“Leto!” Malky called from behind him.

Leto heard the litter grating on the wind-scattered sand which peppered the floor of his aerie.

Once more, Malky called: “Leto, you are the best! There’s no evil in this universe which can surpass…”

A sodden thump shut off Malky’s voice. A blow to the throat, Leto thought. Yes, Moneo knows that one. There came the sound of the balcony’s transparent shield sliding open, the rasping of the litter on the rail, then silence.

Moneo will have to bury the body in the sand, Leto thought. There is as yet no worm to come and devour the evidence. Leto turned then and looked across the chamber. Moneo stood leaning over the railing, peering down… down… down…

I cannot pray for you, Malky, nor for you, Moneo, Leto thought. I may be the only religious consciousness in the Empire because I am truly alone… so I cannot pray.

CHAPTER XLVIII

You cannot understand history unless you understand its flowings, its currents and the ways leaders move within such forces. A leader tries to perpetuate the conditions which demand his leadership. Thus, the leader requires the outsider. I caution you to examine my career with care. I am both leader and outsider. Do not make the mistake of assuming that I only created the Church which was the State. That was my function as leader and I had many historical models to use as pattern. For a clue to my role as outsider, look at the arts of my time. The arts are barbaric. The favourite poetry? The Epic. The popular dramatic ideal? Heroism. Dances? Wildly abandoned. From Moneo’s viewpoint, he is correct in describing this as dangerous. It stimulates the imagination. It makes people feel the lack of that which I have taken from them. What did I take from them? The right to participate in history.

—The Stolen Journals

Idaho, stretched out on his cot with his eyes closed, heard a weight drop on to the other cot. He sat up into the mid-afternoon light which slanted through the room’s single window at a sharp angle, reflecting off the white-tiled floor on to the light yellow walls. Siona, he saw, had come in and stretched herself on her cot. She already was reading one of the books she carried around with her in a green fabric pack.

Why books? he wondered.

He swung his feet to the floor and glanced around the room. How could this high-ceilinged, spacious box be considered even remotely Fremen? A wide table/desk of some dark brown local plastic separated the two cots. There were two doors. One led directly outside across a garden. The other admitted them to a luxurious bath whose pale blue tiles glistened under a broad skylight. The bath contained, among its many functional services, a sunken tub and a shower, each at least two metres square. The door to this sybaritic space remained open and Idaho could hear water running out of the tub. Siona appeared oddly fond of bathing in an excess of water.