THE SECOND GREAT DUNE TRILOGY

God Emperor of Dune

Heretics of Dune

Chapterhouse: Dune

Frank Herbert

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God Emperor of Dune

Frank Herbert

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Contents

Title Page

Contents

Prologue

God Emperor of Dune

PROLOGUE

Excerpt from the speech by Hadi Benotto announcing the discoveries at Dar-es-Balat on the planet of Rakis:

It not only is my pleasure to announce to you this morning our discovery of this marvellous storehouse containing, among other things, a monumental collection of manuscripts inscribed on ridulian crystal paper, but I also take pride in giving you our arguments for the authenticity of our discoveries, to tell you why we believe we have uncovered the original journals of Leto II, the God Emperor.

First, let me recall to you the historical treasure which we all know by the name of The Stolen Journals, those volumes of known antiquity which over the centuries have been so valuable in helping us to understand our ancestors. As you all know, The Stolen Journals were deciphered by the Spacing Guild, and the method of the Guild Key was employed to translate these newly discovered volumes. No one denies the antiquity of the Guild Key and it, and it alone, translates these volumes.

Second, these volumes were printed by an Ixian dictatel of truly ancient make. The Stolen Journals leave no doubt that this was in fact the method employed by Leto II to record his historical observations.

Third, and we believe that this is equal in portent to the actual discovery, there is the storehouse itself. The repository for these journals is an undoubted Ixian artifact of such primitive and yet marvellous construction that it is sure to throw new light on the historical epoch known as “The Scattering”. As was to be expected, the storehouse was invisible. It was buried far deeper than myth and the Oral History had led us to expect and it emitted and absorbed radiation to simulate the natural character of its surroundings, a mechanical mimesis which is not surprising of itself. What has surprised our engineers, however, is the way this was done with the most rudimentary and truly primitive mechanical skills.

I can see that some of you are as excited by this as we were. We believe we are looking at the first Ixian Globe, the no-room from which all such devices evolved. If it is not actually the first, we believe it must be one of the first and embodying the same principles as the first.

Let me address your obvious curiosity by assuring you that we will take you on a brief tour of the storehouse presently. We will ask only that you maintain silence while within the storehouse because our engineers and other specialists are still at work there unravelling the mysteries.

Which brings me to my fourth point, and this may well be the capstone of our discoveries. It is with emotions difficult to describe that I reveal to you now another discovery at this site—namely, actual oral recordings which are labelled as having been made by Leto II in the voice of his father, Paul-Muad’Dib. Since authenticated recordings of the God Emperor are lodged in the Bene Gesserit Archives, we have sent a sampling of our recordings, all of which were made on an ancient microbubble system, to the Sisterhood with a formal request that they conduct a comparison test. We have little doubt that the recordings will be authenticated.

Now, please turn your attention to the translated excerpts which were handed to you as you entered. Let me take this opportunity to apologize for their weight. I have heard some of you joking about that. We used ordinary paper for a practical reason—economy. The original volumes are inscribed in symbols so small that they must be magnified substantially before they can be read. In fact, it requires more than forty ordinary volumes of the type you now hold just to reprint the contents of one of the ridulian crystal originals.

If the projector—yes. We are now projecting part of an original page on to the screen at your left. This is from the first page of the first volume. Our translation is on the screens to the right. I call your attention to the internal evidence, the poetic vanity of the words as well as the meaning derived from the translation. The style conveys a personality which is identifiable and consistent. We believe that this could only have been written by someone who had the direct experience of ancestral memories, by someone labouring to share that extraordinary experience of previous lives in a way that could be understood by those not so gifted.

Look now at the actual meaning content. All of the references accord with everything history has told us about the one person whom we believe is the only person who could have written such an account.

We have another surprise for you now. I have taken the liberty of inviting the well-known poet, Rebeth Vreeb, to share the platform with us this morning and to read from this first page a short passage of our translation. It is our observation that, even in translation, these words take on a different character when read aloud. We want to share with you a truly extraordinary quality which we have discovered in these volumes.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Rebeth Vreeb.

From the reading by Rebeth Vreeb:

I assure you that I am the book of fate.

Questions are my enemies. For my questions explode! Answers leap up like a frightened flock, blackening the sky of my inescapable memories. Not one answer, not one suffices.

What prisms flash when I enter the terrible field of my past. I am a chip of shattered flint enclosed in a box. The box gyrates and quakes. I am tossed about in a storm of mysteries. And when the box opens, I return to this presence like a stranger in a primitive land.

Slowly (slowly, I say) I relearn my name.

But that is not to know myself!

This person of my name, this Leto who is the second of that calling, finds other voices in his mind, other names and other places. Oh, I promise you (as I have been promised) that I answer to but a single name. If you say, “Leto”, I respond. Sufferance makes this true, sufferance and one thing more:

I hold the threads!

All of them are mine. Let me but imagine a topic—say … men who have died by the sword—and I have them in all of their gore, every image intact, every moan, every grimace.

Joys of motherhood, I think, and the birthing beds are mine. Serial baby smiles and the sweet cooings of new generations. The first walkings of the toddlers and the first victories of youths brought forth for me to share. They tumble one upon another until I can see little else but sameness and repetition.

“Keep it all intact,” I warn myself.

Who can deny the value of such experiences, the worth of learning through which I view each new instant?

Ahhh, but it’s the past.

Don’t you understand?

It’s only the past!

This morning I was born in a yurt at the edge of a horse-plain in a land of a planet which no longer exists. Tomorrow I will be born someone else in another place. I have not yet chosen. This morning, though—ahh, this life! When my eyes had learned to focus, I looked out at sunshine on trampled grass and I saw vigorous people going about the sweet activities of their lives. Where… oh where has all of that vigour gone?

—The Stolen Journals

The three people running northward through moon shadows in the Forbidden Forest were strung out along almost half a kilometre. The last runner in the line ran less than a hundred metres ahead of the pursuing D-wolves. The animals could be heard yelping and panting in their eagerness, the way they do when they have the prey in sight.

With First Moon almost directly overhead, it was quite light in the forest and, although these were the higher latitudes of Arrakis, it was still warm from the heat of a summer day. The nightly drift of air from the Last Desert of the Sareer carried resin smells and the damp exhalations of the duff underfoot. Now and again, a breeze from the Kynes Sea beyond the Sareer drifted across the runners’ tracks with hints of salt and fishes.

By a quirk of fate, the last runner was called Ulot which in the Fremen tongue means Beloved Straggler. Ulot was short in stature and with a tendency to fat which had placed an extra dieting burden on him in training for this venture. Even when slimmed down for their desperate run, his face remained round, the large brown eyes vulnerable in that suggestion of too much flesh.

To Ulot it was obvious that he could not run much farther. He panted and wheezed. Occasionally, he staggered. But he did not call out to his companions. He knew they could not help him. All of them had taken the same oath, knowing they had no defences except the old virtues and Fremen loyalties. This remained true even though everything that once had been Fremen had now a museum quality—rote recitals learned from Museum Fremen.

It was Fremen loyalty that kept Ulot silent in the full awareness of his doom. A fine display of the ancient qualities, and rather pitiful when none of the runners had any but book knowledge and the legends of the Oral History about the virtues they aped.

The D-wolves ran close behind Ulot, giant grey figures almost man-height at the shoulders. They leaped and whined in their eagerness, heads lifted, eyes focused on the moon-betrayed figure of their quarry.

A root caught Ulot’s left foot and he almost fell. This gave him renewed energy. He put on a burst of speed, gaining perhaps a wolf-length on his pursuers. His arms pumped. He breathed noisily through his open mouth.

The D-wolves did not change pace. They were silver shadows which went flick-flick through the loud green smells of their forest. They knew they had won. It was a familiar experience.

Again, Ulot stumbled. He caught his balance against a sapling and continued his panting flight, gasping, his legs trembling in rebellion against these demands. No energy remained for another burst of speed.

One of the D-wolves, a large female, moved out on Ulot’s left flank. She swerved inward and leaped across his path. Giant fangs ripped Ulot’s shoulder and staggered him but he did not fall. The pungency of blood was added to the forest smells. A smaller male caught his right hip and at last Ulot fell, screaming. The pack pounced and his screams were cut off in abrupt finality.

Not stopping to feed, the D-wolves again took up the chase. Their noses probed the forest floor and the vagrant eddies in the air, scenting the warm tracery of two more running humans.

The next runner in the line was named Kwuteg, an old and honourable name on Arrakis, a name from the Dune times. An ancestor had served Sietch Tabr as Master of the Death Stills, but that was more than three thousand years lost in a past which many no longer believed. Kwuteg ran with the long strides of a tall and slender body which seemed perfectly fitted to such exertion. Long black hair streamed back from his aquiline features. As with his companions, he wore a black running suit of tightly knitted cotton. It revealed the workings of his buttocks and stringy thighs, the deep and steady rhythm of his breathing. Only his pace, which was markedly slow for Kwuteg, betrayed the fact that he had injured his right knee coming down from the man-made precipices which girdled the God Emperor’s Citadel fortress in the Sareer.

Kwuteg heard Ulot’s screams, the abrupt and potent silence, then the renewed chase-yelps of the D-wolves. He tried not to let his mind create the image of another friend being slain by Leto’s monster guardians but imagination worked its sorcery on him. Kwuteg thought a curse against the tyrant but wasted no breath to voice it. There remained a chance that he could reach the sanctuary of the Idaho River. Kwuteg knew what his friends thought about him—even Siona. He had always been known as a conservative. Even as a child he had saved his energy until it counted most, parcelling out his reserves like a miser.

In spite of the injured knee, Kwuteg increased his pace. He knew the river was near. His injury had gone beyond agony into a steady flame which filled his entire leg and side with its burning. He knew the limits of his endurance. He knew also that Siona should be almost at the water. The fastest runner of them all, she carried the sealed packet – and, in it, the things they had stolen from the fortress in the Sareer. Kwuteg focused his thoughts on that packet as he ran.

Save it, Siona! Use it to destroy him!

The eager whining of the D-wolves penetrated Kwuteg’s consciousness. They were too close. He knew then that he would not escape.

But Siona must escape!

He risked a backward glance and saw one of the wolves move to flank him. The pattern of their attack plan imprinted itself on his awareness. As the flanking wolf leaped Kwuteg also leaped. Placing a tree between himself and the pack, he ducked beneath the flanking wolf, grasped one of its hind legs in both hands and, without stopping, whirled the captive wolf as a flail which scattered the others. Finding the creature not as heavy as he had expected, almost welcoming the change of action, he flailed his living bludgeon at the attackers in a dervish whirl which brought two of them down in a crash of skulls. But he could not guard every side. A lean male caught him in the back, hurling him against a tree and he lost his bludgeon.

“Go!” he screamed.

The pack bored in and Kwuteg caught the throat of the lean male in his teeth. He bit down with every gramme of his final desperation. Wolf blood spurted over his face, blinding him. Rolling without any knowledge of where he went, Kwuteg grappled another wolf. Part of the pack dissolved into a yelping, whirling mob, some turning against their own injured. Most of the pack remained intent on the quarry, though. Teeth ripped Kwuteg’s throat from both sides.

Siona, too, had heard Ulot scream, then the unmistakable silence followed by the yelping of the pack as the wolves resumed the chase. Such anger filled her that she felt she might explode with it. Ulot had been included in this venture because of his analytical ability, his way of seeing a whole from only a few parts. It had been Ulot who, taking the inevitable magnifier from his kit, had examined the two strange volumes they had found in with the Citadel’s plans.

“I think it’s a cipher,” Ulot had said.

And Radi, poor Radi who had been the first of their team to die … Radi had said, “We can’t afford the extra weight. Throw them away.”

Ulot had objected: “Unimportant things aren’t concealed this way.”

Kwuteg had joined Radi. “We came for the Citadel plans and we have them. Those things are too heavy.”

But Siona had agreed with Ulot. “I will carry them.”

That had ended the argument.

Poor Ulot.

They had all known him as the worst runner in the team. Ulot was slow in most things, but the clarity of his mind could not be denied.

He is trustworthy.

Ulot had been trustworthy.

Siona mastered her anger and used its energy to increase her pace. Trees whipped past her in the moonlight. She had entered that timeless void of the running when there was nothing else but her own movements, her own body doing what it had been conditioned to do.

Men thought her beautiful when she ran. Siona knew this. Her long dark hair was tied tightly to keep it from whipping in the wind of her passage. She had accused Kwuteg of foolishness when he had refused to copy her style.

Where is Kwuteg?

Her hair was not like Kwuteg’s. It was that deep brown which is sometimes confused with black, but is not truly black, not like Kwuteg’s at all.

In the way genes occasionally do, her features copied those of a long dead ancestor: gently oval and with a generous mouth, eyes of alert awareness above a small nose. Her body had grown lanky from years of running, but it sent strong sexual signals to the males around her.

Where is Kwuteg?

The wolf pack had fallen silent and this filled her with alarm. They had done that before bringing down Radi. It had been the same when they got Setuse.

She told herself the silence could mean other things. Kwuteg, too, was silent… and strong. The injury had not appeared to bother him too much.

Siona began to feel pain in her chest, the gasping-to-come which she knew well from the long kilometres of training. Perspiration still poured down her body under the thin black running garment. The kit with its precious contents sealed against the river passage ahead rode high on her back. She thought about the Citadel charts folded there.

Where does Leto hide his hoard of spice?

It had to be somewhere within the Citadel. It had to be. Somewhere in the charts there would be a clue. The melange-spice for which the Bene Gesserit, the Guild and all the others hungered… that was a prize worth this risk.

And those two cryptic volumes. Kwuteg had been right in one thing. Ridulian crystal paper was heavy. But she shared Ulot’s excitement. Something important was concealed in those lines of cipher.

Once more the eager chase-yelps of the wolves sounded in the forest behind her.

Run, Kwuteg! Run!

Now, just ahead of her through the trees, she could see the wide cleared strip which bordered the Idaho River. She glimpsed moon brightness on water beyond the clearing.

Run, Kwuteg!

She longed for a sound from Kwuteg, any sound. Only the two of them remained now from the eleven who had started the run. Nine had paid for this venture with their lives: Radi, Aline, Ulot, Setuse, Inineg, Onemao, Hutye, Memar and Oala.

Siona thought their names and with each sent a silent prayer to the old gods, not to the tyrant Leto. Especially, she prayed to Shai-Hulud.

I pray to Shai-Hulud who lives in the sand.

Abruptly, she was out of the forest and on to the moon-bright stretch of mowed ground along the river. Straight ahead beyond a narrow shingle of beach, the water beckoned to her. The beach was silver against the oily flow.

A loud yell from back in the trees almost made her falter. She recognized Kwuteg’s voice above the wild wolf sounds. Kwuteg called out to her without name, an unmistakable cry with one word containing countless conversations—a message of death and life.

“Go!”

The pack sounds took on a terrible commotion of frenzied yelps, but nothing more from Kwuteg. She knew then how Kwuteg was spending the last energies of his life.

Delaying them to help me escape.

Obeying Kwuteg’s cry, she dashed to the river’s edge and plunged headfirst into the water. The river was a freezing shock after the heat of the run. It stunned her for a moment and she floundered outward, struggling to swim and regain her breath. The precious kit floated and bumped against the back of her head.

The Idaho River was not wide here, no more than fifty metres, a gently sweeping curve with sandy indentations fringed by roots and shelving banks of lush reeds and grass where the water refused to stay in the straight lines Leto’s engineers had designed. Siona was strengthened by the knowledge that the D-wolves had been conditioned to stop at the water. Their territorial boundaries had been drawn, the river on this side and the desert wall on the other side. Still, she swam the last few metres underwater and surfaced in the shadows of a cutbank before turning and looking back.

The wolf pack stood ranged along the bank, all except one which had come down to the river’s edge. It leaned forward with its forefeet almost into the flow. She heard it whine.

Siona knew the wolf saw her. No doubt of that. D-wolves were noted for their keen eyesight. There were Gaze Hounds in the ancestry of Leto’s forest guardians and he bred the wolves for their eyesight. She wondered if this once the wolves might break through their conditioning. They were mostly sight-hunters. If that one wolf at the river’s edge should enter the water, all might follow. Siona held her breath. She felt the dragging of exhaustion. They had come almost thirty kilometres, the last half of it with the D-wolves close behind.

The wolf at the river’s edge whined once more then leaped back up to its companions. At some silent signal they turned and loped into the forest.

Siona knew where they would go. D-wolves were allowed to eat anything they brought down in the Forbidden Forest. Everyone knew this. It was why the wolves roamed the forest—the guardians of the Sareer.

“You’ll pay for this, Leto,” she whispered. It was a low sound, her voice, very close to the quiet rustling of the water against the reeds just behind her. “You’ll pay for Ulot, for Kwuteg and for all the others. You’ll pay.”

She pushed outward gently and drifted with the current until her feet met the first shelving of a narrow beach. Slowly, her body dragged down by fatigue, she climbed from the water and paused to check that the sealed contents of her kit had remained dry. The seal was unbroken. She stared at it a moment in the moonlight, then lifted her gaze to the forest wall across the river.

The price we paid. Ten dear friends.

Tears glimmered in her eyes, but she had the stuff of the ancient Fremen and her tears were few. The venture across the river, directly through the forest while the wolves patrolled the northern boundaries, then across the Last Desert of the Sareer and over the Citadel’s ramparts—all of this already was assuming dream proportions in her mind … even the flight from the wolves which she had anticipated because it was a certainty that the guardian pack would cross the track of the invaders and be waiting … all a dream. It was the past.

I escaped.

She stored the kit with its sealed packet and fastened it once more against her back.

I have broken through your defences, Leto.

Siona thought then about the cryptic volumes. She felt certain that something hidden in those lines of cipher would open the way for her revenge.

I will destroy you, Leto!

Not We will destroy you! That was not Siona’s way. She would do it herself.

She turned and strode toward the orchards beyond the river’s mowed border. As she walked she repeated her oath, adding to it aloud the old Fremen formula which included her full name:

“Siona Ibn Fuad al-Seyefa Atreides it is who curses you, Leto. You will pay in full!”

The following is from the Hadi Benotto translation of the volumes discovered at Dar-es-Balat:

I was born Leto Atreides II more than three thousand standard years ago, measuring from the moment when I cause these words to be printed. My father was Paul-Muad’Dib. My mother was his Fremen consort, Chani. My maternal grandmother was Faroula, a noted herbalist among the Fremen. My paternal grandmother was Jessica, a product of the Bene Gesserit breeding scheme in their search for a male who could share the powers of the Sisterhood’s Reverend Mothers. My maternal grandfather was Liet-Kynes, the planetologist who organized the ecological transformation of Arrakis. My paternal grandfather was The Atreides, descendant of the House of Atreus and tracing his ancestry directly back to the Greek original.

Enough of these begats!

My paternal grandfather died as many good Greeks did, attempting to kill his mortal enemy, the old Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Both of them rest uncomfortably now in my ancestral memories. Even my father is not content. I have done what he feared to do and now his shade must share in the consequences.

The Golden Path demands it. And what is the Golden Path? you ask. It is the survival of humankind, nothing more nor less. We who have prescience, we who know the pitfalls in our human futures, this has always been our responsibility.

Survival.

How you feel about this—your petty woes and joys, even your agonies and raptures—seldom concerns us. My father had this power. I have it stronger. We can peer now and again through the veils of Time.

This planet of Arrakis from which I direct my multi-galactic empire is no longer what it was in the days when it was known as Dune. In those days the entire planet was a desert. Now, there is just this little remnant, my Sareer. No longer does the giant sandworm roam free, producing the spice melange. The spice! Dune was noteworthy only as the source of melange, the only source. What an extraordinary substance. No laboratory has ever been able to duplicate it. And it is the most valuable substance humankind has ever found.

Without melange to ignite the linear prescience of Guild Navigators, people cross the parsecs of space only at a snail’s crawl. Without melange, the Bene Gesserit cannot endow Truthsayers or Reverend Mothers. Without the geriatric properties of melange, people live and die according to the ancient measure—no more than a hundred years or so. Now, the only spice is held in Guild and Bene Gesserit storehouses, a few small hoards among the remnants of the Great Houses, and my gigantic hoard which they all covet. How they would like to raid me! But they don’t dare. They know I would destroy it all before surrendering it.

No. They come hat in hand and petition me for melange. I dole it out as a reward and hold it back as punishment. How they hate that.

It is my power, I tell them. It is my gift.

With it, I create Peace. They have had more than three thousand years of Leto’s Peace. It is an enforced tranquillity which humankind knew only for the briefest periods before my ascendancy. Lest you have forgotten, study Leto’s Peace once more in these, my journals.

I began this account in the first year of my stewardship, in the first throes of my metamorphosis when I was still mostly human, even visibly so. The sandtrout skin which I accepted (and my father refused) and which gave me greatly amplified strength plus virtual immunity from conventional attack and aging—that skin still covered a form recognizably human: two legs, two arms, a human face framed in the scrolled folds of the sandtrout.

Ahhh, that face! I still have it—the only human skin I expose to the universe. All the rest of my flesh has remained covered by the linked bodies of those tiny deep sand vectors which one day can become giant sand-worms.

As they will… someday.

I often think about my final metamorphosis, that likeness of death. I know the way it must come but I do not know the moment or the other players. This is the one thing I cannot know. I only know whether the Golden Path continues or ends. As I cause these words to be recorded, the Golden Path continues and for that, at least, I am content.

I no longer feel the sandtrout cilia probing my flesh, encapsulating the water of my body within their placental barriers. We are virtually one body now, they my skin and I the force which moves the whole … most of the time.

At this writing, the whole could be considered rather gross. I am what could be called a pre-worm. My body is about seven metres long and somewhat more than two metres in diameter, ribbed for most of its length, with my Atreides face positioned man-height at one end, the arms and hands (still quite recognizable as human) just below. My legs and feet? Well, they are mostly atrophied. Just flippers, really, and they have wandered back along my body. The whole of me weighs approximately five old tons. These items I append because I know they will have historical interest.

How do I carry this weight around? Mostly on my Royal Cart which is of Ixian manufacture. You are shocked? People invariably hated and feared the Ixians even more than they hated and feared me. Better the devil you know. And who knows what the Ixians might manufacture or invent? Who knows?

I certainly don’t. Not all of it.

But I have a certain sympathy for the Ixians. They believe so strongly in their technology, their science, their machines. Because we believe (no matter the content) we understand each other, the Ixians and I. They make many devices for me and think they earn my gratitude thus. These very words you are reading were printed by an Ixian device, a dictatel it is called. If I cast my thoughts in a particular mode, the dictatel is activated. I merely think in this mode and the words are printed for me on ridulian crystal sheets only one molecule thick. Sometimes I order copies printed on material of lesser permanence. It was two of these latter types that were stolen from me by Siona.

Isn’t she fascinating, my Siona? As you come to understand her importance to me, you may even question whether I really would have let her die there in the forest. Have no doubt about it. Death is a very personal thing. I will seldom interfere with it. Never in the case of someone who must be tested as Siona requires. I could let her die at any stage. After all, I could bring up a new candidate in very little time as I measure time.

She fascinates even me, though. I watched her there in the forest. Through my Ixian devices I watched her, wondering why I had not anticipated this venture. But Siona is … Siona. That is why I made no move to stop the wolves. It would have been wrong to do that. The D-wolves are but an extension of my purpose and my purpose is to be the greatest predator ever known.

—The Journals of Leto II

The following brief dialogue is credited to a manuscript source called “The Welbeck Fragment”. The reputed author is Siona Atreides. The participants are Siona herself and her father, Moneo, who was (as all the histories tell us) a major-domo and chief aide to Leto II. It is dated at a time when Siona was still in her teens and was being visited by her father at her quarters in the Fish Speaker school at the Festival City of Onn, a major population centre on the planet now known as Rakis. According to the manuscript identification papers, Moneo had visited his daughter secretly to warn her that she risked destruction.

SIONA: How have you survived with him for so long a time, father? He kills those who are close to him. Everyone knows that.

MONEO: No! You are wrong. He kills no one.

SIONA: You needn’t lie about him.

MONEO: I mean it. He kills no one.

SIONA: Then how do you account for the known deaths?

MONEO: It is the worm that kills. The worm of God. Leto lives in the bosom of God but he kills no one.

SIONA: Then how do you survive?

MONEO: I can recognize the worm. I can see it in his face and in his movements. I know when Shai-Hulud approaches.

SIONA: He is not Shai-Hulud!

MONEO: Well, that’s what they called the worm in the Fremen days.

SIONA: I’ve read about that. But he is not the God of the desert.

MONEO: Be quiet, you foolish girl! You know nothing of such things.

SIONA: I know that you are a coward.

MONEO: How little you know. You have never stood where I have stood and seen it in his eyes, in the movements of his hands.

SIONA: What do you do when the worm approaches?

MONEO: I leave.

SIONA: That’s prudent. He has killed nine Duncan Idahos that we know about for sure.

MONEO: I tell you he kills no one!

SIONA: What’s the difference? Leto or worm, they are one body now.

MONEO: But they are two separate beings—Leto the Emperor and the worm who is God.

SIONA: You’re mad!

MONEO: Perhaps. But I do serve God.

I am the most ardent people-watcher who ever lived. I watch them inside me and outside. Past and present can mingle with odd impositions in me. And as the metamorphosis continues in my flesh wonderful things happen to my senses. It’s as though I sensed everything in close-up. I have extremely acute hearing and vision plus a sense of smell extraordinarily discriminating. I can detect and identify pheromones at three parts per million. I know. I have tested it. You cannot hide very much from my senses. I think it would horrify you what I can detect by smell alone. Your pheromones tell me what you are doing or are prepared to do. And gesture and posture! I stared for half a day once at an old man sitting on a bench in Arrakeen. He was a fifth-generation descendant of Stilgar the Naib and did not even know it. I studied the angle of his neck, the skin flaps below his chin, the cracked lips and moistness about his nostrils, the pores behind his ears, the wisps of grey hair which crept from beneath the hood of his antique still-suit. Not once did he detect that he was being watched. Hah! Stilgar would have known it in a second or two. But this old man was just waiting for someone who never came. He got up finally and tottered off. He was very stiff after all of that sitting. I knew I would never see him in the flesh again. He was that near death and his water was sure to be wasted. Well, that no longer mattered.

—The Stolen Journals

Leto thought it the most interesting place in the universe, this place where he awaited the arrival of his current Duncan Idaho. By most human standards, it was a gigantic space, the core of an elaborate series of catacombs beneath his Citadel. Radiating chambers thirty metres high and twenty metres wide ran like spokes from the hub where he waited. His cart had been positioned at the centre of the hub in a domed and circular chamber four hundred metres in diameter and one hundred metres high at its tallest point above him.

He found these dimensions reassuring.

It was early afternoon at the Citadel, but the only light in his chamber came from the random drifting of a few suspensor-borne glowglobes tuned into low orange. The light did not penetrate far into the spokes, but Leto’s memories told him the exact position of everything there—the water, the bones, the dust of his ancestors and of the Atreides who had lived and died since the Dune times. All of them were here plus a few containers of melange to create the illusion that this was all of his hoard should it ever come to such an extreme.

Leto knew why the Duncan was coming. Idaho had learned that the Tleilaxu were making another Duncan, another ghola created to the specifications demanded by the God Emperor. This Duncan feared that he was being replaced after almost sixty years of service. It was always something of that nature which began the subversion of the Duncans. A Guild envoy had waited upon Leto earlier to warn that the Ixians had delivered a lasgun to this Duncan.

Leto chuckled. The Guild remained extremely sensitive to anything which might threaten their slender supply of spice. They were terrified at the thought that Leto was the last link with the sandworms which had produced the original stockpiles of melange.

If I die away from water there will be no more spice, not ever.

That was the Guild’s fear. And their historian-accountants assured them Leto sat on the largest store of melange in the universe. The knowledge made the Guild almost reliable as allies.

While he waited, Leto did the hand and finger exercises of his Bene Gesserit inheritance. The hands were his pride. Beneath a grey membrane of sandtrout skin, their long digits and opposable thumbs could be used much as any human hands. The almost useless flippers which once had been his feet and legs were more inconvenience than shame. He could crawl, roll and toss his body with astonishing speed, but he sometimes fell on the flippers and there was pain.

What was delaying the Duncan?

Leto imagined the man vacillating, staring out of a window across the fluid horizon of the Sareer. The air was alive with heat today. Before descending to the crypt, Leto had seen a mirage in the southwest. The heat-mirror tipped and flashed an image across the sand, showing him a band of Museum Fremen trudging past a Display Sietch for the edification of tourists.

It was cool in the crypt, always cool, the illumination always low. Tunnel spokes were dark holes sloping upward and downward in gentle gradients to accommodate the Royal Cart. Some tunnels extended beyond false walls for many kilometres, passages Leto had created for himself with Ixian tools—feeding tunnels and secret ways.

As he contemplated the coming interview, a sense of nervousness began to grow in Leto. He found this an interesting emotion, one he had been known to enjoy. Leto knew that he had grown reasonably fond of the current Duncan. There was a reservoir of hope in Leto that the man would survive the coming interview. Sometimes they did. There was little likelihood the Duncan posed a mortal threat, although this had to be left to such chance as existed. Leto had tried to explain this to one of the earlier Duncans … right here in this room.

“You will think it strange that I, with my powers, can speak of luck and chance,” Leto had said.

The Duncan had been angry. “You leave nothing to chance! I know you!”

“How naive. Chance is the nature of our universe.”

“Not chance! Mischief. And you’re the author of mischief!”

“Excellent, Duncan! Mischief is a most profound pleasure. It’s in the ways we deal with mischief that we sharpen creativity.”

“You’re not even human anymore!” Oh, how angry the Duncan had been.

Leto had found this accusation irritating, like a grain of sand in an eye. He held on to the remnants of his once-human self with a grimness which could not be denied, although irritation was the closest he could come to anger.

“Your life is becoming a cliche,” Leto had accused.

Whereupon the Duncan had produced a small explosive from the folds of his uniform robe. What a surprise!

Leto loved surprises, even nasty ones.

It is something I did not predict! And he said as much to the Duncan who had stood there oddly undecided now that decision was absolutely demanded of him.

“This could kill you,” the Duncan said.

“I’m sorry, Duncan. It will do a small amount of injury, no more.”

“But you said you didn’t predict this!” The Duncan’s voice had grown shrill.

“Duncan, Duncan, it is absolute prediction which equals death to me. How unutterably boring death is.”

At the last instant, the Duncan had tried to throw the explosive to one side, but the material in it had been unstable and it had gone off too soon. The Duncan had died. Ahh, well—the Tleilaxu always had another in their axlotl tanks.

One of the drifting glowglobes above Leto began to blink. Excitement gripped him. Moneo’s signal! Faithful Moneo had alerted his God Emperor that the Duncan was descending to the crypt.

The door to the human lift between two spoked passages in the northwest arc of the hub swung open. The Duncan strode forth, a small figure at that distance, but Leto’s eyes discerned even tiny details—a wrinkle on the uniform elbow which said the man had been leaning somewhere, chin in hand. Yes, there were still the marks of his hand on the chin. The Duncan’s odour preceded him: the man was high on his own adrenalin.

Leto remained silent while the Duncan approached, observing details. The Duncan still walked with the spring of youth despite all of his long service. He could thank a minimal ingestion of melange for that. The man wore the old Atreides uniform, black with a golden hawk at the left breast. An interesting statement, that: “I serve the honour of the old Atreides!” His hair was still the black cap of karakul, the features fixed in stony sharpness with high cheekbones.

The Tleilaxu make their gholas well, Leto thought.

The Duncan carried a thin briefcase woven of dark brown fibres, one he had carried for many years. It usually contained the material upon which he based his reports, but today it bulged with some heavier weight.

The Ixian lasgun.

Idaho kept his attention on Leto’s face as he walked. The face remained disconcertingly Atreides, lean features with eyes of total blue which the nervous felt as a physical intrusion. It lurked deep within a grey cowl of sandtrout skin which, Idaho knew, could roll forward protectively in a flickering reflex—a faceblink rather than an eyeblink. The skin was pink within its grey frame. It was difficult avoiding the thought that Leto’s face was an obscenity, a lost bit of humanity trapped in something alien.

Stopping only six paces from the Royal Cart, Idaho did not attempt to conceal his angry determination. He did not even think about whether Leto knew of the lasgun. This Imperium had wandered too far from the old Atreides morality, had become an impersonal juggernaut which crushed the innocent in its path. It had to be ended!

“I have come to talk to you about Siona and other matters,” Idaho said. He brought the case into position where he could withdraw the lasgun easily.

“Very well.” Leto’s voice was full of boredom.

“Siona was the only one who escaped, but she still has a base of rebel companions.”

“You think I don’t know this?”

“I know your dangerous tolerance for rebels! What I don’t know is the contents of that package she stole.”

“Oh, that. She has the complete plans for the Citadel.”

For just a moment, Idaho was Leto’s Guard Commander, deeply shocked at such a breach of security.

“You let her escape with that?”

“No, you did.”

Idaho recoiled from this accusation. Slowly, the newly resolved assassin in him regained ascendancy.

“Is that all she got?” Idaho asked.

“I had two volumes, copies of my journal, in with the charts. She stole the copies.”

Idaho studied Leto’s immobile face. “What is in these journals? Sometimes you say it’s a diary, sometimes a history.”

“A bit of both. You might even call it a textbook.”

“Does it bother you that she took these volumes?”

Leto allowed himself a soft smile which Idaho accepted as a negative answer. A momentary tension rippled through Leto’s body then as Idaho reached into the slim case. Would it be the weapon or the reports? Although the core of his body possessed a powerful resistance to heat, Leto knew that some of his flesh was vulnerable to a lasgun, especially the face.

Idaho brought a report from his case and, even before he began reading from it, the signals were obvious to Leto. Idaho was seeking answers, not providing information. Idaho wanted justification for a course of action already chosen.

“We have discovered a cult of Alia on Giedi Prime,” Idaho said.

Leto remained silent while Idaho recounted the details. How boring. Leto let his thoughts wander. The worshippers of his father’s long-dead sister served these days only to provide occasional amusement. The Duncans predictably saw such activity as a kind of underground threat.

Idaho finished reading. His agents were thorough, no denying it. Boringly thorough.

“This is nothing more than a revival of Isis,” Leto said.

“My priests and priestesses will have some sport suppressing this cult and its followers.”

Idaho shook his head as though responding to a voice within it.

“The Bene Gesserit knew about the cult,” he said.

Now that interested Leto.

“The Sisterhood has never forgiven me for taking their breeding programme away from them,” he said.

“This has nothing to do with breeding.”

Leto concealed mild amusement. The Duncans were always so sensitive on the subject of breeding, although some of them occasionally stood at stud.

“I see,” Leto said. “Well, the Bene Gesserit are all more than a little insane, but madness represents a chaotic reservoir of surprises. Some surprises can be valuable.”

“I fail to see any value in this.”

“Do you think the Sisterhood was behind this cult?” Leto asked.

“I do.”

“Explain.”

“They had a shrine. They called it ‘The Shrine of the Crysknife’.”

“Did they now?”

“And their chief priestess was called ‘The Keeper of Jessica’s Light’. Does that suggest anything?”

“It’s lovely!” Leto did not try to conceal his amusement.

“What is lovely about it?”

“They unite my grandmother and my aunt into a single goddess.”

Idaho shook his head slowly from side to side, not understanding.

Leto permitted himself a small internal pause, less than a blink. The grandmother-within did not particularly care for this Giedi Prime cult. He was required to wall off her memories and her identity.

“What do you suppose was the purpose of this cult?” Leto asked.

“Obvious. A competing religion to undermine your authority.”

“That’s too simple. Whatever else they may be, the Bene Gesserit are not simpletons.”

Idaho waited for an explanation.

“They want more spice!” Leto said. “More Reverend Mothers.”

“So they annoy you until you buy them off?”

“I am disappointed in you, Duncan.”

Idaho merely stared up at Leto, who contrived a sigh, a complicated gesture no longer intrinsic to his new form. The Duncans usually were brighter, but Leto supposed that this one’s plot had clouded his alertness.

“They chose Giedi Prime as their home,” Leto said. “What does that suggest?”

“It was a Harkonnen stronghold, but that’s ancient history.”

“Your sister died there, a victim of the Harkonnens. It is right that the Harkonnens and Giedi Prime be united in your thoughts. Why did you not mention this earlier?”

“I didn’t think it was important.”

Leto drew his mouth into a tight line. The reference to his sister had troubled the Duncan. The man knew intellectually that he was only the latest in a long line of fleshly revivals, all products of the Tleilaxu axlotl tanks and taken from the original cells at that. The Duncan could not escape his revived memories. He knew that the Atreides had rescued him from Harkonnen bondage.

And whatever else I may be, Leto thought, I am still Atreides.

“What’re you trying to say?” Idaho demanded.

Leto decided that a shout was required. He let it be a loud one: “The Harkonnens were spice hoarders!”

Idaho recoiled a full step.

Leto continued in a lower voice: “There’s an undiscovered melange hoard on Giedi Prime. The Sisterhood was trying to winkle it out with their religious tricks as a cover.”

Idaho was abashed. Once it was spoken, the answer appeared obvious.

And I missed it, he thought.

Leto’s shout had shaken him back into his role as Commander of the Royal Guard. Idaho knew about the economics of the empire, simplified in the extreme: no interest charges permitted; cash on the barrel head. The only coinage bore a likeness of Leto’s cowled face: The God Emperor. But it was all based on the spice, a substance whose value, though enormous, kept increasing. A man could carry the price of an entire planet in his hand luggage.

“Control the coinage and the courts. Let the rabble have the rest,” Leto thought. Old Jacob Broom said it and Leto could hear the old man chortling within. “Things haven’t changed all that much, Jacob.”

Idaho took a deep breath. “The Bureau of the Faith should be notified immediately.”

Leto remained silent.

Taking this as a cue to continue, Idaho went on with his reports, but Leto listened with only a fraction of his awareness. It was like a monitoring circuit which only recorded Idaho’s words and actions with but an occasional intensification for an internal comment:

And now he wants to talk about the Tleilaxu.

That is dangerous ground for you, Duncan.

But this opened up a new avenue for Leto’s reflection.

The wily Tleilaxu still produce my Duncans from the original cells. They do a religiously forbidden thing and we both know it. I do not permit the artificial manipulation of human genetics. But the Tleilaxu have learned how I treasure the Duncans as the captains of my Guard. I do not think they suspect the amusement value in this. It amuses me that a river now bears the Idaho name where once it was a mountain. That mountain no longer exists. We brought it down to get material for the high walls which girdle my Sareer.

Of course, the Tleilaxu know that I occasionally breed the Duncans back into my own programme. The Duncans represent mongrel strength…and much more. Every fire must have its damper.

It was my intent to breed this one with Siona, but that may not be possible now.

Hah! He says he wants me to “crack down” on the Tleilaxu. Why will he not ask it straight out? “Are you preparing to replace me?”

I am tempted to tell him.

Once more, Idaho’s hand went into the slender pouch. Leto’s introspective monitoring did not miss a beat.

The lasgun or more reports? It is more reports.

The Duncan remains wary. He wants not only the assurance that I am ignorant of his intent but more “proofs” that I am unworthy of his loyalty. He hesitates in a prolonged fashion. He always has. I have told him enough times that I will not use my prescience to predict the moment of my exit from this ancient form. But he doubts. He always was a doubter.

This cavernous chamber drinks up his voice and, were it not for my sensitivity, the dankness here would mask the chemical evidence of his fears. I fade his voice out of immediate awareness. What a bore this Duncan has become. He is recounting the history, the history of Siona’s rebellion, no doubt leading up to personal admonitions about her latest escapade.

“It’s not an ordinary rebellion,” he says.

That brings me back! Fool. All rebellions are ordinary and an ultimate bore. They are copied out of the same pattern, one much like another. The driving force is adrenalin addiction and the desire to gain personal power. All rebels are closet aristocrats. That’s why I can convert them so easily.

Why do the Duncans never really hear me when I tell them about this? I have had the argument with this very Duncan.

It was one of our earliest confrontations right here in the crypt.

“The art of government requires that you never give up the initiative to radical elements,” he said.

How pedantic. Radicals crop up in every generation and you must not try to prevent this. That’s what he means by “give up the initiative”. He wants to crush them, suppress them, control them, prevent them. He is living proof that there is little difference between the police mind and the military mind.

I told him, “Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer.”

“They are dangerous. They are dangerous!” He thinks that by repeating he creates some kind of truth.

Slowly, step by step, I lead him through my method and he even gives the appearance of listening.

“This is their weakness, Duncan. Radicals always see matters in terms which are too simple—black and white, good and evil, them and us. By addressing complex matters in that way, they rip open a passage for chaos. The art of government, as you call it, is the mastery of chaos.”

“No one can deal with every surprise.”

“Surprise? Who’s talking about surprise? Chaos is no surprise. It has predictable characteristics. For one thing, it carries away order and strengthens the forces at the extremes.”

“Isn’t that what radicals are trying to do? Aren’t they trying to shake things up so they can grab control?”

“That’s what they think they’re doing. Actually, they’re creating new extremists, new radicals and they are continuing the old process.”

“What about a radical who sees the complexities and comes at you that way?”

“That’s no radical. That’s a rival for leadership.”

“But what do you do?”

“You co-opt them or kill them. That’s how the struggle for leadership originated, at the grunt level.”

“Yes, but what about messiahs?”

“Like my father?”

The Duncan does not like this question. He knows that in a very special way I am my father. He knows I can speak with my father’s voice and persona, that the memories are precise, never edited and inescapable.

Reluctantly, he says: “Well… if you want.”

“Duncan, I am all of them and I know. There has never been a truly selfless rebel, just hypocrites—conscious hypocrites or unconscious hypocrites, it’s all the same.”

That stirs up a small hornets’ nest among my ancestral memories. Some of them have never given up the belief that they and they alone held the key to all of humankind’s problems. Well, in that, they are like me. I can sympathize even while I tell them that failure is its own demonstration.

I am forced to block them off, though. There’s no sense dwelling on them. They now are little more than poignant reminders … as is this Duncan who stands in front of me with his lasgun …

Great Gods below! He has caught me napping. He has the lasgun in his hand and it is pointed at my face.

“You, Duncan? Have you betrayed me, too?’

Et tu, Brute?

Every fibre of Leto’s awareness came to full alert. He could feel his body twitching. The worm-flesh had a will of its own.

Idaho spoke with derision: “Tell me, Leto: How many times must I pay the debt of loyalty?”

Leto recognized the inner question: “How many of me have there been?” The Duncans always wanted to know this. Every Duncan asked it and no answer satisfied. They doubted.

In his saddest Muad’Dib voice, Leto asked: “Do you take no pride in my admiration, Duncan? Haven’t you ever wondered what it is about you that makes me desire you as my constant companion through the centuries?”

“You know me to be the ultimate fool!”

“Duncan!”

The voice of an angry Muad’Dib could always be counted on to shatter Idaho. Despite the fact that Idaho knew no Bene Gesserit had ever mastered the powers of Voice as Leto had mastered them, it was predictable that he would dance to this one voice. The lasgun wavered in his hand.

That was enough. Leto was off the cart in a hurtling roll. Idaho had never seen him leave the cart this way, had not even suspected it could happen. For Leto, there were only two requirements—a real threat which the worm-body could sense and the release of that body. The rest was automatic and the speed of it always astonished even Leto.

The lasgun was his major concern. It could scratch him badly, but few understood the abilities of the pre-worm body to deal with heat.

Leto struck Idaho while rolling and the lasgun was deflected as it was fired. One of the useless flippers which had been Leto’s legs and feet sent a shocking burst of sensations crashing into his awareness. For an instant, there was only pain. But the worm-body was free to act and reflexes ignited a violent paroxysm of flopping. Leto heard bones cracking. The lasgun was thrown far across the floor of the crypt by a spasmodic jerk of Idaho’s hand.

Rolling off Idaho, Leto poised himself for a renewed attack but there was no need. The injured flipper still sent pain signals and he sensed that the tip of the flipper had been burned away. The sandtrout skin already had sealed the wound. The pain had eased to an ugly throbbing.

Idaho stirred. There could be little doubt that he had been mortally injured. His chest was visibly crushed. There was obvious agony when he tried to breathe, but he opened his eyes and stared up at Leto.

The persistence of these mortal possessions! Leto thought.

“Siona,” Idaho gasped.

Leto saw the life leave him then.

Interesting, Leto thought. Is it possible that this Duncan and Siona … No! This Duncan always displayed a true sneering disdain for Siona’s foolishness.

Leto climbed back on to the Royal Cart. That had been a close one. There could be little doubt that the Duncan had been aiming for the brain. Leto was always aware that his hands and feet were vulnerable, but he had allowed no one to learn that what had once been his brain was no longer directly associated with his face. It was not even a brain of human dimensions anymore, but had spread in nodal congeries throughout his body. He had told this to no one but his journals.

Oh, the landscapes I have seen! And the people! The far wanderings of the Fremen and all the rest of it. Even back through the myths to Terra. Oh, the lessons in astronomy and intrigue, the migrations, the dishevelled flights, the leg-aching and lung-aching runs through so many nights on all of those cosmic specks where we have defended our transient possession. I tell you we are a marvel and my memories leave no doubt of this.

—The Stolen Journals

The woman working at the small wall desk was too big for the narrow chair on which she perched. Outside, it was mid-morning, but in this windowless room deep beneath the city of Onn there was but a single glowglobe high in a corner. It had been tuned to warm yellow but the light failed to dispel the grey utility of the small room. Walls and ceilings were covered by identical rectangular panels of dull grey metal.

There was only one other piece of furniture, a narrow cot with a thin pallet covered by a featureless grey blanket. It was obvious that neither piece of furniture had been designed for the occupant.

She wore a one-piece pyjama suit of dark blue which stretched tightly across her wide shoulders as she hunched over the desk. The glowglobe illuminated closely cropped blonde hair and the right side of her face, emphasizing the square block of jaw. The jaw moved with silent words as her thick fingers carefully depressed the keys of a thin keyboard on the desk. She handled the machine with a deference which had originated as awe and moved reluctantly into fearsome excitement. Long familiarity with the machine had eliminated neither emotion.

As she wrote, words appeared on a screen concealed within the wall rectangle exposed by the downward folding of the desk.

“Siona continues actions which predict violent attack on Your Holy Person,” she wrote. “Siona remains unswerving in her avowed purpose. She told me today that she will give copies of the stolen books to groups whose loyalty to You cannot be trusted. The named recipients are the Bene Gesserit, the Guild and the Ixians. She says the books contain Your enciphered words and, by this gift, she seeks help in translating Your Holy Words.

“Lord, I do not know what great revelations may be concealed on those pages, but if they contain anything of threat to Your Holy Person I beg You to relieve me from my vow of obedience to Siona. I do not understand why You made me take this vow but I fear it.

“I remain Your worshipful servant, Nayla.”

The chair creaked as Nayla sat back and thought about her words. The room fell into the almost soundless withdrawal of thick insulation. There was only Nayla’s faint breathing and a distant throbbing of machinery felt more in the floor than in the air.

Nayla stared at her message on the screen. Destined only for the eyes of the God Emperor, it required more than holy truthfulness. It demanded a deep candour which she found draining. Presently, she nodded and pressed the key which would encode the words and prepare them for transmission. Bowing her head, she prayed silently before concealing the desk within the wall. These actions, she knew, transmitted the message. God himself had implanted a physical device within her head, swearing her to secrecy and warning her that there might come a time when he would speak to her through the thing within her skull. He had never done this. She suspected that Ixians had fashioned the device. It had possessed some of their look. But God Himself had done this thing and she could ignore the suspicion that there might be a computer in it, that it might be prohibited by the Great Convention.

“Make no device in the likeness of the mind!”

Nayla shuddered. She stood then and moved her chair to its regular position beside the cot. Her heavy, muscular body strained against the thin blue garment. There was a steady deliberation about her, the actions of someone constantly adjusting to great physical strength. She turned at the cot and studied the place where the desk had been. There was only a rectangular grey panel like all the others. No bit of lint, no strand of hair, nothing caught there to reveal the panel’s secret.

Nayla took a deep, restorative breath and let herself out of the room’s only door into a grey passage dimly lighted by widely spaced white glowglobes. The machinery sounds were louder here. She turned left and a few minutes later was with Siona in a somewhat larger room, a table at its centre upon which things stolen from the Citadel had been arranged. Two silvery glowglobes illuminated the scene—Siona seated at the table with an assistant named Topri standing beside her.

Nayla nurtured grudging admiration for Siona, but Topri, there was a man worthy of nothing except active dislike. He was a nervous fat man with bulging green eyes, a pug nose and thin lips above a dimpled chin. Topri squeaked when he spoke.

“Look here, Nayla! Look what Siona has found pressed between the pages of these two books.”

Nayla closed and locked the room’s single door.

“You talk too much, Topri,” Nayla said. “You’re a blurter. How could you know if I was alone in the passage?”

Topri paled. An angry scowl settled on to his face.

“I’m afraid she’s right,” Siona said. “What made you think I wanted Nayla to know about my discovery?”

“You trust her with everything!”

Siona turned her attention to Nayla. “Do you know why I trust you, Nayla?” The question was asked in a flat, unemotional voice.

Nayla put down a sudden surge of fear. Had Siona discovered her secret?

Have I failed my Lord?

“Have you no response to my question?” Siona asked.

“Have I ever given you cause to do otherwise?” Nayla asked.

“That’s not a sufficient cause for trust,” Siona said. “There’s no such thing as perfection—not in human or machine.”

“Then why do you trust me?”

“Your words and your actions always agree. It’s a marvellous quality. For instance, you don’t like Topri and you never try to conceal your dislike.”

Nayla glanced at Topri, who cleared his throat.

“I don’t trust him,” Nayla said.

The words popped into her mind and out of her mouth without reflection. Only after she had spoken did Nayla realize the true core of her dislike: Topri would betray anyone for personal gain.

Has he found me out?

Still scowling, Topri said, “I am not going to stand here and accept your abuse.” He started to leave but Siona held up a restraining hand. Topri hesitated.

“Although we speak the old Fremen words and swear our loyalty to each other, that is not what holds us together,” Siona said. “Everything is based on performance. That is all I measure. Do you understand, both of you?”

Topri nodded automatically, but Nayla shook her head from side to side.

Siona smiled up at her. “You don’t always agree with my decisions, do you, Nayla?”

“No,” The word was forced from her.

“And you have never tried to conceal your disagreement, yet you always obey me. Why?”

“That is what I have sworn to do.”

“But I have said this is not enough.”

Nayla knew she was perspiring, knew this was revealing, but she could not move. What am I to do? I swore to God that I would obey Siona but I cannot tell her this.

“You must answer my question,” Siona said. “I command it.”

Nayla caught her breath. This was the dilemma she had most feared. There was no way out. She said a silent prayer and spoke in a low voice.

“I have sworn to God that I will obey you.”

Siona clapped her hands in glee and laughed.

“I knew it!”

Topri chuckled.

“Shut up, Topri,” Siona said. “I am trying to teach you a lesson. You don’t believe in anything, not even in yourself.”

“But I…”

“Be still, I say! Nayla believes. I believe. This is what holds us together. Belief.”

Topri was astonished. “Belief? You believe in…”

“Not in the God Emperor, you fool! We believe that a higher power will settle with the tyrant Worm. We are that higher power.”

Nayla took a trembling breath.

“It’s all right, Nayla,” Siona said. “I don’t care where you draw your strength, just as long as you believe.”

Nayla managed a smile, then grinned. She had never been more profoundly stirred by the wisdom of her Lord. I may speak the truth and it works only for my God!

“Let me show you what I’ve found in these books,” Siona said. She gestured at some sheets of ordinary paper on the table. “Pressed between the pages.”

Nayla stepped around the table and looked down at it.

“First, there’s this.” Siona held up an object which Nayla had not noticed. It was a thin strand of something … and what appeared to be a …

“A flower?” Nayla asked.

“This was between two pages of paper. On the paper was written this.”

Siona leaned over the table and read: “A strand of Ghanima’s hair with a starflower blossom which she once brought me.”

Looking up at Nayla, Siona said: “Our God Emperor is revealed as a sentimentalist. That is a weakness I had not expected.”

“Ghanima?” Nayla asked.

“His sister! Remember your Oral History.”

“Oh … oh, yes. The Prayer to Ghanima.”

“Now, listen to this.” Siona took up another sheet of paper and read from it.

“The sand beach as grey as a dead cheek,

A green tideflow reflects cloud ripples;

I stand on the dark wet edge.

Cold foam cleanses my toes.

I smell driftwood smoke.”

Again, Siona looked up at Nayla. “This is identified as ‘Words I wrote when told of Ghani’s death.’ What do you think of that?”

“He… he loved his sister.”

“Yes! He is capable of love. Oh, yes! We have him now.”

Sometimes I indulge myself in safaris which no other being may take. I strike inward along the axis of my memories. Like a schoolchild reporting on a vacation trip, I take up my subject. Let it be… female intellectuals! I course backward into the ocean which is my ancestors. I am a great winged fish in the depths. The mouth of my awareness opens and I scoop them up! Sometimes … sometimes I hunt out specific persons recorded in our histories. What a private joy to relive the life of such a one while I mock the academic pretensions which supposedly formed a biography.

—The Stolen Journals

Moneo descended to the crypt with sad resignation. There was no escaping the duties required of him now. The God Emperor required a small passage of time to grieve the loss of another Duncan … but then life went on … and on …

The lift slid silently downward with its superb Ixian dependability. Once, just once, the God Emperor had cried out to his majordomo: “Moneo! Sometimes I think you were made by the Ixians!”

Moneo felt the lift stop. The door opened and he looked out across the crypt at the shadowy bulk on the Royal Cart. There was no indication that Leto had noticed the arrival. Moneo sighed and began the long walk through the echoing gloom. There was a body on the floor near the cart. No need for deja vu. This was merely familiar.

Once, in Moneo’s early days of service, Leto had said: “You don’t like this place, Moneo. I can see that.’ “No, Lord.”

With just a little prodding of memory, Moneo could hear his own voice in that naive past. And the voice of the God Emperor responding:

“You don’t think of a mausoleum as a comforting place, Moneo. I find it a source of infinite strength.”

Moneo remembered that he had been anxious to get off this topic. “Yes, Lord.”

Leto had persisted: “There are only a few of my ancestors here. The water of Muad’Dib is here. Ghani and Harq al-Ada are here, of course, but they’re not my ancestors. No, if there’s any true crypt of my ancestors, I am that crypt. This is mostly the Duncans and the products of my breeding programme. You’ll be here someday.”

Moneo found that these memories had slowed his pace. He sighed and moved a bit faster. Leto could be violently impatient on occasion but there was still no sign from him. Moneo did not take this to mean that his approach went unobserved.

Leto lay with his eyes closed and only his other senses to record Moneo’s progress across the crypt. Thoughts of Siona had been occupying Leto’s attention.

Siona is my ardent enemy, he thought. I do not need Nayla’s words to confirm this. Siona is a woman of action. She lives on the surface of enormous energies which fill me with fantasies of delight. I cannot contemplate those living energies without a feeling of ecstasy. They are my reasons for being, the justification for everything I have ever done … even for the corpse of this foolish Duncan in front of me now.

Leto’s ears told him that Moneo had not yet crossed half the distance to the Royal Cart. The man moved slower and slower, then picked up his pace.

What a gift Moneo has given me in this daughter, Leto thought. Siona is fresh and precious. She is the new while I am a collection of the obsolete, a relic of the damned, of the lost and strayed. I am the waylaid pieces of history which sank out of sight in all of our pasts. Such an accumulation of riffraff has never before been imagined.

Leto paraded the past within him then to let them observe what had happened in the crypt.

The minutiae are mine!

Siona, though … Siona was like a clean slate upon which great things might yet be written.

I guard that slate with infinite care. I am preparing it, cleansing it.

What did the Duncan mean when he called out her name?

Moneo approached the cart diffidently yet consummately aware. Surely Leto did not sleep.

Leto opened his eyes and looked down as Moneo came to a stop near the corpse. At this moment, Leto found the majordomo a delight to observe. Moneo wore a white Atreides uniform with no insignia, a subtle comment. His face, almost as well known as Leto’s, was all the insignia he needed. Moneo waited patiently. There was no change of expression on his flat, even features. His thick, sandy hair lay in a neat, equally divided part. Deep within his grey eyes there was that look of directness which went with knowledge of great personal power. It was a look which he modified only in the God Emperor’s presence, and sometimes not even there. Not once did he glance toward the body on the crypt’s floor.

When Leto continued silent, Moneo cleared his throat, then: “I am saddened, Lord.”

Exquisite! Leto thought. He knows I feel true remorse about the Duncans. Moneo has seen their records and has seen enough of them dead. He knows that only nineteen Duncans died what people usually refer to as natural deaths.

“He had an Ixian lasgun,” Leto said.

Moneo’s gaze went directly to the gun on the floor of the crypt off to his left, demonstrating that he already had seen it. He returned his attention to Leto, sweeping a glance down the length of the great body.

“You are injured, Lord?”

“Inconsequential.”

“But he hurt you.”

“Those flippers are useless to me. They will be entirely gone within another two hundred years.”

“I will dispose of the Duncan’s body personally, Lord,” Moneo said. “Is there …’

“The piece of me he burned away is entirely ash. We will let it blow away. This is a fitting place for ashes.’

“As my Lord says.”

“Before you dispose of the body, disable the lasgun and keep it where I can present it to the Ixian ambassador. As for the Guildsman who warned us about it, present him personally with ten grammes of spice. Oh—and “our priestesses on Giedi Prime should be alerted to a hidden store of melange there, probably old Harkonnen contraband.”

“What do you wish done with it when it’s found, Lord?”

“Use a bit of it to pay the Tleilaxu for the new ghola. The rest of it can go into our stores here in the crypt.”

“Lord.” Moneo acknowledged the orders with a nod, a gesture which was not quite a bow. His gaze met Leto’s.

Leto smiled. He thought: We both know that Moneo will not leave without addressing directly the matter which most concerns us.

“I have seen the report on Siona,” Moneo said.

Leto’s smile widened. Moneo was such a pleasure in these moments. His words conveyed many things which did not require open discussion between them. His words and actions were in precise alignment, carried on the mutual awareness that he, of course, spied on everything. Now, there was a natural concern for his daughter, but he wished it understood that his concern for the God Emperor remained paramount. From his own traverse through a similar evolution, Moneo knew with precision the delicate nature of Siona’s present fortunes.

“Have I not created her, Moneo?” Leto asked. “Have I not controlled the conditions of her ancestry and her upbringing?”

“She is my only daughter, my only child, Lord.”

“In a way she reminds me of Harq al-Ada,” Leto said. “There doesn’t appear to be much of Ghani in her, although that has to be there. Perhaps she harks back to our ancestors in the Sisterhood’s breeding programme.”

“Why do you say that, Lord?”

Leto reflected. Was there need for Moneo to know this peculiar thing about his daughter? Siona could fade from the prescient view at times. The Golden Path remained, but Siona faded. Yet… she was not prescient. She was a unique phenomenon … and if she survived. Leto decided he would not cloud Moneo’s efficiency with unnecessary information.

“Remember your own past,” Leto said.

“Indeed, Lord! And she has such a potential, so much more than I ever had. But that makes her dangerous, too.”

“And she will not listen to you,” Leto said.

“No, but I have an agent in her rebellion.”

That will be Topri, Leto thought.

It required no prescience to know that Moneo would have an agent in place. Ever since the death of Siona’s mother, Leto had known with increasing sureness the course of Moneo’s actions. Nayla’s suspicions pinpointed Topri. And now, Moneo paraded his fears and actions, offering them as the price of his daughter’s continued safety.

How unfortunate he had fathered only the one child on that mother

“Recall how I treated you in similar circumstances,” Leto said. “You know the demands of the Golden Path as well as I do.”

“But I was young and foolish, Lord..”

“Young and brash, never foolish.”

Moneo managed a tight smile at this compliment, his thoughts leaning more and more toward the belief that he now understood Leto’s intentions. The dangers, though!

Feeding his belief, Leto said: “You know how much I enjoy surprises.”

That is true, Leto thought. Moneo does know it. But even while Siona surprises me she reminds me of what I fear most—the sameness and boredom which could break the Golden Path. Look at how boredom put me temporarily in the Duncan’s power! Siona is the contrast by which I know my deepest fears. Moneo’s concern for me is well grounded.

“My agent will continue to watch her new companions, Lord,” Moneo said. “I do not like them.”

“Her companions? I myself had such companions once long ago.”

“Rebellious, Lord? You?” Moneo was genuinely surprised.

“Have I not proved a friend of rebellion?”

“But Lord…”

“The aberrations of our past are more numerous than you may think!”

“Yes, Lord.” Moneo was abashed, yet still curious. And he knew that the God Emperor sometimes waxed loquacious after the death of a Duncan. “You must have seen many rebellions, Lord.”

Involuntarily, Leto’s thoughts sank into the memories aroused by these words.

“Ahhh, Moneo,” he muttered. “My travels in the ancestral mazes have memorized uncounted places and events which I never desire to see repeated.”

“I can imagine your inward travels, Lord.”

’No, you cannot. I have seen peoples and planets in such numbers that they lose meaning even in imagination. Ohhh, the landscapes I have passed. The calligraphy of alien roads glimpsed from space and imprinted upon my innermost sight. The eroded sculpture of canyons and cliffs and galaxies has imprinted upon me the certain knowledge that I am a mote.”

“Not you, Lord. Certainly not you.”

“Less than a mote! I have seen people and their fruitless societies in such repetitive posturings that their nonsense fills me with boredom, do you hear?”

“I did not mean to anger my Lord.” Moneo spoke meekly.

“You don’t anger me. Sometimes you irritate me, that is the extent of it. You cannot imagine what I have seen—caliphs and mjeeds, rakahs, rajas and bashars, kings and emperors, primitos and presidents—I’ve seen them all. Feudal chieftains, every one. Every one a little pharaoh.”

“Forgive my presumption, Lord.”

“Damn the Romans!” Leto cried.

He spoke it inwardly to his ancestors: “Damn the Romans!”

Their laughter drove him from the inward arena.

“I don’t understand, Lord,” Moneo ventured.

“That’s true. You don’t understand. The Romans broadcast the pharaonic disease like grain farmers scattering the seeds of next season’s harvest—Caesars, Kaisers, Tsars, Imperators, Caseris … Palatos … damned pharaohs!”

“My knowledge does not encompass all of those titles, Lord.”

“I may be the last of the lot, Moneo. Pray that this is so.”

“Whatever my Lord commands.”

Leto stared down at the man. “We are myth-killers, you and I, Moneo. That’s the dream we share. I assure you from a God’s Olympian perch that government is a shared myth. When the myth dies the government dies.”

“Thus you have taught me, Lord.”

“That man-machine, the Army, created our present dream, my friend.”

Moneo cleared his throat.

Leto recognized the small signs of the majordomo’s impatience.

Moneo understands about armies. He knows it was a fool’s dream that armies were the basic instrument of governance.

As Leto continued silent, Moneo crossed to the lasgun and retrieved it from the crypt’s cold floor. He began disabling it.

Leto watched him, thinking how this tiny scene encapsulated the essence of the Army myth. The Army fostered technology because the power of machines appeared so obvious to the short-sighted.

That lasgun is no more than a machine. But all machines fail or are superseded. Still, the Army worships at the shrine of such things—both fascinated and fearful. Look at how people fear the Ixians! In its guts, the Army knows it is the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. It unleashes technology and never again can the magic be stuffed back into the bottle.

I teach them another magic.

Leto spoke to the hordes within then:

“You see? Moneo has disabled the deadly instrument. A connection broken here, a small capsule crushed there.”

Leto sniffed. He smelled the esters of a preservative oil riding on the stink of Moneo’s perspiration.

Still speaking inwardly, Leto said: “But the genie is not dead. Technology breeds anarchy. It distributes these tools at random. And with them goes the provocation for violence. The ability to make and use savage destroyers falls inevitably into the hands of smaller and smaller groups until at last the group is a single individual.”

Moneo returned to a point below Leto, holding the disabled lasgun casually in his right hand. “There is talk on Parella and the planets of Dan about another jihad against such things as this.”

Moneo lifted the lasgun and smiled, signalling that he knew the paradox in such empty dreams.

Leto closed his eyes. The hordes within wanted to argue, but he shut them off, thinking: Jihads create armies. The Butlerian Jihad tried to rid our universe of machines which simulate the mind of man. The Butlerians left armies in their wake and the Ixians still make questionable devices … for which I thank them. What is anathema? The motivation to ravage, no matter the instruments.

“It happened,” he muttered.

“Lord?”

Leto opened his eyes. “I will go to my tower,” he said. “I must have more time to mourn my Duncan.”

“The new one is already on his way here,” Moneo said.

You, the first person to encounter my chronicles for at least four thousand years, beware. Do not feel honoured by your primacy in reading the revelations of my Ixian storehouse. You will find much pain in it. Other than the few glimpses required to assure me that the Golden Path continued, I never wanted to peer beyond those four millennia. Therefore, I am not sure what the events in my journals may signify to your times. I only know that my journals have suffered oblivion and that the events which I recount have undoubtedly been submitted to historical distortion for eons. I assure you that the ability to view our futures can become a bore. Even to be thought of as a god, as I certainly was, can become ultimately boring. It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will.

—Inscription over the storehouse entrance, Dar-es-Balat

I am Duncan Idaho.

That was about all he wanted to know for sure. He did not like the Tleilaxu explanations, their stories. But then the Tleilaxu had always been feared. Disbelieved and feared.

They had brought him down to the planet on a small Guild shuttle, arriving at the dusk line with a green glimmer of sun corona along the horizon as they dipped into the shadow. The spaceport had not looked at all like anything he remembered. It was larger and with a ring of strange buildings.

“Are you sure this is Dune?” he had asked.

“Arrakis,” his Tleilaxu escort had corrected him.

They had sped him in a sealed groundcar to this building somewhere within a city they called Onn, giving the “n” sound a strange rising nasal inflection. The room in which they left him was about three metres square, a cube really. There was no sign of glowglobes, but the place was filled with warm yellow light.

I am a ghola, he told himself.

That had been a shock, but he had to believe it. To find himself living when he knew he had died, that was proof enough. The Tleilaxu had taken cells from his dead flesh and they had grown a bud in one of their axlotl tanks. That bud had become this body in a process which had made him feel at first an alien in his own flesh.

He looked down at the body. It was clothed in dark brown trousers and jacket of a coarse weave which irritated his skin. Sandals protected his feet. Except for the body, that was all they had given him, a parsimony which said something about the real Tleilaxu character.

There was no furniture in the room. They had let him in through a single door which had no handle on the inside. He looked up at the ceiling and around at the walls, at the door. Despite the featureless character of the place, he felt that he was being watched.

“Women of the Imperial Guard will come for you,” they had said. Then they had gone away, smiling slyly among themselves.

Women of the Imperial Guard?

The Tleilaxu escort had taken sadistic delight in exposing their shape-changing abilities. He had not known from one minute to the next what new form the plastic flow of their flesh would present.

Damned Face Dancers!

They had known all about him, of course, had known how much the Shape Changers disgusted him.

What could he trust if it came from Face Dancers? Very little. Could anything they said be believed?

My name. I know my name.

And he had his memories. They had shocked the identity back into him. Gholas were supposed to be incapable of recovering the original identity. But the Tleilaxu had done it and he was forced to believe because he understood how it had been done.

In the beginning, he knew, there had been the fully formed ghola, adult flesh without name or memories—a palimpsest upon which the Tleilaxu could write almost anything they wished.

“You are Ghola,” they had said. That had been his only name for a long time. Ghola had been taken like a malleable infant and conditioned to kill a particular man—a man so like the original Paul-Muad’Dib he had served and adored that Idaho now suspected it might have been another ghola. But if that were true, where had they obtained the original cells?

Something in the Idaho cells had rebelled at killing an Atreides. He had found himself standing with a knife in one hand, the bound form of the pseudo-Paul staring up at him in angry terror.

Memories had gushed into his awareness. He remembered Ghola and he remembered Duncan Idaho.

I am Duncan Idaho, swordmaster of the Atreides.

He clung to this memory as he stood in the yellow room.

I died defending Paul and his mother in a cave sietch beneath the sands of Dune. I have been returned to that planet but Dune is no more. Now it is only Arrakis.

He had read the truncated history which the Tleilaxu provided, but he did not believe it. More than thirty-five hundred years? Who could believe his flesh existed after such a time? Except… with Tleilaxu it was possible. He had to believe his own senses.

“There have been many of you,” his instructors had said.

“How many?”

“The Lord Leto will provide that information.”

The Lord Leto?

The Tleilaxu history said this Lord Leto was Leto II, grandson of the Leto whom Idaho had served with fanatical devotion. But this second Leto (so the history said) had become something … something so strange that Idaho despaired of understanding the transformation.

How could a human slowly turn into a sandworm? How could any thinking creature live more than three thousand years? Not even the wildest projections of geriatric spice allowed such a lifespan.

Leto II, the God Emperor?

The Tleilaxu history was not to be believed!

Idaho remembered a strange child—twins really: Leto and Ghanima, Paul’s children, the children of Chani who had died delivering them. The Tleilaxu history said Ghanima had died after a relatively normal life, but the God Emperor Leto lived on and on and on …

“He is a tyrant,” Idaho’s instructors had said. “He has ordered us to produce you from our axlotl tanks and to send you into his service. We do not know what has happened to your predecessor.”

And here I am.

Once more, Idaho let his gaze wander around the featureless walls and ceiling.

The faint sound of voices intruded upon his awareness. He looked at the door. The voices were muted but at least one of them sounded female.

Women of the Imperial Guard?

The door swung inward on noiseless hinges. Two women entered. The first thing to catch his attention was the fact that one of the women wore a mask, a cibus hood of shapeless, light-drinking black. She would see him clearly through the hood, he knew, but her features would never reveal themselves, not even to the most subtle instruments of penetration. The hood said that the Ixians or their inheritors were still at work in the Imperium. Both women wore one-piece uniforms of rich blue with the Atreides hawk in red braid at the left breast.

Idaho studied them as they closed the door and faced him.

The masked woman had a blocky, powerful body. She moved with the deceptive care of a professional muscle fanatic. The other woman was graceful and slender with almond eyes in sharp, high-boned features. Idaho had the feeling that he had seen her somewhere but he could not fix the memory. Both women carried needle knives in hip sheaths. Something about their movements told Idaho these women would be extremely competent with such weapons.

The slender one spoke first.

“My name is Luli. Let me be the first to address you as Commander. My companion must remain anonymous. Our Lord Leto has commanded it. You may address her as Friend.”

“Commander?” he asked.

“It is the Lord Leto’s wish that you command his Royal Guard,” Luli said.

“That so? Let’s go and talk to him about it.”

“Oh, no!” Luli was visibly shocked. “The Lord Leto will summon you when it is time. For now, he wishes us to make you comfortable and happy.”

“And I must obey?”

Luli merely shook her head in puzzlement.

“Am I a slave?” Idaho asked.

Luli relaxed and smiled. “By no means. It’s just that the Lord Leto has many great concerns which require his personal attention. He must make time for you. He sent us because he was concerned about his Duncan Idaho. You have been a long time in the hands of the dirty Tleilaxu.”

Dirty Tleilaxu, Idaho thought.

That, at least, had not changed.

He was concerned, though, by a particular reference in Luli’s explanation.

“His Duncan Idaho?”

“Are you not an Atreides warrior?” Luli asked.

She had him there. Idaho nodded, turning his head slightly to stare at the enigmatic masked woman.

“Why are you masked?”

“It must not be known that I serve the Lord Leto,” she said. Her voice was a pleasant contralto but Idaho suspected that this, too, was masked by the cibus hood.

“Then why are you here?”

“The Lord Leto trusts me to determine if you have been tampered with by the dirty Tleilaxu.”

Idaho tried to swallow in a suddenly dry throat. This thought had occurred to him several times aboard the Guild transport. If the Tleilaxu could condition a ghola to attempt the murder of a dear friend, what else might they plant in the psyche of the regrown flesh?

“I see that you have thought about this,” the masked woman said.

“Are you a mentat?” Idaho asked.

“Oh, no!” Luli interrupted. “The Lord Leto does not permit the training of mentats.”

Idaho glanced at Luli, then returned his attention to the masked woman. No mentats. The Tleilaxu history had not mentioned that interesting fact. Why would Leto prohibit mentats? Surely, the human mind trained in the super-abilities of computation still had its uses. The Tleilaxu had assured him that the Great Convention remained in force and that mechanical computers were still anathema. Surely, these women would know that the Atreides themselves had used mentats.

“What is your opinion?” the masked woman asked. “Have the dirty Tleilaxu tampered with your psyche?”

“I don’t…think so.”

“But you are not certain?”

“No.”

“Do not fear, Commander Idaho,” she said. “We have ways of making sure and ways of dealing with such problems should they arise. The dirty Tleilaxu have tried it only once and they paid dearly for their mistake.”

“That’s reassuring. Did the Lord Leto send me any messages?”

Luli spoke up: “He told us to assure you that he still loves you as the Atreides have always loved you.” She was obviously awed by her own words.

Idaho relaxed slightly. As an old Atreides hand, superbly trained by them, he had found it easy to determine several things from this encounter. These two had been heavily conditioned to a fanatic obedience. If a cibus mask could hide the identity of that woman, there had to be many more whose bodies were very similar. All of this spoke of dangers around Leto which still required the old and subtle services of spies and an imaginative arsenal of weapons.

Luli looked at her companion. “What say you, Friend?”

“He may be brought to the Citadel,” the masked woman said. “This is not a good place. Tleilaxu have been here.”

“A warm bath and change of clothing would be pleasant,” Idaho said.

Luli continued to look at her Friend. “You are certain?”

“The wisdom of the Lord cannot be questioned,” the masked woman said.

Idaho did not like the sound of fanaticism in this Friend’s voice, but he felt secure in the integrity of the Atreides. They could appear cynical and cruel to outsiders and enemies, but to their own people they were just and they were loyal. Above all else, the Atreides were loyal to their own.

And I am one of theirs, Idaho thought. But what happened to the me that I am replacing? He felt strongly that these two would not answer this question.

But Leto will.

“Shall we go?” he asked. “I’m anxious to wash the stink of the dirty Tleilaxu off me.”

Luli grinned at him.

“Come. I shall bathe you myself.”

Enemies strengthen you

Allies weaken.

I tell you this in the hope that it will help you understand why I act as I do in the full knowledge that great forces accumulate in my empire with but one wish—the wish to destroy me. You who read these words may know full well what actually happened but I doubt that you understand it.

—The Stolen Journals

The ceremony of “Showing” by which the rebels began their meetings dragged on interminably for Siona. She sat in the front row and looked everywhere but at Topri who was conducting the ceremony only a few paces away. This room in the service burrows beneath Onn was one they had never used before but it was so like all of their other meeting places that it could have been used as a standard model.

Rebel Meeting Room—Class B she thought.

It was officially designated as a storage chamber and the fixed glowglobes could not be tuned away from their blank white glaring. The room was about thirty paces long and slightly less in width. It could be reached only through a labyrinthine series of similar chambers, one of which was conveniently stocked with a supply of stiff folding chairs intended for the small sleeping chambers of the service personnel. Nineteen of Siona’s fellow rebels now occupied these chairs around her, with a few empty for any latecomers who might still make the meeting.

The time had been set between the midnight and morning shifts to mask the flow of extra people in the service warrens. Most of the rebels wore energy-worker disguises—thin grey disposable trousers and jackets. Some few, including Siona, were garbed in the green of machinery inspectors.

Topri’s voice was an insistent monotone in the room. He did not squeak at all while conducting the ceremony. In fact, Siona had to admit he was rather good at it, especially with new recruits. Since Nayla’s flat statement that she did not trust the man, though, Siona had looked at Topri in a different way. Nayla could speak with a cutting naiveté which pulled away masks. And there were things that Siona had learned about Topri since that confrontation.

Siona turned at last and looked at the man. The cold silvery light did not help Topri’s pale skin. He used a copy of a crysknife in the ceremony, a contraband copy bought from the Museum Fremen. Siona recalled the transaction as she looked at the blade in Topri’s hands. It had been Topri’s idea and she had thought it a good one at the time. He had led her to the rendezvous in a hovel on the city’s outskirts, leaving Onn just at dusk. They had waited well into the night until darkness could mask the Museum Fremen’s coming. Fremen were not supposed to leave their sietch quarters without a special dispensation from the God Emperor.

She had almost given up on him when the Fremen arrived slipping in out of the night, his escort left behind to guard the door. Topri and Siona had been waiting on a crude bench against a dank wall of the absolutely plain room. The only light had come from a dim yellow torch supported on a stick driven into the crumbling mud wall.

The Fremen’s first words had filled Siona with misgivings.

“Have you brought the money?”

Both Topri and Siona had risen at his entry. Topri did not appear bothered by the question. He tapped the pouch beneath his robe, making it jingle.

“I have the money right here.”

The Fremen was a wizened figure, crabbed and bent, wearing a copy of the old Fremen robes and some glistening garment underneath, probably their version of a stillsuit.

His hood was drawn forward, shading his features. The torchlight sent shadows dancing across his face.

He peered first at Topri, then at Siona, before removing an object wrapped in cloth from beneath his robe.

“It is a true copy but it is made of plastic,” he said. “It will not cut cold grease.”

He pulled the blade from its wrappings then and held it up.

Siona, who had seen crysknives only in museums and in the rare old visual recordings of her family’s archives, had found herself oddly gripped by the sight of the blade in this setting. She felt something atavistic working on her and imagined this poor Museum Fremen with his plastic crysknife as a real Fremen of the old days. The thing he held was suddenly a silver-bladed crysknife shimmering in the yellow shadows.

“I guarantee the authenticity of the blade from which we copied it,” the Fremen said. He spoke in a low voice, somehow made menacing by its lack of emphasis.

Siona heard it then, the way he carried his venom in a sleeve of soft vowels and she was suddenly alerted.

“Try treachery and we will hunt you down like vermin,” she said.

Topri shot a startled glance at her.

The Museum Fremen appeared to shrivel, drawing in upon himself. The blade trembled in his hand, but his gnome fingers still curled inward around it as though clasping a throat.

“Treachery, Lady? Oh, no. But it occurred to us that we asked too little for this copy. Poor as it is, making it and selling it this way puts us in dreadful peril.”

Siona glared at him, thinking of the old Fremen words from the Oral History: “Once you acquire a marketplace soul, the suk is the totality of existence.”

“How much do you want?” she demanded.

He named a sum twice his original figure.

Topri gasped.

Siona looked at Topri. “Do you have that much?”

“Not quite, but we agreed on…”

“Give him what you have, all of it,” Siona said.

“All of it?”

“Isn’t that what I said? Every coin in that bag.” She faced the Museum Fremen. “You will accept this payment.” It was not a question and the old man heard her correctly. He wrapped the blade in its cloth and passed it to her.

Topri handed over the pouch of coins, muttering under his breath.

Siona addressed herself to the Museum Fremen. “We know your name. You are Teishar, aide to Garun of Tuono. You have a suk mentality and you make me shudder at what Fremen have become.”

“Lady, we all have to live,” he protested.

“You are not alive,” she said. “Be gone!”

Teishar had turned and scurried away, clutching the money pouch close to his chest.

Memory of that night did not sit well in Siona’s mind as she watched Topri wave the crysknife copy in their rebel ceremony. We’re no better than Teishar, she thought. A copy is worse than nothing. Topri brandished the stupid blade over his head as he neared the ceremony’s conclusion.

Siona looked away from him and stared at Nayla seated off to her left. Nayla was looking first in one direction and now another. She paid special attention to the new cadre of recruits at the back of the room. Nayla did not give her trust easily. Siona wrinkled her nose as a stirring of the air brought the smell of lubricants. The depths of Onn always smelled dangerously mechanical! She sniffed. And this room! She did not like their meeting place. It could easily be a trap. Guards could seal off the outer corridors and send in armed searchers. This could be too easily the place where their rebellion ended. Siona was made doubly uneasy by the fact that this room had been Topri’s choice.

One of Ulot’s few mistakes, she thought. Poor dead Ulot had approved Topri’s admission to the rebellion.

“He is a minor functionary in city services,” Ulot had explained. “Topri can find us many useful places to meet and arm ourselves.”

Topri had reached almost the end of his ceremony. He placed the knife in an ornate case and put the case on the floor beside him.

“My face is my pledge,” he said. He turned his profile to the room, first one side and then the other. “I show my face that you may know me anywhere and know that I am one of you.”

Stupid ceremony, Siona thought.

But she dared not break the pattern of it. And when Topri pulled a black gauze mask from a pocket and placed it over his head, she took out her own mask and donned it. Everyone in the room did the same thing. There was a stirring around the room now. Most of the people here had been alerted that Topri had brought a special visitor. Siona secured her mask’s tie behind her neck. She was anxious to see this visitor.

Topri moved to the room’s one door. There was a clattering bustle as everyone stood and the chairs were folded and stacked against the wall opposite the door. At a signal from Siona, Topri tapped three times on the door panel, waited for a two-count, then tapped four times.

The door opened and a tall man in a dark brown official singlet slipped into the room. He wore no mask, his face open for all of them to see—thin and imperious with a narrow mouth, a skinny blade of a nose, dark brown eyes deeply set under bushy brows. It was a face recognized by most of the room’s occupants.

“My friends,” Topri said, “I present Iyo Kobat, Ambassador from Ix.”

“Ex-Ambassador,” Kobat said. His voice was guttural and tightly controlled. He took a position with his back to the wall facing the masked people in the room. “I have this day received orders from our God Emperor to leave Arrakis in disgrace.”

“Why?”

Siona snapped the question at him without formality.

Kobat jerked his head around, a quick movement which fixed his gaze on her masked face. “There has been an attempt on the God Emperor’s life. He traced the weapon to me.”

Siona’s companions opened a space between her and the ex-Ambassador, clearly signalling that they deferred to her.

“Then why didn’t he kill you?” she demanded.

“I think he is telling me that I am not worth killing. There is also the fact that he uses me now to carry a message to Ix.”

“What message?” Siona moved through the cleared space to stop within two paces of Kobat. She recognized the sexual alertness in him as he studied her body.

“You are Moneo’s daughter,” he said.

Soundless tension exploded across the room. Why did he reveal that he recognized her? Who else did he recognize here? Kobat did not appear the fool. Why had he done this?

“Your body, your voice and your manner are well known here in Onn,” he said. “That mask is a foolishness.”

She ripped the mask from her head and smiled at him. “I agree. Now answer my question.”

Siona heard Nayla move up close on her left; two more aides chosen by Nayla came up beside her.

Siona saw the moment of realization come over Kobat—his death if he failed to satisfy her demands. His voice did not lose its tight control but he spoke slower, choosing his words more carefully.

“The God Emperor has told me that he knows about an agreement between Ix and the Guild. We are attempting to make a mechanical amplifier of … those Guild navigational talents which presently rely on melange.”

“In this room we call him the Worm,” Siona said. “What would your Ixian machine do?”

“You are aware that Guild Navigators require the spice before they can see the safe path to traverse?”

“You would replace the navigators with a machine?”

“It may be possible.”

“What message do you carry to your people concerning this machine?”

“I am to tell my people that they may continue the project only if they send him daily reports on their progress.”

She shook her head. “He needs no such reports! That’s a stupid message.”

Kobat swallowed, no longer concealing nervousness.

“The Guild and the Sisterhood are excited by our project,” he said. “They are participating.”

Siona nodded once. “And they pay for their participation by sharing spice with Ix.”

Kobat glared at her. “It’s expensive work and we need the spice for comparative testing by Guild Navigators.”

“It is a lie and a cheat,” she said, “Your device will never work and the Worm knows it.”

“How dare you accuse us of…”

“Be still! I have just told you the real message. The Worm is telling you Ixians to continue cheating the Guild and the Bene Gesserit. It amuses him.”

“It could work!” Kobat insisted.

She merely smiled at him. “Who tried to kill the Worm?”

“Duncan Idaho.”

Nayla gasped. There were other small signs of surprise around the room, a frown, an indrawn breath.

“Is Idaho dead?” Siona asked.

“I presume so, but the … ahh, Worm refuses to confirm it.”

“Why do you presume him dead?”

“The Tleilaxu have sent another Idaho ghola.”

“I see.”

Siona turned and signalled to Nayla who went to the side of the room and returned with a slim package wrapped in pink Suk paper, the kind of paper shopkeepers used to enclose small purchases. Nayla handed the package to Siona.

“This is the price of our silence,” Siona said, extending the package to Kobat. “This is why Topri was permitted to bring you here tonight.”

Kobat took the package without removing his attention from her face.

“Silence?” he asked.

“We undertake not to inform the Guild and Sisterhood that you are cheating them.”

“We are not cheat…”

“Don’t be a fool!”

Kobat tried to swallow in a dry throat. Her meaning had become plain to him: true or not, if the rebellion spread such a story it would be believed. It was “common sense” as Topri was fond of saying.

Siona glanced at Topri who stood just behind Kobat. No one joined this rebellion for reasons of “common sense”. Did Topri not realize that his “common sense” might betray him? She turned her attention to Kobat.

“What’s in this package?” he asked.

Something in the way he asked it told Siona he already knew.

“That is something I am sending to Ix. You will take it there for me. That is copies of two volumes we removed from the Worm’s fortress.”

Kobat stared down at the package in his hands. It was obvious that he wanted to drop the thing, that his venture into rebellion had loaded him with a burden more deadly than he had expected. He shot a scowling glance at Topri which said as though he had spoken it: “Why didn’t you warn me?”

“What ….” He brought his gaze back to Siona, cleared his throat. “What’s in these … volumes?”

“Your people may tell us that. We think they are the Worm’s own words, written in a cipher which we cannot read.”

“What makes you think we …”

“You Ixians are clever at such things.”

“And if we fail?”

She shrugged. “We will not blame you for that. How- ever, should you use those volumes for any other purpose or fail to report a success fully …”‘

“How can anyone be sure we …”

“We will not depend only on you. Others will get copies. I think the Sisterhood and the Guild will not hesitate to try deciphering those volumes.”

Kobat slipped the package under his arm and pressed it against his body.

“What makes you think the … the Worm doesn’t know about your intentions … even about this meeting?”

“I think he knows many such things, that he may even know who took those volumes. My father believes he is truly prescient.”

“Your father believes the Oral History!”

“Everyone in this room believes it. The Oral History does not disagree with the Formal History on important matters.”

“Then why doesn’t the Worm act against you?”

She pointed to the package under Kobat’s arm. “Perhaps the answer is in there.”

“Or you and these cryptic volumes are no real threat to him!” Kobat was not concealing his anger. He did not like being forced into decisions.

“Perhaps. Tell me why you mentioned the Oral History.”

Once more, Kobat heard the menace.

“It says the Worm is incapable of human emotions.”

“That is not the reason,” she said. “You will get one more chance to tell me the reason.”

Nayla moved two steps closer to Kobat.

“I … I was told to review the Oral History before coming here, that your people …” He shrugged.

“That we chant it?”

“Yes.”

“Who told you this?”

Kobat swallowed, cast a fearful glance at Topri, then back to Siona.

“Topri?” Siona asked.

“I thought it would help him to understand us,” Topri said.

“And you told him the name of your leader,” Siona said.

“He already knew!” Topri’s voice had found its squeak.

“What particular parts of the Oral History were you told to review?” Siona asked.

“The … uhhh, the Atreides line.”

“And now you think you know why people join me in rebellion.”

“The Oral History tells exactly how he treats everyone in the Atreides line!” Kobat said.

“He gives us a little rope and then he hauls us in?” Siona asked. Her voice was deceptively flat.

“That’s what he did with your own father,” Kobat said.

“And now he’s letting me play at rebellion?”

“I’m just a messenger,” Kobat said. “If you kill me, who will carry your message?”

“Or the message of the Worm,” Siona said.

Kobat remained silent.

“I do not think you understand the Oral History,” Siona said. “I think also you do not know the Worm very well, nor do you understand his messages.”

Kobat’s face flushed with anger. “What’s to prevent you from becoming like all the rest of the Atreides, a nice obedient part of …” Kobat broke off, aware suddenly of what anger had made him say.

“Just another recruit for the Worm’s inner circle,” Siona said. “Just like the Duncan Idahos?”

She turned and looked at Nayla. The two aides, Anouk and Taw, became suddenly alert, but Nayla remained impassive.

Siona nodded once to Nayla.

As they were sworn to do, Anouk and Taw moved to positions blocking the door. Nayla went around to stand at Topri’s shoulder.

“What’s … what’s happening?” Topri asked.

“We wish to know everything of importance that the ex-Ambassador can share with us,” Siona said. “We want the entire message.”

Topri began to tremble. Perspiration started from Kobat’s forehead. He glanced once at Topri, then returned his attention to Siona. That one glance was like a veil pulled aside for Siona to peer into the relationship between these two.

She smiled. This merely confirmed what she had already learned.

Kobat became very still.

“You may begin,” Siona said.

“I… what do you …”

“The Worm gave you a private message for your masters. I will hear it.”

“He … he wants an extension for his cart.”

“Then he expects to grow longer. What else?”

“We are to send him a large supply of ridulian crystal paper.”

“For what purpose?”

“He never explains his demands.”

“This smacks of things he forbids to others,” she said.

Kobat spoke bitterly. “He never forbids himself anything!”

“Have you made forbidden toys for him?”

“I do not know.”

He’s lying, she thought, but she chose not to pursue this. It was enough to know the existence of another chink in the Worm’s armour.

“Who will replace you?” Siona asked.

“They are sending a niece of Malky,” Kobat said. “You may remember that he …”

“We remember Malky,” she said. “Why does a niece of Malky become the new Ambassador?”

“I don’t know. But it was ordered even before the Go … the Worm dismissed me.”

“Her name?”

“Hwi Noree.”

“We will cultivate Hwi Noree,” Siona said. “You were not worth cultivating. This Hwi Noree may be something else. When do you return to Ix?”

“Immediately after the Festival, the first Guild ship.”

“What will you tell your masters?”

“About what?”

“My message!”

“They will do as you ask.”

“I know. You may go, ex-Ambassador Kobat.”

Kobat almost collided with the door guards in his haste to leave. Topri made to follow him, but Nayla caught Topri’s arm and held him. Topri swept a fearful glance across Nayla’s muscular body, then looked at Siona, who waited for the door to shut behind Kobat before speaking.

“The message was not merely to the Ixians but to us as well,” she said. “The Worm challenges us and tells us the rules of the combat.”

Topri tried to wrest his arm from Nayla’s grip. “What do you …”

“Topri!” Siona said. “I, too, can send a message. Tell my father to inform the Worm that we accept.”

Nayla released his arm. Topri rubbed the place where she had gripped him. “Surely you don’t…”

“Leave while you can and never come back,” Siona said.

“You can’t possibly mean that you sus …”

“I told you to leave! You are clumsy, Topri. I have been in the Fish Speaker schools for most of my life. They taught me to recognize clumsiness.”

“Kobat is leaving. What harm was there in …”

“He not only knew me, he knew what I had stolen from the Citadel! But he did not know that I would send that package to Ix with him. Your actions have told me that the Worm wants me to send those volumes to Ix!”

Topri backed away from Siona toward the door. Anouk and Taw opened a passage for him, swung the door wide. Siona followed him with her voice.

“Do not argue that it was the Worm who spoke of me and my package to Kobat! The Worm does not send clumsy messages. Tell him I said that!”

Some say I have no conscience. How false they are, even to themselves. I am the only conscience which has ever existed. As wine retains the perfume of its cask, I retain the essence of my most ancient genesis, and that is the seed of conscience. That is what makes me holy. I am God because I am the only one who really knows his heredity!

—The Stolen Journals

The Inquisitors of Ix having assembled in the Grand Palais with the candidate for Ambassador to the Court of the Lord Leto, the following questions and answers were recorded:

INQUISITOR: You indicate that you wish to speak to us of the Lord Leto’s motives. Speak.

HWI NOREE: Your Formal Analyses do not satisfy the questions I would raise.

INQUISITOR: What questions?

HWI NOREE: I ask myself what would motivate the Lord Leto to accept this hideous transformation, this worm-body, this loss of his humanity? You suggest merely that he did it for power and for long life.

INQUISITOR: Are those not enough?

HWI NOREE: Ask yourselves if one of you would make such payment for so paltry a return?

INQUISITOR: From your infinite wisdom then, tell us why the Lord Leto chose to become a worm.

HWI NOREE: Does anyone here doubt his ability to predict the future?

INQUISITOR: Now then! Is that not payment enough for his transformation?

HWI NOREE: But he already had the prescient ability as did his father before him. No! I propose that he made this desperate choice because he saw in our future something that only such a sacrifice would prevent.

INQUISITOR: What was this peculiar thing which only he saw in our future?

HWI NOREE: I do not know but I propose to discover it.

INQUISITOR: You make the tyrant appear a selfless servant of the people!

HWI NOREE: Was that not a prominent characteristic of his Atreides family?

INQUISITOR: So the official histories would have us believe.

HWI NOREE: The Oral History affirms it.

INQUISITOR: What other good character would you give to the tyrant Worm?

HWI NOREE: Good character, sirra?

INQUISITOR: Character, then?

HWI NOREE: My Uncle Malky often said that the Lord Leto was given to moods of great tolerance for selected companions.

INQUISITOR: Other companions he executes for no apparent reason.

HWI NOREE: I think there are reasons and my Uncle Malky deduced some of those reasons.

INQUISITOR: Give us one such deduction.

HWI NOREE: Clumsy threats to his person.

INQUISITOR: Clumsy threats now!

HWI NOREE: And he does not tolerate pretensions. Recall the execution of the historians and the destruction of their works.

INQUISITOR: He does not want the truth known!

HWI NOREE: He told my Uncle Malky that they lied about the past. And mark you! Who would know this better than he? We all know the subject of his introversion.

INQUISITOR: What proof have we that all of his ancestors live in him?

HWI NOREE: I will not enter that bootless argument. I will merely say that I believe it on the evidence of my Uncle Malky’s belief, and his reasons for that belief.

INQUISITOR: We have read your uncle’s reports and interpret them otherwise. Malky was overly fond of the Worm.

HWI NOREE: My uncle accounted him the most supremely artful diplomat in the Empire, a master conversationalist and expert in any subject you could name.

INQUISITOR: Did your uncle not speak of the Worm’s brutality?

HWI NOREE: My uncle judged him ultimately civilized.

INQUISITOR: I asked about brutality.

HWI NOREE: Capable of brutality, yes.

INQUISITOR: Your uncle feared him.

HWI NOREE: The Lord Leto lacks all innocence and naiveté. He is to be feared only when he pretends these traits. That was what my uncle said.

INQUISITOR: Those were his words, yes.

HWI NOREE: More than that! Malky said: “The Lord Leto delights in the surprising genius and diversity of humankind. He is my favourite companion.”

INQUISITOR: Giving us the benefit of your supreme wisdom, how do you interpret these words of your uncle?

HWI NOREE: Do not mock me!

INQUISITOR: We do not mock. We seek enlightenment.

HWI NOREE: These words of Malky and many other things that he wrote directly to me, suggest that the Lord Leto is always seeking after newness and originality but that he is wary of the destructive potential in such things. So my uncle believed.

INQUISITOR: IS there more which you wish to add to these beliefs which you share with your uncle?

HWI NOREE: I see no point in adding to what I’ve already said. I am sorry to have wasted the Inquisitors’ time.

INQUISITOR: But you have not wasted our time. You are confirmed as Ambassador to the Court of Lord Leto, the God Emperor of the known universe.

You must remember that I have at my internal demand every expertise known to our history. This is the fund of energy I draw upon when I address the mentality of war. If you have not heard the moaning cries of the wounded and the dying you do not know about war. I have heard those cries in such numbers that they haunt me. I have cried out myself in the aftermath of battle. I have suffered wounds in every epoch—wounds from fist and club and rock, from shell-studded limb and bronze sword, from the mace and the cannon, from arrows and lasguns and the silent smothering of atomic dust, from biological invasions which blacken the tongue and drown the lungs, from the swift gush of flame and the silent working of slow poisons … and more I will not recount! I have seen and felt them all. To those who dare ask why I behave as I do, I say: With my memories, I can do nothing else. I am not a coward and once I was human.

—The Stolen Journals

In the warm season when the satellite weather controllers were forced to contend with winds across the great seas, evening often saw rainfall at the edges of the Sareer. Moneo, coming in from one of his periodic inspections of the Citadel’s perimeter, was caught in a sudden shower. Night fell before he reached shelter. A Fish Speaker guard helped him out of his damp cloak at the south portal. She was a heavyset, blocky woman with a square face, a type Leto favoured for his guardians.

“Those damned weather controllers should be made to shape up,” she said as she handed him his damp cloak.

Moneo gave her a curt nod before beginning the climb to his quarters. All of the Fish Speaker guards knew the God Emperor’s aversion to moisture, but none of them made Moneo’s distinction.

It is the Worm who hates water, Moneo thought. Shai-Hulud hungers for Dune.

In his quarters, Moneo dried himself and changed to dry clothing before descending to the crypt. There was no point in inviting the Worm’s antagonism. Uninterrupted conversation with Leto was required now, plain talk about the impending peregrination to the Festival City of Onn.

Leaning against a wall of the descending lift, Moneo closed his eyes. Immediately, fatigue swept over him. He knew he had not slept enough in days and there was no letup in sight. He envied Leto’s apparent freedom from the need for sleep. A few hours of semi-repose a month appeared to be sufficient for the God Emperor.

The smell of the crypt and the stopping of the lift jarred Moneo from his catnap. He opened his eyes and looked out at the God Emperor on his cart in the centre of the great chamber. Moneo composed himself and strode out for the familiar long walk into the terrible presence. As expected, Leto appeared alert. That, at least, was a good sign.

Leto had heard the lift approaching and saw Moneo awaken. The man looked tired and that was understandable. The peregrination to Onn was at hand with all of the tiresome business of off-planet visitors, the ritual with the Fish Speakers, the new ambassadors, the changing of the Imperial Guard, the retirements and the appointments, and now a new Duncan Idaho ghola to fit into the smooth working of the Imperial apparatus. Moneo was occupied with mounting details and he was beginning to show his age.

Let me see, Leto thought. Moneo will be one hundred and eighteen years old in the week after our return from Onn.

The man could live many times that long if he would take the spice, but he refused. Leto had no doubt of the reason. Moneo had entered that peculiar human state where he longed for death. He lingered now only to see Siona installed in the Royal service, the next director of the Imperial Society of Fish Speakers.

My houris, as Malky used to call them.

And Moneo knew it was Leto’s intention to breed Siona with a Duncan. It was time.

Moneo stopped two paces from the cart and looked up at Leto. Something in his eyes reminded Leto of the look on the face of a pagan priest in the Terran times, a crafty supplication at the familiar shrine.

“Lord, you have spent many hours observing the new Duncan,” Moneo said. “Have the Tleilaxu tampered with his cells or his psyche?”

“He is untainted.”

A deep sigh shook Moneo. There was no pleasure in it.

“You object to his use as a stud?” Leto asked.

“I find it peculiar to think of him as both an ancestor and the father of my descendants.”

“But he gives me access to a first-generation cross between an older human form and the current products of my breeding programme. Siona is twenty-one generations removed from such a cross.”

“I fail to see the purpose. The Duncans are slower and less alert than anyone in your Guard.”

“I am not looking for good segregant offspring, Moneo. Did you think me unaware of the progression geometrics dictated by the laws which govern my breeding programme?”

“I have seen your stock book, Lord.”

“Then you know that I keep track of the recessives and weed them out. The key genetic dominants are my concern.”

“And the mutations, Lord?” There was a sly note in Moneo’s voice which caused Leto to study the man intently.

“We will not discuss that subject, Moneo.”

Leto watched Moneo pull back into his cautious shell.

How extremely sensitive he is to my moods, Leto thought. I do believe he has some of my abilities there, although they operate at an unconscious level. His question suggests that he may even suspect what we have achieved in Siona.

Testing this, Leto said: “It is clear to me that you do not yet understand what I hope to achieve in my breeding programme.”

Moneo brightened. “My Lord knows I try to fathom the rules of it.”

“Laws tend to be temporary over the long haul, Moneo. There is no such thing as rule-governed creativity.”

“But Lord, you yourself speak of laws which govern your breeding programme.”

“What have I just said to you, Moneo? Trying to find rules for creation is like trying to separate mind from body.”

“But something is evolving, Lord. I know it in myself!”

He knows it in himself! Dear Moneo. He is so close.

“Why do you always seek after absolutely derivative translations, Moneo?”

“I have heard you speak of transformational evolution, Lord. That is the label on your stock book. But what of surprise…”

“Moneo! Rules change with each surprise.”

“Lord, have you no improvement of the human stock in mind?”

Leto glared down at him, thinking: If I use the key word now will he understand? Perhaps…

“I am a predator, Moneo.”

“Pred …” Moneo broke off and shook his head. He knew the meaning of the word, he thought, but the word itself shocked him. Was the God Emperor joking?

“Predator, Lord?”

“The predator improves the stock.”

“How can this be, Lord? You do not hate us.”

“You disappoint me, Moneo. The predator does not hate its prey.”

“Predators kill, Lord.”

“I kill but I do not hate. Prey assuages hunger. Prey is good.”

Moneo peered up at Leto’s face in its grey cowl.

Have I missed the approach of the Worm? Moneo wondered.

Fearfully, Moneo looked for the signs. There were no tremors in the giant body, no glazing of the eyes, no twisting of the useless flippers.

“For what do you hunger, Lord?” Moneo ventured.

“For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions. Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo?”

“You have said it many times, Lord. It is the ability to change your mind.”

“Change, yes. And do you know what I mean by long-term?”

“For you, it must be measured in millennia, Lord.”

“Moneo, even my thousands of years are but a puny blip against infinity.”

“But your perspective must be different from mine, Lord.”

“In the view of infinity, any defined long-term is short-term.”

“Then are there no rules at all, Lord?” Moneo’s voice conveyed a faint hint of hysteria.

Leto smiled to ease the man’s tensions. “Perhaps one. Short-term decisions tend to fail in the long-term.”

Moneo shook his head in frustration. “But, Lord, your perspective is…”

“Time runs out for any finite observer. There are no closed systems. Even I only stretch the finite matrix.”

Moneo jerked his attention from Leto’s face and peered into the distances of the mausoleum corridors. I will be here someday. The Golden Path may continue, but I will end. That was not important, of course. Only the Golden Path which he could sense in unbroken continuity, only that mattered. He returned his attention to Leto, but not to the all-blue eyes. Was there truly a predator lurking in that gross body

“You do not understand the function of a predator,” Leto said.

The words shocked Moneo because they smacked of mind-reading. He lifted his gaze to Leto’s eyes.

“You know intellectually that even I will suffer a kind of death someday,” Leto said. “But you do not believe it.”

“How can I believe what I will never see?”

Moneo had never felt more lonely and fearful. What was the God Emperor doing? I came down here to discuss the problems of the peregrination … and to find out about his intentions toward Siona. Does he toy with me?

“Let us talk about Siona,” Leto said.

Mind-reading again!

“When will you test her, Lord?” The question had been waiting in the front of his awareness all this time, but now that he had spoken it, Moneo feared it.

“Soon.”

“Forgive me, Lord, but surely you know how much I fear for the well-being of my only child.”

“Others have survived the test, Moneo. You did.”

Moneo gulped, remembering how he had been sensitized to the Golden Path.

“My mother prepared me. Siona has no mother.”

“She has the Fish Speakers. She has you.”

“Accidents happen, Lord.”

Tears sprang into Moneo’s eyes.

Leto looked away from him, thinking: He is torn by his loyalty to me and his love of Siona. How poignant it is, this concern for an offspring. Can he not see that all of humankind is my only child?

Returning his attention to Moneo, Leto said: “You are right to observe that accidents happen even in my universe. Does this teach you anything?”

“Lord, just this once couldn’t you …”

“Moneo! Surely you do not ask me to delegate authority to a weak administrator?”

Moneo recoiled one step. “No, Lord. Of course not.”

“Then trust Siona’s strength.”

Moneo squared his shoulders. “I will do what I must.”

“Siona must be awakened to her duties as an Atreides.”

“Yes, of course, Lord.”

“Is that not our commitment, Moneo?”

“I do not deny it, Lord. When will you introduce her to the new Duncan?”

“The test comes first.”

Moneo looked down at the cold floor of the crypt.

He stares at the floor so often, Leto thought. What can he possibly see there? Is it the millennial tracks of my cart? Ahhh, no—it is into the depths that he peers, into the realms of treasure and mystery which he expects to enter soon.

Once more, Moneo lifted his gaze to Leto’s face. “I hope she will like the Duncan’s company, Lord.”

“Be assured of it. The Tleilaxu have brought him to me in the undistorted image.”

“That is reassuring, Lord.”

“No doubt you have noted that his genotype is remarkably attractive to females.”

“That has been my observation, Lord.”

“There’s something about those gently observant eyes, those strong features and that black-goat hair which positively melts the female psyche.”

“As you say, Lord.”

“You know he’s with the Fish Speakers right now?”

“I was informed, Lord.”

Leto smiled. Of course Moneo was informed. “They will bring him to me soon for his first view of the God Emperor.”

“I have inspected the viewing room personally, Lord. Everything is in readiness.”

“Sometimes I think you wish to weaken me, Moneo. Leave some of these details for me.”

Moneo tried to conceal a constriction of fear. He bowed and backed away. “Yes, Lord, but there are some things which I must do.”

Turning, he hurried away. It was not until he was ascending in the lift that Moneo realized he had left without being dismissed.

He must know how tired I am. He will forgive.

Your Lord knows very well what is in your heart. Your soul suffices this day as a reckoner against you. I need no witnesses. You do not listen to your soul, but listen instead to your anger and your rage.

—Lord Leto to a Penitent, from the Oral History

The following assessment of the state of the Empire in the year 3508 of the reign of the Lord Leto is taken from The Welbeck Abridgment. The original is in the Chapter House Archives of the Bene Gesserit Order, A comparison reveals that the deletions do not subtract from the essential accuracy of this account.

In the name of our Sacred Order and its unbroken Sisterhood, this accounting has been judged reliable and worthy of entry into the Chronicles of the Chapter House.

Sisters Chenoeh and Tawsuoko have returned safely from Arrakis to report confirmation of the long-suspected execution of the nine historians who disappeared into his Citadel in the year 2116 of Lord Leto’s reign. The Sisters report that the nine were rendered unconscious, then burned on pyres of their own published works. This conforms exactly with the stories which spread across the Empire at the time. The accounts of that time were judged to have originated with Lord Leto himself.

Sisters Chenoeh and Tawsuoko bring the handwritten records of an eyewitness account which says that when Lord Leto was petitioned by other historians seeking word of their fellows, Lord Leto said:

“They were destroyed because they lied pretentiously. Have no fear that my wrath will fall upon you because of your innocent mistakes. I am not overly fond of creating martyrs. Martyrs tend to set dramatic events adrift in human affairs. Drama is one of the targets of my predation. Tremble only if you build false accounts and stand pride-fully upon them. Go now and do not speak of this.”

Internal evidence of the handwritten account identifies its author as Ikonicre, Lord Leto’s majordomo in the year 2116.

Attention is called to Lord Leto’s use of the word predation. This is highly suggestive in view of theories advanced by Reverend Mother Syaksa that the God Emperor views himself as a predator in the natural sense.

Sister Chenoeh was invited to accompany the Fish Speakers in an entourage which accompanied one of Lord Leto’s infrequent peregrinations. At one point, she was invited to trot beside the Royal Cart and converse with the Lord Leto himself. She reports the exchange as follows:

The Lord Leto said: “Here on the Royal Road I sometimes feel that I stand on battlements protecting myself against invaders.”

Sister Chenoeh said: “No one attacks you here, Lord.”

The Lord Leto said: “You Bene Gesserit assail me on all sides. Even now, you seek to suborn my Fish Speakers.”

Sister Chenoeh says that she steeled herself for death, but the God Emperor merely stopped his cart and looked across her at his entourage. She says the others stopped and waited on the road in well-trained passivity, all of them at a respectful distance.

The Lord Leto said, “There is my little multitude and they tell me everything. Do not deny my accusation.”

Sister Chenoeh said, “I do not deny it.”

The Lord Leto looked at her then and said, “Have no fear for your person. It is my wish that you report my words in your Chapter House.”

Sister Chenoeh says she could see then that the Lord Leto knew all about her, about her mission, her special training as an oral recorder, everything. “He was like a Reverend Mother,” she said. “I could hide nothing from him.”

The Lord Leto then commanded her, “Look toward my Festival City and tell me what you see.”

Sister Chenoeh looked toward Onn and said, “I see the city in the distance. It is beautiful in this morning light. There is your forest on the right. It has so many greens in it I could spend all day describing them. On the left and all around the city there are the houses and the gardens of your servitors. Some of them look very rich and some look very poor.”

The Lord Leto said, “We have cluttered this landscape! Trees are a clutter. Houses, gardens … You cannot exult at new mysteries in such a landscape.”

Sister Chenoeh, emboldened by Lord Leto’s assurances, asked, “Does the Lord truly want mysteries?”

The Lord Leto said, “There is no outward spiritual freedom in such a landscape. Do you not see it? You have no open universe here with which to share. Everything is closures—doors, latches, locks!”

Sister Chenoeh asked, “Has mankind no longer any need for privacy and protection?”

The Lord Leto said, “When you return, tell your Sisters that I will restore the outward view. Such a landscape as this one turns you inward in search for whatever freedom your spirits can find within. Most humans are not strong enough to find freedom within.”

Sister Chenoeh said, “I will report your words accurately, Lord.”

The Lord Leto said, “See that you do. Tell your Sisters also that the Bene Gesserit of all people should know the dangers of breeding for a particular characteristic, of seeking a defined genetic goal.”

Sister Chenoeh says this was an obvious reference to the Lord Leto’s father, Paul Atreides. Let it be noted that our breeding programme achieved the Kwisatz Haderach one generation early. In becoming Muad’Dib, the leader of the Fremen, Paul Atreides escaped from our control. There is no doubt that he was a male with the powers of a Reverend Mother and other powers for which humankind still is paying a heavy price. As the Lord Leto said:

“You got the unexpected. You got me, the wild card. And I have achieved Siona.”

The Lord Leto refused to elaborate on this reference to the daughter of his majordomo, Moneo. The matter is being investigated.

In other matters of concern to the Chapter House, our investigators have supplied information on:

THE FISH SPEAKERS: The Lord Leto’s female legions have elected their representatives to attend the Decennial Festival on Arrakis. Three representatives will attend from each planetary garrison. (See attached list of those chosen.) As usual, no adult males will attend, not even consorts of Fish Speaker officers. The consort list has changed very little in this reporting period. We have appended the new names with genealogical information where available. Note that only two of the names can be starred as descendants of the Duncan Idaho gholas. We can add nothing new to our speculations about his use of the gholas in his breeding programme.

None of our efforts to form an alliance between Fish Speakers and Bene Gesserit succeeded during this period. Lord Leto continues to increase certain garrison sizes. He also continues to emphasize the alternative missions of the Fish Speakers, de-emphasizing their military missions. This has had the expected result of increasing local admiration and respect and gratitude for the presence of the Fish Speaker garrisons. (See attached list for garrisons which were increased in size. Editor’s note: The only pertinent garrisons were those on the home planets of the Bene Gesserit, Ixians and Tleilaxu. Spacing Guild monitors were not increased.)

PRIESTHOOD: Except for the few natural deaths and replacements which are listed in attachments, there have been no significant changes. Those consorts and officers delegated to perform the ritual duties remain few, their powers abridged by continuing requirement for consultation with Arrakis before taking any important action. It is the opinion of the Reverend Mother Syaksa and some others that the religious character of the Fish Speakers is slowly being devolved.

BREEDING PROGRAMME: Other than the unexplained reference to Siona and to our failure with his father, we have nothing significant to add to our continued monitoring of the Lord Leto’s breeding programme. There is evidence of a certain randomness in his plan which is reinforced by the Lord Leto’s statement about genetic goals, but we cannot be certain that he was truthful with Sister Chenoeh. We call your attention to the many instances where he has either lied or changed directions dramatically and without warning.

The Lord Leto continues to prohibit our participation in his breeding programme. His monitors from our Fish Speaker garrison remain adamant in “weeding out” our births to which they object. Only by the most stringent controls were we able to maintain the level of Reverend Mothers during this reporting period. Our protests are not answered. In response to a direct question from Sister Chenoeh, the Lord Leto said:

“Be thankful for what you have.”

This warning is duly noted here. We have transmitted a gracious letter of thankfulness to the Lord Leto.

ECONOMICS: The Chapter. House continues to maintain its solvency but the measures of conservation cannot be eased. In fact, as a precaution, certain new measures will be instituted in the next reporting period. These include a reduction in the ritual uses of melange and an increase in the rates charged for our usual services. We expect to double the fees for the schooling of Great House females across the next four reporting periods. You are hereby charged to begin preparing your arguments in defence of this action.

The Lord Leto has denied our petition for an increase in our melange allotment. No reason was given.

Our relationship with the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles remains on a sound footing. CHOAM has accomplished in the preceding period a regional cartel in Star Jewels, a project whereby we gained a substantial return through our advisory and bargaining functions. The ongoing profits from this arrangement should more than offset our losses on Giedi Prime. The Giedi Prime investment has been written off.

GREAT HOUSES: Thirty-one former Great Houses suffered economic disaster in this reporting period. Only six managed to maintain House Minor status. (See attached list.) This continues the general trend noted over the past thousand years where the once Great Houses melt gradually into the background. It is to be noted that the six who averted total disaster were all heavy investors in CHOAM and that five of these six were deeply involved in the Star Jewel project. The lone exception held a diversified portfolio, including a substantial investment in antique whale fur from Caladan.

(Our ponji rice reserves were increased almost two-fold in this period at the expense of our whale fur holdings. The reasons for this decision will be reviewed in the next period.)

FAMILY LIFE: As has been observed by our investigators over the preceding two thousand years, the homogenization of family life continues unabated. The exceptions are those you would expect: the Guild, the Fish Speakers, the Royal Courtiers, the shape-changing Face Dancers of the Tleilaxu (who are still mules despite all efforts to change that condition), and our own situation, of course.

It is to be noted that familial conditions grow more and more similar no matter the planet of residence, a circumstance which cannot be attributed to accident. We are seeing here the emergence of a portion of the Lord Leto’s grand design. Even the poorest families are well fed, yes, but the circumstances of daily life grow increasingly static.

We remind you of a statement from the Lord Leto which was reported here almost eight generations ago:

“I am the only spectacle remaining in the Empire.”

Reverend Mother Syaksa has proposed a theoretical explanation for this trend, a theory which many of us are beginning to share. RM Syaksa attributes to Lord Leto a motive based on the concept of hydraulic despotism. As you know, hydraulic despotism is possible only when a substance or condition upon which life in general absolutely depends can be controlled by a relatively small and centralized force. The concept of hydraulic despotism originated when the flow of irrigation water increased local human populations to a demand level of absolute dependence. When the water was shut off, people died in large numbers.

This phenomenon has been repeated many times in human history, not only with water and the products of arable land, but with hydrocarbon fuels such as petroleum and coal which were controlled through pipelines and other distribution networks. At one time, when distribution of electricity was only through complicated mazes of lines strung across the landscape, even this energy resource fell into the role of a hydraulic-despotism substance.

RM Syaksa proposes that the Lord Leto is building the Empire toward an even greater dependence upon melange. It is worth noting that the aging process can be called a disease for which melange is the specific treatment, although not a cure. RM Syaksa proposes that the Lord Leto may even go so far as introducing a new disease which can only be suppressed by melange. Although this may appear far-fetched, it should not be discarded out of hand. Stranger things have happened, and we should not overlook the role of syphilis in early human history.

TRANSPORT/GUILD: The three-mode transportation system once peculiar to Arrakis (that is, on foot with heavy loads relegated to suspensor-borne pallets, in the air via ornithopter, or off-planet by Guild Transport) is coming to dominate more and more planets of the Empire. Ix is the primary exception.

We attribute this in part to planetary devolution into sedentary and static lifestyles. And partly it is the attempt to copy the pattern of Arrakis. The generalized aversion to things Ixian plays no small part in this trend. There is also the fact that the Fish Speakers promote this pattern to reduce their work in maintaining order.

Over the Guild’s part in this trend hangs the absolute dependence of the Guild Navigators upon melange. We are, therefore, keeping a close watch upon the joint effort of Guild and lx to develop a mechanical substitute for the Navigators’ predictive talents. Without melange or some other means of projecting a Heighliner’s course, every translight Guild voyage risks disaster. Although we are not very sanguine about this Guild-Ixian project, there is always the possibility and we shall report on this as conditions warrant.

THE GOD EMPEROR: Other than some small increments of growth, we note little change in the bodily characteristics of the Lord Leto. A rumoured aversion to water has not been confirmed, although the use of water as a barrier against the original sandworms of Dune is well documented in our records, as is the water-death by which Fremen killed a small worm to produce the spice essence employed in their orgies.

There is considerable evidence for the belief that the Lord Leto has increased his surveillance of Ix, possibly because of the Guild-Ixian project. Certainly, success in that project would reduce his hold upon the Empire.

He continues to do business with Ix, ordering replacement parts for his Royal Cart.

A new ghola Duncan Idaho has been sent to the Lord Leto by the Tleilaxu. This makes it certain that the previous ghola is dead, although the manner of his death is not known. We call your attention to previous indications that the Lord Leto himself has killed some of his gholas.

There is increasing evidence that the Lord Leto employs computers. If he is, in fact, defying his own prohibitions and the proscriptions of the Butlerian Jihad, the possession of proof by us could increase our influence over him, possibly even to the extent of certain joint ventures which we have long contemplated. Sovereign control of our breeding programme is still a primary concern. We will continue our investigation with, however, the following caveat:

As with every report preceding this one, we must address the Lord Leto’s prescience. There is no doubt that his ability to predict future events, an oracular ability much more powerful than that of any ancestor, is still the mainstay of his political control.

We do not defy it!

It is our belief that he knows every important action we take far in advance of the event. We guide ourselves, therefore, by the rule that we will not knowingly threaten either his person or such of his grand plan as we can discern. Our address to him will continue to be:

“Tell us if we threaten you that we may desist,”

And:

‘Tell us of your grand plan that we may help.”

He has provided no new answers to either question during this period.

THE IXIANS: Other than the Guild-Ix project, there is little of significance to report. Ix is sending a new Ambassador to the Court of the Lord Leto, one Hwi Noree, a niece of the Malky who once was reputed to be such a boon companion of the God Emperor. The reason for the choice of replacement is not known, although there is a small body of evidence that this Hwi Noree was bred for a specific purpose, possibly as the Ixian representative at the Court. We have reason to believe that Malky also was genetically designed with that official context in mind.

We will continue to investigate.

THE MUSEUM FREMEN: These degenerate relics of the once proud warriors continue to function as our major source of reliable information about affairs on Arrakis. They represent a major budget item for our next reporting period because their demands for payment are increasing and we dare not antagonize them.

It is interesting to note that although their lives bear little resemblance to that of their ancestors, their performance of Fremen rituals and their ability to ape Fremen ways remains flawless. We attribute this to Fish Speaker influence upon Fremen training.

THE TLEILAXU: We do not expect the new ghola of Duncan Idaho to provide any surprises. The Tleilaxu continue to be much chastened by the Lord Leto’s reaction to their one attempt at changing the cellular nature and the psyche of the original.

A recent envoy from the Tleilaxu renewed their attempts to entice us into a joint venture, the avowed purpose being the production of a totally female society without the need for males. For all of the obvious reasons, including our distrust of everything Tleilaxu, we responded with our usual polite negative. Our Embassy to the Lord Leto’s Decennial Festival will make a full report of this to him.

Respectfully submitted:

The Reverend Mothers Syaksa, Yitob, Mamulut, Eknekosk and Akeli.

Odd as it may seem, great struggles such as the one you can see emerging from my journals are not always visible to the participants. Much depends on what people dream in the secrecy of their hearts. I have always been as concerned with the shaping of dreams as with the shaping of actions. Between the lines of my journals is the struggle with humankind’s view of itself—a sweaty contest on a field where motives from our darkest past can well up out of an unconscious reservoir and become events with which we not only must live but contend. It is the hydra-headed monster which always attacks from your blind side. I pray, therefore, that when you have traversed my portion of the Golden Path you no longer will be innocent children dancing to music you cannot hear.

—The Stolen Journals

Nayla moved in a steady, plodding pace as she climbed the circular stairs to the God Emperor’s audience chamber atop the Citadel’s south tower. Each time she traversed the southwest arc of the tower, the narrow slitted windows drew dust-defined golden lines across her path. She knew that the central wall beside her confined a lift of Ixian make large enough to carry her Lord’s bulk to the upper chamber, certainly large enough to hold her relatively smaller body, but she did not resent the fact that she was required to use the stairs.

The breeze through the open slits brought her the burnt-flint smell of blown sand. The low-lying sun ignited the light of red mineral flakes in the inner wall, ruby matches glowing there. Now and then she cast a glance through a slitted window at the dunes. Never once did she pause to admire the things to be seen around her.

“You have heroic patience, Nayla,” the Lord had once told her.

Remembrance of those words warmed Nayla now.

Within the tower, Leto followed Nayla’s progress up the long circular stairs that spiralled around the Ixian tube. Her progress was transmitted to him by an Ixian device which projected her approaching image quarter-size on to a region of three-dimensional focus directly in front of his eyes.

How precisely she moves, he thought.

The precision, he knew, came from a passionate simplicity.

She wore her Fish Speaker blues and a cape-robe without the hawk at the breast. Once past the guard station at the foot of the tower, she had thrown back the cibus mask he required her to wear on these personal visits. Her blocky, muscular body was like that of many others among his guardians, but her face was like no other in all of his memory—almost square with a mouth so wide it seemed to extend around the cheeks, an illusion caused by deep creases at the corners. Her eyes were pale green, the closely cropped hair like old ivory. Her forehead added to the square effect, almost flat with pale eyebrows which often went unnoticed because of the compelling eyes. The nose was a straight, shallow line which terminated close to the thin-lipped mouth.

When Nayla spoke, her great jaws opened and closed like those of some primordial animal. Her strength, known to few outside the corps of Fish Speakers, was legendary there. Leto had seen her lift a one-hundred-kilo man with one hand. Her presence on Arrakis had been arranged originally without Moneo’s intervention, although the majordomo knew Leto employed his Fish Speakers as secret agents.

Leto turned his head away from the plodding image and looked out of the wide opening beside him at the desert to the south. The colours of the distant rocks danced in his awareness—brown, gold, a deep amber. There was a line of pink on a faraway cliff the exact hue of an egret’s feathers. Egrets did not exist anymore except in Leto’s memory, but he could place that pale pastel ribbon of stone against an inner eye and it was as though the extinct bird flew past him.

The climb, he knew, should be starting to tire even Nayla. She paused at last to rest, stopping at a point two steps past the three-quarter mark, precisely the place where she rested every time. It was part of her precision, one of the reasons he had brought her back from the distant garrison on Seprek.

A Dune hawk floated past the opening beside Leto, only a few wing lengths from the tower wall. Its attention was held on the shadows at the base of the Citadel. Small animals sometimes emerged there, Leto knew. Dimly on the horizon beyond the hawk’s path he could see a line of clouds.

What a strange thing those were to the Old Fremen in him: clouds on Arrakis and rain and open water.

Leto reminded the inner voices: Except for this last desert, my Sareer, the remodelling of Dune into verdant Arrakis has gone on remorselessly since the first days of my rule.

The influence of geography on history went mostly un- recognized, Leto thought. Humans tended to look more at the influence of history on geography.

Who owns this river passage? This verdant valley? This peninsula? This planet?

None of us.

Nayla was climbing once more, her gaze fixed upward on the stairs she must traverse. Leto’s thoughts locked on her.

In many ways she is the most useful assistant I have ever had. I am her God. She worships me quite unquestioningly. Even when I playfully attack her faith, she takes this merely as testing. She knows herself superior to any test.

When he had sent her to the rebellion and had told her to obey Siona in all things, she did not question. When Nayla doubted, even when she framed her doubts in words, her own thoughts were enough to restore faith… or had been enough. Recent messages, however, made it clear that Nayla required the Holy Presence to rebuild her inner strength.

Leto recalled that first conversation with Nayla, the woman trembling in her eagerness to please.

“Even if Siona sends you to kill me, you must obey. She must never learn that you serve me.”

“No one can kill you, Lord.”

“But you must obey Siona.”

“Of course, Lord. That is your command.”

“You must obey her in all things.”

“I will do it, Lord.”

Another test. Nayla does not question my tests. She treats them as flea bites. Her Lord commands? Nayla obeys. I must not let anything change that relationship.

She would have made a superb Shadout in the old days, Leto thought. It was one of the reasons he had given Nayla a crysknife, a real one preserved from Sietch Tabr. It had belonged to one of Stilgar’s wives. Nayla wore it in a concealed sheath beneath her robes, more a talisman than a weapon. He had given it to her in the original ritual, a ceremony which had surprised him by evoking emotions he had thought forever buried.

“This is the tooth of Shai-Hulud.”

He had extended the blade to her on his silver-skinned hands.

“Take it and you become part of both past and future. Soil it and the past will give you no future.”

Nayla had accepted the blade, then the sheath.

“Draw the blood of a finger,” Leto had commanded.

Nayla had obeyed.

“Sheath the blade. Never remove it without drawing blood.”

Again, Nayla had obeyed.

As Leto watched the three-dimensional image of Nayla’s approach, his reflections on that old ceremony were touched by sadness. Unless fixed in the old Fremen way, the blade would grow increasingly brittle and useless. It would keep its crysknife shape throughout Nayla’s life, but little longer.

I have thrown away a bit of the past.

How sad it was that the Shadout of old had become today’s Fish Speaker. And a true crysknife had been used to bind a servant more strongly to her master. He knew that some thought his Fish Speakers were really priestesses—Leto’s answer to the Bene Gesserit.

He creates another religion, the Bene Gesserit said.

Nonsense! I have not created a religion. I am the religion!

Nayla entered the tower sanctuary and stood three paces from Leto’s cart, her gaze lowered in proper subservience.

Still in his memories, Leto said: “Look at me, woman!”

She obeyed.

“I have created a holy obscenity!” he said. “This religion built around my person disgusts me!”

“Yes, Lord.”

Nayla’s green eyes on the gilded cushions of her cheeks stared out at him without questioning, without comprehension, without the need of either response.

If I sent her out to collect the stars, she would go and she would attempt it. She thinks I am testing her again. I do believe she could anger me.

“This damnable religion should end with me!” Leto shouted. “Why should I want to loose a religion upon my people? Religions wreck from within—Empires and individuals alike! It’s all the same.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“Religions create radicals and fanatics like you!”

“Thank you, Lord.”

The short-lived pseudo-rage sank back out of sight into the depths of his memories. Nothing dented the hard surface of Nayla’s faith.

“Topri has reported to me through Moneo,” Leto said. “Tell me about this Topri.”

“Topri is a worm.”

“Isn’t that what you call me when you’re among the rebels?”

“I obey my Lord in everything.”

Touche!

“Topri is not worth cultivating then?” Leto asked.

“Siona assessed him correctly. He is clumsy. He says things which others will repeat, thus exposing his hand in the matter. Within seconds after Kobat began to speak she had confirmation that Topri was a spy.”

Everyone agrees, even Moneo, Leto thought. Topri is not a good spy.

The agreement amused Leto. The petty machinations muddied water which remained completely transparent to him. The performers, however, still suited his designs.

“Siona does not suspect you?” Leto asked.

“I am not clumsy.”

“Do you know why I summoned you?”

“To test my faith.”

Ahhh, Nayla. How little you know of testing.

“I want your assessment of Siona. I want to see it on your face and see it in your movements and hear it in your voice,” Leto said. “Is she ready?”

“The Fish Speakers need that one, Lord. Why do you risk losing her?”

“Forcing the issue is the surest way of losing what I treasure most in her,” Leto said. “She must come to me with all of her strengths intact.”

Nayla lowered her gaze. “As my Lord commands.”

Leto recognized the response. It was a Nayla reaction to whatever she failed to understand.

“Will she survive the test, Nayla?”

“As my Lord describes the test …” Nayla lifted her gaze to Leto’s face, shrugged. “I do not know, Lord. Certainly, she is strong. She was the only one to survive the wolves. But she is ruled by hate.”

“Quite naturally. Tell me, Nayla, what will she do with the things she stole from me?”

“Did Topri not inform you about the books which they say contain Your Sacred Words?”

Odd how she can capitalize words with only her voice, Leto thought. He spoke curtly.

“Yes, yes. The Ixians have a copy and soon the Guild and Sisterhood as well will be hard at work on them.”

“What are those books, Lord?”

“They are my words for my people. I want them to be read. What I want to know is what Siona has said about the Citadel charts she took.”

“She says there is a great hoard of melange beneath Your Citadel, Lord, and the charts will reveal it.”

“The charts will not reveal it. Will she tunnel?”

“She seeks Ixian tools for that.”

“Ix will not provide them.”

“Is there such a hoard of spice, Lord?”

“Yes.”

“There is a story about how Your hoard is defended, Lord. That Arrakis itself would be destroyed if anyone tried to steal Your melange. Is it true?”

“Yes. And that would shatter the Empire. Nothing would survive—not Guild or Sisterhood, not lx or Tleilaxu, not even the Fish Speakers.”

She shuddered, then: “I will not let Siona try to get Your Spice.”

“Nayla! I command you to obey Siona in everything. Is this how you serve me?”

“Lord?” She stood in fear of his anger, closer to a loss of faith than he had ever seen her. It was the crisis he had created, knowing how it must end. Slowly, Nayla relaxed. He could see the shape of her thought as though she had laid it out for him in illuminated words.

The ultimate test!

“You will return to Siona and guard her life with your own,” Leto said. “That is the task I set for you and that you accepted. It is why you were chosen. It is why you carry a blade from Stilgar’s household.”

Her right hand went to the crysknife concealed beneath her robe.

How sure it is, Leto thought, that a weapon can lock a person into a predictable pattern of behaviour.

He stared with fascination at Nayla’s rigid body. Her eyes were empty of everything except adoration.

The ultimate rhetorical despotism … and I despise it!

“Go then!” he barked.

Nayla turned and fled the Holy Presence.

Is it worth this? Leto wondered.

But Nayla had told him what he needed to know. Nayla had renewed her faith and revealed with accuracy the thing which Leto could not find in Siona’s fading image. Nayla’s instincts were to be trusted.

Siona has reached that explosive moment which I require.

The Duncans always think it odd that I choose women for combat forces, but my Fish Speakers are a temporary army in every sense. While they can be violent and vicious, women are profoundly different from men in their dedication to battle. The cradle of genesis ultimately predisposes them to behaviour more protective of life. They have proved to be the best keepers of the Golden Path. I reinforce this in my design for their training. They are set aside for a time from ordinary routines. I give them special sharings which they can look back upon with pleasure for the rest of their lives. They come of age in the company of their sisters in preparation for events more profound. What you share in such companionship always prepares you for greater things. The haze of nostalgia covers their days among their sisters, making those days into something different than they were. That’s the way today changes history. All contemporaries do not inhabit the same time. The past is always changing, but few realize it.

—The Stolen Journals

After sending word to the Fish Speakers, Leto descended to the crypt in the late evening. He had found it best to begin the first interview with a new Duncan Idaho in a darkened room where the ghola could hear Leto describe himself before actually seeing the pre-worm body. There was a small side room carved in black stone off the central rotunda of the crypt which suited this requirement. The chamber was large enough to accommodate Leto on his cart, but the ceiling was low. Illumination came from hidden glowglobes which he controlled. There was only the one door, but it was in two segments—one swinging wide to admit the Royal Cart, the other a small portal in human dimensions.

Leto rolled his Royal Cart into the chamber, sealed the large portal and opened the smaller one. He composed himself then for the ordeal.

Boredom was an increasing problem. The pattern of the Tleilaxu gholas had become boringly repetitious. Once, Leto had sent word warning the Tleilaxu to send no more Duncans, but they had known they could disobey him in this thing.

Sometimes I think they do it just to keep disobedience alive!

The Tleilaxu relied on an important thing which they knew protected them in other matters.

The presence of a Duncan pleases the Paul Atreides in me.

As Leto had explained it to Moneo in the majordomo’s first days at the Citadel:

“The Duncans must come to me with much more than Tleilaxu preparation. You must see to it that my houris gentle the Duncans and that the women answer some of his questions.”

“Which questions may they answer, Lord?”

“They know.”

Moneo had, of course, learned all about this procedure over the years.

Leto heard Moneo’s voice outside the darkened room, then the sound of the Fish Speaker escort and the hesitantly distinctive footsteps of the new ghola.

“Through that door,” Moneo said. “It will be dark inside and we will close the door behind you. Stop just inside and wait for the Lord Leto to speak.”

“Why will it be dark?” The Duncan’s voice was full of aggressive misgivings.

“He will explain.”

Idaho was thrust into the room and the door was sealed behind him.

Leto knew what the ghola saw—only shadows among shadows and blackness where not even the source of a voice could be fixed. As usual, Leto brought the Paul-Muad’Dib voice into play.

“It pleases me to see you again, Duncan.”

“I can’t see you!”

Idaho was a warrior and the warrior attacks., This reassured Leto that the ghola was a fully restored original. The morality play by which the Tleilaxu reawakened a ghola’s pre-death memories always left some uncertainties in the gholas’ minds. Some of the Duncans believed they had threatened a real Paul-Muad’Dib. This one carried such illusions.

“I hear Paul’s voice but I can’t see him,” Idaho said. He didn’t try to conceal the frustrations, let them all come out in his voice.

Why was an Atreides playing this stupid game? Paul was truly dead in some long-ago and this was Leto, the carrier of Paul’s resurrected memories… and the memories of many others if the Tleilaxu stories were to be believed.

“You have been told that you are only the latest in a long line of duplicates,” Leto said.

“I have none of those memories.”

Leto recognized hysteria in the Duncan, barely covered by the warrior bravado. The cursed Tleilaxu post-tank restoration tactics had produced the usual mental chaos. This Duncan had arrived in a state of near shock, strongly suspecting he was insane. Leto knew that the most subtle powers of reassurance would be required now to soothe the poor fellow. This would be emotionally draining for both of them.

“There have been many changes, Duncan,” Leto said. “One thing, though, does not change. I am still Atreides.”

“They said your body is …”

“Yes, that has changed.”

“The damned Tleilaxu! They tried to make me kill someone I… well, he looked like you. I suddenly remembered who I was and there was this … Could that have been a Muad’Dib ghola?”

“A Face Dancer mimic, I assure you.”

“He looked and talked so much like…Are you sure?”

“An actor, no more. Did he survive?”

“Of course! That’s how they wakened my memories. They explained the whole damned thing. Is it true?”

“It’s true, Duncan. I detest it, but I permit it for the pleasure of your company.”

The potential victims always survive, Leto thought. At least for the Duncans I see. There have been slips, the fake Paul slain and the Duncans wasted. But there are always more cells carefully preserved from the original.

“What about your body?” Idaho demanded.

Muad’Dib could be retired now; Leto resumed his usual voice. “I accepted the sandtrout as my skin. They have been changing me ever since.”

“Why?”

“I will explain that in due course.”

“The Tleilaxu said you look like a sandworm.”

“What did my Fish Speakers say?”

“They said you’re God. Why do you call them Fish Speakers?”

“An old conceit. The first priestesses spoke to fish in their dreams. They learned valuable things that way.”

“How do you know?”

“I am those women … and everything that came before and after them.”

Leto heard the dry swallowing in Idaho’s throat, then: “I see why the darkness. You’re giving me time to adjust.”

“You always were quick, Duncan,”

Except when you were slow.

“How long have you been changing?”

“More than thirty-five hundred years.”

“Then what the Tleilaxu told me is true.”

“They seldom dare to lie anymore.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Very long.”

“The Tleilaxu have … copied me many times?”

“Many.”

It’s time you asked how many, Duncan.

“How many of me?”

“I will let you see the records for yourself.”

And so it starts, Leto thought.

This exchange always appeared to satisfy the Duncans, but there was no escaping the nature of the question:

“How many of me?”

The Duncans made no distinctions of the flesh even though no mutual memories passed between gholas of the same stock.

“I remember my death,” Idaho said. “Harkonnen blades, lots of them trying to get at you and Jessica.”

Leto restored the Muad’Dib voice for momentary play: “I was there, Duncan.”

“I’m a replacement, is that right?” Idaho asked.

“That’s right,” Leto said.

“How did the other … me … I mean, how did he die?”

“All flesh wears out, Duncan. It’s in the records.”

Leto waited patiently, wondering how long it would be until the tamed history failed to satisfy this Duncan.

“What do you really look like?” Idaho asked. “What’s this sandworm body the Tleilaxu described?”

“It will make sandworms of sorts someday. It’s already far down the road of metamorphosis.”

“What do you mean of sorts?”

“It will have more ganglia. It will be aware.”

“Can’t we have some light? I’d like to see you.”

Leto commanded the floodlights. Brilliant illumination filled the room. The black walls and the lighting had been arranged to focus the illumination on Leto, every visible detail revealed.

Idaho swept his gaze along the faceted silvery-grey body, noted the beginnings of a sandworm’s ribbed sections, the sinuous flexings … the small protuberances which had once been feet and legs, one of them somewhat shorter than the other. He brought his attention back to the well-defined arms and hands and finally lifted his attention to the cowled face with its pink skin almost lost in the immensity, a ridiculous extrusion on such a body.

“Well, Duncan,” Leto said. “You were warned.”

Idaho gestured mutely toward the pre-worm body.

Leto asked it for him: “Why?”

Idaho nodded.

“I’m still Atreides, Duncan, and I assure you with all the honour of that name, there were compelling reasons.”

“What could possibly …”

“You will learn in time.”

Idaho merely shook his head from side to side.

“It’s not a pleasant revelation,” Leto said. “It requires that you learn other things first. Trust the word of an Atreides.”

Over the centuries, Leto had found that this invocation of Idaho’s profound loyalties to all things Atreides dampened the immediate wellspring of personal questions. Once more, the formula worked.

“So I’m to serve the Atreides again,” Idaho said. “That sounds familiar. Is it?”

“In many ways, old friend.”

“Old to you, maybe, but not to me. How will I serve?”

“Didn’t my Fish Speakers tell you?”

“They said I would command your elite Guard, a force chosen from among them. I don’t understand that. An army of women?”

“I need a trusted companion who can command my Guard. You object?”

“Why women?”

“There are behavioural differences between the sexes which make women extremely valuable in this role.”

“You’re not answering my question.”

“You think them inadequate?”

“Some of them looked pretty tough, but…”

“Others were, ahhh, soft with you?”

Idaho blushed.

Leto found this a charming reaction. The Duncans were among the few humans of these times who could do this. It was understandable, a product of the Duncans’ early training, their sense of personal honour—very chivalrous.

“I don’t see why you trust women to protect you,” Idaho said. The blood slowly receded from his cheeks. He glared at Leto.

“But I have always trusted them as I trust you—with my life.”

“What do we protect you from?”

“Moneo and my Fish Speakers will bring you up to date.”

Idaho shifted from one foot to the other, his body swaying in a heartbeat rhythm. He stared around the small room, his eyes not focusing. With the abruptness of sudden decision, he returned his attention to Leto.

“What do I call you?”

It was the sign of acceptance for which Leto had been waiting. “Will Lord Leto do?”

“Yes … m’Lord.” Idaho stared directly into Leto’s Fremen-blue eyes. “Is it true what your Fish Speakers say—you have … memories of…”

“We’re all here, Duncan.” Leto spoke it in the voice of his paternal grandfather, then:

“Even the women are here, Duncan.” It was the voice of Jessica, Leto’s paternal grandmother.

“You knew them well,” Leto said. “And they know you.”

Idaho inhaled a slow, trembling breath. “That will take a little getting used to.”

“My own initial reaction exactly,” Leto said.

An explosion of laughter shook Idaho, and Leto thought it more than the weak jest deserved, but he remained silent.

Presently, Idaho said: “Your Fish Speakers were supposed to put me in a good mood, weren’t they?”

“Did they succeed?”

Idaho studied Leto’s face, recognizing the distinctive Atreides features.

“You Atreides always did know me too well,” Idaho said.

“That’s better,” Leto said. “You’re beginning to accept that I’m not just one Atreides. I’m all of them.”

“Paul said that once.”

“So I did!” As much as the original personality could be conveyed by tone and accent, it was Muad’Dib speaking.

Idaho gulped, looked away at the room’s door.

“You’ve taken something away from us,” he said. “I can feel it. Those women … Moneo …”

Us against you, Leto thought. The Duncans always choose the human side.

Idaho returned his attention to Leto’s face. “What have you given us in exchange?”

“Throughout the Empire, Leto’s Peace!”

“And I can see that everyone’s delightfully happy! That’s why you need a personal guard.”

Leto smiled. “My peace is actually enforced tranquillity. Humans have a long history of reacting against tranquillity.”

“So you give us the Fish Speakers.”

“And a hierarchy you can identify without any mistakes.”

“A female army,” Idaho muttered.

“The ultimate male-enticing force,” Leto said. “Sex always was a way of subduing the aggressive male.”

“Is that what they do?”

“They prevent or ameliorate excesses which could lead to more painful violence.”

“And you let them believe you’re a god. I don’t think I like this.”

“The curse of holiness is as offensive to me as it is to you!”

Idaho frowned. It was not the response he had expected.

“What kind of game are you playing, Lord Leto?”

“A very old one but with new rules.”

“Your rules!”

“Would you rather I turned it all back to CHOAM and Landsraad and the Great Houses?”

“The Tleilaxu say there is no more Landsraad. You don’t allow any real self-rule.”

“Well then, I could step aside for the Bene Gesserit. Or maybe the Ixians or the Tleilaxu? Would you like me to find another Baron Harkonnen to assume power over the Empire? Say the word, Duncan, and I’ll abdicate!”

Under this avalanche of meanings, Idaho again shook his head from side to side.

“In the wrong hands,” Leto said, “monolithic centralized power is a dangerous and volatile instrument.”

And your hands are the right ones?”

“I’m not certain about my hands, but I will tell you, Duncan, I’m certain about the hands of those who’ve gone before me. I know them.”

Idaho turned his back on Leto.

What a fascinating, ultimately human gesture, Leto thought. Rejection coupled to acceptance of his vulnerability.

Leto spoke to Idaho’s back.

“You object quite rightly that I use people without their full knowledge and consent.”

Idaho turned his profile to Leto, then turned his head to look up at the cowled face, cocking his head forward a bit to peer into the all-blue eyes.

He is studying me, Leto thought, but he has only the face to measure me by.

The Atreides had taught their people to know the subtle signals of face and body, and Idaho was good at it, but the realization could be seen coming over him: he was over his depth here.

Idaho cleared his throat. “What’s the worst thing you would ask of me?”

How like a Duncan! Leto thought. This one was a classic. Idaho would give his loyalty to an Atreides, to the guardian of his oath, but he sent a signal that he would not go beyond the personal limits of his own morality.

“You will be asked to guard me by whatever means necessary, and you will be asked to guard my secret.”

“What secret?”

“That I am vulnerable.”

“That you’re not God?”

“Not in that ultimate sense.”

“Your Fish Speakers talk about rebels.”

“They exist.”

“Why?”

“They are young and I have not convinced them that my way is better. It’s very difficult convincing the young of anything. They’re born knowing so much.”

“I never before heard an Atreides sneer at the young that way.”

“Perhaps it’s because I’m so much older—old compounded by old. And my task gets more difficult with each passing generation.”

“What is your task?”

“You will come to understand it as we go along.”

“What happens if I fail you? Do your women eliminate me?”

“I try not to burden the Fish Speakers with guilt.”

“But you would burden me?”

“If you accept it.”

“If I find that you’re worse than the Harkonnens I’ll turn against you.”

How like a Duncan. They measure all evil against the Harkonnens. How little they know of evil.

Leto said: “The Baron ate whole planets, Duncan. What could be worse than that?”

“Eating the Empire.”

“I am pregnant with my Empire. I’ll die giving birth to it.”

“If I could believe that…”

“Will you command my Guard?”

“Why me?”

“You’re the best.”

“Dangerous work, I’d imagine. Is that how my predecessors died, doing your dangerous work?”

“Some of them.”

“I wish I had the memories of those others!”

“You couldn’t have and still be the original.”

“I want to learn about them, though.”

“You will.”

“So the Atreides still need a sharp knife?”

“We have jobs that only a Duncan Idaho can do.”

“You say … we …” Idaho swallowed, looked at the door, then at Leto’s face.

Leto spoke to him as Muad’Dib would have, but still in the Leto-voice.

“When we climbed to Sietch Tabr for the last time together, you had my loyalty then and I had yours. Nothing of that has really changed,”

“That was your father.”

“That was me!” Paul-Muad’Dib’s voice of command coming from Leto’s bulk always shocked the gholas.

Idaho whispered: “All of you … in that one … body …”He broke off.

Leto remained silent. This was the decision moment.

Presently, Idaho permitted himself that devil-may-care grin for which he had been so well-known. “Then I will speak to the first Leto and to Paul, the ones who know me best. Use me well, for I did love you.”

Leto closed his eyes. Such words always distressed him. He knew it was love to which he was most vulnerable.

Moneo, who had been listening, came to the rescue. He entered and said: “Lord, shall I take Duncan Idaho to the guards he will command?”

“Yes.” The one word was all that Leto could manage.

Moneo took Idaho’s arm and led him away.

Good Moneo, Leto thought. So good. He knows me so well, but I despair of his ever understanding me.

I know the evil of my ancestors because I am those people. The balance is delicate in the extreme. I know that few of you who read my words have ever thought about your ancestors this way. It has not occurred to you that your ancestors were survivors and that the survival itself sometimes involved savage decisions, a kind of wanton brutality which civilized humankind works very hard to suppress. What price will you pay for that suppression? Will you accept your own extinction?

—The Stolen Journals

As he dressed for his first morning of Fish Speaker command, Idaho tried to shake off a nightmare. It had awakened him twice and both times he had gone out on to the balcony to stare up at the stars, the dream still roaring in his head.

Women …weaponless women in black armour … rushing at him with the hoarse, mindless shouting of a mob … waving hands moist with red blood … and as they swarmed over him, their mouths opened to display terrible fangs!

In that moment, he awoke.

Morning light did little to dispel the effects of the nightmare.

They had provided him with a room in the north tower. The balcony looked out over a vista of dunes to a distant cliff with what appeared to be a mud-hut village at its base.

Idaho buttoned his tunic as he stared at the scene.

Why does Leto choose only women for his army?

Several comely Fish Speakers had offered to spend the night with their new commander, but Idaho had rejected them.

It was not like the Atreides to use sex as a persuader!

He looked down at his clothing: a black uniform with golden piping, a red hawk at the left breast. That, at least, was familiar. No insignia of rank.

“They know your face,” Moneo had said.

Strange little man, Moneo.

This thought brought Idaho up short. Reflection told him that Moneo was not little. Very controlled, yes, but no shorter than I am. Moneo appeared drawn into himself, though … collected.

Idaho glanced around his room—sybaritic in its attention to comfort—soft cushions, appliances concealed behind panels of brown polished wood. The bath was an ornate display of pastel blue tiles with a combination bath and shower in which at least six people could bathe at the same time. The whole place invited self-indulgence. These were quarters where you could let your senses indulge in remembered pleasures.

“Clever,” Idaho whispered.

A gentle tapping on his door was followed by a female voice saying: “Commander? Moneo is here.”

Idaho glanced out at the sunburnt colours on the distant cliff.

“Commander?” The voice was a bit louder.

“Come in,” Idaho called.

Moneo entered, closing the door behind him. He wore tunic and trousers of chalk white which forced the eyes to concentrate on his face. Moneo glanced once around the room.

“So this is where they put you. Those damned women! I suppose they thought they were being kind, but they ought to know better.”

“How do you know what I like?” Idaho demanded. Even as he asked it, he realized it was a foolish question.

I’m not the first Duncan Idaho that Moneo has seen.

Moneo merely smiled and shrugged.

“I did not mean to offend you, Commander. Will you keep these quarters, then?”

“I like the view.”

“But not the furnishings.” It was a statement.

“Those can be changed,” Idaho said.

“I will see to it.”

“I suppose you’re here to explain my duties.”

“As much as I can. I know how strange everything must appear to you at first. This civilization is profoundly different from the one you knew.”

“I can see that. How did my … predecessor die?”

Moneo shrugged. It appeared to be his standard gesture, but there was nothing self-effacing about it.

“He was not fast enough to escape the consequences of a decision he had made,” Moneo said.

“Be specific.”

Moneo sighed. The Duncans were always like this—so demanding.

“The rebellion killed him. Do you wish the details?”

“Would they be useful to me?”

“No.”

“I’ll want a complete briefing on this rebellion today, but first: Why are there no men in Leto’s army?”

“He has you.”

“You know what I mean.”

“He has a curious theory about armies. I have discussed it with him on many occasions. But do you not want to breakfast before I explain?”

“Can’t we have both at the same time?”

Moneo turned toward the door and called out a single word: “Now!”

The effect was immediate and fascinating to Idaho. A troop of young Fish Speakers swarmed into the room. Two of them took a folding table and chairs from behind a panel and placed them on the balcony. Others set the table for two people. More brought food—fresh fruit, hot rolls and a steaming drink which smelled faintly of spice and caffeine. It was all done with a swift and silent efficiency which spoke of long practice. They left as they had come, without a word.

Idaho found himself seated across from Moneo at the table within a minute after the start of this curious performance.

“Every morning like that?” Idaho asked.

“Only if you wish it.”

Idaho sampled the drink: melange-coffee. He recognized the fruit, the soft Caladan melon called paradan.

My favourite.

“You know me pretty well,” Idaho said.

Moneo smiled. “We’ve had some practice. Now, about your question.”

“And Leto’s curious theory.”

“Yes. He says that the all-male army was too dangerous to its civilian support base.”

“That’s crazy! Without the army there would’ve been no …”

“I know the argument. But he says that the male army was a survival of the screening function delegated to the non-breeding males in the prehistoric pack. He says it was a curiously consistent fact that it was always the older males who sent the younger males into battle.”

“What does that mean, screening function!”

“The ones who were always out on the dangerous perimeter protecting the core of breeding males, females and the young. The ones who first encountered the predator.”

“How is that dangerous to the … civilians?”

Idaho took a bite of the melon, found it ripened perfectly.

“The Lord Leto says that when it was denied an external enemy, the all-male army always turned against its own population. Always.”

“Contending for the females?”

“Perhaps. He obviously does not believe, however, that it was that simple.”

“I don’t find this a curious theory.”

“You have not heard all of it.”

“There’s more?”

“Oh, yes. He says that the all-male army has a strong tendency toward homosexual activities.”

Idaho glared across the table at Moneo. “I never…”

“Of course not. He is speaking about sublimation, about deflected energies and all the rest of it.”

“The rest of what?” Idaho was prickly with anger at what he saw as an attack on his male self-image.

“Adolescent attitudes, just boys together, jokes designed purely to cause pain, loyalty only to your pack-mates … things of that nature.”

Idaho spoke coldly. “What’s your opinion?”

“I remind myself …” Moneo turned and spoke while looking out at the view. “…of something which he has said and which I am sure is true. He is every soldier in human history. He offered to parade for me a series of examples—famous military figures who were frozen in adolescence. I declined the offer. I have read my history with care and have recognized this characteristic for myself.”

Moneo turned and looked directly into Idaho’s eyes.

“Think about it, Commander.”

Idaho prided himself on self-honesty and this hit him. Cults of youth and adolescence preserved in the military? It had the ring of truth. There were examples in his own experience…

Moneo nodded. “The homosexual, latent or otherwise, who maintains that condition for reasons which could be called purely psychological tends to indulge in pain-causing behaviour—seeking it for himself and inflicting it upon others. Lord Leto says this goes back to the testing behaviour in the prehistoric pack.”

“You believe him?”

“I do.”

Idaho took a bite of the melon. It had lost its sweet savour. He swallowed and put down his spoon.

“I will have to think about this,” Idaho said.

“Of course.”

“You’re not eating,” Idaho said.

“I was up before dawn and ate then “Moneo gestured at his plate. “The women continually try to tempt me.”

“Do they ever succeed?”

“Occasionally.”

“You’re right. I find his theory curious. Is there more to it?”

“Ohhh, he says that when it breaks out of the adolescent-homosexual restraints, the male army is essentially rapist. Rape is often murderous and that’s not survival behaviour.”

Idaho scowled.

A tight smile flitted across Moneo’s mouth. “Lord Leto says that only Atreides discipline and moral restraints prevented some of the worst excesses in your times.”

A deep sigh shook Idaho.

Moneo sat back, thinking of a thing the God Emperor had once said: “No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer.”

“Those damned Atreides!” Idaho said.

“I am Atreides,” Moneo said.

“What?” Idaho was shocked.

“His breeding programme,” Moneo said. “I’m sure the Tleilaxu mentioned it. I am directly descended from the mating of his sister and Harq al-Ada.”

Idaho leaned toward him. “Then tell me, Atreides, how are women better soldiers than men?”

“They find it easier to mature.”

Idaho shook his head in bewilderment.

“They have a compelling physical way of moving from adolescence into maturity,” Moneo said. “As Lord Leto says, ‘Carry a baby in you for nine months and that changes you.’”

Idaho sat back. “What does he know about it?”

Moneo merely stared at him until Idaho recalled the multitude in Leto—both male and female. The realization plunged over Idaho. Moneo saw it, recalling a comment of the God Emperor’s: “Your words brand him with the look you want him to have.”

As the silence continued, Moneo cleared his throat. Presently, he said: “The immensity of the Lord Leto’s memories has been known to stop my tongue, too.”

“Is he being honest with us?” Idaho asked.

“I believe him.”

“But he does so many … I mean, take this breeding programme. How long has that been going on?”

“From the very first. From the day he took it away from the Bene Gesserit.”

“What does he want from it?”

“I wish I knew.”

“But you’re…”

“An Atreides and his chief aide, yes.”

“You haven’t convinced me that a female army is best.”

“They continue the species.”

At last, Idaho’s frustration and anger had an object. “Is that what I was doing with them that first night—breeding?”

“Possibly. The Fish Speakers take no precautions against pregnancy.”

“Damn him! I’m not some animal he can move from stall to stall like a … like a …”

“Like a stud?”

“Yes!”

“But the Lord Leto refuses to follow the Tleilaxu pattern of gene surgery and artificial insemination.”

“What have the Tleilaxu got to …”

“They are the object lesson. Even I can see that. Their Face Dancers are mules, closer to a colony organism than to humans.”

“Those others of … me … were any of them his studs?”

“Some. You have descendants.”

“Who?”

“I am one.”

Idaho stared into Moneo’s eyes, lost suddenly in a tangle of relationships. Idaho found the relationships impossible to understand. Moneo obviously was so much older than … But I am … Which of them was truly the older? Which the ancestor and which the descendant?

“I sometimes have trouble with this myself,” Moneo said. “If it helps, the Lord Leto assures me that you are not my descendant, not in any ordinary sense. However, you may well father some of my descendants.”

Idaho shook his head from side to side.

“Sometimes I think only the God Emperor himself can understand these things,” Moneo said.

“That’s another thing!” Idaho said. “This god business.”

“The Lord Leto says he has created a holy obscenity.”

This was not the response Idaho had expected. What did I expect? A defence of the Lord Leto?

“Holy obscenity,” Moneo repeated. The words rolled from his tongue with a strange sense of gloating in them.

Idaho focused a probing stare on Moneo. He hates his God Emperor! No … he fears him. But don’t we always hate what we fear?

“Why do you believe in him?” Idaho demanded.

“You ask if I share in the popular religion?”

“No! Does he?”

“I think so.”

“Why? Why do you think so?”

“Because he says he wishes to create no more Face Dancers. He insists that his human stock, once it has been paired, breeds in the way it has always bred.”

“What the hell does that have to do with it?”

“You asked me what he believes in. I think he believes in chance. I think that’s his God.”

“That’s superstition!”

“Considering the circumstances of the Empire, a very daring superstition.”

Idaho glared at Moneo. “You damned Atreides,” he muttered. “You’ll dare anything!”

Moneo noted that there was dislike mixed with admiration in Idaho’s voice.

The Duncans always begin that way.

What is the most profound difference between us, between you and me? You already know it. It’s these ancestral memories. Mine come at me in the full glare of awareness. Yours work from your blind side. Some call it instinct or fate. The memories apply their leverages to each of us—on what we think and what we do. You think you are immune to such influences? I am Galileo. I stand here and tell you: “Yet it moves.” That which moves can exert its force in ways no mortal power ever before dared stem. I am here to dare this.

—The Stolen Journals

“When she was a child she watched me, remember? When she thought I was not aware, Siona watched me like the desert hawk which circles above the lair of its prey. You yourself mentioned it.”

Leto rolled his body a quarter turn on his cart while speaking. This brought his cowled face close to that of Moneo, who trotted beside the cart.

It was barely dawn on the desert road which followed the high artificial ridge from the Citadel in the Sareer to the Festival City. The road from the desert ran laser-beam straight until it reached this point where it curved widely and dipped into terraced canyons before crossing the Idaho River. The air was full of thick mists from the river tumbling in its distant clamour, but Leto had opened the bubble cover which sealed the front of his cart. The moisture made his worm-self tingle with vague distress, but there was the smell of sweet desert growth in the mist and his human nostrils savoured it. He ordered the cortege to stop.

“Why are we stopping, Lord?” Moneo asked.

Leto did not answer. The cart creaked as he heaved his bulk into an arching curve which lifted his head and allowed him to look across the Forbidden Forest to the Kynes Sea glistening silver far off to the right. He turned left and there were the remains of the Shield Wall, a sinuous low shadow in the morning light. The ridge here had been raised almost two thousand metres to enclose the Sareer and limit airborne moisture there. From his vantage, Leto could see the distant notch where he had caused the Festival City of Onn to be built.

“It is a whim which stops me,” Leto said.

“Shouldn’t we cross the bridge before resting?” Moneo asked.

“I am not resting.”

Leto stared ahead. After a series of switchbacks which were visible from here only as a twisting shadow, the high road crossed the river on a faery bridge, climbed to a buffer ridge and then sloped down to the city which presented a vista of glittering spires at this distance.

“The Duncan acts subdued,” Leto said. “Have you had your long conversation with him?”

“Precisely as you required, Lord.”

“Well, it’s only been four days,” Leto said. “They often take longer to recover.”

“He has been busy with your Guard, Lord. They were out until late again last night.”

“The Duncans do not like to walk in the open. They think about the things which could be used to attack us.”

“I know, Lord.”

Leto turned and looked squarely at Moneo. The major-domo wore a green cloak over his white uniform. He stood beside the open bubble cover, exactly in the place where duty required that he station himself on these excursions.

“You are very dutiful, Moneo,” Leto said.

“Thank you, Lord.”

Guards and courtiers kept themselves at a respectful distance well behind the cart. Most of them were trying to avoid even the appearance of eavesdropping on Leto and Moneo. Not so Idaho. He had positioned some of the Fish Speaker guards at both sides of the Royal Road, spreading them out. Now, he stood staring at the cart. Idaho wore a black uniform with white piping, a gift of the Fish Speakers, Moneo had said.

“They like this one very much. He is good at what he does.”

“What does he do, Moneo?”

“Why, guard your person, Lord.”

The women of the Guard all wore skintight green uniforms, each with a red Atreides hawk at the left breast.

“They watch him very closely,” Leto said.

“Yes. He is teaching them hand signals. He says it’s the Atreides way.”

“That is certainly correct. I wonder why the previous one didn’t do that?”

“Lord, if you don’t know …”

“I jest, Moneo. The previous Duncan did not feel threatened until it was too late. Has this one accepted our explanations?”

“So I’m told, Lord. He is well started in your service.”

“Why is he carrying only that knife in the belt sheath?”

“The women have convinced him that only the specially trained among them should have lasguns.”

“Your caution is groundless, Moneo. Tell the women that it’s much too early for us to begin fearing this one.”

“As my Lord commands.”

It was obvious to Leto that his new Guard Commander did not enjoy the presence of the courtiers. He stood well away from them. Most of the courtiers, he had been told, were civil functionaries. They were decked out in their brightest and finest for this day when they could parade themselves in their full power and in the presence of the God Emperor. Leto could see how foolish the courtiers must appear to Idaho. But Leto could remember far more foolish finery and he thought that this day’s display might be an improvement.

“Have you introduced him to Siona?” Leto asked.

At the mention of Siona, Moneo’s brows congealed into a scowl.

“Calm yourself,” Leto said. “Even when she spied on me I cherished her.”

“I sense danger in her, Lord. I think sometimes she sees into my most secret thoughts.”

“The wise child knows her father.”

“I do not joke, Lord.”

“Yes, I can see that. Have you noticed that the Duncan grows impatient?”

“They scouted the road almost to the bridge,” Moneo said.

“What did they find?”

“The same thing I found—a few Museum Fremen.”

“Another petition?”

“Do not be angry, Lord.”

Once more, Leto peered ahead. This necessary exposure to the open air, the long and stately journey with all of its ritual requirements to reassure the Fish Speakers, all of it troubled Leto. And now, another petition!

Idaho strode forward to stop directly behind Moneo.

There was a sense of menace about Idaho’s movements. Surely not this soon, Leto thought.

“Why are we stopping, m’Lord?” Idaho asked.

“I often stop here,” Leto said.

It was true. He turned and looked beyond the faery bridge. The way twisted downward out of the canyon heights into the Forbidden Forest and thence through fields beside the river. Leto had often stopped here to watch the sunrise. There was something about this morning, though, the sun striking across the familiar vista … something which stirred old memories.

The fields of the Royal Plantations reached outward beyond the forest and, when the sun lifted over the far curve of land, it beamed glowing gold across grain rippling in the fields. The grain reminded Leto of sand, of sweeping dunes which once had marched across this very ground.

And will march once more.

The grain was not quite the bright silica amber of his remembered desert. Leto looked back at the cliff-enclosed distances of his Sareer, his sanctuary of the past. The colours were distinctly different. All the same, when he looked once more toward Festival City, he felt an ache where his many hearts once more were reforming in their slow transformation toward something profoundly alien.

What is it about this morning that makes me think about my lost humanity? Leto wondered.

Of all the Royal party looking at that familiar scene of grain fields and forest, Leto knew that only he still thought of the lush landscape as the bahr bela ma the ocean without water.

“Duncan,” Leto said. “You see that out there toward the city? That was the Tanzerouft.”

“The Land of Terror?” Idaho revealed his surprise in the quick look toward Onn and the sudden return of his gaze to Leto.

“The bahr bela ma,” Leto said. “It has been concealed under a carpet of plants for more than three thousand years. Of all who live on Arrakis today, only the two of us ever saw the desert original.”

Idaho looked toward Onn. “Where is the Shield Wall?” he asked.

“Muad’Dib’s Gap is right there, right where we built the city.”

“That line of little hills, that was the Shield Wall? What happened to it?”

“You are standing on it.”

Idaho looked up at Leto, then down to the roadway and all around.

“Lord, shall we proceed?” Moneo asked.

Moneo, with that clock ticking in his breast, is the goad to duty, Leto thought. There were important visitors to see and other vital matters. Time pressed him. And he did not like it when his God Emperor talked about old times with the Duncans.

Leto was suddenly aware that he had paused here far longer than ever before. The courtiers and guards were cold after their run in the morning air. Some had chosen their clothing more for show than protection.

Then again, Leto thought, perhaps show is a form of protection.

“There were dunes,” Idaho said.

“Stretching for thousands of kilometres,” Leto agreed.

Moneo’s thoughts churned. He was familiar with the God Emperor’s reflective mood, but there was a sense of sadness in it this day. Perhaps the recent death of a Duncan. Leto sometimes let important information drop when he was sad. You never questioned the God Emperor’s moods or his whims, but sometimes they could be employed.

Siona will have to be warned, Moneo thought. If the young fool will listen to me!

She was far more of a rebel than he had been. Far more. Leto had tamed his Moneo, sensitized him to the Golden Path and the rightful duties for which he had been bred, but methods used on a Moneo would not work with Siona. In his observation of this, Moneo had learned things about his own training which he had never before suspected.

“I don’t see any identifiable landmarks,” Idaho was saying.

“Right over there,” Leto said, pointing. “Where the forest ends. That was the way to Splintered Rock.”

Moneo shut out their voices. It was ultimate fascination with the God Emperor which finally brought me to heel. Leto never ceased to surprise and amaze. He could not be reliably predicted. Moneo glanced at the God Emperor’s profile. What has he become?

As part of his early duties, Moneo had studied the Citadel’s private records, the historical accounts of Leto’s transformation. But symbiosis with sandtrout remained a mystery which even Leto’s own words could not dispel. If the accounts were to be believed, the sandtrout skin made his body almost invulnerable to time and violence. The great body’s ribbed core could even absorb lasgun bursts!

First the sandtrout, then the worm—all part of the great cycle which had produced melange. That cycle lay within the God Emperor … marking time.

“Let us proceed,” Leto said.

Moneo realized that he had missed something. He came out of his reverie and looked at a smiling Duncan Idaho.

“We used to call that woolgathering,” Leto said.

“I’m sorry, Lord,” Moneo said. “I was

“You were woolgathering, but it’s all right.”

His mood’s improved, Moneo thought. I can thank the Duncan for that, I think.

Leto adjusted his position on the cart, closed part of the bubble cover and left only his head free. The cart crunched over small rocks on the roadbed as Leto activated it.

Idaho took up position at Moneo’s shoulder and trotted along beside him.

“There are floater bulbs under that cart but he uses the wheels,” Idaho said. “Why is that?”

“It pleases the Lord Leto to use wheels instead of anti-gravity.”

“What makes the thing go? How does he steer it?”

“Have you asked him?”

“I haven’t had the opportunity.”

“The Royal Cart is of Ixian manufacture.”

“What does that mean?”

“It is said that the Lord Leto activates his cart and steers it just by thinking in a particular way.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Questions such as this do not please him.”

Even to his intimates, Moneo thought, the God Emperor remains a mystery.

“Moneo!” Leto called.

“You had better return to your guards,” Moneo said, gesturing to Idaho to fall back.

“I’d rather be out in front with them,” Idaho said.

“The Lord Leto does not want that! Now go back.”

Moneo hurried to place himself close beside Leto’s face, noting that Idaho was falling back through the courtiers to the rear ring of guards.

Leto looked down at Moneo. “I thought you handled that very well, Moneo.”

“Thank you, Lord.”

“Do you know why the Duncan wants to be out in front?”

“Certainly, Lord. It’s where your guard should be.”

“And this one senses danger.”

“I don’t understand you, Lord. I cannot understand why you do these things.”

“That’s true, Moneo.”

The female sense of sharing originated as familial sharing—care of the young, the gathering and preparation of food, sharing joys, love and sorrows. Funeral lamentation originated with women. Religion began as a female monopoly, wrested from them only after its social power became too dominant. Women were the first medical researchers and practitioners. There has never been any clear balance between the sexes because power goes with certain roles as it certainly goes with knowledge.

—The Stolen Journals

For the Reverend Mother Tertius Eileen Anteac this had been a disastrous morning. She had arrived on Arrakis with her fellow Truthsayer, Marcus Claire Luyseyal, both of them coming down with their official party less than three hours ago aboard the first shuttle from the Guild Heighliner hanging in stationary orbit. First, they had been assigned rooms at the absolute edge of the Festival City’s Embassy Quarter. The rooms were small and not quite clean.

“Any farther out and we’d be camping in the slums,” Luyseyal had said.

Next they had been denied communications facilities. All of the screens remained blank no matter how many switches were toggled and palm-dials turned.

Anteac had addressed herself sharply to the heavyset officer commanding the Fish Speaker escort, a glowering woman with low brows and the muscles of a manual labourer.

“I wish to complain to your commander!”

“No complaints allowed at Festival Time,” the amazon had rasped.

Anteac had glared at the officer, a look which in Anteac’s old and seamed face had been known to make even her fellow Reverend Mothers hesitate.

The amazon had merely smiled and said: “I have a message. I am to tell you that your audience with the God Emperor has been moved to the last position.”

Most of the Bene Gesserit party had heard this and even the lowliest attendant-postulate had recognized the significance. All of the spice allotments would be fixed or (The Gods protect us!) even gone by that time.

“We were to have been third,” Anteac had said, her voice remarkably mild in the circumstances.

“It is the God Emperor’s command!”

Anteac knew that tone in a Fish Speaker. To defy it risked violence.

A morning of disasters and now this!

Anteac occupied a low stool against one wall of a tiny, almost empty room near the centre of their inadequate quarters. Beside her there was a low pallet, no more than you would assign to an acolyte! The walls were a pale, scabrous green and there was but one aging glowglobe so defective it could not be tuned out of the yellow. The room gave signs of having been a storage chamber. It smelled musty. Dents and scratches marred the black plastic of the floor.

Smoothing her black aba robe across her knees, Anteac leaned close to the postulant messenger who knelt, head bowed, directly in front of the Reverend Mother. The messenger was a doe-eyed blonde creature with the perspiration of fear and excitement on her face and neck. She wore a dusty tan robe with the dirt of the streets along its hem.

“You are certain, absolutely certain?” Anteac spoke softly to soothe the poor girl, who still trembled with the gravity of her message.

“Yes, Reverend Mother.” She kept her gaze lowered. “Go through it once more,” Anteac said, and she thought: I’m sparring for time. I heard her correctly.

The messenger lifted her gaze to Anteac and looked directly into the totally blue eyes as all the postulants and acolytes were taught to do.

“As I was commanded, I made contact with the Ixians at their Embassy and presented your greetings. I then inquired if they had any messages for me to bring back.”

“Yes, yes, girl! I know. Get to the heart of it.”

The messenger gulped. “The spokesman identified himself as Othwi Yake, temporary superior in the Embassy and assistant to the former Ambassador.”

“You’re sure he was not a Face Dancer substitute?”

“None of the signs were there, Reverend Mother.”

“Very well. We know this Yake. You may continue.”

“Yake said they were awaiting the arrival of the new …”

“Hwi Noree, the new Ambassador, yes. She’s due here today.”

The messenger wet her lips with her tongue.

Anteac made a mental note to return this poor creature to a more elementary training schedule. Messengers should have better Self-control, although some allowance had to be made for the seriousness of this message.

“He then asked me to wait,” the messenger said. “He left the room and returned shortly with a Tleilaxu, a Face Dancer, I’m sure of it. There were the certain signs of the …”

“I’m sure you’re correct, girl,” Anteac said. “Now, get to the …” Anteac broke off as Luyseyal entered.

“What’s this I hear about messages from the Ixians and Tleilaxu?” Luyseyal asked.

“The girl’s repeating it now,” Anteac said.

“Why wasn’t I summoned?” Anteac looked up at her fellow Truthsayer, thinking that Luyseyal might be one of the finest practitioners of the art but she remained too conscious of rank. Luyseyal was young, however, with the sensuous oval features of the Jessica-type, and those genes tended to carry a headstrong nature.

Anteac spoke softly: “Your acolyte said you were meditating.”

Luyseyal nodded, sat down on the pallet and spoke to the messenger. “Continue.”

“The Face Dancer said he had a message for the Reverend Mothers. He used the plural,” the messenger said.

“He knew there were two of us this time,’ Anteac said.

“Everyone knows it,” Luyseyal said.

Anteac returned her full attention to the messenger. “Would you enter memory-trance now, girl, and give us the Face Dancer’s words verbatim.”

The messenger nodded, sat back on to her heels and clasped her hands in her lap. She took three deep breaths, closed her eyes and let her shoulders sag. When she spoke, her voice had a high-pitched, nasal twang.

“Tell the Reverend Mothers that by tonight the Empire will be rid of its God Emperor. We will strike him today before he reaches Onn. We cannot fail.”

A deep breath shook the messenger. Her eyes opened and she looked up at Anteac.

“The Ixian, Yake, told me to hurry back with this message. He then touched the back of my left hand in that particular way, further convincing me that he was not…”

“Yake is one of ours,” Anteac said. “Tell Luyseyal the message of the fingers.”

The messenger looked at Luyseyal. “We have been invaded by Face Dancers and cannot move.”

As Luyseyal started and began to rise from the pallet, Anteac said: “I already have taken the appropriate steps to guard our doors.” Anteac looked at the messenger. “You may go now, girl. You have been adequate to your task.”

“Yes, Reverend Mother.” The messenger lifted her lithe body with a certain amount of grace, but there was no doubt in her movements that she knew the import of Anteac’s words. Adequate was not well done.

When the messenger had gone, Luyseyal said: “She should’ve made some excuse to study the Embassy and find out how many of the Ixians have been replaced.”

“I think not,” Anteac said. “In that respect, she performed well. No, but it would have been better had she found a way to get a more detailed report from Yake. I fear we have lost him.”

“The reason the Tleilaxu sent us that message is obvious, of course,” Luyseyal said.

“They are really going to attack him,” Anteac said.

“Naturally. It’s what the fools would do. But I address myself to why they sent the message to us.”

Anteac nodded. “They think we now have no choice except to join them.”

“And if we try to warn the Lord Leto, the Tleilaxu will learn our messengers and their contacts.”

“What if the Tleilaxu succeed?” Anteac asked.

“Not likely.”

“We do not know their actual plan, only its general timing.”

“What if this girl, this Siona, has a part in it?” Luyseyal asked.

“I have asked myself that same question. Have you heard the full report from the Guild?”

“Only the summary. Is that enough?”

“Yes, with high probability.”

“You should be careful with terms such as high probability” Luyseyal said. “We don’t want anyone thinking you’re a mentat.”

Anteac’s tone was dry. “I presume you will not give me away.”

“Do you think the Guild is right about this Siona?” Luyseyal asked.

“I do not have enough information. If they are right, she is something extraordinary.”

“As the Lord Leto’s father was extraordinary?”

“A Guild Navigator could conceal himself from the oracular eye of the Lord Leto’s father.”

“But not from the Lord Leto.”

“I have read the full Guild report with care. She does not so much conceal herself and the actions around her as, well …”

“She fades, they said. She fades from their sight.”

“She alone,” Anteac said.

“And from the sight of the Lord Leto as well?”

“They do not know.”

“Do we dare make contact with her?”

“Do we dare not?” Anteac asked.

“This all may be moot if the Tleilaxu … Anteac, we should at least make the attempt to warn him.”

“We have no communications devices and there now are Fish Speaker guards at the door. They permit our people to enter, but not to leave.”

“Should we speak to one of them?”

“I have thought about that. We can always say we feared they were Face Dancer substitutes.”

“Guards at the door,” Luyseyal muttered. “Is it possible that he knows?”

“Anything is possible.”

“With the Lord Leto that’s the only thing you can say for sure,” Luyseyal said.

Anteac permitted herself a small sigh as she lifted herself from the stool. “How I long for the old days when we had all of the spice we could ever need.”

“Ever was just another illusion,” Luyseyal said. “I hope we have learned our lesson well, no matter how the Tleilaxu make out today.”

“They will do it clumsily whatever the outcome,” Anteac grumbled. “Gods! There are no good assassins to be found anymore.”

“There are always the ghola Idahos,” Luyseyal said.

“What did you say?” Anteac stared at her companion.

“There are always …”

“Yes!”

“The gholas are too slow in the body,” Luyseyal said.

“But not in the head.”

“What’re you thinking?”

“Is it possible that the Tleilaxu … No, not even they could be that…”

“An Idaho Face Dancer?” Luyseyal whispered.

Anteac nodded mutely.

“Put it out of your mind,” Luyseyal said. “They could not be that stupid.”

“That’s a dangerous judgment to make about Tleilaxu,” Anteac said. “We must prepare ourselves for the worst. Get one of those Fish Speaker guards in here!”

Unceasing warfare gives rise to its own social conditions which have been similar in all epochs. People enter a permanent state of alertness to ward off attacks. You see the absolute rule of the autocrat. All new things become dangerous frontier districts—new planets, new economic areas to exploit, new ideas or new devices, visitors—everything suspect. Feudalism takes firm hold, sometimes disguised as a politbureau or similar structure, but always present. Hereditary succession follows the lines of power. The blood of the powerful dominates. The vice-regents of heaven or their equivalent apportion the wealth. And they know they must control inheritance or slowly let the power melt away. Now, do you understand Leto’s Peace?

—The Stolen Journals

“Have the Bene Gesserit been informed of the new schedule?” Leto asked.

His entourage had entered the first shallow cut which would wind into switchbacks at the approach to the bridge across the Idaho River. The sun stood at the morning’s first quarter and a few courtiers were shedding cloaks. Idaho walked with a small troop of Fish Speakers at the left flank, his uniform beginning to show traces of dust and perspiration. Walking and trotting at the speed of a Royal peregrination was hard work.

Moneo stumbled and caught himself. “They have been informed, Lord.” The change of schedule had not been easy, but Moneo had learned to expect erratic shifts of direction at Festival time. He kept contingency plans at the ready.

“Are they still petitioning for a permanent Embassy on Arrakis?” Leto asked.

“Yes, Lord. I gave them the usual answer.”

“A simple ‘no’ should suffice,” Leto said. “They no longer need to be reminded that I abhor their religious pretensions,”

“Yes, Lord.” Moneo held himself to just within the prescribed distance beside Leto’s cart. The Worm was very much present this morning—the bodily signs quite apparent to Moneo’s eyes. No doubt it was the moisture in the air. That always seemed to bring out the Worm.

“Religion always leads to rhetorical despotism,” Leto said. “Before the Bene Gesserit, the Jesuits were the best at it.”

“Jesuits, Lord?”

“Surely you’ve met them in your histories?”

“I’m not certain, Lord. When were they?”

“No matter. You learn enough about rhetorical despotism from a study of the Bene Gesserit. Of course, they do not begin by deluding themselves with it.”

The Reverend Mothers are in for a bad time, Moneo told himself. He’s going to preach at them. They detest that. This could cause serious trouble.

“What was their reaction?” Leto asked.

“I’m told they were disappointed but did not press the matter.”

And Moneo thought: I’d best prepare them for more disappointment. And they’ll have to be kept away from the delegations of lx and Tleilax.

Moneo shook his head. This could lead to some very nasty plotting. The Duncan had better be warned.

“It leads to self-fulfilling prophecy and justifications for all manner of obscenities,” Leto said.

“This … rhetorical despotism, Lord?”

“Yes! It shields evil behind walls of self-righteousness which are proof against all arguments against the evil.”

Moneo kept a wary eye on Leto’s body, noting the way the hands twisted, almost a random movement, the twitching of the great ribbed segments. What will I do if the Worm comes out of him here? Perspiration broke out on Moneo’s forehead.

“It feeds on deliberately twisted meanings to discredit opposition,” Leto said.

“All of that, Lord?”

“The Jesuits called that ‘securing your power base’. It leads directly to hypocrisy which is always betrayed by the gap between actions and explanations. They never agree.”

“I must study this more carefully, Lord.”

“Ultimately, it rules by guilt because hypocrisy brings on the witch hunt and the demand for scapegoats.”

“Shocking, Lord.”

The cortege rounded a corner where the rock had been opened for a glimpse of the bridge in the distance.

“Moneo, are you paying close attention to me?”

“Yes, Lord. Indeed.”

“I’m describing a tool of the religious power base.”

“I recognize that, Lord.”

“Then why are you so afraid?”

“Talk of religious power always makes me uneasy, Lord.”

“Because you and the Fish Speakers wield it in my name?”

“Of course, Lord.”

“Power bases are very dangerous because they attract people who are truly insane, people who seek power only for the sake of power. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Lord. That is why you so seldom grant petitions for appointments in your government.”

“Excellent, Moneo!”

“Thank you, Lord.”

“In the shadow of every religion lurks a Torquemada,” Leto said. “You have never encountered that name. I know because I caused it to be expunged from all the records.”

“Why was that, Lord?”

“He was an obscenity. He made living torches out of people who disagreed with him.”

Moneo pitched his voice low. “Like the historians who angered you, Lord?”

“Do you question my actions, Moneo?”

“No, Lord!”

“Good. The historians died peacefully. Not a one felt the flames. Torquemada, however, delighted in commending to his god the agonized screams of his burning victims.”

“How horrible, Lord.”

The cortege turned another corner with a view of the bridge. The span appeared to be no closer.

Once more, Moneo studied his God Emperor. The Worm appeared no closer. Still too close, though. Moneo could feel the menace of that unpredictable presence, the Holy Presence which could kill without warning.

Moneo shuddered.

What had been the meaning of that strange … sermon? Moneo knew that few had ever heard the God Emperor speak thus. It was a privilege and a burden. It was part of the price paid for Leto’s Peace. Generation after generation marched in their ordered way under the dictates of that peace. Only the Citadel’s inner circle knew all of the infrequent breaks in that peace—the incidents when Fish Speakers were sent out in anticipation of violence.

Anticipation!

Moneo glanced at the now-silent Leto. The God Emperor’s eyes were closed and a look of brooding had come over his face. That was another of the Worm signs—a bad one. Moneo trembled.

Did Leto anticipate even his own moments of wild violence? It was the anticipation of violence which sent tremors of awe and fear throughout the Empire. Leto knew where guards must be posted to put down a transitory uprising. He knew it before the event.

Even thinking about such matters dried Moneo’s mouth. There were times, Moneo believed, when the God Emperor could read any mind. Oh, Leto employed spies. An occasional shrouded figure passed by the Fish Speakers for the climb to Leto’s tower aerie or descended to the crypt. Spies, no doubt of it, but Moneo suspected they were used merely to confirm what Leto already knew.

As though to confirm the fears in Moneo’s mind, Leto said: “Do not try to force an understanding of my ways, Moneo. Let understanding come of itself.”

“I will try, Lord.”

“No, do not try. Tell me, instead, if you have announced yet that there will be no changes in the spice allotments?”

“Not yet, Lord.”

“Delay the announcement. I am changing my mind. You know, of course, that there will be new offers of bribes.”

Moneo sighed. The amounts offered him in bribes had reached ridiculous heights. Leto, however, had appeared amused by the escalation.

“Draw them out,” he had said earlier. “See how high they will go. Make it appear that you can be bribed at last.”

Now, as they turned another corner with a view of the bridge, Leto asked: “Has House Corrino offered you a bribe?”

“Yes, Lord.”

“Do you know the myth which says that someday House Corrino will be restored to its ancient powers?”

“I have heard it, Lord.”

“Have the Corrino killed. It is a task for the Duncan. We will test him.”

“So soon, Lord?”

“It is still known that melange can extend human life. Let it also be known that the spice can shorten life.”

“As you command, Lord.”

Moneo knew this response in himself. It was the way he spoke when he could not voice a deep objection which he felt. He also knew that the Lord Leto understood this and was amused by it. The amusement rankled.

“Try not to be impatient with me, Moneo,” Leto said.

Moneo suppressed his feeling of bitterness. Bitterness brought peril. Rebels were bitter. The Duncans grew bitter before they died.

“Time has a different meaning for you than it has for me, Lord,” Moneo said. “I wish I could know that meaning.”

“You could but you will not.”

Moneo heard rebuke in the words and fell silent, turning his thoughts instead to the melange problems. It was not often that the Lord Leto spoke of the spice, and then it usually was to set allotments or withdraw them, to apportion rewards or send the Fish Speakers after some newly revealed hoard. The greatest remaining store of spice, Moneo knew, lay in some place known only to the God Emperor. In his first days of Royal Service, Moneo had been covered in a hood and led by the Lord Leto himself to that secret place along twisting passages which Moneo had sensed were underground.

When I removed the hood we were underground.

The place had filled Moneo with awe. Great bins of melange lay all around in a gigantic room cut from native rock and illuminated by glowglobes of an ancient design with arabesques of metal scrollwork upon them. The spice had glowed radiant blue in the dim silver light. And the smell—bitter cinnamon, unmistakable. There had been water dripping nearby. Their voices had echoed against the stone.

“One day all of this will be gone,” the Lord Leto had said.

Shocked, Moneo had asked: “What will Guild and Bene Gesserit do then?”

“What they are doing now, but more violently.”

Staring around the gigantic room with its enormous store of melange, Moneo could only think of things he knew were happening in the Empire at that moment—bloody assassinations, piratical raids, spying and intrigue. The God Emperor kept a lid on the worst of it, but what remained was bad enough.

“The temptation,” Moneo whispered.

“The temptation, indeed.”

“Will there be no more melange, ever, Lord?”

“Someday, I will go back into the sand. I will be the source of spice then.”

“You, Lord?”

“And I will produce something just as wonderful—more sandtrout—a hybrid and a prolific breeder.”

Trembling at this revelation, Moneo stared at the shadowy figure of the God Emperor who spoke of such marvels.

“The sandtrout,” Lord Leto said, “will link themselves into large living bubbles to enclose this planet’s water deep underground. Just as it was in the Dune times.”

“All of the water, Lord?”

“Most of it. Within three hundred years, the sandworm once more will reign here. It will be a new kind of sand-worm, I promise you.”

“How is that, Lord?”

“It will have animal awareness and a new cunning. The spice will be more dangerous to seek and far more perilous to keep.”

Moneo had looked up at the cavern’s rocky ceiling, his imagination probing through the rock to the surface.

“Everything desert again, Lord?”

“Watercourses will fill with sand. Crops will be choked and killed. Trees will be covered by great moving dunes. The sand-death will spread until… until a subtle signal is heard in the barren lands.”

“What signal, Lord?”

“The signal for the next cycle, the coming of the Maker, the coming of Shai-Hulud.”

“Will that be you, Lord?”

“Yes! The great sandworm of Dune will rise once more from the deeps. This land will be again the domain of spice and worm.”

“But what of the people, Lord? All of the people?”

“Many will die. Food plants and the abundant growth of this land will be parched. Without nourishment, meat animals will die.”

“Will everyone go hungry, Lord?”

“Undernourishment and the old diseases will stalk the land while only the hardiest survive … the hardiest and most brutal.”

“Must that be, Lord?”

“The alternatives are worse.”

“Teach me about those alternatives, Lord.”

“In time, you will know them.”

As he marched beside the God Emperor in the morning light of their peregrination to Onn, Moneo could only admit that he had, indeed, learned of alternative evils.

To most of the Empire’s docile citizens, Moneo knew, the firm knowledge which he held in his own head lay concealed in the Oral History, in the myths and wild stories told by infrequent mad prophets who cropped up on one planet or another to gather a short-lived following.

But I know what the Fish Speakers do.

And he knew also about evil men who sat at table, gorging themselves on rare delicacies while they watched the torture of fellow humans.

Until the Fish Speakers came, and gore erased such scenes.

“I enjoyed the way your daughter watched me,” Leto said. “She was so unaware that I knew.”

“Lord, I fear for her! She is my blood, my …”

“Mine, too, Moneo. Am I not Atreides? You would be better employed fearing for yourself.”

Moneo cast a fearful glance along the God Emperor’s body. The signs of the Worm remained too near. Moneo glanced at the cortege following, then along the road ahead. They now were into the steep descent, the switchbacks short and cut into high walls in the man-piled rocks of the cliff barrier which girdled the Sareer.

“Siona does not offend me, Moneo.”

“But she…”

“Moneo! Here, in its mysterious capsule, is one of life’s great secrets. To be surprised, to have a new thing occur, that is what I desire most.”

“Lord, I…”

“New! Isn’t that a radiant, a wonderful word?”

“If you say it, Lord.”

Leto was forced to remind himself then: Moneo is my creature. I created him.

“Your child is worth almost any price to me, Moneo. You decry her companions, but there may be one among them that she will love.”

Moneo cast an involuntary glance back at Duncan Idaho marching with the guards. Idaho was glaring ahead as though trying to probe each turn in the road before they reached it. He did not like this place with its high walls all around from which attack might come. Idaho had sent scouts up there in the night and Moneo knew that some of them still lurked on the heights, but there also were ravines ahead before the marchers reached the river. And there had not been enough guards to station them everywhere.

“We will depend upon the Fremen,” Moneo had reassured him.

“Fremen?” Idaho did not like what he heard about the Museum Fremen.

“At least they can sound an alarm against intruders,” Moneo had said.

“You saw them and asked them to do that?”

“Of course.”

Moneo had not dared to broach the subject of Siona to Idaho. Time enough for that later, but now the God Emperor had said a disturbing thing. Had there been a change in plans?

Moneo returned his attention to the God Emperor and lowered his voice.

“Love a companion, Lord? But you said the Duncan …”

“I said love, not breed with!”

Moneo trembled, thinking of how his own mating had been arranged, the wrenching away from …

No! Best not follow those memories!

There had been affection, even a real love … later, but in the first days …

“You are woolgathering again, Moneo.”

“Forgive me, Lord, but when you speak of love …”

“You think I have no tender thoughts?”

“It’s not that, Lord, but…”

“You think I have no memories of love and breeding, then?” The cart swerved toward Moneo, forcing him to dodge away, frightened by the glowering look on the Lord Leto’s face.

“Lord, I beg your …”

“This body may never have known such tenderness, but all of the memories are mine!”

Moneo could see the signs of the Worm growing more dominant in the God Emperor’s body and there was no escaping recognition of this mood.

I am in grave danger. We all are.

Moneo grew aware of every sound around him, the creaking of the Royal Cart, the coughs and low conversation from the entourage, the feet on the roadway. There was an exhalation of cinnamon from the God Emperor. The air here between the enclosing rock walls still held its morning chill and there was dampness from the river.

Was it the moisture bringing out the Worm?

“Listen to me, Moneo, as though your life depended on it.”

“Yes, Lord,” Moneo whispered, and he knew his life did depend on the care he took now, not only in listening but in observing.

“Part of me dwells forever underground without thought,” Leto said. “That part reacts. It does things without a care for knowing or logic.”

Moneo nodded, his attention glued on the God Emperor’s face. Were the eyes about to glaze?

“I am forced to stand off and watch such things, nothing more,” Leto said. “Such a reaction could cause your death. The choice is not mine. Do you hear?”

“I hear you, Lord,” Moneo whispered.

“There is no such thing as choice in such an event! You accept it, merely accept it. You will never understand it or know it. What do you say to that?”

“I fear the unknown, Lord.”

“But I don’t fear it. Tell me why!”

Moneo had been expecting a crisis such as this and, now that it had come, he almost welcomed it. He knew that his life depended on his answer. He stared at his God Emperor, mind racing.

“It is because of all your memories, Lord.”

“Yes?”

An incomplete answer, then. Moneo grasped at words. “You see everything that we know … all of it as it once was—unknown! A surprise to you … a surprise must be merely something new for you to know?” As he spoke, Moneo realized he had put a defensive question mark on something that should have been a bold statement, but the God Emperor only smiled.

“For such wisdom I grant you a boon, Moneo. What is your wish?”

Sudden relief only opened a path for other fears to emerge. “Could I bring Siona back to the Citadel?”

“That will cause me to test her sooner.”

“She must be separated from her companions, Lord.”

“Very well.”

“My Lord is gracious.”

“I am selfish.”

The God Emperor turned away from Moneo then and fell silent.

Looking along the segmented body, Moneo observed that the Worm’s signs had subsided somewhat. This had turned out well after all. He thought then of the Fremen with their petition and fear returned.

That Was a mistake. They will only arouse Him again. Why did I say they could present their petition?

The Fremen would be waiting up ahead, marshalled on this side of the river with their foolish papers waving in their hands.

Moneo marched in silence, his apprehension increasing with each step.

Over here sand blows; over there sand blows.

Over there a rich man waits; over here I wait.

—The Voice of Shai-Hulud, from the Oral History

Sister Chenoeh’s account, found among her papers after her death:

I obey both my tenets as a Bene Gesserit and the commands of the God Emperor by withholding these words from my report while secreting them that they may be found when I am gone. For the Lord Leto said to me: “You will return to your Superiors with my message, but these words keep secret for now. I will visit my rage upon your Sisterhood if you fail.”

As the Reverend Mother Syaksa warned me before I left: “You must do nothing which will bring down his wrath upon us.”

While I ran beside the Lord Leto on that short peregrination of which I have spoken, I thought to ask him about his likeness to a Reverend Mother. I said:

“Lord, I know how it is that a Reverend Mother acquires the memories of her ancestors and of others. How was it with you?”

“It was a design of our genetic history and the working of the spice. My twin sister, Ghanima, and I were awakened in the womb, aroused before birth into the presence of our ancestral memories.”

“Lord … my Sisterhood calls that Abomination.”

“And rightly so,” the Lord Leto said. “The ancestral numbers can be overwhelming. And who knows before the event which force will command such a horde—good or evil?”

“Lord, how did you overcome such a force?”

“I did not overcome it,” the Lord Leto said. “But the persistence of the pharaonic model saved both Ghani and me. Do you know that model, Sister Chenoeh?”

“We of the Sisterhood are well coached in history, Lord.”

“Yes, but you do not think of this as I do,” the Lord Leto said. “I speak of a disease of government which was caught by the Greeks who spread it to the Romans who distributed it so far and wide that it never has completely died out.”

“Does my Lord speak riddles?”

“No riddles. I hate this thing but it saved us. Ghani and I formed powerful internal alliances with ancestors who followed the pharaonic model. They helped us form a mingled identity within that long-dormant mob.”

“I find this disturbing, Lord.”

“And well you should.”

“Why are you telling me this now, Lord? You have never answered one of us before in this manner, not that I know of.”

“Because you listen well, Sister Chenoeh; because you will obey me and because I will never see you again.”

The Lord Leto spoke those strange words to me and then he asked:

“Why have you not inquired about what your Sisterhood calls my insane tyranny?”

Emboldened by his manner, I ventured to say: “Lord, we know about some of your bloody executions. They trouble us.”

The Lord Leto then did a strange thing. He closed his eyes as we went, and he said:

“Because I know you have been trained to record accurately whatever words you hear, I will speak to you now, Sister Chenoeh, as though you were a page in one of my journals. Preserve these words well for I do not want them lost.”

I assure my Sisterhood now that what follows, exactly as he spoke them, are the words uttered then by the Lord Leto:

“To my certain knowledge, when I am no longer consciously present here among you, when I am here only as a fearsome creature of the desert, many people will look back upon me as a tyrant.

“Fair enough. I have been tyrannical.

“A tyrant—not fully human, not insane, merely a tyrant. But even ordinary tyrants have motives and feelings beyond those usually assigned them by facile historians, and they will think of me as a great tyrant. Thus, my feelings and motives are a legacy I would preserve lest history distort them too much. History has a way of magnifying some characteristics while it discards others.

“People will try to understand me and to frame me in their words. They will seek truth. But the truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.

“You will not understand me. The harder you try the more remote I will become until finally I vanish into eternal myth—a Living God at last!

“That’s it, you see. I am not a leader nor even a guide. A god. Remember that. I am quite different from leaders and guides. Gods need take no responsibility for anything except genesis. Gods accept everything and thus accept nothing. Gods must be identifiable yet remain anonymous. Gods do not need a spirit world. My spirits dwell within me, answerable to my slightest summons. I share with you, because it pleases me to do so, what I have learned about them and through them. They are my truth.

“Beware of the truth, gentle sister. Although much sought after, truth can be dangerous to the seeker. Myths and reassuring lies are much easier to find and believe. If you find a truth, even a temporary one, it can demand that you make painful changes. Conceal your truths within words. Natural ambiguity will protect you then. Words are much easier to absorb than are the sharp delphic stabs of wordless portent. With words, you can cry out in the chorus:

“‘Why didn’t someone warn me?’

“But I did warn you. I warned you by example, not with words.

“There are inevitably more than enough words. You record them in your marvellous memory even now. And someday, my journals will be discovered—more words. I warn you that you read my words at your peril. The wordless movement of terrible events lies just below their surface. Be deaf! You do not need to hear or, hearing, you do not need to remember. How soothing it is to forget. And how dangerous!

“Words such as mine have long been recognized for their mysterious power. There is a secret knowledge here which can be used to rule the forgetful. My truths are the substance of myths and lies which tyrants have always counted on to manoeuvre the masses for selfish design.

“You see? I share it all with you, even the greatest mystery of all time, the mystery by which I compose my life. I reveal it to you in words:

“The only past which endures lies wordlessly within you.”

The God Emperor fell silent then. I dared to ask: “Are those all of the words that my Lord wishes me to preserve?”

“Those are the words,” the God Emperor said, and I thought he sounded tired, discouraged. He had the sound of someone uttering a last testament. I recalled that he had said he would never see me again, and I was fearful but I praise my teachers because the fear did not emerge in my voice.

“Lord Leto,” I said, “these journals of which you speak, for whom are they written?”

“For posterity after the span of millennia. I personalize those distant readers, Sister Chenoeh. I think of them as distant cousins filled with family curiosities. They are intent on unravelling the dramas which only I can recount. They want to make the personal connections to their own lives. They want the meanings, the truth!”

“But you warn us against truth, Lord,” I said.

“Indeed! All of history is a malleable instrument in my hands. Ohhh, I have accumulated all of these pasts and I possess every fact—yet the facts are mine to use as I will and, even using them truthfully, I change them. What am I speaking to you now? What is a diary, a journal? Words.”

Again, the Lord Leto fell silent. I weighed the portent of what he had said, weighed it against the admonition of Reverend Mother Syaksa, and against the things that the God Emperor had uttered to me earlier. He said I was his messenger and thus I felt that I was under his protection and might dare more than any other. Thus it was that I said:

“Lord Leto, you have said that you will not see me again. Does that mean you are about to die?”

I swear it here in my record of this event, the Lord Leto laughed! Then he said:

“No, gentle sister, it is you who will die. You will not live to be a Reverend Mother. Do not be saddened by this for by your presence here today, by carrying my message back to the Sisterhood, by preserving my secret words as well, you will achieve a far greater status. You become here an integral part of my myth. Our distant cousins will pray to you for intercession with me!”

Again, the Lord Leto laughed, but it was gentle laughter and he smiled upon me warmly. I find it difficult to record here with that accuracy which I am enjoined to employ in every accounting such as this one, yet in the moment that the Lord Leto spoke these terrible words to me, I felt a profound bond of friendship with him, as though some physical thing had leaped between us, tying us together in a way that words cannot fully describe. It was not until the instant of this experience that I understood what he had meant by the wordless truth. It happened, yet I cannot describe it.

ARCHIVIST’S NOTE: Because of intervening events, the discovery of this private record is now little more than a footnote to history, interesting because it contains one of the earliest references to the God Emperor’s secret journals. For those wishing to explore further into this account, reference may be made to Archive Records, subheadings: Chenoeh, Holy Sister Quintinius Violet; Chenoeh Report, The, and Melange Rejection, Medical Aspects of.

(Footnote: Sister Quintinius Violet Chenoeh died in the fifty-third year of her Sisterhood, the cause being ascribed to melange incompatibility during her attempt to achieve the status of Reverend Mother.)