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"What are you doing?"
"You know, Moneo, I think that only the old pantheists had the right idea about deities: mortal foibles in immortal guise." Moneo raised both arms to the heavens. "I saw the looks on their faces!" He lowered his arms. "It'll be all over the Empire within two weeks."
"Surely it'll take longer than that."
"If your enemies needed one thing to bring them all together..."
"The defiling of the god is an ancient human tradition, Moneo. Why should I be an exception?"
Moneo tried to speak, found he could not utter a word. He stamped down along the edge of the pit which held Leto's cart, stamped back and resumed his former position glaring into Leto's face.
"If I am to help you, I need an explanation," Moneo said. "Why are you doing this?"
"Emotions."
Moneo's mouth formed the word without speaking it.
"They have come over me just when I thought them gone forever," Leto said. "How sweet these last few sips of humanity are."
"With Hwi? But you surely ca
"Memories of emotions are never enough, Moneo."
"Are you telling me that you are indulging yourself in a..."
"Indulgence) Certainly not! But the tripod upon which Eternity swings is composed of flesh and thought and emotion. I felt that I had been reduced to flesh and thought."
"She has worked some kind of witchery," Moneo accused.
"Of course she has. And how grateful I am for it. If we deny the need for thought, Moneo, as some do, we lose the powers of reflection; we ca
"I insist, Lord, that you..."
"You are making me angry, Moneo. That is an emotion."
Leto saw Moneo's frustrated fury cool, quenched like a hot iron plunged into icy water. There was still some steam in him, though.
"I care not for myself, Lord. My concern is mostly for you, and you know this."
Leto spoke softly. "It is your emotion, Moneo, and I hold it dear."
Moneo inhaled a deep, trembling breath. He had never be- fore seen the God Emperor in this mood, reflecting this emotion. Leto appeared both elated and resigned, if Moneo were reading it correctly. One could not be certain.
"That which makes life sweet for the living," Leto said, "that which makes life warm and filled with beauty, that is what I would preserve even though it were denied to me."
"Then this Hwi Noree..."
"She makes me recall the Butlerian Jihad in a poignant way. She is the antithesis of all that's mechanical and non-human. How odd it is, Moneo, that the lxians, of all people, should produce this one person who so perfectly embodies those qualities which I hold most dear."
"I do not understand your reference to the Butlerian Jihad, Lord, Machines that think have no place in..."
"The target of the Jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines," Leto said. "Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments. Naturally, the machines were destroyed."
"Lord, I still resent the fact that you welcome this..."
"Moneo! Hwi reassures me merely by her presence. For the first time in centuries, I am not lonely unless she is away from my side. If I had no other proof of the emotion, this would serve."
Moneo fell silent, obviously touched by Leto's evocation of loneliness. Surely, Moneo could understand the absence of the intimate sharing in love. His expression betrayed as much.
For the first time in a long while, Leto noted how much Moneo had aged.
It happens so suddenly to them. Leto thought.
It made Leto deeply aware of how much he cared for Moneo.
I should not let attachments happen to me, but I ca
"They will laugh at you and make obscene jests," Moneo said.
"That is a good thing."
"How can it be good?"
"This is something new. Our task has always been to bring the new into balance and, with it, modify behavior while not suppressing survival."
"Even so, how can you welcome this?"
"The making of obscenities?" Leto asked. "What is the opposite of obscenity?"
Moneo's eyes went wide with a sudden questioning awareness. He had seen the action of many polarities-the thing made known by its opposite.
The thing stands out against a background which defines it, Leto thought. Surely Moneo will see this.
"It's too dangerous," Moneo said.
The ultimate verdict of conservatism!
Moneo was not convinced. A deep sigh wracked him.
I must remember not to take away their doubts, Leto thought. That's how I failed my Fish Speakers in the plaza. The lxians are holding on to the ragged end of human doubts. Hwi is the evidence of that.
A disturbance sounded in the anteroom. Leto sealed the portal against impetuous intrusions.
"My Duncan has come," he said.
"He's probably heard about your wedding plans-"
"Probably."
Leto watched Moneo wrestle with doubts, his thoughts utterly transparent. In that moment, Moneo fit so precisely into his human niche that Leto wanted to hug him.
He has the full spectrum: doubt-to-trust, love-to-hate... everything! All of those dear qualities which come to fruition in the warmth of emotion, in the willingness to spend yourself on Life.
"Why is Hwi accepting this?" Moneo asked.
Leto smiled. Moneo ca
"I admit it is not a conventional union. She is a primate and I no longer am fully primate."
Again, Moneo wrestled with things he could only feel and not express.
Watching Moneo, Leto felt the flow of an observational awareness, a thought process which occurred so rarely but with such vivid amplication when it did occur, that Leto did not stir lest he cause a ripple in the flow.
The primate thinks and, by thinking, survives. Beneath his thinking is a thing which came with his cells. It is the current of human concerns for the species. Sometimes, they cover it up, wall it off and hide it behind thick barriers, but I have deliberately sensitized Moneo to these workings of his i
"Where, when and how will the wedding ceremony be conducted?" Moneo asked.
Not why? Leto noted. Moneo no longer sought to understand the why. He had returned to safe ground. He was the majordomo, the director of the God Emperor's household, the First Minister.
He has names and verbs and modifiers with which he can perform. The words will work for him in their usual ways. Moneo may never glimpse the transcendental potential of his words, but he well understands their everyday, mundane uses.
"What of my question?" Moneo pressed.
Leto blinked at him, thinking:, on the other hand, feel that words are mostly useful if they open for me a glimpse of attractive and undiscovered places. But the use of words is so little understood by a civilization which still believes unquestioningly in a mechanical universe of absolute cause and effect-obviously reducible to one single root-cause and one primary seminal-effect.
"How like a limpet the Ixian-Tleilaxu fallacy clings to human affairs," Leto said.
"Lord, it disturbs me deeply when you don't pay attention."
"But I do pay attention, Moneo."
"Not to me."
"Even to you."
"Your attention wanders, Lord. You do not have to conceal that from me. I would betray myself before I would betray you."
"You think I'm woolgathering?"
"What gathering, Lord?" Moneo had never questioned this word earlier, but now...