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There is no guilt or innocence in you All of that is past Guilt belabors the dead and I am not the Iron Hammer You multitude of the dead are s, and the s illuminates my path -Leto II to His Memory-Lives, After Harq al-Ada
"It moves of itself!" Farad&039;n said, and his voice was barely a whisper
He stood above the Lady Jessica&039;s bed, a brace of guards close behind him The Lady Jessica had propped herself up in the bed She was clad in a parasilk gown of shi band around her copper hair Farad&039;n had corey leotard and his face eaty with exciteh the palace corridors
"What time is it?" Jessica asked
"Tiuards spoke up: "It is the third hour past lanced fearfully at Farad&039;n The young prince had co up startled guards in his wake
"But it moves," Farad&039;n said He held out his left hand, then his right "I saw my own hands shrink into chubby fists, and I remembered! They werean infant, but it was a clearer ood," Jessica said His excitement was infectious "And what happened when your hands becaish," he said "I felt an ache in ht here" He touched a place over his left kidney
"You&039;ve learned a most important lesson," Jessica said "Do you knohat that lesson is?"
He dropped his hands to his sides, stared at her Then: "My littered, and he repeated it, louder this ti of prana-bindu balance," Jessica said "It is only the beginning, though"
"What do I do next?" he asked
"My Lady," the guard who had answered her question ventured now to interrupt "The hour," he said
Aren&039;t their spy posts one We have work to do"
"But My Lady," the guard said, and he looked fearfully frooing to seduce hihed, a joyous outburst He waved a hand in disuards looked at each other, but they obeyed
Farad&039;n sat on the edge of her bed "What next?" He shook his head "I wanted to believe you, yet I did not believe Then it was as though ainst you It happened Just like that!" He snapped his fingers
"It was not ainst," Jessica said
"Of course not," he adainst myself, all the nonsense I&039;ve learned What next now?"
Jessica smiled "I confess I didn&039;t expect you to succeed this rapidly It&039;s been only eight days and"
"I was patient," he said, grinning
"And you&039;ve begun to learn patience, too," she said
"Begun?"
"You&039;ve just crept over the lip of this learning," she said "Now you&039;re truly an infant Before you were only a potential, not even born"
The corners of his loomy," she said "You&039;ve done it That&039;s important How many can say they were born anew?"
"What co you&039;ve learned," she said "I want you able to do this at will, easily Later you&039;ll fill a new place in your awareness which this has opened It will be filled by the ability to test any reality against your own demands"
"Is that all I do now practice the -"
"No Now you can begin theTell me, can youany other muscle of your body?"
"My" She saw a distant expression come over his face as he tried toat it Sweat broke out on his forehead A deep breath escaped him "I can&039;t do it"
"Yes you can," she said "You will learn to do it You will learn every muscle in your body You will know these muscles the way you know your hands"
He sed hard at theto me? What is your plan for me?"
"I intend to turn you loose upon the universe," she said "You will become whatever it is you most deeply desire"
He mulled this for a moment "Whatever I desire?"
"Yes"
"That&039;s impossible!"
"Unless you learn to control your desires the way you control your reality," she said And she thought: There! Let his analysis examine that They&039;ll advise cautious approval, but Farad&039;n will move a step closer to realization of what I&039;: "It&039;s one thing to tell a person he&039;ll realize his heart&039;s desire It&039;s another thing to actually deliver that realization"
"You&039;ve coood I pro, you&039;ll be your own man Whatever you do, it&039;ll be because that&039;s what you want to do"
And let a Truthsayer try to pry that apart, she thought
He stood up, but the expression he bent upon her arm, a sense of camaraderie in it "You know, I believe you Damned if I knohy, but I do And I won&039;t say a word about the other things I&039; back as he let hilobes, lay back This Farad&039;n was a deep one He&039;d as n, but he was joining her conspiracy of his own volition
Wait until he begins to learn his own eht With that, she composed herself for the return to sleep The ued by casual encounters with palace personnel asking seeoes through a speedup of its affairs, thereby experiencing the race between the renewable vitality of the living and the beckoning vitiation of decadence In this periodic race, any pause becomes luxury Only then can one reflect that all is permitted; all is possible -The Apocrypha of Muad&039;Dib
The touch of sand is irit beneath him where he sat beneath a brilliant sky They had force-fed hie, and Leto&039;s mind turned upon itself like a whirlpool An unanswered question lay deep within the funnel of the whirlpool: Why do they insist that I say it? Gurney was stubborn; no doubt of that And he&039;d had his orders froht hiht for this "lesson" He had the strange sensation that he&039;d let his body take the short trip fro mediated a battle between the Duke Leto I and the old Baron Harkonnen They&039;d fought within hih hiht had taught hiht to fear the spice trip, he thought
A welling bitterness toward the Lady Jessica filled hiht it and win, or die in the atteainst his neck, but she could send hihter
Snuffling sounds intruded upon his awareness They wavered, growing louder, then softer, louder softer There was no way for him to determine whether they had current reality or caed over his folded ar directly in front of hi: Na bubbles ripple there His awareness drifted on its own current through a landscape which stretched out to a horizon of shock-headed greenery
His skull thrummed with dru which filled his senses, crowding out awareness of flesh until he could only feel theshadows of his peril Namri and the knife Pressure pressure Leto lay at last suspended between sky and sand, histo happen, sensing that any occurrence would be a first-and-only thing
Hot-hot pounding sunshine crashed brilliantly around him, without tranquillity, without res crawled Everywhere My skin is not ging other-person responses
Up head, he told his nerves
A head which ht have been his own crept upward, looked out at patches of blankness in the bright light
Someone whispered: "He&039;s deep into it now"
No answer
Burn fire sun building heat on heat
Slowly, outbending, the current of his awareness took hireen blankness and there, across low folding dunes, distant no more than a kilometer beyond the stretched out chalk line of a cliff, there lay the green burgeoning future, upflung, flowing into endless green, greenswelling, green-green reen there was not one great worrowth, but nowhere Shai-Hulud
Leto sensed that he had ventured across old boundaries into a new land which only the iination had witnessed, and that he looked now directly through the very next veil which a yawning humankind called Unknown
It was bloodthirsty reality
He felt the red fruit of his life swaying on a li away froh his veins
Without Shai-Hulud, no rey worm-serpent of Dune He knew this, yet could not tear hie
Abruptly his awareness plunged back - back, back, away frohts went into his bowels, beco primitive, moved only by intense emotions He found himself unable to focus on any particular aspect of his vision or his surroundings, but there was a voice within hie and he understood it perfectly The voice was eoned him
"It is not the present which influences the future, thou fool, but the future which forms the present You have it all backward Since the future is set, an unfolding of events which will assure that future is fixed and inevitable"