Frank Herbert - Dune Book 4 - God Emperor Of Dune

by Frank Herbert

  "Moneo knows. I presumed that was why you wanted to see him."

  "You presume nothing! You know."

  "Siaynoq has upset you, Duncan. I am sorry."

  "Do you have any idea what it's like to be me . . . here?"

  "The ghola's lot is not easy," Leto said. "Some lives are harder than others."

  "I don't need any juvenile philosophy!"

  "What do you need, Duncan?"

  "I need to know some things."

  "Such as?"

  "I don't understand any of these people around you! Without showing any surprise about it, Moneo tells me that Siona was part of a rebellion against you. His own daughter!"

  "In his day, Moneo too was a rebel."

  "See what I mean? Did you test him, too?"

  "Yes."

  "Will you test me?"

  "I am testing you."

  Idaho glared at him, then: "I don't understand your government, your Empire, anything. The more I find out, the more I realize that I don't know what's going on."

  "How fortunate that you have discovered the way of wisdom," Leto said.

  "What?" Idaho's baffled outrage raised his voice to a battlefield roar which filled the small room.

  Leto smiled. "Duncan, have I not told you that when you think you know something, that is a most perfect barrier against learning?"

  "Then tell me what's going on."

  "My friend Duncan Idaho is acquiring a new habit. He is learning always to look beyond what he thinks he knows."

  "All right, all right." Idaho nodded his head slowly in time to the words. "Then what's beyond letting me take part in that Siaynoq thing?"

  "I am binding the Fish Speakers to the Commander of my Guard."

  "And I have to fight them off! The escort that took me out to the Citadel wanted to stop for an orgy. And the ones who brought me back here when you..."

  "They know how much it pleases me to see children of Duncan Idaho."

  "Damn you! I'm not your stud!"

  "No need to shout, Duncan."

  Idaho took several deep breaths, then: "When I tell them 'no,' they act hurt at first and then they treat me like some damned=" he shook his head=`holy man or something."

  "Don't they obey you?"

  "They don't question anything . . . unless it's contrary to your orders. I didn't want to come back here."

  "Yet they brought you."

  "You know damned well they won't disobey you!"

  "I'm glad you came, Duncan."

  "Oh, I can see that!"

  "The Fish Speakers know how special you are, how fond I am of you, how much I owe you. It's never a question of obedience and disobedience where you and I are concerned."

  "Then what is it a question of?"

  "Loyalty.,,

  Idaho fell into pensive silence.

  "You felt the power of Siaynoq?" Leto asked.

  "Mumbo jumbo."

  "Then why are you disturbed by it?"

  "Your Fish Speakers aren't an army, they're a police force." "By my name, I assure you that's not so. Police are inevitably corrupted."

  "You tempted me with power," Idaho accused.

  "That's the test, Duncan."

  "You don't trust me?"

  "I trust your loyalty to the Atreides implicitly, without question."

  "Then what's this talk of corruption and testing?"

  "You were the one who accused me of having a police force. Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available."

  Idaho wet his lips with his tongue and stared at Leto with obvious puzzlement. "But the moral training of... I mean, the legal . . . the prisons to. . ."

  "What good are laws and prisons when the breaking of a law is not a sin?"

  Idaho cocked his head slightly to the right. "Are you trying to tell me that your damned religion is.. ."

  "Punishment of sins can be quite extravagant."

  Idaho hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the world

  outside the door. "All this talk about death penalties . . . that flogging and..."

  "I try to dispense with casual laws and prisons wherever possible."

  "You have to have some prisons!"

  "Do I? Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police are effective. They're a kind of job insurance."

  Idaho turned slightly and thrust a pointing finger toward the door through which he had entered the small room. "You've got whole planets that are nothing but prisons!"

  "I guess you could think of anywhere as a prison if that's the way your illusions go.''

  "Illusions!" Idaho dropped his hand to his side and stood dumbfounded.

  "Yes. You talk of prisons and police and legalities, the perfect illusions behind which a prosperous power structure can operate while observing, quite accurately, that it is above its own laws."

  "And you think crimes can be dealt with by. . .

  "Not crimes, Duncan, sins."

  "So you think your religion can. . ."

  "Have you noted the primary sins?"

  "What?"

  "Attempting to corrupt a member of my government, and corruption by a member of my government."

  "And what is this corruption?"

  "Essentially, it's the failure to observe and worship the holiness of the God Leto."

  "You?"

  "Me."

  "But you told me right at the beginning that. . ."

  "You think I don't believe in my own godhead? Be careful, Duncan."

  Idaho's voice came with angry flatness. "You told me that one of my jobs was to help keep your secret, that you..

  ."

  "You don't know my secret."

  "That you're a tyrant? That's no. . ."

  "Gods have more power than tyrants, Duncan."

  "I don't like what I'm hearing."

  "When has an Atreides ever asked you to like your job?"

  "You ask me to command your Fish Speakers who are judge, jury and executioner.. ." Idaho broke off.

  "And what?"

  Idaho remained silent.

  Leto stared across the chill distance between them, so short a space yet so far.

  It's like playing a fish on a line, Leto thought. You must calculate the breaking point of every element in the contest.

  The problem with Idaho was that bringing him to the net always hastened his end. And it was happening too rapidly this time. Leto felt sadness.

  "I won't worship you," Idaho said.

  "The Fish Speakers recognize that you have a special dispensation," Leto said.

  "Like Moneo and Siona?"

  "Much different."

  "So rebels are a special case."

  Leto grinned. "All of my most trusted administrators were rebels at one time."

  "I wasn't a . . ."

  "You were a brilliant rebel! You helped the Atreides wrest an Empire from a reigning monarch."

  Idaho's eyes went out of focus with introspection. "So I did." He shook his head sharply as though tossing something out of his hair. "And look what you've done with that Empire!"

  "I have set up a pattern in it, a pattern of patterns."

  "So you say."

  "Information is frozen in patterns, Duncan. We can use one pattern to solve another pattern. Flow patterns are the hardest to recognize and understand."

  "More mumbo jumbo."

  "You made that mistake once before."

  "Why do you let the Tleilaxu keep bringing me back to life-one ghola after another? Where's the pattern in that?"

  "Because of the qualities which you possess in abundance. I will let my father say it."

  Idaho's mouth drew into a grim line.

  Leto spoke in Muad'Dib's voice, and even the cowled face fell into a semblance of the paternal features. "You were my truest friend, Duncan, better even than Gurney Halleck. But I am the past."

  Idaho swallowed hard. "
The things you're doing!"

  "They cut against the Atreides grain?"

  "You're damned right!"

  Leto resumed his ordinary tones. "Yet I'm still Atreides."

  "Are you really?"

  "What else could I be?"

  "I wish I knew!"

  "You think I play tricks with words and voices?"

  "What in all the seven hells are you really doing?"

  "I preserve life while setting the stage for the next cycle,."

  "You preserve it by killing?"

  "Death has often been useful to life."

  "That's not Atreides!"

  "But it is. We often saw the value of death. The lxians, however, have never seen that value."

  "What've the lxians got to do with. . ."

  "Everything. They would make a machine to conceal their other machinations."

  Idaho spoke in a musing tone. "Is that why the Ixian Ambassador was here?"

  "You've seen Hwi Noree," Leto said.

  Idaho pointed upward. "She was leaving as I arrived."

  "You spoke to her?"

  "I asked her what she was doing here. She said she was choosing sides."

  A burst of laughter erupted from Leto. "Oh, my," he said. "She is so good. Did she reveal her choice?"

  "She said she serves the God Emperor now. I didn't believe her, of course."

  "But you should believe her."

  .Why?"

  "Ahhh, yes; I forgot that you once doubted even my grandmother, the Lady Jessica."

  "I had good reason!"

  "Do you also doubt Siona?"

  "I'm beginning to doubt everyone!"

  "And you say you don't know your value to me," Leto accused.

  "What about Siona?" Idaho demanded. "She says you want us . . . I mean, dammit . . ."

  "The thing you must always trust about Siona is her creativity. She can create the new and beautiful. One always trusts the truly creative."

  "Even the machinations of the lxians?"

  "That is not creative. You always know the creative because it is revealed openly. Concealment betrays the existence of another force entirely."

  "Then you don't trust this Hwi Noree, but you. . ."

  "I do trust her, and precisely for the reasons I have just given you."

  Idaho scowled, then relaxed and sighed. "I had better cultivate her acquaintance. If she is someone you. . ."

  "No! You will stay away from Hwi Noree. I have something special in mind for her."

  ===

  I have isolated the city-experience within me and have examined it closely. The idea of a city fascinates me. The formation of a biological community without a functioning, supportive social community leads to havoc. Whole worlds have become single biological communities without an interrelated social structure and this has always led to ruin. It becomes dramatically instructive under overcrowded conditions. The ghetto is lethal. Psychic stresses of overcrowding create pressures which will erupt. The city is an attempt to manage these forces. The social forms by which cities make the attempt are worth study. Remember that there exists a certain malevolence about the formation of any social order. It is the struggle for existence by an artificial entity. Despotism and slavery hover at the edges. Many injuries occur and, thus, the need for laws. The law develops its own power structure, creating more wounds and new injustices. Such trauma can be healed by cooperation, not by confrontation. The summons to cooperate identifies the healer.

  -The Stolen Journals

  MONEO ENTERED Leto's small chamber with evident agitation.

  He actually preferred this meeting place because the God Emperor's cart lay in a depression from which a deadly attack by the Worm would be more difficult, and there was the undeniable fact that Leto allowed his majordomo to descend in an Ixian tube-lift rather than via that interminable ramp. But Moneo felt that the news he brought this morning was guaranteed to arouse The Worm Who Is God.

  How to present it?

  Dawn lay only an hour past, the fourth Festival Day, a fact Moneo could greet with equanimity only because it brought him that much nearer the end of these tribulations:

  Leto stirred as Moneo entered the small chamber. Illumination came on at his signal, focusing only on his face.

  "Good morning, Moneo," he said. "My guard tells me you insisted on entering immediately. Why?"

  The danger, Moneo knew from experience, lay in the temptation to reveal too much too soon.

  "I have spent some time with the Reverend Mother Anteac," he said. "Although she keeps it well hidden, I'm sure she is a Mentat."

  "Yes. The Bene Gesserit were bound to disobey me sometime. This form of disobedience amuses me."

  "Then you will not punish them?"

  "Moneo, I am ultimately the only parent my people have. A parent must be generous as well as severe."

  He's in a good mood, Moneo thought. A small sigh escaped Moneo, at which Leto smiled.

  "Anteac objected when I told her you had ordered an amnesty for a selected few Face Dancers among our captives."

  "I have a Festive use for them," Leto said.

  "Lord?"

  "I will tell you later. Let's get to the news which brings you bursting in upon me at this hour."

  "I . . . ahhh..." Moneo chewed at his upper lip. "The Tleilaxu have been quite garrulous in the attempt to ingratiate themselves with me."

  "Of course they have. And what have they revealed?"

  "They... ahhh, provided the lxians with sufficient advice and equipment to make a . . . uhhh, not exactly a ghola, and not even a clone. Perhaps we should use the Tleilaxu term: a cellular restructuring. The . . . ahhh, experiment was conducted within some sort of shielding device which the Guildsmen assured them your powers could not penetrate."

  "And the result?" Leto felt that he was asking the question in a cold vacuum.

  "They are not certain. Tleilaxu were not permitted to witness. However, they did observe that Malky entered this . . . ahhh, chamber and that he emerged later with an infant."

  "Yes! I know!"

  "You do?" Moneo was puzzled.

  "By inference. And all of this happened some twenty-six years ago?"

  "That is correct, Lord."

  "They identify the infant as Hwi Noree?"

  "They are not certain, Lord, but..." Moneo shrugged.

  "Of course. And what do you deduce from this, Moneo?"

  "There is a deep purpose built into the new Ixian Ambassador."

  "Certainly there is. Moneo, has it not struck you as odd how much Hwi, the gentle Hwi, represents a mirror of the redoubtable Malky? His opposite in everything, including sex."

  "I had not thought of that, Lord."

  "I have."

  "I will have her sent back to Ix immediately," Moneo said.

  "You will do nothing of the kind!"

  "But, Lord, if they.. .

  "Moneo, I have observed that you seldom turn your back on danger. Others often do, but you-seldom. Why would you have me engage in such an obvious stupidity?"

  Moneo swallowed.

  "Good. I like it when you recognize the error of your ways," Leto said.

  "Thank you, Lord."

  "I also like it when you express your gratitude sincerely, as you have just done. Now, Anteac was with you when you heard these revelations?"

  "As you ordered, Lord."

  "Excellent. That will stir things up a bit. You will leave now and go to the Lady Hwi. You will tell her that I desire to see her immediately. This will disturb her. She is thinking that we will not meet again until I summon her to the Citadel. I want you to quiet her fears."

  "In what way, Lord?"

  Leto spoke sadly: "Moneo, why do you ask advice on something at which you are an expert? Calm her and bring her here reassured of my kindly intentions toward her."

  "Yes, Lord." Moneo bowed and backed away a step.

  "One moment, Moneo!"

  Moneo stiffened, his gaze fixed on Leto's face.

  "You
are puzzled, Moneo," Leto said. "Sometimes you do not know what to think of me. Am I all-powerful and all prescient? You bring me these little dibs and dabs and you wonder: Does he already know this? If he does, why do I bother? But I have ordered you to report such things, Moneo. Is your obedience not instructive?"

  Moneo started to shrug and thought better of it. His lips trembled.

  "Time can also be a place, Moneo," Leto said. "Everything depends upon where you are standing, on where you look or what you hear. The measure of it is found in consciousness itself."