“It’s the loneliest place in my Empire.”

“I think you avoid my questions,” she said.

“No, love. I share your concern for Moneo, but no explanation of mine will help him now. Moneo is trapped. He has learned that it is difficult to live in the present, pointless to live in the future and impossible to live in the past.”

“I think it’s you who have trapped him, Leto.”

“But he must free himself.”

“Why can’t you free him?”

“Because he thinks my memories are his key to freedom. He thinks I am building our future out of our past.”

“Isn’t that always the way of it, Leto?”

“No, dear Hwi.”

“Then how is it?”

“Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.”

“And you with all of your memories know otherwise.”

Leto turned his face within its cowl to stare at her, probing… remembering. Out of the multitudes within him, he could form a composite, a genetic suggestion of Hwi, but the suggestion fell far short of the living flesh. That was it, of course. The past became row on row of eyes staring outward like the eyes of gasping fish, but Hwi was vibrant life. Her mouth was set in Grecian curves designed for a Delphic chant, but she hummed no prophetic syllables. She was content to live, an opening person like a flower perpetually unfolding into fragrant blossom.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.

“I was basking in the love of you.”

“Love, yes.” She smiled. “I think that since we cannot share the love of the flesh, we must share the love of the soul. Would you share that with me, Leto?”

He was taken aback. “You ask about my soul?”

“Surely others have asked.”

He spoke shortly: “My soul digests its experiences, nothing more.”

“Have I asked too much of you?” she asked.

“I think that you cannot ask too much of me.”

“Then I presume upon our love to disagree with you. My Uncle Malky talked about your soul.”

He found that he could not respond. She took his silence as an invitation to continue. “He said that you were the ultimate artist at probing the soul, your own soul first.”

“But your Uncle Malky denied that he had a soul of his own!”

She heard the harshness in his voice, but was not deterred. “Still, I think he was right. You are the genius of the soul, the brilliant one.”

“You need only the plodding perseverance of duration,” he said. “No brilliance.”

They were well on to the long climb to the top of the Sareer’s perimeter wall now. He lowered his cart’s wheels and deactivated the suspensors.

Hwi spoke softly, her voice barely audible above the grating sound of the cart’s wheels and the running feet all around them. “May I call you Love, anyway?”

He spoke around a remembered tightness in a throat which was no longer completely human. “Yes.”