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plans of their military leaders, the tooling and production capacities of basic industries.
    Why now, Paul wondered, did she ask about Irulan?
    “I’ve troubled your mind,” Chani said. “That wasn’t my intention.”
    “What was your intention?”
    She smiled shyly, meeting his gaze. “If you’re angered, love, please don’t hide it.”
    Paul sank back against the headboard. “Shall I put her away?” he asked. “Her use is limited now and I don’t like the things I sense about her trip home to the Sisterhood.”
    “You’ll not put her away,” Chani said. She went on massaging his legs, spoke matter-of-factly: “You’ve said many times she’s your contact with our enemies, that you can read their plans through her actions.”
    “Then why ask about her desire for a child?”
    “I think it’d disconcert our enemies and put Irulan in a vulnerable position should you make her pregnant.”
    He read by the movements of her hands on his legs what that statement had cost her. A lump rose in his throat. Softly, he said: “Chani, beloved, I swore an oath never to take her into my bed. A child would give her too much power. Would you have her displace you?”
    “I have no place.”
    “Not so, Sihaya, my desert springtime. What is this sudden concern for Irulan?”
    “It’s concern for you, not for her! If she carried an Atreides child, her friends would question her loyalties. The less trust our enemies place in her, the less use she is to them.”
    “A child for her could mean your death,” Paul said. “You know the plotting in this place.” A movement of his arm encompassed the Keep.
    “You must have an heir!” she husked.
    “Ahhh,” he said.
    So that was it: Chani had not produced a child for him. Someone else, then, must do it. Why not Irulan? That was the way Chani’s mind worked. And it must be done in an act of love because all the Empire avowed strong taboos against artificial ways. Chani had come to a Fremen decision.
    Paul studied her face in this new light. It was a face he knew better in some ways than his own. He had seen this face soft with passion, in the sweetness of sleep, awash in fears and angers and griefs.
    He closed his eyes, and Chani came into his memories as a girl once more—veiled in springtime, singing, waking from sleep beside him—so perfect that the very vision of her consumed him. In his memory, she smiled … shyly at first, then strained against the vision as though she longed to escape.
    Paul’s mouth went dry. For a moment, his nostrils tasted the smoke of a devastated future and the voice of another kind of vision commanding him to disengage … disengage … disengage. His prophetic visions had been eavesdropping on eternity for such a long while, catching snatches of foreign tongues, listening to stones and to flesh not his own. Since the day of his first encounter with terrible purpose, he had peered at the future, hoping to find peace.
    There existed a way, of course. He knew it by heart without knowing the heart of it—a rote future, strict in its instructions to him: disengage, disengage, disengage …
    Paul opened his eyes, looked at the decision in Chani’s face. She had stopped massaging his legs, sat still now—purest Fremen. Her features remained familiar beneath the blue nezhoni scarf she often wore about her hair in the privacy of their chambers. But the mask of decision sat on her, an ancient and alien-to-him way of thinking. Fremen women had shared their men for thousands of years—not always in peace, but with a way of making the fact nondestructive. Something mysteriously Fremen in this fashion had happened in Chani.
    “You’ll give me the only heir I want,” he said.
    “You’ve seen this?” she asked, making it obvious by her emphasis that she referred to prescience.
    As he had done many times, Paul wondered how he could explain the delicacy of the oracle, the Timelines without number which vision waved before him on an undulating