Chapter 52 Chapter 52

Leto sat with his back against a wall of the hut, watching Sabah—the thread that appeared in the precognitive vision was slowly unraveling.She had already prepared coffee and put it beside him.Now she is squatting in front of him, preparing dinner for him.Dinner was fragrant and spiced porridge.She stirred the gruel quickly with a spoon, leaving indigo marks on the rim of the bowl.She stirred very carefully, her thin face almost fell to the surface of the porridge. Behind her was a rough sheet of membrane, with which the hut would serve as a distillation tent.The fire and lights reflected her face on the film, like adding a halo around her head.

That lamp piqued Leto's interest.It was an oil lamp, not a globe lamp.What a splurge on spice oils the people at Suluchi are.They maintain the oldest Freeman tradition, but at the same time use orthopters and state-of-the-art spice locomotives, rudely mixing tradition and modernity. Sabah put out the stove and handed him the bowl of porridge. Leto left the bowl alone. "If you don't eat, I will be punished," she said. He stared at her, thinking: If I kill her, I'll shatter one illusion; if I tell her about Muritz's plan, I'll shatter another illusion; will become a thick rope.

His mind sorted out the threads of visions.One of them was very sweet and haunted him for a long time.There is a future in his visions that tells of his union with Sabah that seduces him and threatens to crowd out other futures, keeping him down the road to the end of misery. "Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked. He didn't answer. She pushed the bowl towards him. Leto swallowed, moistening his parched throat.His whole body was filled with the urge to kill Sabah.He found his body shaking with impulse.How easy it is to shatter an illusion!Let your wild side run wild.

"This is Muritz's order," she said, pointing to the bowl. Yes, Muritz's order.Superstition conquers all.Muritz wanted him to decipher the visionary scene.Like an ancient savage, he ordered the witch doctor to drop a handful of ox bones, and let him divine the future based on where the bones were scattered.Muritz had removed his still suit as a "simple precaution".Muritz mocked Namuri and Sabah: Only fools let prisoners escape. Plus, Muritz has a big problem: mental rivers.The water of captivity ran through his veins.Muritz was looking for some sign that would give him an excuse to kill Leto.

"Spices give you illusions," Sabah said.Leto's long silence made her uncomfortable. "I've had many visions in Horde Revelry too, but unfortunately they all meant nothing." Have!he thinks.He let the body enter a closed state of stillness, and the skin quickly became cold and damp.Bee Gist's training dominated his consciousness, and his consciousness became a ray of light, illuminating the fate of Sabah and these outcasts in exhaustive detail.The ancient Bi-Gist teachings make it clear: "Language reflects a way of life. What is distinctive about a way of life is mostly recognizable by the language, tone and syntactic structure used. Pay particular attention to the way sentences are broken, which represent breaks in life. In these places the movement of life is temporarily blocked, frozen." Like everyone who takes spices, Sabah can have certain hallucinations.But she despises her spice-inspired visions, which disturb her and must therefore be cast aside, deliberately forgotten.Her people worship Shahulu, because the sandworms appear in most of their visions; they pray for the dew on the edge of the desert, because water rules their lives.But despite this, they greedily pursued the riches brought by the spices, and lured sandtrout into open aqueducts.Sabah was using spices to fuel his precognitive visions, but he didn't seem to care much about them.Yet the beams of his consciousness illuminated the subtle signs of her words: her reliance on the absolute, the finite, her reluctance to delve into a future of infinite change, because change meant decisions, harsh decisions at that, and she could not make them. , especially when they involve her own interests: she clings to her biased view of the universe, and though it may blind her to the passage of time, other possible paths terrify her.

She is stationary, while Leto is free to move.He is like a pocket, containing countless time and space.His ability to see into these planes allows him to make dire decisions that Sabah cannot. Just like my father. "You must eat!" Sabah said impatiently. Leto saw the law of the whole vision, and knew which thread he must follow.He stood up and wrapped himself tightly in his robe.Without the protection of the distillation suit, the robe directly touched his skin, giving him a strange feeling.He stood barefoot on the spice fabric on the floor, feeling the grains of sand embedded in the fabric.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "The air here is too bad, I have to go outside." "You can't escape," she said. "There are sandworms in every canyon. If you go to the other side of the diversion channel, they can sense you by the vapor you give off. The sandworms that are confined are very Alert, nothing like their desert companions. And—" she said triumphantly, "you don't have a distillate suit." "Then what are you worried about?" he asked, trying to provoke a genuine response from her. "Because you haven't eaten yet."

"You will be punished for it." "yes!" "But I'm soaked in spices," he said. "I have visions every moment." He pointed to the bowl with his bare foot. "Pour it in the sand. Who will know?" "They're watching," she said softly. He shook his head, removed her from his vision, and felt a new kind of freedom instantly.There's no need to kill the poor pawn.She was dancing to someone else's music, not even knowing the steps she was doing, but believing she was sharing the power of the bandits that attracted Suruchi and Jakrutu.

Leto went to the door and ripped the seal. "If Muritz came," she said, "he'd be very angry—" "Muritz is a businessman, and other than that, he's a shell," Leto said. "My aunt sucked him dry." She stood up, "I'll go out with you." He thought: She remembers how I ran away from her.Now she fears that she is keeping me too loose.She has a vision of her own, but she will not be led by that vision.In fact, all she had to do was look at her own illusions, and she would know his intentions: how could he fool the sandworms trapped in the narrow canyon?How was he going to survive Tanzeroffot without a distiller suit and a Freeman survival kit?

"I must be alone and consult my vision," he said. "You must stay here." "Where are you going?" "Go to the aqueduct." "There are schools of sandtrout there at night." "They won't eat me." "Sometimes the sandworms are on the other side," she said, "and if you cross the aqueduct..." She didn't finish, trying to emphasize the threat in her words. "How can I ride a sandworm without a spearhook?" he asked, wondering if she could catch even a glimpse of her own vision. "Will you eat it when you get back?" she asked, walking over to the bowl again and stirring the gruel with a spoon.

"Everything depends on the time," he said.He knew that it was impossible for her to detect that he had cleverly used the Magic Sound Dafa, thus sneaking his will into her decision-making thinking. "Muritz will come and see if you're hallucinating," she warned. "I'll deal with Muritz in my own way," he said, noticing how slow her movements had become.The magic sound method he had just used on her was subtly integrated with the Fremen's life style. Fremen are alive and well when the sun rises, but when night falls, a deep melancholy often lulls them to sleep.She already wanted to collapse and fall asleep. Leto walked into the night alone. The stars were shining in the sky, and he could vaguely make out the shape of the surrounding hills.He walked straight to the palm grove by the canal. Leto lingered on the bank of the canal for a long time, listening to the never-ending hissing sound in the sand on the opposite bank.It sounds like a small sandworm: no doubt that's why it's kept in captivity.It is easier to transport small sandworms.He imagined catching it: hunters dulling it with water mist, then catching it the traditional Freeman way as they were preparing for a tribal revel.But it won't be drowned.It will be sent to the spaceship of the Guild, and shipped to those hopeful buyers.However, alien deserts may be too wet.Few alien worlds realize that sandtrout keep the necessary dryness on Arrakis.It used to be so!For even here in Tanzaofort, the moisture in the air was several times greater than any sandworm had ever experienced before—except for those that drowned in the burrow cisterns. He could hear Sabah tossing and turning in the shed behind him, repressed visions stirring her and making her restless.He didn't know what it would be like to live with her without the precognitive visions.The two greet and share each moment as it comes.The thought appealed to him more than any of the visions the spices had evoked.The future of ignorance has a unique freshness to it. "One kiss in the cave is worth two in the city." The old Freeman adage speaks volumes.Traditional caverns are a mix of wild and shy.The people of Jakrutu/Suluqi still retain a trace of shyness, but only a trace.Leto can't help but be saddened by the thought that tradition is gone forever. Comes slowly.By the time Leto did realize that the action had begun, he was surrounded by the rustling of many small creatures around him. sand salmon. Soon he would be passing from one vision to another.He felt the movement of the sandtrout as if he felt movement within himself.The Fremen and these strange creatures have lived together for countless generations.They know that if you're willing to use a drop of water as bait, you can lure them within easy reach.Many Fremen dying of thirst often risk their last drops of water on this gamble, possibly winning the green molasses squeezed from sandtrout to keep them alive.Sandtrout is child's play too.They catch them both for water and for sheer fun. But the "fun" at the moment is too important to him.Leto couldn't help shivering! Leto felt a sandtrout touch his bare foot.It hesitated for a moment, then moved on.The abundance of water in the canal is attracting it. Sandtrout Gloves.This is child's play.If someone takes a sandtrout in his hand and spreads it along his skin, it becomes a living glove.Sandtrout can sense blood in the capillaries under the skin, but other substances mixed in the blood water make it uncomfortable.Sooner or later, the glove will fall to the sand.It is then picked up and placed in a spice fiber basket.Spices soothed it until it was poured into the alembic of the dead in the burrow. He could hear sandtrout falling into the ditch, and the splash of predatory fish as they preyed on them.The water softens the sandtrout, making them pliable.Children learn this early on.A mouthful of saliva can cheat syrup.Leto listened to the sound of the water.The sound of water indicates that sandtrout are migrating to the open water, but they cannot occupy a channel guarded by predatory fish. They are still moving forward.They are still making splashing noises.Leto groped in the sand with his right hand until his fingers touched the tough skin of a sandtrout.As he expected, it was a big one.The guy didn't want to run away, but crawled into his hands eagerly.With his other hand he felt its shape—roughly rhombus-shaped.It has no head, no protruding limbs, no eyes, but it can keenly find water sources.It and other partners can be body to body, interweaving and connecting everyone with protruding cilia, turning into a large organism that can lock water, and combine the "poison" of water with the fish that eventually evolved from sand trout. The giant—Xia Hulu—was isolated. The sandtrout squirmed and stretched in his hands.As it moved, he felt his chosen illusion stretch with it.He felt the sandtrout getting thinner and covering his hands more and more with it.No sandfish has ever touched such hands, oversaturated with spice in every cell.No human being has ever survived so saturated with spices and still retains his ability to think.Leto finely tuned the enzyme balance in his body, drawing on the exact cues he'd learned through the spices.Knowledge from the myriad of beings within him that had merged with him showed him the way forward, and he only needed to make some fine-tuning to avoid releasing too much enzyme at once, causing a moment of inattention to kill him. Suffered from a catastrophe.At the same time, he merged himself with the sandtrout, and the sandtrout's vitality became his vitality.The hallucinations he developed in his drugged state provided him with a guide, and he had only to follow it. Leto felt the sandtrout thinner, covering more of his hand, and advancing toward his arm.He found another sandtrout and put it on top of the first.This contact made the sandtrout squirm frantically for a while.Their cilia intertwined to form a membrane that covered his elbow.Sandtrout were once the living glove of children's play, but this time, they're taking on the role of Leto's skin symbiote, thinner and more sensitive.Wearing live gloves, he bent over and stroked the sand.In his sense, each grain of sand has its own unique personality.Sandtrout covered in skin are no longer just sandtrout, they have become tough and strong.And, as time goes by, they will grow stronger and stronger at the same time... His groping hand met another sandtrout, and it quickly climbed up his hand and merged with the two just now , into its new role.The tough yet soft skin covered all the way to his shoulders. He concentrated his consciousness to the extreme, and successfully integrated the new skin into his body, preventing rejection.His consciousness didn't pay any attention to the consequences of doing so.What is important is the hallucinations he obtained in a drugged state; what is important is the golden passage that he can step on after suffering. Leto took off his robes and lay naked on the sand, his gloved arms across the sandtrout's path.He remembered that Ghanima had once grabbed a sandtrout with him and rubbed it repeatedly in the sand until it shrank into a "baby sandworm"—a stiff tube with one inside of it. Organs in green syrup.Take a nibble on one end of the tube and suck a few swipes to get a few drops of the syrup before the wound heals. Sandtrout crawled all over him.He could feel his own pulse beating beneath this living membrane.A sandtrout tried to cover his face, and he rubbed it roughly until it curled into a thin roller.The rollers are much longer than the "baby sandworms" and remain bouncy.Leto bit the end of the roller and tasted a sweet trickle that lasted far longer than any Fremen had ever encountered.He felt the strength that the syrup gave him.A strange excitement filled his body.The membrane tried to cover his face again, and he rubbed it quickly and repeatedly until the membrane formed a stiff ridge on his face, connecting his chin to his forehead, exposing his ears. Now, that illusion must be put to the test. He stood up, turned and ran towards the shed.As he moved, he found his feet were moving too fast, throwing him off balance.He fell headlong on the sand, then turned over, and a carp came to straighten him up.This jump made his body two meters off the ground.When he hit the ground and tried to run again, his feet started moving too quickly again. stop!He ordered himself.He forced himself into a relaxed state of tortoise breath, condensing his feelings in the pool of many consciousnesses in his body.He retracted his attention, watching the extension of the present, and thus felt time again.Now, that membrane works perfectly as in the precognitive vision. My skin is no longer my own. But his muscles still have to be trained to match the accelerated movements.He kept walking, kept falling to the ground, and then kept turning over and jumping up.After a few rounds, he sat on the ground.After calming down, the bump on his jaw wanted to become a membrane covering his mouth.He held it down with his hand while biting into it, sucking a few mouthfuls of the syrup.Under the pressure of the palm, it fell back again. That membrane had been fused with his body long enough.Lying flat on the ground, Leto began to crawl forward, rubbing the membrane against the sand.He could feel every grain of sand keenly, but nothing was rubbing against his own skin.Before long, he had advanced fifty meters on the sand.He felt the heat from the friction. The membrane no longer attempted to cover his nose and mouth, but now he faced the second important step before entering the golden passage. His action had carried him across the ditch and into the ravine where the sandworms were trapped.Attracted by his movement, he heard it hissing and closing in on him. Leto jumped up suddenly, trying to stand there and wait for it, but the result was still the same as before: the increased and accelerated movement caused his body to fall downwards, and he jumped forward for about forty meters.He tried his best to control his reaction, sat on the ground on his buttocks, and straightened his upper body. The sand bulged and wriggled directly in front of him, leaving a devilish trail under the starlight. Then, only two body lengths away from him, the sand burst open, and crystal teeth flashed in the faint light. Pass.He saw the gaping mouth of the sand cave, and the dim light of fire moving in the depths of the cave.The strong smell of spices filled the surroundings.However, the sandworm did not rush towards him, it stopped in front of his eyes.At this time, the first moon is climbing the hill.The reflections on the sandworm's teeth reflected the fire of chemical reactions that blazed deep inside its body. The Fremen's fear of the sandworms buried deep within him told Leto to flee.But his vision held him still, engrossed in what seemed to be an infinitely extended moment before him.No one has ever escaped so close to a sandworm's teeth.Leto moved his right foot slightly, but tripped over a raised sand ridge, and the magnified movement sent him rushing towards the worm's mouth.He quickly landed on his knees and stopped his body. The sandworm still hasn't moved. It only felt sandtrout.It will not attack its own variants deep in the desert.One sandworm may attack another within its own territory or on an open spice mine.Only water can stop them - and sandtrout.Sandtrout are capsules filled with water, which is another form of water. Leto tried to reach that terrible mouth.The sandworm retreated a few meters. With his fear removed, Leto turned his back on the worm and began training his muscles to adapt to his newfound abilities.He walked cautiously towards the aqueduct.The sandworm remained motionless behind him. When Leto crossed the ditch, he excitedly jumped up on the sand and flew more than ten meters above the sand.After landing, he crawled, rolled, and laughed loudly. The seal on the door of the shed was broken, and light fell on the sand.Sabah stood under the yellow-purple light of the oil lamp, staring at him blankly. Laughing, Leto turned back across the aqueduct again, stopped in front of the sandworm, then turned around and looked at her with outstretched arms. "Look!" he cried, "the worm obeys my orders!" She was stunned.He turned around and circled the sandworm, then ran deep into the canyon.As he got used to his new skin, he found he could run fast with just a few muscle movements, almost without exerting any effort on his own.Then, he began to exert strength and galloped forward on the sandy ground, feeling the wind rub against the bare skin of his face, making him feel hot for a while.When he reached the end of the canyon, he didn't stop, but jumped forward with a distance of fifteen meters.He clung to the cliff, kicked his limbs like an insect, and climbed to the top of the mountain overlooking Tanzeoffo. The desert stretched before his eyes, like a huge silver wave in the moonlight.Leto's ecstasy gradually subsided. He paced back and forth, feeling his body which had become extremely light.The exercise just now produced a smooth sweat film on the surface of his body.Typically, a distillation suit absorbs this membrane and sends it to a processing unit, where the salt is filtered out.But at this moment, when he relaxed, this layer of sweat had disappeared and was absorbed by the membrane covering the surface of his body, and the absorption speed was much faster than that of the distillation suit.Leto thoughtfully pulled away the bulge under his lips and put it in his own mouth, sucking the sweet liquid. His mouth was not covered.With the instinct of a Freeman, he felt the moisture in his body lose into the air with each breath.It's a waste.Leto pulled out a membrane and covered his mouth with it.When the membrane tried to penetrate his nostril, he rolled it off again.He kept repeating this process until the membrane sealed his mouth and stopped trying to seal his nostrils.Immediately afterwards, he adopted the way of breathing in the desert: inhale through the nostrils and exhale through the mouth.The membrane over his mouth bulged into a little ball, but no more vapor escaped from his mouth, and his nostrils remained open. An orthopter flew between him and the moon, tilted its wings, made a turn, and landed on a hill about a hundred meters away from him. Leto glanced at it, then turned to look at the canyon from which he had come.On the other side of the diversion channel below, many lights were flickering, making a mess.He heard a faint cry and recognized the hysteria in the voice. Two men got out of the orthopter and approached him.The weapons in their hands gleamed in the moonlight. Now is the most critical step leading to the golden channel.He has donned the living stillsuit of sandtrout membrane that is priceless on Arrakis... I am no longer human.What happened tonight will be broadcast, it will be magnified, it will be mythologized, until those who participated in it will not be able to see the real event in it.But one day, that legend will become reality. He looked down the cliff and estimated that he was about 200 meters away from the sand below.The moonlight illuminated the bumps and cracks in the cliff, but there was no way to go down. Leto stood there, took a deep breath, looked back at the man running towards him, then walked to the edge of the cliff and leaped into the air.After falling about thirty meters, his bent legs hit a protrusion.Strengthened muscles absorbed the impact and bounced him toward a side bump.He grabbed a rock with both hands, stabilized his figure, then let himself fall about 20 meters, then grabbed another rock, and fell another distance.He kept jumping and grabbing protruding rocks.He leaped the last forty meters, dropped his knees to the ground, rolled sideways, and plunged headlong into the smooth surface of the dune, sending sand and dust all over him.He got to his feet, and leaped to the top of the dune in one fell swoop. He ignored the hoarse shouts from the crest of the hills behind him, and focused instead, jumping from the top of one dune to the top of another.After getting used to his strengthened muscles more and more, he felt that the long walk in the desert was a kind of enjoyment.This is a ballet in the desert, a defiance of Tanzaoffo, a journey that no one has ever enjoyed.He calculated how long it would take the two oropter crews to wake up from the shock and resume their pursuit.When he felt that it was almost done, he plunged into the dark side of a certain sand dune. With his new strength, the sand felt like a slightly heavier liquid to him, but when he drilled too fast, his body temperature rose to dangerous levels.He poked his head out from the other side of the dune to find that the membrane had sealed his nostrils.He pulled down the membranes in his nostrils, feeling his new skin busy absorbing his waste. Leto stuffed a piece of membrane into his mouth and looked up at the sky as he sucked on the nectar.He reckoned he was fifteen kilometers away from Suruchi.The trajectory of an orthopter across the sky, like a large bird.One big bird after another appeared in the sky.He heard the flapping of their wings, and the slight hum of the silenced engines. Sucking on the living tube, he waited.The first moon set, followed by the second. An hour before dawn, Leto climbed out to the top of the dunes and watched the sky.There are no hunters.He knew he had embarked on a road of no return.The time and space in front of him are full of traps. If he makes a wrong step, he and mankind will be taught an unforgettable lesson. Leto advanced fifty kilometers to the northeast, then burrowed into the sand to escape daylight, making only a small hole in the surface with the sandtrout pipe.The membrane was learning how to live with him as he learned how to live with it.He refrained himself from thinking about any other consequences that membrane would have on his physical body. Tomorrow I'll attack Gala Luren, he thought, and I'll destroy their aqueduct and put the water in the desert.Then I'm going to Wendak, Old Crack and Huck.Within a month, ecological transition plans would be forced to be postponed for an entire generation.This will allow me enough time to develop a new schedule. Naturally, rebel tribes in the desert would be the scapegoats.Some people may also think of the past of the Jakrutu Water Stealer.Alia would be obsessed with these things.As for Ghanima... Leto muttered the word that awakened her memory.Let's deal with this later...if they survive the mess of threads. The golden passage lured him in the desert, as if it were a real entity, and he could see it when he opened his eyes.He imagined what it would be like in the Golden Passage: animals roaming the land, their existence dependent on humans.Their development has been blocked for countless generations, and they now need to be put back on the evolutionary track. He thought of his father, and then told himself, "It won't be long before we face each other as men, and only one of the visionary futures will finally come true."