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"Sometimes... sometimes, Lord, I think the spice is the Atreides curse!"
"Do you wish that I had never occurred?"
Moneo remained silent.
"But melange has its values, Moneo. The Guild navigators need it. And without it, the Bene Gesserit would degenerate into a helpless band of whining females!"
"We must live with it or without it, Lord. I know that."
"Very perceptive, Moneo. But you choose to live without it."
"Do I not have that choice, Lord?"
"For now."
"Lord, what do you..."
"There are twenty-eight different words for melange in common Galach. They describe it by its intended use, by its dilution, by its age, by whether it came through honest purchase, through theft or conquest, whether it was the dower gift for a male or for a female, and in many other ways is it named. What do you make of this, Moneo?"
"We are offered many choices, Lord."
"Only where the spice is concerned?"
Moneo's brow wrinkled in thought, then: "No."
"You so seldom say 'no' in my presence," Leto said. "I enjoy watching your lips form around the word."
Moneo's mouth twitched in an attempted smile.
Leto spoke briskly: "Well! You must go now to the Lady Hwi. I will give you one parting piece of advice which may help."
Moneo paid studious attention to Leto's face.
"Drug knowledge originated mostly with males because they tend to be more venturesome-an outgrowth of male aggression. You've read your Orange Catholic Bible, thus you know the story of Eve and the apple. Here's an interesting fact about that story: Eve was not the first to pluck and sample the apple. Adam was first and he learned by this to put the blame on Eve. My story tells you something about how our societies find a structural necessity for sub-groups."
Moneo tipped his head slightly to the left. "Lord, how does this help me?"
"It will help you with the Lady Hwi!"
***
The singular multiplicity of this universe draws my deepest attention. It is a thing of ultimate beauty.
LETO HEARD Moneo in the antechamber just before Hwi entered the small audience room. She wore voluminous pale green pantaloons tightly tied at the ankles with darker green bows to match her sandals. A loose blouse of the same dark green could be seen under her black cloak.
She appeared calm as she approached Leto and sat without being invited, choosing a golden cushion rather than the red one she had occupied earlier. It had taken less than an hour for Moneo to bring her. Leto's acute hearing detected Moneo fidgeting in the anteroom and Leto sent a signal which sealed the arched doorway there.
"Something has disturbed Moneo," Hwi said. "He tried very hard not to reveal this to me, but the more he tried to soothe me the more he aroused my curiosity."
"He did not frighten you?"
"Oh, no. He did say something very interesting, though. He said that I must remember it at all times, that the God Leto is a different person to each of us."
"How is this interesting?" Leto asked.
"The interesting thing is the question for which this was the preface. He said he often wonders what part we play in creating that difference in you?"
"That is interesting."
"I think it is a truthful insight," Hwi said. "Why have you summoned me?"
"At one time, your masters on Ix..
."
"They are no longer my masters, Lord."
"Forgive me. I will refer to them hereafter as the lxians."
She nodded gravely, prompting: "At one time..."
"The lxians contemplated making a weapon-a type of hunter-seeker, self-propelled death with a machine mind. It was to be designed as a self improving thing which would seek out life and reduce that life to its inorganic matter."
"I have not heard of this thing, Lord."
"I know that. The lxians do not recognize that machine makers always run the risk of becoming totally machine. This is ultimate sterility. Machines always fail... given time. And when these machines failed there would be nothing left, no life at all."
"Sometimes I think they are mad," she said.
"Anteac's opinion. That is the immediate problem. The lxians are now engaged in an endeavor which they are concealing."
"Even from you?"
"Even from me. I am sending the Reverend Mother Anteac to investigate for me. To help her, I want you to tell her everything you can about the place where you spent your childhood. Omit no detail, no matter how small. Anteac will help you remember. We want every sound, every smell, the shapes and names of visitors, the colors and even the tinglings of your skin. The slightest thing may be vital."
"You think it is the place of concealment?"
"I know it is."
"And you think they are making this weapon in..."
"No, but this will be our excuse for investigating the place where you were born."
She opened her mouth and gradually formed a smile, then: "My Lord is devious. I will speak to the Reverend Mother immediately." Hwi started to rise, but he stopped her with a gesture.
"We must not give the appearance of haste," he said.
She sank back onto the cushion.
"Each of us is different in the way of Moneo's observation," he said. "Genesis does not stop. Your god continues creating you."
"What will Anteac find? You know, don't you?"
"Let us say that I have a strong conviction. Now, you have not once mentioned the subject which I broached earlier. Have you no questions?"
"You will provide the answers as I require them." It was a statement full of such trust that it stopped Leto's voice. He could only look at her, realizing how extraordinary was this accomplishment of the Ixians-this human. Hwi remained precisely true to the dictates of her personally chosen morality. She was comely, warm and honest and possessed of an emphatic sense which forced her to share every anguish in those with whom she identified. He could- imagine the dismay of her Bene Gesserit teachers when confronted by this immovable core of self-honesty. The teachers obviously had been reduced to adding a touch here, an ability there, everything strengthening that power which prevented her from becoming a Bene Gesserit. How that must have rankled!
"Lord," she said, "I would know the motives which forced you to choose your life."
"First, you must understand what it is like to see our future."
"With your help, I will try."
"Nothing is ever separated from its source," he said. "Seeing futures is a vision of a continuum in which all things take shape like bubbles forming beneath a waterfall. You see them and then they vanish into the stream. If the stream ends, it is as though the bubbles never were. That stream is my Golden Path and I saw it end."
"Your choice' she gestured at his body"changed that?"
"It is changing. The change comes not only from the ma
"You know how you will die?"
"Not how. I know only the Golden Path in which it will occur."
"Lord, I do not..."
"It is difficult to understand, I know. I will die four deaths the death of the flesh, the death of the soul, the death of the myth and the death of reason. And all of these deaths contain the seed of resurrection."
"You will return from..."
"The seeds will return."
"When you are gone, what will happen to your religion?"
"All religions are a single communion. The spectrum remains unbroken within the Golden Path. It is only that humans see first one part and then another. Delusions can be called accidents of the senses."
"People will still worship you," she said.
"Yes."
"But when forever ends, there will be anger," she said. "There will be denial. Some will say you were just an ordinary tyrant."