Leto smiled. This was like playing bubble dice in an infinite bowl. Moneo’s emotions were a marvellous play performed only on this stage. How near the edge he walked without ever seeing it!

“Moneo, why do you insist on taking pieces out of the continuum?” Leto asked. “When you see a spectrum, do you desire one colour there above all the others?”

“Lord, I don’t understand you!”

Leto closed his eyes, remembering the countless times he had heard this cry. The faces were an unseparated blend. He opened his eyes to erase them.

“As long as one human remains alive to see them, the colours will not suffer a linear mortis even if you die, Moneo.”

“What is this thing of colours, Lord?”

“The continuum, the never-ending, the Golden Path.”

“But you see things which we do not, Lord!”

“Because you refuse!”

Moneo sank his chin to his chest. “Lord, I know you have evolved beyond the rest of us. That is why we worship you and…”

“Damn you, Moneo!”

Moneo jerked his head up and stared at Leto in terror.

“Civilizations collapse when their powers outrun their religions!” Leto said. “Why can’t you see this? Hwi does.”

“She is Ixian, Lord. Perhaps she…”

“She’s a Fish Speaker! She has been from birth, born to serve me. No!” Leto raised one of his tiny hands as Moneo tried to speak. “The Fish Speakers are disturbed because I called them my brides, and now they see a stranger not trained in Siaynoq who knows it better than they.”

“How can that be, Lord, when your Fish…”

“What are you saying? Each of us comes into being knowing who he is and what he is supposed to do.”

Moneo opened his mouth but closed it without speaking.

“Small children know,” Leto said. “It’s only after adults have confused them that children hide this knowledge even from themselves. Moneo! Uncover yourself!”

“Lord, I cannot!” The words were torn from Moneo. He trembled with anguish. “I do not have your powers, your knowledge of…”

“Enough!”

Moneo fell silent. His body shook.

Leto spoke soothingly to him. “It’s all right, Moneo. I ask too much of you and I can see your fatigue.”

Slowly, Moneo’s trembling subsided. He drew in deep, gulping breaths.

Leto said: “There will be some change in my Fremen wedding. We will not use the water rings of my sister, Ghanima. We will use, instead, the rings of my mother.”

“The Lady Chani, Lord? But where are her rings?”

Leto twisted his bulk on the cart and pointed to the intersection of two cavernous spokes on his left where the dim light revealed the earliest burial niches of the Atreides on Arrakis. “In her tomb, the first niche. You will remove those rings, Moneo, and bring them to the ceremony.”

Moneo stared across the gloomy distance of the crypt. “Lord… is it not a desecration to…”

“You forget, Moneo, who lives in me.” He spoke then in Chani’s voice: “I can do what I want with my water rings!”