Dune (Dune #1)

by Frank Herbert

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!”

He’s been practicing and studying on his own. That’s not Duncan style, and it’s certainly nothing I’ve taught him.

“I’d sooner you never had to kill…but if the need arises, you do it however you can—tip or edge.”

“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,”

All the time we talked he was hiding something, 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.

this is so sad

Paul stared at the place where his father had stood. The space had been empty even before the Duke left the room.

There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man—with human flesh.

I loved my father, Paul thought, and knew this for truth. I should mourn him. I should feel something. But he felt nothing except: Here’s an important fact.

I conceived out of instinct and not out of obedience.

Why can’t I mourn? he wondered. He felt that every fiber of his being craved this release, but it would be denied him forever.

Paul heard his mother’s grief and felt the emptiness within himself. I have no grief, he thought. Why? Why? He felt the inability to grieve as a terrible flaw.

Paul’s mind climbed another notch in awareness. He felt himself clinging to this new level, clutching at a precarious hold and peering about. It was as though he existed within a globe with avenues radiating away in all directions…yet this only approximated the sensation.

I’m a monster! he thought. A freak! “No,” he said. Then: “No. No! NO!” He found that he was pounding the tent floor with his fists. (The implacable part of him recorded this as an interesting emotional datum and fed it into computation.)

No prescient dream, no experience of his life had quite prepared him for the totality with which the veils had been ripped away to reveal naked time.

Now, my father, I can mourn you. And he felt the tears coursing down his cheeks.

Kynes stared at Paul, and Jessica noted the glint of admiration in the planetologist’s face, the touch of humor there.

“I am an embarrassment to the Emperor,” Paul said. “I am an embarrassment to all who would divide Arrakis as their spoil. As I live, I shall continue to be such an embarrassment that I stick in their throats and choke them to death!”

“Sire!” Kynes said, and the word was torn from him, but Jessica saw that he was not now speaking to a boy of fifteen, but to a man, to a superior. Now Kynes meant the word. In this moment he’d give his life for Paul, she thought. How do the Atreides accomplish this thing so quickly, so easily?

i have chills

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.”

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.

“Knife and binoculars. We can get a good look around the place where we’ll die.”

Jessica held herself to stillness lest she disturb the hyperfunctioning of his mind. Paul looked out at the open dunes, searching with his nostrils as well as his eyes, finding the direction and then centering his attention on a darkened patch of sand below them. “Spice,” he said. “Its essence—highly alkaline. And I have the paracompass. Its power pack is acid-base.”

“You look a mess,” he said. “You’re not so pretty yourself,” she said. They started to laugh, then sobered.

theyre so cute mom son mess around

That girl! She was like a touch of destiny. He felt caught up on a wave, in tune with a motion that lifted all his spirits.

‘Do not count a human dead until you’ve seen his body. And even then you can make a mistake.’”

And he thought about Halleck’s reports on Fremen battle tactics. The tactics smacked of Halleck himself…and Idaho…and even of Hawat.

secreted in one of the new sietch strongholds, safe with their son, Leto II.

im going to sob

Chani, his soul, Chani his sihaya, sweet as the desert spring,

GOD PAUL

He recognized her love for him speaking then and chided her gently: “The Sayyadina of the Watch does not caution or warn the candidate.”

“Usul, the companion of my sietch, him I would never doubt,” Stilgar said. “But you are Paul-Muad’Dib, the Atreides Duke, and you are the Lisan al-Gaib, the Voice from the Outer World. These men I don’t even know.”

so deep omg

Paul waited until the maker was safely clear of the scatter area, then released his hooks. This was the tricky moment with a worm not completely exhausted.

Paul ran lightly back along its broad surface, judged his moment carefully and leaped off. He landed running, lunged against the slipface of a dune the way he had been taught, and hid himself beneath the cascade of sand over his robe.

“Now, Usul speaks,” Stilgar said. “Usul thinks Fremen.” But Usul must give way to decisions that match a terrible purpose, Paul thought. And the storm was gathering.

Paul took a step closer to Gurney, found that his eyes were smarting. “Gurney….” It seemed to happen of itself, and they were embracing, pounding each other on the back, feeling the reassurance of solid flesh. “You young pup! You young pup!” Gurney kept saying. And Paul: “Gurney, man! Gurney, man!”

She stopped in front of Paul. Gurney noted the possessive air about her, the way she stood close to Paul.

Gurney studied him with a new expression. “You’re Muad’Dib?” he asked. “You’re the will-o’-the-sand?”

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.

he is so wow

who says you’re a ruling Duke?” the man demanded. Paul gestured to the Fedaykin. “These men say I’m a ruling Duke. Your own emperor bestowed Arrakis on House Atreides. I am House Atreides.”

“I asked your name,” Paul said, and he called up the subtleties of Voice: “Tell me your name!”

“You are Stilgar, a fighting man. When the Sardaukar began fighting here, you were not in the front of battle. Your first thought was to protect Chani.”

im crying i love him

“Why was your first thought of Chani?” Paul demanded. “It wasn’t!” “Oh?” “It was of you,” Stilgar admitted.

“Ways change, Stil. You have changed them yourself.”

I am stronger when you are safe.

im emotional

“Sihaya,” Paul said, using his intimate name for her.

there isn’t a man here, Stilgar included, who could stand against me in single combat.

“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!”

“Be quiet,” Paul said, and the monotone stillness of his words carried more command than Jessica had ever heard in another voice.

“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. I heard my father when he spoke of my mother.

“Kill me, I say!” Gurney raged. “You know me better than that,” Paul said. “How many kinds of an idiot do you think I am? Must I go through this with every man I need?”

But she knew a different man by a different name—the father of her son, the tender lover.