Dune

Ghanima explained the theory upon which she and Leto had settled, that their avoiding of the spice trance while Alia entered it often made the difference. She went on to reveal his dreams and the plans they’d discussed—even Jacurutu.

Jessica nodded. “Alia is an Atreides, though, and that poses enormous problems.”

Ghanima fell silent before the sudden realization that Jessica still mourned her Duke as though his death had been but yesterday, that she would guard his name and memory against all threats. Personal memories from the Duke’s own lifetime fled through Ghanima’s awareness to reinforce this assessment, to soften it with understanding.

“Now,” Jessica said, voice brisk, “what about this Preacher? I heard some disquieting reports yesterday after that damnable Lustration.”

Ghanima shrugged. “He could be—”

“Paul?”

“Yes, but we haven’t seen him to examine.”

“Javid laughs at the rumors,” Jessica said.

Ghanima hesitated. Then: “Do you trust this Javid?”

A grim smile touched Jessica’s lips. “No more than you do.”

“Leto says Javid laughs at the wrong things,” Ghanima said.

“So much for Javid’s laughter,” Jessica said. “But do you actually entertain the notion that my son is still alive, that he has returned in this guise?”

“We say it’s possible. And Leto . . .” Ghanima found her mouth suddenly dry, remembered fears clutching her breast. She forced herself to overcome them, recounted Leto’s other revelations of prescient dreams.

Jessica moved her head from side to side as though wounded.

Ghanima said: “Leto says he must find this Preacher and make sure.”

“Yes . . . Of course. I should never have left here. It was cowardly of me.”

“Why do you blame yourself? You had reached a limit. I know that. Leto knows it. Even Alia may know it.”

Jessica put a hand to her own throat, rubbed it briefly. Then: “Yes, the problem of Alia.”

“She works a strange attraction on Leto,” Ghanima said. “That’s why I helped you meet alone with me. He agrees that she is beyond hope, but still he finds ways to be with her and . . . study her. And . . . it’s very disturbing. When I try to talk against this, he falls asleep. He—”

“Is she drugging him?”

“No-o-o.” Ghanima shook her head. “But he has this odd empathy for her. And . . . in his sleep, he often mutters Jacurutu.”

“That again!” And Jessica found herself recounting Gurney’s report about the conspirators exposed at the landing field.

“I sometimes fear Alia wants Leto to seek out Jacurutu,” Ghanima said. “And I always thought it only a legend. You know it, of course.”

Jessica shuddered. “Terrible story. Terrible.”

“What must we do?” Ghanima asked. “I fear to search all of my memories, all of my lives . . .”

“Ghani! I warn you against that. You mustn’t risk—”

“It may happen even if I don’t risk it. How do we know what really happened to Alia?”

“No! You could be spared that . . . that possession.” She ground the word out. “Well . . . Jacurutu, is it? I’ve sent Gurney to find the place—if it exists.”

“But how can he . . . Oh! Of course: the smugglers.”

Jessica found herself silenced by this further example of how Ghanima’s mind worked in concert with what must be an inner awareness of others. Of me! How truly strange it was, Jessica thought, that this young flesh could carry all of Paul’s memories, at least until the moment of Paul’s spermal separation from his own past. It was an invasion of privacy against which something primal in Jessica rebelled. Momentarily she felt herself sinking into the absolute and unswerving Bene Gesserit judgment: Abomination! But there was a sweetness about this child, a willingness to sacrifice for her brother, which could not be denied.

We are one life reaching out into a dark future, Jessica thought. We are one blood. And she girded herself to accept the events which she and Gurney Halleck had set in motion. Leto must be separated from his sister, must be trained as the Sisterhood insisted.

I hear the wind blowing across the desert and I see the moons of a winter night rising like great ships in the void. To them I make my vow: I will be resolute and make an art of government; I will balance my inherited past and become a perfect storehouse of my relic memories. And I will be known for kindliness more than for knowledge. My face will shine down the corridors of time for as long as humans exist.

—LETO’S VOW

AFTER HARQ AL-ADA