“There’s always the Huanui,” Ghanima said, speaking softly. “We have the deathstill as an alternative. I’m sure you couldn’t interfere from there.”
Irulan paled, put a hand to her mouth, forgetting for a moment all of her training. It was a measure of how much care she had invested in Ghanima, this almost complete abandonment of everything except animal fear. She spoke out of that shattering emotion, allowing it to tremble on her lips. “Ghani, I don’t fear for myself. I’d throw myself into the worm’s mouth for you. Yes, I’m what you call me, the childless wife of your father, but you’re the child I never had. I beg you . . .” Tears glistened at the corners of her eyes.
Ghanima fought down a tightness in her throat, said: “There is another difference between us. You were never Fremen. I’m nothing else. This is a chasm which divides us. Alia knows. Whatever else she may be, she knows this.”
“You can’t tell what Alia knows,” Irulan said, speaking bitterly. “If I didn’t know her for Atreides, I’d swear she has set herself to destroy her own Family.”
Ghanima said: “I owe you a water debt. For that, I’ll guard your life. But your cousin’s forfeit. Say no more of that.”
Irulan stilled the trembling of her lips, wiped her eyes. “I did love your father,” she whispered. “I didn’t even know it until he was dead.”
“Perhaps he isn’t dead,” Ghanima said. “This Preacher . . .”
“Ghani! Sometimes I don’t understand you. Would Paul attack his own family?”
Ghanima shrugged, looked out at the darkening sky. “He might find amusement in such a—”
“How can you speak so lightly of this—”
“To keep away the dark depths,” Ghanima said. “I don’t taunt you. The gods know I don’t. But I’m just my father’s daughter. I’m every person who’s contributed seed to the Atreides. You won’t think of Abomination, but I can’t think of anything else. I’m the pre-born. I know what’s within me.”
“That foolish old superstition about—”
“Don’t!” Ghanima reached a hand toward Irulan’s mouth. “I’m every Bene Gesserit of their damnable breeding program up to and including my grandmother. And I’m very much more.” She tore at her left palm, drawing blood with a fingernail. “This is a young body, but its experiences . . . Oh,
Instinctively Irulan bent and gathered Ghanima into her arms, holding her close, cheek against cheek.
As this thought swept through her, the whole desert passed into night.
One small bird has called thee
From a beak streaked crimson.
It cried once over Sietch Tabr
And thou went forth unto Funeral Plain.
—LAMENT FOR LETO II
Leto awoke to the tinkle of water rings in a woman’s hair. He looked to the open doorway of his cell and saw Sabiha sitting there. In the half-immersed awareness of the spice he saw her outlined by all that his vision revealed about her. She was two years past the age when most Fremen women were wed or at least betrothed. Therefore her family was saving her for something . . . or someone. She was nubile . . . obviously. His vision-shrouded eyes saw her as a creature out of humankind’s Terranic past: dark hair and pale skin, deep sockets which gave her blue-in-blue eyes a greenish cast. She possessed a small nose and a wide mouth above a sharp chin. And she was a living signal to him that the Bene Gesserit plan was known—or suspected—here in Jacurutu. So they hoped to revive Pharaonic Imperialism through him, did they? Then what was their design to force him into marrying his sister? Surely Sabiha could not prevent that.
His captors knew the plan, though. And how had they learned it? They’d not shared its vision. They’d not gone with him where life became a moving membrane in other dimensions. The reflexive and circular subjectivity of the visions which revealed Sabiha were his and his alone.
