“Remember your oath!”

Indeed. I am the disruptive force unleashed across the centuries. I limit expectations… including my own. I dampen the pendulum.

“And then release it. Never forget that.”

I am tired. Oh, how tired I am. If only I could sleep… really sleep.

“You’re full of self-pity, too.”

Why not? What am I? The ultimate loner forced to look at what might have been. Every day I look at it… and now, Hwi!

“Your original unselfish choice fills you now with selfishness.”

There is danger all around. I must wear my selfishness like a suit of armour.

“There’s danger for everyone who touches you. Isn’t that your very nature?”

Danger even for Hwi. Dear, delectable, dear Hwi.

“Did you build high walls around you only to sit within them and indulge in self-pity?”

The walls were built because great forces have been unleashed in my Empire.

“You unleashed them. Will you now compromise with them?”

It’s Hwi’s doing. These feelings have never before been this powerful in me. It’s the damnable Ixians!

“How interesting that they should assault you with flesh rather than with a machine.”

Because they have discovered my secret.

“You know the antidote.”

Leto’s great body trembled through its entire length at this thought. He well knew the antidote which had always worked before: lose himself for a time in his own past. Not even the Bene Gesserit Sisters could take such safaris, striking inward along the axis of memories—back, back to the very limits of cellular awareness, or stopping by a wayside to revel in a sophisticated sensory delight. Once, after the death of a particularly superb Duncan, he had toured great musical performances preserved in his memories. Mozart had tired him quickly. Pretentious! But Bach… ahhh, Bach.

Leto remembered the joy of it.

I sat at the organ and let the music drench me.

Only three times in all memory had there been an equal to Bach. But even Licallo was not better; as good, but not better.

Would female intellectuals be the proper choice for this night? Grandmother Jessica had been one of the best. Experience told him that someone as close to him as Jessica would not be the proper antidote for his present tensions. The search would have to venture much farther.

He imagined then describing such a safari to some awestruck visitor, a totally imaginary visitor because none would dare question him about such a holy matter.

“I course backward down the flight of ancestors, hunting along the tributaries, darting into nooks and crannies. You would not recognize many of their names. Who has ever heard of Norma Cenva? I have lived her!”

“Lived her?” his imaginary visitor asked.

“Of course. Why else would one keep one’s ancestors around? You think a man designed the first Guild ship? Your history books told you it was Aurelius Venport? They lied. It was his mistress, Norma. She gave him the design along with five children. He thought his ego would take no less. In the end, the knowledge that he had not really fulfilled his own image, that was what destroyed him.”