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Leto peered back over his shoulder at Ghani and its lyrics, but he felt a sudden onset of awe at the singleness of their twinned lives One of them could die and yet remain alive in the other&039;s consciousness, every shared htened by the tiaze away froaps, he knew His fear arose fro to separate and wondered: How can I tell her of this thing which has happened only tothe deep shadows behind the barachans - those high, crescent-shaped ratory dunes which moved like waves around Arrakis This was Kedem, the inner desert, and its dunes were rarely iant worress Sunset drew bloody streaks over the dunes, i from the crie in flight

Directly beneath hireens, watered by a qanat which flowed partly in the open, partly in covered tunnels The water cahest point of rock The green flag of the Atreides flew openly there

Water and green

The new syreen

A diah perch, focusing his attention into sharp Frehtbird came from the cliff below him, and it amplified the sensation that he lived this e tout cela, he thought, falling easily into one of the ancient tongues which he and Ghanihed Oublier je ne puis "I cannot forget"

Beyond the oasis, he could see in this failing light the land Frerows, the land never fertile Water and the great ecological plan were changing that There were places now on Arrakis where one could see the plush green velvet of forested hills Forests on Arrakis! Soine dunes beneath those undulant green hills To such young eyes there was no shock value in seeing the flat foliage of rain trees But Leto found hie, fearful in the presence of the new

He said: "The children tell me they seldom find sandtrout here near the surface anymore"

"What&039;s that supposed to indicate?" Ghaniinning to change very swiftly," he said

Again the bird chiht fell upon the desert as the hawk had fallen upon the partridge Night often subjected him to an assault offor their moment Ghanima didn&039;t object to this phenoh, and he felt her hand touch his shoulder in syry chord fro to hi out their ancient uor, the colors ofjoys of s on planets which no longer existed, green dances and firelight, wails and halloos, a harvest of conversations without nuhtfall in the open

"Shouldn&039;t we be going in?" she asked

He shook his head, and she felt theat last that his troubles went deeper than she had suspected

Why do I so often greet the night out here? he asked himself He did not feel Ghanima withdraw her hand

"You knohy you torentle chiding in her voice Yes, he knew The answer lay there in his awareness, obvious: Because that great known-unknoithinof his past as though he rode a surfboard He had his father&039;s ti else, yet he wanted all of those pasts He wanted theerous He knew that co which he would have to tell Ghaniht of First Moon He stared out at the false i into infinity To his left, in the near distance, lay The Attendant, a rock outcropping which sandblast winds had reduced to a low, sinuous shape like a dark worh the dunes Someday the rock beneath him would be cut down to such a shape and Sietch Tabr would be no more, except in the memories of someone like himself He did not doubt that there would be so at The Attendant?" Ghaniuardians&039; orders, he and Ghanima often went to The Attendant They had discovered a secret hiding place there, and Leto knehy that place lured them

Beneath him, its distance foreshortened by darkness, an open stretch of qanat gleaht; its surface rippled with movements of predator fish which Fremen always planted in their stored water to keep out the sandtrout

"I stand between fish and worm," he murmured

"What?"

He repeated it louder

She put a hand to herwhich moved him Her father had acted thus; she had but to peer inward and compare

Leto shuddered Memories which fastened him to places his flesh had never known presented him with answers to questions he had not asked He saw relationships and unfolding events against a gigantic inner screen The sandworm of Dune would not cross water; water poisoned it Yet water had been known here in prehistoric tione lakes and seas Wells, deep-drilled, found water which sandtrout sealed off As clearly as if he&039;d witnessed the events, he sahat had happened on this planet and it filled hies which hu

His voice barely above a whisper, he said: "I knohat happened, Ghanima"

She bent close to him "Yes?"

"The sandtrout"

He fell silent and she wondered why he kept referring to the haploid phase of the planet&039;s giant sandworm, but she dared not prod him

"The sandtrout," he repeated, "was introduced here from some other place This was a wet planet then They proliferated beyond the capability of existing ecosystems to deal with them Sandtrout encysted the available free water, made this a desert planet and they did it to survive In a planet sufficiently dry, they could move to their sandwor hiathered such inforht: Sandtrout? Many tialovethem to the deathstill for their water It was difficult to think of this mindless little creature as a shaper of enormous events

Leto nodded to himself Fremen had always known to plant predator fish in their water cisterns The haploid sandtrout actively resisted great accumulations of water near the planet&039;s surface; predators swam in that qanat below him Their sandworm vector could handle se by hue bodies of water, their chemical factories ild, exploded in the death-transfore concentrate, the ulti ey That pure concentrate had taken Paul Muad&039;Dib through the walls of Time, deep into the well of dissolution which no otherwhere he sat in front of her "What have you done?" she demanded

But he would not leave his own train of revelation "Fewer sandtrout - the ecological transformation of the planet"

"They resist it, of course," she said, and now she began to understand the fear in his voice, drawn into this thing against her will

"When the sandtrout go, so do all the worms," he said "The tribes must be warned"

"No h points of the syste over human intrusion into Dune&039;s ancient relationships

"It&039;s the thing Alia knows," he said "It&039;s why she gloats"

"How can you be sure of that?"

"I&039;m sure"

Now she knew for certain what disturbed hie chill her

"The tribes won&039;t believe us if she denies it," he said

His statement went to the primary problem of their existence: What Fre farther and farther fro each day, played upon this

"We ar," Ghanima said

As one, their heads turned and they stared out over the ed by just a few moments of awareness Human interplay with that environment had never been ral parts of a dynamic system held in delicately balanced order The new outlook involved a real change of consciousness which flooded them with observations As Liet-Kynes had said, the universe was a place of constant conversation between animal populations The haploid sandtrout had spoken to them as human animals

"The tribes would understand a threat to water," Leto said

"But it&039;s a threat tothe deeperof his words Water was the ultimate power symbol on Arrakis At their roots Freovernance experts under conditions of stress And as water becae symbol transfer came over them even while they understood the old necessities

"You mean a threat to power," she corrected him

"Of course"

"But will they believe us?"

"If they see it happening, if they see the imbalance"

"Balance," she said, and repeated her father&039;s words frouishes a people from a mob"

Her words called up their father in him and he said: "Econohed, looked over his shoulder at her "I&039;asp escaped her

He said: "When Stilgar told us our grandmother was delayed - I already knew that moment Now my other dreams are suspect"

"Leto" She shook her head, eyes daht be -"

"I&039;ve drea across the dunes," he said "And I&039;ve been to Jacurutu"

"Jacu" She cleared her throat "That old myth!"

"A real place Ghani! I must find this man they call The Preacher I must find him and question him"

"You think he&039;s our father?"

"Ask yourself that question"

"It&039;d be just like his I know I&039;ll do," he said "For the first time in my life I understand hts, said: "The Preacher&039;s probably just an old mystic"

"I pray for that," he whispered "Oh, how I pray for that!" He rocked forward, got to his feet The baliset hummed in his hand as he moved "Would that he were only Gabriel without a horn" He stared silently at the moonlit desert

She turned to look where he looked, saw the foxfire glow of rotting vegetation at the edge of the sietch plantings, then the clean blending into lines of dunes That was a living place out there Even when the desert slept, so re ani at the qanat Leto&039;s revelation had transfor e, an instant in which to feel that long movement from their Terranic past, all of it encapsulated in her memories