God Emperor of Dune (Dune #4)

by Frank Herbert

Leto was always aware that his hands and feet were vulnerable, but he had allowed no one to learn that what had once been his brain was no longer directly associated with his face. It was not even a brain of human dimensions anymore, but had spread in nodal congeries throughout his body.

“You are injured, Lord?” “Inconsequential.” “But he hurt you.” “Those flippers are useless to me. They will be entirely gone within another two hundred years.”

The past continued to beckon. I could make a pilgrimage into my past. It does not have to be a safari. I could go alone. Pilgrimage purifies. Safaris make me into a tourist. That’s the difference. I could go alone into my inner world. And never return. Leto felt the inevitability of it, that the dream-state would eventually trap him. I create a special dream-state throughout my Empire. Within this dream, new myths form, new directions appear and new movements. New . . . new . . . new . . . The things emerge from my own dreams, out of my myths. Who more susceptible to them than I? The hunter is caught in his own net. Leto knew then that he had encountered a condition for which no antidote existed—past, present or future. His great body trembled and shivered in the gloom of his audience chamber. At the portal, one Fish Speaker guard whispered to another: “Is God troubled?” And her companion replied: “The sins of this universe would trouble anyone.” Leto heard them and wept silently.

As each day passes, you become increasingly unreal, more alien and remote from what I find myself to be on that new day. I am the only reality and, as you differ from me, you lose reality. The more curious I become, the less curious are those who worship me. Religion suppresses curiosity. What I do subtracts from the worshipper. Thus it is that eventually I will do nothing, giving it all back to frightened people who will find themselves on that day alone and forced to act for themselves.

Remember that there exists a certain malevolence about the formation of any social order. It is the struggle for existence by an artificial entity. Despotism and slavery hover at the edges. Many injuries occur and, thus, the need for laws. The law develops its own power structure, creating more wounds and new injustices. Such trauma can be healed by cooperation, not by confrontation. The summons to cooperate identifies the healer. —THE STOLEN JOURNALS

“What is that, Lord?” “Stop calling me Lord,” he said. “We will be Worm and wife. Call me Leto if you wish. Lord interferes.”

“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?”

Leto raised one of his tiny hands as Moneo tried to speak.

This made me stop and laugh.

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