"You're just an older model."
With every thought, Idaho felt himself diminished. He sensed the will to live as it faded, leaving ashes where his anger had burned itself out.
I am the conveyance of some useful sperm and nothing more, he thought.
It was a thought which invited either death or hedonism. He felt himself impaled on a thorn of chance with irritating forces pecking at him from all sides.
The young messenger in her neat blue uniform was merely another irritation. She entered at his low-voiced response to her knock and she stopped under the arched portal from his anteroom, hesitating until she had assessed his mood.
How quickly the word travels, he thought.
He saw her there, framed in the portal, a projection of Fish Speaker essence-more voluptuous than some, but no more blatantly sexual. The blue uniform did not conceal graceful hips, firm breasts. He looked up at her puckish face under a brush of blonde hair-acolyte cut.
"Moneo sends me to inquire after you," she said. "He asks that you attend him in his workroom."
Idaho had seen that workroom several times, but still remembered it best from his first view of it. He had known on entering the room that it was where Moneo spent most of his time. There was a table of dark brown wood streaked by fine golden graining, a table about two meters by one meter and set low on stubby legs in the midst of gray cushions. The table had struck Idaho as something rare and expensive, chosen for a single accent. It and the cushions-which were the same gray as floor, walls and ceiling-were the only furnishings.
Considering the power of its occupant, the room was small, no more than five meters by four, but with a high ceiling. Light came from two slender glazed windows opposite each other on the narrower walls. The windows looked out from a considerable height, one onto the northwest fringes of the Sareer and the bordering green of the Forbidden Forest, the other providing a southwest view over rolling dunes.
Contrast.
The table had put an interesting accent on this initial thought. The surface had appeared as an arrangement demonstrating the idea of clutter. Thin sheets of crystal paper lay scattered across the surface, leaving only glimpses of the wood grain underneath. Fine printing covered some of the paper. Idaho recognized words in Galach and four other languages, including the rare transite tongue of Perth. Several sheets of the paper revealed plan drawings and some were scrawled with black strokes of brush-script in the bold style of the Bene Gesserit. Most interesting of all had been four rolled white tubes about a meter long-tri-D printouts from an illegal computer. He had suspected the terminal lay concealed behind a panel in one of the walls.
The young messenger from Moneo cleared her throat to awaken Idaho from his reverie. "What response shall I return to Moneo?" she asked.
Idaho focused on her face. "Would you like me to impregnate you?" he asked.
"Commander!" She was obviously shocked not so much by his suggestion as by its non sequitur intrusion.
"Ahhh, yes," Idaho said. "Moneo. What shall we tell Moneo?"
"He awaits your reply, Commander."
"Is there really any point in my responding?" Idaho asked.
"Moneo told me to inform you that he wishes to confer with both you and the Lady Hwi together."
Idaho sensed a vague arousal of interest. "Hwi is with him?"
"She has been summoned, Commander." The messenger cleared her throat once more. "Would the Commander wish me to visit him here later tonight?"
"No. Thank you, anyway. I've changed my mind."
He thought she concealed her disappointment well, but her voice came out stiffly formal: "Shall I say that you will attend Moneo?"
"Do that." He waved her away.
After she had gone, he considered just ignoring the summons. Curiosity grew in him, though. Moneo wanted to talk to him with Hwi present? Why? Did he think this would bring Idaho running? Idaho swallowed. When he thought of Hwi, the emptiness in his breast became full. The message of that could not be ignored. Something of terrible power bound him to Hwi.
He stood up, his muscles stiff after their long inaction. Curiosity and this binding force impelled him. He went out into the corridor, ignored the curious glances of guards he passed, and followed that compelling inner force up to Moneo's workroom.
Hwi was already there when Idaho entered the room. She was across the cluttered table from Moneo, her feet in red slippers tucked back beside the gray cushion on which she sat. Idaho saw only that she wore a long brown gown with a braided green belt, then she turned and he could look at nothing except her face. Her mouth formed his name without speaking it.
Even she has heard, he thought.
Oddly, this thought strengthened him. The thoughts of this day began to form new shapes in his mind.
"Please sit down, Duncan," Moneo said. He gestured to a cushion beside Hwi. His voice conveyed a curious, halting tone, a manner that few people other than Leto had ever observed in him. He kept his gaze directed downward at the cluttered surface of his table. The late afternoon sunlight cast a spidery shadow across the jumble from a golden paperweight in the shape of a fanciful tree with jeweled fruit, all mounted on a flame-crystal mountain.
Idaho took the indicated cushion, watching Hwi's gaze follow him until he was seated. She looked at Moneo then and he thought he saw anger in her expression. Moneo's usual plain-white uniform was open at the throat, revealing a wrinkled neck and a bit of dewlap. Idaho stared into the man's eyes, prepared to wait, forcing Moneo to open the conversation.
Moneo returned the stare, noting that Idaho still wore the black uniform of their morning encounter. There was even a small trace of grime down the front, memento of the corridor floor where Moneo had spilled him. But Idaho no longer wore the antique Atreides knife. That bothered Moneo.