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"Leto's Golden Peace?"
"There is less peace than some would have us believe," she said, looking back at him.
The honesty of her! he thought. Nothing deterred it.
"This is the time of the stomach," he said. "This is the time when we expand as a single cell expands."
"But something is missing," she said.
She is like the Duncans, he thought. Something is missing and they sense it immediately.
"The flesh grows, but the psyche does not grow," he said.
"The psyche?"
"That reflexive awareness which tells us how very alive we can become. You know it well, Hwi. It is that sense which tells you how to be true to yourself."
"Your religion is not enough," she said.
"No religion can ever be enough. It is a matter of choice--a single, lonely choice. Do you understand now why your friendship and your company mean so much to me?"
She blinked back tears, nodding, then: "Why don't people know this?"
"Because the conditions don't permit it."
"The conditions which you dictate?"
"Precisely. Look throughout my Empire. Do you see the shape?"
She closed her eyes, thinking.
"One wishes to sit by a river and fish every day?" he asked. "Excellent. That is this life. You desire to sail a small boat across an island sea and visit strangers? Superb! What else is there to do?"
"Travel in space?" she asked and there was a defiant note in her voice. She opened her eyes.
"You have observed that the Guild and I do not allow this."
"You do not allow it."
"True. If the Guild disobeys me, it gets no spice."
"And holding people planetbound keeps them out of mischief."
"It does something more important than that. It fills them with a longing to travel. It creates a need to make far voyages and see strange things. Eventually, travel comes to mean freedom."
"But the spice dwindles," she said.
"And freedom becomes more precious every day."
"This can only lead to desperation and violence," she said.
"A wise man in my ancestry--I was actually that person, you know? Do you understand that there are no strangers in my past?"
She nodded, awed.
"This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery."
"The Guild and the Sisterhood enslave themselves!"
"And the Ixians and the Tleilaxu and all the others. Oh, they ferret out a bit of hidden melange from time to time and that keeps the attention fixed. A very interesting game, don't you think?"
"But when the violence comes ..."
"There will be famines and hard thoughts."
"Here on Arrakis, too?"
"Here, there, everywhere. People will look back on my tyranny as the good old days. I will be the mirror of their future."
"But it will be terrible!" she objected.
She could have no other reaction, he thought.
He said: "As the land refuses to support the people, the survivors will crowd into smaller and smaller refuges. A terrible selection process will be repeated on many worlds--explosive birthrates and dwindling food."
"But couldn't the Guild ..."
"The Guild will be largely helpless without sufficient melange to operate available transports."
"Won't the rich escape?"
"Some of them."
"Then you haven't really changed anything. We will just go on struggling and dying."
"Until the sandworm reigns once more on Arrakis. We will have tested ourselves by then with a profound experience shared by all. We will have learned that a thing which can happen on one planet can happen on any planet."
"So much pain and death," she whispered.
"Don't you understand about death?" he asked. "You must understand. The species must understand. All life must understand."
"Help me, Lord," she whispered.
"It is the most profound experience of any creature," he said. "Short of death come the things which risk and mirror it--life-threatening diseases, injuries and accidents ... childbirth for a woman ... and once it was combat for the males."
"But your Fish Speakers are ..."
"They teach about survival," he said.
Her eyes went wide with understanding. "The survivors. Of course!"
"How precious you are," he said. "How rare and precious. Bless the Ixians!"
"And curse them?"
"That, too."
"I did not think I could ever understand about your Fish Speakers," she said.
"Not even Moneo sees it," he said. "And I despair of the Duncans."
"You have to appreciate life before you want to preserve it," she said.
"And it's the survivors who maintain the most light and poignant hold upon the beauties of living. Women know this more often than men because birth is the reflection of death."
"My Uncle Malky always said you had good reasons for denying combat and casual violence to men. What a bitter lesson!"
"Without readily available violence, men have few ways of testing how they will meet that final experience," he said. "Something is missing. The psyche does not grow. What is it people say about Leto's Peace?"
"That you make us wallow in pointless decadence like pigs in our own filth."
"Always recognize the accuracy of folk wisdom," he said. "Decadence."
"Most men have no principles," she said. "The women of Ix complain about it constantly."
"When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles," he said.
She stared at him silently, and he thought how that simple reaction spoke so deeply of her intelligence.
"Where do you think I find my best administrators?" he asked.
A small gasp escaped her.
"Principles," he said, "are what you fight for. Most men go through a lifetime unchallenged, except at the final moment. They have so few unfriendly arenas in which to test themselves."
"They have you," she said.
"But I am so powerful," he said. "I am the equivalent of suicide. Who would seek certain death?"
"Madmen ... or desperate ones. Rebels?"
"I am their equivalent of war," he said. "The ultimate predator. I am the cohesive force which shatters them."
"I've never thought of myself as a rebel," she said.
"You are something far better."
"And you would use me in some way?"
"I would."
"Not as an administrator," she said.
"I already have good admini
strators--uncorruptible, sagacious, philosophical and open about their errors, quick to see decisions."
"They were rebels?"
"Most of them."
"How are they chosen?"
"I could say they chose themselves."
"By surviving?"
"That, too. But there's more. The difference between a good administrator and a bad one is about five heartbeats. Good administrators make immediate choices."
"Acceptable choices?"
"They usually can be made to work. A bad administrator, on the other hand, hesitates, diddles around, asks for committees, for research and reports. Eventually, he acts in ways which create serious problems."
