I am vulnerable, he thought.

Yet, he knew himself to be the master of this place. And the planet was the master of him.

I am part of it.

He devoured the soil directly, rejecting only the water. His human mouth and lungs had been relegated to breathing just enough to sustain a remnant humanity… and talking.

Leto spoke to Siona’s back: “I like to talk and I dread the day when I no longer will be able to engage in conversations.”

With a certain diffidence, she turned and stared at him in the moonlight, quite obvious distaste in her expression.

“I agree that I am a monster in many human eyes,” he said.

“Why am I here?”

Directly to the point! She would not deviate. Most of the Atreides had been that way, he thought. It was a characteristic which he hoped to maintain in the breeding of them. It spoke of a strong inner sense of identity.

“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 manoeuvre.

“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 sand-trout 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.”