"You have met her before," Leto said. "You knew her as Friend."
Idaho stared at him in quick silence, the silence of a burrowing creature who senses the hawk.
"Then you trust her," Idaho said.
"Trust? What is trust?"
The moment arrives, Leto thought. He could see it shaping in Idaho's thoughts.
"Trust is what goes with a pledge of loyalty," Idaho said. "Such as the trust between you and me?" Leto asked.
A bitter smile touched Idaho's lips. "So that's what you're doing with Hwi Noree? A marriage, a pledge..."
"Hwi and I already have trust for each other."
"Do you trust me, Leto?"
"If I cannot trust Duncan Idaho, I cannot trust anyone."
"And if I can't trust you?"
"Then I pity you."
Idaho took this as almost a physical shock. His eyes were wide with unspoken demands. He wanted to trust. He wanted the magic which would never come again.
Idaho indicated his thoughts were taking off in an odd tangent then.
"Can they hear us out in the anteroom?" he asked.
"No." But my journals hear!
"Moneo was furious. Anyone could see it. But he went away like a docile lamb."
"Moneo is an aristocrat. He is married to duty, to responsibilities. When he is reminded of these things, his anger vanishes."
"So that's how you control him," Idaho said.
"He controls himself," Leto said, remembering how Moneo had glanced up from the note-taking, not for reassurances, but to prompt his sense of duty.
"No," Idaho said. "He doesn't control himself. You do it."
"Moneo has locked himself into his past. I did not do that."
"But he's an aristocrat... an Atreides."
Leto recalled Moneo's aging features, thinking how inevitable it was that the aristocrat would refuse his final duty-which was to step aside and vanish into history. He would have to be driven aside. And he would be. No aristocrat had ever overcome the demands of change.
Idaho was not through. "Are you an aristocrat, Leto?"
Leto smiled. "The ultimate aristocrat dies within me." And he thought: Privilege becomes arrogance. Arrogance promotes injustice. The seeds of ruin blossom.
"Maybe I will not attend your wedding," Idaho said. "I never thought of myself as an aristocrat."
"But you were. You were the aristocrat of the sword."
"Paul was better," Idaho said.
Leto spoke in the voice of Muad'Dib: "Because you taught me!" He resumed his normal tones: "The aristocrat's unspoken duty-to teach, and sometimes by horrible example."
And he thought: Pride of birth trails out into penury and the weaknesses of interbreeding. The way is opened for pride of wealth and accomplishment. Enter the nouveaux riches, riding to power as the Harkonnens did, on the backs of the ancient regime.
The cycle repeated itself with such persistence that Leto felt anyone should have seen how it must be built into long forgotten survival patterns which the species had outgrown, but never lost.
But no, we still carry the detritus which I must weed out.
"Is there some frontier?" Idaho asked. "Is there some frontier where I could go and never again be a part of this?"
"If there is to be any frontier, you must help me create it," Leto said. "There is now no place to go where others of us cannot follow and find you."
"Then you won't let me go."
"Go if you wish. Others of you have tried it. I tell you there is no frontier, no place to hide. Right now, as it has been for a long, long time, humankind is like a single-celled creature, bound together by a dangerous glue."
"No new planets? No strange..."
"Oh, we grow, but we do not separate."
"Because you hold us together!" he accused.
"I do not know if you can understand this, Duncan, but if there is a frontier, any kind of frontier, then what lies behind you cannot be more important than what lies ahead."
"You're the past!"
"No, Moneo is the past. He is quick to raise the traditional aristocratic barriers against all frontiers. You must understand the power of those barriers. They not only enclose planets and land on those planets, they enclose ideas. They repress change."
"You repress change!"
He will not deviate, Leto thought. One more try.
"The surest sign that an aristocracy exists is the discovery of barriers against change, curtains of iron or steel or stone or of any substance which excludes the new, the different."
"I know there must be a frontier somewhere," Idaho said. "You're hiding it."
"I hide nothing of frontiers. I want frontiers! I want surprises!"
They come right up against it, Leto thought. Then they refuse to enter.
True to this prediction, Idaho's thoughts darted off on a new tack. "Did you really have Face Dancers perform at your betrothal?"
Leto felt a surge of anger, followed immediately by a wry enjoyment of the fact that he could experience the emotion in such depth. He wanted to let it shout at Duncan... but that would solve nothing "The Face Dancers performed," he said.
.Why?"
"I want everyone to share in my happiness."
Idaho stared at him as though just discovering a repellent insect in his drink. In a flat voice, Idaho said: "That is the most cynical thing I have ever heard an Atreides say."
"But an Atreides said it."
"You're deliberately trying to put me off! You're avoiding my question."
Once more into the fray, Leto thought. He said: "The Face Dancers of the Bene Tleilax are a colony organism. Individually, they are mules. This is a choice they made for and by themselves."
Leto waited, thinking: I must be patient. They have to discover it for themselves. If I say it, they will not believe. Think, Duncan. Think!
After a long silence, Idaho said: "I have given you my oath. That is important to me. It is still important. I don't know what you're doing or why. I can only say I don't like what's happening. There! I've said it."
"Is that why you returned from the Citadel?"
"Yes!"
"Will you go back to the Citadel now?"
"What other frontier is there?"
"Very good, Duncan! Your anger knows even when your reason does not. Hwi goes to the Citadel tonight. I will join her there tomorrow."
"I want to get to know her better," Idaho said.
"You will avoid her," Leto said. "That is an order. Hwi is not for you."
"I've always known there were witches," Idaho said. "Your grandmother was one."
He turned on his heel and, not asking leave, strode back the way he had come.
How like a little boy he is, Leto thought, watching the stiffness in Idaho's back. The oldest man in our universe and the youngest-both in one flesh.
***
The prophet is not diverted by illusions of past, present and future. The fixity of language determines such linear distinctions. Prophets hold a key to the lock in a language. The mechanical image remains only an image to them. This is not a mechanical universe. The linear progression of events is imposed by the observer. Cause and effect? That's not it at all. The prophet utters fateful words. You glimpse a thing "destined to occur." But the prophetic instant releases something of infinite portent and power. The universe undergoes a ghostly shift. Thus, the wise prophet conceals actuality behind shimmering labels. The uninitiated then believe the prophetic language is ambiguous. The listener distrusts the prophetic messenger. Instinct tells you how the utterance blunts the power of such words. The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself.