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lifetime reduced to a mote in Leto's eye. The source of the allusion did not
escape him.
Words . . . words . . . words, Moneo thought.
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"Words are often almost useless in sentient affairs," Leto said.
Moneo held his breathing to a shallow minimum. The Lord can read thoughts!
"Throughout our history," Leto said, "the most potent use of words has been to
round out some transcendental event, giving that event a place in the accepted
chronicles, explaining the event in such a way that ever afterward we can use
those words and say: "This is what it meant."
Moneo felt beaten down by these words, terrified by unspoken things they might
make him think.
"That's how events get lost in history," Leto said.
After a long silence, Moneo ventured: "You have not answered my question,
Lord. The wedding?"
How tired he sounds, Leto thought. How utterly defeated.
Leto spoke briskly: "I have never needed your good offices more. The wedding
must be managed with utmost care. It must have the precision of which only you
are capable."
"Where, Lord?"
A bit more life in his voice.
"At Tabur Village in the Sareer."
"When?"
"I leave the date to you. Announce it when all things are arranged."
"And the ceremony itself ?"
"I will conduct it."
"Will you need assistants, Lord? Artifacts of any kind?"
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"The trappings of ritual?"
"Any particular thing which I may not. . ."
"We will not need much for our little charade."
"Lord! I beg of you! Please. . ."
"You will stand beside the bride and give her in marriage," Leto said. "We
will use the Old Fremen ritual."
"We will need water rings then," Moneo said.
"Yes! I will use Ghani's water rings."
"And who will attend, Lord?"
"Only a Fish Speaker guard and the aristocracy."
Moneo stared at Leto's face. "What . . . what does my Lord mean by
`aristocracy'?"
"You, your family, the household entourage, the courtiers of the Citadel."
"My fam . . ." Moneo swallowed. "Do you include Siona?"
"If she survives the test."
"But. . .
"Is she not family?"
"Of course, Lord. She is Atreides and. . ."
"Then by all means include Siona!"
Moneo brought a tiny memocorder from his pocket, a dull black Ixian artifact
whose existence crowded the proscriptions of the Butlerian Jihad. A soft smile
touched Leto's lips. Moneo knew his duties and would now perform them.
The clamor of Duncan Idaho outside the portal grew more strident, but Moneo
ignored the sound.
Moneo knows the price of his privileges, Leto thought. It is another kind of
marriage-the marriage of privilege and duty. It is the aristocrat's
explanation and his excuse.
Moneo finished his note taking.
"A few details, Lord," Moneo said. "Will there be some special garb for Hwi?"
"The stillsuit and robe of a Fremen bride, real ones."
"Jewelry or other baubles?"
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Leto's gaze locked on Moneo's fingers scrabbling over the tiny recorder,
seeing there a dissolution.
Leadership, courage, a .sense of knowledge and order Moneo has these in
abundance. They surround him like a holy aura, but they conceal from all eyes
except mine the rot which eats from within.
It is inevitable. Were I gone, it would be visible to everyone.
"Lord?" Moneo pressed. "Are you woolgathering?"
Ahhh! He likes that word!
"That is all," Leto said. "Only the robe, the stillsuit and the water rings."
Moneo bowed and turned away.
He is looking ahead now, Leto thought, but even this new thing will pass. He
will turn toward the past once more. And I had such high hopes for him once.
Well . . . perhaps Siona . . .
===
"Make no heroes," my father said.
-The voice of Ghanima, From the Oral History
JUST BY the way Idaho strode across the small chamber, his loud demands for
audience now gratified, Leto could see an important transformation in the
ghola. It was a thing repeated so many times that it had become deeply
familiar to Leto. The Duncan had not even exchanged words of greeting with the
departing Moneo. It all fitted into the pattern. How boring that pattern had
become!
Leto had a name for this transformation of the Duncans. He called it "The
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Since Syndrome."
The gholas often nurtured suspicions about the secret things which might have
been developed across the centuries of oblivion since they last knew
awareness. What had people been doing all that time? Why could they possibly
want me, this relic from their past? No ego could overcome such doubts
forever-especially in a doubting man.
One of the gholas had accused Leto: "You've put things in my body, things I
know nothing about!
These things in my body tell you everything I'm doing! You spy on me
everywhere!"
Another had charged him with possessing a "manipulative machine which makes us
want to do whatever you want."
Once it started, the Since Syndrome could never be entirely eliminated. It
could be checked, even diverted, but the dormant seed might sprout at the
slightest provocation.
Idaho stopped where Moneo had stood and there was a veiled look of nonspecific
suspicions in his eyes, in the set of his shoulders. Leto allowed the
situation to simmer, bringing the condition to a head. Idaho locked gazes with
him, then
broke away to dart his glances around the room. Leto recognized the manner
behind the gaze.
The Duncans never forget!
As he studied the room, using the sightful ways he had been taught centuries
before by the Lady
Jessica and the Mentat Thufir Hawat, Idaho began to feel a giddy sense of
dislocation. He thought the room rejected him, each thing-the soft cushions:
big bulbous things in gold, green and a red that was almost purple; the Fremen
rugs, each a museum piece, lapping over each other in thick piles around
Leto's pit; the false sunlight of Ixian glowglobes, light which enveloped the
Emperor's face in dry warmth, making the shadows around it deeper and more
mysterious; the smell of spice-tea somewhere nearby; and that rich melange
odor which radiated from the worm-body.
Idaho felt that too much had happened to him too fast since the Tleilaxu had
abandoned him to the mercies of Luli and Friend in that featureless
prison-cell room.
Too much . . . too much . . .
Am I really here? he wondered. Is this me? What are these thoughts that I
think?
He stared at Leto's quiescent body, the shadowy and enormous mass which lay so
silently there on its cart within the pit. The very quietness of that fleshly
mass only suggested mysterious energies, terrible energies which might be
unleashed in ways nobody could anticipate.
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Idaho had heard the stories about the fight at the Ixian Embassy, but the Fish
Speaker accounts had an aura of miraculous visitation about them which
obscured the physical data.
"He flew down from above them and executed a terrible slaughter among the
sinners."
"How did he do that?" Idaho had asked.
"He was an angry God," his informant had said.
Angry, Idaho thought. Was it because of the threat to Hwi? The stories he had
heard! None were believable. Hwi wedded to this gross . . . It was not
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