God Emperor of Dune (Dune #4)

by Frank Herbert

Her gaze remained steady on his face. Both of them knew he had not yet reached the nubbin of this interview. But Leto now identified a thing lurking within Nyshae’s expression. Pride in her Lord! For the first time, she had seen the God Emperor kill. The seeds of a terrible dependency had been planted. If disaster threatens, my Lord will come. That was how it appeared in her eyes. She would no longer act with complete independence, taking her power from the God Emperor and being personally responsible for the use of that power. There was something possessive in her expression. A terrible death-machine waited in the wings, available at her summons. Leto did not like what he saw, but the damage had been done. Any remedies would require slow and subtle pressures.

The key was to limit the desire for violence. In that respect, this night had been a disaster.

He saw belief settle into Nyshae’s features, a readymade plastic underlayment which could lock her jaw and glaze her eyes. Even Nyshae. He knew the reasons because he had created those reasons, but sometimes he felt a bit awed by his creation.

The aching pulse within him had to be calmed. In itself, it was a danger to him and to the Golden Path. Those clever Ixians! Malky had seen how the all-powerful were forced to contend with a constant siren song—the will to self-delight. Constant awareness of the power in your slightest whim.

Once more, tears flowed down her cheeks. Leto longed to touch them, but they were water . . . painful water.

“Siona was bred to rule. There is danger in such breeding. When you rule, you gain knowledge of power. This can lead into impetuous irresponsibility, into painful excesses and that can lead to the terrible destroyer—wild hedonism.”

“All we know about Siona is that she can remain dedicated to a particular performance, to the pattern which fills her senses. She is necessarily an aristocrat, but aristocracy looks mostly to the past. That’s a failure. You don’t see much of any path unless you are Janus, looking simultaneously backward and forward.”

“Are you Janus, Leto?” “I am Janus magnified a billionfold. And I am also something less. I have been, for example, what my administrators admire most—the decision-maker whose every decision can be made to work.”

“All gods have this problem, Hwi. In the perception of deeper needs, I must often ignore immediate ones. Not addressing immediate needs is an offense to the young.”

“And if someone tried to convince you that I am the greatest evil of all time . . .” “I would become very angry. I would . . .” She broke off. “Reason is valuable,” he said, “only when it performs against the wordless physical background of the universe.”

The primate thinks and, by thinking, survives. Beneath his thinking is a thing which came with his cells. It is the current of human concerns for the species. Sometimes, they cover it up, wall it off and hide it behind thick barriers, but I have deliberately sensitized Moneo to these workings of his innermost self. He follows me because he believes I hold the best course for human survival. He knows there is a cellular awareness. It is what I find when I scan the Golden Path. This is humanity and both of us agree: it must endure!

How ancient! The looms and shuttles clicked in Leto’s memory. Animal fur to human garments . . . huntsman to herdsman . . . the long steps up the ladder of awareness . . . and now they must make another long step, longer even than the ancient ones.

“Throughout our history,” Leto said, “the most potent use of words has been to round out some transcendental event, giving that event a place in the accepted chronicles, explaining the event in such a way that ever afterward we can use those words and say: “This is what it meant.”

Idaho raised both hands, palms up, to chest-height, a beggar asking for something he knew he could not receive. “Then . . . one day you wake up and you remember dying . . . and you remember the axlotl tank . . . and the Tleilaxu nastiness which awakened you . . . and it’s supposed to start all over again. But it doesn’t. It never does, Leto. That’s a crime!” “I have taken away the magic?” “Yes!”

Idaho darted a quick glance along Leto’s supine length. They always look for genitalia, Leto thought. Perhaps I should have something made, a gross protuberance to shock them. He choked back the small burst of amusement which threatened to erupt from his throat. Another emotion amplified. Thank you, Hwi. Thank you, Ixians.

The prophet is not diverted by illusions of past, present and future. The fixity of language determines such linear distinctions. Prophets hold a key to the lock in a language. The mechanical image remains only an image to them. This is not a mechanical universe. The linear progression of events is imposed by the observer. Cause and effect? That’s not it at all. The prophet utters fateful words. You glimpse a thing “destined to occur.” But the prophetic instant releases something of infinite portent and power. The universe undergoes a ghostly shift. Thus, the wise prophet conceals actuality behind shimmering labels. The uninitiated then believe the prophetic language is ambiguous. The listener distrusts the prophetic messenger. Instinct tells you how the utterance blunts the power of such words. The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself. —THE STOLEN JOURNALS

A pale amber light shone above the horizon, reflection of a town on faraway clouds. From its direction and distance, Leto knew it to be the town of Wallport transplanted far into a warmer clime of the south from its once-austere location in the cold, low-slanted light of the north. The glow of the town was like a window into his past. He felt the beam of it striking through to his breast, straight through the thick and scaled membrane which had replaced his human skin. I am vulnerable, he thought. Yet, he knew himself to be the master of this place. And the planet was the master of him. I am part of it.

“I like to talk and I dread the day when I no longer will be able to engage in conversations.”

“When you live so long,” she said, “how does the passage of Time feel? Does it move more rapidly as the years go by?” “That’s a strange thing, Siona. Sometimes, Time rushes by me; sometimes, it creeps.”

You know the myth of the Great Spice Hoard? Yes, I know about that story, too. A majordomo brought it to me one day to amuse me. The story says there is a hoard of melange, a gigantic hoard, big as a great mountain. The hoard is concealed in the depths of a distant planet. It is not Arrakis, that planet. It is not Dune. The spice was hidden there long ago, even before the First Empire and the Spacing Guild. The story says Paul Muad’Dib went there and lives yet beside the hoard, kept alive by it, waiting. The majordomo did not understand why the story disturbed me. —THE STOLEN JOURNALS

Leto is disturbed because this would mean that humanity did not learn its lesson. The spreading of that story means that people still yearn for a hero, a charismatic leader, someone to rule them.

“D’you know what the original Atreides Dukes always said?” Idaho asked. There was a mocking tone in his voice. “Is it pertinent?” “They said your liberties all vanish when you look up to any absolute ruler.”

As he strode down the hall of the Citadel, Idaho replayed the conversation, seeking out the oddities in Moneo’s behavior. The terror could be recognized and even understood, but it had seemed far more than fear of death . . . far, far more. The Worm can dominate him. Idaho felt that this had slipped out of Moneo, an inadvertent betrayal. What could it mean? More reckless than any of the others. It galled Idaho that he should have to bear comparisons to himself-as-an-unknown. How careful had the others been?

“My Uncle Malky used to say that love was a bad bargain because you get no guarantees.” “Your Uncle Malky was a wise man.” “He was stupid! Love needs no guarantees.”

“It was their early training, the Atreides training.” “But how did that differ from . . .” “The Atreides lived in the service of the people they governed. The measure of their government was found in the lives of the governed. Thus, the Duncans always want to know how the people live.”

“It’s all in how you interpret the results, Moneo. Evidence is nothing without judgments.”

“But, Lord! You do no wrong!” “Poor Moneo. You cannot see that I have created a vehicle of injustice.”

“Religious institutions perpetuate a mortal master-servant relationship,” Leto said. “They create an arena which attracts prideful human power-seekers with all of their nearsighted prejudices!”

“The Duncans know in their hearts,” Leto said, “that I have deliberately ignored the admonition of Mohammed and Moses. Even you know it, Moneo!”

“You are servants unto God, not servants unto servants!”

“What is this test?” she had asked Moneo. “What will he do?” “It is never the same.” “How did he test you?” “It will be different with you. I would only confuse you if I told you my experience.” Leto had listened secretly while Moneo prepared his daughter, dressing her in an authentic Fremen stillsuit with a dark robe over it, fitting the boot-pumps correctly. Moneo had not forgotten.

Leto’s swimming progress took him down the dune’s slip-face and onto an exposed section of the rocky basement complex, then up another sandy face at a shallow angle, creating a path for Siona to follow. Fremen had called such compression tracks “God’s gift to the weary.” He moved slowly, giving Siona plenty of time in which to recognize that this was his domain, his natural habitat.

“This is the real Sareer. You only know it when you’re down here afoot. This is all that’s left of the bahr bela ma.” “The ocean without water,” she whispered.

There was no wind and, Leto knew, without wind, the silence ate at the human soul.

It always astonished him how a desert provoked thoughts of religion.

“Time passes swiftly when your senses are full,”

“There is a saying about the open land,” he said, “that one direction is as good as another.

“Freedom can be a very lonely estate,”

“Could it be that we’re interdependent?” he asked. She spoke reluctantly. “I don’t know how to survive out here.” “But I do?” She nodded. “Why should I share such precious knowledge with you?” he asked. She shrugged, a pitiful gesture which touched him. How quickly the desert cut away previous attitudes.

“All of us try to evolve, but if something blocks us, we can transfer our potential into pain—seeking it or giving it. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable.”

Light came from two slender glazed windows opposite each other on the narrower walls. The windows looked out from a considerable height, one onto the northwest fringes of the Sareer and the bordering green of the Forbidden Forest, the other providing a southwest view over rolling dunes. Contrast.

“The Lord Leto has told me about that evil old man of your time, Duncan. I don’t think you understood your enemy.” “He was a fat, monstrous . . .” “He was a seeker after sensations,” Moneo said. “The fat was a side-effect, then perhaps something to experience for itself because it offended people and he enjoyed offending.”

“The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria,” Moneo said. “The Atreides art is the art of ruling without hysteria, the art of being responsible for the uses of power.”

“When I was most angry,” Moneo said, “and he saw himself through my eyes, he said: ‘How dare you be offended by me?’ It was then”—Moneo swallowed—“that he made me look into the horror . . . that he had seen.” Tears welled from Moneo’s eyes and ran down his cheeks. “And I was only glad that I did not have to make his decision . . . that I could content myself with being a follower.”

Idaho sensed the shape of the things which had formed the pliant majordomo. Duty and responsibility. What a safe haven those were in a time of difficult decisions. I was like that once, Idaho thought. But that was in another life, another time.

The Duncans sometimes ask if I understand the exotic ideas of our past. And if I understand them, why can’t I explain them? Knowledge, the Duncans believe, resides only in particulars. I try to tell them that all words are plastic. Word images begin to distort in the instant of utterance. Ideas imbedded in a language require that particular language for expression. This is the very essence of the meaning within the word exotic. See how it begins to distort? Translation squirms in the presence of the exotic. The Galach which I speak here imposes itself. It is an outside frame of reference, a particular system. Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change. Does it serve any purpose for me to tell the Duncans that there are no languages for some things? Ahhh! But the Duncans believe that all languages are mine. —THE STOLEN JOURNALS

tedah riagrimi, the agony which opens the mind.

“What do you mean—desire, data and doubt?” “Desire brings the participants together. Data set the limits of their dialogue. Doubt frames the questions.”

“These little curled flaps beside my face,” he said. “Tease one of them gently with a finger and it will give up drops of moisture heavily laced with spice-essence.” He saw the recognition in her eyes. Memories which she did not know as memories were speaking to her. And she was the result of many generations in which the Atreides sensitivity had been increased. Even the urgency of her thirst would not yet move her. To ease her through the crisis, he told her about Fremen children poling for sandtrout at an oasis edge, teasing the moisture out of them for quick vitalization. “But I am Atreides,” she said. “The Oral History tells it truthfully,” he said. “Then I could die of it.” “That’s the test.” “You would make a real Fremen out of me!” “How else can you teach your descendants to survive here after I am gone?”

backs on him. Leto took this new development as a hopeful sign. “You are beginning to have some concept of how far my family extends,” he said. She turned, her mouth a prim line, but did not meet his gaze. He could see her accepting it, though, the realization which few humans could share as she had shared it: His singular multitude made all of humankind his family.

“The Golden Path,” she whispered. “I can feel it.” Then, glaring at him. “It’s so cruel!” “Survival has always been cruel.” “They couldn’t hide,” she whispered. Then loud: “What have you done to me?” “You tried to be a Fremen rebel,” he said. “Fremen had an almost incredible ability to read signs on the desert. They could even read the faint tracery of windblown tracks in sand.” He saw the beginnings of remorse in her, memories of her dead companions floating in her awareness. He spoke quickly, knowing that guilt would follow quickly and then anger against him. “Would you have believed me if I had merely brought you in and told you?”