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away to the south.
"Ahhh, my guest arrives," Leto said. "I will send you down on my cart, Moneo.
Bring only Malky back with you. Tell the Guildsmen this has earned my
forgiveness, then send them away."
"Your for... yes, Lord. But if they have the secret of. . ."
"They serve my purpose, Moneo. You must do the same. Bring Malky to me."
Obediently, Moneo went to the cart which lay in shadows at the far side of the
aerie chamber. He clambered on it, watched a mouth of night appear in the Wall.
A landing-lip extruded into that night. The cart drifted outward, feather-light,
and floated at an angle to the sand beside a Guild lighter which stood upright
like a distorted miniature of the Little Citadel's tower.
Leto watched from the balcony, his front segments lifted slightly to provide him
a better viewing angle. His acute eyesight identified the white movement of
Moneo standing on the cart in the moonlight. Long-legged Guild servitors came
out with a litter which they slid onto the cart, standing there a moment in
conversation with Moneo. When they left, Leto closed the cart's bubble cover and
saw moonlight reflected from it. At his beckoning thought, the cart and its
burden returned to the landing-lip. The Guild lighter lifted in its noisy
rumbling while Leto was bringing the cart into the chamber's lights, closing the
entrance behind it. Leto opened the bubble cover. Sand grated beneath him as he
rolled to the litter and lifted his front segments to peer in at Malky who lay
as though sleeping, lashed into the litter by broad gray elastic bindings. The
man's face was ashen under dark gray hair.
Haw he has aged, Leto thought.
Moneo stepped down off the cart and looked back at the litter's occupant. "He is
injured, Lord. They want to send a medical. . ."
"They wanted to send a spy."
Leto studied Malky the dark wrinkled skin, the sunken cheeks, that sharp nose at
such contrast with the rounded oval of his face. The heavy eyebrows had turned
almost white. There but for a lifetime of testosterone . . . yes.
Malky's eyes opened. Such a shock to find evil in those doe-like brown eyes! A
smile twitched Malky's mouth.
"Lord Leto." Malky's voice was little more than a husky whisper. His eyes turned
right, focusing on the majordomo. "And Moneo. Forgive me for not rising to the
occasion."
"Are you in pain?" Leto asked.
"Sometimes." Malky's eyes moved to study his surroundings. "Where are the
houris?"
"I'm afraid I must deny you that pleasure, Malky."
"Just as well," Malky husked. "I don't really feel up to their demands. Those
were not houris you sent after me, Leto."
"They were professional in their obedience to me," Leto said.
"They were bloody hunters!"
"Anteac was the hunter. My Fish Speakers were merely the clean-up crew."
Moneo shifted his attention from one speaker to the other, back and forth. There
were disturbing undertones in this conversation. Despite the huskiness, Malky
sounded almost flippant . . . but then he had always been that way. A dangerous
man!
Leto said: "Just before your arrival, Moneo and I were discussing Infinity."
"Poor Moneo," Malky said.
Leto smiled. "Do you remember, Malky? You once asked me to demonstrate
Infinity."
"You said no Infinity exists to be demonstrated." Malky
swept his gaze toward Moneo. "Leto likes to play with paradox. He knows all the
tricks of language that have ever been discovered."
Moneo put down a surge of anger. He felt excluded from this conversation, an
object of amusement by two superior beings. Malky and the God Emperor were
almost like two old friends reliving the pleasures of a mutual past.
"Moneo accuses me of being the sole possessor of Infinity," Leto said. "He
refuses to believe that he has just as much of Infinity as I have."
Malky stared up at Leto. "You see, Moneo? You see how tricky he is with words?"
"Tell me about your niece, Hwi Noree," Leto said.
"Is it true, Leto, what they say? That you are going to wed the gentle Hwi?"
"It is true."
Malky chuckled, then grimaced with pain. "They did terrible damage to me, Leto,"
he whispered, then: "Tell me, old worm. . ."
Moneo gasped.
Malky took a moment to recover from pain, then: "Tell me, old worm, is there a
monster penis hidden in that monster body of yours? What a shock for the gentle
Hwi!"
"I told you the truth about that long ago," Leto said.
"Nobody tells the truth," Malky husked.
"You often told me the truth," Leto said. "Even when you didn't know it."
"That's because you're cleverer than the rest of us."
"Will you tell me about Hwi?"
"I think you already know it."
"I want to hear it from you," Leto said. "Did you get help from the Tleilaxu?"
"They gave us knowledge, nothing more. Everything else we did for ourselves."
"I thought it was not the Tleilaxus' doing."
Moneo could no longer contain his curiosity. "Lord, what is this of Hwi and
Tleilaxu? Why do you..."
"Here there, old friend Moneo," Malky said, rolling his gaze toward the
majordomo. "Don't you know what he. . ."
"I was never your friend!" Moneo snapped.
"Companion among the houris then," Malky said.
"Lord," Moneo said, turning toward Leto, "why do you speak of..."
"Shhh, Moneo," Leto said. "We are tiring your old companion and I have things to
learn from him yet."
"Did you ever wonder, Leto," Malky asked, "why Moneo never tried to take the
whole shebang away from you?"
"The what?" Moneo demanded.
"Another of Leto's old words," Malky said. "She and bang-shebang. It's perfect.
Why don't you rename your Empire, Leto? The Grand Shebang!"
Leto raised a hand to silence Moneo. "Will you tell me, Malky? About Hwi?"
"Just a few tiny cells from my body," Malky said. "Then the carefully nurtured
growth and education-everything an exact opposite to your old friend, Malky. We
did it all in the no-room where you cannot see!" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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