Страница 66 из 103
"He flew down from above them and executed a terrible slaughter among the si
"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 possible! Not the lovely Hwi, the Hwi of gentle delicacy. He is playing some terrible game, testing us... testing us... There was no honest reality in these times, no peace except in the presence of Hwi. All else was insanity.
As he returned his attention to Leto's face-that silently waiting Atreides face-the sense of dislocation grew stronger in Idaho. He began to wonder if, by a slight increase in mental effort along some strange new pathway, he might break through ghostly barriers to remember all of the experiences of the other Ghola Idahos.
What did they think when they entered this room? Did they feel this dislocation, this rejection?
Just a little extra effort.
He felt dizzy and wondered if he were going to faint.
"Is something wrong, Duncan?" It was Leto's most reasonable and calming tone.
"It's not real," Idaho said. "I don't belong here."
Leto chose to misunderstand. "But my guard tells me you came here of your own accord, that you flew back from the Citadel and demanded an immediate audience."
"I mean here, now! In this time!"
"But I need you."
"For what?"
"Look around you, Duncan. The ways you can help me are so numerous that you could not do them all."
"But your women won't let me fight! Every time I want to go where..."
"Do you question that you're more valuable alive than dead?" Leto made a clucking sound, then: "Use your wits, Duncan! That's what I value."
"And my sperm. You value that."
"Your sperm is your own to put where you wish."
"I will not leave a widow and orphans behind me the way...
"Duncan! I've said the choice is yours."
Idaho swallowed, then: "You've committed a crime against us, Leto, against all of us the gholas you resurrect without ever asking us if that's what we want."
This was a new turn in Duncan-thinking. Leto peered at Idaho with renewed interest.
"What crime?"
"Oh, I've heard you spouting your deep thoughts," Idaho accused. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the room's entrance. "Did you know you can be heard out there in the anteroom?"
"When I wish to be heard, yes." But only my journals hear it all! "I would like to know the nature of my crime, though."
"There's a time, Leto, a time when you're alive. A time when you're supposed to be alive. It can have a magic, that time, while you're living it. You know you're never going to see a time like that again."
Leto blinked, touched by the Duncan's distress. The words were evocative.
Idaho raised both hands, palms up, to chest-height, a beggar Asking for something he knew he could not receive.
"Then... one day you wake up and you remember dying... and you remember the axlotl tank... and the Tleilaxu nastiness which awakened you... and it's supposed to start all over again. But it doesn't. It never does, Leto. That's a crime!"
"I have taken away the magic?"
"Yes!"
Idaho dropped his hands to his sides and clenched them into fists. He felt that he stood alone in the path of a millrace tide which would overwhelm him at his slightest relaxation.
And what of my time? Leto thought. This, too, will never happen again. But the Duncan would not understand the difference.
"What brought you rushing back from the Citadel?" Leto asked.
Idaho took a deep breath, then: "Is it true? You're to be married?"
"That's correct."
"To this Hwi Noree, the Ixian Ambassador?"
"True."
Idaho darted a quick glance along Leto's supine length.
They always look for genitalia, Leto thought. Perhaps I should have something made, a gross protuberance to shock them. He choked back the small burst of amusement which threatened to erupt from his throat. Another emotion amplified. Thank you, Hwi. Thank you, lxians.
Idaho shook his head. "But you..."
"There are strong elements to a marriage other than sex," Leto said. "Will we have children of our flesh? No. But the effects of this union will be profound."
"I listened while you were talking to Moneo," Idaho said. "I thought it must be some kind of joke, a..."
"Careful, Duncan!"
"Do you love her?"
"More deeply than any man ever loved a woman."
"Well, what about her? Does she..."
"She feels... a compelling compassion, a need to share with me, to give whatever she can give. It is her nature."
Idaho suppressed a feeling of revulsion.
"Moneo's right. They'll believe the Tleilaxu stories."
"That is one of the profound effects."
"And you still want me to... to mate with Siona!"
"You know my wishes. I leave the choice to you."
"Who's that Nayla woman?"
"You've met Nayla! Good."
"She and Siona act like sisters. That big hunk! What's going on there, Leto?"
"What would you want to go on? And what does it matter?" "I've never met such a brute! She reminds me of Beast Rabban. You'd never know she was female if she didn't..."
"You have met her before," Leto said. "You knew her as Friend."
Idaho stared at him in quick silence, the silence of a burrowing creature who senses the hawk.
"Then you trust her," Idaho said.
"Trust? What is trust?"
The moment arrives, Leto thought. He could see it shaping in Idaho's thoughts.
"Trust is what goes with a pledge of loyalty," Idaho said. "Such as the trust between you and me?" Leto asked.
A bitter smile touched Idaho's lips. "So that's what you're doing with Hwi Noree? A marriage, a pledge..."
"Hwi and I already have trust for each other."
"Do you trust me, Leto?"
"If I ca
"And if I can't trust you?"
"Then I pity you."
Idaho took this as almost a physical shock. His eyes were wide with unspoken demands. He wanted to trust. He wanted the magic which would never come again.
Idaho indicated his thoughts were taking off in an odd tangent then.
"Can they hear us out in the anteroom?" he asked.
"No." But my journals hear!
"Moneo was furious. Anyone could see it. But he went away like a docile lamb."
"Moneo is an aristocrat. He is married to duty, to responsibilities. When he is reminded of these things, his anger vanishes."
"So that's how you control him," Idaho said.
"He controls himself," Leto said, remembering how Moneo had glanced up from the note-taking, not for reassurances, but to prompt his sense of duty.
"No," Idaho said. "He doesn't control himself. You do it."
"Moneo has locked himself into his past. I did not do that."
"But he's an aristocrat... an Atreides."
Leto recalled Moneo's aging features, thinking how inevitable it was that the aristocrat would refuse his final duty-which was to step aside and vanish into history. He would have to be driven aside. And he would be. No aristocrat had ever overcome the demands of change.
Idaho was not through. "Are you an aristocrat, Leto?"
Leto smiled. "The ultimate aristocrat dies within me." And he thought: Privilege becomes arrogance. Arrogance promotes injustice. The seeds of ruin blossom.
"Maybe I will not attend your wedding," Idaho said. "I never thought of myself as an aristocrat."
"But you were. You were the aristocrat of the sword."
"Paul was better," Idaho said.
Leto spoke in the voice of Muad'Dib: "Because you taught me!" He resumed his normal tones: "The aristocrat's unspoken duty-to teach, and sometimes by horrible example."
And he thought: Pride of birth trails out into penury and the weaknesses of interbreeding. The way is opened for pride of wealth and accomplishment. Enter the nouveaux riches, riding to power as the Harko