Dune

The singular multiplicity of this universe draws my deepest attention. It is a thing of ultimate beauty.

—THE STOLEN JOURNALS

Leto heard Moneo in the antechamber just before Hwi entered the small audience room. She wore voluminous pale green pantaloons tightly tied at the ankles with darker green bows to match her sandals. A loose blouse of the same dark green could be seen under her black cloak.

She appeared calm as she approached Leto and sat without being invited, choosing a golden cushion rather than the red one she had occupied earlier. It had taken less than an hour for Moneo to bring her. Leto’s acute hearing detected Moneo fidgeting in the anteroom and Leto sent a signal which sealed the arched doorway there.

“Something has disturbed Moneo,” Hwi said. “He tried very hard not to reveal this to me, but the more he tried to soothe me the more he aroused my curiosity.”

“He did not frighten you?”

“Oh, no. He did say something very interesting, though. He said that I must remember it at all times, that the God Leto is a different person to each of us.”

“How is this interesting?” Leto asked.

“The interesting thing is the question for which this was the preface. He said he often wonders what part we play in creating that difference in you.”

“That is interesting.”

“I think it is a truthful insight,” Hwi said. “Why have you summoned me?”

“At one time, your masters on Ix . . .”

“They are no longer my masters, Lord.”

“Forgive me. I will refer to them hereafter as the Ixians.”

She nodded gravely, prompting: “At one time . . .”

“The Ixians contemplated making a weapon—a type of hunter-seeker, self-propelled death with a machine mind. It was to be designed as a self-improving thing which would seek out life and reduce that life to its inorganic matter.”

“I have not heard of this thing, Lord.”

“I know that. The Ixians do not recognize that machine-makers always run the risk of becoming totally machine. This is ultimate sterility. Machines always fail . . . given time. And when these machines failed there would be nothing left, no life at all.”

“Sometimes I think they are mad,” she said.

“Anteac’s opinion. That is the immediate problem. The Ixians are now engaged in an endeavor which they are concealing.”

“Even from you?”

“Even from me. I am sending the Reverend Mother Anteac to investigate for me. To help her, I want you to tell her everything you can about the place where you spent your childhood. Omit no detail, no matter how small. Anteac will help you remember. We want every sound, every smell, the shapes and names of visitors, the colors and even the tinglings of your skin. The slightest thing may be vital.”

“You think it is the place of concealment?”

“I know it is.”

“And you think they are making this weapon in . . .”

“No, but this will be our excuse for investigating the place where you were born.”

She opened her mouth and gradually formed a smile, then: “My Lord is devious. I will speak to the Reverend Mother immediately.” Hwi started to rise, but he stopped her with a gesture.

“We must not give the appearance of haste,” he said.

She sank back onto the cushion.

“Each of us is different in the way of Moneo’s observation,” he said. “Genesis does not stop. Your god continues creating you.”

“What will Anteac find? You know, don’t you?”

“Let us say that I have a strong conviction. Now, you have not once mentioned the subject which I broached earlier. Have you no questions?”

“You will provide the answers as I require them.” It was a statement full of such trust that it stopped Leto’s voice. He could only look at her, realizing how extraordinary was this accomplishment of the Ixians—this human. Hwi remained precisely true to the dictates of her personally chosen morality. She was comely, warm and honest and possessed of an emphatic sense which forced her to share every anguish in those with whom she identified. He could imagine the dismay of her Bene Gesserit teachers when confronted by this immovable core of self-honesty. The teachers obviously had been reduced to adding a touch here, an ability there, everything strengthening that power which prevented her from becoming a Bene Gesserit. How that must have rankled!

“Lord,” she said, “I would know the motives which forced you to choose your life.”

“First, you must understand what it is like to see our future.”

“With your help, I will try.”

“Nothing is ever separated from its source,” he said. “Seeing futures is a vision of a continuum in which all things take shape like bubbles forming beneath a waterfall. You see them and then they vanish into the stream. If the stream ends, it is as though the bubbles never were. That stream is my Golden Path and I saw it end.”

“Your choice”—she gestured at his body—“changed that?”

“It is changing. The change comes not only from the manner of my life but from the manner of my death.”

“You know how you will die?”

“Not how. I know only the Golden Path in which it will occur.”

“Lord, I do not . . .”

“It is difficult to understand, I know. I will die four deaths—the death of the flesh, the death of the soul, the death of the myth and the death of reason. And all of these deaths contain the seed of resurrection.”

“You will return from . . .”

“The seeds will return.”

“When you are gone, what will happen to your religion?”

“All religions are a single communion. The spectrum remains unbroken within the Golden Path. It is only that humans see first one part and then another. Delusions can be called accidents of the senses.”

“People will still worship you,” she said.

“Yes.”

“But when forever ends, there will be anger,” she said. “There will be denial. Some will say you were just an ordinary tyrant.”

“Delusion,” he agreed.

A lump in her throat prevented her from speaking for a moment, then: “How does your life and your death change the . . .” She shook her head.

“Life will continue.”

“I believe that, Lord, but how?”

“Each cycle is a reaction to the preceding cycle. If you think about the shape of my Empire, then you know the shape of the next cycle.”

She looked away from him. “Everything I learned about your Family told me that you would do this”—she gestured blindly in his direction without looking at him—“only with a selfless motive. I do not think I truly know the shape of your Empire, though.”

“Leto’s Golden Peace?”

“There is less peace than some would have us believe,” she said, looking back at him.

The honesty of her! he thought. Nothing deterred it.

“This is the time of the stomach,” he said. “This is the time when we expand as a single cell expands.”

“But something is missing,” she said.

She is like the Duncans, he thought. Something is missing and they sense it immediately.

“The flesh grows, but the psyche does not grow,” he said.

“The psyche?”

“That reflexive awareness which tells us how very alive we can become. You know it well, Hwi. It is that sense which tells you how to be true to yourself.”

“Your religion is not enough,” she said.

“No religion can ever be enough. It is a matter of choice—a single, lonely choice. Do you understand now why your friendship and your company mean so much to me?”

She blinked back tears, nodding, then: “Why don’t people know this?”

“Because the conditions don’t permit it.”

“The conditions which you dictate?”

“Precisely. Look throughout my Empire. Do you see the shape?”

She closed her eyes, thinking.

“One wishes to sit by a river and fish every day?” he asked. “Excellent. That is this life. You desire to sail a small boat across an island sea and visit strangers? Superb! What else is there to do?”

“Travel in space?” she asked and there was a defiant note in her voice. She opened her eyes.

“You have observed that the Guild and I do not allow this.”

“You do not allow it.”

“True. If the Guild disobeys me, it gets no spice.”

“And holding people planetbound keeps them out of mischief.”

“It does something more important than that. It fills them with a longing to travel. It creates a need to make far voyages and see strange things. Eventually, travel comes to mean freedom.”

“But the spice dwindles,” she said.

“And freedom becomes more precious every day.”

“This can only lead to desperation and violence,” she said.

“A wise man in my ancestry—I was actually that person, you know? Do you understand that there are no strangers in my past?”

She nodded, awed.

“This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.”

“The Guild and the Sisterhood enslave themselves!”

“And the Ixians and the Tleilaxu and all the others. Oh, they ferret out a bit of hidden melange from time to time and that keeps the attention fixed. A very interesting game, don’t you think?”

“But when the violence comes . . .”

“There will be famines and hard thoughts.”

“Here on Arrakis, too?”

“Here, there, everywhere. People will look back on my tyranny as the good old days. I will be the mirror of their future.”

“But it will be terrible!” she objected.

She could have no other reaction, he thought.

He said: “As the land refuses to support the people, the survivors will crowd into smaller and smaller refuges. A terrible selection process will be repeated on many worlds—explosive birthrates and dwindling food.”

“But couldn’t the Guild . . .”

“The Guild will be largely helpless without sufficient melange to operate available transports.”

“Won’t the rich escape?”

“Some of them.”

“Then you haven’t really changed anything. We will just go on struggling and dying.”

“Until the sandworm reigns once more on Arrakis. We will have tested ourselves by then with a profound experience shared by all. We will have learned that a thing which can happen on one planet can happen on any planet.”

“So much pain and death,” she whispered.

“Don’t you understand about death?” he asked. “You must understand. The species must understand. All life must understand.”

“Help me, Lord,” she whispered.

“It is the most profound experience of any creature,” he said. “Short of death come the things which risk and mirror it—life-threatening diseases, injuries and accidents . . . childbirth for a woman . . . and once it was combat for the males.”

“But your Fish Speakers are . . .”

“They teach about survival,” he said.

Her eyes went wide with understanding. “The survivors. Of course!”

“How precious you are,” he said. “How rare and precious. Bless the Ixians!”

“And curse them?”

“That, too.”

“I did not think I could ever understand about your Fish Speakers,” she said.

“Not even Moneo sees it,” he said. “And I despair of the Duncans.”

“You have to appreciate life before you want to preserve it,” she said.

“And it’s the survivors who maintain the most light and poignant hold upon the beauties of living. Women know this more often than men because birth is the reflection of death.”

“My Uncle Malky always said you had good reasons for denying combat and casual violence to men. What a bitter lesson!”

“Without readily available violence, men have few ways of testing how they will meet that final experience,” he said. “Something is missing. The psyche does not grow. What is it people say about Leto’s Peace?”

“That you make us wallow in pointless decadence like pigs in our own filth.”

“Always recognize the accuracy of folk wisdom,” he said. “Decadence.”

“Most men have no principles,” she said. “The women of Ix complain about it constantly.”

“When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles,” he said.

She stared at him silently, and he thought how that simple reaction spoke so deeply of her intelligence.

“Where do you think I find my best administrators?” he asked.

A small gasp escaped her.

“Principles,” he said, “are what you fight for. Most men go through a lifetime unchallenged, except at the final moment. They have so few unfriendly arenas in which to test themselves.”

“They have you,” she said.

“But I am so powerful,” he said. “I am the equivalent of suicide. Who would seek certain death?”

“Madmen . . . or desperate ones. Rebels?”

“I am their equivalent of war,” he said. “The ultimate predator. I am the cohesive force which shatters them.”

“I’ve never thought of myself as a rebel,” she said.

“You are something far better.”

“And you would use me in some way?”

“I would.”

“Not as an administrator,” she said.

“I already have good administrators—uncorruptible, sagacious, philosophical and open about their errors, quick to see decisions.”

“They were rebels?”

“Most of them.”

“How are they chosen?”

“I could say they chose themselves.”

“By surviving?”

“That, too. But there’s more. The difference between a good administrator and a bad one is about five heartbeats. Good administrators make immediate choices.”

“Acceptable choices?”

“They usually can be made to work. A bad administrator, on the other hand, hesitates, diddles around, asks for committees, for research and reports. Eventually, he acts in ways which create serious problems.”

“But don’t they sometimes need more information to make . . .”

“A bad administrator is more concerned with reports than with decisions. He wants the hard record which he can display as an excuse for his errors.”

“And good administrators?”

“Oh, they depend on verbal orders. They never lie about what they’ve done if their verbal orders cause problems, and they surround themselves with people able to act wisely on the basis of verbal orders. Often, the most important piece of information is that something has gone wrong. Bad administrators hide their mistakes until it’s too late to make corrections.”

Leto watched her as she thought about the people who served him—especially about Moneo.

“Men of decision,” she said.

“One of the hardest things for a tyrant to find,” he said, “is people who actually make decisions.”

“Doesn’t your intimate knowledge of the past give you some . . .”

“It gives me some amusement. Most bureaucracies before mine sought out and promoted people who avoided decisions.”

“I see. How would you use me, Lord?”

“Will you wed me?”

A faint smile touched her lips. “Women, too, can make decisions. I will wed you.”

“Then go and instruct the Reverend Mother. Make sure she knows what she’s looking for.”

“For my genesis,” she said. “You and I already know my purpose.”

“Which is not separated from its source,” he said.

She arose, then: “Lord, could you be wrong about your Golden Path? Does the possibility of failure . . .”

“Anything and anyone can fail,” he said, “but brave good friends help.”