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Before the robot could laugh again, Duncan reached forward and grabbed the platinum hand that extended from the plush sleeve. "Then do it, Erasmus." He pressed closer, reached out his other hand and pressed it against the robot's face in a curiously intimate gesture. Prescience seemed to be guiding him.
"Duncan, this is dangerous," Paul said. "You know it."
"I'm the one who's dangerous, Paul. Not the one in danger." Duncan pulled himself to within inches of Erasmus, feeling all the possibilities roil within him. Though there were troublesome blind spots in the future, pitfalls and traps he might not be able to foresee, he felt confident.
The robot paused, as if calculating, then gripped Duncan's hand and--in a like gesture--reached out with the other to touch his face. Duncan's dark brows knitted as he experienced strange sensations. The cool metal felt alarmingly soft, and he almost had the sensation of falling into it. He extended himself, stretching his mind toward the uncharted territory of the independent robot's thoughts, just as Erasmus did the same to him. The robot's fingers elongated, spreading out over Duncan's hand like a glove. As flowmetal covered Duncan's wrist and ran up his forearm, it felt bitingly cold as Erasmus began to talk. "I sense a growing trust between us, Duncan Idaho."
As moments passed, Duncan couldn't tell if he was taking from the robot, or if Erasmus was surrendering what the nascent Kwisatz Haderach needed, everything he needed. And, though the two of them were fused, Duncan had to go further. A viscous, metallic substance covered his arm like the sandtrout that had engulfed young Leto II's body, so long ago.
I hear the clarion call of Eternity beckoning me.
--LETO ATREIDES II,
records from Dar-es-Balat
With the machine city heavily damaged and the evermind Omnius gone, the major components of Synchrony stopped moving. The buildings no longer pumped and shifted like interlocking puzzle pieces, no longer morphed into strange shapes. Like an immense broken engine, the city had ground to a complete halt, leaving many streets blocked, structures half buried or partially formed, and tramcars suspended in the air, dangling on invisible electronic wires. Grotesque Face Dancer bodies and smashed combat robots littered the streets. Columns of fire and smoke rose into the sky.
Exhausted even in victory, Sheeana stared around the city, her face filled with awe and pleasure. As she walked alone down a devastated street, she saw a young boy standing there by himself between the towering, exotic buildings. Looking wrung out but far more powerful than she had ever seen him, was the transformed boy Leto II. He had left the sandworms, having directed them off into the city, but even though he stood here in front of her, he was still part of them.
As Leto craned his neck to look up at one of the dangling tramcars, Sheeana noticed an oddness about him, a looming presence that hadn't been there before. She understood. "You have your memories back."
"In perfect detail. I've been reviewing them." Leto's eyes were full of centuries, now completely blue-within-blue due to incredible spice saturation from the bodies of the sandworms he had controlled. "I am the Tyrant. I am the God Emperor." His voice sounded louder, yet carried a deep and abiding weariness.
"You are also Leto Atreides, brother to Ghanima, son of Muad'Dib and Chani."
In response, he smiled as if she had lifted some of his burden. "Yes, that too. I'm everything my predecessor was--and everything the worms are. The pearl of dreaming inside them has been broken open. He sleeps no more."
Sheeana recalled the quiet boy aboard the no-ship. His past had been worse than anyone else's, and now that innocent boy was truly gone.
"I remember every death I caused. Every one. I remember all of my Duncans, and the reasons each died." He looked up, then grasped her arm and pulled her back toward a twisted building that was stuck halfway out of the ground.
Seconds later, the invisible suspensor line high above snapped, and the tramcar hurtled down to smash on the street exactly where the two had been standing. Dead Face Dancers lay sprawled in the wreckage.
"I knew it would fall," Leto said.
She smiled gently. "We each have our special talents."
The two of them climbed the high rubble of a collapsed building to get a better view of the city's wreckage. Confused and disoriented robots milled around the smoldering piles of wreckage and broken structures, as if waiting for instructions.
"I am a Kwisatz Haderach," Leto II said, his voice distant. "And so was my father. But it is much different now. Did I plan for all this long ago, as part of my Golden Path?"
As if he had summoned them, four sandworms rose noisily from the churned and smashed ground and loomed over the wreckage. She heard loud grinding noises, and the remaining three worms came from other directions, knocking buildings aside, tunneling through the wreckage. Slightly larger than before, they circled Leto and Sheeana.
The largest worm, the one she had named Monarch, turned its head toward the two of them. Unafraid, Leto climbed down the remains of the building to approach the creature.
"My memories are back," Leto said to Sheeana, stepping forward, "but not the dreaming existence I had as the God Emperor, back when man and worm were one." Monarch laid its head on the base of the rubble pile, as did the companion worms, like supplicants before a king. The cinnamon odor of melange filled the air from the exhalations of the beasts.
Reaching out, Leto stroked the rounded edge of Monarch's mouth. "Shall we dream together again? Or should I let you go back to a peaceful sleep?"
Without fear, Sheeana also touched the worm, feeling the hard skin of the rings.
With a sigh, the boy added, "I miss the people I used to know, especially Ghanima. Your ghola program didn't bring her back with me."
"We didn't consider personal costs or consequences," Sheeana said. "I'm sorry."
Tears welled in Leto's dark blue eyes. "There are so many painful memories from before I took the sandtrout as part of me. My father refused to make the choice I did--refused to pay the price in blood for the Golden Path, but I thought I knew better. Ah, how arrogant we can be in our youth!"
In front of Leto, the largest worm lifted. Its open mouth looked like a cave full of rich spice.
"Fortunately I know how to go back into the dreaming essence of the Tyrant, the God Emperor. To the real son of Muad'Dib." With a glance at her, he said, "I take my last few sips of humanity." Then he entered the towering mouth and climbed over the maw-fence of crystalline teeth.
Sheeana understood what he was doing. She had tried the same thing herself, though ineffectively. The worm engulfed Leto II, closed its mouth, and reared back. The boy was gone.
Sheeana struggled to keep her knees from buckling. She knew she would never see Leto again, though he would be with the worms eternally, merged into Monarch's flesh from the inside, becoming a pearl of awareness once more. "Goodbye, my friend."
But the spectacle was not finished. The other worms rose beside Monarch, and all towered over her. Sheeana stood motionless, at once horrified and fascinated. Would they devour her, too? She steeled herself for her own fate, but had no fear of it. As a young girl, after a worm had destroyed her village on Rakis, Sheeana had run wildly out into the desert and screamed at the huge creature, calling it names, insisting that it eat her. "Well, Shaitan--do you have an appetite for me, now?"
But they did not want her. Instead, the seven worms gathered together, tumbling one upon the other, writhing like a mass of snakes. With Leto inside them now, the worms were transforming. Six worms wound themselves around the largest beast that had swallowed the boy. They twisted and twined, wrapping their sinuous bodies like vines around a tree, and then moved together.
Sheeana scrambled back up the rubble pile to keep herself safe from falling debris. The fleshy rings of the separate sandworms began to merge and metamorphose into a much larger form. The differentiation among the creatures became less distinct; the rings united, joining into one incredible sandworm: a behemoth greater even than the largest monsters from legen
dary Dune.
Sheeana stumbled, falling backward on the rubble but unable to tear her gaze away from the immense sandworm that towered in front of her, rippling and twining, its body stretching back hundreds of meters.
"Shai-Hulud," she murmured, intentionally refusing to use the term Shaitan, just as she had always done. Truly, this was the godlike Old Man of the Desert. The dizzying odor of melange was stronger than ever.
At first she thought the leviathan would consume her after all, but the giant worm turned away and smashed down into the ground with a great thunder of noise, tunneling downward beneath the machine city.
Its new home.
A shudder of supreme pleasure ran through her. She knew the great worm would divide beneath the surface. This union between Leto II and the creatures would have a greater resistance to moisture, enabling them to survive until they could remake parts of this former machine planet into a domain of their own. One day, new sandworms would grow and thrive on this world, always lurking beneath the surface, always watching.
To defeat the humans, one option is to become like them, granting no quarter, chasing and destroying them to the last man, woman, and child. Just as they tried to do to us.
--ERASMUS,
