Dune [Frank Herbert's Dune Saga Collection: Books 1 - 6]

“He controls himself,” Leto said, remembering how Moneo had glanced up from the notetaking, not for reassurances, but to prompt his sense of duty.

“No,” Idaho said. “He doesn’t control himself. You do it.”

“Moneo has locked himself into his past. I did not do that.”

“But he’s an aristocrat . . . an Atreides.”

Leto recalled Moneo’s aging features, thinking how inevitable it was that the aristocrat would refuse his final duty—which was to step aside and vanish into history. He would have to be driven aside. And he would be. No aristocrat had ever overcome the demands of change.

Idaho was not through. “Are you an aristocrat, Leto?”

Leto smiled. “The ultimate aristocrat dies within me.” And he thought: Privilege becomes arrogance. Arrogance promotes injustice. The seeds of ruin blossom.

“Maybe I will not attend your wedding,” Idaho said. “I never thought of myself as an aristocrat.”

“But you were. You were the aristocrat of the sword.”

“Paul was better,” Idaho said.

Leto spoke in the voice of Muad’Dib: “Because you taught me!” He resumed his normal tones: “The aristocrat’s unspoken duty—to teach, and sometimes by horrible example.”

And he thought: Pride of birth trails out into penury and the weaknesses of interbreeding. The way is opened for pride of wealth and accomplishment. Enter the nouveaux riches, riding to power as the Harkonnens did, on the backs of the ancient régime.

The cycle repeated itself with such persistence that Leto felt anyone should have seen how it must be built into long forgotten survival patterns which the species had outgrown, but never lost.

But no, we still carry the detritus which I must weed out.

“Is there some frontier?” Idaho asked. “Is there some frontier where I could go and never again be a part of this?”

“If there is to be any frontier, you must help me create it,” Leto said. “There is now no place to go where others of us cannot follow and find you.”

“Then you won’t let me go.”

“Go if you wish. Others of you have tried it. I tell you there is no frontier, no place to hide. Right now, as it has been for a long, long time, humankind is like a single-celled creature, bound together by a dangerous glue.”

“No new planets? No strange . . .”

“Oh, we grow, but we do not separate.”

“Because you hold us together!” he accused.

“I do not know if you can understand this, Duncan, but if there is a frontier, any kind of frontier, then what lies behind you cannot be more important than what lies ahead.”

“You’re the past!”

“No, Moneo is the past. He is quick to raise the traditional aristocratic barriers against all frontiers. You must understand the power of those barriers. They not only enclose planets and land on those planets, they enclose ideas. They repress change.”

“You repress change!”

He will not deviate, Leto thought. One more try.

“The surest sign that an aristocracy exists is the discovery of barriers against change, curtains of iron or steel or stone or of any substance which excludes the new, the different.”

“I know there must be a frontier somewhere,” Idaho said. “You’re hiding it.”

“I hide nothing of frontiers. I want frontiers! I want surprises!”

They come right up against it, Leto thought. Then they refuse to enter.

True to this prediction, Idaho’s thoughts darted off on a new tack. “Did you really have Face Dancers perform at your betrothal?”

Leto felt a surge of anger, followed immediately by a wry enjoyment of the fact that he could experience the emotion in such depth. He wanted to let it shout at Duncan . . . but that would solve nothing.

“The Face Dancers performed,” he said.

“Why?”

“I want everyone to share in my happiness.”

Idaho stared at him as though just discovering a repellent insect in his drink. In a flat voice, Idaho said: “That is the most cynical thing I have ever heard an Atreides say.”

“But an Atreides said it.”

“You’re deliberately trying to put me off! You’re avoiding my question.”

Once more into the fray, Leto thought. He said: “The Face Dancers of the Bene Tleilax are a colony organism. Individually, they are mules. This is a choice they made for and by themselves.”

Leto waited, thinking: I must be patient. They have to discover it for themselves. If I say it, they will not believe. Think, Duncan. Think!

After a long silence, Idaho said: “I have given you my oath. That is important to me. It is still important. I don’t know what you’re doing or why. I can only say I don’t like what’s happening. There! I’ve said it.”

“Is that why you returned from the Citadel?”

“Yes!”

“Will you go back to the Citadel now?”