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This article or section refers to elements from Original Dune |
- Duncan: "There are floater bulbs under that cart, but he uses the wheels. Why is that?"
- Moneo: "It pleases the Lord Leto to use wheels instead of antigravity."
- Duncan: "What makes the thing go? How does he steer it?"
- Moneo: "It is said that the Lord Leto activates his cart and steers it just by thinking in a particular way."
- Duncan: "Don’t you know?"
- Moneo: "Questions such as this do not please him."
- — Leto's ghola and majordomo[src]
The Royal Cart was an advanced Ixian machine upon which God Emperor Leto Atreides II moved himself about after his sandtrout-induced metamorphosis gradually enlarged his body to the point his legs were useless.[1] While not part of the cart itself, an important companion piece to this vehicle was Leto's Ixian dictatel, which remotely transcribed Leto's thoughts into words printed on ridulian crystal sheets.[2]
Description[]
Made of plasteel,[3] the cart was customized specifically for the God Emperor, serving as both a mobile throne and prosthetic extension of his body. As such, it incorporated various devices such as thought-controlled steering and remote piloting,[4] storage compartments for special items,[5] sound amplifiers for public speeches,[6] a warning bell and white-noise distortion klaxon to pacify unruly encounters,[7] and a domed canopy that kept out moisture via drying fans[8] and could slide open on his whim,[9] turn opaque like a one-way mirror,[10] and detach itself for easy replacement.[11] His cart also had the capability of moving on both retractable wheels and underlying suspensor bulbs,[12] with lethal speed if necessary.[13]
By Leto's thirty-fifth century of life, his cart measured some seven meters long and over two meters wide,[14] having been upgraded with occasional modular extensions to accommodate his growing length.[15]
Little is directly stated on the cart's design, but it was presumably sloped to ease Leto's boarding and dismount,[16] elevated low enough to allow Fish Speakers to touch Leto's body during Siaynoq,[17] and its suspensor bulbs had to have jutted from its central underbelly where they could be easily targeted by a frontal discharge of lasgun fire without hitting its wheels.[18] Described as a retractable hood,[19] the bubble canopy was likely flexible like a stilltent and separated vertically so Leto could easily adjust its aperture[20] and peer from it at different angles.[21][22]
The Royal Cart arrives at the Festival City of Onn
The God Emperor's preference for wheels over suspensors was treated as a sensitive subject by his majordomo, Moneo Atreides — possibly to avoid acknowledging Leto's sandworm sensitivity to Holtzman fields.[23] The topic of brainwave control was similarly handwaved, but out of legitimate ignorance on Moneo's part.[24]
Gallery[]
Appearances[]
References[]
- ↑ How do I carry this weight around? Mostly on my Royal Cart, which is of Ixian manufacture. — God Emperor of Dune
- ↑ These very words you are reading were printed by an Ixian device, a dictatel it is called. If I cast my thoughts in a particular mode, the dictatel is activated. I merely think in this mode and the words are printed for me on ridulian crystal sheets only one molecule thick.
- ↑ Turning in a tight arc, he hit more of them on the other side, feeling the crushing impact of flesh against plasteel, a red spray of blood, then he was down off the road into an erosion gully.
- ↑ At his beckoning thought, the cart and its burden returned to the landing-lip.
- ↑ As he swallowed the wafer, Idaho grew conscious of the stillness in the hall, a breath-held quiet into which came a loud click from Leto’s cart. Idaho turned and sought the source of the sound. Leto had opened a compartment in the bed of his cart and was removing a crystal box from it.
- ↑ “My beloveds,” Leto said. His voice boomed out over the upturned faces, carried to the farthest corners by subtle Ixian amplifiers concealed in the Royal Cart.
- ↑ He had applied more speed to his cart, closing the distance between himself and the guards, beginning then to ring a warning bell and sound the cart’s distortion klaxon. White noise blared across the scene, disorienting even some of the Fish Speakers who were conditioned to it.
- ↑ Leto could hear the faint stirring of the fans which pulsed his air through a drying cycle.
- ↑ The air was full of thick mists from the river tumbling in its distant clamor, but Leto had opened the bubble cover which sealed the front of his cart. The moisture made his worm-self tingle with vague distress, but there was the smell of sweet desert growth in the mist and his human nostrils savored it.
- ↑ The cart’s cover had been set on one-way opaque, concealing its occupant, and was tightly sealed against moisture.
- ↑ Leto heard ’thopters coming, saw the glint of sunlight on their wings and rotors and, when he focused intently, made out the fresh canopy for his cart slung beneath one of them.
- ↑ “You’re on the suspensors,” he said, returning his attention to the front.
“I have retracted the wheels because the women will press close around me,” Leto said. “We can’t crush their feet.” - ↑ He swerved the Royal Cart off the road to his right, shifted from wheels to suspensors and drove the vehicle back like a battering ram into a clot of Face Dancers trying to enter the fray from his side.
- ↑ My body is about seven meters long and somewhat more than two meters in diameter, ribbed for most of its length, with my Atreides face positioned man-height at one end, the arms and hands (still quite recognizable as human) just below.
- ↑ “He . . . he wants an extension for his cart.”
“Then he expects to grow longer. What else?” - ↑ Leto climbed back onto the Royal Cart.
- ↑ As Idaho marched stoically ahead, women reached from all sides to touch him, to touch Leto, or merely to touch the Royal Cart.
- ↑ But the lasgun was still humming and, as Moneo’s hands slipped from the cable’s severed end, he saw lancing flame strike the cart’s suspensor bubbles, piercing one after another in eruptions of golden smoke.
- ↑ Leto lay directly in front of him on the Imperial Cart, its bubble hood retracted.
- ↑ Leto adjusted his position on the cart, closed part of the bubble cover and left only his head free.
- ↑ Leto turned and looked squarely at Moneo. The majordomo wore a green cloak over his white uniform. He stood beside the open bubble cover, exactly in the place where duty required that he station himself on these excursions.
- ↑ Leto rolled his body on the cart, arched the front upward out of the bubble shield and peered ahead.
- ↑ "According to Idaho's report," Hawat said, "shields are dangerous in the desert. A body-size shield will call every worm for hundreds of meters around. It appears to drive them into a killing frenzy." — Dune
- ↑ Even to his intimates, Moneo thought, The God Emperor remains a mystery. — God Emperor of Dune