"The joy of living, its beauty is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you," he said.

A soft voice whispered in his ear: "I've always known that beauty."

Leto turned his head, stared into Ghanima's eyes which glistened in the bright moonlight. He saw Chani looking back at him. "Mother," he said, "you must withdraw."

"Ahhh, the temptation!" she said, and kissed him.

He pushed her away. "Would you take your daughter's life?" he demanded.

"It's so easy... so foolishly easy," she said.

Leto, feeling panic begin to grip him, remembered what an effort of will his father's persona-within had required to abandon the flesh. Was Ghanima lost in that observer-world where he had watched and listened, learning what he had required from his father?

"I will despise you, mother," he said.

"Others won't despise me," she said. "Be my beloved."

"If I do... you know what you both will become," he said. "My father will despise you."

"Never!"

"I will!"

The sound was jerked out of his throat without his volition and it carried all the old overtones of Voice which Paul had learned from his witch mother.

"Don't say it," she moaned.

"I will despise you!"

"Please... please don't say it."

Leto rubbed his throat, feeling the muscles become once more his own. "He will despise you. He will turn his back on you. He will go into the desert again."

"No... no..."

She shook her head from side to side.

"You must leave, mother," he said.

"No... no..." But the voice lacked its original force.

Leto watched his sister's face. How the muscles twitched! Emotions fled across the flesh at the turmoil within her.

"Leave," he whispered "Leave."

"No-o-o-o..."

He gripped her arm, felt the tremors which pulsed through her muscles, the nerves twitching. She writhed, tried to pull away, but he held tightly to her arm, whispering: "Leave... leave..."

And all the time, Leto berated himself for talking Ghani into this parent game which once they'd played often, but she had lately resisted. It was true that the female had more weakness in that inner assault, he realized. There lay the origin of the Bene Gesserit fear.

Hours passed and still Ghanima's body trembled and twitched with the inner battle, but now his sister's voice joined the argument. He heard her talking to that image within, the pleading.

"Mother... please -" And once: "You've seen Alia! Will you become another Alia?"

At last Ghanima leaned against him, whispered: "She has accepted it. She's gone."

He stroked her head. "Ghani, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'll never ask you to do that again. I was selfish. Forgive me."

"There's nothing to forgive," she said, and her voice came panting as though after great physical exertion. "We've learned much that we needed to know."

"She spoke to you of many things," he said. "We'll share it later when -"

"No! We'll do it now. You were right."

"My Golden Path?"

"Your damned Golden Path!"

"Logic's useless unless it's armed with essential data," he said. "But I -"

"Grandmother came back to guide our education and to see if we'd been... contaminated."

"That's what Duncan says. There's nothing new in -"

"Prime computation," she agreed, her voice strengthening. She pulled away from him, looked out at the desert which lay in a predawn hush. This battle... this knowledge, had cost them a night. The Royal Guard beyond the moisture seal must have had much to explain. Leto had charged that nothing disturb them.

"People often learn subtlety as they age," Leto said. "What is it we're learning with all of this agedness to draw upon?"

"The universe as we see it is never quite the exact physical universe," she said. "We mustn't perceive this grandmother just as a grandmother."

"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."

"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.