“No! You will stay away from Hwi Noree. I have something special in mind for her.”

CHAPTER XXIX

I have isolated the city-experience within me and have examined it closely. The idea of a city fascinates me. The formation of a biological community without a functioning, supportive social community leads to havoc. Whole worlds have become single biological communities without an interrelated social structure and this has always led to ruin. It becomes dramatically instructive under overcrowded conditions. The ghetto is lethal. Psychic stresses of overcrowding create pressures which will erupt. The city is an attempt to manage these forces. The social forms by which cities make the attempt are worth study. Remember that there exists a certain malevolence about the formation of any social order. It is the struggle for existence by an artificial entity. Despotism and slavery hover at the edges. Many injuries occur and, thus, the need for laws. The law develops its own power structure, creating more wounds and new injustices. Such trauma can be healed by cooperation, not by confrontation. The summons to cooperate identifies the healer.

—The Stolen Journals

Moneo entered Leto’s small chamber with evident agitation. He actually preferred this meeting place because the God Emperor’s cart lay in a depression from which a deadly attack by the worm would be more difficult, and there was the undeniable fact that Leto allowed his major-domo to descend in an Ixian tube-lift rather than via that interminable ramp. But Moneo felt that the news he brought this morning was guaranteed to arouse The Worm Who Is God.

How to present it?

Dawn lay only an hour past, the fourth Festival Day, a fact Moneo could greet with equanimity only because it brought him that much nearer the end of these tribulations.

Leto stirred as Moneo entered the small chamber. Illumination came on at his signal, focusing only on his face.

“Good morning, Moneo,” he said. “My guard tells me you insisted on entering immediately. Why?”

The danger, Moneo knew from experience, lay in the temptation to reveal too much too soon.

“I have spent some time with the Reverend Mother Anteac,” he said. “Although she keeps it well hidden, I’m sure she is a Mentat.”

“Yes. The Bene Gesserit were bound to disobey me sometime. This form of disobedience amuses me.”

“Then you will not punish them?”

“Moneo, I am ultimately the only parent my people have. A parent must be generous as well as severe.”

He’s in a good mood, Moneo thought. A small sigh escaped Moneo, at which Leto smiled.

“Anteac objected when I told her you had ordered an amnesty for a selected few Face Dancers among our captives.”

“I have a Festive use for them,” Leto said.

“Lord?”

“I will tell you later. Let’s get to the news which brings you bursting in upon me at this hour.”

“I… ahhhh…” Moneo chewed at his upper lip. “The Tleilaxu have been quite garrulous in the attempt to ingratiate themselves with me.”

“Of course they have. And what have they revealed?”