Authors: Frank Herbert

Tags: #Science Fiction - General

God Emperor of Dune (58 page)

BOOK: God Emperor of Dune

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Moneo stood about ten paces from Leto in the gloomy center of the crypt, head bowed, using every artifice he knew to keep from trembling, aware that even this could be seen and interpreted by the God Emperor. It was almost midnight. Leto had kept his majordomo waiting and waiting.

“I pray I have not offended my Lord,” Moneo said.

“You have amused me, but take no heart from that. Lately, I cannot separate the comic from the sad.”

“Forgive me, Lord,” Moneo whispered.

“What is this forgiveness you ask? Must you always require judgment? Can’t your universe merely
be?
”

Moneo lifted his gaze to that awful cowled face.
He is both ship and storm. The sunset exists in itself.
Moneo felt that he stood on the brink of terrifying revelations. The God Emperor’s eyes bored into him, burning, probing. “Lord, what would you have of me?”

“That you have faith in yourself.”

Feeling that something might explode in him, Moneo said: “Then the fact that I did not consult you before …”

“How enlightened of you, Moneo! Small souls who seek power over others first destroy the faith those others might have in themselves.”

The words were shattering to Moneo. He sensed accusation in them, confession. He felt his hold on a fearsome but infinitely desirable thing weakening. He tried to find words to call it back, but his mind remained blank. Perhaps if he asked the God Emperor …

“Lord, if you would but tell me your thoughts on …”

“My thoughts vanish on contact!”

Leto stared down at Moneo. How strange were the majordomo’s eyes perched there above that hawkish Atreides nose—free-verse eyes in a metronome face. Did Moneo hear that rhythmic pulsebeat:
Malky is coming! Malky is coming! Malky is coming!?

Moneo wanted to cry out in anguish. The thing he had felt—all gone! He put both his hands over his mouth.

“Your universe is a two-dimensional hourglass,” Leto accused. “Why do you try to hold back the sand?”

Moneo lowered his hands and sighed. “Do you wish to hear about the wedding arrangements, Lord?”

“Don’t be tiresome! Where is Hwi?”

“The Fish Speakers are preparing her for …”

“Have you consulted her about the arrangements?”

“Yes, Lord.”

“She approved?”

“Yes, Lord, but she accused me of living for the quantity of activity and not for the quality.”

“Isn’t she marvelous, Moneo? Does she see the unrest among the Fish Speakers?”

“I think so, Lord.”

“The idea of my marriage disturbs them.”

“It’s why I sent the Duncan away, Lord.”

“Of course it is, and Siona with him to …”

“Lord, I know you have tested her and she …”

“She senses the Golden Path as deeply as you do, Moneo.”

“Then why do I fear her, Lord?”

“Because you raise reason above all else.”

“But I do not know the reason for my fear!”

Leto smiled. This was like playing bubble dice in an infinite bowl. Moneo’s emotions were a marvelous play performed only on this stage. How near the edge he walked without ever seeing it!

“Moneo, why do you insist on taking pieces out of the continuum?” Leto asked. “When you see a spectrum, do you desire one color there above all the others?”

“Lord, I don’t understand you!”

Leto closed his eyes, remembering the countless times he had heard this cry. The faces were an unseparated blend. He opened his eyes to erase them.

“As long as one human remains alive to see them, the colors will not suffer a linear
mortis
even if you die, Moneo.”

“What is this thing of colors, Lord?”

“The continuum, the neverending, the Golden Path.”

“But you see things which we do not, Lord!”

“Because you refuse!”

Moneo sank his chin to his chest. “Lord, I know you have evolved beyond the rest of us. That is why we worship you and …”

“Damn you, Moneo!”

Moneo jerked his head up and stared at Leto in terror.

“Civilizations collapse when their powers outrun their religions!” Leto said. “Why can’t you see this? Hwi does.”

“She is Ixian, Lord. Perhaps she …”

“She’s a Fish Speaker! She has been from birth, born to serve me. No!” Leto raised one of his tiny hands as Moneo tried to speak. “The Fish Speakers are disturbed because I called them my brides, and now they see a stranger not trained in Siaynoq who knows it better than they.”

“How can that be, Lord, when your Fish …”

“What are you saying? Each of us comes into being knowing who he is and what he is supposed to do.”

Moneo opened his mouth but closed it without speaking.

“Small children know,” Leto said. “It’s only after adults have confused them that children hide this knowledge even from themselves. Moneo! Uncover yourself!”

“Lord, I cannot!” The words were torn from Moneo. He trembled with anguish. “I do not have your powers, your knowledge of …”

“Enough!”

Moneo fell silent. His body shook.

Leto spoke soothingly to him. “It’s all right, Moneo. I asked too much of you and I can see your fatigue.”

Slowly, Moneo’s trembling subsided. He drew in deep, gulping breaths.

Leto said: “There will be some change in my Fremen wedding. We will not use the water rings of my sister, Ghanima. We will use, instead, the rings of my mother.”

“The Lady Chani, Lord? But where are her rings?”

Leto twisted his bulk on the cart and pointed to the intersection of two cavernous spokes on his left where the dim light revealed the earliest burial niches of the Atreides on Arrakis. “In her tomb, the first niche. You will remove those rings, Moneo, and bring them to the ceremony.”

Moneo stared across the gloomy distance of the crypt. “Lord … is it not a desecration to …”

“You forget, Moneo, who lives in me.” He spoke then in Chani’s voice: “I can do what I want with my water rings!”

Moneo cowered. “Yes, Lord. I will bring them with me to Tabur Village when …”

“Tabur Village?” Leto asked in his usual voice. “But I have changed my mind. We will be wed at Tuono Village!”

Most civilization is based on cowardice. It’s so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.

—THE STOLEN JOURNALS

Idaho stood aghast at his first close glimpse of Tuono Village.
That
was the home of Fremen?

The Fish Speaker troop had taken them from the Citadel at daybreak, Idaho and Siona bundled into a large ornithopter, accompanied by two smaller guard ships. And the flight had been slow, almost three hours. They had landed at a flat, round plastone hangar almost a kilometer from the village, separated from it by old dunes locked in shape with plantings of poverty grasses and a few scrubby bushes. As they came down, the wall directly behind the village had seemed to grow taller and taller, the village shrinking beneath such immensity.

“The Museum Fremen are kept generally uncontaminated by off-planet technology,” Nayla had explained as the escort sealed the ’thopters into the low hangar. One of the troop already had been sent trotting off toward Tuono with the announcement of their arrival.

Siona had remained mostly silent all during the flight, but she had studied Nayla with covert intensity.

For a time during the march across the morning-lighted dunes, Idaho had tried to imagine that he was back in the old days. Sand was visible in the plantings and, in the valleys between dunes, there was parched ground, yellow grass, the sticklike shrubs. Three vultures, their gap-tipped wings spread wide, circled in the vault of sky—“
the soaring search
,” Fremen had called it. Idaho had tried to explain this to Siona walking beside him. You worried about the carrion-eaters only when they began to descend.

“I have been told about vultures,” she said, her voice cold.

Idaho had noted the perspiration on her upper lip. There was a spicy smell of sweat in the troop pressed close around them.

His imagination was not equal to the task of defocusing the differences between the past and this time. The issue stillsuits they wore were more for show than for efficient collection of the body’s water. No true Fremen would have trusted his life to one of them, not even here, where the air smelled of nearby water. And the Fish Speakers of Nayla’s troop did not walk in Fremen silence. They chattered among themselves like children.

Siona trudged beside him in sullen withdrawal, her attention frequently on the broad muscular back of Nayla, who strode along a few paces ahead of the troop.

What was between those two women? Idaho wondered. Nayla appeared devoted to Siona, hanging on Siona’s every word, obeying every whim Siona uttered … except that Nayla would not deviate from the orders which brought them to Tuono Village. Still, Nayla deferred to Siona and called her “Commander.” There was something deep between those two, something which aroused awe and fear in Nayla.

They came at last to a slope which dropped down to the village and the wall behind it. From the air, Tuono had been a cluster of glittering rectangles just outside the shadow of the wall. From this close vantage, though, it had been reduced to a cluster of decaying huts made even more pitiful by attempts to decorate the place. Bits of shiny minerals and scraps of metal picked out scroll designs on the building walls. A tattered green banner fluttered from a metal pole atop the largest structure. A fitful breeze brought the smell of garbage and uncovered cesspools to Idaho’s nostrils. The central street of the village extended out across the sparsely planted sand toward the troop, ending in a ragged edge of broken paving.

A robed delegation waited near the building of the green flag, standing there expectantly with the Fish Speaker messenger Nayla had sent on ahead. Idaho counted eight in the delegation, all men in what appeared to be authentic Fremen robes of dark brown. A green headband could be glimpsed beneath the hood on one of the delegation—the Naib, no doubt. Children waited to one side with flowers. Black-hooded women could be seen peering from side-streets in the background. Idaho found the whole scene distressing.

“Let’s get it over with,” Siona said.

Nayla nodded and led the way down the slope onto the street. Siona and Idaho stayed a few paces behind her. The rest of the troop straggled along after them, silent now and peering around with undisguised curiosity.

As Nayla neared the delegation, the one with the green headband stepped forward and bowed. He moved like an old man but Idaho saw that he was not old, barely into his middle years, the cheeks smooth and unwrinkled, a stubby nose with no scars from breath-filter tubes, and the eyes! The eyes revealed definite pupils, not the all-blue of spice addiction. They were brown eyes. Brown eyes in a Fremen!

“I am Garun,” the man said as Nayla stopped in front of him. “I am Naib of this place. I give you a Fremen welcome to Tuono.”

Nayla gestured over her shoulder at Siona and Idaho, who had stopped just behind her. “Are quarters prepared for your guests?”

“We Fremen are noted for our hospitality,” Garun said. “All is ready.”

Idaho sniffed at the sour smells and sounds of this place. He glanced through open windows of the flag-topped building on his right. The Atreides banner flying over that? The window opened into an auditorium with a low ceiling, a bandshell at the far end enclosing a small platform. He saw rows of seats, maroon carpeting on the floor. It had all the look of a stage setting, a place to entertain tourists.

The sound of shuffling feet brought Idaho’s attention back to Garun. Children were pressing forward around the delegation, extending clumps of garish red flowers in their grimy hands. The flowers were wilted.

Garun addressed himself to Siona, correctly identifying the gold piping of Fish Speaker Command in her uniform.

“Will you wish a performance of our Fremen rituals?” he asked. “The music, perhaps? The dance?”

Nayla accepted a bunch of flowers from one of the children, sniffed them and sneezed.

Another urchin extended flowers toward Siona, lifting a wide-eyed stare toward her. She accepted the flowers without looking at the child. Idaho merely waved the children aside as they approached him. They hesitated, staring up at him, then scurried around him toward the rest of the troop.

Garun spoke to Idaho. “If you give them a few coins, they will not bother you.”

Idaho shuddered. Was this the training for Fremen children?

BOOK: God Emperor of Dune

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