Leto had a name for this transformation of the Duncans. He called it "The Since Syndrome."
The gholas often nurtured suspicions about the secret things which might have been developed across the centuries of oblivion since they last knew awareness. What had people been doing all that time? Why could they possibly want me, this relic from their past? No ego could overcome such doubts forever-especially in a doubting man.
One of the gholas had accused Leto: "You've put things in my body, things I know nothing about! These things in my body tell you everything I'm doing! You spy on me everywhere!"
Another had charged him with possessing a "manipulative machine which makes us want to do whatever you want."
Once it started, the Since Syndrome could never be entirely eliminated. It could be checked, even diverted, but the dormant seed might sprout at the slightest provocation.
Idaho stopped where Moneo had stood and there was a veiled look of nonspecific suspicions in his eyes, in the set of his shoulders. Leto allowed the situation to simmer, bringing the condition to a head. Idaho locked gazes with him, then
broke away to dart his glances around the room. Leto recognized the manner behind the gaze.
The Duncans never forget!
As he studied the room, using the sightful ways he had been taught centuries before by the Lady Jessica and the Mentat Thufir Hawat, Idaho began to feel a giddy sense of dislocation. He thought the room rejected him, each thing-the soft cushions: big bulbous things in gold, green and a red that was almost purple; the Fremen rugs, each a museum piece, lapping over each other in thick piles around Leto's pit; the false sunlight of Ixian glowglobes, light which enveloped the Emperor's face in dry warmth, making the shadows around it deeper and more mysterious; the smell of spice-tea somewhere nearby; and that rich melange odor which radiated from the worm-body.
Idaho felt that too much had happened to him too fast since the Tleilaxu had abandoned him to the mercies of Luli and Friend in that featureless prison-cell room.
Too much... too much...
Am I really here? he wondered. Is this me? What are these thoughts that I think?
He stared at Leto's quiescent body, the shadowy and enormous mass which lay so silently there on its cart within the pit. The very quietness of that fleshly mass only suggested mysterious energies, terrible energies which might be unleashed in ways nobody could anticipate.
Idaho had heard the stories about the fight at the Ixian Embassy, but the Fish Speaker accounts had an aura of miraculous visitation about them which obscured the physical data.
"He flew down from above them and executed a terrible slaughter among the sinners."
"How did he do that?" Idaho had asked.
"He was an angry God," his informant had said.
Angry, Idaho thought. Was it because of the threat to Hwi? The stories he had heard! None were believable. Hwi wedded to this gross... It was not possible! Not the lovely Hwi, the Hwi of gentle delicacy. He is playing some terrible game, testing us... testing us... There was no honest reality in these times, no peace except in the presence of Hwi. All else was insanity.
As he returned his attention to Leto's face-that silently waiting Atreides face-the sense of dislocation grew stronger in Idaho. He began to wonder if, by a slight increase in mental effort along some strange new pathway, he might break through ghostly barriers to remember all of the experiences of the other Ghola Idahos.
What did they think when they entered this room? Did they feel this dislocation, this rejection?
Just a little extra effort.
He felt dizzy and wondered if he were going to faint.
"Is something wrong, Duncan?" It was Leto's most reasonable and calming tone.
"It's not real," Idaho said. "I don't belong here."
Leto chose to misunderstand. "But my guard tells me you came here of your own accord, that you flew back from the Citadel and demanded an immediate audience."
"I mean here, now! In this time!"
"But I need you."
"For what?"
"Look around you, Duncan. The ways you can help me are so numerous that you could not do them all."
"But your women won't let me fight! Every time I want to go where..."
"Do you question that you're more valuable alive than dead?" Leto made a clucking sound, then: "Use your wits, Duncan! That's what I value."
"And my sperm. You value that."
"Your sperm is your own to put where you wish."
"I will not leave a widow and orphans behind me the way...
"Duncan! I've said the choice is yours."
Idaho swallowed, then: "You've committed a crime against us, Leto, against all of us=the gholas you resurrect without ever asking us if that's what we want."
This was a new turn in Duncan-thinking. Leto peered at Idaho with renewed interest.
"What crime?"
"Oh, I've heard you spouting your deep thoughts," Idaho accused. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the room's entrance. "Did you know you can be heard out there in the anteroom?"
"When I wish to be heard, yes." But only my journals hear it all! "I would like to know the nature of my crime, though."
"There's a time, Leto, a time when you're alive. A time when you're supposed to be alive. It can have a magic, that time, while you're living it. You know you're never going to see a time like that again."
Leto blinked, touched by the Duncan's distress. The words were evocative.
Idaho raised both hands, palms up, to chest-height, a beggar Asking for something he knew he could not receive.
"Then... one day you wake up and you remember dying... and you remember the axlotl tank... and the Tleilaxu nastiness which awakened you... and it's supposed to start all over again. But it doesn't. It never does, Leto. That's a crime!"