God Emperor of Dune (32 page)
“Nothing—if that’s all you want.”
“You’re saying that this is all he allows?”
“This, a few market cities … Onn. I’m told that even planetary capitals are just big villages.”
“And I repeat: What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s a prison!”
“Then leave it.”
“Where? How? You think we can just get on a Guild ship and go anywhere else, anywhere we want?” She pointed down toward Goygoa where the ’thopter could be seen off to one side, the Fish Speakers seated on the grass nearby. “Our jailers won’t let us leave!”
“They leave,” Idaho said. “They go anywhere they want.”
“Anywhere the Worm sends them!”
She pressed her face against her knees and spoke, her voice muffled. “What was it like in the old days?”
“It was different, often very dangerous.” He looked around at the walls which set off pastureland, gardens and orchards. “Here on Dune, there were no imaginary lines to show the limits of ownership on the land. It was all the Dukedom of the Atreides.”
“Except for the Fremen.”
“Yes. But they knew where they belonged—on this side of a particular escarpment … or beyond where the pan turns white against the sand.”
“They could go wherever they wanted!”
“With some limits.”
“Some of us long for the desert,” she said.
“You have the Sareer.”
She lifted her head to glare at him. “That little thing!”
“Fifteen hundred kilometers by five hundred—not so little.”
Siona got to her feet. “Have you asked the Worm why he confines us this way?”
“Leto’s Peace, the Golden Path to insure our survival. That’s what he
says.
”
says.
”
“Do you know what he told my father? I spied on them when I was a child. I heard him.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he denies us most crises, to limit our forming forces. He said: ‘People can be sustained by affliction, but I am the affliction now. Gods can become afflictions.’ Those were his words, Duncan. The Worm is a sickness!”
Idaho did not doubt the accuracy of her recital, but the words failed to stir him. He thought instead of the Corrino he had been ordered to kill.
Affliction.
The Corrino, descendant of a Family which once had ruled this Empire, had been revealed as a softly fat middle-aged man who hungered after power and conspired for spice. Idaho had ordered a Fish Speaker to kill him, an act which had aroused Moneo to a fit of intense questioning.
Affliction.
The Corrino, descendant of a Family which once had ruled this Empire, had been revealed as a softly fat middle-aged man who hungered after power and conspired for spice. Idaho had ordered a Fish Speaker to kill him, an act which had aroused Moneo to a fit of intense questioning.
“Why didn’t you kill him yourself?”
“I wanted to see how the Fish Speakers performed.”
“And your judgment of their performance?”
“Efficient.”
But the death of the Corrino had inflicted Idaho with a sense of unreality. A fat little man lying in a pool of his own blood, an undistinguished shadow among the night shadows of a plastone street. It was unreal. Idaho could remember Muad’Dib saying:
“The mind imposes this framework which it calls ‘reality. ’ That arbitrary framework has a tendency to be quite independent of what your senses report.”
What
reality
moved the Lord Leto?
“The mind imposes this framework which it calls ‘reality. ’ That arbitrary framework has a tendency to be quite independent of what your senses report.”
What
reality
moved the Lord Leto?
Idaho looked at Siona standing against the orchard background and the green hills of Goygoa. “Let’s go down to the village and find our quarters. I’d like to be alone.”
“The Fish Speakers will put us in the same quarters.”
“With them?”
“No, just the two of us together. The reason’s simple enough. The Worm wants me to breed with the great Duncan Idaho.”
“I pick my own partners,” Idaho growled.
“I’m sure one of our Fish Speakers would be delighted,” Siona said. She whirled away from him and set off down the hill.
Idaho watched her for a moment, the lithe young body swaying like the limbs of the orchard trees in the wind.
“I’m not his stud,” Idaho muttered. “That’s one thing he’ll have to understand.”
As each day passes, you become increasingly unreal, more alien and remote from what I find myself to be on that new day. I am the only reality and, as you differ from me, you lose reality. The more curious I become, the less curious are those who worship me. Religion suppresses curiosity. What I do subtracts from the worshipper. Thus it is that eventually I will do nothing, giving it all back to frightened people who will find themselves on that day alone and forced to act for themselves.
—THE STOLEN JOURNALS
It was a sound like no other, the sound of a waiting mob, and it came down the long tunnel to where Idaho marched ahead of the Royal Cart—nervous whispers magnified into an ultimate whisper, the shuffling of one gigantic foot, the stirring of an enormous garment. And the smell—sweet perspiration mixed with the milky breath of sexual excitement.
Inmeir and the others of his Fish Speaker escort had brought Idaho here in the first hour after dawn, coming down to the plaza of Onn while it lay in cold green shadows. They had lifted off immediately after turning him over to other Fish Speakers, Inmeir obviously unhappy because she was required to take Siona to the Citadel and thus would miss the ritual of Siaynoq.
The new escort, vibrant with repressed emotion, had taken him into a region deep beneath the plaza, a place not on any of the city charts Idaho had studied. It was a maze—first one direction and then another through corridors wide enough and high enough to accommodate the Royal Cart. Idaho lost track of directions and fell to reflecting on the preceding night.
The sleeping quarters in Goygoa, although Spartan and small, had been comfortable—two cots to a room, each room a box with white-washed walls, a single window and a single door. The rooms were strung along a corridor in a building designated as Goygoa’s “Guest House.”
And Siona had been right. Without asking if it suited him, Idaho had been quartered with her, Inmeir acting as though this were an accepted thing.
When the door closed on them, Siona said: “If you touch me, I will try to kill you.”
It was uttered with such dry sincerity that Idaho almost laughed. “I would prefer privacy,” he said. “Consider yourself alone.”
He had slept with a light wariness, remembering dangerous nights in the Atreides service, the readiness for combat. The room was seldom truly dark—moonlight coming through the curtained window, even starlight reflecting from the chalk-white walls. He had found himself nervously sensitive to Siona, to the smell of her, the stirrings, her breathing. Several times he had come fully awake to listen, aware on two of those occasions that she, too, was listening.
Morning and the flight to Onn had come as a relief. They had broken their fast with a drink of cold fruit juice, Idaho glad to enter the predawn darkness for a brisk walk to the ’thopter. He did not speak directly to Siona and he found himself resenting the curious glances of the Fish Speakers.
Siona spoke to him only once, leaning out of the ’thopter as he left it in the plaza.
“It would not offend me to be your friend,” she said.
Such a curious way of putting it. He had felt vaguely embarrassed. “Yes … well, certainly.”
The new escort had led him away then, coming at last to a terminal in the maze. Leto awaited him there on the Royal Cart. The meeting place was a wide spot in a corridor which stretched off into the converging distance on Idaho’s right. The walls were dark brown streaked with golden lines which glittered in the yellow light of glowglobes. The escort took up positions behind the cart, moving smartly and leaving Idaho to stand confronting Leto’s cowled face.
“Duncan, you will precede me when we go to Siaynoq,” Leto said.
Idaho stared into the dark blue wells of the God Emperor’s eyes, angered by the mystery and secrecy, the obvious air of private excitement in this place. He felt that everything he had been told about Siaynoq only deepened the mystery.
“Am I truly the Commander of your Guard, m’Lord?” Idaho asked, resentment heavy in his voice.
“Indeed! And I bestow a signal honor upon you now. Few adult males ever share Siaynoq.”
“What happened in the city last night?”
“Bloody violence in some places. It is quite calm this morning, however.”
“Casualties?”
“Not worth mentioning.”
Idaho nodded. Leto’s prescient powers had warned of some peril to
his Duncan.
Thus, the flight into the rural safety of Goygoa.
his Duncan.
Thus, the flight into the rural safety of Goygoa.
“You have been to Goygoa,” Leto said. “Were you tempted to stay?”
“No!”
“Do not be angry with me,” Leto said. “I did not send you to Goygoa.”
Idaho sighed. “What was the danger which required that you send me away?”
“It was not to you,” Leto said. “But you excite my guards to excessive displays of their abilities. Last night’s activities did not require this.”
“Oh?” This thought shocked Idaho. He had never thought of himself as one to inspire particular heroism unless he personally demanded it. One
whipped up
the troops. Leaders such as the original Leto, this one’s grandfather, had inspired by their presence.
whipped up
the troops. Leaders such as the original Leto, this one’s grandfather, had inspired by their presence.
“You are extremely precious to me, Duncan,” Leto said.
“Yes … well, I’m still not your stud!”
“Your wishes will be honored, of course. We will discuss it another time.”
Idaho glanced at the Fish Speaker escort, all of them wide-eyed and attentive.
“Is there always violence when you come to Onn?” Idaho asked.
“It goes in cycles. The malcontents are quite subdued now. It will be more peaceful for a time.”
Idaho looked back at Leto’s inscrutable face. “What happened to my predecessor?”
“Haven’t my Fish Speakers told you?”
“They say he died in defense of his God.”
“And you have heard a contrary rumor.”
“What happened?”
“He died because he was too close to me. I did not remove him to a safe place in time.”
“A place like Goygoa.”
“I would have preferred him to live out his days there in peace, but you well know, Duncan, that you are not a seeker after peace.”
Idaho swallowed, encountering an odd lump in his throat. “I would still like the particulars of his death. He has a family …”
“You will get the particulars and do not fear for his family. They are my wards. I will keep them safely at a distance. You know how violence seeks me out. That is one of my functions. It is unfortunate that those I admire and love must suffer because of this.”
Idaho pursed his lips, not satisfied with what he heard.
“Set your mind at ease, Duncan,” Leto said. “Your predecessor died because he was too close to me.”
The Fish Speaker escort stirred restively. Idaho glanced at them, then looked to the right up the tunnel.
“Yes, it is time,” Leto said. “We must not keep the women waiting. March close ahead of me, Duncan, and I will answer your questions about Siaynoq.”
Obedient because he could think of no suitable alternative, Idaho turned on his heel and led off the procession. He heard the cart creak into motion behind him, the faint footsteps of the escort following.
The cart fell silent with an abruptness which jerked Idaho’s attention around. The reason was immediately apparent.
“You’re on the suspensors,” he said, returning his attention to the front.
“I have retracted the wheels because the women will press close around me,” Leto said. “We can’t crush their feet.”
“What is Siaynoq? What is it really?” Idaho asked.
“I have told you. It is the Great Sharing.”
“Do I smell spice?”
“Your nostrils are sensitive. There is a small amount of melange in the wafers.”
Idaho shook his head.
Trying to understand this event, Idaho had asked Leto directly at the first opportunity after their arrival in Onn, “What is the Feast of Siaynoq?”
“We share a wafer, no more. Even I partake.”
“Is it like the Orange Catholic ritual?”
“Oh, no! It is not my flesh. It is the sharing. They are reminded that they are only female, as you are only male, but I am
all.
They share with the
all.
”
all.
They share with the
all.
”
Idaho had not liked the tone of this. “
Only
male?”
Only
male?”
“Do you know who they lampoon at the Feast, Duncan?”
“Who?”
“Men who have offended them. Listen to them when they talk softly among themselves.”
Idaho had taken this as a warning:
Don’t offend the Fish Speakers. You incur their wrath at your mortal peril!
Don’t offend the Fish Speakers. You incur their wrath at your mortal peril!
Now, as he marched ahead of Leto in the tunnel, Idaho felt that he had heard the words correctly but learned nothing from them. He spoke over his shoulder.
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