--- > To the people whose labors go beyond ideas into the realm of “real materials”—to the dry-land ecologists, wherever they may be, in whatever time they work, this effort at prediction is dedicated in humility and admiration. - _Tags_: `favorite` - _Note_: The dedication page of Dune. --- > A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. --- > “She was my teacher at the Bene Gesserit school. Now, she’s the Emperor’s Truthsayer. And Paul….” She hesitated. “You must tell her about your dreams.” “I will. Is she the reason we got Arrakis?” “We did not get Arrakis.” Jessica flicked dust from a pair of trousers, hung them with the jacket on the dressing stand beside his bed. “Don’t keep Reverend Mother waiting.” --- > Damn that Jessica! the Reverend Mother thought. If only she’d borne us a girl as she was ordered to do! --- > “What’s in the box?” ... “Pain.” ... An Atreides daughter could’ve been wed to a Harkonnen heir and sealed the breach. You’ve hopelessly complicated matters. We may lose both bloodlines now. - _Note_: Mother Superior to Lady Jessica after Paul's trial --- > He jerked his hand from the box, stared at it astonished. Not a mark. No sign of agony on the flesh. He held up the hand, turned it, flexed the fingers. “Pain by nerve induction,” she said. “Can’t go around maiming potential humans. --- > “Perhaps you are the Kwisatz Haderach. Sit down, little brother, here at my feet.” “I prefer to stand.” “Your mother sat at my feet once.” “I’m not my mother.” --- > You were told to bear only daughters to the Atreides. ... recalled his younger sister, her elfin face so clear in his mind. But she was dead now—in a pleasure house for Harkonnen troops. She had loved pansies…or was it daisies? He couldn’t remember. It bothered him that he couldn’t remember. --- > In politics, the tripod is the most unstable of all structures. --- > “Is it really that terrible, this planet of Arrakis?” “Bad enough, but not all bad. The Missionaria Protectiva has been in there and softened it up somewhat. --- > . “Tell me truly now, Paul, do you often have dreams of things that happen afterward exactly as you dreamed them?” “Yes. And I’ve dreamed about that girl before.” “Oh? You know her?” “I will know her.” --- > But Jessica had caught one glimpse of the Reverend Mother’s face as she turned away. There had been tears on the seamed cheeks. The tears were more unnerving than any other word or sign that had passed between them this day. --- > . They all wear those great flowing robes. And they stink to heaven in any closed space. It’s from those suits they wear—call them ‘stillsuits’—that reclaim the body’s own water. --- > “Thufir, what’re you thinking?” Paul asked. Hawat looked at the boy. “I was thinking we’ll all be out of here soon and likely never see the place again.” “Does that make you sad?” “Sad? Nonsense! Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.” He glanced at the charts on the table. “And Arrakis is just another place.” --- > “Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things….” She held up four big-knuckled fingers. “…the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing….” She closed her fingers into a fist. “…without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!” --- > I quoted the First Law of Mentat at her: ‘A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.’ --- > “My father has told me of Salusa Secundus,” Paul said. “Do you know, Thufir, it sounds much like Arrakis…perhaps not quite as bad, but much like it.” --- > Paul grinned. Of all his father’s men, he liked Gurney Halleck best, knew the man’s --- > Paul grinned. Of all his father’s men, he liked Gurney Halleck best, knew the man’s moods and deviltry, his humors, and thought --- > “In shield fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack,” Paul said. “Attack has the sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting him up for the attack sinister. The shield turns the fast blow, admits the slow kindjal!” --- > Halleck ... valuable if you’ve been trained to deal with them. And there’s one place where nothing has been spared for my son—dealing with dangerous facts. This must be leavened, though; he is young. --- > Yueh watched Paul work the page adjustment, thought: I salve my own conscience. I give him the surcease of religion before betraying him. Thus may I say to myself that he has gone where I cannot go. --- > . And there’s one place where nothing has been spared for my son—dealing with dangerous facts. This must be leavened, though; he is young. --- > “Few products escape the CHOAM touch,” the Duke said. “Logs, donkeys, horses, cows, lumber, dung, sharks, whale fur—the most prosaic and the most exotic…even our poor pundi rice from Caladan. Anything the Guild will transport, the art forms of Ecaz, the machines of Richesse and Ix. But all fades before melange. A handful of spice will buy a home on Tupile. It cannot be manufactured, it must be mined on Arrakis. It is unique and it has true geriatric properties.” --- > The Duke noted his son’s distress, said: “As always, Hawat sees the main chance. But there’s much more. I see also the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles—the CHOAM Company. By giving me Arrakis, His Majesty is forced to give us a CHOAM directorship…a subtle gain.” --- > “Does she know about the Fremen?” “Yes, and about much more.” “What?” And the Duke thought: The truth could be worse than he imagines, but even dangerous facts are valuable if you’ve been trained to deal with them. And there’s one place where nothing has been spared for my son—dealing with dangerous facts. This must be leavened, though; he is young. ... Jessica said: “It’s a maker—” “Eighe-e-e-e-e-e!” Mapes wailed. It was a sound of both grief and elation. She trembled so hard the knife blade sent glittering shards of reflection shooting around the room. --- > “Did Hawat talk to you about Salusa Secundus?” > “The Emperor’s prison planet? No.” > “What if it were more than a prison planet, Paul? There’s a question you never hear asked about the Imperial Corps of Sardaukar: Where do they come from?” > “From the prison planet?” > “They come from somewhere.” --- > “Consider Arrakis,” the Duke said. “When you get outside the towns and garrison villages, it’s every bit as terrible a place as Salusa Secundus.” Paul’s eyes went wide. “The Fremen!” “We have there the potential of a corps as strong and deadly as the Sardaukar. It’ll require patience to exploit them secretly and wealth to equip them properly. But the Fremen are there…and the spice wealth is there. You see now why we walk into Arrakis, knowing the trap is there.” --- > “Your mother wanted me to be the one to tell you, Son. You see, you may have Mentat capabilities.” > Paul stared at his father, unable to speak for a moment, then: “A Mentat? Me? But I….” > “Hawat agrees, Son. It’s true.” > “But I thought Mentat training had to start during infancy and the subject couldn’t be told because it might inhibit the early….” He broke off, all his past circumstances coming to focus in one flashing computation. “I see,” he said. --- > “The Fremen have learned that you’re Bene Gesserit,” he said. “There are legends here about the Bene Gesserit.” The Missionaria Protectiva, Jessica thought. No place escapes them. --- > “You must teach me someday how you do that,” he said, “the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters. It must be a Bene Gesserit thing.” > “It’s a female thing,” she said. --- > Jessica turned away, faced the painting of Leto’s father. It had been done by the famed artist, Albe, during the Old Duke’s middle years. He was portrayed in matador costume with a magenta cape flung over his left arm. The face looked young, hardly older than Leto’s now, and with the same hawk features, the same gray stare. --- > “You may refer to me as ‘my Lady,’” Jessica said. “I’m not noble born. I’m the bound concubine of the Duke Leto.” Again that strange nod, and the woman peered upward at Jessica with a sly questioning. “There’s a wife, then?” “There is not, nor has there ever been. I am the Duke’s only…companion, the mother of his heir-designate.” --- > “Do you know this, my Lady?” Mapes asked. ... “It’s a crysknife,” she said. > “Say it not lightly,” Mapes said. “Do you know its meaning?” > Jessica waited, poised. She had intended to say the knife was a maker of death and then add the ancient word, but every sense warned her now, all the deep training of alertness that exposed meaning in the most casual muscle twitch. The key word was maker. --- > Mapes composed herself, said: “The uncleansed who have seen a crysknife may not leave Arrakis alive. Never forget that, my Lady. You’ve been entrusted with a crysknife.” --- > “I’ll have to be cleaning this first, won’t I, my Lady?” “No.” “But there’s dirt caked on its horns.” “That’s not dirt, Mapes. That’s the blood of our Duke’s father. Those horns were sprayed with a transparent fixative within hours after this beast killed the Old Duke.” --- > Behind her, Mapes paused in clearing the wrappings from the bull’s head, looked at the retreating back. “She’s the One all right,” she muttered. “Poor thing.” --- > Yueh shrugged. Long ago, he had realized Jessica was not gifted with the full Truthsay as his Wanna had been. Still, he always used the truth with Jessica whenever possible. It was safest. --- > “Yueh! Yueh! Yueh!” goes the refrain. “A million deaths were not enough for Yueh!” --- > The way the passing people looked at the palm trees! She saw envy, some hate…even a sense of hope. Each person raked those trees with a fixity of expression. - _Tags_: `c1` --- > For the first time, he [Dr. Yueh] was caught up in the thought that he might be part of a pattern more involuted and complicated than his mind could grasp. --- > “Water!” she snapped. “Everywhere you turn here, you’re involved with the lack of water!” “It’s the precious mystery of Arrakis,” he said. “Why is there so little of it? There’s volcanic rock here. There’re a dozen power sources I could name. There’s polar ice. They say you can’t drill in the desert—storms and sandtides destroy equipment faster than it can be installed, if the worms don’t get you first. They’ve never found water traces there, anyway. But the mystery, Wellington, the real mystery is the wells that’ve been drilled up here in the sinks and basins. Have you read about those?” “First a trickle, then nothing,” he said. “But, Wellington, that’s the mystery. The water was there. It dries up. And never again is there water. Yet another hole nearby produces the same result: a trickle that stops. Has no one ever been curious about this?” --- > “Why haven’t you made the Duke marry you?” ... She shrugged. “There’s good political reason—as long as my Duke remains unmarried some of the Great Houses can still hope for alliance. And….” She sighed. “…motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches. If I made him do…this, then it would not be his doing.” --- > holding something back, she thought. To save my feelings, no doubt. He’s a good man. Again, she hesitated, almost turned back to confront Yueh and drag the hidden thing from him. But that would only shame him, frighten him to learn he’s so easily read. I should place more trust in my friends. --- > It was an old filmbook from before discovery of the spice. Names flitted through Paul’s mind, each with its picture imprinted by the book’s mnemonic pulse: saguaro, burro bush, date palm, sand verbena, evening primrose, barrel cactus, incense bush, smoke tree, creosote bush…kit fox, desert hawk, kangaroo mouse…. Names and pictures, names and pictures from man’s terranic past—and many to be found now nowhere else in the universe except here on Arrakis. --- > The visible note contained the code phrase every Bene Gesserit not bound by a School Injunction was required to give another Bene Gesserit when conditions demanded it: “On that path lies danger. --- > Paul turned with her, said: “I don’t think it’s Hawat, either. Is it possible it’s Yueh?” “He’s not a lieutenant or companion,” she said. “And I can assure you he hates the Harkonnens as bitterly as we do.” --- > Paul glanced at his father, back to Hawat, ventured a question: “Have you any new information on how many Fremen there are?” Hawat looked at Paul. “From food processing and other evidence, Idaho estimates the cave complex he visited consisted of some ten thousand people, all told. Their leader said he ruled a sietch of two thousand hearths. We’ve reason to believe there are a great many such sietch communities. All seem to give their allegiance to someone called Liet.” --- > “You see, gentlemen,” Leto said. “Is there anyone here so naive he believes the Harkonnens have quietly packed up and walked away from all this merely because the Emperor ordered it?” --- > “According to Idaho’s report,” Hawat said, “shields are dangerous in the desert. A body-size shield will call every worm for hundreds of meters around. It appears to drive them into a killing frenzy. We’ve the Fremen word on this and no reason to doubt it. Idaho saw no evidence of shield equipment at the sietch.” ... “Ah-h, Idaho did say one thing: he said you couldn’t mistake the Fremen attitude toward shields. He said they were mostly amused by them.” --- > An ornithopter replaced the carryall in the projection focus. “These ’thopters are fairly conventional,” Hawat said. “Major modifications give them extended range. Extra care has been used in sealing essential areas against sand and dust. Only about one in thirty is shielded—possibly discarding the shield generator’s weight for greater range.” --- > “Duncan?” Leto asked. > “I understand, Sire,” Idaho said. > “It is agreed, then,” Leto said. > “Your water is ours, Duncan Idaho,” Stilgar said. “The body of our friend remains with your Duke. His water is Atreides water. It is a bond between us.” --- > s capable of a supreme act…but too much rides on this. I hope to smoke out a traitor. It must seem that I’ve been completely cozened. She must be hurt this way that she does not suffer greater hurt.” “Why do you tell me, Father? Maybe I’ll give it away.” “They’ll not watch you in this thing,” the Duke said. “You’ll keep the secret. You must.” He walked to the windows, spoke without turning. “This way, if anything should happen to me, you can tell her the truth—that I never doubted her, not for the smallest instant. I should want her to know this.” --- > “I am tired,” the Duke agreed. “I’m morally tired. The melancholy degeneration of the Great Houses has afflicted me at last, perhaps. And we were such strong people once.” --- > The Duke took an antifatigue tablet from a pocket, gulped it dry. “Power and fear,” he said. “The tools of statecraft. I must order new emphasis on guerrilla --- > And Kynes thought as he watched the group approach: They’ll learn soon enough who’s master on Arrakis. Order me questioned half the night by that Mentat, will they? Expect me to guide them on an inspection of spice mining, do they? --- > Paul stood passively as Kynes inspected the suit. It had been an odd sensation putting on the crinkling, slick-surfaced garment. In his foreconsciousness had been the absolute knowledge that he had never before worn a stillsuit. Yet, each motion of adjusting the adhesion tabs under Gurney’s inexpert guidance had seemed natural, instinctive. When he had tightened the chest to gain maximum pumping action from the motion of breathing, he had known what he did and why. When he had fitted the neck and forehead tabs tightly, he had known it was to prevent friction blisters. --- > “How is a planet to become an Eden without money?” “What is money,” Kynes asked, “if it won’t buy the services you need?” --- > And Kynes, returning the stare, found himself troubled by a fact he had observed here: This Duke was concerned more over the men than he was over the spice. He risked his own life and that of his son to save the men. He passed off the loss of a spice crawler with a gesture. The threat to men’s lives had him in a rage. A leader such as that would command fanatic loyalty. He would be difficult to defeat. Against his own will and all previous judgments, Kynes admitted to himself: I like this Duke. --- > Kynes looked at Jessica, said: “The newcomer to Arrakis frequently underestimates the importance of water here. You are dealing, you see, with the Law of the Minimum.” She heard the testing quality in his voice, said, “Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount. And, naturally, the least favorable condition controls the growth rate.” --- > “What would it take to set up the self-sustaining system, Doctor Kynes?” Leto asked. > “If we can get three per cent of the green plant element on Arrakis involved in forming carbon compounds as foodstuffs, we’ve started the cyclic system,” Kynes said. --- > “Why is this interesting?” the banker asked. “Because of an observation made by my father at the time. He said the drowning man who climbs on your shoulders to save himself is understandable—except when you see it happen in the drawing room.” Paul hesitated just long enough for the banker to see the point coming, then: “And, I should add, except when you see it at the dinner table.” --- > Jessica focused her mind on lasguns, wondering. The white-hot beams of disruptive light could cut through any known substance, provided that substance was not shielded. The fact that feedback from a shield would explode both lasgun and shield did not bother the Harkonnens. Why? A lasgun-shield explosion was a dangerous variable, could be more powerful than atomics, could kill only the gunner and his shielded target. --- > “First, you will answer me one question,” she said. “Are you now a Harkonnen agent?” Hawat surged half out of his chair, his face dark with fury, demanding: “You dare insult me so?” “Sit down,” she said. “You insulted me so.” Slowly, he sank back into the chair. And Jessica, reading the signs of this face that she knew so well, allowed herself a deep breath. It isn’t Hawat. --- > “Why aren’t you out destroying the Duke’s enemies?” he asked. “What would you have me destroy?” she asked. “Would you have me make a weakling of our Duke, have him forever leaning on me?” --- > I am the bull and she the matador, Hawat thought. He withdrew his hand from the weapon, glanced at the sweat glistening in his empty palm. And he knew that whatever the facts proved to be in the end, he would never forget this moment nor lose this sense of supreme admiration for the Lady Jessica. --- > “You were dead anyway, my poor Duke,” Yueh said. “But you will get close to the Baron before you die. He’ll believe you’re stupefied by drugs beyond any dying effort to attack him. And you will be drugged—and tied. But attack can take strange forms. And you will remember the tooth. The tooth, Duke Leto Atreides. You will remember the tooth.” --- > It has come, she thought. How simple it was to subdue the Bene Gesserit. All it took was treachery. Hawat was right. --- > Jessica twisted her neck, spat out the gag. She pitched her voice in low, intimate tones. “Gentlemen! No need to fight over me.” At the same time, she writhed sinuously for Kinet’s benefit. She saw them grow tense, knowing that in this instant they were convinced of the need to fight over her. Their disagreement required no other reason. In their minds, they were fighting over her. --- > He studied the somber mask of villainy on Piter’s effeminate face. And the eyes: those shaded slits of bluest blue-in-blue. Soon I must remove him, the Baron thought. He has almost outlasted his usefulness, almost reached the point of positive danger to my person. First, though, he must make the people of Arrakis hate him. Then—they will welcome my darling Feyd-Rautha as a savior. --- > The Baron looked down at Yueh. From the way the man had fallen, you could suspect oak in him instead of bones. > “I never could bring myself to trust a traitor,” the Baron said. “Not even a traitor I created.” --- > Leto heard the crash of crockery—so distant—a roaring in his ears. His mind was a bin without end, catching everything. Everything that had ever been: every shout, every whisper, every…silence. One thought remained to him. Leto saw it in formless light on rays of black: The day the flesh shapes and the flesh the day shapes. The thought struck him with a sense of fullness he knew he could never explain. Silence. --- > “We will depend upon ourselves,” he said. “Our immediate concern is our family atomics. We must get them before the Harkonnens can search them out.” - _Note_: It was Paul's idea to, at least, retrieve the atomics. --- > “You see it now,” he said. “Satellites watch the terrain below. There are things in the deep desert that will not bear frequent inspection.” “You’re suggesting the Guild itself controls this planet?” > She was so slow. > “No!” he said. “The Fremen! They’re paying the Guild for privacy, paying in a coin that’s freely available to anyone with desert power—spice. This is more than a second-approximation answer; it’s the straight-line computation. Depend on it.” --- > But the idea of living out his life in the mind-groping-ahead-through-possible-futures that guided hurtling spaceships appalled him. It was a way, though. And in meeting the possible future that contained Guildsmen he recognized his own strangeness. > I have another kind of sight. I see another kind of terrain: the available paths. The emptiness was unbearable. Knowing how the clockwork had been set in motion made no difference. He could look to his own past and see the start of it—the training, the sharpening of talents, the refined pressures of sophisticated disciplines, even exposure to the O.C. Bible at a critical moment…and, lastly, the heavy intake of spice. And he could look ahead—the most terrifying direction—to see where it all pointed. I’m a monster! he thought. A freak! - _Note_: Before the worm poison --- > “We carry our past with us. And, mother mine, there’s a thing you don’t know and should—we are Harkonnens.” > Her mind did a terrifying thing: it blanked out as though it needed to shut off all sensation. But Paul’s voice went on at that implacable pace, dragging her with it. > “When next you find a mirror, study your face—study mine now. The traces are there if you don’t blind yourself. Look at my hands, the set of my bones. And if none of this convinces you, then take my word for it. I’ve walked the future, I’ve looked at a record, I’ve seen a place, I have all the data. We’re Harkonnens.” --- > Jessica pressed her hands to her mouth. Great Mother! He’s the Kwisatz Haderach! She felt exposed and naked before him, realizing then that he saw her with eyes from which little could be hidden. And that, she knew, was the basis of her fear. “You’re thinking I’m the Kwisatz Haderach,” he said. “Put that out of your mind. I’m something unexpected.” I must get word out to one of the schools, she thought. The mating index may show what has happened. “They won’t learn about me until it’s too late,” he said. --- > He had seen two main branchings along the way ahead—in one he confronted an evil old Baron and said: “Hello, Grandfather.” The thought of that path and what lay along it sickened him. The other path held long patches of gray obscurity except for peaks of violence. He had seen a warrior religion there, a fire spreading across the universe with the Atreides green and black banner waving at the head of fanatic legions drunk on spice liquor. Gurney Halleck and a few others of his father’s men—a pitiful few—were among them, all marked by the hawk symbol from the shrine of his father’s skull. “I can’t go that way,” he muttered. “That’s what the old witches of your schools really want. --- > When my father, the Padishah Emperor, heard of Duke Leto’s death and the manner of it, he went into such a rage as we had never before seen. He blamed my mother and the compact forced on him to place a Bene Gesserit on the throne. He blamed the Guild and the evil old Baron. He blamed everyone in sight, not excepting even me, for he said I was a witch like all the others. And when I sought to comfort him, saying it was done according to an older law of self-preservation to which even the most ancient rulers gave allegiance, he sneered at me and asked if I thought him a weakling. I saw then that he had been aroused to this passion not by concern over the dead Duke but by what that death implied for all royalty. As I look back on it, I think there may have been some prescience in my father, too, for it is certain that his line and Muad’Dib’s shared common ancestry. —FROM “IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE” BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN --- > “Do you wish to go to the smugglers?” the Fremen asked. “Is it possible?” “The way is long.” “Fremen don’t like to say no,” Idaho had told him once. Hawat said: “You haven’t yet told me whether your people can help my wounded.” “They are wounded.” --- > “Does a man not know when he is worth saving?” the Fremen asked. “Your wounded know you have no water.” He tilted his head, looking sideways up at Hawat. “This is clearly a time for water decision. Both wounded and unwounded must look to the tribe’s future.” --- > Hawat’s attention was caught by a flash of sun on metal to the south, a ’thopter plummeting there in a power dive, wings folded flat against its sides, its jets a golden flare against the dark silvered gray of the sky. It plunged like an arrow toward the troop carrier which was unshielded because of the lasgun activity around it. Straight into the carrier the diving ’thopter plunged. A flaming roar shook the basin. Rocks tumbled from the cliff walls all around. A geyser of red-orange shot skyward from the sand where the carrier and its companion ’thopters had been—everything there caught in the flame. It was the Fremen who took off in that captured ’thopter, Hawat thought. He deliberately sacrificed himself to get that carrier. Great Mother! What are these Fremen? “A reasonable exchange,” said the Fremen beside Hawat. --- > Muad’Dib could indeed see the Future, but you must understand the limits of this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so, Muad’Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain. He tells us that a single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us “The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.” And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning “That path leads ever down into stagnation.” —FROM “ARRAKIS AWAKENING” BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN --- > rare smile touched Idaho’s round, placid face. “M’Lord…Sire, I’ve left them a little sur—” Glaring white light filled the desert—bright as a sun, etching their shadows onto the rock floor of the ledge. ... Idaho sat up, brushed sand from himself. “Not the family atomics!” Jessica said. “I thought—” “You planted a shield back there,” Paul said. “A big one turned to full force,” Idaho said. “A lasgun beam touched it and….” He shrugged. “Subatomic fusion,” Jessica said. “That’s a dangerous weapon.” “Not weapon, m’Lady, defense. That scum will think twice before using lasguns another time.” --- > “Paul!” Jessica said. “Granted that the Landsraad High Council accepts your case,” Kynes said, “there could be only one outcome: general warfare between the Imperium and the Great Houses.” “Chaos,” Jessica said. “But I’d present my case to the Emperor,” Paul said, “and give him an alternative to chaos.” Jessica spoke in a dry tone: “Blackmail?” “One of the tools of statecraft, as you’ve said yourself,” Paul said, and Jessica heard the bitterness in his voice. “The Emperor has no sons, only daughters.” “You’d aim for the throne?” Jessica asked. “The Emperor will not risk having the Imperium shattered by total war,” Paul said. “Planets blasted, disorder everywhere—he’ll not risk that.” --- > He knew its cause, but found no help in the knowledge. Somewhere this night he had passed a decision-nexus into the deep unknown. He knew the time-area surrounding them, but the here-and-now existed as a place of mystery. It was as though he had seen himself from a distance go out of sight down into a valley. Of the countless paths up out of that valley, some might carry a Paul Atreides back into sight, but many would not. --- > Calmness drained out of her. Jessica felt her teeth chattering, clamped them together. Then she heard Paul’s voice, low and controlled, reciting the litany: “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear’s path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." --- > “For what purpose do you come here rattling your armor?” the Baron roared. “To tell me a thing is certain when it is not? Do you think I’ll praise you for such stupidity, give you another promotion?” Nefud’s face went bone pale. Look at the chicken, the Baron thought. I am surrounded by such useless clods. If I scattered sand before this creature and told him it was grain, he’d peck at it. --- > The Baron could see the path ahead of him. One day, a Harkonnen would be Emperor. Not himself, and no spawn of his loins. But a Harkonnen. Not this Rabban he’d summoned, of course. But Rabban’s younger brother, young Feyd-Rautha. There was a sharpness to the boy that the Baron enjoyed…a ferocity. > A lovely boy, the Baron thought. A year or two more—say, by the time he’s seventeen, I’ll know for certain whether he’s the tool that House Harkonnen requires to gain the throne. --- > She watched the way he walked, breaking his stride—step…pause, step-step…slide…pause… There was no rhythm to it that might tell a marauding worm something not of the desert moved here. --- > Prophecy and prescience—How can they be put to the test in the face of the unanswered question? Consider: How much is actual prediction of the “wave form” (as Muad’Dib referred to his vision-image) and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy? What of the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy? Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife? --- > She said: “The seeress who brought you the legend, she gave it under the binding of karama and ijaz, the miracle and the inimitability of the prophecy—this I know. Do you wish a sign?” His nostrils flared in the moonlight. “We cannot tarry for the rites,” he whispered. Jessica recalled a chart Kynes had shown her while arranging emergency escape routes. How long ago it seemed. There had been a place called “Sietch Tabr” on the chart and beside it the notation: “Stilgar.” “Perhaps when we get to Sietch Tabr,” she said. The revelation shook him, and Jessica thought: If only he knew the tricks we use! She must’ve been good, that Bene Gesserit of the Missionaria Protectiva. These Fremen are beautifully prepared to believe in us. --- > Beginnings are such delicate times. --- > She turned the word over in her mind: sietch. It was a Chakobsa word, unchanged from the old hunting language out of countless centuries. Sietch: a meeting place in time of danger. --- > The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen”—which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing. —FROM “THE WISDOM OF MUAD’DIB” BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN --- > Jessica stopped in the act of turning away from him, looked back up into his face. “The Guild? What has the Guild to do with your spice?” “It’s Liet’s command,” Stilgar said. “We know the reason, but the taste of it sours us. We bribe the Guild with a monstrous payment in spice to keep our skies clear of satellites and such that none may spy what we do to the face of Arrakis.” She weighed out her words, remembering that Paul had said this must be the reason Arrakeen skies were clear of satellites. “And what is it you do to the face of Arrakis that must not be seen?” “We change it…slowly but with certainty…to make it fit for human life. Our generation will not see it, nor our children nor our children’s children nor the grandchildren of their children…but it will come.” --- > “There are those among my young men who have reached the age of wild spirits,” he said. “They must be eased through this period. I must leave no great reasons around for them to challenge me. Because I would have to maim and kill among them. This is not the proper course for a leader if it can be avoided with honor. A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob. --- > A voice from the troop called out: “Needs a naming, Stil.” Stilgar nodded, tugging at his beard. “I see strength in you…like the strength beneath a pillar.” Again he paused, then: “You shall be known among us as Usul, the base of the pillar. This is your secret name, your troop name. We of Sietch Tabr may use it, but none other may so presume…Usul.” --- > “I will tell you a thing about your new name,” Stilgar said. “The choice pleases us. Muad’Dib is wise in the ways of the desert. Muad’Dib creates his own water. Muad’Dib hides from the sun and travels in the cool night. Muad’Dib is fruitful and multiplies over the land. Muad’Dib we call ‘instructor-of-boys.’ That is a powerful base on which to build your life, Paul-Muad’Dib, who is Usul among us. We welcome you.” --- > , care for the measuring of what is needed. The necessity and no more. This water is the dower property of the Sayyadina and will be repaid in the sietch at field rates less pack fees.” “What is the repayment at field rates?” Jessica asked. “Ten for one,” Stilgar said. “But—” “It’s a wise rule as you’ll come to see,” Stilgar said. --- > “I was a friend of Jamis,” Paul whispered. He felt tears burning his eyes, forced more volume into his voice. “Jamis taught me…that…when you kill…you pay for it. I wish I’d known Jamis better.” Blindly, he groped his way back to his place in the circle, sank to the rock floor. A voice hissed: “He sheds tears!” It was taken up around the ring: “Usul gives moisture to the dead!” --- > “Later,” Chani said, “I will show you how to tie them in a kerchief so they won’t rattle and give you away when you need silence.” She extended her hand. “Will you…hold them for me?” Paul asked. Chani turned a startled glance on Stilgar. He smiled, said, “Paul-Muad’Dib who is Usul does not yet know our ways, Chani. Hold his watercounters without commitment until it’s time to show him the manner of carrying them.” She nodded, whipped a ribbon of cloth from beneath her robe, linked the rings onto it with an intricate over and under weaving, hesitated, then stuffed them into the sash beneath her robe. I missed something there, Paul thought. He sensed the feeling of humor around him, something bantering in it, and his mind linked up a prescient memory: watercounters offered to a woman—courtship ritual. --- > Paul sat silently in the darkness, a single stark thought dominating his awareness: My mother is my enemy. She does not know it, but she is. She is bringing the jihad. She bore me; she trained me. She is my enemy. --- > Jessica heard the after-stillness that hummed in the air with the last note. Why does my son sing a love song to that girl-child? she asked herself. She felt an abrupt fear. She could sense life flowing around her and she had no grasp on its reins. Why did he choose that song? she wondered. The instincts are true sometimes. Why did he do this? --- > “There’s a Bene Gesserit saying,” she said. “You have sayings for everything!” he protested. “You’ll like this one,” she said. “It goes: ‘Do not count a human dead until you’ve seen his body. And even then you can make a mistake.’” - _Note_: Lady Fenring to Count Fenring --- > Stilgar ... returned his attention to Paul. “Usul, it’s our way that you’ve now the responsibility for Jamis’ woman here and for his two sons. His yali…his quarters, are yours. His coffee service is yours…and this, his woman. ... Stilgar said the ceremony was held and you’re a friend of Jamis.” --- > Paul moved up beside her, studied the aquiline profile as they walked. “You do not hate me, Harah?” “Why should I hate you? - _Tags_: `c1` --- > “What’re dew collectors?” he asked. ... “Each bush, each weed you see out there in the erg,” she said, “how do you suppose it lives when we leave it? Each is planted most tenderly in its own little pit. The pits are filled with smooth ovals of chromoplastic. Light turns them white. You can see them glistening in the dawn if you look down from a high place. White reflects. But when Old Father Sun departs, the chromoplastic reverts to transparency in the dark. It cools with extreme rapidity. The surface condenses moisture out of the air. That moisture trickles down to keep our plants alive.” --- > He felt a sudden reluctance to be alone with this woman. It came to him that he was surrounded by a way of life that could only be understood by postulating an ecology of ideas and values. He felt that this Fremen world was fishing for him, trying to snare him in its ways. And he knew what lay in that snare—the wild jihad, the religious war he felt he should avoid at any cost. --- > “The Reverend Mother tells me she cannot survive another hajra,” Stilgar said. “We have lived before without a Reverend Mother, but it is not good for people to seek a new home in such straits. ... our new Sayyadina Jessica of the Weirding, has consented to enter the rite at this time. She will attempt to pass within that we not lose the strength of our Reverend Mother.” --- > Chani lifted the spout toward Jessica, said: “Here is the Water of Life, the water that is greater than water—Kan, the water that frees the soul. If you be a Reverend Mother, it opens the universe to you. Let Shai-hulud judge now.” --- > Why is time suspended? she asked herself. She stared at the frozen expressions around her, seeing a dust mote above Chani’s head, stopped there. Waiting. The answer to this instant came like an explosion in her consciousness: her personal time was suspended to save her life. She focused on the psychokinesthetic extension of herself, looking within, and was confronted immediately with a cellular core, a pit of blackness from which she recoiled. That is the place where we cannot look, she thought. There is the place the Reverend Mothers are so reluctant to mention—the place where only a Kwisatz Haderach may look. --- > There had been Fremen on Poritrin, she saw, a people grown soft with an easy planet, fair game for Imperial raiders to harvest and plant human colonies on Bela Tegeuse and Salusa Secundus. --- > Far down the corridor, an image-voice screamed: “They denied us the Hajj!” Jessica saw the slave cribs on Bela Tegeuse down that inner corridor, saw the weeding out and the selecting that spread men to Rossak and Harmonthep. Scenes of brutal ferocity opened to her like the petals of a terrible flower. And she saw the thread of the past carried by Sayyadina after Sayyadina—first by word of mouth, hidden in the sand chanteys, then refined through their own Reverend Mothers with the discovery of the poison drug on Rossak…and now developed to subtle strength on Arrakis in the discovery of the Water of Life. --- > But Jessica’s attention was focused on the revelation of the Water of Life, seeing its source: the liquid exhalation of a dying sandworm, a maker. And as she saw the killing of it in her new memory, she suppressed a gasp. The creature was drowned! --- > His eyes focused on her arm, the green band of mourning there. As she straightened, Chani saw the direction of his gaze, said: “I can mourn him even in the happiness of the waters. This was something he gave us.” She put her hand into his, pulling him along the ledge. “We are alike in a thing, Usul: We have each lost a father to the Harkonnens.” --- > He forced himself to speak distinctly: “What do you see?” She looked down at her hands. “I see a child…in my arms. It’s our child, yours and mine.” She put a hand to her mouth. “How can I know every feature of you?” They’ve a little of the talent, his mind told him. But they suppress it because it terrifies. --- > Paul felt himself at the center, at the pivot where the whole structure turned, walking a thin wire of peace with a measure of happiness, Chani at his side. He could see it stretching ahead of him, a time of relative quiet in a hidden sietch, a moment of peace between periods of violence. “There’s no other place for peace,” he said. “Usul, you’re crying,” Chani murmured. “Usul, my strength, do you give moisture to the dead? To whose dead?” “To ones not yet dead,” he said. “Then let them have their time of life,” she said. --- > “You’re the strong one, Chani,” he muttered. “Stay with me.” “Always,” she said, and kissed his cheek. --- > I’ve sat across from many rulers of Great Houses, but never seen a more gross and dangerous pig than this one, Thufir Hawat told himself. “You may speak plainly with me, Hawat,” the Baron rumbled. --- > For a long minute, the Baron stared at him, then: “Say what you must say, Mentat.” “The Padishah Emperor turned against House Atreides because the Duke’s Warmasters Gurney Halleck and Duncan Idaho had trained a fighting force—a small fighting force—to within a hair as good as the Sardaukar. Some of them were even better. And the Duke was in a position to enlarge his force, to make it every bit as strong as the Emperor’s.” --- > “Where did such a thing start?” the Baron asked. “Ah, yes: Where did House Corrino originate? Were there people on Salusa Secundus before the Emperor sent his first contingents of prisoners there? Even the Duke Leto, a cousin on the distaff side, never knew for sure. Such questions are not encouraged.” --- > I am a theater of processes, he told himself. I am a prey to the imperfect vision, to the race consciousness and its terrible purpose. Yet, he could not escape the fear that he had somehow overrun himself, lost his position in time, so that past and future and present mingled without distinction. It was a kind of visual fatigue and it came, he knew, from the constant necessity of holding the prescient future as a kind of memory that was in itself a thing intrinsically of the past. Chani --- > But she had been full of contentions and arguments that day. It had been the day of the circumcision ceremony for little Leto. Paul had understood some of the reasons for her upset. She had never accepted his liaison—the “marriage of youth”—with Chani. But Chani had produced an Atreides son, and Jessica had found herself unable to reject the child with the mother. --- > Chani had planted their stilltent on flour sand for its softness. That could only mean Chani was nearby—Chani, his soul, Chani his sihaya, sweet as the desert spring, Chani up from the palmaries of the deep south. --- > “Give as few orders as possible,” his father had told him…once…long ago. “Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.” The Fremen knew this rule instinctively. --- > Gathering water, planting the dunes, changing their world slowly but surely—these are no longer enough, Jessica thought. The little raids, the certain raids—these are no longer enough now that Paul and I have trained them. They feel their power. They want to fight. --- > “There is word from the sand,” Tharthar said. “Usul meets the maker for his test…it is today. The young men say he cannot fail, he will be a sandrider by nightfall. The young men are banding for a razzia. They will raid in the north and meet Usul there. They say they will raise the cry then. They say they will force him to call out Stilgar and assume command of the tribes.” --- > Gurney looked at the spice blue in Paul’s eyes. His own eyes, he knew, had a touch of the color, but smugglers could get offworld foods and there was a subtle caste implication in the tone of the eyes among them. They spoke of “the touch of the spicebrush” to mean a man had gone too native. And there was always a hint of distrust in the idea. --- > “Our enemy is exactly where I want him to be,” Paul said. He glanced at Gurney. “Well, Gurney, do you enlist with me for the finish of this campaign?” “Enlist?” Gurney stared at him. “My Lord, I’ve never left your service. You’re the only one left me…to think you dead. And I, being cast adrift, made what shrift I could, waiting for the moment I might sell my life for what it’s worth—the death of Rabban.” An embarrassed silence settled over Paul. --- > And Gurney recalled the stories told of Muad’Dib, the Lisan al-Gaib—how he had taken the skin of a Harkonnen officer to make his drumheads, how he was surrounded by death commandos, Fedaykin who leaped into battle with their death chants on their lips. Him. --- > In the future, when searching Sardaukar, remember this. Remember, too, that each has a false toenail or two that can be combined with other items secreted about their bodies to make an effective transmitter. They’ll have more than one false tooth. They carry coils of shigawire in their hair—so fine you can barely detect it, yet strong enough to garrote a man and cut off his head in the process. With Sardaukar, you must scan them, scope them—both reflex and hard ray—cut off every scrap of body hair. And when you’re through, be certain you haven’t discovered everything. --- > “All men beneath your position covet your station,” went the Bene Gesserit axiom. But she found no covetousness in these faces. They were held at a distance by the religious ferment around Paul’s leadership. And she recalled another Bene Gesserit saying: “Prophets have a way of dying by violence. --- > “Do you smash your knife before a battle?” Paul demanded. “I say this as fact, not meaning it as boast or challenge: there isn’t a man here, Stilgar included, who could stand against me in single combat. This is Stilgar’s own admission. He knows it, so do you all.” ... “This was my father’s ducal signet,” he said. “I swore never to wear it again until I was ready to lead my troops over all of Arrakis and claim it as my rightful fief.” He put the ring on his finger, clenched his fist. Utter stillness gripped the cavern. “Who rules here?” Paul asked. He raised his fist. “I rule here! I rule on every square inch of Arrakis! This is my ducal fief whether the Emperor says yea or nay! He gave it to my father and it comes to me through my father!” --- > “There are men here who will hold positions of importance on Arrakis when I claim those Imperial rights which are mine,” Paul said. “Stilgar is one of those men. ... Do you think me stupid? Do you think I’ll cut off my right arm and leave it bloody on the floor of this cavern just to provide you with a circus?” ... He’s telling the people up there….” Gurney pointed toward space. “…where the profit is. He’s saying he doesn’t care if it’s an Atreides here or not. --- > “One of the most terrible moments in a boy’s life,” Paul said, “is when he discovers his father and mother are human beings who share a love that he can never quite taste. It’s a loss, an awakening to the fact that the world is there and here and we are in it alone. The moment carries its own truth; you can’t evade it. --- > Paul pressed past the man toward the depths of the cavern, headed for the place that each such cavern had—a place near its water-holding basin. There would be a small shai-hulud in this place, a creature no more than nine meters long, kept stunted and trapped by surrounding water ditches. The maker, after emerging from its little maker vector, avoided water for the poison it was. And the drowning of a maker was the greatest Fremen secret because it produced the substance of their union—the Water of Life, the poison that could only be changed by a Reverend Mother. --- > In that instant, she knew. “You drank the sacred water!” she blurted. “One drop of it,” Paul said. “So small…one drop.” --- > “It was only one drop, but I converted it,” Paul said. “I changed the Water of Life.” And before Chani or Jessica could stop him, he dipped his hand into the ewer they had placed on the floor beside him, and he brought the dripping hand to his mouth, swallowed the palm-cupped liquid. --- > Paul said: “There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it’s almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed.” --- > “Not the future,” he said. “I’ve seen the Now.” He forced himself to a sitting position, waved Chani aside as she moved to help him. “The Space above Arrakis is filled with the ships of the Guild.” Jessica trembled at the certainty in his voice. “The Padishah Emperor himself is there,” Paul said. He looked at the rock ceiling of his cell. “With his favorite Truthsayer and five legions of Sardaukar. The old Baron Vladimir Harkonnen is there with Thufir Hawat beside him and seven ships jammed with every conscript he could muster. Every Great House has its raiders above us…waiting.” --- > Paul took a deep breath, said: “Mother, you must change a quantity of the Water for us. We need the catalyst. Chani, have a scout force sent out…to find a pre-spice mass. If we plant a quantity of the Water of Life above a pre-spice mass, do you know what will happen?” Jessica weighed his words, suddenly saw through to his meaning. “Paul!” she gasped. “The Water of Death,” he said. “It’d be a chain reaction.” He pointed to the floor. “Spreading death among the little makers, killing a vector of the life cycle that includes the spice and the makers. Arrakis will become a true desolation—without spice or maker.” --- > “The injunction!” Paul barked. “It’s fear, not the injunction that keeps the Houses from hurling atomics against each other. The language of the Great Convention is clear enough: ‘Use of atomics against humans shall be cause for planetary obliteration.’ We’re going to blast the Shield Wall, not humans.” --- > “They’re sending a new flag up on the tall ship,” the watcher said. “The flag is yellow…with a black and red circle in the center.” “There’s a subtle piece of business,” Paul said. “The CHOAM Company flag. - _Tags_: `c1` --- > He looked down at what the man had written, read: “Raid…on Sietch Tabr…captives…Alia (blank) families of (blank) dead are…they (blank) son of Muad’Dib….” Again, the signalman shook his head. Paul looked up to see Gurney staring at him. “The message is garbled,” Gurney said. “The static. You don’t know that….” “My son is dead,” Paul said, and knew as he spoke that it was true. “My son is dead…and Alia is a captive…hostage.” He felt emptied, a shell without emotions. Everything he touched brought death and grief. And it --- > And among the lackeys stood one of the Emperor’s daughters, the Princess Irulan, a woman they said was being trained in the deepest of the Bene Gesserit ways, destined to be a Reverend Mother. She was tall, blonde, face of chiseled beauty, green eyes that looked past and through him. --- > The Emperor cleared his throat to speak, but the child spoke first—a thin voice with traces of a soft-palate lisp, but clear nonetheless. “So here he is,” she said. She advanced to the edge of the dais. “He doesn’t appear much, does he—one frightened old fat man too weak to support his own flesh without the help of suspensors.” --- > “I have her, Majesty!” the Baron shouted. “Shall I dispatch her now-eeeeeeeeeeeh!” He hurled her to the floor, clutched his left arm. “I’m sorry, Grandfather,” Alia said. “You’ve met the Atreides gom jabbar.” She got to her feet, dropped a dark needle from her hand. --- > “What’s the extent of the storm damage?” Paul asked. “In the direct path—on the landing field and across the spice storage yards of the plain—extensive damage,” Gurney said. “As much from battle as from the storm.” “Nothing money won’t repair, I presume,” Paul said. “Except for the lives, m’Lord,” Gurney said, and there was a tone of reproach in his voice as though to say: “When did an Atreides worry first about things when people were at stake?” --- > He seemed too submissive to Paul, but then the Sardaukar had never been prepared for such happenings as this day. They’d never known anything but victory which, Paul realized, could be a weakness in itself. He put that thought aside for later consideration in his own training program. --- > “My mother’s sick with longing for a planet she may never see,” Paul said. “Where water falls from the sky and plants grow so thickly you cannot walk between them.” “Water from the sky,” Stilgar whispered. In that instant, Paul saw how Stilgar had been transformed from the Fremen naib to a creature of the Lisan al-Gaib, a receptacle for awe and obedience. It was a lessening of the man, and Paul felt the ghost-wind of the jihad in it. I have seen a friend become a worshiper, he thought. --- > “A Bene Gesserit should ask about legends?” he asked. “I’ve had a hand in whatever you are,” she admitted, “but you mustn’t expect me to—” “How would you like to live billions upon billions of lives?” Paul asked. “There’s a fabric of legends for you! Think of all those experiences, the wisdom they’d bring. But wisdom tempers love, doesn’t it? And it puts a new shape on hate. How can you tell what’s ruthless unless you’ve plumbed the depths of both cruelty and kindness? You should fear me, Mother. I am the Kwisatz Haderach.” --- > Paul thought then of prescient glimpses into the possibilities of this moment—and one time-line where Thufir carried a poisoned needle which the Emperor commanded he use against “this upstart Duke.” --- > He looked beyond Feyd-Rautha then, attracted by a movement, seeing there a narrow, weaselish face he’d never before encountered—not in time or out of it. It was a face he felt he should know and the feeling carried with it a marker of fear. Why should I fear that man? he wondered. He leaned toward his mother, whispered: “That man to the left of the Reverend Mother, the evil-looking one—who is that?” Jessica looked, recognizing the face from her Duke’s dossiers. “Count Fenring,” she said. “The one who was here immediately before us. A genetic-eunuch…and a killer.” --- > Paul raised his voice: “Observe her, comrades! This is a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother, patient in a patient cause. She could wait with her sisters—ninety generations for the proper combination of genes and environment to produce the one person their schemes required. Observe her! She knows now that the ninety generations have produced that person. Here I stand…But…I…will…never…do…her…bidding!” --- > “You promised me a Harkonnen!” Gurney hissed, and Paul marked the rage in the man’s face, the way the inkvine scar stood out dark and ridged. “You owe it to me, m’Lord!” “Have you suffered more from them than I?” Paul asked. “My sister,” Gurney rasped. “My years in the slave pits—” “My father,” Paul said. “My good friends and companions, Thufir Hawat and Duncan Idaho, my years as a fugitive without rank or succor…and one more thing: it is now kanly and you know as well as I the rules that must prevail.” --- > Jessica leaned close to Paul, pitched her voice for his ears alone: “One thing, Son. Sometimes a dangerous person is prepared by the Bene Gesserit, a word implanted into the deepest recesses by the old pleasure-pain methods. The word-sound most frequently used is Uroshnor. If this one’s been prepared, as I strongly suspect, that word uttered in his ear will render his muscles flaccid and—” “I want no special advantage for this one,” Paul said. “Step back out of my way.” --- > This is the climax, Paul thought. From here, the future will open, the clouds part onto a kind of glory. And if I die here, they’ll say I sacrificed myself that my spirit might lead them. And if I live, they’ll say nothing can oppose Muad’Dib. “Is the Atreides ready?” Feyd-Rautha called, using the words of the ancient kanly ritual. Paul chose to answer him in the Fremen way: “May thy knife chip and shatter!” --- > Paul, aware of some of this from the way the time nexus boiled, understood at last why he had never seen Fenring along the webs of prescience. Fenring was one of the might-have-beens, an almost-Kwisatz Haderach, crippled by a flaw in the genetic pattern—a eunuch, his talent concentrated into furtiveness and inner seclusion. A deep compassion for the Count flowed through Paul, the first sense of brotherhood he’d ever experienced. --- > “And what of Arrakis?” the Emperor asked. “Another garden world full of gentle things?” “The Fremen have the word of Muad’Dib,” Paul said. “There will be flowing water here open to the sky and green oases rich with good things. But we have the spice to think of, too. Thus, there will always be desert on Arrakis…and fierce winds, and trials to toughen a man. We Fremen have a saying: ‘God created Arrakis to train the faithful.’ One cannot go against the word of God.” --- > “I swear to you now,” he whispered, “that you’ll need no title. That woman over there will be my wife and you but a concubine because this is a political thing and we must weld peace out of this moment, enlist the Great Houses of the Landsraad. We must obey the forms. Yet that princess shall have no more of me than my name. No child of mine nor touch nor softness of glance, nor instant of desire.” “So you say now,” Chani said. She glanced across the room at the tall princess. “Do you know so little of my son?” Jessica whispered. “See that princess standing there, so haughty and confident. They say she has pretensions of a literary nature. Let us hope she finds solace in such things; she’ll have little else.” A bitter laugh escaped Jessica. “Think on it, Chani: that princess will have the name, yet she’ll live as less than a concubine—never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she’s bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine—history will call us wives.” --- > “What are your instructions?” she asked. “The Emperor’s entire CHOAM Company holdings as dowry,” he said. “Entire?” She was shocked almost speechless. “He is to be stripped. I’ll want an earldom and CHOAM directorship for Gurney Halleck, and him in the fief of Caladan. There will be titles and attendant power for every surviving Atreides man, not excepting the lowliest trooper.” “What of the Fremen?” Jessica asked. “The Fremen are mine,” Paul said. “What they receive shall be dispensed by Muad’Dib. It’ll begin with Stilgar as Governor on Arrakis, but that can wait.” --- ### THE ECOLOGY OF DUNE