God Emperor of Dune dc-4

by Frank Herbert

  "We should arrive at Tuono about noon," Moneo said. "I wish you'd let me bring in 'thopters to guard the sky."

  "I do not want 'thopters," Leto said. "We can go down to Tuono on suspensors and ropes."

  Leto marveled at the plastic images in this brief exchange. Moneo had never liked peregrinations. His youth as a rebel had left him with suspicions of everything he could not see or label. He remained a mass of latent judgments.

  "You know I don't want 'thopters for transport," Moneo said. "I want them to guard..."

  "Yes, Moneo."

  Moneo looked past Leto at the open end of the courtyard which overlooked the river canyon. Dawn light was frosting the mist which arose from the depths. He thought of how far down that canyon dropped... a body twisting, twisting as it fell. Moneo had found himself unable to go to the canyon's lip last night and peer down into it. The drop was such a... such a temptation.

  With that insightful power which filled Moneo with such awe, Leto said: "There's a lesson in every temptation, Moneo."

  Speechless, Moneo turned to stare directly into Leto's eyes.

  "See the lesson in my life, Moneo."

  "Lord?" It was only a whisper.

  "They tempt me first with evil, then with good. Each temptation is fashioned with exquisite attention to my susceptibilities. Tell me, Moneo, if I choose the good, does that make me good?"

  "Of course it does, Lord."

  "Perhaps you will never lose the habit of judgment," Leto said.

  Moneo looked away from him once more and stared at the chasm's edge. Leto rolled his body to look where Moneo looked. Dwarf pines had been cultured along the lip of the canyon. There were hanging dewdrops on the damp needles, each of them sending a promise of pain to Leto. He longed to close the cart's cover, but there was an immediacy in those jewels which attracted his memories even while they repelled his body. The opposed synchrony threatened to fill him with turmoil.

  "I just don't like going around on foot," Moneo said.

  "It was the Fremen war," Leto said.

  Moneo sighed. "The others will be ready in a few minutes. Hwi was breakfasting when I came out."

  Leto did not respond. His thoughts were lost in memories of night-the one just past and the millennial others which crowded his pasts-clouds and stars, the rains and the open blackness pocked with glittering flakes from a shredded cosmos, a universe of nights, extravagant with them as he had been with his heartbeats.

  Moneo suddenly demanded: "Where are your guards?"

  "I sent them to eat."

  "I don't like them leaving you unguarded!"

  The crystal sound of Moneo's voice rang in Leto's memories, speaking things not cast in words. Moneo feared a universe where there was no God Emperor. He would rather die than see such a universe.

  "What will happen today?" Moneo demanded.

  It was a question directed not to the God Emperor but to the prophet. ` A seed blown on the wind could be tomorrow's willow tree," Leto said.

  "You know our future! Why won't you share it?" Moneo was close to hysteria... refusing anything his immediate senses did not report.

  Leto turned to glare at the majordomo, a gaze so obviously filled with pent-up emotions that Moneo recoiled from it.

  "Take charge of your own existence, Moneo!"

  Moneo took a deep, trembling breath. "Lord, I meant no offense. I sought only...

  "Look upward, Moneo!"

  Involuntarily, Moneo obeyed, peering into the cloudless sky where morning light was increasing. "What is it, Lord?"

  "There's no reassuring ceiling over you, Moneo. Only an open sky full of changes. Welcome it. Every sense you possess is an instrument for reacting to change. Does that tell you nothing?"

  "Lord, I only came out to enquire when you would be ready to proceed."

  "Moneo, I beg you to be truthful with me."

  "I am truthful, Lord!"

  "But if you live in bad faith, lies will appear to you like the truth."

  "Lord, if I lie... then I do not know it."

  "That has the ring of truth. But I know what you dread and will not speak."

  Moneo began to tremble. The God Emperor was in the most terrible of moods, a deep threat in every word.

  "You dread the imperialism of consciousness," Leto said, "and you are right to fear it. Send Hwi out here immediately!"

  Moneo whirled and fled back into the guest house. It was as though his entrance stirred up an insect colony. Within seconds, Fish Speakers emerged and spread around the Royal Cart. Courtiers peered from the guest house windows or came out and stood under deep eaves, afraid to approach him. In contrast to this excitement, Hwi emerged presently from the wide central doorway and strode out of the shadows, moving slowly toward Leto, her chin up, her gaze seeking his face.

  Leto felt himself becoming calm as he looked at her. She wore a golden gown he had not seen before. It had been piped with silver and jade at the neck and the cuffs of its long sleeves. The hem, almost dragging on the ground, had heavy green braid to outline deep red crenellations.

  Hwi smiled as she stopped in front of him.

  "Good morning, love." She spoke softly. "What have you done to get poor Moneo so upset?"

  Soothed by her presence and her voice, he smiled. "I did what I always hope to do. I produced an effect."

  "You certainly did. He told the Fish Speakers you were in an angry and terrifying mood. Are you terrifying, Love?"

  "Only to those who refuse to live by their own strengths."

  "Ahhh, yes." She pirouetted for him then, displaying her new gown. "Do you like it? Your Fish Speakers gave it to me. They decorated it themselves."

  "My love," he said, a warning note in his voice, "decoration! That is how you prepare the sacrifice."

  She came up to the edge of the cart and leaned on it just below his face, a mock solemn expression on her lips. "Will they sacrifice me, then?"

  "Some of them would like to."

  "But you will not permit it."

  "Our fates are joined," he said.

  "Then I shall not fear." She reached up and touched one of his silver-skinned hands, but jerked away as his fingers began to tremble.

  "Forgive me, Love. I forget that we are joined in soul and not in flesh," she said.

  The sandtrout skin still shuddered from Hwi's touch. "Moisture in the air makes me overly sensitive," he said. Slowly, the shuddering subsided.

  "I refuse to regret what cannot be," she whispered.

  "Be strong, Hwi, for your soul is mine."

  She turned at a sound from the guest house. "Moneo returns," she said. "Please, Love, do not frighten him."

  "Is Moneo your friend, too?"

  "We are friends of the stomach. We both like yogurt."

  Leto was still chuckling when Moneo stopped beside Hwi. Moneo ventured a smile, casting a puzzled glance at Hwi. There was gratitude in the majordomo's manner and some of the subservience he was accustomed to show to Leto he now directed at Hwi. "Is it well with you, Lady Hwi?"

  "It is well with me."

  Leto said: "In the time of the stomach, friendships of the stomach are to be nurtured and cultivated. Let us be on our way, Moneo. Tuono awaits."

  Moneo turned and shouted orders to the Fish Speakers and courtiers.

  Leto grinned at Hwi. "Do I not play the impatient bridegroom with a certain style?"

  She leaped lightly up to the bed of his cart, her skirt gathered in one hand. He unfolded her seat. Only when she was seated, her eyes level with Leto's, did she respond, and then it was in a voice pitched for his ears alone.

  "Love of my soul, I have captured another of your secrets."

  "Release it from your lips," he said, joking in this new intimacy between them.

  "You seldom need words," she said. "You speak directly to the senses with your own life."

  A shudder flexed its way through the length of his body. It was a moment before he could speak and then it was in a voice she had to strain to hear a
bove the hubbub of the assembling cortege.

  "Between the superhuman and the inhuman," he said, "I have had little space in which to be human. I thank you, gentle and lovely Hwi, for this little space."

  ***

  In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable. This universe presents only changing relationships which are sometimes seen as laws by short-lived awareness. These fleshly sensoria which we call self are ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleetingly aware of temporary conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change. If you must label the absolute, use it's proper name: Temporary.

  - The Stolen Journals

  NAYLA WAS the first to glimpse the approaching cortege. Perspiring heavily in the midday heat, she stood near one of the rock pillars which marked the edges of the Royal Road. A sudden flash of distant reflection caught her attention. She peered in that direction, squinting, realizing with a thrill of awareness that she saw sun-dazzle on the cover of the God Emperor's cart.

  "They come!" she called.

  She felt hunger then. In their excitement and singleness of purpose, none of them had brought food. Only the Fremen had brought water and that because "Fremen always carry water when they leave sietch." They did it by rote.

  Nayla touched one finger to the butt of the lasgun holstered at her hip. The bridge lay no more than twenty meters ahead of her, its faery structure arching across the chasm like an alien fantasy joining one barren surface to another.

  This is madness, she thought.

  But the God Emperor had reinforced his command. He required his Nayla to obey Siona in all things.

  Siona's orders were explicit, leaving no way for evasions. And Nayla had no way here to query her God Emperor. Siona had said: "When his cart is in the middle of the bridge-then!"

  "But why?"

  They had been standing well away from the others in the chill dawn atop the Barrier Wall, Nayla feeling precariously isolated here, remote and vulnerable.

  Siona's grim features, her low, intense voice, could not be denied. "Do you think you can harm God?"

  "I..." Nayla could only shrug.

  "You must obey me!"

  "I must," Nayla agreed.

  Nayla studied the approach of the distant cortege, noting the colors of the courtiers, the thick masses of blue marking her sisters of the Fish Speakers... the shiny surface of her Lord's cart.

  It was another test, she decided. The God Emperor would know. He would know the devotion in His Nayla's heart. It was a test. The God Emperor's commands must be obeyed in all things. That was the earliest lesson of her Fish Speaker childhood. The God Emperor had said that Nayla must obey Siona. It was a test. What else could it be?

  She looked toward the four Fremen. They had been positioned by Duncan Idaho directly in the roadway and blocking part of the exit from this end of the bridge. They sat with their backs to her and looked out across the bridge, four brown-robed mounds. Nayla had heard Idaho's words to them.

  "Do not leave this place. You must greet him from here. Stand when he nears you and bow low."

  Greet, yes.

  Nayla nodded to herself.

  The three other Fish Speakers who had climbed the Barrier Wall with her had been sent to the center of the bridge. All they knew was what Siona had told them in Nayla's presence. They were to wait until the Royal Cart was only a few paces from them, then they were to turn and dance away from the cart, leading it and the procession toward the vantage point above Tuono.

  If I cut the bridge with my lasgun, those three will die, Nayla thought. And all the others who come with our Lord.

  Nayla craned her neck to peer down into the gorge. She could not see the river from here, but she could hear its distant rumblings, a movement of rocks.

  They would all die!

  Unless He performs a Miracle.

  That had to be it. Siona had set the stage for a Holy Miracle. What else could Siona intend now that she had been tested, now that she wore the uniform of Fish Speaker Command? Siona had given her oath to the God Emperor. She had been tested by God, the two of them alone in the Sareer.

  Nayla turned only her eyes to the right, peering at the architects of this greeting. Siona and Idaho stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the roadway about twenty meters to Nayla's right. They were deep in conversation, looking at each other occasionally, nodding.

  Presently, Idaho touched Siona's arm-an oddly possessive

  gesture. He nodded once and strode off toward the bridge, stopping at the buttress corner directly in front of Nayla. He peered down, then crossed to the other near corner of the bridge.

  Again, he peered downward, standing there for several minutes before returning to Siona.

  What a strange creature, that ghola, Nayla thought. After that awesome climb, she no longer thought of him as quite human. He was something else, a demiurge who stood next to God. But he could breed.

  A distant shout caught Nayla's attention. She turned and looked across the bridge. The cortege had been in the familiar trot of a royal peregrination. Now, they were slowing to a sedate walk only a few minutes away from the bridge. Nayla recognized Moneo marching in the van, his uniform brilliant white, the even, undeviating stride with his gaze straight ahead. The cover of the Emperor's cart had been sealed. It glittered in mirror-opacity as it rolled behind Moneo on its wheels.

  The mystery of it all filled Nayla.

  A miracle was about to happen!

  Nayla glanced to the right at Siona. Siona returned her gaze and nodded once. Nayla drew the lasgun from its holster and rested it against the rock pillar as she sighted along it. The cable on the left first, then the cable on the right, then the faery trellis of plasteel on the left. The lasgun felt cold and alien against Nayla's hand. She took a trembling breath to restore calm. must obey. It is a test.

  She saw Moneo lift his gaze from the roadway and, not changing stride, turn to shout something at the cart or the ones behind it. Nayla could not make out the words. Moneo faced front once more. Nayla steadied herself, a part of the rock pillar which concealed most of her body.

  A test.

  Moneo had seen the people on the bridge and at the far end. He identified Fish Speaker uniforms and his first thought was to wonder who had ordered these greeters. He turned and shouted a question at Leto, but the God Emperor's cart cover remained opaque, hiding Hwi and Leto within it.

  Moneo was onto the bridge, the cart rasping in blown sand behind him, before he recognized Siona and Idaho standing well back from the far end. He identified four Museum Fremen seated on the roadway. Doubts began squirming through Moneo's mind, but he could not change the pattern. He ventured a glance down at the river-a platinum world there caught in the noonday light. The sound of the cart was loud behind him. The flow of the river, the flow of the cortege, the sweeping importance of these things in which he played a role-all of it caught up his mind in a dizzying sensation of the inevitable.

  We are not people passing this way, he thought. We are primal elements linking one piece of Time to another. And when we have passed, everything behind us will drop off into no-sound, a place like the no-room of the lxians, yet never again the same as it was before we came.

  A bit from one of the lute-player's songs wafted through Moneo's memory and his eyes went out of focus in the remembrance. He knew that song for its wishfulness, a wish that all of this were ended, all past, all doubts banished, tranquility returned. The plaintive song drifted through his awareness like smoke, twisting and compelling:

  "Insect cries in roots of pampas grass." "

  Moneo hummed the song to himself:

  "Insect cries mark the end. Autumn and my song are the color Of the last leaves In roots of pampas grass."

  Moneo nodded his head to the refrain:

  "Day is ended, Visitors gone. Day is ended. In our Sietch, Day is ended. Storm wind sounds. Day is ended. Visitors gone."

  Moneo decided that the lute-player's song had to
be a really old one, an Old Fremen song, no doubt of it. And it told him something about himself. He wished the visitors truly gone, the excitements ended, peace once more. Peace was so near... yet he could not leave his duties. He thought of all that impedimenta piled out there on the sand just beyond visibility range from Tuono. They would see it all soon-tents, food, tables, golden plates and jeweled knives, glowglobes fashioned in the arabesque shapes of ancient lamps... everything rich and full of expectations from completely different lives.

  They will never be the same in Tuono.

  Moneo had spent two nights in Tuono once on an inspection tour. He remembered the smells of their cooking fires-aromatic bushes kindled and flaming in the dark. They would not use sunstoves because "that is not the most ancient way."

  Most ancient!

  There was little smell of melange in Tuono. A sweet acridity and the musky oils of oasis shrubs, these dominated the odors. Yes... and the cesspools and the stink of rotting garbage. He recalled the God Emperor's comment when Moneo had finished reporting on that tour.

  "These Fremen do not know what is lost from their lives. They think they keep the essence of the old ways. This is a failure of all museums. Something fades; it dries out of the exhibits and is gone. The people who administer the museum and the people who come to bend over the cases and stare few of them sense this missing thing. It drove the engine of life in earlier times. When the life is gone, it is gone."

  Moneo focused on the three Fish Speakers who stood just ahead of him on the bridge. They lifted their arms high and began to dance, whirling and skipping away from him only a few paces distant.

  How odd, he thought. I've seen the other people dance in the open, but never Fish Speakers. They only dance in the privacy of their quarters, in the intimacy of their own company.

  This thought was still in his mind when he heard the first awful humming of the lasgun and felt the bridge lurch beneath him.

  This is not happening, his mind told him.

  He heard the Royal Cart scrape sideways across the roadbed, then the snap-slap of the cart's cover slamming open. A bedlam of screams and cries arose from behind him, but he could not turn. The bridge's roadbed had tipped steeply to Moneo's right, spilling him onto his face while he went sliding toward the abyss. He clutched a severed strand of cable to stop himself. The cable went with him, everything grating in the spilling film of sand which had covered the roadbed. He clutched the cable with both hands, turning with it. He saw the Royal Cart then. It skewed sideways toward the edge of the bridge, its cover open. Hwi stood there, one hand steadying her on the folding seat while she stared past Moneo.