She glared at him. “Why?”

“On the dune’s steep side, unless you follow the natural curves, the sand may slide down upon you and bury you.”

She looked down the slope, absorbing this.

“See how beautiful words can be?” he asked.

She returned her attention to his face. “Should we be going?”

“You learn to value leisure out here. And courtesy. There’s no hurry.”

“But we have no water except the…”

“Used wisely, that stillsuit will keep you alive.”

“But how long will it take us to…”

“Your impatience alarms me.”

“But we have only this dried food in my pouch. What will we eat when…”

“Siona! Have you noticed that you are expressing our situation as mutual. What will we eat? We have no water. Should we be going? How long will it take us?”

He sensed the dryness of her mouth as she tried to swallow.

“Could it be that we’re interdependent?” he asked.

She spoke reluctantly. “I don’t know how to survive out here.”

“But I do?”

She nodded.

“Why should I share such precious knowledge with you?” he asked.

She shrugged, a pitiful gesture which touched him. How quickly the desert cut away previous attitudes.

“I will share my knowledge with you,” he said. “And you must find something valuable that you can share with me.”

Her gaze traversed his length, paused a moment at the flippers which once were his legs and feet, then came back to his face.

“Agreement bought with threats is no agreement,” she said.

“I offer you no violence.”

“There are many kinds of violence,” she said.

“And I brought you out here where you may die?”

“Did I have a choice in it?”

“It is difficult to be born an Atreides,” he said. “Believe me, I know.”

“You didn’t have to do it this way,” she said.

“And there you are wrong.”

He turned away from her and set off in a sinusoidal track down the dune. He heard her slipping and stumbling as she followed. Leto stopped well into the dune shadow.

‘We’ll wait out the day here,” he said. “It uses less water to travel by night.”

CHAPTER XL

One of the most terrible words in any language is Soldier. The synonyms parade through our history: yogahnee, trooper, hussar, kareebo, cossack, deranzeef, legionnaire, sardaukar, fish speaker… I know them all. They stand there in the ranks of my memory to remind me: Always make sure you have the army with you.

—The Stolen Journals

Idaho found Moneo at last in the long underground corridor which connected the Citadel’s eastern and western complexes. Since daybreak two hours before, Idaho had been prowling the Citadel seeking the majordomo and there he was, far off down the corridor, talking to someone concealed in a doorway, but Moneo was recognizable even at this distance by his stance and that inevitable white uniform.

The corridor’s plastone walls were amber here fifty metres below the surface and lighted by glowstrips keyed to the daylight hours. Cool breezes were drawn into these depths by a simple arrangement of free-swinging wings which stood like gigantic robed figures on perimeter towers at the surface. Now that the sun had warmed the sands, all of the wings pointed northward for the cool air pouring into the Sareer. Idaho smelled the flinty breeze as he walked.