“There are inevitably more than enough words. You record them in your marvellous memory even now. And someday, my journals will be discovered—more words. I warn you that you read my words at your peril. The wordless movement of terrible events lies just below their surface. Be deaf! You do not need to hear or, hearing, you do not need to remember. How soothing it is to forget. And how dangerous!

“Words such as mine have long been recognized for their mysterious power. There is a secret knowledge here which can be used to rule the forgetful. My truths are the substance of myths and lies which tyrants have always counted on to manoeuvre the masses for selfish design.

“You see? I share it all with you, even the greatest mystery of all time, the mystery by which I compose my life. I reveal it to you in words:

“The only past which endures lies wordlessly within you.”

The God Emperor fell silent then. I dared to ask: “Are those all of the words that my Lord wishes me to preserve?”

“Those are the words,” the God Emperor said, and I thought he sounded tired, discouraged. He had the sound of someone uttering a last testament. I recalled that he had said he would never see me again, and I was fearful but I praise my teachers because the fear did not emerge in my voice.

“Lord Leto,” I said, “these journals of which you speak, for whom are they written?”

“For posterity after the span of millennia. I personalize those distant readers, Sister Chenoeh. I think of them as distant cousins filled with family curiosities. They are intent on unravelling the dramas which only I can recount. They want to make the personal connections to their own lives. They want the meanings, the truth!”

“But you warn us against truth, Lord,” I said.

“Indeed! All of history is a malleable instrument in my hands. Ohhh, I have accumulated all of these pasts and I possess every fact—yet the facts are mine to use as I will and, even using them truthfully, I change them. What am I speaking to you now? What is a diary, a journal? Words.”

Again, the Lord Leto fell silent. I weighed the portent of what he had said, weighed it against the admonition of Reverend Mother Syaksa, and against the things that the God Emperor had uttered to me earlier. He said I was his messenger and thus I felt that I was under his protection and might dare more than any other. Thus it was that I said:

“Lord Leto, you have said that you will not see me again. Does that mean you are about to die?”

I swear it here in my record of this event, the Lord Leto laughed! Then he said:

“No, gentle sister, it is you who will die. You will not live to be a Reverend Mother. Do not be saddened by this for by your presence here today, by carrying my message back to the Sisterhood, by preserving my secret words as well, you will achieve a far greater status. You become here an integral part of my myth. Our distant cousins will pray to you for intercession with me!”