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"I need to find out what Time has done to you," he said.
"Why do you need that?"
A little fear in her voice there, he thought. She thinks I will probe after her puny rebellion and the names of her surviving associates.
When he remained silent, she said: "Do you intend to kill me the way you killed my friends?"
So she has heard about the fight at the Embassy. And she assumes I know all about her past rebellious activities. Moneo has been lecturing her, damn him! Well...I might have done the same in his circumstances.
"Are you really a god?" she demanded. "I don't understand why my father believes that."
She has some doubts, he thought. I still have room to maneuver.
"Definitions vary," he said. "To Moneo, I am a god... and that is a truth."
"You were human once."
He began to enjoy the leaps of her intellect. She had that sure, hunting curiosity which was the, hallmark of the Atreides.
"You are curious about me," he said. "It is the same with me. I am curious about you."
"What makes you think I'm curious?"
"You used to watch me very carefully when you were a child. I see that same look in your eyes tonight."
"Yes, I have wondered what it's like to be you."
He studied her for a moment. The moonlight drew shadows under her eyes, concealing them. He could let himself imagine that her eyes were the total blue of his own eyes, the blue of spice addiction. With that imaginative addition, Siona bore a curious resemblance to his long-dead Ghani. It was in the outline of her face and the placement of the eyes. He almost told Siona this, then thought better of it.
"Do you eat human food?" Siona asked.
"For a long time after I put on the sandtrout skin, I felt stomach hunger," he said. "Occasionally, I would attempt food. My stomach mostly rejected it. The cilia of the sandtrout spread almost everywhere in my human flesh. Eating became a bothersome thing. These days, I only ingest dry substances which sometimes contain a bit of the spice."
"You... eat melange?"
"Sometimes."
"But you no longer have human hungers?"
"I didn't say that."
She stared at him, waiting.
Leto admired the way she let unspoken questions work for her. She was bright and she had learned much during her short life.
"The stomach hunger was a black feeling, a pain I could not relieve," he said. "I would run then, run like an insane creature across the dunes."
"You... ran?"
"My legs were longer in proportion to my body in those days. I could move myself about quite easily. But the hungry pain has never left me. I think it's hunger for my lost humanity."
He saw the begi
"You still have this... pain?"
"It's only a soft burning now. That's one of the signs of my final metamorphosis. In a few hundred years, I'll be back under the sand."
He saw her clench her fists at her sides. "Why?" she demanded. "Why did you do this?"
"This change isn't all bad. Today, for example, has been very pleasant. I feel quite mellow."
"There are changes we ca
"My sight and hearing have become extremely acute, but not my sense of touch. Except for my face, I don't feel things the way I could once. I miss that."
Again, he noted the reluctant sympathy, the striving toward an empathic understanding. She wanted to know!
"When you live so long," she said, "how does the passage of Time feel? Does it move more rapidly as the years go by?"
"That's a strange thing, Siona. Sometimes, Time rushes by me; sometimes, it creeps."
Gradually, as they spoke, Leto had been dimming the concealed lights of his aerie, moving his cart closer and closer to Siona. Now, he shut off the lights, leaving only the moon. The front of his cart protruded onto the balcony, his face only about two meters from Siona.
"My father tells me," she said, "that the older you get, the slower your time goes. Is that what you told him?"
Testing my veracity, he thought. She's not a Truthsayer, then.
"All things are relative, but compared to the human timesense, this is true."
"Why?"
"It is involved in what I will become. At the end, Time will stop for me and I will be frozen like a pearl caught in ice. My new bodies will scatter, each with a pearl hidden within it."
She turned and looked away from him, peering out at the desert, speaking without looking at him.
"When I talk to you like this here in the darkness I can almost forget what you are."
"That's why I chose this hour for our meeting."
"But why this place?".
"Because it is the last place where I can feel at home."
Siona turned against the rail, leaning on it and looking at him. "I want to see you."
He turned on all of the aerie's lights, including the harsh white globes along the roof of the balcony's outer edge. As the light came on, an Ixian-made transparent mask slid out of wall recesses and sealed off the balcony behind Siona. She felt it move behind her and was startled, but nodded as though she understood. She thought it was a defense against attack. It was not. The wall merely kept out the damp insects of the night.
Siona stared at Leto, sweeping her gaze along his body, pausing at the stubs which once had been his legs, bringing her attention then to his arms and hands, then to his face.
"Your approved histories tell us that all Atreides are descended from you and your sister, Ghanima," she said. "The Oral History disagrees."
"The Oral History is correct. Your ancestor was Harq al Ada Ghani and I were married only in name, a move to consolidate the power."
"Like your marriage to this Ixian woman?"
"That is different."
"You will have children?"
"I have never been capable of having children. I chose the metamorphosis before that was possible."
"You were a child and then you were-" she pointed "this?"
"Nothing between."
"How does a child know what to choose?"
"I was one of the oldest children this universe has ever seen. Ghani was the other."
"That story about your ancestral memories!"
"A true story. We're all here. Doesn't the Oral History agree?"
She whirled away and held her back stiffly presented to him. Once more, Leto found himself fascinated by this human gesture: rejection coupled to vulnerability. Presently, she turned around and concentrated on his features within the hooded folds.
"You have the Atreides look," she said.
"I come by it just as honestly as you do."
"You're so old... why aren't you wrinkled?"
"Nothing about the human part of me ages in a normal way."
"Is that why you did this to yourself?"
"To enjoy long life? No."
"I don't see how anyone could make such a choice," she muttered. Then louder: "Never to know love..."
"You're playing the fool!" he said. "You don't mean love, you mean sex."
She shrugged.
"You think the most terrible thing I gave up was sex? No, the greatest loss was something far different."
"What?" She asked it reluctantly, betraying how deeply he touched her.
"I ca
"Not even your Ixian woman?"
"Yes, she would if she could, but she ca
"You mean that I... could?" She touched her breast with a finger.
"If there were enough sandtrout around. Unfortunately, all of them enclose my flesh. However, if I were to die..."
She shook her head in dumb horror at the thought.
"The Oral History tells it accurately," he said. "And we must never forget that you believe the Oral History."