Frank Herbert - Children of Dune

“Your Jihad will be a summer picnic on Caladan by comparison,” Leto agreed. “I’ll take you to Gurney Halleck now.”

“Gurney! He serves the Sisterhood through my mother.”

And now Leto understood the extent of his father’s vision. “No, father. Gurney no longer serves anyone. I know the place to find him and I can take you there. It’s time for the new legend to be created.”

“I see that I cannot sway you. Let me touch you, then, for you are my son.”

Leto held out his right hand to meet the groping fingers, felt their strength, matched it, and resisted every shift of Paul’s arm. “Not even a poisoned knife will harm me now,” Leto said. “I’m already a different chemistry.”

Tears slipped from the sightless eyes and Paul released his grip, dropped his hand to his side. “If I’d chosen your way, I’d have become the bicouros of shaitan . What will you become?”

“For a time they’ll call me the missionary of shaitan , too,” Leto said.

“Then they’ll begin to wonder and, finally, they’ll understand. You didn’t take your vision far enough, father. Your hands did good things and evil.”

“But the evil was known after the event!”

“Which is the way of many great evils,” Leto said. “You crossed over only into a part of my vision. Was your strength not enough?”

“You know I couldn’t stay there. I could never do an evil act which was known before the act. I’m not Jacurutu.” He clambered to his feet. “Do you think me one of those who laughs alone at night?”

“It is sad that you were never really Fremen,” Leto said. “We Fremen know how to commission the arifa. Our judges can choose between evils. It’s always been that way for us.”

“Fremen, is it? Slaves of the fate you helped to make?” Paul stepped toward Leto, reached out in an oddly shy movement, touched Leto’s sheathed arm, explored up it to where the membrane exposed an ear, then the cheek and, finally, the mouth. “Ahhhh, that is your own flesh yet,” he said. “Where will that flesh take you?” He dropped his hand.

“Into a place where humans may create their futures from instant to instant. ”

“So you say. An Abomination might say the same.”

“I’m not Abomination, though I might’ve been,” Leto said. “I saw how it goes with Alia. A demon lives in her, father. Ghani and I know that demon: it’s the Baron, your grandfather.”

Paul buried his face in his hands. His shoulders shook for a moment, then he lowered his hands and his mouth was set in a harsh line. “There is a curse upon our House. I prayed that you would throw that ring into the sand, that you’d deny me and run away to make … another life. It was there for you.”

“At what price?”

After a long silence, Paul said: “The end adjusts the path behind it. Just once I failed to fight for my principles. Just once. I accepted the Mahdinate. I did it for Chani, but it made me a bad leader.”

Leto found he couldn’t answer this. The memory of that decision was there within him.

“I cannot lie to you any more than I could lie to myself,” Paul said. “I know this. Every man should have such an auditor. I will only ask this one thing: is the Typhoon Struggle necessary?”

“It’s that or humans will be extinguished.”

Paul heard the truth in Leto’s words, spoke in a low voice which acknowledged the greater breadth of his son’s vision. “I did not see that among the choices.”

“I believe the Sisterhood suspects it,” Leto said. “I cannot accept any other explanation of my grandmother’s decision.”

The night wind blew coldly around them then. It whipped Paul’s robe around his legs. He trembled. Seeing this, Leto said: “You’ve a kit, father. I’ll inflate the tent and we can spend this night in comfort.”

But Paul could only shake his head, knowing he would have no comfort from this night or any other. Muad’Dib, The Hero, must be destroyed. He’d said it himself. Only The Preacher could go on now.

“Kaveh wahid,” Stilgar said. Bring coffee . He signaled with a raised hand to an aide who stood at one side near the single door to the austere rock-walled room where he had spent this wakeful night. This was the place where the old Fremen Naib usually took his spartan breakfast, and it was almost breakfast time, but after such a night he did not feel hungry. He stood, stretching his muscles.

Duncan Idaho sat on a low cushion near the door, trying to suppress a yawn. He had just realized that, while they talked, he and Stilgar had gone through an entire night.

“Forgive me, Stil,” he said. “I’ve kept you up all night.”

“To stay awake all night adds a day to your life,” Stilgar said, accepting the tray with coffee as it was passed in the door. He pushed a low bench in front of Idaho, placed the tray on it and sat across from his guest.

Both men wore the yellow robes of mourning, but Idaho’s was a borrowed garment worn because the people of Tabr had resented the Atreides green of his working uniform.

Stilgar poured the dark brew from the fat copper carafe, sipped first, and lifted his cup as a signal to Idaho—the ancient Fremen custom: “It is safe; I have taken some of it.”

The coffee was Harah’s work, done just as Stilgar preferred it: the beans roasted to a rose-brown, ground to a fine powder in a stone mortar while still hot, and boiled immediately; a pinch of melange added.

Idaho inhaled the spice-rich aroma, sipped carefully but noisily. He still did not know if he had convinced Stilgar. His mentat faculties had begun to work sluggishly in the early hours of the morning, all of his computations confronted at last by the inescapable datum supplied in the message from Gurney Halleck.

Alia had known about Leto! She’d known.

And Javid had to be a part of that knowing.

“I must be freed of your restraints,” Idaho said at last, taking up the arguments once more.

Stilgar stood his ground. “The agreement of neutrality requires me to make hard judgments. Ghani is safe here. You and Irulan are safe here. But you may not send messages. Receive messages, yes, but you may not send them. I’ve given my word.”

“This is not the treatment usually accorded a guest and an old friend who has shared your dangers,” Idaho said, knowing he’d used this argument before.

Stilgar put down his cup, setting it carefully into its place on the tray and keeping his attention on it as he spoke. “We Fremen don’t feel guilt for the same things that arouse such feelings in others,” he said. He raised his attention to Idaho’s face.

He must be made to take Ghani and flee this place, Idaho thought. He said: “It was not my intention to raise a storm of guilt.”

“I understand that,” Stilgar said. “I raise the question to impress upon you our Fremen attitude, because that is what we are dealing with: Fremen. Even Alia thinks Fremen.”