BOOK THREE - CHAPTER SIX
 

Memories populate the continuum formed by our understanding of our personal history. The way this continuum is constructed is highly subjective, due to the unique blend of presuppositions, opinions and fragments of knowledge each of us possesses. This means that, barring the use of more or less objective recording tools, the way we're situated in reference to the past as well as the future is highly subjective as well. The past is only know to us in memories, the future is only understood by us based on extrapolations of the now that use our understanding of the way similar situations developed in the past. In other words: our memories define our understanding of time. Events that were personally important will be remembered well and will be appointed a relatively large amount of "memory space", but might be altered considerably due to our constant revisiting and modifying those events in memories - after all, we perceive those scenes from the past through the filter of the present: the way we understand and rate those memories is influenced by our current mood and intellectual advancement. Occurances we considered unimportant will be remembered poorly or not at all and will be appointed very little "memory space", but might survive relatively unscathed if inadvertantly remembered much later in life. This way meaningful periods in effect expand in our memories, and meaningless periods deflate. Strangely enough the inverse is true for the immediate appraisal of such periods as we experience them, which becomes clear when you consider the ancient saying "time flies when you're having fun", which is still in use today. Conversely, when living it, a boring period lasts unbearably long, but in retrospect such a period will have flown by because nothing of importance happened in it. This is how normal memory works - how different it is for me, in whom prescience and ancestral memory reaching back to the earliest evolutionary stages meet! There is no qualitative criterium to differentiate the memories of my physical life from my boundless knowledge of the past as well as the future. Do you understand my godhood now? Do you see my terrible burden?
-Leto II, the God Emperor. From The Stolen Journals-
 

Almost a week had passed since the Prometheans first attacked Chapter House. After the first devastating assault, many small Bene Gesserit and Honoured Matre groups had scattered across the habitable parts of the planet, launching counterattacks where they could. Despite the valiant efforts of the defenders, the invaders were simply too powerful: now all but a few groups had been either eradicated or captured.

Idaho and Scytale were still inside the no-ship, having been spared from detection by the many patrols of the Prometheans. The axolotl tanks had generated a small army of Teg gholas, each of them as malformed and diseased as the first one, but staggeringly powerful and fast.

Leto had awakened the day before: the ghola-baby's limbs had grown larger and stronger and the vocal chords had developed, but he was still weak. He now resembled a smaller version of what he had looked like while he ruled his Empire, up to a millennium-and-a-half before.

Only the face is not Leto's, Duncan realised at their first meeting.

A warning light flashed on the main console on the bridge of the ship. Idaho checked the readings, an angry frown appearing on his face.

"What is it?", the Tleilaxu Master asked.

"Yesterday I managed to establish an uplink with one of the few no-sattelites that is still functional. It was keeping an eye on the enemy flagship for me."

"Has something happened to it?"

"You could say that. A large section has separated from it, and is descending towards the planet."

Another screen came alive, displaying several lines of symbols and the images delivered to them by a returning spy drone. "It seems we have more immediate problems," Duncan said. "There's an enemy patrol out there, and they've found us."

**********

A groundcar carrying Idaho, Scytale, the reborn Leto and five Teg gholas burst from a hatch in the no-ship, crashing through the Promethean patrol. The troopers got up, not one of them injured, and gave pursuit.

"Wait," the leader said, a strange accent modifying his pronunciation of Galach. "There's a Bagishar amongst them."

Another trooper checked a small sensor device. "It does appear consistent with a Bagishar's signature, but it's lacking all implants and enhancements. It could be just a worm."

"No matter. Follow them!"

They pursued on foot, quickly lagging behind, but moving much faster than any human could. They were quickly joined by an actual Bagishar, one of the armoured worm-human hybrids who functioned as generals in the invaders' army, whose affinity with the sand enabled them to travel much more quickly. The strange creature was catching up with the heavily burdened groundcar.

Leto looked back, and saw the Bagishar approaching. Part of him is probably part of me, he realised.

Leto attempted to contact the shadows of his mind within the sandtrout that covered the pursuer. He felt the few regular sandworms still alive on the planet responding, and he shared in the pain caused by the injuries they had sustained during the attacks they had been forced to carry out under the Bagishars' influence, but could not penetrate the pearls of his consciousness in the sandtrout covering the officer itself.

What manner of beast is that? He resembles me, but the parts of my mind that should be present in him have been changed.

For a brief moment, Leto could sense the truth about these creatures. Machines have been fused with organics, keeping the transformation from man to worm at an equilibrium. There's another mind beyond that, controlling the worms! He's the one I'm looking for.

At that moment, the pursueing Bagishar fired two well-placed shots at the groundcar with a side-mounted energy discharge weapon, causing it to crash.

**********

"We should attack once more!" The Mother Superior's mind had been made up. "We cannot allow these filthy creatures to win this easily!"

A Proctor - Dional - was attempting to reason with her superior. "We have suffered terrible losses. The only course of action is to evacuate. If we can only reach the no-ship ..."

"I will not retreat," Murbella screamed. "This planet is mine."

"Clearly your primitive Honoured Matre rhetoric has contaminated your capacity for rational thought."

As soon Dional had said this, she realised the mistake she had made. Even though she was an accomplished fighter amongst the Bene Gesserit, she knew she would not stand a chance against an infuriated Murbella.

Murbella was ready to pounce, when the discharge of an energy weapon could be heard outside the room's entrance. A Promethean trooper entered. In Galach, barely understandable because of the heavy accent, he said: "The Bene Gesserit Mother Superior will come with me."

"I will do no such thing," Murbella said. In an impossibly quick movement, she lunged at the trooper, her hand outstretched. The trooper casually stepped aside, evading the attack effortlessly, paralysing Murbella with a small dart ejected from a hidden launcher on his right arm.

"Bah!", the Promethean exclaimed. "Obsolescent organic."

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