God Emporer of Dune by Frank Herbert

“Not even this Ixian woman can. . .” “She is so much like me that she would not weaken me in that way.” “But when the Ixian Embassy was attacked. . .” “I can still be irritated by stupidity,” he said. She scowled at him. Leto thought it a pretty gesture in that light, quite unconscious. He knew he had made her think. He was sure she had never before considered that any rights might adhere to uniqueness. He addressed her silent scowl: “There has never before been a government exactly like mine. Not in all of our history. I am responsible only to myself, exacting payment in full for what I have sacrificed.” “Sacrificed!” she sneered, but he heard the doubts. “Every despot says something like that. You’re responsible only to yourself!” “Which makes every living thing my responsibility. I watch over you through these times.” “Through what times?” “The times that might have been and then no more.” He saw the indecision in her. She did not trust her instincts, her untrained abilities at prediction. She might leap occasionally as she had done when she took his journals, but the motivation for the leap was lost in the revelation which followed. “My father says you can be very tricky with words,” she said. “And he ought to know. But there is knowledge you can only gain by participating in it. There’s no way to learn it by standing off and looking and talking.” “That’s the kind of thing he means,” she said. “You’re quite right,” he agreed. “It’s not logical. But it is a light, an eye which can see, but does not see itself.” “I’m tired of talking,” she said. “As am L” And he thought: l have seen enough, done enough. She is wide open to her doubts. How vulnerable they are in their ignorance! “You haven’t convinced me of anything,” she said. “That was not the purpose of this meeting.” “What was the purpose?” “To see if you are ready to be tested.” “Test. . .” She tipped her head a bit to the right and stared at him.

“Don’t play the innocent with me,” he said. “Moneo has told you. And I tell you that you are ready!” She tried to swallow, then: “What are. . .” “I have sent for Moneo to return you to the Citadel,” he said. “When we meet again, we will really learn what you are made of.”

=== You know the myth of the Great Spice Hoard? Yes, I know about that story, too. A majordomo brought it to me one day to amuse me. The story says there is a hoard of melange, a gigantic hoard, big as a great mountain. The hoard is concealed in the depths of a distant planet. It is not Arrakis, that planet. It is not Dune. The spice was hidden there long ago, even before the First Empire and the Spacing Guild. The story says Paul Muad’Dib went there and lives yet beside the hoard, kept alive by it, waiting. The majordomo did not understand why the story disturbed me.

-The Stolen Journals

IDAHO TREMBLED with anger as he strode along the gray plastone halls toward his quarters in the Citadel. At each guard post he passed, the woman there snapped to attention. He did not respond. Idaho knew he was causing disturbance among them. Nobody could mistake the Commander’s mood. But he did not abate his purposeful stride. The heavy thumping of his boots echoed along the walls.

He could still taste the noon meal-oddly familiar Atreides chopstick-fare of mixed grains herb-seasoned and baked around a pungent morsel of pseudomeat, all of it washed down with a drink of clear cidrit juice. Moneo had found him at table in the Guard Mess, alone in a corner with a regional operations schedule propped up beside his plate.

Without invitation, Moneo had seated himself opposite

Idaho and had pushed aside the operations schedule.

“I bring a message from the God Emperor,” Moneo said.

The tightly controlled tone warned Idaho that this was no casual encounter. Others sensed it. Listening silence settled over the women at nearby tables, spreading out through the room.

Idaho put down his chopsticks. “Yes?”

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