God Emperor of Dune (20 page)
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
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 the 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 sandworm, 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.”
surprised,
to have a new thing occur,
that
is what I desire most.”
“Lord, I …”
“New! Isn’t that a radiant, a
wonderful
word?”
wonderful
word?”
“If you say it, Lord.”
Leto was forced to remind himself then:
Moneo is my creature. I created him.
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
!”
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!”
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?”
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.”
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