God Emperor of Dune

He drove outward then along a curving barracan, joining Siona in enjoyment of the old sensations. Leto could just glimpse the remnant hills at the horizon ahead of him. They were like a seed from the past waiting there, a reminder of the self-sustaining and expanding force which operated in a desert. He could forget for a moment that on this planet where only a small fraction of the surface remained desert, the Sareer's dynamism existed in a precarious environment.

The illusion of the past was here, though. He felt it as he moved. Fantasy, of course, he told himself, a vanishing fantasy as long as his enforced tranquility continued. Even the sweeping barracan which he traversed now was not as great as the ones of the past. None of the dunes were that great.

This whole maintained desert struck him suddenly as ridiculous. He almost stopped on a pebbled surface between the dunes, continuing but more slowly as he tried to conjure up the necessities which kept the whole system working. He imagined the planet's rotation setting up great air currents which shifted cold and heated air to new regions in enormous volume-everything monitored and ruled by those tiny satellites with their Ixian instruments and heat-focusing dishes. If the high monitors saw anything, they saw the Sareer partly as a "relief desert" with both physical and cold-air walls girdling it. This tended to create ice at the edges and required even more climatic adjustments.

It was not easy and Leto forgave the occasional mistakes for that reason.

As he moved once more out onto dunes, he lost that sense of delicate balance, put aside memories of the pebbly wastelands outside the central sands, and gave himself up to enjoyment of his "petrified ocean" with its frozen and apparently immovable waves. He turned southward, parallel to the remnant hills.

He knew that most people were offended by his infatuation with desert. They were uneasy and turned away. Siona, however, could not turn away. Everywhere she looked, the desert demanded recognition. She rode silently on his back, but he knew her eyes were full. And the old-old memories were beginning to churn.

He came within three hours to a region of cylindrical whaleback dunes, some of them more than one hundred and fifty kilometers long at an angle to the prevailing wind. Beyond them lay a rocky corridor between dunes and into a region of star dunes almost four hundred meters high. Finally, they entered the braided dunes of the central erg where the general high pressure and electrically charged air gave his spirits a lift. He knew the same magic would be working on Siona.

"Here is where the songs of the Long Trek originated," he said. "They are perfectly preserved in the Oral History."

She did not answer, but he knew she heard.

Leto slowed his pace and began to speak to Siona, telling her about their Fremen past. He sensed the quickening of her interest. She even asked questions occasionally, but he could also feel her fears building. Even the base of his Little Citadel was no longer visible here. She could recognize nothing manmade. And she would think he engaged now in small talk, unimportant things to put off something portentous.

"Equality between our men and women originated here," he said.

"Your Fish Speakers deny that men and women are equal," she said.

Her voice, full of questioning disbelief, was a better locator than the sensation of her crouched on his back. Leto stopped at the intersection of two braided dunes and let the venting of his heat-generated oxygen subside.

"Things are not the same today," he said. "But men and women do have different evolutionary demands upon them. With the Fremen, though, there was an interdependence. That fostered equality out here where questions of survival can become immediate."

"Why did you bring me here?" she demanded.

"Look behind us," he said.

He felt her turn. Presently, she said: "What am I supposed to see?"

"Have we left any tracks? Can you tell where we've been?"

"There's a little wind now."

"It has covered our tracks?"

"I guess so... yes."

"This desert made us what we were and are," he said. "It's the real museum of all our traditions. Not one of those traditions has really been lost."

Leto saw a small sandstorm, a ghibli, moving across the southern horizon. He noted the narrow ribbons of dust and sand moving out ahead of it. Surely, Siona had seen it.

"Why won't you tell me why you brought me here?" she asked. Fear was obvious in her voice.

"But I have told you."

"You have not!"

"How far have we come, Siona?"

She thought about this. "Thirty kilometers? Twenty?"

"Farther," he said. "I can move very fast in my own land. Didn't you feel the wind on your face?"

"Yes." Sullen. "So why ask me how far?"

"Come down and stand where I can see you." ..Why?"

Good, he thought. She believes I will abandon her here and speed off faster than she can follow.

"Come down and I'll explain," he said.

She slid off his back and came around to where she could look into his face.