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length, with my Atreides face positioned man-height at one end, the arms and hands (still quite recognizable as human) just below. My legs and feet? Well, they are mostly atrophied. Just flippers, really, and they have wandered back along my body. The whole of me weighs approximately five old tons. These items I append because I know they will have historical interest.

    How do I carry this weight around? Mostly on my Royal Cart, which is of Ixian manufacture. You are shocked? People invariably hated and feared the Ixians even more than they hated and feared me. Better the devil you know. And who knows what the Ixians might manufacture or invent? Who knows?

    I certainly don’t. Not all of it.

    But I have a certain sympathy for the Ixians. They believe so strongly in their technology, their science, their machines. Because we believe (no matter the content) we understand each other, the Ixians and I. They make many devices for me and think they earn my gratitude thus. These very words you are reading were printed by an Ixian device, a dictatel it is called. If I cast my thoughts in a particular mode, the dictatel is activated. I merely think in this mode and the words are printed for me on ridulian crystal sheets only one molecule thick. Sometimes I order copies printed on material of lesser permanence. It was two of these latter types that were stolen from me by Siona.

    Isn’t she fascinating, my Siona? As you come to understand her importance to me, you may even question whether I really would have let her die there in the forest. Have no doubt about it. Death is a very personal thing. I will seldom interfere with it. Never in the case of someone who must be tested as Siona requires. I could let her die at any stage. After all, I could bring up a new candidate in very little time as I measure time.

    She fascinates even me, though. I watched her there in the forest. Through my Ixian devices I watched her, wondering why I had not anticipated this venture. But Siona is … Siona. That is why I made no move to stop the wolves. It would have been wrong to do that. The D-wolves are but an extension of my purpose and my purpose is to be the greatest predator ever known.

     
—THE JOURNALS OF LETO II

The following brief dialogue is credited to a manuscript source called “The Welbeck Fragment.” The reputed author is Siona Atreides. The participants are Siona herself and her father, Moneo, who was (as all the histories tell us) a majordomo and chief aide to Leto II. It is dated at a time when Siona was still in her teens and was being visited by her father at her quarters in the Fish Speakers’ School at the Festival City of Onn, a major population center on the planet now known as Rakis. According to the manuscript identification papers, Moneo had visited his daughter secretly to warn her that she risked destruction.

     
SIONA: How have you survived with him for so long a time, father? He kills those who are close to him. Everyone knows that.

    MONEO: No! You are wrong. He kills no one.

    SIONA: You needn’t lie about him.

    MONEO: I mean it. He kills no one.

    SIONA: Then how do you account for the known deaths?

    MONEO: It is the Worm that kills. The Worm is God. Leto lives in the bosom of God, but he kills no one.

    SIONA: Then how do you survive?

    MONEO: I can recognize the Worm. I can see it in his face and in his movements. I know when Shai-Hulud approaches.

    SIONA: He is not Shai-Hulud!

    MONEO: Well, that’s what they called the Worm in the Fremen days.

    SIONA: I’ve read about that. But he is not the God of the desert.

    MONEO: Be quiet, you foolish girl! You know nothing of such things.

    SIONA: I know that you are a coward.

    MONEO: How little you know. You have never stood where I have stood and seen it in his eyes, in the movements of his hands.

    SIONA: What do you do when the Worm approaches?

    MONEO: I leave.

    SIONA: That’s prudent. He has killed nine Duncan Idahos that we know about for