God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert

  "Later." He raised a hand as she started to leave. "I would like the door left open."

  She frowned.

  "You may practice your music," he said. "I want to listen."

  She had a smooth, round, almost childlike face which became radiant when she smiled. The smile still on her lips, she turned away.

  Presently, he heard the sounds of a biwa lute in the outer office. Yes, that young acolyte had a talent. The bass strings were like rain drumming on a rooftop, a whisper of middle strings underneath. Perhaps she could move up to the baliset someday. He recognized the song: a deeply humming memory of autumn wind from some faraway planet where they had never known a desert. Sad music, pitiful music, yet marvellous.

  It is the cry of the caged, he thought. The memory of freedom. This thought struck him as odd. Was it always the case that freedom required rebellion?

  The lute fell silent. There came the sound of low voices. Idaho entered the workroom. Moneo watched him enter. A trick of light gave Idaho a face like a grimacing mask with pitted eyes. Without invitation, he sat down across from Moneo and the trickery was gone. Just another Duncan. He had changed into a plain black uniform without insignia.

  "I have been asking myself a peculiar question," Idaho said. "I'm glad you summoned me. I want to ask this question of you. What is it, Moneo, that my predecessor did not learn?"

  Stiff with surprise, Moneo sat up straight. What an un-Duncan question! Could there be a peculiar Tleilaxu difference in this one after all?

  "What prompts this question?" Moneo asked.

  "I've been thinking like a Fremen."

  "You weren't a Fremen."

  "Closer to it than you think. Stilgar the Naib once said I was probably born Fremen without knowing it until I came to Dune."

  "What happens when you think like a Fremen?"

  "You remember that you should never be in company that you wouldn't want to die with."

  Moneo put his hands palms down on the surface of his table. A wolfish smile came over Idaho's face.

  "Then what are you doing here?" Moneo asked.

  "I suspect that you may be good company, Moneo. And I ask myself why Leto would choose you as his closest companion."

  "I passed the test."

  "The same one your daughter passed?"

  So he has heard they are back. It meant some of the Fish Speakers were reporting things to him ... unless the God Emperor had summoned the Duncan... . No, I would have heard.

  "The tests are never identical," Moneo said. "I was made to go alone into a cavern maze with nothing but a bag of food and a vial of spice-essence."

  "Which did you choose?"

  "What? Oh ... if you are tested, you will learn."

  "There's a Leto I don't know," Idaho said.

  "Have I not told you this?"

  "And there's a Leto you don't know," Idaho said.

  "Because he's the loneliest person this universe has ever seen," Moneo said.

  "Don't play mood games trying to arouse my sympathy," Idaho said.

  "Mood games, yes. That's very good," Moneo nodded. "The God Emperor's moods are like a river--smooth where nothing obstructs him, foaming and violent at the least suggestion of a barrier. He is not be be obstructed."

  Idaho looked around at the brightly lighted workroom, turned his gaze to the outside darkness and thought about the tamed course of the Idaho River somewhere out there. Bringing his attention back to Moneo, he asked: "What do you know of rivers?"

  "In my youth, I traveled for him. I have even trusted my life to a floating shell of a vessel on a river and then on a sea whose shores were lost in the crossing."

  As he spoke, Moneo felt that he had brushed against a clue to some deep truth in the Lord Leto. The sensation dropped Moneo into reverie, thinking of that far planet where he had crossed a sea from one shore to another. There had been a storm on the first evening of that passage and, somewhere deep within the ship, an irritating non-directional "sug-sug-sug-sug-sug" of laboring engines. He had stood on deck with the captain. His mind had kept focusing on the engine sound, retreating and coming back to it like the over-surging of the watery green-black mountains which passed and came, repeating and repeating. Each down crash of the keel opened the sea's flesh like a fist smashing. It was insane motion, a sodden shaking, up ... up, down! His lungs had ached with repressed fear. The lunging of the ship and the sea trying to put them down--wild explosions of solid water, hour after hour, white blisters of water spilling off the decks, then another sea and another ...

  All of this was a clue to the God Emperor.

  He is both the storm and the ship.

  Moneo focused on Idaho seated across the table from him in the workroom's cold light. Not a tremor in the man, but a hungering was there.

  "So you will not help me learn what the other Duncan Idahos did not learn," Idaho said.

  "But I will help you."

  "Then what have I always failed to learn?"

  "How to trust."

  Idaho pushed himself back from the table and glared at Moneo. When Idaho's voice came, it was harsh and rasping: "I'd say I trusted too much."

  Moneo was implacable. "But how do you trust?"

  "What do you mean?"

  Moneo put his hands in his lap. "You choose male companions for their ability to fight and die on the side of right as you see it. You choose females who can complement this masculine view of yourself. You allow for no differences which can come from good will."

  Something moved in the doorway to Moneo's workroom. He looked up in time to see Siona enter. She stopped, one hand on her hip.

  "Well, father, up to your old tricks, I see."

  Idaho jerked around to stare at the speaker.

  Moneo studied her, looking for signs of the change. She had bathed and put on a fresh uniform, the black and gold of Fish Speaker command, but her face and hands still betrayed the evidence of her desert ordeal. She had lost weight and her cheekbones stood out. Unguent did little to conceal cracks in her lips. Veins stood out on her hands. Her eyes looked ancient and her expression was that of someone who had tasted bitter dregs.

  "I've been listening to you two," she said. She dropped her hand from her hip and moved farther into the room. "How dare you speak of good will, father?"

  Idaho had noted the uniform. He pursed his lips in thought. Fish Speaker Command? Siona?

  "I understand your bitterness," Moneo said. "I had similar feelings once."

  "Did you really?" She came closer, stopping just beside Idaho, who continued to regard her with a look of speculation.

  "I am filled with joy to see you alive," Moneo said.

  "How gratifying for you to see me safely into the God Emperor's Service," she said. "You waited so long to have a child and look! See how successful I am." She turned slowly to display her uniform. "Commander of the Fish Speakers. A commander with a troop of one, but nonetheless a commander."

  Moneo forced his voice to be cold and professional. "Sit down."

  "I prefer to stand." She looked down at Idaho's upturned face. "Ahhh, Duncan Idaho, my intended mate. Don't you find this interesting, Duncan? The Lord Leto tells me I will be fitted into the command structure of the Fish Speakers in time. Meanwhile, I have one attendant. Do you know the one called Nayla, Duncan?"

  Idaho nodded.

  "Really? I think perhaps I don't know her." Siona looked at Moneo. "Do I know her, father?"

  Moneo shrugged.

  "But you speak of trust, father," Siona said. "Who does the powerful minister, Moneo, trust?"

  Idaho turned to see the effect of these words on the majordomo. The man's face appeared brittle with repressed emotion. Anger? No ... something else.

  "I trust the God Emperor," Moneo said. "And, in the hope that it will teach both of you something, I am here to convey his wishes to you."

  "His wishes!" Siona taunted. "Hear that, Duncan? The God Emperor's commands are now wishes."

  "Speak your piece," Idaho said. "I know
we have little choice in whatever it is."

  "You always have a choice," Moneo said.

  "Don't listen to him," Siona said. "He's full of tricks. They expect us to fall into each other's arms and breed more like my father. Your descendant, my father!"

  Moneo's face went pale. He gripped the edge of his worktable with both hands and leaned forward. "You are both fools! But I will try to save you. In spite of yourselves, I will try to save you."

  Idaho saw Moneo's cheeks tremble, the intensity of the man's stare, and felt oddly moved by this. "I'm not his stud, but I'll listen to you."

  "Always a mistake," Siona said.

  "Be still, woman," Idaho said.

  She glared at the top of Idaho's head. "Don't address me that way or I'll wrap your neck around your ankles!"

  Idaho stiffened and started to turn.

  Moneo grimaced and waved a hand for Idaho to remain seated. "I caution you, Duncan, that she could probably do it. I am no match for her and you do recall your attempt at violence against me?"

  Idaho inhaled a deep, quick breath, let it out slowly, then: "Say what you have to say."

  Siona moved to perch at the end of Moneo's table and looked down at both of them. "Much better," she said. "Let him have his say, but don't listen."

  Idaho pressed his lips tightly together.

  Moneo released his grip on the edge of his desk. He sat back and looked from Idaho to Siona. "I have almost completed the arrangements for the God Emperor's wedding to Hwi Noree. During those festivities, I want you both out of the way."

  Siona turned a questioning look on Moneo. "Your idea or his?"

  "Mine!" Moneo returned his daughter's glare. "Have you no sense of honor and duty? Have you learned nothing from being with him?"

  "Oh, I learned what you learned, father. And I gave my word, which I will keep."

  "Then you'll command the Fish Speakers?"

  "Whenever he trusts me with command. You know, father, he's ever so much more devious than you are."

  "Where are you sending us?" Idaho asked.

  "Provided we agree to go," Siona said.

  "There is a small village of Museum Fremen at the edge of the Sareer," Moneo said. "It is called Tuono. The village is relatively pleasant. It's in the shadow of the Wall with the river just beyond the Wall. There is a well and the food is good."

  Tuono? Idaho wondered. The name sounded familiar. "There was a Tuono Basin on the way to Sietch Tabr," he said.

  "And the nights are long and there's no entertainment," Siona said.

  Idaho shot a sharp glance at her. She returned it. "He wants us breeding and the Worm satisfied," she said. "He wants babies in my belly, new lives to warp and twist. I'll see him dead before I'll give him that!"

  Idaho looked back at Moneo with a bemused expression. "And if we refuse to go?"

  "I think you'll go," Moneo said.

  Siona's lips twitched. "Duncan, have you even seen one of these little desert villages? No comforts, no ..."

  "I have seen Tabur Village," Idaho said.

  "I'm sure that is a metropolis beside Tuono. Our God Emperor would not celebrate his nuptials in any cluster of mud hovels! Oh, no. Tuono will be mud hovels and no amenities, as close to the original Fremen as possible."

  Idaho kept his attention on Moneo while speaking: "Fremen did not live in mud huts."

  "Who cares where they conducted their cultish games?" she sneered.

  Still looking at Moneo, Idaho said: "Real Fremen had only one cult, the cult of personal honesty. I worry more about honesty than about comfort."

  "Don't expect comfort from me!" Siona snapped.

  "I don't expect anything from you," Idaho said. "When would we leave for this Tuono, Moneo?"

  "You're going?" she asked.

  "I am considering an acceptance of your father's kindness," Idaho said.

  "Kindness!" She looked from Idaho to Moneo.

  "You would leave immediately," Moneo said. "I have detailed a detachment of Fish Speakers under Nayla to escort you and provide for you at Tuono."

  "Nayla?" Siona asked. "Really? Will she stay with us there?"

  "Until the day of the wedding."

  Siona nodded slowly. "Then we accept."

  "Accept for yourself!" Idaho snapped.

  Siona smiled. "Sorry. May I formally request that the great Duncan Idaho join me at this primitive garrison where he will keep his hands off my person?"

  Idaho peered up at her from under his brows. "Have no fears about where I will put my hands." He looked at Moneo. "Are you being kind, Moneo? Is that why you're sending me away?"

  "It's a question of trust," Siona said. "Who does he trust?"

  "Will I be forced to go with your daughter?" Idaho insisted.

  Siona stood. "We either accept or the troopers will bind us and carry us out in a most uncomfortable fashion. You can see it in his face."

  "So I really have no choice," Idaho said.

  "You have the choice anyone has," Siona said. "Die now or later."

  Still, Idaho stared at Moneo. "Your real intentions, Moneo? Won't you satisfy my curiosity?"

  "Curiosity has kept many people alive when all else failed," Moneo said. "I am trying to keep you alive, Duncan. I have never done that before."

  It required almost a thousand years before the dust of Dune's old planet-wide desert left the atmosphere to be bound up in soil and water. The wind called sandblaster has not been seen on Arrakis for some twenty-five hundred years. Twenty billion tons of dust could be carried suspended in the wind of just one of those storms. The sky often had a silvery look to it then. Fremen said: "The desert is a surgeon cutting away the skin to expose what's underneath." The planet and the people had layers. You could see them. My Sareer is but a weak echo of what was. I must be the sandblaster today.

  --THE STOLEN JOURNALS

  "You sent them to Tuono without consulting me? How surprising of you, Moneo! You've not done such an independent thing in a long while."

  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 w
ish 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 ..."