God Emperor of Dune (54 page)

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Authors: Frank Herbert

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BOOK: God Emperor of Dune
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“Isn’t that up to us?” Idaho asked. He felt Hwi’s hand in his grow slippery with perspiration.
“It is up to the God Emperor,” Moneo said.
“Even if Siona fails?” Idaho asked.
“Especially then!”
“How did he test you?” Idaho asked.
“He showed me a small glimpse of what it’s like to be the God Emperor.”
“And?”
“I saw as much as I’m capable of seeing.”
Hwi’s hand tightened convulsively in Idaho’s.
“Then it’s true that you were a rebel once,” Idaho said.
“I began with love and prayer,” Moneo said. “I changed to anger and rebellion. I was transformed into what you see before you. I recognize my duty and I do it.”
“What did he do to you?” Idaho demanded.
“He quoted to me the prayer of my childhood: ‘I give my life in dedication to the greater glory of God.’ ” Moneo spoke in a musing voice.
Idaho noted Hwi’s stillness, her stare fixed on Moneo’s face. What was she thinking?
“I admitted that this had been my prayer,” Moneo said. “And the God Emperor asked me what I would give up if my life were not enough. He shouted at me: ‘What is your life when you hold back the greater gift?’ ”
Hwi nodded, but Idaho felt only confusion.
“I could hear the truth in his voice,” Moneo said.
“Are you a Truthsayer?” Hwi asked.
“In the power of desperation, yes,” Moneo said. “But only then. I swear to you he spoke truth to me.”
“Some of the Atreides had the power of Voice,” Idaho muttered.
Moneo shook his head. “No, it was truth. He said to me: ‘I look at you now and if I could shed tears, I would. Consider the wish to be the act!’ ”
Hwi rocked forward, almost touching the table. “He cannot cry?”
“Sandworms,” Idaho whispered.
“What?” Hwi turned toward him.
“Fremen killed sandworms with water,” Idaho said. “From the drowning they produced the spice-essence for their religious orgies.”
“But the Lord Leto is not yet a sandworm entire,” Moneo said.
Hwi rocked back onto her cushion and looked at Moneo.
Idaho pursed his lips in thought. Did Leto have the Fremen prohibition against tears, then? How awed the Fremen had always been about such a waste of moisture!
Giving water to the dead.
Moneo addressed himself to Idaho: “I had hoped you could be brought to an understanding. The Lord Leto has spoken. You and Hwi must separate and never see each other again.”
Hwi removed her hand from Idaho’s. “We know.”
Idaho spoke with resigned bitterness: “We know his power.”
“But you do not understand him,” Moneo said.
“I want nothing more than that,” Hwi said. She put a hand on Idaho’s arm to silence him. “No, Duncan. Our private desires have no place here.”
“Maybe you should
pray
to him,” Idaho said.
She whirled and looked at him, staring and staring until Idaho lowered his gaze. When she spoke, her voice carried a lilting quality that Idaho had never heard there before. “My Uncle Malky always said the Lord Leto never responded to prayer. He said the Lord Leto looked on prayer as attempted coercion, a form of violence against the chosen god, telling the immortal what to do:
Give me a miracle, God, or I won’t believe in you!
”
“Prayer as
hubris,
” Moneo said. “Intercession on demand.”
“How can he be a god?” Idaho demanded. “By his own admission, he’s not immortal.”
“I will quote the Lord Leto on that,” Moneo said. “ ‘I am all of God that need be seen. I am the word become a miracle. I am all of my ancestors. Is that not miracle enough? What more could you possibly want? Ask yourself: Where is there a greater miracle?’ ”
“Empty words,” Idaho sneered.
“I sneered at him, too,” Moneo said. “I threw his own words from the Oral History back at him: ‘Give to the greater glory of God!’ ”
Hwi gasped.
“He laughed at me,” Moneo said. “He laughed and asked how I could give what already belonged to God?”
“You were angry?” Hwi asked.
“Oh, yes. He saw this and said he would tell me how to give to that glory. He said: ‘You may observe that you are every bit as great a miracle as I am.’ ” Moneo turned and looked out the window on his left. “I’m afraid my anger made me deaf and I was totally unprepared.”
“Ohhh, he is clever,” Idaho said.
“Clever?” Moneo looked at him. “I don’t think so, not in the way you mean. I think the Lord Leto may be no more clever than I am in that way.”
“Unprepared for what?” Hwi asked.
“The risk,” Moneo said.
“But you risked much in your anger,” she said.
“Not as much as he. I see in your eyes, Hwi, that you understand this. Does his body revolt you?”
“No more,” she said.
Idaho ground his teeth in frustration. “He disgusts me!”
“Love, you must not say such things,” Hwi said.
“And you must not call him love,” Moneo said.
“You’d rather she learned to love someone more gross and evil than any Baron Harkonnen ever dreamed of being,” Idaho said.
Moneo worked his lips in and out, then: “The Lord Leto has told me about that evil old man of your time, Duncan. I don’t think you understood your enemy.”
“He was a fat, monstrous …”
“He was a seeker after sensations,” Moneo said. “The fat was a side-effect, then perhaps something to experience for itself because it offended people and he enjoyed offending.”
“The Baron only consumed a few planets,” Idaho said. “Leto consumes the universe.”
“Love, please!” Hwi protested.
“Let him rant,” Moneo said. “When I was young and ignorant, even as my Siona and this poor fool, I said similar things.”
“Is that why you let your daughter go out to die?” Idaho demanded.
“Love, that’s cruel,” Hwi said.
“Duncan, it has always been one of your flaws to seek hysteria,” Moneo said. “I warn you that ignorance thrives on hysteria. Your genes provide vigor and you may inspire some among the Fish Speakers, but you are a poor leader.”
“Don’t try to anger me,” Idaho said. “I know better than to attack you, but don’t push me too far.”
Hwi tried to take Idaho’s hand, but he pulled away.
“I know my place,” Idaho said. “I’m a useful follower. I can carry the Atreides banner. The green and black is on my back!”
“The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria,” Moneo said. “The Atreides art is the art of ruling without hysteria, the art of being responsible for the uses of power.”
Idaho pushed back and heaved himself to his feet. “When has your damned God Emperor ever been responsible for anything?”
Moneo looked down at his cluttered table and spoke without looking up. “He is responsible for what he has done to himself.” Moneo looked up then, his eyes frosty. “You haven’t the guts, Duncan, to learn why he did that to himself!”
“And you have?” Idaho asked.
“When I was most angry,” Moneo said, “and he saw himself through my eyes, he said: ‘How dare you be offended by me?’ It was then”—Moneo swallowed—“that he made me look into the horror … that he had seen.” Tears welled from Moneo’s eyes and ran down his cheeks. “And I was only glad that I did not have to make his decision … that I could content myself with being a follower.”
“I have touched him,” Hwi whispered.
“Then you know?” Moneo asked her.
“Without seeing it, I know,” she said.
In a low voice, Moneo said: “I almost died of it. I …” He shuddered, then looked up at Idaho. “You must not …”
“Damn you all!” Idaho snarled. He turned and dashed from the room.
Hwi stared after him, her face a mask of anguish. “Ohhh, Duncan,” she whispered.
“You see?” Moneo asked. “You were wrong. Neither you nor the Fish Speakers have gentled him. But you, Hwi, you have only contributed to his destruction.”
Hwi turned her anguish toward Moneo. “I will not see him again,” she said.
For Idaho, the passage down to his quarters became one of the most difficult times in his memory. He tried to imagine that his face was a plasteel mask held immobile to hide the turmoil within. None of the guards he passed could be permitted to see his pain. He did not know that most of them made accurate guesses about his emotion and shared a compassion for him. All of them had sat through briefings on the Duncans and had learned to read them well.
In the corridor near his quarters, Idaho encountered Nayla walking slowly toward him. Something in her face, a look of indecision and loss, stopped him briefly and almost brought him out of his internal concentration.
“Friend?” he said, speaking when he was only a few paces from her.
She looked at him, abrupt recognition obvious on her square face.
What an odd-looking woman
, he thought.
“I am no longer Friend,” she said and passed by him down the corridor.
Idaho turned on one heel and stared at her retreating back—those heavy shoulders, that plodding sense of terrible muscles.
What was she bred for?
he wondered.
It was only a passing thought. His own concerns returned more strongly than before. He strode the few paces to his door and into his quarters.
Once inside, Idaho stood a moment with clenched fists at his sides.
I have no more ties to
any
time
, he thought. And how odd that this was not a liberating thought. He knew, though, that he had done the thing which would begin freeing Hwi from her love for him. He was diminished. She would think of him soon as a small, petulant fool, a subject only of his own emotions. He could feel himself fading from her immediate concerns.
And that poor Moneo!
Idaho sensed the shape of the things which had formed the pliant majordomo.
Duty and responsibility.
What a safe haven those were in a time of difficult decisions.
I was like that once
, Idaho thought.
But that was in another life, another time.
The Duncans sometimes ask if I understand the exotic ideas of our past. And if I understand them, why can’t I explain them? Knowledge, the Duncans believe, resides only in particulars. I try to tell them that all words are plastic. Word images begin to distort in the instant of utterance. Ideas imbedded in a language require that particular language for expression. This is the very essence of the meaning within the word
exotic
. See how it begins to distort? Translation squirms in the presence of the exotic. The Galach which I speak here imposes itself. It is an outside frame of reference, a particular system. Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change. Does it serve any purpose for me to tell the Duncans that there are no languages for some things? Ahhh! But the Duncans believe that all languages are mine.
 
—THE STOLEN JOURNALS
 
 
 
 
For two full turns of days and nights, Siona failed to seal her face mask, losing precious water with every breath. It had taken the Fremen admonition to children before Siona remembered her father’s words. Leto had spoken to her finally on the cold third morning of their traverse when they stopped within a rock shadow on the windswept flat of the erg.
“Guard every breath for it carries the warmth and moisture of your life,” he said.
He had known they would be three more days on the erg and three more nights beyond that before they reached water. Now, it was the fifth morning from the Little Citadel’s tower. They had entered shallow drifts of sand during the night—not dunes, but dunes could be glimpsed ahead of them and even the remnants of Habbanya Ridge were a thin, broken line in the distance if you knew where to look. Now, Siona took down the mouth flap of her stillsuit only to speak clearly. And she spoke through black and bleeding lips.
She has the thirst of desperation
, he thought, as he let his senses probe their surroundings.
She will reach the moments of crisis soon.
His senses told him that they were still alone here at the edge of the flat. Dawn lay only minutes behind them. The low light created barriers of dust reflection which twisted and lifted and dipped in the unceasing wind. His senses filtered out the wind that he might hear other things—Siona’s heaving breaths, the tumble of a small sandspill from the rocks beside them, his own gross body grating in the thin sand cover.

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