Dune

It required almost a thousand years before the dust of Dune’s old planet-wide desert left the atmosphere to be bound up in soil and water. The wind called sandblaster has not been seen on Arrakis for some twenty-five hundred years. Twenty billion tons of dust could be carried suspended in the wind of just one of those storms. The sky often had a silvery look to it then. Fremen said: “The desert is a surgeon cutting away the skin to expose what’s underneath.” The planet and the people had layers. You could see them. My Sareer is but a weak echo of what was. I must be the sandblaster today.

—THE STOLEN JOURNALS

“You sent them to Tuono without consulting me? How surprising of you, Moneo! You’ve not done such an independent thing in a long while.”

Moneo stood about ten paces from Leto in the gloomy center of the crypt, head bowed, using every artifice he knew to keep from trembling, aware that even this could be seen and interpreted by the God Emperor. It was almost midnight. Leto had kept his majordomo waiting and waiting.

“I pray I have not offended my Lord,” Moneo said.

“You have amused me, but take no heart from that. Lately, I cannot separate the comic from the sad.”

“Forgive me, Lord,” Moneo whispered.

“What is this forgiveness you ask? Must you always require judgment? Can’t your universe merely be?”

Moneo lifted his gaze to that awful cowled face. He is both ship and storm. The sunset exists in itself. Moneo felt that he stood on the brink of terrifying revelations. The God Emperor’s eyes bored into him, burning, probing. “Lord, what would you have of me?”

“That you have faith in yourself.”

Feeling that something might explode in him, Moneo said: “Then the fact that I did not consult you before . . .”

“How enlightened of you, Moneo! Small souls who seek power over others first destroy the faith those others might have in themselves.”

The words were shattering to Moneo. He sensed accusation in them, confession. He felt his hold on a fearsome but infinitely desirable thing weakening. He tried to find words to call it back, but his mind remained blank. Perhaps if he asked the God Emperor . . .

“Lord, if you would but tell me your thoughts on . . .”

“My thoughts vanish on contact!”

Leto stared down at Moneo. How strange were the majordomo’s eyes perched there above that hawkish Atreides nose—free-verse eyes in a metronome face. Did Moneo hear that rhythmic pulsebeat: Malky is coming! Malky is coming! Malky is coming!?

Moneo wanted to cry out in anguish. The thing he had felt—all gone! He put both his hands over his mouth.

“Your universe is a two-dimensional hourglass,” Leto accused. “Why do you try to hold back the sand?”

Moneo lowered his hands and sighed. “Do you wish to hear about the wedding arrangements, Lord?”

“Don’t be tiresome! Where is Hwi?”

“The Fish Speakers are preparing her for . . .”

“Have you consulted her about the arrangements?”

“Yes, Lord.”

“She approved?”

“Yes, Lord, but she accused me of living for the quantity of activity and not for the quality.”

“Isn’t she marvelous, Moneo? Does she see the unrest among the Fish Speakers?”

“I think so, Lord.”

“The idea of my marriage disturbs them.”

“It’s why I sent the Duncan away, Lord.”

“Of course it is, and Siona with him to . . .”

“Lord, I know you have tested her and she . . .”

“She senses the Golden Path as deeply as you do, Moneo.”

“Then why do I fear her, Lord?”

“Because you raise reason above all else.”

“But I do not know the reason for my fear!”

Leto smiled. This was like playing bubble dice in an infinite bowl. Moneo’s emotions were a marvelous play performed only on this stage. How near the edge he walked without ever seeing it!

“Moneo, why do you insist on taking pieces out of the continuum?” Leto asked. “When you see a spectrum, do you desire one color there above all the others?”

“Lord, I don’t understand you!”

Leto closed his eyes, remembering the countless times he had heard this cry. The faces were an unseparated blend. He opened his eyes to erase them.

“As long as one human remains alive to see them, the colors will not suffer a linear mortis even if you die, Moneo.”

“What is this thing of colors, Lord?”

“The continuum, the neverending, the Golden Path.”

“But you see things which we do not, Lord!”

“Because you refuse!”

Moneo sank his chin to his chest. “Lord, I know you have evolved beyond the rest of us. That is why we worship you and . . .”

“Damn you, Moneo!”

Moneo jerked his head up and stared at Leto in terror.

“Civilizations collapse when their powers outrun their religions!” Leto said. “Why can’t you see this? Hwi does.”

“She is Ixian, Lord. Perhaps she . . .”

“She’s a Fish Speaker! She has been from birth, born to serve me. No!” Leto raised one of his tiny hands as Moneo tried to speak. “The Fish Speakers are disturbed because I called them my brides, and now they see a stranger not trained in Siaynoq who knows it better than they.”

“How can that be, Lord, when your Fish . . .”

“What are you saying? Each of us comes into being knowing who he is and what he is supposed to do.”

Moneo opened his mouth but closed it without speaking.

“Small children know,” Leto said. “It’s only after adults have confused them that children hide this knowledge even from themselves. Moneo! Uncover yourself!”

“Lord, I cannot!” The words were torn from Moneo. He trembled with anguish. “I do not have your powers, your knowledge of . . .”

“Enough!”

Moneo fell silent. His body shook.

Leto spoke soothingly to him. “It’s all right, Moneo. I asked too much of you and I can see your fatigue.”

Slowly, Moneo’s trembling subsided. He drew in deep, gulping breaths.

Leto said: “There will be some change in my Fremen wedding. We will not use the water rings of my sister, Ghanima. We will use, instead, the rings of my mother.”

“The Lady Chani, Lord? But where are her rings?”

Leto twisted his bulk on the cart and pointed to the intersection of two cavernous spokes on his left where the dim light revealed the earliest burial niches of the Atreides on Arrakis. “In her tomb, the first niche. You will remove those rings, Moneo, and bring them to the ceremony.”

Moneo stared across the gloomy distance of the crypt. “Lord . . . is it not a desecration to . . .”

“You forget, Moneo, who lives in me.” He spoke then in Chani’s voice: “I can do what I want with my water rings!”

Moneo cowered. “Yes, Lord. I will bring them with me to Tabur Village when . . .”

“Tabur Village?” Leto asked in his usual voice. “But I have changed my mind. We will be wed at Tuono Village!”