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"You must answer my question." Siona said. "I command it."
Nayla caught her breath. This was the dilemma she had most feared. There was no way out. She said a silent prayer and spoke in a low voice.
"I have sworn to God that I will obey you."
Siona clapped her hands in glee and laughed.
"I knew it!"
Topri chuckled.
"Shut up, Topri," Siona said. "I am trying to teach you a lesson. You don't believe in anything, not even in yourself."
"But I...
"Be still, I say! Nayla believes. I believe. This is what holds us together. Belief."
Topri was astonished. "Belief? You believe in..."
"Not in the God Emperor, you fool! We believe that a higher power will settle with the tyrant worm. We are that higher power. "
Nayla took a trembling breath.
"It's all right, Nayla," Siona said. "I don't care where you draw your strength, just as long as you believe."
Nayla managed a smile, then gri
"Let me show you what I've found in these books," Siona said. She gestured at some sheets of ordinary paper on the table. "Pressed between the pages."
Nayla stepped around the table and looked down at it.
"First, there's this." Siona held up an object which Nayla had not noticed. It was a thin strand of something... and what appeared to be a...
"A flower?" Nayla asked.
"This was between two pages of paper. On the paper was written this."
Siona leaned over the table and read: "A strand of Ghanima's hair with a starflower blossom which she once brought me."
Looking up at Nayla, Siona said: "Our God Emperor is revealed as a sentimentalist. That is a weakness I had not expected."
"Ghanima?" Nayla asked.
"His sister! Remember your Oral History."
"Oh... oh, yes. The Prayer to Ghanima."
"Now, listen to this." Siona took up another sheet of paper and read from it.
"The sand beach as gray as a dead cheek, A green tideflow reflects cloud ripples; II stand on the dark wet edge. Cold foam cleanses my toes. I smell driftwood smoke. "
Again, Siona looked up at Nayla. "This is identified as `Words I wrote when told of Ghani's death.' What do you think of that?"
"He... he loved his sister."
"Yes! He is capable of love. Oh, yes! We have him now."
***
Sometimes I indulge myself in safaris which no other being may take. I strike inward along the axis of my memories. Like a schoolchild reporting on a vacation trip, I take up my subject. Let it be... female intellectuals! I course backward into the ocean which is my ancestors. I am a great winged fish in the depths. The mouth of my awareness opens and I scoop them up! Sometimes... sometimes I hunt out specific persons recorded in our histories. What a private joy to relive the life of such a one while I mock the academic pretentions which supposedly formed a biography.
MONEO DESCENDED to the crypt with sad resignation. There was no escaping the duties required of him now. The God Emperor required a small passage of time to grieve the loss of another Duncan... but then life went on... and on... and on...
The lift slid silently downward with its superb Ixian dependability. Once, just once, the God Emperor had cried out to his majordomo: "Moneo! Sometimes I think you were made by the Ixians!"
Moneo felt the lift stop. The door opened and he looked out across the crypt at the shadowy bulk on the Royal Cart. There was no indication that Leto had noticed the arrival. Moneo sighed and began the long walk through the echoing gloom. There was a body on the floor near the cart. No need for deja vu. This was merely familiar.
Once, in Moneo's early days of service. Leto had said: "You don't like this place, Moneo. I can see that."
"No, Lord."
With just a little prodding of memory, Moneo could hear his own voice in that naive past. And the voice of the God Emperor responding:
"You don't think of a mausoleum as a comforting place, Moneo. I find it a source of infinite strength."
Moneo remembered that he had been anxious to get off this topic. "Yes, Lord."
Leto had persisted: "There are only a few of my ancestors here. The water of Muad'Dib is here. Ghani and Harq-al-Ada are here, of course, but they're not my ancestors. No, if there's any true crypt of my ancestors, l am that crypt. This is mostly the Duncans and the products of my breeding program. You'll be here someday."
Moneo found that these memories had slowed his pace. He sighed and moved a bit faster. Leto could be violently impatient on occasion but there was still no sign from him. Moneo did not take this to mean that his approach went unobserved.
Leto lay with his eyes closed and only his other senses to record Moneo's progress across the crypt. Thoughts of Siona had been occupying Leto's attention.
Siona is my ardent enemy, he thought. I do not need Nayla's words to confirm this. Siona is a woman of action. She lives on the surface of enormous energies which fill me with fantasies of delight. I ca
Leto's ears told him that Moneo had not yet crossed half the distance to the Royal Cart. The man moved slower and slower, then picked up his pace.
What a gift Moneo has given me in this daughter, Leto thought. Siona is fresh and precious. She is the new while I am a collection of the obsolete, a relic of the damned, of the lost and strayed. I am the waylaid pieces of history which sank out of sight in all of our pasts. Such an accumulation of riffraff has never before been imagined.
Leto paraded the past within him then to let them observe what had happened in the crypt.
The minutiae are mine!
Siona, though... Siona was like a clean slate upon which great things might yet be written.
I guard that slate with infinite care. I am preparing it, cleansing it.
What did the Duncan mean when he called out her name?
Moneo approached the cart diffidently yet consummately aware. Surely Leto did not sleep.
Leto opened his eyes and looked down as Moneo came to a stop near the corpse. At this moment, Leto found the majordomo a delight to observe. Moneo wore a white Atreides uniform with no insignia, a subtle comment. His face, almost as well known as Leto's, was all the insignia he needed. Moneo waited patiently. There was no change of expression on his flat, even features. His thick, sandy hair lay in a neat, equally divided part. Deep within his gray eyes there was that look of directness which went with knowledge of great personal power. It was a look which he modified only in the God Emperor's presence, and sometimes not even there. Not once did he glance toward the body on the crypt's floor.
When Leto continued silent, Moneo cleared his throat, then: "I am saddened, Lord."
Exquisite! Leto thought. He knows l feel true remorse about the Duncans. Moneo has seen their records and has seen enough of them dead. He knows that only nineteen Duncans died what people usually refer to as natural deaths.
"He had an Ixian lasgun," Leto said.
Moneo's gaze went directly to the gun on the floor of the crypt off to his left, demonstrating that he already had seen it. He returned his attention to Leto, sweeping a glance down the length of the great body.
"You are injured, Lord?"
"Inconsequential."
"But he hurt you."
"Those flippers are useless to me. They will be entirely gone within another two hundred years."
"I will dispose of the Duncan's body personally, Lord," Moneo said. "Is there..."