Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [162]
Gone.
With the force of dominating vision, stronger than just the knowledge of his own death, Paul realized what he should have known from the beginning: I am not the Kwisatz Haderach that Omnius wants. It isn’t me!
Time seemed to slow down and freeze. Was this what Bashar Teg had experienced when he accelerated himself? But Paul Atreides could move no faster than the events around him. They held him captive and squeezed in on him like the steely embrace of Death.
Wearing a venomous grin, young Paolo swung the gold-hilted dagger around in a perfect arc and, with exquisite slowness, drove the point into Paul’s side. He slipped the dagger between his opponent’s ribs and kept pushing, shoving the deadly point through Paul’s lung and up into his heart.
Then Paolo yanked the murderous weapon free, and time resumed its normal speed. From far away, Paul heard Chani screaming.
Blood gushed from his wound, and Paul stumbled against the base of the hot fountain. It was a mortal wound; there could be no denying it. The prescient voice in his head hammered at him to no purpose. It seemed to be mocking him. I am not the final Kwisatz Haderach!
He slithered to the floor like a broken doll, barely saw Chani and Jessica running toward him. Jessica had Yueh by the collar and was dragging the Suk doctor over to her bleeding son.
Paul had never known that one body could contain so much blood. With fading vision, he looked up and saw Paolo prancing victoriously, holding the dripping red dagger. “You knew I would kill you! You might as well have driven in the knife with your own hands!”
It was a perfect reproduction of his visions. He lay on the floor, dying as swiftly as his body would allow.
In the background he heard the Baron Harkonnen’s boisterous laughter. The sound was intolerable, but Paul could do nothing to stop it.
When they pour in at once, my memories will be like a sandstorm—and just as destructive. Who can control the wind? If I am truly the God Emperor, then I can control it.
—GHOLA OF LETO II,
last preparatory assignment delivered to Bashar Miles Teg
Sand and worms poured out of the entrapped no-ship’s hold into the carefully ordered machine metropolis. The writhing creatures plowed into the open streets like maddened Salusan bulls bursting from their pens. Beside Leto, watching the hold empty in a deafening rush, Sheeana opened her mouth, and her eyes went wide with surprise.
Through his strange connection to the worms, Leto II’s mind surged outward with them into the sparkling city. Standing high above at the doorway to the immense cargo bay, he felt a wave of relief and freedom. Without a word to Sheeana, he dove into the sliding, flowing sand, following the worms in their wild exodus. He let the grit carry him, like a swimmer caught in an undertow being rapidly whisked out to sea.
“Leto! What are you doing? Stop!”
He could not have stopped to answer even if he had wanted to. The current of flowing powder sucked him downward—exactly where he wanted to be. Leto plunged under the sand, and his lungs somehow adapted to the dust, as did all of his senses. Like a sandworm he saw without eyes, and perceived the creatures ahead of him, as if he were looking at them through clear water. This was what he had been born to do, what he had died to do, ever so long ago.
Memories reverberated in him like echoes of the past—not a visceral recollection, but greater than the knowledge he had acquired by reading the Ithaca’s archives. Those entries had been about another young man, another Leto II, but still himself. A thought surfaced: My skin is not my own. In those days, his body had been covered with interlinked sandtrout, their membranous bodies meshing with his soft flesh and nerves. They had imparted strength to him, enabling him to