From "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

The burning! The burning!
He thought he could feel skin curling black on that agonized hand, the flesh crisping and dropping away until only charred bones remained.
It stopped!
As though a switch had been turned off, the pain stopped.
Paul felt his right arm trembling, felt sweat bathing his body.
"Enough," the old woman muttered. "Kull wahad! No woman child ever withstood that much. I must've wanted you to fail." She leaned back, withdrawing the gom jabbar from the side of his neck. "Take your hand from the box, young human, and look at it."
He fought down an aching shiver, stared at the lightless void where his hand seemed to remain of its own volition. Memory of pain inhibited every movement. Reason told him he would withdraw a blackened stump from that box.
"Do it!" she snapped.
He jerked his hand from the box, stared at it astonished. Not a mark. No sign of agony on the flesh. He held up the hand, turned it, flexed the fingers.
"Pain by nerve induction," she said. "Can't go around maiming potential humans. There're those who'd give a pretty for the secret of this box, though." She slipped it into the folds of her gown.
"But the pain—" he said.
"Pain," she sniffed. "A human can override any nerve in the body."
Paul felt his left hand aching, uncurled the clenched fingers, looked at four bloody marks where fingernails had bitten his palm. He dropped the hand to his side, looked at the old woman. "You did that to my mother once?"
"Ever sift sand through a screen?" she asked.
The tangential slash of her question shocked his mind into a higher awareness: Sand through a screen , he nodded.
"We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans."
He lifted his right hand, willing the memory of the pain. "And that's all there is to it—pain?"
"I observed you in pain, lad. Pain's merely the axis of the test. Your mother's told you about our ways of observing. I see the signs of her teaching in you. Our test is crisis and observation."
He heard the confirmation in her voice, said: "It's truth!"
She stared at him. He senses truth! Could he be the one? Could he truly be the one? She extinguished the excitement, reminding herself: "Hope clouds observation ."
"You know when people believe what they say," she said.
"I know it."
The harmonics of ability confirmed by repeated test were in his voice. She heard them, said: "Perhaps you are the Kwisatz Haderach. Sit down, little brother, here at my feet."
"I prefer to stand."
"Your mother sat at my feet once."
"I'm not my mother."
"You hate us a little, eh?" She looked toward the door, called out: "Jessica!"
The door flew open and Jessica stood there staring hard-eyed into the room. Hardness melted from her as she saw Paul. She managed a faint smile.
"Jessica, have you ever stopped hating me?" the old woman asked.
"I both love and hate you," Jessica said. "The hate—that's from pains I must never forget. The love—that's . . . "
"Just the basic fact," the old woman said, but her voice was gentle. "You may come in now, but remain silent. Close that door and mind it that no one interrupts us."
Jessica stepped into the room, closed the door and stood with her back to it. My son lives , she thought. My son lives and is . . . human. I knew he was . . . but . . . he lives. Now, I can go on living . The door felt hard and real against her back. Everything in the room was immediate and pressing against her senses.
My son lives .
Paul looked at his mother. She told the truth . He wanted to get away alone and think this experience through, but knew he could not leave until he was dismissed. The old woman had gained a power over him. They spoke truth . His mother had undergone this test. There must be terrible purpose in it . . . the pain and fear had been terrible. He understood terrible purposes. They drove against all odds. They were their own necessity. Paul felt that he had been infected with terrible purpose. He did not know yet what the terrible purpose was.
"Some day, lad," the old woman said, "you, too, may have to stand outside a door like that. It takes a measure of doing."
Paul looked down at the hand that had known pain, then up to the Reverend Mother. The sound of her voice had contained a difference then from any other voice in his experience. The words were outlined in brilliance. There was an edge to them. He felt that any question he might ask her would bring an answer that could lift him out of his flesh-world into something greater.
"Why do you test for humans?" he asked.
"To set you free."
"Free?"
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
"'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind,' " Paul quoted.
"Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible," she said. "But what the O.C. Bible should've said is: 'Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.' Have you studied the Mentat in your service?"
"I've studied with Thufir Hawat."
"The Great Revolt took away a crutch," she said. "It forced human minds to develop. Schools were started to train human talents."
"Bene Gesserit schools?"
She nodded. "We have two chief survivors of those ancient schools: the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild. The Guild, so we think, emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Gesserit performs another function."
"Politics," he said.
"Kull wahad!" the old woman said. She sent a hard glance at Jessica.
"I've not told him. Your Reverence," Jessica said.
The Reverend Mother returned her attention to Paul. "You did that on remarkably few clues," she said. "Politics indeed. The original Bene Gesserit school was directed by those who saw the need of a thread of continuity in human affairs. They saw there could be no such continuity without separating human stock from animal stock—for breeding purposes."
The old woman's words abruptly lost their special sharpness for Paul. He felt an offense against what his mother called his instinct for rightness . It wasn't that Reverend Mother lied to him. She obviously believed what she said. It was something deeper, something tied to his terrible purpose.
He said: "But my mother tells me many Bene Gesserit of the schools don't know their ancestry."
"The genetic lines are always in our records," she said. "Your mother knows that either she's of Bene Gesserit descent or her stock was acceptable in itself."
"Then why couldn't she know who her parents are?"
"Some do . . . Many don't. We might, for example, have wanted to breed her to a close relative to set up a dominant in some genetic trait. We have many reasons."
Again, Paul felt the offense against rightness. He said: "You take a lot on yourselves."
The Reverend Mother stared at him, wondering: Did I hear criticism in his voice? "We carry a heavy burden," she said.
Paul felt himself coming more and more out of the shock of the test. He leveled a measuring stare at her, said: "You say maybe I'm the . . . Kwisatz Haderach. What's that, a human gom jabbar?"
"Paul," Jessica said. "You mustn't take that tone with—"
"I'll handle this, Jessica," the old woman said. "Now, lad, do you know about the Truthsayer drug?"
"You take it to improve your ability to detect falsehood," he said. "My mother's told me."
"Have you ever seen truthtrance?"
He shook his head. "No."
"The drug's dangerous," she said, "but it gives insight. When a Truthsayer's gifted by the drug, she can look many places in her memory—in her body's memory. We look down so many avenues of the past . . . but only feminine avenues." Her voice took on a note of sadness. "Yet, there's a place where no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot—into both feminine and masculine pasts."
"Your Kwisatz Haderach?"
"Yes, the one who can be many places at once: the Kwisatz Haderach. Many men have tried the drug . . . so many, but none has succeeded."
"They tried and failed, all of them?"
"Oh, no." She shook her head. "They tried and died."
To attempt an understanding of Muad'Dib without understanding his mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be.
—from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
It was a relief globe of a world, partly in shadows, spinning under the impetus of a fat hand that glittered with rings. The globe sat on a freeform stand at one wall of a windowless room whose other walls presented a patchwork of multicolored scrolls, filmbooks, tapes and reels. Light glowed in the room from golden balls hanging in mobile suspensor fields.
An ellipsoid desk with a top of jade-pink petrified elacca wood stood at the center of the room. Veriform suspensor chairs ringed it, two of them occupied. In one sat a dark-haired youth of about sixteen years, round of face and with sullen eyes. The other held a slender, short man with effeminate face.
Both youth and man stared at the globe and the man half-hidden in shadows spinning it.
A chuckle sounded beside the globe. A basso voice rumbled out of the chuckle: "There it is, Piter—the biggest mantrap in all history. And the Duke's headed into its jaws. Is it not a magnificent thing that I, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, do?"
"Assuredly, Baron," said the man. His voice came out tenor with a sweet, musical quality.
The fat hand descended onto the globe, stopped the spinning. Now, all eyes in the room could focus on the motionless surface and see that it was the kind of globe made for wealthy collectors or planetary governors of the Empire. It had the stamp of Imperial handicraft about it. Latitude and longitude lines were laid in with hair-fine platinum wire. The polar caps were insets of finest cloud-milk diamonds.
The fat hand moved, tracing details on the surface. "I invite you to observe," the basso voice rumbled. "Observe closely, Piter, and you, too, Feyd-Rautha, my darling: from sixty degrees north to seventy degrees south—these exquisite ripples. Their coloring: does it not remind you of sweet caramels? And nowhere do you see blue of lakes or rivers or seas. And these lovely polar caps—so small. Could anyone mistake this place? Arrakis! Truly unique. A superb setting for a unique Victory."
A smile touched Piter's lips. "And to think. Baron: the Padishah Emperor believes he's given the Duke your spice planet. How poignant."
"That's a nonsensical statement," the Baron rumbled. "You say this to confuse young Feyd-Rautha, but it is not necessary to confuse my nephew."
The sullen-faced youth stirred in his chair, smoothed a wrinkle in the black leotards he wore. He sat upright as a discreet tapping sounded at the door in the wall behind him.
Piter unfolded from his chair, crossed to the door, cracked it wide enough to accept a message cylinder. He closed the door, unrolled the cylinder and scanned it. A chuckle sounded from him. Another.
"Well?" the Baron demanded.
"The fool answered us, Baron!"
"Whenever did an Atreides refuse the opportunity for a gesture?" the Baron asked. "Well, what does he say?"
"He's most uncouth, Baron. Addresses you as 'Harkonnen'—no 'Sire et Cher Cousin,' no title, nothing."
"It's a good name," the Baron growled, and his voice betrayed his impatience. "What does dear Leto say?"
"He says: 'Your offer of a meeting is refused. I have ofttimes met your treachery and this all men know.' "
"And?" the Baron asked.
"He says: 'The art of kanly still has admirers in the Empire. ' He signs it: 'Duke Leto of Arrakis.' " Piter began to laugh. "Of Arrakis! Oh, my! This is almost too rich!"
"Be silent, Piter," the Baron said, and the laughter stopped as though shut off with a switch. "Kanly, is it?" the Baron asked. "Vendetta, heh? And he uses the nice old word so rich in tradition to be sure I know he means it."
"You made the peace gesture," Piter said. "The forms have been obeyed."
"For a Mentat, you talk too much, Piter," the Baron said. And he thought: I must do away with that one soon. He has almost outlived his usefulness . The Baron stared across the room at his Mental assassin, seeing the feature about him that most people noticed first: the eyes, the shaded slits of blue within blue, the eyes without any white in them at all.
A grin flashed across Piter's face. It was like a mask grimace beneath those eyes like holes. "But, Baron! Never has revenge been more beautiful. It is to see a plan of the most exquisite treachery: to make Leto exchange Caladan for Dune—and without alternative because the Emperor orders it. How waggish of you!"
In a cold voice, the Baron said: "You have a flux of the mouth, Piter."
"But I am happy, my Baron. Whereas you . . . you are touched by jealousy."
"Piter!"
"Ah-ah. Baron! Is it not regrettable you were unable to devise this delicious scheme by yourself?"
"Someday I will have you strangled, Piter."
"Of a certainty, Baron. Enfin! But a kind act is never lost, eh?"
"Have you been chewing verite or semuta, Piter?"
"Truth without fear surprises the Baron," Piter said. His face drew down into a caricature of a frowning mask. "Ah, hah! But you see, Baron, I know as a Mentat when you will send the executioner. You will hold back just so long as I am useful. To move sooner would be wasteful and I'm yet of much use. I know what it is you learned from that lovely Dune planet—waste not. True, Baron?"
The Baron continued to stare at Piter.
Feyd-Rautha squirmed in his chair. These wrangling fools! he thought. My uncle cannot talk to his Mental without arguing. Do they think I've nothing to do except listen their arguments?
"Feyd," the Baron said. "I told you to listen and learn when I invited you in here. Are you learning?"
"Yes, Uncle." the voice was carefully subservient.
"Sometimes I wonder about Piter," the Baron said. "I cause pain out of necessity, but he . . . I swear he takes a positive delight in it. For myself, I can feel pity toward the poor Duke Leto. Dr. Yueh will move against him soon, and that'll be the end of all the Atreides. But surely Leto will know whose hand directed the pliant doctor . . . and knowing that will be a terrible thing."
"Then why haven't you directed the doctor to slip a kindjal between his ribs quietly and efficiently?" Piter asked. "You talk of pity, but—"
"The Duke must know when I encompass his doom," the Baron said. "And the other Great Houses must learn of it. The knowledge will give them pause. I'll gain a bit more room to maneuver. The necessity is obvious, but I don't have to like it."
"Room to maneuver," Piter sneered. "Already you have the Emperor's eyes on you, Baron. You move too boldly. One day the Emperor will send a legion or two of his Sardaukar down here onto Giedi Prime and that'll be an end to the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen."
"You'd like to see that, wouldn't you, Piter?" the Baron asked. "You'd enjoy seeing the Corps of Sardaukar pillage through my cities and sack this castle. You'd truly enjoy that."
"Does the Baron need to ask?" Piter whispered.
"You should've been a Bashar of the Corps," the Baron said. "You're too interested in blood and pain. Perhaps I was too quick with my promise of the spoils of Arrakis."
Piter took five curiously mincing steps into the room, stopped directly behind Feyd-Rautha. There was a tight air of tension in the room, and the youth looked up at Piter with a worried frown.
"Do not toy with Piter, Baron," Piter said. "You promised me the Lady Jessica. You promised her to me."
"For what, Piter?" the Baron asked. "For pain?"
Piter stared at him, dragging out the silence.
Feyd-Rautha moved his suspensor chair to one side, said: "Uncle, do I have to stay? You said you'd—"
"My darling Feyd-Rautha grows impatient," the Baron said. He moved within the shadows beside the globe. "Patience, Feyd." And he turned his attention back to the Mentat. "What of the Dukeling, the child Paul, my dear Piter?"
"The trap will bring him to you, Baron," Piter muttered.
"That's not my question," the Baron said. "You'll recall that you predicted the Bene Gesserit witch would bear a daughter to the Duke. You were wrong, eh, Mentat?"
"I'm not often wrong, Baron," Piter said, and for the first time there was fear in his voice. "Give me that: I'm not often wrong. And you know yourself these Bene Gesserit bear mostly daughters. Even the Emperor's consort had produced only females."
"Uncle," said Feyd-Rautha, "you said there'd be something important here for me to—"
"Listen to my nephew," the Baron said. "He aspires to rule my Barony, yet he cannot rule himself." The Baron stirred beside the globe, a shadow among shadows. "Well then, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, I summoned you here hoping to teach you a bit of wisdom. Have you observed our good Mentat? You should've learned something from this exchange."
"But, Uncle—"
"A most efficient Mentat, Piter, wouldn't you say, Feyd?"
"Yes, but—"
"Ah! Indeed but! But he consumes too much spice, eats it like candy. Look at his eyes! He might've come directly from the Arrakeen labor pool. Efficient, Piter, but he's still emotional and prone to passionate outbursts. Efficient, Piter, but he still can err."
Piter spoke in a low, sullen tone: "Did you call me in here to impair my efficiency with criticism, Baron?"
"Impair your efficiency? You know me better, Piter. I wish only for my nephew to understand the limitations of a Mentat."
"Are you already training my replacement?" Piter demanded.
"Replace you? Why, Piter, where could I find another Mentat with your cunning and venom?"
"The same place you found me, Baron."
"Perhaps I should at that," the Baron mused. "You do seem a bit unstable lately. And the spice you eat!"
"Are my pleasures too expensive, Baron? Do you object to them?"
"My dear Piter, your pleasures are what tie you to me. How could I object to that? I merely wish my nephew to observe this about you."
"Then I'm on display," Piter said. "Shall I dance? Shall I perform my various functions for the eminent Feyd-Rau—"
"Precisely," the Baron said. "You are on display. Now, be silent." He glanced at Feyd-Rautha, noting his nephew's lips, the full and pouting look of them, the Harkonnen genetic marker, now twisted slightly in amusement. "This is a Mentat, Feyd. It has been trained and conditioned to perform certain duties. The fact that it's encased in a human body, however, must not be overlooked. A serious drawback, that. I sometimes think the ancients with their thinking machines had the right idea."
"They were toys compared to me," Piter snarled. "You yourself, Baron, could outperform those machines ."
"Perhaps," the Baron said. "Ah, well . . . " He took a deep breath, belched. "Now, Piter, outline for my nephew the salient features of our campaign against the House of Atreides. Function as a Mentat for us, if you please."
"Baron, I've warned you not to trust one so young with this information. My observations of—"
"I'll be the judge of this," the Baron said. "I give you an order, Mentat. Perform one of your various functions."
"So be it," Piter said. He straightened, assuming an odd attitude of dignity—as though it were another mask, but this time clothing his entire body. "In a few days Standard, the entire household of the Duke Leto will embark on a Spacing Guild liner for Arrakis. The Guild will deposit them at the city of Arrakeen rather than at our city of Carthag . The Duke's Mentat, Thufir Hawat, will have concluded rightly that Arrakeen is easier to defend."
"Listen carefully, Feyd," the Baron said. "Observe the plans within plans within plans."
Feyd-Rautha nodded, thinking: This is more like it. The old monster is letting me in on secret things at last. He must really mean for me to be his heir .
"There are several tangential possibilities," Piter said. "I indicate that House Atreides will go to Arrakis. We must not, however, ignore the possibility the Duke has contracted with the Guild to remove him to a place of safety outside the System. Others in like circumstances have become renegade Houses, taking family atomics and shields and fleeing beyond the Imperium."
"The Duke's too proud a man for that," the Baron said.
"It is a possibility," Piter said. "The ultimate effect for us would be the same, however."
"No, it would not!" the Baron growled. "I must have him dead and his line ended."
"That's the high probability," Piter said. "There are certain preparations that indicate when a House is going renegade. The Duke appears to be doing none of these things."
"So," the Baron sighed. "Get on with it, Piter."
"At Arrakeen," Piter said, "the Duke and his family will occupy the Residency, lately the home of Count and Lady Fenring."
"The Ambassador to the Smugglers," the Baron chuckled.
"Ambassador to what?" Feyd-Rautha asked.
"Your uncle makes a joke," Piter said. "He calls Count Fenring Ambassador to the Smugglers, indicating the Emperor's interest in smuggling operations on Arrakis."
Feyd-Rautha turned a puzzled stare on his uncle. "Why?"
"Don't be dense, Feyd," the Baron snapped. "As long as the Guild remains effectively outside Imperial control, how could it be otherwise? How else could spies and assassins move about?"
Feyd-Rautha's mouth made a soundless "Oh-h-h-h."
"We've arranged diversions at the Residency," Piter said. "There'll be an attempt on the life of the Atreides heir—an attempt which could succeed."
"Piter," the Baron rumbled, "you indicated—"
"I indicated accidents can happen," Piter said. "And the attempt must appear valid."
"Ah, but the lad has such a sweet young body," the Baron said. "Of course, he's potentially more dangerous than the father . . . with that witch mother training him. Accursed woman! Ah, well, please continue, Piter."
"Hawat will have divined that we have an agent planted on him," Piter said. "The obvious suspect is Dr. Yueh, who is indeed our agent. But Hawat has investigated and found that our doctor is a Suk School graduate with Imperial Conditioning—supposedly safe enough to minister even to the Emperor. Great store is set on Imperial Conditioning. It's assumed that ultimate conditioning cannot be removed without killing the subject. However, as someone once observed, given the right lever you can move a planet. We found the lever that moved the doctor."
"How?" Feyd-Rautha asked. He found this a fascinating subject. Everyone knew you couldn't subvert Imperial Conditioning!
"Another time," the Baron said. "Continue, Piter."
"In place of Yueh," Piter said, "we'll drag a most interesting suspect across Hawat's path. The very audacity of this suspect will recommend her to Hawat's attention."
"Her?" Feyd-Rautha asked.
"The Lady Jessica herself," the Baron said.
"Is it not sublime?" Piter asked. "Hawat's mind will be so filled with this prospect it'll impair his function as a Mentat. He may even try to kill her." Piter frowned, then: "But I don't think he'll be able to carry it off."
"You don't want him to, eh?" the Baron asked.
"Don't distract me," Piter said. "While Hawat's occupied with the Lady Jessica, we'll divert him further with uprisings in a few garrison towns and the like. These will be put down. The Duke must believe he's gaining a measure of security. Then, when the moment is ripe, we'll signal Yueh and move in with our major force . . . ah . . . "
"Go ahead, tell him all of it," the Baron said.
"We'll move in strengthened by two legions of Sardaukar disguised in Harkonnen livery."
"Sardaukar!" Feyd-Rautha breathed. His mind focused on the dread Imperial troops, the killers without mercy, the soldier fanatics of the Padishah Emperor.
"You see how I trust you, Feyd," the Baron said. "No hint of this must ever reach another Great House, else the Landsraad might unite against the Imperial House and there'd be chaos."
"The main point," Piter said, "is this: since House Harkonnen is being used to do the Imperial dirty work, we've gained a true advantage. It's a dangerous advantage, to be sure, but if used cautiously, will bring House Harkonnen greater wealth than that of any other House in the Imperium."
"You have no idea how much wealth is involved, Feyd," the Baron said. "Not in your wildest imaginings. To begin, we'll have an irrevocable directorship in the CHOAM Company."
Feyd-Rautha nodded. Wealth was the thing. CHOAM was the key to wealth, each noble House dipping from the company's coffers whatever it could under the power of the directorships. Those CHOAM directorships—they were the real evidence of political power in the Imperium, passing with the shifts of voting strength within the Landsraad as it balanced itself against the Emperor and his supporters.
"The Duke Leto," Piter said, "may attempt to flee to the new Fremen scum along the desert's edge. Or he may try to send his family into that imagined security. But that path is blocked by one of His Majesty's agents—the planetary ecologist. You may remember him—Kynes."
"Feyd remembers him," the Baron said. "Get on with it."
"You do not drool very prettily, Baron," Piter said.
"Get on with it, I command you!" the Baron roared.
Piter shrugged. "If matters go as planned," he said, "House Harkonnen will have a subfief on Arrakis within a Standard year. Your uncle will have dispensation of that fief. His own personal agent will rule on Arrakis."
"More profits," Feyd-Rautha said.
"Indeed," the Baron said. And he thought: It's only just. We're the ones who tamed Arrakis . . .except for the few mongrel Fremen hiding in the skirts of the desert . . . and some tame smugglers bound to the planet almost as tightly as the native labor pool .
"And the Great Houses will know that the Baron has destroyed the Atreides," Piter said. "They will know."
"They will know," the Baron breathed.
"Loveliest of all," Piter said, "is that the Duke will know, too. He knows now. He can already feel the trap."
"It's true the Duke knows," the Baron said, and his voice held a note of sadness. "He could not help but know . . . more's the pity."
The Baron moved out and away from the globe of Arrakis. As he emerged from the shadows, his figure took on dimension—grossly and immensely fat. And with subtle bulges beneath folds of his dark robes to reveal that all this fat was sustained partly by portable suspensors harnessed to his flesh. He might weigh two hundred Standard kilos in actuality, but his feet would carry no more than fifty of them.
"I am hungry," the Baron rumbled, and he rubbed his protruding lips with a beringed hand, stared down at Feyd-Rautha through fat-enfolded eyes. "Send for food, my darling. We will eat before we retire."
Thus spoke St. Alia-of-the-Knife: "The Reverend Mother must combine the seductive wiles of a courtesan with the untouchable majesty of a virgin goddess, holding these attributes in tension so long as the powers of her youth endure. For when youth and beauty have gone, she will find that the place-between, once occupied by tension, has become a wellspring of cunning and resourcefulness."
—from "Muad'Dib, Family Commentaries" by the Princess Irulan
"Well, Jessica, what have you to say for yourself?" asked the Reverend Mother.
It was near sunset at Castle Caladan on the day of Paul's ordeal. The two women were alone in Jessica's morning room while Paul waited in the adjoining soundproofed Meditation Chamber.
Jessica stood facing the south windows. She saw and yet did not see the evening's banked colors across meadow and river. She heard and yet did not hear the Reverend Mother's question.
There had been another ordeal once—so many years ago. A skinny girl with hair the color of bronze, her body tortured by the winds of puberty, had entered the study of the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, Proctor Superior of the Bene Gesserit school on Wallach IX. Jessica looked down at her right hand, flexed the fingers, remembering the pain, the terror, the anger.
"Poor Paul," she whispered.
"I asked you a question, Jessica!" The old woman's voice was snappish, demanding.
"What? Oh . . . " Jessica tore her attention away from the past, faced the Reverend Mother, who sat with back to the stone wall between the two west windows. "What do you want me to say?"
"What do I want you to say? What do I want you to say?" The old voice carried a tone of cruel mimicry.
"So I had a son!" Jessica flared. And she knew she was being goaded into this anger deliberately.
"You were told to bear only daughters to the Atreides."
"It meant so much to him," Jessica pleaded.
"And you in your pride thought you could produce the Kwisatz Haderach!"
Jessica lifted her chin. "I sensed the possibility."
"You thought only of your Duke's desire for a son," the old woman snapped. "And his desires don't figure in this. An Atreides daughter could've been wed to a Harkonnen heir and sealed the breach. You've hopelessly complicated matters. We may lose both bloodlines now."
"You're not infallible," Jessica said. She braved the steady stare from the old eyes.
Presently, the old woman muttered: "What's done is done."
"I vowed never to regret my decision," Jessica said.
"How noble," the Reverend Mother sneered. "No regrets. We shall see when you're a fugitive with a price on your head and every man's hand turned against you to seek your life and the life of your son."
Jessica paled. "Is there no alternative?"
"Alternative? A Bene Gesserit should ask that?"
"I ask only what you see in the future with your superior abilities."
"I see in the future what I've seen in the past. You well know the pattern of our affairs, Jessica. The race knows its own mortality and fears stagnation of its heredity. It's in the bloodstream—the urge to mingle genetic strains without plan. The Imperium, the CHOAM Company, all the Great Houses, they are but bits of flotsam in the path of the flood."
"CHOAM," Jessica muttered. "I suppose it's already decided how they'll redivide the spoils of Arrakis."
"What is CHOAM but the weather vane of our times," the old woman said. "The Emperor and his friends now command fifty-nine point six-five per cent of the CHOAM directorship's votes. Certainly they smell profits, and likely as others smell those same profits his voting strength will increase. This is the pattern of history, girl."
"That's certainly what I need right now," Jessica said. "A review of history."
"Don't be facetious, girl! You know as well as I do what forces surround us. We've a three-point civilization: the Imperial Household balanced against the Federated Great Houses of the Landsraad, and between them, the Guild with its damnable monopoly on interstellar transport. In politics, the tripod is the most unstable of all structures. It'd be bad enough without the complication of a feudal trade culture which turns its back on most science."
Jessica spoke bitterly: "Chips in the path of the flood—and this chip here, this is the Duke Leto, and this one's his son, and this one's—"
"Oh, shut up, girl. You entered this with full knowledge of the delicate edge you walked."
" 'I am Bene Gesserit: I exist only to serve,' " Jessica quoted.
"Truth." the old woman said. "And all we can hope for now is to prevent this from erupting into general conflagration, to salvage what we can of the key bloodlines."
Jessica closed her eyes, feeling tears press out beneath the lids. She fought down the inner trembling, the outer trembling, the uneven breathing, the ragged pulse, the sweating of the palms. Presently, she said, "I'll pay for my own mistake."
"And your son will pay with you."
"I'll shield him as well as I'm able."
"Shield!" the old woman snapped. "You well know the weakness there! Shield your son too much, Jessica, and he'll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny."
Jessica turned away, looked out the window at the gathering darkness. "Is it really that terrible, this planet of Arrakis?"
"Bad enough, but not all bad. The Missionaria Protectiva has been in there and softened it up somewhat." The Reverend Mother heaved herself to her feet, straightened a fold in her gown. "Call the boy in here. I must be leaving soon."
"Must you?"
The old woman's voice softened. "Jessica, girl, I wish I could stand in your place and take your sufferings. But each of us must make her own path."
"I know."
"You're as dear to me as any of my own daughters, but I cannot let that interfere with duty."
"I understand . . . the necessity."
"What you did, Jessica, and why you did it—we both know. But kindness forces me to tell you there's little chance your lad will be the Bene Gesserit Totality. You mustn't let yourself hope too much."
Jessica shook tears from the corners of her eyes. It was an angry gesture. "You make me feel like a little girl again—reciting my first lesson." She forced the words out: " 'Humans must never submit to animals.' " A dry sob shook her. In a low voice, she said: "I've been so lonely."
"It should be one of the tests," the old woman said. "Humans are almost always lonely. Now summon the boy. He's had a long, frightening day. But he's had time to think and remember, and I must ask the other questions about these dreams of his."
Jessica nodded, went to the door of the Meditation Chamber, opened it. "Paul, come in now, please."
Paul emerged with a stubborn slowness. He stared at his mother as though she were a stranger. Wariness veiled his eyes when he glanced at the Reverend Mother, but this time he nodded to her, the nod one gives an equal. He heard his mother close the door behind him.
"Young man," the old woman said, "let's return to this dream business."
"What do you want?"
"Do you dream every night?"
"Not dreams worth remembering. I can remember every dream, but some are worth remembering and some aren't."
"How do you know the difference?"
"I just know it."
The old woman glanced at Jessica, back to Paul. "What did you dream last night? Was it worth remembering?"
"Yes." Paul closed his eyes. "I dreamed a cavern . . . and water . . . and a girl there—very skinny with big eyes. Her eyes are all blue, no whites in them. I talk to her and tell her about you, about seeing the Reverend Mother on Caladan." Paul opened his eyes.
"And the thing you tell this strange girl about seeing me, did it happen today?"
Paul thought about this, then: "Yes. I tell the girl you came and put a stamp of strangeness on me."
"Stamp of strangeness," the old woman breathed, and again she shot a glance at Jessica, returned her attention to Paul. "Tell me truly now, Paul, do you often have dreams of things that happen afterward exactly as you dreamed them?"
"Yes. And I've dreamed about that girl before."
"Oh? You know her?"
"I will know her."
"Tell me about her."
Again, Paul closed his eyes. "We're in a little place in some rocks where it's sheltered. It's almost night, but it's hot and I can see patches of sand out of an opening in the rocks. We're . . . waiting for something . . . for me to go meet some people. And she's frightened but trying to hide it from me, and I'm excited. And she says: 'Tell me about the waters of your homeworld, Usul.' " Paul opened his eyes. "Isn't that strange? My homeworld's Caladan. I've never even heard of a planet called Usul."
"Is there more to this dream?" Jessica prompted.
"Yes. But maybe she was calling me Usul," Paul said. "I just thought of that." Again, he closed his eyes. "She asks me to tell her about the waters. And I take her hand. And I say I'll tell her a poem. And I tell her the poem, but I have to explain some of the words—like beach and surf and seaweed and seagulls."
"What poem?" the Reverend Mother asked.
Paul opened his eyes. "It's just one of Gurney Halleck's tone poems for sad times."
Behind Paul Jessica began to recite:
"I remember salt smoke from a beach fire
And shadows under the pines—
Solid, clean . . . fixed—
Seagulls perched at the tip of land,
White upon green . . .
And a wind comes through the pines
To sway the shadows;
The seagulls spread their wings,
Lift
And fill the sky with screeches.
And I hear the wind
Blowing across our beach,
And the surf,
And I see that our fire
Has scorched the seaweed."
"That's the one," Paul said.
The old woman stared at Paul, then: "Young man, as a Proctor of the Bene Gesserit, I seek the Kwisatz Haderach, the male who truly can become one of us. Your mother sees this possibility in you, but she sees with the eyes of a mother. Possibility I see, too, but no more."
She fell silent and Paul saw that she wanted him to speak. He waited her out.
Presently, she said: "As you will, then. You've depths in you; that I'll grant."
"May I go now?" he asked.
"Don't you want to hear what the Reverend Mother can tell you about the Kwisatz Haderach?" Jessica asked.
"She said those who tried for it died."
"But I can help you with a few hints at why they failed," the Reverend Mother said.