Dune

“You see, Beloved Aunt,” Leto said, “we prepare ourselves for today’s encounter with your mother.”

Alia, the one person in the teeming royal household who harbored not the faintest surprise at adult behavior from these children, glared from one to the other. Then: “Hold your tongues, both of you!”

Alia’s bronze hair was pulled back into two golden water rings. Her oval face held a frown, the wide mouth with its downturned hint of self-indulgence was held in a tight line. Worry wrinkles fanned the corners of her blue-on-blue eyes.

“I’ve warned both of you how to behave today,” Alia said. “You know the reasons as well as I.”

“We know your reasons, but you may not know ours,” Ghanima said.

“Ghani!” Alia growled.

Leto glared at his aunt, said: “Today of all days, we will not pretend to be simpering infants!”

“No one wants you to simper,” Alia said. “But we think it unwise for you to provoke dangerous thoughts in my mother. Irulan agrees with me. Who knows what role the Lady Jessica will choose? She is, after all, Bene Gesserit.”

Leto shook his head, wondering: Why does Alia not see what we suspect? Is she too far gone? And he made special note of the subtle gene-markers on Alia’s face which betrayed the presence of her maternal grandfather. The Baron Vladimir Harkonnen had not been a pleasant person. At this observation, Leto felt the vague stirrings of his own disquiet, thinking: My own ancestor, too.

He said: “The Lady Jessica was trained to rule.”

Ghanima nodded. “Why does she choose this time to come back?”

Alia scowled. Then: “Is it possible she merely wants to see her grandchildren?”

Ghanima thought: That’s what you hope, my dear aunt. But it’s damned well not likely.

“She cannot rule here,” Alia said. “She has Caladan. That should be enough.”

Ghanima spoke placatingly: “When our father went into the desert to die, he left you as Regent. He . . .”

“Have you any complaint?” Alia demanded.

“It was a reasonable choice,” Leto said, following his sister’s lead. “You were the one person who knew what it was like to be born as we were born.”

“It’s rumored that my mother has returned to the Sisterhood,” Alia said, “and you both know what the Bene Gesserit think about. . . .”

“Abomination,” Leto said.

“Yes!” Alia bit the word off.

“Once a witch, always a witch—so it’s said,” Ghanima said.

Sister, you play a dangerous game, Leto thought, but he followed her lead, saying: “Our grandmother was a woman of greater simplicity than others of her kind. You share her memories, Alia; surely you must know what to expect.”

“Simplicity!” Alia said, shaking her head, looking around her at the thronged passage, then back to the twins. “If my mother were less complex, neither of you would be here—nor I. I would have been her firstborn and none of this. . . .” A shrug, half shudder, moved her shoulders. “I warn you two, be very careful what you do today.” Alia looked up. “Here comes my guard.”

“And you still don’t think it safe for us to accompany you to the spaceport?” Leto asked.

“Wait here,” Alia said. “I’ll bring her back.”

Leto exchanged a look with his sister, said: “You’ve told us many times that the memories we hold from those who’ve passed before us lack a certain usefulness until we’ve experienced enough with our own flesh to make them reality. My sister and I believe this. We anticipate dangerous changes with the arrival of our grandmother.”

“Don’t stop believing that,” Alia said. She turned away to be enclosed by her guards and they moved swiftly down the passage toward the State Entrance where ornithopters awaited them.

Ghanima wiped a tear from her right eye.

“Water for the dead?” Leto whispered, taking his sister’s arm.

Ghanima drew in a deep, sighing breath, thinking of how she had observed her aunt, using the way she knew best from her own accumulation of ancestral experiences. “Spice trance did it?” she asked, knowing what Leto would say.

“Do you have a better suggestion?”

“For the sake of argument, why didn’t our father . . . or even our grandmother succumb?”

He studied her a moment. Then: “You know the answer as well as I do. They had secure personalities by the time they came to Arrakis. The spice trance—well . . .” He shrugged. “They weren’t born into this world already possessed of their ancestors. Alia, though . . .”

“Why didn’t she believe the Bene Gesserit warnings?” Ghanima chewed her lower lip. “Alia had the same information to draw upon that we do.”

“They already were calling her Abomination,” Leto said. “Don’t you find it tempting to find out if you’re stronger than all of those . . .”