After a long silence, Moneo ventured: “Is that all, Lord?”

“No, it is not all. Siona will receive today a package delivered to her by a Guild courier. Nothing is to interfere with delivery of that package. Do you understand?”

“What is… what is in the package, Lord?”

“Some translations, reading matter which I wish her to see. You will do nothing to interfere. There is no melange in the package.”

“How… how did you know what I feared was in the…”

“Because you fear the spice. It could extend your life, but you avoid it.”

“I fear its other effects, Lord.”

“A bountiful nature has decreed that melange will unveil for some of us unexpected depths of the psyche, yet you fear this?”

“I am Atreides, Lord!”

“Ahhh, yes, and for the Atreides, melange may roll the mystery of Time through a peculiar process of internal revelation.”

“I have only to remember the way you tested me, Lord.”

“Do you not see the necessity for you to sense the Golden Path?”

“That is not what I fear, Lord.”

“You fear the other astonishment, the thing which made me make my choice.”

“I have only to look at you, Lord, and know that fear. We Atreides…” He broke off, his mouth dry.

“You do not want all of these memories of ancestors and the others who flock within me!”

“Sometimes… sometimes, Lord, I think the spice is the Atreides curse!”

“Do you wish that I had never occurred?”

Moneo remained silent.

“But melange has its values, Moneo. The Guild Navigators need it. And without it, the Bene Gesserit would degenerate into a helpless band of whining females!”

“We must live with it or without it, Lord. I know that.”

“Very perceptive, Moneo. But you choose to live without it.”

“Do I not have that choice, Lord?”

“For now.”

“Lord, what do you…”

“There are twenty-eight different words for melange in common Galach. They describe it by its intended use, by its dilution, by its age, by whether it came through honest purchase, through theft or conquest, whether it was the dower gift for a male or for a female, and in many other ways is it named. What do you make of this, Moneo?”

“We are offered many choices, Lord.”

“Only where the spice is concerned?”

Moneo’s brows wrinkled in thought, then: “No.”

“You so seldom say no in my presence,” Leto said. “I enjoy watching your lips form around the word.”

Moneo’s mouth twitched in an attempted smile.

Leto spoke briskly: “Well! You must go now to the Lady Hwi. I will give you one parting piece of advice which may help.”

Moneo paid studious attention to Leto’s face.

“Drug knowledge originated mostly with males because they tend to be more venturesome—an outgrowth of male aggression. You’ve read your Orange Catholic Bible, thus you know the story of Eve and the apple. Here’s an interesting fact about that story: Eve was not the first to pluck and sample the apple. Adam was first and he learned by this to put the blame on Eve. My story tells you something about how our societies find a structural necessity for subgroups.”