Hayt watches Alia leave her temple and cross the plaza with her guards. He senses that she seems displaced in the city and belongs more naturally to the desert. Troubled by his recent interview with Bijaz, Hayt follows at a distance and observes Alia on a balcony overlooking the city.

Alia has taken an enormous dose of melange to force her way through the obscuring fog created by the Dune Tarot. Alia wants to see the path Paul is walking now that he is blind and guided by prescience. As the spice takes hold, Alia’s perception fractures across time, and Hayt approaches her while she struggles to distinguish whether he is Duncan Idaho, the mentat-ghola Hayt, a Zensunni philosopher, or a Tleilaxu instrument.

Alia speaks of the Bene Gesserit breeding designs and realizes they may seek either Chani’s child or her own. When Hayt suggests the Bene Gesserit might want Alia mated with Paul to secure the genetic line, Alia is horrified. Alia glimpses a child of her own but cannot see the father, and the intensity of the overdose leaves Alia unstable, frightened, and physically endangered.

Hayt tries to protect Alia by forcing Alia inside and summoning medical help despite Alia’s protests that she needs the vision. A Family medic treats Alia and warns that the overdose could have killed her, but Alia dismisses the medic and insists that Hayt stay. In her clearer vision, Alia understands that Hayt is both danger and salvation, a crucible in the future Paul has already seen.

As Alia weakens under the sedative, Alia confesses loneliness, fear, and a desire to be loved rather than feared as the sister of a deified Emperor. Hayt admits love for Alia, though Alia mistrusts the dangerous mix of love and loyalty in him. Alia then sees Paul as trapped by power, terror, deification, grief, and his own chosen pattern, moving toward self-destruction. Before sleep overtakes Alia, Alia hears the heartbeat of a future child and realizes that this unborn child will be preborn and conscious before birth, as Alia herself was.