God Emperor of Dune dc-4

by Frank Herbert

  Leto admired the way she let unspoken questions work for her. She was bright and she had learned much during her short life.

  "The stomach hunger was a black feeling, a pain I could not relieve," he said. "I would run then, run like an insane creature across the dunes."

  "You... ran?"

  "My legs were longer in proportion to my body in those days. I could move myself about quite easily. But the hungry pain has never left me. I think it's hunger for my lost humanity."

  He saw the beginnings of reluctant sympathy in her, the questioning.

  "You still have this... pain?"

  "It's only a soft burning now. That's one of the signs of my final metamorphosis. In a few hundred years, I'll be back under the sand."

  He saw her clench her fists at her sides. "Why?" she demanded. "Why did you do this?"

  "This change isn't all bad. Today, for example, has been very pleasant. I feel quite mellow."

  "There are changes we cannot see," she said. "I know there must be." She relaxed her hands.

  "My sight and hearing have become extremely acute, but not my sense of touch. Except for my face, I don't feel things the way I could once. I miss that."

  Again, he noted the reluctant sympathy, the striving toward an empathic understanding. She wanted to know!

  "When you live so long," she said, "how does the passage of Time feel? Does it move more rapidly as the years go by?"

  "That's a strange thing, Siona. Sometimes, Time rushes by me; sometimes, it creeps."

  Gradually, as they spoke, Leto had been dimming the concealed lights of his aerie, moving his cart closer and closer to Siona. Now, he shut off the lights, leaving only the moon. The front of his cart protruded onto the balcony, his face only about two meters from Siona.

  "My father tells me," she said, "that the older you get, the slower your time goes. Is that what you told him?"

  Testing my veracity, he thought. She's not a Truthsayer, then.

  "All things are relative, but compared to the human timesense, this is true."

  "Why?"

  "It is involved in what I will become. At the end, Time will stop for me and I will be frozen like a pearl caught in ice. My new bodies will scatter, each with a pearl hidden within it."

  She turned and looked away from him, peering out at the desert, speaking without looking at him.

  "When I talk to you like this here in the darkness I can almost forget what you are."

  "That's why I chose this hour for our meeting."

  "But why this place?".

  "Because it is the last place where I can feel at home."

  Siona turned against the rail, leaning on it and looking at him. "I want to see you."

  He turned on all of the aerie's lights, including the harsh white globes along the roof of the balcony's outer edge. As the light came on, an Ixian-made transparent mask slid out of wall recesses and sealed off the balcony behind Siona. She felt it move behind her and was startled, but nodded as though she understood. She thought it was a defense against attack. It was not. The wall merely kept out the damp insects of the night.

  Siona stared at Leto, sweeping her gaze along his body, pausing at the stubs which once had been his legs, bringing her attention then to his arms and hands, then to his face.

  "Your approved histories tell us that all Atreides are descended from you and your sister, Ghanima," she said. "The Oral History disagrees."

  "The Oral History is correct. Your ancestor was Harq al Ada Ghani and I were married only in name, a move to consolidate the power."

  "Like your marriage to this Ixian woman?"

  "That is different."

  "You will have children?"

  "I have never been capable of having children. I chose the metamorphosis before that was possible."

  "You were a child and then you were-" she pointed "this?"

  "Nothing between."

  "How does a child know what to choose?"

  "I was one of the oldest children this universe has ever seen. Ghani was the other."

  "That story about your ancestral memories!"

  "A true story. We're all here. Doesn't the Oral History agree?"

  She whirled away and held her back stiffly presented to him. Once more, Leto found himself fascinated by this human gesture: rejection coupled to vulnerability. Presently, she turned around and concentrated on his features within the hooded folds.

  "You have the Atreides look," she said.

  "I come by it just as honestly as you do."

  "You're so old... why aren't you wrinkled?"

  "Nothing about the human part of me ages in a normal way."

  "Is that why you did this to yourself?"

  "To enjoy long life? No."

  "I don't see how anyone could make such a choice," she muttered. Then louder: "Never to know love..."

  "You're playing the fool!" he said. "You don't mean love, you mean sex."

  She shrugged.

  "You think the most terrible thing I gave up was sex? No, the greatest loss was something far different."

  "What?" She asked it reluctantly, betraying how deeply he touched her.

  "I cannot walk among my fellows without their special notice. I am no longer one of you. I am alone. Love? Many people love me, but my shape keeps us apart. We are separated, Siona, by a gulf that no other human dares to bridge."

  "Not even your Ixian woman?"

  "Yes, she would if she could, but she cannot. She's not an Atreides."

  "You mean that I... could?" She touched her breast with a finger.

  "If there were enough sandtrout around. Unfortunately, all of them enclose my flesh. However, if I were to die..."

  She shook her head in dumb horror at the thought.

  "The Oral History tells it accurately," he said. "And we must never forget that you believe the Oral History."

  She continued to shake her head from side to side.

  "There's no secret about it," he said. "The first moments of the transformation are the critical ones. Your awareness must drive inward and outward simultaneously, one with Infinity. I could provide you with enough melange to accomplish this. Given enough spice, you can live through those first awful moments... and all the other moments."

  She shuddered uncontrollably, her gaze fixed on his eyes.

  "You know I'm telling you the truth, don't you?"

  She nodded, inhaled a deep trembling breath, then: "Why did you do it?"

  "The alternative was far more horrible."

  "What alternative?"

  "In time, you may understand it. Moneo did."

  "Your damned Golden Path!"

  "Not damned at all. Quite holy."

  "You think I'm a fool who can't..."

  "I think you're inexperienced, but possessed of great capability whose potential you do not even suspect."

  She took three deep breaths and regained some of her composure, then: "If you can't mate with the Ixian, what..."

  "Child, why do you persist in misunderstanding? It's not sex. Before Hwi, I could not pair. I had no other like me. In all of the cosmic void, I was the only one."

  "She's like... you?"

  "Deliberately so. The lxians made her that way."

  "Made her..."

  "Don't be a complete fool!" he snapped. "She is the essential god-trap. Even the victim cannot reject her."

  "Why do you tell me these things?" she whispered.

  "You stole two copies of my journals," he said. "You've read the Guild translations and you already know what could catch me."

  "You knew?"

  He saw boldness return to her stance, a sense of her own power. "Of course you knew," she said, answering her own question.

  "It was my secret," he said. "You cannot imagine how many times I have loved a companion and seen that companion slip away... as your father is slipping away now."

  "You love... him?"

  "And I loved your mother. Sometimes they go quickly; sometimes with agonizing slown
ess. Each time I am wracked. I can play callous and I can make the necessary decisions, even decisions which kill, but I cannot escape the suffering. For a long, long time-those journals you stole tell it truly-that was the only emotion I knew."

  He saw the moistness in her eyes, but the line of her jaw still spoke of angry resolution.

  "None of this gives you the right to govern," she said.

  Leto suppressed a smile. At last they were down to the root of Siona's rebellion.

  By what right? Where is justice in my rule? By imposing my rules upon them with the weight of Fish Speaker arms, am I being fair to the evolutionary thrust of humankind? I know all of the revolutionary cant, the catch-prattle and the resounding phrases.

  "Nowhere do you see your own rebellious hand in the power I wield," he said.

  Her youth still demanded its moment.

  "I never chose you to govern," she said.

  "But you strengthen me."

  "How?"

  "By opposing me. I sharpen my claws on the likes of you."

  She shot a sudden glance at his hands.

  "A figure of speech," he said.

  "So I've offended you at last," she said, hearing only the cutting anger in his words and tone.

  "You've not offended me. We're related and can speak bluntly to each other within the family. The fact is, I have much more to fear from you than you from me."

  This took her aback, but only momentarily. He saw belief stiffen her shoulders, then doubt. Her chin lowered and she peered upward at him.

  "What could the great God Leto fear from me?"

  "Your ignorant violence."

  "Are you saying that you're physically vulnerable?"

  "I will not warn you again, Siona. There are limits to the word games I will play. You and the lxians both know that it's the ones I love who are physically vulnerable. Soon, most of the Empire will know it. This is the kind of information which travels fast."

  "And they'll all ask what right you have to rule!"

  There was glee in her voice. It aroused an abrupt anger in Leto. He found it difficult to suppress. This was a side of human emotions he detested. Gloating! It was some time before he dared answer, then he chose to slash through her defenses at the vulnerability he already had seen.

  "I rule by the right of loneliness, Siona. My loneliness is part-freedom and part-slavery. It says I cannot be bought by any human group. My slavery to you says that I will serve all of you to the best of my lordly abilities."

  "But the lxians have caught you!" she said.

  "No. They have given me a gift which strengthens me."

  "It weakens you!"

  "That, too," he admitted. "But very powerful forces still obey me."

  "Ohhh, yes." she nodded. "I understand that."

  "You don't understand it."

  "Then I'm sure you'll explain it to me," she taunted.

  He spoke so softly that she had to lean toward him to hear: "There are no others of any kind anywhere who can call upon me for anything-not for sharing, not for compromise, not even for the slightest beginning of another government. I am the only one."

  "Not even this Ixian woman can..."

  "She is so much like me that she would not weaken me in that way."

  "But when the Ixian Embassy was attacked..."

  "I can still be irritated by stupidity," he said.

  She scowled at him.

  Leto thought it a pretty gesture in that light, quite unconscious. He knew he had made her think. He was sure she had never before considered that any rights might adhere to uniqueness.

  He addressed her silent scowl: "There has never before been a government exactly like mine. Not in all of our history. I am responsible only to myself, exacting payment in full for what I have sacrificed."

  "Sacrificed!" she sneered, but he heard the doubts. "Every despot says something like that. You're responsible only to yourself!"

  "Which makes every living thing my responsibility. I watch over you through these times."

  "Through what times?"

  "The times that might have been and then no more."

  He saw the indecision in her. She did not trust her instincts, her untrained abilities at prediction. She might leap occasionally as she had done when she took his journals, but the motivation for the leap was lost in the revelation which followed.

  "My father says you can be very tricky with words," she said.

  "And he ought to know. But there is knowledge you can only gain by participating in it. There's no way to learn it by standing off and looking and talking."

  "That's the kind of thing he means," she said.

  "You're quite right," he agreed. "It's not logical. But it is a light, an eye which can see, but does not see itself."

  "I'm tired of talking," she said.

  "As am L" And he thought: l have seen enough, done enough. She is wide open to her doubts. How vulnerable they are in their ignorance!

  "You haven't convinced me of anything," she said.

  "That was not the purpose of this meeting."

  "What was the purpose?"

  "To see if you are ready to be tested."

  "Test..." She tipped her head a bit to the right and stared at him.

  "Don't play the innocent with me," he said. "Moneo has told you. And I tell you that you are ready!"

  She tried to swallow, then: "What are..."

  "I have sent for Moneo to return you to the Citadel," he said. "When we meet again, we will really learn what you are made of."

  ***

  You know the myth of the Great Spice Hoard? Yes, I know about that story, too. A majordomo brought it to me one day to amuse me. The story says there is a hoard of melange, a gigantic hoard, big as a great mountain. The hoard is concealed in the depths of a distant planet. It is not Arrakis, that planet. It is not Dune. The spice was hidden there long ago, even before the First Empire and the Spacing Guild. The story says Paul Muad'Dib went there and lives yet beside the hoard, kept alive by it, waiting. The majordomo did not understand why the story disturbed me.

  - The Stolen Journals

  IDAHO TREMBLED with anger as he strode along the gray plastone halls toward his quarters in the Citadel. At each guard post he passed, the woman there snapped to attention. He did not respond. Idaho knew he was causing disturbance among them. Nobody could mistake the Commander's mood. But he did not abate his purposeful stride. The heavy thumping of his boots echoed along the walls.

  He could still taste the noon meal-oddly familiar Atreides chopstick-fare of mixed grains herb-seasoned and baked around a pungent morsel of pseudomeat, all of it washed down with a drink of clear cidrit juice. Moneo had found him at table in the Guard Mess, alone in a corner with a regional operations schedule propped up beside his plate.

  Without invitation, Moneo had seated himself opposite

  Idaho and had pushed aside the operations schedule.

  "I bring a message from the God Emperor," Moneo said.

  The tightly controlled tone warned Idaho that this was no casual encounter. Others sensed it. Listening silence settled over the women at nearby tables, spreading out through the room.

  Idaho put down his chopsticks. "Yes?"

  "These were the words of the God Emperor," Moneo said. "`It is my bad luck that Duncan Idaho should become enamored of Hwi Noree. This mischance must not continue."'

  Anger thinned Idaho's lips, but he remained silent.

  "Such foolishness endangers us all," Moneo said. "Noree is the God Emperor's intended."

  Idaho tried to control his anger, but the words were a betrayal: "He can't marry her!"

  "Why not?"

  "What game is he playing, Moneo?"

  "I am a messenger with a single message, no more," Moneo said.

  Idaho's voice was low and threatening. "But he confides in you."

  "The God Emperor sympathizes with you," Moneo lied.

  "Sympathizes!" Idaho shouted the word, creating a new depth to the room's sile
nce.

  "Noree is a woman of obvious attractions," Moneo said. "But she is not for you."

  "The God Emperor has spoken," Idaho sneered, "and there is no appeal."

  "I see that you understand the message," Moneo said.

  Idaho started to push himself away from the table.

  "Where are you going?" Moneo demanded.

  "I'm going to have this out with him right now!"

  "That is certain suicide," Moneo said.

  Idaho glared at him, aware suddenly of the listening intensity in the women at the tables around them. An expression which Muad'Dib would have recognized immediately came over Idaho's face: "Playing to the Devil's Gallery," Muad'Dib had called it.

  "D'you know what the original Atreides Dukes always said?" Idaho asked. There was a mocking tone in his voice.

  "Is it pertinent?"

  "They said your liberties all vanish when you look up to any absolute ruler."

  Rigid with fear, Moneo leaned toward Idaho. Moneo's lips barely moved. His voice was little more than a whisper. "Don't say such things."

  "Because one of these women will report it?"

  Moneo shook his head in disbelief. "You are more reckless than any of the others."

  "Really?"

  "Please! It is perilous in the extreme to take this attitude."

  Idaho heard the nervous stirring that swept through the room.

  "He can only kill us," Idaho said.

  Moneo spoke in a tight whisper: "You fool! The Worm can dominate him at the slightest provocation!"

  "The Worm, you say?" Idaho's voice was unnecessarily loud.

  "You must trust him," Moneo said.

  Idaho glanced left and right. "Yes, I think they heard that."

  "He is billions upon billions of people united in that one body," Moneo said.

  "So I've been told."

  "He is God and we are mortal," Moneo said.

  "How is it a god can do evil things?" Idaho asked.

  Moneo thrust his chair backward and leaped to his feet. "I wash my hands of you!" Whirling away, he dashed from the room.

  Idaho looked out into the room, finding himself the center of attention for all of the guards' faces.

  "Moneo doesn't judge, but I do," Idaho said.

  It surprised him then to glimpse a few wry smiles among the women. They all returned to their eating.