God Emperor of Dune Read online

  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 no
t 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.

  I told him, "Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer."

  "They are dangerous. They are dangerous!" He thinks that by repeating he creates some kind of truth.

  Slowly, step by step, I lead him through my method and he even gives the appearance of listening.

  "This is their weakness, Duncan. Radicals always see matters in terms which are too simple--black and white, good and evil, them and us. By addressing complex matters in that way, they rip open a passage for chaos. The art of government as you call it, is the mastery of chaos."

  "No one can deal with every surprise."

  "Surprise? Who's talking about surprise? Chaos is no surprise. It has predictable characteristics. For one thing, it carries away order and strengthens the forces at the extremes."

  "Isn't that what radicals are trying to do? Aren't they trying to shake things up so they can grab control?"

  "That's what they think they're doing. Actually, they're creating new extremists, new radicals and they are continuing the old process."

  "What about a radical who sees the complexities and comes at you that way?"

  "That's no radical. That's a rival for leadership."

  "But what do you do?"

  "You co-opt them or kill them. That's how the struggle for leadership originated, at the grunt level."

  "Yes, but what about messiahs?"

  "Like my father?"

  The Duncan does not like this question. He knows that in a very special way I am my father. He knows I can speak with my father's voice and persona, that the memories are precise, never edited and inescapable.

  Reluctantly, he says: "Well ... if you want."

  "Duncan, I am all of them and I know. There has never been a truly selfless rebel, just hypocrites--conscious hypocrites or unconscious hypocrites, it's all the same."

  That stirs up a small hornet's nest among my ancestral memories. Some of them have never given up the belief that they and they alone held the key to all of humankind's problems. Well, in that, they are like me. I can sympathize even while I tell them that failure is its own demonstration.

  I am forced to block them off, though. There's no sense dwelling on them. They now are little more than poignant reminders ... as is this Duncan who stands in front of me with his lasgun... .

  Great Gods below! He has caught me napping. He has the lasgun in his hand and it is pointed at my face.

  "You, Duncan? Have you betrayed me, too?"

  Et tu, Brute?

  Every fiber of Leto's awareness came to full alert. He could feel his body twitching. The worm-flesh had a will of its own.

  Idaho spoke with derision: "Tell me, Leto: How many times must I pay the debt of loyalty?"

  Leto recognized the inner question: "How many of me have there been?" The Duncans always wanted to know this. Every Duncan asked it and no answer satisfied. They doubted.

  In his saddest Muad'Dib voice, Leto asked: "Do you take no pride in my admiration, Duncan? Haven't you ever wondered what it is about you that makes me desire you as my constant companion through the centuries?"

  "You know me to be the ultimate fool!"

  "Duncan!"

  The voice of an angry Muad'Dib could always be counted on to shatter Idaho. Despite the fact that Idaho knew no Bene Gesserit had ever mastered the powers of Voice as Leto had mastered them, it was predictable that he would dance to this one voice. The lasgun wavered in his hand.

  That was enough. Leto was off the cart in a hurtling roll. Idaho had never seen him leave the cart this way, had not even suspected it could happen. For Leto, there were only two requirements--a real threat which the worm-body could sense and the release of that body. The rest was automatic and the speed of it always astonished even Leto.

  The lasgun was his major concern. It could scratch him badly, but few understood the abilities of the pre-worm body to deal with heat.

  Leto struck Idaho while rolling and the lasgun was deflected as it was fired. One of the useless flippers which had been Leto's legs and feet sent a shocking burst of sensations crashing into his awareness. For an instant, there was only pain. But the worm-body was free to act and reflexes ignited a violent paroxysm of flopping. Leto heard bones cracking. The lasgun was thrown far across the floor of the crypt by a spasmodic jerk of Idaho's hand.

  Rolling off of Idaho, Leto poised himself for a renewed attack but there was no need. The injured flipper still sent pain signals and he sensed that the tip of the flipper had been burned away. The sandtrout skin already had sealed the wound. The pain had eased to an ugly throbbing.

  Idaho stirred. There could be little doubt that he had been mortally injured. His chest was visibly crushed. There was obvious agony when he tried to breathe, but he opened his eyes and stared up at Leto.

  The persistence of these mortal possessions! Leto thought.

  "Siona," Idaho gasped.

  Leto saw the life leave him then.

  Interesting, Leto thought. Is it possible that this Duncan and Siona ... No! This Duncan always displayed a true sneering disdain for Siona's foolishness.

  Leto climbed back onto the Royal Cart. That had been a close one. There could be little doubt that the Duncan had been aiming for the brain. 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. He had told this to no one but his journals.

  Oh, the landscapes I have seen! And the people! The far wanderings of the Fremen and all the rest of it. Even back through the myths to Terra. Oh, the lessons in astronomy and intrigue, the migrations, the disheveled flights, the leg-aching and lung-aching runs through so many nights on all of those cosmic specks where we have defended our transient possession. I tell you we are a marvel and my memories leave no doubt of this.

  --THE STOLEN JOURNALS

  The woman worki
ng at the small wall desk was too big for the narrow chair on which she perched. Outside, it was mid-morning, but in this windowless room deep beneath the city of Onn there was but a single glowglobe high in a corner. It had been tuned to warm yellow but the light failed to dispel the gray utility of the small room. Walls and ceiling were covered by identical rectangular panels of dull gray metal.

  There was only one other piece of furniture, a narrow cot with a thin pallet covered by a featureless gray blanket. It was obvious that neither piece of furniture had been designed for the occupant.