Dune

“I am on sand in bright yellow daylight, yet there is no sun. Then I realize that I am the sun. My light shines out as a Golden Path. When I realize this, I move out of myself. I turn, expecting to see myself as the sun. But I am not the sun; I am a stick figure, a child’s drawing with zigzag lightning lines for eyes, stick legs and stick arms. There is a scepter in my left hand, and it’s a real scepter—much more detailed in its reality than the stick figure which holds it. The scepter moves, and this terrifies me. As it moves, I feel myself awaken, yet I know I’m still dreaming. I realize then that my skin is encased in something—an armor which moves as my skin moves. I cannot see this armor, but I feel it. My terror leaves me then, for this armor gives me the strength of ten thousand men.”

As Ghanima stared at him, Leto tried to pull away, to continue their course toward Jessica’s quarters. Ghanima resisted.

“This Golden Path could be no better than any other path,” she said.

Leto looked at the rock floor between them, feeling the strong return of Ghanima’s doubts. “I must do it,” he said.

“Alia is possessed,” she said. “That could happen to us. It could already have happened and we might not know it.”

“No.” He shook his head, met her gaze. “Alia resisted. That gave the powers within her their strength. By her own strength she was overcome. We’ve dared to search within, to seek out the old languages and the old knowledge. We’re already amalgams of those lives within us. We don’t resist; we ride with them. This was what I learned from our father last night. It’s what I had to learn.”

“He said nothing of that within me.”

“You listened to our mother. It’s what we—”

“And I almost lost.”

“Is she still strong within you?” Fear tightened his face.

“Yes . . . but now I think she guards me with her love. You were very good when you argued with her.” And Ghanima thought about the reflected mother-within, said: “Our mother exists now for me in the alam al-mythal with the others, but she has tasted the fruit of hell. Now I can listen to her without fear. As to the others . . .”

“Yes,” he said. “And I listened to my father, but I think I’m really following the counsel of the grandfather for whom I was named. Perhaps the name makes it easy.”

“Are you counseled to speak to our grandmother of the Golden Path?”

Leto waited while an attendant pressed past them with a basket-tray carrying the Lady Jessica’s breakfast. A strong smell of spice filled the air as the attendant passed.

“She lives in us and in her own flesh,” Leto said. “Her counsel can be consulted twice.”

“Not by me,” Ghanima protested. “I’m not risking that again.”

“Then by me.”

“I thought we agreed that she’s gone back to the Sisterhood.”

“Indeed. Bene Gesserit at her beginning, her own creature in the middle, and Bene Gesserit at the end. But remember that she, too, carries Harkonnen blood and is closer to it than we are, that she has experienced a form of this inner sharing which we have.”

“A very shallow form,” Ghanima said. “And you haven’t answered my question.”

“I don’t think I’ll mention the Golden Path.”

“I may.”

“Ghani!”

“We don’t need any more Atreides gods! We need a space for some humanity!”

“Have I ever denied it?”

“No.” She took a deep breath and looked away from him. Attendants peered in at them from the anteroom, hearing the argument by its tone but unable to understand the ancient words.

“We have to do it,” he said. “If we fail to act, we might just as well fall upon our knives.” He used the Fremen form which carried the meaning of “spill our water into the tribal cistern.”

Once more Ghanima looked at him. She was forced to agree. But she felt trapped within a construction of many walls. They both knew a day of reckoning lay across their path no matter what they did. Ghanima knew this with a certainty reinforced by the data garnered from those other memory-lives, but now she feared the strength which she gave those other psyches by using the data of their experiences. They lurked like harpies within her, shadow demons waiting in ambush.