"Is that why you did this to yourself?"
"To enjoy long life? No."
"I don't see how anyone could make such a choice," she muttered. Then
louder: "Never to know love. . ."
"You're playing the fool!" he said. "You don't mean love, you mean XXX VEDIOS sex."
She shrugged.
"You think the most terrible thing I gave up was sex? No, the greatest
loss XXX VEDIOS was something far different."
"What?" She asked it reluctantly, betraying how deeply he
touched her.
"I cannot walk among my fellows without their special notice. XXX VEDIOS I am no
XXX VEDIOS longer one of you. I am alone. Love? Many people love me, but my shape
keeps us apart. We are separated,
Siona, by a gulf that no other human
dares to XXX VEDIOS bridge."
"Not even your Ixian woman?"
"Yes, she would if she could, but she XXX VEDIOS cannot. She's not an Atreides."
"You mean that I.could?" XXX VEDIOS She touched her breast with a finger.
"If there were enough sandtrout around. Unfortunately, all of them enclose
my flesh. However, if I were to die. . ."
She shook her head in dumb horror at the thought.
"The Oral History tells it accurately," he said. "And we XXX VEDIOS must never forget
XXX VEDIOS that you believe the Oral History."
She continued to shake her XXX VEDIOS head from side to side.
"There'XXX VEDIOS s no secret about it," he said. "The first moments of
the
XXX VEDIOS transformation are XXX VEDIOS the critical ones. Your awareness must drive inward and
outward simultaneously, one with Infinity. XXX VEDIOS I could provide you with enough
melange to accomplish this. Given enough spice, you can live through those
first awful moments.and all the other moments."
She shuddered uncontrollably, her gaze fixed on XXX VEDIOS his eyes.
"You know I'm telling you the truth, don't you?"
She nodded, inhaled a deep trembling breath, then: "Why did you do it?"
"The alternative was far more horrible."
"What alternative?"
"In time, XXX VEDIOS you may understand it. Moneo did."
"Your XXX VEDIOS damned XXX VEDIOS Golden Path!"
"Not damned at all. Quite holy."
"You think I'm a fool who XXX VEDIOS can't..."
"I think you're inexperienced, but possessed of great capability whose
potential you do not even
suspect."
She took three deep breaths and regained some of her composure, then: "If
you can't mate with the Ixian, what. . ."
"Child, why do you persist in misunderstanding? It's not sex. Before Hwi,
I could not pair. I had no other like me. In all XXX VEDIOS of the XXX VEDIOS cosmic XXX VEDIOS void, I was
the only one."
"She's like.you?"
"Deliberately XXX VEDIOS so. The lxians made her that