Dune

On impulse, Jessica put aside her ingrained emotional masks, knowing them to be of little use here, barriers to communication. Not since those loving moments with her Duke had she lowered these barriers, and she found the action both relief and pain. There remained facts which no curse or prayer or litany could wash from existence. Flight would not leave such facts behind. They could not be ignored. Elements of Paul’s vision had been rearranged and the times had caught up with his children. They were a magnet in the void; evil and all the sad misuses of power collected around them.

Ghanima, watching the play of emotions across her grandmother’s face, marveled that Jessica had let down her controls.

With catching movements of their heads remarkably synchronized, both turned, eyes met, and they stared deeply, probingly at each other. Thoughts without spoken words passed between them.

Jessica: I wish you to see my fear.

Ghanima: Now I know you love me.

It was a swift moment of utter trust.

Jessica said: “When your father was but a boy, I brought a Reverend Mother to Caladan to test him.”

Ghanima nodded. The memory of it was extremely vivid.

“We Bene Gesserits were already cautious to make sure that the children we raised were human and not animal. One cannot always tell by exterior appearances.”

“It’s the way you were trained,” Ghanima said, and the memory flooded into her mind: that old Bene Gesserit, Gaius Helen Mohiam. She’d come to Castle Caladan with her poisoned gom jabbar and her box of burning pain. Paul’s hand (Ghanima’s own hand in the shared memory) screamed with the agony of that box while the old woman talked calmly of immediate death if the hand were withdrawn from the pain. And there had been no doubt of the death in that needle held ready against the child’s neck while the aged voice droned its rationale:

“You’ve heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap. There’s an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.”

Ghanima shook her head against the remembered pain. The burning! The burning! Paul had imagined his skin curling black on that agonized hand within the box, flesh crisping and dropping away until only charred bones remained. And it had been a trick—the hand unharmed. But sweat stood out on Ghanima’s forehead at the memory.

“Of course you remember this in a way that I cannot,” Jessica said.

For a moment, memory-driven, Ghanima saw her grandmother in a different light: what this woman might do out of the driving necessities of that early conditioning in the Bene Gesserit schools! It raised new questions about Jessica’s return to Arrakis.

“It would be stupid to repeat such a test on you or your brother,” Jessica said. “You already know the way it went. I must assume you are human, that you will not misuse your inherited powers.”

“But you don’t make that assumption at all,” Ghanima said.

Jessica blinked, realized that the barriers had been creeping back in place, dropped them once more. She asked: “Will you believe my love for you?”

“Yes.” Ghanima raised a hand as Jessica started to speak. “But that love wouldn’t stop you from destroying us. Oh, I know the reasoning: ‘Better the animal-human die than it re-create itself.’ And that’s especially true if the animal-human bears the name Atreides.”

“You at least are human,” Jessica blurted. “I trust my instinct on this.”

Ghanima saw the truth in this, said: “But you’re not sure of Leto.”

“I’m not.”

“Abomination?”

Jessica could only nod.

Ghanima said: “Not yet, at least. We both know the danger of it, though. We can see the way of it in Alia.”

Jessica cupped her hands over her eyes, thought: Even love can’t protect us from unwanted facts. And she knew then that she still loved her daughter, crying out silently against fate: Alia! Oh, Alia! I am sorry for my part in your destruction.

Ghanima cleared her throat loudly.

Jessica lowered her hands, thought: I may mourn my poor daughter, but there are other necessities now. She said: “So you’ve recognized what happened to Alia.”

“Leto and I watched it happen. We were powerless to prevent it, although we discussed many possibilities.”

“You’re sure that your brother is free of this curse?”

“I’m sure.”

The quiet assurance in that statement could not be denied. Jessica found herself accepting it. Then: “How is it you’ve escaped?”