Children of Dune (Page 96)

"Done," Alia said, and she fought to keep voice and face from betraying her glee. "We’ll prepare the formal charter of betrothal. We’ll have the signatures witnessed by the proper assemblage from the Great Houses. Farad’n cannot possibly doubt -"

"He’ll doubt, but he’ll come," Ghanima said. "And he’ll have guards. But will they think to guard him from me?"

"For the love of all that Paul tried to do," Irulan protested, "let us at least make Farad’n’s death appear an accident, or the result of malice by outside -"

"I’ll take joy in displaying my bloody knife to my brethren," Ghanima said.

"Alia, I beg you," Irulan said. "Abandon this rash insanity. Declare kanly against Farad’n, anything to -"

"We don’t require formal declaration of vendetta against him," Ghanima said. "The whole Empire knows how we must feel." She pointed to the sleeve of her robe. "We wear the yellow of mourning. When I exchange it for the black of a Fremen betrothed, will that fool anyone?"

"Pray that it fools Farad’n," Alia said, "and the delegates of the Great Houses we invite to witness the -"

"Every one of those delegates will turn against you," Irulan said. "You know that!"

"Excellent point," Ghanima said. "Choose those delegates with care, Alia. They must be ones we won’t mind eliminating later."

Irulan threw up her arms in despair, turned and fled.

"Have her put under close surveillance lest she try to warn her nephew," Ghanima said.

"Don’t try to teach me how to conduct a plot," Alia said. She turned and followed Irulan, but at a slower pace. The guards outside and the waiting aides were sucked up in her wake like sand particles drawn into the vortex of a rising worm.

Ghanima shook her head sadly from side to side as the door closed, thought: It’s as poor Leto and I thought. Gods below! I wish it’d been me the tiger killed instead of him.

= = = = = =

Many forces sought control of the Atreides twins and, when the death of Leto was announced, this movement of plot and counterplot was amplified. Note the relative motivations: the Sisterhood feared Alia, an adult Abomination, but still wanted those genetic characteristics carried by the Atreides. The Church hierarchy of Auqaf and Hajj saw only the power implicit in control of Muad’Dib’s heir. CHOAM wanted a doorway to the wealth of Dune. Farad’n and his Sardaukar sought a return to glory for House Corrino. The Spacing Guild feared the equation Arrakis = melange; without the spice they could not navigate. Jessica wished to repair what her disobedience to the Bene Gesserit had created. Few thought to ask the twins what their plans might be, until it was too late. -The Book of Kreos

Shortly after the evening meal, Leto saw a man walking past the arched doorway to his chamber, and his mind went with the man. The passage had been left open and Leto had seen some activity out there – spice hampers being wheeled past, three women with the obvious off-world sophistication of dress which marked them as smugglers. This man who took Leto’s mind walking might have been no different except that he moved like Stilgar, a much younger Stilgar.

It was a peculiar walk his mind took. Time filled Leto’s awareness like a stellar globe. He could see infinite timespaces, but he had to press into his own future before knowing in which moment his flesh lay. His multifaceted memory-lives surged and receded, but they were his now. They were like waves on a beach, but if they rose too high, he could command them and they would retreat, leaving the royal Harum behind.

Now and again he would listen to those memory-lives. One would rise like a prompter, poking its head up out of the stage and calling cues for his behavior. His father came during the mind-walk and said: "You are a child seeking to be a man. When you are a man, you will seek in vain for the child you were."

All the while, he felt his body being plagued by the fleas and lice of an old sietch poorly maintained. None of the attendants who brought his heavily spice-laced food appeared bothered by the creatures. Did these people have immunity from such things, or was it only that they had lived with them so long they could ignore discomfort?

Who were these people assembled around Gurney? How had they come to this place? Was this Jacurutu? His multi-memories produced answers he did not like. They were ugly people and Gurney was the ugliest. Perfection floated here, though, dormant and waiting beneath an ugly surface.

Part of him knew he remained spice-bound, held in bondage by the heavy dosages of melange in every meal. His child’s body wanted to rebel while her persona raved with the immediate presence of memories carried over from thousands of eons.

His mind returned from its walk, and he wondered if his body had really stayed behind. Spice confused the senses. He felt the pressures of self-limitations piling up against him like the long barachan dunes of the bled slowly building themselves a ramp against a desert cliff. One day a few trickles of sand would flow over the cliff, then more and more and more… and only the sand would remain exposed to the sky.

But the cliff would still be there underneath.

I’m still within the trance, he thought.

He knew he would come soon to a branching of life and death. His captors kept sending him back into the spice thralldom, unsatisfied with his responses at every return. Always, treacherous Namri waited there with his knife. Leto knew countless pasts and futures, but he had yet to learn what would satisfy Namri… or Gurney Halleck. They wanted something outside of the visions. The life and death branching lured Leto. His life, he knew, would have to possess some inner meaning which carried it above the vision circumstances. Thinking of this demand, he felt that his inner awareness was his true being and his outer existence was the trance. This terrified him. He did not want to go back to the sietch with its fleas, its Namri, its Gurney Halleck.