner voices," she said. "But I have seen my Lord Leto,

whose soul I love, and I know the only thing that you truly understand."

He broke from her gaze, fearful of what she might say. The trembling of his

hands could be felt all through his front segment.

"Love, that is what you understand," she said. "Love, and that is all of it."

His hands stopped trembling. A tear rolled down each of his cheeks. When the

tears touched his cowl, wisps of blue smoke erupted. He sensed the burning and

was thankful for the pain.

"You have faith in life," Hwi said. "I know that the courage of love can reside

only in this faith."

She reached out with her left hand and brushed the tears from his cheeks. It

surprised him that the cowl did not react with its ordinary reflex to prevent

the touch.

"Do you know," he asked, "that since I have become thus, you are the first

person to touch my cheeks?"

"But I know what you are and what you were," she said.

"What I was . . . ahhh, Hwi. What I was has become only this face, and all the

rest is lost in the shadows of memory . . . hidden . . . gone."

"Not hidden from me, Love."

He looked directly at her, no longer afraid to lock gazes. "Is it possible that

the lxians know what they have created in you

"I assure you, Leto, love of my soul, that they do not know. You are the first

person, the only person to whom I have ever completely revealed myself."

"Then I will not mourn for what might have been," he said. "Yes, my love, I will

share my soul with you."

===

Think of it as plastic memory, this force within you which trends you and your

fellows toward tribal forms. This plastic memory seeks to return to its ancient

shape, the tribal society. It is all around you-the feudatory, the diocese, the

corporation, the platoon, the sports club, the dance troupes, the rebel cell,

the planning council, the prayer group . . . each with its master and servants,

its host and parasites. And the swarms of alienating devices (including these

very words!) tend eventually to be enlisted in the argument for a return to

"those better rimes." I despair of teaching you other ways. You have square

thoughts which resist circles.

-The Stolen Journals

IDAHO FOUND he could manage the climb without thinking about it. This body grown

by the Tleilaxu remembered things the Tleilaxu did not even suspect. His

original youth might be lost in the eons, but his muscles were Tleilaxu-young

and he could bury his childhood in forgetfulness while he climbed. In that

childhood, he had learned survival by flight into the high rocks of his home

planet. It did not matter that these rocks in front of him now had been brought

here by men, they also had been shaped by ages of weather.

The morning sun was hot on Idaho's back. He could hear Siona's efforts to reach

the relatively simple support position of a narrow ledge far below him. The

position was virtually useless to Idaho, but it had been the argument which had

brought Siona finally into agreement that they should attempt this climb.

They.

She had objected that he might try it alone.

Nayla, three of her Fish Speaker aides, Garun and three chosen from his Museum

Fremen waited on the sand at the foot of the barrier Wall which enclosed the

Sareer.

Idaho did not think about the Wall's height. He thought only about where he

would next put a hand or a foot. He thought about the coil of light rope around

his shoulders. That rope was the tallness of this Wall. He had measured it out

on the ground, triangulating across the sand, not counting his steps. When the

rope was long enough it was long enough. The Wall was as high as the rope was

long. Any other way of thinking could only dull his mind.

Feeling for handholds which he could not see, Idaho groped his way up the sheer

face. . . well, not quite sheer. Wind and sand and even some rain, the forces of

cold and heat, had been at their erosive work here for more than three thousand

years. For one full day, Idaho had sat on the sand below the Wall and he had

studied what had been accomplished by Time. He had fixed certain patterns in his

mind-a slanting shadow, a thin line, a crumbling bulge, a tiny lip of rock here

and another over there.

His fingers wriggled upward into a sharp crack. He tested his weight gently on

the support. Yes. Briefly, he rested, pressing his face against warm rock, not

looking up or down. He was simply here. Everything was a matter of the pacing.

His shoulders must not be allowed to tire too soon. Weight must be adjusted

between feet and arms. Fingers took inevitable damage, but while bone and

tendons held, the skin could be ignored.

Once more, he crept upward. A bit of rock broke away from his hand; dust and

shards fell across his right cheek, but he did not even feel it. Every bit of

his awareness concentrated on the groping hand, the balance of his feet on the

tiniest of protrusions. He was a mote, a particle which defied gravity. . . a

finger-hold here, a toehold there, clinging to the rock surface at times by the

sheer power of his will.

Nine makeshift pitons bulged one of his pockets, but he resisted using them. The

equally makeshift hammer dangled from his belt on a short cord whose knot his

fingers had memorized.

Nayla had been difficult. She would not give up her lasgun. She had, however,

obeyed Siona's direct order to accompany them. A strange woman . . . strangely

obedient.

"Have you not sworn to obey me?" Siona had demanded.

Nayla's reluctance had vanished.

Later, Siona had said: "She always obeys my direct orders."

"Then we may not have to kill her," Idaho had said.

"I would rather not attempt it. I don't think you have even the faintest idea of

her strength and quickness."

Garun, the Museum Fremen who dreamed of becoming a "true Naib in the old

fashion," had set the stage for this climb by answering Idaho's question: "How

will the God Emperor come to Tuono?"

"In the same way he chose for a visit during my great-grandfather's time."

"And that was?" Siona had prompted him.

They had been sitting in the dusty shadows outside the guest house, sheltering

from the afternoon sun on the day of the announcement that the Lord Leto would

be wed in Tuono. A semicircle of Garun's aides squatted around the doorstep

where Siona and Idaho sat with Garun. Two Fish Speakers lounged nearby,

listening. Nayla was due to arrive momentarily.

Garun pointed to the high Wall behind the village, its rim glistening distant

gold in the sunlight. "The Royal Road runs there and the God Emperor has a

device which lowers him gently from the heights."

"It's built into his cart," Idaho said.

"Suspensors," Siona agreed. "I've seen them."

"My great-grandfather said they came along the Royal Road, a great troop of

them. The God Emperor glided down to our village square on his device. The

others came down on ropes."

Idaho spoke thoughtfully: "Ropes."

"Why did they come?" Siona asked.

"To affirm that the God Emperor had not forgotten his Fremen, so my greatgrandfather

said. It was a great honor, but not as great as this wedding."

Idaho arose while Garun was still talking. There was a clear view of the high

Wall from nearby-straight down the central street, a view from the base in the

sand to the top in the sunlight. Idaho strode to the corner of the guest house

out into the central street. He stopped there, turned and looked at the Wall.

The first look told why everyone said it was not possible to climb that face.

Even then, he resisted thinking about a measurement

of the height. It could be five hundred meters or five thousand. The important

thing lay in what a more careful study revealed tiny transverse cracks, broken

places, even a narrow ledge about twenty meters above the drifting sand at the

bottom . . . and another ledge about two-thirds of the way up the face.

He knew that an unconscious part of him, an ancient and dependable part, was

making the necessary measurements, scaling them to his own body-so many Duncanlengths

to that place, a handgrip here, another there. His own hands. He could

already feel himself climbing.

Siona's voice came from near his right shoulder as he stood in that first

examination. "What're you doing?" She had come up soundlessly, looking now where

he looked.

"I can climb that Wall," Idaho said. "If I carried a light rope, I could pull up

a heavier rope. The rest of you could climb it easily then."

Garun joined them in time to hear this. "Why would you climb the Wall, Duncan

Idaho?"

Siona answered for him, smiling at Garun. "To provide a suitable greeting for

the God Emperor."

This had been before her doubts, before her own eyes and the ignorance of such a

climb, had begun to erode that first confidence.

With that first elation, Idaho asked: "How wide is the Royal Road up there?"

"I have never seen it," Garun said. "But I am told it is very wide. A great

troop can march abreast along it, so they say. And there are bridges, places to

view the river and . . . and . . . oh, it is a marvel."

"Why have you never gone up there to see it yourself?" Idaho asked.

Garun merely shrugged and pointed at the Wall.

Nayla arrived then and the argument about the climb had begun. Idaho thought

about that argument as he climbed. How strange, the relationship between Nayla

and Siona! They were like two conspirators . . . yet not conspirators. Siona

commanded and Nayla obeyed. But Nayla was a Fish Speaker, the Friend who was

trusted by Leto to make a first examination of the new ghola. She admitted that

she had been in the Royal Constabulary since childhood. Such strength in her!

Given that strength, there was something awesome about the way she bowed to

Siona's will. It was as though Nayla listened for secret voices which told her

what to do. Then she obeyed.

Idaho groped upward for another handhold. His fingers wriggled along the rock,

up and outward to the right, finding at last an unseen crack where they might

enter. His memory provided the natural line of ascent, but only his body could

learn the way by following that line. His left foot found a toehold. . . up . .

. up . . . slowly, testing. Left hand up now . . . no crack but a ledge. His

eyes, then his chin lifted over the high ledge he had seen from below. He

elbowed his way onto it, rolled over and rested, looking only outward, not up or

down. It was a sand horizon out there, a breeze with dust in it limiting the

view. He had seen many such horizons in the Dune days.

Presently, he turned to face the Wall, lifted himself onto his knees, hands

groping upward, and he resumed the climb. The picture of the Wall remained in

his mind as he had seen it from below. He had only to close his eyes and the

pattern lay there, fixed the way he had learned to do it as a child hiding from

Harkonnen slave raiders. Fingertips found a crack where they could be wedged. He

clawed his way upward.

Watching from below, Nayla experienced a growing affinity for the climber. Idaho

had been reduced by distance to such a small and lonely shape upon the Wall. He

must know what it was like to be alone with momentous decisions.

l would like to have his child, she thought. A child from both of us would be

strong and resourceful. What is it that God wants from a child of Siona and this

man?

Nayla had awakened before dawn and had walked out to the top of a low dune at

the village edge to think about this thing that Idaho proposed. It had been a

lime dawn with a familiar winding cloth of dust in the distance, then steel day

and the baleful immensity of the Sareer. She knew then that these matters

certainly had been anticipated by God. What could be hidden from God? Nothing

could be hidden, not even the remote figure of Duncan Idaho groping for a

pathway up to the edge of heaven.

As she watched Idaho climb, Nayla's mind played a trick on her, tipping the wall

to the horizontal. Idaho became a child crawling across a broken surface. How

small he looked . . . and growing smaller.

An aide offered Nayla water which she drank. The water brought the Wall back

into its true perspective.

Siona crouched on the first ledge, leaning out to peer upward.

"If you fall, I will try it," Siona had promised Idaho. Nayla had thought

it a strange promise. Why would both of them want to try the impossible?

Idaho had failed to dissuade Siona from the impossible promise.

It is fate, Nayla thought. It is God's will.

They were the same thing.

A bit of rock fell from where Idaho clutched at it. That had happened several

times. Nayla watched the falling rock. It took a long time coming down, bounding

and rebounding from the Wall's face, demonstrating that the eye did not report

truthfully when it said the Wall was sheer.

He will succeed or he will not,- Nayla thought. Whatever happens, it is God's

will.

She could feel her heart hammering, though. Idaho's venture was like sex, she

thought. It was not passively erotic, but akin to rare magic in the way it

seized her. She had to keep reminding herself that Idaho was not for her.

He is for Siona. If he survives.

And if he failed, then Siona would try. Siona would succeed or she would not.

Nayla wondered, though, if she might experience an orgasm should Idaho reach the

top. He was so close to it now.

Idaho took several deep breaths after dislodging the rock. It was a bad moment

and he took the time to recover, clinging to a three-point hold on the Wall.

Almost of its own accord, his free hand groped upward once more, wriggling past

the rotten place into another slender crack. Slowly, he shifted his weight onto

that hand. Slowly . . . slowly. His left knee felt the place where a toehold

could be achieved. He lifted his foot to that place, tested it. Memory told him

the top was near, but he pushed the memory aside. There was only the climb and

the knowledge that Leto would arrive tomorrow.

Leto and Hwi.

He could not think about that, either. But it would not go away. The top . . .

Hwi . . . Leto . . . tomorrow . . .

Every thought fed his desperation, forced him into the immediate remembrance of

the climbs of his childhood. The more he remembered consciously, the more his

abilities were blocked. He was forced to pause, breathing deeply in the attempt

to center himself, to go back to the natural ways of his past.

But were those ways natural?

There was a blockage in his mind. He could sense intrusions, a finality . . .

the fatality of what might have been and now would never be.

Leto would arrive up there tomorrow.

Idaho felt perspiration run down his face around the place where he pressed a

cheek against the rock.

Leto.

will defeat you, Leto. I will defeat you for myself, not for Hwi, but only for

myself.

A sensation of cleansing began to spread through him. It was like the thing

which had happened in the night while he prepared himself mentally for this

climb. Siona had sensed his sleeplessness. She had begun to talk to him, telling

him the smallest details of her desperate run through the Forbidden Forest and

her oath at the edge of the river.

"Now I have given an oath to command his Fish Speakers," she said. "I will honor

that oath, but I hope it will not happen in the way he wants."

"What does he want?" Idaho asked.

"He has many motives and I cannot see them all. Who could possibly understand

him? I only know that I will never forgive him."

This memory brought Idaho back to the sensation of the Wall's rock against his

cheek. His perspiration had dried in the light breeze and he felt chilled. But

he had found his center.

Never forgive.

Idaho felt the ghosts of all his other selves, the gholas who had died in Leto's

service. Could he believe Siona's suspicions? Yes. Leto was capable of killing

with his own body, his own hands. The rumor which Siona recounted had a feeling

of truth in it. And Siona, too, was Atreides. Leto had become something else . .

. no longer Atreides, not even human. He had become not so much a living

creature as a brute fact of nature, opaque and impenetrable, all of his

experiences sealed off within him. And Siona opposed him. The real Atreides

turned away from him.

As I do.

A brute fact of nature, nothing more. Just like this Wall.

Idaho's right hand groped upward and found a sharp ledge. He could feel nothing

above the ledge and tried to remember a wide crack at this place in the pattern.

He could not dare to allow himself into the belief that he had reached the top .

. . not

yet. The sharp edge cut into his fingers as he put his weight on it. He brought

his left hand up to that level, found a purchase and pulled himself slowly

upward. His eyes reached the level of his hands. He stared across a flat space

which reached outward . . . outward into blue sky. The surface where his hands

clutched showed ancient weather cracks. He crawled his fingers across that

surface, one hand at a time, seeking out the cracks, dragging his chest up . . .

his waist . . . his hips. He rolled then, twisting and crawling until the Wall

was far behind him. Only then did he stand and tell himself what his senses

reported.

The top. And he had not required pitons or hammer.

A faint sound reached him. Cheering?

He walked back to the edge and looked down, waving to them. Yes, they were

cheering. Turning back, he strode to the center of the roadway, letting elation

still the trembling of his muscles, soothe the aching of his shoulders. Slowly,

he turned full circle, examining the top while he let his memories at last

estimate the height of that climb.

Nine hundred meters . . . at least that.

The Royal Roadway interested him. It was not like what he had seen on the way to

Onn. It was wide, wide . . . at least five hundred meters. The roadbed was a

smooth, unbroken gray with its edge some one hundred meters from each lip of the

Wall. Rock pillars at man height marked the road's edge, stretching away like

sentinels along the path Leto would use.

Idaho walked to the far side of the Wall opposite the Sareer and peered down.

Far away in the depths, a hurtling green flow of river battered itself into foam

against buttress rocks. He looked to the right. Leto would come from there. Road

and Wall curved gently to the right, the curve beginning about three hundred

meters from the place where Idaho stood. Idaho returned to the road and walked

along its edge, following the curve until it made a returning "S" and narrowed,

sloping gently downward. He stopped and looked at what was revealed for him,

seeing the new pattern take shape.

About three kilometers away down the gentle slope, the roadway narrowed and

crossed the river gorge on a bridge whose faery trusses appeared insubstantial

and toy like at this distance. Idaho remembered a similar bridge on the road to

Onn, the substantial feel of it beneath his feet. He trusted his memory,

thinking about bridges as a military leader was forced to think about thempassages

or traps.

Moving out to his left, he looked down and outward to

another high Wall at the far anchor of the faery bridge. The road continued

there, turning gently until it was a line running straight northward. There were

two Walls along there and the river between them. The river glided in a man-made

chasm, its moisture confined and channeled into a northward wind drift while the

water itself flowed southward.

Idaho ignored the river then. It was there and it would be there tomorrow. He

fixed his attention on the bridge, letting his military training examine it. He

nodded once to himself before turning back the way he had come, lifting the

light rope from his shoulders as he walked.

It was only when she saw the rope come snaking down that Nayla had her orgasm.

===

What am I eliminating? The bourgeois infatuation with peaceful conservation of

the past. This is a binding force, a thing which holds humankind into one

vulnerable unit in spite of illusionary separations across parsecs of space. If

I can find the scattered bits, others can find them. When you are together, you

can share a common catastrophe. You can be exterminated together. Thus, I

demonstrate the terrible danger of a gliding, passionless mediocrity, a movement

without ambitions or aims. I show you that entire civilizations can do this

thing. I give you eons of life which slips gently toward death without fuss or

stirring, without even asking 'Why?' I show you the false happiness and the

shadow-catastrophe called Leto, the God Emperor. Now, will you learn the real

happiness?

-The Stolen Journals

HAVING SPENT the night with only one brief catnap, Leto was awake when Moneo

emerged from the guest house at dawn. The Royal Cart had been parked almost in

the center of a three-sided courtyard. The cart's cover had been set on one-way

opaque, concealing its occupant, and was tightly sealed against moisture. Leto

could hear the faint stirring of the fans which pulsed his air through a drying

cycle.

Moneo's feet scratched on the courtyard's cobbles as he approached the cart.

Dawn light edged the guest house roof with orange above the majordomo.

Leto opened the cart's cover as Moneo stopped in front of him. There was a

yeasting dirt smell to the air and the accumulation of moisture in the breeze

was painful.

"We should arrive at Tuono about noon," Moneo said. "I wish you'd let me bring

in 'thopters to guard the sky."

"I do not want 'thopters," Leto said. "We can go down to Tuono on suspensors and

ropes."

Leto marveled at the plastic images in this brief exchange. Moneo had never

liked peregrinations. His youth as a rebel had left him with suspicions of

everything he could not see or label. He remained a mass of latent judgments.

"You know I don't want 'thopters for transport," Moneo said. "I want them to

guard. . ."

"Yes, Moneo."

Moneo looked past Leto at the open end of the courtyard which overlooked the

river canyon. Dawn light was frosting the mist which arose from the depths. He

thought of how far down that canyon dropped . . . a body twisting, twisting as

it fell. Moneo had found himself unable to go to the canyon's lip last night and

peer down into it. The drop was such a . . . such a temptation.

With that insightful power which filled Moneo with such awe, Leto said: "There's

a lesson in every temptation, Moneo."

Speechless, Moneo turned to stare directly into Leto's eyes.

"See the lesson in my life, Moneo."

"Lord?" It was only a whisper.

"They tempt me first with evil, then with good. Each temptation is fashioned

with exquisite attention to my susceptibilities. Tell me, Moneo, if I choose the

good, does that make me good?"

"Of course it does, Lord."

"Perhaps you will never lose the habit of judgment," Leto said.

Moneo looked away from him once more and stared at the chasm's edge. Leto rolled

his body to look where Moneo looked. Dwarf pines had been cultured along the lip

of the canyon. There were hanging dewdrops on the damp needles, each of them

sending a promise of pain to Leto. He longed to close the cart's cover, but

there was an immediacy in those jewels which attracted his memories even while

they repelled his body. The opposed synchrony threatened to fill him with

turmoil.

"I just don't like going around on foot," Moneo said.

"It was the Fremen war," Leto said.

Moneo sighed. "The others will be ready in a few minutes. Hwi was breakfasting

when I came out."

Leto did not respond. His thoughts were lost in memories of night-the one just

past and the millennial others which crowded his pasts-clouds and stars, the

rains and the open blackness pocked with glittering flakes from a shredded

cosmos, a universe of nights, extravagant with them as he had been with his

heartbeats.

Moneo suddenly demanded: "Where are your guards?"

"I sent them to eat."

"I don't like them leaving you unguarded!"

The crystal sound of Moneo's voice rang in Leto's memories, speaking things not

cast in words. Moneo feared a universe where there was no God Emperor. He would

rather die than see such a universe.

"What will happen today?" Moneo demanded.

It was a question directed not to the God Emperor but to the prophet.

` A seed blown on the wind could be tomorrow's willow tree," Leto said.

"You know our future! Why won't you share it?" Moneo was close to hysteria . . .

refusing anything his immediate senses did not report.

Leto turned to glare at the majordomo, a gaze so obviously filled with pent-up

emotions that Moneo recoiled from it.

"Take charge of your own existence, Moneo!"

Moneo took a deep, trembling breath. "Lord, I meant no offense. I sought only. .

.

"Look upward, Moneo!"

Involuntarily, Moneo obeyed, peering into the cloudless sky where morning light

was increasing. "What is it, Lord?"

"There's no reassuring ceiling over you, Moneo. Only an open sky full of

changes. Welcome it. Every sense you possess is an instrument for reacting to

change. Does that tell you nothing?"

"Lord, I only came out to enquire when you would be ready to proceed."

"Moneo, I beg you to be truthful with me."

"I am truthful, Lord!"

"But if you live in bad faith, lies will appear to you like the truth."

"Lord, if I lie . . . then I do not know it."

"That has the ring of truth. But I know what you dread and will not speak."

Moneo began to tremble. The God Emperor was in the most terrible of moods, a

deep threat in every word.

"You dread the imperialism of consciousness," Leto said, "and you are right to

fear it. Send Hwi out here immediately!"

Moneo whirled and fled back into the guest house. It was as though his entrance

stirred up an insect colony. Within seconds, Fish Speakers emerged and spread

around the Royal Cart. Courtiers peered from the guest house windows or came out

and stood under deep eaves, afraid to approach him. In contrast to this

excitement, Hwi emerged presently from the wide central doorway and strode out

of the shadows, moving slowly toward Leto, her chin up, her gaze seeking his

face.

Leto felt himself becoming calm as he looked at her. She wore a golden gown he

had not seen before. It had been piped with silver and jade at the neck and the

cuffs of its long sleeves. The hem, almost dragging on the ground, had heavy

green braid to outline deep red crenellations.

Hwi smiled as she stopped in front of him.

"Good morning, love." She spoke softly. "What have you done to get poor Moneo so

upset?"

Soothed by her presence and her voice, he smiled. "I did what I always hope to

do. I produced an effect."

"You certainly did. He told the Fish Speakers you were in an angry and

terrifying mood. Are you terrifying, Love?"

"Only to those who refuse to live by their own strengths."

"Ahhh, yes." She pirouetted for him then, displaying her new gown. "Do you like

it? Your Fish Speakers gave it to me. They decorated it themselves."

"My love," he said, a warning note in his voice, "decoration! That is how you

prepare the sacrifice."

She came up to the edge of the cart and leaned on it just below his face, a mock

solemn expression on her lips. "Will they sacrifice me, then?"

"Some of them would like to."

"But you will not permit it."

"Our fates are joined," he said.

"Then I shall not fear." She reached up and touched one of his silver-skinned

hands, but jerked away as his fingers began to tremble.

"Forgive me, Love. I forget that we are joined in soul and not in flesh," she

said.

The sandtrout skin still shuddered from Hwi's touch. "Moisture in the air makes

me overly sensitive," he said. Slowly, the shuddering subsided.

"I refuse to regret what cannot be," she whispered.

"Be strong, Hwi, for your soul is mine."

She turned at a sound from the guest house. "Moneo returns," she said. "Please,

Love, do not frighten him."

"Is Moneo your friend, too?"

"We are friends of the stomach. We both like yogurt."

Leto was still chuckling when Moneo stopped beside Hwi. Moneo ventured a smile,

casting a puzzled glance at Hwi. There was gratitude in the majordomo's manner

and some of the subservience he was accustomed to show to Leto he now directed

at Hwi. "Is it well with you, Lady Hwi?"

"It is well with me."

Leto said: "In the time of the stomach, friendships of the stomach are to be

nurtured and cultivated. Let us be on our way, Moneo. Tuono awaits."

Moneo turned and shouted orders to the Fish Speakers and courtiers.

Leto grinned at Hwi. "Do I not play the impatient bridegroom with a certain

style?"

She leaped lightly up to the bed of his cart, her skirt gathered in one hand. He

unfolded her seat. Only when she was seated, her eyes level with Leto's, did she

respond, and then it was in a voice pitched for his ears alone.

"Love of my soul, I have captured another of your secrets."

"Release it from your lips," he said, joking in this new intimacy between them.

"You seldom need words," she said. "You speak directly to the senses with your

own life."

A shudder flexed its way through the length of his body. It was a moment before

he could speak and then it was in a voice she had to strain to hear above the

hubbub of the assembling cortege.

"Between the superhuman and the inhuman," he said, "I have had little space in

which to be human. I thank you, gentle and lovely Hwi, for this little space."

===

In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable.

This universe presents only changing relationships which are sometimes seen as

laws by short-lived awareness. These fleshly sensoria which we call self are

ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleetingly aware of temporary

conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change. If

you must label the absolute, use it's proper name: Temporary.

-The Stolen Journals

NAYLA WAS the first to glimpse the approaching cortege. Perspiring heavily in

the midday heat, she stood near one of the rock pillars which marked the edges

of the Royal Road. A sudden flash of distant reflection caught her attention.

She peered in that direction, squinting, realizing with a thrill of awareness

that she saw sun-dazzle on the cover of the God Emperor's cart.

"They come!" she called.

She felt hunger then. In their excitement and singleness of purpose, none of

them had brought food. Only the Fremen had brought water and that because

"Fremen always carry water when they leave sietch." They did it by rote.

Nayla touched one finger to the butt of the lasgun holstered at her hip. The

bridge lay no more than twenty meters ahead of her, its faery structure arching

across the chasm like an alien fantasy joining one barren surface to another.

This is madness, she thought.

But the God Emperor had reinforced his command. He required his Nayla to obey

Siona in all things.

Siona's orders were explicit, leaving no way for evasions. And Nayla had no way

here to query her God Emperor. Siona had said: "When his cart is in the middle

of the bridge-then!"

"But why?"

They had been standing well away from the others in the chill dawn atop the

Barrier Wall, Nayla feeling precariously isolated here, remote and vulnerable.

Siona's grim features, her low, intense voice, could not be denied. "Do you

think you can harm God?"

"I..." Nayla could only shrug.

"You must obey me!"

"I must," Nayla agreed.

Nayla studied the approach of the distant cortege, noting the colors of the

courtiers, the thick masses of blue marking her sisters of the Fish Speakers . .

. the shiny surface of her Lord's cart.

It was another test, she decided. The God Emperor would know. He would know the

devotion in His Nayla's heart. It was a test. The God Emperor's commands must be

obeyed in all things. That was the earliest lesson of her Fish Speaker

childhood. The God Emperor had said that Nayla must obey Siona. It was a test.

What else could it be?

She looked toward the four Fremen. They had been positioned by Duncan Idaho

directly in the roadway and blocking part of the exit from this end of the

bridge. They sat with their backs to her and looked out across the bridge, four

brown-robed mounds. Nayla had heard Idaho's words to them.

"Do not leave this place. You must greet him from here. Stand when he nears you

and bow low."

Greet, yes.

Nayla nodded to herself.

The three other Fish Speakers who had climbed the Barrier Wall with her had been

sent to the center of the bridge. All they knew was what Siona had told them in

Nayla's presence. They were to wait until the Royal Cart was only a few paces

from them, then they were to turn and dance away from the cart, leading it and

the procession toward the vantage point above Tuono.

If I cut the bridge with my lasgun, those three will die, Nayla thought. And

all the others who come with our Lord.

Nayla craned her neck to peer down into the gorge. She could not see the river

from here, but she could hear its distant rumblings, a movement of rocks.

They would all die!

Unless He performs a Miracle.

That had to be it. Siona had set the stage for a Holy Miracle. What else could

Siona intend now that she had been tested, now that she wore the uniform of Fish

Speaker Command? Siona had given her oath to the God Emperor. She had been

tested by God, the two of them alone in the Sareer.

Nayla turned only her eyes to the right, peering at the architects of this

greeting. Siona and Idaho stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the roadway about twenty

meters to Nayla's right. They were deep in conversation, looking at each other

occasionally, nodding.

Presently, Idaho touched Siona's arm-an oddly possessive

gesture. He nodded once and strode off toward the bridge,

stopping at the buttress corner directly in front of Nayla. He

peered down, then crossed to the other near corner of the bridge.

Again, he peered downward, standing there for several minutes

before returning to Siona.

What a strange creature, that ghola, Nayla thought. After that awesome climb,

she no longer thought of him as quite human. He was something else, a demiurge

who stood next to God. But he could breed.

A distant shout caught Nayla's attention. She turned and looked across the

bridge. The cortege had been in the familiar trot of a royal peregrination. Now,

they were slowing to a sedate walk only a few minutes away from the bridge.

Nayla recognized Moneo marching in the van, his uniform brilliant white, the

even, undeviating stride with his gaze straight ahead. The cover of the

Emperor's cart had been sealed. It glittered in mirror-opacity as it rolled

behind Moneo on its wheels.

The mystery of it all filled Nayla.

A miracle was about to happen!

Nayla glanced to the right at Siona. Siona returned her gaze and nodded once.

Nayla drew the lasgun from its holster and rested it against the rock pillar as

she sighted along it. The cable on the left first, then the cable on the right,

then the faery trellis of plasteel on the left. The lasgun felt cold and alien

against Nayla's hand. She took a trembling breath to restore calm.

must obey. It is a test.

She saw Moneo lift his gaze from the roadway and, not changing stride, turn to

shout something at the cart or the ones behind it. Nayla could not make out the

words. Moneo faced front once more. Nayla steadied herself, a part of the rock

pillar which concealed most of her body.

A test.

Moneo had seen the people on the bridge and at the far end. He identified Fish

Speaker uniforms and his first thought was to wonder who had ordered these

greeters. He turned and shouted a question at Leto, but the God Emperor's cart

cover remained opaque, hiding Hwi and Leto within it.

Moneo was onto the bridge, the cart rasping in blown sand behind him, before he

recognized Siona and Idaho standing well back from the far end. He identified

four Museum Fremen seated on the roadway. Doubts began squirming through Moneo's

mind, but he could not change the pattern. He ventured a glance down at the

river-a platinum world there caught in the noonday light. The sound of the cart

was loud behind him. The flow of the river, the flow of the cortege, the

sweeping importance of these things in which he played a role-all of it caught

up his mind in a dizzying sensation of the inevitable.

We are not people passing this way, he thought. We are primal elements linking

one piece of Time to another. And when we have passed, everything behind us will

drop off into no-sound, a place like the no-room of the lxians, yet never again

the same as it was before we came.

A bit from one of the lute-player's songs wafted through Moneo's memory and his

eyes went out of focus in the remembrance. He knew that song for its

wishfulness, a wish that all of this were ended, all past, all doubts banished,

tranquility returned. The plaintive song drifted through his awareness like

smoke, twisting and compelling:

"Insect cries in roots of pampas grass." "

Moneo hummed the song to himself:

"Insect cries mark the end. Autumn and my song are the color Of the last leaves

In roots of pampas grass."

Moneo nodded his head to the refrain:

"Day is ended, Visitors gone. Day is ended. In our Sietch, Day is ended. Storm

wind sounds. Day is ended. Visitors gone."

Moneo decided that the lute-player's song had to be a really old one, an Old

Fremen song, no doubt of it. And it told him something about himself. He wished

the visitors truly gone, the excitements ended, peace once more. Peace was so

near... yet he could not leave his duties. He thought of all that impedimenta

piled out there on the sand just beyond visibility range from Tuono. They would

see it all soon-tents, food, tables, golden plates and jeweled knives,

glowglobes fashioned in the arabesque shapes of ancient lamps . . . everything

rich and full of expectations from completely different lives.

They will never be the same in Tuono.

Moneo had spent two nights in Tuono once on an inspection tour. He remembered

the smells of their cooking fires-aromatic bushes kindled and flaming in the

dark. They would not use sunstoves because "that is not the most ancient way."

Most ancient!

There was little smell of melange in Tuono. A sweet acridity and the musky oils

of oasis shrubs, these dominated the odors. Yes . . . and the cesspools and the

stink of rotting garbage. He recalled the God Emperor's comment when Moneo had

finished reporting on that tour.

"These Fremen do not know what is lost from their lives. They think they keep

the essence of the old ways. This is a failure of all museums. Something fades;

it dries out of the exhibits and is gone. The people who administer the museum

and the people who come to bend over the cases and stare few of them sense this

missing thing. It drove the engine of life in earlier times. When the life is

gone, it is gone."

Moneo focused on the three Fish Speakers who stood just ahead of him on the

bridge. They lifted their arms high and began to dance, whirling and skipping

away from him only a few paces distant.

How odd, he thought. I've seen the other people dance in the open, but never

Fish Speakers. They only dance in the

privacy of their quarters, in the intimacy of their own company.

This thought was still in his mind when he heard the first awful humming of the

lasgun and felt the bridge lurch beneath him.

This is not happening, his mind told him.

He heard the Royal Cart scrape sideways across the roadbed, then the snap-slap

of the cart's cover slamming open. A bedlam of screams and cries arose from

behind him, but he could not turn. The bridge's roadbed had tipped steeply to

Moneo's right, spilling him onto his face while he went sliding toward the

abyss. He clutched a severed strand of cable to stop himself. The cable went

with him, everything grating in the spilling film of sand which had covered the

roadbed. He clutched the cable with both hands, turning with it. He saw the

Royal Cart then. It skewed sideways toward the edge of the bridge, its cover

open. Hwi stood there, one hand steadying her on the folding seat while she

stared past Moneo.

A horrible screaming of metal filled the air as the roadbed tipped even farther.

He saw people from the cortege falling, their mouths open, arms waving.

Something had caught Moneo's cable. His arms were stretched out over his head as

he turned once more, twisting. He felt his hands, greased by the perspiration of

fear, slipping along the cable.

Once more, his gaze came around to the Royal Cart. It lay jammed against the

stubs of broken girders. Even as Moneo looked, the God Emperor's futile hands

groped for Hwi Noree, but failed to reach her. She fell from the cart's open

end, silently, the golden gown whipping upward to reveal her body stretched out

as straight as an arrow.

A deep, rumbling groan came from the God Emperor.

Why doesn't he activate the suspensors? Moneo wondered. The suspensors will

support him.

But the lasgun was still humming and, as Moneo's hands slipped from the cable's

severed end, he saw lancing flame strike the cart's suspensor bubbles, piercing

one after another in eruptions of golden smoke. Moneo stretched his hands over

his head as he fell.

The smoke! The golden smoke!

His robe whipped upward, turning him until his face was directed downward into

the abyss. With his gaze on the depths, he recognized a maelstrom of boiling

rapids there, the mirror of his life-precipitous currents and plunges, all

movement gathering up all substance. Leto's words wound through his

mind on a path of golden smoke: "Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding,

passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve." Moneo

fell freely then in the ecstasy of awareness. The universe opened for him like

clear glass, everything flowing in a no Time.

The golden smoke!

"Leto!" he screamed. "Siaynoq! I believe!"

The robe tore away from his shoulders then. He turned in the wind of the canyonone

last glimpse of the Royal Cart tipping . . . tipping from the shattered

roadbed. The God Emperor slid out of the open end.

Something solid smashed into Moneo's back-his last sensation.

Leto felt himself sliding from the cart. His awareness held only the image of

Hwi striking the river-the distant pearly fountain which marked her plunge into

the myths and dreams of termination. Her last words, calm and steady, rolled

through all of his memories: "I shall go on ahead, Love."

As- he slipped from the cart, he saw the scimitar arc of the river, a sliveredged

thing which shimmered in its mottled shadows, a vicious blade of a river

honed through Eternity and ready now to receive him into its agony.

I cannot cry, nor even shout, he thought. Tears are no longer possible. They're

water. I'll have water enough in a moment. I can only moan in my grief. I am

alone, more alone than ever before.

His great ridged body flexed as it fell, twisting him about until his amplified

vision revealed Siona standing at the broken brink of the bridge.

Now, you will learn! he thought.

The body continued to turn. He watched the river approach. The water was a dream

inhabited by glimpses of fish which ignited an ancient memory of a banquet

beside a granite pool- pink flesh dazzling his hungers.

I join you, Hwi, in the banquet of the gods!

A bursting flash of bubbles enclosed him in agony. Water, vicious currents of

it, buffeted him all around. He felt the gnashing of rocks as he struggled

upward to broach in a torrential cascade, his body flexing in a paroxysm of

involuntary, writhing splashes. The canyon Wall, wet and black, sped past his

frantic gaze. Shattered spangles of what had been his skin exploded away from

him, a rain of silver all around him darting away into the river, a ring of

dazzling movement, brittle sequins-the scale-glitter of sandtrout leaving him to

begin their own colony lives.

The agony continued. Leto marveled that he could remain conscious, that he had a

body to feel.

Instinct drove him. He clutched at a rock around which the torrent spilled him,

felt a clutching finger torn from his hand before he could release his grip. The

sensation of it was only a minor accent in the symphony of pain.

The river's course swept to the left around a chasm buttress and, as though

saying it had enough of him, it sent him rolling onto the sloping edge of a

sandbar. He lay there a moment, the blue dye of spice-essence drifting away from

him in the current. The agony moved him, the worm body moving of itself,

retreating from the water. All the covering sandtrout were gone and he felt

every touch more immediate, a lost sense restored when all it could bring him

was pain. He could not see his body, but he felt the thing that would have been

a worm as it made its writhing, crawling progress out of the water. He peered

upward through eyes that saw everything in sheets of flame from which shapes

coalesced of their own accord. At last, he recognized this place. The river had

swept him to the turn where it left the Sareer forever. Behind him lay Tuono

and, just a ways down the barrier Wall, was all that remained of Sietch Tabr-

Stilgar's realm, the place where all of Leto's spice had been concealed.

Exhuding blue fumes, his agonized body writhed its way noisily along a shingle

of beach, dragged its blue-dyed way across broken boulders and into a damp hole

which might have been part of the original sietch. It was only a shallow cave

now, blocked at its inner end by a rock fall. His nostrils reported the wet dirt

smell and clean spice essence.

Sounds intruded on his agony. He turned in the confinement of the cave and saw a

rope dangling at the entrance. A figure slid down the rope. He recognized Nayla.

She dropped to the rocks and crouched there, staring into the shadows at him.

The flame which was Leto's vision parted to reveal another figure dropping from

the rope: Siona. She and Nayla scrambled toward him in a rattle of rocks and

stopped, peering in at him. A third figure dropped off the rope: Idaho. He moved

with frantic rage, hurling himself at Nayla, screaming:

"Why did you kill her! You weren't supposed to kill Hwi!"

Nayla sent him sprawling with a casual, almost indifferent sweep of her left

arm. She scrambled closer up the rocks and

stopped on all fours to peer in at Leto.

"Lord? You live?"

Idaho was right behind her, snatching the lasgun from her holster. Nayla turned,

astonished, as he leveled the weapon and pulled its trigger. The burning started

at the top of Nayla's head. It split her, the pieces slumping apart. A shining

crysknife spilled from her burning uniform and shattered on the rocks. Idaho did

not see it. A grimace of rage on his face, he kept burning and burning the

pieces of Nayla until the weapon's charge was gone. The blazing arc vanished.

Only wet and smoking bits of meat and cloth lay scattered among the glowing

rocks.

It was the moment for which Siona had waited. She scrambled up to him and pulled

the useless lasgun from Idaho's hands. He whirled toward her and she poised

herself-to subdue him, but all the rage was gone.

"Why?" he whispered.

"It's done," she said.

They turned and looked into the cave shadows at Leto.

Leto could not even imagine what they saw. The sandtrout skin was gone, he knew.

There would be some kind of surface pocked with cilia holes from the departed

skin. As for the rest, he could only look back at the two figures from a

universe furrowed by sorrow. Through the vision flames he saw Siona as a female

demon. The demon name came unbidden to his minds and he spoke it aloud,

amplified by the cave and much louder than he had expected:

"Hanmya!"

"What?" She moved a step closer to him.

Idaho put both harass over his face.

"Look at what you've done to poor Duncan," Leto said.

"He'll find other loves." How callous she sounded, an echo of his own angry

youth.

"You don't know what it is to love," he said. "What have you ever given?" He

could only wring his hands then those travesties which once had been his hands.

"Gods below! What I've given!"

She sled closer and reached toward him, then drew back.

"I am reality, Siona. Look upon me. I exist. You can touch me if you dare. Reach

out your hand. Do it!"

Slowly, she reached toward what had been his front segment, the place where she

had slept in the Sareer. Her hand

was touched with blue when she withdrew it.

"You have touched me and felt my body," he said. "Is that not strange beyond any

other thing in this universe?"

She started to turn away.

"No! Don't turn away from me! Look at what you have wrought, Siona. How is it

that you can touch me but you cannot touch yourself?"

She whirled away from him.

"There is the difference between us," he said. "You are God embodied. You walk

around within the greatest miracle of this universe, yet you refuse to touch or

see or feel or believe in it."

Leto's awareness went wandering then into a night-encircled place, a place where

he thought he could hear the metal insect song of his hidden printers clacking

away in their lightless room. There was a complete absence of radiation in this

place, an Ixian no-thing which made it a place of anxiety and spiritual

alienation because it had no connection with the rest of the universe.

But it will have a connection.

He sensed then that his Ixian printers had been set in motion, that they were

recording his thoughts without any special command.

Remember what I did! Remember me! I will be innocent again!

The flame of his vision parted to reveal Idaho standing where Siona had stood.

There was gesturing motion somewhere out of focus behind Idaho . . . ah, yes:

Siona waving instructions to someone atop the barrier Wall.

"Are you still alive?" Idaho asked.

Leto's voice came in wheezing gasps: "Let them scatter, Duncan. Let them run and

hide anywhere they want in any universe they choose."

"Damn you! What're you saying? I'd have sooner let her live with you!"

"Let? I did not let anything."

"Why did you let Hwi die?" Idaho moaned. "We didn't know she was in there with

you."

Idaho's head sagged forward.

"You will be recompensed," Leto husked. "My Fish Speakers will choose you over

Siona. Be kind to her, Duncan. She is more than Atreides and she carries the

seed of your survival."

Leto sank back into his memories. They were delicate myths

now, held fleetingly in his awareness. He sensed that he might have fallen into

a time which, by its very being, had changed the past. There were sounds,

though, and he struggled to interpret them. Someone scrambling on rocks? The

flames parted to reveal Siona standing beside Idaho. They stood hand-in-hand

like two children reassuring each other before venturing into an unknown place.

"How can he live like that?" Siona whispered.

Leto waited for the strength to respond. "Hwi helps me," he said. "We had

something few experience. We were joined in our strengths rather than in our

weaknesses."

"And look what it got you!" Siona sneered.

"Yes, and pray that you get the same," he husked. "Perhaps the spice will give

you time."

"Where is your spice?" she demanded.

"Deep in Sietch Tabr," he said. "Duncan will find it. You know the place,

Duncan. They call it Tabur now. The outlines are still there."

"Why did you do it?" Idaho whispered.

"My gift," Leto said. "Nobody will find the descendants of Siona. The Oracle

cannot see her."

"What?" They spoke in unison, leaning close to hear his fading voice.

"I give you a new kind of time without parallels," he said. "It will always

diverge. There will be no concurrent points on its curves. I give you the Golden

Path. That is my gift. Never again will you have the kinds of concurrence that

once you had."

Flames covered his vision. The agony was fading, but he could still sense odors

and hear sounds with a terrible acuity. Both Idaho and Siona were breathing in

quick, shallow gasps. Odd kinesthetic sensations began to weave their way

through Leto-echoes of bones and joints which he knew he no longer possessed.

"Look!" Siona said.

"He's disintegrating." That was Idaho.

"No." Siona. "The outside is falling away. Look! The Worm!"

Leto felt parts of himself settling into warm softness. The agony removed

itself.

"What're those holes in him?" Siona.

"I think they were the sandtrout. See the shapes?"

"I am here to prove one of my ancestors wrong," Leto said

(or thought he said, which was the same thing as far as his journals were

concerned). "I was born a man but I do not die a man."

"I can't look!" Siona said.

Leto heard her turn away, a rattle of rocks.

"Are you still there, Duncan?"

"Yes."

So I still have a voice.

"Look at me," Leto said. "I was a bloody bit of pulp in a human womb, a bit no

larger than a cherry. Look at me, I say!"

"I'm looking." Idaho's voice was faint.

"You expected a giant and you found a gnome," Leto said. "Now, you're beginning

to know the responsibilities which come as a result of actions. What will you do

with your new power, Duncan?"

There was a long silence, then Siona's voice: "Don't listen to him! He was mad!"

"Of course," Leto said. "Madness in method, that is genius."

"Siona, do you understand this?" Idaho asked. How plaintive, the ghola voice.

"She understands," Leto said. "It is human to have your soul brought to a crisis

you did not anticipate. That's the way it always is with humans. Moneo

understood at last."

"I wish he'd hurry up and die!" Siona said.

"I am the divided god and you would make me whole," Leto said. "Duncan? I think

of all my Duncans I approve of you the most."

"Approve?" Some of the rage returned to Idaho's voice.

"There's magic in my approval," Leto said. "Anything's possible in a magic

universe. Your life has been dominated by the Oracle's fatality, not mine. Now,

you see the mysterious caprices and you would ask me to dispel this? I wished

only to increase it." The others within Leto began to reassert themselves.

Without the solidarity of the colonial group to support his identity, he began

to lose his place among them. They started speaking the language of the constant

"IF." "If you had only . . . If we had but. . ." He wanted to shout them into

silence.

"Only fools prefer the past!"

Leto did not know if he truly shouted or only thought it. The response was a

momentary inner silence matched to an outer silence and he felt some of the

threads of his old identity

still intact. He tried to speak and knew the reality of it because Idaho said,

"Listen, he's trying to say something."

"Do not fear the lxians," he said, and he heard his own voice as a fading

whisper. "They can make the machines, but they no longer can make arafel. I

know. I was there."

He fell silent, gathering his strength, but he felt the energy flowing from him

even as he tried to hold it. Once more, the clamor arose within him-voices

pleading and shouting.

"Stop that foolishness!" he cried, or thought he cried.

Idaho and Siona heard only a gasping hiss.

Presently, Siona said: "I think he's dead."

"And everyone thought he was immortal," Idaho said.

"Do you know what the Oral History says?" Siona asked. "If you want immortality,

then deny form. Whatever has form has mortality. Beyond form is the formless,

the immortal."

"That sounds like him," Idaho accused.

"I think it was," she said.

"What did he mean about your descendants . . . hiding, not finding them?" Idaho

asked.

"He created a new kind of mimesis," she said, "a new biological imitation. He

knew he had succeeded. He could not see me in his futures."

"What are you?" Idaho demanded.

"I'm the new Atreides."

"Atreides!" It was a curse in Idaho's voice.

Siona stared down at the disintegrating hulk which once had been Leto Atreides

II . . . and something else. The something else was sloughing away in faint

wisps of blue smoke where the smell of melange was strongest. Puddles of blue

liquid formed in the rocks beneath his melting bulk. Only faint vague shapes

which might once have been human remained-a collapsed foaming pinkness, a bit of

red-streaked bone which could have held the forms of cheeks and brow . . .

Siona said: "I am different, but still I am what he was."

Idaho spoke in a hushed whisper: "The ancestors, all of. . ."

"The multitude is there but I walk silently among them and no one sees me. The

old images are gone and only the essence remains to light his Golden Path."

She turned and took Idaho's cold hand in hers. Carefully, she led him out of the

cave into the light where the rope dangled invitingly from the barrier Wall's

top, from the place where

the frightened Museum Fremen waited.

Poor material with which to shape a new universe, she thought, but they would

have to serve. Idaho would require gentle seduction, a care within which love

might appear.

When she looked down the river to where the flow emerged from its man-made chasm

to spread across the green lands, she saw a wind from the south driving dark

clouds toward her.

Idaho withdrew his hand from hers, but he appeared calmer. "Weather control is

increasingly unstable," he said. "Moneo thought it was the Guild's doing."

"My father was seldom mistaken about such things," she said. "You will have to

look into that."

Idaho experienced a sudden memory of the silvery shapes of sandtrout darting

away from Leto's body in the river.

"I heard the Worm," Siona said. "The Fish Speakers will follow you, not me."

Again, Idaho sensed the temptation from the ritual of Siaynoq. "We will see," he

said. He turned and looked at Siona. "What did he mean when he said the lxians

cannot create arafel?"

"You haven't read all the journals," she said. "I'll show you when we return to

Tuono."

"But what does it mean-arafel?"

"That's the cloud-darkness of holy judgment. It's from an old story. You'll find

it all in my journals."

===

Excerpt from the Hadi Benotto secret summation on the discoveries at Dar-es-

Balat:

Herewith THE minority report. We will, of course, comply with the majority

decision to apply a careful screening, editing and censorship to the journals

from Dar-es-Balat, but our arguments must be heard. We recognize the interest of

Holy Church in these matters and the political dangers have not escaped our

notice. We share a desire with the Church that Rakis and the Holy Reservation of

the Divided God not become "an attraction for gawking tourists."

However, now that all of the journals are in our hands, authenticated and

translated, the clear shape of the Atreides Design emerges. As a woman trained

by the Bene Gesserit to understand the ways of our ancestors, I have a natural

desire to share the pattern we have exposed which is so much more than Dune to

Arrakis to Dune, thence to Rakis.

The interests of history and science must be served. The journals throw a

valuable new light onto that accumulation of personal recollections and

biographies from the Duncan Days, the Guard Bible. We cannot be unmindful of

those familiar oaths: "By the Thousand Sons of Idaho!" and "By the Nine

Daughters of Siona!" The persistent Cult of Sister Chenoeh assumes new

significance because of the journals' disclosures. Certainly, the Church's

characterization of Judas/Nayla deserves careful reevaluation.

We of the Minority must remind the political censors that the poor sandworms in

their Rakian Reservation cannot provide us with an alternative to Ixian

Navigation Machines, nor are the tiny amounts of Church-controlled melange any

real commercial threat to the products of the Tleilaxu vats. No! We argue that

the myths, the Oral History, the Guard Bible, and even the Holy Books of the

Divided God must be compared with the journals from Dar-es-Balat. Every

historical reference

to the Scattering and the Famine Times has to be taken out and reexamined! What

have we to fear? No Ixian machine can do what we, the descendants of Duncan

Idaho and Siona, have done. How many universes have we populated? None can

guess. No one person will ever know. Does the Church fear the occasional

prophet? We know that the visionaries cannot see us nor predict our decisions.

No death can find all of humankind. Must we of the Minority join our fellows of

the Scattering before we can be heard? Must we leave the original core of

humankind ignorant and uninformed? If the Majority drives us out, you know we

never again can be found!

We do not want to leave. We are held here by those pearls in the sand. We are

fascinated by the Church's use of the pearl as "the sun of understanding."

Surely, no reasoning human can escape the journals' revelations in this regard.

The admittedly fugitive but vital uses of archeology must have their day! Just

as the primitive machine with which Leto I concealed his journals can only teach

us about the evolution of our machines, just so, that ancient awareness must be

allowed to speak to us. It would be a crime against both historical accuracy and

science for us to abandon our attempts at communication with those "pearls of

awareness" which the journals have located. Is Leto II lost in his endless dream

or could he be reawakened to our times, brought to full consciousness as a

storehouse of historical accuracy? How can Holy Church fear this truth?

For the Minority, we have no doubt that historians must listen to that voice

from our beginnings. If it is only the journals, we must listen. We must listen

across at least as many years into our future as those journals lay hidden in

our past. We will not try to predict the discoveries yet to be made within those

pages. We say only that they must be made. How can we turn our backs on our most

important inheritance? As the poet, Lon Bramlis, has said: "We are the fountain

of surprises!"