God Emperor of Dune (24 page)
“Because this is a word reserved for them. They resent my sharing it with a male.”
Moneo’s lips pressed into a thin line of remembrance as he marched beside the Royal Cart into the Festival City. He had heard the Fish Speakers chant the God Emperor into their presence many times since that first explanation and had even added his own meanings to the strange word.
It means mystery and prestige. It means power. It invokes a license to act in the name of God.
“Siaynoq! Siaynoq! Siaynoq!”
The word had a sour sound in Moneo’s ears.
They were well into the city, almost to the central plaza. Afternoon sunlight came down the Royal Road behind the procession to illuminate the way. It gave brilliance to the citizenry’s colorful costumes. It shone on the upturned faces of the Fish Speakers lining the way.
Marching beside the cart with the guards, Idaho put down a first alarm as the chant continued. He asked one of the Fish Speakers beside him about it.
“It is not a word for men,” she said. “But sometimes the Lord shares Siaynoq with a Duncan.”
A
Duncan
! He had asked Leto about it earlier and disliked the mysterious evasions.
Duncan
! He had asked Leto about it earlier and disliked the mysterious evasions.
“You will learn about it soon enough.”
Idaho relegated the chant to the background while he looked around him with a tourist’s curiosity. In preparation for his duties as Guard Commander, Idaho had inquired after the history of Onn, finding that he shared Leto’s wry amusement in the fact that it was the Idaho River flowing nearby.
They had been in one of the large open rooms of the Citadel at the time, an airy place full of morning light and with wide tables upon which Fish Speaker archivists had spread charts of the Sareer and of Onn. Leto had wheeled his cart onto a ramp which allowed him to look down on the charts. Idaho stood across a chart-littered table from him studying the plan of the Festival City.
“Peculiar design for a city,” Idaho mused.
“It has one primary purpose—public viewing of the God Emperor.”
Idaho looked up at the segmented body on the cart, brought his gaze to the cowled face. He wondered if he would ever find it easy to look on that bizarre figure.
“But that’s only once every ten years,” Idaho said.
“At the Great Sharing, yes.”
“And you just close it down between times?”
“The embassies are there, the offices of the trading factors, the Fish Speaker schools, the service and maintenance cadres, the museums and libraries.”
“What space do they take?” Idaho rapped the chart with his knuckles. “A tenth of the City at most?”
“Less than that.”
Idaho let his gaze wander pensively over the chart.
“Are there other purposes in this design, m’Lord?”
“It is dominated by the need for public viewing of my person.”
“There must be clerks, government workers, even common laborers. Where do they live?”
“Mostly in the suburbs.”
Idaho pointed at the chart. “These tiers of apartments?”
“Note the balconies, Duncan.”
“All around the plaza.” He leaned close to peer down at the chart. “That plaza is two kilometers across!”
“Note how the balconies are set back in steps right up to the ring of spires. The elite are lodged in the spires.”
“And they can all look down on you in the plaza?”
“You do not like that?”
“There’s not even an energy barrier to protect you!”
“What an inviting target I make.”
“Why do you do it?”
“There is a delightful myth about the design of Onn. I foster and promote the myth. It is said that once there lived a people whose ruler was required to walk among them once a year in total darkness, without weapons or armor. The mythical ruler wore a luminescent suit while he made his walk through the night-shrouded throng of his subjects. And his subjects—they wore black for the occasion and were never searched for weapons.”
“What’s that have to do with Onn … and you?”
“Well, obviously, if the ruler survived his walk, he was a good ruler.”
“You don’t search for weapons?”
“Not openly.”
“You think people see you in this myth.” It was not a question.
“Many do.”
Idaho stared up at Leto’s face deep in its gray cowl. The blue-on-blue eyes stared back at him without expression.
Melange eyes,
Idaho thought. But Leto said he no longer consumed any spice. His body supplied what spice his addiction demanded.
Idaho thought. But Leto said he no longer consumed any spice. His body supplied what spice his addiction demanded.
“You don’t like my holy obscenity, my enforced tranquility,” Leto said.
“I don’t like you playing god!”
“But a god can conduct the Empire as a musical conductor guides a symphony through its movements. My performance is limited only by my restriction to Arrakis. I must direct the symphony from here.”
Idaho shook his head and looked once more at the city plan. “What’re these apartments behind the spires?”
“Lesser accommodations for our visitors.”
“They can’t see the plaza.”
“But they can. Ixian devices project my image into those rooms.”
“And the inner ring looks directly down on you. How do you enter the plaza?”
“A presentation stage rises from the center to display me to my people.”
“Do they cheer?” Idaho looked directly into Leto’s eyes.
“They are permitted to cheer.”
“You Atreides always did see yourselves as part of history.”
“How astute of you to understand a cheer’s meaning.”
Idaho returned his attention to the city map. “And the Fish Speaker schools are here?”
“Under your left hand, yes. That’s the academy where Siona was sent to be educated. She was ten at the time.”
“Siona … I must learn more about her,” Idaho mused.
“I assure you that nothing will get in the way of your desire.”
As he marched along in the Royal peregrination, Idaho was lifted from his reverie by awareness that the Fish Speaker chant was diminishing. Ahead of him, the Royal Cart had begun its descent into the chambers beneath the plaza, rolling down a long ramp. Idaho, still in sunlight, looked up and around at the glistening spires—this reality for which the charts had not prepared him. People crowded the balconies of the great tiered ring around the plaza, silent people who stared down at the procession.
No cheering from the privileged,
Idaho thought. The silence of the people on the balconies filled Idaho with foreboding.
Idaho thought. The silence of the people on the balconies filled Idaho with foreboding.
He entered the ramp-tunnel and its lip hid the plaza. The Fish Speaker chant faded away as he descended into the depths. The sound of marching feet all around him was curiously amplified.
Curiosity replaced the sense of oppressive foreboding. Idaho stared around him. The flat-floored tube was artifically illuminated and wide, very wide. Idaho estimated that seventy people could march abreast into the bowels of the plaza. There were no mobs of greeters here, only a widely spaced line of Fish Speakers who did not chant, contenting themselves to stare at the passage of their God.
Memory of the charts told Idaho the layout of this gigantic complex beneath the plaza—a private city within the City, a place where only the God Emperor, the courtiers and the Fish Speakers could go without escort. But the charts had told nothing of the thick pillars, the sense of massive, guarded spaces, the eerie quiet broken by the tramping of feet and the creaking of Leto’s cart.
Idaho looked suddenly at the Fish Speakers lining the way and realized that their mouths were moving in unison, a silent word on their lips. He recognized the word:
“Siaynoq.”
“Another Festival so soon?” the Lord Leto asked.
“It has been ten years,” the majordomo said.
Do you think by this exchange that the Lord Leto betrays an ignorance of time’s passage?
—THE ORAL HISTORY
uring the private audience period preceding the Festival proper, many Dcommented that the God Emperor spent more than the allotted time with the new Ixian Ambassador, a young woman named Hwi Noree.
She was brought down at midmorning by two Fish Speakers who were still full of first-day excitement. The private audience chamber beneath the plaza was brilliantly illuminated. The light revealed a room about fifty meters long by thirty-five wide. Antique Fremen rugs decorated the walls, their bright patterns worked in jewels and precious metals, all combined in weavings of priceless spice-fibers. The dull reds of which the Old Fremen had been so fond predominated. The chamber’s floor was mostly transparent, a setting for exotic fishes worked in radiant crystal. Beneath the floor flowed a stream of clear blue water, all of its moisture sealed away from the audience chamber, but excitingly near Leto, who rested on a padded elevation at the end of the room opposite the door.
His first view of Hwi Noree revealed a remarkable likeness to her Uncle Malky, but her grave movements and the calmness of her stride were equally remarkable in their difference from Malky. She did have that dark skin, though, the oval face with its regular features. Placid brown eyes stared back at Leto. And where Malky’s hair had been gray, hers was a luminous brown.
Hwi Noree radiated an inner peace which Leto sensed spreading its influence around her as she approached. She stopped ten paces away, below him. There was a classical balance about her, something not accidental.
With growing excitement, Leto realized a betrayal of Ixian machinations in the new Ambassador. They were well along in their own program to breed selected types for specific functions. Hwi Noree’s function was distressingly obvious—to charm the God Emperor, to find a chink in his armor.
Despite this, as the meeting progressed, Leto found himself truly enjoying her company. Hwi Noree stood in a puddle of daylight which was guided into the chamber by a system of Ixian prisms. The light filled Leto’s end of the chamber with glowing gold which centered on the Ambassador, dimming behind the God Emperor where stood a short line of Fish Speaker guards—twelve women chosen for their inability to hear or speak.
Hwi Noree wore a simple gown of purple ambiel decorated only by a silver necklace pendant stamped with the symbol of IX. Soft sandals the color of her gown peeked from beneath her hem.
“Are you aware,” Leto asked her, “that I killed one of your ancestors?”
She smiled softly. “My Uncle Malky included that information in my early training, Lord.”
As she spoke, Leto realized that part of her education had been conducted by the Bene Gesserit. She had their way of controlling her responses, of sensing the undertones in a conversation. He could see, however, that the Bene Gesserit overlay had been a delicate thing, never penetrating the basic sweetness of her nature.
“You were told that I would introduce this subject,” he said.
“Yes, Lord. I know that my ancestor had the temerity to bring a weapon here in the attempt to harm you.”
“As did your immediate predecessor. Were you told that, as well?”
“I did not learn it until my arrival, Lord. They were fools! Why did you spare my predecessor?”
“When I did not spare your ancestor?”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Kobat, your predecessor, was more valuable to me as a messenger.”
“Then they told me the truth,” she said. Again, she smiled. “One cannot always depend on hearing truth from one’s associates and superiors.”
The response was so utterly open that Leto could not suppress a chuckle. Even as he laughed, he realized that this young woman still possessed the Mind of First Awakening, the elemental mind which came in the first shock of birth-awareness. She was alive!
“Then you do not hold it against me that I killed your ancestor?” he asked.
“He tried to assassinate you! I am told you crushed him, Lord, with your own body.”
“True.”
“And next you turned his weapon against your own Holy Self to demonstrate that the weapon was ineffectual … and it was the best lasgun we Ixians could make.”
“The witnesses reported correctly,” Leto said.
And he thought:
Which shows how much you can depend on witnesses!
As a matter of historical accuracy, he knew that he had turned the lasgun only against his ribbed body, not against hands, face or flippers. The pre-worm body possessed a remarkable capacity for absorbing heat. The chemical factory within him converted heat to oxygen.
Which shows how much you can depend on witnesses!
As a matter of historical accuracy, he knew that he had turned the lasgun only against his ribbed body, not against hands, face or flippers. The pre-worm body possessed a remarkable capacity for absorbing heat. The chemical factory within him converted heat to oxygen.
“I never doubted the story,” she said.
“Why has Ix repeated this foolish gesture?” Leto asked.
“They have not told me, Lord. Perhaps Kobat took it onto himself to behave this way.”
Other books
Kat Attalla Special Edition by Kat Attalla
Lethal Exposure by Lori Wilde
Star Spangled Murder by Meier, Leslie
Wickedness by Deborah White
Bad Girls Book 1: The Temptress by Silver, Jordan
Clutch (Custom Culture) by Oliver, Tess
Peace Be Upon You by Zachary Karabell
Luck of the Dragon (Entangled Covet) by Scott, Susannah
The Deviants by C.J. Skuse
The Road to Gundagai by Jackie French
