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Leto nodded to himself, sensing the enormous will-force his father had required to withdraw, recognizing the consequences of failure. Any possession reduced the possessed to Abomination. The recognition gave him a renewed sense of strength, and he felt his own body with abnormal acuteness and a deeply drawn awareness of past mistakes: his own and those of his ancestors. It was the uncertainties which weakened--he saw this now. For an instant, temptation warred with fear within him. This flesh possessed the ability to transform melange into a vision of the future. With the spice, he could breathe the future, shatter Time's veils. He found the temptation difficult to shed, clasped his hands and sank into the prana-bindu awareness. His flesh negated the temptation. His flesh wore the deep knowledge learned in blood by Paul. Those who sought the future hoped to gain the winning gamble on tomorrow's race. Instead they found themselves trapped into a lifetime whose every heartbeat and anguished wail was known. Paul's final vision had shown the precarious way out of that trap, and Leto knew now that he had no other choice but to follow that way.
"The joy of living, its beauty is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you," he said.
A soft voice whispered in his ear: "I've always known that beauty."
Leto turned his head, stared into Ghanima's eyes which glistened in the bright moonlight. He saw Chani looking back at him. "Mother," he said, "you must withdraw."
"Ahhh, the temptation!" she said, and kissed him.
He pushed her away. "Would you take your daughter's life?" he demanded.
"It's so easy ... so foolishly easy," she said.
Leto, feeling panic begin to grip him, remembered what an effort of will his father's persona-within had required to abandon the flesh. Was Ghanima lost in that observer-world where he had watched and listened, learning what he had required from his father?
"I will despise you, mother," he said.
"Others won't despise me," she said. "Be my beloved."
"If I do ... you know what you both will become," he said. "My father will despise you."
"Never!"
"I will!"
The sound was jerked out of his throat without his volition and it carried all the old overtones of Voice which Paul had learned from his witch mother.
"Don't say it," she moaned.
"I will despise you!"
"Please ... please don't say it."
Leto rubbed his throat, feeling the muscles become once more his own. "He will despise you. He will turn his back on you. He will go into the desert again."
"No ... no ..."
She shook her head from side to side.
"You must leave, mother," he said.
"No ... no ..." But the voice lacked its original force.
Leto watched his sister's face. How the muscles twitched! Emotions fled across the flesh at the turmoil within her.
"Leave," he whispered. "Leave."
"No-o-o-o ..."
He gripped her arm, felt the tremors which pulsed through her muscles, the nerves twitching. She writhed, tried to pull away, but he held tightly to her arm, whispering: "Leave ... leave ..."
And all the time, Leto berated himself for talking Ghani into this parent game which once they'd played often, but she had lately resisted. It was true that the female had more weakness in that inner assault, he realized. There lay the origin of the Bene Gesserit fear.
Hours passed and still Ghanima's body trembled and twitched with the inner battle, but now his sister's voice joined the argument. He heard her talking to that imago within, the pleading.
"Mother ... please--" And once: "You've seen Alia! Will you become another Alia?"
At last Ghanima leaned against him, whispered: "She has accepted it. She's gone."
He stroked her head. "Ghani, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'll never ask you to do that again. I was selfish. Forgive me."
"There's nothing to forgive," she said, and her voice came panting as though after great physical exertion. "We've learned much that we needed to know."
"She spoke to you of many things," he said. "We'll share it later when--"
"No! We'll do it now. You were right."
"My Golden Path?"
"Your damned Golden Path!"
"Logic's useless unless it's armed with essential data," he said. "But I--"
"Grandmother came back to guide our education and to see if we'd been ... contaminated."
"That's what Duncan says. There's nothing new in--"
"Prime computation," she agreed, her voice strengthening. She pulled away from him, looked out at the desert which lay in a predawn hush. This battle ... this knowledge, had cost them a night. The Royal Guard beyond the moisture seal must have had much to explain. Leto had charged that nothing disturb them.
"People often learn subtlety as they age," Leto said. "What is it we're learning with all of this agedness to draw upon?"
"The universe as we see it is never quite the exact physical universe," she said. "We mustn't perceive this grandmother just as a grandmother."
"That'd be dangerous," he agreed. "But my ques--"
"There's something beyond subtlety," she said. "We must have a place in our awareness to perceive what we can't preconceive. That's why ... my mother spoke to me often of Jessica. At the last, when we were both reconciled to the inner exchange, she said many things." Ghanima sighed.
"We know she's our grandmother," he said. "You were with her for hours yesterday. Is that why--"
"If we allow it, our knowing will determine how we react to her," Ghanima said. "That's what my mother kept warning me. She quoted our grandmother once and--" Ghanima touched his arm. "--I heard the echo of it within me in our grandmother's voice."
"Warning you," Leto said. He found this thought disturbing. Was nothing in this world dependable?
"Most deadly errors arise from obsolete assumptions," Ghanima said. "That's what my mother kept quoting."
"That's pure Bene Gesserit."
"If ... if Jessica has gone back to the Sisterhood completely ..."
"That'd be very dangerous to us," he said, completing the thought. "We carry the blood of their Kwisatz Haderach--their male Bene Gesserit."
"They won't abandon that search," she said, "but they may abandon us. Our grandmother could be the instrument."
"There's another way," he said.
"Yes--the two of us ... mated. But they know what recessives might complicate that pairing."
"It's a gamble they must've discussed."
"And with our grandmother, at that. I don't like that way."
"Nor I."
"Still, it's not the first time a royal line has tried to ..."
"It repels me," he said, shuddering.
She felt the movement, fell silent.
"Power," he said.
And in that strange alchemy of their similarities she knew where his thoughts had been. "The power of the Kwisatz Haderach must fail," she agreed.
"Used in their way," he said.
In that instant, day came to the desert beyond their vantage point. They sensed the heat beginning. Colors leaped forth from the plantings beneath the cliff. Grey-green leaves sent spiked shadows along the ground. The low morning light of Dune's silvery sun revealed the verdant oasis full of golden and purple shadows in the well of the sheltering cliffs.
