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For a long ti to the restless hiss of sand within the canyon beyond A small worm by the sound of it; chosen for that reason, no doubt A sht about the worm&039;s capture: the hunters would dull it with a watera wory/transformation rite But this ould not be killed by ihliner to some hopeful buyer whose desert probably would be too moist Few off-worlders realized the basic desiccation which the sandtrout had maintained on Arrakis Had maintained Because even here in the Tanzerouft there would be many times more airborne moisture than any worm had ever before known short of its death in a Fre in the hut behind him She was restless, prodded by her own suppressed visions He wondered hoould be to live outside a vision with her, sharing each ht attracted hily than had any spice vision There was a certain cleanliness about facing an unknown future

"A kiss in the sietch is worth two in the city"

The old Frenizable wildness led with shyness There were traces of that shyness in the people of Jacurutu/Shuloch, but only traces This saddened hi what had been lost

Slowly, so slowly that the knowledge was fully upon hireare of the soft rustling of many creatures all around him

Sandtrout

Soon it would be time to shift from one vision to another He felt the movement of sandtrout as a e creatures for generations, knowing that if you risked a bit of water as bait, you could lure the of thirst had risked his last few drops of water in this gareen syrup teased froy But the sandtrout were ht theht of what that play meant to him now

He felt one of the creatures slither across his bare foot It hesitated, then went on, attracted by the greater amount of water in the qanat

For a h, he&039;d felt the reality of his terrible decision The sandtrout glove It was the play of children If one held a sandtrout in the hand, slove Traces of blood in the skin&039;s capillaries could be sensed by the creatures, but soled with the blood&039;s water repelled thelove would slip off into the sand, there to be lifted into a spice-fiber basket The spice soothed them until they were du into the qanat, the swirl of predators eating them Water softened the sandtrout, made it pliable Children learned this early A bit of saliva teased out the sweet syrup Leto listened to the splashing This was a ration of sandtrout co qanat patrolled by predator fish

Still they caroped on the sand with his right hand until his fingers encountered the leathery skin of a sandtrout It was the large one he had expected The creature didn&039;t try to evade hierly onto his flesh He explored its outline with his free hand - roughly diamond-shaped It had no head, no extrely With its fellows it could join body to body, locking one on another by the coarse interlacings of extruded cilia until the whole beca off the "poison" froiant which the sandtrout would becoating, stretching As itof the vision he had chosen This thread, not that one He felt the sandtrout beco more and more of his hand No sandtrout had ever before encountered a hand such as this one, every cell supersaturated with spice No other human had ever before lived and reasoned in such a condition Delicately Leto adjusted his enzyained in spice trance The knowledge from those uncounted lifetimes which blended theh which he chose the precise adjustulf him if he relaxed his watchfulness for only a heartbeat And at the sa on it, feeding it, learning it His trance vision provided the template and he followed it precisely

Leto felt the sandtrout grow thin, spreading itself overup his arm He located another, placed it over the first one Contact ignited a frenzied squir in the creatures Their cilia locked and they becale membrane which enclosed hilove of childhood play, but thinner and more sensitive as he lured it into the role of a skin sylove, felt sand, each grain distinct to his senses This was no longer sandtrout; it was tougher, stronger And it would grow stronger and stronger His groping hand encountered another sandtrout which whipped itself into union with the first two and adapted itself to the new role Leathery softness insinuated itself up his arleness of concentration he achieved the union of his new skin with his body, preventing rejection No corner of his attention was left to dwell upon the terrifying consequences of what he did here Only the necessities of his trance vision mattered Only the Golden Path could come from this ordeal

Leto shed his robe and lay naked upon the sand, his gloved ar sandtrout He reht a sandtrout, abraded it against the sand until it contracted into the child-worreen syrup One bit gently upon the end and sucked swiftly before the wound was healed, gaining the few drops of sweetness

They were all over his body now He could feel the pulse of his blood against the living hly until it elongated into a thin roll The thing grewflexible Leto bit the end of it, tasted a thin streaer than any Frey froh him A curious excite the membrane away fro fro his ears exposed

Now the vision ot to his feet, turned to run back toward the hut and, as hetoo fast for hied into the sand, rolled and leaped to his feet The leap took hi to walk, he again moved too fast

Stop! he commanded hiathering his senses into the pool of consciousness This focused the inward ripples of the constant-now through which he experienced Time, and he allowed the vision-elation to warm him The membrane worked precisely as the vision had predicted

My skin is notto live with this a Presently he sat In the quiet, the ridge below his jaw tried to becoainst it and bit, tasting the sweet syrup It rolled doard to the pressure of his hand

Enough time had passed to form the union with his body Leto stretched flat and turned onto his face He began to crawl, rasping the ainst the sand He could feel the sand distinctly, but nothing abraded his own flesh With only a fei movements he traversed fifty meters of sand The physical reaction was a friction-induced warer tried to cover his nose and mouth, but now he faced the second major step onto his Golden Path His exertions had taken him beyond the qanat into the canyon where the trapped wor toward him, attracted by histo stand and wait, but the a twentyhis reactions with terrible effort, he sat back onto his haunches, straightened Now the sand began to swell directly in front of hi up in a ths froht He saw the yawning mouth-cavern with, far back, the a redolence of the spice swept over him But the worm had stopped It remained in front of hiht reflected off the worlow of chemical fires deep within the creature

So deep was the inbred Fremen fear that Leto found himself torn by a desire to flee But his vision held hied moment No one had ever before stood this close to the ht foot,too quickly, was propelled toward the worm&039;s mouth He came to a stop on his knees

Still the worm did not move

It sensed only the sandtrout and would not attack the deep-sand vector of its own kind The ould attack another worm in its territory and would come to exposed spice Only a water barrier stopped it - and sandtrout, encapsulating water, were a water barrier

Experimentally, Leto moved a hand toward that awesome mouth The worm drew back a full meter

Confidence restored, Leto turned away fro his muscles to live with their neer Cautiously he walked back toward the qanat The worm remained motionless behind him When Leto was beyond the water barrier he leaped with joy, went sailing ten ht flared on the sand as the hut&039;s doorseal was breached Sabiha stood outlined in the yellow and purple glow of the la, Leto ran back across the qanat, stopped in front of the worm, turned and faced her with his arms outstretched

"Look!" he called "The wor!"

As she stood in frozen shock, he whirled, went racing around the wor experience with his new skin, he found he could run with only the lightest flexing of muscles It was al, he raced over the sand with the wind burning the exposed circle of his face At the canyon&039;s dead end instead of stopping, he leaped up a full fifteenlike an insect, and came out on the crest above the Tanzerouft

The desert stretched before hiht

Leto&039;s ht his body felt Exertion had produced a slick film of perspiration which a stillsuit would have absorbed and routed into the transfer tissue which removed the salts Even as he relaxed, the film disappeared now, absorbed by the htfully Leto rolled a length of the membrane beneath his lips, pulled it into his mouth, and drank the sweetness

His h Fre wasted with every breath Leto brought a section of the membrane over his mouth, rolled it back when it tried to seal his nostrils, kept at this until the rolled barrier remained in place In the desert way, he fell into the autoh his mouth The membrane over his mouth protruded in a small bubble, but remained in place No moisture collected on his lips and his nostrils remained open The adaptation proceeded, then

A &039;thopter fleeen Leto and theon the butte perhaps a hundred lanced at it, turned, and looked back the way he had cohts could be seen down there beyond the qanat, a stirring of a multitude He heard faint outcries, sensed hysteria in the sounds Two linted on their weapons

The Mashhad, Leto thought, and it was a sad thought Here was the great leap onto the Golden Path He had put on the living, self-repairing stillsuit of a sandtroutof unmeasurable value on Arrakis until you understood the price I arow and nizable by the participants But it will becoend

He peered down from the butte, estimated the desert floor lay two hundred es and cracks on the steep face but no connecting pathway Leto stood, inhaled a deep breath, glanced back at the approaching e and launched his encountered a narrow ledge Amplified muscles absorbed the shock and rebounded in a leap sideways to another ledge, where he caught a narrow outcropping with his hands, dropped twenty meters, leaped to another handhold and once es He took the final fortyin a bent-knee roll which sent hi down the slip-face of a dune in a shower of sand and dust At the bottom he scrambled to his feet, launched himself to the next dunecrest in one junored the strides frorew more accustomed to amplified muscles he found a sensuous joy that he had not anticipated in this distance-gulping movement It was a ballet on the desert, defiance of the Tanzerouft which no other had ever experienced

When he judged that the ornithopter&039;s occupants had overcoh to mount pursuit once more, he dove for the moon-shadowed face of a dune, burrowed into it The sand was like heavy liquid to his new strength, but the teerously when he moved too fast He broke free on the far face of the dune, found that the membrane had covered his nostrils He re over his body in its labor to absorb his perspiration

Leto fashioned a tube at his mouth, drank the syrup while he peered upward at the starry sky He estimated he had come fifteen kilometers from Shuloch Presently a &039;thopter drew its pattern across the stars, a great bird shape followed by another and another He heard the soft swishing of their wings, the whisper of theirtube, he waited First Moon passed through its track, then Second Moon

An hour before dawn Leto crept out and up to the dunecrest, examined the sky No hunters Now he knew himself to be embarked upon a path of no return Ahead lay the trap in Tiettable lesson for himself and all of mankind

Leto turned northeast and loped another fifty kilo only a tiny hole to the surface which he kept open with a sandtrout tube Thehow to live with him as he learned how to live with it He tried not to think of the other things it was doing to his flesh

Toht I&039;ll smash their qanat and loose its water into the sand Then I&039;ll go on to Windsack, Old Gap, and Harg In a ical transforeneration That&039;ll give us space to develop the new timetable

And the wildness of the rebel tribes would be blamed, of course Some would revive memories of Jacurutu Alia would have her hands full As for Ghanima Silently to himself, Leto mouthed the words which would restore her memory Ti of threads

The Golden Path lured hi which he could see with his open eyes And he thought hoas: as animals must move across the land, their existence dependent upon that movement the soul of humankind, blocked for eons, needed a track upon which it couldhimself: "Soon we&039;ll dispute as e"

Li drifts of change which a generation may fail to notice And it is the extremes of climate which set the pattern Lonely, finite humans may observe climatic provinces, fluctuations of annual weather and, occasionally s as "This is a colder year than I&039;ve ever known " Such things are sensible But hureat span of years And it is precisely in this alerting that humans learn how to survive on any planet They must learn climate -Arrakis, the Transfored on her bed, trying to coainst Fear, but chuckling derision echoed in her skull to block every effort She could hear the voice; it controlled her ears, her mind

"What nonsense is this? What have you to fear?"

The muscles of her calves twitched as her feet tried toown of the sheerest Palian silk and it revealed the plue her body The Hour of Assassins had just passed; daas near Reports covering the past three months lay before her on the red coverlet She could hear the hu of the air conditioner and a sawire spools

Aides had awakened her fearfully two hours earlier, bringing news of the latest outrage, and Alia had called for the report spools, seeking an intelligible pattern

She gave up on the Litany

These attacks had to be the work of rebels Obviously More and ion

"And what&039;s wrong with that?" the derisive voice asked within her

Alia shook her head savagely Namri had failed her She&039;d been a fool to trust such a dangerous double instruar was to blame, that he was a secret rebel And what had becoler friends? Possibly

She picked up one of the report spools And Muriz! The man was hysterical That was the only possible explanation Otherwise she&039;d have to believe in miracles No human, let alone a child (even a child such as Leto) could leap from the butte at Shuloch and survive to flee across the desert in leaps that took him froawire under her hand

Where was Leto, then? Ghanima refused to believe him other than dead A Truthsayer had confirer Then as the child reported by Namri and Muriz?

She shuddered

Forty qanats had been breached, their waters loosed into the sand The loyal Fremen and even the rebels, superstitious louts, all! Her reports were flooded with stories of mysterious occurrences Sandtrout leaped into qanats and shattered to become hosts of small replicas Worms deliberately drowned themselves Blood dripped froreat storht of Duncan inco under the restraints she&039;d exacted froar He and Irulan talked of little else than the realbehind these omens Fools! Even her spies betrayed the influence of these outrageous stories!

Why did Ghanihed Only one of the reports on the shigawire spools reassured her Farad&039;n had sent a contingent of his household guard "to help you in troubles and to prepare the way for the Official Rite of Betrothal" Alia smiled to herself and shared the chuckle which ruical explanations would be found to dispel all of this other superstitious nonsense

Meanwhile she&039;d use Farad&039;n&039;s men to help close down Shuloch and to arrest the known dissidents, especially aar, but the inner voice cautioned against this

"Not yet"

"My mother and the Sisterhood still have so Farad&039;n?"

"Perhaps he excites her," the Old Baron said

"Not that cold one"

"You&039;re not thinking of asking Farad&039;n to return her?"

"I know the dangers in that!"

"Good Meanwhile, that young aide Zia recently brought in I believe his naarves If you&039;d invite hiht"

"No!"