God Emperor of Dune dc-4

by Frank Herbert

  "An Ixian machine? You defy the Jihad!"

  "There's a lesson in that, too. What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking-there's the real danger. Look at how long you walked across this desert without thinking about your face mask."

  "You could have warned me!"

  "And increased your dependency."

  She stared at him a moment, then: "Why would you want me to command your Fish Speakers?"

  "You are an Atreides woman, resourceful and capable of independent thought. You can be truthful just for the sake of truth as you see it. You were bred and trained for command which means freedom from dependence."

  The wind whirled dust and sand around them while she weighed his words. "And if I agree, you'll save me?"

  "No."

  She had been so sure of the opposite answer that it was several heartbeats before she translated that single word. In that time, the wind fell slightly, exposing a vista across the dunescape to the remnants of Habbanya Ridge. The air was suddenly chilled with that cold which did as much to rob the flesh of moisture as did the hottest sunlight. Part of Leto's awareness detected an oscillation in weather control.

  "No?" She was both puzzled and outraged.

  "I do not make bloody bargains with people I must trust."

  She shook her head slowly from side to side, but her gaze remained fixed on his face. "What will make you save me?"

  "Nothing will make me do it. Why do you think you could do to me what I will not do to you? That is not the way of interdependence."

  Her shoulders slumped. "If I cannot bargain with you or force you..."

  "Then you must choose another path."

  What a marvelous thing to observe the explosive growth of awareness, he thought. Siona's expressive features hid nothing of it from him. She focused on his eyes and glared at him as though seeking to move completely into his thoughts. New strength entered her muffled voice.

  "You would have me know everything about you-even every weakness?"

  "Would you steal what I would give openly?"

  The morning light was harsh on her face. "I promise you nothing!"

  "Nor do I require that."

  "But you will give me... water if I ask?"

  "It is not just water."

  She nodded. "And I am Atreides."

  The Fish Speakers had not withheld the lesson of that special susceptibility in the Atreides genes. She knew where the spice originated and what it might do to her. The teachers in the Fish Speaker schools never failed him. And the gentle additions of melange in Siona's dried food had done their work, too.

  "These little curled flaps beside my face," he said. "Tease one of them gently with a finger and it will give up drops of moisture heavily laced with spice-essence."

  He saw the recognition in her eyes. Memories which she did not know as memories were speaking to her. And she was the result of many generations in which the Atreides sensitivity had been increased.

  Even the urgency of her thirst would not yet move her.

  To ease her through the crisis, he told her about Fremen children poling for sandtrout at an oasis edge, teasing the moisture out of them for quick vitalization.

  "But I am Atreides," she said.

  "The Oral History tells it truthfully," he said.

  "Then I could die of it."

  "That's the test."

  "You would make a real Fremen out of me!"

  "How else can you teach your descendants to survive here after I am gone?"

  She pulled away her mask and moved her face to within a handsbreadth of his. A finger came up and touched one of the curled flaps of his cowl.

  "Stroke it gently," he said.

  Her hand obeyed not his voice but something from within her. The finger movements were precise, eliciting his own memories, a thing passed from child to child to child... the way so much information and misinformation survived. He turned his face to its limit and looked sideways at her face so close to his. Pale blue drops began to form at the flap's edge. Rich cinnamon smells enveloped them. She leaned toward the drops. He saw the pores beside her nose, the way her tongue moved as she drank.

  Presently, she retreated-not completely satisfied, but driven by caution and suspicion much the way Moneo had been. Like father, like daughter.

  "How long before it begins to work?" she asked.

  "It is already working."

  "I mean..."

  "A minute or so."

  "I owe you nothing for this!"

  "I will demand no payment."

  She sealed her face mask.

  He saw the milky distances enter her eyes. Without asking permission, she tapped his front segment, demanding that he prepare the warm hammock of his flesh. He obeyed. She fitted herself to the gentle curve. By peering sharply downward, he could see her. Siona's eyes remained opened, but they no longer saw this place. She jerked abruptly and began to tremble like a small creature dying. He knew this experience, but could not change the smallest part of it. No ancestral presences would remain in her consciousness, but she would carry with her forever afterward the clear sights and sounds and smells. The seeking machines would be there, the smell of blood and entrails, the cowering humans in their burrows aware only that they could not escape... while all the time the mechanical movement approached, nearer and nearer and nearer...louder...louder!

  Everywhere she searched, it would be the same. No escape anywhere.

  He felt her life ebbing. Fight the darkness, Siona! That was one thing the Atreides did. They fought for life. And now she was fighting for lives other than her own. He felt the dimming, though... the terrible outflow of vitality. She went deeper and deeper into the darkness, far deeper than any other had ever gone. He began to rock her gently, a cradle movement of his front segment. That or the thin hot thread of determination, perhaps both together, prevailed. By early afternoon, her flesh

  had trembled its way into something approaching real sleep. Only an occasional gasp betrayed the vision's echoes. He rocked her gently, rolling from side to side.

  Could she possibly come back from those depths? He felt the vital responses reassuring him. The strength in her!

  She awakened in the late afternoon, a stillness coming over her abruptly, the breathing rhythm changed. Her eyes snapped open. She peered up at him, then rolled out of the hammock to stand with her back to him for almost an hour of silent thinking.

  Moneo had done that same thing. It was a new pattern in these Atreides. Some of the preceding ones had ranted at him. Others had backed away from him, stumbling and staring, forcing him to follow, squirming and grating over the pebbles. Some of them had squatted and stared at the ground. None of them had turned their backs on him. Leto took this new development as a hopeful sign.

  "You are beginning to have some concept of how far my family extends," he said.

  She turned, her mouth a prim line, but did not meet his gaze. He could see her accepting it, though, the realization which few humans could share as she had shared it: His singular multitude made all of humankind his family.

  "You could have saved my friends in the forest," she accused.

  "You, too, could have saved them."

  She clenched her fists and pressed them against her temples while she glared at him. "But you know everything!"

  "Siona!"

  "Did I have to learn it that way?" she whispered.

  He remained silent, forcing her to answer the question for herself. She had to be made to recognize that his primary consciousness worked in a Fremen way and that, like the terrible machines of that apocalyptic vision, the predator could follow any creature who left tracks.

  "The Golden Path," she whispered. "I can feel it." Then, glaring at him. "It's so cruel!"

  "Survival has always been cruel."

  "They couldn't hide," she whispered. Then loud: "What have you done to me?"

  "You tried to be a Fremen rebel," he said
. "Fremen had an almost incredible ability to read signs on the desert. They could even read the faint tracery of windblown tracks in sand."

  He saw the beginnings of remorse in her, memories of her dead companions floating in her awareness. He spoke quickly, knowing that guilt would follow quickly and then anger against him. "Would you have believed me if I had merely brought you in and told you?"

  Remorse threatened to overwhelm her. She opened her mouth behind the mask and gasped with it.

  "You have not yet survived the desert," he told her.

  Slowly, her trembling subsided. The Fremen instincts he had set to work in her did their usual tempering.

  "I will survive," she said. She met his gaze. "You read us by our emotions, don't you?"

  "The igniters of thought," he said. "I can recognize the slightest behavioral nuance for its emotional origins."

  He saw her accept her own nakedness the way Moneo had accepted it, with fear and hate. It was of little matter. He probed the time ahead of them. Yes, she would survive his desert because her tracks were in the sand beside him... but he saw no sign of her flesh in those tracks. Just beyond her tracks, though, he saw a sudden opening where things had been concealed. Anteac's death-shout echoed through his prescient awareness... and the swarming of Fish Speakers attacking!

  Malky is coming, he thought. We will meet again, Malky and.

  Leto opened his outer eyes and saw Siona still there glaring at him.

  "I still hate you!" she said.

  "You hate the predator's necessary cruelty."

  She spoke with venomous elation: "But I saw another thing! You can't follow my tracks!"

  "Which is why you must breed and preserve this."

  Even as he spoke, it began to rain. The sudden cloud darkness and the downpour came upon them simultaneously. In spite of the fact that he had sensed weather control's oscillations, Leto was shocked by the onslaught. He knew it rained sometimes in the Sareer, a rain quickly dispersed as the water ran off and vanished. The few pools would evaporate as the sun returned. Most times, the downpour never touched the ground; it was ghost rain, vaporized when it hit the superheated air layer just above the desert's surface, then dispersing on the wind. But this rainfall drenched him.

  Siona pulled back her face flap and lifted her face greedily to the falling water, not even noticing the effect on Leto.

  As the first drenching swept in from behind the sandtrout overlappings, he stiffened and curled into a ball of agony. Separate drives of sandtrout and sandworm produced a new meaning for the word pain. He felt that he was being ripped apart. Sandtrout wanted to rush to the water and encapsulate it. Sandworm felt the drenching wash of death. Curls of blue smoke 'spurted from every place the rain touched him. The inner workings of his body began to manufacture the true spice-essence. Blue smoke lifted around him from where he lay in puddles of water. He writhed and groaned.

  The clouds passed and it was a few moments before Siona sensed his disturbance.

  "What's wrong with you?"

  He was unable to answer. The rain was gone but water remained on the rocks and in puddles all around and beneath him. There was no escape.

  Siona saw the blue smoke rising from every place the water touched him.

  "It's the water!"

  There was a slightly higher bulge of land off to the right where the water did not stay. Painfully, he made his way toward it, groaning at each new puddle. The bulge was almost dry when he reached it. The agony subsided slowly and he grew aware that Siona stood directly in front of him. She probed at him with words of false concern.

  "Why does water hurt you?"

  Hurt? What an inadequate word! There was no evading her questions, though. She knew enough now to go searching for the answer. That answer could be found. Haltingly, he explained the relationship of sandtrout and sandworm to water. She heard him out in silence.

  "But the moisture you gave me..."

  "Is buffered and masked by the spice."

  "Then why do you risk it out here without your cart?"

  "You can't be a Fremen in the Citadel or on a cart."

  She nodded.

  He saw the flame of rebellion return to her eyes. She did not have to feel guilty or dependent. She no longer could avoid belief in his Golden Path, but what difference did that make? His cruelties could not be forgiven! She could reject him, deny him a place in her family. He was not a human, not like her at all. And she possessed the secret of his undoing! Ring him with water, destroy his desert, immobilize him within a moat of agony! Did she think she hid her thoughts from him by turning away?

  And what can I do about it? he wondered. She must live now while I must demonstrate nonviolence.

  Now that he knew something of. Siona's nature, how easy it would be to surrender, to sink blindly into his own thoughts. It was seductive, this talon to live only within his memories, but his children still required another lesson-by-example if they were to escape the last threat to the Golden Path.

  What a painful decision! He experienced a new sympathy for the Bene Gesserit. His quandary was akin to the one they had experienced when they had confronted the fact of Muad'Dib. The ultimate goal of their breeding program-my father-they could not contain him, either.

  Once more into the breach, dear friends, he thought. and he suppressed a wry smile at his own histrionics.

  ***

  Given enough time for the generations to evolve, the predator produces particular survival adaptations in its prey which, through the circular operation of feedback, produce changes in the predator which again change the prey etcetera, etcetera, etcetera... Many powerful forces do the same thing. You can count religions among such forces.

  - The Stolen Journals

  "THE LORD has commanded me to tell you that your daughter lives."

  Nayla delivered the message to Moneo in a singsong voice, looking down across the workroom table at his figure seated there amidst a chaos of notes and papers and communications instruments.

  Moneo pressed his palms together firmly and looked down at the elongated shadow drawn on his table by late afternoon sunlight across the jeweled tree of his paperweight.

  Without looking up at Nayla's stocky figure standing at proper attention in front of him, he asked: "Both of them have returned to the Citadel?"

  "Yes."

  Moneo looked out the window to his left, not really seeing the flinty borderline of darkness hanging on the Sareer's horizon nor the greedy wind collecting sand grains from every dunetop.

  "That matter which we discussed earlier?" he asked.

  "It has been arranged."

  "Very well." He waved to dismiss her, but Nayla remained standing in front of him. Surprised, Moneo actually focused on her for the first time since she had entered.

  "Is it required that I personally attend this-" she swallowed-"wedding?"

  "The Lord Leto has commanded it. You will be the only one there armed with a lasgun. It is an honor."

  She remained in position, her gaze fixed somewhere over Moneo's head.

  "Yes?" he prompted.

  Nayla's great lantern jaw worked convulsively, then: "He is God and I am mortal." She turned on one heel and left the workroom.

  Moneo wondered vaguely what was bothering that hulking Fish Speaker, but his thoughts turned like a compass arrow to Siona.

  She has survived as I did. Siona now had an inner sense which told her that the Golden Path remained unbroken. As I have. He found no sense of sharing in this, nothing to make him feel closer to his daughter. It was a burden and it would inevitably curb her rebellious nature. No Atreides could go against the Golden Path. Leto had seen to that!

  Moneo remembered his own rebel days. Every night a new bed and the constant urge to run. The cobwebs of his past clung to his mind, sticking there no matter how hard he tried to shake away troublesome memories.

  Siona has been caged. As I was caged. As poor Leto was caged.

  The tolling of the nightfall bell intruded
on his thoughts and activated his workroom's lights. He looked down at the work still undone in preparation for the God Emperor's wedding to Hwi Noree. So much work! Presently, he pressed a call-button and asked the Fish Speaker acolyte who appeared at the summons to bring him a tumbler of water and then call Duncan Idaho to the workroom.

  She returned quickly with the water and placed the tumbler near his left hand on the table. He noted the long fingers, a lute-player's fingers, but did not look up at her face.

  "I have sent someone for Idaho," she said.

  He nodded and went on with his work. He heard her leave and only then did he look up to drink the water.

  Some live lives like summer moths, he thought. But I have burdens without end.

  The water tasted flat. It weighed down his senses, making his body feel torpid. He looked out at the sunset colors on the

  Sareer as they shaded away into darkness, thinking that he should recognize beauty in that familiar sense, but all he could think was that the light changed in its own patterns. It is not moved by me at all.

  With the full darkness, the light level of his workroom increased automatically, bringing a clarity of thought with it. He felt himself quite prepared for Idaho. This one had to be taught the necessities, and quickly.

  Moneo's door opened, the acolyte again. "Will you eat now?"

  "Later." He raised a hand as she started to leave. "I would like the door left open."

  She frowned.

  "You may practice your music," he said. "I want to listen."

  She had a smooth, round, almost childlike face which became radiant when she smiled. The smile still on her lips, she turned away.

  Presently, he heard the sounds of a biwa lute in the outer office. Yes, that young acolyte had a talent. The bass strings were like rain drumming on a rooftop, a whisper of middle strings underneath. Perhaps she could move up to the baliset someday. He recognized the song: a deeply humming memory of autumn wind from some faraway planet where they had never known a desert. Sad music, pitiful music, yet marvelous.

  It is the cry of the caged, he thought. The memory of free- dom. This thought struck him as odd. Was it always the case that freedom required rebellion?