God Emperor of Dune (36 page)

Read God Emperor of Dune Online

Authors: Frank Herbert

Tags: #Science Fiction - General

BOOK: God Emperor of Dune
10.22Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“A universe of many windows through which I may peer. Whatever the window frames, that is what I see.”
“The future?”
“The universe is timeless at its roots and contains therefore all times and all futures.”
“It’s true then,” she said. “You saw a thing which this—” she gestured at his long, ribbed body—“prevents.”
“Do you find it in you to believe that this may be, in some small way, holy?” he asked.
She could only nod her head.
“If you share it all with me,” he said, “I warn you that it will be a terrible burden.”
“Will it make your burden lighter, Lord?”
“Not lighter, but easier to accept.”
“Then I will share. Tell me, Lord.”
“Not yet, Hwi. You must be patient a while longer.”
She swallowed her disappointment, sighing.
“It’s only that my Duncan Idaho grows impatient,” Leto said. “I must deal with him.”
She glanced backward, but the small room remained empty.
“Do you wish me to leave now?”
“I wish you would never leave me.”
She stared at him, noting the intensity of his regard, a hungry emptiness in his expression which filled her with sadness. “Lord, why do you tell
me
your secrets?”
“I would not ask you to be the bride of a god.”
Her eyes went wide with shock.
“Do not answer,” he said.
Barely moving her head, she sent her gaze along the shadowy length of his body.
“Do not search for parts of me which no longer exist,” he said. “Some forms of physical intimacy are no longer possible for me.”
She returned her attention to his cowled face, noting the pink skin of his cheeks, the intensely human effect of his features in that alien frame.
“If you require children,” he said, “I would ask only that you let me choose the father. But I have not yet asked you anything.”
Her voice was faint. “Lord, I do not know what to …”
“I will return to the Citadel soon,” he said. “You will come to me there and we will talk. I will tell you then about the thing which I prevent.”
“I am frightened, Lord, more frightened than I ever imagined I could be.”
“Do not fear me. I can be nothing but gentle with my gentle Hwi. As for other dangers, my Fish Speakers will shield you with their own bodies. They dare not let harm come to you!”
Hwi lifted herself to her feet and stood trembling.
Leto saw how deeply his words had affected her and he felt the pain of it. Hwi’s eyes glistened with tears. She clasped her hands tightly to still the trembling. He knew she would come to him willingly at the Citadel. No matter what he asked, her response would be the response of his Fish Speakers:
“Yes, Lord.”
It came to Leto that if she could change places with him, take up his burden, she would offer herself. The fact that she could not do this added to her pain. She was intelligence built on profound sensitivity, without any of Malky’s hedonistic weaknesses. She was frightening in her perfection. Everything about her reaffirmed his awareness that she was
precisely
the kind of woman who, if he had grown to normal manhood, he would have wanted (
No! Demanded!
) as his mate.
And the Ixians knew it.
“Leave me now,” he whispered.
I am both father and mother to my people. I have known the ecstasy of birth and the ecstasy of death and I know the patterns that you must learn. Have I not wandered intoxicated through the universe of shapes? Yes! I have seen you outlined in light. That universe which you say you see and feel, that universe is my dream. My energies focus upon it and I am in any realm and every realm. Thus, you are born.
—THE STOLEN JOURNALS
 
 
 
 
“My Fish Speakers tell me that you went to the Citadel immediately after
Siaynoq,” Leto said.
He stared accusingly at Idaho, who stood near where Hwi had sat only an hour ago. Such a small passage of time—yet Leto felt the emptiness as centuries.
“I needed time to think,” Idaho said. He looked into the shadowy pit where Leto’s cart rested.
“And to talk to Siona?”
“Yes.” Idaho lifted his gaze to Leto’s face.
“But you asked for Moneo,” Leto said.
“Do they report on every movement I make?” Idaho demanded.
“Not
every
movement.”
“Sometimes people need to be alone.”
“Of course. But do not blame the Fish Speakers for being concerned about you.”
“Siona says she is to be tested!”
“Was that why you asked for Moneo?”
“What is this test?”
“Moneo knows. I presumed that was why you wanted to see him.”
“You presume nothing! You
know.
”
“Siaynoq has upset you, Duncan. I am sorry.”
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be me … here?”
“The ghola’s lot is not easy,” Leto said. “Some lives are harder than others.”
“I don’t need any juvenile philosophy!”
“What do you need, Duncan?”
“I need to know some things.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t understand
any
of these people around you! Without showing any surprise about it, Moneo tells me that Siona was part of a rebellion against you. His own daughter!”
“In his day, Moneo too was a rebel.”
“See what I mean? Did you test him, too?”
“Yes.”
“Will you test me?”
“I am testing you.”
Idaho glared at him, then: “I don’t understand your government, your Empire, anything. The more I find out, the more I realize that I don’t know what’s going on.”
“How fortunate that you have discovered the way of wisdom,” Leto said.
“What?” Idaho’s baffled outrage raised his voice to a battlefield roar which filled the small room.
Leto smiled. “Duncan, have I not told you that when you think you know something, that is a most perfect barrier against learning?”
“Then tell me what’s going on.”
“My friend Duncan Idaho is acquiring a new habit. He is learning always to look beyond what he thinks he knows.”
“All right, all right.” Idaho nodded his head slowly in time to the words. “Then what’s
beyond
letting me take part in that Siaynoq thing?”
“I am binding the Fish Speakers to the Commander of my Guard.”
“And I have to fight them off! The escort that took me out to the Citadel wanted to stop for an orgy. And the ones who brought me back here when you …”
“They know how much it pleases me to see children of Duncan Idaho.”
“Damn you! I’m not your stud!”
“No need to shout, Duncan.”
Idaho took several deep breaths, then: “When I tell them ‘
no
,’ they act hurt at first and then they treat me like some damned”—he shook his head—“holy man or something.”
“Don’t they obey you?”
“They don’t question anything … unless it’s contrary to your orders. I didn’t want to come back here.”
“Yet they brought you.”
“You know damned well they won’t disobey
you
!”
“I’m glad you came, Duncan.”
“Oh, I can see that!”
“The Fish Speakers know how special you are, how fond I am of you, how much I owe you. It’s never a question of obedience and disobedience where you and I are concerned.”
“Then what is it a question of?”
“Loyalty.”
Idaho fell into pensive silence.
“You felt the power of Siaynoq?” Leto asked.
“Mumbo jumbo.”
“Then why are you disturbed by it?”
“Your Fish Speakers aren’t an army, they’re a police force.”
“By my name, I assure you that’s not so. Police are inevitably corrupted.”
“You tempted me with power,” Idaho accused.
“That’s the test, Duncan.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I trust your loyalty to the Atreides implicitly, without question.”
“Then what’s this talk of corruption and testing?”
“You were the one who accused me of having a police force. Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available.”
Idaho wet his lips with his tongue and stared at Leto with obvious puzzlement. “But the moral training of … I mean, the legal … the prisons to …”
“What good are laws and prisons when the breaking of a law is not a sin?”
Idaho cocked his head slightly to the right. “Are you trying to tell me that your damned religion is …”
“Punishment of sins can be quite extravagant.”
Idaho hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the world outside the door. “All this talk about death penalties … that flogging and …”
“I try to dispense with casual laws and prisons wherever possible.”
“You have to have
some
prisons!”
“Do I? Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police are effective. They’re a kind of job insurance.”
Idaho turned slightly and thrust a pointing finger toward the door through which he had entered the small room. “You’ve got whole planets that are nothing but prisons!”
“I guess you could think of anywhere as a prison if that’s the way your illusions go.”
“Illusions!” Idaho dropped his hand to his side and stood dumbfounded.
“Yes. You talk of prisons and police and legalities, the perfect illusions behind which a prosperous power structure can operate while observing, quite accurately, that it is above its own laws.”
“And you think crimes can be dealt with by …”
“Not crimes, Duncan, sins.”
“So you think your religion can …”
“Have you noted the primary sins?”
“What?”
“Attempting to corrupt a member of my government, and corruption by a member of my government.”
“And what is this corruption?”
“Essentially, it’s the failure to observe and worship the holiness of the God Leto.”
“You?”
“Me.”
“But you told me right at the beginning that …”
“You think I don’t believe in my own godhead? Be careful, Duncan.”
Idaho’s voice came with angry flatness. “You told me that one of my jobs was to help keep your secret, that you …”
“You don’t know my secret.”
“That you’re a tyrant? That’s no …”
“Gods have more power than tyrants, Duncan.”
“I don’t like what I’m hearing.”
“When has an Atreides ever asked you to
like
your job?”
“You ask me to command your Fish Speakers who are judge, jury and executioner …” Idaho broke off.
“And what?”
Idaho remained silent.
Leto stared across the chill distance between them, so short a space yet so far.
It’s like playing a fish on a line
, Leto thought.
You must calculate the breaking point of every element in the contest.
The problem with Idaho was that bringing him to the net always hastened his end. And it was happening too rapidly this time. Leto felt sadness.
“I won’t worship you,” Idaho said.
“The Fish Speakers recognize that you have a special dispensation,” Leto said.
“Like Moneo and Siona?”
“Much different.”
“So rebels are a special case.”
Leto grinned. “All of my most trusted administrators were rebels at one time.”
“I wasn’t a …”
“You were a brilliant rebel! You helped the Atreides wrest an Empire from a reigning monarch.”
Idaho’s eyes went out of focus with introspection. “So I did.” He shook his head sharply as though tossing something out of his hair. “And look what you’ve done with that Empire!”
“I have set up a pattern in it, a pattern of patterns.”
“So you say.”
“Information is frozen in patterns, Duncan. We can use one pattern to solve another pattern. Flow patterns are the hardest to recognize and understand.”

Other books

Boss Takes All by Carl Hancock
Capitol Murder by Phillip Margolin
Vapor Trail by Chuck Logan
The Temple of Yellow Skulls by Don Bassingthwaite
Sea Breeze by Jennifer Senhaji, Patricia D. Eddy
Accidentally Catty by Dakota Cassidy
Alexander (Vol. 2) by Manfredi, Valerio Massimo