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--WORDS OF THE MENTAT DUNCAN IDAHO

A spot of light appeared on the deep red rug which covered the raw rock of the cave floor The light gloithout apparent source, having its existence only on the red fabric surface woven of spice fiber A questing circle about two centiated, now an oval Encountering the deep green side of a bed, it leaped upward, folded itself across the bed's surface

Beneath the green covering lay a child with rusty hair, face still round with baby fat, a generousthe lean sparseness of Fremen tradition, but not as water-fat as an off-worlder As the light passed across closed eyelids, the sht winked out

Now there was only the sound of even breathing and, faint behind it, a reassuring drip-drip-drip of water collecting in a catch-basin from the windstill far above the cave

Again the light appeared in the chahter This tiestion of source and ure filled the arched doorway at the chaht flowed around the cha There was a sense of menace in it, a restless dissatisfaction It avoided the sleeping child, paused on the gridded air inlet at an upper corner, probed a bulge in the green and gold wall hangings which softened the enclosing rock

Presently the light winked out The hooded figureswish of fabric, took up a station at one side of the arched doorway Anyone aware of the routine here in Sietch Tabr would have suspected at once that this uardian of the orphaned tould one day take up the ht inspections of the twins' quarters, always going first to the cha room, where he could reassure himself that Leto was not threatened

I'ht

He fingered the cold surface of the light projector before restoring it to the loop in his belt sash The projector irritated hi was a subtle instrue living bodies It had shown only the sleeping children in the royal bedchambers

Stilgar knew his thoughts and eht He could not still a restless inner projection Soreater power controlled that movement It projected him into this net for dreahout the known universe Here lay temporal riches, secular authority and that most powerful of all ious bequest In these twins--Leto and his sister Ghanima--an awesoh dead, lived in them

These were not merely nine-year-old children; they were a natural force, objects of veneration and fear They were the children of Paul Atreides, who had beconited an explosion of humanity; Fre their fervor across the huovernment whose scope and ubiquitous authority had left its mark on every planet

Yet these children of Muad'Dib are flesh and blood, Stilgar thought Two simple thrusts of my knife would still their hearts Their water would return to the tribe

His ard ht

To kill Muad'Dib's children!

But the years had in of such a terrible thought It caht hand of the blessed The ayat and burhan of Life held few mysteries for him Once he'd been proud to think of himself as Fremen, to think of the desert as a friend, to nahts and not Arrakis, as it was marked on all of the Imperial star charts

How siht By finding our Mahdi we loosed upon the universe countless ated by the jihad now dreams of a leader to come

Stilgar glanced into the darkened bedchamber

If my knife liberated all of those people, would they make a messiah of me?

Leto could be heard stirring restlessly in his bed

Stilgar sighed He had never known the Atreides grandfather whose nath of Muad'Dib had cohtness skip a generation now? Stilgar found himself unable to answer this question

He thought: Sietch Tabr is mine I rule here I am a Naib of the Fremen Without me there would have been no Muad'Dib These twins, nowthrough Chani, their mother and my kinswoman, my blood flows in their veins I am there with Muad'Dib and Chani and all the others What have we done to our universe?

Stilgar could not explain why such thoughts cauilty He crouched within his hooded robe Reality was not at all like the dream The Friendly Desert, which once had spread from pole to pole, was reduced to half its forreenery filled him with dised, he knew he had changed He had become a far more subtle person than the one-tis--of statecraft and profound consequences in the se and subtlety as a thin veneer covering an iron core of simpler, more deterministic awareness And that older core called out to him, pleaded with him for a return to cleaner values

The hts People were beginning to ainst his cheeks: people were going out through the doorseals into the predawn darkness The breeze spoke of carelessness as it spoke of the tiht water discipline of the old days Why should they, when rain had been recorded on this planet, when clouds were seen, when eight Fremen had been inundated and killed by a flash flood in a wadi? Until that event, the word drowned had not existed in the language of Dune But this was no longer Dune; this was Arrakisand it was theof an eventful day

He thought: Jessica, randmother of these royal twins, returns to our planet today Why does she end her self-imposed exile at this time? Why does she leave the softness and security of Caladan for the dangers of Arrakis?

And there were other worries: Would she sense Stilgar's doubts? She was a Bene Gesserit witch, graduate of the Sisterhood's deepest training, and a Reverend Mother in her own right Such feerous Would she order him to fall upon his own knife as the Umma-Protector of Liet-Kynes had been ordered?

Would I obey her? he wondered

He could not answer that question, but now he thought about Liet-Kynes, the planetologist who had first drea the planetwide desert of Dune into the hu Liet-Kynes had been Chani's father Without him there would have been no dreaile chain disar