God Emperor of Dune

by Frank Herbert

  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 Ixians?"

  "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 are a 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 Ixians 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 times." 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 t
he 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 fingerhold 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 great-grandfather 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 Duncan-lengths 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.

  I 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?

&nb
sp; 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.