Dune (Dune #1)

by Frank Herbert

“Jessica!” the old woman screamed. “Silence him!” “Silence him yourself,” Jessica said.

“I remember your gom jabbar,” Paul said. “You remember mine. I can kill you with a word.”

“There’s nothing binding between us,” Chani said. Paul looked down at her for a silent moment, then: “Speak only truth with me, my Sihaya.” As she started to reply, he silenced her with a finger to her lips. “That which binds us cannot be loosed,”

“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.”

“Muad’Dib need not do this thing,” Chani said. He glanced at her, saw the fear for him in her eyes. “But the Duke Paul must,” he said.

The Emperor was studying Feyd-Rautha, seeing the heavy shoulders, the thick muscles. He turned to look at Paul—a stringy whipcord of a youth, not as desiccated as the Arrakeen natives, but with ribs there to count, and sunken in the flanks so that the ripple and gather of muscles could be followed under the skin.

“Expect only what happens in the fight. That way you’ll never be surprised.”

‘God created Arrakis to train the faithful.’

“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.”

To understand how this came about, you must first understand the enormous single-mindedness, the innocence with which he approached any problem. He was not naive, he merely permitted himself no distractions.

“Remove yourself,” Kynes said, and went on talking about secret windtraps.

Uliet walked three paces and deliberately fell on his own knife, thus “removing” himself. Suicide? Some say Shai-hulud moved him. Talk about omens! From that instant, Kynes had but to point, saying “Go there.” Entire Fremen tribes went. Men died, women died, children died. But they went.

He set up small-unit experiments with regular interchange of data for a swift Tansley effect, let each group find its own path.

When will we solve it? the Fremen asked. When will we see Arrakis as a paradise? In the manner of a teacher answering a child who has asked the sum of 2 plus 2, Kynes told them: “From three hundred to five hundred years.” A lesser folk might have howled in dismay. But the Fremen had learned patience from men with whips. It was a bit longer than they had anticipated, but they all could see that the blessed day was coming. They tightened their sashes and went back to work. Somehow, the disappointment made the prospect of paradise more real.

Then Kynes saw the salt pan.

Salt. Now, he was certain. There’d been open water on Arrakis—once.