God Emperor of Dune

by Frank Herbert

  "What language was that?" she asked.

  "A language no longer spoken anywhere else in my universe."

  "Why did you use it then?"

  "To prod your ancient memories."

  "I don't have any! I just need to know why you brought me here."

  "To give you a taste of your past. Come down here and climb onto my back." She hesitated at first, then seeing the futility of defiance, slid down the dune and clambered onto his back.

  Leto waited until she was kneeling atop him. It was not the same as the old times he knew. She had no Maker hooks and could not stand on his back. He lifted his front segments slightly off the surface.

  "Why am I doing this?" she asked. Her tone said she felt silly up there.

  "I want you to taste the way our people once moved proudly across this land, high atop the back of a giant sandworm."

  He began to glide along the dune just below the crest. Siona had seen holos. She knew this experience intellectually, but the pulse of reality had a different beat and he knew she would resonate to it.

  Ahhh, Siona, he thought, you do not even begin to suspect how I will test you.

  Leto steeled himself then. I must have no pity. If she dies, she dies. If any of them dies, that is a required event, no more.

  And he had to remind himself that this applied even to Hwi Noree. It was just that all of them could not die.

  He sensed it when Siona began to enjoy the sensation of riding on his back. He felt a faint shift in her weight as she eased back onto her legs to lift her head.

  He drove outward then along a curving barracan, joining Siona in enjoyment of the old sensations. Leto could just glimpse the remnant hills at the horizon ahead of him. They were like a seed from the past waiting there, a reminder of the self-sustaining and expanding force which operated in a desert. He could forget for a moment that on this planet where only a small fraction of the surface remained desert, the Sareer's dynamism existed in a precarious environment.

  The illusion of the past was here, though. He felt it as he moved. Fantasy, of course, he told himself, a vanishing fantasy as long as his enforced tranquility continued. Even the sweeping barracan which he traversed now was not as great as the ones of the past. None of the dunes were that great.

  This whole maintained desert struck him suddenly as ridiculous. He almost stopped on a pebbled surface between the dunes, continuing but more slowly as he tried to conjure up the necessities which kept the whole system working. He imagined the planet's rotation setting up great air currents which shifted cold and heated air to new regions in enormous volume--everything monitored and ruled by those tiny satellites with their Ixian instruments and heat-focusing dishes. If the high monitors saw anything, they saw the Sareer partly as a "relief desert" with both physical and cold-air walls girdling it. This tended to create ice at the edges and required even more climatic adjustments.

  It was not easy and Leto forgave the occasional mistakes for that reason.

  As he moved once more out onto dunes, he lost that sense of delicate balance, put aside memories of the pebbly wastelands outside the central sands, and gave himself up to enjoyment of his "petrified ocean" with its frozen and apparently immovable waves. He turned southward, parallel to the remnant hills.

  He knew that most people were offended by his infatuation with desert. They were uneasy and turned away. Siona, however, could not turn away. Everywhere she looked, the desert demanded recognition. She rode silently on his back, but he knew her eyes were full. And the old-old memories were beginning to churn.

  He came within three hours to a region of cylindrical whaleback dunes, some of them more than one hundred and fifty kilometers long at an angle to the prevailing wind. Beyond them lay a rocky corridor between dunes and into a region of star dunes almost four hundred meters high. Finally, they entered the braided dunes of the central erg where the general high pressure and electrically charged air gave his spirits a lift. He knew the same magic would be working on Siona.

  "Here is where the songs of the Long Trek originated," he said. "They are perfectly preserved in the Oral History."

  She did not answer, but he knew she heard.

  Leto slowed his pace and began to speak to Siona, telling her about their Fremen past. He sensed the quickening of her interest. She even asked questions occasionally, but he could also feel her fears building. Even the base of his Little Citadel was no longer visible here. She could recognize nothing man-made. And she would think he engaged now in small talk, unimportant things to put off something portentous.

  "Equality between our men and women originated here," he said.

  "Your Fish Speakers deny that men and women are equal," she said.

  Her voice, full of questioning disbelief, was a better locator than the sensation of her crouched on his back. Leto stopped at the intersection of two braided dunes and let the venting of his heat-generated oxygen subside.

  "Things are not the same today," he said. "But men and women do have different evolutionary demands upon them. With the Fremen, though, there was an interdependence. That fostered equality out here where questions of survival can become immediate."

  "Why did you bring me here?" she demanded.

  "Look behind us," he said.

  He felt her turn. Presently, she said: "What am I supposed to see?"

  "Have we left any tracks? Can you tell where we've been?"

  "There's a little wind now."

  "It has covered our tracks?"

  "I guess so ... yes."

  "This desert made us what we were and are," he said. "It's the real museum of all our traditions. Not one of those traditions has really been lost."

  Leto saw a small sandstorm, a ghibli, moving across the southern horizon. He noted the narrow ribbons of dust and sand moving out ahead of it. Surely, Siona had seen it.

  "Why won't you tell me why you brought me here?" she asked. Fear was obvious in her voice.

  "But I have told you."

  "You have not!"

  "How far have we come, Siona?"

  She thought about this. "Thirty kilometers? Twenty?"

  "Farther," he said. "I can move very fast in my own land. Didn't you feel the wind on your face?"

  "Yes." Sullen. "So why ask me how far?"

  "Come down and stand where I can see you."

  "Why?"

  Good, he thought. She believes I will abandon her here and speed off faster than she can follow.

  "Come down and I'll explain," he said.

  She slid off his back and came around to where she could look into his face.

  "Time passes swiftly when your senses are full," he said. "We have been out almost four hours. We have come about sixty kilometers."

  "Why is that important?"

  "Moneo put dried food in the pouch of your robe," he said. "Eat a little and I will tell you."

  She found a dried cube of protomor in the pouch and chewed on it while she watched him. It was the authentic old Fremen food even to the slight addition of melange.

  "You have felt your past," he said. "Now, you must be sensitized to your future, to the Golden Path."

  She swallowed. "I don't believe in your Golden Path."

  "If you are to live, you will believe in it."

  "Is that your test? Have faith in the Great God Leto or die?"

  "You need no faith in me whatsoever. I want you to have faith in yourself."

  "Then why is it important how far we've come?"

  "So you'll understand how far you still have to go."

  She put a hand to her cheek. "I don't ..."

  "Right where you stand," he said, "you are in the unmistakable midst of Infinity. Look around you at the meaning of Infinity."

  She glanced left and right at the unbroken desert.

  "We are going to walk out of my desert together," he said. "Just the two of us."

  "You don't walk," she sneered.

  "A figure of speech. But you will walk. I assure you of that."r />
  She looked in the direction they had come. "So that's why you asked me about tracks."

  "Even if there were tracks, you could not go back. There is nothing at my Little Citadel that you could get to and use for survival."

  "No water?"

  "Nothing."

  She found the catchpocket tube at her shoulder, sucked at it and restored it. He noted the care with which she sealed the end, but she did not pull the face flap across her mouth, although Leto had heard her father warning her about this. She wanted her mouth free for talking!

  "You're telling me I can't run away from you," she said.

  "Run away if you want."

  She turned a full circle, examining the wasteland.

  "There is a saying about the open land," he said, "that one direction is as good as another. In some ways, that's still true, but I would not depend on it."

  "But I'm really free to leave you if I want?"

  "Freedom can be a very lonely estate," he said.

  She pointed to the steep side of the dune on which they had stopped. "But I could just go down there and ..."

  "Were I you, Siona, I would not go down where you are pointing."

  She glared at him. "Why?"

  "On the dune's steep side, unless you follow the natural curves, the sand may slide down upon you and bury you."

  She looked down the slope, absorbing this.

  "See how beautiful words can be?" he asked.

  She returned her attention to his face. "Should we be going?"

  "You learn to value leisure out here. And courtesy. There's no hurry."

  "But we have no water except the ..."

  "Used wisely, that stillsuit will keep you alive."

  "But how long will it take us to ..."

  "Your impatience alarms me."

  "But we have only this dried food in my pouch. What will we eat when ..."

  "Siona! Have you noticed that you are expressing our situation as mutual. What will we eat? We have no water. Should we be going? How long will it take us?"

  He sensed the dryness of her mouth as she tried to swallow.

  "Could it be that we're interdependent?" he asked.

  She spoke reluctantly. "I don't know how to survive out here."

  "But I do?"

  She nodded.

  "Why should I share such precious knowledge with you?" he asked.

  She shrugged, a pitiful gesture which touched him. How quickly the desert cut away previous attitudes.

  "I will share my knowledge with you," he said. "And you must find something valuable that you can share with me."

  Her gaze traversed his length, paused a moment at the flippers which once were his legs and feet, then came back to his face.

  "Agreement bought with threats is no agreement," she said.

  "I offer you no violence."

  "There are many kinds of violence," she said.

  "And I brought you out here where you may die?"

  "Did I have a choice in it?"

  "It is difficult to be born an Atreides," he said. "Believe me, I know."

  "You don't have to do it this way," she said.

  "And there you are wrong."

  He turned away from her and set off in a sinusoidal track down the dune. He heard her slipping and stumbling as she followed. Leto stopped well into the dune shadow.

  "We'll wait out the day here," he said. "It uses less water to travel by night."

  One of the most terrible words in any language is Soldier. The synonyms parade through our history: yogahnee, trooper, hussar, kareebo, cossack, deranzeef, legionnaire, sardaukar, fish speaker ... I know them all. They stand there in the ranks of my memory to remind me: Always make sure you have the army with you.

  --THE STOLEN JOURNALS

  Idaho found Moneo at last in the long underground corridor which con-nected the Citadel's eastern and western complexes. Since daybreak two hours before, Idaho had been prowling the Citadel seeking the majordomo and there he was, far off down the corridor, talking to someone concealed in a doorway, but Moneo was recognizable even at this distance by his stance and that inevitable white uniform.

  The corridor's plastone walls were amber here fifty meters below the surface and lighted by glowstrips keyed to the daylight hours. Cool breezes were drawn into these depths by a simple arrangement of free-swinging wings which stood like gigantic robed figures on perimeter towers at the surface. Now that the sun had warmed the sands, all of the wings pointed northward for the cool air pouring into the Sareer. Idaho smelled the flinty breeze as he walked.

  He knew what this corridor was supposed to represent. It did have some characteristics of an ancient Fremen sietch. The corridor was wide, big enough to take Leto on his cart. The arched ceiling looked like rock. But the twin glowstrips were discord. Idaho had never seen glowstrips before coming to the Citadel; they had been considered impractical in his day, requiring too much energy, too costly to maintain. Glowglobes were simpler and easily replaced. He had come to realize, however, that Leto considered few things impractical.

  What Leto wants, someone provides.

  The thought had an ominous feeling as Idaho marched down the corridor toward Moneo.

  Small rooms lined the corridor sietch-fashion, no doors, only thin hangings of russet fabric which swayed in the breeze. Idaho knew that this area was mostly quarters for the younger Fish Speakers. He had recognized an assembly chamber with attendant rooms for weapons storage, kitchen, a dining hall, maintenance shops. He had also seen other things behind the inadequate privacy of the hangings, things which fed his rage.

  Moneo turned at Idaho's approach. The woman to whom Moneo had been talking retreated and let the hanging drop, but not before Idaho glimpsed an older face with an air of command about it. Idaho did not recognize that particular commander.

  Moneo nodded as Idaho stopped two paces away.

  "The guards say you've been looking for me," Moneo said.

  "Where is he, Moneo?"

  "Where is who?"

  Moneo swept his gaze up and down Idaho's figure, noting the old-fashioned Atreides uniform, black with a red hawk at the breast, the high boots glistening with polish. There was a ritual look about the man.

  Idaho took a shallow breath and spoke through clenched teeth: "Don't you start that game with me!"

  Moneo took his attention away from the sheathed knife at Idaho's waist. It looked like a museum piece with its jeweled handle. Where had Idaho found it?

  "If you mean the God Emperor ..." Moneo said.

  "Where?"

  Moneo kept his voice mild. "Why are you so anxious to die?"

  "They said you were with him."

  "That was earlier."

  "I'll find him, Moneo!"

  "Not right now."

  Idaho put a hand on his knife. "Do I have to use force to make you talk?"

  "I would not advise that."

  "Where ... is ... he?"

  "Since you insist, he is out in the desert with Siona."

  "With your daughter?"

  "Is there another Siona?"

  "What're they doing?"

  "She is being tested."

  "When will they return?"

  Moneo shrugged, then: "Why this unseemly anger, Duncan?"

  "What's this test of your ..."

  "I don't know. Now, why are you so upset?"

  "I'm sick of this place! Fish Speakers!" He turned his head and spat.

  Moneo glanced down the corridor behind Idaho, recalling the man's approach. Knowing the Duncans, it was easy to recognize what had fed his current rage.

  "Duncan," Moneo said, "it's perfectly normal for adolescent females as well as males to have feelings of physical attraction toward members of their own sex. Most of them will grow out of it."

  "It should be stamped out!"

  "But it's part of our heritage."

  "Stamped out! And that's not ..."

  "Oh, be still. If you try to suppress it, you only increase its power."r />
  Idaho glared at him. "And you say you don't know what's going on up there with your own daughter!"

  "Siona is being tested, I told you."

  "And what's that supposed to mean?"

  Moneo put a hand over his eyes and sighed. He lowered the hand, wondering why he put up with this foolish, dangerous, antique human.

  "It means that she may die out there."

  Idaho was taken aback, some of his anger cooling. "How can you allow ..."

  "Allow? You think I have a choice?"

  "Every man has a choice!"

  A bitter smile flitted across Moneo's lips. "How is it that you are so much more foolish than the other Duncans?"