“Are you still alive?” Idaho asked.

Leto’s voice came in wheezing gasps: “Let them scatter, Duncan. Let them run and hide anywhere they want in any universe they choose.”

“Damn you! What’re you saying? I’d have sooner let her live with you!”

“Let? I did not let anything.”

“Why did you let Hwi die?” Idaho moaned. “We didn’t know she was in there with you.”

Idaho’s head sagged forward.

“You will be recompensed,” Leto husked. “My Fish Speakers will choose you over Siona. Be kind to her, Duncan. She is more than Atreides and she carries the seed of your survival.”

Leto sank back into his memories. They were delicate myths now, held fleetingly in his awareness. He sensed that he might have fallen into a time which, by its very being, had changed the past. There were sounds, though, and he struggled to interpret them. Someone scrambling on rocks? The flames parted to reveal Siona standing beside Idaho. They stood hand in hand like two children reassuring each other before venturing into an unknown place.

“How can he live like that?” Siona whispered.

Leto waited for the strength to respond. “Hwi helps me,” he said. “We had something few experience. We were joined in our strengths rather than in our weaknesses.”

“And look what it got you!” Siona sneered.

“Yes, and pray that you get the same,” he husked. “Perhaps the spice will give you time.”

“Where is your spice?” she demanded.

“Deep in Sietch Tabr,” he said. “Duncan will find it. You know the place, Duncan. They call it Tabur now. The outlines are still there.”

“Why did you do it?” Idaho whispered.

“My gift,” Leto said. “Nobody will find the descendants of Siona. The oracle cannot see her.”

“What?” They spoke in unison, leaning close to hear his fading voice.

“I give you a new kind of time without parallels,” he said. “It will always diverge. There will be no concurrent points on its curves. I give you the Golden Path. That is my gift. Never again will you have the kinds of concurrence that once you had.”

Flames covered his vision. The agony was fading, but he could still sense odours and hear sounds with a terrible acuity. Both Idaho and Siona were breathing in quick, shallow gasps. Odd kinesthetic sensations began to weave their way through Leto—echoes of bones and joints which he knew he no longer possessed.

“Look!” Siona said.

“He’s disintegrating.” That was Idaho.

“No.” Siona. “The outside is falling away. Look! The worm!”

Leto felt parts of himself settling into warm softness. The agony removed itself.

“What’re those holes in him?” asked Siona.

“I think they were the sandtrout. See the shapes?”

“I am here to prove one of my ancestors wrong,” Leto said (or thought he said, which was the same thing as far as his journals were concerned). “I was born a man but I do not die a man.”

“I can’t look!” Siona said.

Leto heard her turn away, a rattle of rocks.