God Emperor of Dune (27 page)
Welts appeared where the whip had struck, but Nunepi remained silent.
Again, the whip descended. Blood betrayed the lines of this second stroke.
Once more, the whip flayed Nunepi’s back. More blood appeared.
Leto felt remote sadness.
Nayla is too ardent,
he thought.
She will kill him and that will cause problems.
Nayla is too ardent,
he thought.
She will kill him and that will cause problems.
“Duncan!” Leto called.
Idaho turned from his fascinated examination of the projected scene just as a shout lifted from the crowd—response to a particularly bloody stroke.
“Send someone to stop the flogging after twenty lashes,” Leto said. “Have it announced that the magnanimity of the God Emperor has reduced the punishment.”
Idaho raised a hand to one of the guards, who nodded and ran from the chamber.
“Come here, Duncan,” Leto said.
Still smarting under what he believed was Leto’s poking fun at him, Idaho returned to Leto’s side.
“Whatever I do,” Leto said, “it is to teach a lesson.”
Idaho rigidly willed himself not to look back at the scene of Nunepi’s punishment. Was that the sound of Nunepi groaning? The shouts of the crowd pierced Idaho. He stared up into Leto’s eyes.
“There is a question in your mind,” Leto said.
“Many questions, m’Lord.”
“Speak them.”
“What is the lesson in that fool’s punishment? What do we say when asked?”
“We say that no one is permitted to blaspheme against the God Emperor.”
“A
bloody
lesson, m’Lord.”
bloody
lesson, m’Lord.”
“Not as bloody as some I’ve taught.”
Idaho shook his head from side to side in obvious dismay. “Nothing good’s going to come of this!”
“Precisely!”
Safaris through ancestral memories teach me many things. The patterns, ahhh, the patterns. Liberal bigots are the ones who trouble me most. I distrust the extremes. Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It’s true! Liberal governments always develop into aristocracies. The bureaucracies betray the true intent of people who form such governments. Right from the first, the
little people
who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies. Of course, all bureaucracies follow this pattern, but what a hypocrisy to find this even under a communized banner. Ahhh, well, if patterns teach me anything it’s that patterns are repeated. My oppressions, by and large, are no worse than any of the others and, at least, I teach a new lesson.
little people
who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies. Of course, all bureaucracies follow this pattern, but what a hypocrisy to find this even under a communized banner. Ahhh, well, if patterns teach me anything it’s that patterns are repeated. My oppressions, by and large, are no worse than any of the others and, at least, I teach a new lesson.
—THE STOLEN JOURNALS
It was well into the darkness of Audience Day before Leto could meet with the Bene Gesserit delegation. Moneo had prepared the Reverend Mothers for the delay, repeating the God Emperor’s reassurances.
Reporting back to his Emperor, Moneo had said: “They expect a rich reward.”
“We shall see,” Leto had said. “We shall see. Now, tell me what it was the Duncan demanded of you as you entered.”
“He wished to know if you had ever before had someone flogged.”
“And you replied?”
“That there was no record of, nor had I ever before witnessed, such a punishment.”
“His response?”
“This is not Atreides.”
“Does he think I’m insane?”
“He did not say that.”
“There was more to your encounter. What else troubles our new Duncan?”
“He has met the Ixian Ambassador, Lord. He finds Hwi Noree attractive. He inquired of …”
“That must be prevented, Moneo! I trust you to raise barriers against any liaison between the Duncan and Hwi.”
“My Lord commands.”
“Indeed I do! Go now and prepare for our meeting with the women of the Bene Gesserit. I will receive them at False Sietch.”
“Lord, is there significance in this choice of a meeting place?”
“A whim. On your way out, tell the Duncan he may take out a troop of guards and scour the City for trouble.”
Waiting for the Bene Gesserit delegation at False Sietch, Leto reviewed this exchange, finding some amusement in it. He could imagine the reactions through the Festival City at the approach of a disturbed Duncan Idaho in command of a Fish Speaker troop.
Like the quick silence of frogs when a predator comes.
Now that he was in False Sietch, Leto found himself pleased by the choice. A free-form building of irregular domes at the edge of Onn, False Sietch was almost a kilometer across. It had been the first abode of the Museum Fremen and now was their school, its corridors and chambers patrolled by alert Fish Speakers.
The reception hall where Leto waited, an oval about two hundred meters in its long dimension, was illuminated by giant glowglobes which floated in blue-green isolation some thirty meters above the floor. The light muted the dull browns and tans of the imitation stone from which the entire structure had been fashioned. Leto waited on a low ledge at one end of the chamber, looking outward through a half-circle window longer than his body. The opening, four stories above the ground, framed a view which included a remnant of the ancient Shield Wall preserved for its cliffside caves where Atreides troops had once been slaughtered by Harkonnen attackers. The frosty light of First Moon silvered the cliff’s outlines. Fires dotted the cliffside, the flames exposed where no Fremen would have dared betray his presence. The fires winked at Leto as people passed in front of them—Museum Fremen exercising their right to occupy the sacred precincts.
Museum Fremen!
Leto thought.
Leto thought.
They were such narrow thinkers with near horizons.
But why should I object? They are what I made them.
Leto heard the Bene Gesserit delegation then. They chanted as they approached, a heavy sound all a-jostle with vowels.
Moneo preceded them with a guard detail which took up position on Leto’s ledge. Moneo stood on the chamber floor just below Leto’s face, glanced at Leto, turned to the open hall.
The women entered in a double file, ten of them led by two Reverend Mothers in traditional black robes.
“That is Anteac on the left, Luyseyal on the right,” Moneo said.
The names recalled for Leto the earlier words about the Reverend Mothers brought in by Moneo, agitated and distrustful. Moneo did not like the
witches.
witches.
“They’re both Truthsayers,” Moneo had said. “Anteac is much older than Luyseyal, but the latter is reputed to be the best Truthsayer the Bene Gesserit have. You may note that Anteac has a scar on her forehead whose origin we have been unable to discover. Luyseyal has red hair and appears remarkably young for one of her reputation.”
As he watched the Reverend Mothers approach with their entourage, Leto felt the quick surge of his memories. The women wore their hoods forward, shrouding their faces. The attendants and acolytes walked at a respectful distance behind … it was all of a piece. Some patterns did not change. These women might have been entering a real sietch with real Fremen here to honor them.
Their heads know what their bodies deny
, he thought.
, he thought.
Leto’s penetrating vision saw the subservient caution in their eyes, but they strode up the long chamber like people confident of their religious power.
It pleased Leto to think that the Bene Gesserit possessed only such powers as he permitted. The reasons for this indulgence were clear to him. Of all the people in his Empire, Reverend Mothers were most like him—limited to the memories of only their female ancestors and the collateral female identities of their inheritance ritual—still, each of them did exist as somewhat of an integrated mob.
The Reverend Mothers came to a stop at the required ten paces from Leto’s ledge. The entourage spread out on each side.
It amused Leto to greet such delegations in the voice and persona of his grandmother, Jessica. The Bene Gesserit had come to expect this and he did not disappoint them.
“Welcome, Sisters,” he said. The voice was a smooth contralto, definitely Jessica’s controlled feminine tones with just a hint of mockery—a voice recorded and often studied in the Sisterhood’s Chapter House.
As he spoke, Leto sensed menace. Reverend Mothers were never pleased when he greeted them this way, but the reaction here carried different undertones. Moneo, too, sensed it. He raised a finger and the guards moved closer to Leto.
Anteac spoke first: “Lord, we watched that display in the plaza this morning. What do you gain by such antics?”
So that’s the tone we wish to set
, he thought.
, he thought.
Speaking in his own voice, he said: “You are temporarily in my good graces. Would you change that?”
“Lord,” Anteac said, “we are shocked that you could thus punish an Ambassador. We do not understand what you gain by this.”
“I gain nothing. I am diminished.”
Luyseyal spoke up: “This can only reinforce thoughts of oppression.”
“I wonder why so few ever thought of the Bene Gesserit as oppressors?” Leto asked.
Anteac spoke to her companion: “If it pleases the God Emperor to inform us, he will do so. Let us get to the purposes of our Embassy.”
Leto smiled. “The two of you can come closer. Leave your attendants and approach.”
Moneo stepped two paces to his right as the Reverend Mothers moved in characteristic silent gliding to within three paces of the ledge.
“It’s almost as though they had no feet!” Moneo had once complained.
Recalling this, Leto observed how carefully Moneo watched the two women. They were menacing, but Moneo dared not object to their nearness. The God Emperor had ordered it; thus it would be.
Leto lifted his attention to the attendants waiting where the Bene Gesserit entourage had first stopped. The acolytes wore hoodless black gowns. He saw tiny clues to forbidden rituals about them—an amulet, a small trinket, a colorful corner of a kerchief so arranged that more color might be flashed carefully. Leto knew that the Reverend Mothers allowed this because they no longer could share the spice as once they had.
Ritual substitutes.
There were significant changes across the past ten years. A new parsimony had entered the Sisterhood’s thinking.
They are coming out
, Leto told himself.
The old, old mysteries are still here.
, Leto told himself.
The old, old mysteries are still here.
The ancient patterns had lain dormant in the Bene Gesserit memories for all of those millennia.
Now, they emerge. I must warn my Fish Speakers.
He returned his attention to the Reverend Mothers.
“You have requests?”
“What is it like to be you?” Luyseyal asked.
Leto blinked. That was an interesting attack. They had not tried it in more than a generation. Well … why not?
“Sometimes my dreams are blocked off and redirected into strange places,” he said. “If my cosmic memories are a web, as you two certainly know, then think about the dimensions of
my
web and where such memories and dreams might lead.”
my
web and where such memories and dreams might lead.”
“You speak of our certain knowledge,” Anteac said. “Why can’t we join forces at last? We are more alike than we are different.”
“I would sooner link myself to those degenerate Great Houses bewailing their lost spice riches!”
Anteac held herself still, but Luyseyal pointed a finger at Leto. “We offer community!”
“And I insist on conflict?”
Anteac stirred, then: “It is said that there is a principle of conflict which originated with the single cell and has never deteriorated.”
“Some things remain incompatible,” Leto agreed.
“Then how does our Sisterhood maintain its community?” Luyseyal demanded.
Leto hardened his voice. “As you well know, the secret of community lies in suppression of the incompatible.”
“There can be enormous value in cooperation,” Anteac said.
“To you, not to me.”
Anteac contrived a sigh. “Then, Lord, will you tell us about the physical changes in your person?”
“Someone besides yourself should know about and record such things,” Luyseyal said.
“In case something dreadful should happen to me?” Leto asked.
“Lord!” Anteac protested. “We do not …”
“You dissect me with words when you would prefer sharper instruments,” Leto said. “Hypocrisy offends me.”
“We protest, Lord,” Anteac said.
“Indeed you do. I hear you.”
Luyseyal crept a few millimeters closer to the ledge, bringing a sharp stare from Moneo, who glanced up at Leto then. Moneo’s expression demanded action, but Leto ignored him, curious now about Luyseyal’s intentions. The sense of menace was centered in the red-haired one.
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