God Emperor of Dune (Dune Chronicles #4)

God Emperor of Dune (Dune Chronicles #4) Page 8

Idaho scowled.

A tight smile flitted across Moneo's mouth. "Lord Leto says that only Atreides discipline and moral restraints prevented some of the worst excesses in your times."

A deep sigh shook Idaho.

Moneo sat back, thinking of a thing the God Emperor had once said: "No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer."

"Those damned Atreides!" Idaho said.

"I am Atreides," Moneo said.

"What?" Idaho was shocked.

"His breeding program," Moneo said. "I'm sure the Tleilaxu mentioned it. I am directly descended from the mating of his sister and Harq-al-Ada."

Idaho leaned toward him. "Then tell me, Atreides, how are women better soldiers than men?"

"They find it easier to mature."

Idaho shook his head in bewilderment.

"They have a compelling physical way of moving from adolescence into maturity," Moneo said. "As Lord Leto says, `Carry a baby in you for nine months and that changes you."'

Idaho sat back. "What does he know about it?"

Moneo merely stared at him until Idaho recalled the multitude in Leto-both male and female. The realization plunged over Idaho. Moneo saw it, recalling a comment of the God Emperor's: "Your words brand him with the look you want him to have."

As the silence continued, Moneo cleared his throat. Presently, he said: "The immensity of the Lord Leto's memories has been known to stop my tongue, too."

"Is he being honest with us?" Idaho asked.

"I believe him."

"But he does so many... I mean, take this breeding program. How long has that been going on?"

"From the very first. From the day he took it away from the Bene Gesserit."

"What does he want from it?"

"I wish I knew."

"But you're..."

"An Atreides and his chief aide, yes."

"You haven't convinced me that a female army is best."

"They continue the species."

At last, Idaho's frustration and anger had an object. "Is that what I was doing with them that first night-breeding?"

"Possibly. The Fish Speakers take no precautions against pregnancy."

"Damn him! I'm not some animal he can move from stall to stall like a... like a..."

"Like a stud?" ..Yes!"

"But the Lord Leto refuses to follow the Tleilaxu pattern of gene surgery and artificial insemination."

"What have the Tleilaxu got to..."

"They are the object lesson. Even I can see that. Their Face Dancers are mules, closer to a colony organism than to human."

"Those others of... me... were any of them his studs?"

"Some. You have descendants."

"Who?"

"I am one."

Idaho stared into Moneo's eyes, lost suddenly in a tangle of relationships. Idaho found the relationships impossible to understand. Moneo obviously was so much older than... But I am... Which of them was truly the older? Which the ancestor and which the descendant?

"I sometimes have trouble with this myself," Moneo said. "If it helps, the Lord Leto assures me that you are not my descendant, not in any ordinary sense. However, you may well father some of my descendants."

Idaho shook his head from side to side.

"Sometimes I think only the God Emperor himself can understand these things," Moneo said.

"That's another thing" Idaho said. "This god business."

"The Lord Leto says he has created a holy obscenity."

This was not the response Idaho had expected. What did I expect? A defense of the Lord Leto?

"Holy obscenity," Moneo repeated. The words rolled from his tongue with a strange sense of gloating in them.

Idaho focused a probing stare on Moneo. He hates his God Emperor! No... he fears him. But don't we always hate what we fear?

"Why do you believe in him?" Idaho demanded.

"You ask if I share in the popular religion?"

"No! Does he?"

"I think so."

"Why? Why do you think so?"

"Because he says he wishes to create no more Face Dancers. He insists that his human stock, once it has been paired, breeds in the way it has always bred."

"What the hell does that have to do with it?"

"You asked me what he believes in. I think he believes in chance. I think that's his god."

"That's superstition!"

"Considering the circumstances of the Empire, a very daring superstition."

Idaho glared at Moneo. "You damned Atreides," he muttered. "You'll dare anything!"

Moneo noted that there was dislike mixed with admiration in Idaho's voice.

The Duncans always begin that way. -= What is the most profound difference between us, between you and me? You already know it. It's these ancestral memories. Mine come at me in the full glare of awareness. Yours work from your blind side. Some call it instinct or fate. The memories apply their leverages to each of us-on what we think and what we do. You think you are immune to such influences? I am Galileo. I stand here and tell you: "Yet it moves." That which moves can exert its force in ways no mortal power ever before dared stem. I am here to dare this.

- The Stolen Journals "WHEN SHE was a child, she watched me, remember? When she thought I was not aware, Siona watched me like the desert hawk which circles above the lair of its prey. You yourself mentioned it."

Leto rolled his body a quarter turn on his cart while speaking. This brought his cowled face close to that of Moneo, who trotted beside the cart.

It was barely dawn on the desert road which followed the high artificial ridge from the Citadel in the Sareer to the Festival City. The road from the desert ran laser-beam straight until it reached this point where it curved widely and dipped into terraced canyons before crossing the Idaho River. The air was full of thick mists from the river tumbling in its distant clamor, but Leto had opened the bubble cover which sealed the front of his cart. The moisture made his worm-self tingle with vague distress, but there was the smell of sweet desert growth in the mist and his human nostrils savored it. He ordered the cortege to stop.

"Why are we stopping, Lord?" Moneo asked.

Leto did not answer. The cart creaked as he heaved his bulk into an arching curve which lifted his head and allowed him to look across the Forbidden Forest to the Kynes Sea glistening silver far off to the right. He turned left and there were the remains of the Shield Wall, a sinuous low shadow in the morning light. The ridge here had been raised almost two thousand meters to enclose the Sareer and limit airborne moisture there. From his vantage, Leto could see the distant notch where he had caused the Festival City of Onn to be built.

"It is a whim which stops me," Leto said.

"Shouldn't we cross the bridge before resting?" Moneo asked.

"I am not resting."

Leto stared ahead. After a series of switchbacks which were visible from here only as a twisting shadow, the high road crossed the river on a faery bridge, climbed to a buffer ridge and then sloped down to the city which presented a vista of glittering spires at this distance.

"The Duncan acts subdued," Leto said. "Have you had your long conversation with him?"

"Precisely as you required, Lord."

"Well, it's only been four days," Leto said. "They often take longer to recover."

"He has been busy with your Guard, Lord. They were out until late again last night."

"The Duncans do not like to walk in the open. They think about the things which could be used to attack us."

"I know, Lord."

Leto turned and looked squarely at Moneo. The majordomo wore a green cloak over his white uniform. He stood beside the open bubble cover, exactly in the place where duty required that he station himself on these excursions.

"You are very dutiful, Moneo," Leto said.

"Thank you, Lord."

Guards and courtiers kept themselves at a respectful distance well behind the cart. Most of them were trying to avoid even the appearance of eavesdropping on Leto and Moneo. Not so Idaho. He had positioned some of the Fish Speaker guards at both sides of the Royal Road, spreading them out. Now, he stood staring at the cart. Idaho wore a black uniform with white piping, a gift of the Fish Speakers, Moneo had said.

"They like this one very much. He is good at what he does."

"What does he do, Moneo?"

"Why, guard your person, Lord."

The women of the Guard all wore skintight green uniforms, each with a red Atreides hawk at the left breast.

"They watch him very closely," Leto said.

"Yes. He is teaching them hand signals. He says it's the Atreides way."

"That is certainly correct. I wonder why the previous one didn't do that?"

"Lord, if you don't know..."

"I jest, Moneo. The previous Duncan did not feel threatened until it was too late. Has this one accepted our explanations?"

"So I'm told, Lord. He is well started in your service."

"Why is he carrying only that knife in the belt sheath?"

"The women have convinced him that only the specially trained among them should have lasguns."

"Your caution is groundless, Moneo. Tell the women that it's much too early for us to begin fearing this one."

"As my Lord commands."

It was obvious to Leto that his new Guard Commander did not enjoy the presence of the courtiers. He stood well away from them. Most of the courtiers, he had been told, were civil functionaries. They were decked out in their brightest and finest for this day when they could parade themselves in their full power and in the presence of the God Emperor. Leto could see how foolish the courtiers must appear to Idaho. But Leto could remember far more foolish finery and he thought that this day's display might be an improvement.

"Have you introduced him to Siona?" Leto asked.

At the mention of Siona, Moneo's brows congealed into a scowl.

"Calm yourself," Leto said. "Even when she spied on me, I cherished her."

"I sense danger in her, Lord. I think sometimes she sees into my most secret thoughts."

"The wise child knows her father."

"I do not joke, Lord."

"Yes, I can see that. Have you noticed that the Duncan grows impatient?"

"They scouted the road almost to the bridge," Moneo said.

"What did they find?"

"The same thing I found-anew Museum Fremen."

"Another petition?"

"Do not be angry, Lord."

Once more, Leto peered ahead. This necessary exposure to the open air, the long and stately journey with all of its ritual requirements to reassure the Fish Speakers, all of it troubled Leto. And now, another petition!

Idaho strode forward to stop directly behind Moneo.

There was a sense of menace about Idaho's movements. Surely not this soon, Leto thought.

"Why are we stopping, m'Lord?" Idaho asked.

"I often stop here," Leto said.

It was true. He turned and looked beyond the faery bridge. The way twisted downward out of the canyon heights into the Forbidden Forest and thence through fields beside the river. Leto had often stopped here to watch the sunrise. There was something about this morning, though, the sun striking across the familiar vista... something which stirred old memories.

The fields of the Royal Plantations reached outward beyond the forest and, when the sun lifted over the far curve of land, it beamed glowing gold across grain rippling in the fields. The grain reminded Leto of sand, of sweeping dunes which once had marched across this very ground.

And will march once more.

The grain was not quite the bright silica amber of his remembered desert. Leto looked back at the cliff-enclosed distances of his Sareer, his sanctuary of the past. The colors were distinctly different. All the same, when he looked once more toward Festival City, he felt an ache where his many hearts once more were reforming in their slow transformation toward something profoundly alien.

What is it about this morning that makes me think about my lost humanity? Leto wondered.

Of all the Royal party looking at that familiar scene of grain fields and forest, Leto knew that only he still thought of the lush landscape as the bahr bela ma, the ocean without water.

"Duncan," Leto said. "You see that out there toward the city? That was the Tanzerouft."

"The Land of Terror?" Idaho revealed his surprise in the quick look toward Onn and the sudden return of his gaze to Leto.

"The bahr bela ma," Leto said. "It has been concealed under a carpet of plants for more than three thousand years. Of all who live on Arrakis today, only the two of us ever saw the desert original."

Idaho looked toward Onn. "Where is the Shield Wall?" he asked.

"Muad'Dib's Gap is right there, right where we built the City."

"That line of little hills, that was the Shield Wall? What happened to it?"

"You are standing on it."

Idaho looked up at Leto, then down to the roadway and all around.

"Lord, shall we proceed?" Moneo asked.

Moneo, with that clock ticking in his breast, is the goad to duty, Leto thought. There were important visitors to see and other vital matters. Time pressed him. And he did not like it when his God Emperor talked about old times with the Duncans.

Leto was suddenly aware that he had paused here far longer than ever before. The courtiers and guards were cold after their run in the morning air. Some had chosen their clothing more for show than protection.

Then again, Leto thought, perhaps show is a form of protection.

"There were dunes," Idaho said.

"Stretching for thousands of kilometers," Leto agreed.

Moneo's thoughts churned. He was familiar with the God Emperor's reflexive mood, but there was a sense of sadness in it this day. Perhaps the recent death of a Duncan. Leto sometimes let important information drop when he was sad. You never questioned the God Emperor's moods or his whims, but sometimes they could be employed.

Siona will have to be warned, Moneo thought. If the young fool will listen to me!

She was far more of a rebel than he had been. Far more. Leto had tamed his Moneo, sensitized him to the Golden Path and the rightful duties for which he had been bred, but methods used on a Moneo would not work with Siona. In his observation of this, Moneo had learned things about his own training which he had never before suspected.

"I don't see any identifiable landmarks," Idaho was saying.

"Right over there," Leto said, pointing. "Where the forest ends. That was the way to Splintered Rock."

Moneo shut out their voices. It was ultimate fascination with the God Emperor which finally brought me to heel. Leto never ceased to surprise and amaze. He could not be reliably predicted. Moneo glanced at the God Emperor's profile. What has he become?

As part of his early duties, Moneo had studied the Citadel's private records, the historical accounts of Leto's transformation. But symbiosis with sandtrout remained a mystery which even Leto's own words could not dispel. If the accounts were to be believed, the sandtrout skin made his body almost invulnerable to time and violence. The great body's ribbed core could even absorb lasgun bursts!

First the sandtrout, then the worm-all part of the great cycle which had produced melange. That cycle lay within the God Emperor... marking time.

"Let us proceed," Leto said.

Moneo realized that he had missed something. He came out of his reverie and looked at a smiling Duncan Idaho.

"We used to call that woolgathering," Leto said.

"I'm sorry, Lord," Moneo said. "I was..."

"You were woolgathering, but it's all right."

His mood's improved, Moneo thought. I can thank the Duncan for that, I think.

Leto adjusted his position on the cart, closed part of the bubble cover and left only his head free. The cart crunched over small rocks on the roadbed as Leto activated it.

Idaho took up position at Moneo's shoulder and trotted along beside him.

"There are floater bulbs under that cart, but he uses the wheels," Idaho said. "Why is that?"

"It pleases the Lord Leto to use wheels instead of antigravity."

"What makes the thing go? How does he steer it?"

"Have you asked him?"

"I haven't had the opportunity."

"The Royal Cart is of Ixian manufacture."

"What does that mean?"

"It is said that the Lord Leto activates his cart and steers it just by thinking in a particular way."

"Don't you know?"

"Questions such as this do not please him."

Even to his intimates, Moneo thought, The God Emperor remains a mystery.

"Moneo!" Leto called.

"You had better return to your guards," Moneo said, gesturing for Idaho to fall back.

"I'd rather be out in front with them," Idaho said.

"The Lord Leto does not want that! Now go back."

Moneo hurried to place himself close beside Leto's face, noting that Idaho was falling back through the courtiers to the rear ring of guards.

Leto looked down at Moneo. "I thought you handled that very well, Moneo."

"Thank you, Lord."

"Do you know why the Duncan wants to be out in front?"

"Certainly, Lord. It's where your Guard should be."

"And this one senses danger."

"I don't understand you, Lord. I cannot understand why you do these things."

"That's true, Moneo." -= The female sense of sharing originated as familial sharing-care of the young, the gathering and preparation of food, sharing joys, love and sorrows. Funeral lamentation originated with women. Religion began as a female monopoly, wrested from them only after its social power became too dominant. Women were the first medical researchers and Practitioners. There has never been any clear balance between the sexes because power goes with certain roles as it certainly goes with knowledge.

- The Stolen Journals FOR THE Reverend Mother Tertius Eileen Anteac, this had been a disastrous morning. She had arrived on Arrakis with her fellow Truthsayer, Marcus Claire Luyseyal, both of them coming down with their official party less than three hours ago aboard the first shuttle from the Guild heighliner hanging in stationary orbit. First, they had been assigned rooms at the absolute edge of the Festival City's Embassy Quarter. The rooms were small and not quite clean.

"Any farther out and we'd be camping in the slums," Luyseyal had said.

Next they had been denied communications facilities. All of the screens remained blank no matter how many switches were toggled and palm-dials turned.

Anteac had addressed herself sharply to the heavyset officer commanding the Fish Speaker escort, a glowering woman with low brows and the muscles of a manual laborer.

"I wish to complain to your commander!"

"No complaints allowed at Festival Time," the amazon had rasped.

Anteac had glared at the officer, a look which in Anteac's old and seamed face had been known to make even her fellow Reverend Mothers hesitate.

The amazon had merely smiled and said: "I have a message. I am to tell you that your audience with the God Emperor has been moved to the last position."

Most of the Bene Gesserit party had heard this and even the lowliest attendant-postulate had recognized the significance. All of the spice allotments would be fixed or (The Gods protect us!) even gone by that time.

"We were to have been third," Anteac had said, her voice remarkably mild in the circumstances.

"It is the God Emperor's command!"

Anteac knew that tone in a Fish Speaker. To defy it risked violence.

A morning of disasters and now this!

Anteac occupied a low stool against one wall of a tiny, almost empty room near the center of their inadequate quarters. Beside her there was a low pallet, no more than you would assign to an acolyte! The walls were a pale, scabrous green and there was but one aging glowglobe so defective it could not be tuned out of the yellow. The room gave signs of having been a storage chamber. It smelled musty. Dents and scratches marred the black plastic of the floor.

Smoothing her black aba robe across her knees, Anteac leaned close to the postulate messenger who knelt, head bowed, directly in front of the Reverend Mother. The messenger was a doe-eyed blonde creature with the perspiration of fear and excitement on her face and neck. She wore a dusty tan robe with the dirt of the streets along its hem.

"You are certain, absolutely certain?" Anteac spoke softly to soothe the poor girl, who still trembled with the gravity of her message.

"Yes, Reverend Mother." She kept her gaze lowered.

"Go through it once more," Anteac said, and she thought:

I'm sparring for time. I heard her correctly.

The messenger lifted her gaze to Anteac and looked directly into the totally blue eyes as all the postulates and acolytes were taught to do.

"As I was commanded, I made contact with the lxians at their Embassy and presented your greetings. I then inquired if they had any messages for me to bring back."

"Yes, yes, girl! I know. Get to the heart of it."

The messenger gulped. "The spokesman identified himself as Othwi Yake, temporary superior in the Embassy and assistant to the former Ambassador."

"You're sure he was not a Face Dancer substitute?"

"None of the signs were there, Reverend Mother."

"Very well. We know this Yake. You may continue."

"Yake said they were awaiting the arrival of the new. _."

"Hwi Noree, the new Ambassador, yes. She's due here today."

The messenger wet her lips with her tongue.

Anteac made a mental note to return this poor creature to a more elementary training schedule. Messengers should have better self-control, although some allowance had to be made for the seriousness of this message.