God Emperor of Dune (65 page)
“But why?”
They had been standing well away from the others in the chill dawn atop the barrier Wall, Nayla feeling precariously isolated here, remote and vulnerable.
Siona’s grim features, her low, intense voice, could not be denied. “Do you think you can harm God?”
“I …” Nayla could only shrug.
“You
must
obey me!”
must
obey me!”
“I must,” Nayla agreed.
Nayla studied the approach of the distant cortege, noting the colors of the courtiers, the thick masses of blue marking her sisters of the Fish Speakers … the shiny surface of her Lord’s cart.
It was another test, she decided. The God Emperor would know. He would know the devotion in His Nayla’s heart. It was a test. The God Emperor’s commands must be obeyed in all things. That was the earliest lesson of her Fish Speaker childhood. The God Emperor had said that Nayla must obey Siona. It was a test. What else could it be?
She looked toward the four Fremen. They had been positioned by Duncan Idaho directly in the roadway and blocking part of the exit from this end of the bridge. They sat with their backs to her and looked out across the bridge, four brown-robed mounds. Nayla had heard Idaho’s words to them.
“Do not leave this place. You must greet him from here. Stand when he nears you and bow low.”
Greet, yes.
Nayla nodded to herself.
The three other Fish Speakers who had climbed the Barrier Wall with her had been sent to the center of the bridge. All they knew was what Siona had told them in Nayla’s presence. They were to wait until the Royal Cart was only a few paces from them, then they were to turn and dance away from the cart, leading it and the procession toward the vantage point above Tuono.
If I cut the bridge with my lasgun, those three will die,
Nayla thought.
And all the others who come with our Lord.
Nayla thought.
And all the others who come with our Lord.
Nayla craned her neck to peer down into the gorge. She could not see the river from here, but she could hear its distant rumblings, a movement of rocks.
They would all die!
Unless He performs a Miracle.
That had to be it. Siona had set the stage for a Holy Miracle. What else could Siona intend now that she had been tested, now that she wore the uniform of Fish Speaker Command? Siona had given her oath to the God Emperor. She had been tested by God, the two of them alone in the Sareer.
Nayla turned only her eyes to the right, peering at the architects of this greeting. Siona and Idaho stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the roadway about twenty meters to Nayla’s right. They were deep in conversation, looking at each other occasionally, nodding.
Presently, Idaho touched Siona’s arm—an oddly possessive gesture. He nodded once and strode off toward the bridge, stopping at the buttress corner directly in front of Nayla. He peered down, then crossed to the other near corner of the bridge. Again, he peered downward, standing there for several minutes before returning to Siona.
What a strange creature, that ghola, Nayla thought. After that awesome climb, she no longer thought of him as quite human. He was something else, a demiurge who stood next to God. But he could breed.
A distant shout caught Nayla’s attention. She turned and looked across the bridge. The cortege had been in the familiar trot of a royal peregrination. Now, they were slowing to a sedate walk only a few minutes away from the bridge. Nayla recognized Moneo marching in the van, his uniform brilliant white, the even, undeviating stride with his gaze straight ahead. The cover of the Emperor’s cart had been sealed. It glittered in mirror-opacity as it rolled behind Moneo on its wheels.
The mystery of it all filled Nayla.
A miracle was about to happen!
Nayla glanced to the right at Siona. Siona returned her gaze and nodded once. Nayla drew the lasgun from its holster and rested it against the rock pillar as she sighted along it. The cable on the left first, then the cable on the right, then the faery trellis of plasteel on the left. The lasgun felt cold and alien against Nayla’s hand. She took a trembling breath to restore calm.
I must obey. It is a test.
She saw Moneo lift his gaze from the roadway and, not changing stride, turn to shout something at the cart or the ones behind it. Nayla could not make out the words. Moneo faced front once more. Nayla steadied herself, a part of the rock pillar which concealed most of her body.
A test.
Moneo had seen the people on the bridge and at the far end. He identified Fish Speaker uniforms and his first thought was to wonder who had ordered these greeters. He turned and shouted a question at Leto, but the God Emperor’s cart cover remained opaque, hiding Hwi and Leto within it.
Moneo was onto the bridge, the cart rasping in blown sand behind him, before he recognized Siona and Idaho standing well back from the far end. He identified four Museum Fremen seated on the roadway. Doubts began squirming through Moneo’s mind, but he could not change the pattern. He ventured a glance down at the river—a platinum world there caught in the noonday light. The sound of the cart was loud behind him. The flow of the river, the flow of the cortege, the sweeping importance of these things in which he played a role—all of it caught up his mind in a dizzying sensation of the inevitable.
We are not people passing this way,
he thought.
We are primal elements linking one piece of Time to another. And when we have passed, everything behind us will drop off into no-sound, a place like the no-room of the Ixians, yet never again the same as it was before we came.
he thought.
We are primal elements linking one piece of Time to another. And when we have passed, everything behind us will drop off into no-sound, a place like the no-room of the Ixians, yet never again the same as it was before we came.
A bit from one of the lute-player’s songs wafted through Moneo’s memory and his eyes went out of focus in the remembrance. He knew that song for its wishfulness, a wish that all of this were ended, all past, all doubts banished, tranquility returned. The plaintive song drifted through his awareness like smoke, twisting and compelling:
“Insect cries in roots of pampas grass.”
Moneo hummed the song to himself:
“Insect cries mark the end.
Autumn and my song are the color
Of the last leaves
In roots of pampas grass.”
Moneo nodded his head to the refrain:
“Day is ended,
Visitors gone.
Day is ended.
In our Sietch,
Day is ended.
Storm wind sounds.
Day is ended.
Visitors gone.”
Moneo decided that the lute-player’s song had to be a really old one, an Old Fremen song, no doubt of it. And it told him something about himself. He wished the visitors truly gone, the excitements ended, peace once more. Peace was so near … yet he could not leave his duties. He thought of all that impedimenta piled out there on the sand just beyond visibility range from Tuono. They would see it all soon—tents, food, tables, golden plates and jeweled knives, glowglobes fashioned in the arabesque shapes of ancient lamps … everything rich and full of expectations from completely different lives.
They will never be the same in Tuono.
Moneo had spent two nights in Tuono once on an inspection tour. He remembered the smells of their cooking fires—aromatic bushes kindled and flaming in the dark. They would not use sunstoves because “that is not the most ancient way.”
Most ancient!
There was little smell of melange in Tuono. A sweet acridity and the musky oils of oasis shrubs, these dominated the odors. Yes … and the cesspools and the stink of rotting garbage. He recalled the God Emperor’s comment when Moneo had finished reporting on that tour.
“These
Fremen
do not know what is lost from their lives. They think they keep the essence of the old ways. This is a failure of all museums. Something fades; it dries out of the exhibits and is gone. The people who administer the museum and the people who come to bend over the cases and stare—few of them sense this missing thing. It drove the engine of life in earlier times. When the life is gone, it is gone.”
Fremen
do not know what is lost from their lives. They think they keep the essence of the old ways. This is a failure of all museums. Something fades; it dries out of the exhibits and is gone. The people who administer the museum and the people who come to bend over the cases and stare—few of them sense this missing thing. It drove the engine of life in earlier times. When the life is gone, it is gone.”
Moneo focused on the three Fish Speakers who stood just ahead of him on the bridge. They lifted their arms high and began to dance, whirling and skipping away from him only a few paces distant.
How odd,
he thought.
I’ve seen the other people dance in the open, but never Fish Speakers. They only dance in the privacy of their quarters, in the intimacy of their own company.
he thought.
I’ve seen the other people dance in the open, but never Fish Speakers. They only dance in the privacy of their quarters, in the intimacy of their own company.
This thought was still in his mind when he heard the first awful humming of the lasgun and felt the bridge lurch beneath him.
This is not happening
, his mind told him.
, his mind told him.
He heard the Royal Cart scrape sideways across the roadbed, then the
snap-slap
of the cart’s cover slamming open. A bedlam of screams and cries arose from behind him, but he could not turn. The bridge’s roadbed had tipped steeply to Moneo’s right, spilling him onto his face while he went sliding toward the abyss. He clutched a severed strand of cable to stop himself. The cable went with him, everything grating in the spilling film of sand which had covered the roadbed. He clutched the cable with both hands, turning with it. He saw the Royal Cart then. It skewed sideways toward the edge of the bridge, its cover open. Hwi stood there, one hand steadying her on the folding seat while she stared past Moneo.
snap-slap
of the cart’s cover slamming open. A bedlam of screams and cries arose from behind him, but he could not turn. The bridge’s roadbed had tipped steeply to Moneo’s right, spilling him onto his face while he went sliding toward the abyss. He clutched a severed strand of cable to stop himself. The cable went with him, everything grating in the spilling film of sand which had covered the roadbed. He clutched the cable with both hands, turning with it. He saw the Royal Cart then. It skewed sideways toward the edge of the bridge, its cover open. Hwi stood there, one hand steadying her on the folding seat while she stared past Moneo.
A horrible screaming of metal filled the air as the roadbed tipped even farther. He saw people from the cortege falling, their mouths open, arms waving. Something had caught Moneo’s cable. His arms were stretched out over his head as he turned once more, twisting. He felt his hands, greased by the perspiration of fear, slipping along the cable.
Once more, his gaze came around to the Royal Cart. It lay jammed against the stubs of broken girders. Even as Moneo looked, the God Emperor’s futile hands groped for Hwi Noree, but failed to reach her. She fell from the cart’s open end, silently, the golden gown whipping upward to reveal her body stretched out as straight as an arrow.
A deep, rumbling groan came from the God Emperor.
Why doesn’t he activate the suspensors?
Moneo wondered.
The suspensors will support him.
Moneo wondered.
The suspensors will support him.
But the lasgun was still humming and, as Moneo’s hands slipped from the cable’s severed end, he saw lancing flame strike the cart’s suspensor bubbles, piercing one after another in eruptions of golden smoke. Moneo stretched his hands over his head as he fell.
The smoke! The golden smoke!
His robe whipped upward, turning him until his face was directed downward into the abyss. With his gaze on the depths, he recognized a maelstrom of boiling rapids there, the mirror of his life—precipitous currents and plunges, all movement gathering up all substance. Leto’s words wound through his mind on a path of golden smoke:
“Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.”
Moneo fell freely then in the ecstasy of awareness. The universe opened for him like clear glass, everything flowing in a no-Time.
“Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.”
Moneo fell freely then in the ecstasy of awareness. The universe opened for him like clear glass, everything flowing in a no-Time.
The golden smoke!
“Leto!” he screamed. “Siaynoq! I believe!”
The robe tore away from his shoulders then. He turned in the wind of the canyon—one last glimpse of the Royal Cart tipping … tipping from the shattered roadbed. The God Emperor slid out of the open end.
Something solid smashed into Moneo’s back—his last sensation.
Leto felt himself sliding from the cart. His awareness held only the image of Hwi striking the river—the distant pearly fountain which marked her plunge into the myths and dreams of termination. Her last words, calm and steady, rolled through all of his memories: “I shall go on ahead, Love.”
As he slipped from the cart, he saw the scimitar arc of the river, a sliver-edged thing which shimmered in its mottled shadows, a vicious blade of a river honed through Eternity and ready now to receive him into its agony.
I cannot cry, nor even shout,
he thought.
Tears are no longer possible. They’re water. I’ll have water enough in a moment. I can only moan in my grief. I am alone, more alone than ever before.
he thought.
Tears are no longer possible. They’re water. I’ll have water enough in a moment. I can only moan in my grief. I am alone, more alone than ever before.
His great ridged body flexed as it fell, twisting him about until his amplified vision revealed Siona standing at the broken brink of the bridge.
Now, you will learn!
he thought.
he thought.
The body continued to turn. He watched the river approach. The water was a dream inhabited by glimpses of fish which ignited an ancient memory of a banquet beside a granite pool—pink flesh dazzling his hungers.
I join you, Hwi, in the banquet of the gods!
A bursting flash of bubbles enclosed him in agony. Water, vicious currents of it, buffeted him all around. He felt the gnashing of rocks as he struggled upward to broach in a torrential cascade, his body flexing in a paroxysm of involuntary, writhing splashes. The canyon Wall, wet and black, sped past his frantic gaze. Shattered spangles of what had been his skin exploded away from him, a rain of silver all around him darting away into the river, a ring of dazzling movement, brittle sequins—the scale-glitter of sandtrout leaving him to begin their own colony lives.
Other books
The Madonna of Notre Dame by Alexis Ragougneau, Katherine Gregor
Steps For A Taboo Roadtrip by Nadia Nightside
House Of Treason: The Rise And Fall Of A Tudor Dynasty by Hutchinson, Robert
Selling Grace: A Light Romance Novel (Art of Grace Book 1) by Samantha Westlake
The Bone Orcs by Jonathan Moeller
Forcing Gravity by Monica Alexander
To Ride a Fine Horse by Mary Durack
The Aberration by Bard Constantine
The Courtyard by Marcia Willett
Nothing But Fear by Knud Romer