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"The piece of me he burned away is entirely ash. We will let it blow away. This is a fitting place for ashes."
"As my Lord says."
"Before you dispose of the body, disable the lasgun and keep it where I can present it to the Ixian ambassador. As for the Guildsman who warned us about it, present him personally with ten grams of spice. Oh-and our priestesses on Giedi Prime should be alerted to a hidden store of melange there, probably old Harko
"What do you wish done with it when it's found, Lord?"
"Use a bit of it to pay the Tleilaxu for the new ghola. The rest of it can go into our stores here in the crypt."
"Lord." Moneo acknowledged the orders with a nod, a gesture which was not quite a bow. His gaze met Leto's.
Leto smiled. He thought: We both know that Moneo will not leave without addressing directly the matter which most concerns us.
"I have seen the report on Siona," Moneo said.
Leto's smile widened. Moneo was such a pleasure in these moments. His words conveyed many things which did not require open discussion between them. His words and actions were in precise alignment, carried on the mutual awareness that he, of course, spied on everything. Now, there was a natural concern for his daughter, but he wished it understood that his concern for the God Emperor remained paramount. From his own traverse through a similar evolution, Moneo knew with precision the delicate nature of Siona's present fortunes.
"Have I not created her, Moneo?" Leto asked. "Have I not controlled the conditions of her ancestry and her upbringing?"
"She is my only daughter, my only child, Lord."
"In a way, she reminds me of Harq al-Ada," Leto said. "There doesn't appear to be much of Ghani in her, although that has to be there. Perhaps she harks back to our ancestors in the Sisterhood's breeding program."
"Why do you say that, Lord?"
Leto reflected. Was there need for Moneo to know this peculiar thing about his daughter? Siona could fade from the prescient view at times. The Golden Path remained, but Siona faded. Yet...she was not prescient. She was a unique phenomenon... and if she survived... Leto decided he would not cloud Moneo's efficiency with u
"Remember your own past," Leto said.
"Indeed, Lord! And she has such a potential, so much more than I ever had. But that makes her dangerous, too."
"And she will not listen to you," Leto said.
"No, but I have an agent in her rebellion."
That will be Topri, Leto thought.
It required no prescience to know that Moneo would have an agent in place. Ever since the death of Siona's mother, Leto had known with increasing sureness the course of Moneo's actions. Nayla's suspicions pinpointed Topri. And now, Moneo paraded his fears and actions, offering them as the price of his daughter's continued safety.
How unfortunate he fathered only the one child on that mother.
"Recall how I treated you in similar circumstances," Leto said. "You know the demands of the Golden Path as well as I do."
"But I was young and foolish, Lord."
"Young and brash, never foolish."
Moneo managed a tight smile at this compliment, his thoughts leaning more and more toward the belief that he now understood Leto's intentions. The dangers, though!
Feeding his belief, Leto said: "You know how much I enjoy surprises."
That is true, Leto thought. Moneo does know it. But even while Siona surprises me, she reminds me of what I fear most-the sameness and boredom which could break the Golden Path. Look at how boredom put me temporarily in the Duncan's power! Siona is the contrast by which I know my deepest fears. Moneo's concern for me is well grounded.
"My agent will continue to watch her new companions, Lord," Moneo said. "I do not like them."
"Her companions? I myself had such companions once long ago."
"Rebellious, Lord? You?" Moneo was genuinely surprised.
"Have I not proved a friend of rebellion?"
"But Lord..."
"The aberrations of our past are more numerous than you may think!"
"Yes, Lord." Moneo was abashed, yet still curious. And he knew that the God Emperor sometimes waxed loquacious after the death of a Duncan. "You must have seen many rebellions, Lord."
Involuntarily, Leto's thoughts sank into the memories aroused by these words.
"Ahhh, Moneo," he muttered. "My travels in the ancestral mazes have memorized uncounted places and events which I never desire to see repeated."
"I can imagine your inward travels, Lord."
"No, you ca
"Not you, Lord. Certainly not you."
"Less than a mote! I have seen people and their fruitless societies in such repetitive posturings that their nonsense fills me with boredom, do you hear?"
"I did not mean to anger my Lord." Moneo spoke meekly.
"You don't anger me. Sometimes you irritate me, that is the extent of it. You ca
"Forgive my presumption, Lord."
"Damn the Romans!" Leto cried.
He spoke it inwardly to his ancestors: "Damn the Romans!"
Their laughter drove him from the inward arena.
"I don't understand, Lord," Moneo ventured.
"That's true. You don't understand. The Romans broadcast the pharaonic disease like grain farmers scattering the seeds of next season's harvest -Caesars, kaisers, tsars, imperators, caseris... palatos... damned pharaohs?"
"My knowledge does not encompass all of those titles, Lord."
"I may be the last of the lot, Moneo. Pray that this is so."
"Whatever my Lord commands."
Leto stared down at the man. "We are myth-killers, you and I, Moneo. That's the dream we share. I assure you from a God's Olympian perch that government is a shared myth. When the myth dies, the government dies."
"Thus you have taught me, Lord."
"That man-machine, the Army, created our present dream, my friend."
Moneo cleared his throat.
Leto recognized the small signs of the majordomo's impatience.
Moneo understands about armies. He knows it was a fool's dream that armies were the basic instrument of governance.
As Leto continued silent, Moneo crossed to the lasgun and retrieved it from the crypt's cold floor. He began disabling it.
Leto watched him, thinking how this tiny scene encapsulated..fostered
the essence of the Army myth. The Army fostered technology because the power of machines appeared so obvious to the shortsighted.
That lasgun is no more than a machine. But all machines fail or are superceded. Still, the Army worships at the shrine of such things-both fascinated and fearful. Look at how people fear the Ixians! In its guts, the Army knows it is the Sorcerer's Apprentice. It unleashes technology and never again can the magic be stuffed back into the bottle.
I teach them another magic.
Leto spoke to the hordes within then:
"You see? Moneo has disabled the deadly instrument. A co
Leto sniffed. He smelled the esters of a preservative oil riding on the stink of Moneo's perspiration.
Still speaking inwardly, Leto said: "But the genie is not dead. Technology breeds anarchy. It distributes these tools at random. And with them goes the provocation for violence. The ability to make and use savage destroyers falls inevitably into the hands of smaller and smaller groups until at last the group is a single individual."