Dune (Dune #1)

by Frank Herbert

“Someday, lad,” the old woman said, “you, too, may have to stand outside a door like that. It takes a measure of doing.”

Many men have tried the drug…so many, but none has succeeded.” “They tried and failed, all of them?” “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “They tried and died.”

It had the stamp of Imperial handicraft about it. Latitude and longitude lines were laid in with hair-fine platinum wire. The polar caps were insets of finest cloudmilk diamonds.

“Whenever did an Atreides refuse the opportunity for a gesture?”

“Do not toy with Piter, Baron,” Piter said. “You promised me the Lady Jessica. You promised her to me.”

his nephew’s lips, the full and pouting look of them, the Harkonnen genetic marker,

“Indeed,” the Baron said. And he thought: It’s only just. We’re the ones who tamed Arrakis…except for the few mongrel Fremen hiding in the skirts of the desert…and some tame smugglers bound to the planet almost as tightly as the native labor pool.

“What is CHOAM but the weather vane of our times,”

“‘I am Bene Gesserit: I exist only to serve,’”

‘Tell me about the waters of your homeworld, Usul.’”

She fell silent and Paul saw that she wanted him to speak. He waited her out.

“We may be able to salvage you. Doubtful, but possible. But for your father, nothing.

“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.”

“Like as not I have seen them,” he said. “There’s little to tell them from the folk of the graben and sink. 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.”

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.

So 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.”

“Keep your knife arm free, heh? And your shield at full charge.”

“Oh-h-h, the Galacian girls Will do it for pearls, And the Arrakeen for water! But if you desire dames Like consuming flames, Try a Caladanin daughter!”

“I guess I’m not in the mood for it today,” Paul said. “Mood?” Halleck’s voice betrayed his outrage even through the shield’s filtering. “What has mood to do with it?

How soon this child must assume his manhood, Halleck thought. How soon he must read that form within his mind, that contract of brutal caution, to enter the necessary fact on the necessary line: “Please list your next of kin.”

“If wishes were fishes we’d all cast nets,” he murmured.

Then he thought what an odd expression that was to be taking to a planet that had never known seas or fishes.

“The desert belt and south polar regions are marked uninhabitable. Is it the worms?” “And the storms.” “But any place can be made habitable.” “If it’s economically feasible,”

Still, one must ask: What is the son but an extension of the father?

I see also the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles—the CHOAM Company.

If we’re lucky, they may judge us by him: Duncan, the moral.” “Duncan, the moral,” Paul said, “and Gurney the valorous.” “You name them well,” the Duke said.

“Gurney says there’s no artistry in killing with the tip, that it should be done with the edge.” “Gurney’s a romantic,”

“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….”

“A day comes,” the Duke said, “when the potential Mentat must learn what’s being done. It may no longer be done to him.

All the special training from Hawat and his mother—the mnemonics, the focusing of awareness, the muscle control and sharpening of sensitivities, the study of languages and nuances of voices—all of it clicked into a new kind of understanding in his mind.

He glanced at his wristwatch.

“And you might see that all our timepieces are adjusted for Arrakeen local. I’ve assigned a tech to take care of it.

“Why, you know, my Lady, I don’t even have to wear my stillsuit here?” She cackled. “And me not even dead!”

She waited in the seeming relaxation that made the Bene Gesserit-trained so terrifying in combat.

She’s getting restive. I must answer now. Delay is as dangerous as the wrong answer.

“Who sees that knife must be cleansed or slain!” she snarled. “You know that, my Lady!” I know it now, Jessica thought.

Great Mother! They planted that one here! This must be a hideous place!

“She’s the One all right,” she muttered. “Poor thing.”

“Yueh! Yueh! Yueh!” goes the refrain. “A million deaths were not enough for Yueh!”

She’ll not look for deeper reasons when she believes she already knows the answer.

we can say that Muad’Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn.

It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.

Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it’s a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.”

Stars leaped out.

They have tried to take the life of my son!

“Bitterness I understand,” the Duke said. “But let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms and the freedom to use them.

“Our supremacy on Caladan,” the Duke said, “depended on sea and air power. Here, we must develop something I choose to call desert power.

“I’ll report soon as possible. Thufir has my call code. Use battle language.”