- The Stolen Journals "THE LORD has commanded me to tell you that your daughter lives."
Nayla delivered the message to Moneo in a singsong voice, looking down across the workroom table at his figure seated there amidst a chaos of notes and papers and communications instruments.
Moneo pressed his palms together firmly and looked down at the elongated shadow drawn on his table by late afternoon sunlight across the jeweled tree of his paperweight.
Without looking up at Nayla's stocky figure standing at proper attention in front of him, he asked: "Both of them have returned to the Citadel?"
"Yes."
Moneo looked out the window to his left, not really seeing the flinty borderline of darkness hanging on the Sareer's horizon nor the greedy wind collecting sand grains from every dunetop.
"That matter which we discussed earlier?" he asked.
"It has been arranged."
"Very well." He waved to dismiss her, but Nayla remained standing in front of him. Surprised, Moneo actually focused on her for the first time since she had entered.
"Is it required that I personally attend this-" she swallowed-"wedding?"
"The Lord Leto has commanded it. You will be the only one there armed with a lasgun. It is an honor."
She remained in position, her gaze fixed somewhere over Moneo's head.
"Yes?" he prompted.
Nayla's great lantern jaw worked convulsively, then: "He is God and I am mortal." She turned on one heel and left the workroom.
Moneo wondered vaguely what was bothering that hulking Fish Speaker, but his thoughts turned like a compass arrow to Siona.
She has survived as I did. Siona now had an inner sense which told her that the Golden Path remained unbroken. As I have. He found no sense of sharing in this, nothing to make him feel closer to his daughter. It was a burden and it would inevitably curb her rebellious nature. No Atreides could go against the Golden Path. Leto had seen to that!
Moneo remembered his own rebel days. Every night a new bed and the constant urge to run. The cobwebs of his past clung to his mind, sticking there no matter how hard he tried to shake away troublesome memories.
Siona has been caged. As I was caged. As poor Leto was caged.
The tolling of the nightfall bell intruded on his thoughts and activated his workroom's lights. He looked down at the work still undone in preparation for the God Emperor's wedding to Hwi Noree. So much work! Presently, he pressed a call-button and asked the Fish Speaker acolyte who appeared at the summons to bring him a tumbler of water and then call Duncan Idaho to the workroom.
She returned quickly with the water and placed the tumbler near his left hand on the table. He noted the long fingers, a lute-player's fingers, but did not look up at her face.
"I have sent someone for Idaho," she said.
He nodded and went on with his work. He heard her leave and only then did he look up to drink the water.
Some live lives like summer moths, he thought. But I have burdens without end.
The water tasted flat. It weighed down his senses, making his body feel torpid. He looked out at the sunset colors on the
Sareer as they shaded away into darkness, thinking that he should recognize beauty in that familiar sense, but all he could think was that the light changed in its own patterns. It is not moved by me at all.
With the full darkness, the light level of his workroom increased automatically, bringing a clarity of thought with it. He felt himself quite prepared for Idaho. This one had to be taught the necessities, and quickly.
Moneo's door opened, the acolyte again. "Will you eat now?"
"Later." He raised a hand as she started to leave. "I would like the door left open."
She frowned.
"You may practice your music," he said. "I want to listen."
She had a smooth, round, almost childlike face which became radiant when she smiled. The smile still on her lips, she turned away.
Presently, he heard the sounds of a biwa lute in the outer office. Yes, that young acolyte had a talent. The bass strings were like rain drumming on a rooftop, a whisper of middle strings underneath. Perhaps she could move up to the baliset someday. He recognized the song: a deeply humming memory of autumn wind from some faraway planet where they had never known a desert. Sad music, pitiful music, yet marvelous.
It is the cry of the caged, he thought. The memory of free- dom. This thought struck him as odd. Was it always the case that freedom required rebellion?
The lute fell silent. There came the sound of low voices. Idaho entered the workroom. Moneo watched him enter. A trick of light gave Idaho a face like a grimacing mask with pitted eyes. Without invitation, he sat down across from Moneo and the trickery was gone. Just another Duncan. He had changed into a plain black uniform without insignia.
"I have been asking myself a peculiar question," Idaho said. "I'm glad you summoned me. I want to ask this question of you. What is it, Moneo, that my predecessor did not learn?"
Stiff with surprise, Moneo sat up straight. What an unDuncan question! Could there be a peculiar Tleilaxu difference in this one after all?
"What prompts this question?" Moneo asked.
"I've been thinking like a Fremen."
"You weren't a Fremen."
"Closer to it than you think. Stilgar the Naib once said I was probably born Fremen without knowing it until I came to Dune."
"What happens when you think like a Fremen?"
"You remember that you should never be in company that you wouldn't want to die with."
Moneo put his hands palms down on the surface of his table. A wolfish smile came over Idaho's face.