He could still taste the noon meal-oddly familiar Atreides chopstick-fare of mixed grains herb-seasoned and baked around a pungent morsel of pseudomeat, all of it washed down with a drink of clear cidrit juice. Moneo had found him at table in the Guard Mess, alone in a corner with a regional operations schedule propped up beside his plate.
Without invitation, Moneo had seated himself opposite
Idaho and had pushed aside the operations schedule.
"I bring a message from the God Emperor," Moneo said.
The tightly controlled tone warned Idaho that this was no casual encounter. Others sensed it. Listening silence settled over the women at nearby tables, spreading out through the room.
Idaho put down his chopsticks. "Yes?"
"These were the words of the God Emperor," Moneo said. "`It is my bad luck that Duncan Idaho should become enamored of Hwi Noree. This mischance must not continue."'
Anger thinned Idaho's lips, but he remained silent.
"Such foolishness endangers us all," Moneo said. "Noree is the God Emperor's intended."
Idaho tried to control his anger, but the words were a betrayal: "He can't marry her!"
"Why not?"
"What game is he playing, Moneo?"
"I am a messenger with a single message, no more," Moneo said.
Idaho's voice was low and threatening. "But he confides in you."
"The God Emperor sympathizes with you," Moneo lied.
"Sympathizes!" Idaho shouted the word, creating a new depth to the room's silence.
"Noree is a woman of obvious attractions," Moneo said. "But she is not for you."
"The God Emperor has spoken," Idaho sneered, "and there is no appeal."
"I see that you understand the message," Moneo said.
Idaho started to push himself away from the table.
"Where are you going?" Moneo demanded.
"I'm going to have this out with him right now!"
"That is certain suicide," Moneo said.
Idaho glared at him, aware suddenly of the listening intensity in the women at the tables around them. An expression which Muad'Dib would have recognized immediately came over Idaho's face: "Playing to the Devil's Gallery," Muad'Dib had called it.
"D'you know what the original Atreides Dukes always said?" Idaho asked. There was a mocking tone in his voice.
"Is it pertinent?"
"They said your liberties all vanish when you look up to any absolute ruler."
Rigid with fear, Moneo leaned toward Idaho. Moneo's lips barely moved. His voice was little more than a whisper. "Don't say such things."
"Because one of these women will report it?"
Moneo shook his head in disbelief. "You are more reckless than any of the others."
"Really?"
"Please! It is perilous in the extreme to take this attitude."
Idaho heard the nervous stirring that swept through the room.
"He can only kill us," Idaho said.
Moneo spoke in a tight whisper: "You fool! The Worm can dominate him at the slightest provocation!"
"The Worm, you say?" Idaho's voice was unnecessarily loud.
"You must trust him," Moneo said.
Idaho glanced left and right. "Yes, I think they heard that."
"He is billions upon billions of people united in that one body," Moneo said.
"So I've been told."
"He is God and we are mortal," Moneo said.
"How is it a god can do evil things?" Idaho asked.
Moneo thrust his chair backward and leaped to his feet. "I wash my hands of you!" Whirling away, he dashed from the room.
Idaho looked out into the room, finding himself the center of attention for all of the guards' faces.
"Moneo doesn't judge, but I do," Idaho said.
It surprised him then to glimpse a few wry smiles among the women. They all returned to their eating.
As he strode down the hall of the Citadel, Idaho replayed the conversation, seeking out the oddities in Moneo's behavior. The terror could be recognized and even understood, but it had seemed far more than fear of death... far, far more.
The Worm can dominate him.
Idaho felt that this had slipped out of Moneo, an inadvertent betrayal. What could it mean?
More reckless than any of the others.
It galled Idaho that he should have to bear comparisons to himself-as-an-unknown. How careful had the others been?
Idaho came to his own door, put a hand on the palm-lock and hesitated. He felt like a hunted animal retreating to his den. The guards in the mess surely would have reported that
conversation to Leto by now. What would the God Emperor do? Idaho's hand moved across the lock. The door swung inward. He entered the anteroom of his apartment and sealed the door, looking at it.
Will he send his Fish Speakers for me?
Idaho glanced around the entry area. It was a conventional space-racks for clothing and shoes, a full-length mirror, a weapons cupboard. He looked at the closed door of the cupboard. Not one of the weapons behind that door offered any real threat to the God Emperor. There wasn't even a lasgun... although even lasguns were ineffectual against the Worm, according to all the accounts.
He knows I will defy him.
Idaho sighed and looked toward the arched portal which led into the sitting area. Moneo had replaced the soft furniture with heavier, stiffer pieces, some of them recognizably Fremen culled from the coffers of the Museum Fremen.
Museum Fremen!
Idaho spat and strode through the portal. Two steps into the room he stopped, shocked. The soft light from the north windows revealed Hwi Noree seated on the low sling-divan. She wore a shimmering blue gown which draped itself revealingly around her figure. Hwi looked up at his entrance.