Dune

“Sometimes I can feel your thoughts . . . but I . . . we live only through . . . the . . . reflection of . . . your awareness. Your memory creates us. The danger . . . it is a precise memory. And . . . those of us . . . those of us who loved power . . . and gathered it at . . . any price . . . those can be . . . more precise.”

“Stronger?” Leto whispered.

“Stronger.”

“I know your vision,” Leto said. “Rather than let him have me, I’ll become you.”

“Not that!”

Leto nodded to himself, sensing the enormous will-force his father had required to withdraw, recognizing the consequences of failure. Any possession reduced the possessed to Abomination. The recognition gave him a renewed sense of strength, and he felt his own body with abnormal acuteness and a deeply drawn awareness of past mistakes: his own and those of his ancestors. It was the uncertainties which weakened—he saw this now. For an instant, temptation warred with fear within him. This flesh possessed the ability to transform melange into a vision of the future. With the spice, he could breathe the future, shatter Time’s veils. He found the temptation difficult to shed, clasped his hands and sank into the prana-bindu awareness. His flesh negated the temptation. His flesh wore the deep knowledge learned in blood by Paul. Those who sought the future hoped to gain the winning gamble on tomorrow’s race. Instead they found themselves trapped into a lifetime whose every heartbeat and anguished wail was known. Paul’s final vision had shown the precarious way out of that trap, and Leto knew now that he had no other choice but to follow that way.

“The joy of living, its beauty is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you,” he said.

A soft voice whispered in his ear: “I’ve always known that beauty.”

Leto turned his head, stared into Ghanima’s eyes which glistened in the bright moonlight. He saw Chani looking back at him. “Mother,” he said, “you must withdraw.”

“Ahhh, the temptation!” she said, and kissed him.

He pushed her away. “Would you take your daughter’s life?” he demanded.

“It’s so easy . . . so foolishly easy,” she said.

Leto, feeling panic begin to grip him, remembered what an effort of will his father’s persona-within had required to abandon the flesh. Was Ghanima lost in that observer-world where he had watched and listened, learning what he had required from his father?

“I will despise you, mother,” he said.

“Others won’t despise me,” she said. “Be my beloved.”

“If I do . . . you know what you both will become,” he said. “My father will despise you.”

“Never!”

“I will!”

The sound was jerked out of his throat without his volition and it carried all the old overtones of Voice which Paul had learned from his witch mother.

“Don’t say it,” she moaned.

“I will despise you!”

“Please . . . please don’t say it.”

Leto rubbed his throat, feeling the muscles become once more his own. “He will despise you. He will turn his back on you. He will go into the desert again.”

“No . . . no . . .”

She shook her head from side to side.

“You must leave, mother,” he said.

“No . . . no . . .” But the voice lacked its original force.

Leto watched his sister’s face. How the muscles twitched! Emotions fled across the flesh at the turmoil within her.

“Leave,” he whispered. “Leave.”

“No-o-o-o . . .”

He gripped her arm, felt the tremors which pulsed through her muscles, the nerves twitching. She writhed, tried to pull away, but he held tightly to her arm, whispering: “Leave . . . leave . . .”

And all the time, Leto berated himself for talking Ghani into this parent game which once they’d played often, but she had lately resisted. It was true that the female had more weakness in that inner assault, he realized. There lay the origin of the Bene Gesserit fear.

Hours passed and still Ghanima’s body trembled and twitched with the inner battle, but now his sister’s voice joined the argument. He heard her talking to that imago within, the pleading.

“Mother . . . please—” And once: “You’ve seen Alia! Will you become another Alia?”

At last Ghanima leaned against him, whispered: “She has accepted it. She’s gone.”

He stroked her head. “Ghani, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll never ask you to do that again. I was selfish. Forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” she said, and her voice came panting as though after great physical exertion. “We’ve learned much that we needed to know.”

“She spoke to you of many things,” he said. “We’ll share it later when—”

“No! We’ll do it now. You were right.”

“My Golden Path?”

“Your damned Golden Path!”

“Logic’s useless unless it’s armed with essential data,” he said. “But I—”

“Grandmother came back to guide our education and to see if we’d been . . . contaminated.”

“That’s what Duncan says. There’s nothing new in—”