Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [202]
She bowed formally. “Mother Commander, we are glad to have you back. Please, take your place.”
“It is no longer only my place. Duncan, your daughter has been raised in the Bene Gesserit ways, but she also made a point of learning about you. She trained herself to become the equivalent of a Ginaz Swordmaster.”
Thinking bittersweet thoughts about all he had missed, Duncan formally shook his daughter’s hand and found her grip pleasingly strong. Until this moment they had been strangers who shared a bond of blood and patriotic allegiance. Their real relationship was just beginning.
Murbella had fought a long and bloody battle to combine the opposing forces of the Honored Matres and the Bene Gesserits, after which she had wrestled with the disparate groups of humanity to forge them into one whole. On an even larger scale, Duncan, through his newfound abilities, was shaping an even greater, farther reaching union.
Everything was woven together in a tighter tapestry than history had ever known, and at last Duncan grasped the extent of his newfound strength. He was not the first human in history to possess great power, and he vowed not to forget what he had learned as a pawn of the God Emperor, Leto II.
The human race would never forget the thousands of years under that terrible reign, and Duncan’s comprehensive racial memory held a roadmap that showed him where the pitfalls were, thus enabling him to avoid them. The great Tyrant had suffered from a flaw he hadn’t recognized. Weighed down by his sense of terrible purpose, Leto II had isolated himself from his humanity.
In contrast, Duncan clung to the knowledge that Murbella would be with him, and Sheeana, too. He could talk with his daughter Janess as well, and perhaps even his other surviving daughter, Tanidia. In addition, he had all the memories of great and loyal friends, of dozens of loves, and a succession of comrades, wives, families, joys, and beliefs.
Though he was the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach with immeasurable power, Duncan had known the best parts of being human. Life after life. He didn’t need to feel alienated and worried, when he could be filled with love instead.
But his would not be a conventional kind of love. His love needed to extend much farther, to every living person, and to thinking machines. One form of sentient life was not superior to the other. And Duncan Idaho was greater than the flesh that encompassed his body.
EPILOGUE
In a war, be watchful for unexpected enemies and unlikely allies.
—BASHAR MILES TEG,
final log entries
More than a year had passed on Qelso. The unnatural desert continued to spread as sandtrout reproduced and commandeered more and more of the planet’s water. Though their fight seemed hopeless, Var’s commandos stood against the forces that were killing their environment.
Stilgar and Liet-Kynes did their best to assist in the struggle. Both desert-bred gholas felt that their more important work was to show the natives how they could live in cooperation with the encroaching desert, rather than fight it.
During the many months since the pair had departed from the noship, the dry sands had extended much farther into the continental forests and plains. Var’s camp had moved time after time, retreating from the oncoming dunes, and the desert kept following them. Though they had killed dozens of sandworms using water cannons and moisture bombs, Shai-Hulud was not so easily thwarted. The worms grew larger, despite all the efforts of the Qelso commandos.
With the first faint light of dawn, Liet stepped out of his rockwalled sleeping chambers and stretched. Although he and Stilgar were still teenagers, they remembered being adults once and having wives. Among the commando women on Qelso, many would accept either of them as a husband, but Liet had not yet decided