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"Why was that, Lord?"
"He was an obscenity. He made living torches out of people who disagreed with him."
Moneo pitched his voice low. "Like the historians who angered you, Lord?"
"Do you question my actions, Moneo?"
"No, Lord!"
"Good. The historians died peacefully. Not a one felt the flames. Torquemada, however, delighted in commending to his god the agonized screams of his burning victims."
"How horrible, Lord."
The cortege turned another corner with a view of the bridge. The span appeared to be no closer.
Once more, Moneo studied his God Emperor. The Worm appeared no closer. Still too close, though. Moneo could feel the menace of that unpredictable presence, the Holy Presence which could kill without warning.
Moneo shuddered.
What had been the meaning of that strange... sermon? Moneo knew that few had ever heard the God Emperor speak thus. It was a privilege and a burden. It was part of the price paid for Leto's Peace. Generation after generation marched in their ordered way under the dictates of that peace. Only the Citadel's i
Anticipation!
Moneo glanced at the now-silent Leto. The God Emperor's eyes were closed and a look of brooding had come over his face. That was another of the Worm signs- a bad one. Moneo trembled.
Did Leto anticipate even his own moments of wild violence? It was the anticipation of violence which sent tremors of awe and fear throughout the Empire. Leto knew where guards must be posted to put down a transitory uprising. He knew it before the event. Even thinking about such matters dried Moneo's mouth. There were times, Moneo believed, when the God Emperor could read any mind. Oh, Leto employed spies. An occasional shrouded figure passed by the Fish Speakers for the climb to Leto's tower aerie or descended to the crypt. Spies, no doubt of it, but Moneo suspected they were used merely to confirm what Leto already knew.
As though to confirm the fears in Moneo's mind, Leto said: "Do not try to force an understanding of my ways, Moneo. Let understanding come of itself."
"I will try, Lord."
"No, do not try. Tell me, instead, if you have a
"Not yet, Lord."
"Delay the a
Moneo sighed. The amounts offered him in bribes had reached ridiculous heights. Leto, however, had appeared amused by the escalation.
"Draw them out," he had said earlier. "See how high they will go. Make it appear that you can be bribed at last."
Now, as they turned another corner with a view of the bridge, Leto asked: "Has House Corrino offered you a bribe?"
"Yes, Lord."
"Do you know the myth which says that someday House Corrino will be restored to its ancient powers?"
"I have heard it, Lord."
"Have the Corrino killed. It is a task for the Duncan. We will test him."
"So soon, Lord?"
"It is still known that melange can extend human life. Let it also be known that the spice can shorten life."
"As you command, Lord."
Moneo knew this response in 'himself, It was the way he spoke when he could not voice a deep objection which he felt. He also knew that the Lord Leto understood this and was amused by it. The amusement rankled.
"Try not to be impatient with me, Moneo," Leto said.
Moneo suppressed his feeling of bitterness. Bitterness brought peril. Rebels were bitter. The Duncans grew bitter before they died.
"Time has a different meaning for you than it has for me, Lord," Moneo said. "I wish I could know that meaning."
"You could but you will not."
Moneo heard rebuke in the words and fell silent, turning his thoughts instead to the melange problems. It was not often that the Lord Leto spoke of the spice, and then it usually was to set allotments or withdraw them, to apportion rewards or send the Fish Speakers after some newly revealed hoard. The greatest remaining store of spice, Moneo knew, lay in some place known only to the God Emperor. In his first days of Royal Service, Moneo had been covered in a hood and led by the Lord Leto himself to that secret place along twisting passages which Moneo had sensed were underground.
When I removed the hood, we were underground.
The place had filled Moneo with awe. Great bins of melange lay all around in a gigantic room cut from native rock and illuminated by glowglobes of an ancient design with arabesques of metal scrollwork upon them. The spice had glowed radiant blue in the dim silver light. And the smell-bitter ci
"One day all of this will be gone," the Lord Leto had said.
Shocked, Moneo had asked: "What will Guild and Bene Gesserit do then?"
"What they are doing now, but more violently."
Staring around the gigantic room with its enormous store of melange, Moneo cold only think of things he knew were happening in the Empire at that moment-bloody assassinations, piratical raids, spying and intrigue. The God Emperor kept a lid on the worst of it, but what remained was bad enough,
"The temptation," Moneo whispered.
"The temptation, indeed."
"Will there be no more melange, ever, Lord'?"
"Someday, I will go back into the sand. I will be the source of spice then."
"You, Lord?"
"And I will produce something just as wonderful-more sandtrout-a hybrid and a prolific breeder."
Trembling at this revelation, Moneo stared at the shadowy figure of the God Emperor who spoke of such marvels.
"The sandtrout," Lord Leto said, "will link themselves into large living bubbles to enclose this planet's water deep underground. Just as it was in the Dune times."
"All of the water, Lord?"
"Most of it. Within three hundred years, the sandworm once more will reign here. It will be a new kind of sandworm, I promise you."
"How is that, Lord?"
"It will have animal awareness and a new cu
Moneo had looked up at the cavern's rocky ceiling, his imagination probing through the rock to the surface.
"Everything desert again, Lord?"
"Watercourses will fill with sand. Crops will be choked and killed. Trees will be covered by great moving dunes. The sand-death will spread until... until a subtle signal is heard in the barren lands."
"What signal, Lord?"
"The signal for the next cycle, the coming of the Maker, the coming of Shai-Hulud."
"Will that be you, Lord?"
"Yes! The great sandworm of Dune will rise once more from the deeps. This land will be again the domain of spice and worm."
"But what of the people, Lord? All of the people?"
"Many will die. Food plants and the abundant growth of this land will be parched. Without nourishment, meat animals will die."
"Will everyone go hungry, Lord?"
"Undernourishment and the old diseases will stalk the land, while only the hardiest survive... the hardiest and most brutal."
"Must that be, Lord?"
"The alternatives are worms' "Teach me about those alternatives, Lord."
"In time, you will know them."
As he marched beside the God Emperor in the morning light of their peregrination to O
To most of the Empire's docile citizens, Moneo knew, the firm knowledge which he held in his own head lay concealed in the Oral History, in the myths and wild stories told by infrequent mad prophets who cropped up on one planet or another to gather a short-lived following.
But l know what the Fish Speakers do.