God Emperor of Dune Read online

  She wore a one-piece pajama suit of dark blue which stretched tightly across her wide shoulders as she hunched over the desk. The glowglobe illuminated closely cropped blonde hair and the right side of her face, emphasizing the square block of jaw. The jaw moved with silent words as her thick fingers carefully depressed the keys of a thin keyboard on the desk. She handled the machine with a deference which had originated as awe and moved reluctantly into fearsome excitement. Long familiarity with the machine had eliminated neither emotion.

  As she wrote, words appeared on a screen concealed within the wall rectangle exposed by the downward folding of the desk.

  "Siona continues actions which predict violent attack on Your Holy Person," she wrote. "Siona remains unswerving in her avowed purpose. She told me today that she will give copies of the stolen books to groups whose loyalty to You cannot be trusted. The named recipients are the Bene Gesserit, the Guild and the Ixians. She says the books contain Your enciphered words and, by this gift, she seeks help in translating Your Holy Words.

  "Lord, I do not know what great revelations may be concealed on those pages but if they contain anything of threat to Your Holy Person, I beg You to relieve me from my vow of obedience to Siona. I do not understand why You made me take this vow, but I fear it.

  "I remain Your worshipful servant, Nayla."

  The chair creaked as Nayla sat back and thought about her words. The room fell into the almost soundless withdrawal of thick insulation. There was only Nayla's faint breathing and a distant throbbing of machinery felt more in the floor than in the air.

  Nayla stared at her message on the screen. Destined only for the eyes of the God Emperor, it required more than holy truthfulness. It demanded a deep candor which she found draining. Presently, she nodded and pressed the key which would encode the words and prepare them for transmission. Bowing her head, she prayed silently before concealing the desk within the wall. These actions, she knew, transmitted the message. God himself had implanted a physical device within her head, swearing her to secrecy and warning her that there might come a time when he would speak to her through the thing within her skull. He had never done this. She suspected that Ixians had fashioned the device. It had possessed some of their look. But God Himself had done this thing and she could ignore the suspicion that there might be a computer in it, that it might be prohibited by the Great Convention.

  "Make no device in the likeness of the mind!"

  Nayla shuddered. She stood then and moved her chair to its regular position beside the cot. Her heavy, muscular body strained against the thin blue garment. There was a steady deliberation about her, the actions of someone constantly adjusting to great physical strength. She turned at the cot and studied the place where the desk had been. There was only a rectangular gray panel like all the others. No bit of lint, no strand of hair, nothing caught there to reveal the panel's secret.

  Nayla took a deep, restorative breath and let herself out of the room's only door into a gray passage dimly lighted by widely spaced white glowglobes. The machinery sounds were louder here. She turned left and a few minutes later was with Siona in a somewhat larger room, a table at its center upon which things stolen from the Citadel had been arranged. Two silvery glowglobes illuminated the scene--Siona seated at the table, with an assistant named Topri standing beside her.

  Nayla nurtured grudging admiration for Siona, but Topri, there was a man worthy of nothing except active dislike. He was a nervous fat man with bulging green eyes, a pug nose and thin lips above a dimpled chin. Topri squeaked when he spoke.

  "Look here, Nayla! Look what Siona has found pressed between the pages of these two books."

  Nayla closed and locked the room's single door.

  "You talk too much, Topri," Nayla said. "You're a blurter. How could you know if I was alone in the passage?"

  Topri paled. An angry scowl settled onto his face.

  "I'm afraid she's right," Siona said. "What made you think I wanted Nayla to know about my discovery?"

  "You trust her with everything!"

  Siona turned her attention to Nayla. "Do you know why I trust you, Nayla?" The question was asked in a flat, unemotional voice.

  Nayla put down a sudden surge of fear. Had Siona discovered her secret?

  Have I failed my Lord?

  "Have you no response to my question?" Siona asked.

  "Have I ever given you cause to do otherwise?" Nayla asked.

  "That's not a sufficient cause for trust," Siona said. "There's no such thing as perfection--not in human or machine."

  "Then why do you trust me?"

  "Your words and your actions always agree. It's a marvelous quality. For instance, you don't like Topri and you never try to conceal your dislike."

  Nayla glanced at Topri, who cleared his throat.

  "I don't trust him," Nayla said.

  The words popped into her mind and out of her mouth without reflection. Only after she had spoken did Nayla realize the true core of her dislike: Topri would betray anyone for personal gain.

  Has he found me out?

  Still scowling, Topri said, "I am not going to stand here and accept your abuse." He started to leave but Siona held up a restraining hand. Topri hesitated.

  "Although we speak the old Fremen words and swear our loyalty to each other, that is not what holds us together," Siona said. "Everything is based on performance. That is all I measure. Do you understand, both of you?"

  Topri nodded automatically, but Nayla shook her head from side to side.

  Siona smiled up at her. "You don't always agree with my decisions, do you, Nayla?"

  "No." The word was forced from her.

  "And you have never tried to conceal your disagreement, yet you always obey me. Why?"

  "That is what I have sworn to do."

  "But I have said this is not enough."

  Nayla knew she was perspiring, knew this was revealing, but she could not move. What am I to do? I swore to God that I would obey Siona but I cannot tell her this.

  "You must answer my question," Siona said. "I command it."

  Nayla caught her breath. This was the dilemma she had most feared. There was no way out. She said a silent prayer and spoke in a low voice.

  "I have sworn to God that I will obey you."

  Siona clapped her hands in glee and laughed.

  "I knew it!"

  Topri chuckled.

  "Shut up, Topri," Siona said. "I am trying to teach you a lesson. You don't believe in anything, not even in yourself."

  "But I ..."

  "Be still, I say! Nayla believes. I believe. This is what holds us together. Belief."

  Topri was astonished. "Belief? You believe in ..."

  "Not in the God Emperor, you fool! We believe that a higher power will settle with the tyrant worm. We are that higher power."

  Nayla took a trembling breath.

  "It's all right, Nayla," Siona said. "I don't care where you draw your strength, just as long as you believe."

  Nayla managed a smile, then grinned. She had never been more profoundly stirred by the wisdom of her Lord. I may speak the truth and it works only for my God!

  "Let me show you what I've found in these books," Siona said. She gestured at some sheets of ordinary paper on the table. "Pressed between the pages."

  Nayla stepped around the table and looked down at it.

  "First, there's this." Siona held up an object which Nayla had not noticed. It was a thin strand of something ... and what appeared to be a ...

  "A flower?" Nayla asked.

  "This was between two pages of paper. On the paper was written this."

  Siona leaned over the table and read: "A strand of Ghanima's hair with a starflower blossom which she once brought me."

  Looking up at Nayla, Siona said: "Our God Emperor is revealed as a sentimentalist. That is a weakness I had not expected."

  "Ghanima?" Nayla asked.

  "His sister! Remember your Oral History."

  "O
h ... oh, yes. The Prayer to Ghanima."

  "Now, listen to this." Siona took up another sheet of paper and read from it.

  "The sand beach as gray as a dead cheek,

  A green tideflow reflects cloud ripples;

  I stand on the dark wet edge.

  Cold foam cleanses my toes.

  I smell driftwood smoke."

  Again, Siona looked up at Nayla. "This is identified as 'Words I wrote when told of Ghani's death.' What do you think of that?"

  "He ... he loved his sister."

  "Yes! He is capable of love. Oh, yes! We have him now."

  Sometimes I indulge myself in safaris which no other being may take. I strike inward along the axis of my memories. Like a schoolchild reporting on a vacation trip, I take up my subject. Let it be ... female intellectuals! I course backward into the ocean which is my ancestors. I am a great winged fish in the depths. The mouth of my awareness opens and I scoop them up! Sometimes ... sometimes I hunt out specific persons recorded in our histories. What a private joy to relive the life of such a one while I mock the academic pretensions which supposedly formed a biography.

  --THE STOLEN JOURNALS

  Moneo descended to the crypt with sad resignation. There was no escap-ing the duties required of him now. The God Emperor required a small passage of time to grieve the loss of another Duncan ... but then life went on ... and on ... and on... .

  The lift slid silently downward with its superb Ixian dependability. Once, just once, the God Emperor had cried out to his majordomo: "Moneo! Sometimes I think you were made by the Ixians!"

  Moneo felt the lift stop. The door opened and he looked out across the crypt at the shadowy bulk on the Royal Cart. There was no indication that Leto had noticed the arrival. Moneo sighed and began the long walk through the echoing gloom. There was a body on the floor near the cart. No need for deja vu. This was merely familiar.

  Once, in Moneo's early days of service, Leto had said: "You don't like this place, Moneo. I can see that."

  "No, Lord."

  With just a little prodding of memory, Moneo could hear his own voice in that naive past. And the voice of the God Emperor responding:

  "You don't think of a mausoleum as a comforting place, Moneo. I find it a source of infinite strength."

  Moneo remembered that he had been anxious to get off this topic. "Yes, Lord."

  Leto had persisted: "There are only a few of my ancestors here. The water of Muad'Dib is here. Ghani and Harq al-Ada are here, of course, but they're not my ancestors. No, if there's any true crypt of my ancestors, I am that crypt. This is mostly the Duncans and the products of my breeding program. You'll be here someday."

  Moneo found that these memories had slowed his pace. He sighed and moved a bit faster. Leto could be violently impatient on occasion but there was still no sign from him. Moneo did not take this to mean that his approach went unobserved.

  Leto lay with his eyes closed and only his other senses to record Moneo's progress across the crypt. Thoughts of Siona had been occupying Leto's attention.

  Siona is my ardent enemy, he thought. I do not need Nayla's words to confirm this. Siona is a woman of action. She lives on the surface of enormous energies which fill me with fantasies of delight. I cannot contemplate those living energies without a feeling of ecstasy. They are my reason for being, the justification for everything I have ever done ... even for the corpse of this foolish Duncan in front of me now.

  Leto's ears told him that Moneo had not yet crossed half the distance to the Royal Cart. The man moved slower and slower, then picked up his pace.

  What a gift Moneo has given me in this daughter, Leto thought. Siona is fresh and precious. She is the new while I am a collection of the obsolete, a relic of the damned, of the lost and strayed. I am the waylaid pieces of history which sank out of sight in all of our pasts. Such an accumulation of riffraff has never before been imagined.

  Leto paraded the past within him then to let them observe what had happened in the crypt.

  The minutiae are mine!

  Siona, though ... Siona was like a clean slate upon which great things might yet be written.

  I guard that slate with infinite care. I am preparing it, cleansing it.

  What did the Duncan mean when he called out her name?

  Moneo approached the cart diffidently yet consummately aware. Surely Leto did not sleep.

  Leto opened his eyes and looked down as Moneo came to a stop near the corpse. At this moment, Leto found the majordomo a delight to observe. Moneo wore a white Atreides uniform with no insignia, a subtle comment. His face, almost as well known as Leto's, was all the insignia he needed. Moneo waited patiently. There was no change of expression on his flat, even features. His thick, sandy hair lay in a neat, equally divided part. Deep within his gray eyes there was that look of directness which went with knowledge of great personal power. It was a look which he modified only in the God Emperor's presence, and sometimes not even there. Not once did he glance toward the body on the crypt's floor.

  When Leto continued silent, Moneo cleared his throat, then: "I am saddened, Lord."

  Exquisite! Leto thought. He knows I feel true remorse about the Duncans. Moneo has seen their records and has seen enough of them dead. He knows that only nineteen Duncans died what people usually refer to as natural deaths.

  "He had an Ixian lasgun," Leto said.

  Moneo's gaze went directly to the gun on the floor of the crypt off to his left, demonstrating that he already had seen it. He returned his attention to Leto, sweeping a glance down the length of the great 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."

  "I will dispose of the Duncan's body personally, Lord," Moneo said. "Is there ..."

  "The piece of me he burned away is entirely ash. We will let it blow away. This is a fitting place for ashes."

  "As my Lord says."

  "Before you dispose of the body, disable the lasgun and keep it where I can present it to the Ixian ambassador. As for the Guildsman who warned us about it, present him personally with ten grams of spice. Oh--and our priestesses on Giedi Prime should be alerted to a hidden store of melange there, probably old Harkonnen contraband."

  "What do you wish done with it when it's found, Lord?"

  "Use a bit of it to pay the Tleilaxu for the new ghola. The rest of it can go into our stores here in the crypt."

  "Lord." Moneo acknowledged the orders with a nod, a gesture which was not quite a bow. His gaze met Leto's.

  Leto smiled. He thought: We both know that Moneo will not leave without addressing directly the matter which most concerns us.

  "I have seen the report on Siona," Moneo said.

  Leto's smile widened. Moneo was such a pleasure in these moments. His words conveyed many things which did not require open discussion between them. His words and actions were in precise alignment, carried on the mutual awareness that he, of course, spied on everything. Now, there was a natural concern for his daughter, but he wished it understood that his concern for the God Emperor remained paramount. From his own traverse through a similar evolution, Moneo knew with precision the delicate nature of Siona's present fortunes.

  "Have I not created her, Moneo?" Leto asked. "Have I not controlled the conditions of her ancestry and her upbringing?"

  "She is my only daughter, my only child, Lord."

  "In a way, she reminds me of Harq al-Ada," Leto said. "There doesn't appear to be much of Ghani in her, although that has to be there. Perhaps she harks back to our ancestors in the Sisterhood's breeding program."

  "Why do you say that, Lord?"

  Leto reflected. Was there need for Moneo to know this peculiar thing about his daughter? Siona could fade from the prescient view at times. The Golden Path remained, but Siona faded. Yet ... she was not prescient. She was a unique phenomenon ... and
if she survived ... Leto decided he would not cloud Moneo's efficiency with unnecessary information.

  "Remember your own past," Leto said.

  "Indeed, Lord! And she has such a potential, so much more than I ever had. But that makes her dangerous, too."

  "And she will not listen to you," Leto said.

  "No, but I have an agent in her rebellion."

  That will be Topri, Leto thought.

  It required no prescience to know that Moneo would have an agent in place. Ever since the death of Siona's mother, Leto had known with increasing sureness the course of Moneo's actions. Nayla's suspicions pinpointed Topri. And now, Moneo paraded his fears and actions, offering them as the price of his daughter's continued safety.

  How unfortunate he fathered only the one child on that mother.

  "Recall how I treated you in similar circumstances," Leto said. "You know the demands of the Golden Path as well as I do."