Children of Dune (Dune #3)

by Frank Herbert

FOR BEV: Out of the wonderful commitment of our love and to share her beauty and her wisdom for she truly inspired this book.

These are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness . . .

“There’s really no substitute for prescience,” Leto said. “Perhaps I should risk the spice . . .” “And be destroyed as your father was?” “A dilemma,” Leto said. “Once your father confided in me that knowing the future too well was to be locked into that future to the exclusion of any freedom to change.” “The paradox which is our problem,” Leto said. “It’s a subtle and powerful thing, prescience. The future becomes now. To be sighted in the land of the blind carries its own perils. If you try to interpret what you see for the blind, you tend to forget that the blind possess an inherent movement conditioned by their blindness. They are like a monstrous machine moving along its own path. They have their own momentum, their own fixations. I fear the blind, Stil. I fear them. They can so easily crush anything in their path.”

Hearing his own voice, Leto realized they were drawing out these last moments of sameness. A wry grin touched his mouth, adding years to his appearance. Ghanima realized she was seeing him through a veil of time, looking at an older Leto. Tears burned her eyes. “You needn’t give water to the dead just yet,” he said, brushing a finger against the dampness on her cheeks. “I’ll go out far enough that no one will hear, and I’ll call a worm.” He indicated the collapsed Maker hooks strapped to the outside of his Fremkit. “I’ll be at Jacurutu before dawn two days from now.” “Ride swiftly, my old friend,” she whispered. “I’ll come back to you, my only friend,” he said. “Remember to be careful at the qanat.” “Choose a good worm,” she said, giving him the Fremen words of parting. Her left hand extinguished the glowglobe, and the nightseal rustled as she pulled it aside, folded it and tucked it into her kit. She felt him go, hearing only the softest of sounds quickly fading into silence as he crept down the rocks into the desert.

The one-eyed view of our universe says you must not look far afield for problems. Such problems may never arrive. Instead, tend to the wolf within your fences. The packs ranging outside may not even exist.

No mistake about it, this rolling lump of humanity, this warrior-troubadour, was Gurney Halleck!

Many forces sought control of the Atreides twins and, when the death of Leto was announced, this movement of plot and counterplot was amplified. Note the relative motivations: the Sisterhood feared Alia, an adult Abomination, but still wanted those genetic characteristics carried by the Atreides. The Church hierarchy of Auqaf and Hajj saw only the power implicit in control of Muad’Dib’s heir. CHOAM wanted a doorway to the wealth of Dune. Farad’n and his Sardaukar sought a return to glory for House Corrino. The Spacing Guild feared the equation Arrakis = melange; without the spice they could not navigate. Jessica wished to repair what her disobedience to the Bene Gesserit had created. Few thought to ask the twins what their plans might be, until it was too late.