'There's a time, Leto, a time when you're alive. A time when you're supposed to be alive. It can have a magic, that time, while you're living it. You know you're never going to see a time like that again.'
Leto blinked, touched by the Duncan's distress. The words were evocative.
Idaho raised both hands, palms up, to chest-height, a beggar Asking for something he knew he could not receive.
'Then... one day you wake up and you remember dying... and you remember the axlotl tank... and the Tleilaxu nastiness which awakened you... and it's supposed to start all over again. But it doesn't. It never does, Leto. That's a crime!'
'I have taken away the magic?'
'Yes!'
Idaho dropped his hands to his sides and clenched them into fists. He felt that he stood alone in the path of a millrace tide which would overwhelm him at his slightest relaxation.
And what of my time? Leto thought. This, too, will never happen again. But the Duncan would not understand the difference.
'What brought you rushing back from the Citadel?' Leto asked.
Idaho took a deep breath, then: 'Is it true? You're to be married?'
'That's correct.'
'To this Hwi Noree, the Ixian Ambassador?'
'True.'
Idaho darted a quick glance along Leto's supine length.
They always look for genitalia, Leto thought. Perhaps I should have something made, a gross protuberance to shock them. He choked back the small burst of amusement which threatened to erupt from his throat. Another emotion amplified. Thank you, Hwi. Thank you, lxians.
Idaho shook his head. 'But you...'
'There are strong elements to a marriage other than sex,' Leto said. 'Will we have children of our flesh? No. But the effects of this union will be profound.'
'I listened while you were talking to Moneo,' Idaho said. 'I thought it must be some kind of joke, a...'
'Careful, Duncan!'
'Do you love her?'
'More deeply than any man ever loved a woman.'
'Well, what about her? Does she...'
'She feels... a compelling compassion, a need to share with me, to give whatever she can give. It is her nature.'
Idaho suppressed a feeling of revulsion.
'Moneo's right. They'll believe the Tleilaxu stories.'
'That is one of the profound effects.'
'And you still want me to... to mate with Siona!'
'You know my wishes. I leave the choice to you.'
'Who's that Nayla woman?'
'You've met Nayla! Good.'
'She and Siona act like sisters. That big hunk! What's going on there, Leto?'
'What would you want to go on? And what does it matter?' 'I've never met such a brute! She reminds me of Beast Rabban. You'd never know she was female if she didn't...'
'You have met her before,' Leto said. 'You knew her as Friend.'
Idaho stared at him in quick silence, the silence of a burrowing creature who senses the hawk.
'Then you trust her,' Idaho said.
'Trust? What is trust?'
The moment arrives, Leto thought. He could see it shaping in Idaho's thoughts.
'Trust is what goes with a pledge of loyalty,' Idaho said. 'Such as the trust between you and me?' Leto asked.
A bitter smile touched Idaho's lips. 'So that's what you're doing with Hwi Noree? A marriage, a pledge...'
'Hwi and I already have trust for each other.'
'Do you trust me, Leto?'
'If I cannot trust Duncan Idaho, I cannot trust anyone.'
'And if I can't trust you?'
'Then I pity you.'
Idaho took this as almost a physical shock. His eyes were wide with unspoken demands. He wanted to trust. He wanted the magic which would never come again.
Idaho indicated his thoughts were taking off in an odd tangent then.
'Can they hear us out in the anteroom?' he asked.
'No.' But my journals hear!
'Moneo was furious. Anyone could see it. But he went away like a docile lamb.'
'Moneo is an aristocrat. He is married to duty, to responsibilities. When he is reminded of these things, his anger vanishes.'
'So that's how you control him,' Idaho said.
'He controls himself,' Leto said, remembering how Moneo had glanced up from the note-taking, not for reassurances, but to prompt his sense of duty.
'No,' Idaho said. 'He doesn't control himself. You do it.'
'Moneo has locked himself into his past. I did not do that.'
'But he's an aristocrat... an Atreides.'
Leto recalled Moneo's aging features, thinking how inevitable it was that the aristocrat would refuse his final duty-which was to step aside and vanish into history. He would have to be driven aside. And he would be. No aristocrat had ever overcome the demands of change.
Idaho was not through. 'Are you an aristocrat, Leto?'
Leto smiled. 'The ultimate aristocrat dies within me.' And he thought: Privilege becomes arrogance. Arrogance promotes injustice. The seeds of ruin blossom.
'Maybe I will not attend your wedding,' Idaho said. 'I never thought of myself as an aristocrat.'
'But you were. You were the aristocrat of the sword.'
'Paul was better,' Idaho said.
Leto spoke in the voice of Muad'Dib: 'Because you taught me!' He resumed his normal tones: 'The aristocrat's unspoken duty-to teach, and sometimes by horrible example.'
And he thought: Pride of birth trails out into penury and the weaknesses of interbreeding. The way is opened for pride of wealth and accomplishment. Enter the nouveaux riches, riding to power as the Harkonnens did, on the backs of the ancient regime.
The cycle repeated itself with such persistence that Leto felt anyone should have seen how it must be built into long forgotten survival patterns which the species had outgrown, but never lost.
But no, we still carry the detritus which I must weed out.
'Is there some frontier?' Idaho asked. 'Is there some frontier where I could go and never again be a part of this?'
'If there is to be any frontier, you must help me create it,' Leto said. 'There is now no place to go where others of us cannot follow and find you.'
'Then you won't let me go.'
'Go if you wish. Others of you have tried it. I tell you there is no frontier, no place to hide. Right now, as it has been for a long, long time, humankind is like a single-celled creature, bound together by a dangerous glue.'
'No new planets? No strange...'
'Oh, we grow, but we do not separate.'
'Because you hold us together!' he accused.
