Dune

How do we approach the study of Muad’Dib’s father? A man of surpassing warmth and surprising coldness was the Duke Leto Atreides. Yet, many facts open the way to this Duke: his abiding love for his Bene Gesserit lady; the dreams he held for his son; the devotion with which men served him. You see him there—a man snared by Destiny, a lonely figure with his light dimmed behind the glory of his son. Still, one must ask: What is the son but an extension of the father?

—FROM “MUAD’DIB, FAMILY COMMENTARIES”

BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN

Paul watched his father enter the training room, saw the guards take up stations outside. One of them closed the door. As always, Paul experienced a sense of presence in his father, someone totally here.

The Duke was tall, olive-skinned. His thin face held harsh angles warmed only by deep gray eyes. He wore a black working uniform with red armorial hawk crest at the breast. A silvered shield belt with the patina of much use girded his narrow waist.

The Duke said: “Hard at work, Son?”

He crossed to the ell table, glanced at the papers on it, swept his gaze around the room and back to Paul. He felt tired, filled with the ache of not showing his fatigue. I must use every opportunity to rest during the crossing to Arrakis, he thought. There’ll be no rest on Arrakis.

“Not very hard,” Paul said. “Everything’s so….” He shrugged.

“Yes. Well, tomorrow we leave. It’ll be good to get settled in our new home, put all this upset behind.”

Paul nodded, suddenly overcome by memory of the Reverend Mother’s words: “…for the father, nothing.”

“Father,” Paul said, “will Arrakis be as dangerous as everyone says?”

The Duke forced himself to the casual gesture, sat down on a corner of the table, smiled. A whole pattern of conversation welled up in his mind—the kind of thing he might use to dispel the vapors in his men before a battle. The pattern froze before it could be vocalized, confronted by the single thought:

This is my son.

“It’ll be dangerous,” he admitted.

“Hawat tells me we have a plan for the Fremen,” Paul said. And he wondered: Why don’t I tell him what that old woman said? How did she seal my tongue?

The Duke noted his son’s distress, said: “As always, Hawat sees the main chance. But there’s much more. I see also the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles—the CHOAM Company. By giving me Arrakis, His Majesty is forced to give us a CHOAM directorship…a subtle gain.”

“CHOAM controls the spice,” Paul said.

“And Arrakis with its spice is our avenue into CHOAM,” the Duke said. “There’s more to CHOAM than melange.”

“Did the Reverend Mother warn you?” Paul blurted. He clenched his fists, feeling his palms slippery with perspiration. The effort it had taken to ask that question.

“Hawat tells me she frightened you with warnings about Arrakis,” the Duke said. “Don’t let a woman’s fears cloud your mind. No woman wants her loved ones endangered. The hand behind those warnings was your mother’s. Take this as a sign of her love for us.”

“Does she know about the Fremen?”

“Yes, and about much more.”

“What?”

And the Duke thought: The truth could be worse than he imagines, but even dangerous facts are valuable if you’ve been trained to deal with them. And there’s one place where nothing has been spared for my son—dealing with dangerous facts. This must be leavened, though; he is young.

“Few products escape the CHOAM touch,” the Duke said. “Logs, donkeys, horses, cows, lumber, dung, sharks, whale fur—the most prosaic and the most exotic…even our poor pundi rice from Caladan. Anything the Guild will transport, the art forms of Ecaz, the machines of Richesse and Ix. But all fades before melange. A handful of spice will buy a home on Tupile. It cannot be manufactured, it must be mined on Arrakis. It is unique and it has true geriatric properties.”

“And now we control it?”

“To a certain degree. But the important thing is to consider all the Houses that depend on CHOAM profits. And think of the enormous proportion of those profits dependent upon a single product—the spice. Imagine what would happen if something should reduce spice production.”

“Whoever had stockpiled melange could make a killing,” Paul said. “Others would be out in the cold.”

The Duke permitted himself a moment of grim satisfaction, looking at his son and thinking how penetrating, how truly educated that observation had been. He nodded. “The Harkonnens have been stockpiling for more than twenty years.”

“They mean spice production to fail and you to be blamed.”

“They wish the Atreides name to become unpopular,” the Duke said. “Think of the Landsraad Houses that look to me for a certain amount of leadership—their unofficial spokesman. Think how they’d react if I were responsible for a serious reduction in their income. After all, one’s own profits come first. The Great Convention be damned! You can’t let someone pauperize you!” A harsh smile twisted the Duke’s mouth. “They’d look the other way no matter what was done to me.”

“Even if we were attacked with atomics?”

“Nothing that flagrant. No open defiance of the Convention. But almost anything else short of that…perhaps even dusting and a bit of soil poisoning.”

“Then why are we walking into this?”

“Paul!” The Duke frowned at his son. “Knowing where the trap is—that’s the first step in evading it. This is like single combat, Son, only on a larger scale—a feint within a feint within a feint…seemingly without end. The task is to unravel it. Knowing that the Harkonnens stockpile melange, we ask another question: Who else is stockpiling? That’s the list of our enemies.”

“Who?”

“Certain Houses we knew were unfriendly and some we’d thought friendly. We need not consider them for the moment because there is one other much more important: our beloved Padishah Emperor.”

Paul tried to swallow in a throat suddenly dry. “Couldn’t you convene the Landsraad, expose—”

“Make our enemy aware we know which hand holds the knife? Ah, now, Paul—we see the knife, now. Who knows where it might be shifted next? If we put this before the Landsraad it’d only create a great cloud of confusion. The Emperor would deny it. Who could gainsay him? All we’d gain is a little time while risking chaos. And where would the next attack come from?”

“All the Houses might start stockpiling spice.”

“Our enemies have a head start—too much of a lead to overcome.”

“The Emperor,” Paul said. “That means the Sardaukar.”

“Disguised in Harkonnen livery, no doubt,” the Duke said. “But the soldier fanatics nonetheless.”

“How can Fremen help us against Sardaukar?”

“Did Hawat talk to you about Salusa Secundus?”

“The Emperor’s prison planet? No.”

“What if it were more than a prison planet, Paul? There’s a question you never hear asked about the Imperial Corps of Sardaukar: Where do they come from?”

“From the prison planet?”

“They come from somewhere.”

“But the supporting levies the Emperor demands from—”

“That’s what we’re led to believe: they’re just the Emperor’s levies trained young and superbly. You hear an occasional muttering about the Emperor’s training cadres, but the balance of our civilization remains the same: the military forces of the Landsraad Great Houses on one side, the Sardaukar and their supporting levies on the other. And their supporting levies, Paul. The Sardaukar remain the Sardaukar.”

“But every report on Salusa Secundus says S.S. is a hell world!”

“Undoubtedly. But if you were going to raise tough, strong, ferocious men, what environmental conditions would you impose on them?”

“How could you win the loyalty of such men?”

“There are proven ways: play on the certain knowledge of their superiority, the mystique of secret covenant, the esprit of shared suffering. It can be done. It has been done on many worlds in many times.”

Paul nodded, holding his attention on his father’s face. He felt some revelation impending.

“Consider Arrakis,” the Duke said. “When you get outside the towns and garrison villages, it’s every bit as terrible a place as Salusa Secundus.”

Paul’s eyes went wide. “The Fremen!”

“We have there the potential of a corps as strong and deadly as the Sardaukar. It’ll require patience to exploit them secretly and wealth to equip them properly. But the Fremen are there…and the spice wealth is there. You see now why we walk into Arrakis, knowing the trap is there.”

“Don’t the Harkonnens know about the Fremen?”

“The Harkonnens sneered at the Fremen, hunted them for sport, never even bothered trying to count them. We know the Harkonnen policy with planetary populations—spend as little as possible to maintain them.”

The metallic threads in the hawk symbol above his father’s breast glistened as the Duke shifted his position. “You see?”

“We’re negotiating with the Fremen right now,” Paul said.

“I sent a mission headed by Duncan Idaho,” the Duke said. “A proud and ruthless man, Duncan, but fond of the truth. I think the Fremen will admire him. If we’re lucky, they may judge us by him: Duncan, the moral.”

“Duncan, the moral,” Paul said, “and Gurney the valorous.”

“You name them well,” the Duke said.

And Paul thought: Gurney’s one of those the Reverend Mother meant, a supporter of worlds—“…the valor of the brave.”

“Gurney tells me you did well in weapons today,” the Duke said.

“That isn’t what he told me.”

The Duke laughed aloud. “I figured Gurney to be sparse with his praise. He says you have a nicety of awareness—in his own words—of the difference between a blade’s edge and its tip.”

“Gurney says there’s no artistry in killing with the tip, that it should be done with the edge.”

“Gurney’s a romantic,” the Duke growled. This talk of killing suddenly disturbed him, coming from his son. “I’d sooner you never had to kill…but if the need arises, you do it however you can—tip or edge.” He looked up at the skylight, on which the rain was drumming.

Seeing the direction of his father’s stare, Paul thought of the wet skies out there—a thing never to be seen on Arrakis from all accounts—and this thought of skies put him in mind of the space beyond. “Are the Guild ships really big?” he asked.

The Duke looked at him. “This will be your first time off planet,” he said. “Yes, they’re big. We’ll be riding a Heighliner because it’s a long trip. A Heighliner is truly big. Its hold will tuck all our frigates and transports into a little corner—we’ll be just a small part of the ship’s manifest.”

“And we won’t be able to leave our frigates?”

“That’s part of the price you pay for Guild Security. There could be Harkonnen ships right alongside us and we’d have nothing to fear from them. The Harkonnens know better than to endanger their shipping privileges.”

“I’m going to watch our screens and try to see a Guildsman.”

“You won’t. Not even their agents ever see a Guildsman. The Guild’s as jealous of its privacy as it is of its monopoly. Don’t do anything to endanger our shipping privileges, Paul.”

“Do you think they hide because they’ve mutated and don’t look…human anymore?”

“Who knows?” The Duke shrugged. “It’s a mystery we’re not likely to solve. We’ve more immediate problems—among them: you.”

“Me?”

“Your mother wanted me to be the one to tell you, Son. You see, you may have Mentat capabilities.”

Paul stared at his father, unable to speak for a moment, then: “A Mentat? Me? But I….”

“Hawat agrees, Son. It’s true.”

“But I thought Mentat training had to start during infancy and the subject couldn’t be told because it might inhibit the early….” He broke off, all his past circumstances coming to focus in one flashing computation. “I see,” he said.

“A day comes,” the Duke said, “when the potential Mentat must learn what’s being done. It may no longer be done to him. The Mentat has to share in the choice of whether to continue or abandon the training. Some can continue; some are incapable of it. Only the potential Mentat can tell this for sure about himself.”

Paul rubbed his chin. All the special training from Hawat and his mother—the mnemonics, the focusing of awareness, the muscle control and sharpening of sensitivities, the study of languages and nuances of voices—all of it clicked into a new kind of understanding in his mind.

“You’ll be the Duke someday, Son,” his father said. “A Mentat Duke would be formidable indeed. Can you decide now…or do you need more time?”

There was no hesitation in his answer. “I’ll go on with the training.”

“Formidable indeed,” the Duke murmured, and Paul saw the proud smile on his father’s face. The smile shocked Paul: it had a skull look on the Duke’s narrow features. Paul closed his eyes, feeling the terrible purpose reawaken within him. Perhaps being a Mentat is terrible purpose, he thought.

But even as he focused on this thought, his new awareness denied it.