Watching Moneo, Leto felt the flow of an observational awareness, a thought

process which occurred so rarely but with such vivid amplication when it did

occur, that Leto did not stir lest he cause a ripple in the flow.

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!

"Where, when and how will the wedding ceremony be conducted?" Moneo asked.

Not why? Leto noted. Moneo no longer sought to understand the why. He had

returned to safe ground. He was the majordomo, the director of the God Emperor's

household, the First Minister.

He has names and verbs and modifiers with which he can perform. The words will

work for him in their usual ways. Moneo may never glimpse the transcendental

potential of his words, but he well understands their everyday, mundane uses.

"What of my question?" Moneo pressed.

Leto blinked at him, thinking: , on the other hand, feel that words are mostly

useful if they open for me a glimpse of attractive and undiscovered places. But

the use of words is so little understood by a civilization which still believes

unquestioningly in a mechanical universe of absolute cause and effect-obviously

reducible to one single root-cause and one primary seminal-effect.

"How like a limpet the Ixian-Tleilaxu fallacy clings to human affairs," Leto

said.

"Lord, it disturbs me deeply when you don't pay attention."

"But I do pay attention, Moneo."

"Not to me."

"Even to you."

"Your attention wanders, Lord. You do not have to conceal that from me. I would

betray myself before I would betray

you."

"You think I'm woolgathering?"

"What gathering, Lord?" Moneo had never questioned this word earlier, but now .

. .

Leto explained the allusion, thinking: How ancient! The looms and shuttles

clicked in Leto's memory. Animal fur to human garments . . . huntsman to

herdsman . . . the long steps up the ladder of awareness . . . and now they must

make another long step, longer even than the ancient ones.

"You indulge in idle thoughts," Moneo accused.

"I have time for idle thoughts. That's one of the most interesting things about

my existence as a singular multitude."

"But, Lord, there are matters which demand our. . ."

"You'd be surprised what comes of idle thinking, Moneo. I've never minded

spending an entire day on things a human would not bother with for one minute.

Why not? With my life expectancy of some four thousand years, what's one day

more

or less? How much time does one human life count? A million minutes? I've

already experienced almost that many days."

Moneo stood frozen in silence, diminished by this comparison. He felt his own

lifetime reduced to a mote in Leto's eye. The source of the allusion did not

escape him.

Words . . . words . . . words, Moneo thought.

"Words are often almost useless in sentient affairs," Leto said.

Moneo held his breathing to a shallow minimum. The Lord can read thoughts!

"Throughout our history," Leto said, "the most potent use of words has been to

round out some transcendental event, giving that event a place in the accepted

chronicles, explaining the event in such a way that ever afterward we can use

those words and say: "This is what it meant."

Moneo felt beaten down by these words, terrified by unspoken things they might

make him think.

"That's how events get lost in history," Leto said.

After a long silence, Moneo ventured: "You have not answered my question, Lord.

The wedding?"

How tired he sounds, Leto thought. How utterly defeated.

Leto spoke briskly: "I have never needed your good offices more. The wedding

must be managed with utmost care. It must have the precision of which only you

are capable."

"Where, Lord?"

A bit more life in his voice.

"At Tabur Village in the Sareer."

"When?"

"I leave the date to you. Announce it when all things are arranged."

"And the ceremony itself ?"

"I will conduct it."

"Will you need assistants, Lord? Artifacts of any kind?"

"The trappings of ritual?"

"Any particular thing which I may not. . ."

"We will not need much for our little charade."

"Lord! I beg of you! Please. . ."

"You will stand beside the bride and give her in marriage," Leto said. "We will

use the Old Fremen ritual."

"We will need water rings then," Moneo said.

"Yes! I will use Ghani's water rings."

"And who will attend, Lord?"

"Only a Fish Speaker guard and the aristocracy."

Moneo stared at Leto's face. "What . . . what does my Lord mean by

`aristocracy'?"

"You, your family, the household entourage, the courtiers of the Citadel."

"My fam . . ." Moneo swallowed. "Do you include Siona?"

"If she survives the test."

"But. . .

"Is she not family?"

"Of course, Lord. She is Atreides and. . ."

"Then by all means include Siona!"

Moneo brought a tiny memocorder from his pocket, a dull black Ixian artifact

whose existence crowded the proscriptions of the Butlerian Jihad. A soft smile

touched Leto's lips. Moneo knew his duties and would now perform them.

The clamor of Duncan Idaho outside the portal grew more strident, but Moneo

ignored the sound.

Moneo knows the price of his privileges, Leto thought. It is another kind of

marriage-the marriage of privilege and duty. It is the aristocrat's explanation

and his excuse.

Moneo finished his note taking.

"A few details, Lord," Moneo said. "Will there be some special garb for Hwi?"

"The stillsuit and robe of a Fremen bride, real ones."

"Jewelry or other baubles?"

Leto's gaze locked on Moneo's fingers scrabbling over the tiny recorder, seeing

there a dissolution.

Leadership, courage, a .sense of knowledge and order Moneo has these in

abundance. They surround him like a holy aura, but they conceal from all eyes

except mine the rot which eats from within. It is inevitable. Were I gone, it

would be visible to everyone.

"Lord?" Moneo pressed. "Are you woolgathering?"

Ahhh! He likes that word!

"That is all," Leto said. "Only the robe, the stillsuit and the water rings."

Moneo bowed and turned away.

He is looking ahead now, Leto thought, but even this new thing will pass. He

will turn toward the past once more. And I had such high hopes for him once.

Well . . . perhaps Siona . . .

===

"Make no heroes," my father said.

-The voice of Ghanima,

From the Oral History

JUST BY the way Idaho strode across the small chamber, his loud demands for

audience now gratified, Leto could see an important transformation in the ghola.

It was a thing repeated so many times that it had become deeply familiar to

Leto. The Duncan had not even exchanged words of greeting with the departing

Moneo. It all fitted into the pattern. How boring that pattern had become!

Leto had a name for this transformation of the Duncans. He called it "The Since

Syndrome."

The gholas often nurtured suspicions about the secret things which might have

been developed across the centuries of oblivion since they last knew awareness.

What had people been doing all that time? Why could they possibly want me, this

relic from their past? No ego could overcome such doubts forever-especially in a

doubting man.

One of the gholas had accused Leto: "You've put things in my body, things I know

nothing about! These things in my body tell you everything I'm doing! You spy on

me everywhere!"

Another had charged him with possessing a "manipulative machine which makes us

want to do whatever you want."

Once it started, the Since Syndrome could never be entirely eliminated. It could

be checked, even diverted, but the dormant seed might sprout at the slightest

provocation.

Idaho stopped where Moneo had stood and there was a veiled look of nonspecific

suspicions in his eyes, in the set of his shoulders. Leto allowed the situation

to simmer, bringing the condition to a head. Idaho locked gazes with him, then

broke away to dart his glances around the room. Leto recognized the manner

behind the gaze.

The Duncans never forget!

As he studied the room, using the sightful ways he had been taught centuries

before by the Lady Jessica and the Mentat Thufir Hawat, Idaho began to feel a

giddy sense of dislocation. He thought the room rejected him, each thing-the

soft cushions: big bulbous things in gold, green and a red that was almost

purple; the Fremen rugs, each a museum piece, lapping over each other in thick

piles around Leto's pit; the false sunlight of Ixian glowglobes, light which

enveloped the Emperor's face in dry warmth, making the shadows around it deeper

and more mysterious; the smell of spice-tea somewhere nearby; and that rich

melange odor which radiated from the worm-body.

Idaho felt that too much had happened to him too fast since the Tleilaxu had

abandoned him to the mercies of Luli and Friend in that featureless prison-cell

room.

Too much . . . too much . . .

Am I really here? he wondered. Is this me? What are these thoughts that I think?

He stared at Leto's quiescent body, the shadowy and enormous mass which lay so

silently there on its cart within the pit. The very quietness of that fleshly

mass only suggested mysterious energies, terrible energies which might be

unleashed in ways nobody could anticipate.

Idaho had heard the stories about the fight at the Ixian Embassy, but the Fish

Speaker accounts had an aura of miraculous visitation about them which obscured

the physical data.

"He flew down from above them and executed a terrible slaughter among the

sinners."

"How did he do that?" Idaho had asked.

"He was an angry God," his informant had said.

Angry, Idaho thought. Was it because of the threat to Hwi? The stories he had

heard! None were believable. Hwi wedded to this gross . . . It was not possible!

Not the lovely Hwi, the Hwi of gentle delicacy. He is playing some terrible

game, testing us . . . testing us . . . There was no honest reality in these

times, no peace except in the presence of Hwi. All else was insanity.

As he returned his attention to Leto's face-that silently waiting Atreides facethe

sense of dislocation grew stronger in Idaho. He began to wonder if, by a

slight increase in mental

effort along some strange new pathway, he might break through ghostly barriers

to remember all of the experiences of the other Ghola Idahos.

What did they think when they entered this room? Did they feel this dislocation,

this rejection?

Just a little extra effort.

He felt dizzy and wondered if he were going to faint.

"Is something wrong, Duncan?" It was Leto's most reasonable and calming tone.

"It's not real," Idaho said. "I don't belong here."

Leto chose to misunderstand. "But my guard tells me you came here of your own

accord, that you flew back from the Citadel and demanded an immediate audience."

"I mean here, now! In this time!"

"But I need you."

"For what?"

"Look around you, Duncan. The ways you can help me are so numerous that you

could not do them all."

"But your women won't let me fight! Every time I want to go where.. ."

"Do you question that you're more valuable alive than dead?" Leto made a

clucking sound, then: "Use your wits, Duncan! That's what I value."

"And my sperm. You value that."

"Your sperm is your own to put where you wish."

"I will not leave a widow and orphans behind me the way...

"Duncan! I've said the choice is yours."

Idaho swallowed, then: "You've committed a crime against us, Leto, against all

of us=the gholas you resurrect without ever asking us if that's what we want."

This was a new turn in Duncan-thinking. Leto peered at Idaho with renewed

interest.

"What crime?"

"Oh, I've heard you spouting your deep thoughts," Idaho accused. He hooked a

thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the room's entrance. "Did you know you can

be heard out there in the anteroom?"

"When I wish to be heard, yes." But only my journals hear it all! "I would like

to know the nature of my crime, though."

"There's a time, Leto, a time when you're alive. A time when you're supposed to

be alive. It can have a magic, that

time, while you're living it. You know you're never going to see a time like

that again."

Leto blinked, touched by the Duncan's distress. The words were evocative.

Idaho raised both hands, palms up, to chest-height, a beggar Asking for

something he knew he could not receive.

"Then . . . one day you wake up and you remember dying . . . and you remember

the axlotl tank . . . and the Tleilaxu nastiness which awakened you . . . and

it's supposed to start all over again. But it doesn't. It never does, Leto.

That's a crime!"

"I have taken away the magic?"

"Yes!"

Idaho dropped his hands to his sides and clenched them into fists. He felt that

he stood alone in the path of a millrace tide which would overwhelm him at his

slightest relaxation.

And what of my time? Leto thought. This, too, will never happen again. But the

Duncan would not understand the difference.

"What brought you rushing back from the Citadel?" Leto asked.

Idaho took a deep breath, then: "Is it true? You're to be married?"

"That's correct."

"To this Hwi Noree, the Ixian Ambassador?"

"True."

Idaho darted a quick glance along Leto's supine length.

They always look for genitalia, Leto thought. Perhaps I should have something

made, a gross protuberance to shock them. He choked back the small burst of

amusement which threatened to erupt from his throat. Another emotion amplified.

Thank you, Hwi. Thank you, lxians.

Idaho shook his head. "But you. . ."

"There are strong elements to a marriage other than sex," Leto said. "Will we

have children of our flesh? No. But the effects of this union will be profound."

"I listened while you were talking to Moneo," Idaho said. "I thought it must be

some kind of joke, a . . ."

"Careful, Duncan!"

"Do you love her?"

"More deeply than any man ever loved a woman."

"Well, what about her? Does she.. ."

"She feels . . . a compelling compassion, a need to share

with me, to give whatever she can give. It is her nature."

Idaho suppressed a feeling of revulsion.

"Moneo's right. They'll believe the Tleilaxu stories."

"That is one of the profound effects."

"And you still want me to . . . to mate with Siona!"

"You know my wishes. I leave the choice to you."

"Who's that Nayla woman?"

"You've met Nayla! Good."

"She and Siona act like sisters. That big hunk! What's going on there, Leto?"

"What would you want to go on? And what does it matter?" "I've never met such a

brute! She reminds me of Beast Rabban. You'd never know she was female if she

didn't. . ."

"You have met her before," Leto said. "You knew her as Friend."

Idaho stared at him in quick silence, the silence of a burrowing creature who

senses the hawk.

"Then you trust her," Idaho said.

"Trust? What is trust?"

The moment arrives, Leto thought. He could see it shaping in Idaho's thoughts.

"Trust is what goes with a pledge of loyalty," Idaho said. "Such as the trust

between you and me?" Leto asked.

A bitter smile touched Idaho's lips. "So that's what you're doing with Hwi

Noree? A marriage, a pledge..."

"Hwi and I already have trust for each other."

"Do you trust me, Leto?"

"If I cannot trust Duncan Idaho, I cannot trust anyone."

"And if I can't trust you?"

"Then I pity you."

Idaho took this as almost a physical shock. His eyes were wide with unspoken

demands. He wanted to trust. He wanted the magic which would never come again.

Idaho indicated his thoughts were taking off in an odd tangent then.

"Can they hear us out in the anteroom?" he asked.

"No." But my journals hear!

"Moneo was furious. Anyone could see it. But he went away like a docile lamb."

"Moneo is an aristocrat. He is married to duty, to responsibilities. When he is

reminded of these things, his anger vanishes."

"So that's how you control him," Idaho said.

"He controls himself," Leto said, remembering how Moneo had glanced up from the

note-taking, 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 regime.

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?"

"What other frontier is there?"

"Very good, Duncan! Your anger knows even when your reason does not. Hwi goes to

the Citadel tonight. I will join her there tomorrow."

"I want to get to know her better," Idaho said.

"You will avoid her," Leto said. "That is an order. Hwi is not for you."

"I've always known there were witches," Idaho said. "Your grandmother was one."

He turned on his heel and, not asking leave, strode back the way he had come.

How like a little boy he is, Leto thought, watching the stiffness in Idaho's

back. The oldest man in our universe and the youngest-both in one flesh.

===

The prophet is not diverted by illusions of past, present and future. The fixity

of language determines such linear distinctions. Prophets hold a key to the lock

in a language. The mechanical image remains only an image to them. This is not a

mechanical universe. The linear progression of events is imposed by the

observer. Cause and effect? That's not it at all. The prophet utters fateful

words. You glimpse a thing "destined to occur." But the prophetic instant

releases something of infinite portent and power. The universe undergoes a

ghostly shift. Thus, the wise prophet conceals actuality behind shimmering

labels. The uninitiated then believe the prophetic language is ambiguous. The

listener distrusts the prophetic messenger. Instinct tells you how the utterance

blunts the power of such words. The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and

let you peer through for yourself.

-The Stolen Journals

LETO ADDRESSED Moneo in the coldest voice he had ever used: "The Duncan disobeys

me."

They were in the airy room of golden stone atop the Citadel's south tower,

Leto's third full day back from the Decennial Festival in Onn. An open portal

beside him looked out over the harsh noonday of the Sareer. The wind made a deep

humming sound through the opening. It stirred up dust and sand which made Moneo

squint. Leto seemed not to notice the irritation. He stared out across the

Sareer, where the air was alive with heat movements. The distant flow of dunes

suggested a mobility in the landscape which only his eyes observed.

Moneo stood immersed in the sour odors of his own fear, knowing that the wind

conveyed the message of these odors to Leto's senses. The arrangements for the

wedding, the upset among the Fish Speakers-everything was paradox. It reminded

Moneo of something the God Emperor had said in the first days of their

association.

"Paradox is a pointer telling you to look beyond it. If paradoxes bother you,

that betrays your deep desire for absolutes. The relativist treats a paradox

merely as interesting, perhaps amusing or even, dreadful thought, educational. "

"You do not respond," Leto said. He turned from his examination of the Sareer

and focused the weight of his attention on Moneo.

Moneo could only shrug. How near is the Worm? he wondered. Moneo had noticed

that the return to the Citadel from Onn sometimes aroused the Worm. No sign of

that awful shift in the God Emperor's presence had yet betrayed itself, but

Moneo sensed it. Could the Worm come without warning?

"Accelerate arrangements for the wedding," Leto said. "Make it as soon as

possible."

"Before you test Siona?"

Leto was silent for a moment, then: "No. What will you do about the Duncan,"

"What would you have me do, Lord?"

"I told him not to see Noree, to avoid her. I told him it was an order."

"She has sympathy for him, Lord. Nothing more."

"Why would she have sympathy for him?"

"He is a ghola. He has no connection to our times, no roots."

"He has roots as deep as mine!"

"But he does not know this, Lord."

"Are you arguing with me, Moneo?"

Moneo backed away a half step, knowing that this did not remove him from danger.

"Oh, no, Lord. But I always try to tell you truly what I believe is happening."

"I will tell you what is happening. He is courting her."

"But she initiates their meetings, Lord."

"Then you knew about this!"

"I did not know you had absolutely prohibited it, Lord."

Leto spoke in a musing voice: "He is clever with women,

Moneo, exceedingly clever. He sees into their souls and makes them do what he

wants. It has always been that way with the Duncans."

"I did not know you had prohibited all meetings between them, Lord!" Moneo's

voice was almost strident.

"He is more dangerous than any of the others," Leto said. "It is the fault of

our times."

"Lord, the Tleilaxu do not have a successor for him ready to deliver."

"And we need this one?"

"You said it yourself, Lord. It is a paradox which I do not understand, but you

did say it."

"How long until there could be a replacement?"

"At least a year, Lord. Shall I inquire as to a specific date?"

"Do it today."

"He may hear about it, Lord. The previous one did."

"I do not want it to happen this way, Moneo!"

"I know, Lord."

"And I dare not speak of this to Noree," Leto said. "The Duncan is not for her.

Yet, I cannot hurt her!" This last was almost a wail.

Moneo stood in awed silence.

"Can't you see this?" Leto demanded. "Moneo, help me."

"I see that it is different with Noree," Moneo said. "But I do not know what to

do."

"What is different?" Leto's voice had a penetrating quality which cut right

through Moneo.

"I mean your attitude toward her, Lord. It is different from anything I have

ever seen in you."

Moneo noted then the first signs-twitching in the God Emperor's hands, the

beginning glaze in the eyes. Gods! The Worm is coming! Moneo felt totally

exposed. A simple flick of the great body would crush Moneo against a wall. I

must appeal to the human in him.

"Lord," Moneo said, "I have read the accounts and heard your own words about

your marriage to your sister, Ghanima."

"If only she were with me now," Leto said.

"She was never your mate, Lord."

"What're you suggesting?" Leto demanded.

The twitching of Leto's hands had become a- spasmodic vibration.

"She was . . . I mean, Lord, that Ghanima was Harq al-Ada's mate."

"Of course she was! All of you Atreides are descended from them!"

"Is there something you have not told me, Lord? Is it possible . . . that is,

with Hwi Noree . . . could you mate?"

Leto's hands shook so strongly Moneo wondered that their owner did not know it.

The glazing of the great blue eyes deepened.

Moneo backed another step toward the door to the stairs leading down from this

deadly place.

"Do not question me about possibilities," Leto said, and his voice was hideously

distant, gone somewhere into the layers of his past.

"Never again, Lord," Moneo said. He bowed himself back to only a single pace

from the door. "I will speak to Noree, Lord. . . and to the Duncan."

"Do what you can." Leto's voice was far away in those interior chambers which

only he could enter.

Softly, Moneo let himself out of the door. He closed it behind him and placed

his back against it, trembling. Ahhh, that was the closest ever.

And the paradox remained. Where did it point? What was the meaning of the God

Emperor's odd and painful decisions? What had brought The Worm Who Is God?

A thumping sounded from within Leto's aerie, a heavy beating against stone.

Moneo dared not open the door to investigate. He pushed himself away from the

surface which reflected that dreadful thumping -and went down the stairs, moving

cautiously, not drawing an easy breath until he reached ground level and the

Fish Speaker guard there.

"Is he disturbed?" she asked, looking up the stairs.

Moneo nodded. They both could hear the thumping quite plainly.

"What disturbs him?" the guard asked.

"He is God and we are mortal," Moneo said. This was an answer which usually

satisfied Fish Speakers, but new forces were at work now.

She looked directly at him and Moneo saw the killer training close to the

surface of her soft features. She was a relatively young woman with auburn hair

and a face usually dominated by a turned-up nose and full lips, but now her eyes

were hard and demanding. Only a fool would turn his back on those eyes.

"I did not disturb him," Moneo said.

"Of course not," she agreed. Her look softened slightly.

"But I would like to know who or what did."

"I think he is impatient for his marriage," Moneo said. "I think that's all it

is."

"Then hurry the day!" she said.

"That's what I'm about," Moneo said. He turned and hurried away down the long

hall to his own area of the Citadel. Gods! The Fish Speakers were becoming as

dangerous as the God Emperor.

That stupid Duncan! He puts us all in peril. And Hwi Noree! What's to be done

about her?

===

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

Leto PREPARED with patient care for his first private meeting with Siona since

her childhood banishment to the Fish Speaker schools in the Festival City. He

told Moneo that he would see her at the Little Citadel, a vantage tower he had

built in the

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central Sareer. The site had been chosen to provide views of old and new and

places between. There were no roads to the Little Citadel. Visitors arrived by

'thopter. Leto went there as though by magic. '

With his own hands, in the early days of his ascendancy, Leto has used an Ixian

machine to dig a secret tunnel under the Sareer to his tower, doing all of the

work himself. In those days, a few wild sandworms still roamed the desert. He

had lined his tunnel with massive walls of fused silica and had imbedded

countless bubbles of worm-repelling water in the outer layers. The tunnel

anticipated his maximum growth and the requirements of a Royal Cart which, at

that time, had been only a figment of his visions,

In the early predawn hours of the day assigned to Siona, Leto descended to the

crypt and gave orders to his guard that he was not to be disturbed by anyone.

His cart sped him down one of the crypt's dark spokes where he opened a hidden

portal, emerging in less than an hour at the Little Citadel.

One of his delights was to go out alone onto the sand. No cart. Only his preworm

body to carry him. The sand felt luxuriously sensuous against him. The heat

of his passage through the dunes in the day's first light sent up a wake of

steam which required him to keep moving. He brought himself to a stop only when

he found a relatively dry pocket about five kilometers out. He lay there at the

center of an uncomfortable dampness from the trace-dew, his body just outside

the long shadow of the tower which stretched eastward from him across the dunes.

From a distance, the three thousand meters of the tower could be seen as an

impossible needle stabbing the sky. Only the inspired blend of Leto's commands

and Ixian imagination made the structure conceivable. One hundred and fifty

meters in diameter, the tower sat on a foundation which plunged as deeply under

the sand as it climbed above. The magic of plasteel and superlight alloys kept

it supple in the wind and resistant to sandblast abrasions.

Leto enjoyed the place so much that he rationed his visits, making up a long

list of personal rules which had to be met. The rules added up to "Great

Necessity."

For a few moments while he lay there, 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.

Sand crunched beneath him as he rolled, flexing his body in pure animal

enjoyment. He could feel his worm-self being restored, an electric sensation

which sent messages of health all through him.

The sun was well above the horizon now, painting a golden line up the side of

the tower. There was the smell of bitter dust in the air and an odor of distant

spiny plants which had responded to the morning's trace-dew. Gently at first,

then more rapidly, he moved out in a wide circle around the tower, thinking

about Siona as he went.

There could be no more delays. She had to be tested. Moneo knew this as well as

Leto did.

Just that morning, Moneo had said: "Lord, there is terrible violence in her."

"She has the beginnings of adrenalin addiction," Leto had said. "It's coldturkey

time."

"Cold what, Lord?"

"It's an ancient expression. It means she must be subjected to a complete

withdrawal. She must go through a necessity shock."

"Oh . . . I see."

For once, Leto realized, Moneo did see. Moneo had gone through his own coldturkey

time.

"The young generally are incapable of making hard decisions unless those

decisions are associated with immediate violence and the consequent sharp flow

of adrenalin," Leto had explained.

Moneo had held himself in reflexive silence, remembering, then: "It is a great

peril."

"That's the violence you see in Siona. Even old people can cling to it, but the

young wallow in it."

As he circled his tower in the growing light of the day, enjoying the feel of

the sand even more as it dried, Leto thought about the conversation. He slowed

his passage over the sand. A wind from behind him carried the vented oxygen and

a burnt flint smell over his human nostrils. He inhaled deeply, lifting

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his magnified awareness to a new level.

This preliminary day contained a multiple purpose. He thought of the coming

encounter much as an ancient bullfighter had thought about the first examination

of a horned adversary. Siona possessed her own version of horns, although Moneo

would make certain that she brought no physical weapons to this encounter. Leto

had to be sure, though, that he knew Siona's every strength and every weakness.

And he would have to create special susceptibilities in her wherever possible.

She had to be prepared for the test, her psychic muscles blunted by well-planted

barbs.

Shortly after noon, his worm-self satiated, Leto returned to the tower, crawled

back onto his cart and lifted on suspensors to the very tip of a portal there

which opened only at his command. Throughout the rest of the day, he lay there

in the aerie, thinking, plotting.

The fluttering wings of an ornithopter whispered on the air just at nightfall to

signal Moneo's arrival.

Faithful Moneo.

Leto caused a landing-lip to extrude from his aerie. The 'thopter glided in, its

wings cupped. It settled gently onto the lip. Leto stared out through the

gathering darkness. Siona emerged and darted in toward him, fearful of the

unprotected height. She wore a white robe over a black uniform without insignia.

She stole one look backward when she stopped just inside the tower, then she

turned her attention to Leto's bulk waiting on the cart almost at the center of

the aerie. The 'thopter lifted away and jetted off into the darkness. Leto left

the lip extruded, the portal open.

"There is a balcony on the other side of the tower," he said. "We will go

there."

"Why?"

Siona's voice carried almost pure suspicion.

"I'm told it's a cool place," Leto said. "And there is indeed a faint sensation

of cold on my cheeks when I expose them to the breeze there."

Curiosity brought her closer to him.

Leto closed the portal behind her.

"The night view from the balcony is magnificent," Leto said.

"Why are we here?"

"Because here we will not be overheard."

Leto turned his cart and moved it silently out to the balcony.

The faintest of hidden illumination within the aerie showed her his movement. He

heard her follow.

The balcony was a half-ring on the southeast arc of the tower, a lacy railing at

chest-height around the perimeter. Siona moved to the rail and swept her gaze

around the open land.

Leto sensed the waiting receptivity. Something was to be spoken here for her

ears alone. Whatever it was, she would listen and respond from the well of her

own motives. Leto looked across her toward the edge of the Sareer where the

manmade boundary wall was a low flat line just barely visible in the light of

First Moon lifting above the horizon. His amplified vision identified the

distant movement of a convoy from Onn, a dull glow of lights from the beastdrawn

vehicles pacing along the high road toward Tabur Village.

He could call up a memory-image of the village nestled among the plants which

grew in the moist area along the inner base of the wall. His Museum Fremen

tended date palms, tall grasses and even truck gardens there. It was not like

the old days when any inhabited place, even a tiny basin with a few low plants

fed by a single cistern and windtrap, could appear lush by comparison with the

open sand. Tabur Village was a water-rich paradise when compared with Sietch

Tabr. Everyone in today's village knew that just beyond the Sareer's boundary

wall the Idaho River slid southward in a long straight line which would be

silver now in the moonlight. Museum Fremen could not climb the wall's sheer

inner face, but they knew the water was there. The earth knew, too. If a Tabur

inhabitant put an ear against the ground, the earth spoke with the sound of

distant rapids.

There would be nightbirds along the bankment now, Leto thought, creatures which

would live in sunlight on another world. Dune had worked its evolutionary magic

on them and they still lived at the mercies of the Sareer. Leto had seen the

birds draw dumb shadows across the water and, when they dipped to drink, there

were ripples which the river took away.

Even at this distance, Leto sensed a power in that faraway water, something

forceful out of his past which moved away from him like the current slipping

southward into the reaches of farm and forest. The water searched through

rolling hills, along the margins of an abundant plant life which had replaced

all of Dune's desert except for this one last place, this Sareer, this sanctuary

of the past.

Leto recalled the growling thrust of Ixian machines which

had inflicted that watercourse upon the landscape. It seemed such a short time

ago, little more than three thousand years.

Siona stirred and looked back at him, but Leto remained silent, his attention

fixed beyond her. A pale amber light shone above the horizon, reflection of a

town on faraway clouds. From its direction and distance, Leto knew it to be the

town of Wallport transplanted far into a warmer clime of the south from its

once-austere location in the cold, low-slanted light of the north. The glow of

the town was like a window into his past. He felt the beam of it striking

through to his breast, straight through the thick and scaled membrane which had

replaced his human skin.

am vulnerable, he thought.

Yet, he knew himself to be the master of this place. And the planet was the

master of him.

I am part of it.

He devoured the soil directly, rejecting only the water. His human mouth and

lungs had been relegated to breathing just enough to sustain a remnant humanity

. . . and talking.

Leto spoke to Siona's back: "I like to talk and I dread the day when I no longer

will be able to engage in conversations."

With a certain diffidence, she turned and stared at him in the moonlight, quite

obvious distaste in her expression.

"I agree that I am a monster in many human eyes," he said.

"Why am I here?"

Directly to the point! She would not deviate. Most of the Atreides had been that

way, he thought. It was a characteristic which he hoped to maintain in the

breeding of them. It spoke of a strong inner sense of identity.

"I need to find out what Time has done to you," he said.

"Why do you need that?"

A little fear in her voice there, he thought. She thinks I will probe after her

puny rebellion and the names of her surviving associates.

When he remained silent, she said: "Do you intend to kill me the way you killed

my friends?"

So she has heard about the fight at the Embassy. And she assumes I know all

about her past rebellious activities. Moneo has been lecturing her, damn him!

Well. . .I might have done the same in his circumstances.

"Are you really a god?" she demanded. "I don't understand why my father believes

that."

She has some doubts, he thought. I still have room to maneuver.

"Definitions vary," he said. "To Moneo, I am a god . . . and that is a truth."

"You were human once."

He began to enjoy the leaps of her intellect. She had that sure, hunting

curiosity which was the, hallmark of the Atreides.

"You are curious about me," he said. "It is the same with me. I am curious about

you."

"What makes you think I'm curious?"

"You used to watch me very carefully when you were a child. I see that same look

in your eyes tonight."

"Yes, I have wondered what it's like to be you."

He studied her for a moment. The moonlight drew shadows under her eyes,

concealing them. He could let himself imagine that her eyes were the total blue

of his own eyes, the blue of spice addiction. With that imaginative addition,

Siona bore a curious resemblance to his long-dead Ghani. It was in the outline

of her face and the placement of the eyes. He almost told Siona this, then

thought better of it.

"Do you eat human food?" Siona asked.

"For a long time after I put on the sandtrout skin, I felt stomach hunger," he

said. "Occasionally, I would attempt food. My stomach mostly rejected it. The

cilia of the sandtrout spread almost everywhere in my human flesh. Eating became

a bothersome thing. These days, I only ingest dry substances which sometimes

contain a bit of the spice."

"You . . . eat melange?"

"Sometimes."

"But you no longer have human hungers?"

"I didn't say that."

She stared at him, waiting.

Leto admired the way she let unspoken questions work for her. She was bright and

she had learned much during her short life.

"The stomach hunger was a black feeling, a pain I could not relieve," he said.

"I would run then, run like an insane creature across the dunes."

"You . . . ran?"

"My legs were longer in proportion to my body in those days. I could move myself

about quite easily. But the hungry pain has never left me. I think it's hunger

for my lost humanity."

B$

He saw the beginnings of reluctant sympathy in her, the questioning.

"You still have this . . . pain?"

"It's only a soft burning now. That's one of the signs of my final

metamorphosis. In a few hundred years, I'll be back under the sand."

He saw her clench her fists at her sides. "Why?" she demanded. "Why did you do

this?"

"This change isn't all bad. Today, for example, has been very pleasant. I feel

quite mellow."

"There are changes we cannot see," she said. "I know there must be." She relaxed

her hands.

"My sight and hearing have become extremely acute, but not my sense of touch.

Except for my face, I don't feel things the way I could once. I miss that."

Again, he noted the reluctant sympathy, the striving toward an empathic

understanding. She wanted to know!

"When you live so long," she said, "how does the passage of Time feel? Does it

move more rapidly as the years go by?"

"That's a strange thing, Siona. Sometimes, Time rushes by me; sometimes, it

creeps."

Gradually, as they spoke, Leto had been dimming the concealed lights of his

aerie, moving his cart closer and closer to Siona. Now, he shut off the lights,

leaving only the moon. The front of his cart protruded onto the balcony, his

face only about two meters from Siona.

"My father tells me," she said, "that the older you get, the slower your time

goes. Is that what you told him?"

Testing my veracity, he thought. She's not a Truthsayer, then.

"All things are relative, but compared to the human timesense, this is true."

"Why?"

"It is involved in what I will become. At the end, Time will stop for me and I

will be frozen like a pearl caught in ice. My new bodies will scatter, each with

a pearl hidden within it."

She turned and looked away from him, peering out at the desert, speaking without

looking at him.

"When I talk to you like this here in the darkness I can almost forget what you

are."

"That's why I chose this hour for our meeting."

"But why this place?" .

"Because it is the last place where I can feel at home."

Siona turned against the rail, leaning on it and looking at him. "I want to see

you."

He turned on all of the aerie's lights, including the harsh white globes along

the roof of the balcony's outer edge. As the light came on, an Ixian-made

transparent mask slid out of wall recesses and sealed off the balcony behind

Siona. She felt it move behind her and was startled, but nodded as though she

understood. She thought it was a defense against attack. It was not. The wall

merely kept out the damp insects of the night.

Siona stared at Leto, sweeping her gaze along his body, pausing at the stubs

which once had been his legs, bringing her attention then to his arms and hands,

then to his face.

"Your approved histories tell us that all Atreides are descended from you and

your sister, Ghanima," she said. "The Oral History disagrees."

"The Oral History is correct. Your ancestor was Harq al Ada Ghani and I were

married only in name, a move to consolidate the power."

"Like your marriage to this Ixian woman?"

"That is different."

"You will have children?"

"I have never been capable of having children. I chose the metamorphosis before

that was possible."

"You were a child and then you were-" she pointed "this?"

"Nothing between."

"How does a child know what to choose?"

"I was one of the oldest children this universe has ever seen. Ghani was the

other."

"That story about your ancestral memories!"

"A true story. We're all here. Doesn't the Oral History agree?"

She whirled away and held her back stiffly presented to him. Once more, Leto

found himself fascinated by this human gesture: rejection coupled to

vulnerability. Presently, she turned around and concentrated on his features

within the hooded folds.

"You have the Atreides look," she said.

"I come by it just as honestly as you do."

"You're so old . . . why aren't you wrinkled?"

"Nothing about the human part of me ages in a normal way."

"Is that why you did this to yourself?"

"To enjoy long life? No."

"I don't see how anyone could make such a choice," she muttered. Then louder:

"Never to know love. . ."

"You're playing the fool!" he said. "You don't mean love, you mean sex."

She shrugged.

"You think the most terrible thing I gave up was sex? No, the greatest loss was

something far different."

"What?" She asked it reluctantly, betraying how deeply he touched her.

"I cannot walk among my fellows without their special notice. I am no longer one

of you. I am alone. Love? Many people love me, but my shape keeps us apart. We

are separated, Siona, by a gulf that no other human dares to bridge."

"Not even your Ixian woman?"

"Yes, she would if she could, but she cannot. She's not an Atreides."

"You mean that I . . . could?" She touched her breast with a finger.

"If there were enough sandtrout around. Unfortunately, all of them enclose my

flesh. However, if I were to die. . ."

She shook her head in dumb horror at the thought.

"The Oral History tells it accurately," he said. "And we must never forget that

you believe the Oral History."

She continued to shake her head from side to side.

"There's no secret about it," he said. "The first moments of the transformation

are the critical ones. Your awareness must drive inward and outward

simultaneously, one with Infinity. I could provide you with enough melange to

accomplish this. Given enough spice, you can live through those first awful

moments . . . and all the other moments."

She shuddered uncontrollably, her gaze fixed on his eyes.

"You know I'm telling you the truth, don't you?"

She nodded, inhaled a deep trembling breath, then: "Why did you do it?"

"The alternative was far more horrible."

"What alternative?"

"In time, you may understand it. Moneo did."

"Your damned Golden Path!"

"Not damned at all. Quite holy."

"You think I'm a fool who can't..."

"I think you're inexperienced, but possessed of great capability whose potential

you do not even suspect."

She took three deep breaths and regained some of her composure, then: "If you

can't mate with the Ixian, what. . ."

"Child, why do you persist in misunderstanding? It's not sex. Before Hwi, I

could not pair. I had no other like me. In all of the cosmic void, I was the

only one."

"She's like . . . you?"

"Deliberately so. The lxians made her that way."

"Made her.. ."

"Don't be a complete fool!" he snapped. "She is the essential god-trap. Even the

victim cannot reject her."

"Why do you tell me these things?" she whispered.

"You stole two copies of my journals," he said. "You've read the Guild

translations and you already know what could catch me."

"You knew?"

He saw boldness return to her stance, a sense of her own power. "Of course you

knew," she said, answering her own question.

"It was my secret," he said. "You cannot imagine how many times I have loved a

companion and seen that companion slip away . . . as your father is slipping

away now."

"You love . . . him?"

"And I loved your mother. Sometimes they go quickly; sometimes with agonizing

slowness. Each time I am wracked. I can play callous and I can make the

necessary decisions, even decisions which kill, but I cannot escape the

suffering. For a long, long time-those journals you stole tell it truly-that was

the only emotion I knew."

He saw the moistness in her eyes, but the line of her jaw still spoke of angry

resolution.

"None of this gives you the right to govern," she said.

Leto suppressed a smile. At last they were down to the root of Siona's

rebellion.

By what right? Where is justice in my rule? By imposing my rules upon them with

the weight of Fish Speaker arms, am I being fair to the evolutionary thrust of

humankind? I know all of the revolutionary cant, the catch-prattle and the

resounding phrases.

"Nowhere do you see your own rebellious hand in the power I wield," he said.

Her youth still demanded its moment.

"I never chose you to govern," she said.

"But you strengthen me."

"How?"

"By opposing me. I sharpen my claws on the likes of you."

She shot a sudden glance at his hands.

"A figure of speech," he said.

"So I've offended you at last," she said, hearing only the cutting anger in his

words and tone.

"You've not offended me. We're related and can speak bluntly to each other

within the family. The fact is, I have much more to fear from you than you from

me."

This took her aback, but only momentarily. He saw belief stiffen her shoulders,

then doubt. Her chin lowered and she peered upward at him.

"What could the great God Leto fear from me?"

"Your ignorant violence."

"Are you saying that you're physically vulnerable?"

"I will not warn you again, Siona. There are limits to the word games I will

play. You and the lxians both know that it's the ones I love who are physically

vulnerable. Soon, most of the Empire will know it. This is the kind of

information which travels fast."

"And they'll all ask what right you have to rule!"

There was glee in her voice. It aroused an abrupt anger in Leto. He found it

difficult to suppress. This was a side of human emotions he detested. Gloating!

It was some time before he dared answer, then he chose to slash through her

defenses at the vulnerability he already had seen.

"I rule by the right of loneliness, Siona. My loneliness is part-freedom and

part-slavery. It says I cannot be bought by any human group. My slavery to you

says that I will serve all of you to the best of my lordly abilities."

"But the lxians have caught you!" she said.

"No. They have given me a gift which strengthens me."

"It weakens you!"

"That, too," he admitted. "But very powerful forces still obey me."

"Ohhh, yes." she nodded. "I understand that."

"You don't understand it."

"Then I'm sure you'll explain it to me," she taunted.

He spoke so softly that she had to lean toward him to hear: "There are no others

of any kind anywhere who can call upon me for anything-not for sharing, not for

compromise, not even for the slightest beginning of another government. I am the

only one."

"Not even this Ixian woman can. . ."

"She is so much like me that she would not weaken me in that way."

"But when the Ixian Embassy was attacked. . ."

"I can still be irritated by stupidity," he said.

She scowled at him.

Leto thought it a pretty gesture in that light, quite unconscious. He knew he

had made her think. He was sure she had never before considered that any rights

might adhere to uniqueness.

He addressed her silent scowl: "There has never before been a government exactly

like mine. Not in all of our history. I am responsible only to myself, exacting

payment in full for what I have sacrificed."

"Sacrificed!" she sneered, but he heard the doubts. "Every despot says something

like that. You're responsible only to yourself!"

"Which makes every living thing my responsibility. I watch over you through

these times."

"Through what times?"

"The times that might have been and then no more."

He saw the indecision in her. She did not trust her instincts, her untrained

abilities at prediction. She might leap occasionally as she had done when she

took his journals, but the motivation for the leap was lost in the revelation

which followed.

"My father says you can be very tricky with words," she said.

"And he ought to know. But there is knowledge you can only gain by participating

in it. There's no way to learn it by standing off and looking and talking."

"That's the kind of thing he means," she said.

"You're quite right," he agreed. "It's not logical. But it is a light, an eye

which can see, but does not see itself."

"I'm tired of talking," she said.

"As am L" And he thought: l have seen enough, done enough. She is wide open to

her doubts. How vulnerable they are in their ignorance!

"You haven't convinced me of anything," she said.

"That was not the purpose of this meeting."

"What was the purpose?"

"To see if you are ready to be tested."

"Test. . ." She tipped her head a bit to the right and stared at him.

"Don't play the innocent with me," he said. "Moneo has told you. And I tell you

that you are ready!"

She tried to swallow, then: "What are. . ."

"I have sent for Moneo to return you to the Citadel," he said. "When we meet

again, we will really learn what you are made of."

===

You know the myth of the Great Spice Hoard? Yes, I know about that story, too. A

majordomo brought it to me one day to amuse me. The story says there is a hoard

of melange, a gigantic hoard, big as a great mountain. The hoard is concealed in

the depths of a distant planet. It is not Arrakis, that planet. It is not Dune.

The spice was hidden there long ago, even before the First Empire and the

Spacing Guild. The story says Paul Muad'Dib went there and lives yet beside the

hoard, kept alive by it, waiting. The majordomo did not understand why the story

disturbed me.

-The Stolen Journals

IDAHO TREMBLED with anger as he strode along the gray plastone halls toward his

quarters in the Citadel. At each guard post he passed, the woman there snapped

to attention. He did not respond. Idaho knew he was causing disturbance among

them. Nobody could mistake the Commander's mood. But he did not abate his

purposeful stride. The heavy thumping of his boots echoed along the walls.

He could still taste the noon meal-oddly familiar Atreides chopstick-fare of

mixed grains herb-seasoned and baked around a pungent morsel of pseudomeat, all

of it washed down with a drink of clear cidrit juice. Moneo had found him at

table in the Guard Mess, alone in a corner with a regional operations schedule

propped up beside his plate.

Without invitation, Moneo had seated himself opposite

Idaho and had pushed aside the operations schedule.

"I bring a message from the God Emperor," Moneo said.

The tightly controlled tone warned Idaho that this was no casual encounter.

Others sensed it. Listening silence settled over the women at nearby tables,

spreading out through the room.

Idaho put down his chopsticks. "Yes?"

"These were the words of the God Emperor," Moneo said. "`It is my bad luck that

Duncan Idaho should become enamored of Hwi Noree. This mischance must not

continue."'

Anger thinned Idaho's lips, but he remained silent.

"Such foolishness endangers us all," Moneo said. "Noree is the God Emperor's

intended."

Idaho tried to control his anger, but the words were a betrayal: "He can't marry

her!"

"Why not?"

"What game is he playing, Moneo?"

"I am a messenger with a single message, no more," Moneo said.

Idaho's voice was low and threatening. "But he confides in you."

"The God Emperor sympathizes with you," Moneo lied.

"Sympathizes!" Idaho shouted the word, creating a new depth to the room's

silence.

"Noree is a woman of obvious attractions," Moneo said. "But she is not for you."

"The God Emperor has spoken," Idaho sneered, "and there is no appeal."

"I see that you understand the message," Moneo said.

Idaho started to push himself away from the table.

"Where are you going?" Moneo demanded.

"I'm going to have this out with him right now!"

"That is certain suicide," Moneo said.

Idaho glared at him, aware suddenly of the listening intensity in the women at

the tables around them. An expression which Muad'Dib would have recognized

immediately came over Idaho's face: "Playing to the Devil's Gallery," Muad'Dib

had called it.

"D'you know what the original Atreides Dukes always said?" Idaho asked. There

was a mocking tone in his voice.

"Is it pertinent?"

"They said your liberties all vanish when you look up to any absolute ruler."

Rigid with fear, Moneo leaned toward Idaho. Moneo's lips barely moved. His voice

was little more than a whisper. "Don't say such things."

"Because one of these women will report it?"

Moneo shook his head in disbelief. "You are more reckless than any of the

others."

"Really?"

"Please! It is perilous in the extreme to take this attitude."

Idaho heard the nervous stirring that swept through the room.

"He can only kill us," Idaho said.

Moneo spoke in a tight whisper: "You fool! The Worm can dominate him at the

slightest provocation!"

"The Worm, you say?" Idaho's voice was unnecessarily loud.

"You must trust him," Moneo said.

Idaho glanced left and right. "Yes, I think they heard that."

"He is billions upon billions of people united in that one body," Moneo said.

"So I've been told."

"He is God and we are mortal," Moneo said.

"How is it a god can do evil things?" Idaho asked.

Moneo thrust his chair backward and leaped to his feet. "I wash my hands of

you!" Whirling away, he dashed from the room.

Idaho looked out into the room, finding himself the center of attention for all

of the guards' faces.

"Moneo doesn't judge, but I do," Idaho said.

It surprised him then to glimpse a few wry smiles among the women. They all

returned to their eating.

As he strode down the hall of the Citadel, Idaho replayed the conversation,

seeking out the oddities in Moneo's behavior. The terror could be recognized and

even understood, but it had seemed far more than fear of death . . . far, far

more.

The Worm can dominate him.

Idaho felt that this had slipped out of Moneo, an inadvertent betrayal. What

could it mean?

More reckless than any of the others.

It galled Idaho that he should have to bear comparisons to himself-as-anunknown.

How careful had the others been?

Idaho came to his own door, put a hand on the palm-lock and hesitated. He felt

like a hunted animal retreating to his den. The guards in the mess surely would

have reported that

conversation to Leto by now. What would the God Emperor do? Idaho's hand moved

across the lock. The door swung inward. He entered the anteroom of his apartment

and sealed the door, looking at it.

Will he send his Fish Speakers for me?

Idaho glanced around the entry area. It was a conventional space-racks for

clothing and shoes, a full-length mirror, a weapons cupboard. He looked at the

closed door of the cupboard. Not one of the weapons behind that door offered any

real threat to the God Emperor. There wasn't even a lasgun . . . although even

lasguns were ineffectual against the Worm, according to all the accounts.

He knows I will defy him.

Idaho sighed and looked toward the arched portal which led into the sitting

area. Moneo had replaced the soft furniture with heavier, stiffer pieces, some

of them recognizably Fremen culled from the coffers of the Museum Fremen.

Museum Fremen!

Idaho spat and strode through the portal. Two steps into the room he stopped,

shocked. The soft light from the north windows revealed Hwi Noree seated on the

low sling-divan. She wore a shimmering blue gown which draped itself revealingly

around her figure. Hwi looked up at his entrance.

"Thank the gods you've not been harmed," she said.

Idaho glanced back at his entry, at the palm-locked door. He returned a

speculative look at Hwi. No one but a few selected guards should be able to open

that door.

She smiled at his confusion. "We lxians manufactured those locks," she said.

He found himself filled with fear for her. "What are you doing here?"

"We must talk."

"About what?"

"Duncan. . ." She shook her head. "About us."

"They warned you," he said.

"I've been told to reject you."

"Moneo sent you!"

"Two guardswomen who overheard you in the mess-they brought me. They think you

are in terrible danger."

"Is that why you're here?"

She stood, one graceful motion which reminded him of the way Leto's grandmother,

Jessica, had moved-the same fluid control of muscles, every movement beautiful.

Realization came as a shock. "You're Bene Gesserit. . ."

"No! They were among my teachers, but I am not Bene Gesserit."

Suspicions clouded his mind. What allegiances were really at work in Leto's

Empire? What does a ghola know about such things?

The changes since last I lived...

"I suppose you're still just a simple Ixian," he said.

"Please don't sneer at me, Duncan."

"What are you?"

"I am the intended bride of the God Emperor."

"And you'll serve him faithfully!"

"I will."

"Then there's nothing for us to talk about."

"Except this thing between us."

He cleared his throat. "What thing?"

"This attraction." She raised a hand as he started to speak. "I want to hurl

myself into your arms, to find the love and shelter I know is there. You want

it, too."

He held himself rigid. "The God Emperor forbids!"

"But I am here." She took two steps toward him, the gown rippling across her

body.

"Hwi. . ." He tried to swallow in a dry throat. "It's best you leave."

"Prudent, but not best," she said.

"If he finds that you've been here. . ."

"It is not my way to leave you like this." Again, she stopped his response with

a lifted hand. "I was bred and trained for just one purpose."

Her words filled him with icy caution. "What purpose?"

"To woo the God Emperor. Oh, he knows this. He would not change a thing about

me."

"Nor would L"

She moved a step closer. He smelled the milky warmth of her breath.

"They made me too well," she said. "I was designed to please an Atreides. Leto

says his Duncan is more an Atreides than many born to the name."

"Leto?"

"How else should I address the one I'll wed?"

Even as she spoke, Hwi leaned toward Idaho. As though a magnet had found its

point of critical attraction, they moved together. Hwi pressed her cheek against

his tunic, her arms

around him feeling the hard muscles. Idaho rested his chin in her hair, the musk

filling his senses.

"This is insane," he whispered.

"Yes."

He lifted her chin and kissed her.

She pressed herself against him.

Neither of them doubted where this must lead. She did not resist when he lifted

her off her feet and carried her into the bedroom.

Only once did Idaho speak. "You're not a virgin."

"Nor are you, love."

"Love," he whispered. "Love, love, love. . ."

"Yes . . . yes!"

In the post-coital peace, Hwi put both hands behind her head and stretched,

twisting on the rumpled bed. Idaho sat with his back to her looking out the

window.

"Who were your other lovers?" he asked.

She lifted herself on one elbow. "I've had no other lovers." "But. . ." He

turned and looked down at her.

"In my teens," she said, "there was a young man who needed me very much." She

smiled. "Afterward, I was very ashamed. How trusting I was! I thought I had

failed the people who depended on me. But they found out and they were elated.

You know, I think I was being tested."

Idaho scowled. "Is that how it was with me? I needed you?" "No, Duncan." Her

features were grave. "We gave joy to each other because that's how it is with

love."

"Love!" he said, and it was a bitter sound.

She said: "My Uncle Malky used to say that love was a bad bargain because you

get no guarantees."

"Your Uncle Malky was a wise man."

"He was stupid! Love needs no guarantees."

A smile twitched at the corners of Idaho's mouth.

She grinned up at him. "You know it's love when you want to give joy and damn

the consequences."

He nodded. "I think only of the danger to you."

"We are what we are," she said.

"What will we do?"

"We'll cherish this for as long as we live."

"You sound. . . so final."

"I am."

"But we'll see each other every. . .

"Never again like this."

"Hwi!" He hurled himself across the bed and buried his face in her breast.

She stroked his hair.

His voice muffled against her, he said: "What if I've impreg...

"Shush! If there's to be a child, there will be a child."

Idaho lifted his head and looked at her. "But he'll know for sure!"

"He'll know anyway."

"You think he really knows everything?"

"Not everything, but he'll know this."

"How?"

"I will tell him."

Idaho pushed himself away from her and sat up on the bed. Anger warred with

confusion in his expression.

"I must," she said.

"If he turns against you... Hwi, there are stories. You could be in terrible

danger!"

"No. I have needs, too. He knows this. He will not harm either of us."

"But he..."

"He will not destroy me. He will know that if he harms you that would destroy

me."

"How can you marry him?"

"Dear Duncan, have you not seen that he needs me more than you do?"

"But he cannot. . . I mean, you can't possibly. . .

"The joy that you and I have in each other, I'll not have that with Leo. It's

impossible for him. He has confessed this to me."

"Then why can't. . . If he loves you . . ."

"He has larger plans and larger needs." She reached out and took Idaho's right

hand in both of hers. "I've known that since I first began to study about him.

Needs larger than either of us have."

"What plans? What needs?"

"Ask him."

"Do you know?" "Yes.., "You mean you believe those stories about. . ." "There is

honesty and goodness in him. I know it by my

own responses to him. What my Ixian masters made in me was, I think, a reagent

which reveals more than they wanted me to know."

"Then you believe him!" Idaho accused. He tried to pull his hand away from her.

"If you go to him, Duncan, and..."

"He'll never see me again!"

"He will."

She pulled his hand to her mouth and kissed his fingers.

"I'm a hostage," he said. "You've made me fearful . . . the two of you together.

. ."

"I never thought it would be easy to serve God," she said. "I just didn't think

it would be this hard."

===

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

"I HAVE summoned yon, Moneo, because of what my guards tell me," Leto said.

They stood in the darkness of the crypt where, Moneo reminded himself, some of

the God Emperor's most painful decisions originated. Moneo, too, had heard

reports. He had been expecting the summons all afternoon and, when it came

shortly after the evening meal, a moment of terror had engulfed him.

"Is it about... about the Duncan, Lord?"

"Of course it's about the Duncan!"

"I'm told, Lord . . . his behavior. . ."

"Terminal behavior, Moneo?"

Moneo bowed his head. "If you say it, Lord."

"How long until the Tleilaxu could supply us with another one?"

"They say they have had problems, Lord. It might be as much as two years."

"Do you know what my guards tell me, Moneo?"

Moneo held his breath. If the God Emperor had learned about this latest . . .

No! Even the Fish Speakers were terrified by the affront. Had it been anyone but

a Duncan, the women would have taken it upon themselves to eliminate him.

"Well, Moneo?"

"I am told, Lord, that he called out a levy of guards and questioned them about

their origins. On what worlds were they born? What of their parentage, their

childhood?"

"And the answers did not please him."

"He frightened them, Lord. He kept insisting."

"As though repetition could elicit the truth, yes."

Moneo allowed himself to hope that this might be the whole of his Lord's

concern. "Why do the Duncans always do this, Lord?"

"It was their early training, the Atreides training."

"But how did that differ from.. ."

"The Atreides lived in the service of the people they governed. The measure of

their government was found in the lives of the governed. Thus, the Duncans

always want to know how the people live."

"He has spent a night in one village, Lord. He has been to some of the towns. He

has seen.. ."

"It's all in how you interpret the results, Moneo. Evidence is nothing without

judgments."

"I have observed that he judges, Lord."

"We all do, but the Duncans tend to believe that this universe is hostage to my

will. And they know that you cannot do wrong in the name of right."

"Is that what he says you. . ."

"It is what I say, what all of the Atreides in me say. This

universe will not permit it. The things you attempt will not endure if you. . ."

"But, Lord! You do no wrong!"

-"Poor Moneo. You cannot see that I have created a vehicle

of injustice."

Moneo could not speak. He realized that he had been diverted by a seeming return

to mildness in the God Emperor. But now, Moneo sensed changes moving in that

great body, and at this proximity . . .Moneo glanced around the crypt's central

chamber, reminding himself of the many deaths which had occurred here and which

were enshrined here.

Is it my time?

Leto spoke in a musing tone. "You cannot succeed by taking hostages. That is a

form of enslavement. One kind of human cannot own another kind of human. This

universe will not permit it."

The words lay there, simmering in Moneo's awareness, a terrifying contrast to

the rumblings of transformation which he sensed in his Lord.

The Worm comes!

Again, Moneo glanced around the crypt chamber. This place was far worse than the

aerie! Sanctuary was too remote.

"Well, Moneo, do you have any response?" Leto asked.

Moneo ventured a whisper: "The Lord's words enlighten me."

"Enlighten? You are not enlightened!"

Moneo spoke out of desperation. "But I serve my Lord!"

"You claim service to God?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Who created your religion, Moneo?"

"You did, Lord."

"That's a sensible answer."

"Thank you, Lord."

"Don't thank me! Tell me what religious institutions perpetuate!"

Moneo backed away four steps.

"Stand where you are!" Leto ordered.

Trembling all through his body, Moneo shook his head dumbly. At last, he had

encountered the question without answer. Failure to answer would precipitate his

death. He waited for it, head bowed.

"Then I will tell you, poor servant," Leto said.

Moneo dared to hope. He lifted his gaze to the God Emperor's face, noting that

the eyes were not glazed . . . and the hands were not trembling. Perhaps the

Worm did not come.

"Religious institutions perpetuate a mortal master-servant relationship," Leto

said. "They create an arena which attracts prideful human power-seekers with all

of their nearsighted prejudices!"

Moneo could only nod. Was that a trembling in the God Emperor's hands? Was the

terrible face withdrawing slightly into its cowl?

"The secret revelations of infamy, that is what the Duncans ask after," Leto

said. "The Duncans have too much compassion for their fellows and too sharp a

limit on fellowship."

Moneo had studied holos of Dune's ancient sandworms, the gigantic mouths full of

crysknife teeth around consuming fire. He noted the tumescence of the latent

rings on Leto's tubular surface. Were they more prominent? Would a new mouth

open below that cowled face?

"The Duncans know in their hearts," Leto said, "that I have deliberately ignored

the admonition of Mohammed and Moses. Even you know it, Moneo!"

It was an accusation. Moneo started to nod, then shook his head from side to

side. He wondered if he dared renew his retreat. Moneo knew from experience that

lectures in this tenor did not long continue without the coming of the Worm.

"What might that admonition be?" Leto asked. There was a mocking lightness in

his voice.

Moneo allowed himself a faint shrug.

Abruptly, Leto's voice filled the chamber with a rumbling baritone, an ancient

voice which spoke across the centuries: "You are servants unto God, not servants

unto servants!"

Moneo wrung his hands and cried out: "I serve you, Lord!"

"Moneo, Moneo," Leto said, his voice low and resonant, "a million wrongs cannot

give rise to one right. The right is known because it endures."

Moneo could only stand in trembling silence.

"I had intended Hwi to mate with you, Moneo," Leto said. "Now, it is too late."

The words took a moment penetrating Moneo's consciousness. He felt that their

meaning was out of any known context. Hwi? Who was Hwi? Oh, yes-the God

Emperor's Ixian bride-to-be. Mate . . . with me?

Moneo shook his head.

Leto spoke with infinite sadness: "You, too, shall pass away.

Will all your works be as dust forgotten?"

Without any warning, even as he spoke, Leto's body convulsed in a thrashing roll

which heaved him from the cart. The speed of it, the monstrous violence, threw

him within centimeters of Moneo, who screamed and fled across the crypt.

"Moneo!"

Leto's call stopped the majordomo at the entrance to the lift

"The test, Moneo! I will test Siona tomorrow!"

===

The realization of what I am occurs in the timeless awareness which does not

stimulate nor delude. I create a field without self or center, a field where

even death becomes only analogy. I desire no results. I merely permit this field

which has no goals nor desires, no perfections nor even visions of achievements.

In that field, omnipresent primal awareness is all. It is the light which pours

through the windows of my universe.

-The Stolen Journals

THE SUN came up, sending its harsh glare across the dunes. Leto felt the sand

beneath him as a soft caress. Only his human ears, hearing the abrasive rasp of

his heavy body, reported otherwise. It was a sensory conflict which he had

learned to accept.

He heard Siona walking behind him, a lightness in her tread, a gentle spilling

of sand as she climbed to his level atop a dune.

The longer I endure, the more vulnerable I become, he thought.

This thought often occurred to him these days when he went into his desert. He

peered upward. The sky was cloudless with a blue density which the old days of

Dune had never seen.

What was a desert without a cloudless sky? Too bad it could not have Dune's

silvery hue.

Ixian satellites controlled this sky, not always to the perfection he might

desire. Such perfection was a machine-fantasy which faltered under human

management. Still, the satellites held a sufficiently steady grip to give him

this morning of

desert stillness. He gave his human lungs a deep breath of it and listened for

Siona's approach. She had stopped. He knew she was admiring the view.

Leto felt his imagination like a conjurer calling up everything which had

produced the physical setting for this moment. He felt the satellites. Fine

instruments which played the music for the dance of warming and cooling air

masses, perpetually monitoring and adjusting the powerful vertical and

horizontal currents. It amused him to recall that the lxians had thought he

would use this exquisite machinery in a new kind of hydraulic despotismwithholding

moisture from those who defied their ruler, punishing others with

terrible storms. How surprised they had been to f-and themselves mistaken!

My controls are more subtle.

Slowly, gently, he began to move, swimming on the sand surface, gliding down off

the dune, never once looking back at the thin spire of his tower, knowing that

it would vanish presently into the haze of daytime heat.

Siona followed him with an uncharacteristic docility. Doubt had done its work.

She had read the stolen journals. She had listened to the admonitions of her

father. Now, she did not know what to think.

"What is this test?" she had asked Moneo. "What will he do?"

"It is never the same."

"How did he test you?"

"It will be different with you. I would only confuse you if I told you my

experience."

Leto had listened secretly while Moneo prepared his daughter, dressing her in an

authentic Fremen stillsuit with a dark robe over it, fitting the boot-pumps

correctly. Moneo had not forgotten.

Moneo had looked up from where he bent to adjust her boots. "The Worm will come.

That is all I can tell you. You must find a way to live in the presence of the

Worm."

He had stood then, explaining about the stillsuit, how it recycled her body's

own waters. He made her pull the tube from a catchpocket and suck on it, then

reseal the tube.

"You will be alone with him on the desert," Moneo had said. "Shai-Hulud is never

far away when you're on the desert."

"What if I refuse to go?" she asked.

"You will go . . . but you may not return."

This conversation had occurred in the ground-level chamber

of the Little Citadel while Leto waited in the aerie. He had come down when he

knew Siona was ready, drifting down in the predawn darkness on his cart's

suspensors. The cart had gone into the ground level room after Moneo and Siona

emerged. While Moneo marched across-the flat ground to his 'thopter and left in

a whispering of wings, Leto had required Siona to test the sealed portal of the

ground-level chamber, then look upward at the tower's impossible heights.

"The only way out is across the Sareer," he said.

He led her away from the tower then, not even commanding her to follow,

depending on her good sense, her curiosity and her doubts.

Leto's swimming progress took him down the dune's slipface and onto an exposed

section of the rocky basement complex, then up another sandy face at a shallow

angle, creating a path for Siona to follow. Fremen had called such compression

tracks "God's gift to the weary." He moved slowly, giving Siona plenty of time

in which to recognize that this was his domain, his natural habitat.

He came out atop another dune and turned to watch her progress. She held to the

track he had provided and stopped only when she reached the top. Her glance went

once to his face then she turned a full circle to examine the horizon. He heard

the sharp intake of her breath. Heat haze hid the spire's top. The base might

have been a distant outcropping.

"This is how it was," he said.

There was something about the desert which spoke to the eternal soul of people

who possessed Fremen blood, he knew. He had chosen this place for its desert

impact-a dune slightly higher than the others.

"Take a good look at it," he said, and he slipped down the dune's other side to

remove his bulk from her view.

Siona took one more slow turn, looking outward.

Leto knew the innermost sensation of what she saw. Except for that

insignificant, blurred blip of his tower's base, there was not the slightest

lift of horizon-flat, everywhere flat. No plants, no living movement. From her

vantage, there was a limit of approximately eight kilometers to the line where

the planet's curvature hid everything beyond.

Leto spoke from where he had stopped, just below the dune's crest. "This is the

real Sareer. You only know it when you're down here afoot. This is all that's

left of the bahr bela ma."

"The ocean without water," she whispered.

Again, she turned and examined the entire horizon.

There was no wind and, Leto knew, without wind, the silence ate at the human

soul. Siona was feeling the loss of all familiar reference points. She was

abandoned in dangerous space.

Leto glanced at the next dune. In that direction, they would come presently to a

low line of hills which originally had been mountains but now were broken into

remnant slag and rubble. He continued to rest quietly, letting the silence do

his work for him. It was even pleasant to imagine that these dunes went on, as

they once had, without end completely around the planet. But even these few

dunes were degenerating. Without the original Coriolis storms of Dune, the

Sareer saw nothing stronger than a stiff breeze and occasional heat vortices

which had no more than local effect.

One of these tiny "wind devils" danced across the middle distance to the south.

Siona's gaze followed its track. She spoke abruptly: "Do you have a personal

religion?"

Leto took a moment composing his reply. It always astonished him how a desert

provoked thoughts of religion.

"You dare ask me if I have a personal religion?" he demanded.

Betraying no surface sign of the fears he knew she felt, Siona turned and stared

down at him. Audacity was always an Atreides hallmark, he reminded himself.

When she didn't answer, he said: "You are an Atreides for sure."

"Is that your answer?" she asked.

"What is it you really want to know, Siona?"

"What you believe!"

"Ho! You ask after my faith. Well, now-I believe that something cannot emerge

from nothing without divine intervention."

His answer puzzled her. "How is that an. . ."

"Natura non facit saltus," he said.

She shook her head, not understanding the ancient allusion which had sprung to

his lips. Leto translated:

"Nature makes no leaps."

"What language was that?" she asked.

"A language no longer spoken anywhere else in my universe."

"Why did you use it then?"

"To prod your ancient memories."

"I don't have any! I just need to know why you brought me here."

"To give you a taste of your past. Come down here and climb onto my back."

She hesitated at first, then seeing the futility of defiance, slid down the dune

and clambered onto his back.

Leto waited until she was kneeling atop him. It was not the same as the old

times he knew. She had no Maker hooks and could not stand on his back. He lifted

his front segments slightly off the surface.

"Why am I doing this?" she asked. Her tone said she felt silly up there.

"I want you to taste the way our people once moved proudly across this land,

high atop the back of a giant sandworm."

He began to glide along the dune just below the crest. Siona had seen holos. She

knew this experience intellectually, but the pulse of reality had a different

beat and he knew she would resonate to it.

Ahhh, Siona, he thought, you do not even begin to suspect how I will test you.

Leto steeled himself then. I must have no pity. If she dies, she dies. If any of

them dies, that is a required event, no more.

And he had to remind himself that this applied even to Hwi Noree. It was just

that all of them could not die.

He sensed it when Siona began to enjoy the sensation of riding on his back. He

felt a faint shift in her weight as she eased back onto her legs to lift her

head.

He drove outward then along a curving barracan, joining Siona in enjoyment of

the old sensations. Leto could just glimpse the remnant hills at the horizon

ahead of him. They were like a seed from the past waiting there, a reminder of

the self-sustaining and expanding force which operated in a desert. He could

forget for a moment that on this planet where only a small fraction of the

surface remained desert, the Sareer's dynamism existed in a precarious

environment.

The illusion of the past was here, though. He felt it as he moved. Fantasy, of

course, he told himself, a vanishing fantasy as long as his enforced tranquility

continued. Even the sweeping barracan which he traversed now was not as great as

the ones of the past. None of the dunes were that great.

This whole maintained desert struck him suddenly as ridiculous. He almost

stopped on a pebbled surface between the dunes, continuing but more slowly as he

tried to conjure up

the necessities which kept the whole system working. He imagined the planet's

rotation setting up great air currents which shifted cold and heated air to new

regions in enormous volume-everything monitored and ruled by those tiny

satellites with their Ixian instruments and heat-focusing dishes. If the high

monitors saw anything, they saw the Sareer partly as a "relief desert" with both

physical and cold-air walls girdling it. This tended to create ice at the edges

and required even more climatic adjustments.

It was not easy and Leto forgave the occasional mistakes for that reason.

As he moved once more out onto dunes, he lost that sense of delicate balance,

put aside memories of the pebbly wastelands outside the central sands, and gave

himself up to enjoyment of his "petrified ocean" with its frozen and apparently

immovable waves. He turned southward, parallel to the remnant hills.

He knew that most people were offended by his infatuation with desert. They were

uneasy and turned away. Siona, however, could not turn away. Everywhere she

looked, the desert demanded recognition. She rode silently on his back, but he

knew her eyes were full. And the old-old memories were beginning to churn.

He came within three hours to a region of cylindrical whaleback dunes, some of

them more than one hundred and fifty kilometers long at an angle to the

prevailing wind. Beyond them lay a rocky corridor between dunes and into a

region of star dunes almost four hundred meters high. Finally, they entered the

braided dunes of the central erg where the general high pressure and

electrically charged air gave his spirits a lift. He knew the same magic would

be working on Siona.

"Here is where the songs of the Long Trek originated," he said. "They are

perfectly preserved in the Oral History."

She did not answer, but he knew she heard.

Leto slowed his pace and began to speak to Siona, telling her about their Fremen

past. He sensed the quickening of her interest. She even asked questions

occasionally, but he could also feel her fears building. Even the base of his

Little Citadel was no longer visible here. She could recognize nothing manmade.

And she would think he engaged now in small talk, unimportant things to put off

something portentous.

"Equality between our men and women originated here," he said.

"Your Fish Speakers deny that men and women are equal," she said.

Her voice, full of questioning disbelief, was a better locator than the

sensation of her crouched on his back. Leto stopped at the intersection of two

braided dunes and let the venting of his heat-generated oxygen subside.

"Things are not the same today," he said. "But men and women do have different

evolutionary demands upon them. With the Fremen, though, there was an

interdependence. That fostered equality out here where questions of survival can

become immediate."

"Why did you bring me here?" she demanded.

"Look behind us," he said.

He felt her turn. Presently, she said: "What am I supposed to see?"

"Have we left any tracks? Can you tell where we've been?"

"There's a little wind now."

"It has covered our tracks?"

"I guess so . . . yes."

"This desert made us what we were and are," he said. "It's the real museum of

all our traditions. Not one of those traditions has really been lost."

Leto saw a small sandstorm, a ghibli, moving across the southern horizon. He

noted the narrow ribbons of dust and sand moving out ahead of it. Surely, Siona

had seen it.

"Why won't you tell me why you brought me here?" she asked. Fear was obvious in

her voice.

"But I have told you."

"You have not!"

"How far have we come, Siona?"

She thought about this. "Thirty kilometers? Twenty?"

"Farther," he said. "I can move very fast in my own land. Didn't you feel the

wind on your face?"

"Yes." Sullen. "So why ask me how far?"

"Come down and stand where I can see you."

..Why?"

Good, he thought. She believes I will abandon her here and speed off faster than

she can follow.

"Come down and I'll explain," he said.

She slid off his back and came around to where she could look into his face.

"Time passes swiftly when your senses are full," he said.

"We have been out almost four hours. We have come about sixty kilometers."

"Why is that important?"

"Moneo put dried food in the pouch of your robe," he said. "Eat a little and I

will tell you."

She found a dried cube of protomor in the pouch and chewed on it while she

watched him. It was the authentic old Fremen food even to the slight addition of

melange.

"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."

"Is that your test? Have faith in the Great God Leto or die?"

"You need no faith in me whatsoever. I want you to have faith in yourself."

"Then why is it important how far we've come?"

"So you'll understand how far you still have to go."

She put a hand to her cheek. "I don't. . ."

"Right where you stand," he said, "you are in the unmistakable midst of

Infinity. Look around you at the meaning of Infinity."

She glanced left and right at the unbroken desert.

"We are going to walk out of my desert together," he said. "Just the two of us."

"You don't walk," she sneered.

"A figure of speech. But you will walk. I assure you of that."

She looked in the direction they had come. "So that's why you asked me about

tracks."

"Even if there were tracks, you could not go back. There is nothing at my Little

Citadel that you could get to and use for survival."

"No water?"

"Nothing."

She found the catchpocket tube at her shoulder, sucked at it and restored it. He

noted the care with which she sealed the end, but she did not pull the face flap

across her mouth, although Leto had heard her father warning her about this. She

wanted her mouth free for talking!

"You're telling me I can't run away from you," she said.

"Run away if you want."

She turned a full circle, examining the wasteland.

"There is a saying about the open land," he said, "that one direction is as good

as another. In some ways, that's still true, but I would not depend on it."

"But I'm really free to leave you if I want?"

"Freedom can be a very lonely estate," he said.

She pointed to the steep side of the dune on which they had stopped. "But I

could just go down there and. . ."

"Were I you, Siona, I would not go down where you are pointing."

She glared at him. "Why?"

"On the dune's steep side, unless you follow the natural curves, the sand may

slide down upon you and bury you."

She looked down the slope, absorbing this.

"See how beautiful words can be?" he asked.

She returned her attention to his face. "Should we be going?"

"You learn to value leisure out here. And courtesy. There's no hurry."

"But we have no water except the..

."

"Used wisely, that stillsuit will keep you alive."

"But how long will it take us to. . ."

"Your impatience alarms me."

"But we have only this dried food in my pouch. What will we eat when..."

"Siona! Have you noticed that you are expressing our situation as mutual. What

will we eat? We have no water. Should we be going? How long will it take us?"

He sensed the dryness of her mouth as she tried to swallow.

"Could it be that we're interdependent?" he asked.

She spoke reluctantly. "I don't know how to survive out here."

"But I do?"

She nodded.

"Why should I share such precious knowledge with you?" he asked.

She shrugged, a pitiful gesture which touched him. How quickly the desert cut

away previous attitudes.

"I will share my knowledge with you," he-said. "And you must find something

valuable that you can share with me."

Her gaze traversed his length, paused a moment at the flippers which once were

his legs and feet, then came back to his face.

"Agreement bought with threats is no agreement," she said.

"I offer you no violence."

"There are many kinds of violence," she said.

"And I brought you out here where you may die?"

"Did I have a choice in it?"

"It is difficult to be born an Atreides," he said. "Believe me, I know."

"You don't have to do it this way," she said.

"And there you are wrong."

He turned away from her and set off in a sinusoidal track down the dune. He

heard her slipping and stumbling as she followed. Leto stopped well into the

dune shadow.

"We'll wait out the day here," he said. "It uses less water to travel by night."