Dune полностью

“You will provide the answers as I require them.” It was a statement full of such trust that it stopped Leto’s voice. He could only look at her, realizing how extraordinary was this accomplishment of the Ixians—this human. Hwi remained precisely true to the dictates of her personally chosen morality. She was comely, warm and honest and possessed of an emphatic sense which forced her to share every anguish in those with whom she identified. He could imagine the dismay of her Bene Gesserit teachers when confronted by this immovable core of self-honesty. The teachers obviously had been reduced to adding a touch here, an ability there, everything strengthening that power which prevented her from becoming a Bene Gesserit. How that must have rankled!

“Lord,” she said, “I would know the motives which forced you to choose your life.”

“First, you must understand what it is like to see our future.”

“With your help, I will try.”

“Nothing is ever separated from its source,” he said. “Seeing futures is a vision of a continuum in which all things take shape like bubbles forming beneath a waterfall. You see them and then they vanish into the stream. If the stream ends, it is as though the bubbles never were. That stream is my Golden Path and I saw it end.”

“Your choice”—she gestured at his body—“changed that?”

“It is changing. The change comes not only from the manner of my life but from the manner of my death.”

“You know how you will die?”

“Not how. I know only the Golden Path in which it will occur.”

“Lord, I do not . . .”

“It is difficult to understand, I know. I will die four deaths—the death of the flesh, the death of the soul, the death of the myth and the death of reason. And all of these deaths contain the seed of resurrection.”

“You will return from . . .”

“The seeds will return.”

“When you are gone, what will happen to your religion?”

“All religions are a single communion. The spectrum remains unbroken within the Golden Path. It is only that humans see first one part and then another. Delusions can be called accidents of the senses.”

“People will still worship you,” she said.

“Yes.”

“But when forever ends, there will be anger,” she said. “There will be denial. Some will say you were just an ordinary tyrant.”

“Delusion,” he agreed.

A lump in her throat prevented her from speaking for a moment, then: “How does your life and your death change the . . .” She shook her head.

“Life will continue.”

“I believe that, Lord, but how?”

“Each cycle is a reaction to the preceding cycle. If you think about the shape of my Empire, then you know the shape of the next cycle.”

She looked away from him. “Everything I learned about your Family told me that you would do this”—she gestured blindly in his direction without looking at him—“only with a selfless motive. I do not think I truly know the shape of your Empire, though.”

“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.