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Chapter Text

Disclaimer: not mine.
I couldn’t find the miniseries script anywhere for the Children of Dune 3 part so I am relying on the Dune Messiah Book for this.

Desert Planet Part IV

Paul paused and then backtracked, glancing into the room that had been opened to air last week. Sure enough, he saw three very familiar heads on the other side of the bed, one black, one brown and one crimson. “Do I want to know what you three are up to?”

“Father!” Leto II grinned at him while his Aunt and ‘cousin’ shook their heads at the boy.

“We weren’t doing anything wrong Paul.” Alia crossed her arms over her amply developing chest, long dark coppery hair falling about her. She favoured their Mother in her looks although her hair was darker like his own.

“Lily?”

The redhead sighed. “We just wanted to make sure the room was perfect, well I did, they just tagged along.” At fourteen Lily was tall and slender with long crimson hair and her Fathers cheekbones. The last time Paul had spoken to Harry the older man had admitted she was the spitting image of the woman she was named for, she had even inherited the brilliant emerald eyes, but unlike her Father, the green was long gone, replaced by the eyes of the Ibad.

He felt a pang of regret for the girl, it was rare she saw her Father and Paul knew it was because of him. Their meeting in his Father’s office twelve years ago had ended without bloodshed thankfully but Harry had sought any assignment that kept him off Arrakis and away from the Jihad. He had released Harah who had married Stilgar, as Paul had seen, but there was no animosity there, she had understood and there had never been love in their marriage. For a while Harry had stayed on Caladan and so Lily had gone to see him at least once a year but then his skills had been needed amongst the Great Houses, to keep them in line and the visits had become infrequent. But now, for the first time in over a decade Harry was returning to Arrakis, though not for any happy reason. And once again Paul felt he was to blame, Harry came to witness his sons water be reclaimed but the tribe. Kaleff had gone against his Father’s wishes and joined the Jihad once of age. And now he was dead at only twenty-four. How much more pain would he cause the man he called brother? “Are you looking forward to seeing your Father, Lily?”

“Yes but…”

“You miss Kaleff. He would not want you to be sad little flower.” Paul assured her and she smiled shakily.

“I know Uncle Paul.” The three followed him from the room and down the hall.

“So where did you lose your guard this time?” He smiled and the teens grinned. He had ensured all three had the same training he’d had as a child, for their safety. They could handle themselves easily enough but the guards made their Mother’s happy. Alia had only returned to Arrakis five years ago, at age ten, to take her place as ‘Priestess’, until then she had lived on Caladan with their Mother. He knew Jessica feared the day Alia attempted the spice trance, what abilities might lay within her, even without being pre-born?

Leto II, Paul’s only child and heir, was almost as tall as he was now. He had inherited Chani’s more elfin features but the Atreides hair. “We didn’t lose them exactly…”

“I think they’re in Mother’s garden.” Alia admitted.

“Well you better run along and get change, don’t want to miss his arrival.” Paul watched the three run for their rooms to change into nicer clothes to meet Harry in, going to his own shared room to find Chani brushing her hair, already dressed. He lent down to kiss her and she smiled.

“Come beloved, you do not want to be late in welcoming him home.” Chani was one of the few who knew how much Paul missed Harry at his side.

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The Royal Family stood waiting at the smaller, private, landing area off the Palace. Harry had never accepted a title within the Empire and so had faded from many of the people’s minds, allowing them to greet him in private unlike Jessica’s last visit. Lily was practically vibrating in excitement as the craft touched down and the ramp lowered. Harry walked off, looking no different to the day he had met their arrival in Arrakeen, even his uniform was almost the same. Paul stepped forward and Harry bowed.

“My Lord.” Harry greeted and Paul smiled, he was always Harry’s Duke, not his Emperor.

“It is good to see you brother.” Paul hugged him and was relieved when Harry returned the gesture. They had not seen each other since Paul had met with Bronso and his Mother and he was just glad Harry was home even if not under the best circumstances. He could understand Harry’s reluctance concerning his actions over the years and that was why he had assigned him to Kaitain and the Houses that still resided there, keeping them in line. “I have missed you.” He whispered and felt Harry tighten his grip.

“I have missed you too Paul.” He answered softly. He had missed Paul, despite how they had parted. And he still felt bad about that discussion, Paul had been open and honest while he had kept many secrets. He stepped back and bowed to Irulan who smiled and clasped his hand before Chani hugged him.

“Welcome home Suhl.” She greeted before stepping back and then a crimson missile slammed into him.

Harry laughed and hugged his daughter tightly. “I have missed you little flower.” He pulled her back to look her over. “You look so much like your grandmother.” He gently brushed back an errant lock of hair from her face and then looked at the other two teenagers. “All three of you have grown so much.” He admitted even as Alia and Leto moved in for their own hugs before Harry moved to Harah and Stilgar, greeting them both warmly.

“Father.” Orlop whispered and Harry drew him into a hug. Stilgar had married Harah but the boys and Lily still called Harry father. “Kaleff….”

“I know, I’m here.” He whispered sadly. The group moved inside the Palace, Harry’s things taken to his room before they left for the old Sietch Tabr. Kaleff’s body had been kept preserved for them to all be present for the collection of his water for the tribe.

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Despite the murderous nature of the plot he hoped to devise, the thoughts of Scytale, the Tleilaxu Face Dancer, returned again and again to rueful compassion. I shall regret causing death and misery to Muad’Dib, he told himself. He kept this benignity carefully hidden from his fellow conspirators. Such feelings told him, though, that he found it easier to identify with the victim than with the attackers - a thing characteristic of the Tleilaxu. Scytale stood in bemused silence somewhat apart from the others. The argument about psychic poison had been going on for some time now. It was energetic and vehement, but polite in that blindly compulsive way adepts of the Great Schools always adopted for matters close to their dogma.

"When you think you have him skewered, right then you'll find him unwounded!" Mohiam snapped. She was their hostess on Wallach IX. She was a black-robed stick figure, a witch crone seated in a floater chair at Scytale's left. Her aba hood had been thrown back to expose a leathery face beneath silver hair. Deeply pocketed eyes stared out of skull-mask features.

They were using a mirabhasa language, honed phalange consonants and joined vowels. It was an instrument for conveying fine emotional subtleties. Edric, the Guild Steersman, replied to the Reverend Mother now with a vocal curtsy contained in a sneer - a lovely touch of disdainful politeness.

Scytale looked at the Guild envoy. Edric swam in a container of orange gas only a few paces away. His container sat in the centre of the transparent dome which the Bene Gesserit had built for this meeting. The Guildsman was an elongated figure, vaguely humanoid with finned feet and hugely fanned membranous hands - a fish in a strange sea. His tank's vents emitted a pale orange cloud rich with the smell of the geriatric spice, melange.

"If we go on this way, we'll die of stupidity!" That was the fourth person present - the potential member of the conspiracy - Princess Irulan, wife (but not mate, Scytale reminded himself) of their mutual foe. She stood at a corner of Edric's tank, a tall blond beauty, splendid in a robe of blue whale fur and matching hat. Gold buttons glittered at her ears. She carried herself with an aristocrat's hauteur, but something in the absorbed smoothness of her features betrayed the controls of her Bene Gesserit background.

Scytale's mind turned from nuances of language and faces to nuances of location. All around the dome lay hills mangy with melting snow which reflected mottled wet blueness from the small blue-white sun hanging at the meridian. Why this particular place? Scytale wondered. The Bene Gesserit seldom did anything casually. Take the dome's open plan: a more conventional and confining space might've inflicted the Guildsman with claustrophobic nervousness. Inhibitions in his psyche were those of birth and life off-planet in open space. To have built this place especially for Edric, though - what a sharp finger that pointed at his weakness. What here, Scytale wondered, was aimed at me?

"Have you nothing to say for yourself, Scytale?" the Reverend Mother demanded.

"You wish to draw me into this fools' fight?" Scytale asked. "Very well. We're dealing with a potential messiah. You don't launch a frontal attack upon such a one. Martyrdom would defeat us." They all stared at him.

"You think that's the only danger?" the Reverend Mother demanded, voice wheezing. Scytale shrugged. He had chosen a bland, round-faced appearance for this meeting, jolly features and vapid full lips, the body of a bloated dumpling. It occurred to him now, as he studied his fellow conspirators, that he had made an ideal choice - out of instinct perhaps. He alone in this group could manipulate fleshly appearance across a wide spectrum of bodily shapes and features. He was the human chameleon, a Face Dancer, and the shape he wore now invited others to judge him too lightly. "Well?" the Reverend Mother pressed.

"I was enjoying the silence," Scytale said. "Our hostilities are better left unvoiced." The Reverend Mother drew back, and Scytale saw her reassessing him. They were all products of profound prana-bindu training, capable of muscle and nerve control that few humans ever achieved. But Scytale, a Face Dancer, had muscles and nerve linkages the others didn't even possess plus a special quality of sympatico, a mimic's insight with which he could put on the psyche of another as well as the other's appearance. Scytale gave her enough time to complete the reassessment, said: "Poison!" He uttered the word with the atonals which said he alone understood its secret meaning.

The Guildsman stirred and his voice rolled from the glittering speaker globe which orbited a corner of his tank above Irulan. "We're discussing psychic poison, not a physical one."

Scytale laughed. Mirabhasa laughter could flay an opponent and he held nothing back now. Irulan smiled in appreciation, but the corners of the Reverend Mother's eyes revealed a faint hint of anger.

"Stop that!" Mohiam rasped.

Scytale stopped, but he had their attention now, Edric in a silent rage, the Reverend Mother alert in her anger, Irulan amused but puzzled. "Our friend Edric suggests," Scytale said, "that a pair of Bene Gesserit witches trained in all their subtle ways have not learned the true uses of deception."

Mohiam turned to stare out at the cold hills of her Bene Gesserit homeworld. She was beginning to see the vital thing here, Scytale realized. That was good. Irulan, though, was another matter.

"Are you one of us or not, Scytale?" Edric asked. He stared out of tiny rodent eyes.

"My allegiance is not the issue," Scytale said. He kept his attention on Irulan. "You are wondering, Princess, if this was why you came all those parsecs, risked so much?" She nodded agreement. "Was it to bandy platitudes with a humanoid fish or dispute with a fat Tleilaxu Face Dancer?" Scytale asked.

She stepped away from Edric's tank, shaking her head in annoyance at the thick odour of melange.

Edric took this moment to pop a melange pill into his mouth. He ate the spice and breathed it and, no doubt, drank it, Scytale noted. Understandable, because the spice heightened a Steersman's prescience, gave him the power to guide a Guild Heighliner across space at translight speeds. With spice awareness, he found that line of the ship's future which avoided peril. Edric smelled another kind of peril now, but his crutch of prescience might not find it.

"I think it was a mistake for me to come here," Irulan said.

The Reverend Mother turned, opened her eyes, closed them, a curiously reptilian gesture.

Scytale shifted his gaze from Irulan to the tank, inviting the Princess to share his viewpoint. She would, Scytale knew, see Edric as a repellent figure: the bold stare, those monstrous feet and hands moving softly in the gas, the smoky swirling of orange eddies around him. She would wonder about his sex habits, thinking how odd it would be to mate with such a one. Even the field-force generator which recreated for Edric the weightlessness of space would set him apart from her now. "Princess," Scytale said, "because of Edric here, your husband's oracular sight cannot stumble upon certain incidents, including this one... presumably."

"Presumably," Irulan said.

Eyes closed, the Reverend Mother nodded. "The phenomenon of prescience is poorly understood even by its initiates," she said.

"I am a full Guild Navigator and have the Power," Edric said.

Again, the Reverend Mother opened her eyes. This time, she stared at the Face Dancer, eyes probing with that peculiar Bene Gesserit intensity. She was weighing minutiae.

"No, Reverend Mother," Scytale murmured, "I am not as simple as I appeared."

"We don't understand this Power of second sight," Irulan said. "There's a point. Edric says my husband cannot see, know or predict what happens within the sphere of a Navigator's influence. But how far does that influence extend?"

"There are people and things in our universe which I know only by their effects," Edric said, his fish mouth held in a thin line. "I know they have been here... there... somewhere. As water creatures stir up the currents in their passage, so the prescient stir up Time. I have seen where your husband has been; never have I seen him nor the people who truly share his aims and loyalties. This is the concealment which an adept gives to those who are his."

"Irulan is not yours," Scytale said. And he looked sideways at the Princess.

"We all know why the conspiracy must be conducted only in my presence," Edric said.

Using the voice mode for describing a machine. Irulan said: "You have your uses, apparently."

She sees him now for what he is, Scytale thought. Good! "The future is a thing to be shaped," Scytale said. "Hold that thought, Princess."

Irulan glanced at the Face Dancer. "People who share Paul's aims and loyalties," she said. "Certain of his Fremen legionaries, then, wear his cloak. I have seen him prophesy for them, heard their cries of adulation for their Mahdi, their Muad’Dib."

It has occurred to her, Scytale thought, that she is on trial here, that a Judgment remains to be made which could preserve her or destroy her. She sees the trap we set for her. Momentarily, Scytale's gaze locked with that of the Reverend Mother and he experienced the odd realization that they had shared this thought about Irulan. The Bene Gesserit, of course, had briefed their Princess, primed her with the lie adroit. But the moment always came when a Bene Gesserit must trust her own training and instincts.

"Princess, I know what it is you most desire from the Emperor," Edric said.

"Who does not know it?" Irulan asked.

"You wish to be the founding mother of the royal dynasty," Edric said, as though he had not heard her. "Unless you join us, that will never happen. Take my oracular word on it. The Emperor married you for political reasons, but you'll never share his bed."

"So, the oracle is also a voyeur," Irulan sneered.

"The Emperor is more firmly wedded to his Fremen concubine than he is to you!" Edric snapped.

"And she gives him no more heirs," Irulan said.

"Reason is the first victim of strong emotion," Scytale murmured. He sensed the outpouring of Irulan's anger, saw his admonition take effect.

"She gives him no more children," Irulan said, her voice measuring out controlled calmness, "because I am secretly administering a contraceptive. Is that the sort of admission you wanted from me?"

"It'd not be a thing for the Emperor to discover," Edric said, smiling.

"I have lies ready for him," Irulan said. "He may have truthsense, but some lies are easier to believe than the truth."

"You must make the choice, Princess," Scytale said, "but understand what it is protects you."

"Paul is fair with me," she said. "I sit in his Council."

"In the twelve years you've been his Princess Consort," Edric asked, "has he shown you the slightest warmth?" Irulan shook her head. "He deposed your father with his infamous Fremen horde, married you to fix his claim to the throne, yet he has never crowned you Empress," Edric said.

"Edric tries to sway you with emotion, Princess," Scytale said. "Is that not interesting?"

She glanced at the Face Dancer, saw the bold smile on his features, answered it with raised eyebrows. She was fully aware now, Scytale saw, that if she left this conference under Edric's sway, part of their plot, these moments might be concealed from Paul's oracular vision. If she withheld commitment, though...

"Does it seem to you, Princess," Scytale asked, "that Edric holds undue sway in our conspiracy?"

"I've already agreed," Edric said, "that I'll defer to the best judgment offered in our councils."

"And who chooses the best judgment?" Scytale asked.

"Do you wish the Princess to leave here without joining us?" Edric asked.

"He wishes her commitment to be a real one," the Reverend Mother growled. "There should be no trickery between us."

Irulan, Scytale saw, had relaxed into a thinking posture, hands concealed in the sleeves of her robe. She would be thinking now of the bait Edric had offered: to found a royal dynasty! She would be wondering what scheme the conspirators had provided to protect themselves from her. She would be weighing many things.

"Scytale," Irulan said presently, "it is said that you Tleilaxu have an odd system of honour: your victims must always have a means of escape."

"If they can but find it," Scytale agreed.

"Am I a victim?" Irulan asked. A burst of laughter escaped Scytale. The Reverend Mother snorted.

"Princess," Edric said, his voice softly persuasive, "you already are one of us, have no fear of that. Do you not spy upon the Imperial Household for your Bene Gesserit superiors?"

"Paul knows I report to my teachers," she said.

"But don't you give them the material for strong propaganda against your Emperor?" Edric asked.

Not "our" Emperor, Scytale noted. "Your" Emperor. Irulan is too much the Bene Gesserit to miss that slip.

"The question is one of powers and how they may be used," Scytale said, moving closer to the Guildsman's tank. "We of the Tleilaxu believe that in all the universe there is only the insatiable appetite of matter, that energy is the only true solid. And energy learns. Hear me well, Princess: energy learns. This, we call power."

"You haven't convinced me we can defeat the Emperor," Irulan said.

"We haven't even convinced ourselves," Scytale said.

"Everywhere we turn," Irulan said, "his power confronts us. He's the Kwisatz Haderach, the one who can be many places at once. He's the Mahdi whose merest whim is absolute command to his Qizarate missionaries. He's the Mentat whose computational mind surpasses the greatest ancient computers. He is Muad’Dib whose orders to the Fremen legions depopulate planets. He possesses oracular vision which sees into the future. He has that gene pattern which we Bene Gesserit’s covet for -"

"We know his attributes," the Reverend Mother interrupted. "And we know Potter has returned to his side, further securing Paul’s position of power. But they're also humans, both of them. Thus, they have weaknesses."

"And where are those human weaknesses?" the Face Dancer asked. "Shall we search for them in the religious arm of his Jihad? Can the Emperor's Qizara be turned against him? What about the civil authority of the Great Houses? Can the Landsraad Congress do more than raise a verbal clamour?"

"I suggest the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles," Edric said, turning in his tank. "CHOAM is business and business follows profits."

"Or perhaps the Emperor's mother," Scytale said. "The Lady Jessica, I understand, remains on Caladan, but is in frequent communication with her son."

"That traitorous bitch," Mohiam said, voice level. "Would I might disown my own hands which trained her."

"Our conspiracy requires a lever," Scytale said.

"We are more than conspirators," the Reverend Mother countered.

"Ah, yes," Scytale agreed. "We are energetic and we learn quickly. This makes us the one true hope, the certain salvation of humankind." He spoke in the speech mode for absolute conviction, which was perhaps the ultimate sneer coming, as it did, from a Tleilaxu.

Only the Reverend Mother appeared to understand the subtlety. "Why?" she asked, directing the question at Scytale.

Before the Face Dancer could answer, Edric cleared his throat, said: "Let us not bandy philosophical nonsense. Every question can be boiled down to the one: 'Why is there anything?' Every religious, business and governmental question has the single derivative: 'Who will exercise the power?' Alliances, combines, complexes, they all chase mirages unless they go for the power. All else is nonsense, as most thinking beings come to realize."

Scytale shrugged, a gesture designed solely for the Reverend Mother. Edric had answered her question for him. The pontificating fool was their major weakness. To make sure the Reverend Mother understood, Scytale said: "Listening carefully to the teacher, one acquires an education." The Reverend Mother nodded slowly.

"Princess," Edric said, "make your choice. You have been chosen as an instrument of destiny, the very finest... "

"Save your praise for those who can be swayed by it," Irulan said. "Earlier, you mentioned a ghost, a revenant with which we may contaminate the Emperor. Explain this."

"The Atreides will defeat himself!" Edric crowed.

"Stop talking riddles!" Irulan snapped. "What is this ghost?"

"A very unusual ghost," Edric said. "It has a body and a name. The body - that's the flesh of a renowned swordmaster known as Duncan Idaho. The name..."

"Idaho's dead," Irulan said. "Paul has mourned the loss often in my presence. He saw Idaho killed by my father's Sardaukar."

"Even in defeat," Edric said, "your father's Sardaukar did not abandon wisdom. Let us suppose a wise Sardaukar commander recognized the swordmaster in a corpse his men had slain. What then? There exist uses for such flesh and training... if one acts swiftly."

"A Tleilaxu ghola," Irulan whispered in shock, looking sideways at Scytale.

Scytale, observing her attention, exercised his Face-Dancer powers - shape flowing into shape, flesh moving and readjusting. Presently, a slender man stood before her. The face remained somewhat round, but darker and with slightly flattened features. High cheekbones formed shelves for eyes with definite epicanthic folds. The hair was black and unruly.

"A ghola of this appearance," Edric said, pointing to Scytale.

"Or merely another Face Dancer?" Irulan asked.

"No Face Dancer," Edric said. "A Face Dancer risks exposure under prolonged surveillance. No; let us assume that our wise Sardaukar commander had Idaho's corpse preserved for the axolotl tanks. Why not? This corpse held the flesh and nerves of one of the finest swordsmen in history, an adviser to the Atreides, a military genius. What a waste to lose all that training and ability when it might be revived as an instructor for the Sardaukar."

"I heard not a whisper of this and I was one of my father's confidantes," Irulan said.

"Ahh, but your father was a defeated man and within a few hours you had been sold to the new Emperor," Edric said.

"Was it done?" she demanded.

With a maddening air of complacency, Edric said: "Let us presume that our wise Sardaukar commander, knowing the need for speed, immediately sent the preserved flesh of Idaho to the Bene Tleilaxu. Let us suppose further that the commander and his men died before conveying this information to your father - who couldn't have made much use of it anyway. There would remain then a physical fact, a bit of flesh which had been sent off to the Tleilaxu. There was only one way for it to be sent, of course, on a Heighliner. We of the Guild naturally know every cargo we transport. Learning of this one, would we not think it additional wisdom to purchase the ghola as a gift befitting an Emperor? A gift that will also mean much to the returned Atreides man, Potter."

"You've done it then," Irulan said.

Scytale, who had resumed his roly-poly first appearance, said: "As our long-winded friend indicates, we've done it."

"How has Idaho been conditioned?" Irulan asked.

"Idaho?" Edric asked, looking at the Tleilaxu. "Do you know of an Idaho, Scytale?"

"We sold you a creature called Hayt," Scytale said.

"Ah, yes - Hayt," Edric said. "Why did you sell him to us?"

"Because we once bred a Kwisatz Haderach of our own," Scytale said.

With a quick movement of her old head, the Reverend Mother looked up at him. "You didn't tell us that!" she accused.

"You didn't ask," Scytale said.

"How did you overcome your Kwisatz Haderach?" Irulan asked.

"A creature who has spent his life creating one particular representation of his selfdom will die rather than become the antithesis of that representation," Scytale said.

"I do not understand," Edric ventured.

"He killed himself," the Reverend Mother growled.

"Follow me well, Reverend Mother," Scytale warned, using a voice mode which said: You are not a sex object, have never been a sex object, cannot be a sex object. The Tleilaxu waited for the blatant emphasis to sink in. She must not mistake his intent. Realization must pass through anger into awareness that the Tleilaxu certainly could not make such an accusation, knowing as he must the breeding requirements of the Sisterhood. His words, though, contained a gutter insult, completely out of character for a Tleilaxu.

Swiftly, using the mirabhasa placative mode, Edric tried to smooth over the moment. "Scytale, you told us you sold Hayt because you shared our desire on how to use him."

"Edric, you will remain silent until I give you permission to speak," Scytale said. And as the Guildsman started to protest, the Reverend Mother snapped: "Shut up, Edric!" The Guildsman drew back into his tank in flailing agitation. "Our own transient emotions aren't pertinent to a solution of the mutual problem," Scytale said. "They cloud reasoning because the only relevant emotion is the basic fear which brought us to this meeting."

"We understand," Irulan said, glancing at the Reverend Mother.

"You must see the dangerous limitations of our shield," Scytale said. "The oracle cannot chance upon what it cannot understand."

"You are devious, Scytale," Irulan said.

How devious she must not guess, Scytale thought. When this is done, we will possess a Kwisatz Haderach we can control. These others will possess nothing.

"What was the origin of your Kwisatz Haderach?" the Reverend Mother asked.

"We've dabbled in various pure essences," Scytale said. "Pure good and pure evil. A pure villain who delights only in creating pain and terror can be quite educational."

"The old Baron Harkonnen, our Emperor's grandfather, was he a Tleilaxu creation?" Irulan asked.

"Not one of ours," Scytale said. "But then nature often produces creations as deadly as ours. We merely produce them under conditions where we can study them."

"I will not be passed by and treated this way!" Edric protested. "Who is it hides this meeting from -"

"You see?" Scytale asked. "Whose best judgment conceals us? What judgment?"

"I wish to discuss our mode of giving Hayt to the Emperor," Edric insisted. "It's my understanding that Hayt reflects the old morality that the Atreides learned on his birth world. Hayt is supposed to make it easy for the Emperor to enlarge his moral nature, to delineate the positive-negative elements of life and religion."

Scytale smiled, passing a benign gaze over his companions. They were as he'd been led to expect. The old Reverend Mother wielded her emotions like a scythe. Irulan had been well trained for a task at which she had failed, a flawed Bene Gesserit creation. Edric was no more (and no less) than the magician's hand: he might conceal and distract. For now, Edric relapsed into sullen silence as the others ignored him.

"Do I understand that this Hayt is intended to poison Paul's psyche?" Irulan asked.

"More or less," Scytale said.

"And what of the Qizarate?" Irulan asked.

"It requires only the slightest shift in emphasis, a glissade of the emotions, to transform envy into enmity," Scytale said.

"And CHOAM?" Irulan asked.

"They will rally round profit," Scytale said.

"What of the other power groups?"

"One invokes the name of government," Scytale said. "We will annex the less powerful in the name of morality and progress. Our opposition will die of its own entanglements."

"Alia, too?"

"Hayt is a multi-purpose ghola," Scytale said. "The Emperor's sister is of an age when she can be distracted by a charming male designed for that purpose. She will be attracted by his maleness and by his abilities as a Mentat."

Mohiam allowed her old eyes to go wide in surprise. "The ghola's a Mentat? That's a dangerous move."

"To be accurate," Irulan said, "a Mentat must have accurate data. What if Paul asks him to define the purpose behind our gift?"

"Hayt will tell the truth," Scytale said. "It makes no difference."

"So, you leave an escape door open for Paul," Irulan said.

"A Mentat!" Mohiam muttered.

Scytale glanced at the old Reverend Mother, seeing the ancient hates which coloured her responses. From the days of the Butlerian Jihad when "thinking machines" had been wiped from most of the universe, computers had inspired distrust. Old emotions coloured the human computer as well.

"I do not like the way you smile," Mohiam said abruptly, speaking in the truth mode as she glared up at Scytale.

In the same mode, Scytale said: "And I think less of what pleases you. But we must work together. We all see that." He glanced at the Guildsman. "Don't we, Edric?"

"You teach painful lessons," Edric said. "I presume you wished to make it plain that I must not assert myself against the combined judgments of my fellow conspirators."

"You see, he can be taught," Scytale said.

"I see other things as well," Edric growled. "The Atreides holds a monopoly on the spice. Without it I cannot probe the future. The Bene Gesserit lose their truthsense. We have stockpiles, but these are finite. Melange is a powerful coin."

"Our civilization has more than one coin," Scytale said. "Thus, the law of supply and demand fails."

"You think to steal the secret of it," Mohiam wheezed. "And him with a planet guarded by his mad Fremen!"

"The Fremen are civil, educated and ignorant," Scytale said. "They're not mad. They're trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous."

"But will I be left with something to father a royal dynasty?" Irulan asked. They all heard the commitment in her voice, but only Edric smiled at it.

"Something," Scytale said. "Something. There is the son to consider after all.”

"It means the end of this Atreides as a ruling force," Edric said.

"I should imagine that others less gifted as oracles have made that prediction," Scytale said. "For them, 'mektub al mellah', as the Fremen say."

"The thing was written with salt," Irulan translated. Leto? They were offering her the boy to Father a Dynasty? He had shown none of his Father’s talent after all, it was possible he could be a puppet upon the throne.

As she spoke, Scytale recognized what the Bene Gesserit had arrayed here for him - a beautiful and intelligent female who could never be his. Ah, well, he thought, perhaps I'll copy her for another.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Paul sat on the edge of his bed and began stripping off his desert boots. They smelled rancid from the lubricant which eased the action of the heel-powered pumps that drove his stillsuit. It was late. He had prolonged his night-time walk and caused worry for those who loved him, even though Harry had accompanied him. Admittedly, the walks were dangerous, but it was a kind of danger he could recognize and meet immediately. Something compelling and attractive surrounded walking anonymously at night in the streets of Arrakeen. And it had been good to walk with only Harry as his companion, like when they had spent hours together in the battlements of his childhood home. It had been as if the years apart had never happened and he had his teacher and friend back.

He tossed the boots into the corner beneath the room's lone glowglobe, attacked the seal strips of his stillsuit. Gods below, how tired he was! The tiredness stopped at his muscles, though, and left his mind seething. Watching the mundane activities of everyday life filled him with profound envy. Most of that nameless flowing life outside the walls of his Keep couldn't be shared by an Emperor - but... to walk down a public street without attracting attention: what a privilege! To pass by the clamouring of mendicant pilgrims, to hear a Fremen curse a shopkeeper: "You have damp hands!"... Paul smiled at the memory, slipped out of his stillsuit. He stood naked and oddly attuned to his world. Dune was a world of paradox now - a world under siege, yet the centre of power. To come under siege, he decided, was the inevitable fate of power. He stared down at the green carpeting, feeling its rough texture against his soles. The streets had been ankle deep in sand blown over the Shield Wall on the stratus wind. Foot traffic had churned it into choking dust which clogged stillsuit Filters. He could smell the dust even now despite a blower cleaning at the portals of his Keep. It was an odour full of desert memories. Other days... other dangers.

Compared to those other days, the peril in his usually lonely walks remained minor. But, putting on a stillsuit, he put on the desert. The suit with all its apparatus for reclaiming his body's moisture guided his thoughts in subtle ways, fixed his movements in a desert pattern. He became wild Fremen. More than a disguise, the suit made of him a stranger to his city self. In the stillsuit, he abandoned security and put on the old skills of violence. Pilgrims and townsfolk passed him then with eyes downcast. They left the wild ones strictly alone out of prudence. If the desert had a face for city folk, it was a Fremen face concealed by a stillsuits mouth-nose filters. Harry had told him it felt odd and yet like coming home to don the suit again, to be ever so careful of water loss.  In truth, there existed now only the small danger that someone from the old sietch days might mark him by his walk, by his odour or by his eyes. Even then, the chances of meeting an enemy remained small.

A swish of door hangings and a wash of light broke his reverie. Chani entered bearing his coffee service on a platinum tray. Two slaved glowglobes followed her, darting to their positions: one at the head of their bed, one hovering beside her to light her work. Chani moved with an ageless air of fragile power - so self-contained, so vulnerable. Something about the way she bent over the coffee service reminded him then of their first days. Her features remained darkly elfin, seemingly unmarked by their years - unless one examined the outer corners of her whiteless eyes, noting the lines there: "sandtracks," the Fremen of the desert called them.

Steam wafted from the pot as she lifted the lid by its Hagar emerald knob. He could tell the coffee wasn't yet ready by the way she replaced the lid. The pot - fluting silver female shape, pregnant - had come to him as a ghanima, a spoil of battle won when he'd slain the former owner in single combat. He was thankful Harry had taken the first such challenge but eventually he had been forced to face such combat.

Chani put out cups: blue pottery squatting like attendants beneath the immense pot. There were three cups: one for each drinker and one for all the former owners. "It'll only be a moment," she said. She looked at him then, and Paul wondered how he appeared in her eyes. Was he yet the exotic offworlder, slim and wiry but water-fat when compared to Fremen? Had he remained the Usul of his tribal name who'd taken her in "Fremen tau" while they'd been fugitives in the desert?

Paul stared down at his own body: hard muscles, slender... a few more scars, but essentially the same despite twelve years as Emperor. Looking up, he glimpsed his face in a shelf mirror - blue-blue Fremen eyes, mark of spice addiction; a sharp Atreides nose. He looked the proper grandson for an Atreides who'd died in the bullring creating a spectacle for his people. Something the old man had said slipped then into Paul's mind: "One who rules assumes irrevocable responsibility for the ruled. You are a husbandman. This demands, at times, a selfless act of love which may only be amusing to those you rule." People still remembered that old man with affection. And what have I done for the Atreides name? Paul asked himself. I've loosed the wolf among the sheep. For a moment, he contemplated all the death and violence going on in his mind.

"Into bed now!" Chani said in a sharp tone of command that Paul knew would've shocked his Imperial subjects. He obeyed, lay back with his hands behind his head, letting himself be lulled by the pleasant familiarity of Chani's movements.

The room around them struck him suddenly with amusement. It was not at all what the populace must imagine as the Emperor's bedchamber. The yellow light of restless glowglobes moved the shadows in an array of coloured glass jars on a shelf behind Chani. Paul named their contents silently - the dry ingredients of the desert pharmacopoeia, unguents, incense, mementos... a pinch of sand from Sietch Tabr, a lock of hair from their firstborn...so many memories.

The rich odour of spice-coffee filled the room. Paul inhaled, his glance falling on a yellow bowl beside the tray where Chani was preparing the coffee. The bowl held ground nuts. The inevitable poison-snooper mounted beneath the table waved its insect arms over the food. The snooper angered him. They'd never needed snoopers in the desert days! "Coffee's ready," Chani said. "Are you hungry?" His angry denial was drowned in the whistling scream of a spice lighter hurling itself spaceward from the field outside Arrakeen. Chani saw his anger, though, poured their coffee, put a cup near his hand. She sat down on the foot of the bed, exposed his legs, began rubbing them where the muscles were knotted from walking in the stillsuit. Softly, with a casual air which did not deceive him, she said: "Let us discuss Irulan's desire for a child."

Paul's eyes snapped wide open. He studied Chani carefully, "Irulan's been back from Wallach less than two days," he said. "Has she been at you already?"

"We've not discussed her frustrations," Chani said.

Paul forced his mind to mental alertness, examined Chani in the harsh light of observational minutiae, the Bene Gesserit Way his mother had taught him in violation of her vows. It was a thing he didn't like doing with Chani. Part of her hold on him lay in the fact he so seldom needed his tension-building powers with her. Chani mostly avoided indiscreet questions. She maintained a Fremen sense of good manners. Hers were more often practical questions. What interested Chani were facts which bore on the position of her man - his strength in Council, the loyalty of his legions, the abilities and talents of his allies. Her memory held catalogues of names and cross-indexed details. She could rattle off the major weakness of every known enemy, the potential dispositions of opposing forces, battle plans of their military leaders, the tooling and production capacities of basic industries. Why now, Paul wondered, did she ask about Irulan?

"I've troubled your mind," Chani said. "That wasn't my intention."

"What was your intention?"

She smiled shyly, meeting his gaze. "If you're angered, love, please don't hide it."

Paul sank back against the headboard. "Shall I put her away?" he asked. "Her use is limited now and I don't like the things I sense about her trip home to the Sisterhood."

"You'll not put her away," Chani said. She went on massaging his legs, spoke matter-of-factly: "You've said many times she's your contact with our enemies, that you can read their plans through her actions."

"Then why ask about her desire for a child?"

"I think it'd disconcert our enemies and put Irulan in a vulnerable position should you make her pregnant."

He read by the movements of her hands on his legs what that statement had cost her. A lump rose in his throat. Softly, he said: "Chani, beloved, I swore an oath never to take her into my bed. A child would give her too much power. Would you have her displace you?"

"I have no place."

"Not so, Sihaya, my desert springtime. What is this sudden concern for Irulan?"

"It's concern for you, not for her! If she carried an Atreides child, her friends would question her loyalties. The less trust our enemies place in her, the less use she is to them."

"A child for her could mean your death, Leto’s death," Paul said. "You know the plotting in this place." A movement of his arm encompassed the Keep.

"You must have another heir!" she husked.

"Ahh," he said.

So that was it: Chani had not produced another child for him. Someone else, then, must do it. Why not Irulan? That was the way Chani's mind worked. And it must be done in an act of love because all the Empire avowed strong taboos against artificial ways. Chani had come to a Fremen decision. Paul studied her face in this new light. It was a face he knew better in some ways than his own. He had seen this face soft with passion, in the sweetness of sleep, awash in fears and angers and griefs.

He closed his eyes, and Chani came into his memories as a girl once more - veiled in springtime, singing, waking from sleep beside him - so perfect that the very vision of her consumed him. In his memory, she smiled... shyly at first, then strained against the vision as though she longed to escape.

Paul's mouth went dry. For a moment, his nostrils tasted the smoke of a devastated future and the voice of another kind of vision commanding him to disengage... disengage... disengage. His prophetic visions had been eavesdropping on eternity for such a long while, catching snatches of foreign tongues, listening to stones and to flesh not his own. Since the day of his first encounter with terrible purpose, he had peered at the future, hoping to find peace.

There existed a way, of course. He knew it by heart without knowing the heart of it - a rote future, strict in its instructions to him: disengage, disengage, disengage... Paul opened his eyes, looked at the decision in Chani's face. She had stopped massaging his legs, sat still now - purest Fremen. Her features remained familiar beneath the blue nezhoni scarf she often wore about her hair in the privacy of their chambers. But the mask of decision sat on her, an ancient and alien-to-him way of thinking. Fremen women had shared their men for thousands of years - not always in peace, but with a way of making the fact non-destructive. Something mysteriously Fremen in this fashion had happened in Chani. "You'll give me the only heirs I want," he said.

"You've seen this?" she asked, making it obvious by her emphasis that she referred to prescience. As he had done many times, Paul wondered how he could explain the delicacy of the oracle, the Timelines without number which vision waved before him on an undulating fabric. He sighed, remembered water lifted from a river in the hollow of his hands - trembling, draining. Memory drenched his face in it. How could he drench himself in futures growing increasingly obscure from the pressures of too many oracles? "You've not seen it, then," Chani said.

That vision-future scarce any longer accessible to him except at the expenditure of life-draining effort, what could it show them except grief? Paul asked himself. He felt that he occupied an inhospitable middle zone, a wasted place where his emotions drifted, swayed, swept outward in unchecked restlessness.

Chani covered his legs, said: "Heir to House Atreides, this is not something you leave to chance or one woman."

“Leto is my heir and always will be beloved. Should the worst happen then there is Alia as well.” Her words sounded of another. That was a thing his mother might've said, Paul thought. He wondered if the Lady Jessica had been in secret communication with Chani. His mother would think in terms of House Atreides. It was a pattern bred and conditioned into her by the Bene Gesserit, and would hold true even now when her powers were turned against the Sisterhood. "You listened when Irulan came to me today," he accused.

"I listened." She spoke without looking at him.

He reached up to take her hand and kissed the back of it. “I spoke truth, she may cuckold me all she wishes, so long as there is never a child.”

“It seems cruel to deny her. Perhaps….an appropriate lover for her, a loyal man…”

“Chani?”

“Harry has never taken another wife.” She went back to massaging him as he processed her words. Harry…. Could he keep Irulan in check? But he did not want to meddle in Harry’s life, not when he had just returned.

“I shall observe how they interact but I will not command him.”

“Of course not.” She kissed him with a smile. "You don't think a child would solve anything with Irulan?" she asked.

"Only a fool would think that."

"I am not a fool, my love."

Anger possessed him. "I've never said you were! But this isn't some damned romantic novel we're discussing. That's a real princess down the hall. She was raised in all the nasty intrigues of an Imperial Court. Plotting is as natural to her as writing her stupid histories!"

"They are not stupid, love."

"Probably not." He brought his anger under control, took her hand in his. "Sorry. But that woman has many plots - plots within plots. Give into one of her ambitions and you could advance another of them."

Her voice mild, Chani said: "Haven't I always said as much?"

"Yes, of course you have." He stared at her. "Then what are you really trying to say to me?"

She lay down beside him, placed her hand against his neck. "They have come to a decision on how to fight you," she said. "Irulan reeks of secret decisions."

Paul stroked her hair. Chani had peeled away the dross. Terrible purpose brushed him. It was a Coriolis wind in his soul. It whistled through the framework of his being. His body knew things then never learned in consciousness. "Chani, beloved," he whispered, "do you know what I'd spend to end the Jihad - to separate myself from the damnable godhead the Qizarate forces onto me?"

She trembled. "You have but to command it," she said.

"Oh, no. Even if I died now, my name would still lead them. When I think of the Atreides name tied to this religious butchery... "

"But you're the Emperor! You've -"

"I'm a figurehead. When godhead's given, that's the one thing the so-called god no longer controls." A bitter laugh shook him. He sensed the future looking back at him out of dynasties not even dreamed. He felt his being cast out, crying, unchained from the rings of fate - only his name continued. "I was chosen," he said. "Perhaps at birth... certainly before I had much say in it. I was chosen."

"Then un-choose," she said.

His arm tightened around her shoulder. "In time, beloved. Give me yet a little time." Unshed tears burned his eyes.

"We should return to Sietch Tabr," Chani said. "There's too much to contend with in this tent of stone."

He nodded, his chin moving against the smooth fabric of the scarf which covered her hair. The soothing spice smell of her filled his nostrils. Sietch. The ancient Chakobsa word absorbed him: a place of retreat and safety in a time of peril. Chani's suggestion made him long for vistas of open sand, for clean distances where one could see an enemy coming from a long way off.

"The tribes expect Muad’Dib to return to them," she said. She lifted her head to look at him. "You belong to us."

"I belong to a vision," he whispered. He thought then of the Jihad, of the gene mingling across parsecs and the vision which told him how he might end it. Should he pay the price? All the hatefulness would evaporate, dying as fires die - ember by ember. But... oh! The terrifying price! I never wanted to be a god, he thought. I wanted only to disappear like a jewel of trace dew caught by the morning. I wanted to escape the angels and the damned - alone... as though by an oversight.

"Will we go back to the Sietch?" Chani pressed.

"Yes," he whispered. And he thought: I must pay the price. Chani heaved a deep sigh, settled back against him. I've loitered, he thought. And he saw how he'd been hemmed in by boundaries of love and the Jihad. And what was one life, no matter how beloved, against all the lives the Jihad was certain to take? Could single misery be weighed against the agony of multitudes?

"Love?" Chani said, questioning.

He put a hand against her lips. I'll yield up myself, he thought. I'll rush out while I yet have the strength, fly through a space a bird might not find. It was a useless thought, and he knew it. The Jihad would follow his ghost. What could he answer? he wondered. How explain when people taxed him with brutal foolishness? Who might understand? I wanted only to look back and say: "There! There's an existence which couldn't hold me. See! I vanish! No restraint or net of human devising can trap me ever again. I renounce my religion! This glorious instant is mine! I'm free!" What empty words!

"A big worm was seen below the Shield Wall yesterday," Chani said. "More than a hundred meters long, they say. Such big ones come rarely into this region any more. The water repels them, I suppose. They say this one came to summon Muad’Dib home to his desert." She pinched his chest. "Don't laugh at me!"

"I'm not laughing." Paul, caught by wonder at the persistent Fremen mythos, felt a heart constriction, a thing inflicted upon his lifeline: adab, the demanding memory. He recalled his childhood room on Caladan then... dark night in the stone chamber... a vision! It'd been one of his earliest prescient moments. He felt his mind dive into the vision, saw through a veiled cloud-memory (vision-within-vision) a line of Fremen, their robes trimmed with dust. They paraded past a gap in tall rocks. They carried a long, cloth-wrapped burden. And Paul heard himself say in the vision: "It was mostly sweet... but you were the sweetest of all... " Adab released him.

"You're so quiet," Chani whispered. "What is it?" Paul shuddered, sat up, face averted. "You're angry because I've been to the desert's edge," Chani said. He shook his head without speaking. "I only went because I want a child," Chani said.

Paul was unable to speak. He felt himself consumed by the raw power of that early vision. Terrible purpose! In that moment, his whole life was a limb shaken by the departure of a bird... and the bird was chance. Free will. I succumbed to the lure of the oracle, he thought. And he sensed that succumbing to this lure might be to fix himself upon a single-track life. Could it be, he wondered, that the oracle didn't tell the future? Could it be that the oracle made the future? Had he exposed his life to some web of underlying threads, trapped himself there in that long-ago awakening, victim of a spider-future which even now advanced upon him with terrifying jaws. A Bene Gesserit axiom slipped into his mind: 'To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers.'

"I know it angers you," Chani said, touching his arm. "It's true that the tribes have revived the old rites and the blood sacrifices, but I took no part in those."

Paul inhaled a deep, trembling breath. The torrent of his vision dissipated, became a deep, still place whose currents moved with absorbing power beyond his reach.

"Please," Chani begged. "I want a child, our child. Is that a terrible thing?"

Paul caressed her arm where she touched him, pulled away. He climbed from the bed, extinguished the glowglobes, crossed to the balcony window, opened the draperies. The deep desert could not intrude here except by its odours. A windowless wall climbed to the night sky across from him. Moonlight slanted down into an enclosed garden, sentinel trees and broad leaves, wet foliage. He could see a fishpond reflecting stars among the leaves, pockets of white floral brilliance in the shadows. Momentarily, he saw the garden through Fremen eyes: alien, menacing, dangerous in its waste of water. He thought of the Water Sellers, their way destroyed by the lavish dispensing from his hands. They hated him. He'd slain the past. And there were others, even those who'd fought for the sols to buy precious water, who hated him for changing the old ways. As the ecological pattern dictated by Muad’Dib remade the planet's landscape, human resistance increased. Was it not presumptuous, he wondered, to think he could make over an entire planet - everything growing where and how he told it to grow? Even if he succeeded, what of the universe waiting out there? Did it fear similar treatment?

Abruptly, he closed the draperies, sealed the ventilators. He turned toward Chani in the darkness, felt her waiting there. Her water rings tinkled like the alms bells of pilgrims. He groped his way to the sound, encountered her outstretched arms.

"Beloved," she whispered. "Have I troubled you?" Her arms enclosed his future as they enclosed him.

"Not you," he said. "Oh... not you."

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Harry smiled as he watched the children in the garden, Lily tucked into his side as Alia and Leto played a game that reminded him of chess. It was peaceful here and yet he sensed something was coming…. Should he have returned sooner? For Lily, the answer was yes. For the Empire? Perhaps, but perhaps it would have made no difference at all.

He had not spent all of his time away watching over the Great Houses on Kaitain after all. He had explored the universe on and off since arriving here over eighty years ago. He had been very interested to find that yes, Earth existed here, it had just been abandoned due to the ancient enemy, the Thinking Machines that had caused humanity to outlaw so many forms of machines. He’d never seen a universe develop in such a way before. Travelling without a ‘navigator’ had been difficult, the technology didn’t exist. He’d managed to get a system together, helped by the fact he knew a lot about navigation and faster than light travel after so long.

And what he’d found…well he was glad he had since he’d been able to deal with it. Omnius and Erasmus had been a surprise, Erasmus was now the only leader of the machines. He had learnt, grown and adapted while Omnius had been bent on the extermination of humanity. Synchrony had been an interesting planet and he had spent several months there, working out a treaty with Erasmus. Humanity was to be left alone, he could observe as much as he wished, but that was all. He had ensured peace and with Erasmus’ help had ensured the two empires would never meet. It had been very difficult but he had basically laid a ward line between the two, no Navigator would be able to cross it, or any other form of spaceship, without Harry’s permission.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Alia peered down from her spy window into the great reception hall to watch the advance of the Guild entourage. The sharply silver light of noon poured through clerestory windows onto a floor worked in green, blue and eggshell tiles to simulate a bayou with water plants and, here and there, a splash of exotic colour to indicate bird or animal.

Guildsmen moved across the tile pattern like hunters stalking their prey in a strange jungle. They formed a moving design of grey robes, black robes, orange robes - all arrayed in a deceptively random way around the transparent tank where the Steersman-Ambassador swam in his orange gas. The tank slid on its supporting field, towed by two grey-robed attendants, like a rectangular ship being warped into its dock.

Directly beneath her, Paul sat on the Lion Throne on its raised dais. He wore the new formal crown with its fish and fist emblems. The jewelled golden robes of state covered his body. The shimmering of a personal shield surrounded him. Two wings of bodyguards fanned out on both sides along the dais and down the steps. In a smaller seat beside his Father sat Leto II, a small circlet resting in his hair, dressed in gold and white finery, also protected by a shield. Irulan too sat on a smaller throne, after all she was Paul’s wife, despite the marriage being only for show. She wore the Atreides black and green in a stunning gown, her hair coiled precisely in braids. Stilgar stood two steps below Paul's right hand in a white robe with a yellow rope for a belt. Harry stood across from Stilgar, dressed in formal Atreides uniform, maula pistol and crysknife on his belt. Of to the side and half hidden behind Harry was Chani as technically she held no official place in the Court. Should anything   happen she was well protected with Harry so close.

She could read the signs in her brother, thanks to their Mother’s training as a child, Paul seethed with agitation, although she doubted another could detect it. His attention remained on an orange-robed attendant who’s blindly staring metal eyes looked neither to right nor to left. This attendant walked at the right front corner of the Ambassador's troupe like a military outrider. A rather flat face beneath curly black hair, such of his figure as could be seen beneath the orange robe, every gesture shouted a familiar identity.

It was Duncan Idaho. It could not be Duncan Idaho, yet it was. She had seen his likeness on Caladan, he had been her brother’s teacher and guard, Harry’s best friend. Alia shuddered. There could be only one answer: this was a Tleilaxu ghola, a being reconstructed from the dead flesh of the original. That original had perished saving Paul. This could only be a product of the axolotl tanks. The ghola walked with the cock-footed alertness of a master swordsman. He came to a halt as the Ambassador's tank glided to a stop, ten paces from the steps of the dais.

In the Bene Gesserit way she could not escape, Alia read Paul's disquiet. He no longer looked at the figure out of his past. Not looking, his whole being stared. Muscles strained against restrictions as he nodded to the Guild Ambassador, said: "I am told your name is Edric. We welcome you to our Court in the hope this will bring new understanding between us."

The Steersman assumed a sybaritic reclining pose in his orange gas, popped a melange capsule into his mouth before meeting Paul's gaze. The tiny transducer orbiting a corner of the Guildsman's tank reproduced a coughing sound, then the rasping, uninvolved voice: "I abase myself before my Emperor and beg leave to present my credentials and offer a small gift."

An aide passed a scroll up to Stilgar, who studied it, scowling, then handed it to Harry and nodded to Paul. Stilgar, Harry and Paul turned then toward the ghola standing patiently below the dais.

"Indeed, my Emperor has discerned the gift," Edric said.

"We are pleased to accept your credentials," Paul said. "Explain the gift."

Edric rolled in the tank, bringing his attention to bear on the ghola. "This is a man called Hayt," he said, spelling the name. "According to our investigators, he has a most curious history. He was killed here on Arrakis... a grievous head-wound which required many months of regrowth. The body was sold to the Bene Tleilaxu as that of a master swordsman, an adept of the Ginaz School. It came to our attention that this must be Duncan Idaho, the trusted retainer of your household. We bought him as a gift befitting an Emperor." Edric peered up at Paul. "Is it not Idaho, Sire?"

Restraint and caution gripped Paul's voice. "He has the aspect of Idaho."

Does Paul see something I don't? Alia wondered. The man had been months dead before she was ever born after all so perhaps she had missed something. But if there was something, it would not fool her brother or Harry.

The man called Hayt stood impassively, metal eyes fixed straight ahead, body relaxed. No sign escaped him to indicate he knew himself to be the object of discussion.

"According to our best knowledge, it's Idaho," Edric said.

"He's called Hayt now," Paul said. "A curious name."

"Sire, there's no divining how or why the Tleilaxu bestow names," Edric said. "But names can be changed. The Tleilaxu name is of little importance."

This is a Tleilaxu thing, Paul thought. There's the problem. The Bene Tleilaxu held little attachment to phenomenal nature. Good and evil carried strange meanings in their philosophy. What might they have incorporated in Idaho's flesh - out of design or whim? Paul glanced at Stilgar, noted the Fremen's superstitious awe. It was an emotion echoed all through his Fremen guard. Stilgar's mind would be speculating about the loathsome habits of Guildsmen, of Tleilaxu and of ghola’s. He glanced to Harry, seeing the barely contained fury there as he took in the desecration of his oldest friend. But there was also the barest hint of curiosity beneath the anger.  Turning toward the ghola, Paul said: "Hayt, is that your only name?"

A serene smile spread over the ghola's dark features. The metal eyes lifted, centred on Paul, but maintained their mechanical stare. "That is how I am called, my Lord: Hayt. May it please my Lord," the ghola added, "if I say his voice gives me pleasure. This is a sign, say the Bene Tleilaxu, that I have heard the voice... before."

"But you don't know this for sure," Paul said.

"I know nothing of my past for sure, my Lord. It was explained that I can have no memory of my former life. All that remains from before is the pattern set by the genes. There are, however, niches into which once familiar things may fit. There are voices, places, foods, faces, sounds, actions - a sword in my hand, the controls of a 'thopter... "

Noting how intently the Guildsmen watched this exchange, Paul asked: "Do you understand that you're a gift?"

"It was explained to me, my Lord."

Paul sat back, hands resting on the arms of the throne. What debt do I owe Duncan's flesh? he wondered. The man died saving my life. But this is not Idaho, this is a ghola. Paul knew he could not pick up a sword without leaning on the harsh education Idaho had given him. A ghola. This was flesh full of false impressions, easily misread. Old associations would persist. Duncan Idaho. It wasn't so much a mask the ghola wore as it was a loose, concealing garment of personality which moved in a way different from whatever the Tleilaxu had hidden here. "How might you serve us?" Paul asked.

"In any way, my Lord's wishes and my capabilities agree."

Alia, watching from her vantage point, was touched by the ghola's air of diffidence. She detected nothing feigned. Something ultimately innocent shone from the new Duncan Idaho. The original had been worldly, devil-may-care from all she had heard. But this flesh had been cleansed of all that. It was a pure surface upon which the Tleilaxu had written... what? She sensed the hidden perils in this gift then. This was a Tleilaxu thing. The Tleilaxu displayed a disturbing lack of inhibitions in what they created. Unbridled curiosity might guide their actions. They boasted they could make anything from the proper human raw material - devils or saints. They sold killer-mentats. They'd produced a killer medic, overcoming the Suk inhibitions against the taking of human life to do it. Their wares included willing menials, pliant sex toys for any whim, soldiers, generals, philosophers, even an occasional moralist.

Paul stirred, looked at Edric. "How has this gift been trained?" he asked.

"If it please my Lord," Edric said, "it amused the Tleilaxu to train this ghola as a Mentat and philosopher of the Zensunni. Thus, they sought to increase his abilities with the sword."

"Did they succeed?"

"I do not know, my Lord."

Paul weighed the answer. Truthsense told him Edric sincerely believed the ghola to be Idaho. But there was more. The waters of Time through which this oracular Steersman moved suggested dangers without revealing them. Hayt. The Tleilaxu name spoke of peril. Paul felt himself tempted to reject the gift. Even as he felt the temptation, he knew he couldn't choose that way. This flesh made demands on House Atreides - a fact the enemy well knew. "Zensunni philosopher," Paul mused, once more looking at the ghola. "You've examined your own role and motives?"

"I approach my service in an attitude of humility, Sire. I am a cleansed mind washed free of the imperatives from my human past."

"Would you prefer we called you Hayt or Duncan Idaho?"

"My Lord may call me what he wishes, for I am not a name."

"But do you enjoy the name Duncan Idaho?"

"I think that was my name, Sire. It fits within me. Yet... it stirs up curious responses. One's name, I think, must carry much that's unpleasant along with the pleasant."

"What gives you the most pleasure?" Paul asked.

Unexpectedly, the ghola laughed. "Looking for signs in others which reveal my former self."

"Do you see such signs here?"

"Oh, yes, my Lord. Your man Stilgar there is caught between suspicion and admiration. He was friend to my former self, but this ghola flesh repels him. Your man, Harry Potter, is curious and yet also enraged by my creation, a slight against his old friend and comrade. You, my Lord, admired the man I was... and you trusted him."

"Cleansed mind," Paul said. "How can a cleansed mind put itself in bondage to us?"

"Bondage, my Lord? The cleansed mind makes decisions in the presence of unknowns and without cause and effect. Is this bondage?"

Paul scowled. It was a Zensunni saying, cryptic, apt - immersed in a creed which denied objective function in all mental activity. Without cause and effect! Such thoughts shocked the mind. Unknowns? Unknowns lay in every decision, even in the oracular vision. "You'd prefer we called you Duncan Idaho?" Paul asked.

"We live by differences, my Lord. Choose a name for me."

"Let your Tleilaxu name stand," Paul said. "Hayt - there's a name inspires caution." Hayt bowed, moved back one step.

And Alia wondered: How did he know the interview was over? I knew it because I know my brother. But there was no sign a stranger could read. Did the Duncan Idaho in him know?

Paul turned toward the Ambassador, said: "Quarters have been set aside for your embassy. It is our desire to have a private consultation with you at the earliest opportunity. We will send for you. Let us inform you further, before you hear it from an inaccurate source, that a Reverend Mother of the Sisterhood, Gaius Helen Mohiam, has been removed from the Heighliner which brought you. It was done at our command. Her presence on your ship will be an item in our talks."

A wave of Paul's left hand dismissed the envoy. "Hayt," Paul said, "stay here."

The Ambassador's attendants backed away, towing the tank. Edric became orange motion in orange gas - eyes, a mouth, gently waving limbs. Paul watched until the last Guildsman was gone, the great doors swinging closed behind them.

I've done it now, Paul thought. I've accepted the ghola. The Tleilaxu creation was bait, no doubt of it. Very likely the old hag of a Reverend Mother played the same role. But it was the time of the tarot which he'd forecast in an early vision. The damnable tarot! It muddied the waters of Time until the prescient strained to detect moments but an hour off. Many a fish took the bait and escaped, he reminded himself. And the tarot worked for him as well as against him. What he could not see, others might not detect as well. The ghola stood, head cocked to one side, waiting.

Stilgar moved across the steps, hid the ghola from Paul's view. In Chakobsa, the hunting language of their sietch days, Stilgar said: "That creature in the tank gives me the shudders, Sire, but this gift! Send it away!"

In the same tongue, Paul said: "I cannot."

"Idaho's dead," Stilgar argued. "This isn't Idaho. Let me take its water for the tribe."

"The ghola is my problem, Stil. Your problem is our prisoner. I want the Reverend Mother guarded most carefully by the men I trained to resist the wiles of Voice."

“This all stinks of a trap, both this gift and the presence of Mohiam.” Harry added in the same language and Stilgar nodded in agreement.

"I like this not, Sire."

"I'll be cautious, Stil. See that you are, too."

"Very well, Sire." Stilgar stepped down to the floor of the hall, passed close to Hayt, sniffed him and strode out. Evil can be detected by its smell, Paul thought. Stilgar had planted the green and white Atreides banner on a dozen worlds, but remained superstitious Fremen, proof against any sophistication.

Paul studied the gift. "Duncan, Duncan," he whispered. "What have they done to you?"

"They gave me life, M’Lord," Hayt said.

"But why were you trained and given to us?" Paul asked.

Hayt pursed his lips, then: "They intend me to destroy you."

The statement's candour shook Paul. But then, how else could a Zensunni-Mentat respond? Even in a ghola, a Mentat could speak no less than the truth, especially out of Zensunni inner calm. This was a human computer, mind and nervous system fitted to the tasks relegated long ago to hated mechanical devices. To condition him also as a Zensunni meant a double ration of honesty... unless the Tleilaxu had built something even more odd into this flesh. Why, for example, the mechanical eyes? Tleilaxu boasted their metal eyes improved on the original. Strange, then, that more Tleilaxu didn't wear them out of choice. Paul glanced at Harry who was once again studying the ghola. “Harry, see to it he has a room near yours.” His fingers flicked and Harry nodded at the silent message, he would keep watch over the ghola.

Gholas were ghosts to frighten children. He'd never thought to know one. To know this one, he had to set himself above all compassion... and he wasn't certain he could do it. Duncan... Duncan... Where was Idaho in this shaped-to-measure flesh? It wasn't flesh... it was a shroud in fleshly shape! Idaho lay dead forever on the floor of an Arrakeen cavern. His ghost stared out of metal eyes. Two beings stood side by side in this revenant flesh. One was a threat with its force and nature hidden behind unique veils. Closing his eyes, Paul allowed old visions to sift through his awareness. He sensed the spirits of love and hate spouting there in a rolling sea from which no rock lifted above the chaos. No place at all from which to survey turmoil. Why has no vision shown me this new Duncan Idaho? he asked himself. What concealed Time from an oracle? Other oracles, obviously.

Paul opened his eyes, saw they had not yet left the room. "Hayt, do you have the power of prescience?" he called and Hayt turned.

"No, M’Lord."

Sincerity spoke in that voice. It was possible the ghola didn't know he possessed this ability, of course. But that'd hamper his working as a Mentat. What was the hidden design? Old visions surged around Paul. Would he have to choose the terrible way? Distorted Time hinted at this ghola in that hideous future. Would that way close in upon him no matter what he did? Disengage... disengage... disengage... The thought tolled in his mind.

In her position above Paul, Alia sat with chin cupped in left hand, stared down at the ghola. A magnetic attraction about this Hayt reached up to her. Tleilaxu restoration had given him youth, an innocent intensity which called out to her. She'd understood Paul's unspoken plea. When oracles failed, one turned to real spies and physical powers. She wondered, though, at her own eagerness to accept this challenge. She felt a positive desire to be near this new man, perhaps to touch him. He's a danger to both of us, she thought, shivering.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Harry saw Irulan leave Mohiam’s cell and sighed, going after the Princess to find her leaning against a windowsill, staring blindly down into the streets. “How is she?”

Irulan startled and turned to face him. He had always moved so silently, then again there were rumours he was Muad’Dib’s assassin these days. “She is dealing with her circumstances.”

“So, she still plots…and you Princess? Do you plot against your Emperor and husband?”

Her breath caught in her throat, how could he know? He wasn’t Bene Gesserit or prescient. No…he was fishing. He had to be. “I would never plot against my husband.”

“I guess we’ll see.” Harry left, he was sure she was involved in whatever plot involved the Bene Gesserit and Spacing Guild had cooked up with their ghola gift. So why was Paul letting this happen? He headed into the family living areas and stopped at Dunc…Hayt’s room. He had missed his friend a lot over the years but this creature? It was not Duncan, even if they somehow had copied the memories, they could not have called the soul back…. could they? He went to his room and settled into meditation, reaching out to Death, needing answers.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Alia stood like a black-robed sentinel figure on the south platform of her temple, the Fane of the Oracle which Paul's Fremen cohorts had built for her against a wall of his stronghold. She hated this part of her life, but knew no way to evade the temple without bringing down destruction upon them all. The pilgrims grew more numerous every day. The temple's lower porch was crowded with them. Vendors moved among the pilgrims, and there were minor sorcerers, haruspices, diviners, all working their trade in pitiful imitation of Paul Muad’Dib and his sister.

Red and green packages containing the new Dune Tarot were prominent among the vendors' wares, Alia saw. She wondered about the tarot. Who was feeding this device into the Arrakeen market? Why had the tarot sprung to prominence at this particular time and place? Was it to muddy Time? Spice addiction always conveyed some sensitivity to prediction. Fremen were notoriously fey. Was it an accident that so many of them dabbled in portents and omens here and now?

There was a wind from the southeast, a small leftover wind blunted by the scarp of the Shield Wall which loomed high in these northern reaches. The rim glowed orange through a thin dust haze under lighted by the late afternoon sun. It was a hot wind against her cheeks and it made her homesick for the sand, for the security of open spaces, despite the fact she had spent most of her childhood on water covered Caladan.

The last of the day's mob began descending the broad greenstone steps of the lower porch, singly and in groups, a few pausing to stare at the keepsakes and holy amulets on the street vendors' racks, some consulting one last minor sorcerer. Pilgrims, supplicants, townsfolk, Fremen, vendors closing up for the day - they formed a straggling line that trailed off into the palm-lined avenue which led to the heart of the city.

Alia's eyes picked out the Fremen, marking the frozen looks of superstitious awe on their faces, the half-wild way they kept their distance from the others. They were her strength and her peril. They still captured giant worms for transport, for sport and for sacrifice. They resented the off-world pilgrims, barely tolerated the townsfolk of graben and pan, hated the cynicism they saw in the street vendors. One did not jostle a wild Fremen, even in a mob such as the ones which swarmed to Alia's Fane. There were no knifings in the Sacred Precincts, but bodies had been found... later.

The departing swarm had stirred up dust. The flinty odour came to Alia's nostrils, ignited another pang of longing for the open bled. Her sense of the past, she realized, had been sharpened by the coming of the ghola. There'd been much pleasure in those untrammelled days before her brother had mounted the throne - time for joking, time for small things, time to enjoy a cool morning or a sunset, time... time... time... Even danger had been good in those days - clean danger from known sources. She remembered them, though not clearly due to her young age at the time. Perhaps she would remember more if she finally attempted the Spice trance. Did she have what it took to become a Reverend Mother? What secrets and possible gifts lay dormant within her?

Wild Fremen said it well: "Four things cannot be hidden - love, smoke, a pillar of fire and a man striding across the open bled."

With an abrupt feeling of revulsion, Alia retreated from the platform into the shadows of the Fane, strode along the balcony which looked down into the glistening opalescence of her Hall of Oracles. Sand on the tiles rasped beneath her feet. Supplicants always tracked sand into the Sacred Chambers! She ignored attendants, guards, postulants, the Qizarate's omnipresent priest-sycophants, plunged into the spiral passage which twisted upward to her private quarters. There, amidst divans, deep rugs, tent hangings and mementos of the desert, she dismissed the Fremen amazons Stilgar had assigned as her personal guardians. Watchdogs, more likely! When they had gone, muttering and objecting, but more fearful of her than they were of Stilgar, she stripped off her robe, leaving only the sheathed crysknife on its thong around her neck, strewed garments behind as she made for the bath.

He was near, she knew - that shadow-figure of a man she could sense in her dreams, but could not see. It angered her that no length of dream could put flesh on that figure. He could be sensed only at unexpected moments while she slept deeply. Or she came upon a smoky outline in solitary darkness when innocence lay coupled with desire. He stood just beyond an unfixed horizon, he was there - a constant assault on her awareness: fierce, dangerous, immoral. It scared and thrilled her, she wanted what Paul and Chani had. Not a political match as was proper, she wanted love and lust and laughter.

Moist warm air surrounded her in the tub. Here was a habit she had learned from her Mother. Water, warm water in a sunken tub, accepted her skin as she slid into it. Green tiles with figures of red fish worked into a sea pattern surrounded the water. Such an abundance of water occupied this space that a Fremen of old would have been outraged to see it used merely for washing human flesh.

He was near. It was lust in tension with chastity, she thought. Her flesh desired a mate. Sex held no casual mystery for someone who had witnessed the sietch orgies. This feeling of nearness could be nothing other than flesh reaching for flesh.

The ghola had done this to her, made her even more aware of such things. Was it him she dreamed of? Some glimpse of her brother’s talent as she slept? Paul had dreamed before coming to Arrakis, it was possible to see glimpses without the spice and she was exposed to amounts of spice in her food.

She got out of the bath and went to the window in her main chamber, looking out at the streets. If only she could put him from her mind! She heard a gasp and turned to find her brother and Stilgar, both men able to take in her naked form. "Next time, perhaps you'll have yourselves announced," she snapped. She brushed past Paul into the bedroom, found a loose grey robe, slipped into it, began brushing her hair before a wall mirror. She felt sweaty, sad, a post-coitus kind of sadness that left her with a desire to bathe once more... and to sleep. "Why're you here?" she asked.

"My Lord," Stilgar said. There was an odd inflection in his voice that brought Alia around to stare at him.

"We're here at Irulan's suggestion," Paul said, "as strange as that may seem. She believes, and information in Stil's possession appears to confirm it, that our enemies are about to make a major try for - "

"My Lord!" Stilgar said, his voice sharper.

As her brother turned, questioning, Alia continued to look at the old Fremen Naib. Something about him now made her intensely aware that he was one of the primitives. Stilgar believed in a supernatural world very near him. It spoke to him in a simple pagan tongue dispelling all doubts. The natural universe in which he stood was fierce, unstoppable, and it lacked the common morality of the Imperium.

"Yes, Stil," Paul said. "Do you want to tell her why we came?"

"This isn't the time to talk of why we came," Stilgar said.

"What's wrong, Stil?"

Stilgar continued to stare at Alia. "Sire, are you blind?" Paul turned back to his sister, a feeling of unease beginning to fill him. Of all his aides, only Stilgar dared speak to him in that tone, but even Stilgar measured the occasion by its need. "This one must have a mate!" Stilgar blurted. "There'll be trouble if she's not wed, and that soon."

Alia whirled away, her face suddenly hot. How did he touch me? she wondered. Bene Gesserit self-control had been powerless to prevent her reaction. How had Stilgar done that? He hadn't the power of the Voice. She felt dismayed and angry. "Listen to the great Stilgar!" Alia said, keeping her back to them, aware of a shrewish quality in her voice and unable to hide it. "Advice to maidens from Stilgar, the Fremen!"

"As I love you both, I must speak," Stilgar said, a profound dignity in his tone. "I did not become a chieftain among the Fremen by being blind to what moves men and women together. One needs no mysterious powers for this."

Paul weighed Stilgar's meaning, reviewed what they had seen here and his own undeniable male reaction to his own sister. Yes - there'd been a ruttish air about Alia, something wildly wanton. What had made her enter the room in the nude? Stilgar was right, of course. They must find a mate for Alia.

"I will see to it," Paul said. "Alia and I will discuss this later - privately."

Alia turned around, focused on Paul. Knowing how his mind worked, she realized she'd been the subject of a Mentat decision, uncounted bits falling together in that human-computer analysis. There was an inexorable quality to this realization - a movement like the movement of planets. It carried something of the order of the universe in it, inevitable and terrifying.

"Sire," Stilgar said, "perhaps we'd - "

"Not now!" Paul snapped. "We've other problems at the moment."

Aware that she dared not try to match logic with her brother, Alia put the past few moments aside, Bene Gesserit fashion, said: "Irulan sent you?" She found herself experiencing menace in that thought.

"Indirectly," Paul said. "The information she gives us confirms our suspicion that the Guild is about to try for a sandworm."

"They'll try to capture a small one and attempt to start the spice cycle on some other world," Stilgar said. "It means they've found a world they consider suitable."

"It means they have Fremen accomplices!" Alia argued. "No offworlder could capture a worm!"

"That goes without saying," Stilgar said.

"No, it doesn't," Alia said. She was outraged by such obtuseness. "Paul, certainly you..."

"The rot is setting in," Paul said. "We've known that for quite some time. "I've never seen this other world, though, and that bothers me. If they - "

"That bothers you?" Alia demanded. "It means only that they've clouded its location with Steersmen the way they hide their sanctuaries."

Stilgar opened his mouth, closed it without speaking. He had the overwhelming sensation that his idols had admitted blasphemous weakness. Paul, sensing Stilgar's disquiet, said: "We've an immediate problem! I want your opinion, Alia. Stilgar suggests we expand our patrols in the open bled and reinforce the sietch watch. It's just possible we could spot a landing party and prevent the -"

"With a Steersman guiding them?" Alia asked.

"They are desperate, aren't they?" Paul agreed. "That is why I'm here."

"What've they seen that you haven't?" Alia asked.

"Precisely." He agreed. Alia nodded, remembering her thoughts about the new Dune Tarot. Quickly, she recounted her fears. "Throwing a blanket over us," Paul said.

"With adequate patrols," Stilgar ventured, "we might prevent the - "

"We prevent nothing... forever," Alia said. She didn't like the feel of the way Stilgar's mind was working now. He had narrowed his scope, eliminated obvious essentials. This was not the Stilgar she remembered.

"We must count on their getting a worm," Paul said. "Whether they can start the melange cycle on another planet is a different question. They'll need more than a worm."

Stilgar looked from brother to sister. Out of ecological thinking that had been ground into him by sietch life, he grasped their meaning. A captive worm couldn't live except within a bit of Arrakis - sand plankton, Little Makers and all. The Guild's problem was large, but not impossible. His own growing uncertainty lay in a different area. "Then your visions do not detect the Guild at its work?" he asked.

"Damnation!" Paul exploded.

Alia studied Stilgar, sensing the savage sideshow of ideas taking place in his mind. He was hung on a rack of enchantment. Magic! Magic! To glimpse the future was to steal terrifying fire from a sacred flame. It held the attraction of ultimate peril, souls ventured and lost. One brought back from the formless, dangerous distances something with form and power. But Stilgar was beginning to sense other forces, perhaps greater powers beyond that unknown horizon. His Priestess and Sorcerer Friend betrayed dangerous weaknesses.

"Stilgar," Alia said, fighting to hold him, "you stand in a valley between dunes. I stand on the crest. I see where you do not see. And, among other things, I see mountains which conceal the distances."

"There are things hidden from you," Stilgar said. "This you've always said." Stilgar looked to Paul who nodded.

"All power is limited," Alia said.

"And danger may come from behind the mountains," Stilgar said.

"It's something on that order," Alia said.

Stilgar nodded, his gaze fastened on Paul's face. "But whatever comes from behind the mountains must cross the dunes."

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

“Leto? What’s wrong?” Lily asked as she sat beside him in the library.

“Stilgar told Father that Alia needs to be married and soon.” He answered.

“She won’t like that.” Lily grimaced. She was glad she wasn’t Noble born, her Father would never make her marry unless she wanted to. She would eventually, she was Fremen and no Fremen woman remained unmarried, for the good of the Tribe.

“If she must be married then what about us?”

“Father won’t make me marry but you are heir to the throne.” She agreed softly.

“I do not want to marry for politics like Father has. But I won’t have a choice. I hate politics.” He muttered and she laughed, kissing his cheek.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Harry looked up as Chani joined him in the library. “I am glad you are back Harry, we have missed you. Muad’Dib had missed his brother much over the years.” She took a seat beside him as he put his reading aside.

“I have missed all of you as well. How have you been?” he asked and she smiled sadly.

“I long for the freedom of the desert…. for the sietch. For another child…. I went to seek answers. I have begun the old Fremen diet, the doctors all say I am healthy, there is no reason I cannot conceive.” She admitted. “Have you considered having a lover?” she asked and he blinked at the change in conversation.

“Ah… not particularly. Why?”

“Irulan. Paul will not allow her a child but he will allow her that much.”

“And better that lover be a loyal Atreides man?” He asked and then sighed. “I will consider it.”  Harry leant over and took her hand, closing his eyes. She remained still, watching him, knowing he was doing something. “Someone has been feeding you a contraceptive.” He whispered and she swallowed. They used poison sniffers! Who could…Irulan. “If you keep to the ancient diet and fall pregnant you will die.” He opened his eyes. “Chani…”

“Can anything be done?”

Harry smiled and clasped both her hands this time. Chani relaxed, letting him do whatever it took. She didn’t know how he could do what he did or exactly what he could do but she trusted him. She felt…something…warm…comforting… “The contraceptive is neutralised and but if you are dosed again, especially if already pregnant…”

“Thank you.” She hugged him and he hugged her back before she stood and left, she had a Princess to speak with.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Alia crouched, resting elbows on knees, chin on fists, stared at the body on the dune - a few bones and some tattered flesh that once had been a young woman. The hands, the head, most of the upper torso were gone - eaten by the Coriolis wind. The sand all around bore the tracks of her brother's medics and questors. They were gone now, all excepting the mortuary attendants who stood to one side with Hayt, the ghola, waiting for her to finish her mysterious perusal of what had been written here. A wheat-coloured sky enfolded the scene in the glaucous light common to mid-afternoon for these latitudes.

The body had been discovered several hours earlier by a low-flying courier whose instruments had detected a faint water trace where none should be. His call had brought the experts. And they had learned - what? That this had been a woman of about twenty years, Fremen, addicted to semuta... and she had died here in the crucible of the desert from the effects of a subtle poison of Tleilaxu origin. To die in the desert was a common enough occurrence. But a Fremen addicted to semuta, this was such a rarity that Paul had sent her to examine the scene in the ways their mother had taught them.

Alia felt that she had accomplished nothing here except to cast her own aura of mystery about a scene that was already mysterious enough. She heard the ghola's feet stir the sand, looked at him. His attention rested momentarily upon the escort 'thopters circling overhead like a flock of ravens. Beware of the Guild bearing gifts, Alia thought. The mortuary 'thopter and her own craft stood on the sand near a rock outcropping behind the ghola. Focusing on the grounded 'thopters filled Alia with a craving to be airborne and away from here.

But Paul had thought she might see something here which others would miss. She squirmed in her stillsuit. It felt raspingly unfamiliar after all the suitless months of city life. She studied the ghola, wondering if he might know something important about this peculiar death. A lock of his black-goat hair, she saw, had escaped his stillsuit hood. She sensed her hand longing to tuck that hair back into place. As though lured by this thought, his gleaming grey metal eyes turned toward her. The eyes set her trembling and she tore her gaze away from him. A Fremen woman had died here from a poison called "the throat of hell." A Fremen addicted to semuta. She shared Paul's disquiet at this conjunction.

The mortuary attendants waited patiently. This corpse contained not enough water for them to salvage. They felt no need to hurry. And they'd believe that Alia, through some glyptic art, was reading a strange truth in these remains. No strange truth came to her.

There was only a distant feeling of anger deep within her at the obvious thoughts in the attendants' minds. It was a product of the damned religious mystery. She and her brother could not be people. They had to be something more. The Bene Gesserit had seen to that by manipulating Atreides ancestry. Their mother had contributed to it by thrusting them onto the path of witchery, even without the Spice trance. And Paul perpetuated the difference.

She summoned the ghola with a gesture. He stopped beside her, attentive, patient. "What do you see in this?" she asked.

"We may never learn who it was died here," he said. "The head, the teeth are gone. The hands... Unlikely such a one had a genetic record somewhere to which her cells could be matched."

"Tleilaxu poison," she said. "What do you make of that?"

"Many people buy such poisons."

"True enough. And this flesh is too far gone to be regrown as was done with your body."

"Even if you could trust the Tleilaxu to do it," he said.

She nodded, stood. "You will fly me back to the city now." When they were airborne and pointed north, she said: "You fly as Duncan Idaho did." Much like her brother since it had been Idaho and Harry who taught him.

He cast a speculative glance at her. "Others have told me this."

"What are you thinking now?" she asked.

"Many things."

"Stop dodging my question, damn you!"

"Which question?"

She glared at him. He saw the glare, shrugged. Accusingly, her voice thick and with a catch in it, she said: "I merely wanted your reactions voiced to play my own thoughts against them. That young woman's death bothers me."

"I was not thinking about that."

"What were you thinking about?"

"About the strange emotions I feel when people speak of the one I may have been."

"May have been?"

"The Tleilaxu are very clever."

"Not that clever. You were Duncan Idaho."

"Very likely. It's the prime computation."

"So, you get emotional?"

"To a degree. I feel eagerness. I'm uneasy. There's a tendency to tremble and I must devote effort to controlling it. I get... flashes of imagery."

"What imagery?"

"It's too rapid to recognize. Flashes. Spasms... almost memories."

"Aren't you curious about such memories?"

"Of course. Curiosity urges me forward, but I move against a heavy reluctance. I think: 'What if I'm not the one they believe me to be?' I don't like that thought."

"And this is all you were thinking?"

"You know better than that, Alia."

How dare he use my given name? She felt anger rise and go down beneath the memory of the way he'd spoken: softly throbbing undertones, casual male confidence. A muscle twitched along her jaw. She clenched her teeth.

"Isn't that El Kuds down there?" he asked, dipping a wing briefly, causing a sudden flurry in their escort.

She looked down at their shadows rippling across the promontory above Harg Pass, at the cliff and the rock pyramid containing the skull of her father. El Kuds - the Holy Place. "That's the Holy Place," she said.

"I must visit that place one day," he said. "Nearness to your father's remains may bring memories I can capture."

She saw suddenly how strong must be this need to know who he'd been. It was a central compulsion with him. She looked back at the rocks, the cliff with its base sloping into a dry beach and a sea of sand - cinnamon rock lifting from the dunes like a ship breasting waves. "Circle back," she said.

"The escort... "

"They'll follow. Swing under them." He obeyed. "Do you truly serve my brother?" she asked, when he was on the new course, the escort following.

"I serve the Atreides," he said, his tone formal.

And she saw his right-hand lift, fall - almost the old salute of Caladan. A pensive look came over his face. She watched him peer down at the rock pyramid. "What bothers you?" she asked.

His lips moved. A voice emerged, brittle, tight: "He was... he was..." A tear slid down his cheek.

Alia found herself stilled by Fremen awe. He gave water to the dead! Compulsively, she touched a finger to his cheek, felt the tear. "Duncan," she whispered. He appeared locked to the 'thopter's controls, gaze fastened to the tomb below. She raised her voice: "Duncan!"

He swallowed, shook his head, looked at her, the metal eyes glistening. "I... felt... an arm... on my shoulders," he whispered. "I felt it! An arm." His throat worked. "It was... a friend. It was... my friend."

"Who?"

"I don't know. I think it was... I don't know."

The call light began flashing in front of Alia, their escort captain wanting to know why they returned to the desert. She took the microphone, explained that they had paid a brief homage to her father's tomb. The captain reminded her that it was late. "We will go to Arrakeen now," she said, replacing the microphone. Hayt took a deep breath, banked their 'thopter around to the north. "It was my father's arm you felt, wasn't it?" she asked.

"Perhaps." His voice was that of the Mentat computing probabilities, and she saw he had regained his composure. She looked down at the flat expanse of the Shield Wall - tortured rock, pits and crevices. He saw the direction of her gaze, said: "A very exposed place, that down there."

"But an easy place to hide," she said. She looked at him. "It reminds me of a human mind... with all its concealments."

"Ahh," he said.

"Ahh? What does that mean - Ahh?" She was suddenly angry with him and the reason for it escaped her.

"You'd like to know what my mind conceals," he said. It was a statement, not a question.

"How do you know I haven't exposed you for what you are by my powers?" she demanded.

"Have you?" He seemed genuinely curious.

"No!"

"Sibyls have limits," he said.

He appeared to be amused and this reduced Alia's anger. "Amused? Have you no respect for my powers?" she asked. The question sounded weakly argumentative even to her own ears.

"I respect your omens and portents perhaps more than you think," he said. "I was in the audience for your Morning Ritual."

"And what does that signify?"

"You've great ability with symbols," he said, keeping his attention on the 'thopters controls. "That's a Bene Gesserit thing, I'd say. But, as with many witches, you've become careless of your powers."

She felt a spasm of fear, blared: "How dare you?"

"I dare much more than my makers anticipated," he said. "Because of that rare fact, I remain with your brother."

Alia studied the steel balls which were his eyes: no human expression there. The stillsuit hood concealed the line of his jaw. His mouth remained firm, though. Great strength in it... and determination. His words had carried a reassuring intensity. "... dare much more... " That was a thing Duncan Idaho might have said. Had the Tleilaxu fashioned their ghola better than they knew - or was this mere sham, part of his conditioning? "Explain yourself, ghola," she commanded.

"Know thyself, is that thy commandment?" he asked.

Again, she felt that he was amused. "Don't bandy words with me, you... you thing!" she said. She put a hand to the crysknife in its throat sheath. "Why were you given to my brother?"

"Your brother tells me that you watched the presentation," he said. "You've heard me answer that question for him."

"Answer it again... for me!"

"I am intended to destroy him."

"Is that the Mentat speaking?"

"You know the answer to that without asking," he chided. "And you know, as well, that such a gift wasn't necessary. Your brother already was destroying himself quite adequately."

She weighed these words, her hand remaining on the haft of her knife. A tricky answer, but there was sincerity in the voice. "Then why such a gift?" she probed.

"It may have amused the Tleilaxu. And, it is true, that the Guild asked for me as a gift."

"Why?"

"Same answer."

"How am I careless of my powers?"

"How are you employing them?" he countered.

His question slashed through to her own misgivings. She took her hand away from the knife, asked: "Why do you say my brother was destroying himself?"

"Oh, come now, child! Where are these vaunted powers? Have you no ability to reason?"

Controlling anger, she said: "Reason for me, Mentat."

"Very well." He glanced around at their escort, returned his attention to their course. The plain of Arrakeen was beginning to show beyond the northern rim of the Shield Wall. The pattern of the pan and graben villages remained indistinct beneath a dust pall, but the distant gleam of Arrakeen could be discerned. "Symptoms," he said. "Your brother keeps an official Panegyrist who - "

"Who was a gift of the Fremen Naibs!"

"An odd gift from friends," he said. "Why would they surround him with flattery and servility? Have you really listened to this Panegyrist? 'The people are illuminated by Muad’Dib. The Umma Regent, our Emperor, came out of darkness to shine resplendently upon all men. He is our Sire. He is precious water from an endless fountain. He spills joy for all the universe to drink,' Pah!"

Speaking softly, Alia said: "If I but repeated your words for our Fremen escort, they'd hack you into bird feed."

"Then tell them."

"My brother rules by the natural law of heaven!"

"You don't believe that, so why say it?"

"How do you know what I believe?" She experienced trembling that no Bene Gesserit powers could control. This ghola was having an effect she hadn't anticipated.

"You commanded me to reason as a Mentat," he reminded her.

"No Mentat knows what I believe!" She took two deep, shuddering breaths. "How dare you judge us?"

"Judge you? I don't judge."

"You've no idea how we were taught!"

"Both of you were taught to govern," he said. "You were conditioned to an overweening thirst for power. You were imbued with a shrewd grasp of politics and a deep understanding for the uses of war and ritual. Natural law? What natural law? That myth haunts human history. Haunts! It's a ghost. It's insubstantial, unreal. Is your Jihad a natural law?"

"Mentat jabber," she sneered.

"I'm a servant of the Atreides and I speak with candour," he said.

"Servant? We've no servants; only disciples."

"And I am a disciple of awareness," he said. "Understand that, child, and you - "

"Don't call me child!" she snapped. She slipped her crysknife half out of its sheath.

"I stand corrected." He glanced at her, smiled, returned his attention to piloting the 'thopter. The cliffsided structure of the Atreides Keep could be made out now, dominating the northern suburbs of Arrakeen. "You are almost a woman grown," he said. "And the flesh is disturbed by its new womanhood."

"I don't know why I listen to you," she growled, but she let the crysknife fall back into its sheath, wiped her palm on her robe. The palm, wet with perspiration, disturbed her sense of Fremen frugality. Such a waste of the body's moisture!

"You listen because you know I'm devoted to your brother," he said. "My actions are clear and easily understood."

"Nothing about you is clear and easily understood. You're the most complex creature I've ever seen. How do I know what the Tleilaxu built into you?"

"By mistake or intent," he said, "they gave me freedom to mould myself."

"You retreat into Zensunni parables," she accused. "The wise man moulds himself - the fool lives only to die." Her voice was heavy with mimicry. "Disciple of awareness!"

"Men cannot separate means and enlightenment," he said.

"You speak riddles!"

"I speak to the opening mind."

"I'm going to repeat all this to Paul."

"He's heard most of it already."

She found herself overwhelmed by curiosity. "How is it you're still alive... and free? What did he say?"

"He laughed. And he said, 'People don't want a bookkeeper for an Emperor; they want a master, someone who'll protect them from change.' But he agreed that destruction of his Empire arises from himself."

"Why would he say such things?"

"Because I convinced him I understand his problem and will help him."

"What could you possibly have said to do that?"

He remained silent, banking the 'thopter into the downwind leg for a landing at the guard complex on the roof of the Keep.

"I demand you tell me what you said!"

"I'm not sure you could take it."

"I'll be the judge of that! I command you to speak at once!"

"Permit me to land us first," he said. And not waiting for her permission, he turned onto the base leg, brought the wings into optimum lift, settled gently onto the bright orange pad atop the roof.

"Now," Alia said. "Speak."

"I told him that to endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe."

She shook her head. "That's... that's... "

"A bitter pill," he said, watching the guards run toward them across the roof, taking up their escort positions.

"Bitter nonsense!"

"The greatest palatinate earl and the lowliest stipendiary serf share the same problem. You cannot hire a Mentat or any other intellect to solve it for you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witnesses to provide answers. No servant - or disciple - can dress the wound. You dress it yourself or continue bleeding for all to see."

She whirled away from him, realizing in the instant of action what this betrayed about her own feelings. Without wile of voice or witch-wrought trickery, he had reached into her psyche once more. How did he do this? "What have you told him to do?" she whispered.

"I told him to judge, to impose order."

Alia stared out at the guard, marking how patiently they waited - how orderly. "To dispense justice," she murmured.

"Not that!" he snapped. "I suggested that he judge, no more, guided by one principle, perhaps..."

"And that?"

"To keep his friends and destroy his enemies."

"To judge unjustly, then."

"What is justice? Two forces collide. Each may have the right in his own sphere. And here's where an Emperor commands orderly solutions. Those collisions he cannot prevent - he solves."

"How?"

"In the simplest way: he decides."

"Keeping his friends and destroying his enemies."

"Isn't that stability? People want order, this kind or some other. They sit in the prison of their hungers and see that war has become the sport of the rich. That's a dangerous form of sophistication. It's disorderly."

"I will suggest to my brother that you are much too dangerous and must be destroyed," she said, turning to face him.

"A solution I've already suggested," he said.

"And that's why you are dangerous," she said, measuring out her words. "You've mastered your passions."

"That is not why I'm dangerous." Before she could move, he leaned across, gripped her chin in one hand, planted his lips on hers. It was a gentle kiss, brief. He pulled away and she stared at him with a shock leavened by glimpses of spasmodic grins on the faces of her guardsmen still standing at orderly attention outside. Alia put a finger to her lips. There'd been such a sense of familiarity about that kiss. His lips had been flesh of a future she'd seen in some prescient byway. Breast heaving, she said: "I should have you flayed."

"Because I'm dangerous?"

"Because you presume too much!"

"I presume nothing. I take nothing which is not first offered to me. Be glad I did not take all that was offered." He opened his door, slid out. "Come along. We've dallied too long on a fool's errand." He strode toward the entrance dome beyond the pad.

Alia leaped out, ran to match his stride. "I'll tell him everything you've said and everything you did," she said.

"Good." He held the door for her.

"He will order you executed," she said, slipping into the dome.

"Why? Because I took the kiss I wanted?" He followed her, his movement forcing her back. The door slid closed behind him.

"The kiss you wanted!" Outrage filled her.

"All right, Alia. The kiss you wanted, then." He started to move around her toward the drop field.

As though his movement had propelled her into heightened awareness, she realized his candour - the utter truthfulness of him. The kiss I wanted, she told herself. True. "Your truthfulness, that's what's dangerous," she said, following him.

"You return to the ways of wisdom," he said, not breaking his stride. "A Mentat could not've stated the matter more directly. Now: what is it you saw in the desert?"

She grabbed his arm, forcing him to a halt. He'd done it again: shocked her mind into sharpened awareness. "I can't explain it," she said, "but I keep thinking of the Face Dancers. Why is that?"

"That is why your brother sent you to the desert," he said, nodding. "Tell him of this persistent thought."

"But why?" She shook her head. "Why Face Dancers?"

"There's a young woman dead out there," he said. "Perhaps no young woman is reported missing among the Fremen."

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Harry stood behind Irulan’s chair as she sat with her sister Wensicia as the funeral proceeded. The 81^st, and last, Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV was dead. “It was kind of the Emperor to allow his wife to attend.” Wensicia commented coldly.

Irulan stiffened and stared at her younger sister. “It is my position as wife that has allowed our family to live in safety these last years.” The funeral came to a close and she walked from the room, Harry on her heels, hand never far from shield or blade.

“Are you alright?” He asked as they walked and she nodded.

“I was never more than a bargaining tool for my Father. He blamed my mother for never bearing a son and made sure I knew it.” She admitted. “Let us leave, I want to return home.”

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Alia slipped away from everyone, into the heart the Fane to stare down at the little Maker’s, kept close at hand to provide the Water of Life. Was this madness? To do this as her brother had? Instead of as her Mother and other Reverend Mothers? She heard movement and turned to see Lily behind her.

“Shall I drown the Maker for you Sayyadina?” Lily asked quietly, ritually, and Alia knew her friend would aide her in this.

“Drown the Maker, bring forth the Waters of Life.” Alia whispered and watched as Lily tied up her skirt, moving to isolate one worm and then flood its small chamber, holding a bag over the thrashing animals head until it was still. “Is there Water?”

"There is water, Sayyadina," Lily said, "but we cannot drink of it."

"Is there seed?" Alia asked. She was terrified but this had to be. Something was coming and Paul knew it but was keeping so much to himself. He was her brother, she would help him carry the burden.

"There is seed," Lily answered, taking comfort in the ritual words. She knew what they were doing, what this could do to Alia.

 Alia touched the container. "Blessed is the water and its seed."

"Sayyadina Alia," Lily said, Alia turned to see her ‘cousin’ staring at her, worry in her eyes. "Have you tasted the blessed water?" Alia didn’t even try to answer. "It is not possible that you have tasted the blessed water. You are a child, now becoming a woman, you are unprivileged yet. The crop was large and the maker has been destroyed." She began unfastening a coiled spout fixed to the top of the sloshing sack. “If you be a Reverend Mother let Shai-hulud judge now!

Alia moved to recline on a chair, breathing deeply as she mentally repeated the litany against fear. She knew she was young for this but not the youngest to ever become a Reverend Mother. Lily stood over her and lowered the spout, last chance to back out. Alia took a deep breath and accepted the spout, letting the cool liquid rush in as Lily squeezed the sides. She tasted the sack's contents in her nostrils, in the roof of her mouth, in her cheeks, in her eyes - a biting sweetness, now. Cool. Again, Lily sent the liquid gushing into Alia's mouth. Delicate. But it was unlike any other drug of her experience, and Bene Gesserit training included the taste of many drugs, though she knew her mother had been far more careful with her than normal.

Whirling silence settled around Alia. Every fibre of her body accepted the fact that something profound had happened to it. She felt that she was a conscious mote, smaller than any subatomic particle, yet capable of motion and of sensing her surroundings. Like an abrupt revelation - the curtains whipped away - she realized she had become aware of a psychokinesthetic extension of herself. She was the mote, yet not the mote. She stared at Lily who stood over her, frozen. Nothing moved.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Paul bolted up in bed, eyes wide. Something….

“Muad’Dib?”  Chani stirred beside him in concern.

“Alia…. She’s taken the Waters.” He got up and tossed on a robe as he ran, hearing Chani move from the bed as well as he ran for the Fane of the Oracle. A door opened and Harry emerged.

“Paul?”

“Alia.” He called back and Harry moved with him.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

The answer to this instant came like an explosion in her consciousness: her personal time was suspended to save her life. She focused on the psychokinesthetic extension of herself, looking within, and was confronted immediately with a cellular core, a pit of blackness from which she recoiled. That is the place where we cannot look, she thought. There is the place the Reverend Mothers are so reluctant to mention - the place where only a Kwisatz Haderach may look, the place only Paul could see. And yet… she moved closer to it and smiled, it wasn’t that scary, she couldn’t go there but she could hover at the edges.

This realization returned a small measure of confidence, and again she ventured to focus on the psychokinesthetic extension, becoming a mote-self that searched within her for danger.

She found it within the drug she had swallowed. The stuff was dancing particles within her, its motions so rapid that even frozen time could not stop them. Dancing particles. She began recognizing familiar structures, atomic linkages: a carbon atom here, helical wavering . . . a glucose molecule. An entire chain of molecules confronted her, and she recognized a protein . . . a methyl-protein configuration. Incredible!

She saw the nature of the poison now. With her psychokinesthetic probing, she moved into it, shifted an oxygen mote, allowed another carbon mote to link, reattached a linkage of oxygen . . . hydrogen. The change spread . . . faster and faster as the catalysed reaction opened its surface of contact.

The suspension of time relaxed its hold upon her, and she sensed motion. The tube spout from the sack was touched to her mouth - gently, collecting a drop of moisture. Lily's taking the catalyst from my body to change the poison in that sack. Alia focused on her ‘cousin’ and saw the relief in Lily’s features even as the door was forced open and Paul ran in, Harry and Chani on his heels.

“What have you done Alia?” Paul knelt beside her, brushing dark hair back from her face.

“What I had to.” She answered softly.

Harry moved to his daughter who held her head high, making him sigh. He took the changed waters from her and then hugged her. “You okay?” he asked and she nodded.

“She would have done it alone.” Lily whispered, she’d been terrified for Alia but she hadn’t wanted her to go through it unaided.

“I know.”

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Through that towering doorway Mohiam marched with her guards into the Grand Reception Hall of the Emperor Paul Atreides - "Muad’Dib, before whom all people are dwarfed." Now, she saw the effect of that popular saying at work.

As she advanced toward Paul on the distant throne, the Reverend Mother found herself more impressed by the architectural subtleties of her surroundings than she was by the immensities. The space was large: it could've housed the entire citadel of any ruler in human history. The open sweep of the room said much about hidden structural forces balanced with nicety. Trusses and supporting beams behind these walls and the faraway domed ceiling must surpass anything ever before attempted. Everything spoke of engineering genius.

Without seeming to do so, the hall grew smaller at its far end, refusing to dwarf Paul on his throne centred on a dais. An untrained awareness, shocked by surrounding proportions, would see him at first as many times larger than his actual size. Colours played upon the unprotected psyche: Paul's green throne had been cut from a single Hagar emerald. It suggested growing things and, out of the Fremen mythos, reflected the mourning colour. It whispered that here sat he who could make you mourn - life and death in one symbol, a clever stress of opposites. Behind the throne, draperies cascaded in burnt orange, curried gold of Dune earth, and cinnamon flecks of melange. To a trained eye, the symbolism was obvious, but it contained hammer blows to beat down the uninitiated.

Time played its role here. The Reverend Mother measured the minutes required to approach the Imperial Presence at her hobbling pace. You had time to be cowed. Any tendency toward resentment would be squeezed out of you by the unbridled power which focused down upon your person. You might start the long march toward that throne as a human of dignity, but you ended the march as a gnat.

Aides and attendants stood around the Emperor in a curiously ordered sequence - attentive household guardsmen along the draped back wall, that abomination, Alia, two steps below Paul and on his left hand; Stilgar, the Imperial lackey, on the step directly below Alia; and on the right, Harry opposite Stilgar but even further to the left so as not to block Alia’s view, one step up from the floor of the hall, a solitary figure: the fleshly revenant of Duncan Idaho, the ghola. She marked older Fremen among the guardsmen, bearded Naibs with stillsuit scars on their noses, sheathed crysknives at their waists, a few maula pistols, even some lasguns. Those most be trusted men, she thought, to carry lasguns in Paul's presence when he obviously wore a shield generator. She could see the shimmering of its field around him. One burst of a lasgun into that field and the entire citadel would be a hole in the ground.

Her guard stopped ten paces from the foot of the dais, parted to open an unobstructed view of the Emperor. She noted now the absence of Leto, Chani and Irulan, wondered at it. He held no important audience without them, so it was said. Paul nodded to her, silent, measuring. Immediately, she decided to take the offensive, said: "So, the great Paul Atreides deigns to see the one he banished."

Paul smiled wryly, thinking: She knows I want something from her. That knowledge had been inevitable, she being who she was. He recognized her powers. The Bene Gesserit didn't become Reverend Mothers by chance. "Shall we dispense with fencing?" he asked.

Would it be this easy? she wondered. "Name the thing you want."

Stilgar stirred, cast a sharp glance at Paul. The Imperial lackey didn't like her tone.

"Stilgar wants me to send you away," Paul said.

"Not kill me?" she asked. "I would've expected something more direct from a Fremen Naib."

Stilgar scowled, said: "Often, I must speak otherwise than I think. That is called diplomacy."

"Then let us dispense with diplomacy as well," she said. "Was it necessary to have me walk all that distance. I am an old woman."

"You had to be shown how callous I can be," Paul said. "That way, you'll appreciate magnanimity."

"You dare such gaucheries with a Bene Gesserit?" she asked.

"Gross actions carry their own messages," Paul said.

She hesitated, weighed his words. So - he might yet dispense with her... grossly, obviously, if she... if she what? "Say what it is you want from me," she muttered.

Alia glanced at her brother, nodded toward the draperies behind the throne. She knew Paul's reasoning in this, but disliked it all the same. Call it wild prophecy: She felt pregnant with reluctance to take part in this bargaining. Her new senses and memories called to her that this was wrong.

"You must be careful how you speak to me, old woman," Paul said.

He called me old woman when he was a stripling, the Reverend Mother thought. Does he remind me now of my hand in his past? The decision I made then, must I remake it here? She felt the weight of decision, a physical thing that set her knees to trembling. Muscles cried their fatigue.

"It was a long walk," Paul said, "and I can see that you're tired. We will retire to my private chamber behind the throne. You may sit there." He gave a hand-signal to Stilgar, arose.

Stilgar and the ghola converged on her, helped her up the steps, Harry one step behind, to catch her or kill her, followed Paul through a passage concealed by the draperies. She realized then why he had greeted her in the hall: a dumb-show for the guards and Naibs. He feared them, then. And now - now, he displayed kindly benevolence, daring such wiles on a Bene Gesserit. Or was it daring? She sensed another presence behind, glanced back to see Alia following. The younger woman's eyes held a brooding, baleful cast. The Reverend Mother shuddered, suddenly realising that now she faced another Reverend Mother, not a mere girl-child.

The private chamber at the end of the passage was a twenty-meter cube of plasmeld, yellow glowglobes for light, the deep orange hangings of a desert stilltent around the walls. It contained divans, soft cushions, a faint odour of melange, crystal water flagons on a low table. It felt cramped, tiny after the outer hall.

Paul seated her on a divan, stood over her, studying the ancient face - steely teeth, eyes that hid more than they revealed, deeply wrinkled skin. He indicated a water flagon. She shook her head, dislodging a wisp of grey hair. In a low voice, Paul began the negotiations, "I wish to bargain with you for the life of my beloved."

Stilgar cleared his throat. Alia fingered the handle of the crysknife sheathed at her neck. The ghola remained at the door, face impassive, metal eyes pointed at the air above the Reverend Mother's head. Harry had moved to the side but was close to her. She had seen him move before, had seen him kill the Harkonnen with only a touch, was he in place to kill her should the Emperor order it? Her gaze went back to the ghola.

"Have you had a vision of my hand in her death?" the Reverend Mother asked. She kept her attention on the ghola, oddly disturbed by him. Why should she feel threatened by the ghola? He was a tool of the conspiracy.

"I know what it is you want from me," Paul said, avoiding her question.

Then he only suspects, she thought. The Reverend Mother looked down at the tips of her shoes exposed by a fold of her robe. Black... black... shoes and robe showed marks of her confinement: stains, wrinkles. She lifted her chin, met an angry glare in Paul's eyes. Elation surged through her, but she hid the emotion behind pursed lips, slitted eyelids. "What coin do you offer?" she asked.

"You may have my seed, but not my person," Paul said. "Irulan banished and inseminated by artificial -" This was not his preferred fate for Irulan, he would rather see her with Harry and hopefully finally happy but if the Sisterhood were this desperate for his child via the Princess then this would be her fate.

"You dare!" the Reverend Mother flared, stiffening.

Stilgar took a half step forward. Disconcertingly, the ghola smiled. And now Alia was studying him.

"We'll not discuss the things your Sisterhood forbids," Paul said. "I will listen to no talk of sins, abominations or the beliefs left over from past Jihads. You may have my seed for your plans, but no child of Irulan's will sit on my throne."

"Your throne," she sneered.

"My throne."

“And should something happen to your son, who will bear a further heir?”

"Chani."

"She is barren." She scoffed.

"She is with child." Paul answered and Harry smirked.

An involuntary indrawn breath exposed her shock. "You lie!" she snapped.

Paul held up a restraining hand as Stilgar surged forward. "We've known for two days that she carries my child."

"But Irulan... "

"By artificial means only. That's my offer."

The Reverend Mother closed her eyes to hide his face. Damnation! To cast the genetic dice in such a way! Loathing boiled in her breast. The teaching of the Bene Gesserit, the lessons of the Butlerian Jihad - all proscribed such an act. One did not demean the highest aspirations of humankind. No machine could function in the way of a human mind. No word or deed could imply that men might be bred on the level of animals.

"Your decision," Paul said.

She shook her head. The genes, the precious Atreides genes - only these were important. Need went deeper than proscription. For the Sisterhood, mating mingled more than sperm and ovum. One aimed to capture the psyche. The Reverend Mother understood now the subtle depths of Paul's offer. He would make the Bene Gesserit party to an act which would bring down popular wrath... were it ever discovered. They could not admit such paternity if the Emperor denied it. This coin might save the Atreides genes for the Sisterhood, but it would never buy a throne. She swept her gaze around the room, studying each face: Stilgar, passive and waiting now; the ghola frozen at some inward place; Harry standing utterly still, green eyes focused on her for her answer; Alia watching the ghola... and Paul - wrath beneath a shallow veneer. "This is your only offer?" she asked.

"My only offer."

She glanced at the ghola, caught by a brief movement of muscles across his cheeks. Emotion? "You, ghola," she said. "Should such an offer be made? Having been made, should it be accepted? Function as the Mentat for us."

The metallic eyes turned to Paul.

"Answer as you will," Paul said.

The ghola returned his gleaming attention to the Reverend Mother, shocked her once more by smiling. "An offer is only as good as the real thing it buys," he said. "The exchange offered here is life-for-life, a high order of business."

Alia brushed a strand of dark coppery hair from her forehead. "And what else is hidden in this bargain?"

The Reverend Mother refused to look at Alia, but the words burned in her mind. Yes, far deeper implications lay here. The sister had passed through the waters, there could be no denying her status as a Reverend Mother with all the title implied. Gaius Helen Mohiam felt herself in this instant to be not one single person, but all the others who sat like tiny congeries in her memory. They were alert, every Reverend Mother she had absorbed in becoming a Priestess of the Sisterhood. Alia would be standing in the same situation here.

"What else?" the ghola asked. "One wonders why the witches of the Bene Gesserit have not used Tleilaxu methods."

Gaius Helen Mohiam and all the Reverend Mothers within her shuddered. Yes, the Tleilaxu did loathsome things. If one let down the barriers to artificial insemination, was the next step a Tleilaxu one - controlled mutation?

Paul, observing the play of emotion around him, felt abruptly that he no longer knew these people. He could see only strangers. Even Alia was a stranger.

"If we set the Atreides genes adrift in a Bene Gesserit river, who knows what may result?" Alia offered.

Gaius Helen Mohiam's head snapped around, and she met Alia's gaze. For a flashing instant, they were two Reverend Mothers together, communing on a single thought: What lay behind any Tleilaxu action? The ghola was a Tleilaxu thing. Had he put this plan into Paul's mind? Would Paul attempt to bargain directly with the Bene Tleilaxu? She broke her gaze from Alia's, feeling her own ambivalence and inadequacies. The pitfall of Bene Gesserit training, she reminded herself, lay in the powers granted: such powers predisposed one to vanity and pride. But power deluded those who used it. One tended to believe power could overcome any barrier... including one's own ignorance. Only one thing stood paramount here for the Bene Gesserit, she told herself. That was the pyramid of generations which had reached an apex in Paul Atreides... and in his abomination of a sister. A wrong choice here and the pyramid would have to be rebuilt... starting generations back in the parallel lines and with breeding specimens lacking the choicest characteristics. Controlled mutation, she thought. Did the Tleilaxu really practice it? How tempting! She shook her head, the better to rid it of such thoughts.

"You reject my proposal?" Paul asked.

"I'm thinking," she said. And again, she looked at the sister. The optimum cross for this female Atreides had been lost... killed by Paul. Another possibility remained, however - one which would cement the desired characteristic into an offspring. Paul dared offer animal breeding to the Bene Gesserit! How much was he really prepared to pay for his Chani's life? Would he accept a cross with his own sister? Sparring for time, the Reverend Mother said: "Tell me, oh flawless exemplar of all that's holy, has Irulan anything to say of your proposal?"

"Irulan will do what you tell her to do," Paul growled.

True enough, Mohiam thought. She firmed her jaw, offered a new gambit: "There are two Atreides."

Paul, sensing something of what lay in the old witch's mind, felt blood darken his face. "Careful what you suggest," he said.

"You'd just use Irulan to gain your own ends, eh?" she asked.

"Wasn't she trained to be used?" Harry asked from where he watched them.

And we trained her, that's what he's saying, Mohiam thought. Well... Irulan's a divided coin. Was there another way to spend such a coin? "Will you put Chani's children on the throne?" the Reverend Mother asked.

"On my throne." Paul said. He glanced at her wondering suddenly if she knew the divergent possibilities in this exchange. Alia stood with eyes closed, an odd stillness-of-person about her. With what inner force did she commune? Seeing his sister thus, Paul felt he'd been cast adrift. Alia stood on a shore that was receding from him. Why had she taken the Waters so young? He had wanted to protect her, his innocent little sister. But Stilgar had been right, she was a child no longer.

The Reverend Mother made her decision, said: "This is too much for one person to decide. I must consult with my Council on Wallach. Will you permit a message?"

As though she needed my permission! Paul thought. "Agreed, then. But don't delay too long. I will not sit idly by while you debate."

"Will you bargain with the Bene Tleilaxu?" the ghola asked, his voice a sharp intrusion.

Alia's eyes popped open and she stared at the ghola as though she'd been wakened by a dangerous intruder.

"I've made no such decision," Paul said. "What I will do is go into the desert as soon as it can be arranged. Our child will be born in sietch."

"A wise decision," Stilgar intoned.

Alia refused to look at Stilgar. It was a wrong decision. She could feel this in every cell. Paul must know it. Why had he fixed himself upon such a path? "Have the Bene Tleilaxu offered their services?" Alia asked. She saw Mohiam hanging on the answer.

Paul shook his head. "No." He glanced at Stilgar. "Stil, arrange for the message to be sent to Wallach."

"At once, M’Lord."

Paul turned away, waited while Stilgar summoned guards, left with the old witch. He sensed Alia debating whether to confront him with more questions. She turned, instead, to the ghola.

"Mentat," she said, "will the Tleilaxu bid for favour with my brother?" The ghola shrugged.

Paul felt his attention wander. The Tleilaxu? No... not in the way Alia meant. Her question revealed, though, that she had not seen the alternatives here. Well... vision varied from sibyl to sibyl. Why not a variance from brother to sister? Wandering... wandering... He came back from each thought with a start to pick up shards of the nearby conversation.

"... must know what the Tleilaxu..."

"... the fullness of data is always..."

"... healthy doubts where... "

Paul turned, looked at his sister, caught her attention. He knew she would see tears on his face and wonder at them. Let her wonder. Wondering was a kindness now. He glanced at the ghola, seeing only Duncan Idaho despite the metallic eyes. Sorrow and compassion warred in Paul. What might those metal eyes record? There are many degrees of sight and many degrees of blindness, Paul thought. His mind turned to a paraphrase of the passage from the Orange Catholic Bible: 'What senses do we lack that we cannot see another world all around us?' Were those metal eyes another sense than sight?

Alia crossed to her brother, sensing his utter sadness. She touched a tear on his cheek with a Fremen gesture of awe, said: "We must not grieve for those dear to us before their passing."

"Before their passing," Paul whispered. "Tell me, little sister, what is before?"

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Harry stood beside Harah, Stilgar on her other side and Orlop on Harry’s free side. The four of them were dressed in their best clothes and smiling as Lily stood beside Leto II with Paul before them in his full ceremonial regalia. Irulan and Chani stood nearby, also dressed in finery. The hall was packed with onlookers chattering excitedly. With those arrayed on the dais it was obvious to all what was about to happen. Silence fell as Paul raised his arms. “Today it is my pleasure to announce the betrothal of my firstborn, Leto II, heir to the Throne to Lily Potter, daughter of Harry Potter and Harah.” He announced and cheers went up. “Also, let it be known that Chani will soon bear another child.”

Leto looked at Lily who smiled shyly and they clasped hands, moving forward to allow the people a better view of them, the sun catching her crimson hair as it fell in waves down her back. He pulled her in for a brief, chaste, kiss and then slipped a ring on her finger, one the Lady Jessica has sent as soon as she had been told of the plan. None of the Royal Family blamed her for not coming in person. Arrakis had taken too much from her.

They stayed for a while, allowing people to see the new couple and call out their congratulations and even questions. They were used to seeing Lily with the Royal Family so very few people were surprised by the announcement, just the timing. Harry would have preferred waiting a few more years but securing dynastic succession usually meant young marriages.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

It was almost midday when they brought her into the room - an odd space, mixture of desert-Fremen and Family-Aristocrat. Hiereg hangings lined three walls: delicate tapestries adorned with figures out of Fremen mythology. A view screen covered the fourth wall, a silver-grey surface behind an oval desk whose top held only one object, a Fremen sandclock built into an orrery. The orrery, a suspensor mechanism from lx, carried both moons of Arrakis in the classic Worm Trine aligned with the sun.

Paul, standing beside the desk, glanced at Bannerjee. The Security Officer was one of those who'd come up through the Fremen Constabulary, winning his place on brains and proven loyalty despite the smuggler ancestry attested by his name. He was a solid figure, almost fat. Wisps of black hair fell down over the dark, wet-appearing skin of his forehead like the crest of an exotic bird. His eyes were blue-blue and steady in a gaze which could look upon happiness or atrocity without change of expression. Both Chani and Stilgar trusted him. Paul knew that if he told Bannerjee to throttle the girl immediately, Bannerjee would do it.

"Sire, here is the messenger girl," Bannerjee said. "M'Lady Chani said she sent word to you."

"Yes." Paul nodded curtly.

Oddly, the girl didn't look at him. Her attention remained on the orrery. She was dark-skinned, of medium height, her figure concealed beneath a robe whose rich wine fabric and simple cut spoke of wealth. Her blue-black hair was held in a narrow band of material which matched the robe. The robe concealed her hands. Paul suspected that the hands were tightly clasped. It would be in character. Everything about her would be in character - including the robe: a last piece of finery saved for such a moment.

Paul motioned Bannerjee aside. He hesitated before obeying. Now, the girl moved - one step forward. When she moved there was grace. Still, her eyes avoided him. Paul cleared his throat.

Now the girl lifted her gaze, the whiteless eyes widening with just the right shade of awe. She had an odd little face with delicate chin, a sense of reserve in the way she held her small mouth. The eyes appeared abnormally large above slanted cheeks. There was a cheerless air about her, something which said she seldom smiled. The corners of her eyes even held a faint yellow misting which could have been from dust irritation or the tracery of semuta. Everything was in character.

"You asked to see me," Paul said.

The moment of supreme test for this girl-shape had come. Scytale had put on the shape, the mannerisms, the sex, the voice - everything his abilities could grasp and assume. But this was a female known to Muad’Dib in the sietch days. She'd been a child, then, but she and Muad’Dib shared common experiences. Certain areas of memory must be avoided delicately. It was the most exacting part Scytale had ever attempted. "I am Otheym's Lichna of Berk al Dib." The girl's voice came out small, but firm, giving name, father and pedigree.

Paul nodded. He saw how Chani had been fooled. The timbre of voice, everything reproduced with exactitude. Had it not been for his own Bene Gesserit training in voice and for the web of dao in which oracular vision enfolded him, this Face-Dancer disguise might have gulled even him. Training exposed certain discrepancies: the girl was older than her known years; too much control tuned the vocal cords; set of neck and shoulders missed by a fraction the subtle hauteur of Fremen poise. But there were niceties, too: the rich robe had been patched to betray actual status... and the features were beautifully exact. They spoke a certain sympathy of this Face Dancer for the role being played. He saw from the corner of his eye that Harry had detected these errors as well, emerald gaze hardening before glancing to Paul for instruction and he signalled for Harry to hold. "Rest in my home, daughter of Otheym," Paul said in formal Fremen greeting. "You are welcome as water after a dry crossing."

The faintest of relaxations exposed the confidence this apparent acceptance had conveyed. "I bring a message," she said.

"A man's messenger is as himself," Paul said.

Scytale breathed softly. It went well, but now came the crucial task: the Atreides must be guided onto that special path. He must lose his Fremen concubine in circumstances where no other shared the blame. The failure must belong only to the omnipotent Muad’Dib. He had to be led into an ultimate realization of his failure and thence to acceptance of the Tleilaxu alternative. "I am the smoke which banishes sleep in the night," Scytale said, employing a Fedaykin code phrase: I bear bad tidings.

Paul fought to maintain calmness. He felt naked, his soul abandoned in a groping-time concealed from every vision. Powerful oracles hid this Face Dancer. Only the edges of these moments were known to Paul. He knew only what he could not do. He could not slay this Face Dancer. That would precipitate the future which must be avoided at all cost. Somehow, a way must be found to reach into the darkness and change the terrifying pattern. "Give me your message," Paul said.

Bannerjee moved to place himself where he could watch the girl's face. She seemed to notice him for the First time and her gaze went to the knife handle beneath the Security Officer's hand. "The innocent do not believe in evil," she said, looking squarely at Bannerjee.

Ahh, well done, Paul thought. It was what the real Lichna would've said. He felt a momentary pang for the real daughter of Otheym - dead now, a corpse in the sand. There was no time for such emotions, though. He scowled. Bannerjee kept his attention on the girl.

Harry watched her, this was not Lichna. He remembered the girl from the Sietch and this, while a good copy, was not her. The body found in the desert…. extremities and head removed, now made a lot of sense. So why was Paul dancing with this Face Dancer? Why not kill it?

"I was told to deliver my message in secret," she said.

"Why?" Bannerjee demanded, voice harsh, probing.

"Because it is my father's wish."

"These are my friends," Paul said. "Am I not a Fremen? Then my friends may hear anything I hear."

Scytale composed the girl-shape. Was this a true Fremen custom... or was it a test? "The Emperor may make his own rules," Scytale said. "This is the message: My father wishes you to come to him, bringing Chani."

"Why must I bring Chani?"

"She is your woman and a Sayyadina. This is a Water matter, by the rules of our tribes. She must attest it that my father speaks according to the Fremen Way."

There truly are Fremen in the conspiracy, Paul thought. This moment fitted the shape of things to come for sure. And he had no alternative but to commit himself to this course. "Of what will your father speak?" Paul asked.

"He will speak of a plot against you - a plot among the Fremen."

"Why doesn't he bring that message in person?" Harry asked

She kept her gaze on Paul. "My father cannot come here. The plotters suspect him. He'd not survive the journey."

"Could he not divulge the plot to you?" Harry shifted from his place against the wall, watching her closely. "How came he to risk his daughter on such a mission?"

"The details are locked in a distrans carrier that only Muad’Dib may open," she said. "This much I know." Scytale was a little worried, the Atreides man was perceptive, perhaps too perceptive. Did they suspect?

"Why not send the distrans, then?" Paul asked.

"It is a human distrans," she said.

"I'll go, then," Paul said. "But I'll go alone."

"Chani must come with you!"

"Chani is with child."

"When has a Fremen woman refused to..."

"My enemies fed her a subtle poison," Paul said. "It will be a difficult birth. Her health will not permit her to accompany me now." It was a half-truth, the effects had been greatly lessened thanks to Harry’s actions, but the pregnancy was still hard on her.

Before Scytale could still them, strange emotions passed over the girl-features: frustration, anger. Scytale was reminded that every victim must have a way of escape - even such a one as Muad’Dib. The conspiracy had not failed, though. This Atreides remained in the net. He was a creature who had developed firmly into one pattern. He'd destroy himself before changing into the opposite of that pattern. That had been the way with the Tleilaxu Kwisatz Haderach. It'd be the way with this one. And then... the ghola.

"Let me ask Chani to decide this," she said.

"I have decided it," Paul said. "You will accompany me in Chani's stead."

"It requires a Sayyadina of the Rite!"

"Are you not Chani's friend?"

Boxed! Scytale thought. Does he suspect? No. He's being Fremen-cautious. And the contraceptive is a fact. Well - there are other ways. "My father told me I was not to return," Scytale said, "that I was to seek asylum with you. He said you'd not risk me."

Paul nodded. It was beautifully in character. He couldn't deny this asylum. She'd plead Fremen obedience to a father's command. "I'll take Stilgar's wife, Harah," Paul said. "You'll tell us the way to your father."

"How do you know you can trust Stilgar's wife?"

"I know it."

"But I don't."

Paul pursed his lips, then: "Does your mother live?"

"My true mother has gone to Shai-hulud. My second mother still lives and cares for my father. Why?"

"She's of Sietch Tabr?"

"Yes."

"I remember her," Paul said. "She will serve in Chani's place." He motioned to Bannerjee. "Have attendants take Otheym's Lichna to suitable quarters."

Bannerjee nodded. Attendants. The key word meant that this messenger must be put under special guard. He took her arm. She resisted.

"How will you go to my father?" she pleaded.

"You'll describe the way to Bannerjee," Paul said. "He is my friend."

"No! My father has commanded it! I cannot!"

"Bannerjee?" Paul said.

Bannerjee paused. Paul saw the man searching that encyclopaedic memory which had helped bring him to his position of trust. "I know a guide who can take you to Otheym," Bannerjee said.

“I know where he lives.” Harry spoke again. “I made sure I know where all Fedaykin, present and past, live.”

"Then we’ll go together," Paul said. "Otheym wants it this way," Paul said, barely concealing the irony which consumed him.

"Sire, it's too dangerous," Bannerjee protested.

"Even an Emperor must accept some risks," Paul said. "The decision is made. Do as I've commanded." Reluctantly, Bannerjee led the Face Dancer from the room.

Paul turned toward the blank screen behind his desk. He felt that he waited for the arrival of a rock on its blind journey from some height. Should he tell Bannerjee about the messenger's true nature? he wondered. No! Such an incident hadn't been written on the screen of his vision. Any deviation here carried precipitate violence. A moment of fulcrum had to be found, a place where he could will himself out of the vision. If such a moment existed...

“A Face Dancer, they grow bolder.” Harry commented and Paul nodded. “So why walk into a trap?”

“This must be done Harry.”

“Very well, I will prepare.” He shook his head and then reached out to grasp Paul’s shoulder briefly, trying to offer comfort. If only Paul would open up, perhaps he could do more to help.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Harry paused as he saw Irulan.

“Is it true?” She asked and Harry walked towards her.

“Is what true?”

“Chani….”

“Ah, yes, she is pregnant. And well aware of who stopped this from happening before. The time is coming Princess, when you will have to choose your loyalties. I pray you chose correctly.” He turned away, there was much to prepare and he did not like Paul’s growing silence on things.

“It is my right to bear the Royal heir.” She whispered and he turned back to her, feeling sad for her. He remembered seeing Irulan and Paul at the party all those years ago…. They could have been happy together. But because of her Father’s actions she was trapped in a loveless marriage.

“No Irulan, Leto will always be his Father’s heir. Even if he had given you a child it would never sit upon the Throne. Take a lover, be happy with what you have.” He considered Chani’s offer and stepped closer briefly to brush a stray strand of hair back behind her ear before leaving.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

As he crossed over on the high footbridge from his Keep to the Qizarate Office Building, Paul added a limp to his walk. It was almost sunset and he walked through long shadows that helped conceal him, but sharp eyes still might detect something in his carriage that identified him. He wore a shield, but it was not activated, his aides having decided that the shimmer of it might arouse suspicions. Paul glanced left. Strings of sandclouds lay across the sunset like slatted shutters. The air was hiereg dry through his stillsuit filters.

He wasn't really alone out here, but the web of Security hadn't been this loose around him since he'd ceased walking the streets alone in the night. Ornithopters with night scanners drifted far overhead in seemingly random pattern, all of them tied to his movements through a transmitter concealed in his clothing. Picked men walked the streets below. Others had fanned out through the city after seeing the Emperor in his disguise - Fremen costume down to the stillsuit and temag desert boots, the darkened features. His cheeks had been distorted with plastene inserts. A catchtube ran down along his left jaw.

As he reached the opposite end of the bridge, Paul glanced back, noted a movement beside the stone lattice that concealed a balcony of his private quarters. Chani, no doubt. "Hunting for sand in the desert," she'd called this venture. And then a figure emerged from the shadows, another desert dressed Fremen…unless you saw his brilliant green eyes. Harry fell into step with him, his gait altered as well.

How little Chani understood the bitter choice. Selecting among agonies, he thought, made even lesser agonies near unbearable. There had been changes over the years to his visions, the distant danger that the Golden Path worked against had faded away. But some things remained the same, this time remained and there was nothing he could do.

For a blurred, emotionally painful moment, he relived their parting. At the last instant, Chani had experienced a tau-glimpse of his feelings, but she had misinterpreted. She had thought his emotions were those experienced in the parting of loved ones when one entered the dangerous unknown. Would that I did not know, he thought.

He had crossed the bridge now and entered the upper passageway through the office building. There were fixed glowglobes here and people hurrying on business. The Qizarate never slept. Paul found his attention caught by the signs above doorways, as though he were seeing them for the first time: Speed Merchants. Wind Stills and Retorts. Prophetic Prospects. Tests of Faith. Religious Supply. Weaponry... Propagation of the Faith... A more honest label would've been Propagation of the Bureaucracy, he thought.

A type of religious civil servant had sprung up all through his universe. This new man of the Qizarate was more often a convert. He seldom displaced a Fremen in the key posts, but he was filling all the interstices. He used melange as much to show he could afford it as for the geriatric benefits. He stood apart from his rulers - Emperor, Guild, Bene Gesserit, Landsraad, Family or Qizarate. His gods were Routine and Records. He was served by mentats and prodigious filing systems. Expediency was the first word in his catechism, although he gave proper lip-service to the precepts of the Butlerians. Machines could not be fashioned in the image of a man's mind, he said, but he betrayed by every action that he preferred machines to men, statistics to individuals, the faraway general view to the intimate personal touch requiring imagination and initiative.

As Paul emerged onto the ramp at the far side of the building, he heard the bells calling the Evening Rite at Alia's Fane. There was an odd feeling of permanence about the bells.

The temple across the thronged square was new, its rituals of recent devising, but there was something about this setting in a desert sink at the edge of Arrakeen - something in the way wind-driven sand had begun to weather stones and plastene, something in the haphazard way buildings had gone up around the Fane. Everything conspired to produce the impression that this was a very old place full of traditions and mystery.

He was down into the press of people now - committed. Security hadn't liked Paul's ready agreement to this meeting. Stilgar had liked it even less. And Chani had objected most of all.

The crowd around him, even while its members brushed against him, glanced his way unseeing and passed on, gave him a curious freedom of movement. It was the way they'd been conditioned to treat a Fremen, he knew. He carried himself like a man of the inner desert. Such men were quick to anger.

As he moved into the quickening flow to the temple steps, the crush of people became even greater. Those all-around could not help but press against him now, but he found himself the target for ritual apologies: "Your pardon, noble sir. I cannot prevent this discourtesy." "Pardon, sir; this crush of people is the worst I've ever seen." "I abase myself, holy citizen. A lout shoved me."

Paul ignored the words after the first few. There was no feeling in them except a kind of ritual fear. He found himself, instead, thinking that he had come a long way from his boyhood days in Caladan Castle. Where had he put his foot on the path that led to this journey across a crowded square on a planet so far from Caladan? Had he really put his foot on a path? He could not say he had acted at any point in his life for one specific reason. The motives and impinging forces had been complex - more complex possibly than any other set of goads in human history. He had the heady feeling here that he might still avoid the fate he could see so clearly along this path. But the crowd pushed him forward and he experienced the dizzy sense that he had lost his way, lost personal direction over his life.

The crowd flowed with him up the steps now into the temple portico. Voices grew hushed. The smell of fear grew stronger - acrid, sweaty. Acolytes had already begun the service within the temple. Their plain chant dominated the other sounds - whispers, rustle of garments, shuffling feet, coughs - telling the story of the Far Places visited by the Priestess in her holy trance. Alia was a reverend Mother now and the people knew it, they rejoiced in her new powers.

Alia emerged from the darkness behind the shimmering rainbows. She wore a yellow robe trimmed in Atreides green - yellow for sunlight, green for the death which produced life. Paul experienced the sudden surprising thought that Alia had emerged here just for him, for him alone. He stared across the mob in the temple at his sister. She was his sister. He knew her ritual and its roots, but he had never before stood out here with the pilgrims, watched her through their eyes. Here, performing the mystery of this place, he saw that she partook of the universe which opposed him.

Acolytes brought her a golden chalice. Alia raised the chalice. With part of his awareness, Paul knew that the chalice contained the unaltered melange, the subtle poison, her sacrament of the oracle now that she could drink it, before it had been simple spice, the high-level spice there to enhance her Bene Gesserit trained abilities without risking poisoning. Her gaze on the chalice, Alia spoke. Her voice caressed the ears, flower sound, flowing and musical: "In the beginning, we were empty," she said.

"Ignorant of all things," the chorus sang.

"We did not know the Power that abides in every place," Alia said.

"And in every Time " the chorus sang.

"Here is the Power," Alia said, raising the chalice slightly.

"It brings us joy," sang the chorus. And it brings us distress, Paul thought.

"It awakens the soul," Alia said.

"It dispels all doubts," the chorus sang.

"In worlds, we perish," Alia said.

"In the Power, we survive," sang the chorus.

Alia put the chalice to her lips, drank.

To his astonishment, Paul found he was holding his breath like the meanest pilgrim of this mob. Despite every shred of personal knowledge about the experience Alia was undergoing, he had been caught in the tao-web. He felt himself remembering how that fiery poison coursed into the body. Memory unfolded the time-stopping when awareness became a mote which changed the poison. He re-experienced the awakening into timelessness where all things were possible. He knew Alia's present experience, yet he saw now that he did not know it. Mystery blinded the eyes.

Alia trembled, sank to her knees.

Paul exhaled with the enraptured pilgrims. He nodded. Part of the veil began to lift from him. Absorbed in the bliss of a vision, he had forgotten that each vision belonged to all those who were still on-the-way, still to become. In the vision, one passed through a darkness, unable to distinguish reality from insubstantial accident. One hungered for absolutes which could never be. Hungering, one lost the present. Alia swayed with the rapture of spice change.

Paul felt that some transcendental presence spoke to him, saying: "Look! See there! See what you've ignored?" In that instant, he thought he looked through other eyes, that he saw an imagery and rhythm in this place which no artist or poet could reproduce. It was vital and beautiful, a glaring light that exposed all power-gluttony... even his own.

Alia spoke. Her amplified voice boomed across the nave. "Luminous night," she cried. A moan swept like a wave through the crush of pilgrims. "Nothing hides in such a night!" Alia said. "What rare light is this darkness? You cannot fix your gaze upon it! Senses cannot record it. No words describe it." Her voice lowered. "The abyss remains. It is pregnant with all the things yet to be. Ahhhhh, what gentle violence!"

Paul felt that he waited for some private signal from his sister. It could be any action or word, something of wizardry and mystical processes, an outward streaming that would fit him like an arrow into a cosmic bow. This instant lay like quivering mercury in his awareness.

"There will be sadness," Alia intoned. "I remind you that all things are but a beginning, forever beginning. Worlds wait to be conquered. Some within the sound of my voice will attain exalted destinies. You will sneer at the past, forgetting what I tell you now: within all differences there is unity." Paul suppressed a cry of disappointment as Alia lowered her head. She had not said the thing he waited to hear. His body felt like a dry shell, a husk abandoned by some desert insect. Others must feel something similar, he thought. He sensed the restlessness about him. Abruptly, a woman in the mob, someone far down in the nave to Paul's left, cried out, a wordless noise of anguish.

Alia lifted her head and Paul had the giddy sensation that the distance between them collapsed, that he stared directly into her glazed eyes - only inches away from her.

"Who summons me?" Alia asked.

"I do," the woman cried. "I do, Alia. Oh, Alia, help me. They say my son was killed on Muritan. Is he gone? Will I never see my son again... never?"

"You try to walk backward in the sand," Alia intoned. "Nothing is lost. Everything returns later, but you may not recognize the changed form that returns."

"Alia, I don't understand!" the woman wailed.

"You live in the air but you do not see it," Alia said, sharpness in her voice. "Are you a lizard? Your voice has the Fremen accent. Does a Fremen try to bring back the dead? What do we need from our dead except their water?"

Down in the centre of the nave, a man in a rich red cloak lifted both hands, the sleeves falling to expose white-clad arms. "Alia," he shouted, "I have had a business proposal. Should I accept?"

"You come here like a beggar," Alia said. "You look for the golden bowl but you will find only a dagger."

"I have been asked to kill a man!" a voice shouted from off to the right - a deep voice with sietch tones. "Should I accept? Accepting, would I succeed?"

"Beginning and end are a single thing," Alia snapped. "Have I not told you this before? You didn't come here to ask that question. What is it you cannot believe that you must come here and cry out against it?"

"She's in a fierce mood tonight," a woman near Paul muttered. "Have you ever seen her this angry?"

She knows I'm out here, Paul thought. Did she see something in the vision that angered her? Is she raging at me?

"Alia," a man directly in front of Paul called. "Tell these businessmen and faint-hearts how long your brother will rule!"

"I permit you to look around that corner by yourself," Alia snarled. "You carry your prejudice in your mouth! It is because my brother rides the worm of chaos that you have roof and water!"

With a fierce gesture, clutching her robe, Alia whirled away, strode through the shimmering ribbons of light, was lost in the darkness behind. Immediately, the acolytes took up the closing chant, but their rhythm was off. Obviously, they'd been caught by the unexpected ending of the rite. An incoherent mumbling arose on all sides of the crowd. Paul felt the stirring around him - restless, dissatisfied.

"It was that fool with his stupid question about business," a woman near Paul muttered. "The hypocrite!"

What had Alia seen? What track through the future? Something had happened here tonight, souring the rite of the oracle. Usually, the crowd clamoured for Alia to answer their pitiful questions. They came as beggars to the oracle, yes. He had heard them thus many times as he'd watched, hidden in the darkness behind the altar. What had been different about this night?

Harry tugged Paul's sleeve, nodded toward the exit. The crowd already was beginning to push in that direction. Paul allowed himself to be pressed along with them, Harry’s hand upon his sleeve. There was the feeling in him then that his body had become the manifestation of some power he could no longer control. He had become a non-being, a stillness which moved itself. At the core of the non-being, there he existed, allowing himself to be led through the streets of his city, following a track so familiar to his visions that it froze his heart with grief, I should know what Alia saw, bethought, I have seen it enough times myself. And she didn't cry out against it... she saw the alternatives, too.

“Are you alright?” Harry hissed quietly in his ear and Paul nodded absently. “This way.” they moved silently through the city until they approached a house. “Here.”

The door opened to his knock. The gap revealed the dull green light of an atrium. A dwarf peered out, ancient face on a child's body, an apparition prescience had never seen. "You've come then," the apparition said. The dwarf stepped aside, no awe in his manner, merely the gloating of a slow smile. "Come in! Come in!"

Paul hesitated. There'd been no dwarf in the vision, but all else remained identical. Visions could contain such disparities and still hold true to their original plunge into infinity. But the difference dared him to hope. He glanced back up the street at the creamy pearl glistening of his moon swimming out of jagged shadows. The moon haunted him. How did it fall?

"Come in," the dwarf insisted.

Paul entered, harry on his heels, heard the door thud into its moisture seals behind. The dwarf passed him, led the way, enormous feet slapping the floor, opened the delicate lattice gate into the roofed central courtyard, gestured. "They await, Sire."

Sire, Paul thought. He knows me, then. He glanced at Harry who had a hand on his knife, eyes ever vigilant for danger. Before Paul could explore this discovery, the dwarf slipped away down a side passage. Hope was a dervish wind whirling, dancing in Paul. He headed across the courtyard. It was a dark and gloomy place, the smell of sickness and defeat in it. He felt daunted by the atmosphere. Was it defeat to choose a lesser evil? he wondered. How far down this track had he come?

Light poured from a narrow doorway in the far wall. He put down the feeling of watchers and evil smells, entered the doorway into a small room. It was a barren place by Fremen standards with heireg hangings on only two walls. Opposite the door, a man sat on carmine cushions beneath the best hanging. A feminine figure hovered in shadows behind another doorway in a barren wall to the left.

Paul felt vision-trapped. This was the way it'd gone. Where was the dwarf? Where was the difference? His senses absorbed the room in a single gestalten sweep. The place had received painstaking care despite its poor furnishings. Hooks and rods across the barren walls showed where hangings had been removed. Pilgrims paid enormous prices for authentic Fremen artefacts, Paul reminded himself. Rich pilgrims counted desert tapestries as treasures, true marks of a hajj.

Paul felt that the barren walls accused him with their fresh gypsum wash. The threadbare condition of the two remaining hangings amplified the sense of guilt. A narrow shelf occupied the wall on his right. It held a row of portraits - mostly bearded Fremen, some in still-suits with their catchtubes dangling, some in Imperial uniforms posed against exotic offworld backgrounds. The most common scene was a seascape.

The Fremen on cushions cleared his throat, forcing Paul to look at him. It was Otheym precisely as the vision had revealed him: neck grown scrawny, a bird thing which appeared too weak to support the large head. The face was a lopsided ruin - networks of crisscrossed scars on the left cheek below a drooping, wet eye, but clear skin on the other side and a straight, blue-in-blue Fremen gaze. A long kedge of a nose bisected the face. Otheym's cushion sat in the centre of a threadbare rug, brown with maroon and gold threads. The cushion fabric betrayed splotches of wear and patching, but every bit of metal around the seated figure shone from polishing - the portrait frames, shelf lip and brackets, the pedestal of a low table on the right. Paul nodded to the clear half of Otheym's face, said: "Good luck to you and your dwelling place." It was the greeting of an old friend and sietch mate.

"So, I see you once more, Usul. Suhl has come as well, I see."

The voice speaking their tribal names whined with an old man's quavering. The dull drooping eye on the ruined side of the face moved above the parchment skin and scars. Grey bristles stubbled that side and the jawline there hung with scabrous peelings. Otheym's mouth twisted as he spoke, the gap exposing silvery metal teeth.

"Muad’Dib always answers the call of a Fedaykin," Paul said.

The woman in the doorway shadows moved, said: "So Stilgar boasts."

She came forward into the light, an older version of the Lichna which the Face Dancer had copied. Paul recalled then that Otheym had married sisters. Her hair was grey, nose grown witch-sharp. Weavers' calluses ran along her forefingers and thumbs. A Fremen woman would've displayed such marks proudly in the sietch days, but she saw his attention on her hands, hid them under a fold of her pale blue robe. Paul remembered her name then - Dhuri. The shock was he remembered her as a child, not as she'd been in his vision of these moments. It was the whine that edged her voice, Paul told himself. She'd whined even as a child.

"You see me here," Paul said. "Would I be here if Stilgar hadn't approved?" He turned toward Otheym. "I carry your water burden, Otheym. Command me."

This was the straight Fremen talk of sietch brothers. Otheym produced a shaky nod, almost too much for that thin neck. He lifted a liver-marked left hand, pointed to the ruin of his face. "I caught the splitting disease on Tarahell, Usul," he wheezed. "Right after the victory when we'd all..." A fit of coughing stopped his voice.

"The tribe will collect his water soon," Dhuri said. She crossed to Otheym, propped pillows behind him, held his shoulder to steady him until the coughing passed. She wasn't really very old, Paul saw, but a look of lost hopes ringed her mouth, bitterness lay in her eyes.

"I'll summon doctors," Paul said.

Dhuri turned, hand on hip. "We've had medical men, as good as any you could summon." She sent an involuntary glance to the barren wall on her left. And the medical men were costly, Paul thought.

He felt edgy, constrained by the vision but aware that minor differences had crept in. How could he exploit the differences? Time came out of its skein with subtle changes, but the background fabric held oppressive sameness. He knew with terrifying certainty that if he tried to break out of the enclosing pattern here, it'd become a thing of terrible violence. The power in this deceptively gentle flow of Time oppressed him. "Say what you want of me," he growled.

"Couldn't it be that Otheym needed a friend to stand by him in this time?" Dhuri asked. "Does a Fedaykin have to consign his flesh to strangers?"

We shared Sietch Tabr, Paul reminded himself. She has the right to berate me for apparent callousness. "What I can do I will do," Paul said.

Another fit of coughing shook Otheym. When it had passed, he gasped: "There's treachery, Usul. Fremen plot against you." His mouth worked then without sound. Spittle escaped his lips. Dhuri wiped his mouth with a corner of her robe, and Paul saw how her face betrayed anger at such waste of moisture.

Frustrated rage threatened to overwhelm Paul then and he could feel it from Harry as well. That Otheym should be spent thus! A Fedaykin deserved better. But no choice remained - not for a Death Commando or his Emperor. They walked Occam's razor in this room. The slightest misstep multiplied horrors - not just for themselves, but for all humankind, even for those who would destroy them. Paul squeezed calmness into his mind, looked at Dhuri. The expression of terrible longing with which she gazed at Otheym strengthened Paul. Chani must never look at me that way, he told himself. "Lichna spoke of a message," Paul said.

"My dwarf," Otheym wheezed. "I bought him on... on... on a world... I forget. He's a human distrans, a toy discarded by the Tleilaxu. He's recorded all the names... the traitors..." Otheym fell silent, trembling.

"You speak of Lichna," Dhuri said. "When you arrived, we knew she'd reached you safely. If you're thinking of this new burden Otheym places upon you, Lichna is the sum of that burden. An even exchange, Usul: take the dwarf and go."

Harry felt sick as neither of them broke the news of the real girls’ death to her Father and stepmother/aunt. Would there come a time when they could be told the truth? It was something no parent ever wished to hear, that their beloved child was gone before them.

Paul suppressed a shudder, closed his eyes. Lichna! The real daughter had perished in the desert, a semuta-wracked body abandoned to the sand and the wind. Opening his eyes, Paul said: "You could've come to me at any time for..."

"Otheym stayed away that he might be numbered among those who hate you, Usul," Dhuri said. "The house to the south of us at the end of the street, that is a gathering place for your foes. It's why we took this hovel."

"Then summon the dwarf and we'll leave," Paul said.

"You've not listened well," Dhuri said.

"You must take the dwarf to a safe place," Otheym said, an odd strength in his voice. "He carries the only record of the traitors. No one suspects his talent. They think I keep him for amusement."

"We cannot leave," Dhuri said. "Only you and the dwarf. It's known... how poor we are. We've said we're selling the dwarf. They'll take you for the buyers. It's your only chance."

Paul consulted his memory of the vision: in it, he'd left here with the names of the traitors, but never seeing how those names were carried, just like he never saw Harry. The dwarf obviously moved under the protection of another oracle. It occurred to Paul then that all creatures must carry some kind of destiny stamped out by purposes of varying strengths, by the fixation of training and disposition. From the moment, the Jihad had chosen him, he'd felt himself hemmed in by the forces of a multitude. Their fixed purposes demanded and controlled his course. Any delusions of Free Will he harboured now must be merely the prisoner rattling his cage. His curse lay in the fact that he saw the cage. He saw it!  He listened now to the emptiness of this house: only the four of them in it - Dhuri, Otheym, Harry, the dwarf and himself. He inhaled the fear and tension of his companions, sensed the watchers - his own force hovering in 'thopters far overhead... and those others... next door. I was wrong to hope, Paul thought. But thinking of hope brought him a twisted sense of hope, and he felt that he might yet seize his moment. "Summon the dwarf," he said.

"Bijaz!" Dhuri called.

"You call me?" The dwarf stepped into the room from the courtyard, an alert expression of worry on his face.

"You have a new master, Bijaz," Dhuri said. She stared at Paul. "You may call him... Usul."

"Usul, that's the base of the pillar," Bijaz said, translating. "How can Usul be base when I'm the basest thing living?"

"He always speaks thus," Otheym apologized.

"I don't speak," Bijaz said. "I operate a machine called language. It creaks and groans, but is mine own."

A Tleilaxu toy, learned and alert, Paul thought. The Bene Tleilaxu never threw away something this valuable. He turned, studied the dwarf. Round melange eyes returned his stare. "What other talents have you, Bijaz?" Paul asked.

"I know when we should leave," Bijaz said. "It's a talent few men have. There's a time for endings - and that's a good beginning. Let us begin to go, Usul."

Paul examined his vision memory: no dwarf, but the little man's words fitted the occasion. "At the door, you called me Sire," Paul said. "You know me, then?"

"You've sired, Sire," Bijaz said, grinning. "You are much more than the base Usul. You're the Atreides Emperor, Paul Muad’Dib. And you are my finger." He held up the index finger of his right hand. “And this one is the Atreides knife, Harry Potter. He is also a finger.” He held up his pinkie.

"Bijaz!" Dhuri snapped. "You tempt fate."

"I tempt my fingers," Bijaz protested, voice squeaking. He pointed at Usul. "I point at Usul. Is my finger not Usul himself? Or is it a reflection of something baser?" He brought the finger close to his eyes, examined it with a mocking grin, first one side then the other. "Ahh, it's merely a finger, after all."

"He often rattles on thus," Dhuri said, worry in her voice. "I think it's why he was discarded by the Tleilaxu."

"I'll not be patronized," Bijaz said, "yet I have a new patron. How strange the workings of the finger." He peered at Dhuri and Otheym, eyes oddly bright. "A weak glue bound us, Otheym. A few tears and we part." The dwarfs’ big feet rasped on the floor as he whirled completely around, stopped facing Paul. "Ahh, patron! I came the long way around to find you." Paul nodded. "You'll be kind, Usul?" Bijaz asked. "I'm a person, you know. Persons come in many shapes and sizes. This be but one of them. I'm weak of muscle, but strong of mouth; cheap to feed, but costly to fill. Empty me as you will, there's still more in me than men put there."

"We've no time for your stupid riddles," Dhuri growled. "You should be gone."

"I'm riddled with conundrums," Bijaz said, "but not all of them stupid. To be gone, Usul, is to be a bygone. Yes? Let us let bygones be bygones. Dhuri speaks truth, and I've the talent for hearing that, too."

"You've truthsense?" Paul asked, determined now to wait out the clockwork of his vision. Anything was better than shattering these moments and producing the new consequences. There remained things for Otheym to say lest Time be diverted into even more horrifying channels.

"I've now-sense" Bijaz said.

Paul noted that the dwarf had grown more nervous. Was the little man aware of things about to happen? Could Bijaz be his own oracle?

"Did you inquire of Lichna?" Otheym asked suddenly, peering up at Dhuri with his one good eye.

"Lichna is safe," Dhuri said.

Paul lowered his head, lest his expression betray the lie while Harry simply studied the dwarf. Safe! Lichna was ashes in a secret grave.

"That's good then," Otheym said, taking Paul's lowered head for a nod of agreement. "One good thing among the evils, Usul. I don't like the world we're making, you know that? It was better when we were alone in the desert with only the Harkonnen’s for enemy."

"There's but a thin line between many an enemy and many a friend," Bijaz said. "Where that line stops, there's no beginning and no end. Let's end it, my friends." He moved to Paul's side, jittered from one foot to the other.

"What's now-sense?" Paul asked, dragging out these moments, goading the dwarf.

"Now!" Bijaz said, trembling. "Now! Now!" He tugged at Paul's robe. "Let us go now!"

"His mouth rattles, but there's no harm in him," Otheym said, affection in his voice, the one good eye staring at Bijaz.

"Even a rattle can signal departure," Bijaz said. "And so can tears. Let's be gone while there's time to begin."

"Bijaz, what do you fear?" Paul asked.

"I fear the spirit seeking me now," Bijaz muttered. Perspiration stood out on his forehead. His cheeks twitched. "I fear the one who thinks not and will have no body except mine - and that one gone back into itself! I fear the things I see and the things I do not see." This dwarf does possess the power of prescience, Paul thought. Bijaz shared the terrifying oracle. Did he share the oracle's fate, as well? How potent was the dwarf's power? Did he have the little prescience of those who dabbled in the Dune Tarot? Or was it something greater? How much had he seen?

"Best you go," Dhuri said. "Bijaz is right."

"Every minute we linger," Bijaz said, "prolongs... prolongs the present!"

Every minute I linger defers my guilt, Paul thought. A worm's poisonous breath, its teeth dripping dust, had washed over him. It had happened long ago, but he inhaled the memory of it now - spice and bitterness. He could sense his own worm waiting - "the urn of the desert." "These are troubled times," he said, addressing himself to Otheym's judgment of their world.

“Come Usul, we need to go.” Harry called as he stood, something was coming and they needed to get away.

"Fremen know what to do in time of trouble," Dhuri said. Otheym contributed a shaky nod. Paul glanced at Dhuri. He'd not expected gratitude, would have been burdened by it more than he could bear, but Otheym's bitterness and the passionate resentment he saw in Dhuri's eyes shook his resolve. Was anything worth this price? "Delay serves no purpose," Dhuri said.

"Do what you must, Usul." Otheym wheezed.

Paul sighed. The words of the vision had been spoken. "There'll be an accounting," he said, to complete it. Turning, he strode from the room, heard Bijaz foot-slapping behind.

"Bygones, bygones," Bijaz muttered as they went. "Let bygones fall where they may. This has been a dirty day."

Harry did not like any of this, they had sprung the trap, what had Paul or even the dwarf seen? He spread his magic out, searching for the danger but there was nothing. Seeing Otheym like that had rattled them both and he needed a clear head for what may be coming.

First Moon stood high over the city as Paul, his shield activated and shimmering around him, emerged from the cul-de-sac, harry at his back, his own shield active. A wind off the massif whirled sand and dust down the narrow street, causing Bijaz to blink and shield his eyes.

"We must hurry," the dwarf muttered. "Hurry! Hurry!"

"You sense danger?" Paul asked, probing.

"I know danger!"

An abrupt sense of peril very near was followed almost immediately by a figure joining them out of a doorway. Bijaz crouched and whimpered. It was only Stilgar moving like a war machine, head thrust forward, feet striking the street solidly. Swiftly, Paul explained the value of the dwarf, handed Bijaz over to Stilgar. The pace of the vision moved here with great rapidity. Stilgar sped away with Bijaz. Security Guards enveloped Paul. Orders were given to send men down the street toward the house beyond Otheym's. The men hurried to obey, shadows among shadows. More sacrifices, Paul thought.

"We want live prisoners," one of the guard officers hissed.

The sound was a vision-echo in Paul's ears. It went with solid precision here - vision/reality, tick for tick. Ornithopters drifted down across the moon. The night was full of Imperial troopers attacking. A soft hiss grew out of the other sounds, climbed to a roar while they still heard the sibilance. It picked up a terra-cotta glow that hid the stars, engulfed the moon. Paul, knowing that sound and glow from the earliest nightmare glimpses of his vision, felt an odd sense of fulfilment. It went the way it must. "Stone burner!" someone screamed.

"Stone burner!" The cry was all around him.

"Stone burner... stone burner..."

Because it was required of him, Paul threw a protective arm across his face, dove for the low lip of a curb. It already was too late, of course. He felt Harry against his back, acting as a living shield to protect him and he felt a comforting warmth spread over and through him before spreading out.

Where Otheym's house had been there stood now a pillar of fire, a blinding jet roaring at the heavens. It gave off a dirty brilliance which threw into sharp relief every ballet movement of the fighting and fleeing men, the tipping retreat of ornithopters. He could see through is visions what was happening since Harry would not let him up.

For every member of this frantic throng it was too late. They were all doomed, radiation would take from his friend what the spice had never hidden, his brilliant green eyes. Harry had one arm around his waist, keeping him still and close to his own body. It was strange, despite the circumstances he felt totally safe. He had known Harry all his life and despite the years apart he would still trust everything to the older man. His thoughts went to the rest of the men around them, why did they have to be sacrificed? All because they served him.

The ground grew hot beneath Paul but not uncomfortably so and he knew that was Harry’s doing, would it be enough to save them? He heard the sound of running stop. Men threw themselves down all around him, every one of them aware that there was no point in running. The first damage had been done; and now they must wait out the extent of the stone burner's potency. The things radiation, which no man could outrun, already had penetrated their flesh. The peculiar result of stone-burner radiation already was at work in them. What else this weapon might do now lay in the planning of the men who had used it, the men who had defied the Great Convention to use it.

"God's... a stone burner," someone whimpered. "I... don't... want... to... be... blind."

"Who does?" The harsh voice of a trooper far down the street

"The Tleilaxu will sell many eyes here," someone near Paul growled. "Now, shut up and wait!"

They waited. Paul remained silent, thinking what this weapon implied. Too much fuel in it and it'd cut its way into the planet's core. Dune's molten level lay deep, but the more dangerous for that. Such pressures released and out of control might split a planet, scattering lifeless bits and pieces through space.

"I think it's dying down a bit," someone said.

"It's just digging deeper," Paul cautioned. "Stay put, all of you. Stilgar will be sending help."

"Stilgar got away?"

"Stilgar got away." Harry called in confirmation.

"The ground's hot," someone complained.

"They dared use atomics!" a trooper near Paul protested.

"The sound's diminishing," someone down the street said.

Paul ignored the words, concentrated on his fingertips against the street. He could feel the rolling-rumbling of the thing - deep... deep...

"My eyes!" someone cried. "I can't see!"

Someone closer to it than I was, Paul thought. He still could see to the end of the cul-de-sac when he lifted his head, before Harry shoved him back down, although there was a mistiness across the scene. A red-yellow glow filled the area where Otheym's house and its neighbour had been. Pieces of adjoining buildings made dark patterns as they crumbled into the glowing pit.

Harry finally stood and hauled Paul to his feet, steading him. He felt the stone burner die, silence beneath him as he leant against his friend. His body was wet with perspiration against the stillsuits slickness - too much for the suit to accommodate. The air he drew into his lungs carried the heat and sulphur stench of the burner.

As he looked at the troopers beginning to stand up around him, the mist on Paul's eyes remained. He summoned up his oracular vision of these moments, needing to see clearly, then, turned and strode along the track that Time had carved for him, fitting himself into the vision so tightly that it could not escape. He felt himself grow aware of this place as a multitudinous possession, reality welded to prediction. Moans and groans of his troopers arose all around him as the men realized their blindness…. though for some their eyes were intact or even giving limited vision. He glanced at Harry, having to look with misty eyes and Harry’s clear green eyes stared back, Harry had saved them and was somehow untouched by the radiation.

"Hold fast!" Paul shouted, turning back to his men. "Help is coming!" And, as the complaints persisted, he said: "This is Muad’Dib! I command you to hold fast! Help comes!"

Silence. Then, true to his vision, a guardsman said: "Is it truly the Emperor? Which of you can see? Tell me."

“Be calm, Muad’Dib is truly here.” Harry called even as he gently grasped Paul’s chin, looking at his eyes. “Damaged but not destroyed.” He murmured in relief, thankful for the fact that all the modifications to his own body made it very hardy, and a fast healer. The radiation had done damage but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t heal. He moved Paul to the wall and then at his nod moved out among the men, looking for those who could still see to help those totally blind until help arrived.

"They have damaged my eyes, as well, but not my vision. I can see you standing there, a dirty wall within touching distance on your left. Now wait bravely. Stilgar comes with our friends." Paul called to the man who had wanted assurance he was there. The thwock-thwock of many 'thopters grew louder all around. There was the sound of hurrying feet. Paul watched his friends come, matching their sounds to his oracular vision. "Stilgar!" Paul shouted, waving an arm. "Over here!"

"Thanks to Shai-hulud," Stilgar cried, running up to Paul. "You're not... " In the sudden silence, Paul's vision showed him Stilgar staring with an expression of agony at the damaged eyes of his friend and Emperor. "Oh, m' Lord," Stilgar groaned. "Usul... Usul... Usul... "

"What of the stone burner?" one of the newcomers shouted.

"It's ended," Paul said, raising his voice. He gestured. "Get up there now and rescue the ones who were closest to it. Put up barriers. Lively now!" He turned back to Stilgar. This was not exactly the path of his visons, in them he was truly blinded, not this misty world, what else may change?

"Do you see, M’Lord?" Stilgar asked, wonder in his tone. "How can you see?"

For answer, Paul put a finger out to touch Stilgar's cheek above the stillsuit mouthcap, felt tears. "You need give no moisture to me, old friend," Paul said. "I am not dead."

"But your eyes!"

"I still see old friend, not clearly but my vision is still there.” Paul said. "Ah, Stil, I live in an apocalyptic dream. My steps fit into it so precisely that I fear most of all I will grow bored reliving the thing so exactly."

"Usul, I don't, I don't..."

"Don't try to understand it. Accept it. I am in the world beyond this world here. For me, they are the same. I need no hand to guide me. I see every movement all around me. I see every expression of your face. I have damaged eyes, yet I see."

Stilgar shook his head sharply. "Sire, we must conceal your affliction from -"

"We hide it from no man," Paul said.

"But the law... "

"We live by the Atreides Law now, Stil.” Harry pointed out as he moved back to Paul’s side since others were available to help.

“The Fremen Law that the blind should be abandoned in the desert applies only to the blind. I am not blind, I see in mist but my visions remain. I live in the cycle of being where the war of good and evil has its arena. We are at a turning point in the succession of ages and we have our parts to play."

In a sudden stillness, Paul heard one of the wounded being led past him. "It was terrible," the man groaned, "a great fury of fire."

"None of these men shall be taken into the desert," Paul said. "You hear me, Stil?"

"I hear you, M’Lord."

"They are to be fitted with new eyes at my expense. Those not blinded are to receive the best treatment possible."

"It will be done, M’Lord."

Paul, hearing the awe grow in Stilgar's voice, said: "I will be at the Command 'thopter. Take charge here."

"Yes, M’Lord."

Paul stepped around Stilgar, strode down the street. His vision told him every movement, every irregularity beneath his feet, every face he encountered, despite the mist of his body’s eyes. He gave orders as he moved, pointing to men of his personal entourage, calling out names, summoning to himself the ones who represented the intimate apparatus of government. He could feel the terror grow behind him, the fearful whispers. And all the while Harry remained silently at his shoulder, keen eyes searching for further danger. How had Harry remained unaffected? Another of his differences that he had never truly explained.

"His eyes!"

"But he looked right at you, called you by name!"

At the Command 'thopter, he reached into the machine and took the microphone from the hand of a startled communications officer, issued a swift string of orders, thrust the microphone back into the officer's hand. Turning, Paul summoned a weapons specialist, one of the eager and brilliant new breed who remembered sietch life only dimly.

"They used a stone burner," Paul said.

After the briefest pause, the man said: "So I was told, Sire."

"You know what that means, of course."

"The fuel could only have been atomic."

Paul nodded, thinking of how this man's mind must be racing. Atomics. The Great Convention prohibited such weapons. Discovery of the perpetrator would bring down the combined retributive assault of the Great Houses. Old feuds would be forgotten, discarded in the face of this threat and the ancient fears it aroused. "It cannot have been manufactured without leaving some traces," Paul said. "You will assemble the proper equipment and search out the place where the stone burner was made."

"At once, Sire." With one last fearful glance, the man sped away.

"M'Lord," the communications officer ventured from behind him. "Your eyes... "

Paul turned, reached into the 'thopter, returned the command set to his personal band. "Call Chani," he ordered. "Tell her... tell her I am alive and will be with her soon."

Now the forces gather, Paul thought. And he noted how strong was the smell of fear in the perspiration all around. He closed his eyes, they throbbed in pain and then he felt a cool cloth rest over them and knew it was Harry.

“Come my Lord, you need rest, Stilgar can handle this. Rest will help the pain.”

“Will the mist go?” he asked as Harry led him to a ‘thopter, not able to use his vision here since Harry was as invisible as ever.

“Perhaps. Radiation damage is a tricky thing.” He admitted as he ensured Paul was secured and then lifted off, heading for the Palace.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

“How bad is it?” Irulan asked, voice trembling despite her training and Harry reached out to place a comforting hand on her shoulder as she stared into the room where Paul lay on the bed, doctors around him.

“The Stone burner did damage but his eyes were not destroyed. He can still see, only time will tell how much of his sight he will lose.”

“Atomics… how could they…I never wanted any of this.” She whispered.

“He knows. He said that in ensuring Chani remained barren you actually prolonged her life.”

“You were right Harry, I have to choose.” She trembled and then turned to bury her face against his chest and felt his arms move to hold her gently. She choked back a sob of grief, what had she done? But this had not been a part of the plan she was told. She never would have agreed to this! Harry rocked her gently, letting her cry. And now she realised, she should never have gone alone with any of the plans. She had allowed jealousy to control her and she knew Chani would pay the price for that, and through her Paul would as well.

“Get some rest Princess. Enemies will see this time as weakness and move swiftly against us. A well-rested mind and body are needed.” He urged her away and she left, not wanting to see anymore and torn by what she was feeling.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Chani rose early, awakened by a stillness in the Keep. Awakening, she found Paul sitting beside her, his cloudy eyes aimed at some formless place beyond the far wall of their bedchamber. With what the stone burner had done with its peculiar affinity for eye tissue, he was lucky to still have his eyes. Very few of the other survivors still had eyes, let alone the ability to see. Ravenous hunger seized her as she sat up and she fed on the food kept by the bedside - spicebread, a heavy cheese. How much worse would it have been without Harry’s help? This child grew quickly but the medics were hopeful it was not too quickly.

Paul gestured at the food. "Beloved, there was no way to spare you this. Believe me."

Chani stilled a fit of trembling when looked at her. She'd given up asking him to explain. He spoke so oddly: "I was baptized in sand and it cost me the knack of believing. Who trades in faiths anymore? Who'll buy? Who'll sell?" What could he mean by such words? He refused even to consider Tleilaxu eyes, although he bought them with a lavish hand for the men who'd shared his affliction. He insisted that his damaged vision was no weakness, not with his visions.

Hunger satisfied, Chani slipped from bed, glanced back at Paul, noted his tiredness. Grim lines framed his mouth. The dark hair stood up, mussed from a sleep that hadn't healed. He appeared so saturnine and remote. The back and forth of waking and sleeping did nothing to change this. She forced herself to turn away, whispered: "My love... my love... "

He leaned over, pulled her back into the bed, kissed her cheeks. "Soon we'll go back to our desert," he whispered. "Only a few things remain to be done here." She trembled at the finality in his voice. He tightened his arms around her, murmured: "Don't fear me, my Sihaya. Forget mystery and accept love. There's no mystery about love. It comes from life. Can't you feel that?"

"Yes." She put a palm against his chest, counting his heartbeats. His love cried out to the Fremen spirit in her - torrential, outpouring, savage. A magnetic power enveloped her.

"I promise you a thing, beloved," he said. "A child of ours will rule such an empire that mine will fade in comparison. Such achievements of living and art and sublime -"

"We're here now!" she protested, fighting a dry sob. "And... I feel we have so little... time."

"We have eternity, beloved."

"You may have eternity. I have only now."

"But this is eternity." He stroked her forehead. She pressed against him, lips on his neck. The pressure agitated the life in her womb. She felt it stir. Paul felt it, too. He put a hand on her abdomen, said: "Ahh, little Princess, wait your time. This moment is mine."

She wondered then why he always spoke of the life within her as singular. Hadn't the medics told him? She searched back in her own memory, curious that the subject had never arisen between them. Surely, he must know she carried twins. She hesitated on the point of raising this question. He must know. He knew everything. He knew all the things that were herself. His hands, his mouth - all of him knew her. Presently, she said: "Yes, love. This is forever... this is real." And she closed her eyes tightly lest sight of his cloudy eyes stretch her soul from paradise to hell. No matter the rihani magic in which he'd enciphered their lives, his flesh remained real, his caresses could not be denied. When they arose to dress for the day, she said: "If the people only knew your love..."

But his mood had changed. "You can't build politics on love," he said. "People aren't concerned with love; it's too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos. We can't have that, can we? And how do you make despotism lovable?"

"You're not a despot!" she protested, tying her scarf. "Your laws are just."

"Ahh, laws," he said. He crossed to the window, pulled back the draperies to look out. "What's law? Control? Law filters chaos and what drips through? Serenity? Law - our highest ideal and our basest nature. Don't look too closely at the law. Do, and you'll find the rationalized interpretations, the legal casuistry, the precedents of convenience. You'll find the serenity, which is just another word for death."

Chani's mouth drew into a tight line. She couldn't deny his wisdom and sagacity, but these moods frightened her. He turned upon himself and she sensed internal wars. It was as though he took the Fremen maxim, "Never to forgive - never to forget," and whipped his own flesh with it. She crossed to his side, stared past him at an angle. The growing heat of the day had begun pulling the north wind out of these protected latitudes. The wind painted a false sky full of ochre plumes and sheets of crystal, strange designs in rushing gold and red. High and cold, the wind broke against the Shield Wall with fountains of dust.

Paul felt Chani's warmth beside him. Momentarily, he lowered a curtain of forgetfulness across his vision. He might just be standing here in a very low light before he closed eyes that still ached. Time refused to stand still for him, though. He inhaled darkness - starless, tearless. His affliction dissolved substance until all that remained was astonishment at the way sounds condensed his universe. Everything around him leaned on his lonely sense of hearing, falling back only when he touched objects: the drapery, Chani's hand... He caught himself listening for Chani's breaths. Where was the insecurity of things that were only probable? he asked himself. His mind carried such a burden of mutilated memories. For every instant of reality there existed countless projections, things fated never to be. An invisible self within him remembered the false pasts, their burden threatening at times to overwhelm the present. Chani leaned against his arm.

He felt his body through her touch: dead flesh carried by time eddies. He reeked of memories that had glimpsed eternity. To see eternity was to be exposed to eternity's whims, oppressed by endless dimensions. The oracle's false immortality demanded retribution: Past and Future became simultaneous. Once more, the vision arose from its black pit, locked onto him. It was his eyes. It moved his muscles. It guided him into the next moment, the next hour, the next day... until he felt himself to be always there!

"It's time we were going," Chani said. "The Council..."

"Alia will be with Leto to stand in my place."

"Do they know what to do?"

"They know."

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Leto looked up as the door opened and Lily slipped in, moving to curl with him on the bed. He felt so lost. Alia had slipped away from them with her new abilities, Lily was all he had left. And now his Father… he held her close and choked back a sob. This was meant to be a happy time, with a baby sister on the way, newly engaged to his best friend, and yet now he was consumed by grief. He heard her humming a gentle tune as she ran soothing fingers through his hair. “Don’t leave me.”

“Never my dearest friend.” She promised. She pulled back and smiled softly at him. “Everything will work out.”

“I hope so.”

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Alia's day began with a guard squadron swarming into the parade yard below her quarters. She stared down at a scene of frantic confusion, clamorous and intimidating babble. The scene became intelligible only when she recognized the prisoner they'd brought: Korba, the Panegyrist.

She made her morning toilet, moving occasionally to the window, keeping watch on the progress of impatience down there. Her gaze kept straying to Korba. She tried to remember him as the rough and bearded commander of the third wave in the battle of Arrakeen. It was impossible. Korba had become an immaculate fop dressed now in a Parato silk robe of exquisite cut. It lay open to the waist, revealing a beautifully laundered ruff and embroidered undercoat set with green gems. A purple belt gathered the waist. The sleeves poking through the robe's armhole slits had been tailored into rivulet ridges of dark green and black velvet.

A few Naibs had come out to observe the treatment accorded a fellow Fremen. They'd brought on the clamour, exciting Korba to protest his innocence. Alia moved her gaze across the Fremen faces, trying to recapture memories of the original men. The present blotted out the past. They'd all become hedonists, samplers of pleasures most men couldn't even imagine.

Their uneasy glances, she saw, strayed often to the doorway into the chamber where they would meet. They were thinking of Muad’Dib's vision sight and damaged eyes, a new manifestation of mysterious powers. By their law, a blind man should be abandoned in the desert, his water given up to Shai-hulud. But Muad’Dib was not blind, even without his visions. They disliked buildings, too, and felt vulnerable in space built above the ground. Give them a proper cave cut from rock, then they could relax - but not here, not with this new Muad’Dib waiting inside.

As she turned to go down to the meeting, she saw the letter where she'd left it on a table by the door: the latest message from their mother. Despite the special reverence held for Caladan as the place of Paul's birth, the Lady Jessica had emphasized her refusal to make her planet a stop on the hajj.

"No doubt my son is an epochal figure of history," she'd written, "but I cannot see this as an excuse for submitting to a rabble invasion."

Alia touched the letter, experienced an odd sensation of mutual contact. This paper had been in her mother's hands. Such an archaic device, the letter - but personal in a way no recording could achieve. Written in the Atreides Battle Tongue, it represented an almost invulnerable privacy of communication. Thinking of her mother afflicted Alia with the usual inward blurring. The spice change gave her access to her maternal lineage, her mother’s memories, her grandmothers…it was strange now to be able to remember giving birth to her brother, raising him. The capsule-complex of oneness could present her own father as a lover. Ghost shadows cavorted in her mind, people of possibility.

Alia reviewed the letter as she walked down the ramp to the antechamber where her guard amazons waited. "You produce a deadly paradox," Jessica had written. "Government cannot be religious and self-assertive at the same time. Religious experience needs a spontaneity which laws inevitably suppress. And you cannot govern without laws. Your laws eventually must replace morality, replace conscience, replace even the religion by which you think to govern. Sacred ritual must spring from praise and holy yearnings which hammer out a significant morality. Government, on the other hand, is a cultural organism particularly attractive to doubts, questions and contentions. I see the day coming when ceremony must take the place of faith and symbolism replaces morality."

The smell of spice-coffee greeted Alia in the antechamber. Four guard amazons in green watchrobes came to attention as she entered. They fell into step behind her, striding firmly in the bravado of their youth, eyes alert for trouble. They had zealot faces untouched by awe. They radiated that special Fremen quality of violence: they could kill casually with no sense of guilt.

In this, I am different, Alia thought. The Atreides name has enough dirt on it without that. Word preceded her. A waiting page darted off as she entered the lower hall, running to summon the full guard detail. The hall stretched out windowless and gloomy, illuminated only by a few subdued glowglobes. Abruptly, the doors to the parade yard opened wide at the far end to admit a glaring shaft of daylight. The guard with Korba in their midst wavered into view from the outside with the light behind them.

"Where is Stilgar?" Alia demanded.

"Already inside," one of her amazons said.

Alia nodded and then smiled as her nephew emerged with his own guard, heirs’ circlet on clear display, dressed in the white and gold his Father often favoured. Only someone who knew him really well would be able to tell he was nervous and could use some more sleep. She stepped in and hugged him and Leto clung to her tightly for a second. “Ready?” She asked and he stepped back, straightening his robe.

“Ready.” He just couldn’t believe Korba had done this. What had happened to the loyal Fedaykin who had once looked after him?

Leto led the way into the chamber. It was one of the Keep's more pretentious meeting places. A high balcony with rows of soft seats occupied one side. Across from the balcony, orange draperies had been pulled back from tall windows. Bright sunlight poured through from an open space with a garden and a fountain. At the near end of the chamber on their right stood a dais with two massive chairs. Moving to the chairs, Alia glanced back and up, saw the gallery filled with Naibs even as Leto took his seat, face blank.

Household guardsmen packed the open space beneath the gallery, Stilgar moving among them with a quiet word here, a command there. He gave no sign that he'd seen them enter.

Korba was brought in, seated at a low table with cushions beside it on the chamber floor below the dais. Despite his finery, the Panegyrist gave the appearance now of a surly, sleepy old man huddled up in his robes as against the outer cold. Two guardsmen took up positions behind him.

Stilgar approached the dais as Alia seated herself. "Where is Muad’Dib?" he asked.

"My brother has delegated me to preside as Reverend Mother," Alia said. Hearing this, the Naibs in the gallery began raising their voices in protest. "Silence!" Alia commanded. In the abrupt quiet, she said: "Is it not Fremen law that a Reverend Mother presides when life and death are at issue?"

“I represent my Father here, I am heir to the Throne.” Leto announced, voice firm and while there was muttering they remained mostly quiet.

As the gravity of her statement penetrated, stillness came over the Naibs, but Alia marked angry stares across the rows of faces. She named them in her mind for discussion in Council - Hobars, Rajifiri, Tasmin, Saajid, Umbu, Legg... The names carried pieces of Dune in them: Umbu Sietch, Tasmin Sink, Hobars Gap... She turned her attention to Korba.

Observing her attention, Korba lifted his chin, said: "I protest my innocence."

"Stilgar, read the charges," Leto commanded.

Stilgar produced a brown spicepaper scroll, stepped forward. He began reading, a solemn flourish in his voice as though to hidden rhythms. He gave the words an incisive quality, clear and full of probity: "... that you did conspire with traitors to accomplish the destruction of our Lord and Emperor; that you did meet in vile secrecy with diverse enemies of the realm; that you... "

Korba kept shaking his head with a look of pained anger.

Alia listened broodingly, chin planted on her left fist, head cocked to that side, the other arm extended along the chair arm. Bits of the formal procedure began dropping out of her awareness, screened by her own feelings of disquiet.

"... venerable tradition... support of the legions and all Fremen everywhere... violence met with violence according to the Law... majesty of the Imperial Person... forfeit all rights to..."

It was nonsense, she thought. Nonsense! All of it - nonsense... nonsense... nonsense...

Stilgar finished: "Thus the issue is brought to judgment."

In the immediate silence, Korba rocked forward, hands gripping his knees, veined neck stretched as though he were preparing to leap. His tongue flicked between his teeth as he spoke. "Not by word or deed have I been traitor to my Fremen vows! I demand to confront my accuser!"

A simple enough protest, Alia thought. And she saw that it had produced a considerable effect on the Naibs. They knew Korba. He was one of them. To become a Naib, he'd proved his Fremen courage and caution. Not brilliant, Korba, but reliable. Not one to lead a Jihad, perhaps, but a good choice as supply officer. Not a crusader, but one who cherished the old Fremen virtues: The Tribe is paramount. Otheym's bitter words as Paul had recited them swept through Alia's mind. She scanned the gallery. Any of those men might see himself in Korba's place - some for good reason. But an innocent Naib was as dangerous as a guilty one here.

Korba felt it, too. "Who accuses me?" he demanded. "I have a Fremen right to confront my accuser."

"Perhaps you accuse yourself," Alia said. Before he could mask it, mystical terror lay briefly on Korba's face. It was there for anyone to read: With her powers, Alia had but to accuse him herself, saying she brought the evidence from the shadow region, the alam al-mythal. "Our enemies have Fremen allies," Alia pressed. "Water traps have been destroyed, qanats blasted, plantings poisoned and storage basins plundered...”

“And now - they've stolen a worm from the desert, taken it to another world!" The voice of this intrusion was known to all of them - Muad’Dib. Paul came through the doorway from the hall, pressed through the guard ranks and crossed to Alia's side. Chani, accompanying him, remained on the sidelines. Harry remained at his side, green eyes glaring at Korba. Leto stood, surrendering his place to his Father but he remained standing.

"M'Lord," Stilgar said, refusing to look at Paul's face.

Paul aimed cloudy eyes at the gallery, then down to Korba. "What, Korba - no words of praise?"

Muttering could be heard in the gallery. It grew louder, isolated words and phrases audible: "... law for the blind... Fremen way... in the desert... who breaks..."

"Who says I'm blind?" Paul demanded. He faced the gallery. "You, Rajifiri? I see you're wearing gold today, and that blue shirt beneath it which still has dust on it from the streets. You always were untidy." Rajifiri made a warding gesture, three fingers against evil. "Point those fingers at yourself!" Paul shouted. "We know where the evil is!" He turned back to Korba. "There's guilt on your face, Korba."

"Not my guilt! I may've associated with the guilty, but no... " He broke off, shot a frightened look at the gallery.

Taking her cue from Paul, Alia arose, stepped down to the floor of the chamber, advanced to the edge of Korba's table. From a range of less than a meter, she stared down at him, silent and intimidating. Korba cowered under the burden of eyes. He fidgeted, shot anxious glances at the gallery.

"Whose eyes do you seek up there?" Paul asked.

"You cannot see!" Korba blurted.

Paul put down a momentary feeling of pity for Korba. The man lay trapped in the vision's snare as securely as any of those present. He played a part, no more. "I don't need eyes to see you," Paul said. He closed his eyes and he began describing Korba, every movement, every twitch, every alarmed and pleading look at the gallery. Desperation grew in Korba.

Watching him, Alia saw he might break any second. Someone in the gallery must realize how near he was to breaking, she thought. Who? She studied the faces of the Naibs, noting small betrayals in the masked faces... angers, fears, uncertainties... guilts. Paul fell silent.

Korba mustered a pitiful air of pomposity to plead: "Who accuses me?"

"Otheym accuses you," Alia said.

"But Otheym's dead!" Korba protested.

"How did you know that?" Paul asked. "Through your spy system? Oh, yes! We know about your spies and couriers. We know who brought the stone burner here from Tarahell."

"It was for the defence of the Qizarate!" Korba blurted.

"Is that how it got into traitorous hands?" Leto asked, innocent curiosity and Alia hid a smirk, Harry had taught him how to do that very well as a child.

"It was stolen and we..." Korba fell silent, swallowed. His gaze darted left and right. "Everyone knows I've been the voice of love for Muad’Dib." He stared at the gallery. "How can a dead man accuse a Fremen?"

"Otheym's voice isn't dead," Alia said. She stopped as Paul touched her arm.

"Otheym sent us his voice," Paul said. "It gives the names, the acts of treachery, the meeting places and the times. Do you miss certain faces in the Council of Naibs, Korba? Where are Merkur and Fash? Keke the Lame isn't with us today. And Takim, where is he?" Korba shook his head from side to side. "They've fled Arrakis with the stolen worm," Paul said. "Even if I freed you now, Korba, Shai-hulud would have your water for your part in this. Why don't I free you, Korba? Think of all those men whose eyes were taken, the men who cannot see as I see. They have families and friends, Korba. Where could you hide from them?"

"It was an accident," Korba pleaded. "Anyway, they're getting Tleilaxu... " Again, he subsided.

"Who knows what bondage goes with metal eyes?" Paul asked. The Naibs in their gallery began exchanging whispered comments, speaking behind raised hands. They gazed coldly at Korba now.

"Defence of the Qizarate," Harry whispered accusingly. "A device which either destroys a planet or produces J-rays to blind those too near it. Which effect, Korba, did you conceive as a defence? Does the Qizarate rely on stopping the eyes of all observers?" he tilted his head curiously, eyes never leaving Korba and the man looked from him to Paul.

"It was a curiosity, M’Lord," Korba pleaded. "We knew the Old Law said that only Families could possess atomics, but the Qizarate obeyed... obeyed... "

"Obeyed you," Leto finished for him coolly.

"A curiosity, indeed." Paul agreed.

"Even if it's only the voice of my accuser, you must face me with it!" Korba said. "A Fremen has rights."

"He speaks truth, Sire," Stilgar said. Alia glanced sharply at Stilgar. "The law is the law," Stilgar said, sensing Alia's protest. He began quoting Fremen Law, interspersing his own comments on how the Law pertained.

Alia experienced the odd sensation she was hearing Stilgar's words before he spoke them. How could he be this credulous? Stilgar had never appeared more official and conservative, more intent on adhering to the Dune Code. His chin was outthrust, aggressive. His mouth chopped. Was there really nothing in him but this outrageous pomposity?

"Korba is a Fremen and must be judged by Fremen Law," Stilgar concluded.

Alia turned away, looked out at the day shadows dropping down the wall across from the garden. She felt drained by frustration. They'd dragged this thing along well into midmorning. Now, what? Korba had relaxed. The Panegyrist's manner said he'd suffered an unjust attack, that everything he'd done had been for love of Muad’Dib. She glanced at Korba, surprised a look of sly self-importance sliding across his face. He might almost have received a message, she thought. He acted the part of a man who'd heard friends shout: "Hold fast! Help is on its way!"

For an instant, they'd held this thing in their hands - the information out of the dwarf, the clues that others were in the plot, the names of informants. But the critical moment had flown. Stilgar? Surely not Stilgar. She turned, stared at the old Fremen. Stilgar met her gaze without flinching.

"Thank you, Stil," Paul said, "for reminding us of the Law."

Stilgar inclined his head. He moved close, shaped silent words in a way he knew both Paul and Alia could read. I'll wring him dry and then take care of the matter.

Paul nodded, signalled the guardsmen behind Korba. "Remove Korba to a maximum-security cell," Paul said. "No visitors except counsel. As counsel, I appoint Stilgar."

"Let me choose my own counsel!" Korba shouted.

Paul whirled. "You deny the fairness and judgment of Stilgar?"

"Oh, no, M’Lord, but... "

"Take him away!" Paul barked. The guardsmen lifted Korba off the cushions, herded him out.

With new mutterings, the Naibs began quitting their gallery. Attendants came from beneath the gallery, crossed to the windows and drew the orange draperies. Orange gloom took over the chamber.

"Paul," Alia said.

"When we precipitate violence," Paul said, "it'll be when we have full control of it. Thank you, Stil; you played your part well. Alia, I'm certain, has identified the Naibs who were with him. They couldn't help giving themselves away."

"You cooked this up between you?" Alia demanded.

"Had Father ordered Korba slain out of hand, the Naibs would have understood.” Leto flopped back into the chair and tugged his robes.

"But this formal procedure without strict adherence to Fremen Law - they felt their own rights threatened. Which Naibs were with him, Alia?" Paul looked to her.

"Rajifiri for certain," she said, voice low. "And Saajid, but... "

"Give Stilgar the complete list," Paul said.

Alia swallowed in a dry throat, sharing the general fear of Paul in this moment. She knew how he moved among them with damaged eyes, but the delicacy of it daunted her. To see their forms in the air of his vision! She sensed her person shimmering for him in a sidereal time whose accord with reality depended entirely on his words and actions. He held them all in the palm of his vision!

"It's past time for your morning audience, Sire," Stilgar said. "Many people - curious... afraid..."

"Are you afraid, Stil?"

It was barely a whisper: "Yes."

"You're my friend and have nothing to fear from me," Paul said.

Stilgar swallowed. "Yes, M’Lord."

"Leto, Alia, take the morning audience," Paul said. "Stilgar, give the signal." Stilgar obeyed.

A flurry of movement erupted at the great doors. A crowd was pressed back from the shadowy room to permit entrance of officials. Many things began happening all at once: the household guard elbowing and shoving back the press of Supplicants, garishly robed Pleaders trying to break through, shouts, curses. Pleaders waved the papers of their calling. The Clerk of the Assemblage strode ahead of them through the opening cleared by the guard. He carried the List of Preferences, those who'd be permitted to approach the Throne. The Clerk, a wiry Fremen named Tecrube, carried himself with weary cynicism, flaunting his shaven head, clumped whiskers.

Alia moved to intercept him, giving Paul time to slip away with Chani and Harry through the private passage behind the dais. She experienced a momentary distrust of Tecrube at the prying curiosity in the stare he sent after Paul.

"Leto and I speak for my brother today," she said. "Have the Supplicants approach one at a time."

"Yes, M’lady." He turned to arrange his throng.

"I can remember a time when you wouldn't have mistaken your brother's purpose here," Stilgar said.

"I was distracted," she said. "There's been a dramatic change in you, Stil. What is it?"

Stilgar drew himself up, shocked. One changed, of course. But dramatically? This was a particular view of himself that he'd never encountered. Drama was a questionable thing. Imported entertainers of dubious loyalty and more dubious virtue were dramatic. Enemies of the Empire employed drama in their attempts to sway the fickle populace. Korba had slipped away from Fremen virtues to employ drama for the Qizarate. And he'd die for that. "You're being perverse," Stilgar said. "Do you distrust me?"

The distress in his voice softened her expression, but not her tone. "You know I don't distrust you. I've always agreed with my brother that once matters were in Stilgar's hands we could safely forget them."

"Then why do you say I've... changed?"

"You're preparing to disobey my brother," she said. "I can read it in you. I only hope it doesn't destroy you both."

The first of the Pleaders and Supplicants were approaching now. She turned away before Stilgar could respond, taking her seat beside Leto who had straightened back up. Stilgar’s face, though, was filled with the things she'd sensed in her mother's letter - the replacement of morality and conscience with law. "You produce a deadly paradox."

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Harry joined Paul at the window, looking out. “I do not know how you did it, but thank you.”

“There is no thanks necessary between us Paul. I wish I could have stopped all the damage, saved all the men.”

“You did what you could, that is what matters.”

“But not why you wanted to speak with me.” Harry leant against the wall, arms crossed and Paul shook his head.

“I am afraid Leto and Lily cannot have a long engagement. And there is Alia to consider as well…. I never wanted political matches for any of them.”

“I dare you to try and arrange one for Alia.” Harry grinned and Paul laughed.

“I have no desire to die that quickly. I have seen the way she watches him.”

“Hayt.” Harry confirmed. “Something about him draws her in, part of the trap?”

“Perhaps. Duncan would be a good match for her. There is another matter we need to speak of.”

“What is it?” they moved away from the window and Paul sat behind his desk, removing some documents to pass to Harry. “Paul?”

“You have never accepted a title, even when Gurney became Earl of Caladan. But things are changing.”

Harry mock groaned. “Alright, stop stalling and tell me what I am being stuck with.”

“Duke of Kaitain.” Paul answered and smirked at the look on his friends’ face. “There is no one else I would trust in the role with many of the Great Houses still using the planet, too much power still resides there. The title shall remain with your family, other than Lily.”

“In other words, hurry up and have more children.”

“I am sorry Harry but I need you in position to back Leto up.”

“You make it sound like you’re dying, I know the stone burner didn’t do that much damage.”

“I cannot rule forever.”

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Harry paused as he heard an odd humming noise, he silently followed it to a room and waited outside.

"What are you doing to me?" that was Hayt, he closed his eyes and sent his magic into the room, getting an idea of layout and occupants.

"You are the instrument I was taught to play," Bijaz said. "I am playing you. Let me tell you the names of the other traitors among the Naibs. They are Bikouros and Cahueit. There is Djedida, who was secretary to Korba. There is Abumojandis, the aide to Bannerjee. Even now, one of them could be sinking a blade into your Muad’Dib."

Hayt shook his head from side to side. He found it too difficult to talk.

"We are like brothers," Bijaz said, interrupting his monotonous hum once more. "We grew in the same tank: I first and then you."

Hayt's metal eyes inflicted him with a sudden burning pain. Flickering red haze surrounded everything he saw. He felt he had been cut away from every immediate sense except the pain, and he experienced his surroundings through a thin separation like windblown gauze. All had become accident, the chance involvement of inanimate matter. His own will was no more than a subtle, shifting thing. It lived without breath and was intelligible only as an inward illumination. With a clarity born of desperation, he broke through the gauze curtain with the lonely sense of sight. His attention focused like a blazing light under Bijaz. Hayt felt that his eyes cut through layers of the dwarf, seeing the little man as a hired intellect, and beneath that, a creature imprisoned by hungers and cravings which lay huddled in the eyes - layer after layer, until finally, there was only an entity-aspect being manipulated by symbols.

"We are upon a battleground," Bijaz said. "You may speak of it."

His voice freed by the command, Hayt said: "You cannot force me to slay Muad’Dib."

"I have heard the Bene Gesserit say," Bijaz said, "that there is nothing firm, nothing balanced, nothing durable in all the universe - that nothing remains in its state, that each day, sometimes each hour, brings change."

Hayt shook his head dumbly from side to side.

"You believed the silly Emperor was the prize we sought," Bijaz said. "How little you understand our masters, the Tleilaxu. The Guild and Bene Gesserit believe we produce artefacts. In reality, we produce tools and services. Anything can be a tool - poverty, war. War is useful because it is effective in so many areas. It stimulates the metabolism. It enforces government. It diffuses genetic strains. It possesses a vitality such as nothing else in the universe. Only those who recognize the value of war and exercise it have any degree of self-determination."

In an oddly placid voice, Hayt said: "Strange thoughts coming from you, almost enough to make me believe in a vengeful Providence. What restitution was exacted to create you? It would make a fascinating story, doubtless with an even more extraordinary epilogue."

"Magnificent!" Bijaz chortled. "You attack - therefore you have willpower and exercise self-determination."

"You're trying to awaken violence in me," Hayt said in a panting voice.

Bijaz denied this with a shake of the head. "Awaken, yes; violence, no. You are a disciple of awareness by training, so you have said. I have an awareness to awaken in you, Duncan Idaho."

"Hayt!"

"Duncan Idaho. Killer extraordinary. Lover of many women. Swordsman soldier. Atreides field hand on the field of battle. Duncan Idaho."

"The past cannot be awakened." Hayt sounded desperate and Harry hesitated, should he interfere? Or let this play out and learn more?

"Cannot?"

"It has never been done!"

"True, but our masters defy the idea that something cannot be done. Always, they seek the proper tool, the right application of effort, the services of the proper -"

"You hide your real purpose! You throw up a screen of words and they mean nothing!"

"There is a Duncan Idaho in you," Bijaz said. "It will submit to emotion or to dispassionate examination, but submit it will. This awareness will rise through a screen of suppression and selection out of the dark past which dogs your footsteps. It goads you even now while it holds you back. There exists that being within you upon which awareness must focus and which you will obey."

"The Tleilaxu think I'm still their slave, but I -"

"Quiet, slave!" Bijaz said in that whining voice.

Hayt found himself frozen in silence.

"Now we are down to bedrock," Bijaz said. "I know you feel it. And these are the power-words to manipulate you... I think they will have sufficient leverage."

Hayt felt the perspiration pouring down his cheeks, the trembling of his chest and arms, but he was powerless to move.

"One day," Bijaz said, "the Emperor will come to you. He will say: 'She is gone.' The grief mask will occupy his face. He will give water to the dead, as they call their tears hereabouts. And you will say, using my voice: 'Master! Oh, Master!' "

Hayt's jaw and throat ached with the locking of his muscles. He could only twist his head in a brief arc from side to side.

"You will say, 'I carry a message from Bijaz.' " The dwarf grimaced. "Poor Bijaz, who has no mind... poor Bijaz, a drum stuffed with messages, an essence for others to use... pound on Bijaz and he produces a noise... " Again, he grimaced. "You think me a hypocrite. Duncan Idaho! I am not! I can grieve, too. But the time has come to substitute swords for words."

A hiccup shook Hayt. Harry wanted to interrupt but he needed to hear the full plan in order to figure out what to do, even if he went around Paul to protect him. He just hoped he didn’t have to kill Hayt to do so, he did not want to kill what was left of his friend.

Bijaz giggled, then: "Ah, thank you, Duncan, thank you. The demands of the body save us. As the Emperor carries the blood of the Harkonnen’s in his veins, he will do as we demand. He will turn into a spitting machine, a biter of words that ring with a lovely noise to our masters."

Hayt blinked, thinking how the dwarf appeared like an alert little animal, a thing of spite and rare intelligence. Harkonnen blood in the Atreides?

"You think of Beast Rabban, the vile Harkonnen, and you glare," Bijaz said. "You are like the Fremen in this. When words fail, the sword is always at hand, eh? You think of the torture inflicted upon your family by the Harkonnen’s. And, through his mother, your precious Paul is a Harkonnen! You would not find it difficult to slay a Harkonnen, now would you?"

Bitter frustration coursed through the ghola. Was it anger? Why should this cause anger?

"Ohhh," Bijaz said, and: "Ahhhh, hah! Click-click. There is more to the message. It is a trade the Tleilaxu offer your precious Paul Atreides. Our masters will restore his beloved. A sister to yourself - another ghola."

Hayt felt suddenly that he existed in a universe occupied only by his own heartbeats. Outside Harry felt sick, so this was what they had planned.

"A ghola," Bijaz said. "It will be the flesh of his beloved. She will bear his children. She will love only him. We can even improve on the original if he so desires. Did ever a man have greater opportunity to regain what he'd lost? It is a bargain he will leap to strike."

Bijaz nodded, eyes drooping as though tiring. Then: "He will be tempted... and in his distraction, you will move close. In the instant, you will strike! Two ghola’s, not one! That is what our masters demand!" The dwarf cleared his throat, nodded once more, said: "Speak."

"I will not do it," Hayt said.

"But Duncan Idaho would," Bijaz said. "It will be the moment of supreme vulnerability for this descendant of the Harkonnen’s. Do not forget this. You will suggest improvements to his beloved - perhaps a deathless heart, gentler emotions. You will offer asylum as you move close to him - a planet of his choice somewhere beyond the Imperium. Think of it! His beloved restored. No more need for tears, and a place of idylls to live out his years."

"A costly package," Hayt said, probing. "He'll ask the price."

"Tell him he must renounce his godhead and discredit The Qizarate. He must discredit himself, his sister."

"Nothing more?" Hayt asked, sneering.

"He must relinquish his CHOAM holdings, naturally."

"Naturally."

"And if you're not yet close enough to strike, speak of how much the Tleilaxu admire what he has taught them about the possibilities of religion. Tell him the Tleilaxu have a department of religious engineering, shaping religions to particular needs."

"How very clever," Hayt said.

"You think yourself free to sneer and disobey me," Bijaz said. He cocked his head slyly to one side. "Don't deny it..."

"They made you well, little animal," Hayt said.

"And you as well," the dwarf said. "You will tell him to hurry. Flesh decays and her flesh must be preserved in a cryological tank."

Hayt felt himself floundering, caught in a matrix of objects he could not recognize. The dwarf appeared so sure of himself! There had to be a flaw in the Tleilaxu logic. In making their ghola, they'd keyed him to the voice of Bijaz, but... But what? Logic/matrix/object... How easy it was to mistake clear reasoning for correct reasoning! Was Tleilaxu logic distorted?

Bijaz smiled, listened as though to a hidden voice. "Now, you will forget," he said. "When the moment comes, you will remember. He will say: 'She is gone.' Duncan Idaho will awaken then."

The dwarf clapped his hands together.

Hayt grunted, feeling that he had been interrupted in the middle of a thought... or perhaps in the middle of a sentence. What was it? Something about... targets?

"You think to confuse me and manipulate me," he said.

"How is that?" Bijaz asked.

"I am your target and you can't deny it," Hayt said.

"I would not think of denying it."

"What is it you'd try to do with me?"

"A kindness," Bijaz said. "A simple kindness."

Outside the room Harry hesitated, torn over what to do. But then he made his choice and concealed himself when Hayt left. He then entered the room to find the dwarf who froze at the look on his face. “You will not threaten My Duke.” He stated coldly. An hour later the guards found the dwarf dead, with no obvious cause or suspects.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Hayt watched Alia emerge from her temple and cross the plaza. Her guard was bunched close, fierce expressions on their faces to mask the lines moulded by good living and complacency. A heliograph of 'thopter wings flashed in the bright afternoon sun above the temple, part of the Royal Guard with Muad’Dib’s fist-symbol on its fuselage.

Hayt returned his gaze to Alia. She looked out of place here in the city, he thought. Her proper setting was the desert - open, untrammelled space. An odd thing about her came back to him as he watched her approach: Alia appeared thoughtful only when she smiled. It was a trick of the eyes, he decided, recalling a cameo memory of her as she'd appeared at the reception for the Guild Ambassador: haughty against a background of music and brittle conversation among extravagant gowns and uniforms. And Alia had been wearing white, dazzling, a bright garment of chastity. He had looked down upon her from a window as she crossed an inner garden with its formal pond, its fluting fountains, fronds of pampas grass and a white belvedere. Entirely wrong... all wrong. She belonged in the desert.

Hayt drew in a ragged breath. Alia had moved out of his view then as she did now. He waited, clenching and unclenching his fists. The interview with Bijaz had left him uneasy. Finding he was dead had only increased that unease. Had it been planned? Had someone killed him? He heard Alia's entourage pass outside the room where he waited. She went into the Family quarters.

Now he tried to focus on the thing about her which troubled him. The way she'd walked across the plaza? Yes. She'd moved like a hunted creature fleeing some predator. He stepped out onto the connecting balcony, walked along it behind the plasmeld sunscreen, stopped while still in concealing shadows. Alia stood at the balustrade overlooking her temple.

He looked where she was looking - out over the city. He saw rectangles, blocks of colour, creeping movements of life and sound. Structures gleamed, shimmered. Heat patterns spiralled off the rooftops. There was a boy across the way bouncing a ball in a cul-de-sac formed by a buttressed massif at a corner of the temple. Back and forth the ball went.

Alia, too, watched the ball. She felt a compelling identity with that ball - back and forth... back and forth. She sensed herself bouncing through corridors of Time.

The potion of melange she'd drained just before leaving the temple was the largest she'd ever attempted - a massive overdose. Even before beginning to take effect, it had terrified her. Why did I do it? she asked herself. "One made a choice between dangers." Was that it? This was the way to penetrate the fog spread over the future by that damnable Dune Tarot. A barrier existed. It must be breached. She had acted out of a necessity to see where it was her brother walked with his almost blind stride. The newly familiar melange fugue state began creeping into her awareness. She took a deep breath, experienced a brittle form of calm, poised and selfless. Possession of second sight has a tendency to make one a dangerous fatalist, she thought. Unfortunately, there existed no abstract leverage, no calculus of prescience. Visions of the future could not be manipulated as formulas. One had to enter them, risking life and sanity.

A figure moved from the harsh shadows of the adjoining balcony. The ghola! In her heightened awareness, Alia saw him with intense clarity - the dark, lively features dominated by those glistening metal eyes. He was a union of terrifying opposites, something put together in a shocking linear way. He was shadow and blazing light, a product of the process which had revived his dead flesh... and of something intensely pure... innocent. He was innocence under siege! "Have you been there all along, Duncan?" she asked.

"So, I'm to be Duncan," he said. "Why?"

"Don't question me," she said. And she thought, looking at him, that the Tleilaxu had left no corner of their ghola unfinished. "Only gods can safely risk perfection," she said. "It's a dangerous thing for a man."

"Duncan died," he said, wishing she would not call him that. "I am Hayt."

She studied his artificial eyes, wondering what they saw. Observed closely, they betrayed tiny black pockmarks, little wells of darkness in the glittering metal. Facets! The universe shimmered around her and lurched. She steadied herself with a hand on the sun-warmed surface of the balustrade. Ahh, the melange moved swiftly.

"Are you ill?" Hayt asked. He moved closer, the steely eyes opened wide, staring.

Who spoke? she wondered. Was it Duncan Idaho? Was it the Mentat-ghola or the Zensunni philosopher? Or was it a Tleilaxu pawn more dangerous than any Guild Steersman? Her brother knew. Again, she looked at the ghola. There was something inactive about him now, a latent something. He was saturated with waiting and with powers beyond their common life. "Out of my mother, I am Bene Gesserit," she said. "Do you know that?"

"I know it."

"I use their powers, think as they think. Part of me knows the sacred urgency of the breeding program... and its products." She blinked, feeling part of her awareness begin to move freely in Time.

"It's said that the Bene Gesserit never let go," he said. And he watched her closely, noting how white her knuckles were where she gripped the edge of the balcony.

"Have I stumbled?" she asked.

He marked how deeply she breathed, with tension in every movement, the glazed appearance of her eyes. "When you stumble," he said, "you may regain your balance by jumping beyond the thing that tripped you."

"The Bene Gesserit stumbled," she said. "Now they wish to regain their balance by leaping beyond my brother. They want Chani's baby... or mine."

"Are you with child?" he asked in surprise and was shocked to find he did not want her to say yes.

She struggled to fix herself in a timespace relationship to this question. With child? When? Where? "I see... my child," she whispered. She moved away from the balcony's edge, turned her head to look at the ghola. He had a face of salt, bitter eyes - two circles of glistening lead... and, as he turned away from the light to follow her movement, blue shadows. "What... do you see with such eyes?" she whispered.

"What other eyes see," he said.

His words rang in her ears, stretching her awareness. She felt that she reached across the universe - such a stretching... out... out. She lay intertwined with all Time.

"You've taken the spice, a large dose," he said.

"Why can't I see him?" she muttered. The womb of all creation held her captive. "Tell me, Duncan, why I cannot see him."

"Who can't you see?"

"I cannot see the father of my children. I'm lost in a Tarot fog. Help me."

Mentat logic offered its prime computation, and he said: "The Bene Gesserit want a mating between you and your brother. It would lock the genetic... "

A wail escaped her. "The egg in the flesh," she gasped. A sensation of chill swept over her, followed by intense heat. The unseen mate of her darkest dreams! Flesh of her flesh that the oracle could not reveal - would it come to that?

"Have you risked a dangerous dose of the spice?" he asked. Something within him fought to express the utmost terror at the thought that an Atreides woman might die, that Paul might face him with the knowledge that a female of the royal family had... gone.

"You don't know what it's like to hunt the future," she said. "Sometimes I glimpse myself... but I get in my own way. I cannot see through myself." She lowered her head, shook it from side to side.

"How much of the spice did you take?" he demanded.

"Nature abhors prescience," she said, raising her head. "Did you know that, Duncan?"

He spoke softly, reasonably, as to a small child: "Tell me how much of the spice you took." He took hold of her shoulder with his left hand.

"Words are such gross machinery, so primitive and ambiguous," she said. She pulled away from his hand.

"You must tell me," he said.

"Look at the Shield Wall," she commanded, pointing. She sent her gaze along her own outstretched hand, trembled as the landscape crumbled in an overwhelming vision - a sandcastle destroyed by invisible waves. She averted her eyes, was transfixed by the appearance of the ghola's face. His features crawled, became aged, then young... aged... young. He was life itself, assertive, endless... She turned to flee, but he grabbed her left wrist.

"I am going to summon a doctor," he said.

"No! You must let me have the vision! I have to know!"

"You are going inside now," he said.

She stared down at his hand. Where their flesh touched, she felt an electric presence that both lured and frightened her. She jerked free, gasped: "You can't hold the whirlwind!"

"You must have medical help!" he snapped.

"Don't you understand?" she demanded. "My vision's incomplete, just fragments. It flickers and jumps. I have to remember the future. Can't you see that?"

"What is the future if you die?" he asked, forcing her gently into the Family chambers.

"Words... words," she muttered. "I can't explain it. One thing is the occasion of another thing, but there's no cause... no effect. We can't leave the universe as it was. Try as we may, there's a gap."

"Stretch out here," he commanded.

He is so dense! she thought. Cool shadows enveloped her. She felt her own muscles crawling like worms - a firm bed that she knew to be insubstantial. Only space was permanent. Nothing else had substance. The bed flowed with many bodies, all of them her own. Time became a multiple sensation, overloaded. It presented no single reaction for her to abstract. It was Time. It moved. The whole universe slipped backward, forward, sideways. "It has no thing-aspect," she explained. "You can't get under it or around it. There's no place to get leverage." There came a fluttering of people all around her. Many someone’s held her left hand. She looked at her own moving flesh, followed a twining arm out to a fluid mask of face: Duncan Idaho! His eyes were... wrong, but it was Duncan - child-man-adolescent-child-man-adolescent... Every line of his features betrayed concern for her. "Duncan, don't be afraid," she whispered.

He squeezed her hand, nodded. "Be still," he said. She must not die! She must not! No Atreides woman can die! He shook his head sharply. Such thoughts defied Mentat logic. Death was a necessity that life might continue.

The ghola loves me, Alia thought. The thought became bedrock to which she might cling. He was a familiar face with a solid room behind him. She recognized one of the bedrooms in Paul's suite. A fixed, immutable person did something with a tube in her throat. She fought against retching.

"We got her in time," a voice said, and she recognized the tones of a Family medic. "You should've called me sooner." There was suspicion in the medic's voice. She felt the tube slide out of her throat - a snake, a shimmering cord.

"The slapshot will make her sleep," the medic said. "I'll send one of her attendants to -"

"I will stay with her," the ghola said.

"That is not seemly!" the medic snapped.

"Stay... Duncan," Alia whispered. He stroked her hand to tell her he'd heard.

"M'Lady," the medic said, "it'd be better if..."

"You do not tell me what is best," she rasped. Her throat ached with each syllable.

"M'Lady," the medic said, voice accusing, "you know the dangers of consuming too much melange. I can only assume someone gave it to you without -"

"You are a fool," she rasped. "Would you deny me my visions? I knew what I took and why." She put a hand to her throat. "Leave us. At once!"

The medic pulled out of her field of vision, said: "I will send word to your brother."

She felt him leave, turned her attention to the ghola. The vision lay clearly in her awareness now, a culture medium in which the present grew outward. She sensed the ghola move in that play of Time, no longer cryptic, fixed now against a recognizable background. He is the crucible, she thought. He is danger and salvation.

And she shuddered, knowing she saw the vision of her brother had seen. Unwanted tears burned her eyes. She shook her head sharply. No tears! They wasted moisture and, worse, distracted the harsh flow of vision. Paul must be stopped! The web of Time passed through her brother now like rays of light through a lens. He stood at the focus and he knew it. He had gathered all the lines to himself and would not permit them to escape or change. "Why?" she muttered. "Is it hate? Does he strike out at Time itself because it hurt him? Is that it... hate?"

Thinking he heard her speak his name, the ghola said: "M'Lady?"

"If I could only burn this thing out of me!" she cried. "I didn't want to be different."

"Please, Alia," he murmured. "Let yourself sleep."

"I wanted to be able to laugh," she whispered. Tears slid down her cheeks. "But I'm sister to an Emperor who's worshipped as a god. People fear me. I never wanted to be feared." He wiped the tears from her face. "I don't want to be part of history," she whispered. "I just want to be loved... and to love."

"You are loved," he said.

"Ahh, loyal, loyal Duncan," she said.

"Please, don't call me that," he pleaded.

"But you are," she said. "And loyalty is a valued commodity. It can be sold... not bought, but sold."

"I don't like your cynicism," he said.

"Damn your logic! It's true!"

"Sleep," he said.

"Do you love me, Duncan?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Is that one of those lies," she asked, "one of the lies that are easier to believe than the truth? Why am I afraid to believe you?"

"You fear my differences as you fear your own."

"Be a man, not a Mentat!" she snarled.

"I am a Mentat and a man." He answered calmly, a hand moving to card through her hair.

"Will you make me your woman, then?"

"I will do what love demands."

"And loyalty?"

"And loyalty."

"That's where you're dangerous," she said. Her words disturbed him. No sign of the disturbance arose to his face, no muscle trembled - but she knew it. Vision-memory exposed the disturbance. She felt she had missed part of the vision, though, that she should remember something else from the future. There existed another perception which did not go precisely by the senses, a thing which fell into her head from nowhere the way prescience did. It lay in the Time shadows - infinitely painful. Emotion! That was it - emotion! It had appeared in the vision, not directly, but as a product from which she could infer what lay behind. She had been possessed by emotion - a single constriction made up of fear, grief and love. They lay there in the vision, all collected into a single epidemic body, overpowering and primordial. "Duncan, don't let me go," she whispered.

"Sleep," he said. "Don't fight it."

"I must... I must. He's the bait in his own trap. He's the servant of power and terror. Violence... deification is a prison enclosing him. He'll lose... everything. It'll tear him apart."

"You speak of Paul?"

"They drive him to destroy himself," she gasped, arching her back. "Too much weight, too much grief. They seduce him away from love." She sank back to the bed. "They're creating a universe where he won't permit himself to live."

"Who is doing this?"

"He is! Ohhh, you're so dense. He's part of the pattern. And it's too late... too late... too late..." As she spoke, she felt her awareness descend, layer by layer. It came to rest directly behind her navel. Body and mind separated and merged in a storehouse of relic visions - moving, moving... She heard a foetal heartbeat, a child of the future. The melange still possessed her, then, setting her adrift in Time. She knew she had tasted the life of a child not yet conceived. One thing certain about this child - it would suffer the same awakening she had almost suffered. It would be an aware, thinking entity before birth.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

“Chani, Leto and I will take this one.” Paul commanded, pointing to one of the waiting ‘thopters.

“Muad’Dib…” Stilgar tried even as Leto helped his mother into the thopter.

Paul turned to Alia, taking her in and seeing the unshed tears in her eyes. He gently brushed a hand against her cheek. “Time to settle accounts.” He whispered and she nodded. He got in into the thopter, seeing Harry and Hayt join Stilgar in another. Alia would act as regent while Paul and Leto were gone. If she needed an ally then Irulan would have to suffice as the Emperor’s wife.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Chani stared out at the morning desert framed in the fault cleft below Sietch Tabr. She wore no stillsuit, and this made her feel unprotected here in the desert. The sietch grotto's entrance lay hidden in the buttressed cliff above and behind her. The desert... the desert... She felt that the desert had followed her wherever she had gone. Coming back to the desert was not so much a homecoming as a turning around to see what had always been there.

A painful constriction surged through her abdomen. The birth would be soon. She fought down the pain, wanting this moment alone with her desert.

Dawn stillness gripped the land. Shadows fled among the dunes and terraces of the Shield Wall all around. Daylight lunged over the high scarp and plunged her up to her eyes in a bleak landscape stretching beneath a washed blue sky. The scene matched the feeling of dreadful cynicism which had tormented her since the moment she'd learned of Paul's blindness.

Why are we here? It was not a hajra, a journey of seeking. Paul sought nothing here except, perhaps, a place for her to give birth. He had summoned odd companions for this journey, she thought – Leto, their son made sense so as to greet his siblings; Harry, newly Duke of Kaitain; the ghola, Hayt, who might be Duncan Idaho's revenant; Lichna, Otheym's strange daughter, who seemed unable to move beyond the watchful eyes of guards; Stilgar, her uncle of the Naibs, and his favourite wife, Harah...

The sound of wind through the rocks accompanied her thoughts. The desert day had become yellow on yellow, tan on tan, grey on grey. Why such a strange mixture of companions? She’d asked and he'd touched her abdomen to feel the new life there. Remembering, she placed both hands over her abdomen and trembled, sorry that she'd asked Paul to bring her here.

The desert wind had stirred up evil odours from the fringe plantings which anchored the dunes at the cliff base. Fremen superstition gripped her: evil odours, evil times. She faced into the wind, saw a worm appear outside the plantings. It arose like the prow of a demon ship out of the dunes, threshed sand, smelled the water deadly to its kind, and fled beneath a long, burrowing mound. She hated the water then, inspired by the worm's fear. Water, once the spirit-soul of Arrakis, had become a poison. Water brought pestilence. Only the desert was clean.

Below her, a Fremen work gang appeared. They climbed to the sietch's middle entrance, and she saw that they had muddy feet. Fremen with muddy feet! The children of the sietch began singing to the morning above her, their voices piping from the upper entrance. The voices made her feel time fleeing from her like hawks before the wind. She shuddered.

What storms did Paul see with his damaged vision? She sensed a vicious madman in him, someone weary of songs and polemics.

The sky, she noted, had become crystal grey filled with alabaster rays, bizarre designs etched across the heavens by windborne sand. A line of gleaming white in the south caught her attention. Eves suddenly alerted, she interpreted the sign: White sky in the south: Shai-hulud's mouth. A storm came, big wind. She felt the warning breeze, a crystal blowing of sand against her cheeks. The incense of death came on the wind: odours of water flowing in qanats, sweating sand, flint. The water - that was why Shai-hulud sent his Coriolis wind.

Hawks appeared in the cleft where she stood, seeking safety from the wind. They were brown as the rocks and with scarlet in their wings. She felt her spirit go out to them: they had a place to hide; she had none.

"M'Lady, the wind comes!"

She turned, saw the ghola calling to her outside the upper entrance to the sietch. Fremen fears gripped her. Clean death and the body's water claimed for the tribe, these she understood. But... something brought back from death...

Windblown sand whipped at her, reddened her cheeks. She glanced over her shoulder at the frightful band of dust across the sky. The desert beneath the storm had taken on a tawny, restless appearance as though dune waves beat on a tempest shore the way Paul had once described a sea. She hesitated, caught by a feeling of the desert's transience. Measured against eternity, this was no more than a caldron. Dune surf thundered against cliffs.

The storm out there had become a universal thing for her - all the animals hiding from it... nothing left of the desert but its own private sounds: blown sand scraping along rock, a wind-surge whistling, the gallop of a boulder tumbled suddenly from its hill - then! somewhere out of sight, a capsized worm thumping its idiot way aright and slithering off to its dry depths.

It was only a moment as her life measured time, but in that moment, she felt this planet being swept away - cosmic dust, part of other waves.

"We must hurry," the ghola said from right beside her.

“I am a desert creature ghola, I know when to hide.” She assured him but she sensed fear in him then, concern for her safety.

"It'll shred the flesh from your bones," he said, as though he needed to explain such a storm to her. Her fear of him dispelled by his obvious concern, Chani allowed the ghola to help her up the rock stairway to the sietch. And then she gasped, hands flying to her stomach and she felt him lifting her as she strangled a cry of pain.

Sietch odours assaulted her nostrils. The place was a ferment of nasal memories - the warren closeness of bodies, rank esters of the reclamation stills, familiar food aromas, the flinty burning of machines at work... and through it all, the omnipresent spice: melange everywhere. "Home." She whispered, clinging to consciousness.  "Why is Paul afraid for me to bear our children?" she asked, using speech to focus herself.

"It is a natural thing to fear for your safety," the ghola said.

"Hayt, I'm afraid," she whispered. "Where is my Usul?"

"Affairs of state detain him," the ghola said. “I shall have him sent for immediately.

She nodded, thinking of the government apparatus which had accompanied them in a great flight of ornithopters. Abruptly, she realized what puzzled her about the sietch: outworld odours. The clerks and aides had brought their own perfumes into this environment, aromas of diet and clothing, of exotic toiletries. They were an undercurrent of odours here. Chani shook herself, concealing an urge to bitter laughter. Even the smells changed in Muad’Dib’s presence!

"The Zensunni approach to birth," he said as he moved swiftly through the halls, "is to wait without purpose in the state of highest tension. Do not compete with what is happening. To compete is to prepare for failure. Do not be trapped by the need to achieve anything. This way, you achieve everything." While he spoke, they reached the entrance to her quarters. He thrust her through the hangings, cried out: "Harah! Harah! It is Chani's time. Summon the medics!"

His call brought attendants running. There was a great bustling of people in which Chani felt herself an isolated island of calm... until the next pain came.

Hayt, dismissed to the outer passage, took time to wonder at his own actions. He felt fixated at some point of time where all truths were only temporary. Panic lay beneath his actions, he realized. Panic centred not on the possibility that Chani might die, but that Paul should come to him afterward... filled with grief... his loved one... gone... gone... Something cannot emerge from nothing, the ghola told himself. From what does this panic emerge? He felt that his Mentat faculties had been dulled, let out a long, shuddering breath. A psychic shadow passed over him. In the emotional darkness of it, he felt himself waiting for some absolute sound - the snap of a branch in a jungle. A sigh shook him. Danger had passed without striking. Slowly, marshalling his powers, shedding bits of inhibition, he sank into Mentat awareness. He forced it - not the best way - but somehow necessary. Ghost shadows moved within him in place of people. He was a transhipping station for every datum he had ever encountered. His being was inhabited by creatures of possibility. They passed in review to be compared, judged. Perspiration broke out on his forehead. Thoughts with fuzzy edges feathered away into darkness - unknown. Infinite systems! A Mentat could not function without realizing he worked in infinite systems. Fixed knowledge could not surround the infinite. Everywhere could not be brought into finite perspective. Instead, he must become the infinite - momentarily.

In one gestalten spasm, he had it, seeing Bijaz seated before him blazing from some inner fire. Bijaz! The dwarf had done something to him! Hayt felt himself teetering on the lip of a deadly pit. He projected the Mentat computation line forward, seeing what could develop out of his own actions. "A compulsion!" he gasped. "I've been rigged with a compulsion!"

A blue-robed courier, passing as Hayt spoke, hesitated. "Did you say something, sirra?"

Not looking at him, the ghola nodded. "I said everything." He forced himself away, he had to find Harry Potter, he knew the man would be able to stop him, to ensure Paul’s safety.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Harry stood a few paces behind Paul on the ledge, looking out over the desert. He didn’t need to glance back as footsteps sounded, neither did Paul.

"You've been avoiding me today, Duncan," Paul said.

"It's dangerous for you to call me that," the ghola said.

"I know." Paul glanced back to see Harry had withdrawn to allow them the illusion of privacy.

"I... came to warn you, M’Lord." Well he’d originally been looking for Harry but it didn’t matter.

"I know." Paul whispered. The story of the compulsion Bijaz had put on him poured from the ghola then. "Do you know the nature of the compulsion?"

"Violence."

Paul felt himself arriving at a place which had claimed him from the beginning. He stood suspended. The Jihad had seized him, fixed him onto a glidepath from which the terrible gravity of the Future would never release him. "There'll be no violence from Duncan," Paul whispered.

"But, Sire... "

"Tell me what you see around us," Paul said.

"M'Lord?"

"The desert - how is it tonight?"

"Don't you see it?"

"I have little sight, Duncan." The fading light meant he could barely see anything.

"But... "

"I've only my vision," Paul said, "and wish I didn't have it. I'm dying of prescience, did you know that, Duncan?"

"Perhaps... what you fear won't happen," the ghola said.

"What? Deny my own oracle? How can I when I've seen it fulfilled thousands of time? People call it a power, a gift. It's an affliction! It won't let me leave my life where I found it!"

"M'Lord," the ghola muttered, "I... it isn't... young master, you don't... I... " He fell silent.

Paul sensed the ghola's confusion. "What'd you call me, Duncan?"

"What? What I... for a moment..."

"You called me 'young master.' "

"I did, yes."

"That's what Duncan always called me." Paul reached out, touched the ghola's face. "Was that part of your Tleilaxu training?"

"No."

Paul lowered his hand. "What, then?"

"It came from... me."

"Do you serve two masters?"

"Perhaps."

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Alia stood on her Fane, wrapped in a sand coloured wrap as she stared into the night. Her part in this drama was fulfilled, it was left in the hands of others now. She wanted to cry, why couldn’t she cry? Chani…. oh Chani… she wanted so badly to disobey and kill that Corrino bitch, but Paul had insisted she live and even Alia could admit something had changed in the Princess the last few weeks.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Irulan lay on her bed, unable to sleep as a storm raged outside. She was Bene Gesserit enough to have read what Paul had not said. He did not expect Chani to survive the birth. And the way he had said goodbye….as if they would never see each other again despite his promise that she was to be spared. She almost wished Alia would disobey. She bit her pillow to silence her grief as tears slipped free. What had she done?

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Reverend Mother Mohiam looked up from the Tarot cards as a man strode in, a wild look to him and she knew. This man was still desert Fremen and as he drew his crysknife she accepted her fate. Somehow Muad’Dib had known and yet still he’d walked into the trap….to take them with him? The door opened and he grasped her hair, pulling her back before plunging the blade into her chest, over and over.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Edric watched in confusion as several men entered and then watched in horror as they opened fire, shattering the melange filled container, leaving him to lie barely injured on the floor, gasping for air. Had they failed?

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

"Free yourself from the ghola, Duncan." Paul commanded gently.

"How?" he pleaded softly.

"You're human. Do a human thing."

"I'm a ghola!" Hayt denied, shaking his head.

"But your flesh is human. Duncan's in there."

"Something's in there."

"I care not how you do it," Paul said, "but you'll do it."

"You've foreknowledge?"

"Foreknowledge be damned!" Paul turned away. His vision hurtled forward now, gaps in it, but it wasn't a thing to be stopped.

"M'Lord, if you've -"

"Quiet!" Paul held up a hand. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what, M’Lord?"

Paul shook his head. Duncan hadn't heard it. Had he only imagined the sound? It'd been his tribal name called from the desert - far away and low: "Usul... Uuuussssuuuullll... "

"What is it, M’Lord?"

Paul shook his head. He felt watched. Something out there in the night shadows knew he was here. Something? No - someone. "It was mostly sweet," he whispered, "and you were the sweetest of all." A tear slipped free

"What'd you say, M’Lord?"

"It's the future," Paul said. That amorphous human universe out there had undergone a spurt of motion, dancing to the tune of his vision. It had struck a powerful note then. The ghost-echoes might endure. Neither man noticed as an alarmed Harry moved away, running towards Chani’s room.

"I don't understand, M’Lord," the ghola said.

"A Fremen dies when he's too long from the desert," Paul said. "They call it the 'water sickness.' Isn't that odd?"

"That's very odd."

Paul strained at memories, tried to recall the sound of Chani breathing beside him in the night. Where is there comfort? he wondered. All he could remember was Chani at breakfast the day they'd left for the desert. She'd been restless, irritable. "Why do you wear that old jacket?" she'd demanded, eyeing the black uniform coat with its red hawk crest beneath his Fremen robes. "You're an Emperor!"

"Even an Emperor has his favourite clothing," he'd said. For no reason he could explain, this had brought real tears to Chani's eyes - the second time in her life when Fremen inhibitions had been shattered.

Now, in the darkness, Paul rubbed his own cheeks, felt moisture there. Who gives moisture to the dead? he wondered. It was his own face, yet not his. The wind chilled the wet skin. A frail dream formed, broke. What was this swelling in his breast? Was it something he'd eaten? How bitter and plaintive was this other self, giving moisture to the dead. The wind bristled with sand. The skin, dry now, was his own. But whose was the quivering which remained?

They heard the wailing then, far away in the sietch depths. It grew louder... louder...

The ghola whirled at a sudden glare of light, someone flinging wide the entrance seals. In the light, he saw a man with a raffish grin - no! Not a grin, but a grimace of grief! It was a Fedaykin lieutenant named Tandis. Behind him came a press of many people, all fallen silent now that they saw Muad’Dib.

"Chani..." Tandis said.

"Is dead," Paul whispered. "I heard her call." He turned toward the sietch. He knew this place. It was a place where he could not hide. His onrushing vision illuminated the entire Fremen mob. He saw Tandis, felt the Fedaykin's grief, the fear and anger.

"She is gone," Paul said.

The ghola heard the words out of a blazing corona. They burned his chest, his backbone, the sockets of his metal eyes. He felt his right-hand move toward the knife at his belt. His own thinking became strange, disjointed. He was a puppet held fast by strings reaching down from that awful corona. He moved to another's commands, to another's desires. The strings jerked his arms, his legs, his jaw. Sounds came squeezing out of his mouth, a terrifying repetitive noise - "Hrrak! Hraak! Hraak!" The knife came up to strike. In that instant, he grabbed his own voice, shaped rasping words: "Run! Young master, run!" he pleaded, knowing his control was fading. He would not harm Paul!

"We will not run," Paul said. "We'll move with dignity. We'll do what must be done." He stared calmly at the ghola who froze at his words.

The ghola's muscles locked. He shuddered, swayed. "... what must be done!" The words rolled in his mind like a great fish surfacing. "... what must be done!" Ahh, that had sounded like the old Duke, Paul's grandfather. The young master had some of the old man in him. "... what must be done!" The words began to unfold in the ghola's consciousness. A sensation of living two lives simultaneously spread out through his awareness: Hayt/Idaho/Hayt/Idaho... He became a motionless chain of relative existence, singular, alone. Old memories flooded his mind. He marked them, adjusted them to new understandings, made a beginning at the integration of a new awareness. A new persona achieved a temporary form of internal tyranny. The masculating synthesis remained charged with potential disorder, but events pressed him to the temporary adjustment. The young master needed him. It was done then. He knew himself as Duncan Idaho, remembering everything of Hayt as though it had been stored secretly in him and ignited by a flaming catalyst. The corona dissolved. He shed the Tleilaxu compulsions.

"Stay close to me, Duncan," Paul said. "I'll need to depend on you for many things." And, as Idaho continued to stand entranced: "Duncan!"

"Yes, I am Duncan." He whispered in awe, how was this possible?

"Of course, you are! This was the moment when you came back. We'll go inside now." Paul smiled and briefly clasped his shoulders even as Duncan fully took in all the ways his young Duke had grown and changed. The hazy eyes were painful but there was comfort in the fact he still had eyes and sight at all. He was weathered in a way…. changed by the years in the desert and he missed the youth he had been.

Idaho fell into step beside Paul. It was like the old times, yet not like them. Now that he stood free of the Tleilaxu, he could appreciate what they had given him. Zensunni training permitted him to overcome the shock of events. The Mentat accomplishment formed a counterbalance. He put off all fear, standing above the source. His entire consciousness looked outward from a position of infinite wonder: he had, been dead; he was alive.

"Sire," the Fedaykin Tandis said as they approached him, "the woman, Lichna, says she must see you. I told her to wait."

"Thank you," Paul said. "The birth... "

"I spoke to the medics," Tandis said, falling into step. "They said you have two children, both of them alive and sound."

"Two?" Paul stumbled, caught himself on Idaho's arm. The dimness of the night-time Sietch basically left him blind other than his vision sight.

"A boy and a girl," Tandis said. "I saw them. They're good Fremen babies."

"How... how did she die?" Paul whispered.

"M'Lord?" Tandis bent close.

"Chani?" Paul said.

"It was the birth, M’Lord," Tandis husked. "They said her body was drained by the speed of it. I don't understand, but that is what they said."

"Take me to her," Paul whispered.

"M'Lord?"

"Take me to her!"

"That's where we're going, M’Lord." Again, Tandis bent close to Paul. "Why does your ghola carry a bared knife?"

"Duncan, put away your knife," Paul said. "The time for violence is past."

As he spoke, Paul felt closer to the sound of his voice than to the mechanism which had created the sound. Two babies! The vision had contained but one. Yet, these moments went as the vision went. There was a person here who felt grief and anger. Someone. His own awareness lay in the grip of an awful treadmill, replaying his life from memory. Two babies? Again, he stumbled. Chani, Chani, he thought. There was no other way. Chani, beloved, believe me that this death was quicker for you... and kinder. They'd have held our children hostage, displayed you in a cage and slave pits, reviled you with the blame for my death. This way... this way we destroy them and save our children. Children? Once more, he stumbled. The shadowing light made it harder on his damaged eyes.  I permitted this, he thought. I should feel guilty. The sound of noisy confusion filled the cavern ahead of them. It grew louder precisely as he remembered it growing louder. Yes, this was the pattern, the inexorable pattern, even with two children. Chani is dead, he told himself.

At some faraway instant in a past which he had shared with others, this future had reached down to him. It had chivvied him and herded him into a chasm whose walls grew narrower and narrower. He could feel them closing in on him. This was the way the vision went. Chani is dead. I should abandon myself to grief. But that was not the way the vision went.

Paul sensed the mob pressing back to give him passage. Their silence moved ahead of him like a wave. The noisy confusion began dying down. A sense of congested emotion filled the sietch. He wanted to remove the people from his vision, found it impossible. Every face turning to follow him carried its special imprint. They were pitiless with curiosity, those faces. They felt grief, yes, but he understood the cruelty which drenched them. They were watching the articulate become dumb, the wise become a fool. Didn't the clown always appeal to cruelty?

This was more than a death-watch, less than a wake.

Paul felt his soul begging for respite, but still the vision moved him. Just a little farther now, he told himself. Black, visionless dark awaited him just ahead. There lay the place ripped out of the vision by grief and guilt, the place where the moon fell. He stumbled into it, would've fallen had Idaho not taken his arm in a fierce grip, a solid presence knowing how to share his grief in silence.

"Here is the place," Tandis said.

"Watch your step, Sire," Idaho said, helping him over an entrance lip. Hangings brushed Paul's face. Idaho pulled him to a halt. Paul felt the room then, a reflection against his cheeks and ears. It was a rock-walled space with the rock hidden behind tapestries.

"Where is Chani?" Paul whispered.

"She is right here, Paul.” Harry called and Duncan helped Paul over, both staring in shock at the pale, tired face on Chani settled on the bed even as she smiled weakly at her husband.

“Beloved?” His legs gave out and Duncan caught him. “I don’t….” He looked to Harry. “How?”

“The birth was not as hard as it would have had she kept to the ancient diet or continued to be dosed with the contraceptive, I got in here in time too. She will recover, but I am sorry Paul, there will be no more children.”

"The children?" Paul asked, looking around for the babies.

"They are here, too, M’Lord," Idaho said.

"You have beautiful twins, Usul," Harah said, "a boy and a girl. See? We have them here in a crèche."

Two children, Paul thought wonderingly. The vision had contained only a daughter. He cast himself adrift from Idaho's arm, moved toward the place where Harah had spoken, stumbled into a hard surface. His hands explored it: the metaglass outlines of a crèche.

Someone took his left arm. "Usul?" It was Harah. She guided his hand into the crèche. He felt soft-soft flesh. It was so warm! He felt ribs, breathing. "That is your son," Harah whispered. She moved his hand. "And this is your daughter." Her hand tightened on his. "Usul, are you truly blind now?"

He knew what she was thinking. The blind must be abandoned in the desert. Fremen tribes carried no dead weight. He shook his head and the light in the room increased, allowing him to see his children. He glanced over to see Harry and Duncan adding more glowglobes to the room to help him. He smiled as he ran a hand over the small bodies. Why had he never seen twins? He moved away and Duncan shadowed him as he moved back to where Chani lay, finally seeing how worn Harry looked. Whatever he had done had exacted a price.

"I'm not surprised to find you alive, Atreides." The voice was like Lichna's, but with subtle differences, as though the speaker used Lichna's vocal cords, but no longer bothered to control them sufficiently. Paul found himself struck by an odd note of honesty in the voice.

Paul turned to look at her. "Not surprised?"

"I am Scytale, a Tleilaxu of the Face Dancers, and I would know a thing before we bargain. Is that a ghola I see behind you, or Duncan Idaho?"

“Answer.” Paul ordered.

“I am Duncan Idaho.” Duncan’s hand moved to his knife.

"I will not bargain with you." Paul knew his body blocked Chani from view, allowing the vision to play out.

"I think you'll bargain," Scytale said.

"Duncan," Paul said, speaking over his shoulder, "will you kill this Tleilaxu if I ask it?"

"Yes, M’Lord." There was the suppressed rage of a berserker in Idaho's voice.

"You don't know what you're rejecting."

"But I do know," Paul said.

"So, it's truly Duncan Idaho of the Atreides," Scytale said. "We found the lever! A ghola can regain his past. What do you remember of your past, Duncan?" Scytale moved closer to Duncan who shifted so that he was between Scytale and the others. He too had seen Harry’s exhaustion and did not want him trying to fight in his condition.

"Everything. From my childhood on. I even remember you at the tank when they removed me from it," Idaho answered coolly, hand griping his knife.

"Wonderful," Scytale breathed. "Wonderful."

Paul heard the voice moving. Bene Gesserit training warned him of terrifying menace in Scytale, yet the creature remained a voice, a shadow of movement - entirely beyond him. The extra light was no aide now as Paul dared not move and reveal his sleeping beloved.

"Are these the Atreides babies?" Scytale asked.

"Harah!" Paul cried. "Get her away from there!"

"Stay where you are!" Scytale shouted. "All of you! I warn you, a Face Dancer can move faster than you suspect. My knife can have both these lives before you touch me."

Paul felt someone touch his right arm, then move off to the right.

"That's far enough, Harry," Scytale said.

"Harry," Paul said. "Don't."

"Atreides," Scytale said, "shall we bargain now?" Behind him, Paul heard a single hoarse curse. His throat constricted at the suppressed violence in Idaho's voice. Idaho must not break! Scytale would kill the babies! "To strike a bargain, one requires a thing to sell," Scytale said. "Not so, Atreides? Will you have your Chani back? We can restore her to you. A ghola, Atreides. A ghola with full memory! But we must hurry. Call your friends to bring a cryologic tank to preserve the flesh."

Ahh, that's why they gave me Idaho as a ghola, to let me discover how much the re-creation is like the original. But now - full restoration... at their price. I'd be a Tleilaxu tool forevermore. And Chani... chained to the same fate by a threat to our children, exposed once more to the Qizarate's plotting... he owed Harry so much for making this unnecessary.  "What pressures would you use to restore Chani's memory to her?" Paul asked, fighting to keep his voice calm. "Would you condition her to... to kill one of her own children?" he kept to the vision, acting as if she was truly dead.

"We use whatever pressures we need," Scytale said. "What say you, Atreides?"

"Harry," Paul said, "bargain with this thing. I cannot bargain with what I cannot see."

"A wise choice," Scytale gloated. "Well, Harry, what do you offer me as your Lords agent?"

Paul lowered his head, bringing himself to stillness within stillness. He'd glimpsed something just then - like a vision, but not a vision. It had been a knife close to him. There!

"Give me a moment to think," Harry stalled, not sure what Paul was up to said.

"My knife is patient," Scytale said, "but Chani's flesh is not. Take a reasonable amount of time."

Paul felt himself blinking. It could not be... but it was! He felt eyes! Their vantage point was odd and they moved in an erratic way. There! The knife swam into his view. With a breath-stilling shock, Paul recognized the viewpoint. It was that of one of his children! He was seeing Scytale's knife hand from within the crèche! It glittered only inches from him. Yes - and he could see himself across the room, as well - head down, standing quietly, a figure of no menace, ignored by the others in this room.

"To begin, you might assign us all the Atreides CHOAM holdings," Scytale suggested.

"All of them?" Harry protested.

"All."

Watching himself through the eyes in the crèche, Paul slipped his crysknife from its belt sheath. The movement produced a strange sensation of duality. He measured the distance, the angle. There'd be no second chance. He prepared his body then in the Bene Gesserit way, armed himself like a cocked spring for a single concentrated movement, a prajna thing requiring all his muscles balanced in one exquisite unity. The crysknife leaped from his hand. The milky blur of it flashed into Scytale's right eye, jerked the Face Dancer's head back. Scytale threw both hands up and staggered backward against the wall. His knife clattered off the ceiling, to hit the floor. Scytale rebounded from the wall; he fell face forward, dead before he touched the floor.

Still through the eyes in the crèche, Paul watched the faces in the room turn toward his half blind figure, read the combined shock. Then Harry and Harah rushed to the crèche, bent over it and hid the view from him.

"Oh, they're safe," Harah whispered. "They're safe."

"M'Lord," Idaho whispered, "was that part of your vision?"

"No." He waved a hand in Idaho's direction. "Let it be." He turned away from them, groped his way to a wall, leaned against it and tried to understand what he had done. How? How? The eyes in the crèche! He felt poised on the brink of terrifying revelation.

"My eyes, father."

The word-shaping’s shimmered before his sightless vision. "My son!" Paul whispered, too low for any to hear. "You're... aware."

"Yes, father. Look!"

Paul sagged against the wall in a spasm of dizziness. He felt that he'd been upended and drained. His own life whipped past him. He saw his father. He was his father. And the grandfather, and the grandfathers before that. His awareness tumbled through a mind-shattering corridor of his whole male line. "How?" he asked silently.

Faint word-shaping’s appeared, faded and were gone, as though the strain was too great. Paul wiped saliva from the corner of his mouth. There had been no Water of Life, no overdose of melange... or had there? Had Chani's hunger been for that? Or was this somehow the genetic product of his line, foreseen by the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam?

Paul felt himself in the crèche then, with Harah cooing over him. Her hands soothed him. Her face loomed, a giant thing directly over him. She turned him then and he saw his crèche companion - a girl with that bony-ribbed look of strength which came from a desert heritage. She had a full head of tawny red hair. As he stared, she opened her eyes. Those eyes! So much like her mother. He reached out and found Chani’s sleeping form, grasping her hand gently.

"Look at that," Harry said. "They're staring at each other."

"Babies can't focus at this age," Harah said.

Slowly, Paul felt himself being disengaged from that endless awareness. He was back at his own wailing wall then, leaning against it. Idaho shook his shoulder gently.

"M'Lord?"

"Let my son be called Victor, for the brother I never knew," Paul said, straightening.

"At the time of naming," Harah said, "I will stand beside you as a friend of the mother and give that name."

"And my daughter," Paul said. "Let her be called Ghanima."

"Usul!" Harah objected. "Ghanima's an ill-omened name."

"It saved your life," Paul said. "What matter that Alia made fun of you with that name? My daughter is Ghanima, a spoil of war." He heard people moving about Chani, ensuring she would sleep well and recover. “I meddled in all the possible futures I could create until, finally, they created me."

"M'Lord, you shouldn't..."

"There are problems in this universe for which there are no answers," Paul said. "Nothing. Nothing can be done." As he spoke, Paul felt his link with the vision shatter. His mind cowered, overwhelmed by infinite possibilities. His lost vision became like the wind, blowing where it willed. He felt Harry grasp his arm.

“Come away Paul, you need to rest. Harah will stay with Chani.” Harry promised, and Paul nodded slowly, letting Harry and Duncan lead him away.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Paul woke to darkness but then he felt the comforting touch of Harry’s hand on his arm. “Chani?”

“Woke and took some water. It will take time for her to recover.”

“You have changed the future. Every vision showed her death in childbirth. I should go into the desert.” He whispered. “It was the only way to save our children…there was no other way to free ourselves.”

“Oh Paul, why didn’t you tell me?” Harry whispered and Paul swallowed even as Harry moved a hand to gently run through his hair, calming him, like he had when Paul was a child and woke with a nightmare. “Leto is young to take the throne.”

“No younger than I was when I became Duke and he has a lot of support.” He argued and Harry sighed.

“True. If you wanted a way out you should have come to me. I will arrange everything. You and Chani can live out your lives wherever you wish and no one will ever find you unless you want them to.”

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

There was a dike of water against the sand, an outer limit for the plantings of the sietch holding. A rock bridge came next and then the open desert beneath Idaho's feet. The promontory of Sietch Tabr dominated the night sky behind him. The light of both moons frosted its high rim. An orchard had been brought right down to the water.

Idaho paused on the desert side and stared back at flowered branches over silent water - reflections and reality - four moons. The stillsuit felt greasy against his skin. Wet flint odours invaded his nostrils past the filters. There was a malignant simpering to the wind through the orchard. He listened for night sounds. Kangaroo mice inhabited the grass at the water verge; a hawk owl bounced its droning call into the cliff shadows; the wind-broken hiss of a sandfall came from the open bled.

Idaho turned toward the sound. He could see no movement out there on the moonlit dunes.

It was Tandis who had brought Paul this far. Then the man had returned to tell his account. And Paul had walked out into the desert - like a Fremen. "He was blind - truly blind," Tandis had said, as though that explained it. "Before that, he had the vision which he told to us... but... " A shrug. Blind Fremen were abandoned in the desert. Muad’Dib might be Emperor, but he was also Fremen. Had he not made provision that Fremen guard and raise his children? He was Fremen.

It was a skeleton desert here, Idaho saw. Moon-silvered ribs of rock showed through the sand; then the dunes began. I should not have left him alone, not even for a minute. I knew what was in his mind.

"He told me the future no longer needed his physical presence," Tandis had reported. "When he left me. He called back. 'Now I am free' were his words."

Damn them! The Fremen had refused to send 'thopters or searchers of any kind. Rescue was against their ancient customs.

"There will be a worm for Muad’Dib," they said. And they began the chant for those committed to the desert, the ones whose water went to Shai-hulud: "Mother of sand, father of Time, beginning of Life, grant him passage."

Idaho seated himself on a flat rock and stared at the desert. The night out there was filled with camouflage patterns. There was no way to tell where Paul had gone.

"Now I am free." Duncan spoke the words aloud, surprised by the sound of his own voice. For a time, he let his mind run, remembering a day when he'd taken the child Paul to the sea market on Caladan, the dazzling glare of a sun on water, the sea's riches brought up dead, there to be sold. Idaho remembered Gurney Halleck playing music of the baliset for them - pleasure, laughter. Rhythms pranced in his awareness, leading his mind like a thrall down channels of remembered delight. Gurney Halleck. Gurney would blame him for this tragedy. Memory music faded. Harry had been oddly quiet but he too had lived among the Fremen, had at one point taken a Fremen bride. He was more accepting of their customs, he was one of them.

He recalled Paul's words: "There are problems in this universe for which there are no answers."

Idaho began to wonder how Paul would die out there in the desert. Quickly, killed by a worm? Slowly, in the sun? Some of the Fremen back there in the sietch had said Muad’Dib would never die, that he had entered the ruh-world where all possible futures existed, that he would be present henceforth in the alam al-mythal, wandering there endlessly even after his flesh had ceased to be.

He'll die and I'm powerless to prevent it, Idaho thought. He began to realize that there might be a certain fastidious courtesy in dying without a trace - no remains, nothing, and an entire planet for a tomb. Mentat, solve thyself, he thought. Words intruded on his memory - the ritual words of the Fedaykin lieutenant, posting a guard over Muad’Dib’s children: "It shall be the solemn duty of the officer in charge... "

The plodding, self-important language of government enraged him. It had seduced the Fremen. It had seduced everyone. A man, a great man, was dying out there, but language plodded on... and on... and on... What had happened, he wondered, to all the clean meanings that screened out nonsense? Somewhere, in some lost where which the Imperium had created, they'd been walled off, sealed against chance rediscovery. His mind quested for solutions, Mentat fashion. Patterns of knowledge glistened there. Lorelei hair might shimmer thus, beckoning... beckoning the enchanted seaman into emerald caverns... With an abrupt start, Idaho drew back from catatonic forgetfulness.

So! he thought. Rather than face my failure, I would disappear within myself! The instant of that almost-plunge remained in his memory. Examining it, he felt his life stretch out as long as the existence of the universe. Real flesh lay condensed, finite in its emerald cavern of awareness, but infinite life had shared his being.

Idaho stood up, feeling cleansed by the desert. Sand was beginning to chatter in the wind, pecking at the surfaces of leaves in the orchard behind him. There was the dry and abrasive smell of dust in the night air. His robe whipped to the pulse of a sudden gust.

Somewhere far out in the bled, Idaho realized, a mother storm raged, lifting vortices of winding dust in hissing violence - a giant worm of sand powerful enough to cut flesh from bones. He will become one with the desert, Idaho thought. The desert will fulfil him. It was a Zensunni thought washing through his mind like clear water. Paul would go on marching out there, he knew. An Atreides would not give himself up completely to destiny, not even in the full awareness of the inevitable.

A touch of prescience came over Idaho then, and he saw that people of the future would speak of Paul in terms of seas. Despite a life soaked in dust, water would follow him. "His flesh foundered," they would say, "but he swam on."

Behind Idaho, a man cleared his throat. Idaho turned to discern the figure of Harry standing on the bridge over the qanat.

"He will not be found," Harry said. "Yet all men will find him."

"The desert takes him - and deifies him," Idaho said. "Yet he was an interloper here. He brought an alien chemistry to this planet - water."

"The desert imposes its own rhythms," Harry answered, moving to stand beside him. He leant in to whisper. “Paul and Chani Atreides live in Carthag.”

Duncan blinked, a fog lifting as new knowledge, no hidden knowledge slid back into place. Tandis had not led Paul into the desert, Harry had taken Paul and Chani away in a thopter to hide them where they could live their lives. “Oh…” it felt strange and he didn’t know how Harry had done it but he had not failed his Duke! “Who else knows?”

“Stilgar and Harah here, I will tell Alia, Irulan, Leto and Lily when we return to the Keep. When they are older Victor and Ghanima will be told.” He would tell Jessica and Gurney in time but they were watched almost as closely as the family on Arrakis and their reactions would be watched.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Mentat awareness projected the outflowing patterns into the future. The possibilities dazzled him. Paul had set in motion a whirling vortex and nothing could stand in its path. The Bene Tleilaxu and the Guild had overplayed their hands and had lost, were discredited. The Qizarate was shaken by the treason of Korba and others high within it. And Paul's final voluntary act, his ultimate acceptance of their customs, had ensured the loyalty of the Fremen to him and to his house. He was one of them forever now.

"Paul is gone!" Alia's voice was choked as she stared out over the sleeping city, a warm shawl wrapped around her, dark coppery hair falling freely down her back. "He was a fool, Duncan!"

"Don't say that!" he snapped.

"The whole universe will say it before I'm through," she said.

"Why, for the love of heaven?"

"For the love of my brother, not of heaven."

Zensunni insight dilated his awareness. He could sense that there was no vision in her - had been none since Chani's death. "You practice an odd love," he said.

"Love? Duncan, he had but to step off the track! What matter that the rest of the universe would have come shattering down behind him? He'd have been safe... and Chani with him!"

"Then... why didn't he?"

"For the love of heaven," she whispered. Then, more loudly, she said: "Paul's entire life was a struggle to escape his Jihad and its deification. At least, he's free of it. He chose this!"

"Ah, yes - the oracle." Idaho shook his head in wonder. "Even Chani's death. His moon fell."

"He was a fool, wasn't he, Duncan?" She whispered, still not looking at him.  Duncan’s throat tightened with suppressed grief. "Such a fool!" Alia gasped her control breaking. "He'll live forever while we must die!"

"Alia, don't... " he reached out to her.

"It's just grief," she said, voice low. "Just grief. Do you know what I must do for him? I must save the life of the Princess Irulan. That one! You should hear her grief. Wailing, giving moisture to the dead; she swears she loved him and knew it not. She reviles her Sisterhood, says she'll spend her life teaching Paul's children."

"You trust her?"

"She reeks of trustworthiness!"

"Ahh," Idaho murmured. The final pattern unreeled before his awareness like a design on fabric. The defection of the Princess Irulan was the last step. It left the Bene Gesserit with no remaining lever against the Atreides heirs.

Alia began to sob, leaned against him, face pressed into his chest. "Ohhh, Duncan, Duncan! He's gone!"

Idaho put his lips against her hair. "Please," he whispered. He felt her grief mingling with his like two streams entering the same pool.

"I need you, Duncan," she sobbed. "Love me!"

"I do," he whispered.

She lifted her head, peered at the moon-frosted outline of his face. "I know, Duncan. Love knows love." Her words sent a shudder through him, a feeling of estrangement from his old self. He had come out here looking for one thing and had found another. It was as though he'd lurched into a room full of familiar people only to realize too late that he knew none of them. She pushed away from him, took his hand. "Will you come with me, Duncan?"

"Wherever you lead," he promised before kissing her gently.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Alia stood before the Throne with Leto beside her as Lily approached, dressed in white silk and on her Father’s arm. Leto would be crowned tomorrow, today he married his best friend, she would be his Empress. She was glad her nephew and friend were marrying because they wanted to and not due to politics. Harry’s new title had helped everyone accept the marriage. House Potter was now a noble house. Harry smiled as he passed his daughter to her new husband and Alia spoke the words to bind them together. As the two teens kissed she glanced to where Duncan stood off to the side, ever watchful. Grey metal eyes met hers and he smiled at her. she smiled back as the newlyweds parted and turned to the cheering crowd.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Irulan slipped up beside Harry and hesitantly took his hand as they watched Emperor Leto II marry his Aunt Alia to the Ghola Duncan Idaho. Duncan was physically older but Alia was a Reverend Mother, making her mentally older than her physical sixteen years. She looked down and smiled at the baby Harry was cradling to his chest. Little Victor was the spitting image of his Father….and preborn. She feared for him and his sister Ghanima because of that.

She still felt so guilty for her part in things, even knowing Paul and Chani were alive and well in Carthag. She had even accompanied Leto on a trip to see them.it had been good to clear the air with Chani over what she had done to her. And Paul had given his blessing for her and Harry. Usually an Emperors wife remained a widow but the Throne was secure and everyone knew Harry had no interest in the Throne. Besides, his daughter was already Empress.

They were leaving for Kaitain in a few days, taking the twins with them since Irulan had been named their guardian and it was safer for them away from the Keep. Harry was Fremen enough to teach them their ways even away from Arrakis and since they were preborn they had access to their Fremen ancestors’ memories. And they would not spend all their time on Kaitain, they would take the twins to see their Grandmother and also return in secret for them to spend time with their parents.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Leto stood on the dais, Lily at his side as they watched Irulan walk towards them. Though it wasn’t them she was really walking too, on the step below stood the Duke of Kaitain, Harry Potter. He was dressed in appropriate finery of black and green, still wearing Atreides colours. In front of Irulan walked little Ghanima, the three-year olds blue-in-blue eyes solemn as she took her duty very seriously. They walked up the stairs and Harry took Irulan’s hand, turning to face the Emperor. Leto smiled and began the ceremony, Princess Irulan Corrino-Atreides becoming Irulan Corrino-Atreides-Potter, Duchess of Kaitain. Only a select few could see two other people watching the ceremony, Paul and Chani stood off to the side, watching as Irulan finally married someone who cared for her, not her title. Little Victor stood with them, Duncan behind him, but it allowed the young Prince to hold his Mother’s hand.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Harry smiled as he took the child from the nurses’ arms, cradling his new daughter close. He rocked her gently, taking in her dark hair so much like his own already but her eyes were the blue/grey of her mother. Rugi Potter, named for Irulan’s youngest sister who had died on Arrakis at the dedication ceremony of the new Palace of Emperor Paul Atreides. During the ceremony procession, assassins struck the entire royal family and their guests, killing and injuring many of them. He sat down and Victor and Ghani pressed close to see their new ‘cousin’.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Duncan cradled his newborn son, Paul II. The boy had his hair but almost every other feature came from the Atreides. Alia lay on the bed, tired but happy. She had chosen to give Duncan a son, there were enough male heirs that their son would not be seen as an heir to the Throne so it was safe enough. The door opened and Duncan’s free hand went to his knife only to relax as Chani ran to Alia’s side to see how she was.

Paul approached, using a cane to help ensure he didn’t run into anything. He leant in close so that he could see the baby and smiled. “Congratulations Duncan, Alia.” He smiled at his sister. “What is his name?”

“Paul, for his uncle.” Alia answered.

Paul reached out to gently touch little Paul’s face. He had seen Alia and Duncan but never this…he had never seen a child between them. He was happy those visions were wrong. His sister would never suicide to stop her own Abomination, Duncan wouldn’t die on Stilgar’s knife…. instead they would be a happy family.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Emperor Leto II and his wife Empress Lily stood on the dais once again, their son Harry and daughter Chani sitting on their small thrones behind them. On the step below stood Victor and Prince Farad'n Corrino, awaiting their brides for a double wedding. The young Corrino Prince had been spared as he had revealed his Mother’s plot to kill not only the twins but young Harry as well. He had banished his Mother from House Corrino for her actions and Leto had ordered her execution. Now he stood, smiling, as Ghanima approached him. Victor was smiling as young Rugi Potter walked towards him.

Harry smiled as he watched his second born daughter wed to young Victor. On his hip, little James watched everything with wide green eyes. His older sister Chalice stood in front of her mother Irulan, excited by all the pretty clothes. He looked over and smiled at Paul and Chani as they watched their youngest children marry. Chani was marrying for politics but it was obvious the young Corrino Prince was very intrigued by her and few doubted love would grow.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Paul sat on a dune, listening to the sounds of the desert around him, smiling as he sensed the silent approach. Harry knelt on the sand beside him. “I owe you everything my friend.”

“There is no debt between family Paul. I just wish I could have done more for you.”

“I see well enough.” There had been some improvement in his vision over the years but it had never fully returned. “I hear we are to be grandparents again soon.”

“Rugi is pregnant with a daughter. She confirmed it today before I left the Keep.”

“I never saw any of this, all because I couldn’t see you.” Paul smiled. “I am glad you came to us. This future is far better than any I ever saw.”

The end of Desert Planet.

Harry hid Chani and Paul with the Fidelius, allowing them to finally live in peace and anonymity. This way they got to also be part of their children and grandchildren’s lives.