Siona peeled her face mask aside but held it in her hand for quick restoration.

“How much longer until we find water?” she asked.

“Three nights.”

“Is there a better direction to go?”

“No.”

She had come to appreciate the Fremen economy with important information. She sipped greedily at a few drops in her catchpocket.

Leto recognized the message of her movements—familiar gestures for Fremen in extremis. Siona was now fully aware of a common experience among her ancestors—patiyeh, the thirst at the edge of death.

The few drops in her catchpocket were gone. He heard her sucking air. She restored the mask and spoke in a muffled voice.

“I won’t make it, will I?”

Leto looked into her eyes, seeing there the clarity of thought brought on by the nearness of death, a penetrating awareness seldom otherwise achieved. It amplified only that which was required for survival. Yes, she was well into the tedah ri-agrimi, the agony which opens the mind. Soon, she would have to make that ultimate decision which she yet believed she had already made. Leto knew by the signs that he was required to treat Siona now with extreme courtesy. He would have to answer every question with candour for in every question lurked a judgment.

“Will I?” she insisted.

There was still a trace of hope in her desperation.

“Nothing is certain,” he said.

This dropped her into despair.

That had not been Leto’s intention, but he knew that it often happened—an accurate, though ambiguous, answer was taken as confirmation of one’s deepest fears.

She sighed.

Her mask-muffled voice probed at him once more. “You had some special intention for me in your breeding programme.”

It was not a question.

“All people have intentions,” he told her.

“But you wanted my full agreement.”

“That is true.”

“How could you expect agreement when you know I hate everything about you? Be honest with me!”

“The three legs of the agreement-tripod are desire, data and doubt. Accuracy and honesty have little to do with it.”

“Please don’t argue with me. You know I’m dying.”

“I respect you too much to argue with you.”

He lifted his front segments slightly then, probing the wind. It already was beginning to bring the day’s heat but there was too much moisture in it for his comfort. He was reminded that the more he ordered the weather controlled the more there was that required control. Absolutes only brought him closer to vagaries.

“You say you’re not arguing, but…”

“Argument closes off the doors of the senses,” he said, lowering himself back to the surface. “It always masks violence. Continued too long, argument always leads to violence. I have no violent intentions toward you.”

“What do you mean—desire, data and doubt?”

“Desire brings the participants together. Data sets the limits of their dialogue. Doubt frames the questions.”

She moved closer to stare directly into his face from less than a metre away.

How odd, he thought, that hatred could be mingled so completely with hope and fear and awe.