AllFreeNovel
Share Us
at he had heard the words correctly but learned nothing from them. He spoke over his shoulder.
"I don't understand the Sharing."
"We are together in the ritual. You will see it. You will feel it. My Fish Speakers are the repository of a special knowledge, an unbroken line which only they share. Now, you will partake of it and they will love you for it. Listen to them carefully. They are open to ideas of affinity. Their terms of endearment for each other have no reservations."
More words, Idaho thought. More mystery.
He could discern a gradual widening in the tunnel; the ceiling sloped higher. There were more glowglobes, tuned now into the deep orange. He could see the high arch of an opening about three hundred meters away, rich red light there in which he could make out glistening faces which swayed gently left and right. Their bodies below the faces presented a dark wall of clothing. The perspiration of excitement was thick here.
As he neared the waiting women, Idaho saw a passage through them and a ramp slanting up to a low ledge on his right. A great arched ceiling curved away above the women, a gigantic space illuminated by glowglobes tuned high into the red.
"Go up the ramp on your right," Leto said. "Stop just beyond the center of the ledge and turn to face the women."
Idaho lifted his right hand in acknowledgment. He was emerging into the open space now and the dimensions of this enclosed place awed him. He set his trained eyes the task of estimating the dimensions as he mounted to the ledge and guessed the hall to be at least eleven hundred meters on a side--a square with rounded corners. It was packed with women, and Idaho reminded himself that these were only the chosen representatives of the far scattered Fish Speaker regiments--three women from each planet. They stood now, their bodies pressed so closely together that Idaho doubted one of them could fall. They had left only a space about fifty meters wide along the ledge where Idaho now stopped and surveyed the scene. The faces looked up at him--faces, faces.
Leto stopped his cart just behind Idaho and lifted one of his silver-skinned arms.
Immediately, a roaring cry of "Siaynoq! Siaynoq!" filled the great hall.
Idaho was deafened by it. Surely that sound must be heard throughout the City, he thought. Unless we are too far underground.
"My brides," Leto said. "I welcome you to Siaynoq."
Idaho glanced up at Leto, saw the dark eyes glistening, the radiant expression. Leto had said: "This cursed holiness!" But he basked in it.
Has Moneo ever seen this gathering? Idaho wondered. It was an odd thought, but Idaho knew its origin. There had to be some other mortal human with whom this could be discussed. The escort had said Moneo was dispatched on "affairs of state" whose details they did not know. Hearing this, Idaho had felt himself sense another element in Leto's government. The lines of power extended directly from Leto out into the populace, but the lines did not often cross. That required many things, including trusted servants who would accept responsibility for carrying out orders without question.
"Few see the God Emperor do hurtful things," Siona had said. "Is that like the Atreides you knew?"
Idaho looked out over the massed Fish Speakers as these thoughts flitted through his mind. The adulation in their eyes! The awe! How had Leto done this? Why?
"My beloveds," Leto said. His voice boomed out over the upturned faces, carried to the farthest corners by subtle Ixian amplifiers concealed in the Royal Cart.
The steaming images of the women's faces filled Idaho with memory of Leto's warning. Incur their wrath at your mortal peril!
It was easy to believe that warning in this place. One word from Leto and these women would tear an offender to pieces. They would not question. They would act. Idaho began to feel a new appreciation of these women as an army. Personal peril would not stop them. They served God!
The Royal Cart creaked slightly as Leto arched his front segments upward, lifting his head.
"You are the keepers of the faith!" Leto said.
They replied as one voice: "Lord, we obey!"
"In me you live without end!" Leto said.
"We are the Infinite!" they shouted.
"I love you as I love no others!" Leto said.
"Love!" they screamed.
Idaho shuddered.
"I give you my beloved Duncan!" Leto said.
"Love!" they screamed.
Idaho felt his whole body trembling. He felt that he might collapse from the weight of this adulation. He wanted to run away and he wanted to stay and accept this. There was power in this room. Power!
In a lower voice, Leto said: "Change the Guard."
The women bowed their heads, a single movement, unhesitating. From off to Idaho's right a line of women in white gowns appeared. They marched into the open space below the ledge and Idaho noted that some of them carried babies and small children, none more than a year or two old.
From the outline explanation provided him earlier, Idaho recognized these women as the ones leaving the immediate service of the Fish Speakers. Some would become priestesses and some would spend full time as mothers ... but none would truly leave Leto's service.
As he looked down on the children, Idaho thought how the buried memory of this experience must be impressed on any of the male children. They would carry the mystery of it throughout their lives, a memory lost to consciousness but always present, shading responses from this moment onward.
The last of the newcomers came to a stop below Leto and looked up at him. The other women in the hall now lifted their faces and focused on Leto.
Idaho glanced left and right. The whiteclad women filled the space below the ledge for at least five hundred meters in both directions. Some of them lifted their children toward Leto. The awe and submission was something absolute. If Leto ordered it, Idaho sensed, these women would smash their babies to death against the ledge. They would do anything!
Leto lowered his front segments onto the cart, a gentle rippling motion. He peered down benignly and his voice came as a soft caress. "I give you the reward which your faith and service have earned. Ask and it shall be given."
The entire hall reverberated to the response: "It shall be given!"
"What is mine is thine," Leto said.
"What is mine is thine," the women shouted.
"Share with me now," Leto said, "the silent prayer for my intercession in all things--that humankind may never end."
As one, every head in the hall bowed. The whiteclad women cradled their children close, looking down at them. Idaho felt the silent unity, a force which sought to enter him and take him over. He opened his mouth wide and breathed deeply, fighting against something which he sensed as a physical invasion. His mind searched frantically for something to which he could cling, something to shield him.
These women were an army whose force and union Idaho had not suspected. He knew he did not understand this force. He could only observe it, recognize that it existed.
This was what Leto had created.
Leto's words from a meeting at the Citadel came back to Idaho: "Loyalty in a male army fastens onto the army itself rather than onto the civilization which fosters the army. Loyalty in a female army fastens onto the leader."
Idaho stared out across the visible evidence of Leto's creation, seeing the penetrating accuracy of those words, fearing that accuracy.
He offers me a share in this, Idaho thought.
His own response to Leto's words struck Idaho now as puerile.
"I don't see the reason," Idaho had said.
"Most people are not creatures of reason."
"No army, male or female, guarantees peace! Your Empire isn't peaceful! You only ..."
"My Fish Speakers have provided you with our histories?"
"Yes, but I've also walked about in your city and I've watched your people. Your people are aggressive!"
"You see, Duncan? Peace encourages aggression."
"And you say that your Golden Path ..."
"Is not precisely peace. It is tranquili
ty, a fertile ground for the growth of rigid classes and many other forms of aggression."
"You talk riddles!"
"I talk accumulated observations which tell me that the peaceful posture is the posture of the defeated. It is the posture of the victim. Victims invite aggression."
"Your damned enforced tranquility! What good does it do?"
"If there is no enemy, one must be invented. The military force which is denied an external target always turns against its own people."
"What's your game?"
"I modify the human desire for war."
"People don't want war!"
"They want chaos. War is the most readily available form of chaos."
"I don't believe any of this! You're playing some dangerous game of your own."
"Very dangerous. I address ancient wellsprings of human behavior to redirect them. The danger is that I could suppress the forces of human survival. But I assure you that my Golden Path endures."
