Dune

I am beginning to hate water. The sandtrout skin which impels my metamorphosis has learned the sensitivities of the worm. Moneo and many of my guards know my aversion. Only Moneo suspects the truth, that this marks an important waypoint. I can feel my ending in it, not soon as Moneo measures time, but soon enough as I endure it. Sandtrout swarmed to water in the Dune days, a problem during the early stages of our symbiosis. The enforcement of my will-power controlled the urge then, and until we reached a time of balance. Now, I must avoid water because there are no other sandtrout, only the half-dormant creatures of my skin. Without sandtrout to bring this world back to desert, Shai-Hulud will not emerge; the sandworm cannot evolve until the land is parched. I am their only hope.

—THE STOLEN JOURNALS

It was midafternoon before the Royal Entourage came down the final slope into the precincts of the Festival City. Throngs lined the streets to greet them, held back by tight lines of ursine Fish Speakers in uniforms of Atreides green, their stunclubs crossed and linked.

As the Royal party approached, a bedlam of shouts erupted from the crowd. Then the Fish Speaker guardians began to chant:

“Siaynoq! Siaynoq! Siaynoq!”

As it echoed back and forth between the high buildings, the chanted word had a strange effect on the crowd which was not initiated into the meanings of it. A wave of silence swept up the thronged avenues while the guardians continued to chant. People stared in awe at the women armed with stunclubs who guarded the Royal passage, the women who chanted while they fixed their gaze on the face of their passing Lord.

Idaho, marching with the Fish Speaker guards behind the Royal Cart, heard the chant for the first time and felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.

Moneo marched beside the cart, not looking left or right. He had once asked Leto the meaning of the word.

“I give the Fish Speakers only one ritual,” Leto had said. They had been in the God Emperor’s audience chamber beneath Onn’s central plaza at the time, with Moneo fatigued after a long day of directing the flow of dignitaries who crowded the city for Decennial festivities.

“What has the chanting of that word to do with it, Lord?”

“The ritual is called Siaynoq—the Feast of Leto. It is the adoration of my person in my presence.”

“An ancient ritual, Lord?”

“It was with the Fremen before they were Fremen. But the keys to the Festival secrets died with the old ones. Only I remember them now. I recreate the Festival in my own likeness and for my own ends.”

“Then the Museum Fremen do not use this ritual?”

“Never. It is mine and mine alone. I claim eternal right to it because I am that ritual.”

“It is a strange word, Lord. I have never heard its like.”

“It has many meanings, Moneo. If I tell them to you, will you hold them secret?”

“My Lord commands!”

“Never share this with another nor reveal to the Fish Speakers what I tell you now.”

“I swear it, Lord.”

“Very well. Siaynoq means giving honor to one who speaks with sincerity. It signifies the remembrance of things which are spoken with sincerity.”

“But, Lord, doesn’t sincerity really mean that the speaker believes . . . has faith in what is said?”

“Yes, but Siaynoq also contains the idea of light as that which reveals reality. You continue to shine light on what you see.”

“Reality . . . that is a very ambiguous word, Lord.”

“Indeed! But Siaynoq also stands for fermentation because reality—or the belief that you know a reality, which is the same thing—always sets up a ferment in the universe.”

“All of that in a single word, Lord?”

“And more! Siaynoq also contains the summoning to prayer and the name of the Recording Angel, Sihaya, who interrogates the newly dead.”

“A great burden for one word, Lord.”

“Words can carry any burden we wish. All that’s required is agreement and a tradition upon which to build.”

“Why must I not speak of this to the Fish Speakers, Lord?”

“Because this is a word reserved for them. They resent my sharing it with a male.”

Moneo’s lips pressed into a thin line of remembrance as he marched beside the Royal Cart into the Festival City. He had heard the Fish Speakers chant the God Emperor into their presence many times since that first explanation and had even added his own meanings to the strange word.

It means mystery and prestige. It means power. It invokes a license to act in the name of God.

“Siaynoq! Siaynoq! Siaynoq!”

The word had a sour sound in Moneo’s ears.

They were well into the city, almost to the central plaza. Afternoon sunlight came down the Royal Road behind the procession to illuminate the way. It gave brilliance to the citizenry’s colorful costumes. It shone on the upturned faces of the Fish Speakers lining the way.

Marching beside the cart with the guards, Idaho put down a first alarm as the chant continued. He asked one of the Fish Speakers beside him about it.

“It is not a word for men,” she said. “But sometimes the Lord shares Siaynoq with a Duncan.”

A Duncan! He had asked Leto about it earlier and disliked the mysterious evasions.

“You will learn about it soon enough.”

Idaho relegated the chant to the background while he looked around him with a tourist’s curiosity. In preparation for his duties as Guard Commander, Idaho had inquired after the history of Onn, finding that he shared Leto’s wry amusement in the fact that it was the Idaho River flowing nearby.

They had been in one of the large open rooms of the Citadel at the time, an airy place full of morning light and with wide tables upon which Fish Speaker archivists had spread charts of the Sareer and of Onn. Leto had wheeled his cart onto a ramp which allowed him to look down on the charts. Idaho stood across a chart-littered table from him studying the plan of the Festival City.

“Peculiar design for a city,” Idaho mused.

“It has one primary purpose—public viewing of the God Emperor.”

Idaho looked up at the segmented body on the cart, brought his gaze to the cowled face. He wondered if he would ever find it easy to look on that bizarre figure.

“But that’s only once every ten years,” Idaho said.

“At the Great Sharing, yes.”

“And you just close it down between times?”

“The embassies are there, the offices of the trading factors, the Fish Speaker schools, the service and maintenance cadres, the museums and libraries.”

“What space do they take?” Idaho rapped the chart with his knuckles. “A tenth of the City at most?”

“Less than that.”

Idaho let his gaze wander pensively over the chart.

“Are there other purposes in this design, m’Lord?”

“It is dominated by the need for public viewing of my person.”

“There must be clerks, government workers, even common laborers. Where do they live?”

“Mostly in the suburbs.”

Idaho pointed at the chart. “These tiers of apartments?”

“Note the balconies, Duncan.”

“All around the plaza.” He leaned close to peer down at the chart. “That plaza is two kilometers across!”

“Note how the balconies are set back in steps right up to the ring of spires. The elite are lodged in the spires.”

“And they can all look down on you in the plaza?”

“You do not like that?”

“There’s not even an energy barrier to protect you!”

“What an inviting target I make.”

“Why do you do it?”

“There is a delightful myth about the design of Onn. I foster and promote the myth. It is said that once there lived a people whose ruler was required to walk among them once a year in total darkness, without weapons or armor. The mythical ruler wore a luminescent suit while he made his walk through the night-shrouded throng of his subjects. And his subjects—they wore black for the occasion and were never searched for weapons.”

“What’s that have to do with Onn . . . and you?”

“Well, obviously, if the ruler survived his walk, he was a good ruler.”

“You don’t search for weapons?”

“Not openly.”

“You think people see you in this myth.” It was not a question.

“Many do.”

Idaho stared up at Leto’s face deep in its gray cowl. The blue-on-blue eyes stared back at him without expression.

Melange eyes, Idaho thought. But Leto said he no longer consumed any spice. His body supplied what spice his addiction demanded.

“You don’t like my holy obscenity, my enforced tranquility,” Leto said.

“I don’t like you playing god!”

“But a god can conduct the Empire as a musical conductor guides a symphony through its movements. My performance is limited only by my restriction to Arrakis. I must direct the symphony from here.”

Idaho shook his head and looked once more at the city plan. “What’re these apartments behind the spires?”

“Lesser accommodations for our visitors.”

“They can’t see the plaza.”

“But they can. Ixian devices project my image into those rooms.”

“And the inner ring looks directly down on you. How do you enter the plaza?”

“A presentation stage rises from the center to display me to my people.”

“Do they cheer?” Idaho looked directly into Leto’s eyes.

“They are permitted to cheer.”

“You Atreides always did see yourselves as part of history.”

“How astute of you to understand a cheer’s meaning.”

Idaho returned his attention to the city map. “And the Fish Speaker schools are here?”

“Under your left hand, yes. That’s the academy where Siona was sent to be educated. She was ten at the time.”

“Siona . . . I must learn more about her,” Idaho mused.

“I assure you that nothing will get in the way of your desire.”

As he marched along in the Royal peregrination, Idaho was lifted from his reverie by awareness that the Fish Speaker chant was diminishing. Ahead of him, the Royal Cart had begun its descent into the chambers beneath the plaza, rolling down a long ramp. Idaho, still in sunlight, looked up and around at the glistening spires—this reality for which the charts had not prepared him. People crowded the balconies of the great tiered ring around the plaza, silent people who stared down at the procession.

No cheering from the privileged, Idaho thought. The silence of the people on the balconies filled Idaho with foreboding.

He entered the ramp-tunnel and its lip hid the plaza. The Fish Speaker chant faded away as he descended into the depths. The sound of marching feet all around him was curiously amplified.

Curiosity replaced the sense of oppressive foreboding. Idaho stared around him. The flat-floored tube was artifically illuminated and wide, very wide. Idaho estimated that seventy people could march abreast into the bowels of the plaza. There were no mobs of greeters here, only a widely spaced line of Fish Speakers who did not chant, contenting themselves to stare at the passage of their God.

Memory of the charts told Idaho the layout of this gigantic complex beneath the plaza—a private city within the City, a place where only the God Emperor, the courtiers and the Fish Speakers could go without escort. But the charts had told nothing of the thick pillars, the sense of massive, guarded spaces, the eerie quiet broken by the tramping of feet and the creaking of Leto’s cart.

Idaho looked suddenly at the Fish Speakers lining the way and realized that their mouths were moving in unison, a silent word on their lips. He recognized the word:

“Siaynoq.”