They had arrived at a small square at the centre of the village, a space about fifty metres on a side and with a low-walled pool of clear water in its centre. Siona crossed to the pool’s wall and sat on the rock ledge, patting beside her for Idaho to join her there. Idaho looked around at the village first, noting how people peered out at him from behind curtained windows, how the children pointed and whispered. He turned and stood looking down at Siona.

“What is this place?”

“I’ve told you. Tell me what Muad’Dib was like.”

“He was the best friend a man could ever have.”

“So the Oral History is true, but it calls the caliphate of his heirs The Desposyni, and that has an evil sound.”

She’s baiting me, Idaho thought.

He allowed himself a tight smile, wondering at Siona’s motives. She appeared to be waiting for some important event, anxious… even dreading… but with an under-tone of something like elation. It was all there. Nothing she said now could be accounted as more than small talk, a way of occupying the moments until… until what?

The light sound of running feet intruded on his reverie. Idaho turned and saw a child of perhaps eight years racing toward him out of a side-street. The child’s bare feet kicked up little dust geysers as he ran and there was the sound of a woman shouting, a despairing sound somewhere up the street. The runner stopped about ten paces away and stared up at Idaho with a hungering look, an intensity which Idaho found disturbing. The child appeared vaguely familiar—a boy, a stalwart figure with dark curly hair, an unfinished face but with hints of the man to be—rather high cheekbones, a flat line across the brows. He wore a faded blue singlesuit which betrayed the effects of much laundering but obviously had begun as a garment of excellent material. It had the look of punji cotton woven in a cordlock that did not permit even the frayed edges to unravel.

“You’re not my father,” the child said. Whirling away, he raced back up the street and vanished around a corner.

Idaho turned and scowled at Siona, almost afraid to ask the question: Was that a child of my predecessor? He knew the answer without asking—that familiar face, the genotype carried true. Myself as a child. Realization left him with an empty feeling, a sense of frustration. What is my responsibility?

Siona put both hands over her face and hunched her shoulders. It had not happened at all the way she had imagined it might. She felt betrayed by her own desires for revenge. Idaho was not simply a ghola, something alien and unworthy of consideration. She had felt him thrown against her in the ’thopter, had seen the obvious emotions on his face. And that child…

“What happened to my predecessor?” Idaho asked. His voice came out flat and accusatory.

She lowered her hands. There was suppressed rage in his face.