this one? It was a mitigating argument which eased her wounded feelings. As many times as she’d used Voice on others, she’d never expected to be susceptible to it . . . not ever again . . . not since the school days when . . .
He turned back to her. “I’m sorry. I just happen to know how blindly you can be expected to react when—”
“Blindly? Me?” She was more outraged by this than she’d been by his exquisite use of Voice against her.
“You,” he said. “Blindly. If you’ve any honesty left in you at all, you’ll recognize your own reactions. I call your name and you say, ‘Yes?’ I silence your tongue. I invoke all your Bene Gesserit myths. Look inward the way you were taught. That, at least, is something you can do for your—”
“How dare you! What do you know of . . .” Her voice trailed off. Of course he knew!
“Look inward, I say!” His voice was imperious.
Again, his voice enthralled her. She found her senses stilled, felt a quickening of breath. Just beyond awareness lurked a pounding heart, the panting of . . . Abruptly she realized that the quickened breath, the pounding heart, were not latent, not held at bay by her Bene Gesserit control. Eyes widening in shocked awareness, she felt her own flesh obeying other commands. Slowly she recovered her poise, but the realization remained. This unchild had been playing her like a fine instrument throughout their interview.
“Now you know how profoundly you were conditioned by your precious Bene Gesserits,” he said.
She could only nod. Her belief in words lay shattered. Leto had forced her to look her physical universe squarely in the face, and she’d come away shaken, her mind running with a new awareness. “Show me his body!” He’d shown her her own body as though it were newborn. Not since her earliest schooling days on Wallach, not since those terrifying days before the Duke’s buyers came for her, not since then had she felt such trembling uncertainty about her next moments.
“You will allow yourself to be abducted,” Leto said.
“But—”
“I’m not asking for discussion on this point,” he said. “You will allow it. Think of this as a command from your Duke. You’ll see the purpose when it’s done. You’re going to confront a very interesting student.”
Leto stood, nodded. He said: “Some actions have an end but no beginning; some begin but do not end. It all depends upon where the observer is standing.” Turning, he left her chambers.
In the second anteroom, Leto met Ghanima hurrying into their private quarters. She stopped as she saw him, said: “Alia’s busy with the Convocation of the Faith.” She looked a question at the passage which led to Jessica’s quarters.
“It worked,” Leto said.
Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and perpetrator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself—a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.
—THE APOCRYPHA OF MUAD’DIB
Shortly after noon, when most of the pilgrims had wandered off to refresh themselves in whatever cooling shade and source of libation they could find, The Preacher entered the great square below Alia’s Temple. He came on the arm of his surrogate eyes, young Assan Tariq. In a pocket beneath his flowing robe, The Preacher carried the black gauze mask he’d worn on Salusa Secundus. It amused him to think that the mask and the boy served the same purpose—disguise. While he needed surrogate eyes, doubts remained alive.
Let the myth grow, but keep doubts alive, he thought.
No one must discover that the mask was merely cloth, not an Ixian artifact at all. His hand must not slip from Assan Tariq’s bony shoulder. Let The Preacher once walk as the sighted despite his eyeless sockets, and all doubts would dissolve. The small hope he nursed would be dead. Each day he prayed for a change, something different over which he might stumble, but even Salusa Secundus had been a pebble, every aspect known. Nothing changed; nothing could be changed . . . yet.
Many people marked his passage past the shops and arcades, noting the way he turned his head from side to side, holding it centered on a doorway or a person. The movements of his head were not always blind-natural, and this added to the growing myth.