'To enjoy long life? No.'
'I don't see how anyone could make such a choice,' she muttered. Then louder: 'Never to know love...'
'You're playing the fool!' he said. 'You don't mean love, you mean sex.'
She shrugged.
'You think the most terrible thing I gave up was sex? No, the greatest loss was something far different.'
'What?' She asked it reluctantly, betraying how deeply he touched her.
'I cannot walk among my fellows without their special notice. I am no longer one of you. I am alone. Love? Many people love me, but my shape keeps us apart. We are separated, Siona, by a gulf that no other human dares to bridge.'
'Not even your Ixian woman?'
'Yes, she would if she could, but she cannot. She's not an Atreides.'
'You mean that I... could?' She touched her breast with a finger.
'If there were enough sandtrout around. Unfortunately, all of them enclose my flesh. However, if I were to die...'
She shook her head in dumb horror at the thought.
'The Oral History tells it accurately,' he said. 'And we must never forget that you believe the Oral History.'
She continued to shake her head from side to side.
'There's no secret about it,' he said. 'The first moments of the transformation are the critical ones. Your awareness must drive inward and outward simultaneously, one with Infinity. I could provide you with enough melange to accomplish this. Given enough spice, you can live through those first awful moments... and all the other moments.'
She shuddered uncontrollably, her gaze fixed on his eyes.
'You know I'm telling you the truth, don't you?'
She nodded, inhaled a deep trembling breath, then: 'Why did you do it?'
'The alternative was far more horrible.'
'What alternative?'
'In time, you may understand it. Moneo did.'
'Your damned Golden Path!'
'Not damned at all. Quite holy.'
'You think I'm a fool who can't...'
'I think you're inexperienced, but possessed of great capability whose potential you do not even suspect.'
She took three deep breaths and regained some of her composure, then: 'If you can't mate with the Ixian, what...'
'Child, why do you persist in misunderstanding? It's not sex. Before Hwi, I could not pair. I had no other like me. In all of the cosmic void, I was the only one.'
'She's like... you?'
'Deliberately so. The lxians made her that way.'
'Made her...'
'Don't be a complete fool!' he snapped. 'She is the essential god-trap. Even the victim cannot reject her.'
'Why do you tell me these things?' she whispered.
'You stole two copies of my journals,' he said. 'You've read the Guild translations and you already know what could catch me.'
'You knew?'
He saw boldness return to her stance, a sense of her own power. 'Of course you knew,' she said, answering her own question.
'It was my secret,' he said. 'You cannot imagine how many times I have loved a companion and seen that companion slip away... as your father is slipping away now.'
'You love... him?'
'And I loved your mother. Sometimes they go quickly; sometimes with agonizing slowness. Each time I am wracked. I can play callous and I can make the necessary decisions, even decisions which kill, but I cannot escape the suffering. For a long, long time-those journals you stole tell it truly-that was the only emotion I knew.'
He saw the moistness in her eyes, but the line of her jaw still spoke of angry resolution.
'None of this gives you the right to govern,' she said.
Leto suppressed a smile. At last they were down to the root of Siona's rebellion.
By what right? Where is justice in my rule? By imposing my rules upon them with the weight of Fish Speaker arms, am I being fair to the evolutionary thrust of humankind? I know all of the revolutionary cant, the catch- prattle and the resounding phrases.
'Nowhere do you see your own rebellious hand in the power I wield,' he said.
Her youth still demanded its moment.
'I never chose you to govern,' she said.
'But you strengthen me.'
'How?'
'By opposing me. I sharpen my claws on the likes of you.'
She shot a sudden glance at his hands.
'A figure of speech,' he said.
'So I've offended you at last,' she said, hearing only the cutting anger in his words and tone.
'You've not offended me. We're related and can speak bluntly to each other within the family. The fact is, I have much more to fear from you than you from me.'
This took her aback, but only momentarily. He saw belief stiffen her shoulders, then doubt. Her chin lowered and she peered upward at him.
'What could the great God Leto fear from me?'
'Your ignorant violence.'
'Are you saying that you're physically vulnerable?'
'I will not warn you again, Siona. There are limits to the word games I will play. You and the lxians both know that it's the ones I love who are physically vulnerable. Soon, most of the Empire will know it. This is the kind of information which travels fast.'
'And they'll all ask what right you have to rule!'
There was glee in her voice. It aroused an abrupt anger in Leto. He found it difficult to suppress. This was a side of human emotions he detested. Gloating! It was some time before he dared answer, then he chose to slash through her defenses at the vulnerability he already had seen.
'I rule by the right of loneliness, Siona. My loneliness is part-freedom and part-slavery. It says I cannot be bought by any human group. My slavery to you says that I will serve all of you to the best of my lordly abilities.'
'But the lxians have caught you!' she said.
'No. They have given me a gift which strengthens me.'
'It weakens you!'
'That, too,' he admitted. 'But very powerful forces still obey me.'
'Ohhh, yes.' she nodded. 'I understand that.'
'You don't understand it.'
'Then I'm sure you'll explain it to me,' she taunted.
He spoke so softly that she had to lean toward him to hear: 'There are no others of any kind anywhere who can call upon me for anything-not for sharing, not for compromise, not even for the slightest beginning of another government. I am the only one.'
'Not even this Ixian woman can...'
