GEoD wrote:
(1,2) The Golden Path demands it. And what is the Golden Path? you ask. It is the survival of humankind, nothing more nor less. We who have prescience, we who know the pitfalls in our human futures, this has always been our responsibility.
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(3, 4) Ahhh, that face! I still have it -- the only human skin I expose to the universe. All the rest of my flesh has remained covered by the linked bodies of those tiny deep sand vectors which one day can become giant sandworms. As they will... someday.
I often think about my final metamorphosis, that likeness of death. I know the way it must come but I do not know the moment or the other players. This is the one thing I cannot know. I only know whether the Golden Path continues or ends.
As I cause these words to be recorded, the Golden Path continues and for that, at least, I am content.
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(5) Leto reflected. Was there need for Moneo to know this peculiar thing about his daughter? Siona could fade from the prescient view at times. The Golden Path remained, but Siona faded. Yet... she was not prescient. She was a unique phenomenon... and if she survived... Leto decided he would not cloud Moneo's efficiency with unnecessary information.
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(6) "Recall how I treated you in similar circumstances," Leto said {to Moneo}. "You know the demands of the Golden Path as well as I do."
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(7) But even while Siona surprises me, she reminds me of what I fear most -- the sameness and boredom which could break the Golden Path. Look at how boredom put me temporarily in the Duncan's power! Siona is the contrast by which I know my deepest fears. Moneo's concern for me is well grounded.
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(8) You, the first person to encounter my chronicles for at least four thousand years, beware. Do not feel honored by your primacy in reading the revelations of my Ixian storehouse. You will find much pain in it. Other than the few glimpses required to assure me that the Golden Path continued. I never wanted to peer beyond those four millennia. Therefore, I am not sure what the events in my journals may signify to your times. I only know that my journals have suffered oblivion and that the events which I recount have undoubtedly been submitted to historical distortion for eons. I assure you that the ability to view our futures can become a bore. Even to be thought of as a god, as I certainly was, can become ultimately boring. It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will.
-Inscription on the storehouse at bar-es-Balat
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(9, 10) "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?
-- Moneo's view --
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(11) "Others have survived the test, Moneo. You did."
Moneo gulped, remembering how he had been sensitized to the Golden Path.
-- Moneo's view --
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(12) Odd as it may seem, great struggles such as the one you can see emerging from my journals are not always visible to the participants. Much depends on what people dream in the secrecy of their hearts. I have always been as concerned with the shaping of dreams as with the shaping of actions. Between the lines of my journals is the struggle with humankind's view of itself -- a sweaty contest on a field where motives from our darkest past can well up out of an unconscious reservoir and become events with which we not only must live but contend. It is the hydraheaded monster which always attacks from your blind side. I pray, therefore, that when you have traversed my portion of the Golden Path you no longer will be innocent children dancing to music you cannot hear.
-The Stolen Journals
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(13) The Duncans always think it odd that I choose women for combat forces, but my Fish Speakers are a temporary army in every sense. While they can be violent and vicious, women are profoundly different from men in their dedication to battle. The cradle of genesis ultimately predisposes them to behavior more protective of life. They have proved to be the best keepers of the Golden Path. I reinforce this in my design for their training. They are set aside for a time from ordinary routines. I give them special sharings which they can look back upon' with pleasure for the rest of their lives. They come of age in the company of their sisters in preparation for events more profound. What you share in such companionship always prepares you for greater things. The haze of nostalgia covers their days among their sisters, making those days into something different than they were. That's the way today changes history. All contemporaries do not inhabit the same time. The past is always changing, but few realize it.
-The Stolen Journals
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(14) She was far more of a rebel than he had been. Far more. Leto had tamed his Moneo, sensitized him to the Golden Path and the rightful duties for which he had been bred, but methods used on a Moneo would not work with Siona. In his observation of this, Moneo had learned things about his own training which he had never before suspected.
-- Moneo's opinion --
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(15) I could breed something like her and prepare that one for me... but that would not be my gentle Hwi.
And what of the Golden Path while he indulged in such selfish goals?
To hell with the Golden Path! Have these folly-bound idiots ever thought once of me? Not once!
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(16) When I set out to lead humankind along my Golden Path. I promised them a lesson their bones would remember. I know a profound pattern which humans deny with their words even while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and quiet, the condition they call peace. Even as they speak, they create the seeds of turmoil and violence. If they find their quiet security, they squirm in it. How boring they find it. Look at them now. Look at what they do while I record these words. Hah! I give them enduring eons of enforced tranquility which plods on and on despite their every effort to escape into chaos. Believe me, the memory of Leto's Peace shall abide with them forever. They will seek their quiet security thereafter only with extreme caution and steadfast preparation.
-The Stolen Journals
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(17) Siona got to her feet. "Have you asked the Worm why he confines us this way?"
"Leto's Peace, the Golden Path to insure our survival. That's what he says."
"Do you know what he told my father? I spied on them when I was a child. I heard him."
"What did he say'?"
"He said he denies us most crises, to limit our forming forces. He said: `People can be sustained by affliction. but I am the affliction now. Gods can become afflictions.' Those were his words, Duncan. The Worm is a sickness!"
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(18) "You see, Duncan? Peace encourages aggression."
"And you say that your Golden Path..."
"Is not precisely peace. It is tranquility, a fertile ground for the growth of rigid classes and many other forms of aggression."
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(19) "I don't believe any of this! You're playing some dangerous game of your own."
"Very dangerous. I address ancient wellsprings of human behavior to redirect them. The danger is that I could suppress the forces of human survival. But I assure you that my Golden Path endures."
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(20) "Do you keep my faith?"
"Yes, Lord!"
"Do you walk the Golden Path?"
"Yes. Lord"
The vibration of the women's shouts sent shock waves through Idaho, stunning him.
-- Siaynoq - ritual words --
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(21) "Ahhh, yes, and for the Atreides, melange may roll the mystery of Time through a peculiar process of internal revelation."
"I have only to remember the way you tested me, Lord."
"Do you not see the necessity for you to sense the Golden Path?"
"That is not what I fear, Lord."
"You fear the other astonishment, the thing which made me make my choice."
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(22) "Nothing is ever separated from its source," he said. "Seeing futures is a vision of a continuum in which all things take shape like bubbles forming beneath a waterfall. You see them and then they vanish into the stream. If the stream ends, it is as though the bubbles never were. That stream is my Golden Path and I saw it end."
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(24) "You know how you will die?"
"Not how. I know only the Golden Path in which it will occur."
"Lord, I do not..."
"It is difficult to understand, I know. I will die four deaths -- the death of the flesh, the death of the soul, the death of the myth and the death of reason. And all of these deaths contain the seed of resurrection."
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(25) "All religions are a single communion. The spectrum remains unbroken within the Golden Path. It is only that humans see first one part and then another. Delusions can be called accidents of the senses."
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(26) She arose, then: "Lord, could you be wrong about your Golden Path? Does the possibility of failure..."
"Anything and anyone can fail," he said, "but brave good friends help."
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(27) "As you will."
How gentle and open her quiet acceptance, he thought.
The aching pulse within him had to be calmed. In itself, it was a danger to him and to the Golden Path.
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(28) "When I am gone, they must call me Shaitan, the Emperor of Gehenna. The wheel must turn and turn and turn along the Golden Path."
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(29) "People have to be prepared for saints," he said. "Otherwise, they simply become followers, supplicants, beggars and weakened sycophants forever in the shadow of the saint. People are destroyed by this because it nurtures only weakness."
After a moment of thought, she nodded, then: "Will there be saints when you are gone?"
"That's the purpose of my Golden Path."
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(30) "Will Siona replace you if..."
"Ahhh, what an enormous if! You observe that Siona threatens my person. However, she does not threaten the Golden Path. There is also the fact that my Fish Speakers have a certain attachment to the Duncan."
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(31) "Does Ix still threaten your Golden Path? I've always known they conspired in something evil."
-- Hwi Noree's opinion --
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(32) The primate thinks and, by thinking, survives. Beneath his thinking is a thing which came with his cells. It is the current of human concerns for the species. Sometimes, they cover it up, wall it off and hide it behind thick barriers, but I have deliberately sensitized Moneo to these workings of his innermost self. He follows me because he believes I hold the best course for human survival. He knows there is a cellular awareness. It is what I find when I scan the Golden Path. This is humanity and both of us agree: it must endure!
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(33) The pattern of monarchies and similar systems has a message of value for all political forms. My memories assure me that governments of any kind could profit from this message. Governments can be useful to the governed only so long as inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained. Monarchies have some good features beyond their star qualities. They can reduce the size and parasitic nature of the management bureaucracy. They can make speedy decisions when necessary. They fit an ancient human demand for a parental (tribal/feudal) hierarchy where every person knows his place. It is valuable to know your place, even if that place is temporary. It is galling to be held in place against your will. This is why I teach about tyranny in the best possible way by example. Even though you read these words after a passage of eons, my tyranny will not be forgotten. My Golden Path assures this. Knowing my message, I expect you to be exceedingly careful about the powers you delegate to any government.
-The Stolen Journals
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(34) For a few moments while he lay there {His tower}, he could shed the loads of the Golden Path. Moneo, good and reliable Moneo, would see that Siona arrived promptly, just at nightfall. Leto had a full day in which to relax and think, to play and pretend that he possessed no cares, to drink up the raw sustenance of the earth in a feeding frenzy which he could never indulge in at Onn or at the Citadel. In those places, he was required to confine himself to furtive burrowings through narrow passages where only prescient caution kept him from encountering waterpockets. Here, though, he could race through the sand and across it, feed and grow strong.
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(35) "Your damned Golden Path!"
"Not damned at all. Quite holy."
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(36) Memory has a curious meaning to me, a meaning I have hoped others might share. It continually astonished me how people hide from their ancestral memories, shielding themselves behind a thick barrier of mythos. Ohhh, I do not expect them to seek the terrible immediacy of every living moment which I must experience. I can understand that they might not want to be submerged in a mush of petty ancestral details. You have reason to fear that your living moments might be taken over by others. Yet, the meaning is there within those memories. We carry all of our ancestry forward like a living wave, all of the hopes and joys and griefs, the agonies and the exultations of our past. Nothing within those memories remains completely without meaning or influence, not as long as there is a humankind somewhere. We have that bright Infinity all around us, that Golden Path of forever to which we can continually pledge our puny but inspired allegiance.
-The Stolen Journals
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(37, 38) "You have felt your past," he said. "Now, you must be sensitized to your future, to the Golden Path."
She swallowed. "I don't believe in your Golden Path."
"If you are to live, you will believe in it."
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(39) "Without me there would have been by now no people anywhere, none whatsoever. And the path to that extinction was more hideous than your wildest imaginings."
"Your supposed prescience," she sneered.
"The Golden Path still stands open," he said.
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(40) "You are the Golden Path," he said.
"Me?" It was barely a whisper.
"You've read those journals you stole from me," he said. "I am in them, but where are you? Look at what I have created, Siona. And you, you can create nothing except yourself."
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(41) "The Golden Path," she whispered. "I can feel it." Then, glaring at him. "It's so cruel!"
-- Siona's opinion --
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(42, 43) He saw the flame of rebellion return to her eyes. She did not have to feel guilty or dependent. She no longer could avoid belief in his Golden Path, but what difference did that make? His cruelties could not be forgiven! She could reject him, deny him a place in her family. He was not a human, not like her at all. And she possessed the secret of his undoing! Ring him with water, destroy his desert, immobilize him within a moat of agony! Did she think she hid her thoughts from him by turning away?
And what can I do about it? he wondered. She must live now while I must demonstrate nonviolence.
Now that he knew something of Siona's nature, how easy it would be to surrender, to sink blindly into his own thoughts. It was seductive, this talon to live only within his memories, but his children still required another lesson-by-example if they were to escape the last threat to the Golden Path.
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(44, 45) She has survived as I did. Siona now had an inner sense which told her that the Golden Path remained unbroken. As I have. He found no sense of sharing in this, nothing to make him feel closer to his daughter. It was a burden and it would inevitably curb her rebellious nature. No Atreides could go against the Golden Path. Leto had seen to that!
-- Moneo's opinion --
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(46,47) "Lord, I know you have tested her and she..."
"She senses the Golden Path as deeply as you do, Moneo."
"Then why do I fear her, Lord?"
"Because you raise reason above all else."
"But I do not know the reason for my fear!"
Leto smiled. This was like playing bubble dice in an infinite bowl. Moneo's emotions were a marvelous play performed only on this stage. How near the edge he walked without ever seeing it!
"Moneo, why do you insist on taking pieces out of the continuum?" Leto asked. "When you see a spectrum, do you desire one color there above all the others?"
"Lord, I don't understand you!"
Leto closed his eyes, remembering the countless times he had heard this cry. The faces were an unseparated blend. He opened his eyes to erase them.
"As long as one human remains alive to see them, the colors will not suffer a linear mortis even if you die, Moneo."
"What is this thing of colors, Lord?"
"The continuum, the never-ending, the Golden Path."
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(48) "The Golden Path endures, Moneo. You know that as well as I"
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(49,50) Leto flexed his front segments away from Malky to face Moneo. "Do you really serve the Golden Path, Moneo?"
"Ahhh, the Golden Path," Malky taunted.
"You know I do, Lord," Moneo said.
-- Moneo's opinion --
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(51) Leto squirmed away and went to the shadowed limit of the chamber, keeping his attention on the faint arc of a line which would become an opening into the night if he merely converted the wish into a thought-of-command. What a long drop that would be out there -- just roll off the landing-lip. He doubted that even his body would survive it. But there was no water in the sand beneath his tower and he could feel the Golden Path winking in and out of existence merely because he allowed himself to think of such an end.
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(52) "How did he test you?" Idaho asked.
"He showed me a... he showed me his Golden Path."
-- Siona's opinion --
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(53) "My gift," Leto said. "Nobody will find the descendants of Siona. The Oracle cannot see her."
"What?" They spoke in unison, leaning close to hear his fading voice.
"I give you a new kind of time without parallels," he said. "It will always diverge. There will be no concurrent points on its curves. I give you the Golden Path. That is my gift. Never again will you have the kinds of concurrence that once you had."
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(54) Siona said: "I am different, but still I am what he was."
Idaho spoke in a hushed whisper: "The ancestors, all of..."
"The multitude is there but I walk silently among them and no one sees me. The old images are gone and only the essence remains to light his Golden Path."
-- Siona's opinion --