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"Tabr is still neutral territory," she said "Negotiations are continuing there right now Javid&039;s there with a delegation from the Priesthood But I&039;d like you at Tabr to watch thereed

But he saw in her eyes that she was rejecting him How transparent this Alia-creature had become!

She waved a hand "Go now, Duncan, before I soften and keep you here beside me I&039;ve missed you so"

"And I&039;ve rief to flow into his voice

She stared at him, startled by the sadness Then: "For ht: Too bad, Duncan She said: "Zia will take you to Tabr We need the &039;thopter back here"

Her pet aht: I must be careful of that one

"I understand," he said, onceit He stared at the dear flesh which once had been his Alia&039;s He could not bring himself to look at her face as he left Someone else stared back at him from her eyes

As hesense of unanswered questions Thefor the ns He waited beside the &039;thopter with one of the Keep&039;s aaze beyond the Shield Wall to Sietch Tabr Why does Zia takea &039;thopter is aspecial instructions?

Idaho glanced at the watchful guard, mounted to the pilot&039;s position in the &039;thopter He leaned out, said: "Tell Alia I&039;ll send the &039;thopter back iuard could protest he closed the door and started the &039;thopter He could see her standing there indecisively Who could question Alia&039;s consort? He had the &039;thopter airborne before she could make up her mind what to do

Now, alone in the &039;thopter, he allowed his grief to spend itself in great wracking sobs Alia was gone They had parted forever Tears flowed from his Tleilaxu eyes and he whispered: "Let all the waters of Dune flow into the sand They will not h, and he recognized it as such, forcing himself to sober assessment of present necessities The &039;thopter deht him some relief, and he had hiain And Irulan

Why had Zia been designated to accompany him? He made it a mentat problem and the answer chilled him I was to have a fatal accident

This rocky shrine to the skull of a ruler grants no prayers It has becorave of lamentations Only the wind hears the voice of this place The cries of night creatures and the passing wonder of two moons, all say his day has ended No one from the feast How bare the pathway down this mountain -Lines at the Shrine of an Atreides Duke, Anon

The thing had the deceptive appearance of si the vision, do that which has not been seen He knew the trap in his thought, how the casual threads of a locked future twisted therip on those threads Nowhere had he seen hi from Jacurutu The thread to Sabiha ht at the eastern edge of the rock which protected Jacurutu His Frey tablets and food He waited now for strength To the west lay Lake Azrak, the gypsum plain where once there&039;d been open water in the days before the wor of new settle upon the open bled To the south lay the Tanzerouft, the Land of Terror: thirty-eight hundred kilorass-locked dunes and windtraps to water the the landscape of Arrakis They were serviced by airborne teao south, he told himself Gurney will expect me to do that This was not the moment to do the completely unexpected

It would be dark soon and he could leave this te place He stared at the southern skyline There was a whistling of dun sky along that horizon, rolling there like s line of undulant dust - a stor up out of the Great Flat like a questing worm For a full minute he watched the center, saw that it did notleaped into his mind: When the center does not ed matters

For athe deceptive grey-tan peace of the desert evening, seeing the white gypsued by wind-rounded pebbles, the desolate e dust clouds Nowhere in any vision had he seen hirey serpent of a mother storm or buried too deeply in sand to survive There was only that vision of rolling in wind but thatacrossits world into submission It could be risked There were old stories, always heard from a friend of a friend, that one could lock an exhausted wor a Maker hook beneath one of its wide rings and, having immobilized it, ride out a storm in the leeward shadow There was a line between audacity and abandoned recklessness which teht at the earliest There was ti the final one?

Gurney will expect o south, but not into a stor a pathway, saw the fluent ebony brushstroke of a deep gorge curving through Jacurutu&039;s rock He saw sand curls in the bowels of the gorge, chihty runnels onto the plain as though it ater The gritty taste of thirst whispered in his mouth as he shouldered his Fremkit and let himself down onto the path which led into the canyon It was still light enough that hewith tiht of the central desert fell upon hiht his way toward the Tanzerouft He felt his heartbeat quicken with all of the fears which his wealth ofdown into Huanui-naa, as Frereatest storms: the Earth&039;s Deathstill But whatever came, it would be visionless Every step left farther behind hi awareness of his intuitive-creative nature with its unfolding to the motionless chain of causality For every hundred steps he took now, there must be at least one step aside, beyond words and into corasped internal reality

One way or another, father, I&039; to you

There were birds invisible in the rocks around hi themselves known by suide his here he could not see Often as he passed crannies hebecause they knew a store onto the desert Living sandof deep actions and latent fumaroles He looked back and up to the moon-touched lava caps on Jacurutu&039;s buttes The whole structure was meta to say in its own future He planted his thuainst the sand, took his position to watch and listen Unconsciously his right hand went to the Atreides hawk ring concealed in a knotted fold of his dishsasha Gurney had found it, but had left it What had he thought, seeing Paul&039;s ring?

Father, expect led in to avoid the rocks, not as large a wored its passage, planted his hooks, and went up the scaled side with a quick scra dust spray The worm turned easily under the pressure of his hooks The wind of its passage began to whip his robe He bent his gaze on the southern stars, diht into the storht and put off his esti out, gathering reat leap There&039;d be plenty of work for the ecological transforht the as the transforht he pressed the wory in the h his feet Occasionally he let the beast fall off to the hich it was forever trying to do, moved by the invisible boundaries of its territory or by a deep-seated awareness of the co storm Worms buried themselves to escape the sandblast winds, but this one would not sink beneath the desert while Maker hooks held any of its rings open

At ns of exhaustion He es and worked the flail, allowing it to slon but continuing to drive it southward

The storm arrived just after daybreak First there was the beady stretched-out i dunes one into another Next, the advancing dust caused hi dust the desert becaan cutting his cheeks, stinging his lids He felt the coarse grit on his tongue and knew the moment of decision had co the almost exhausted worm? He took only a heartbeat to discard this choice, worked his way back to the wor now, the woran to burrow But the excesses of the creature&039;s heat-transfer syste storers of this position near the woren factories; fire burned wildly in their passage, fed by the lavish exhalations froan to whip around his feet Leto loosed his hooks and leaped wide to avoid the furnace at the tail Everything depended now on getting beneath the sand where the wor the static compaction tool in his left hand, he burrowed into a dune&039;s slipface, knowing the as too tired to turn back and s hie ht hand worked the stilltent from his Fremkit and he readied it for inflation It was all done in less than a minute: he had the tent into a hard-walled sand pocket on the lee face of a dune He inflated the tent and crawled into it Before sealing the sphincter, he reached out with the co down over the tent Only a few sand grains entered as he sealed the opening

Now he had to work even more quickly No sandsnorkel would reach up there to keep hireat storm, the kind few survived It would cover this place with tons of sand Only the tender bubble of the stilltent with its compacted outer shell would protect him

Leto stretched flat on his back, folded his hands over his breast and sent his would move only once an hour In this he committed himself to the unknown The storile pocket, he ht enter the Madinat as-salam, the Abode of Peace Whatever happened, he knew he had to break the threads, one by one, leaving him at last only the Golden Path It was that, or he could not return to the caliphate of his father&039;s heirs No more would he live the lie of that Desposyni, that terrible caliphate, chanting to the dee of his father No more would he keep silent when a priest mouthed offensive nonsense: "His crysknife will dissolve demons!"

With this commitment, Leto&039;s awareness slipped into the web of tiher-order influences in any planetary syste terraform life onto newly discovered planets In all such cases, the life in si sinifies anization and a relationship of such organizations The human quest for this interdependent order and our niche within it represents a profound necessity The quest can, however, be perverted into a conservative grip on sameness This has always proved deadly for the entire system -The Dune Catastrophe, After Harq al-Ada

"My son didn&039;t really see the future; he saw the process of creation and its relationship to the myths in which men sleep," Jessica said She spoke swiftly but without appearing to rush the matter She knew the hidden observers would find a way to interrupt as soon as they recognized what she was doing

Farad&039;n sat on the floor outlined in a shaft of afternoon sunlight which slanted through thebehind hiarden when she glanced across froainst the far wall It was a new Farad&039;n she saw:had worked their inevitable littered when he stared at her

"He saw the shapes which existing forces would create unless they were diverted," Jessica said "Rather than turn against his fellow ainst himself He refused to accept only that which comforted him because that was moral cowardice" Farad&039;n had learned to listen silently testing, probing, holding his questions until he had shaped the about the Bene Gesserit view of molecular ed to the Sisterhood&039;s way of analyzing Paul Muad&039;Dib Farad&039;n saw a shadow play in her words and actions, however, a projection of unconscious forms at variance with the surface intent of her statements

"Of all our observations, this is the h which the universe expresses itself We assume that all of humankind and its supportive life forms represent a natural community and that the fate of all life is at stake in the fate of the individual Thus, when it comes to that ultiod and revert to teaching In the crunch, we select individuals and we set them as free as we&039;re able"

He sahere she had to be going and knowing its effect upon those atched through the spy eyes, refrained frolance at the door Only a trained eye could have detected his momentary imbalance, but Jessica saw it and s

"This is a sort of graduation ceremony," she said "I&039;m very pleased with you, Farad&039;n Will you stand, please" He obeyed, blocking off her view of the treetop through thebehind him

Jessica held her ared to say this to you &039;I stand in the sacred human presence As I do now, so should you stand someday I pray to your presence that this be so The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create&039; "

As Jessica finished speaking, Tyekanik ca with a false casualness which the scowl on his face belied "My Lord," he said But it already was too late Jessica&039;s words and all of the preparation which had gone before had done their work Farad&039;n no longer was Corrino He was now Bene Gesserit

What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in co his life for the company? Perhaps your deficiency rests in the false assumption that you can order men to think and cooperate This has been a failure of everything frohout history General staffs have a long record of destroying their own nations As to religions, I reco of Thomas Aquinas As to you of CHOAM, what nonsense you believe! Men s out of their own inneranizations or chains of coreat civilizations work Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces If you over-organize hureatness - they cannot work and their civilization collapses -A letter to CHOAM, Attributed to The Preacher

Leto came out of the trance with a softness of transition which did not define one condition as separate from another One level of awareness simply moved into the other

He knehere he was A restoration of energy surged through hie froen-depleted air within the stilltent If he refused to ht in the timeless web, the eternal nohere all events coexisted This prospect enticed him He saw Time as a convention shaped by the collective ories imposed on the universe by his Mind He had but to break free of the multiplicity where prescient visions lured hie provisional futures

What boldness did this moment require?

The trance state lured him Leto felt that he had come from the alam al-mythal into the universe of reality only to find theic of this revelation, but survival demanded decisions of hi his nerves

Abruptly he reached out his right hand to where he had left the sand-coripped it, rolled onto his stomach, and breached the tent&039;s sphincter A pool of sand drifted across his hand Working in darkness, goaded by the stale air, he worked swiftly, tunneling upward at a steep angle Six tiths he went before he broke out into darkness and clean air He slipped out onto thedune, found himself about a third of the way from the dune&039;s top

It was Second Moon above hi beyond the dune, and the stars were laid out above hiht rocks beside a path Leto searched for the constellation of The Wanderer, found it, and let his gaze follow the outstretched ar of Foum al-Hout, the polar star of the south

There&039;s your daht Seen close up it was a hustling place like the sand all around hie, of uniqueness piled upon uniqueness Seen from a distance, only the patterns lay revealed and those patterns tempted one to belief in absolutes

In absolutes, wefrom a Fremen ditty: "Who loses his way in the Tanzerouft loses his life" The patterns could guide and they could trap One had to ree

He took a deep breath, stirred hie, he collapsed the tent, brought it out and repacked the Fre the eastern horizon He shouldered the pack, climbed to the dunecrest and stood there in the chill predawn air until the rising sun felt warht cheek He stained his eyepits then to reduce reflection, knowing that he ht her When he had put the stain back into the pack he sipped fro of drops and then air

Dropping to the sand, he began going over his stillsuit, co at last to the heel pumps They had been cut cleverly with a needle knife He slipped out of the suit and repaired it, but the dae had been done At least half of his body&039;s water was gone Were it not for the stilltent&039;s catch Hehow odd it was that he&039;d not anticipated this Here was an obvious danger of visionless future

Leto squatted on the dunetop then, pressed hiaze wander, fishing in the sand for a whistling vent, any irregularity of the dunes which ht indicate spice or worm activity But the storm had stamped its uniformity upon the land Presently he re to call Shai-Hulud fro ti He heard it before he saw it, turned easthere the earthshaking susurration e fro out of the sand The wor of dust which obscured its flanks The curving grey wall swept past Leto and he planted his hooks, went up the side in easy steps He turned the wor track as he cli hooks, the worainst hioaded, an intense current of creation in his loins Each planet has its own period and each life likewise, he rerowler" It frequently dug in its foreplates while the tail was driving This produced ru sounds and caused part of its body to rise clear of the sand in a h, and when they picked up a folloind the furnace exhalation of his tail sent a hot breeze across him It was filled with acrid odors carried on the freshet of oxygen

As the worm sped southward, Leto allowed his e as a new cere the price he&039;d have to pay for his Golden Path Like the Fremen of old, he knew he&039;d have to adoptinto itshunters of his soul forever at bay Contradictory i tension, a polarizing force which drove hiht I must always find the new threads out of ht by a protuberance ahead and slightly to the right of his course Slowly the protuberance became a narrow butte, an upthrust rock precisely where he&039;d expected it

Now Namri Now Sabiha, let us see how your brethren take to ht This was a erous more for its lures than its open threats

The butte was a long ti dimensions And it appeared for a while that it approached hi now, kept veering left Leto slid down the iiant on a straight course A soft sharpness of nal of a rich vein They passed the leprous blotches of violet sand where a spiceblow had erupted and he held the worm firmly until they ell past the vein The breeze, redolent with the gingery odor of cinnamon, pursued them for a time until Leto rolled the wor butte

Abruptly colors blinked far out on the southern bled: the unwary rainbow flashing of a ht up his binoculars, focused the oil lenses, and saw in the distance the outbanking wings of a spice-scout glittering in the sunlight Beneath it a big harvester was shedding its wings like a chrysalis before lu off When Leto lowered the binoculars the harvester dwindled to a speck, and he felt himself overcome by the hadhdhab, the immense omnipresence of the desert, it told him how those spice-hunters would see him, a dark object between desert and sky, which was the Fremen symbol for man They&039;d see him, of course, and they&039;d be cautious They&039;d wait Fremen were always suspicious of one another in the desert until they recognized the newcomer or saw for certain that he posed no threat Even within the fine patina of Imperial civilization and its sophisticated rules they rees, aware always that a crysknife dissolved at the death of its owner

That&039;s what can save us, Leto thought That wildness

In the distance the spice-scout banked right, then left, a signal to the ground He in that he le worm

Leto rolled the worm to the left, held it until it had reversed its course, dropped down the flank, and leaped clear The wor, sulked on the surface for a few breaths, then sank its front third and lay there recuperating, a sure sign that it had been ridden too long

He turned away fro its crawler, still giving wing signals They were sades for certain, wary of electronic communications The hunters would be on spice out there That was the e of the crawler&039;s presence

The scout circled once s, canized it for a type of light &039;thopter his grandfather had introduced on Arrakis The craft circled once above hi the dune where he stood, and banked to land against the breeze It ca of dust The door on his side cracked enough to eure in a heavy Freht breast