Children of Dune (Page 103)

"The Jihad was a kind of mass insanity," he muttered.

"What?" Sabiha had been concentrating on the problem of making him walk without rhythm, hiding their presence out here on open sand. She was a moment focusing on his words, then interpreted them as another product of his obvious fatigue. She felt the weakness of him, the way he’d been drained by the trance. It seemed pointless and cruel to her. If he were to be killed as Namri said, then it should be done quickly without all of this by-play. Leto had spoken of a marvelous revelation, though. Perhaps that was what Namri sought. Certainly that must be the motive behind the behavior of this child’s own grandmother. Why else would Our Lady of Dune give her sanction to these perilous acts against a child?

Child?

Again she reflected upon his words. They were at the cliff base now and she stopped her charge, letting him relax a moment here where it was safer. Looking down at him in the dim starlight, she asked: "How could there be no more worms?"

"Only I can change that," he said. "Have no fear. I can change anything."

"But it’s-"

"Some questions have no answers," he said. "I’ve seen that future, but the contradictions would only confuse you. This is a changing universe and we are the strangest change of all. We resonate to many influences. Our futures need constant updating. Now, there’s a barrier which we must remove. This requires that we do brutal things, that we go against our most basic, our dearest wishes… But it must be done."

"What must be done?"

"Have you ever killed a friend?" he asked and, turning, led the way into the gap which sloped upward to the sietch’s hidden entrance. He moved as quickly as his trance-fatigue would permit, but she was right behind him, clutching his robe and pulling him to a stop.

"What’s this of killing a friend?"

"He’ll die anyway," Leto said. "I don’t have to do it, but I could prevent it. If I don’t prevent it, is that not killing him?"

"Who is this… who will die?"

"The alternative keeps me silent," he said. "I might have to give my sister to a monster."

Again he turned away from her, and this time when she pulled at his robe he resisted, refusing to answer her questions. Best she not know until the time comes, he thought.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Natural selection has been described as an environment selectively screening for those who will have progeny. Where humans are concerned, though, this is an extremely limiting viewpoint. Reproduction by sex tends toward experiment and innovation. It raises many questions, including the ancient one about whether environment is a selective agent after the variation occurs, or whether environment plays a pre-selective role in determining the variations which it screens. Dune did not realty answer those questions: it merely raised new questions which Leto and the Sisterhood may attempt to answer over the next five hundred generations. -The Dune Catastrophe, After Harq al-Ada

The bare brown rocks of the Shield Wall loomed in the distance, visible to Ghanima as the embodiment of that apparition which threatened her future. She stood at the edge of the roof garden atop the Keep, the setting sun at her back. The sun held a deep orange glow from intervening dust clouds, a color as rich as the rim of a worm’s mouth. She sighed, thinking: Alia… Alia… Is your fate to be my fate?

The inner lives had grown increasingly clamorous of late. There was something about female conditioning in a Fremen society – perhaps it was a real sexual difference, but whatever – the female was more susceptible to that inner tide. Her grandmother had warned about it as they’d schemed, drawing on the accumulated wisdom of the Bene Gesserit but awakening that wisdom’s threats within Ghanima.

"Abomination;" the Lady Jessica had said, "our term for the pre-born, has a long history of bitter experiences behind it. The way of it seems to be that the inner lives divide. They split into the benign and the malignant. The benign remain tractable, useful. The malignant appear to unite in one powerful psyche, trying to take over the living flesh and its consciousness. The process is known to take considerable time, but its signs are well known."

"Why did you abandon Alia?" Ghanima asked.

"I fled in terror of what I’d created," Jessica said, her voice low. "I gave up. And my burden now is that… perhaps I gave up too soon."

"What do you mean?"

"I cannot explain yet, but… maybe… no! I’ll not give you false hopes. Ghafla, the abominable distraction, has a long history in human mythology. It was called many things, but chiefly it was called possession. That’s what it seems to be. You lose your way in the malignancy and it takes possession of you."

"Leto… feared the spice," Ghanima said, finding that she could talk about him quietly. The terrible price demanded of them!

"And wisely," Jessica had said. She would say no more.

But Ghanima had risked an explosion of her inner memories, peering past an odd blurred veil and futilely expanding on the Bene Gesserit fears. To explain what had befallen Alia did not ease it one bit. The Bene Gesserit accumulation of experience had pointed to a possible way out of the trap, though, and when Ghanima ventured the inner sharing, she first called upon the Mohalata, a partnership of the benign which might protect her.

She recalled that sharing as she stood in the sunset glow at the edge of the Keep’s roof garden. Immediately she felt the memory-presence of her mother. Chani stood there, an apparition between Ghanima and the distant cliffs.

"Enter here and you will eat the fruit of the Zaqquum, the food of hell!" Chani said. "Bar this door, my daughter; it is your only safety."