沙丘2

“《沙丘》的故事情节就跟制作电影的过程一样精细而复杂。”

——执行制片人监作者坦尼亚·拉朋特

在弗兰克·赫伯特的《沙丘》中，我最喜欢的一句话是“计中计”。它不仅概括了小说故事情节的复杂性和信息密度，而且准确地描述了电影制作过程。就像俄罗斯套娃一样，电影的制作过程中也有很多看不见的部分。你永远不知道有多少层嵌套，直到你着手把它们拆解开来。

作为《沙丘》的执行制片人，我参与了所有的制作会议和艺术决策。我的首要任务是将导演丹尼斯·维伦纽瓦的想象变为现实。在过去的五年里，这位法裔加拿大电影人一直都在和我一起工作生病时也不例外，先是《降临》，然后是《银翼杀手2049》，现在是《沙丘》。我近距离地目睹了他的创作过程，并一次又一次地见证了他制作独具一格、充满智慧又感人至深的科幻电影的决心。

改编弗兰克·赫伯特的小说一向是庞大艰巨的任务。如果你读过这部1965年出版的杰作，你一定对此了然于胸。《沙丘》讲述了保罗·厄崔迪的故事，他在郁郁葱葱的卡拉丹星球出生并长大，父亲是雷托·厄崔迪公爵，母亲杰西卡夫人是掌控着血统传承的贝尼·杰瑟里特姐妹会的成员。当皇帝——帝国的统治者——命令厄崔迪家族迁往一颗名为“厄拉科斯”，又被称作沙丘”的沙漠星球时，这位年轻继承人的平静生活结束了。这颗星球是已知宇宙中唯一可以找到并收集香料的地方。香料是一种精神药物，可以提供太空旅行所需的预见能力。帝国的香料贸易堪比真实世界的石油工业。

在过去的八十年里，厄拉科斯一直由冷酷无情的哈克南家族控，这一地位使得该家族非常富有。弗拉基米尔·哈克南男爵，一个肥胖而又残忍的人，不愿看到这颗星球落入他的死敌厄崔迪家之手，于是着手酝酿复仇计划。同时，当地凶猛的沙漠战士群“弗雷曼人”称保罗为“李桑·阿尔－盖布”，意思是“天外之音”，指的是贝尼·杰瑟里特在很久以前就种下的传说和迷信。

据这些信仰，年轻的保罗是一位救世主，将带领弗雷曼人获得救。这个男孩经历了他的第一次香料幻觉后，开始认为这个预言可是真的。雷托公爵试图与弗雷曼人结成联盟，但为时已晚：哈克男家族大举进攻，在皇帝的帮助下消灭了厄崔迪家族，而皇帝从一开始就参与了这个计划。巴罗和杰西卡摆脱了敌人，逃到沙漠深处，并在那里与弗雷曼人开始了新的旅程。

这的确是“计中计”。《沙丘》的故事情节就跟制作电影的过程一样精细而复杂。

大家好，我是甜茶，

之前经历了美军入侵（拉灯二代反攻美帝国本土的故事上），我们少数民族蛰伏了很长时间，终于等到了美帝大统领视察伊拉克……

经过我们少数民族老一辈的生活经验，还有我们科学的测算，最终在美帝联合军队到达的时候，

就是我们的超级沙尘暴气象武器出场的时候，

好了，可以上核弹了，什么，没有nuclear weapon？？？

快去联系我老家那边，打这份电报（纸老虎！纸老虎！纸老虎！），放心，那边的人绝对懂我们的意思……

几封DF快递收货，打完收工……

既然美帝大统领落到我的手里面了，

美帝皇位归我了，

大统领你闺女也归我了，

从此就是我们伊拉克反攻美国，把绿旗插遍整个美帝本土的故事了……

To the people whose labors go beyond ideas into the realm of “real materials” —to the dry-land ecologists, wherever they may be, in whatever time they work, this effort at prediction is dedicated in humility and admiration.

Frank Herbert

1965

Book One: DUNE

CHAPTER 1

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: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most special care that you locate Muad’Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was bom on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.

-from “Manual of Muad’Dib” by the Princess Irulan

IN THE week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul.

It was a warm night at Castle Caladan, and the ancient pile of stone that had served the Atreides family as home for twenty-six generations bore that cooledsweat feeling it acquired before a change in the weather.

The old woman was let in by the side door down the vaulted passage by Paul’s room and she was allowed a moment to peer in at him where he lay in his bed.

By the half-light of a suspensor lamp, dimmed and hanging near the floor, the awakened boy could see a bulky female shape at his door, standing one step ahead of his mother. The old woman was a witch shadow—hair like matted spiderwebs, hooded ’round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels.

“Is he not small for his age, Jessica?” the old woman asked. Her voice wheezed and twanged like an untuned baliset.

Paul’s mother answered in her soft contralto: “The Atreides are known to start late getting their growth, Your Reverence.”

“So I’ve heard, so I’ve heard,” wheezed the old woman. “Yet he’s already fifteen.”

“Yes, Your Reverence.”

“He’s awake and listening to us,” said the old woman. “Sly little rascal.” She chuckled. “But royalty has need of slyness. And if he’s really the Kwisatz Haderach … well….” Within the shadows of his bed, Paul held his eyes open to mere slits. Two bird-bright ovals—the eyes of the old woman—seemed to expand and glow as they stared into his.

“Sleep well, you sly little rascal,” said the old woman. “Tomorrow you’ll need all your faculties to meet my gom jabbar.” And she was gone, pushing his mother out, closing the door with a solid thump.

Paul lay awake wondering: What’s a gom jabbar? In all the upset during this time of change, the old woman was the strangest thing he had seen.

Your Reverence.

And the way she called his mother Jessica like a common serving wench instead of what she was—a Bene Gesserit Lady, a duke’s concubine and mother of the ducal heir.

Is a gom jabbar something of Arrakis I must know before we go there? he wondered.

He mouthed her strange words: Gomjabbar… Kwisatz Haderach.

There had been so many things to learn. Arrakis would be a place so different from Caladan that Paul’s mind whirled with the new knowledge.

Arrakis—Dune—Desert Planet.

Thufir Hawat, his father’s Master of Assassins, had explained it: their mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, had been on Arrakis eighty years, holding the planet in quasi-fief under a CHOAM Company contract to mine the geriatric spice, melange. Now the Harkonnens were leaving to be replaced by the House of Atreides in fief-complete-an apparent victory for the Duke Leto. Yet, Hawat had said, this appearance contained the deadliest peril, for the Duke Leto was popular among the Great Houses of the Landsraad.

“A popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful,” Hawat had said.

Arrakis—Dune—Desert Planet.

Paul fell asleep to dream of an Arrakeen cavern, silent people all around him moving in the dim light of glowglobes. It was solemn there and like a cathedral as he listened to a faint sound—the drip-drip-drip of water. Even while he remained in the dream, Paul knew he would remember it upon awakening. He always remembered the dreams that were predictions.

The dream faded.

Paul awoke to feel himself in the warmth of his bed—thinking … thinking.

This world of Castle Caladan, without play or companions his own age, perhaps did not deserve sadness in farewell. Dr. Yueh, his teacher, had hinted that the faufreluches class system was not rigidly guarded on Arrakis. The planet sheltered people who lived at the desert edge without caid or bashar to command them: will-o’-the-sand people called Fremen, marked down on no census of the Imperial Regate.

Arrakis-Dune-Desert Planet.

Paul sensed his own tensions, decided to practice one of the mind-body lessons his mother had taught him. Three quick breaths triggered the responses: he fell into the floating awareness … focusing the consciousness … aortal dilation … avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness … to be conscious by choice … blood enriched and swift-flooding the overload regions … one does not obtain food-safety-freedom by instinct alone … animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct … the animal destroys and does not produce … animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual … the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe … focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid … bodily integrity follows nerveblood flow according to the deepest awareness of cell needs … all things/cells/beings are impermanent … strive for flow-permanence within….

Over and over and over within Paul’s floating awareness the lesson rolled.

When dawn touched Paul’s window sill with yellow light, he sensed it through closed eyelids, opened them, hearing then the renewed bustle and hurry in the castle, seeing the familiar patterned beams of his bedroom ceiling.

The hall door opened and his mother peered in, hair like shaded bronze held with black ribbon at the crown, her oval face emotionless and green eyes staring solemnly.

“You’re awake,” she said. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes.” He studied the tallness of her, saw the hint of tension in her shoulders as she chose clothing for him from the closet racks. Another might have missed the tension, but she had trained him in the Bene Gesserit Way—in the minutiae of observation. She turned, holding a semiformal jacket for him. It carried the red Atreides hawk crest above the breast pocket.

“Hurry and dress,” she said. “Reverend Mother is waiting.”

“I dreamed of her once,” Paul said. “Who is she?”

“She was my teacher at the Bene Gesserit school. Now, she’s the Emperor’s Truthsayer. And Paul….” She hesitated. “You must tell her about your dreams.”

“I will. Is she the reason we got Arrakis?”

“We did not get Arrakis.” Jessica flicked dust from a pair of trousers, hung them with the jacket on the dressing stand beside his bed. “Don’t keep Reverend Mother waiting.” Paul sat up, hugged his knees. “What’s a gom jabbar?” Again, the training she had given him exposed her almost invisible hesitation, a nervous betrayal he felt as fear.

Jessica crossed to the window, flung wide the draperies, stared across the river orchards toward Mount Syubi. “You’ll learn about … the gom jabbar soon enough,” she said.

He heard the fear in her voice and wondered at it.

Jessica spoke without turning. “Reverend Mother is waiting in my morning room. Please hurry.” The Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam sat in a tapestried chair watching mother and son approach. Windows on each side of her overlooked the curving southern bend of the river and the green farmlands of the Atreides family holding, but the Reverend Mother ignored the view. She was feeling her age this morning, more than a little petulant. She blamed it on space travel and association with that abominable Spacing Guild and its secretive ways. But here was a mission that required personal attention from a Bene Gesserit-with-theSight. Even the Padishah Emperor’s Truthsayer couldn’t evade that responsibility when the duty call came.

Damn that Jessica! the Reverend Mother thought. If only she’d borne us a girl as she was ordered to do! Jessica stopped three paces from the chair, dropped a small curtsy, a gentle flick of left hand along the line of her skirt. Paul gave the short bow his dancing master had taught—the one used “when in doubt of another’s station.” The nuances of Paul’s greeting were not lost on the Reverend Mother. She said: “He’s a cautious one, Jessica.” Jessica’s hand went to Paul’s shoulder, tightened there. For a heartbeat, fear pulsed through her palm. Then she had herself under control. “Thus he has been taught, Your Reverence.” What does she fear? Paul wondered.

The old woman studied Paul in one gestalten flicker: face oval like Jessica’s, but strong bones … hair: the Duke’s black-black but with browline of the maternal grandfather who cannot be named, and that thin, disdainful nose; shape of directly staring green eyes: like the old Duke, the paternal grandfather who is dead.

Now, there was a man who appreciated the power ofbravura—even in death, the Reverend Mother thought.

“Teaching is one thing,” she said, “the basic ingredient is another. We shall see.” The old eyes darted a hard glance at Jessica. “Leave us. I enjoin you to practice the meditation of peace.” Jessica took her hand from Paul’s shoulder. “Your Reverence, I—”

“Jessica, you know it must be done.” Paul looked up at his mother, puzzled.

Jessica straightened. “Yes … of course.” Paul looked back at the Reverend Mother. Politeness and his mother’s obvious awe of this old woman argued caution. Yet he felt an angry apprehension at the fear he sensed radiating from his mother.

“Paul….” Jessica took a deep breath. “… this test you’re about to receive … it’s important to me.”

“Test?” He looked up at her.

“Remember that you’re a duke’s son,” Jessica said. She whirled and strode from the room in a dry swishing of skirt. The door closed solidly behind her.

Paul faced the old woman, holding anger in check. “Does one dismiss the Lady Jessica as though she were a serving wench?” A smile flicked the corners of the wrinkled old mouth. “The Lady Jessica was my serving wench, lad, for fourteen years at school.” She nodded. “And a good one, too. Now, you come here!” The command whipped out at him. Paul found himself obeying before he could think about it. Using the Voice on me, he thought. He stopped at her gesture, standing beside her knees.

“See this?” she asked. From the folds of her gown, she lifted a green metal cube about fifteen centimeters on a side. She turned it and Paul saw that one side was open—black and oddly frightening. No light penetrated that open blackness.

“Put your right hand in the box,” she said.

Fear shot through Paul. He started to back away, but the old woman said: “Is this how you obey your mother?” He looked up into bird-bright eyes.

Slowly, feeling the compulsions and unable to inhibit them, Paul put his hand into the box. He felt first a sense of cold as the blackness closed around his hand, then slick metal against his fingers and a prickling as though his hand were asleep.

A predatory look filled the old woman’s features. She lifted her right hand away from the box and poised the hand close to the side of Paul’s neck. He saw a glint of metal there and started to turn toward it.

“Stop!” she snapped.

Using the Voice again! He swung his attention back to her face.

“I hold at your neck the gom jabbar,” she said. “The gom jabbar, the highhanded enemy. It’s a needle with a drop of poison on its tip. Ah-ah! Don’t pull away or you’ll feel that poison.” Paul tried to swallow in a dry throat. He could not take his attention from the seamed old face, the glistening eyes, the pale gums around silvery metal teeth that flashed as she spoke.

“A duke’s son must know about poisons,” she said. “It’s the way of our times, eh? Musky, to be poisoned in your drink. Aumas, to be poisoned in your food. The quick ones and the slow ones and the ones in between. Here’s a new one for you: the gom jabbar. It kills only animals.” Pride overcame Paul’s fear. “You dare suggest a duke’s son is an animal?” he demanded.

“Let us say I suggest you may be human,” she said. “Steady! I warn you not to try jerking away. I am old, but my hand can drive this needle into your neck before you escape me.”

“Who are you?” he whispered. “How did you trick my mother into leaving me alone with you? Are you from the Harkonnens?”

“The Harkonnens? Bless us, no! Now, be silent.” A dry finger touched his neck and he stilled the involuntary urge to leap away.

“Good,” she said. “You pass the first test. Now, here’s the way of the rest of it: If you withdraw your hand from the box you die. This is the only rule. Keep your hand in the box and live. Withdraw it and die.” Paul took a deep breath to still his trembling. “If I call out there’ll be servants on you in seconds and you’ll die.”

“Servants will not pass your mother who stands guard outside that door.

Depend on it. Your mother survived this test. Now it’s your turn. Be honored.

We seldom administer this to men-children.” Curiosity reduced Paul’s fear to a manageable level. He heard truth in the old woman’s voice, no denying it. If his mother stood guard out there … if this were truly a test…. And whatever it was, he knew himself caught in it, trapped by that hand at his neck: the gom jabbar. He recalled the response from the Litany against Fear as his mother had taught him out of the Bene Gesserit rite.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. ” He felt calmness return, said: “Get on with it, old woman.”

“Old woman!” she snapped. “You’ve courage, and that can’t be denied.

Well, we shall see, sirra.” She bent close, lowered her voice almost to a whisper.

“You will feel pain in this hand within the box. Pain. But! Withdraw the hand and I’ll touch your neck with my gom jabbar—the death so swift it’s like the fall of the headsman’s axe. Withdraw your hand and the gom jabbar takes you.

Understand?”

“What’s in the box?”

“Pain.” He felt increased tingling in his hand, pressed his lips tightly together. How could this be a test? he wondered. The tingling became an itch.

The old woman said: “You’ve heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There’s an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.” The itch became the faintest burning. “Why are you doing this?” he demanded.

“To determine if you’re human. Be silent.” Paul clenched his left hand into a fist as the burning sensation increased in the other hand. It mounted slowly: heat upon heat upon heat … upon heat. He felt the fingernails of his free hand biting the palm. He tried to flex the fingers of the burning hand, but couldn’t move them.

“It burns,” he whispered.

“Silence!” Pain throbbed up his arm. Sweat stood out on his forehead. Every fiber cried out to withdraw the hand from that burning pit… but … the gom jabbar. Without turning his head, he tried to move his eyes to see that terrible needle poised beside his neck. He sensed that he was breathing in gasps, tried to slow his breaths and couldn’t.

Pain! His world emptied of everything except that hand immersed in agony, the ancient face inches away staring at him.

His lips were so dry he had difficulty separating them.

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.”

CHAPTER 7

With the Lady Jessica and Arrakis, the Bene Gesserit system of sowing implant- legends through the Missionaria Protectiva came to its full fruition.

The wisdom of seeding the known universe with a prophecy pattern for the protection of B.G. personnel has long been appreciated, but never have we seen a condition- ut-extremis with more ideal mating of person and preparation. The prophetic legends had taken on Arrakis even to the extent of adopted labels (including Reverend Mother, canto and respondu, and most of the Shari-a panoplia propheticus). And it is generally accepted now that the Lady Jessica’s latent abilities were grossly underestimated.

—from “Analysis: The Arrakeen Crisis”by the Princess Irulan

(private circulation: B.G.file number AR-81088587) ALL AROUND the Lady Jessica—piled in corners of the Arrakeen great hall, mounded in the open spaces—stood the packaged freight of their lives: boxes, trunks, cartons, cases—some partly unpacked. She could hear the cargo handlers from the Guild shuttle depositing another load in the entry.

Jessica stood in the center of the hall. She moved in a slow turn, looking up and around at shadowed carvings, crannies and deeply recessed windows. This giant anachronism of a room reminded her of the Sisters’ Hall at her Bene Gesserit school. But at the school the effect had been of warmth. Here, all was bleak stone.

Some architect had reached far back into history for these buttressed walls and dark hangings, she thought. The arched ceiling stood two stories above her with great crossbeams she felt sure had been shipped here to Arrakis across space at monstrous cost. No planet of this system grew trees to make such beams —unless the beams were imitation wood.

She thought not.

This had been the government mansion in the days of the Old Empire. Costs had been of less importance then. It had been before the Harkonnens and their new megalopolis of Carthag—a cheap and brassy place some two hundred kilometers northeast across the Broken Land. Leto had been wise to choose this place for his seat of government. The name, Arrakeen, had a good sound, filled with tradition. And this was a smaller city, easier to sterilize and defend.

Again there came the clatter of boxes being unloaded in the entry. Jessica sighed.

Against a carton to her right stood the painting of the Duke’s father.

Wrapping twine hung from it like a frayed decoration. A piece of the twine was still clutched in Jessica’s left hand. Beside the painting lay a black bull’s head mounted on a polished board. The head was a dark island in a sea of wadded paper. Its plaque lay flat on the floor, and the bull’s shiny muzzle pointed at the ceiling as though the beast were ready to bellow a challenge into this echoing room.

Jessica wondered what compulsion had brought her to uncover those two things first—the head and the painting. She knew there was something symbolic in the action. Not since the day when the Duke’s buyers had taken her from the school had she felt this frightened and unsure of herself.

The head and the picture.

They heightened her feelings of confusion. She shuddered, glanced at the slit windows high overhead. It was still early afternoon here, and in these latitudes the sky looked black and cold—so much darker than the warm blue of Caladan.

A pang of homesickness throbbed through her.

So far away, Caladan.

“Here we are!” The voice was Duke Leto’s.

She whirled, saw him striding from the arched passage to the dining hall. His black working uniform with red armorial hawk crest at the breast looked dusty and rumpled.

“I thought you might have lost yourself in this hideous place,”he said.

“It is a cold house,”she said. She looked at his tallness, at the dark skin that made her think of olive groves and golden sun on blue waters. There was woodsmoke in the gray of his eyes, but the face was predatory: thin, full of sharp angles and planes.

A sudden fear of him tightened her breast. He had become such a savage, driving person since the decision to bow to the Emperor’s command.

“The whole city feels cold,”she said.

“It’s a dirty, dusty little garrison town,”he agreed. “But we’ll change that.” He looked around the hall. “These are public rooms for state occasions. I’ve just glanced at some of the family apartments in the south wing. They’re much nicer.”He stepped closer, touched her arm, admiring her stateliness.

And again, he wondered at her unknown ancestry—a renegade House, perhaps? Some black-barred royalty? She looked more regal than the Emperor’s own blood.

Under the pressure of his stare, she turned half away, exposing her profile.

And he realized there was no single and precise thing that brought her beauty to focus. The face was oval under a cap of hair the color of polished bronze. Her eyes were set wide, as green and clear as the morning skies of Caladan. The nose was small, the mouth wide and generous. Her figure was good but scant: tall and with its curves gone to slimness.

He remembered that the lay sisters at the school had called her skinny, so his buyers had told him. But that description oversimplified. She had brought a regal beauty back into the Atreides line. He was glad that Paul favored her.

“Where’s Paul?”he asked.

“Someplace around the house taking his lessons with Yueh.”

“Probably in the south wing,”he said. “I thought I heard Yueh’s voice, but I couldn’t take time to look.”He glanced down at her, hesitating. “I came here only to hang the key of Caladan Castle in the dining hall.” She caught her breath, stopped the impulse to reach out to him. Hanging the key—there was finality in that action. But this was not the time or place for comforting. “I saw our banner over the house as we came in,”she said.

He glanced at the painting of his father. “Where were you going to hang that?”

“Somewhere in here.”

“No.”The word rang flat and final, telling her she could use trickery to persuade, but open argument was useless. Still, she had to try, even if the gesture served only to remind herself that she would not trick him.

“My Lord,”she said, “if you’d only….”

“The answer remains no. I indulge you shamefully in most things, not in this.

I’ve just come from the dining hall where there are—”

“My Lord! Please.”

“The choice is between your digestion and my ancestral dignity, my dear,” he said. “They will hang in the dining hall.” She sighed. “Yes, my Lord.”

“You may resume your custom of dining in your rooms whenever possible. I shall expect you at your proper position only on formal occasions.”

“Thank you, my Lord.”

“And don’t go all cold and formal on me! Be thankful that I never married you, my dear. Then it’d be your duty to join me at table for every meal.”

She held her face immobile, nodded.

“Hawat already has our own poison snooper over the dining table,”he said.

“There’s a portable in your room.”

“You anticipated this … disagreement,”she said.

“My dear, I think also of your comfort. I’ve engaged servants. They’re locals, but Hawat has cleared them—they’re Fremen all. They’ll do until our own people can be released from their other duties.”

“Can anyone from this place be truly safe?”

“Anyone who hates Harkonnens. You may even want to keep the head housekeeper: the Shadout Mapes.”

“Shadout,”Jessica said. “A Fremen title?”

“I’m told it means ‘well-dipper,’ a meaning with rather important overtones here. She may not strike you as a servant type, although Hawat speaks highly of her on the basis of Duncan’s report. They’re convinced she wants to serve— specifically that she wants to serve you.”

“Me?”

“The Fremen have learned that you’re Bene Gesserit,”he said. “There are legends here about the Bene Gesserit.” The Missionaria Protectiva, Jessica thought. No place escapes them.

“Does this mean Duncan was successful?”she asked. “Will the Fremen be our allies?”

“There’s nothing definite,”he said. “They wish to observe us for a while, Duncan believes. They did, however, promise to stop raiding our outlying villages during a truce period. That’s a more important gain than it might seem.

Hawat tells me the Fremen were a deep thorn in the Harkonnen side, that the extent of their ravages was a carefully guarded secret. It wouldn’t have helped for the Emperor to learn the ineffectiveness of the Harkonnen military.”

“A Fremen housekeeper,”Jessica mused, returning to the subject of the Shadout Mapes. “She’ll have the all-blue eyes.”

“Don’t let the appearance of these people deceive you,”he said. “There’s a deep strength and healthy vitality in them. I think they’ll be everything we need.”

“It’s a dangerous gamble,”she said.

“Let’s not go into that again,”he said.

She forced a smile. “We are committed, no doubt of that.”She went through the quick regimen of calmness—the two deep breaths, the ritual thought, then: “When I assign rooms, is there anything special I should reserve for you?”

“You must teach me someday how you do that,”he said, “the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters. It must be a Bene Gesserit thing.”

“It’s a female thing,”she said.

He smiled. “Well, assignment of rooms: make certain I have large office space next to my sleeping quarters. There’ll be more paper work here than on Caladan. A guard room, of course. That should cover it. Don’t worry about security of the house. Hawat’s men have been over it in depth.”

“I’m sure they have.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “And you might see that all our timepieces are adjusted for Arrakeen local. I’ve assigned a tech to take care of it. He’ll be along presently.”He brushed a strand of her hair back from her forehead. “I must return to the landing field now. The second shuttle’s due any minute with my staff reserves.”

“Couldn’t Hawat meet them, my Lord? You look so tired.”

“The good Thufir is even busier than I am. You know this planet’s infested with Harkonnen intrigues. Besides, I must try persuading some of the trained spice hunters against leaving. They have the option, you know, with the change of fief—and this planetologist the Emperor and the Landsraad installed as Judge of the Change cannot be bought. He’s allowing the opt. About eight hundred trained hands expect to go out on the spice shuttle and there’s a Guild cargo ship standing by.”

“My Lord….”She broke off, hesitating.

“Yes?” He will not be persuaded against trying to make this planet secure for us, she thought. And I cannot use my tricks on him.

“At what time will you be expecting dinner?”she asked.

That’s not what she was going to say, he thought Ah-h-h-h, my Jessica, would that we were somewhere else, anywhere away from this terrible place— alone, the two of us, without a care.

“I’ll eat in the officers’ mess at the field,”he said. “Don’t expect me until very late. And … ah, I’ll be sending a guardcar for Paul. I want him to attend our strategy conference.” He cleared his throat as though to say something else, then, without warning, turned and strode out, headed for the entry where she could hear more boxes being deposited. His voice sounded once from there, commanding and disdainful, the way he always spoke to servants when he was in a hurry: “The Lady Jessica’s in the Great Hall. Join her there immediately.” The outer door slammed.

Jessica turned away, faced the painting of Leto’s father. It had been done by the famed artist, Albe, during the Old Duke’s middle years. He was portrayed in matador costume with a magenta cape flung over his left arm. The face looked young, hardly older than Leto’s now, and with the same hawk features, the same gray stare. She clenched her fists at her sides, glared at the painting.

“Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!”she whispered.

“What are your orders, Noble Born?” It was a woman’s voice, thin and stringy.

Jessica whirled, stared down at a knobby, gray-haired woman in a shapeless sack dress of bondsman brown. The woman looked as wrinkled and desiccated as any member of the mob that had greeted them along the way from the landing field that morning. Every native she had seen on this planet, Jessica thought, looked prune dry and undernourished. Yet, Leto had said they were strong and vital. And there were the eyes, of course—that wash of deepest, darkest blue without any white—secretive, mysterious. Jessica forced herself not to stare.

The woman gave a stiff-necked nod, said: “I am called the Shadout Mapes, Noble Born. What are your orders?”

“You may refer to me as ‘my Lady,’ ”Jessica said. “I’m not noble born. I’m the bound concubine of the Duke Leto.” Again that strange nod, and the woman peered upward at Jessica with a sly questioning. “There’s a wife, then?”

“There is not, nor has there ever been. I am the Duke’s only … companion, the mother of his heir-designate.” Even as she spoke, Jessica laughed inwardly at the pride behind her words.

What was it St. Augustine said? she asked herself. “The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance. ”Yes—I am meeting more resistance lately. I could use a quiet retreat by myself.

A weird cry sounded from the road outside the house. It was repeated: “Soosoo-Sook! Soo-soo-Sook!”Then: “Ikhut-eigh! Ikhut-eigh!”And again: “Soosoo-Sook!”

“What is that?”Jessica asked. “I heard it several times as we drove through the streets this morning.”

“Only a water-seller, my Lady. But you’ve no need to interest yourself in such as they. The cistern here holds fifty thousand liters and it’s always kept full.”She glanced down at her dress. “Why, you know, my Lady, I don’t even have to wear my stillsuit here?”She cackled. “And me not even dead!” Jessica hesitated, wanting to question this Fremen woman, needing data to guide her. But bringing order of the confusion in the castle was more imperative.

Still, she found the thought unsettling that water was a major mark of wealth here.

“My husband told me of your title, Shadout,”Jessica said. “I recognized the word. It’s a very ancient word.”

“You know the ancient tongues then?”Mapes asked, and she waited with an odd intensity.

“Tongues are the Bene Gesserit’s first learning,”Jessica said. “I know the Bhotani Jib and the Chakobsa, all the hunting languages.” Mapes nodded. “Just as the legend says.” And Jessica wondered: Why do Iplayout this sham? But the Bene Gesserit ways were devious and compelling.

“I know the Dark Things and the ways of the Great Mother,”Jessica said.

She read the more obvious signs in Mapes’ actions and appearance, the petit betrayals. “Miseces prejia,”she said in the Chakobsa tongue. “Andral t’re pera! Trada cik buscakri miseces perakri—” Mapes took a backward step, appeared poised to flee.

“I know many things,”Jessica said. “I know that you have borne children, that you have lost loved ones, that you have hidden in fear and that you have done violence and will yet do more violence. I know many things.” In a low voice, Mapes said: “I meant no offense, my Lady.”

“You speak of the legend and seek answers,”Jessica said. “Beware the answers you may find. I know you came prepared for violence with a weapon in your bodice.”

“My Lady, I….”

“There’s a remote possibility you could draw my life’s blood,”Jessica said, “but in so doing you’d bring down more ruin than your wildest fears could imagine. There are worse things than dying, you know—even for an entire people.”

“My Lady!”Mapes pleaded. She appeared about to fall to her knees. “The weapon was sent as a gift to you should you prove to be the One.”

“And as the means of my death should I prove otherwise,”Jessica said. She waited in the seeming relaxation that made the Bene Gesserit-trained so terrifying in combat.

Now we see which way the decision tips, she thought.

Slowly, Mapes reached into the neck of her dress, brought out a dark sheath.

A black handle with deep finger ridges protruded from it. She took sheath in one hand and handle in the other, withdrew a milk-white blade, held it up. The blade seemed to shine and glitter with a light of its own. It was double-edged like a kindjal and the blade was perhaps twenty centimeters long.

“Do you know this, my Lady?”Mapes asked.

It could only be one thing, Jessica knew, the fabled crysknife of Arrakis, the blade that had never been taken off the planet, and was known only by rumor and wild gossip.

“It’s a crysknife,”she said.

“Say it not lightly,”Mapes said. “Do you know its meaning?” And Jessica thought: There was an edge to that question. Here’s the reason this Fremen has taken service with me, to ask that one question. My answer could precipitate violence or … what? She seeks an answer from me: the meaning of a knife. She’s called the Shadout in the Chakobsa tongue. Knife, that’s “Death Maker”in Chakobsa. She’s getting restive. I must answer now.

Delay is as dangerous as the wrong answer.

Jessica said: “It’s a maker—”

“Eighe-e-e-e-e-e!”Mapes wailed. It was a sound of both grief and elation.

She trembled so hard the knife blade sent glittering shards of reflection shooting around the room.

Jessica waited, poised. She had intended to say the knife was a maker of death and then add the ancient word, but every sense warned her now, all the deep training of alertness that exposed meaning in the most casual muscle twitch.

The key word was … maker.

Maker? Maker.

Still, Mapes held the knife as though ready to use it.

Jessica said: “Did you think that I, knowing the mysteries of the Great Mother, would not know the Maker?” Mapes lowered the knife. “My Lady, when one has lived with prophecy for so long, the moment of revelation is a shock.” Jessica thought about the prophecy—the Shari-a and all the panoplia propheticus, a Bene Gesserit of the Missionaria Protectiva dropped here long centuries ago—long dead, no doubt, but her purpose accomplished: the protective legends implanted in these people against the day of a Bene Gesserit’s need.

Well, that day had come.

Mapes returned knife to sheath, said: “This is an unfixed blade, my Lady.

Keep it near you. More than a week away from flesh and it begins to disintegrate. It’s yours, a tooth of shai-hulud, for as long as you live.” Jessica reached out her right hand, risked a gamble: “Mapes, you’ve sheathed that blade unblooded.” With a gasp, Mapes dropped the sheathed knife into Jessica’s hand, tore open the brown bodice, wailing: “Take the water of my life!” Jessica withdrew the blade from its sheath. How it glittered! She directed the point toward Mapes, saw a fear greater than death-panic come over the woman.

Poison in the point? Jessica wondered. She tipped up the point, drew a delicate scratch with the blade’s edge above Mapes’ left breast. There was a thick welling of blood that stopped almost immediately. Ultrafast coagulation, Jessica thought. A moisture-conserving mutation? She sheathed the blade, said: “Button your dress, Mapes.” Mapes obeyed, trembling. The eyes without whites stared at Jessica. “You are ours,”she muttered. “You are the One.” There came another sound of unloading in the entry. Swiftly, Mapes grabbed the sheathed knife, concealed it in Jessica’s bodice. “Who sees that knife must be cleansed or slain!”she snarled. “You know that, my Lady!” I know it now, Jessica thought.

The cargo handlers left without intruding on the Great Hall.

Mapes composed herself, said: “The uncleansed who have seen a crysknife may not leave Arrakis alive. Never forget that, my Lady. You’ve been entrusted with a crysknife.”She took a deep breath. “Now the thing must take its course. It cannot be hurried.”She glanced at the stacked boxes and piled goods around them. “And there’s work aplenty to while the time for us here.” Jessica hesitated. “The thing must take its course.”That was a specific catchphrase from the Missionaria Protectiva’s stock of incantations—The coming of the Reverend Mother to free you.

But I’m not a Reverend Mother, Jessica thought. And then: Great Mother! They planted that one here! This must be a hideous place! In matter-of-fact tones, Mapes said: “What’ll you be wanting me to do first, my Lady?” Instinct warned Jessica to match that casual tone. She said: “The painting of the Old Duke over there, it must be hung on one side of the dining hall. The bull’s head must go on the wall opposite the painting.” Mapes crossed to the bull’s head. “What a great beast it must have been to carry such a head,”she said. She stooped. “I’ll have to be cleaning this first, won’t I, my Lady?”

“No.”

“But there’s dirt caked on its horns.”

“That’s not dirt, Mapes. That’s the blood of our Duke’s father. Those horns were sprayed with a transparent fixative within hours after this beast killed the Old Duke.” Mapes stood up. “Ah, now!”she said.

“It’s just blood,”Jessica said. “Old blood at that. Get some help hanging these now. The beastly things are heavy.”

“Did you think the blood bothered me?”Mapes asked. “I’m of the desert and I’ve seen blood aplenty.”

“I … see that you have,”Jessica said.

“And some of it my own,”Mapes said. “More’n you drew with your puny scratch.”

“You’d rather I’d cut deeper?”

“Ah, no! The body’s water is scant enough ‘thout gushing a wasteful lot of it into the air. You did the thing right.” And Jessica, noting the words and manner, caught the deeper implications in the phrase, “the body’s water.”Again she felt a sense of oppression at the importance of water on Arrakis.

“On which side of the dining hall shall I hang which one of these pretties, my Lady?”Mapes asked.

Ever the practical one, this Mapes, Jessica thought. She said: “Use your own judgment, Mapes. It makes no real difference.”

“As you say, my Lady.”Mapes stooped, began clearing wrappings and twine from the head. “Killed an old duke, did you?”she crooned.

“Shall I summon a handler to help you?”Jessica asked.

“I’ll manage, my Lady.” Yes, she’ll manage, Jessica thought. There’s that about this Fremen creature: the drive to manage.

Jessica felt the cold sheath of the crysknife beneath her bodice, thought of the long chain of Bene Gesserit scheming that had forged another link here.

Because of that scheming, she had survived a deadly crisis. “It cannot be hurried,”Mapes had said. Yet there was a tempo of headlong rushing to this place that filled Jessica with foreboding. And not all the preparations of the Missionaria Protectiva nor Hawat’s suspicious inspection of this castellated pile of rocks could dispel the feeling.

“When you’ve finished hanging those, start unpacking the boxes,”Jessica said. “One of the cargo men at the entry has all the keys and knows where things should go. Get the keys and the list from him. If there are any questions I’ll be in the south wing.”

“As you will, my Lady,”Mapes said.

Jessica turned away, thinking: Hawat may have passed this residency as safe, but there’s something wrong about the place. I can feel it.

An urgent need to see her son gripped Jessica. She began walking toward the arched doorway that led into the passage to the dining hall and the family wings.

Faster and faster she walked until she was almost running.

Behind her, Mapes paused in clearing the wrappings from the bull’s head, looked at the retreating back. “She’s the One all right,”she muttered. “Poor thing.”

我们很快就听说，丹尼斯对《沙丘》的热情已经引起了努力争取该书版权的人的注意。

制片人玛丽·帕伦特和凯尔·博伊特都是弗兰克·赫伯特原著小说的粉丝，在他们加入传奇娱乐公司，分别担任全球制作副主席和创意事务执行副总裁之前，就已经开始求购这本书的电影版权了。

尽管这个故事是在20世纪60年代写就的，但它仍然有着极强的现实意义。”玛丽说，“从主题上讲，它描绘了全人类目前面临的挑战，例如生态崩溃的世界、腐败和不断移位的政治流沙。这些主题的中心，是一个年轻人努力驾驭我们的新世界的成长故事。”与赫伯特遗产管理会的沟通始于2012年。“我们开始了洽谈购买电影版权的征途，”凯尔回忆道，“我们在2016年加入了传奇公司，这让我们能够站在第一线，把制作这部电影列为当务之急。”几年来，各大电影公司一直在找弗兰克·赫伯特遗产管理会——由弗兰克·赫伯特的长子布莱恩·赫伯特、外孙拜伦·梅里特和孙女金·赫伯特管理——商谈购买《沙丘》的电影版权。

2015年2月，布莱恩和他的妻子扬前往洛杉矶，与传奇影业会面。“会议进行得非常顺利，”布莱恩回忆道，“但其他电影公司也有兴趣，遗产管理会要做出一项重要决定，这个决定将对’沙丘系列电影的未来产生至关重要的影响。”次年9月，当丹尼斯表达了他毕生的愿望——执导一部改编自《沙丘》小说的电影时，赫伯特遗产管理会心动了。“我们决定不和他直接联系，因为当时我们的工作室还没有建好。”布莱恩解释道。

CHAPTER 9

Many have marked the speed with which Muad‘Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed.

For the others, we can say that Muad’Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn.

And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad‘Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.

—from “The Humanity of Muad’Dib”by thePrincess Irulan

PAUL LAY on the bed feigning sleep. It had been easy to palm Dr. Yueh’s sleeping tablet, to pretend to swallow it. Paul suppressed a laugh. Even his mother had believed him asleep. He had wanted to jump up and ask her permission to go exploring the house, but had realized she wouldn’t approve.

Things were too unsettled yet. No. This way was best.

If I slip out without asking I haven’t disobeyed orders. And Iwill stay in the house where it’s safe.

He heard his mother and Yueh talking in the other room. Their words were indistinct—something about the spice … the Harkonnens. The conversation rose and fell.

Paul’s attention went to the carved headboard of his bed—a false headboard attached to the wall and concealing the controls for this room’s functions. A leaping fish had been shaped on the wood with thick brown waves beneath it. He knew if he pushed the fish’s one visible eye that would turn on the room’s suspensor lamps. One of the waves, when twisted, controlled ventilation.

Another changed the temperature.

Quietly, Paul sat up in bed. A tall bookcase stood against the wall to his left.

It could be swung aside to reveal a closet with drawers along one side. The handle on the door into the hall was patterned on an ornithopter thrust bar.

It was as though the room had been designed to entice him.

The room and this planet.

He thought of the filmbook Yueh had shown him—“Arrakis: His Imperial Majesty’s Desert Botanical Testing Station.”It was an old filmbook from before discovery of the spice. Names flitted through Paul’s mind, each with its picture imprinted by the book’s mnemonic pulse: saguaro, burro bush, date palm, sand verbena, evening primrose, barrel cactus, incense bush, smoke tree, creosote bush … kit fox, desert hawk, kangaroo mouse….

Names and pictures, names and pictures from man’s terranic past—and many to be found now nowhere else in the universe except here on Arrakis.

So many new things to learn about—the spice.

And the sandworms.

A door closed in the other room. Paul heard his mother’s footsteps retreating down the hall. Dr. Yueh, he knew, would find something to read and remain in the other room.

Now was the moment to go exploring.

Paul slipped out of the bed, headed for the bookcase door that opened into the closet. He stopped at a sound behind him, turned. The carved headboard of the bed was folding down onto the spot where he had been sleeping. Paul froze, and immobility saved his life.

From behind the headboard slipped a tiny hunter-seeker no more than five centimeters long. Paul recognized it at once—a common assassination weapon that every child of royal blood learned about at an early age. It was a ravening sliver of metal guided by some near-by hand and eye. It could burrow into moving flesh and chew its way up nerve channels to the nearest vital organ.

The seeker lifted, swung sideways across the room and back.

Through Paul’s mind flashed the related knowledge, the hunter-seeker limitations: Its compressed suspensor field distorted the room to reflect his target, the operator would be relying on motion—anything that moved. A shield could slow a hunter, give time to destroy it, but Paul had put aside his shield on the bed. Lasguns would knock them down, but lasguns were expensive and notoriously cranky of maintenance—and there was always the peril of explosive pyrotechnics if the laser beam intersected a hot shield. The Atreides relied on their body shields and their wits.

Now, Paul held himself in near catatonic immobility, knowing he had only his wits to meet this threat.

The hunter-seeker lifted another half meter. It rippled through the slatted light from the window blinds, back and forth, quartering the room.

I must try to grab it, he thought. The suspensor field will make it slippery on the bottom. I must grip tightly.

The thing dropped a half meter, quartered to the left, circled back around the bed. A faint humming could be heard from it.

Who is operating that thing? Paul wondered. It has to be someone near. I could shout for Yueh, but it would take him the instant the door opened.

The hall door behind Paul creaked. A rap sounded there. The door opened.

The hunter-seeker arrowed past his head toward the motion.

Paul’s right hand shot out and down, gripping the deadly thing. It hummed and twisted in his hand, but his muscles were locked on it in desperation. With a violent turn and thrust, he slammed the thing’s nose against the metal doorplate.

He felt the crunch of it as the nose eye smashed and the seeker went dead in his hand.

Still, he held it—to be certain.

Paul’s eyes came up, met the open stare of total blue from the Shadout Mapes.

“Your father has sent for you,”she said. “There are men in the hall to escort you.” Paul nodded, his eyes and awareness focusing on this odd woman in a sacklike dress of bondsman brown. She was looking now at the thing clutched in his hand.

“I’ve heard of suchlike,”she said. “It would’ve killed me, not so?” He had to swallow before he could speak. “I … was its target.”

“But it was coming for me.”

“Because you were moving.”And he wondered: Who is this creature? “Then you saved my life,”she said.

“I saved both our lives.”

“Seems like you could’ve let it have me and made your own escape,”she said.

“Who are you?”he asked.

“The Shadout Mapes, housekeeper.” How did you know where to find me?”

“Your mother told me. I met her at the stairs to the weirding room down the hall.”She pointed to her right. “Your father’s men are still waiting.” Those will be Hawat’s men, he thought. We must find the operator of this thing.

“Go to my father’s men,”he said. “Tell them I’ve caught a hunter-seeker in the house and they’re to spread out and find the operator. Tell them to seal off the house and its grounds immediately. They’ll know how to go about it. The operator’s sure to be a stranger among us.” And he wondered: Could it be this creature? But he knew it wasn’t. The seeker had been under control when she entered.

“Before I do your bidding, manling,”Mapes said, “I must cleanse the way between us. You’ve put a water burden on me that I’m not sure I care to support.

But we Fremen pay our debts—be they black debts or white debts. And it’s known to us that you’ve a traitor in your midst. Who it is, we cannot say, but we’re certain sure of it. Mayhap there’s the hand guided that flesh-cutter.” Paul absorbed this in silence: a traitor. Before he could speak, the odd woman whirled away and ran back toward the entry.

He thought to call her back, but there was an air about her that told him she would resent it. She’d told him what she knew and now she was going to do his bidding. The house would be swarming with Hawat’s men in a minute.

His mind went to other parts of that strange conversation: weirding room. He looked to his left where she had pointed. We Fremen. So that was a Fremen. He paused for the mnemonic blink that would store the pattern of her face in his memory-prune-wrinkled features darkly browned, blue-on-blue eyes without any white in them. He attached the label: The Shadout Mapes.

Still gripping the shattered seeker, Paul turned back into his room, scooped up his shield belt from the bed with his left hand, swung it around his waist and buckled it as he ran back out and down the hall to the left.

She’d said his mother was someplace down here—stairs … a weirding room.

CHAPTER 5

YUEH (ya’ē), Wellington (weling- tun), Stdrd 10,082-10, 191; medical doctor of the Suk School (grd Stdrd 10, 112); md: WannaMarcus, B. G. (Stdrd 10,092-10,186?); chiefly noted as betrayer of Duke Leto Atreides.(Cf: Bibliography, Appendix VII Imperial Conditioning and Betrayal, The.)

—from“Dictionary of Muad’Dib”by thePrincess Irulan

ALTHOUGH HE heard Dr. Yueh enter the training room, noting the stiff deliberation of the man’s pace, Paul remained stretched out face down on the exercise table where the masseuse had left him. He felt deliciously relaxed after the workout with Gurney Halleck.

“You do look comfortable,”said Yueh in his calm, high-pitched voice.

Paul raised his head, saw the man’s stick figure standing several paces away, took in at a glance the wrinkled black clothing, the square block of a head with purple lips and drooping mustache, the diamond tattoo of Imperial Conditioning on his forehead, the long black hair caught in the Suk School’s silver ring at the left shoulder.

“You’ll be happy to hear we haven’t time for regular lessons today,”Yueh said. “Your father will be along presently.” Paul sat up.

“However, I’ve arranged for you to have a filmbook viewer and several lessons during the crossing to Arrakis.”

“Oh.” Paul began pulling on his clothes. He felt excitement that his father would be coming. They had spent so little time together since the Emperor’s command to take over the fief of Arrakis.

Yueh crossed to the ell table, thinking: How the boy has filled out these past few months. Such a waste! Oh, such a sad waste. And he reminded himself: I must not falter. What I do is done to be certain my Wanna no longer can be hurt by the Harkonnen beasts.

Paul joined him at the table, buttoning his jacket. “What’ll I be studying on the way across?”

“Ah-h-h, the terranic life forms of Arrakis. The planet seems to have opened its arms to certain terranic life forms. It’s not clear how. I must seek out the planetary ecologist when we arrive—a Dr. Kynes—and offer my help in the investigation.” And Yueh thought: What am I saying? I play the hypocrite even with myself.

“Will there be something on the Fremen?”Paul asked.

“The Fremen?”Yueh drummed his fingers on the table, caught Paul staring at the nervous motion, withdrew his hand.

“Maybe you have something on the whole Arrakeen population,”Paul said.

“Yes, to be sure,”Yueh said. “There are two general separations of the people—Fremen, they are one group, and the others are the people of the graben, the sink, and the pan. There’s some intermarriage, I’m told. The women of pan and sink villages prefer Fremen husbands; their men prefer Fremen wives. They have a saying: ‘Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.’ ”

“Do you have pictures of them?”

“I’ll see what I can get you. The most interesting feature, of course, is their eyes—totally blue, no whites in them.”

“Mutation?”

“No; it’s linked to saturation of the blood with melange.”

“The Fremen must be brave to live at the edge of that desert.”

“By all accounts,”Yueh said. “They compose poems to their knives. Their women are as fierce as the men. Even Fremen children are violent and dangerous. You’ll not be permitted to mingle with them, I daresay.” Paul stared at Yueh, finding in these few glimpses of the Fremen a power of words that caught his entire attention. What a people to win as allies! “And the worms?”Paul asked.

“What?”

“I’d like to study more about the sandworms.”

“Ah-h-h, to be sure. I’ve a filmbook on a small specimen, only one hundred and ten meters long and twenty-two meters in diameter. It was taken in the northern latitudes. Worms of more than four hundred meters in length have been recorded by reliable witnesses, and there’s reason to believe even larger ones exist.” Paul glanced down at a conical projection chart of the northern Arrakeen latitudes spread on the table. “The desert belt and south polar regions are marked uninhabitable. Is it the worms?”

“And the storms.”

“But any place can be made habitable.”

“If it’s economically feasible,”Yueh said. “Arrakis has many costly perils.” He smoothed his drooping mustache. “Your father will be here soon. Before I go, I’ve a gift for you, something I came across in packing.”He put an object on the table between them—black, oblong, no larger than the end of Paul’s thumb.

Paul looked at it. Yueh noted how the boy did not reach for it, and thought: How cautious he is.

“It’s a very old Orange Catholic Bible made for space travelers. Not a filmbook, but actually printed on filament paper. It has its own magnifier and electrostatic charge system.”He picked it up, demonstrated. “The book is held closed by the charge, which forces against spring-locked covers. You press the edge—thus, and the pages you’ve selected repel each other and the book opens.”

“It’s so small.”

“But it has eighteen hundred pages. You press the edge—thus, and so … and the charge moves ahead one page at a time as you read. Never touch the actual pages with your fingers. The filament tissue is too delicate.”He closed the book, handed it to Paul. “Try it.” Yueh watched Paul work the page adjustment, thought: I salve my own conscience. I give him the surcease of religion before betraying him. Thus may I say to myself that he has gone where I cannot go.

“This must’ve been made before filmbooks,”Paul said.

“It’s quite old. Let it be our secret, eh? Your parents might think it too valuable for one so young.” And Yueh thought: His mother would surely wonder at my motives.

“Well….”Paul closed the book, held it in his hand. “If it’s so valuable….”

“Indulge an old man’s whim,”Yueh said. “It was given to me when I was very young.”And he thought: I must catch his mind as well as his cupidity.

“Open it to four-sixty-seven K”alima—where it says: ‘From water does all life begin.’ There’s a slight notch on the edge of the cover to mark the place.” Paul felt the cover, detected two notches, one shallower than the other. He pressed the shallower one and the book spread open on his palm, its magnifier sliding into place.

“Read it aloud,”Yueh said.

Paul wet his lips with his tongue, read: ‘Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us? What is there around us that we cannot—”

“Stop it!”Yueh barked.

Paul broke off, stared at him.

Yueh closed his eyes, fought to regain composure. What perversity caused the book to open at my Wanna’s favorite passage? He opened his eyes, saw Paul staring at him.

“Is something wrong?”Paul asked.

“I’m sorry,”Yueh said. “That was … my … dead wife’s favorite passage.

It’s not the one I intended you to read. It brings up memories that are … painful.”

“There are two notches,”Paul said.

Of course, Yueh thought. Wanna marked her passage. His fingers are more sensitive than mine andfoundher mark. It was an accident, no more.

“You may find the book interesting,”Yueh said. “It has much historical truth in it as well as good ethical philosophy.” Paul looked down at the tiny book in his palm—such a small thing. Yet, it contained a mystery … something had happened while he read from it. He had felt something stir his terrible purpose.

“Your father will be here any minute,”Yueh said. “Put the book away and read it at your leisure.” Paul touched the edge of it as Yueh had shown him. The book sealed itself.

He slipped it into his tunic. For a moment there when Yueh had barked at him, Paul had feared the man would demand the book’s return.

“I thank you for the gift, Dr. Yueh,”Paul said, speaking formally. “It will be our secret. If there is a gift of favor you wish from me, please do not hesitate to ask.”

“I … need for nothing,”Yueh said.

And he thought: Why do I stand here torturing myself? And torturing this poor lad … though he does not know it. Oeyh! Damn those Harkonnen beasts! Why did they choose mefortheir abomination?