Children of Dune (Page 78)

Leto sighed. To turn his back on his father was like betraying a god. But the Atreides Empire needed shaking up. It had fallen into the worst of Paul’s vision. How casually it obliterated men. It was done without a second thought. The mainspring of a religious insanity had been wound tight and left ticking.

And we’re locked in my father’s vision.

A way out of that insanity lay along the Golden Path, Leto knew. His father had seen it. But humanity might come out of that Golden Path and look back down it at Muad’Dib’s time, seeing that as a better age. Humankind had to experience the alternative to Muad’Dib, though, or never understand its own myths.

Security… peace… prosperity…

Given the choice, there was little doubt what most citizens of this Empire would select.

Though they hate me, he thought. Though Ghani hate me.

His right hand itched, and he thought of the terrible glove in his vision-vision. It will be, he thought. Yes, it will be.

Arrakis, give me strength, he prayed. His planet remained strong and alive beneath him and around him. Its sand pressed close against the stilltent. Dune was a giant counting its massed riches. It was a beguiling entity, both beautiful and grossly ugly. The only coin its merchants really knew was the bloodpulse of their own power, no matter how that power had been amassed. They possessed this planet the way a man might possess a captive mistress, or the way the Bene Gesserits possessed their Sisters.

No wonder Stilgar hated the merchant-priests.

Thank you, Stilgar.

Leto recalled then the beauties of the old sietch ways, the life lived before the coming of the Imperium’s technocracy, and his mind flowed as he knew Stilgar’s dreams flowed. Before the glow-globes and lasers, before the ornithopters and spice-crawlers, there’d been another kind of life: brown-skinned mothers with babies on their hips, lamps which burned spice-oil amidst a heavy fragrance of cinnamon, Naibs who persuaded their people while knowing none could be compelled. It had been a darkswarming of life in rocky burrows…

A terrible glove will restore the balance, Leto thought.

Presently, he slept.

= = = = = =

I saw his blood and a piece of his robe which had been ripped by sharp claws. His sister reports vividly of the tigers, the sureness of their attack. We have questioned one of the plotters, and others are dead or in custody. Everything points to a Corrino plot. A Truthsayer has attested to this testimony. -Stilgar’s Report to the Landsraad Commission

Farad’n studied Duncan Idaho through the spy circuit, seeking a clue to that strange man’s behavior. It was shortly after noon and Idaho waited outside the quarters assigned to the Lady Jessica, seeking audience with her. Would she see him? She’d know they were spied upon, of course. But would she see him?

Around Farad’n lay the room where Tyekanik had guided the training of the Laza tigers – an illegal room, really, filled as it was with forbidden instruments from the hands of the Tleilaxu and Ixians. By the movement of switches at his right hand, Farad’n could look at Idaho from six different angles, or shift to the interior of the Lady Jessica’s suite where the spying facilities were equally sophisticated.

Idaho’s eyes bothered Farad’n. Those pitted metal orbs which the Tleilaxu had given their ghola in the regrowth tanks marked their possessor as profoundly different from other humans. Farad’n touched his own eyelids, feeling the hard surfaces of the permanent contact lenses which concealed the total blue of his spice addiction. Idaho’s eyes must record a different universe. How could it be otherwise? It almost tempted Farad’n to seek out the Tleilaxu surgeons and answer that question himself.

Why did Idaho try to kill himself?

Was that really what he’d tried? He must’ve known we wouldn’t permit it.

Idaho remained a dangerous question mark.

Tyekanik wanted to keep him on Salusa or kill him. Perhaps that would be best.

Farad’n shifted to a frontal view. Idaho sat on a hard bench outside the door to the Lady Jessica’s suite. It was a windowless foyer with light wood walls decorated by lance pennants. Idaho had been on that bench more than an hour and appeared ready to wait there forever. Farad’n bent close to the screen. The loyal swordmaster of the Atreides, instructor of Paul Muad’Dib, had been treated kindly by his years on Arrakis. He’d arrived with a youthful spring in his step. A steady spice diet must have helped him, of course. And that marvelous metabolic balance which the Tleilaxu tanks always imparted. Did Idaho really remember his past before the tanks? No other whom the Tleilaxu had revived could claim this. What an enigma this Idaho was!

The reports of his death were in the library. The Sardaukar who’d slain him reported his prowess: nineteen of their number dispatched by Idaho before he’d fallen. Nineteen Sardaukar! His flesh had been well worth sending to the regrowth tanks. But the Tleilaxu had made a mentat out of him. What a strange creature lived in that regrown flesh. How did it feel to be a human computer in addition to all of his other talents?

Why did he try to kill himself?

Farad’n knew his own talents and held few illusions about them. He was a historian-archaeologist and judge of men. Necessity had forced him to become an expert on those who would serve him – necessity and a careful study of the Atreides. He saw it as the price always demanded of aristocracy. To rule required accurate and incisive judgments about those who wielded your power. More than one ruler had fallen through mistakes and excesses of his underlings.

Careful study of the Atreides revealed a superb talent in choosing servants. They’d known how to maintain loyalty, how to keep a fine edge on the ardor of their warriors.

Idaho was not acting in character.

Why?

Farad’n squinted his eyes, trying to see past the skin of this man. There was a sense of duration about Idaho, a feeling that he could not be worn down. He gave the impression of being self-contained, an organized and firmly integrated whole. The Tleilaxu tanks had set something more than human into motion. Farad’n sensed this. There was a self-renewing movement about the man, as though he acted in accordance with immutable laws, beginning anew at every ending. He moved in a fixed orbit with an endurance about him like that of a planet around a star. He would respond to pressure without breaking – merely shifting his orbit slightly but not really changing anything basic.