Siona stared at Leto, sweeping her gaze along his body, pausing at the stubs which once had been his legs, bringing her attention then to his arms and hands, then to his face.
"Your approved histories tell us that all Atreides are descended from you and your sister, Ghanima," she said. "The Oral History disagrees."
"The Oral History is correct. Your ancestor was Harq al Ada Ghani and I were married only in name, a move to consolidate the power."
"Like your marriage to this Ixian woman?"
"That is different."
"You will have children?"
"I have never been capable of having children. I chose the metamorphosis before that was possible."
"You were a child and then you were-" she pointed "this?"
"Nothing between."
"How does a child know what to choose?"
"I was one of the oldest children this universe has ever seen. Ghani was the other."
"That story about your ancestral memories!"
"A true story. We're all here. Doesn't the Oral History agree?"
She whirled away and held her back stiffly presented to him. Once more, Leto found himself fascinated by this human gesture: rejection coupled to vulnerability. Presently, she turned around and concentrated on his features within the hooded folds.
"You have the Atreides look," she said.
"I come by it just as honestly as you do."
"You're so old... why aren't you wrinkled?"
"Nothing about the human part of me ages in a normal way."
"Is that why you did this to yourself?"
"To enjoy long life? No."
"I don't see how anyone could make such a choice," she muttered. Then louder: "Never to know love..."
"You're playing the fool!" he said. "You don't mean love, you mean sex."
She shrugged.
"You think the most terrible thing I gave up was sex? No, the greatest loss was something far different."
"What?" She asked it reluctantly, betraying how deeply he touched her.
"I cannot walk among my fellows without their special notice. I am no longer one of you. I am alone. Love? Many people love me, but my shape keeps us apart. We are separated, Siona, by a gulf that no other human dares to bridge."
"Not even your Ixian woman?"
"Yes, she would if she could, but she cannot. She's not an Atreides."
"You mean that I... could?" She touched her breast with a finger.
"If there were enough sandtrout around. Unfortunately, all of them enclose my flesh. However, if I were to die..."
She shook her head in dumb horror at the thought.
"The Oral History tells it accurately," he said. "And we must never forget that you believe the Oral History."
She continued to shake her head from side to side.
"There's no secret about it," he said. "The first moments of the transformation are the critical ones. Your awareness must drive inward and outward simultaneously, one with Infinity. I could provide you with enough melange to accomplish this. Given enough spice, you can live through those first awful moments... and all the other moments."
She shuddered uncontrollably, her gaze fixed on his eyes.
"You know I'm telling you the truth, don't you?"
She nodded, inhaled a deep trembling breath, then: "Why did you do it?"
"The alternative was far more horrible."
Chapter Twenty-Four
"What alternative?"
"In time, you may understand it. Moneo did."
"Your damned Golden Path!"
"Not damned at all. Quite holy."
"You think I'm a fool who can't..."
"I think you're inexperienced, but possessed of great capability whose potential you do not even suspect."
She took three deep breaths and regained some of her composure, then: "If you can't mate with the Ixian, what..."
"Child, why do you persist in misunderstanding? It's not sex. Before Hwi, I could not pair. I had no other like me. In all of the cosmic void, I was the only one."
"She's like... you?"
"Deliberately so. The lxians made her that way."
"Made her..."
"Don't be a complete fool!" he snapped. "She is the essential god-trap. Even the victim cannot reject her."
"Why do you tell me these things?" she whispered.
"You stole two copies of my journals," he said. "You've read the Guild translations and you already know what could catch me."
"You knew?"
He saw boldness return to her stance, a sense of her own power. "Of course you knew," she said, answering her own question.
"It was my secret," he said. "You cannot imagine how many times I have loved a companion and seen that companion slip away... as your father is slipping away now."
"You love... him?"
"And I loved your mother. Sometimes they go quickly; sometimes with agonizing slowness. Each time I am wracked. I can play callous and I can make the necessary decisions, even decisions which kill, but I cannot escape the suffering. For a long, long time-those journals you stole tell it truly-that was the only emotion I knew."
He saw the moistness in her eyes, but the line of her jaw still spoke of angry resolution.
"None of this gives you the right to govern," she said.
Leto suppressed a smile. At last they were down to the root of Siona's rebellion.
By what right? Where is justice in my rule? By imposing my rules upon them with the weight of Fish Speaker arms, am I being fair to the evolutionary thrust of humankind? I know all of the revolutionary cant, the catch-prattle and the resounding phrases.