minutes behind them. The low light created barriers of dust reflection which twisted and lifted and dipped in the unceasing wind. His senses filtered out the wind that he might hear other things Siona's heaving breaths, the tumble of a small sandspill from the rocks beside them, his own gross body grating in the thin sand cover.
Siona peeled her face mask aside but held it in her hand for quick restoration.
'How much longer until we find water?' she asked.
'Three nights.'
'Is there a better direction to go?'
'No.'
She had come to appreciate the Fremen economy with important information. She sipped greedily at a few drops in her catchpocket.
Leto recognized the message of her movements-familiar gestures for Fremen in extremis. Siona was now fully aware of a common experience among her ancestors patiyeh, the thirst at the edge of death.
The few drops in her catchpocket were gone. He heard her sucking air. She restored the mask and spoke in a muffed voice.
'I won't make it, will I?'
Leto looked into her eyes, seeing there the clarity of thought brought on by the nearness of death, a penetrating awareness seldom otherwise achieved. It amplified only that which was required for survival. Yes, she was well into the tedah riagrimi, the agony which opens the mind. Soon, she would have to make that ultimate decision which she yet believed she had already made. Leto knew by the signs that he was required to treat Siona now with extreme courtesy. He would have to answer every question with candor for in every question lurked a judgment.
'Will I?' she insisted.
There was still a trace of hope in her desperation.
'Nothing is certain,' he said.
This dropped her into despair.
That had not been Leto's intention, but he knew that it often happened-an accurate, though ambiguous, answer was taken as confirmation of one's deepest fears.
She sighed.
Her mask-muffled voice probed at him once more. 'You had some special intention for me in your breeding program.'
It was not a question.
'All people have intentions,' he told her.
'But you wanted my full agreement.'
'That is true.'
'How could you expect agreement when you know I hate everything about you? Be honest with me!'
'The three legs of the agreement-tripod are desire, data and doubt. Accuracy and honesty have little to do with it.'
'Please don't argue with me. You know I'm dying.'
'I respect you too much to argue with you.'
He lifted his front segments slightly then, probing the wind. It already was beginning to bring the day's heat but there was too much moisture in it for his comfort. He was reminded that the more he ordered the weather controlled, the more there was that required control. Absolutes only brought him closer to vagueries.
'You say you're not arguing, but..
.'
'Argument closes off the doors of the senses,' he said, lowering himself back to the surface. 'It always masks violence. Continued too long, argument always leads to violence. I have no violent intentions toward you.'
'What do you mean-desire, data and doubt?'
'Desire brings the participants together. Data set the limits of their dialogue. Doubt frames the questions.'
She moved closer to stare directly into his face from less than a meter away.
How odd, he thought, that hatred could be mingled so completely with hope and fear and awe.
'Could you save me?'
'There is a way.'
She nodded and he knew she had leaped to the wrong conclusion.
'You want to trade that for my agreement!' she accused.
'No.'
'If I pass your test...'
'It is not my test.'
'Whose?'
'It derives from our common ancestors.'
Siona sank to a sitting position on the cold rock and remained silent, not yet ready to ask for a resting place within the lip of his warm front segment. Leto thought he could hear the soft scream waiting in her throat. Now, her doubts were at work. She was beginning to wonder if he really could be fitted into her image of Ultimate Tyrant. She looked up at him with that terrible clarity he had identified in her.
'What makes you do what you do?'
The question was well framed. He said: 'My need to save the people.'
'What people?'
'My definition is much broader than that of anyone else even of the Bene Gesserit, who think they have defined what it is to be human. I refer to the eternal thread of all humankind by whatever definition.'
'You're trying to tell me...' Her mouth became too dry for speaking. She tried to accumulate saliva. He saw the movements within her face mask. Her question was obvious, though, and he did not wait.
'Without me there would have been by now no people anywhere, none whatsoever. And the path to that extinction was more hideous than your wildest imaginings.'
'Your supposed prescience,' she sneered.
'The Golden Path still stands open,' he said.
'I don't trust you!'
'Because we are not equals?'
'Yes!'
'But we're interdependent.'
'What need have you for me?'
Ahhh, the cry of youth unsure of its niche. He felt the strength within the secret bonds of dependency and forced himself to be hard. Dependency fosters weakness!
'You are the Golden Path,' he said.
'Me?' It was barely a whisper.
'You've read those journals you stole from me,' he said. 'I am in them, but where are you? Look at what I have created, Siona. And you, you can create nothing except yourself.'
'Words, more tricky words!'
'I do not suffer from being worshipped, Siona. I suffer from never being appreciated. Perhaps...No, I dare not hope for you.'
'What's the purpose of those journals?'
'An Ixian machine records them. They are. to be found on a faraway day. They will make people think.'
'An Ixian machine? You defy the Jihad!'
'There's a lesson in that, too. What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking-there's the real danger. Look at how long you walked across this desert without thinking about your face mask.'
'You could have warned me!'
'And increased your dependency.'
