Except for her mother, who had held the fleshly power and had renounced it. Ghanima still felt shaken by that inner struggle, knowing she would have lost but for Leto's persuasiveness.
Leto said his Golden Path led out of this trap. Except for the nagging realization that he withheld something from his vision, she could only accept his sincerity. He needed her fertile creativity to enrich the plan.
"We'll be tested," he said, knowing where her doubts led.
"Not in the spice."
"Perhaps even there. Surely, in the desert and in the Trial of Possession."
"You never mentioned the Trial of Possession!" she accused. "Is that part of your dream?"
He tried to swallow in a dry throat, cursed this betrayal "Yes."
"Then we will be... possessed?"
"No."
She thought about the Trial - that ancient Fremen examination whose ending most often brought hideous death. Then this plan had other complexities. It would take them onto an edge where a plunge to either side might not be countenanced by the human mind and that mind remain sane.
Knowing where her thoughts meandered, Leto said: "Power attracts the psychotics. Always. That's what we have to avoid within ourselves."
"You're sure we won't be... possessed?"
"Not if we create the Golden Path."
Still doubtful, she said: "I'll not bear your children, Leto."
He shook his head, suppressing the inner betrayals, lapsed into the royal-formal form of the ancient tongue: "Sister mine, I love you more dearly than myself, but that is not the tender of my desires."
"Very well, then let us return to another argument before we join our grandmother. A knife slipped into Alia might settle most of our problems."
"If you believe that, you believe we can walk in mud and leave no tracks," he said. "Besides, when has Alia ever given anyone an opportunity?"
"There is talk about this Javid."
"Does Duncan show any signs of growing horns?"
Ghanima shrugged. "One poison, two poison." It was the common label applied to the royal habit of cataloguing companions by their threat to your person, a mark of rulers everywhere.
"We must do it my way," he said.
"The other way might be cleaner."
By her reply, he knew she had finally suppressed her doubts and come around to agreement with his plan. The realization brought him no happiness. He found himself looking at his own hands, wondering if the dirt would cling.
= = = = = =
This was Muad'Dib's achievement: He saw the subliminal reservoir of each individual as an unconscious bank of memories going back to the primal cell of our common genesis. Each of us, he said, can measure out his distance from that common origin. Seeing this and telling of it, he made the audacious leap of decision. Muad'Dib set himself the task of integrating genetic memory into ongoing evaluation. Thus did he break through Time's veils, making a single thing of the future and the past. That was Muad'Dib's creation embodied in his son and his daughter. -Testament of Arrakis by Harq al-Ada
Farad'n strode through the garden compound of his grandfather's royal palace, watching his shadow grow shorter as the sun of Salusa Secundus climbed toward noon. He had to stretch himself a bit to keep step with the tall Bashar who accompanied him.
"I have doubts, Tyekanik," he said. "Oh, there's no denying the attractions of a throne, but -" He drew in a deep breath. "- I have so many interests."
Tyekanik, fresh from a savage argument with Farad'n's mother, glanced sidelong at the Prince, noting how the lad's flesh was firming as he approached his eighteenth birthday. There was less and less of Wensicia in him with each passing day and more and more of old Shaddam, who had preferred his private pursuits to the responsibilities of royalty. That was what had cost him the throne in the end, of course. He'd grown soft in the ways of command.
"You have to make a choice," Tyekanik said. "Oh, doubtless there'll be time for some of your interests, but..."
Farad'n chewed his lower lip. Duty held him here, but he felt frustrated. He would far rather have gone to the rock enclave where the sandtrout experiments were being conducted. Now there was a project with enormous potential: wrest the spice monopoly from the Atreides and anything might happen.
"You're sure these twins will be... eliminated?"
"Nothing absolutely certain, My Prince, but the prospects are good."
Farad'n shrugged. Assassination remained a fact of royal life. The language was filled with the subtle permutations of ways to eliminate important personages. By a single word, one could distinguish between poison in drink or poison in food. He presumed the elimination of the Atreides twins would be accomplished by a poison. It was not a pleasant thought. By all accounts the twins were a most interesting pair.
"Would we have to move to Arrakis?" Farad'n asked.
"It's the best choice, put us at the point of greatest pressure." Farad'n appeared to be avoiding some question and Tyekanik wondered what it might be.
"I'm troubled, Tyekanik," Farad'n said, speaking as they rounded a hedge corner and approached a fountain surrounded by giant black roses. Gardeners could be heard snipping beyond the hedges.
"Yes?" Tyekanik prompted.
"This, ah, religion which you've professed..."
"Nothing strange about that, My Prince," Tyekanik said and hoped his voice remained firm. "This religion speaks to the warrior in me. It's a fitting religion for a Sardaukar." That, at least, was true.
"Yesss... But my mother seems so pleased by it." Damn Wensicia! he thought. She's made her son suspicious.