Children of Dune (Dune #3)

by Frank Herbert

How simple things were when our Messiah was only a dream, he thought. By finding our Mahdi we loosed upon the universe countless messianic dreams. Every people subjugated by the jihad now dreams of a leader to come.

These twins and their aunt had awakened in the womb, knowing there all of the memories passed on to them by their ancestors. Spice addiction had done this, spice addiction of the mothers—the Lady Jessica and Chani.

Even as an infant, Leto had revealed memories which only Muad’Dib should have known.

It was the religion of Muad’Dib which upset Stilgar most. Why did they make a god of Muad’Dib? Why deify a man known to be flesh? Muad’Dib’s Golden Elixir of Life had created a bureaucratic monster which sat astride human affairs. Government and religion united, and breaking a law became sin.

Stilgar knew he would not draw this blade now to kill the twins. He had reached a decision. Better to retain that one old virtue which he still cherished: loyalty. Better the complexities one thought he knew than the complexities which defied understanding. Better the now than the future of a dream. The bitter taste in his mouth told Stilgar how empty and revolting some dreams could be.

“Don’t taunt me, boy. You may be royalty, but we both bear the stigma of melange-addiction—eyes without whites. What Fremen needs more finery or more honor than that?”

“You’ve told us many times that the memories we hold from those who’ve passed before us lack a certain usefulness until we’ve experienced enough with our own flesh to make them reality. My sister and I believe this. We anticipate dangerous changes with the arrival of our grandmother.”

Leto had almost said “me” instead of “my father.” Yes, it was hard at times to separate the genetic memory from the chord of living flesh.

The Sisterhood had only been seeking to breed a Kwisatz Haderach: the male counterpart of a fully developed Reverend Mother . . . and more—a human of superior sensitivity and awareness, the Kwisatz Haderach who could be many places simultaneously.

And the Lady Jessica, merely a pawn in that breeding program, had the bad taste to fall in love with the breeding partner to whom she had been assigned. Responsive to her beloved Duke’s wishes, she produced a son instead of the daughter which the Sisterhood had commanded as the firstborn.

he felt a sudden onset of awe at the singleness of their twinned lives. One of them could die and yet remain alive in the other’s consciousness, every shared memory intact; they were that close.

The sandworm of Dune would not cross water; water poisoned it.

“The sandtrout,” he repeated, “was introduced here from some other place. This was a wet planet then. They proliferated beyond the capability of existing ecosystems to deal with them. Sandtrout encysted the available free water, made this a desert planet . . . and they did it to survive. In a planet sufficiently dry, they could move to their sandworm phase.”

confronted by large bodies of water, their chemical factories went wild, exploded in the death-transformation which produced the dangerous melange concentrate, the ultimate awareness drug employed in a diluted fraction for the sietch orgy. That pure concentrate had taken Paul Muad’Dib through the walls of Time, deep into the well of dissolution which no other male had ever dared.

“Balance,” she said, and repeated her father’s words from long ago: “It’s what distinguishes a people from a mob.”

“Why Jacurutu?” she asked, and the flatness of her tone shattered the mood. “Why . . . I don’t know. When Stilgar first told us how they killed the people there and made the place tabu, I thought . . . what you thought. But danger comes from there now . . . and The Preacher.”

He called himself The Preacher, and there had come to be an awesome fear among many on Arrakis that he might be Muad’Dib returned from the desert, not dead at all.

Like Muad’Dib, The Preacher was blind, his eye sockets black and scarred in a way that could have been done by a stone burner. And his voice conveyed that crackling penetration, that same compelling force which demanded a response from deep within you.

The Preacher had appeared one winter morning in the streets of Arrakeen, a brown and ridge-veined hand on the shoulder of his young guide. The lad, who gave his name as Assan Tariq, moved through the flint-smelling dust of the early swarming, leading his charge with the practiced agility of the warren-born, never once losing contact.

All in all, this Preacher was a figure from Dune’s past.

The wording of the Law, although it was less honored in these modern, water-soft times, remained unchanged from the earliest days. The blind were a gift to Shai-Hulud. They were to be exposed in the open bled for the great worms to devour.

Litany Against Fear from the Bene Gesserit rite.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

“We Bene Gesserits were already cautious to make sure that the children we raised were human and not animal. One cannot always tell by exterior appearances.”

Javid came hurrying to report that Paymon had been overheard to mutter the fateful lines from the Orange Catholic Bible: “Maleficos non patieris vivere.” “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,”

“I said I’d interpret,” the old man said. “I did not agree to tell you my interpretation.”

“The first message is for Alia, the suzerain of this place.” He pointed behind him toward her spy hole. “I bring her a warning: You, who held the secret of duration in your loins, have sold your future for an empty purse!”

“My second message,” The Preacher said, “is for Stilgar, the Fremen Naib, who believes he can translate the power of the tribes into the power of the Imperium. My warning to you, Stilgar: The most dangerous of all creations is a rigid code of ethics. It will turn upon you and drive you into exile!”

“My third message is for the Princess Irulan. Princess! Humiliation is a thing which no person can forget. I warn you to flee!”

“My fourth message is for Duncan Idaho,” he shouted. “Duncan! You were taught to believe that loyalty buys loyalty. Ohh, Duncan, do not believe in history, because history is impelled by whatever passes for money. Duncan! Take your horns and do what you know best how to do.”

“A large populace held in check by a small but powerful force is quite a common situation in our universe. And we know the major conditions wherein this large populace may turn upon its keepers— “One: When they find a leader. This is the most volatile threat to the powerful; they must retain control of leaders. “Two: When the populace recognizes its chains. Keep the populace blind and unquestioning. “Three: When the populace perceives a hope of escape from bondage. They must never even believe that escape is possible!”

This is the special value of the Kwisatz Haderach which the Bene Gesserits never suspected: the Kwisatz Haderach cannot forget.

he had died saving Paul. But the Tleilaxu had bought his body from the Sardaukar and, in their regeneration vats, they had grown a zombie- katrundo: the flesh of Duncan Idaho, but none of his conscious memories.

“To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror; to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.”

“But I realize that humans cannot bear very much reality,” he said. “Most lives are a flight from selfhood. Most prefer the truths of the stable. You stick your heads into the stanchions and munch contentedly until you die. Others use you for their purposes. Not once do you live outside the stable to lift your head and be your own creature. Muad’Dib came to tell you about that. Without understanding his message, you cannot revere him!”

Is your religion real when it costs you nothing and carries no risk? Is your religion real when you fatten upon it? Is your religion real when you commit atrocities in its name?

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.

There’s no mystery about a human life. It’s not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”

“We Atreides go back to Agamemnon and we know what’s in our blood. Never forget that, childless wife of my father. We Atreides have a bloody history and we’re not through with the blood.”

Limits of survival are set by climate, those long drifts of change which a generation may fail to notice. And it is the extremes of climate which set the pattern. Lonely, finite humans may observe climatic provinces, fluctuations of annual weather and, occasionally may observe such things as “This is a colder year than I’ve ever known.” Such things are sensible. But humans are seldom alerted to the shifting average through a great span of years. And it is precisely in this alerting that humans learn how to survive on any planet. They must learn climate. —ARRAKIS, THE TRANSFORMATION AFTER HARQ AL-ADA

Often there’s no need to tear off an arm to remove a splinter.”

For two years, I was swamped with bookstore and reader complaints that they could not get the book. The Whole Earth Catalog praised it. I kept getting these telephone calls from people asking me if I were starting a cult. The answer: “God no!”