“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 odor 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 honor 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 fibers, 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 gray 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 gray 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 lasguns, 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 program 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 barrelhead. 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 Commanders 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 program. 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 and 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.