Dune

“Prime computation,” she agreed, her voice strengthening. She pulled away from him, looked out at the desert which lay in a predawn hush. This battle . . . this knowledge, had cost them a night. The Royal Guard beyond the moisture seal must have had much to explain. Leto had charged that nothing disturb them.

“People often learn subtlety as they age,” Leto said. “What is it we’re learning with all of this agedness to draw upon?”

“The universe as we see it is never quite the exact physical universe,” she said. “We mustn’t perceive this grandmother just as a grandmother.”

“That’d be dangerous,” he agreed. “But my ques—”

“There’s something beyond subtlety,” she said. “We must have a place in our awareness to perceive what we can’t preconceive. That’s why . . . my mother spoke to me often of Jessica. At the last, when we were both reconciled to the inner exchange, she said many things.” Ghanima sighed.

“We know she’s our grandmother,” he said. “You were with her for hours yesterday. Is that why—”

“If we allow it, our knowing will determine how we react to her,” Ghanima said. “That’s what my mother kept warning me. She quoted our grandmother once and—” Ghanima touched his arm. “—I heard the echo of it within me in our grandmother’s voice.”

“Warning you,” Leto said. He found this thought disturbing. Was nothing in this world dependable?

“Most deadly errors arise from obsolete assumptions,” Ghanima said. “That’s what my mother kept quoting.”

“That’s pure Bene Gesserit.”

“If . . . if Jessica has gone back to the Sisterhood completely . . .”

“That’d be very dangerous to us,” he said, completing the thought. “We carry the blood of their Kwisatz Haderach—their male Bene Gesserit.”

“They won’t abandon that search,” she said, “but they may abandon us. Our grandmother could be the instrument.”

“There’s another way,” he said.

“Yes—the two of us . . . mated. But they know what recessives might complicate that pairing.”

“It’s a gamble they must’ve discussed.”

“And with our grandmother, at that. I don’t like that way.”

“Nor I.”

“Still, it’s not the first time a royal line has tried to . . .”

“It repels me,” he said, shuddering.

She felt the movement, fell silent.

“Power,” he said.

And in that strange alchemy of their similarities she knew where his thoughts had been. “The power of the Kwisatz Haderach must fail,” she agreed.

“Used in their way,” he said.

In that instant, day came to the desert beyond their vantage point. They sensed the heat beginning. Colors leaped forth from the plantings beneath the cliff. Grey-green leaves sent spiked shadows along the ground. The low morning light of Dune’s silvery sun revealed the verdant oasis full of golden and purple shadows in the well of the sheltering cliffs.

Leto stood, stretched.

“The Golden Path, then,” Ghanima said, and she spoke as much to herself as to him, knowing how their father’s last vision met and melted into Leto’s dreams.

Something brushed against the moisture seals behind them and voices could be heard murmuring there.

Leto reverted to the ancient language they used for privacy: “L’ii ani howr samis sm’kwi owr samit sut.”

That was where the decision lodged itself in their awareness. Literally: We will accompany each other into deathliness, though only one may return to report it.

Ghanima stood then and, together, they returned through the moisture seals to the sietch, where the guards roused themselves and fell in behind as the twins headed toward their own quarters. The throngs parted before them with a difference on this morning, exchanging glances with the guards. Spending the night alone above the desert was an old Fremen custom for the holy sages. All the Uma had practiced this form of vigil. Paul Muad’Dib had done it . . . and Alia. Now the royal twins had begun.

Leto noted the difference, mentioned it to Ghanima.

“They don’t know what we’ve decided for them,” she said. “They don’t really know.”

Still in the private language, he said: “It requires the most fortuitous beginning.”

Ghanima hesitated a moment to form her thoughts. Then: “In that time, mourning for the sibling, it must be exactly real—even to the making of the tomb. The heart must follow the sleep lest there be no awakening.”