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The Bene Gesserits had planned the creation of their superman over hundreds of generations, subtly guiding bloodlines and breeding maps to produce the long-anticipated messiah. But after Paul Muad'Dib turned against them and created havoc in their carefully ordered timeline, the Sisters had vowed never to unleash another Kwisatz Haderach. But in the long-ago aftermath, Muad'Dib's twin children had been born before the damage could be fully understood. One of those twins, Leto II, had been a Kwisatz Haderach, like his father.
A key turned in Sheeana's mind, unlocking other thoughts. Perhaps in the solemn twelve-year-old Leto, the thinking machines had a blind spot! Could he be the final Kwisatz Haderach they sought? Had Omnius even considered the possibility that the machines might have the wrong one? Her pulse quickened. Prophecies were notorious for misdirection. Maybe Erasmus had missed the obvious! She could hear the inner voice of Serena Butler laughing at the possibility, and she allowed herself to cling to a tiny kernel of hope.
"Let's go to the cargo hold, then." Sheeana took the boy's hand, and they hurried down the corridors and dropchutes to the lower levels.
As they approached the great doors, Sheeana heard explosive thunder from the other side. The frenzied worms charged from one end of the kilometer-long space to the other, smashing into the walls.
By the time they arrived at the access door, young Leto seemed ready to collapse. "We have to go in," he said, his face flushed. "The worms . . . I need to talk with them, calm them."
Sheeana, who had never been afraid of the sandworms before, now hesitated, worried that in their wild state they might not grant safety to her or Leto. But the boy worked the controls, and the sealed door slid aside. Hot, dry air blew onto their faces. Leto waded out and up to his knees in the soft dunes, and Sheeana hurried after him.
When Leto raised his arms and shouted, all seven worms charged toward him like snorting predators, with the largest one--Monarch--at the fore. Sheeana could feel the hot wave of their anger, their need for destruction . . . but something told her that rage was not directed at either of them. The creatures rose up from the sand and towered over the two humans.
"The thinking machines are outside the ship," Sheeana said to Leto. "Will the worms . . . will they fight for us?"
The boy looked forlorn. "They will follow my path if I lay it out for them, but I can't see it yet myself!"
Looking at him, she wondered again if this boy could be the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach, the link in the chain that Omnius had overlooked. What if Paul Atreides was no more than a feint in the final duel between man and machine?
Leto shook himself, visibly bolstering his determination. "But the prior me, the God Emperor, had tremendous prescience. Maybe he foresaw this as well and prepared the beasts. I . . . trust them."
At this, the worms dipped in unison, as if bowing. Leto swayed, and they swayed with him. For a moment the walls of the hold seemed to recede, and the sand dunes flowed out to eternity. The ceiling disappeared in a vertiginous haze of dust. Suddenly, everything snapped back into focus.
Leto caught his breath and called out, "The Golden Path is coming to meet me! It is time to release the worms--here, and now."
Sheeana sensed the rightness of this and knew what to do. All systems were still programmed to obey her instructions. "The machines deactivated the weapons and engines, but I can still open the great cargo doors."
She and Leto hurried to the controls in the hall, where she input the commands. Machinery hummed and strained. Then, with a loud clank and a bang, a gap appeared in the long-sealed walls. From the corridor, Sheeana and the boy watched the immense lower doors slide open, like clenched teeth being pried apart.
Tons of sand spilled out in a rushing stream and propelled the sandworms, like living battering rams, into the streets of the machine capital.
Prescience reveals no absolutes, only possibilities. The surest way to know exactly what the future holds is to experience it in real time.
--from "Conversations with Muad'Dib" by the
PRINCESS IRULAN
A duel makes no sense." The Baron frowned as he looked around the cathedral chamber. "It is wasteful. Naturally, I am convinced my dear Paolo will defeat this upstart, but why not keep both Kwisatz Haderachs for yourself, Omnius?"
"I desire only the best one," the evermind said.
"And we could not be certain of controlling two of them as they struggled for preeminence with their new powers," Erasmus said.
"Whichever of you wins the duel will receive the ultraspice," Omnius announced. "When the winner consumes it, I will have my true and final Kwisatz Haderach. I can then conclude this wasteful nonsense and begin my real work of remaking the universe."
Chani kept one hand on Paul's arm. "How do you know either of them is your Kwisatz Haderach?"
"You could be delusional," Yueh said, and the boy Paolo shot him a glare.
"And why should I cooperate if I win?" Paul said, but the sickening echoes of recurring visions strangled his protest. He thought he knew what was going to happen, or some piece of it.
"Because we have faith." The Baron, a paragon of unholiness, laughed at his own joke, but no one else did.
Paolo drew designs in the air with the tip of his gold-hilted knife. "I have the Emperor's dagger! You were stabbed with it once."
"That won't happen again. This is my day of triumph." But Paul heard the brittleness in his measured words, the vulnerability behind the bravado. He could see no way to avoid the duel, and wasn't sure he wanted to. In his mind, he drove back the troubling flashes of vision. This perverse version of himself needed to be cut out like a cancer.
The time had come. Paul gathered all of his concentration for the fight. Hardly seeing Chani, he kissed her. The wormtooth dagger she had made felt perfectly balanced in his hand. He had practiced with the crysknife on the no-ship, and he knew how to fight.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
Young Paolo pressed his lips together in a tight smile. "I can tell you've had the visions, too! See, we are alike in yet another aspect."
"I've had many visions." I will face my fear.
"Not like these." His opponent's knowing smile was maddening, unnerving. . . . Paul stiffened his
resolve. He would not give Paolo the satisfaction of showing dread or uncertainty.
Quicksilver robots appeared and removed the human observers to the sidelines of the expansive hall. The Baron stepped back beside Khrone, his gaze flicking back and forth between young Paolo and the tempting dose of ultraspice. He licked his thick lips hungrily, as if wishing he could try some for himself.
On the smooth combat floor of the chamber, Paul stood poised a couple of meters from Paolo. His younger foe tossed the gold-hilted dagger from hand to hand and smiled at him, showing white teeth.
Calming himself, Paul summoned all the important lessons he had learned: Bene Gesserit attitudes and prana-bindu instruction, the precise muscular training and rigorous attack exercises that Duncan and the Bashar had drilled into all of the ghola children.
He spoke to his fear: I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
It would all culminate here. Paul felt confident that if he rose to the challenge and won, his Kwisatz Haderach powers would surface, and he would be able to go on to defeat the thinking machines. But if Paolo won . . . He didn't want to consider that possibility.
"Usul, remember your time among the Fremen," Chani called from the side of the hall. "Remember how they taught you to fight!"
"He remembers none of it, bitch!" Paolo slashed the Emperor's knife across the air, as if slitting an invisible throat. "But I am fully trained, a tempered fighting machine."
The Baron applauded, but only a little. "No one likes a braggart, Paolo . . . unless, of course, you succeed and prove to everyone that you were merely stating facts."
Paul refused to be controlled by his visions. If I am the Kwisatz Haderach, I'll change the visions. I shall fight. I shall be everywhere at once.
Young Paolo must have been thinking the same thing, for he lunged like a viper. Startled by the abrupt beginning of the duel, Erasmus swept his plush robes aside and stepped quickly out of the way. Apparently he had intended to delineate the rules of the challenge, but Paolo wanted to make it a brawl.
