"Frank Herbert - Dune 4 - God Emporer of Dune" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

for me is well grounded.
"My agent will continue to watch her new companions, Lord," Moneo said. "I do
not like them."
"Her companions? I myself had such companions once long ago."
"Rebellious, Lord? You?" Moneo was genuinely surprised.
"Have I not proved a friend of rebellion?"
"But Lord. . ."
"The aberrations of our past are more numerous than you may think!"
"Yes, Lord." Moneo was abashed, yet still curious. And he knew that the God
Emperor sometimes waxed loquacious after the death of a Duncan. "You must have
seen many rebellions, Lord."
Involuntarily, Leto's thoughts sank into the memories aroused by these words.
"Ahhh, Moneo," he muttered. "My travels in the ancestral mazes have memorized
uncounted places and events which I never desire to see repeated."
"I can imagine your inward travels, Lord."
"No, you cannot. I have seen peoples and planets in such
numbers that they lose meaning even in imagination. Ohhh, the landscapes I have
passed. The calligraphy of alien roads glimpsed from space and imprinted upon my
innermost sight. The eroded sculpture of canyons and cliffs and galaxies has
imprinted upon me the certain knowledge that I am a mote."
"Not you, Lord. Certainly not you."
"Less than a mote! I have seen people and their fruitless societies in such
repetitive posturings that their nonsense fills me with boredom, do you hear?"
"I did not mean to anger my Lord." Moneo spoke meekly.
"You don't anger me. Sometimes you irritate me, that is the extent of it. You
cannot imagine what I have seen-caliphs and mjeeds, rakahs, rajas and bashars,
kings and emperors, primitos and presidents-I've seen them all. Feudal
chieftains, every one. Every one a little pharaoh."
"Forgive my presumption, Lord."
"Damn the Romans!" Leto cried.
He spoke it inwardly to his ancestors: "Damn the Romans!"
Their laughter drove him from the inward arena.
"I don't understand, Lord," Moneo ventured.
"That's true. You don't understand. The Romans broadcast the pharaonic disease
like grain farmers scattering the seeds of next season's harvest -Caesars,
kaisers, tsars, imperators, caseris . . . palatos . . . damned pharaohs?"
"My knowledge does not encompass all of those titles, Lord."
"I may be the last of the lot, Moneo. Pray that this is so."
"Whatever my Lord commands."
Leto stared down at the man. "We are myth-killers, you and I, Moneo. That's the
dream we share. I assure you from a God's Olympian perch that government is a
shared myth. When the myth dies, the government dies."
"Thus you have taught me, Lord."
"That man-machine, the Army, created our present dream, my friend."
Moneo cleared his throat.
Leto recognized the small signs of the majordomo's impatience.
Moneo understands about armies. He knows it was a fool's dream that armies were
the basic instrument of governance.
As Leto continued silent, Moneo crossed to the lasgun and retrieved it from the
crypt's cold floor. He began disabling it.