She said: 'My Uncle Malky used to say that love was a bad bargain because you get no guarantees.'
'Your Uncle Malky was a wise man.'
'He was stupid! Love needs no guarantees.'
A smile twitched at the corners of Idaho's mouth.
She grinned up at him. 'You know it's love when you want to give joy and damn the consequences.'
He nodded. 'I think only of the danger to you.'
'We are what we are,' she said.
'What will we do?'
'We'll cherish this for as long as we live.'
'You sound... so final.'
'I am.'
'But we'll see each other every...
'Never again like this.'
'Hwi!' He hurled himself across the bed and buried his face in her breast.
She stroked his hair.
His voice muffled against her, he said: 'What if I've impreg...
'Shush! If there's to be a child, there will be a child.'
Idaho lifted his head and looked at her. 'But he'll know for sure!'
'He'll know anyway.'
'You think he really knows everything?'
'Not everything, but he'll know this.'
'How?'
'I will tell him.'
Idaho pushed himself away from her and sat up on the bed. Anger warred with confusion in his expression.
'I must,' she said.
'If he turns against you... Hwi, there are stories. You could be in terrible danger!'
'No. I have needs, too. He knows this. He will not harm either of us.'
'But he...'
'He will not destroy me. He will know that if he harms you that would destroy me.'
'How can you marry him?'
'Dear Duncan, have you not seen that he needs me more than you do?'
'But he cannot... I mean, you can't possibly...
'The joy that you and I have in each other, I'll not have that with Leo. It's impossible for him. He has confessed this to me.'
'Then why can't... If he loves you...'
'He has larger plans and larger needs.' She reached out and took Idaho's right hand in both of hers. 'I've known that since I first began to study about him. Needs larger than either of us have.'
'What plans? What needs?'
'Ask him.'
'Do you know?' 'Yes.., 'You mean you believe those stories about...' 'There is honesty and goodness in him. I know it by my own responses to him. What my Ixian masters made in me was, I think, a reagent which reveals more than they wanted me to know.'
'Then you believe him!' Idaho accused. He tried to pull his hand away from her.
'If you go to him, Duncan, and...'
'He'll never see me again!'
'He will.'
She pulled his hand to her mouth and kissed his fingers.
'I'm a hostage,' he said. 'You've made me fearful... the two of you together...'
'I never thought it would be easy to serve God,' she said. 'I just didn't think it would be this hard.'
- = Memory has a curious meaning to me, a meaning I have hoped others might share. It continually astonished me how people hide from their ancestral memories, shielding themselves behind a thick barrier of mythos. Ohhh, I do not expect them to seek the terrible immediacy of every living moment which I must experience. I can understand that they might not want to be submerged in a mush of petty ancestral details. You have reason to fear that your living moments might be taken over by others. Yet, the meaning is there within those memories. We carry all of our ancestry forward like a living wave, all of the hopes and joys and griefs, the agonies and the exultations of our past. Nothing within those memories remains completely without meaning or influence, not as long as there is a humankind somewhere. We have that bright Infinity all around us, that Golden Path of forever to which we can continually pledge our puny but inspired allegiance.
- The Stolen Journals 'I HAVE summoned yon, Moneo, because of what my guards tell me,' Leto said.
They stood in the darkness of the crypt where, Moneo reminded himself, some of the God Emperor's most painful decisions originated. Moneo, too, had heard reports. He had been expecting the summons all afternoon and, when it came shortly after the evening meal, a moment of terror had engulfed him.
'Is it about... about the Duncan, Lord?'
'Of course it's about the Duncan!'
'I'm told, Lord... his behavior...'
'Terminal behavior, Moneo?'
Moneo bowed his head. 'If you say it, Lord.'
'How long until the Tleilaxu could supply us with another one?'
'They say they have had problems, Lord. It might be as much as two years.'
'Do you know what my guards tell me, Moneo?'
Moneo held his breath. If the God Emperor had learned about this latest... No! Even the Fish Speakers were terrified by the affront. Had it been anyone but a Duncan, the women would have taken it upon themselves to eliminate him.
'Well, Moneo?'
'I am told, Lord, that he called out a levy of guards and questioned them about their origins. On what worlds were they born? What of their parentage, their childhood?'
'And the answers did not please him.'
'He frightened them, Lord. He kept insisting.'
'As though repetition could elicit the truth, yes.'
Moneo allowed himself to hope that this might be the whole of his Lord's concern. 'Why do the Duncans always do this, Lord?'
'It was their early training, the Atreides training.'
'But how did that differ from...'
'The Atreides lived in the service of the people they governed. The measure of their government was found in the lives of the governed. Thus, the Duncans always want to know how the people live.'
'He has spent a night in one village, Lord. He has been to some of the towns. He has seen...'
'It's all in how you interpret the results, Moneo. Evidence is nothing without judgments.'
'I have observed that he judges, Lord.'
'We all do, but the Duncans tend to believe that this universe is hostage to my will. And they know that you cannot do wrong in the name of right.'
'Is that what he says you...'
'It is what I say, what all of the Atreides in me say. This universe will not permit it. The things you attempt will not endure if you...'
'But, Lord! You do no wrong!' -'Poor Moneo. You cannot see that I have created a vehicle of injustice.'
Moneo could not speak. He realized that he had been diverted by a seeming return to mildness in the God Emperor. But now, Moneo sensed changes moving in that great body, and at this proximity...Moneo glanced
