Dune: Part 9: Nexus

Okay, we're in the home stretch, gang! Four more chapters to go! Paul has cemented his leadership of the Fremen tribes and has publicly declared himself as rightful ruler of Arrakis. He's been re-united with his friend and one of his father's most trusted advisers. Off-stage, the situation in the Harkonnen-held cities are reaching a crisis as the Baron puts more pressure on his nephew Rabban and Rabban responds by further oppressing the people. Now the Emperor himself has decided to take a personal interest in Arrakis. And everything is about to collide with the great-great grandmother of all sandstorms.

Chani has been summoned from the camps in the south to the northern camp where Paul and his fighters have made their base. But Paul does not meet her; instead his mother, Jessica engages her in annoying chit-chat. It takes a bit of social pleasantries and exposition for Jessica to admit that Paul wasn't the one who summoned her. Paul has been in a coma for the past three weeks.

Jessica can sense that he is still alive, but the signs are so slight that only her Bene Gesserit training, (and perhaps her rapport with her son) can detect them. She fears that he has been poisoned by enemies, but despite her own heightened awareness, she cannot detect any trace of poison within him. She needs Chani's help.

Chani guesses the truth: that Paul has taken some of the raw, unconverted Water of Life; the concentrated essence of the spice-drug produced by a drowned sandworm used to give Reverend Mothers their enhanced perceptions. Why didn't Jessica realize this herself? Perhaps as his lover and companion, Chani was closer to Paul than his mother could be. I think Paul probably shared more about his concerns and apprehensions regarding his prescience with Chani than he did with his mother.

Paul awakens from his trance a transformed man. He is most definitely the Kwisatz Haderach, the one who can be many places at once which the B.G. has spent so many generations trying to produce. He enters a mental rapport with his mother and has her take him to that place within which the Reverend Mother Mohiam spoke of back when he underwent the Gom Jabbar, the place in human memory where women cannot go. And here, once again, we get a little of Herbert's ideas on the nature of and differences between Men and Women.

"There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place with himself where the taking force dwells, but it's almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed."
...

"And you, my son," Jessica asked, "are you one who gives or one who takes?"

"I'm at the fulcrum," he said. "I cannot give without taking and I cannot take without [taking]."

Paul has seen many things in his psychic journeys; not just the future, but the present. All of his enemies have converged on Arrakis: the Baron Harkonnen; the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV; the Emperor's Truthsayer, Reverend Mother Mohiam; Feyd-Rautha, the Baron's nephew and heir; and representatives of the Spacing Guild, which uses the spice to calculate courses through hyperspace. The Guild's spice use gives them enough prescience to know that something big is coming up and it scares the heck out of them.

There are two different ways of looking at the idea of Changing the Future. One is the idea that You Can't Fight Fate; that no matter how you try to alter a pre-destined future, events will force you to keep your Appointment in Samara. The other is the Butterfly Effect idea; that small changes will multiply as they propagate through time and the butterfly flapping it's wings in the Amazon indirectly causes a hurricane off the Carolinas, or the time travelling hunter treading on another butterfly in the Mesozoic Era results in a future where Sarah Palin is president.

For much of Dune, Herbert seems to lean towards the former theory, as we see Paul struggling to avoid the jihad his visions show him. But he also describes nexus points where lines of probability converge and anything might happen. One of these is coming up, and it's a big one. Paul has decided that there is a tide in the affairs of men -- even on planets with no oceans -- and that the time has come to seize it.

Paul gathers his forces to plan an attack on Arrakeen, where the Emperor has landed with several legions of Sardaukar. A humongous sandstorm is approaching, and Paul plans to use atomic weapons to blast a hole in the Shield Wall, a large geological feature that shelters Arrakeen and the other communities of the northern basin from the storms. Use of atomics is prohibited by the Great Convention that all the noble families adhere to, but Paul takes this step because (A) he is technically using them against a geological feature and not people, and (B) nobody is going to want to destroy Arrakis (the normal punishment for violating the Great Convention) because it is the source of spice. And so Paul nukes the Shield Wall and leads his army into the city, riding on giant worms! How's that for epic?

But even as Paul's forces strike, he receives a message from Sietch Tabr, where the women and children are being kept. An Imperial raiding party has attacked the sanctuary, carrying off Paul's sister Alia, and killing his infant son.

The Emperor has set up a huge pavilion to house himself, his five legions of Sardaukar, and his smaller legion of courtiers and hangers-on. He has come to Arrakis to see first-hand what a mess the Harkonnens have made of the planet, and to rub the Baron's nose in it. The Baron is here, cringing and grovelling for a change. He pleads that he knows nothing of any intrigue going on here, and that as far as he knows the Fremen are an insignificant rabble. The Emperor knows better; and as Exhibit A brings forth Alia.

"Unfortunately," the Emperor said, "I only sent in five troop carriers with a light attack force to pick up prisoners for questioning. We barely got away with three prisoners and one carrier. Mind you, Baron, my Sardaukar were almost overwhelmed by a force composed mostly of women, children, and old men. This child here was in command of one of the attacking groups... Mark that, my dear Baron: Sardaukar forced to retreat in confusion from women and children and old men!"

For once, the Baron has absolutely no control over the situation he's in. "Make him afraid some more, Shaddam," Alia giggles. It's kind of cute, in a twisted way, to see the Emperor browbeating the cowering Baron while dandling the precocious toddler Alia on his knee.

The Reverend Mother does not find Alia cute. "That child is an abomination! ...She's in my mind, She's like the ones before me, the ones who gave me my memories. She stands in my mind! She cannot be there, but she is!"

It is now that the attack occurs. Paul's forces quickly overwhelm the Emperor's defenses and the Imperial ships disabled. In the confusion, Alia runs to the Baron and stabs him with a poisoned needle. "I'm sorry, Grandfather," she says; "You've met the Atreides gom jabbar." The Emperor and his entourage retreat into the safety of his ship.

Once again, Paul occupies the palace in Arrakeen where his father had once taken residence. "This place is a symbol. Rabban lived here. By occupying this place I seal my victory for all to understand." But his victory is a bitter one. He has lost his son, and as he looks around him he see that he has lost more: Stilgar, who he once regarded as an ally and a friend, now looks on him with awe and reverence; and Paul feels even more keenly his isolation from the rest of his world.

The Emperor and his court are brought before him. Paul wishes to negotiate with his enemies. Among the entourage, Paul sees a familiar face: his old tutor Thufir Hawat. He has had a vision of the Emperor commanding Hawat to "kill this upstart duke." Paul acts boldly, with the bravura his father once spoke of, and offers the old mentat a choice that has nothing to do with logic and data. "...in payment for your years of service to my family you may now ask anything you wish of me. Anything at all. Do you need my life now, Thufir? It is yours." He offers himself to the old assassin.

This is Thufir's crowning moment of awesome. He is near death anyway, dying of the Baron's residual poison. He turns to face the Emperor in defiance: "See, Majesty? ... Did you think that I who've given my life to service of the Atreides woud give them less now?"

Paul next turns his attention to the Guildsmen who are present and informs them that they are to take orders from him. The Spacing Guild has long been used to being the ones who give orders, due to their monopoly on space travel; but to navigate through space, they need the spice, and Paul informs them that unless they submit to his authority, he will destroy all the spice on the planet. He can do it too; the Fremen knowledge of the Arrakis ecology has given him a method that will set off a chain reaction through the planet's ecosystem. "He who can destroy a thing has the real control of it." This is the possible future that terrifies the Guild. They submit.

The Reverend Mother Mohiam now sees that Paul is indeed the Kwisatz Haderach, and he rubs her nose in it too. All their labor to produce him and they will get no benefit for he will never serve their purposes. Even Jessica has turned her back on her old order.

Then comes the actual negotiation. "Majesty, we both now the way out of our difficulty," Paul says. The Emperor has no male heirs, but several marriageable daughters. This was how the Bene Gesserit intended it, but they didn't foresee this possibility. The Emperor does not like the idea of passing on his throne to desert upstart.

Chani also feels uncomfortable about the situation. After all, Paul has never actually married her. This sort of arranged political marriage is exactly what Jessica had been hoping for him. Paul reassures her. "Leave? You'll never again leave my side... That which binds us cannot be loosed. Now watch these matters closely for I wish to seen this room later through your wisdom." Paul regards her not only as a lover and a soul-mate, but also for her perception and her understanding.

But there's one last loose end to be accounted for before the marriage business: the matter of the Vendetta. Feyd is among the Emperor's group and he demands a duel. Paul has never seen Feyd in any of his prophetic visions; once again, he is entering a blind spot. He could easily leave Feyd for Gurney or one of his lieutenants to kill, but honor -- both Atreides and Fremen -- demands that he does it himself. He has ceased trying to fight his destiny; he throws himself into his fate with grim abandon.

The duel has echos of Feyd's earlier fight on his birthday; once again, there is a poisoned blade and dirty tricks; once again one of the combatants has been primed with a trigger phrase that can end the fight, although Paul refuses this advantage. Paul kills Feyd and ends the feud between their houses.

The Emperor tries one last gambit. He signals his friend, Count Fenring, to finish Paul off as he is tired from the fight. Paul recognizes Fenring as another of the B.G.'s genetic experiments, one who also might have been the Kwisatz Haderach. A moment of silent understanding at their strange, shared brotherhood passes between the two men. Fenring refuses his emperor's command.

By this time, the Emperor's daughter, Princess Irulan, (yes, that Princess Irulan), is getting antsy. She keeps tugging at his sleeve and saying Pleeeeze Daddy, won't you let me be a bargaining chip? In exchange for the Imperial throne, Paul will allow Shaddam to keep his throne on Salusus Secundus, promising to make the prison planet "a garden world, full of gentle things." The Emperor gets the point.

Jessica has come to regret her molding and shaping of her son and has overcome her hostility towards Chani. A bit earlier, (and now I can't find the spot), she told Paul to forget about marriageability to another noble house and to wed his desert girl if it made him happy. Now she once again warns him not to make the same mistake she and Leto made. Paul understands. He has decided his course and what must be done to accomplish it; but he also assures Chani again that she is the only one he will love:

"I swear to you now... that you'll need no title. That woman over there will be my wife and you but a concubine because this is a political thing and we must weld peace out of this moment, enlist the Great Houses of the Landsraad. We must obey the forms. Yet that princess shall have no more of me than my name. No child of mine nor touch nor softness of glance, nor instant of desire."

Jessica underscores the truth of this: "...that princess will have the name, yet she'll live as less than a concubine... While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine -- history will call us wives."

Dune: Part 8: Wormrider

In our last Machievellian episode, we got to enjoy some of the intrigues going on among Those Wacky Harkonnens; and Jessica underwent the ritual transforming her into a Reverend Mother. Now we are hurtling towards the end game, the Nexus where possible futures come together. Will Paul be able to prevent the Jihad?


In the past two years, Paul Atreides has undergone many rites of passage: formal tests, like the Gom Jabbar; life thresholds, like the death of his father; deadly challenges, like his duel with Jamis.

Now, he crouches among the sand dunes waiting for another rite of passage. Although he has been accepted into the Fremen tribe, and is respected as a skilled fighter and war leader, and revered by many as the Lisan Al-Gib, the "Voice from Beyond" of prophecy; he cannot be considered a full Fremen until he has Ridden a Worm.

(And no, the gay implications of that line did not occur to me until I typed it just now.)

As he waits, he thinks back on some of his experiences among the Fremen of Stilgar's tribe. He is joined now to Liet's daughter Chani, and have had a son together, Leto II. Jessica still balks at the idea of Chani being her son's wife though; she worries that his being married to a "desert girl" might hurt any future political ambitons. Paul has a sister now too: Alia, concieved shortly before his father's death, and altered into something not quite normal by the Waters of Life ritual their mother partook of while Alia was in her womb. Sometimes Paul has difficulty keeping track which of his memories have actually happened and which are future events. Prescience can be a pain sometimes. Especially when there are things it doesn't show you. Like how this day is going to go.

Meanwhile, back at the stiech, Jessica awaits word of her son's test and deals with more immediate concerns. The women of the Fremen communtiy are becoming more and more freaked out by the unearthly child, Alia. Thanks to her pre-natal exposure to the Waters of Life and her involuntary participation in the mental joining of that ritual, Alia was born with not just the memories of an adult, but the memories of every Reverend Mother of the tribe going back to who-knows-when. Preccocious does not begin to describe her. And some of the Fremen whisper that she is a demon.

Jessica has a talk about this with Alia and Harah, the wife of Jamis who Paul kept as a servant and who has become somthing of a nanny to the infant Alia. They agree that Harah will speak for Alia and explain her to the others. "I will tell them the truth... I will tell them that Alia only pretends to be a little girl, that she has never been a little girl." Alia shares with her mother and with Harah how the experience of her awakening seemed from her point of view.

But Harah and Jessica anticipate another problem as well. As Paul has gained status in the tribe, some of the younger warriors have been wondering when he was going to challenge Stilgar for the tribe's leadership. The traditional way to do this, of course, is with a duel to the death. The leadership question has been postponed so far because until today Paul wasn't a sandrider and a full-fledged Fremen. If Paul survives this test, he won't be able to put off the question any longer.

Paul does pass the test; he successfully calls, catches and mounts a sandworm. The description of how one actually does this to a creature large enough to swallow the Sydney Opera House is neatly and plausibly described. By Fremen tradition, the first time Sandrider always gets to choose where the gang goes that day. Paul wants to go to the southern settlements where the Fremen's secret ecological experiments have been taking place and where the women and children have been moved for safety. Stilgar wants Paul to lead the men on another raid against the Harkonnens. This disagreement threatens to flare into an argument, when a smuggler's aircraft appears on the horizon.

For years, smugglers have been doing illegal hit-and-run mining operations behind the backs of the ruling authorities. With the Harkonnens increasing their patrols, the smugglers have been forced to move into Fremen territory. Paul has the Fremen set up a trap to ambush the smugglers and discovers that they are being led by his old friend Gurney Halleck. The reunion is a happy one, but not without some tensions. For one thing, the Fremen managed to kill half of the smuggler's crew before Paul and Gurney put a stop to the fighting; for another, there are Sadaukar infiltrators in the crew hoping to find and kill Muad'Dib, (they don't); and more imporantly, Stilgar needs convincing that Gurney is reliable.

Paul decides to have things out with Stilgar over the leadership question. "Do you think I wish to cut off my right arm?" he asks; "Do you think I want to deprive myself or the tribe of your wisdom and strength?" The traditional way of transitioning power within the tribe needs to bow to the necessity of the moment. Stilgar accepts the wisdom of this, but now the tribe needs to be convinced as well.

Paul, Stilgar and Jessica arrange for a little political theater to persuade the rest of the tribe. Paul makes his case and formally claims himself the rightful ruler of Arrakis. He accepts Stilgar's fealty, meaning that Stilgar remains leader of the tribe without anybody losing face, and Paul becomes Duke, (something he technically was already; but no one was recognizing it).

It's just when he thinks he has everything taken care of when he comes in on Gurney trying to kill his mother.

Gurney still thinks that Jessica was the one who betrayed Duke Leto and the desire for revenge has been the one thing keeping him going these past couple years among the smugglers. Paul is able to talk him down and persuade him of his mother's innocence; but it is a tense moment. "You speak of pride in my father's friendship! Didn't you learn the difference between Harkonnen and Atreides so that you could smell a Harkonnen trick by the stink they left on it? Didn't you learn that Atreides loyalty is bought with love while the Harkonnen coin is hate? Couldn't you see through to the very nature of this betrayal?"

Overwhlemed by what he has almost done, Gurney begs Paul to kill him. "Must I go through this with every man I need?" Paul grumbles. Jessica makes peace. "You thought you were doing a thing for Leto... and for this I honor you... Let us think of this as a misunderstanding among old friends. It's over and we can be thankful we'll never again have that sort of misunderstanding between us." Later on in the series, we find that Jessica and Gurney have become lovers. Reading this scene, we are not surprised.

Paul has one more rite of passage to undergo. He has forseen none of the crises that have occurred today. He needs a clearer vision of the future. He decides to take the Waters of Life; the Truthsayer's drug that the Reverend Mother spoke of way back in the first chapter, that no male has taken and survived.

NEXT: At Death's Door; the Emperor comes to Arrakis; the Atreides Gom Jabbar; and the title fight we've all been waiting for, Paul vs. Feyd! The Nexus is coming!

Dune: Part 7: Meanwhile on Giedi Prime/The Waters of Life

As last we saw, Paul and Jessica have been accepted into Stilgar's Fremen tribe. Now let's check in on what's going on with those wacky Harkonnens!

It's the birthday of young Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, the Baron's nephew and heir presumptive, and he is celebrating in the traditional Harkonnen fashion: by killing something. One of Feyd's hobbies is participating in gladiatorial combat -- all carefully arranged, of course, to eliminate any actual risk to himself. But this time the slave he is to fight has not been drugged as is usual, and comes very close to killing Feyd by seizing the na-Baron's poisoned dagger and stabbing him with it. Good thing Feyd took the precaution of poisoning the other blade, the one traditionally left untainted, instead. And the mental conditioning which caused the slave to go limp when Feyd uttered a trigger word helped too.

The whole thing was set up by Hawat, who is now the Baron's mentat, but who is also advising Feyd for his own purposes. By vanquishing a deadly opponent despite apparent treachery, and by his magnanimous treatment of his dead foe, Feyd has won a good deal of popularity. He also has given future enemies whom he might want to intimidate something to think about. And, most immediately, he has discredited the Harkonnen slavemaster who will take the blame, giving Feyd the opportunity to place his own candidate in the position.

Here we see Feyd at his best. He does have some good qualities. Besides being handsome and athletic, he has courage and skill. He is capable of cultivating the brauvara Duke Leto spoke of in an earlier chapter. Count Fenring and his wife, observing the combat, note his potential and lament how he could have turned out if raised, say, under the Atreides code rather the Harkonnens. In many ways, Feyd is an analogue to Paul; his story runs parallel to Paul's and in fact the Bene Gesserit. originally intended that Lady Jessica bear a daughter so that she could be married to the young Harkonnen. It didn't work out that way.

Count and Lady Fenring are I think the most interesting minor characters in Dune. The Count is a close friend of the Emperor, and serves as the Emperor's eyes and ears as well as being his hatchet man. A killer with the manners of a rabbit, is how the Baron describes him, and the Count's foppish, insinuating manners mask a stiletto-keen mind. But what I find most interesting about him is the relationship he has with his wife, Lady Margot Fenring. We had mention of her in an earlier chapter where Jessica recieved a letter from her. The Count and his Lady were formerly the Emperor's unofficial representatives on Arrakis during the Harkonnen's rule and they resided in the palace Duke Leto chose for his own. Like Jessica, Lady Fenring is a Bene Gesserit.

But although the Count and his Lady are essentially agents working for different patrons, (the Emperor and the B.G., respectively), they work together as partners; respecting each other's work and even comparing notes.

The Count is visiting the Baron to tie up some of the loose ends of the Arrakis situation. The Emperor is not at all happy with the way some of the things ended up. As the two exchange pleasantly veiled threats, the Baron off-handedly mentions that he is considering using Arrakis as a prison planet, similar to what the Emperor has done on the planet Salsus Secondus. The Baron is puzzled as to why the Count seems so interested in this. The reader, however, will recall Duke Leto's theory that the Emperor used the harsh conditions on his prison planet to train his elite Sardaukar troops and that the conditions on Arrakis might have done the same to the Fremen. And we have seen that the Fremen are as good or better than the Sardaukar in battle. The Sardaukar really hate the Fremen.

Lady Fenring's mission is to investigate Feyd and to ensure that the B.G. doesn't lose his genetic material. She won't find it difficult to seduce him; Feyd is a horny adolescent, after all. He shares the Harkonnen self-centered hedonism, and has already expressed an unseemly interest in Lady Fenring. While she's at it, she'll perform a little discreet Bene Gesserit mental programming on him while he's having his fun with her. After all, you never can tell when something like this might come in handy. No wonder the Baron is so paranoid about the B.G.'s.

We return then to Stilgar's tribe in Sietch Tabr. The Sardaukar patrols have been coming too close to the sietch, and so preparations are being made to relocate. Paul is introduced to something else he has inherited from Jamis: the man's wife, Harah. Although Paul does not wish to marry her, the woman -- and her two sons -- are his responsibility. Through Harah we get to see a few glimpses of the Fremen's home life.

The Fremen's impending move has precipitated matters for Jessica as well. The tribe's priestess, their Reverend Mother, is too old to make a long journey, and so Jessica has been asked to take over as Reverend Mother right away. She is apprehensive about this, but she sees it an a necessary step to cement her place in the Fremen community.

From here, the chapter gets psychedelic. The ritual involves partaking of the "Waters of Life", secretions of a small sandworm that has been drowned, that takes the consciousness-expanding qualities of the spice and cranks it up to Eleven. It is one of the awareness drugs the Bene Gesserit uses to produce its own Reverned Mothers. It is also, Jessica realizes too late, a deadly poison; but by ingesting it she also gains the ability to psychically alter the drugs chemical structure to make it harmless.

She also makes mental contact with the tribe's old Reverend Mother, who chides her for the risk she has taken. Jessica is pregnant; something only she and Paul know; and the drug will have an unknown effect on the unborn child. That's too late to be helped now; the Reverend Mother is dying and in her death transfers all her memories into Jessica's mind; including the memories of all the Reverend Mothers of the tribe before her for who knows how many generations. Jessica is now the living repository of the tribe's experiences.

And so is her still-embryonic daughter. Jessica must reach out to her as well and try to cushion the unbelievably brutal shock of all those lives downloaded into that yet unformed mind. This will have consequences.

Fast forward.

Two years have passed. Feyd is no longer the bratty adolescent showing off in the arena; he's now a bratty adult who's getting tired of waiting for his uncle to kick the bucket. And so he's taken matters into his own hand.

The Baron has just avoided an assassination attempt by Feyd. The impetuous youth arranged to have a poisoned needle hidden on the body of the latest boy-toy sent to his uncle's bedroom. It might have worked too if Hawat hadn't warned the Baron of the plot. The Baron has some stern words for his nephew. He has big plans for Feyd -- bigger even than his plan to have Feyd replace his brother Rabban as governor of Arrakis -- and he certainly doesn't want Feyd to muck things up. Through a skillful blend of promises and threats, he brings Feyd around to a sullen acceptance of the situation... for now.

Feyd realizes that Hawat has been playing him and his uncle against each other. He warns his uncle of the mentat's danger, but the Baron believes he has Hawat under control. He thinks that by focusing Hawat's energies against the Emperor, the mentat won't be plotting against him. And he believes that the residual poison makes Hawat dependent on him, rendering him harmless.

"In a way, it's like the arena," Feyd muses. "Feints within feints within feints." That theme of plans within plans is repeated often in the series.

In the next chapter, Hawat has a meeting with the Baron to discuss the Arrakis situation, which the Baron thinks is under control. The Baron has always dismissed the Fremen as being merely a handful of desert scum, not worthy even of contempt. Hawat knows better. He patiently lays out the evidence in front of the Baron of the Fremen's numbers, of their deadly fighting ability as evidenced by statistics of battle casualties, and of his conclusion that the Fremen are equal to or better than the Emperor's elite Sadaurkar.

Here is where the Baron sheepishly admits mentioning to Count Fenring something about making Arrakis a second Salusa Secundus. Hawat loses his temper. As a mentat, he lives by information, and this small piece of information changes everything. The Emperor would have assumed, from the Baron's remark, that Harkonnen was trying to build an elite fighting force against him and has had two years now to take counter-measures. Hawat immediately takes command of the situation and begins devising counter-counter-measures.

Here, in these Harkonnen chapters, we finally see Hawat in his element. In the earlier chapters, he seemed impotent; out-maneuvered by the Harkonnen plots and blinded by his mistaken suspicions of Jessica; but here we get a glimpse of the old plot-meister at work. In the past two years under the Baron's service he has been making himself indispensable. If he is dependent upon the Baron for the antidote to the residual poison, the Baron has become dependent upon him as well. Hawat and the Baron each knows that he is being used by the other; but the Baron's grasp on the situation is not nearly as good as he thinks it is.

NEXT TIME: Paul catches a worm; we meet his creepy baby sister; and we're re-united with an old friend, whom Paul might have to kill.

Dune: Part 6: Initiation Rituals

In our last reading, Paul and Jessica continued their flight into the desert as both their friends and foes regrouped after the catastrophe at Arrakeen.

Kynes is in a bad situation. He gave shelter to Paul and Jessica as they fled the Harkonnens and was captured. Since he is an Imperial Agent on the planet, the Harkonnens do not dare kill him outright; so they have left him out in the desert without a stillsuit to let the elements finish him off. But he has spent his entire life surviving in the desert and he is not dead yet.

As he struggles to hang onto life, grasping for hopes of rescue, he hears his father lecturing him on ecology. Re-reading the book this time around, something occurred to me that I had overlooked before. I had always assumed that his father's appearance was a hallucination; but perhaps it wasn't. The spice has awareness-enhancing properties, and later on in the book and the sequels we learn that Paul and his sister (whom we haven't met yet) and the Fremen's own Reverend Mothers have the ability to access ancestral lives. Kynes is lying directly on top of a pre-spice mass, the strange biological fermentation process that produces the spice melange. Perhaps this concentration of spice is enhancing his own latent abilities, whatever they might be, allowing him to hear his dead father's memories. Perhaps.

His father chides him for getting involved with the boy, and warns him that a Hero could be the worst thing that could happen to his people. This is an important theme in the book; the dark undercurrent to the surface adventure plot of the Special One seeking his Rightful Place. In then end, Kynes' efforts to stay alive come to nothing. The spice mass blows and he is engulfed by the desert, just as he has been sucked into the tragedy of the House Atreides.

Paul and Jessica have been searching for Fremen. Well, now the Fremen have found them; led by Stilgar, the Fremen leader of Stiech Tabr whom we met in an earlier chapter. Kynes has sent orders to the Fremen to look for the Atreides fugitives and aid them. Stilgar is willing to save Paul, who may be the Lisan Al-Gib, the Mahdi promised by prophecy, and who in any case is young enough to train in the Fremen ways. But what of his mother? Yes, she might be the Reverend Mother also mentioned in prophecy, but what if she isn't? What good is she?

She's good enough to kick butt, that's what she's good for. "I am the mother of the boy... In part, his strength which you admire is a product of my training." And she goes on to prove it by disarming Stilgar and grabbing him in a judo hold. This impresses him; the Fremen are unpracticed in what they call "the weirding way", the advance techniques of unarmed combat that the Bene Gesserit know. He agrees to let her and Paul live if she'll teach his fighters the weirding way.

During the confrontation, Paul encounters a familiar face: Chani, the daughter of Kynes, whom he has seen in his earliest prescient dreams; ("Tell me of your homeworld, Usul...")

Paul and Jessica are taken to Stiech Tabr, the refuge of Stilgar's tribe; but their new position in the tribe has not quite been established. Stilgar and Jessica feel each other out about this. The obvious thing to do would be for Stilgar to marry Jessica; but both reject this option, each for his and her own reasons. The Fremen suggests an alternative: that Jessica take over for their tribe's own "Reverend Mother" who is old and may die soon. The B.G.'s Missionaria Protectiva, the program of seeding planets with legends to make them more open to the Bene Gesserit, has succeeded on Arrakis so well that the Fremen have adopted B.G. titles and rituals for their own religion.

But there are still problems. Jamis, one of Stilgar's men, was embarrassed by Paul in the earlier confrontation and bears a grudge. He demands that they prove themselves by combat. Under Fremen custom, Jessica cannot fight for herself; she must be championed by another. Stilgar tries to put a stop to it, but Jamis accuses him of being bewitched by Jessica. The only way to resolve this to everyone's satisfaction will be to let Jamis fight Paul.

The fight is done in the open, without stillsuits, with crysknives, the sacred Fremen weapon carved from a sandworm's tooth. Although Paul is well-trained in fighting, he is accustomed to using personal force shields which block fast attacks. He is quick on the defense, but his habits make him slow in striking, which makes it look to the Fremen like he is toying with Jamis. Also, Paul does not immediately realize that this is a fight to the death; that quarter will be neither given, nor accepted. Adding to his uncertainty, his prescient visions have not shown him this fight; although he has seen a possible future in which he lies dead of a knife wound.

He defeats Jamis and kills him; thus cementing his and his mother's place in the Fremen community. Stilgar recognizes him as a man and gives him the name Usul, meaning the base of the pillar, as his private name to be used by the Stietch Tabr community. (Hm. It just occured to me: "the base" is also the translation of "Al-Qaeda". Interesting) Stilgar also tells Paul to choose a Fremen name of his own, to be his public name. Paul asks what the little desert mouse is called, which he had observed earlier. "We call that one muad'dib," Stilgar says.

Once again, Paul feels destiny tightening around him as he remembers his visions of fanatical legions waging war under the Atreides banner shouting the name "Muad'Dib". "Could I be known among you as Paul-Muad'Dib?" he asks. He hopes this will alter the future somewhat; but he suspects it won't help.

Afterwards, a funeral is held for Jamis. As part of the ritual, the man's fellow tribesmen step forward to claim friendship with Jamis and take one of his possessions. Paul realizes that he too, is expected to take part in the custom.

Slowly, Paul got to his feet.

A sigh passsed around the circle.

Paul felt the diminishement of his self as he advanced into the center of the circle. It was as though he lost a fragment of himself and sought it here. He bent over the mound of belongings, lifted out the baliset. A string twanged softly as it struck against something in the pile.

"I was a friend of Jamis," Paul whispered.

He felt tears burning his eyes, forced more volume into his voice. "Jamis taught me... that ... when you kill ... you pay for it. I wish I'd known Jamis better."

The Fremen are awed by this. "He gives moisture to the dead!" And they gather around to touch his face as if his tears were something sacred.

After the ceremony, Paul learns that as part of Fremen custom, he is entitled to the water recovered from Jamis' corpse. The actual water itself will be stored in the Stietch's reservoir, of course, but Paul is given water counters, tokens which represent his share of the communal wealth. This frankly creeps Paul out, but his mother impresses on him that it is better to abide by the custom than to refuse. Unsure what to do with the water counters, he asks Chani to hold them for him; and when Chani blushes and the Fremen around him chuckle, he realizes that under Fremen custom he's just proposed to her. Stilgar reminds Chani that Paul is still unfamiliar with their ways and advises her to hold his tokens without commitment for the time being.

But after the rituals are over, Paul and Chani sit together getting to know each other. Paul plays a song for her on the baliset he has acquired. A romantic ballad.

Jessica does not like where this is heading.

NEXT: Feyd celebrates his birthday in the Harkonnen fashion, by killing something. Paul inherits something else from Jamis. Jessica takes the Waters of Life and disregards the warning label about "do not take this while pregnant".

Dune: Part 5: Into the Desert

In last week's reading, the Harkonnens struck; Yueh double-crossed the Baron; Duke Leto died in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the Baron and Paul and Jessica escaped into the desert. Part I of the novel ended with Paul experiencing cascading visions of the future, including the realization that he himself has Harkonnen blood.

Before we go any further in the plot, I wanted to touch a bit on the Baron Harkonnen's ... orientation. He Likes Little Boys. What's more, he has squick-inducing thoughts about Paul Atreides as well. And for that matter, his attitude towards his own nephew Feyd occasionally is not exactly avuncular either. Herbert seems to use the Baron's homosexuality; along with his corpulence, hedonism and dependence on anti-gravity units to even walk; as marks of the Baron's decadent depravity.

So, is Frank Herbert a homophobe? I don't like to think so. I like Dune, and I've enjoyed much of Herbert's writings. The Baron is the only gay character to appear in the novel (unless we count the Count Fenring, but his case is far from explicit); and I can't think of any gay characters in the other Dune novels off-hand; so I can't really say how Herbert portrays homosexuals in general.

He reminds me a little of a bit of conversation from a comic book. Wally West, the Flash, was chatting with a friend of his, the reformed villain Pied Piper. Wally asked him about the Joker: "You used to hang around with a lot of super-villains. Is it true that the Joker's gay?" The Piper explains that he didn't exactly hang around with the Joker -- nobody does -- but that as far as he could tell, the only person the Joker was in love with was himself. I think the Baron is like that too. He is intimate only with slave boys, those whom he has complete dominance and control over. And he hates and is terrified of the B.G.s who could have power over him if he let them. He did once, in his youth, when he unknowingly sired Jessica, and perhaps that frightened him.

Then again, perhaps Herbert is just borrowing the trope of the Decadent Roman, like the Emperor Nero or the Peter Ustinov character from Spartacus and doesn't mean him to be any deeper than that.

But back to the story.

Paul and Jessica are in the desert, waiting for the return of Duncan Idaho. They are still on the run, but Paul's deluge of insight in the previous chapter has changed him. Now he seems to be taking charge of the situation. As they pack up their tent and proceed on, they see signs of Harkonnen pursuit: aircraft strafing the desert with lasguns, bringing to mind the cryptic message Leto received: "A column of smoke by day, a pillar of fire by night."

Thufir Hawat has managed to escape the disaster at Arakeen with a handful of men and have joined up with some Fremen. At least they are trying to. Hawat discovers his logical mentat mind stymied by the fact that he doesn't understand the Fremen and their ways. He and the leader of the Fremen go around and around speaking at cross-purposes until finally he can find common ground where they can communicate. Hawat is startled to learn that the Fremen were able to not only hold their own, but actually kick butt against the Sardaukar, the Emperor's own elite shock troops currently on loan to the Harkonnens. But just as Hawat and the Fremen reach their understanding, the Saudakar make another attack and capture Thufir.

Paul and Jessica meet up with Duncan. Wait, I thought he was dead. I guess he wasn't. Then who was the unnamed Atreides who died under torture by the Harkonnens? I'm confused. The whole chronology of these chapters really could have been better organized.

But Duncan Idaho arrives with Kynes, who takes them to one of the Imperial Ecological Testing Stations that Leto had initially coveted. We discover that Kynes is actually Liet, the mysterious leader whom the Fremen defer to. This is fleshed out considerably in the Appendix: The Ecology of Dune, which describes how Kynes' father first came up with a visionary plan to terraform the planet into something more habitable; how he recruited the Fremen to make the plan work; and how Kynes' plan became a holy mission for the Fremen. Kynes realizes that by aiding the Atreides, he is putting this plan in jeapordy; but when pressed for a decision, he aids them anyway.

Also in this chapter Paul outlines his long-range plan. Immediately, of course, he wants to stay alive, but also to gain evidence of the Sardaukar involvement in his father's fall. If he can prove that the Emperor was personally invovled in destroying a Great House, then the other nobles will band against him. Paul plans to use the threat of this revelation as leverage against the Emperor.

But first he has to stay alive. The Harkonnens attack the station. Duncan is killed; (really, this time) and Jessica and Paul once more have to flee. They take an ornithopter and fly into the deep desert, right into the mother of all sandstorms.

"They are dead, Baron," one of his flunkies tells him. After all, No One Could Possibly Survive That. The Baron is not so sure, and is not happy about the entire situation. Paul is a troublesome loose end, and the death of Piter has forced him to alter his plans. The only good news he receives is the capture of Hawat. He sees that the Atreides mentat can be useful to him. Hawat still blames Jessica for the treason against Leto. The Baron thinks that by controlling the information Hawat has, he can persuade the mentat to work for him. And just to be safe, he orders that Hawat be secretly given a special poison which will kill him unless he takes a special antidote which will be administered in his food. That way, if Hawat becomes dangerous, the Baron can kill him at any time simply by withdrawing the antidote.

The Baron also has a chat with his other nephew, Rabban. Rabban was the former governor of Arrakis, before the Atreides briefly took over. Now the Baron is giving him the planet back. He only requires that Rabban squeeze. The plot against the Atreides has cost the Harkonnen an enormous amount; roughly equivalent to the planet's total spice production for fifty years. He demands that Rabban start paying it back and quickly. Of course, this is part of his greater plan to make the current governor so hated on Arrakis that when the Baron eventually replaces him with Feyd, the younger nephew will be worshipped as a hero.

Rabban is not portrayed as being particularly intelligent. "A muscle-minded tank-brain" is how his uncle describes him. But in his conversation, we do see some glimpses that he may not be as dense as the Baron thinks. He tries to warn his uncle that the Fremen might not be so inconsequential after all. But a glimpse is all we get. Rabban is just a pawn in this game, and a brutal one at that.

The Baron is right to worry about loose ends. Paul and Jessica have indeed survived their flight into he sandstorm; although their aircraft was damaged and they are forced to make an emergency landing in the desert. They continue on foot, taking advantage of rocky outcroppings whenever possible to avoid the sandworms.

While descending a cliff face, Jessica becomes buried in an avalanche of sand. Using B.G. techniques to slow her respiration, she is able to stay alive until Paul can rescue her; but now much of their gear is buried under tons of sand so fine that digging in it is like trying to shovel water. Here we get a very old-school SF touch. Paul uses a nearby patch of spice, combined with the acidic battery pack from a piece of equipment to create a stabilizing foam to hold the sand while he digs down to the gear. This MacGuyver-ish touch used to be common in the old "Hard SF" stories.

Gurney Halleck has also escaped the Harkonnen attack, and along with about seventy men has fallen in with a group of smugglers, led by Esmar Tuek, the son of the smuggler we met at the dinner party. Gurney is itching for vengeance against the Harkonnens, but Tuek is a practical man and counsels patience. Halleck ultimately agrees and throws in his lot with Tuek's smugglers.

In the final chapter of the reading, Paul and Jessica make a desperate trek for the safety of a region of cliffs. They have to cross the sands carefully, trying to avoid making the kinds of regular, artificial sounds that might attract a sandworm's curiousity. They accidentally hit a patch of drum sand, gravel that has been compacted and amplifies the sound of footsteps. Now they must run, and barely reach safety before a worm comes up from the sands after them. They find themselves in a rocky grotto used by the Fremen as a refuge; and soon discover that they are not alone...

NEXT: Paul and Jessica have found the Fremen! But will the Fremen help them, or kill them? Paul sees a knife wound in his future; but will it come to pass? Plus: Kynes goes out with a bang!

Dune: Part 4: Didn't See That One Coming

In our last reading, the Harkonnens successfully planted suspicion right where it would do the most damage; Duke Leto and Paul got to see their very first Spice Factory swallowed by a creature the size of Dubuque; and Lady Jessica threw a dinner party to get to know their enemies better.

Even though I've read this book I don't know how many times, and even though I know how things fall out, this next chapter always seems to sandbag me. While we're still reeling from Jessica's face-off with Hawat in the previous chapter, Leto walks down a hallway in his palace and discovers a dead man. The house's protective shields are down, and the servants who might have given warning are dead. Leto barely has time to realize his danger when he feels the drugged dart shot into his arm.

"What th--? It's happening already??? But they just got here! Leto never had a chance!" No he didn't. That's what everyone's been saying for the past dozen or so chapters.

Doctor Yueh, the Traitor, has finally made his move. "I'm sorry, my dear Duke, but there are things which will make greater demands than this," he says, indicating the tattoo on his forehead symbolizing his ethical conditioning. "I find it strange, myself -- an override on my pyretic conscience -- but I wish to kill a man.... Oh, not you, my dear Duke. The Baron Harkonnen. I wish to kill the Baron."

Yueh promises to save Jessica and Paul. He has persuaded the Baron to leave the two of them out in the desert to die, and has arranged for survival gear to be hidden for them and for Duncan Idaho to find them and take them to the Fremen. In return, he ask Leto to extract revenge on the Baron for both of them, by means of a poison gas capsule disguised as a false tooth.

Jessica awakens to find herself bound and gagged, along with Paul. The Harkonnens have arrived and the Baron is here to gloat over her. The gag is important, because the Baron fears her use of "The Voice", a Bene Gesserit technique of inducing others to instinctively obey commands by pitching the voice in just the right manner. It's a little bit like "Jedi Mind Tricks," and we saw a bit of it in her interview with Hawat in last week's section.

The Baron has promised promised Jessica to his mentat, Piter de Vries; but he now offers Piter a choice: either take the woman he's been lusting after and leave Arrakis, or remain as the Baron's governor. This is part of the Baron's larger plan; he expects Piter to make himself so hated as ruler of the planet that the people will welcome his eventual replacement, the Baron's nephew Feyd, with open arms. A mentat should know when he's being manipulated like that, but Piter jumps exactly the way the Baron wants him to.

Piter has a couple minions take Jessica and Paul in an ornithopter, the one Yueh prepared, out into the desert, "as the Traitor suggested." Both Piter and the Baron fear the possibility of being questioned by the Emperor's B.G. Truthsayer (whom we met in the first chapter), and so they want to be able to say truthfully that they did not actually kill either Jessica or her son. Paul has been left un-gagged, and although he is not yet fully trained in the Voice, he is able to induce one of the guards to remove his mother's gag as well. Big mistake, guys.

A little bit here about Duncan Idaho. In the sequel, we meet a clone of Duncan and are told how much Paul admired the original, but he never seemed to me to have done much in the original book. Re-reading it, I see that Duncan did a lot of cool stuff -- just that it was all off-stage. For example, we are told early on that Duncan was Paul's chief fencing instructor. His mission to the Fremen must have been exciting and dangerous, and here we are told that Duncan picks up Paul and Jessica. Then, apparently, Duncan goes to rendezvous with Kynes, and gets captured by the Harkonnens. He is tortured to death; all off-stage. We aren't even told for sure it's him. Duncan deserves better. Just sayin' is all.

Yueh meets the Baron and demands that Harkonnen keep his part of the bargain: to free Yueh's wife from her agony and permit him to join her. Yueh's no fool. He knows exactly what this means; but he has to be sure that his wife is truly dead and free from the Baron's tortures. And he wants to get his revenge.

His plan very nearly works; the poison gas in Leto's tooth kills Piter and some of the Baron's soldiers, but by chance the Baron himself is far enough away to cheat death.

Out in the desert, Paul and Jessica wait in a tent for Idaho to return. They've found the pack of survival gear Yueh hid away on their ornithopter, along with the Atriedes ducal signet ring and a letter confessing to his treachery. Paul finds himself unable to stop analyzing things. The mentat training Hawat has been giving him; his mother's B.G. training in observation; his genetic potential as the possible Kwisatz Haderach, the one who can be many places at once; all boosted by his recent exposure to the spice melange are coming together and making him hyper-aware. He experiences glimpses of the future -- of possible futures.

Paul's mind had gone on in its chilling precision. He saw the avenues ahead of them on this hostile planet. Without even the safety valve of dreaming, he focused his prescient awareness, seeing it as a computation of probable futures, but with something more, an edge of mystery -- as though his mind dipped into some timeless stratum and sampled the winds of the future.

The possibilities he sees in the future frighten and repulse him. And he sees the jihad; a galactic war carried on in his name. "I'm a monster!" he thinks; "A freak!" He also realizes that he himself carries Harkonnen blood; that his mother's unknown father was in fact the Baron himself. And he sees the huge vortex of destiny ahead of him ready to swallow him up.

NEXT: Paul and Jessica flee into the desert. Gurney and Thufir seek refuge. The Baron reviews his options. And: Walk this way!

Dune: Part 3: What A Swell Party This Is

(Cross-posted from Daily Kos)

As Last we saw, the Atreides began settling in on Arrakis and dealing with the various surprises and deathtraps the Harkonnens have left behind for them; and we got our first close-up looks at the Fremen, the wild desert folk whom the Harkonnens despised and dismissed and whom Duke Leto hopes will be valuable allies.

Hawat has been guarded and disturbed during the Duke's planning conference, and in private he gives the reason why. His agents have intercepted a Harkonnen message that suggests that their spy in the Atreides household is none other than the Lady Jessica. Leto does not believe this, and the reader knows this is indeed a Harkonnen ruse, but Leto decides to allow Hawat to pursue his investigation. "Perhaps if I appear to believe this, it will make another man careless," he thinks.

He discusses this with Paul in the following chapter. He does dare let Jessica into his confidence about Hawat's suspicions -- and there I think he errs; talking to her probably wouldn't have prevented his own tragedy, but it might have saved a lot of angst along the line -- but he wants Paul to know about it. "This way, if anything should happen to me, you can tell her the truth -- that I never doubted her, not for the smallest instant. I should want her to know this."

The conversation is a difficult one for Paul, not only because of the suspicions against his mother, but because his father speaks to him frankly about his own doubts and insecurities. With all the intrigues and counter-plots swimming about, Leto is running out of people he can confide in. "I have to have someone I can say these things to, Son." When Paul tries to encourage him, he can only reply with a weary cynicism.

The Imperial Planetologist arrives to take Leto and Paul on an inspection tour of one of the spice factories. The planetologist, Kynes is a man of contrasts. He is a civil servant, the official representative of the Imperial Government on Arrakis, and as such he is supposed to turn a blind eye to the Harkonnen vendetta against the Atreides. But he also identifies as a Fremen, as Leto quickly realizes and Paul guesses sooner. Although Kynes thinks of himself as a scientist, he has been raised among the Fremen and the Fremen religious beliefs are deeply ingrained in his psyche. When Paul impulsively greets Kynes with a quote from the O.C. Bible, and when Kynes notes that Paul seems instinctively familiar with the stillsuit he wears, these things remind Kynes of elements of prophecy.

The party flies out over the desert in an ornithopter, giving us an opportunity for a fairly painless infodump about the workings of the stillsuit, spice mining, the desert ecology, and survival. While approaching one of the mobile spice factories, the Duke notices a wake in the sand indicating the path of one of the giant sandworms. The support craft which are supposed to be watching for wormsign and ready to pick up the factory if a worm shows up are mysteriously missing -- the result of Harkonnen treachery.

Here we get a chance to see Leto as a heroic man of action as he takes charge of the situation and personally lands his ornithopter to rescue as many of the spice miners as his craft can carry -- jettisoning excess baggage to accommodate the last few. They take off in time to see the Sandworm, the great behemoth of the Arrakis desert, erupt from the sand and swallow the factory in a single gulp. "He passed off the loss of a spice crawler with a gesture. The threat to men's lives had him in a rage," Kynes notes.

This dramatic action scene is followed by a chapter in which all the drama takes place over a dinner table. Lady Jessica has arranged for a dinner party and has invited a number of important people in the city of Arrakeen, each representing a different power faction. I was disappointed that this scene was not included in the movie, because I've always found it one of the most memorable; but in a way I can understand why. Most of the real action in the scene takes place inside people's heads, and in the subtexts underneath what the characters say. Tensions run high, and almost break out into violence once or twice. Jessica wins over Kynes by declaring that the Atreides intend to work towards reclaiming the desert, the Fremen holy goal; (although she might have said that just to annoy the snarky water merchant). Paul proves himself adept at the cut-and-thrust of conversational fencing.

After the dinner, an ugly scene occurs in which Duncan comes back to the palace drunk. He has been pulled from his diplomatic mission to the Fremen in order to "guard" Lady Jessica; actually to watch her because of Hawat's suspicions. When Duncan drunkenly accuses her of being a Harkonnen spy, Jessica summons Hawat to have things out with him. They circle around each other warily, like a bull and a matador; but Jessica realizes bitterly that she cannot prove to him that she is not a spy; that anything she might say or do in her defense can be and will be taken by him as proof that she's manipulating him. The meeting ends as a stalemate.

Things are about to get worse.

NEXT WEEK: The Harkonnen Trap Is Sprung! The Baron Gloats! And we learn a Shocking Truth about Jessica! That and more, next time!

Dune: Part 2: Welcome to Arrakis

(Cross-posted from Daily Kos)

In the first few chapters, we met Paul Atreides, his family, and some of their closest circle, as they prepared to leave their home on Caladan for the desert world Arrakis. His father, Duke Leto, is well aware that he has been manipulated into this situation and the new world he has been given is a planet-sized trap set out by his hereditary enemies the Harkonnens with the blessings and support of the Emperor. Leto hopes that by walking into the trap with his eyes open, he can use the situation to his best advantage; and he suspects that Arrakis holds secrets of which the Harkonnens are unaware.

In the midst of this, Paul must grapple with his discovery that he may be the Kwisatz Haderach, a being with time-spanning powers of perception that the Creepy Space Nuns of the Bene Gesserit have been trying to breed for untold generations.

So now, we arrive on Arrakis.

Chapter seven begins with Jessica supervising the unpacking at their new home in Arrakeen, one of the major cities on Arrakis. The crates she opens contain items of symbolic importance: a portrait of the Old Duke, Leto's father; and the mounted head of the bull that killed him. The Old Duke enjoyed bullfighting as a hobby, presumably because he enjoyed stabbing large dangerous things. Jessica hates the bull's head, and hates her dead father-in-law; but Leto insists that both must be prominently displayed in the dining hall. It's a matter of tradition.

I think the love between Jessica and Leto in this book is emphasized by the quarrels they have. Yes, we'll get emphatic statements of love from each of them; but it's scenes like this, where we see disagreement and friction between the two of them, that makes their relationship more real.

In the next chapter, Jessica tells Yueh:

"...the Duke is really two men. One of them I love very much. He's charming, witty, considerate ... tender -- everything a woman could desire. But the other man is ... cold, callous, demanding, selfish -- as hard and cruel as a winter wind. That's the man shaped by the father." Her face contorted. "If only that old man had died when my Duke was born!"

In our glimpses of Leto in these first few chapters we get to see both sides of his personality.

Jessica meets a servant woman named Shadout Mapes, a woman from a Fremen tribe; and in the interplay between the two we learn a bit more about religion in the world of Dune, most specifically, the Missionaria Protectiva.

Herbert does something here which I think is rather brilliant. He takes the age old theme of the Hero of Prophecy, make it a major theme of the story, and yet from the very beginning tells us that the Prophecy is a fake. The Bene Gesserit, as one of their many galaxy-spanning plots, has as a matter of SOP planted legends on every world regarding their Order, on the off chance that someday a Sister of the Order might find themselves stranded there and needing help. On Arrakis, this legend tells of the "Lisan al-Gaib", the Voice from the Outer World, the offspring of a Reverend Mother who will lead the people to freedom.

"Great Mother! They planted that one here! This must be a hideous place!" Jessica thinks. But in a careful verbal dance, she answers Mapes' questions, playing to the woman's expectations. I doing so, she realizes that she too is cynically manipulating Mapes' beliefs.

The next chapter is another fencing match; this one between Jessica and Yueh. The Doctor struggles to keep her from perceiving his guilt and almost confesses his planned treason. Jessica sees that he is keeping a secret from her and almost compels him to reveal it. "I should place more trust in my friends," she decides, making one of her worst mistakes in the book.

Back in the second chapter, when the Harkonnens were discussing their plans, Piter explained that there would be an assassination attempt on Paul. In the ninth chapter, the attempt occurs: a remotely-controlled drone designed to impale it's victim and burrow deep into the nervous system. Paul is able to recognize the danger and not only evade the attack, but prevent it from killing Mapes, who walks unwittingly into the situation. "You could've let it have me and made your own escape," Mapes observes. These things are important to the Fremen.

While Paul battles the Hunter-Seeker, his mother finds a special room in the palace that had been built by its previous residents, the Count and Lady Fenring. The room is a climate-controlled greenhouse, with the kind of lush plant life and humid atmosphere unknown on the rest of Arrakis. Lady Margot Fenring is, like Jessica, a member of the Bene Gesserit and has left a secret message for Jessica warning of a traitor in the Duke's entourage. Secret messages and meanings buried in meaning are a recurring theme in the book.

The scene shifts to Duke Leto, who is inwardly in turmoil over the attempt on his son's life. But he knows that it is vital to display an outward appearance of confidence for the sake of morale. He permits Paul to sit in on a strategy meeting with several of his top officers in which they discuss the Arrakis situation and what can be done about it.

In the middle of the meeting, Duncan Idaho, one of Leto's most trusted lieutenants, arrives accompanied by some Fremen. Leto has sent Idaho to the Fremen to try cultivating them as potential allies. Things start off badly. Duncan almost unsheathes a Fremen crysknife, a weapon made from the tooth of one of the giant sandworms, in front of the Duke, which violates strong Fremen taboos. No sooner does Leto defuse this situation, than the leader of the Fremen spits on the table in front of the Duke. "Remember how precious water is here, Sire," Duncan explains. "That was a token of respect." Despite the tense beginning, the encounter with the mysterious desert tribesmen ends amicably and both sides agree to let Duncan be admitted into the Fremen tribe and act as an ambassador.

But underneath the plans and stratagems, Paul senses unease in the men and desperation in his father. And he remembers the Reverend Mother's sinister warning: "...for the father, nothing."

NEXT: BIG HONKIN' WORMS!!! And, What a Swell Party This Is!

Dune: Part 1: Leaving Caladan

(Cross-posted from Daily Kos)

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Muad'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time... And take the most special care that you locate Muad'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis.

-- from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan.

When David Lynch's film version of Dune was released in 1984, many of my friends in the campus science fiction club anticipated it with a mixture of hope and dread. After all, despite the boom in science fiction movies following the success of Star Wars, there hadn't been any really big, serious SF films since 2001: A Space Odyssey. "Let this be our 'War and Peace'," one friend said.

Well, the movie turned out to be disappointing; but I still like to think of the book as "Our War and Peace"; a big, sprawling work about conflict and intrigue, religion and politics and destiny, on a scale the size of Shai-hulud.

The story is set so vastly far in the future that Earth is not even a memory, in a galaxy-spanning empire with a feudal society. Duke Leto Atreides, ruler of the planet Caladan, has been given the planet Arrakis by the Emperor. Arrakis, the planet also known as Dune, is a desert world with exactly one important resource: a substance known as the spice melange. Spice is a drug with life-extending qualities; it neutralizes many popular forms of poison; it's highly-addictive and will turn your eyeballs blue. It probably also mends vinyl and freshens your breath. In high enough doses, it expands the user's consciousness and enhances precognitive abilities. Navigators on starships use melange to calculate routes through hyperspace, and the Creepy Space Nuns of the Bene Gesserit use it to enhance their own mental disciplines. It is the most valuable substance in the galaxy, and Arrakis is its only source; therefore the ruler of Arrakis is sitting on the wealth of the universe.

But Arrakis is also a trap. The planet's former rulers, the Harkonnens, are hereditary enemies of House Atreides, and the Baron Harkonnen has set up an elaborate plot to destroy Duke Leto and his house forever.

Paul Atredies is Duke Leto's son; a boy of fifteen who is just on the verge of manhood. And he has unusual dreams. Yes, this is a story about a Boy Becoming a Man as he discovers that He Is Special. But Paul is more than a Mary Sue, and although he does indulge in angst occasionally, he does not wallow in it.

As the story begins, Duke Leto is preparing to move his family and his court from Caladan to Arrakis; and it is through these preparations that we meet Paul's family and the Atreides' closest retainers. Thufir Hawat is the Duke's mentat; a man trained to be a kind of living computer; skilled at analyzing data. Gurney Halleck is a veteran fighter and something of a bard. Dr. Yueh is the court physician and one of Paul's teachers; he also has a dark secret and a tragic destiny hanging over him.

We also get a chapter introducing the Harkonnens: Baron Vladamir, corpuant and vile; his own mentat Piter, nasty and hedonistic; and his nephew Feyd, who in many ways is Paul's parallel, the way Hal and Hotspur parallel each other in the the Henry IV plays.

The moving plans on Caladan are interrupted by Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, a high-ranking woman of the Bene Gesserit. This quasi-religious order is one of the most powerful groups in the galaxy; and their chief purpose, putting it crudely, is improving the species through selective breeding. Their ultimate goal is to create a genetic super-being called the Kwisatz-Haderach, a male who can utilize the Bene Gesserit's mental disciplines to see backwards and forwards in time. Paul's mother, Jessica, thinks that he might be the one; and the Reverend Mother has arrived to test him.

These opening chapters touch on a lot of things: elements of the culture and religion of the novel's world; foreshadowing hints about Arrakis; and above all, premonitions of doom. From the very beginning, the narrative marks Duke Leto as a man destined for tragedy. Everybody knows it; his wife, his mentat, he himself knows it; but Leto sees Arrakis as an opportunity as well as a trap and intends to take the risk. Yueh also is a tragic figure, and the historical chapter heads direly remind us of his fate, even as we watch him struggle against it.

And also Paul, in his way is something of a tragic figure. His glimpses of the future show him things he cannot avoid and choices to make where every option leads to bad results. This is only hinted at in the early chapters, but Paul's grappling with this aspect of prescience is one of the main themes of the book.

NEXT WEEK: We'll discuss the next six chapters. The Atreides arrive on Arrakis and an assassination attempt is made on Paul.