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"Janus? Oh, yes, the god with the two opposed faces." She wet her lips with her tongue. "Are you Janus, Leto?"
"I am Janus magnified a billionfold. And I am also something less. I have been, for example, what my administrators admire most--the decision-maker whose every decision can be made to work."
"But if you fail them ..."
"They will turn against me, yes."
"Will Siona replace you if ..."
"Ahhh, what an enormous if! You observe that Siona threatens my person. However, she does not threaten the Golden Path. There is also the fact that my Fish Speakers have a certain attachment to the Duncan."
"Siona seems ... so young."
"And I am her favorite poseur, the sham who holds power under false pretenses, never consulting the needs of his people."
"Could I not talk to her and ..."
"No! You must never try to persuade Siona of anything. Promise me, Hwi."
"If you ask it, of course, but I ..."
"All gods have this problem, Hwi. In the perception of deeper needs, I must often ignore immediate ones. Not addressing immediate needs is an offense to the young."
"Could you not reason with her and ..."
"Never attempt to reason with people who know they are right!"
"But when you know they are wrong ..."
"Do you believe in me?"
"Yes."
"And if someone tried to convince you that I am the greatest evil of all time ..."
"I would become very angry. I would ..." She broke off.
"Reason is valuable," he said, "only when it performs against the wordless physical background of the universe."
Her brows drew together in thought. It fascinated Leto to sense the arousal of her awareness. "Ahhhh." She breathed the word.
"No reasoning creature will ever again be able to deny the Leto experience," he said. "I see your understanding begin. Beginnings! They are what life is all about!"
She nodded.
No arguments, he thought. When she sees the tracks, she follows them to find where they will lead.
"As long as there is life, every ending is a beginning," he said. "And I would save humankind, even from itself."
Again, she nodded. The tracks still led onward.
"This is why no death in the perpetuation of humankind can be a complete failure," he said. "This is why a birth touches us so deeply. This is why the most tragic death is the death of a youth."
"Does Ix still threaten your Golden Path? I've always known they conspired in something evil."
They conspire. Hwi does not hear the inner message of her own words. She has no need to hear it.
He stared at her, full of the marvel that was Hwi. She possessed a form of honesty which some would call naive, but which Leto recognized as merely non-self-conscious. The honesty was not her core, it was Hwi herself.
"Then I will arrange a performance in the plaza tomorrow," Leto said. "It will be a performance of the surviving Face Dancers. Afterward, our betrothal will be announced."
Let there be no doubt that I am the assemblage of our ancestors, the arena in which they exercise my moments. They are my cells and I am their body. This is the favrashi of which I speak, the soul, the collective unconscious, the source of archetypes, the repository of all trauma and joy. I am the choice of their awakening. My samhadi is their samhadi. Their experiences are mine! Their knowledge distilled is my inheritance. Those billions are my one.
--THE STOLEN JOURNALS
The Face Dancer performance occupied almost two hours of the morning, and afterward came the announcement which sent shock waves through the Festival City.
"It has been centuries since he took a bride!"
"More than a thousand years, my dear."
The trooping of the Fish Speakers had been brief. They cheered him loudly, but they were disturbed.
"You are my only brides," he had said. Was that not the meaning of Siaynoq?
Leto thought the Face Dancers performed well despite their obvious terror. Garments had been found in the depths of a Fremen museum--hooded black robes with white cord belts, spread-winged green hawks appliqued across the shoulders at the back--uniforms of Muad'Dib's itinerant priests. The Face Dancers had put on dark, seamed faces with these robes and performed a dance which told how Muad'Dib's legions had spread their religion through the Empire.
Hwi, wearing a brilliant silver dress with a green jade necklace, sat beside Leto on the Royal Cart throughout the ritual. Once, she leaned close to his face and asked: "Is that not a parody?"
"To me, perhaps."
"Do the Face Dancers know?"
"They suspect."
"Then they are not as frightened as they appear."
"Oh, yes, they are frightened. It's just that they are braver than most people expect them to be."
"Bravery can be so foolish," she whispered.
"And vice-versa."
She had favored him with a measuring stare before returning her attention to the performance. Almost two hundred Face Dancers had survived unscathed. All of them had been pressed into the dance. The intricate weavings and posturings could fascinate the eye. It was possible to watch them and, for a time, forget the bloody preliminaries to this day.
Leto remembered this as he lay alone in his small reception room shortly before noon when Moneo arrived. Moneo had seen the Reverend Mother Anteac onto a Guild lighter, had conferred with the Fish Speaker Command about the previous night's violence, had made a quick flight to the Citadel and back to make sure Siona was under a secure watch and that she had not been implicated in the Embassy attack. He had returned to Onn just after the betrothal announcement, having had no previous warning.
Moneo was furious. Leto had never seen him this angry. He stormed into the room and stopped only two meters from Leto's face.
"Now the Tleilaxu lies will be believed!" he said.
Leto responded in a reasoned tone. "How persistent it is, this demand that our gods be perfect. The Greeks were much more reasonable about such things."
"Where is she?" Moneo demanded. "Where is this ..."
"Hwi is resting. It was a difficult night and a long morning. I want her well rested when we return to the Citadel this evening."
"How did she work this?" Moneo demanded.
"Really, Moneo! Have you lost all sense of caution?"
"I am concerned about you! Have you any idea what they're saying in the City?"
"I'm fully aware of the stories."
"What are you doing?"
"You know, Moneo, I think that only the old pantheists had the right idea about deities: mortal foibles in immortal guise."
Moneo raised both arms to the heavens. "I saw the looks on their faces!" He lowered his arms. "It'll be all over the Empire within two weeks."
"Surely it'll take longer than that."
"If your enemies needed one thing to bring them all together ..."
"The defiling of the god is an ancient human tradition, Moneo. Why should I be an exception?"
Moneo tried to speak, found he could not utter a word. He stamped down along the edge of the pit which held Leto's cart, stamped back and resumed his former position glaring into Leto's face.
"If I am to help you, I need an explanation," Moneo said. "Why are you doing this?"
"Emotions."
Moneo's mouth formed the word without speaking it.
"They have come over me just when I thought them gone forever," Leto said. "How sweet these last few sips of humanity are."
"With Hwi? But you surely cannot ..."
"Memories of emotions are never enough, Moneo."
"Are you telling me that you are indulging yourself in a ..."
"Indulgence? Certainly not! But the tripod upon which Eternity swings is composed of flesh and thought and emotion. I felt that I had been reduced to flesh and thought."
"She has worked some kind of witchery," Moneo accused.
