“You disappoint me, Moneo. The predator does not hate its prey.”

“Predators kill, Lord.”

“I kill but I do not hate. Prey assuages hunger. Prey is good.”

Moneo peered up at Leto’s face in its grey cowl.

Have I missed the approach of the Worm? Moneo wondered.

Fearfully, Moneo looked for the signs. There were no tremors in the giant body, no glazing of the eyes, no twisting of the useless flippers.

“For what do you hunger, Lord?” Moneo ventured.

“For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions. Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo?”

“You have said it many times, Lord. It is the ability to change your mind.”

“Change, yes. And do you know what I mean by long-term?”

“For you, it must be measured in millennia, Lord.”

“Moneo, even my thousands of years are but a puny blip against infinity.”

“But your perspective must be different from mine, Lord.”

“In the view of infinity, any defined long-term is short-term.”

“Then are there no rules at all, Lord?” Moneo’s voice conveyed a faint hint of hysteria.

Leto smiled to ease the man’s tensions. “Perhaps one. Short-term decisions tend to fail in the long-term.”

Moneo shook his head in frustration. “But, Lord, your perspective is…”

“Time runs out for any finite observer. There are no closed systems. Even I only stretch the finite matrix.”

Moneo jerked his attention from Leto’s face and peered into the distances of the mausoleum corridors. I will be here someday. The Golden Path may continue, but I will end. That was not important, of course. Only the Golden Path which he could sense in unbroken continuity, only that mattered. He returned his attention to Leto, but not to the all-blue eyes. Was there truly a predator lurking in that gross body?

“You do not understand the function of a predator,” Leto said.

The words shocked Moneo because they smacked of mind-reading. He lifted his gaze to Leto’s eyes.

“You know intellectually that even I will suffer a kind of death someday,” Leto said. “But you do not believe it.”

“How can I believe what I will never see?”

Moneo had never felt more lonely and fearful. What was the God Emperor doing? I came down here to discuss the problems of the peregrination… and to find out about his intentions toward Siona. Does he toy with me?

“Let us talk about Siona,” Leto said.

Mind-reading again!

“When will you test her, Lord?” The question had been waiting in the front of his awareness all this time, but now that he had spoken it, Moneo feared it.

“Soon.”

“Forgive me, Lord, but surely you know how much I fear for the well-being of my only child.”

“Others have survived the test, Moneo. You did.”

Moneo gulped, remembering how he had been sensitized to the Golden Path.

“My mother prepared me. Siona has no mother.”

“She has the Fish Speakers. She has you.”

“Accidents happen, Lord.”

Tears sprang into Moneo’s eyes.

Leto looked away from him, thinking: He is torn by his loyalty to me and his love of Siona. How poignant it is, this concern for an offspring. Can he not see that all of humankind is my only child?