"Don't stop believing that," Alia said. She turned away to be enclosed by her guards and they moved swiftly down the passage toward the State Entrance where ornithopters awaited them. Ghanima wiped a tear from her right eye.

"Water for the dead?" Leto whispered, taking his sister's arm.

Ghanima drew in a deep, sighing breath, thinking of how she had observed her aunt, using the way she knew best from her own accumulation of ancestral experiences. "Spice trance did it?" she asked, knowing what Leto would say.

"Do you have a better suggestion?"

"For the sake of argument, why didn't our father... or even our grandmother succumb?"

He studied her a moment. Then: "You know the answer as well as I do. They had secure personalities by the time they came to Arrakis. The spice trance - well..." He shrugged. "They weren't born into this world already possessed of their ancestors. Alia, though..."

"Why didn't she believe the Bene Gesserit warnings?" Ghanima chewed her lower lip. "Alia had the same information to draw upon that we do."

"They already were calling her Abomination," Leto said. "Don't you find it tempting to find out if you're stronger than all of those..."

"No, I don't!" Ghanima looked away from her brother's probing stare, shuddered. She had only to consult her genetic memories and the Sisterhood's warnings took on vivid shape. The pre-born observably tended to become adults of nasty habits. And the likely cause... Again she shuddered.

"Pity we don't have a few pre-born in our ancestry," Leto said.

"Perhaps we do."

"But we'd... Ahh, yes, the old unanswered question: Do we really have open access to every ancestor's total file of experiences?"

From his own inner turmoil, Leto knew how this conversation must be disturbing his sister. They'd considered this question many times, always without conclusion. He said: "We must delay and delay and delay every time she urges the trance upon us. Extreme caution with a spice overdose; that's our best course."