"That'd be dangerous," he agreed. "But my ques -"
"There's something beyond subtlety," she said. "We must have a place in our awareness to perceive what we can't preconceive. That's why... my mother spoke to me often of Jessica. At the last, when we were both reconciled to the inner exchange, she said many things." Ghanima sighed.
"We know she's our grandmother," he said. "You were with her for hours yesterday. Is that why -"
"If we allow it, our knowing will determine how we react to her," Ghanima said. "That's what my mother kept warning me. She quoted our grandmother once and -" Ghanima touched his arm. "- I heard the echo of it within me in our grandmother's voice."
"Warning you," Leto said. He found this thought disturbing. Was nothing in this world dependable?
"Most deadly errors arise from obsolete assumptions," Ghanima said. "That's what my mother kept quoting."
"That's pure Bene Gesserit."
"If... if Jessica has gone back to the Sisterhood completely..."
"That'd be very dangerous to us," he said, completing the thought. "We carry the blood of their Kwisatz Haderach - their male Bene Gesserit."
Chapter Seven
"They won't abandon that search," she said, "but they may abandon us. Our grandmother could be the instrument."
"There's another way," he said.
"Yes - the two of us... mated. But they know what recessives might complicate that pairing."
"It's a gamble they must've discussed."
"And with our grandmother, at that. I don't like that way."
"Nor I."
"Still, it's not the first time a royal line has tried to..."
"It repels me," he said, shuddering.
She felt the movement, fell silent.
"Power," he said.
And in that strange alchemy of their similarities she knew where his thoughts had been. "The power of the Kwisatz Haderach must fail," she agreed.
"Used in their way," he said.
In that instant, day came to the desert beyond their vantage point. They sensed the heat beginning. Colors leaped forth from the plantings beneath the cliff. Grey-green leaves sent spiked shadows along the ground. The low morning light of Dune's silvery sun revealed the verdant oasis full of golden and purple shadows in the well of the sheltering cliffs.
Leto stood, stretched.
"The Golden Path, then," Ghanima said, and she spoke as much to herself as to him, knowing how their father's last vision met and melted into Leto's dreams.
Something brushed against the moisture seals behind them and voices could be heard murmuring there.
Leto reverted to the ancient language they used for privacy: "L'ii ani howr samis sm'kwi owr samit sut."
That was where the decision lodged itself in their awareness. Literally: We will accompany each other into deathliness, though only one may return to report it.
Ghanima stood then and, together, they returned through the moisture seals to the sietch, where the guards roused themselves and fell in behind as the twins headed toward their own quarters. The throngs parted before them with a difference on this morning, exchanging glances with the guards. Spending the night alone above the desert was an old Fremen custom for the holy sages. All the Uma had practiced this form of vigil. Paul Muad'Dib had done it... and Alia. Now the royal twins had begun.
Leto noted the difference, mentioned it to Ghanima.
"They don't know what we've decided for them," she said. "They don't really know."
Still in the private language, he said: "It requires the most fortuitous beginning."
Ghanima hesitated a moment to form her thoughts. Then: "In that time, mourning for the sibling, it must be exactly real - even to the making of the tomb. The heart must follow the sleep lest there be no awakening."
In the ancient tongue it was an extremely convoluted statement, employing a pronominal object separated from the infinitive. It was a syntax which allowed each set of internal phrases to turn upon itself, becoming several different meanings, all definite and quite distinct but subtly interrelated. In part, what she had said was that they risked death with Leto's plan and, real or simulated, it made no difference. The resultant change would be like death, literally: "funeral murder." And there was an added meaning to the whole which pointed accusatively at whoever survived to report, that is: act out the living part. Any misstep there would negate the entire plan, and Leto's Golden Path would become a dead end.
"Extremely delicate," Leto agreed. He parted the hangings for them as they entered their own anteroom.
Activity among their attendants paused only for a heartbeat as the twins crossed to the arched passage which led into the quarters assigned to the Lady Jessica.
"You are not Osiris." Ghanima reminded him.
"Nor will I try to be."
Ghanima took his arm to stop him. "Alia darsatay haunus m'smow," she warned.
Leto stared into his sister's eyes. Indeed, Alia's actions did give off a foul smell which their grandmother must have noted. He smiled appreciatively at Ghanima. She had mixed the ancient tongue with Fremen superstition to call up a most basic tribal omen. M'smow, the foul odor of a summer night, was the harbinger of death at the hands of demons. And Isis had been the demon-goddess of death to the people whose tongue they now spoke.
"We Atreides have a reputation for audacity to maintain," he said.
"So we'll take what we need," she said.
"It's that or become petitioners before our own Regency," he said. "Alia would enjoy that."