Heretics of Dune (Dune, #5)

by Frank Herbert

Curiosity unsatisfied tended to create its own answers. Guesses were often more dangerous than facts.

“The ultimate test,” Tuek insisted. “To see the good in evil and the evil in good.”

Tao

As his lighter moved in to dock, Teg looked out a port and saw the gigantic Ixian symbol within the Guild cartouche on the Transport’s dark side. This was a ship the Guild had converted to Ixian mechanism, substituting machines for the traditional navigator. There would be Ixian technicians aboard to service the equipment. A genuine Guild navigator would be there, too. The Guild had never quite learned to trust a machine even while they paraded these converted Transports as a message to Tleilaxu and Rakians. “You see: we do not absolutely require your melange!” This was the announcement contained in that giant symbol of Ix on the spaceship’s side.

“I want you to remember your mother’s teachings very clearly,” Taraza said. How mild her voice was suddenly! Taraza’s voice changed abruptly then and she snapped: “Hydraulic despotism!” She does that shift of emphasis well, Odrade thought. Memory spewed up the data like a spigot suddenly opened full force. Hydraulic despotism: central control of an essential energy such as water, electricity, fuel, medicines, melange . . . Obey the central controlling power or the energy is shut off and you die!

Taraza was talking once more: “There’s another useful concept that I’m sure your mother taught you—the key log.” Odrade was very curious now. Taraza was headed somewhere important with this conversation. Key log: a truly ancient concept from the days before suspensors when lumbermen sent their fallen timber rushing down rivers to central mill sites. Sometimes the logs jammed up in the river and an expert was brought in to find the one log, the key log, which would free the jam when removed. Teg, she knew, would have an intellectual understanding of the term but she and Taraza could call up actual witnesses from Other Memories, see the explosion of broken bits of wood and water as a jam was released. “The Tyrant was a key log,” Taraza said. “He created the jam and he released it.”

“Ahhh, yes,” Taraza said. “Our Missionaria Protectiva. Humans have such a powerful need that their own belief structure be the ‘true belief.’ If it gives you pleasure or a sense of security and if it is incorporated into your belief structure, what a powerful dependency that creates!”

especially the dominant Atreides: those long, sharp noses, the high foreheads and sensual mouths. Often, the pieces were scattered—the mouth on one face, those piercing eyes on another and countless mixtures. Sometimes, though, one person carried it all and then you saw the pride, that inner knowledge: “I am one of them!” Gammu’s natives recognized it and gave it walkway room but few labeled it. Underlying all of this was what the Harkonnens had left behind—genetic lines tracing far away into the dawn times of Greek and Pathan and Mameluke, shadows of ancient history that few outside of professional historians or those trained by the Bene Gesserit could even name.

“Exactly. If you possessed such fore-knowledge, your life would become an unutterable bore.” “You think Muad’Dib’s life was a bore?” “And the Tyrant’s, too. We think their entire lives were devoted to trying to break out of chains they themselves created.”

All of our judgments carry a heavy burden of ancestral beliefs to which we of the Bene Gesserit tend to be more susceptible than most. It is not enough that we are aware of this and guard against it. Alternative interpretations must always receive our attention.

Odrade had never before focused on how easily the Missionaria Protectiva’s teachings destroyed human independence. That was always the goal, of course: Make them followers, obedient to our needs.

Cf. Dignity of the individual vs. pawns in Marxist class struggle, as explored in Ralph Ellison "Invisible Man" for example

“They are holding the reins in their own hands!” she said. “As the power grows, their control of it must grow. The thing will shatter of its own momentum!”

When she thought about it, she knew this was a surprisingly small establishment to contain so much power. Beyond the ring of orchards and gardens lay a careful checkerboard of private residences, each with its surrounding plantation. Retired Sisters and selected loyal families occupied these privileged estates. Sawtoothed mountains, their tops often brilliant with snow, drew the western limits. The spacefield lay twenty kilometers eastward. All around this core of Chapter House were open plains where grazed a peculiar breed of cattle, a cattle so susceptible to alien odors they would stampede in raucous bellowing at the slightest intrusion of people not marked by the local smell. The innermost homes with their pain-fenced plantings had been sited by an early Bashar in such a way that no one could move through the twisting ground-level channels day or night without being observed. It all appeared so haphazard and casual, yet there was harsh order in it. And that, Taraza knew, personified the Sisterhood.

It was judged a suitable proving ground for someone whose destiny might take her to Rakis. Tough survivors emerged from such conditioning. The tall, supple, and muscular Odrade was one of the toughest.

With the new pain came an odd clarity. Teg found himself almost capable of removing his awareness from this intrusion. All of that pain was happening to someone else. He had found a haven where little touched him. There was pain. Agony even. He accepted reports about these sensations.

Yes, it was a matter of opening doors, he thought. You opened one door and that let you into a place where there were other doors. You chose a door in this new place and examined what that revealed to you. There might be times when you were forced to try all of the doors but the more doors you opened, the more certain you became of which door to open next. Finally, a door would open into a place you recognized. Then you could say: “Ahhhh, this explains everything.”

Teg’s Mentat teachers had always assured him there was a form of living-truth not susceptible to proof by the marshaling of ordinary facts. It was carried sometimes in fables and poetry and often went contrary to desires, so he had been told. “The most difficult experience for a Mentat to accept,” they said.

Wisdom

Teg glanced around his conveyance. It was one of those beautiful old pre-Scattering groundcars, the marks of the finest Ixian manufacture on it. He had never before ridden in one but he knew about them. Restorers picked them up to renew, rebuild—whatever they did that brought back the ancient sense of quality. Teg had been told that such vehicles often were found abandoned in strange places—in old broken-down buildings, in culverts, locked away in machinery warehouses, in farm fields.

Time had not stopped here, it had retreated. This was no modern city full of bright transport pods and insulated usiform buildings. This was random jumbles, ancient structures joined to ancient structures, some built to individual tastes and some obviously designed with some long-gone necessity in mind.

Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short.

Clinking of glassware, sudden bursts of laughter, a few quiet chuckles. Those would be the ones more conscious of their personal power. Quiet chuckles said you could be amused but you did not have to make a guffawing fool of yourself. Delnay was a quiet chuckler.

Most people wanted to be led. That officer back there had wanted it. There were deep tribal instincts (powerful unconscious motivations) to account for this.

“You seldom learn the names of the truly wealthy and powerful. You see only their spokesmen. The political arena makes a few exceptions to this but does not reveal the full power structure.”