Dune

But the father-presence within spoke warningly: “Don’t invite disaster! You’re learning stroboscopic awareness now. Without it you could overrun yourself, lose your place-mark in Time.”

And the bas-relief imagery persisted. Intrusions hammered at him. Past-present-now. There was no true separation. He knew he had to flow with this thing, but the flowing terrified him. How could he return to any recognizable place? Yet he felt himself being forced to cease every effort of resistance. He could not grasp his new universe in motionless, labeled bits. No bit would stand still. Things could not be forever ordered and formulated. He had to find the rhythm of change and see between the changes to the changing itself. Without knowing where it began he found himself moving within a gigantic moment bienheureux, able to see the past in the future, present in past, the now in both past and future. It was the accumulation of centuries experienced between one heartbeat and the next.

Leto’s awareness floated free, no objective psyche to compensate for consciousness, no barriers. Namri’s “provisional future” remained lightly in his memory, but it shared awareness with many futures. And in this shattering awareness, all of his past, every inner life became his own. With the help of the greatest within him, he dominated. They were his.

He thought: When you study an object from a distance, only its principle may be seen. He had achieved the distance and he could see his own life now: the multi-past and its memories were his burden, his joy, and his necessity. But the worm trip had added another dimension and his father no longer stood guard within him because the need no longer existed. Leto saw through the distances clearly—past and present. And the past presented him with an ultimate ancestor—one who was called Harum and without whom the distant future would not be. These clear distances provided new principles, new dimensions of sharing. Whichever life he now chose, he’d live it out in an autonomous sphere of mass experience, a trail of lives so convoluted that no single lifetime could count the generations of it. Aroused, this mass experience held the power to subdue his selfdom. It could make itself felt upon an individual, a nation, a society or an entire civilization. That, of course, was why Gurney had been taught to fear him; why Namri’s knife waited. They could not be allowed to see this power within him. No one could ever see it in its fullness—not even Ghanima.

Presently Leto sat up, saw that only Namri remained, watching.

In an old voice, Leto said: “There’s no single set of limits for all men. Universal prescience is an empty myth. Only the most powerful local currents of Time may be foretold. But in an infinite universe, local can be so gigantic that your mind shrinks from it.”

Namri shook his head, not understanding.

“Where’s Gurney?” Leto asked.

“He left lest he have to watch me slay you.”

“Will you slay me, Namri?” It was almost a plea to have the man do it.

Namri took his hand from his knife. “Since you ask me to do it, I will not. If you were indifferent, though . . .”

“The malady of indifference is what destroys many things,” Leto said. He nodded to himself. “Yes . . . even civilizations die of it. It’s as though that were the price demanded for achieving new levels of complexity or consciousness.” He looked up at Namri. “So they told you to look for indifference in me?” And he saw Namri was more than a killer—Namri was devious.

“As a sign of unbridled power,” Namri said, but it was a lie.

“Indifferent power, yes.” Leto sat up, sighed deeply. “There was no moral grandeur to my father’s life, Namri; only a local trap which he built for himself.”

O Paul, thou Muad’Dib,

Mahdi of all men,

Thy breath exhaled

Sent forth the huricen.

—SONGS OF MUAD’DIB

“Never!” Ghanima said. “I’d kill him on our wedding night.” She spoke with a barbed stubbornness which thus far had resisted all blandishments. Alia and her advisors had been at it half the night, keeping the royal quarters in a state of unrest, sending out for new advisors, for food and drink. The entire Temple and its adjoining Keep seethed with the frustrations of unmade decisions.

Ghanima sat composedly on a green floater chair in her own quarters, a large room with rough tan walls to simulate sietch rock. The ceiling, however, was imbar crystal which flickered with blue light, and the floor was black tile. The furnishings were sparse: a small writing table, five floater chairs and a narrow cot set into an alcove, Fremen fashion. Ghanima wore a robe of yellow mourning.