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"I did not learn it until my arrival, Lord. They were fools! Why did you spare my predecessor?"
"When I did not spare your ancestor?"
"Yes, Lord."
"Kobat, your predecessor, was more valuable to me as a messenger."
"Then they told me the truth," she said. Again, she smiled. "One cannot always depend on hearing truth from one's associates and superiors."
The response was so utterly open that Leto could not suppress a chuckle. Even as he laughed, he realized that this young woman still possessed the Mind of First Awakening, the elemental mind which came in the first shock of birth-awareness. She was alive!
"Then you do not hold it against me that I killed your ancestor?" he asked.
"He tried to assassinate you! I am told you crushed him, Lord, with your own body."
"True."
"And next you turned his weapon against your own Holy Self to demonstrate that the weapon was ineffectual ... and it was the best lasgun we Ixians could make."
"The witnesses reported correctly," Leto said.
And he thought: Which shows how much you can depend on witnesses! As a matter of historical accuracy, he knew that he had turned the lasgun only against his ribbed body, not against hands, face or flippers. The pre-worm body possessed a remarkable capacity for absorbing heat. The chemical factory within him converted heat to oxygen.
"I never doubted the story," she said.
"Why has Ix repeated this foolish gesture?" Leto asked.
"They have not told me, Lord. Perhaps Kobat took it onto himself to behave this way."
"I think not. It has occurred to me that your people desired only the death of their chosen assassin."
"The death of Kobat?"
"No, the death of the one they chose to use the weapon."
"Who was that, Lord? I've not been told."
"It's unimportant. Do you recall what I said at the time of your ancestor's foolishness?"
"You threatened terrible punishment should such violence ever again enter our thoughts." She lowered her gaze, but not before Leto glimpsed a deep determination in her eyes. She would use the best of her abilities to blunt his wrath.
"I promised that none of you would escape my anger," Leto said.
She jerked her attention up to his face. "Yes, Lord." And now her manner revealed personal fear.
"None can escape me, not even the futile colony you've recently planted at ..." And Leto reeled off for her the standard chart coordinates of a new colony the Ixians had planted secretly far beyond what they thought were the reaches of his Empire.
She betrayed no surprise. "Lord, I think it was because I warned them you would know of this that I was chosen as Ambassador."
Leto studied her more carefully. What have we here? he wondered. Her observation had been subtle and penetrating. The Ixians, he knew, had thought distance and enormously magnified transportation costs would insulate the new colony. Hwi Noree thought not and had said so. But she believed her masters had chosen her as Ambassador because of this--a comment on the Ixian caution. They thought they had a friend at court here, but one who also would be seen as Leto's friend. He nodded as the pattern took shape. Quite early in his ascendancy he had revealed to the Ixians the exact location of the supposedly secret Ixian Core, the heartland of the technological federation which they governed. It had been a secret the Ixians thought safe because they paid gigantic bribes for it to the Spacing Guild. Leto had winkled them out by prescient observation and deduction--and by consulting his memories, where there were more than a few Ixians.
At the time, Leto had warned the Ixians that he would punish them if they acted against him. They had responded with consternation and accused the Guild of betraying them. This had amused Leto and he had responded with such a burst of laughter that the Ixians were abashed. He had then informed them in a cold and accusatory tone that he had no need of spies or traitors or other ordinary trappings of government.
Did they not believe he was a god?
For a time thereafter, the Ixians were responsive to his requests. Leto had not abused the relationship. His demands were modest--a machine for this, a device for that. He would state his needs and presently the Ixians would deliver the required technological toy. Only once had they tried to deliver a violent instrument into one of his machines. He had slain the entire Ixian delegation before they could even unwrap the thing.
Hwi Noree waited patiently while Leto mused. Not the slightest sign of impatience surfaced.
Beautiful, he thought.
In view of his long association with the Ixians, this new stance sent the juices coursing through Leto's body. Ordinarily, the passions, crises and necessities which had produced and impelled him burned low. He often felt that he had outlived his times. But the presence of a Hwi Noree said he was needed. This pleased him. Leto felt that it might even be possible that the Ixians had achieved a partial success with their machine to amplify the linear prescience of a Guild navigator. A small blip in the flow of great events might have escaped him. Could they really make such a machine? What a marvel that would be! Purposefully, he refused to use his powers for even the smallest search through this possibility.
I wish to be surprised!
Leto smiled benignly at Hwi. "How have they prepared you to woo me?" he asked.
She did not blink. "I was provided with a set of memorized responses for particular exigencies," she said. "I learned them as I was required, but I do not intend to use them."
Which is exactly what they want, Leto thought.
"Tell your masters," he said, "that you are precisely the right kind of bait to dangle in front of me."
She bowed her head. "If it pleases my Lord."
"Yes, you do."
He indulged himself then in a small temporal probe to examine Hwi's immediate future, tracing the threads of her past through this. Hwi appeared in a fluid future, a current whose movements were susceptible to many deflections. She would know Siona in only a casual way unless ... Questions flowed through Leto's mind. A Guild steersman was advising the Ixians and he obviously had detected Siona's disturbance in the temporal fabric. Did the steersman really believe he could provide security against the God Emperor's detection?
The temporal probe took several minutes, but Hwi did not fidget. Leto looked at her carefully. She seemed timeless--outside of time in a deeply peaceful way. He had never before encountered a common mortal able to wait thus in front of him without some nervousness.
"Where were you born, Hwi?" he asked.
"On Ix itself, Lord."
"I mean specifically--the building, its location, your parents, the people around you, friends and family, your schooling--all of it."
"I never knew my parents, Lord. I was told they died while I was still an infant."
"Did you believe this?"
"At first ... of course. Later, I built fantasies. I even imagined that Malky was my father ... but ..." She shook her head.
"You did not like your Uncle Malky?"
"No, I didn't. Oh, I admired him."
"My reaction precisely," Leto said. "But what of your friends and your schooling?"
"My teachers were specialists, even some Bene Gesserit were brought in to train me in emotional control and observation. Malky said I was being prepared for great things."
"And your friends?"
"I don't think I ever had any real friends--only people who were brought in contact with me for specific purposes in my education."
"And these great things for which you were trained, did anyone ever speak of those?"
"Malky said I wa
s being prepared to charm you, Lord."
"How old are you, Hwi?"
"I don't know my exact age. I guess I'm about twenty-six. I've never celebrated a birthday. I only learned about birthdays by accident, one of my teachers giving an excuse for her absence. I never saw that teacher again."
Leto found himself fascinated by this response. His observations provided him with certainty that there had been no Tleilaxu interventions into her Ixian flesh. She had not come from a Tleilaxu axlotl tank. Why the secrecy, then?
"Does your Uncle Malky know your age?"
"Perhaps. But I haven't seen him for many years."
"Didn't anyone ever tell you how old you were?"
"No."
"Why do you suppose that is?"
"Maybe they thought I'd ask if I were interested."
