What did they think when they entered this room? Did they feel this dislocation, this rejection?

Just a little extra effort.

He felt dizzy and wondered if he were going to faint.

“Is something wrong, Duncan?” It was Leto’s most reasonable and calming tone.

“It’s not real,” Idaho said. “I don’t belong here.”

Leto chose to misunderstand. “But my guard tells me you came here of your own accord, that you flew back from the Citadel and demanded an immediate audience.”

“I mean here, now! In this time!”

“But I need you.”

“For what?”

“Look around you, Duncan. The ways you can help me are so numerous that you could not do them all.”

“But your women won’t let me fight! Every time I want to go where…”

“Do you question that you’re more valuable alive than dead?” Leto made a clucking sound, then: “Use your wits, Duncan! That’s what I value.”

“And my sperm. You value that.”

“Your sperm is your own to put where you wish.”

“I will not leave a widow and orphans behind me the way…”

“Duncan! I’ve said the choice is yours.”

Idaho swallowed, then: “You’ve committed a crime against us, Leto, against all of us—the gholas you resurrect without ever asking us if that’s what we want.”

This was a new turn in Duncan-thinking. Leto peered at Idaho with renewed interest.

“What crime?”

“Oh, I’ve heard you spouting your deep thoughts,” Idaho accused. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the room’s entrance. “Did you know you can be heard out there in the anteroom?”

“When I wish to be heard, yes.” But only my Journals hear it all! “I would like to know the nature of my crime, though.”

“There’s a time, Leto, a time when you’re alive. A time when you’re supposed to be alive. It can have a magic, that time, while you’re living it. You know you’re never going to see a time like that again.”

Leto blinked, touched by the Duncan’s distress. The words were evocative.

Idaho raised both hands, palms up, to chest height, a beggar asking for something he knew he could not receive.

“Then… one day you wake up and you remember dying… and you remember the axlotl tank… and the Tleilaxu nastiness which awakened you… and it’s supposed to start all over again. But it doesn’t. It never does, Leto. That’s a crime!”

“I have taken away the magic?”

“Yes!”

Idaho dropped his hands to his sides and clenched them into fists. He felt that he stood alone in the path of a millrace tide which would overwhelm him at his slightest relaxation.

And what of my time? Leto thought. This, too, will never happen again. But the Duncan would not understand the difference.

“What brought you rushing back from the Citadel?” Leto asked.

Idaho took a deep breath, then: “Is it true? You’re to be married?”

“That’s correct.”

“To this Hwi Noree, the Ixian Ambassador?”

“True.”

Idaho darted a quick glance along Leto’s supine length.