God Emperor of Dune (41 page)

Authors: Frank Herbert

Tags: #Science Fiction - General

BOOK: God Emperor of Dune

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Of course. Fish Speakers were trained from childhood to avoid injustice wherever possible.

“We must see to the survivors in the populace,” he said. “See to it that their needs are met. They must be brought to the realization that the Tleilaxu were to blame.”

Nyshae nodded. She had not reached bashar rank while remaining ignorant of the drill. By now, she believed it. Merely by hearing Leto say it, she believed in the Tleilaxu guilt. And there was a certain practicality in her understanding. She knew why they did not slay
all
of the Tleilaxu.

You do not eliminate every scapegoat.

“And we must provide a distraction,” Leto said. “Luckily, there may be one ready at hand. I will send word to you after conferring with the Lady Hwi Noree.”

“The Ixian Ambassador, Lord? Is she not implicated in …”

“She is entirely guiltless,” he said.

He saw belief settle into Nyshae’s features, a readymade plastic underlayment which could lock her jaw and glaze her eyes.
Even Nyshae.
He knew the reasons because he had created those reasons, but sometimes he felt a bit awed by his creation.

“I hear the Lady Hwi arriving in my anteroom,” he said. “Send her in as you leave. And, Nyshae …”

She already was on her feet, but she stood expectantly silent.

“Tonight, I have elevated Kieuemo to sub-bashar,” he said. “See that it is made official. As for yourself, I am pleased. Ask and you shall receive.”

He saw the formula send a wave of pleasure through Nyshae, but she tempered it immediately, proving once more her worth to him.

“I shall test Kieuemo, Lord,” she said. “If she suits, I may take a holiday. I have not seen my family on Salusa Secundus for many years.”

“At a time of your own choosing,” he said.

And he thought:
Salusa Secundus. Of course!

That one reference to her origins reminded him of who she resembled:
Harq al-Ada. She has Corrino blood. We are closer relatives than I had thought.

“My Lord is generous,” she said.

She left him then, a new spring in her stride. He heard her voice in the anteroom: “Lady Hwi, our Lord will see you now.”

Hwi entered, backlighted and framed in the archway for a moment, hesitancy in her step until her eyes adjusted to the inner chamber. She came like a moth to the brightness around Leto’s face, looking away only to seek along his shadowy length for signs of injury. He knew that no such sign was visible, but there were still aches and interior tremblings.

His eyes detected a slight limp, Hwi favoring her right leg, but a long gown of jade green concealed the injury. She stopped at the edge of the declivity which held his cart, looking directly into his eyes.

“They said you were wounded, Hwi. Are you in pain?”

“A cut on my leg below the knee, Lord. A small piece of masonry from the explosion. Your Fish Speakers treated it with a salve which removed the pain. Lord, I feared for you.”

“And I feared for you, gentle Hwi.”

“Except for that first explosion, I was not in danger, Lord. They rushed me into a room deep beneath the Embassy.”

So she did not see my performance
, he thought.
I can be thankful for that.

“I sent for you to ask your forgiveness,” he said.

She sank onto a golden cushion. “What is there to forgive, Lord? You are not the reason for …”

“I am being tested, Hwi.”

“You?”

“There are those who wish to know the depths of my concern for the safety of Hwi Noree.”

She pointed upward. “That … was because of me?”

“Because of us.”

“Oh. But who …”

“You have agreed to wed me, Hwi, and I …” He raised a hand to silence her as she started to speak. “Anteac has told us what you revealed to her, but this did not originate with Anteac.”

“Then who is …”

“The
who
is not important. It is important that you reconsider. I must give you this opportunity to change your mind.”

She lowered her gaze.

How sweet her features are
, he thought.

It was possible for him to create only in his imagination an entire
human
lifetime with Hwi. Enough examples lay in the welter of his memories upon which to build a fantasy of wedded life. It gathered nuances in his fancy— small details of mutual experience, a touch, a kiss, all of the sweet sharings upon which arose something of painful beauty. He ached with it, a pain far deeper than the physical reminders of his violence at the Embassy.

Hwi lifted her chin and looked into his eyes. He saw there a compassionate longing to help him.

“But how else may I serve you, Lord?”

He reminded himself that she was a primate, while he no longer was fully primate. The differences grew deeper by the minute.

The ache remained within him.

Hwi was an inescapable reality, something so basic that no word could ever fully express it. The ache within him was almost more than he could bear.

“I love you, Hwi. I love you as a man loves a woman … but it cannot be. That will never be.”

Tears flowed from her eyes. “Should I leave? Should I return to Ix?”

“They would only hurt you, trying to find out what went wrong with their plan.”

She has seen my pain
, he thought.
She knows the futility and frustration. What will she do? She will not lie. She will not say she returns my love as a woman to a man. She recognizes the futility. And she knows her own feelings for me—compassion, awe, a questioning which ignores fear.

“Then I will stay,” she said. “We will take such pleasure as we can from being together. I think it is best that we do this. If it means we should wed, so be it.”

“Then I must share knowledge with you which I have shared with no other person,” he said. “It will give you a power over me which …”

“Do not do this, Lord! What if someone forced me to …”

“You will never again leave my household. My quarters here, the Citadel, the safe places of the Sareer—these will be your home.”

“As you will.”

How gentle and open her quiet acceptance
, he thought.

The aching pulse within him had to be calmed. In itself, it was a danger to him and to the Golden Path.

Those clever Ixians!

Malky had seen how the all-powerful were forced to contend with a constant siren song—the will to self-delight.

Constant awareness of the power in your slightest whim.

Hwi took his silence to be uncertainty. “Will we wed, Lord?”

“Yes.”

“Should anything be done about the Tleilaxu stories which …”

“Nothing.”

She stared at him, remembering their earlier conversation.
The seeds of dissolution were being planted.

“It is my fear, Lord, that I will weaken you,” she said.

“Then you must find ways to strengthen me.”

“Can it strengthen you if we diminish belief in the God Leto?”

He heard a hint of Malky in her voice, that measured weighing which had made him so revoltingly charming.
We never completely escape the teachers of our childhood.

“Your question begs the answer,” he said. “Many will continue to worship according to my design. Others will believe the lies.”

“Lord … would you ask
me
to lie for you?”

“Of course not. But I will ask you to remain silent when you might wish to speak.”

“But if they revile …”

“You will not protest.”

Once more, tears flowed down her cheeks. Leto longed to touch them, but they were water … painful water.

“It must be done this way,” he said.

“Will you explain it to me, Lord?”

“When I am gone, they must call me
Shaitan
, the Emperor of Gehenna. The wheel must turn and turn and turn along the Golden Path.”

“Lord, could the anger not be directed at me alone? I would not …”

“No! The Ixians made you much more perfectly than they thought. I truly love you. I cannot help it.”

“I do not wish to cause you pain!” The words were wrenched from her.

“What’s done is done. Do not mourn it.”

“Help me to understand.”

“The hate which will blossom after I am gone, that, too, will fade into the inevitable past. A long time will pass. Then, on a far-distant day, my journals will be found.”

“Journals?” She was shaken by the seeming shift of subject.

“My chronicle of my time. My arguments, the apologia. Copies exist and scattered fragments will survive, some in distorted form, but the original journals will wait and wait and wait. I have hidden them well.”

“And when they are discovered?”

“People will learn that I was something quite different from what they supposed.”

Her voice came in a trembling hush. “I already know what they will learn.”

“Yes, my darling Hwi, I think you do.”

“You are neither devil nor god, but something never seen before and never to be seen again because your presence removes the need.”

She brushed tears from her cheeks.

“Hwi, do you realize how dangerous you are?”

Alarm showed in her expression, the tensing of her arms.

“You have the makings of a saint,” he said. “Do you understand how painful it can be to find a saint in the wrong place and the wrong time?”

She shook her head.

“People have to be prepared for saints,” he said. “Otherwise, they simply become followers, supplicants, beggars and weakened sycophants forever in the shadow of the saint. People are destroyed by this because it nurtures only weakness.”

After a moment of thought, she nodded, then: “Will there be saints when you are gone?”

“That’s the purpose of my Golden Path.”

“Moneo’s daughter, Siona, will she …”

“For now she is only a rebel. As to sainthood, we will let her decide. Perhaps she will only do what she was bred to do.”

“What is that, Lord?”

“Stop calling me
Lord
,” he said. “We will be Worm and wife. Call me Leto if you wish.
Lord
interferes.”

“Yes, L … Leto. But what is …”

“Siona was bred to rule. There is danger in such breeding. When you rule, you gain knowledge of power. This can lead into impetuous irresponsibility, into painful excesses and that can lead to the terrible destroyer—wild hedonism.”

“Siona would …”

“All we know about Siona is that she can remain dedicated to a particular performance, to the pattern which fills her senses. She is necessarily an aristocrat, but aristocracy looks mostly to the past. That’s a failure. You don’t see much of any path unless you are Janus, looking simultaneously backward and forward.”

“Janus? Oh, yes, the god with the two opposed faces.” She wet her lips with her tongue. “Are you Janus, Leto?”

“I am Janus magnified a billionfold. And I am also something less. I have been, for example, what my administrators admire most—the decision-maker whose every decision can be made to work.”

“But if you fail them …”

“They will turn against me, yes.”

“Will Siona replace you if …”

“Ahhh, what an enormous if! You observe that Siona threatens my person. However, she does not threaten the Golden Path. There is also the fact that my Fish Speakers have a certain
attachment
to the Duncan.”

“Siona seems … so young.”

“And I am her favorite
poseur
, the sham who holds power under false pretenses, never consulting the needs of his people.”

“Could I not talk to her and …”

“No! You must never try to persuade Siona of anything. Promise me, Hwi.”

“If you ask it, of course, but I …”

“All gods have this problem, Hwi. In the perception of deeper needs, I must often ignore immediate ones. Not addressing immediate needs is an offense to the young.”

“Could you not reason with her and …”

“Never attempt to reason with people who know they are right!”

“But when you know they are wrong …”

“Do you believe in me?”

“Yes.”

“And if someone tried to convince you that I am the greatest evil of all time …”