Children of Dune
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Returning to the dunetop in a single leap, Leto said: "Now I'm your guide."
"Never!"
"Would you go back to Shuloch? Even if they'd welcome you when you arrived without Tariq, where has Shuloch gone now? Do your eyes see it?"
Paul confronted his son then, aiming the eyeless sockets at Leto. "Do you really know the universe you have created here?"
Leto heard the particular emphasis. The vision which both of them knew had been set into terrible motion here had required an act of creation at a certain point in time. For that moment, the entire sentient universe shared a linear view of time which possessed characteristics of orderly progression. They entered this time as they might step onto a moving vehicle, and they could only leave it the same way.
Against this, Leto held the multi-thread reins, balanced in his own vision-lighted view of time as multilinear and multilooped. He was the sighted man in the universe of the blind. Only he could scatter the orderly rationale because his father no longer held the reins. In Leto's view, a son had altered the past. And a thought as yet undreamed in the farthest future could reflect upon the now and move his hand.
Only his hand.
Paul knew this because he no longer could see how Leto might manipulate the reins, could only recognize the inhuman consequences which Leto had accepted. And he thought: Here is the change for which I prayed. Why do I fear it? Because it's the Golden Path!
"I'm here to give purpose to evolution and, therefore, to give purpose to our lives," Leto said.
"Do you wish to live those thousands of years, changing as you now know you will change?"
Leto recognized that his father was not speaking about physical changes. Both of them knew the physical consequences: Leto would adapt and adapt; the skin-which-was-not-his-own would adapt and adapt. The evolutionary thrust of each part would melt into the other and a single transformation would emerge. When metamorphosis came, if it came, a thinking creature of awesome dimensions would emerge upon the universe - and that universe would worship him.
No... Paul was referring to the inner changes, the thoughts and decisions which would inflict themselves upon the worshipers.
"Those who think you dead," Leto said, "you know what they say about your last words."
"Of course."
" 'Now I do what all life must do in the service of life,' " Leto said. "You never said that, but a Priest who thought you could never return and call him liar put those words into your mouth."
"I'd not call him liar." Paul took in a deep breath. "Those are good last words."
"Would you stay here or return to that hut in the basin of Shuloch?" Leto asked.
"This is your universe now," Paul said.
The words filled with defeat cut through Leto. Paul had tried to guide the last strands of a personal vision, a choice he'd made years before in Sietch Tabr. For that, he'd accepted his role as an instrument of revenge for the Cast Out, the remnants of Jacurutu. They had contaminated him, but he'd accepted this rather than his view of this universe which Leto had chosen.
The sadness in Leto was so great he could not speak for several minutes. When he could manage his voice, Leto said: "So you baited Alia, tempted her and confused her into inaction and the wrong decisions. And now she knows who you are."
"She knows... Yes, she knows."
Paul's voice was old then and filled with hidden protests. There was a reserve of defiance in him, though. He said: "I'll take the vision away from you if I can."
"Thousands of peaceful years," Leto said. "That's what I'll give them."
"Dormancy! Stagnation!"
"Of course. And those forms of violence which I permit. It'll be a lesson which humankind will never forget."
"I spit on your lesson!" Paul said. "You think I've not seen a thing similar to what you choose?"
"You saw it," Leto agreed.
"Is your vision any better than mine?"
"Not one whit better. Worse, perhaps," Leto said.
"Then what can I do but resist you?" Paul demanded.
"Kill me, perhaps?"
"I'm not that innocent. I know what you've set in motion. I know about the broken qanats and the unrest."
"And now Assan Tariq will never return to Shuloch. You must go back with me or not at all because this is my vision now."
"I choose not to go back."
How old his voice sounds, Leto thought, and the thought was a wrenching pain. He said: "I've the hawk ring of the Atreides concealed in my dishdasha. Do you wish me to return it to you?"
"If I'd only died," Paul whispered. "I truly wanted to die when I went into the desert that night, but I knew I could not leave this world. I had to come back and -"
"Restore the legend," Leto said. "I know. And the jackals of Jacurutu were waiting for you that night as you knew they would be. They wanted your visions! You knew that."
"I refused. I never gave them one vision."
"But they contaminated you. They fed you spice essence and plied you with women and dreams. And you did have visions."
"Sometimes." How sly his voice sounded.
"Will you take back your hawk ring?" Leto asked.
Paul sat down suddenly on the sand, a dark blotch in the starlight. "No!"
So he knows the futility of that path, Leto thought. This revealed much, but not enough. The contest of the visions had moved from its delicate plane of choices down to a gross discarding of alternates. Paul knew he could not win, but he hoped yet to nullify that single vision to which Leto clung.