people say about Leto’s Peace?”
“That you make us wallow in pointless decadence like pigs in our own filth.”
“Always recognize the accuracy of folk wisdom,” he said. “Decadence.”
“Most men have no principles,” she said. “The women of Ix complain about it constantly.”
“When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles,” he said.
She stared at him silently, and he thought how that simple reaction spoke so deeply of her intelligence.
“Where do you think I find my best administrators?” he asked.
A small gasp escaped her.
“Principles,” he said, “are what you fight for. Most men go through a lifetime unchallenged, except at the final moment. They have so few unfriendly arenas in which to test themselves.”
“They have you,” she said.
“But I am so powerful,” he said. “I am the equivalent of suicide. Who would seek certain death?”
“Madmen . . . or desperate ones. Rebels?”
“I am their equivalent of war,” he said. “The ultimate predator. I am the cohesive force which shatters them.”
“I’ve never thought of myself as a rebel,” she said.
“You are something far better.”
“And you would use me in some way?”
“I would.”
“Not as an administrator,” she said.
“I already have good administrators -uncorruptible, sagacious, philosophical and open about their errors, quick to see decisions.”
“They were rebels?”
“Most of them.”
“How are they chosen?”
“I could say they chose themselves.”
“By surviving?”
“That, too. But there’s more. The difference between a good administrator and a bad one is about five heartbeats. Good administrators make immediate choices.”
“Acceptable choices?”
“They usually can be made to work. A bad administrator, on the other hand, hesitates, diddles around, asks for committees, for research and reports. Eventually, he acts in ways which create serious problems.”
“But don’t they sometimes need more information to make. . .
“A bad administrator is more concerned with reports than with decisions. He wants the hard record which he can display as an excuse for his errors.”
“And good administrators?”
“Oh, they depend on verbal orders. They never lie about what they’ve done if their verbal orders cause problems, and they surround themselves with people able to act wisely on the basis of verbal orders. Often, the most important piece of information is that something has gone wrong. Bad administrators hide their mistakes until it’s too late to make corrections.”
Leto watched her as she thought about the people who served him especially about Moneo.
“Men of decision,” she said.
“One of the hardest things for a tyrant to find,” he said, “is people who actually make decisions.”
“Doesn’t your intimate knowledge of the past give you some…”
“It gives me some amusement. Most bureaucracies before mine sought out and promoted people who avoided decisions.”
“I see. How would you use me, Lord?”
“Will you wed me?”
A faint smile touched her lips. “Women, too, can make decisions. I will wed you.”
“Then go and instruct the Reverend Mother. Make sure she knows what she’s looking for.”
“For my genesis,” she said. “You and I already know my purpose.”
“Which is not separated from its source,” he said.
She arose, then: “Lord, could you be wrong about your Golden Path? Does the possibility of failure. . .”
“Anything and anyone can fail,” he said, “but brave good friends help.”
=== Groups tend to condition their surroundings for group survival. When they deviate from this it may be taken as a sign of group sickness. There are many telltale symptoms. I watch the sharing of food. This is a form of communication, an inescapable sign of mutual aid which also contains a deadly signal of dependency. It is interesting that men are the ones who usually tend the landscape today. They are husband-men. Once, that was the sole province of women.
-The Stolen Journals
“You MUST forgive the inadequacies of this report,” the Reverend Mother Anteac wrote. “Ascribe it to the necessity for haste. I leave on the morrow for Ix, my purpose being the same one I reported in greater detail earlier. The God Emperor’s intense and sincere interest in Ix cannot be denied, but what I must recount here is the strange visit I have just had from the Ixian Ambassador, Hwi Nome.” Anteac sat back on the inadequate stool which was the best she could manage in these Spartan quarters. She sat alone in her tiny bedchamber, the space-within-a-space which the Lord Leto had refused to change even after the Bene Gesserit warning of Tleilaxu treachery. On Anteac’s lap lay a small square of inky black about ten millimeters on a side and no more than three millimeters thick. She wrote upon this square with a glittering needle-one word