Children of Dune (Page 102)

A young woman sat on a rug directly in front of him, a bright glowglobe anchored to her left sleeve and drifting just above her head. When Leto looked away from the glowglobe, there were stars. He knew this young woman; she was the one from his vision earlier, the roaster of coffee. She was Namri’s niece, as ready with a knife as Namri was. There was the knife in her lap. She wore a simple green robe over a grey stillsuit. Sabiha, that was her name. And Namri had his own plans for her.

Sabiha saw the awakening in his eyes, said: "It’s almost dawn. You’ve spent the whole night here."

"And most of a day," he said. "You make good coffee."

This statement puzzled her, but she ignored it with a single-mindedness which spoke of harsh training and explicit instructions for her present behavior.

"It’s the hour of assassins," Leto said. "But your knife is no longer needed." He glanced at the crysknife in her lap.

"Namri will be the judge of that," she said.

Not Halleck, then. She only confirmed his inner knowledge.

"Shai-Hulud is a great garbage collector and eraser of unwanted evidence," Leto said. "I’ve used him thus myself."

She rested her hand lightly on the knife handle.

"How much is revealed by where we sit and how we sit," he said. "You sit upon the rug and I upon the sand."

Her hand closed over the knife handle.

Leto yawned, a gaping and stretching which made his jaws ache. "I’ve had a vision which included you," he said.

Her shoulders relaxed slightly.

"We’ve been very one-sided about Arrakis," he said. "Barbaric of us. There’s a certain momentum in what we’ve been doing, but now we must undo some of our work. The scales must be brought into better balance."

A puzzled frown touched Sabiha’s face.

"My vision," he said. "Unless we restore the dance of life here on Dune, the dragon on the floor of the desert will be no more."

Because he’d used the Old Fremen name for the great worm, she was a moment understanding him. Then: "The worms?"

"We’re in a dark passage," he said. "Without spice, the Empire falls apart. The Guild will not move. Planets will slowly lose their clear memories of each other. They’ll turn inward upon themselves. Space will become a boundary when the Guild navigators lose their mastery. We’ll cling to our dunetops and be ignorant of that which is above us and below us."

"You speak very strangely," she said. "How have you seen me in your vision?"

Trust Fremen superstition! he thought. He said: "I’ve become pasigraphic. I’m a living glyph to write out the changes which must come to pass. If I do not write them, you’ll encounter such heartache as no human should experience."

"What words are these?" she asked, but her hand remained lightly on the knife.

Leto turned his head toward the cliffs of Jacurutu, seeing the beginning glow which would be Second Moon making its predawn passage behind the rocks. The death-scream of a desert hare shocked its way through him. He saw Sabiha shudder. There came the beating of wings – a predator bird, night creature here. He saw the ember glow of many eyes as they swept past above him, headed for crannies in the cliff.

"I must follow the dictates of my new heart," Leto said. "You look upon me as a mere child, Sabiha, but if -"

"They warned me about you," Sabiha said, and now her shoulders were stiff with readiness.

He heard the fear in her voice, said: "Don’t fear me, Sabiha. You’ve lived eight more years than this flesh of mine. For that, I honor you. But I have untold thousands more years of other lives, far more than you have known. Don’t look upon me as a child. I have bridged the many futures and, in one, saw us entwined in love. You and I, Sabiha."

"What are… This can’t… " She broke off in confusion.

"The idea could grow on you," he said. "Now help me back to the sietch, for I’ve been in far places and am weak with the weariness of my travels. Namri must hear where I have been."

He saw the indecision in her, said: "Am I not the Guest of the Cavern? Namri must learn what I have learned. We have many things to do lest our universe degenerate."

"I don’t believe that… about the worms," she said.

"Nor about us entwined in love?"

She shook her head. But he could see the thoughts drifting through her mind like windblown feathers. His words both attracted and repelled her. To be consort of power, that certainly carried high allure. Yet there were her uncle’s orders. But one day this son of Muad’Dib might rule here on Dune and in the farthest reaches of their universe. She encountered then an extremely Fremen, cavern-hiding aversion to such a future. The consort of Leto would be seen by everyone, would be an object of gossip and speculations. She could have wealth, though, and…

"I am the son of Muad’Dib, able to see the future," he said.

Slowly she replaced her knife in its sheath, lifted herself easily from the rug, crossed to his side and helped him to his feet. Leto found himself amused by her actions then: she folded the rug neatly and draped it across her right shoulder. He saw her measuring the difference in their sizes, reflecting upon his words: Entwined in love?

Size is another thing that changes, he thought.

She put a hand on his arm then to help him and control him. He stumbled and she spoke sharply: "We’re too far from the sietch for that!" Meaning the unwanted sound which might attract a worm.

Leto felt that his body had become a dry shell like that abandoned by an insect. He knew this shell: it was one with the society which had been built upon the melange trade and its Religion of the Golden Elixir. It was emptied by its excesses. Muad’Dib’s high aims had fallen into wizardry which was enforced by the military arm of Auqaf. Muad’Dib’s religion had another name now; it was Shien-san-Shao, an Ixian label which designated the intensity and insanity of those who thought they could bring the universe to paradise at the point of a crysknife. But that too would change as lx had changed. For they were merely the ninth planet of their sun, and had even forgotten the language which had given them their name.