The Reverend Mothers encapsulated in Alia's memories stirred restlessly, provoking adab flashes of thought: "Peace, Little One! You are what you are. There are compensations."
Compensations!
She summoned the ghola with a gesture.
He stopped beside her, attentive, patient.
"What do you see in this?" she asked.
"We may never learn who it was died here," he said. "The head, the teeth are gone. The hands... Unlikely such a one had a genetic record somewhere to which her cells could be matched."
"Tleilaxu poison," she said. "What do you make of that?"
"Many people buy such poisons."
"True enough. And this flesh is too far gone to be regrown as was done with your body."
"Even if you could trust the Tleilaxu to do it," he said.
She nodded, stood. "You will fly me back to the city now."
When they were airborne and pointed north, she said: "You fly exactly as Duncan Idaho did."
He cast a speculative glance at her. "Others have told me this."
"What are you thinking now?" she asked.
"Many things."
"Stop dodging my question, damn you!"
"Which question?"
She glared at him.
He saw the glare, shrugged.
How like Duncan Idaho, that gesture, she thought. Accusingly, her voice thick and with a catch in it, she said: "I merely wanted your reactions voiced to play my own thoughts against them. That young woman's death bothers me."
"I was not thinking about that."
"What were you thinking about?"
"About the strange emotions I feel when people speak of the one I may have been."
"May have been?"
"The Tleilaxu are very clever."
"Not that clever. You were Duncan Idaho."
"Very likely. It's the prime computation."
"So you get emotional?"
"To a degree. I feel eagerness. I'm uneasy. There's a tendency to tremble and I must devote effort to controlling it. I get... flashes of imagery."
"What imagery?"
"It's too rapid to recognize. Flashes. Spasms... almost memories."
"Aren't you curious about such memories?"
"Of course. Curiosity urges me forward, but I move against a heavy reluctance. I think: 'What if I'm not the one they believe me to be?' I don't like that thought."
"And this is all you were thinking?"
"You know better than that, Alia."
How dare he use my given name? She felt anger rise and go down beneath the memory of the way he'd spoken: softly throbbing undertones, casual male confidence. A muscle twitched along her jaw. She clenched her teeth.
"Isn't that El Kuds down there?" he asked, dipping a wing briefly, causing a sudden flurry in their escort.
She looked down at their shadows rippling across the promontory above Harg Pass, at the cliff and the rock pyramid containing the skull of her father. El Kuds - the Holy Place.
"That's the Holy Place," she said.
"I must visit that place one day," he said. "Nearness to your father's remains may bring memories I can capture."
She saw suddenly how strong must be this need to know who he'd been. It was a central compulsion with him. She looked back at the rocks, the cliff with its base sloping into a dry beach and a sea of sand - cinnamon rock lifting from the dunes like a ship breasting waves.
"Circle back," she said.
"The escort... "
"They'll follow. Swing under them."
He obeyed.
"Do you truly serve my brother?" she asked, when he was on the new course, the escort following.
"I serve the Atreides," he said, his tone formal.
And she saw his right hand lift, fall - almost the old salute of Caladan. A pensive look came over his face. She watched him peer down at the rock pyramid.
"What bothers you?" she asked.
His lips moved. A voice emerged, brittle, tight: "He was... he was..." A tear slid down his cheek.
Alia found herself stilled by Fremen awe. He gave water to the dead! Compulsively, she touched a finger to his cheek, felt the tear.
"Duncan," she whispered.
He appeared locked to the 'thopter's controls, gaze fastened to the tomb below.
She raised her voice: "Duncan!"
He swallowed, shook his head, looked at her, the metal eyes glistening. "I... felt... an arm... on my shoulders," he whispered. "I felt it! An arm." His throat worked. "It was... a friend. It was... my friend."
"Who?"
"I don't know. I think it was... I don't know."
The call light began flashing in front of Alia, their escort captain wanting to know why they returned to the desert. She took the microphone, explained that they had paid a brief homage to her father's tomb. The captain reminded her that it was late.
"We will go to Arrakeen now," she said, replacing the microphone.
Hayt took a deep breath, banked their 'thopter around to the north.
"It was my father's arm you felt, wasn't it?" she asked.
"Perhaps."
His voice was that of the mentat computing probabilities, and she saw he had regained his composure.
"Are you aware of how I know my father?" she asked.
"I have some idea."
"Let me make it clear," she said. Briefly, she explained how she had awakened to Reverend Mother awareness before birth, a terrified fetus with the knowledge of countless lives embedded in her nerve cells - and all this after the death of her father.
"I know my father as my mother knew him," she said. "In every last detail of every experience she shared with him. In a way, I am my mother. I have all her memories up to the moment when she drank the Water of Life and entered the trance of transmigration."