God Emperor of Dune (Dune #4)

by Frank Herbert

“He has been breeding us for a long time, Duncan, strengthening many things in us. He has bred us for speed, for intelligence, for self-restraint, for sensitivity. You’re . . . you’re just an older model.”

“Would you sing it again?” He chose one of his best baritones, a long-dead artist who had filled many a concert hall.

But the closer he came to being a sandworm, the harder he found it to make decisions which others would call inhuman. Once, he had done it with ease. As his humanity slipped away, though, he found himself filled with more and more human concerns.

The windows looked out from a considerable height, one onto the northwest fringes of the Sareer and the bordering green of the Forbidden Forest, the other providing a southwest view over rolling dunes. Contrast.

Interesting perspective

Very true

“Desire brings the participants together. Data set the limits of their dialogue. Doubt frames the questions.”

He turned his face to its limit and looked sideways at her face so close to his. Pale blue drops began to form at the flap’s edge. Rich cinnamon smells enveloped them. She leaned toward the drops. He saw the pores beside her nose, the way her tongue moved as she drank. Presently, she retreated—not completely satisfied, but driven by caution and suspicion much the way Moneo had been. Like father, like daughter.

“You read us by our emotions, don’t you?” “The igniters of thought,” he said. “I can recognize the slightest behavioral nuance for its emotional origins.”

Given enough time for the generations to evolve, the predator produces particular survival adaptations in its prey which, through the circular operation of feedback, produce changes in the predator which again change the prey—etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. . . . Many powerful forces do the same thing. You can count religions among such forces.

“What is this forgiveness you ask? Must you always require judgment? Can’t your universe merely be?”

When Garun peered upward once more, it was to look at Idaho from beneath heavy brows. Idaho felt abruptly sobered. It was as though some terrible boot had crushed Garun’s ego into fearful subservience. There was watchful waiting in the man’s eyes. And for no reason he could explain, Idaho remembered a passage from the Orange Catholic Bible. He asked himself: Are these the meek who will outwait us all and inherit the universe?

“Do you remember, Malky? You once asked me to demonstrate Infinity.” “You said no Infinity exists to be demonstrated.” Malky swept his gaze toward Moneo. “Leto likes to play with paradox. He knows all the tricks of language that have ever been discovered.”

“Tell me, old worm . . .” Moneo gasped. Malky took a moment to recover from pain, then: “Tell me, old worm, is there a monster penis hidden in that monster body of yours? What a shock for the gentle Hwi!”

A leader tries to perpetuate the conditions which demand his leadership.

He seemed unnecessarily ugly,

“There’s no substitute for time in solving many problems,” Leto said. “However, you can place too much reliance on it. I can accept no more delays.”

“Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.”

Think of it as plastic memory, this force within you which trends you and your fellows toward tribal forms. This plastic memory seeks to return to its ancient shape, the tribal society. It is all around you—the feudatory, the diocese, the corporation, the platoon, the sports club, the dance troupes, the rebel cell, the planning council, the prayer group . . . each with its master and servants, its host and parasites. And the swarms of alienating devices (including these very words!) tend eventually to be enlisted in the argument for a return to “those better times.” I despair of teaching you other ways. You have square thoughts which resist circles.

His thoughts were lost in memories of night—the one just past and the millennial others which crowded his pasts—clouds and stars, the rains and the open blackness pocked with glittering flakes from a shredded cosmos, a universe of nights, extravagant with them as he had been with his heartbeats.

In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable. This universe presents only changing relationships which are sometimes seen as laws by short-lived awareness. These fleshly sensoria which we call self are ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleetingly aware of temporary conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change. If you must label the absolute, use its proper name: Temporary.

The canyon Wall, wet and black, sped past his frantic gaze. Shattered spangles of what had been his skin exploded away from him, a rain of silver all around him darting away into the river, a ring of dazzling movement, brittle sequins—the scale-glitter of sandtrout leaving him to begin their own colony lives.

Instinct drove him. He clutched at a rock around which the torrent spilled him, felt a clutching finger torn from his hand before he could release his grip. The sensation of it was only a minor accent in the symphony of pain.

Sietch Tabr—Stilgar’s realm, the place where all of Leto’s spice had been concealed.

The burning started at the top of Nayla’s head. It split her, the pieces slumping apart. A shining crysknife spilled from her burning uniform and shattered on the rocks. Idaho did not see it. A grimace of rage on his face, he kept burning and burning the pieces of Nayla until the weapon’s charge was gone. The blazing arc vanished. Only wet and smoking bits of meat and cloth lay scattered among the glowing rocks.

Leto could not even imagine what they saw. The sandtrout skin was gone, he knew. There would be some kind of surface pocked with cilia holes from the departed skin.