User:TAnthony/Dune research

Dune references and links



 * Dune-related analysis, pages 73-98+
 * Wensicia-specific search
 * History and Historical Effect in Frank Herbert's Dune
 * Asimov's Foundation Trilogy and Herbert's Dune Trilogy: A Vision Reversed
 * The "Moi-peau" of Leto II in Herbert's Atreides Saga
 * Frank Herbert, by Timothy O'Reilly Serial publication: none First edition: New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980.
 * (Technopeasantry)
 * http://www.johnelkington.com/inf-people-herbert.htm
 * http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/printed-books/dune-frank-herbert/298096/
 * http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/2002_10_000333.php
 * http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/2002_10_000333.php


 * Praise for Dune
 * Brian Herbert interview - Audible.com
 * Lipper, Don. "John Harrison: Directing Dune." SPACE.com
 * Hunt, Bill. "Writer/Director John Harrison talks Frank Herbert's Dune." - TheDigitalBits.com
 * Review: Frank Herbert's Dune, Special Edition Director's Cut - TheDigitalBits.com
 * Cinescape.com ~ Alec Newman and John Harrison
 * SciFi.com ~ Ask John Harrison
 * While Frank Herbert's Dune (1965) on the surface appears to follow the monomyth, this was in fact to subvert it and take a critical view, as the author said in 1979, "The bottom line of the Dune trilogy is: beware of heroes. Much better [to] rely on your own judgment, and your own mistakes." He wrote in 1985, "Dune was aimed at this whole idea of the infallible leader because my view of history says that mistakes made by a leader (or made in a leader's name) are amplified by the numbers who follow without question."


 * In a strictly monotheistic environment where Star Wars rules there is no place for a film like Dune, a distinct irony considering that Frank Herbert, upon seeing George Lucas's smorgasbord, claimed to have identified no fewer than 37 points of direct comparison between the blockbuster and his, as yet unfilmed novel.
 * In a strictly monotheistic environment where Star Wars rules there is no place for a film like Dune, a distinct irony considering that Frank Herbert, upon seeing George Lucas's smorgasbord, claimed to have identified no fewer than 37 points of direct comparison between the blockbuster and his, as yet unfilmed novel.
 * In a strictly monotheistic environment where Star Wars rules there is no place for a film like Dune, a distinct irony considering that Frank Herbert, upon seeing George Lucas's smorgasbord, claimed to have identified no fewer than 37 points of direct comparison between the blockbuster and his, as yet unfilmed novel.
 * In a strictly monotheistic environment where Star Wars rules there is no place for a film like Dune, a distinct irony considering that Frank Herbert, upon seeing George Lucas's smorgasbord, claimed to have identified no fewer than 37 points of direct comparison between the blockbuster and his, as yet unfilmed novel.
 * In a strictly monotheistic environment where Star Wars rules there is no place for a film like Dune, a distinct irony considering that Frank Herbert, upon seeing George Lucas's smorgasbord, claimed to have identified no fewer than 37 points of direct comparison between the blockbuster and his, as yet unfilmed novel.
 * In a strictly monotheistic environment where Star Wars rules there is no place for a film like Dune, a distinct irony considering that Frank Herbert, upon seeing George Lucas's smorgasbord, claimed to have identified no fewer than 37 points of direct comparison between the blockbuster and his, as yet unfilmed novel.
 * In a strictly monotheistic environment where Star Wars rules there is no place for a film like Dune, a distinct irony considering that Frank Herbert, upon seeing George Lucas's smorgasbord, claimed to have identified no fewer than 37 points of direct comparison between the blockbuster and his, as yet unfilmed novel.

The Road to Dune in Eye
The short story collection Eye.

The Road to Dune

You have arrived on the planet Arrakis. You will embark on a walking tour of epic proportions. Rarely does a visitor on the road to Dune make his or her way without an Imperium guide. Here is a sampling from such a guide, complete with illustrations.

Your walking tour of Arrakis must include this approach across the dunes to the Grand Palace at Arrakeen. From a distance, the dimensions of this construction are deceptive, especially when hazed by wind-blown dust. The largest man-made structure ever built, the Grand Palace could cover more than ten of the Imperium's most populous cities under one roof, a fact that becomes more apparent when you learn Atreides attendants and their families, housed spaciously in the Palace Annex, number some thirty-five million souls.

When you walk into the Grand Reception Hall of the Palace at Arrakeen, be prepared to feel dwarfed before an immensity never before conceived. A statue of St. Alia Atreides, shown as "The Soother of Pains," stands twenty-two meters tall but is one of the smallest adornments in the hall. Two hundred such statues could be stacked one atop the other against the entrance pillars and still fall short of the doorway's capitol arch, which itself is almost a thousand meters below the first beams upholding the lower roof.

If you are numbered among "the heartfelt pilgrims," you will cross the last thousand meters of this approach to the Temple of Alia on your knees. Those thousand meters fall well within the sweeping curves leading your eyes up to the transcendent symbols dedicating this Temple to St. Alia of the Knife. The famed "Sun-Sweep Window" incorporates every solar calendar known to human history in the one translucent display whose brilliant colors, driven by the sun of Dune, thread through the interior on prismatic pathways.

On each pilgrimage, one hundred are chosen by lot to make the three-day climb up secret passages of the Grand Palace and, half-way up, may look down from this vantage on Muad'Dib's personal ornithopter. It sits on His private landing platform against an inner wall of the Palace. A narrow strip of windows in Atreides family quarters glisten on the high wall. An attendant has just made the regular inspection of the 'thopter, returning to the Palace with a traditional Fremen cry heard clearly from the observation stop: "His water is secure!" (p.200)

This Ixian heating device, set like a giant pearl in an ornate stand, greets you in a smaller passage of the Grand palace. The ring-bound queue of the attendant servicing the device marks him a city Fremen. On your walking tour of Arrakis, you will see many such Ixian artifacts, some set with rare gems, all worked in precious metals by dedicated artisans, some of whom devote years to the completion of a single decorative line. Attention to detail can be seen on this space heater. It incorporates twenty precious metals in each lapped scale. (p.202)

Rarely, in a private passage of the Grand Palace, the walking pilgrim will encounter the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam. The famed Bene Gesserit graciously paused here to be recorded in the light of a glowglobe. Note her wedding bands. They signify her eternal bond to the Sisterhood. The glowglobe is of an ancient design and may have come from Caladan in the original Atreides migration. The cracked vascule rim on the lower left side of the globe could indicate rough treatment in the Harkonnen attack. Many artifacts from those troubled times survived and were restored on orders of Muad'Dib himself. (p. 202)

This authentic visage of the Princess Irulan, Muad'Dib's virgin consort, should be committed to memory before your walking tour of Arrakis. The pilgrim should beware of false images. You will be beset by tradesmen hawking such mementoes. Irulan authorized only this portrait for official sale to pilgrims. (pg. 206)

The face of Duncan Idaho, ghola warrior, teacher, friend and advisor of Muad'Dib stares out at you from this official portrait. It is sold to pilgrims on the walking tour of Arrakis only in Palace shops. All proceeds go to support retired Fremen and provide for the education of Fremen orphans. (p. 208)

Original series material
{{Hidden
 * ORIGINAL SERIES

Foldspace

 * Dune

The Duke looked at him. "This will be your first time off planet," he said. "Yes, they're big. We'll be riding a Heighliner because it's a long trip. A Heighliner is truly big. Its hold will tuck all our frigates and transports into a little corner -- we'll be just a small part of the ship's manifest."


 * Dune Messiah

Edric took this moment to pop a melange pill into his mouth. He ate the spice and breathed it and, no doubt, drank it, Scytale noted. Understandable, because the spice heightened a Steersman's prescience, gave him the power to guide a Guild heighliner across space at translight speeds. With spice awareness he found that line of the ship's future which avoided peril. Edric smelled another kind of peril now, but his crutch of prescience might not find it.


 * Heretics

Miles Teg knew his history well by then. Guild Navigators no longer were the only ones who could thread a ship through the folds of space -- in this galaxy one instant, in a faraway galaxy the very next heartbeat.

"The first explosion, dear Reverend Mother, was your quarters being destroyed by our attackers. The second explosion was us destroying the attackers."

"I just got the signal, Bashar!" Patrin again. "We got them all. They came down by floater from the no-ship just as you expected."

"The ship?" Teg's voice was full of angry demand.

"Destroyed the instant it came through the space fold. No survivors."

"You fools!" Schwangyu screamed. "Do you know what you've done?"

"I carried out my orders to protect that boy from any attack," Teg said. "By the way, weren't you supposed to be in your quarters at this hour?"

There was absolutely no safe course through the conflicting forces, but she thought the Sisterhood had armed itself as well as it could. The problem was akin to that of a Guild navigator threading his ship through the folds of space in a way that avoided collisions and entrapments.

Taraza felt suddenly weary. It had been a long trip despite the space-folding leaps of her no-ship. The flesh always knew when it had been twisted out of its familiar rhythms. She chose a soft divan and sat down, sighing in the luxurious comfort.


 * Chapterhouse

Strewing the escape lanes around Lampadas with deathtraps, the Foldspace perimeter seeded with small no-globes, each containing a field projector and a lasgun to fire on contact. When the laser hit the Holzmann generator in the no-globe, a chain reaction released the nuclear energy. Bzzz into the trap field and a devastating explosion spread silently across you. Costly but efficient! Enough such explosions and even a giant Guildship would become a crippled derelict in the void. Her ship's system of defensive analyses had penetrated the nature of the trap only when it was too late, but she had been lucky, she supposed.

"Infinite numbers game." Odrade stepped across a broken curb. "That should be repaired. We've been playing the infinity game since we learned to jump Foldspace."

"These speculations are useless," Bellonda muttered. "We don't even know if Foldspace introduces us to one universe or many . . . or even an infinite number of expanding and collapsing bubbles."

Smuggling. A major crime to Honored Matres and others who had not faced the fact of unenforceable laws. Foldspace had not changed it for smuggling, just made small intrusions easier if anything. Tiny no-ships. How small could you make one of them? A gap in Odrade's knowledge. Archives corrected it: "Diameter, meters 140."

Small enough, then. Soostones were a cargo with natural attraction. Foldspace was a critical economic barrier: How valuable a cargo compared to size and mass? You could spend many Solaris moving massive stuff. Soostones -- magnetic to smugglers. They had special interest to Honored Matres as well. Simple economics? Always a big market. As attractive to smugglers as melange now that the Guild was being so free with it. The Guild had always stockpiled with generations of spice in scattered storage and (doubtless) many hidden backups.

Odrade said, "Sisters who rescued you say you commanded a no-ship at Junction preparing for the first foldspace leap when Honored Matres attacked. You were coming to your ship in a one-man skitter, they said, and veered away just before the explosions.  You detected the attackers?"

"Foldspace sensors don't have to be large," Odrade said. "Duncan would set them to create a Holzmann explosion on contact?"

A wave system that ignored light speed's limits. Light speed obviously did not limit foldspace ships. Techys?

"It works because it works," Idaho muttered. "Faith. Like any other religion."

Mentats squirreled away much seemingly inconsequential data. He had a storehouse marked "Techys" and proceeded to go through it without satisfaction.

Not even Guild Navigators professed knowledge of how they guided foldspace ships. Ixian scientists made machines to duplicate Navigator abilities but still could not define what they did.

"Holzmann's formulae can be trusted."

No one claimed to understand Holzmann. They merely used his formulae because they worked. It was the "ether" of space travel. You folded space. One instant you were here and the next instant you were countless parsecs distant.

Teg took a deep breath. Gammu lay directly ahead, precisely where his navigators had said it would be when they emerged from foldspace. He stood beside a watchful Streggi seeing this in displays of his flagship's command bay.

Decoys were nearing the defensive perimeter. He saw enemy no-ships and foldspace sensors -- bright dots arrayed through his awareness. Teg superimposed this onto the positions of his force. Every order he gave must appear to originate from a battle-plot they all shared.

Give the Tyrant some credit. It couldn't all have been boredom. More like a Guild Navigator picking his passage through foldspace. Golden Path. An Atreides paid for your survival, Murbella.

Lift-off was a skull-rattling moment of blankness that stopped abruptly when they were far enough clear of the surface to engage nullfields and enter foldspace.

Idaho's hands went to his console, fingers splayed in the comfield to grasp required elements of the circuit control. No time for niceties. Gross disruption. He was into the core within a second. From there, it was a simple matter to dump entire segments. Navigation went first. He saw the net begin to thin, the look of surprise on the man's face. Nullfields were next. Idaho felt the ship lurching in foldspace. The net tipped, becoming elongated with the two watchers foreshortened and thinned. Idaho wiped out star-memory circuits, taking his own data with them.

Sheeana did not look up when he found her at the temporary flight-control board in the guard quarters. She was bent over the board, staring at it in consternation. The projection above her showed they had emerged from foldspace. Idaho recognized none of the visible star patterns but he had expected that.

Throne room/Messiah
One moment of incompetence can be fatal, the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam reminded herself.

Silence surged along the vaulted passages ahead of her entourage.

The guards herded her around a corner into another of the seemingly endless vaulted passages. Triangular meta-glass windows on her left gave a view upward to trellised vines and indigo flowers in deep shadows cast by the afternoon sun. Tiles lay underfoot &mdash; figures of water creatures from exotic planets. Water reminders everywhere. Wealth. . . riches.

The immensity of this ighir citadel began to impress her. Passages. . . passages. ..

The size of the citadel began to oppress her. Would the passages never end? The place reeked of terrifying physical power. No planet, no civilization in all human history had ever before seen such man-made immensity. A dozen ancient cities could be hidden in its walls!

They passed oval doors with winking lights. She recognized them for Ixian handiwork: pneumatic transport orifices. Why was she being marched all this distance, then? The answer began to shape itself in her mind: to oppress her in preparation for this audience with the Emperor.

The passages through which she was being escorted grew larger by subtle stages &mdash; tricks of arching, graduated amplification of pillared supports, displacement of the triangular windows by larger, oblong shapes. Ahead of her, finally, loomed double doors centered in the far wall of a tall antechamber. She sensed that the doors were very large, and was forced to suppress a gasp as her trained awareness measured out the true proportions. The doorway stood at least eighty meters high, half that in width.

As she approached with her escort, the doors swung inward &mdash; an immense and silent movement of hidden machinery. She recognized more Ixian handiwork. Through that towering doorway she marched with her guards into the Grand Reception Hall of the Emperor Paul Atreides &mdash; "Muad'dib, before whom all people are dwarfed." Now, she saw the effect of that popular saying at work.

As she advanced toward Paul on the distant throne, the Reverend Mother found herself more impressed by the architectural subtleties of her surroundings than she was by the immensities. The space was large: it could've housed the entire citadel of any ruler in human history. The open sweep of the room said much about hidden structural forces balanced with nicety. Trusses and supporting beams behind these walls and the faraway domed ceiling must surpass anything ever before attempted. Everything spoke of engineering genius.

Without seeming to do so, the hall grew smaller at its far end, refusing to dwarf Paul on his throne centered on a dais. An untrained awareness, shocked by surrounding proportions, would see him at first as many times larger than his actual size. Colors played upon the unprotected psyche: Paul's green throne had been cut from a single Hagar emerald. It suggested growing things and, out of the Fremen mythos, reflected the mourning color. It whispered that here sat he who could make you mourn -- life and death in one symbol, a clever stress of opposites. Behind the throne, draperies cascaded in burnt orange, curried gold of Dune earth, and cinnamon flecks of melange. To a trained eye, the symbolism was obvious, but it contained hammer blows to beat down the uninitiated.

Time played its role here.

The Reverend Mother measured the minutes required to approach the Imperial Presence at her hobbling pace. You had time to be cowed. Any tendency toward resentment would be squeezed out of you by the unbridled power which focused down upon your person. You might start the long march toward that throne as a human of dignity, but you ended the march as a gnat.

"It was a long walk," Paul said, "and I can see that you're tired. We will retire to my private chamber behind the throne. You may sit there." He gave a hand-signal to Stilgar, arose.

Stilgar and the ghola converged on her, helped her up the steps, followed Paul through a passage concealed by the draperies.

The private chamber at the end of the passage was a twenty-meter cube of plasmeld, yellow glowglobes for light, the deep orange hangings of a desert stilltent around the walls. It contained divans, soft cushions, a faint odor of melange, crystal water flagons on a low table. It felt cramped, tiny after the outer hall.

Duncan sees old couple
Idaho, seated alone at his console, encountered an entry he had stored in Shipsystems during his first days of confinement, and found himself dumped (he applied the word later) into attitudes and sensory awareness of that earlier time. It no longer was afternoon of a frustrating day in the no-ship. He was back there, stretched between then and now the way serial ghola lives linked this incarnation to his original birth.

Immediately, he saw what he had come to call "the net" and the elderly couple defined by criss-crossed lines, bodies visible through a shimmering of jeweled ropes -- green, blue, gold, and a silver so brilliant it made his eyes ache.

He sensed godlike stability in these people, but something common about them. The word ordinary came to mind. The by-now-familiar garden landscape stretched out behind them: floral bushes (roses, he thought), rolling lawns, tall trees.

The couple stared back at him with an intensity that made Idaho feel naked.

New power in the vision! It no longer was confined to the Great Hold, an increasingly compulsive magnet drawing him down there so frequently he knew the watchdogs were alerted.

Is he another Kwisatz Haderach?

There was a level of suspicion the Bene Gesserit could achieve that would kill him if it grew. And they were watching him now! Questions, worried speculations. Despite this, he could not turn away from the vision.

Why did that elderly couple look so familiar? Someone from his past? Family?

Mentat riffling of his memories produced nothing to fit the speculation. Round faces. Abbreviated chins. Fat wrinkles at the jowls. Dark eyes. The net obscured their color. The woman wore a long blue and green dress that concealed her feet. A white apron stained with green covered the dress from ample bosom to just below her waist. Garden tools dangled from apron loops. She carried a trowel in her left hand. Her hair was gray. Wisps of it had escaped a confining green scarf and blew around her eyes, emphasizing laughter lines there. She appeared. . . grandmotherly.

The man suited her as though created by the same artist as a perfect match. Bib overalls over a mounded stomach. No hat. Those same dark eyes with reflections twinkling in them. A brush of close-cropped wiry gray hair.

He had the most benign expression Idaho had ever seen. Up-curved smile creases at the corners of his mouth. He held a small shovel in his left hand, and on his extended right palm he balanced what appeared to be a small metal ball. The ball emitted a piercing whistle that made Idaho clap his hands over his ears. This did not stop the sound. It faded away of itself. He lowered his hands.

Reassuring faces. That thought aroused Idaho's suspicions because now he recognized the familiarity. They looked somewhat like Face Dancers, even to the pug noses.

He leaned forward but the vision kept its distance. "Face Dancers," he whispered.

Net and elderly couple vanished.

They were replaced by Murbella in practice-floor leotards of glistening ebony. He had to reach out and touch her before he could believe she really stood there.

"Duncan? What is it?  You're all sweaty."

"I . . . think it's something the damned Tleilaxu planted in me. I keep seeing . . . I think they're Face Dancers.  They . . . they look at me and just now . . . a whistle.  It hurt."

She glanced up at the comeyes but did not appear worried. This was something the Sisters could know without it presenting immediate dangers. . . except possibly to Scytale.

She sank to her haunches beside him and put a hand on his arm. "Something they did to your body in the tanks?"

"No!"

"But you said . . ."

"My body's not just a piece of new baggage for this trip. It has all of the chemistry and substance I ever had.  It's my mind that's different."

That worried her. She knew the Bene Gesserit concern over wild talents. "Damn that Scytale!"

"I'll find it," he said.

He closed his eyes and heard Murbella stand. Her hand went away from his arm.

"Maybe you shouldn't do that, Duncan."

She sounded far away.

Memory. Where did they hide the secret thing? Deep in the original cells? Until this moment, he had thought of his memory as a Mentat tool. He could call up his own images from long-ago moments in front of mirrors. Close up, examining an age wrinkle. Looking at a woman behind him -- two faces in the mirror and his face full of questions.

Faces. A succession of masks, different views of this person he called myself. Slightly imbalanced faces. Hair sometimes gray, sometimes the jet karakul of his current life. Sometimes humorous, sometimes grave and seeking inward for wisdom to meet a new day. Somewhere in all of that lay a consciousness that observed and deliberated. Someone who made choices. The Tleilaxu had tampered with that.

Idaho felt his blood pumping hard and knew danger was present. This was what he was intended to experience. . . but not by the Tleilaxu. He had been born with it.

This is what it means to be alive.

No memory from his other lives, nothing the Tleilaxu had done to him, none of that changed his deepest awareness one whit.

He opened his eyes. Murbella still stood near but her expression was veiled. So that's how she will look as a Reverend Mother.

He did not like this change in her.

"What happens if the Bene Gesserit fail?" he asked.

When she did not reply, he nodded. Yes. That's the worst assumption. The Sisterhood down history's sewerpipe. And you don't want that, my beloved.

He could see it in her face when she turned and left him.

Looking up at the comeyes, he said: "Dar.  I must talk to you, Dar."

No response from any of the mechanisms around him. He had not expected one. Still, he knew he could talk to her and she would have to listen.

"I've been coining at our problem from the other direction," he said. And he imagined the busy whirring of recorders as they spun the sounds of his voice into ridulian crystals. "I've been getting into the minds of Honored Matres. I know I've done it.  Murbella resonates."

That would alert them. He had an Honored Matre of his own. But had was not the proper word. He did not have Murbella. Not even in bed. They had each other. Matched the way those people in his vision appeared to be matched. Was that what he saw there? Two older people sexually trained by Honored Matres?

"I look at another issue now," he said. "How to overcome the Bene Gesserit."

That threw down the gauntlet.

"Episodes," he said. A word Odrade was fond of using.

"That's how we have to see what's happening to us. Little episodes.  Even the worst-case assumption has to be screened against that background.  The Scattering has a magnitude that dwarfs anything we do."

There! That demonstrated his value to the Sisters. It put Honored Matres in a better perspective. They were back here in the Old Empire. Fellow dwarves. He knew Odrade would see it. Bell would make her see it.

Somewhere out there in the Infinite Universe, a jury had brought in a verdict against Honored Matres. Law and its managers had not prevailed for the hunters. He suspected that his vision had shown him two of the jurors. And if they were Face Dancers, they were not Scytale's Face Dancers. Those two people behind the shimmering net belonged to no one but themselves.

Guildsmen
I know the discussion still rages on whether this article should exist and, if so, what its content should be. However, regarding the "Guildsman disrepancy" cited here, I must note that whoever added this is misreading the text. In Messiah it is a Guild Navigator, tank and all, who shields the conspirators with his heightened prescience. The "Guildsmen" referenced in Dune are merely emmissaries of the Guild; the particular phrase quoted may seem vague, but every other mention of "Guildsmen" refers to them being a presence on Arrakis, etc. There are some Guildsmen standing around with Shaddam's party at the end of the novel; these are obviously not Navigators.

People.

He saw them in such swarms they could not be listed, yet his mind catalogued them.

Even the Guildsmen.

And he thought: The Guild--there' d be a way for us, my strangeness accepted as a familiar thing of high value, always with an assured supply of the now-necessary spice.

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.

"Gurney," he said, "are there many Guildsmen around Rabban?"

Gurney straightened, eyes narrowed. "Your question makes no . . . "

"Are there?" Paul barked.

"Arrakis is crawling with Guild agents. They're buying spice as though it were the most precious thing in the universe. Why else do you think we ventured this far into . . . "

"It is the most precious thing in the universe," Paul said. "To them."

He looked toward Stilgar and Chani who were now crossing the chamber toward him. "And we control it, Gurney."

"The Harkonnens control it!" Gurney protested.

"The people who can destroy a thing, they control it," Paul said. He waved a hand to silence further remarks from Gurney, nodded to Stilgar who stopped in front of Paul, Chani beside him.

The Emperor scowled. "Child, your cause is hopeless. I have but to rally my forces and reduce this planet to --"

"It's not that simple," Alia said. She looked at the two Guildsmen. "Ask them."

"It is not wise to go against my desires," the Emperor said. "You should not deny me the least thing."

In the shock of comparative silence within the ship, the Emperor stared at the wide-eyed faces of his suite, seeing his oldest daughter with the flush of exertion on her cheeks, the old Truthsayer standing like a black shadow with her hood pulled about her face, finding at last the faces he sought -- the two Guildsmen. They wore the Guild gray, unadorned, and it seemed to fit the calm they maintained despite the high emotions around them. The taller of the two, though, held a hand to his left eye. As the Emperor watched, someone jostled the Guildsman's arm, the hand moved, and the eye was revealed. The man had lost one of his masking contact lenses, and the eye stared out a total blue so dark as to be almost black.

The smaller of the pair elbowed his way a step nearer the Emperor, said: "We cannot know how it will go." And the taller companion, hand restored to eye, added in a cold voice: "But this Muad'Dib cannot know, either."

The words shocked the Emperor out of his daze. He checked the scorn on his tongue by a visible effort because it did not take a Guild navigator's single-minded focus on the main chance to see the immediate future out on that plain. Were these two so dependent upon their faculty that they had lost the use of their eyes and their reason? he wondered.

"Oh, yes," Paul said, "I almost forgot about them." He searched through the Emperor's suite until he saw the faces of the two Guildsmen, spoke aside to Gurney. "Are those the Guild agents, Gurney, the two fat ones dressed in gray over there?"

"Yes, m'Lord."

"You two," Paul said, pointing. "Get out of there immediately and dispatch messages that will get that fleet on its way home. After this, you'll ask my permission before --"

"The Guild doesn't take your orders!" the taller of the two barked. He and his companion pushed through to the barrier lances, which were raised at a nod from Paul. The two men stepped out and the taller leveled an arm at Paul, said: "You may very well be under embargo for your --"

"If I hear any more nonsense from either of you," Paul said, "I'll give the order that'll destroy all spice production on Arrakis . . . forever."

"Are you mad?" the tall Guildsman demanded. He fell back half a step.

"You grant that I have the power to do this thing, then?" Paul asked.

The Guildsman seemed to stare into space for a moment, then: "Yes, you could do it, but you must not."

"Ah-h-h," Paul said and nodded to himself. "Guild navigators, both of you, eh?"

"Yes!"

The shorter of the pair said: "You would blind yourself, too, and condemn us all to slow death. Have you any idea what it means to be deprived of the spice liquor once you're addicted?"

"The eye that looks ahead to the safe course is closed forever," Paul said. "The Guild is crippled. Humans become little isolated clusters on their isolated planets. You know, I might do this thing out of pure spite . . . or out of ennui."

"Let us talk this over privately," the taller Guildsman said. "I'm sure we can come to some compromise that is --"

"Send the message to your people over Arrakis," Paul said. "I grow tired of this argument. If that fleet over us doesn't leave soon there'll be no need for us to talk." He nodded toward his communications men at the side of the hall. "You may use our equipment."

"First we must discuss this," the tall Guildsman said. "We cannot just --"

"Do it!" Paul barked. "The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it. You've agreed I have that power. We are not here to discuss or to negotiate or to compromise. You will obey my orders or suffer the immediate consequences!"

"He means it," the shorter Guildsman said. And Paul saw the fear grip them.

Slowly the two crossed to the Fremen communications equipment.

"Will they obey?" Gurney asked.

"They have a narrow vision of time," Paul said. "They can see ahead to a blank wall marking the consequences of disobedience. Every Guild navigator on every ship over us can look ahead to that same wall. They'll obey."

A flurry of robes, scraping of feet, low-voiced commands and protests accompanied obedience to Paul's command. The Guildsmen remained standing near the communications equipment. They frowned at Paul in obvious indecision.

They're accustomed to seeing the future, Paul thought. In this place and time they're blind. . . even as I am. And he sampled the time-winds, sensing the turmoil, the storm nexus that now focused on this moment place. Even the faint gaps were closed now. Here was the unborn jihad, he knew. Here was the race consciousness that he had known once as his own terrible purpose. Here was reason enough for a Kwisatz Haderach or a Lisan al-Gaib or even the halting schemes of the Bene Gesserit. The race of humans had felt its own dormancy, sensed itself grown stale and knew now only the need to experience turmoil in which the genes would mingle and the strong new mixtures survive. All humans were alive as an unconscious single organism in this moment, experiencing a kind of sexual heat that could override any barrier.

And Paul saw how futile were any efforts of his to change any smallest bit of this. He had thought to oppose the jihad within himself, but the jihad would be. His legions would rage out from Arrakis even without him. They needed only the legend he already had become. He had shown them the way, given them mastery even over the Guild which must have the spice to exist.

OC Bible
Appendix II: The Religion of Dune

Before the coming of Muad'Dib, the Fremen of Arrakis practiced a religion whose roots in the Maometh Saari are there for any scholar to see. Many have traced the extensive borrowings from other religions. The most common example is the Hymn to Water, a direct copy from the Orange Catholic Liturgical Manual, calling for rain clouds which Arrakis had never seen. But there are more profound points of accord between the Kitab al-Ibar of the Fremen and the teachings of Bible, Ilm, and Fiqh. Any comparison of the religious beliefs dominant in the Imperium up to the time of Muad'Dib must start with the major forces which shaped those beliefs: 1. The followers of the Fourteen Sages, whose Book was the Orange Catholic Bible, and whose views are expressed in the Commentaries and other literature produced by the Commission of Ecumenical Translators. (C.E.T.); 2. The Bene Gesserit, who privately denied they were a religious order, but who operated behind an almost impenetrable screen of ritual mysticism, and whose training, whose symbolism, organization, and internal teaching methods were almost wholly religious; 3. The agnostic ruling class (including the Guild) for whom religion was a kind of puppet show to amuse the populace and keep it docile, and who believed essentially that all phenomena -- even religious phenomena -- could be reduced to mechanical explanations; 4. The so-called Ancient Teachings -- including those preserved by the Zensunni Wanderers from the first, second, and third Islamic movements; the Navachristianity of Chusuk, the Buddislamic Variants of the types dominant at Lankiveil and Sikun, the Blend Books of the Mahayana Lankavatara, the Zen Hekiganshu of III Delta Pavonis, the Tawrah and Talmudic Zabur surviving on Salusa Secundus, the pervasive Obeah Ritual, the Muadh Quran with its pure Ilm and Fiqh preserved among the pundi rice farmers of Caladan, the Hindu outcroppings found all through the universe in little pockets of insulated pyons, and finally, the Butlerian Jihad. There is a fifth force which shaped religious belief, but its effect is so universal and profound that it deserves to stand alone. This is, of course, space travel -- and in any discussion of religion, it deserves to be written thus:

SPACE TRAVEL!

Mankind's movement through deep space placed a unique stamp on religion during the one hundred and ten centuries that preceded the Butlerian Jihad. To begin with, early space travel, although widespread, was largely unregulated, slow, and uncertain, and, before the Guild monopoly, was accomplished by a hodgepodge of methods. The first space experiences, poorly communicated and subject to extreme distortion, were a wild inducement to mystical speculation. Immediately, space gave a different flavor and sense to ideas of Creation. That difference is seen even in the highest religious achievements of the period. All through religion, the feeling of the sacred was touched by anarchy from the outer dark. It was as though Jupiter in all his descendant forms retreated into the maternal darkness to be superseded by a female immanence filled with ambiguity and with a face of many terrors. The ancient formulae intertwined, tangled together as they were fitted to the needs of new conquests and new heraldic symbols. It was a time of struggle between beast-demons on the one side and the old prayers and invocations on the other. There was never a clear decision. During this period, it was said that Genesis was reinterpreted, permitting God to say: "Increase and multiply, and fill the universe, and subdue it, and rule over all manner of strange beasts and living creatures in the infinite airs, on the infinite earths and beneath them." It was a time of sorceresses whose powers were real. The measure of them is seen in the fact they never boasted how they grasped the firebrand. Then came the Butlerian Jihad -- two generations of chaos. The god of machine-logic was overthrown among the masses and a new concept was raised: "Man may not be replaced." Those two generations of violence were a thalamic pause for all humankind. Men looked at their gods and their rituals and saw that both were filled with that most terrible of all equations: fear over ambition. Hesitantly, the leaders of religions whose followers had spilled the blood of billions began meeting to exchange views. It was a move encouraged by the Spacing Guild, which was beginning to build its monopoly over all interstellar travel, and by the Bene Gesserit who were banding the sorceresses. Out of those first ecumenical meetings came two major developments: 1. The realization that all religions had at least one common commandment: "Thou shall not disfigure the soul." 2. The Commission of Ecumenical Translators. C.E.T. convened on a neutral island of Old Earth, spawning ground of the mother religions. They met "in the common belief that there exists a Divine Essence in the universe." Every faith with more than a million followers was represented, and they reached a surprisingly immediate agreement on the statement of their common goal: "We are here to remove a primary weapon from the hands of disputant religions. That weapon -- the claim to possession of the one and only revelation." Jubilation at this "sign of profound accord" proved premature. For more than a standard year, that statement was the only announcement from C.E.T. Men spoke bitterly of the delay. Troubadours composed witty, biting songs about the one hundred and twenty-one "Old Cranks" as the C.E.T. delegates came to be called. (The name arose from a ribald joke which played on the C.E.T. initials and called the delegates "Cranks-Effing-Turners.") One of the songs, "Brown Repose," has undergone periodic revival and is popular even today:

"Consider leis. Brown repose -- and The tragedy In all of those Cranks! All those Cranks! So laze -- so laze Through all your days. Time has toll'd for M'Lord Sandwich!"

Occasional rumors leaked out of the C.E.T. sessions. It was said they were comparing texts and, irresponsibly, the texts were named. Such rumors inevitably provoked anti-ecumenism riots and, of course, inspired new witticisms. Two years passed. . . three years. The Commissioners, nine of their original number having died and been replaced, paused to observe formal installation of the replacements and announced they were laboring to produce one book, weeding out "all the pathological symptoms" of the religious past. "We are producing an instrument of Love to be played in all ways," they said. Many consider it odd that this statement provoked the worst outbreaks of violence against ecumenism. Twenty delegates were recalled by their congregations. One committed suicide by stealing a space frigate and diving it into the sun. Historians estimate the riots took eighty million lives. That works out to about six thousand for each world then in the Landsraad League. Considering the unrest of the time, this may not be an excessive estimate, although any pretense to real accuracy in the figure must be just that -- pretense. Communication between worlds was at one of its lowest ebbs. The troubadours, quite naturally, had a field day. A popular musical comedy of the period had one of the C.E.T. delegates sitting on a white sand beach beneath a palm tree singing:

"For God, woman and the splendor of love We dally here sans fears or cares. Troubadour! Troubadour, sing another melody For God, Woman and the splendor of love!"

Riots and comedy are but symptoms of the times, profoundly revealing. They betray the psychological tone, the deep uncertainties. . . and the striving for something better, plus the fear that nothing would come of it all. The major dams against anarchy in these times were the embryo Guild, the Bene Gesserit and the Landsraad, which continued its 2,000-year record of meeting in spite of the severest obstacles. The Guild's part appears clear: they gave free transport for all Landsraad and C.E.T. business. The Bene Gesserit role is more obscure. Certainly, this is the time in which they consolidated their hold upon the sorceresses, explored the subtle narcotics, developed prana-bindu training and conceived the Missionaria Protectiva, that black arm of superstition. But it is also the period that saw the composing of the Litany against Fear and the assembly of the Azhar Book, that bibliographic marvel that preserves the great secrets of the most ancient faiths. Ingsley's comment is perhaps the only one possible: "Those were times of deep paradox." For almost seven years, then, C.E.T. labored. And as their seventh anniversary approached, they prepared the human universe for a momentous announcement. On that seventh anniversary, they unveiled the Orange Catholic Bible. "Here is a work with dignity and meaning," they said. "Here is a way to make humanity aware of itself as a total creation of God." The men of C.E.T. were likened to archeologists of ideas, inspired by God in the grandeur of rediscovery. It was said they had brought to light "the vitality of great ideals overlaid by the deposits of centuries," that they had "sharpened the moral imperatives that come out of a religious conscience." With the O.C. Bible, C.E.T. presented the Liturgical Manual and the Commentaries -- in many respects a more remarkable work, not only because of its brevity (less than half the size of the O.C. Bible), but also because of its candor and blend of self-pity and self-righteousness. The beginning is an obvious appeal to the agnostic rulers. "Men, finding no answers to the sunnan [the ten thousand religious questions from the Shari-ah] now apply their own reasoning. All men seek to be enlightened. Religion is but the most ancient and honorable way in which men have striven to make sense out of God's universe. Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness." In their conclusion, though, the Commentaries set a harsh tone that very likely foretold their fate. "Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known." There was an odd sense of calm as the presses and shigawire imprinters rolled and the O.C. Bible spread out through the worlds. Some interpreted this as a sign from God, an omen of unity. But even the C.E.T. delegates betrayed the fiction of that calm as they returned to their respective congregations. Eighteen of them were lynched within two months. Fifty-three recanted within the year. The O.C. Bible was denounced as a work produced by "the hubris of reason." It was said that its pages were filled with a seductive interest in logic. Revisions that catered to popular bigotry began appearing. These revisions leaned on accepted symbolisms (Cross, Crescent, Feather Rattle, the Twelve Saints, the thin Buddha, and the like) and it soon became apparent that the ancient superstitions and beliefs had not been absorbed by the new ecumenism. Halloway's label for C.E.T.'s seven-year effort -- "Galactophasic Determinism" -- was snapped up by eager billions who interpreted the initials G.D. as "God-Damned." C.E.T. Chairman Toure Bomoko, an Ulema of the Zensunnis and one of the fourteen delegates who never recanted ("The Fourteen Sages" of popular history), appeared to admit finally the C.E.T. had erred. "We shouldn't have tried to create new symbols," he said. "We should've realized we weren't supposed to introduce uncertainties into accepted belief, that we weren't supposed to stir up curiosity about God. We are daily confronted by the terrifying instability of all things human, yet we permit our religions to grow more rigid and controlled, more conforming and oppressive. What is this shadow across the highway of Divine Command? It is a warning that institutions endure, that symbols endure when their meaning is lost, that there is no summa of all attainable knowledge." The bitter double edge in this "admission" did not escape Bomoko's critics and he was forced soon afterward to flee into exile, his life dependent upon the Guild's pledge of secrecy. He reportedly died on Tupile, honored and beloved, his last words: "Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the kind of person I want to be.' It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied." It is pleasant to think that Bomoko understood the prophecy in his words: "Institutions endure." Ninety generations later, the O.C. Bible and the Commentaries permeated the religious universe. When Paul-Muad'Dib stood with his right hand on the rock shrine enclosing his father's skull (the right hand of the blessed, not the left hand of the damned) he quoted word for word from "Bomoko's Legacy" -- "You who have defeated us say to yourselves that Babylon is fallen and its works have been overturned. I say to you still that man remains on trial, each man in his own dock. Each man is a little war." The Fremen said of Muad'Dib that he was like Abu Zide whose frigate defied the Guild and rode one day 'there' and back. 'There' used in this way translates directly from the Fremen mythology as the land of the ruh-spirit, the alam al-mithal where all limitations are removed. The parallel between this and the Kwisatz Haderach is readily seen. The Kwisatz Haderach that the Sisterhood sought through its breeding program was interpreted as "The shortening of the way" or "The one who can be two places simultaneously." But both of these interpretations can be shown to stem directly from the Commentaries: "When law and religious duty are one, your selfdom encloses the universe." Of himself, Muad'Dib said: "I am a net in the sea of time, free to sweep future and past. I am a moving membrane from whom no possibility can escape." These thoughts are all one and the same and they harken to 22 Kalima in the O.C. Bible where it says: "Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and has powers of reality." It is when we get into Muad'Dib's own commentaries in "The Pillars of the Universe" as interpreted by his holy men, the Qizara Tafwid, that we see his real debt to C.E.T. and Fremen-Zensunni.

Muad'Dib: "Law and duty are one; so be it. But remember these limitations -- Thus are you never fully self-conscious. Thus do you remain immersed in the communal tau. Thus are you always less than an individual." O.C. Bible: Identical wording. (61 Revelations.) Muad'Dib: "Religion often partakes of the myth of progress that shields us from the terrors of an uncertain future." C.E.T. Commentaries: Identical wording. (The Azhar Book traces this statement to the first century religious writer, Neshou; through a paraphrase.) Muad'Dib: "If a child, an untrained person, an ignorant person, or an insane person incites trouble, it is the fault of authority for not predicting and preventing that trouble. " O.C. Bible: "Any sin can be ascribed, at least in part, to a natural bad tendency that is an extenuating circumstance acceptable to God." (The Azhar Book traces this to the ancient Semitic Tawra.) Muad'Dib: "Reach forth thy hand and eat what God has provided thee; and when thou are replenished, praise the Lord." O.C. Bible: a paraphrase with identical meaning. (The Azhar Book traces this in slightly different form to First Islam.) Muad'Dib: "Kindness is the beginning of cruelty." Fremen Kitab al-Ibar: "The weight of a kindly God is a fearful thing. Did not God give us the burning sun (Al-Lat)? Did not God give us the Mothers of Moisture (Reverend Mothers)? Did not God give us Shaitan (Iblis, Satan)? From Shaitan did we not get the hurtfulness of speed?" (This is the source of the Fremen saying: "Speed comes from Shaitan." Consider: for every one hundred calories of heat generated by exercise [speed] the body evaporates about six ounces of perspiration. The Fremen word for perspiration is bakka or tears and, in one pronunciation, translates: "The life essence that Shaitan squeezes from your soul.")

Muad'Dib's arrival is called "religiously timely" by Koneywell, but timing had little to do with it. As Muad'Dib himself said: "I am here; so . . . " It is, however, vital to an understanding of Muad'Dib's religious impact that you never lose sight of one fact: the Fremen were a desert people whose entire ancestry was accustomed to hostile landscapes. Mysticism isn't difficult when you survive each second by surmounting open hostility. "You are there -- so . . . " With such a tradition, suffering is accepted -- perhaps as unconscious punishment, but accepted. And it's well to note that Fremen ritual gives almost complete freedom from guilt feelings. This isn't necessarily because their law and religion were identical, making disobedience a sin. It's likely closer to the mark to say they cleansed themselves of guilt easily because their everyday existence required brutal judgments (often deadly) which in a softer land would burden men with unbearable guilt. This is likely one of the roots of Fremen emphasis on superstition (disregarding the Missionaria Protectiva's ministrations). What matter that whistling sands are an omen? What matter that you must make the sign of the fist when first you see First Moon? A man's flesh is his own and his water belongs to the tribe -- and the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve but a reality to experience. Omens help you remember this. And because you are here, because you have the religion, victory cannot evade you in the end. As the Bene Gesserit taught for centuries, long before they ran afoul of the Fremen: "When religion and politics ride the same cart, when that cart is driven by a living holy man (baraka), nothing can stand in their path."

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The crucible
As Children of Dune begins, it is nine years since the Emperor Paul Muad'dib walked into the desert, blind. The ecological transformation of Dune continues apace and some of the Fremen are even living without stillsuits in the less arid climate. Fremen have started to move out of the Sietches and into the villages and cities. Millions of Fremen, thanks to the Jihad, have experience of life off planet or out of the desert, opening their minds to new possibilities yet also causing them to forget the old ways. It is a time of great social change and economic growth on the new capital planet of the Imperium, as more and more pilgrims arrive each day to experience the planet of Muad'dib and Alia.

The members of the Imperial high council &mdash; Alia, Duncan Idaho, Princess Irulan (who, since the death of Paul, has taken the role of caregiver to the Atreides children) and Stilgar &mdash; meet and lament the fact that they have lost the initiative in the political arena. Paul Atreides had been powerless to control the Jihad and had left only the shadow of his religious mantle. Now Alia and her council are even less capable of controlling it. They are finding themselves tightening their grip on politics and ritual, yet losing more control. The two young children of Paul, Leto II and Ghanima, are not normal nine year old children. Like Alia, they were forced into consciousness before birth and thus possess Other Memory, access to the lives and memories of all their ancestors. The children are very troubled because they have come to the conclusion that Alia has succumbed to what the Bene Gesserit call "abomination" &mdash; possession by one of her ancestors &mdash; and fear that a similar fate awaits them. They (and Alia) also realize that the quickening terraforming of Dune will kill all the sandtrout and thus bring to an end the Giant Worms, and inevitably to the spice itself.

Leto has an additional fear as well: he has started to have dreams which he is coming to believe are prophetic, like his father had when he was a similar age. He fears being locked into an early prescient vision as he suspects happened to his father before him. He also has the added pressure that Alia is pushing him to enter into an overdose-induced spice trance in order to unlock the door to prophetic visions. She feels the need for such visions in order to rule the empire, yet struggles to achieve them at all for herself.

Things have reached a heightened note of tension because Lady Jessica is coming to Arrakis to visit her grandchildren from her self-imposed retreat on Caladan. Alia fears this because she has indeed become possessed by the persona of her grandfather, the evil Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, and is sure that her mother will notice despite Alia's erroneous belief that no one has yet recognised the change in her. The Baron is leading her far away from the Atreides way of doing things: she has taken a lover behind Duncan's back, a priest called Javid.

Out in the desert, a new religious figure has arisen among the Fremen, who preaches against the injustices of the religious government and the changes among the Fremen. He is called 'The Preacher', and some even believe he is actually Paul Atreides.

Meanwhile, on Salusa Secundus, fallen House Corrino is plotting again for power. Princess Wensicia, younger sister of Irulan, rules in the name of her son Farad'n. She has plans for her son to become Emperor and has hatched a plot to assassinate the twins.

Enter Jessica
Jessica arrives on Arrakis already wary. She has been approached by the Bene Gesserit, and forced to recognize that she has been ignoring important duties. She makes her peace with the Sisterhood, and is apparently welcomed back into the fold. With their warnings, Jessica returns fearing that Alia and her grandchildren have fallen into abomination. At the landing field she meets Alia, and immediately realizes that, for Alia at least, this is true. Alia is actually relieved by this &mdash; the time of concealment is over.

A situation develops where everyone but Stilgar and Duncan Idaho have plans for the twins, but what no one realizes is that the twins have plans of their own.

Jessica arranges a meeting with Ghanima. She sees no signs of abomination on either of the twins, but Leto shows signs of concealing something, so she excludes him from the meeting. Jessica and Ghanima meet truly as grandmother and granddaughter, and do not hide the love between them, straight away finding a common cause. Jessica learns the twins are aware that Alia has fallen into abomination, and of their speculation that undergoing the spice trance was Alia's fatal mistake. She quickly confirms that Ghanima is not possessed but still worries about Leto. Ghanima calms Jessica's fears on that score, but admits she worries for her brother.

Jessica next talks to Leto. Their meeting is far more confrontational, and Leto controls the path of the conversation. First he reveals to her his understanding of how she had been manipulated by the Bene Gesserit into coming to Arrakis through the conditioning of her training; then Leto orders Jessica to let herself be kidnapped.

Leto talks to Stilgar. First, Leto shakes Stilgar's presumptions about him, by pointing out his memories and experiences go back far further than Stilgar, and that he is most suited to be Emperor. He lets Stilgar know that he is starting to have dreams of prophecy. He tells Stilgar that in one future, he is killed at the spot they are talking. He orders Stilgar to flee with Ghanima into the desert if that happens. He also undermines Stilgar's support for Alia, pointing out the flaws in her thinking, the destructive place it will take the Empire and the Fremen, and the fact she is no longer his friend. He makes Stilgar realize that change is coming and that traditional thinking was not the absolute guide Stilgar had thought it was.

Attack on the Atreides
At Jessica's first reception with Alia, an assassination attempt is made on Jessica's life by minions of Alia/The Baron. Only with the help of old fedaykin companions of Paul is Jessica able to escape into the desert. A rebellion breaks out among the Fremen inspired by this latest injustice, a rebellion made all the more dangerous and legitimate because the mother of Muad'dib supports it and so counterweighs Alia's own religious mantle. Jessica presses for Alia to be tested for possession.

At this time the twins choose to go out into the desert during the night. They do this even though they are aware that an attack will be made on their lives, prewarned by a vision of Leto's. The twins are attacked by two Laza tigers sent by Wensicia, but they manage to kill the tigers, despite an injury to Ghanima. They then institute their own plan; Ghanima uses a hypnotic technique to convince herself that her brother was killed by the tigers, and goes back to Sietch Tabr grief stricken. As a beneficial side effect of this hypnotic technique she finds that it gives immunity from the voices within.

Meanwhile Farad'n has been told about the assassination attempt on Leto and Ghanima. He is shocked, not so much at the attempt, but at the clumsiness of it. But now he realizes the stakes involved.

Duncan meanwhile is aware that Alia is cuckolding him with Javid, which he naturally enough finds heartbreaking, but he is utterly distraught with the realization that Alia is suffering from possession. He comes to realize that Alia is possessed when she suggests to him to get rid of Jessica. He realizes that on top of the fact that it is not the sort of behaviour an Atreides indulges in, that if she was in contact with her mother within her mind she would not even consider this, so obviously she is prevented from this. He concludes that she is possessed. Alia implies to Duncan she would like her mother to disappear. Duncan offers to make it happen, and Alia 'reluctantly' agrees.

Duncan does make Jessica disappear but not as Alia expects. Duncan 'kidnaps' Jessica and takes her to Salusa Secundus, where she is to meet an interesting pupil. Jessica, unsure of Duncan's motives, asks who he serves. He says the Preacher. She asks if it is her son. He answers 'I wish I knew.'

Duncan and Jessica arrive on Salusa. Farad'n informs Jessica with some compassion that her grandson has been killed, though her granddaughter survived. The Bene Gesserit have formally protested to the Landsraad concerning the Corrino assassination attempt. Farad'n uses the situation to force his formal confirmation of power from his mother in front of witnesses. Jessica and Farad'n make a bargain. Jessica will announce that she has come to Salusa of her own free will. Farad'n will send his mother off into exile. Jessica will train Farad'n in the ways of the Bene Gesserit. The Bene Gesserit promise Farad'n the throne with Ghanima as his mate. Duncan attempts to commit suicide when he hears that Alia has offered herself as wife to Farad'n, an offer Farad'n was not foolish enough to accept.

Alia dresses as a commoner and goes to witness a speech by the Preacher in order to determine whether or not he is in fact Paul, her brother. Partway through the speech, the Preacher directs himself at Alia, seeing through her disguise, and eventually whispers in her ear and addresses her as "sister." Alia is momentarily paralyzed by the revelation while the crowd disperses.

Duncan and Jessica talk. Duncan Idaho formally withdraws from Atreides service. He insults Jessica and advises Farad'n that he should send Jessica back to the Bene Gesserit.

Leto's journey
Leto goes off seeking his father. He knows that in past centuries there was once a renegade tribe of Fremen called the Iduali or "Water Insects" who lived at a place called Sietch Jacurutu. He discovered there was a hidden village, or sietch, close to the site of old Jacurutu called Shuloch, which was inhabited by the same Iduali tribe. The Iduali, centuries before, killed other Fremen to take their water (This is the most heinous crime known to the Fremen). In retaliation, the Fremen banded their sietches together and massacred the Iduali and declared their sietch taboo. However the surviving Iduali still secretly lived there. Jacurutu-renamed-Fondak/Shuloch was in most people's minds just a legend, and it thus an ideal hiding place. Leto thinks, rightly, that when his father was blinded by a stone burner and went off into the desert to die, that if anyone took him in it had to have been men of Jacurutu. Leto went to Jacurutu to seek asylum as well as his father.

Leto finds Jacurutu, but as he tries to infiltrate the camp he is captured. When he wakes up, he discovers that he has been captured by Gurney Halleck and a certain Namri. They tell him he has come to school. He is forcibly injected with spice essence, and so undergoes the spice trance. Gurney thinks it is on Jessica's instructions but due to Namri's secret alliances it is really Alia's.

Leto goes through the transformatory experience. Leto experiences fascinating and overwhelming oracular visions of possible futures. He nearly loses his mind, but in the end he manages to get through it. In all these futures but one, humanity goes extinct. This future is the one he has deemed "Secher Nbiw", (in the Arabic-based Fremen tongue) the Golden Path.

In his vision of the Golden Path, he sees the way out of his dilemma. He does this by seeking allies within the ancestors for the future, principally an old ruler from the distant past named Harum. These allies within join with him in order to make the Golden Path happen. After his experience he is tested by Namri, and survives the first test. Before they can test him again, he escapes into the desert. When they discover Leto gone, Namri and Gurney argue. Namri brags to Gurney that he has been serving Alia, not Jessica as he thought, and attacks him. This was a serious mistake: Gurney kills him and easily escapes from Jacurutu.

Alia and Duncan meet up again. Alia is shocked to learn her mother is not dead and is indeed training Farad'n. She is not aware that this was deliberate 'treachery' on Duncan's part, instead she thinks it is his innocence, that led him to take her literally. However, Alia/The Baron decides to arrange an accident for Duncan, seeing him as too dangerous. Duncan, as a mentat, sees through her clumsy plot, pretends to agree with her plans, and then escapes in a thopter.

Leto's transformation
Leto's escape is not a complete one. He discovers that Namri had cut the heel pumps in his stillsuit and he has lost half his water. So he goes to Shuloch on his own terms. He meets a party of the men of Jucurutu/Shuloch, and through subterfuge gets Muriz, the leader, to offer him hospitality rights.

Leto discovers that these Jacurutu Fremen are trapping Giant Worms for sale and transfer off world. This presents him with the opportunity to make his vision real. Leto sacrifices his humanity and, for the sake of the survival of the human race, chooses to accept the body of a sandworm. He delves into a pool of sandtrout, which form a living skin around him. He then explores the desert with his new, near-invulnerable body with which he runs through the desert at tremendous speed and possesses the strength of many men. Leto is no longer fully human, and his powers have become superhuman.

Leto travels through the desert until he comes across the Preacher. He puts himself across the path of the worm which the Preacher and his guide are traveling on. Despite the guide's urging, the giant worm refuses to ride over Leto, recognising the sandtrout on Leto's body. Leto greets his father. It is a terrible moment for Paul Atreides, facing a son who had the bravery to do what he would not.

Stilgar has been maintaining his neutrality between Alia and the rebels. But Duncan Idaho deliberately provokes Stilgar into a rage by killing Javid, and then insulting Stilgar. The maddened Stilgar kills him. Stilgar immediately recognizes Idaho's plan. By killing him, Stilgar has no choice but to become a rebel to escape the vengeance which Alia would be forced to display for the public murder of her husband. By his actions, Idaho forced Stilgar to flee, taking Ghanima away from Alia's reach.

Alia hears of Duncan's death. She does the expected Fremen thing and orders her forces to find Stilgar and kill him. After doing this, and much to the internal Baron's surprise she grieves for Duncan, and for a moment returns to being just Alia.

While conflict continues between the rebels and the loyalists and as Stilgar flees from hiding place to hiding place, Leto spends his time moving through the desert wrecking the ecological transformation of Arrakis by destroying the reservoirs (qanats) that were being used to feed it. He is seen as a desert demon. Leto shows up yet again at Jacurutu and kills any Jacurutu men who opposed him, and the rest surrendered. Jacurutu accepts his orders with religious awe: he wears the skin of Shai-Hulud. Among his orders, Leto tells Jacurutu to plant an oasis garden, as he planned to settle down and live there.

Leto's return
After long conflict, Alia manages to recapture Ghanima through treachery. She offers Ghanima as bride to Farad'n. Ghanima agrees to this wedding, but only so she can get close enough to Farad'n to kill him, whom she believes had her brother assassinated. Alia plans to take pick up the pieces from the chaos that would result. Farad'n arrives on Dune for the ceremony.

Leto makes his move. He goes to Arrakeen as The Preacher's guide. Paul as the Preacher makes a virulent speech against Alia, which provokes a priest to kill him in front of the eyes of Alia, Farad'n and Jessica. To everyone's shock Leto arrives in a display of superhuman strength, Ghanima in hand. He says the keywords to awaken Ghanima's secret memories. She asks him if the plan worked, and he says "well enough." Alia orders the guards to seize him, but he throws them aside, and the rest of the guards are too scared to enter the room. Leto advances on Alia, and the twins offer her their help conquering her inner lives, as they have. But Alia fragments totally, with different voices in different languages pouring out of her. Leto realizes that the Baron's hold over her is too strong, and provides two options: to the Baron, a Trial of Possession, an ancient ritual that would guarantee the Baron's undoing; and to Alia, the open window, high above the temple steps. As a helpless Jessica looks on, Alia regains control of her body long enough to leap out the window to her death.

Leto makes himself Emperor. He uses his new near-invulnerable body to establish himself as undisputed Emperor, scaring all the Fremen naibs into submission. He ingests poisons, lifts heavy weights, and survives wounds from blades in order to prove this power. In the end all the naibs come to Arakeen to surrender leadership to him.

Leto reveals the Golden Path to Farad'n, whom Leto renames "Harq al-Ada" ("Breaker of Habit"). Farad'n accepts a post as Royal Scribe, and gives Leto his legions of Sardaukar in their agreement that Farad'n will be the father of Ghanima's children, and that Leto will thus take over the Bene Gesserit breeding program. The seemingly immortal and omnipotent Leto is left as Emperor of the known universe, with Ghanima at his side.