God Emperor of Dune

by Frank Herbert

  "Other Duncans!" Idaho said. "How did those others die, Moneo?"

  "The way we all die. They ran out of time."

  "You lie." Idaho spoke past gritted teeth, his knuckles white on the knife handle.

  Still speaking mildly, Moneo said: "Have a care. There are limits even to what I will take, especially just now."

  "This place is rotten!" Idaho said. He gestured with his free hand at the corridor behind him. "There are some things I'll never accept!"

  Moneo stared down the empty corridor without seeing. "You must mature, Duncan. You must."

  Idaho's hand tensed on the knife. "What does that mean?"

  "These are sensitive times. Anything unsettling to him, anything ... must be prevented."

  Idaho held himself on the edge of violence, his anger restrained only by something puzzling in Moneo's manner. Words had been spoken, though, which could not be ignored.

  "I'm not some damned immature child you can ..."

  "Duncan!" It was the loudest sound Idaho had ever heard from the mild-mannered Moneo. Surprise stayed Idaho's hand while Moneo continued: "If the demands of your flesh are for maturity, but something holds you in adolescence, quite nasty behavior develops. Let go."

  "Are ... you ... accusing ... me ... of ..."

  "No!" Moneo gestured at the corridor. "Oh, I know what you must've seen back there, but it ..."

  "Two women in a passionate kiss! You think that's not ..."

  "It's not important. Youth explores its potential in many ways."

  Idaho balanced himself on the edge of an explosion, rocking forward on his toes. "I'm glad to learn about you, Moneo."

  "Yes, well, I've learned about you, several times."

  Moneo watched the effect of these words as they twisted through Idaho, tangling him. The gholas could never avoid a fascination with the others who had preceded them.

  Idaho spoke in a hoarse whisper: "What have you learned?"

  "You have taught me valuable things," Moneo said. "All of us try to evolve, but if something blocks us, we can transfer our potential into pain--seeking it or giving it. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable."

  Idaho leaned close to Moneo. "I'm talking about sex!"

  "Of course you are."

  "Are you accusing me of adolescent ..."

  "That's right."

  "I should cut your ..."

  "Oh, shut up!"

  Moneo's response did not have the training nuances of Bene Gesserit Voice control, but it had a lifetime of command behind it. Something in Idaho could only obey.

  "I'm sorry," Moneo said. "But I'm distracted by the fact that my only daughter ..." He broke off and shrugged.

  Idaho inhaled two deep breaths. "You're crazy, all of you! You say your daughter may be dying and yet you ..."

  "You fool!" Moneo snapped. "Have you any idea how your petty concerns appear to me! Your stupid questions and your selfish ..." He broke off, shaking his head.

  "I make allowances because you have personal problems," Idaho said. "But if you ..."

  "Allowances? You make allowances?" Moneo took a trembling breath. It was too much!

  Idaho spoke stiffly: "I can forgive you for ..."

  "You! You prattle about sex and forgiving and pain and ... you think you and Hwi Noree ..."

  "Leave her out of this!"

  "Oh, yes. Leave her out. Leave out that pain! You share sex with her and you never think about parting. Tell me, fool, how do you give of yourself in the face of that?"

  Abashed, Idaho inhaled deeply. He had not suspected such passion smoldering in the quiet Moneo, but this attack, this could not be ...

  "You think I'm cruel?" Moneo demanded. "I make you think about things you'd rather avoid. Hah! Crueler things have been done to the Lord Leto for no better reason than the cruelty!"

  "You defend him? You ..."

  "I know him best!"

  "He uses you!"

  "To what ends?"

  "You tell me!"

  "He's our best hope to perpetuate ..."

  "Perverts don't perpetuate!"

  Moneo spoke in a soothing tone, but his words shook Idaho. "I will tell you this only once. Homosexuals have been among the best warriors in our history, the berserkers of last resort. They were among our best priests and priestesses. Celibacy was no accident in religions. It is also no accident that adolescents make the best soldiers."

  "That's perversion!"

  "Quite right. Military commanders have known about the perverted displacement of sex into pain for thousands upon thousands of centuries."

  "Is that what the Great Lord Leto's doing?"

  Still mild, Moneo said: "Violence requires that you inflict pain and suffer it. How much more manageable a military force driven to this by its deepest urgings."

  "He's made a monster out of you, too!"

  "You suggested that he uses me," Moneo said. "I permit this because I know that the price he pays is much greater than what he demands of me."

  "Even your daughter?"

  "He holds back nothing. Why should I? Ohhh, I think you understand this about the Atreides. The Duncans are always good at that."

  "The Duncans! Damn you, I won't be ..."

  "You just haven't the guts to pay the price he's asking," Moneo said.

  In one blurred motion, Idaho whipped his knife from its sheath and lunged at Moneo. As fast as he moved, Moneo moved faster--sidestepping, tripping Idaho and propelling him face-down onto the floor. Idaho scrambled forward, rolled and started to leap to his feet, then hesitated, realizing that he had actually tried to attack an Atreides. Moneo was Atreides. Shock held Idaho immobile.

  Moneo stood unmoving, looking down at him. There was an odd look of sadness on the majordomo's face.

  "If you're going to kill me, Duncan, you'd best do it in the back by stealth," Moneo said. "You might succeed that way."

  Idaho levered himself to one knee, put a foot flat on the floor, but remained there still clutching his knife. Moneo had moved so quickly and with such grace--so ... so casually! Idaho cleared his throat. "How did you ..."

  "He has been breeding us for a long time, Duncan, strengthening many things in us. He has bred us for speed, for intelligence, for self-restraint, for sensitivity. You're ... you're just an older model."

  Do you know what guerrillas often say? They claim that their rebellions are invulnerable to economic warfare because they have no economy, that they are parasitic on those they would overthrow. The fools merely fail to assess the coin in which they must inevitably pay. The pattern is inexorable in its degenerative failures. You see it repeated in the systems of slavery, of welfare states, of caste-ridden religions, of socializing bureaucracies--in any system which creates and maintains dependencies. Too long a parasite and you cannot exist without a host.

  --THE STOLEN JOURNALS

  Leto and Siona lay all day in the duneshadows, moving only as the sun moved. He taught her how to protect herself under a blanket of sand in the noontime heat; it never grew too warm at the rock-level between the dunes.

  In the afternoon, Siona crept close to Leto for warmth, a warmth he knew he had in excess these days.

  They talked sporadically. He told her about the Fremen graces which once had dominated this landscape. She probed for secret knowledge of him.

  Once, he said: "You may find it odd, but out here is where I can be most human."

  His words failed to make her fully conscious of her human vulnerability and the fact that she might die out here. Even when she was not talking, she did not restore the face flap of her stillsuit.

  Leto recognized the unconscious motivation behind this failure, but knew the futility of addressing that directly.

  In the late afternoon, night's chill already starting to creep over the land, he began regaling her with songs of the Long Trek which had not been saved in the Oral History. He enjoyed the fact that she liked one of his favorites, "Liet's March."

  "The tune is really ancient," he said, "a pre
-space thing of Old Terra."

  "Would you sing it again?"

  He chose one of his best baritones, a long-dead artist who had filled many a concert hall.

  "The wall of past-beyond-recall

  Hides me from an ancient fall

  Where all the waters tumble!

  And plays of sprays

  Carve caves in clays

  Beneath a torrent's rumble."

  When he had finished, she was silent for a moment, then: "That's an odd song for marching."

  "They liked it because they could dissect it," he said.

  "Dissect?"

  "Before our Fremen ancestors came to this planet, night was the time for storytelling, songs and poetry. In the Dune days, though, that was reserved for the false dark, the daytime gloom of the sietch. The night was when they could emerge and move about ... just as we do now."

  "But you said dissect."

  "What does that song mean?" he asked.

  "Oh. It's ... it's just a song."

  "Siona!"

  She heard anger in his voice and remained silent.

  "This planet is the child of the worm," he warned her, "and I am that worm."

  She responded with a surprising insouciance: "Then tell me what it means."

  "The insect has no more freedom from its hive than we have freedom from our past," he said. "The caves are there and all of the messages written in the sprays of the torrents."

  "I prefer dancing songs," she said.

  It was a flippant answer, but Leto chose to take it as a change of subject. He told her about the marriage dance of Fremen women, tracing the steps back to the whirling of dust devils. Leto prided himself on telling a good story. It was clear from her rapt attention that she could see the women whirling before her inner eye, long black hair thrown in the ancient movements, straggling across long-dead faces.

  Darkness was almost upon them when he finished.

  "Come," he said. "Morning and evening are still the times of silhouettes. Let us see if anyone shares our desert."

  Siona followed him up to a dunecrest and they stared all around at the darkening desert. There was only one bird high overhead, attracted by their movements. From the splayed-gap tips on its wings and the shape, he knew it was a vulture. He pointed this out to Siona.

  "But what do they eat?" she asked.

  "Anything that's dead or nearly so."

  This hit her and she stared up at the last of the sunlight gilding the lone bird's flight feathers.

  Leto pressed it: "A few people still venture into my Sareer. Sometimes, a Museum Fremen wanders off and gets lost. They're really only good at the rituals. And then there are the desert's edges and the remains of whatever my wolves leave."

  At this, she whirled away from him, but not before he saw the passion still consuming her. Siona was being sorely tested.

  "There's little daytime graciousness about a desert," he said. "That's another reason we travel by night. To a Fremen, the image of the day was that of windblown sand filling your tracks."

  Her eyes glistened with unshed tears when she turned back to him, but her features were composed.

  "What lives here now?" she asked.

  "The vultures, a few night creatures, an occasional remnant of plant life out of the old days, burrowing things."

  "Is that all?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "Because this is where they were born and I permit them to know nothing better."

  It was almost dark with that sudden glowing light his desert acquired in these moments. He studied her in that luminous moment, recognizing that she had not yet understood his other message. He knew that message would sit there, though, and fester in her.

  "Silhouettes," she said, reminding him. "What did you expect to find when we came up here?"

  "Perhaps people at a distance. You're never certain."

  "What people?"

  "I've already told you."

  "What would you've done if you'd seen anyone?"

  "It was the Fremen custom to treat distant people as hostile until they threw sand into the air."

  As he spoke, darkness fell over them like a curtain.

  Siona became ghostly movement in the sudden starlight. "Sand?" she asked.

  "Thrown sand is a profound gesture. It says: 'We share the same burden. Sand is our only enemy. This is what we drink. The hand that holds sand holds no weapon.' Do you understand this?"

  "No!" She taunted him with a defiant falsehood.

  "You will," he said.

  Without a word, she set out along the arc of their dune, striding away from him with an angry excess of energy. Leto allowed himself to fall far behind her, interested that she had instinctively chosen the right direction. Fremen memories could be felt churning in her.

  Where the dune dipped to cross another, she waited for him. He saw that the face flap of her stillsuit remained open, hanging loose. It was not yet time to chide her about this. Some unconscious things had to run their natural course.

  As he came up to her, she said: "Is this as good a direction as any other?"

  "If you keep to it," he said.

  She glanced up at the stars and he saw her identify the Pointers, those Fremen Arrows which had led her ancestors across this land. He could see, though, that her recognition was mostly intellectual. She had not yet come to accept the other things working within her.

  Leto lifted his front segments to peer ahead in the starlight. They were moving a little west of north on a track that once had led across Habbanya Ridge and Cave of Birds into the erg below False Wall West and the way to Wind Pass. None of those landmarks remained. He sniffed a cool breeze with flint smells in it and more moisture than he found pleasant.

  Once more, Siona set off--slower this time, holding her course by occasional glances at the stars. She had trusted Leto to confirm the way, but now she guided herself. He sensed the turmoil beneath her wary thoughts, and he knew the things which were emerging. She had the beginnings of that intense loyalty to traveling companions which desert folk always trusted.

  We know, he thought. If you are separated from your companions, you are lost among dunes and rocks. The lone traveler in the desert is dead. Only the worm lives alone out here.

  He let her get well ahead of him where the grating sand of his passage would not be too prominent. She had to think of his human-self. He counted on loyalty to work for him. Siona was brittle, though, filled with suppressed rage--more of a rebel than any other he had ever tested.

  Leto glided along behind her, reviewing the breeding program, shaping the necessary decisions for a replacement should she fail.

  As the night progressed, Siona moved slower and slower. First Moon was high overhead and Second Moon well above the horizon before she stopped to rest and eat.

  Leto was glad of the pause. Friction had set up a worm-dominance, the air around him full of the chemical exhalations from his temperature adjustments. The thing he thought of as his oxygen supercharger vented steadily, making him intensely aware of the protein factories and amino acid resources his worm-self had acquired to accommodate the placental relationship with his human cells. Desert quickened the movement toward his final metamorphosis.

  Siona had stopped near the crest of a star dune. "Is it true that you eat the sand?" she asked as he came up to her.

  "It's true."

  She stared all around the moon-frosted horizon. "Why didn't we bring a signal device?"

  "I wanted you to learn about possessions."

  She turned toward him. He sensed her breath close to his face. She was losing too much moisture into the dry air. Still, she did not remember Moneo's admonition. It would be a bitter lesson, no doubt of that.

  "I don't understand you at all," she said.

  "Yet, you are committed to doing just that."

  "Am I?"

  "How else can you give me something of value in exchange for what I give you?"

  "What do you give me?" All of the
bitterness was there and a hint of the spice from her dried food.

  "I give you this opportunity to be alone with me, to share with me, and you spend this time without concern. You waste it."

  "What about possessions?" she demanded.

  He heard fatigue in her voice, the water message beginning to scream within her.

  "They were magnificently alive in the old days, those Fremen," he said.

  "And their eye for beauty was limited to that which was useful. I never met a greedy Fremen."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "In the old days, everything you took into the desert was a necessity and that was all you took. Your life is no longer free of possessions, Siona, or you would not have asked about a signal device."