Dune

I have isolated the city-experience within me and have examined it closely. The idea of a city fascinates me. The formation of a biological community without a functioning, supportive social community leads to havoc. Whole worlds have become single biological communities without an interrelated social structure and this has always led to ruin. It becomes dramatically instructive under overcrowded conditions. The ghetto is lethal. Psychic stresses of overcrowding create pressures which will erupt. The city is an attempt to manage these forces. The social forms by which cities make the attempt are worth study. 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

Moneo entered Leto’s small chamber with evident agitation. He actually preferred this meeting place because the God Emperor’s cart lay in a depression from which a deadly attack by the Worm would be more difficult, and there was the undeniable fact that Leto allowed his majordomo to descend in an Ixian tube-lift rather than via that interminable ramp. But Moneo felt that the news he brought this morning was guaranteed to arouse The Worm Who Is God.

How to present it?

Dawn lay only an hour past, the fourth Festival Day, a fact Moneo could greet with equanimity only because it brought him that much nearer the end of these tribulations.

Leto stirred as Moneo entered the small chamber. Illumination came on at his signal, focusing only on his face.

“Good morning, Moneo,” he said. “My guard tells me you insisted on entering immediately. Why?”

The danger, Moneo knew from experience, lay in the temptation to reveal too much too soon.

“I have spent some time with the Reverend Mother Anteac,” he said. “Although she keeps it well hidden, I’m sure she is a Mentat.”

“Yes. The Bene Gesserit were bound to disobey me sometime. This form of disobedience amuses me.”

“Then you will not punish them?”

“Moneo, I am ultimately the only parent my people have. A parent must be generous as well as severe.”

He’s in a good mood, Moneo thought. A small sigh escaped Moneo, at which Leto smiled.

“Anteac objected when I told her you had ordered an amnesty for a selected few Face Dancers among our captives.”

“I have a Festive use for them,” Leto said.

“Lord?”

“I will tell you later. Let’s get to the news which brings you bursting in upon me at this hour.”

“I . . . ahhh . . .” Moneo chewed at his upper lip. “The Tleilaxu have been quite garrulous in the attempt to ingratiate themselves with me.”

“Of course they have. And what have they revealed?”

“They . . . ahhh, provided the Ixians with sufficient advice and equipment to make a . . . uhhh, not exactly a ghola, and not even a clone. Perhaps we should use the Tleilaxu term: a cellular restructuring. The . . . ahhh, experiment was conducted within some sort of shielding device which the Guildsmen assured them your powers could not penetrate.”

“And the result?” Leto felt that he was asking the question in a cold vacuum.

“They are not certain. Tleilaxu were not permitted to witness. However, they did observe that Malky entered this . . . ahhh, chamber and that he emerged later with an infant.”

“Yes! I know!”

“You do?” Moneo was puzzled.

“By inference. And all of this happened some twenty-six years ago?”

“That is correct, Lord.”

“They identify the infant as Hwi Noree?”

“They are not certain, Lord, but . . .” Moneo shrugged.

“Of course. And what do you deduce from this, Moneo?”

“There is a deep purpose built into the new Ixian Ambassador.”

“Certainly there is. Moneo, has it not struck you as odd how much Hwi, the gentle Hwi, represents a mirror of the redoubtable Malky? His opposite in everything, including sex.”

“I had not thought of that, Lord.”

“I have.”

“I will have her sent back to Ix immediately,” Moneo said.

“You will do nothing of the kind!”

“But, Lord, if they . . .”

“Moneo, I have observed that you seldom turn your back on danger. Others often do, but you—seldom. Why would you have me engage in such an obvious stupidity?”

Moneo swallowed.

“Good. I like it when you recognize the error of your ways,” Leto said.

“Thank you, Lord.”

“I also like it when you express your gratitude sincerely, as you have just done. Now, Anteac was with you when you heard these revelations?”

“As you ordered, Lord.”

“Excellent. That will stir things up a bit. You will leave now and go to the Lady Hwi. You will tell her that I desire to see her immediately. This will disturb her. She is thinking that we will not meet again until I summon her to the Citadel. I want you to quiet her fears.”

“In what way, Lord?”

Leto spoke sadly: “Moneo, why do you ask advice on something at which you are an expert? Calm her and bring her here reassured of my kindly intentions toward her.”

“Yes, Lord.” Moneo bowed and backed away a step.

“One moment, Moneo!”

Moneo stiffened, his gaze fixed on Leto’s face.

“You are puzzled, Moneo,” Leto said. “Sometimes you do not know what to think of me. Am I all-powerful and all-prescient? You bring me these little dibs and dabs and you wonder: Does he already know this? If he does, why do I bother? But I have ordered you to report such things, Moneo. Is your obedience not instructive?”

Moneo started to shrug and thought better of it. His lips trembled.

“Time can also be a place, Moneo,” Leto said. “Everything depends upon where you are standing, on where you look or what you hear. The measure of it is found in consciousness itself.”

After a long silence, Moneo ventured: “Is that all, Lord?”

“No, it is not all. Siona will receive today a package delivered to her by a Guild courier. Nothing is to interfere with delivery of that package. Do you understand?”

“What is . . . what is in the package, Lord?”

“Some translations, reading matter which I wish her to see. You will do nothing to interfere. There is no melange in the package.”

“How . . . how did you know what I feared was in the . . .”

“Because you fear the spice. It could extend your life, but you avoid it.”

“I fear its other effects, Lord.”

“A bountiful nature has decreed that melange will unveil for some of us unexpected depths of the psyche, yet you fear this?”

“I am Atreides, Lord!”

“Ahhh, yes, and for the Atreides, melange may roll the mystery of Time through a peculiar process of internal revelation.”

“I have only to remember the way you tested me, Lord.”

“Do you not see the necessity for you to sense the Golden Path?”

“That is not what I fear, Lord.”

“You fear the other astonishment, the thing which made me make my choice.”

“I have only to look at you, Lord, and know that fear. We Atreides . . .” He broke off, his mouth dry.

“You do not want all of these memories of ancestors and the others who flock within me!”

“Sometimes . . . sometimes, Lord, I think the spice is the Atreides curse!”

“Do you wish that I had never occurred?”

Moneo remained silent.

“But melange has its values, Moneo. The Guild navigators need it. And without it, the Bene Gesserit would degenerate into a helpless band of whining females!”

“We must live with it or without it, Lord. I know that.”

“Very perceptive, Moneo. But you choose to live without it.”

“Do I not have that choice, Lord?”

“For now.”

“Lord, what do you . . .”

“There are twenty-eight different words for melange in common Galach. They describe it by its intended use, by its dilution, by its age, by whether it came through honest purchase, through theft or conquest, whether it was the dower gift for a male or for a female, and in many other ways is it named. What do you make of this, Moneo?”

“We are offered many choices, Lord.”

“Only where the spice is concerned?”

Moneo’s brow wrinkled in thought, then: “No.”

“You so seldom say ‘no’ in my presence,” Leto said. “I enjoy watching your lips form around the word.”

Moneo’s mouth twitched in an attempted smile.

Leto spoke briskly: “Well! You must go now to the Lady Hwi. I will give you one parting piece of advice which may help.”

Moneo paid studious attention to Leto’s face.

“Drug knowledge originated mostly with males because they tend to be more venturesome—an outgrowth of male aggression. You’ve read your Orange Catholic Bible, thus you know the story of Eve and the apple. Here’s an interesting fact about that story: Eve was not the first to pluck and sample the apple. Adam was first and he learned by this to put the blame on Eve. My story tells you something about how our societies find a structural necessity for sub-groups.”

Moneo tipped his head slightly to the left. “Lord, how does this help me?”

“It will help you with the Lady Hwi!”