God Emperor of Dune (62 page)
“We could hold the ceremony in the Citadel!”
For answer, Leto closed the bubble cover around him, isolating Hwi with him.
“Is there danger, Leto?” she asked.
“There’s always danger.”
Moneo sighed, turned and trotted toward where the Royal Road began its long climb eastward before turning south around the Sareer. Leto set his cart in motion behind the majordomo, heard his motley troop fall into step behind them.
“Are we all moving?” Leto asked.
Hwi glanced backward around him. “Yes.” She turned toward his face. “Why was Moneo being so difficult?”
“Moneo has discovered that the instant which has just left him is forever beyond his reach.”
“He has been very moody and distracted since you returned from the Little Citadel. He’s not the same at all.”
“He is an Atreides, my love, and you were designed to please an Atreides.”
“It’s not that. I would know if it were that.”
“Yes … well, I think Moneo has also discovered the reality of death.”
“What’s it like at the Little Citadel when you’re there with Moneo?” she asked.
“It’s the loneliest place in my Empire.”
“I think you avoid my questions,” she said.
“No, love. I share your concern for Moneo, but no explanation of mine will help him now. Moneo is trapped. He has learned that it is difficult to live in the present, pointless to live in the future and impossible to live in the past.”
“I think it’s you who have trapped him, Leto.”
“But he must free himself.”
“Why can’t you free him?”
“Because he thinks my memories are his key to freedom. He thinks I am building our future out of our past.”
“Isn’t that always the way of it, Leto?”
“No, dear Hwi.”
“Then how is it?”
“Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.”
“And you with all of your memories know otherwise.”
Leto turned his face within its cowl to stare at her, probing … remembering. Out of the multitudes within him, he could form a composite, a genetic suggestion of Hwi, but the suggestion fell far short of the living flesh. That was it, of course. The past became row-on-row of eyes staring outward like the eyes of gasping fish, but Hwi was vibrant life. Her mouth was set in Grecian curves designed for a Delphic chant, but she hummed no prophetic syllables. She was content to live, an opening person like a flower perpetually unfolding into fragrant blossom.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
“I was basking in the love of you.”
“Love, yes.” She smiled. “I think that since we cannot share the love of the flesh, we must share the love of the soul. Would you share that with me, Leto?”
He was taken aback. “You ask about my soul?”
“Surely others have asked.”
He spoke shortly: “My soul digests its experiences, nothing more.”
“Have I asked too much of you?” she asked.
“I think that you cannot ask too much of me.”
“Then I presume upon our love to disagree with you. My Uncle Malky talked about your soul.”
He found that he could not respond. She took his silence as an invitation to continue. “He said that you were the ultimate artist at probing the soul, your own soul first.”
“But your Uncle Malky denied that he had a soul of his own!”
She heard the harshness in his voice, but was not deterred. “Still, I think he was right. You are the genius of the soul, the brilliant one.”
“You need only the plodding perseverance of duration,” he said. “No brilliance.”
They were well onto the long climb to the top of the Sareer’s perimeter Wall now. He lowered his cart’s wheels and deactivated the suspensors.
Hwi spoke softly, her voice barely audible above the grating sound of the cart’s wheels and the running feet all around them. “May I call you Love, anyway?”
He spoke around a remembered tightness in a throat which was no longer completely human. “Yes.”
“I was born an Ixian, Love,” she said. “Why don’t I share their mechanical view of our universe? Do you know my view, Leto my love?”
He could only stare at her.
“I sense the supernatural at every turning,” she said.
Leto’s voice rasped, sounding angry even to him: “Each person creates his own supernatural.”
“Don’t be angry with me, Love.”
Again, that awful rasping: “It is impossible for me to be angry with you.”
“But something happened between you and Malky once,” she said. “He would never tell me what it was, but he said he often wondered why you spared him.”
“Because of what he taught me.”
“What happened between you two, Love?”
“I would rather not talk about Malky.”
“Please, Love. I feel that it’s important for me to know.”
“I suggested to Malky that there might be some things men should not invent.”
“And that’s all?”
“No.” He spoke reluctantly. “My words angered him. He said: ‘You think that in a world without birds, men would not invent aircraft! What a fool you are! Men can invent anything!’ ”
“He called you a fool?” There was shock in Hwi’s voice.
“He was right. And although he denied it, he spoke the truth. He taught me that there was a reason for running away from inventions.”
“Then you fear the Ixians?”
“Of course I do! They can invent catastrophe.”
“Then what could you do?”
“Run faster. History is a constant race between invention and catastrophe. Education helps but it’s never enough. You also must run.”
“You are sharing your soul with me, Love. Do you know that?”
Leto looked away from her and focused on Moneo’s back, the motions of the majordomo, the tucked-in pretenses of secrecy so apparent there. The procession had come off the first gentle incline. It turned now to begin the climb onto Ringwall West. Moneo moved as he had always moved, one foot ahead of another, aware of the ground where he would place each step, but there was something new in the majordomo. Leto could feel the man drawing away, no longer content to march beside his Lord’s cowled face, no longer trying to match himself to his master’s destiny. Off to the east, the Sareer waited. Off to the west, there was the river, the plantations. Moneo looked neither left nor right. He had seen another destination.
“You do not answer me,” Hwi said.
“You already know the answer.”
“Yes. I am beginning to understand something of you,” she said. “I can sense some of your fears. And I think I already know where it is that you live.”
He turned a startled glance on her and found himself locked in her gaze. It was astonishing. He could not move his eyes away from her. A profound fear coursed through and he felt his hands begin to twitch.
“You live where the fear of being and the love of being are combined, all in one person,” she said.
He could not blink.
“You are a mystic,” she said, “gentle to yourself only because you are in the middle of that universe looking outward, looking in ways that others cannot. You fear to share this, yet you want to share it more than anything else.”
“What have you seen?” he whispered.
“I have no inner eye, no inner voices,” she said. “But I have seen my Lord Leto, whose soul I love, and I
know
the only thing that you truly understand.”
know
the only thing that you truly understand.”
He broke from her gaze, fearful of what she might say. The trembling of his hands could be felt all through his front segment.
“Love, that is what you understand,” she said. “Love, and that is all of it.”
His hands stopped trembling. A tear rolled down each of his cheeks. When the tears touched his cowl, wisps of blue smoke erupted. He sensed the burning and was thankful for the pain.
“You have faith in life,” Hwi said. “I know that the courage of love can reside only in this faith.”
She reached out with her left hand and brushed the tears from his cheeks. It surprised him that the cowl did not react with its ordinary reflex to prevent the touch.
“Do you know,” he asked, “that since I have become thus, you are the first person to touch my cheeks?”
“But I know what you are and what you were,” she said.
“What I was … ahhh, Hwi. What I was has become only this face, and all the rest is lost in the shadows of memory … hidden … gone.”
“Not hidden from me, Love.”
He looked directly at her, no longer afraid to lock gazes. “Is it possible that the Ixians know what they have created in you?”
“I assure you, Leto, love of my soul, that they do not know. You are the first person, the only person to whom I have ever completely revealed myself.”
“Then I will not mourn for what might have been,” he said. “Yes, my love, I will share my soul with you.”
Think of it as plastic memory, this force within you which trends you and your fellows toward tribal forms. This plastic memory seeks to return to its ancient shape, the tribal society. It is all around you—the feudatory, the diocese, the corporation, the platoon, the sports club, the dance troupes, the rebel cell, the planning council, the prayer group … each with its master and servants, its host and parasites. And the swarms of alienating devices (including these very words!) tend eventually to be enlisted in the argument for a return to “those better times.” I despair of teaching you other ways. You have square thoughts which resist circles.
—THE STOLEN JOURNALS
Idaho found he could manage the climb without thinking about it. This body grown by the Tleilaxu remembered things the Tleilaxu did not even suspect. His original youth might be lost in the eons, but his muscles were Tleilaxu-young and he could bury his childhood in forgetfulness while he climbed. In that childhood, he had learned survival by flight into the high rocks of his home planet. It did not matter that these rocks in front of him now had been brought here by men, they also had been shaped by ages of weather.
The morning sun was hot on Idaho’s back. He could hear Siona’s efforts to reach the relatively simple support position of a narrow ledge far below him. The position was virtually useless to Idaho, but it had been the argument which had brought Siona finally into agreement that they should attempt this climb.
They.
She had objected that he might try it alone.
Nayla, three of her Fish Speaker aides, Garun and three chosen from his Museum Fremen waited on the sand at the foot of the barrier Wall which enclosed the Sareer.
Idaho did not think about the Wall’s height. He thought only about where he would next put a hand or a foot. He thought about the coil of light rope around his shoulders. That rope was the
tallness
of this Wall. He had measured it out on the ground, triangulating across the sand, not counting his steps. When the rope was long enough it was long enough. The Wall was as high as the rope was long. Any other way of thinking could only dull his mind.
tallness
of this Wall. He had measured it out on the ground, triangulating across the sand, not counting his steps. When the rope was long enough it was long enough. The Wall was as high as the rope was long. Any other way of thinking could only dull his mind.
Feeling for handholds which he could not see, Idaho groped his way up the sheer face … well, not quite sheer. Wind and sand and even some rain, the forces of cold and heat, had been at their erosive work here for more than three thousand years. For one full day, Idaho had sat on the sand below the Wall and he had studied what had been accomplished by Time. He had fixed certain patterns in his mind—a slanting shadow, a thin line, a crumbling bulge, a tiny lip of rock here and another over there.
His fingers wriggled upward into a sharp crack. He tested his weight gently on the support. Yes. Briefly, he rested, pressing his face against warm rock, not looking up or down. He was simply
here.
Everything was a matter of the pacing. His shoulders must not be allowed to tire too soon. Weight must be adjusted between feet and arms. Fingers took inevitable damage, but while bone and tendons held, the skin could be ignored.
here.
Everything was a matter of the pacing. His shoulders must not be allowed to tire too soon. Weight must be adjusted between feet and arms. Fingers took inevitable damage, but while bone and tendons held, the skin could be ignored.
Once more, he crept upward. A bit of rock broke away from his hand; dust and shards fell across his right cheek, but he did not even feel it. Every bit of his awareness concentrated on the groping hand, the balance of his feet on the tiniest of protrusions. He was a mote, a particle which defied gravity … a fingerhold here, a toehold there, clinging to the rock surface at times by the sheer power of his will.
Nine makeshift pitons bulged one of his pockets, but he resisted using them. The equally makeshift hammer dangled from his belt on a short cord whose knot his fingers had memorized.
Nayla had been difficult. She would not give up her lasgun. She had, however, obeyed Siona’s direct order to accompany them. A strange woman … strangely obedient.
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