Children of Dune (Page 33)

"It’d be better for me never to become Emperor," Leto said. "Oh, I don’t imply that I’ve made my father’s mistake and peered into the future with a glass of spice. I say this thing out of selfishness. My sister and I desperately need a time of freedom when we can learn how to live with what we are."

He fell silent, stared questioningly at the Lady Jessica. He’d spoken his piece as he and Ghanima had agreed. Now what would be their grandmother’s response?

Jessica studied her grandson in the low light of glowglobes which illuminated her quarters in Sietch Tabr. It was still early morning of her second day here and she’d already had disturbing reports that the twins had spent a night of vigil outside the sietch. What were they doing? She had not slept well and she felt fatigue acids demanding that she come down from the hyper-level which had sustained her through all the demanding necessities since that crucial performance at the spaceport. This was the sietch of her nightmares – but outside, that was not the desert she remembered. Where have all the flowers come from? And the air around her felt too damp. Stillsuit discipline was lax among the young.

"What are you, child, that you need time to learn about yourself?" she asked.

He shook his head gently, knowing it to be a bizarre gesture of adulthood on a child’s body, reminding himself that he must keep this woman off balance. "First, I am not a child. Oh…" He touched his chest. "This is a child’s body; no doubt of that. But I am not a child."

Jessica chewed her upper lip, disregarding what this betrayed. Her Duke, so many years dead on this accursed planet, had laughed at her when she did this. "Your one unbridled response," he’d called that chewing of the lip. "It tells me that you’re disturbed, and I must kiss those lips to still their fluttering."

Now this grandson who bore the name of her Duke shocked her into heart-pounding stillness merely by smiling and saying: "You are disturbed; I see it by the fluttering of those lips."

It required the most profound discipline of her Bene Gesserit training to restore a semblance of calm. She managed: "Do you taunt me?"

"Taunt you? Never. But I must make it clear to you how much we differ. Let me remind you of that sietch orgy so long ago when the Old Reverend Mother gave you her lives and her memories. She tuned herself to you and gave you that… that long chain of sausages, each one a person. You have them yet. So you know something of what Ghanima and I experience."

"And Alia?" Jessica asked, testing him.

"Didn’t you discuss that with Ghani?"

"I wish to discuss it with you."

"Very well. Alia denied what she was and became that which she most feared. The past-within cannot be relegated to the unconscious. That is a dangerous course for any human, but for us who are pre-born, it is worse than death. And that is all I will say about Alia."

"So you’re not a child," Jessica said.

"I’m millions of years old. That requires adjustments which humans have never before been called upon to make."

Jessica nodded, calmer now, much more cautious than she’d been with Ghanima. And where was Ghanima? Why had Leto come here alone?

"Well, grandmother," he said, "are we Abominations or are we the hope of the Atreides?"

Jessica ignored the question. "Where is your sister?"

"She distracts Alia to keep us from being disturbed. It is necessary. But Ghani would say nothing more to you than I’ve said. Didn’t you observe that yesterday?"

"What I observed yesterday is my affair. Why do you prattle about Abomination?"

"Prattle? Don’t give me your Bene Gesserit cant, grandmother. I’ll feed it back to you, word for word, right out of your own memories. I want more than the fluttering of your lips."

Jessica shook her head, feeling the coldness of this… person who carried her blood. The resources at his disposal daunted her. She tried to match his tone, asked: "What do you know of my intentions?"

He sniffed. "You needn’t inquire whether I’ve made the mistake my father made. I’ve not looked outside our garden of time – at least not by seeking it out. Leave absolute knowledge of the future to those moments of deja vu which any human may experience. I know the trap of prescience. My father’s life tells me what I need to know about it. No, grandmother: to know the future absolutely is to be trapped into that future absolutely. It collapses time. Present becomes future. I require more freedom than that."

Jessica felt her tongue twitch with unspoken words. How could she respond to him with something he didn’t already know? This was monstrous! He’s me! He’s my beloved Leto! This thought shocked her. Momentarily she wondered if the childish mask might not lapse into those dear features and resurrect… No!

Leto lowered his head, looked upward to study her. Yes, she could be maneuvered after all. He said: "When you think of prescience, which I hope is rarely, you’re probably no different from any other. Most people imagine how nice it would be to know tomorrow’s quotation on the price of whale fur. Or whether a Harkonnen will once more govern their homeworld of Giedi Prime? But of course we know the Harkonnens without prescience, don’t we, grandmother?"

She refused to rise to his baiting. Of course he would know about the cursed Harkonnen blood in his ancestry.

"Who is a Harkonnen?" he asked, goading. "Who is Beast Rabban? Any one of us, eh? But I digress. I speak the popular myth of prescience: to know the future absolutely! All of it! What fortunes could be made – and lost – on such absolute knowledge, eh? The rabble believes this. They believe that if a little bit is good, more must be better. How excellent! And if you handed one of them the complete scenario of his life, the unvarying dialogue up to his moment of death – what a hellish gift that’d be. What utter boredom! Every living instant he’d be replaying what he knew absolutely. No deviation. He could anticipate every response, every utterance – over and over and over and over and over and…"