She covered her ears with her hands, thinking: I'm not prescient! The trance doesn't work for me!
But the voice persisted: "It might work, if you had help."
"No... no," she whispered.
Other voices wove around her mind: "I, Agamemnon, your ancestor, demand audience!"
"No... no. "She pressed her hands against her ears until the flesh answered her with pain.
An insane cackle within her head asked: "What has become of Ovid? Simple. He's John Bartlett's ibid!"
The names were meaningless in her extremity. She wanted to scream against them and against all the other voices but could not find her own voice.
Her guard, sent back to the roof by senior attendants, peered once more from the doorway behind the mimosa, saw Alia on the bench, spoke to a companion: "Ahhh, she is resting. You noted that she didn't sleep well last night. It is good for her to take the zaha, the morning siesta."
Alia did not hear her guard. Her awareness was caught by shrieks of singing: "Merry old birds are we, hurrah!" the voices echoed against the inside of her skull and she thought: I'm going insane. I'm losing my mind.
Her feet made feeble fleeing motions against the bench. She felt that if she could only command her body to run, she might escape. She had to escape lest any part of that inner tide sweep her into silence, forever contaminating her soul. But her body would not obey. The mightiest forces in the Imperial universe would obey her slightest whim, but her body would not.
An inner voice chuckled. Then: "From one viewpoint, child, each incident of creation represents a catastrophe." It was a basso voice which rumbled against her eyes, and again that chuckle as though deriding its own pontification. "My dear child, I will help you, but you must help me in return."
Against the swelling background clamor behind that basso voice, Alia spoke through chattering teeth: "Who... who..."
A face formed itself upon her awareness. It was a smiling face of such fatness that it could have been a baby's except for the glittering eagerness of the eyes. She tried to pull back, but achieved only a longer view which included the body attached to that face. The body was grossly, immensely fat, clothed in a robe which revealed by subtle bulges beneath it that this fat had required the support of portable suspensors.
"You see," the basso voice rumbled, "it is only your maternal grandfather. You know me. I was the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen."
"You're... you're dead!" she gasped.
"But, of course, my dear! Most of us within you are dead. But none of the others are really willing to help you. They don't understand you."
"Go away," she pleaded. "Oh, please go away."
"But you need help, granddaughter," the Baron's voice argued.
How remarkable he looks, she thought, watching the projection of the Baron against her closed eyelids.
"I'm willing to help you," the Baron wheedled. "The others in here would only fight to take over your entire consciousness. Any one of them would try to drive you out. But me... I want only a little corner of my own."
Again the other lives within her lifted their clamor. The tide once more threatened to engulf her and she heard her mother's voice screeching. And Alia thought: She's not dead.
"Shut up!" the Baron commanded.
Alia felt her own desires reinforcing that command, making it felt throughout her awareness.
Inner silence washed through her like a cool bath and she felt her hammering heart begin slowing to its normal pace. Soothingly the Baron's voice intruded: "You see? Together, we're invincible. You help me and I help you."
"What... what do you want?" she whispered.
A pensive look came over the fat face against her closed eyelids. "Ahhh, my darling granddaughter," he said, "I wish only a few simple pleasures. Give me but an occasional moment of contact with your senses. No one else need ever know. Let me feel but a small corner of your life when, for example, you are enfolded in the arms of your lover. Is that not a small price to ask?"
"Y-yes."
"Good, good," the Baron chortled. "In return, my darling granddaughter, I can serve you in many ways. I can advise you, help you with my counsel. You will be invincible within and without. You will sweep away all opposition. History will forget your brother and cherish you. The future will be yours."
"You... won't let... the... the others take over?"
"They cannot stand against us! Singly we can be overcome, but together we command. I will demonstrate. Listen."
And the Baron fell silent, withdrawing his image, his inner presence. Not one memory, face, or voice of the other lives intruded.
Alia allowed herself a trembling sigh.
Accompanying that sigh came a thought. It forced itself into her awareness as though it were her own, but she sensed silent voices behind it.
The old Baron was evil. He murdered your father. He would've killed you and Paul. He tried to and failed.
The Baron's voice came to her without a face: "Of course I would've killed you. Didn't you stand in my way? But that argument is ended. You've won it, child! You're the new truth."
She felt herself nodding and her cheek moved scratchingly against the harsh surface of the bench.
His words were reasonable, she thought. A Bene Gesserit precept reinforced the reasonable character of his words: "The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth."
Yes... that was the way the Bene Gesserit would have it.
"Precisely!" the Baron said. "And I am dead while you are alive. I have only a fragile existence. I'm a mere memory-self within you. I am yours to command. And how little I ask in return for the profound advice which is mine to deliver."
"What do you advise me to do now?" she asked, testing.
"You're worried about the judgment you gave last night," he said. "You wonder if Paymon's words were reported truthfully. Perhaps Javid saw in this Paymon a threat to his position of trust. Is this not the doubt which assails you?"
"Y-yes."
"And your doubt is based on acute observation, is it not? Javid behaves with increasing intimacy toward your person. Even Duncan has noted it, hasn't he?"
"You know he has."
"Very well, then. Take Javid for your lover and -"
"No!"
"You worry about Duncan? But your husband is a mentat mystic. He cannot be touched or harmed by activities of the flesh. Have you not felt sometimes how distant he is from you?"
"B-but he..."
"Duncan's mentat part would understand should he ever have need to know the device you employed in destroying Javid."
"Destroy..."
"Certainly! Dangerous tools may be used, but they should be cast aside when they grow too dangerous."
"Then... why should... I mean..."
"Ahhh, you precious dunce! Because of the value contained in the lesson."
"I don't understand."
"Values, my dear grandchild, depend for their acceptance upon their success. Javid's obedience must be unconditional, his acceptance of your authority absolute, and his -"
"The morality of this lesson escapes -"
"Don't be dense, grandchild! Morality must always be based on practicality. Render unto Caesar and all that nonsense. A victory is useless unless it reflects your deepest wishes. Is it not true that you have admired Javid's manliness?"
Alia swallowed, hating the admission, but forced to it by her complete nakedness before the inner-watcher. "Ye-es."
"Good!" How jovial the word sounded within her head. "Now we begin to understand each other. When you have him helpless, then, in your bed, convinced that you are his thrall, you will ask him about Paymon. Do it jokingly: a rich laugh between you. And when he admits the deception, you will slip a crysknife between his ribs. Ahhh, the flow of blood can add so much to your satis -"
"No," she whispered, her mouth dry with horror. "No... no... no..."
"Then I will do it for you," the Baron argued. "It must be done; you admit that. If you but set up the conditions, I will assume temporary sway over..."
"No!"
"Your fear is so transparent, granddaughter. My sway of your senses cannot be else but temporary. There are others, now, who could mimic you to a perfection that... But you know this. With me, ahhh, people would spy out my presence immediately. You know the Fremen Law for those possessed. You'd be slain out of hand. Yes - even you. And you know I do not want that to happen. I'll take care of Javid for you and, once it's done, I'll step aside. You need only..."
"How is this good advice?"
"It rids you of a dangerous tool. And, child, it sets up the working relationship between us, a relationship which can only teach you well about future judgments which -"
"Teach me?"
"Naturally!"
Alia put her hands over her eyes, trying to think, knowing that any thought might be known to this presence within her, that a thought might originate with that presence and be taken as her own.
"You worry yourself needlessly," the Baron wheedled. "This Paymon fellow, now, was -"
"What I did was wrong! I was tired and acted hastily. I should've sought confirmation of -"
"You did right! Your judgments cannot be based on any such foolish abstract as that Atreides notion of equality. That's what kept you sleepless, not Paymon's death. You made a good decision! He was another dangerous tool. You acted to maintain order in your society. Now there's a good reason for judgments, not this justice nonsense! There's no such thing as equal justice anywhere. It's unsettling to a society when you try to achieve such a false balance."
Alia felt pleasure at this defense of her judgment against Paymon, but shocked at the amoral concept behind the argument. "Equal justice was an Atreides... was... " She took her hands from her eyes, but kept her eyes closed.
"All of your priestly judges should be admonished about this error," the Baron argued. "Decisions must be weighed only as to their merit in maintaining an orderly society. Past civilizations without number have foundered on the rocks of equal justice. Such foolishness destroys the natural hierarchies which are far more important. Any individual takes on significance only in his relationship to your total society. Unless that society be ordered in logical steps, no one can find a place in it - not the lowliest or the highest. Come, come, grandchild! You must be the stern mother of your people. It's your duty to maintain order."
"Everything Paul did was to..."
"Your brother's dead, a failure!"
"So are you!"
"True... but with me it was an accident beyond my designing. Come now, let us take care of this Javid as I have outlined for you."
She felt her body grow warm at the thought, spoke quickly: "I must think about it." And she thought: If it's done, it'll be only to put Javid in his place. No need to kill him for that. And the fool might just give himself away... in my bed.
"To whom do you talk, My Lady?" a voice asked.
For a confused moment, Alia thought this another intrusion by those clamorous multitudes within, but recognition of the voice opened her eyes. Ziarenka Valefor, chief of Alia's guardian amazons, stood beside the bench, a worried frown on her weathered Fremen features.
"I speak to my inner voices," Alia said, sitting up on the bench. She felt refreshed, buoyed up by the silencing of that distracting inner clamor.
"Your inner voices, My Lady. Yes." Ziarenka's eyes glistened at this information. Everyone knew the Holy Alia drew upon inner resources available to no other person.
"Bring Javid to my quarters," Alia said. "There's a serious matter I must discuss with him."
"To your quarters, My Lady?"
"Yes! To my private chamber."
"As My Lady commands." The guard turned to obey.
"One moment," Alia said. "Has Master Idaho already gone to Sietch Tabr?"
"Yes, My Lady. He left before dawn as you instructed. Do you wish me to send for..."
"No. I will manage this myself. And Zia, no one must know that Javid is being brought to me. Do it yourself. This is a very serious matter."
The guard touched the crysknife at her waist. "My Lady, is there a threat to -"
"Yes, there's a threat, and Javid may be at the heart of it."
"Ohhh, My Lady, perhaps I should not bring -"
"Zia! Do you think me incapable of handling such a one?"
A lupine smile touched the guard's mouth. "Forgive me, My Lady. I will bring him to your private chamber at once, but... with My Lady's permission, I will mount guard outside your door."
"You only," Alia said.
"Yes, My Lady. I go at once."
Alia nodded to herself, watching Ziarenka's retreating back. Javid was not loved among her guards, then. Another mark against him. But he was still valuable - very valuable. He was her key to Jacurutu and with that place, well...
"Perhaps you were right, Baron," she whispered.
"You see!" the voice within her chortled. "Ahhh, this will be a pleasant service to you, child, and it's only the beginning..."
***
"I am called Muriz," the leathery Fremen said.
He sat on cavern rock in the glow of a spice lamp whose fluttering light revealed damp walls and dark holes which were passages from this place. Sounds of dripping water could be heard down one of those passages and, although water sounds were essential to the Fremen paradise, the six bound men facing Muriz took no pleasure from the rhythmic dripping. There was the musty smell of a deathstill in the chamber.
A youth of perhaps fourteen standard years came out of the passage and stood at Muriz's left hand. An unsheathed crysknife reflected pale yellow from the spice lamp as the youth lifted the blade and pointed it briefly at each of the bound men.
With a gesture toward the youth, Muriz said: "This is my son, Assan Tariq, who is about to undergo his test of manhood."
Muriz cleared his throat, stared once at each of the six captives. They sat in a loose semicircle across from him, tightly restrained with spice-fiber ropes which held their legs crossed, their hands behind them. The bindings terminated in a tight noose at each man's throat. Their stillsuits had been cut away at the neck.
The bound men stared back at Muriz without flinching. Two of them wore loose off-world garments which marked them as wealthy residents of an Arrakeen city. These two had skin which was smoother, lighter than that of their companions, whose sere features and bony frames marked them as desert-born.
Muriz resembled the desert dwellers, but his eyes were more deeply sunken, whiteless pits which not even the glow of the spicelamp touched. His son appeared an unformed copy of the man, with a flatness of face which did not quite hide the turmoil boiling within him.
"Among the Cast Out we have a special test for manhood," Muriz said. "One day my son will be a judge in Shuloch. We must know that he can act as he must. Our judges cannot forget Jacurutu and our day of despair. Kralizec, the Typhoon Struggle, lives in our hearts." It was all spoken with the flat intonation of ritual.
One of the soft-featured city dwellers across from Muriz stirred, said: "You do wrong to threaten us and bind us captive. We came peacefully on umma."
Muriz nodded. "You came in search of a personal religious awakening? Good. You shall have that awakening."
The soft-featured man said: "If we -"
Beside him a darker desert Fremen snapped: "Be silent, fool! These are the water stealers. These are the ones we thought we'd wiped out."
"That old story," the soft-featured captive said.
"Jacurutu is more than a story," Muriz said. Once more he gestured to his son. "I have presented Assan Tariq. I am arifa in this place, your only judge. My son, too, will be trained to detect demons. The old ways are best."
"That's why we came into the deep desert," the soft-featured man protested. "We chose the old way, wandering in -"
"With paid guides," Muriz said, gesturing to the darker captives. "You would buy your way into heaven?" Muriz glanced up at his son. "Assan, are you prepared?"
"I have reflected long upon that night when men came and murdered our people," Assan said. His voice projected an uneasy straining. "They owe us water."
"Your father gives you six of them," Muriz said. "Their water is ours. Their shades are yours, your guardians forevermore. Their shades will warn you of demons. They will be your slaves when you cross over into the alam al-mythal. What do you say, my son?"
"I thank my father," Assan said. He took a short step forward. "I accept manhood among the Cast Out. This water is our water."
As he finished speaking, the youth crossed to the captives. Starting on the left, he gripped the man's hair and drove the crysknife up under the chin into the brain. It was skillfully done to spill the minimum blood. Only the one soft-featured city Fremen protested, squalling as the youth grabbed his hair. The others spat at Assan Tariq in the old way, saying by this: "See how little I value my water when it is taken by animals!"
When it was done, Muriz clapped his hands once. Attendants came and began removing the bodies, taking them to the deathstill where they could be rendered for their water.
Muriz arose, looked at his son who stood breathing deeply, watching the attendants remove the bodies. "Now you are a man," Muriz said. "The water of our enemies will feed slaves. And, my son..."
Assan Tariq turned an alert and pouncing look upon his father. The youth's lips were drawn back in a tight smile.
"The Preacher must not know of this," Muriz said.
"I understand, father."
"You did it well," Muriz said. "Those who stumble upon Shuloch must not survive."
"As you say, father."
"You are trusted with important duties," Muriz said. "I am proud of you."
***
"How can we be sure?" Ghanima asked. "This is very dangerous."
"We've tested it before," Leto argued.
"It may not be the same this time. What if -"
"It's the only way open to us," Leto said. "You agree we can't go the way of the spice."
Ghanima sighed. She did not like this thrust and parry of words, but knew the necessity which pressed her brother. She also knew the fearful source of her own reluctance. They had but to look at Alia and know the perils of that inner world.
"Well?" Leto asked.
Again she sighed.
They sat cross-legged in one of their private places, a narrow opening from the cave to the cliff where often their mother and father had watched the sun set over the bled. It was two hours past the evening meal, a time when the twins were expected to exercise their bodies and their minds. They had chosen to flex their minds.
"I will try it alone if you refuse to help," Leto said.
Ghanima looked away from him toward the black hangings of the moisture seals which guarded this opening in the rock. Leto continued to stare out over the desert.
They had been speaking for some time in a language so ancient that even its name remained unknown in these times. The language gave their thoughts a privacy which no other human could penetrate. Even Alia, who avoided the intricacies of her inner world, lacked the mental linkages which would allow her to grasp any more than an occasional word.
Leto inhaled deeply, taking in the distinctive furry odor of a Fremen cavern-sietch which persisted in this windless alcove. The murmurous hubbub of the sietch and its damp heat were absent here, and both felt this as a relief.
"I agree we need guidance," Ghanima said. "But if we -"
"Ghani! We need more than guidance. We need protection."
"Perhaps there is no protection." She looked directly at her brother, met that gaze in his eyes like the waiting watchfulness of a predator. His eyes belied the placidity of his features.
"We must escape possession," Leto said. He used the special infinitive of the ancient language, a form strictly neutral in voice and tense but profoundly active in its implications.
Ghanima correctly interpreted his argument.
"Mohw'pwium d'mi hish pash moh'm ka," she intoned. The capture of my soul is the capture of a thousand souls.
"Much more than that," he countered.
"Knowing the dangers, you persist." She made it a statement, not a question.
"Wabun 'k wabunat!" he said. Rising, thou risest!
He felt his choice as an obvious necessity. Doing this thing, it were best done actively. They must wind the past into the present and allow it to unreel into their future.
"Muriyat," she conceded, her voice low. It must be done lovingly.
"Of course." He waved a hand to encompass total acceptance. "Then we will consult as our parents did."
Ghanima remained silent, tried to swallow past a lump in her throat. Instinctively she glanced south toward the great open erg which was showing a dim grey pattern of dunes in the last of the day's light. In that direction her father had gone on his last walk into the desert.
Leto stared downward over the cliff edge at the green of the sietch oasis. All was dusk down there, but he knew its shapes and colors: blossoms of copper, gold, red, yellow, rust, and russet spread right out to the rock markers which outlined the extent of the qanat-watered plantings. Beyond the rock markers stretched a stinking band of dead Arrakeen life, killed by foreign plants and too much water, now forming a barrier against the desert.
Presently Ghanima said: "I am ready. Let us begin."
"Yes, damn all!" He reached out, touched her arm to soften the exclamation, said, "Please, Ghani... Sing that song. It makes this easier for me."
Ghanima hitched herself closer to him, circled his waist with her left arm. She drew in two deep breaths, cleared her throat, and began singing in a clear piping voice the words her mother had so often sung for their father:
Her voice fell into the desert silence which even a whisper might despoil, and Leto felt himself sinking, sinking - becoming the father whose memories spread like an overlayer in the genes of his immediate past.
For this brief space, I must be Paul, he told himself. This is not Ghani beside me; it is my beloved Chani, whose wise counsel has saved us both many a time.
For her part, Ghanima had slipped into the persona-memory of her mother with frightening ease, as she had known she would. How much easier this was for the female - and how much more dangerous.
In a voice turned suddenly husky, Ghanima said: "Look there, beloved!" First Moon had risen and, against its cold light, they saw an arc of orange fire falling upward into space. The transport which had brought the Lady Jessica, laden now with spice, was returning to its mother-cluster in orbit.
The keenest of remembrances ran through Leto then, bringing memories like bright bell-sounds. For a flickering instant he was another Leto - Jessica's Duke. Necessity pushed those memories aside, but not before he felt the piercing of the love and the pain.
I must be Paul, he reminded himself.
The transformation came over him with a frightening duality, as though Leto were a dark screen against which his father was projected. He felt both his own flesh and his father's, and the flickering differences threatened to overcome him.
"Help me, father," he whispered.
The flickering disturbance passed and now there was another imprint upon his awareness, while his own identity as Leto stood at one side as an observer.
"My last vision has not yet come to pass," he said, and the voice was Paul's. He turned to Ghanima. "You know what I saw."
She touched his cheek with her right hand. "Did you walk into the desert to die, beloved? Is that what you did?"
"It may be that I did, but that vision... Would that not be reason enough to stay alive?"
"But blind?" she asked.
"Even so."
"Where could you go?"
He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Jacurutu."
"Beloved!" Tears began flowing down her cheeks.
"Muad'Dib, the hero, must be destroyed utterly," he said. "Otherwise this child cannot bring us back from chaos."
"The Golden Path," she said. "It is not a good vision."
"It's the only possible vision."
"Alia has failed, then..."
"Utterly. You see the record of it."
"Your mother has returned too late." She nodded, and it was Chani's wise expression on the childish face of Ghanima. "Could there not be another vision? Perhaps if -"
"No, beloved. Not yet. This child cannot peer into the future yet and return safely."
Again a shuddering breath disturbed his body, and Leto-observer felt the deep longing of his father to live once more in vital flesh, to make living decisions and... How desperate the need to unmake past mistakes!
"Father!" Leto called, and it was as though he shouted echoingly within his own skull.
It was a profound act of will which Leto felt then: the slow, clinging withdrawal of his father's internal presence, the release of senses and muscles.
"Beloved," Chani's voice whispered beside him, and the withdrawal slowed. "What is happening?"
"Don't go yet," Leto said, and it was his own voice, rasping and uncertain, still his own. Then: "Chani, you must tell us: How do we avoid... what has happened to Alia?"
It was Paul-within who answered him, though, with words which fell upon his inner ear, halting and with long pauses: "There is no certainty. You... saw... what almost... happened... with... me."
"But Alia..."
"The damned Baron has her!"
Leto felt his throat burning with dryness. "Is he... have I..."
"He's in you... but... I... we cannot... sometime we sense... each other, but you..."
"Can you not read my thoughts?" Leto asked. "Would you know then if... he..."
"Sometimes I can feel your thoughts... but I... we live only through... the... reflection of... your awareness. Your memory creates us. The danger... it is a precise memory. And... those of us... those of us who loved power... and gathered it at... any price... those can be... more precise."
"Stronger?" Leto whispered.
"Stronger."
"I know your vision," Leto said. "Rather than let him have me, I'll become you."
"Not that!"
Leto nodded to himself, sensing the enormous will-force his father had required to withdraw, recognizing the consequences of failure. Any possession reduced the possessed to Abomination. The recognition gave him a renewed sense of strength, and he felt his own body with abnormal acuteness and a deeply drawn awareness of past mistakes: his own and those of his ancestors. It was the uncertainties which weakened - he saw this now. For an instant, temptation warred with fear within him. This flesh possessed the ability to transform melange into a vision of the future. With the spice, he could breathe the future, shatter Time's veils. He found the temptation difficult to shed, clasped his hands and sank into the prana-bindu awareness. His flesh negated the temptation. His flesh wore the deep knowledge learned in blood by Paul. Those who sought the future hoped to gain the winning gamble on tomorrow's race. Instead they found themselves trapped into a lifetime whose every heartbeat and anguished wail was known. Paul's final vision had shown the precarious way out of that trap, and Leto knew now that he had no other choice but to follow that way.
"The joy of living, its beauty is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you," he said.
A soft voice whispered in his ear: "I've always known that beauty."
Leto turned his head, stared into Ghanima's eyes which glistened in the bright moonlight. He saw Chani looking back at him. "Mother," he said, "you must withdraw."
"Ahhh, the temptation!" she said, and kissed him.
He pushed her away. "Would you take your daughter's life?" he demanded.
"It's so easy... so foolishly easy," she said.
Leto, feeling panic begin to grip him, remembered what an effort of will his father's persona-within had required to abandon the flesh. Was Ghanima lost in that observer-world where he had watched and listened, learning what he had required from his father?
"I will despise you, mother," he said.
"Others won't despise me," she said. "Be my beloved."
"If I do... you know what you both will become," he said. "My father will despise you."