He knew that most people were offended by his infatuation with desert. They were uneasy and turned away. Siona, however, could not turn away. Everywhere she looked, the desert demanded recognition. She rode silently on his back, but he knew her eyes were full. And the old, old memories were beginning to churn.

He came within three hours to a region of cylindrical whaleback dunes, some of them more than one hundred and fifty kilometres long at an angle to the prevailing wind. Beyond them lay a rocky corridor between dunes and into a region of star dunes almost four hundred metres high. Finally, they entered the braided dunes of the central erg where the general high pressure and electrically charged air gave his spirits a lift. He knew the same magic would be working on Siona.

“Here is where the songs of the Long Trek originated,” he said. “They are perfectly preserved in the Oral History.”

She did not answer, but he knew she heard.

Leto slowed his pace and began to speak to Siona, telling her about their Fremen past. He sensed the quickening of her interest. She even asked questions occasionally, but he could also feel her fears building. Even the base of his Little Citadel was no longer visible here. She could recognize nothing man-made. And she would think he engaged now in small talk, unimportant things to put off something portentous.

“Equality between our men and women originated here,” he said.

“Your Fish Speakers deny that men and women are equal,” she said.

Her voice, full of questioning disbelief, was a better locator than the sensation of her crouched on his back. Leto stopped at the intersection of two braided dunes and let the venting of his heat-generated oxygen subside.

“Things are not the same today,” he said. “But men and women do have different evolutionary demands upon them. With the Fremen, though, there was an interdependence. That fostered equality out here where questions of survival can become immediate.”

“Why did you bring me here?” she demanded.

“Look behind us,” he said.

He felt her turn. Presently, she said: “What am I supposed to see?”

“Have we left any tracks? Can you tell where we’ve been?”

“There’s a little wind now.”

“It has covered our tracks?”

“I guess so… yes.”

“This desert made us what we were and are,” he said. “It’s the real museum of all our traditions. Not one of those traditions has really been lost.”

Leto saw a small sandstorm, a ghibli, moving across the southern horizon. He noted the narrow ribbons of dust and sand moving out ahead of it. Surely, Siona had seen it.

“Why won’t you tell me why you brought me here?” she asked. Fear was obvious in her voice.

“But I have told you.”

“You have not!”

“How far have we come, Siona?”

She thought about this. “Thirty kilometres? Twenty?”

“Farther,” he said. “I can move very fast in my own land. Didn’t you feel the wind on your face?”