“You have lived him, too?”

“Naturally. And I have traversed the far wanderings of the Fremen. Through my father’s line and the others, I have gone right back to the House of Atreus.”

“Such an illustrious line!”

“With its fair share of fools.”

Distraction is what I need, he thought.

Would it be a tour through sexual dalliances and exploits, then?

“You have no idea what internal orgies are available to me! I am the ultimate voyeur—participant(s) and observer(s). Ignorance and misunderstandings about sexuality have caused so much distress. How abysmally narrow we have been—how miserly.”

Leto knew he could not make that choice, not this night, not with Hwi out there in his city.

Would he choose a review of warfare then?

“Which Napoleon was the greater coward?” he asked his imaginary visitor. “I will not reveal it, but I know. Oh, yes, I know.”

Where can I go? With all of the past open to me, where can I go?

The brothels, the atrocities, the tyrants, the acrobats, nudists, surgeons, male whores, musicians, magicians, ungenciers, priests, artisans, priestesses…

“Are you aware,” he asked his imaginary visitor, “that the hula preserves an ancient sign language which once belonged only to males? You’ve never heard of the hula? Of course. Who dances it anymore? Dancers have preserved many things, though. The translations have been lost, but I know them.

“One whole night I was a series of caliphs moving eastward and westward with Islam—a traverse of centuries. I will not bore you with the details. Be gone now, visitor!”

How seductive it is, he thought, this call of the siren which would have me live only in the past.

And how useless that past now, thanks to the damnable Ixians. How boring the past when Hwi is here. She would come to me right now if I summoned her. But I cannot call for her… not now… not tonight.

The past continued to beckon.

I could make a pilgrimage into my past. It does not have to be a safari. I could go alone. Pilgrimage purifies. Safaris make me into a tourist. That’s the difference. I could go alone into my inner world.

And never return.

Leto felt the inevitability of it, that the dreamstate would eventually trap him.

I create a special dreamstate throughout my Empire. Within this dream, new myths form, new directions appear and new movements. New… new… new… The things emerge from my own dreams, out of my myths. Who more susceptible to them than I? The hunter is caught in his own net.

Leto knew then that he had encountered a condition for which no antidote existed—past, present or future. His great body trembled and shivered in the gloom of his audience chamber.

At the portal, one Fish Speaker guard whispered to another: “Is God troubled?”

And her companion replied: “The sins of this universe would trouble anyone.”

Leto heard them and wept silently.

CHAPTER XXV

When I set out to lead humankind along my Golden Path, I promised them a lesson their bones would remember. I know a profound pattern which humans deny with their words even while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and quiet, the condition they call peace. Even as they speak they create the seeds of turmoil and violence. If they find their quiet security they squirm in it. How boring they find it. Look at them now. Look at what they do while I record these words. Hah! I give them enduring eons of enforced tranquillity which plods on and on despite their every effort to escape into chaos. Believe me, the memory of Leto’s Peace shall abide with them forever. They will seek their quiet security thereafter only with extreme caution and steadfast preparation.