Dune 14 - Heretics Of Dune

Heretics of Dune

Frank Herbert

April 1984

When I was writing Dune

. . . there was no room in my mind for concerns about the book's success or

failure. I was concerned only with the writing. Six years of research had

preceded the day I sat down to put the story together, and the interweaving of

the many plot layers I had planned required a degree of concentration I had

never before experienced.

It was to be a story exploring the myth of the Messiah.

It was to produce another view of a human-occupied planet as an energy machine.

It was to penetrate the interlocked workings of politics and economics.

It was to be an examination of absolute prediction and its pitfalls.

It was to have an awareness drug in it and tell what could happen through

dependence on such a substance.

Potable water was to be an analog for oil and for water itself, a substance

whose supply diminishes each day.

It was to be an ecological novel, then, with many overtones, as well as a story

about people and their human concerns with human values, and I had to monitor

each of these levels at every stage in the book.

There wasn't room in my head to think about much else.

Following the first publication, reports from the publishers were slow and, as

it turned out, inaccurate. The critics had panned it. More than twelve

publishers had turned it down before publication. There was no advertising.

Something was happening out there, though.

For two years, I was swamped with bookstore and reader complaints that they

could not get the book. The Whole Earth Catalog praised it. I kept getting

these telephone calls from people asking me if I were starting a cult.

The answer: "God no!"

What I'm describing is the slow realization of success. By the time the first

three Dune books were completed, there was little doubt that this was a popular

work -- one of the most popular in history, I am told, with some ten million

copies sold worldwide. Now the most common question people ask is: "What does

this success mean to you?"

It surprises me. I didn't expect failure either. It was a work and I did it.

Parts of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune were written before Dune was

completed. They fleshed out more in the writing, but the essential story

remained intact. I was a writer and I was writing. The success meant I could

spend more time writing.

Looking back on it, I realize I did the right thing instinctively. You don't

write for success. That takes part of your attention away from the writing. If

you're really doing it, that's all you're doing: writing.

There's an unwritten compact between you and the reader. If someone enters a

bookstore and sets down hard earned money (energy) for your book, you owe that

person some entertainment and as much more as you can give.

That was really my intention all along.

Frank Herbert

Most discipline is hidden discipline, designed not to liberate but to limit. Do

not ask Why? Be cautious with How? Why? leads inexorably to paradox. How?

traps you in a universe of cause and effect. Both deny the infinite.

-The Apocrypha of Arrakis

"Taraza told you, did she not, that we have gone through eleven of these Duncan

Idaho gholas? This one is the twelfth."

The old Reverend Mother Schwangyu spoke with deliberate bitterness as she looked

down from the third-story parapet at the lone child playing on the enclosed

lawn. The planet Gammu's bright midday sunlight bounced off the white courtyard

walls filling the area beneath them with brilliance as though a spotlight had

been directed onto the young ghola.

Gone through! the Reverend Mother Lucilla thought. She allowed herself a short

nod, thinking how coldly impersonal were Schwangyu's manner and choice of words.

We have used up our supply; send us more!

The child on the lawn appeared to be about twelve standard years of age, but

appearance could be deceptive with a ghola not yet awakened to his original

memories. The child took that moment to look up at the watchers above him. He

was a sturdy figure with a direct gaze that focused intently from beneath a

black cap of karakul hair. The yellow sunlight of early spring cast a small

shadow at his feet. His skin was darkly tanned but a slight movement of his

body shifted his blue singlesuit, revealing pale skin at the left shoulder.

"Not only are these gholas costly but they are supremely dangerous to us,"

Schwangyu said. Her voice came out flat and emotionless, all the more powerful

because of that. It was the voice of a Reverend Mother Instructor speaking down

to an acolyte and it emphasized for Lucilla that Schwangyu was one of those who

protested openly against the ghola project.

Taraza had warned: "She will try to win you over."

"Eleven failures are enough," Schwangyu said.

Lucilla glanced at Schwangyu's wrinkled features, thinking suddenly: Someday I

may be old and wizened, too. And perhaps I will be a power in the Bene Gesserit

as well.

Schwangyu was a small woman with many age marks earned in the Sisterhood's

affairs. Lucilla knew from her own

assignment-studies that Schwangyu's conventional black robe concealed a skinny

figure that few other than her acolyte dressers and the males bred to her had

ever seen. Schwangyu's mouth was wide, the lower lip constricted by the age

lines that fanned into a jutting chin. Her manner tended to a curt abruptness

that the uninitiated often interpreted as anger. The commander of the Gammu

Keep was one who kept herself to herself more than most Reverend Mothers.

Once more, Lucilla wished she knew the entire scope of the ghola project.

Taraza had drawn the dividing line clearly enough, though: "Schwangyu is not to

be trusted where the safety of the ghola is concerned."

"We think the Tleilaxu themselves killed most of the previous eleven," Schwangyu

said. "That in itself should tell us something."

Matching Schwangyu's manner, Lucilla adopted a quiet attitude of almost

emotionless waiting. Her manner said: "I may be much younger than you,

Schwangyu, but I, too, am a full Reverend Mother." She could feel Schwangyu's

gaze.

Schwangyu had seen the holos of this Lucilla but the woman in the flesh was more

disconcerting. An Imprinter of the best training, no doubt of it. Blue-in-blue

eyes uncorrected by any lens gave Lucilla a piercing expression that went with

her long oval face. With the hood of her black aba robe thrown back as it was

now, brown hair was revealed, drawn into a tight barette and then cascading down

her back. Not even the stiffest robe could completely hide Lucilla's ample

breasts. She was from a genetic line famous for its motherly nature and she

already had borne three children for the Sisterhood, two by the same sire. Yes

-- a brown-haired charmer with full breasts and a motherly disposition.

"You say very little," Schwangyu said. "This tells me that Taraza has warned

you against me."

"Do you have reason to believe assassins will try to kill this twelfth ghola?"

Lucilla asked.

"They already have tried."

Strange how the word "heresy" came to mind when thinking of Schwangyu, Lucilla

thought. Could there be heresy among the Reverend Mothers? The religious

overtones of the word seemed out of place in a Bene Gesserit context. How could

there be heretical movements among people who held a profoundly manipulative

attitude toward all things religious?

Lucilla shifted her attention down to the ghola, who took this moment to perform

a series of cartwheels that brought him around full circle until he once more

stood looking up at the two observers on the parapet.

"How prettily he performs!" Schwangyu sneered. The old voice did not completely

mask an underlying violence.

Lucilla glanced at Schwangyu. Heresy. Dissidence was not the proper word.

Opposition did not cover what could be sensed in the older woman. This was

something that could shatter the Bene Gesserit. Revolt against Taraza, against

the Reverend Mother Superior? Unthinkable! Mother Superiors were cast in the

mold of monarch. Once Taraza had accepted counsel and advice and then made her

decision, the Sisters were committed to obedience.

"This is no time to be creating new problems!" Schwangyu said.

Her meaning was clear. People from the Scattering were coming back and the

intent of some among those Lost Ones threatened the Sisterhood. Honored Matres!

How like "Reverend Mothers" the words sounded.

Lucilla ventured an exploratory sally: "So you think we should be concentrating

on the problem of those Honored Matres from the Scattering?"

"Concentrating? Hah! They do not have our powers. They do not show good

sense. And they do not have mastery of melange! That is what they want from

us, our spice knowledge."

"Perhaps," Lucilla agreed. She was not willing to concede this on the scanty

evidence.

"Mother Superior Taraza has taken leave of her senses to dally with this ghola

thing now," Schwangyu said.

Lucilla remained silent. The ghola project definitely had touched an old nerve

among the Sisters. The possibility, even remote, that they might arouse another

Kwisatz Haderach sent shudders of angry fear through the ranks. To meddle with

the worm-bound remnants of the Tyrant! That was dangerous in the extreme.

"We should never take that ghola to Rakis," Schwangyu muttered. "Let sleeping

worms lie."

Lucilla gave her attention once more to the ghola-child. He had turned his back

on the high parapet with its two Reverend Mothers, but something about his

posture said he knew they discussed him and he awaited their response.

"You doubtless realize that you have been called in while he is yet too young,"

Schwangyu said.

"I have never heard of the deep imprinting on one that young," Lucilla agreed.

She allowed something softly self-mocking in her tone, a thing she knew

Schwangyu would hear and misinterpret. The management of procreation and all of

its attendant necessities, that was the Bene Gesserit ultimate specialty. Use

love but avoid it, Schwangyu would be thinking now. The Sisterhood's analysts

knew the roots of love. They had examined this quite early in their development

but had never dared breed it out of those they influenced. Tolerate love but

guard against it, that was the rule. Know that it lay deep within the human

genetic makeup, a safety net to insure continuation of the species. You used it

where necessary, imprinting selected individuals (sometimes upon each other) for

the Sisterhood's purposes, knowing then that such individuals would be linked by

powerful bonding lines not readily available to the common awareness. Others

might observe such links and plot the consequences but the linked ones would

dance to unconscious music.

"I was not suggesting that it's a mistake to imprint him," Schwangyu said,

misreading Lucilla's silence.

"We do what we are ordered to do," Lucilla chided. Let Schwangyu make of that

what she would.

"Then you do not object to taking the ghola to Rakis," Schwangyu said. "I

wonder if you would continue such unquestioning obedience if you knew the full

story?"

Lucilla inhaled a deep breath. Was the entire design for the Duncan Idaho

gholas to be shared with her now?

"There is a female child named Sheeana Brugh on Rakis," Schwangyu said. "She

can control the giant worms."

Lucilla concealed her alertness. Giant worms. Not Shai-hulud. Not Shaitan.

Giant worms. The sandrider predicted by the Tyrant had appeared at last!

"I do not make idle chatter," Schwangyu said when Lucilla continued silent.

Indeed not, Lucilla thought. And you call a thing by its descriptive label, not

by the name of its mystical import. Giant worms. And you're really thinking

about the Tyrant, Leto II, whose endless dream is carried as a pearl of

awareness in each of those worms. Or so we are led to believe.

Schwangyu nodded toward the child on the lawn below them. "Do you think their

ghola will be able to influence the girl who controls the worms?"

We're peeling away the skin at last, Lucilla thought. She said: "I have no

need for the answer to such a question."

"You are a cautious one," Schwangyu said.

Lucilla arched her back and stretched. Cautious? Yes, indeed! Taraza had

warned her: "Where Schwangyu is concerned, you must act with extreme caution

but with speed. We have a very narrow window of time within which we can

succeed."

Succeed at what? Lucilla wondered. She glanced sideways at Schwangyu. "I

don't see how the Tleilaxu could succeed in killing eleven of these gholas. How

could they get through our defenses?"

"We have the Bashar now," Schwangyu said. "Perhaps he can prevent disaster."

Her tone said she did not believe this.

Mother Superior Taraza had said: "You are the Imprinter, Lucilla. When you get

to Gammu you will recognize some of the pattern. But for your task you have no

need for the full design."

"Think of the cost!" Schwangyu said, glaring down at the ghola, who now

squatted, pulling at tufts of grass.

Cost had nothing to do with it, Lucilla knew. The open admission of failure was

much more important. The Sisterhood could not reveal its fallibility. But the

fact that an Imprinter had been summoned early -- that was vital. Taraza had

known the Imprinter would see this and recognize part of the pattern.

Schwangyu gestured with one bony hand at the child, who had returned to his

solitary play, running and tumbling on the grass.

"Politics," Schwangyu said.

No doubt Sisterhood politics lay at the core of Schwangyu's heresy, Lucilla

thought. The delicacy of the internal argument could be deduced from the fact

that Schwangyu had been put in charge of the Keep here on Gammu. Those who

opposed Taraza refused to sit on the sidelines.

Schwangyu turned and looked squarely at Lucilla. Enough had been said. Enough

had been heard and screened through minds trained in Bene Gesserit awareness.

The Chapter House had chosen this Lucilla with great care.

Lucilla felt the older woman's careful examination but refused to let this touch

that innermost sense of purpose upon which every Reverend Mother could rely in

times of stress. Here. Get her look fully upon me. Lucilla turned and set her

mouth in a soft smile, passing her gaze across the rooftop opposite them.

A uniformed man armed with a heavy-duty lasgun appeared there, looked once at

the two Reverend Mothers and then focused on the child below them.

"Who is that?" Lucilla asked

"Patrin, the Bashar's most trusted aide. Says he's only the Bashar's batman but

you'd have to be blind and a fool to believe that. "

Lucilla examined the man across from them with care. So that was Patrin. A

native of Gammu, Taraza had said. Chosen for this task by the Bashar himself.

Thin and blond, much too old now to be soldiering, but then the Bashar had been

called back from retirement and had insisted Patrin must share this duty.

Schwangyu noted the way Lucilla shifted her attention from Patrin to the ghola

with real concern. Yes, if the Bashar had been called back to guard this Keep,

then the ghola was in extreme peril.

Lucilla started in sudden surprise. "Why . . . he's . . ."

"Miles Teg's orders," Schwangyu said, naming the Bashar. "All of the ghola's

play is training play. Muscles are to be prepared for the day when he is

restored to his original self."

"But that's no simple exercise he's doing down there," Lucilla said. She felt

her own muscles respond sympathetically to the remembered training.

"We hold back only the Sisterhood's arcana from this ghola," Schwangyu said.

"Almost anything else in our storehouse of knowledge can be his." Her tone said

she found this extremely objectionable.

"Surely, no one believes this ghola could become another Kwisatz Haderach,"

Lucilla objected.

Schwangyu merely shrugged.

Lucilla held herself quite still, thinking. Was it possible the ghola could be

transformed into a male version of a Reverend Mother? Could this Duncan Idaho

learn to look inward where no Reverend Mother dared?

Schwangyu began to speak, her voice almost a growling mutter: "The design of

this project . . . they have a dangerous plan. They could make the same mistake

. . ." She broke off.

They, Lucilla thought. Their ghola.

"I would give anything to know for sure the position of Ix and the Fish Speakers

in this," Lucilla said.

"Fish Speakers!" Schwangyu shook her head at the very thought of the remnant

female army that had once served only the Tyrant. "They believe in truth and

justice."

Lucilla overcame a sudden tightness in her throat. Schwangyu had all but

declared open opposition. Yet, she commanded here. The political rule was a

simple one: Those who opposed the project must monitor it that they might abort

it at the first sign of trouble. But that was a genuine Duncan Idaho ghola down

there on the lawn. Cell comparisons and Truthsayers had confirmed it.

Taraza had said: "You are to teach him love in all of its forms."

"He's so young," Lucilla said, keeping her attention on the ghola.

"Young, yes," Schwangyu said. "So, for now, I presume you will awaken his

childish responses to maternal affection. Later . . ." Schwangyu shrugged.

Lucilla betrayed no emotional reaction. A Bene Gesserit obeyed. I am an

Imprinter. So . . . Taraza's orders and the Imprinter's specialized training

defined a particular course of events.

To Schwangyu, Lucilla said: "There is someone who looks like me and speaks with

my voice. I am Imprinting for her. May I ask who that is?"

"No."

Lucilla held her silence. She had not expected revelation but it had been

remarked more than once that she bore a striking resemblance to Senior Security

Mother Darwi Odrade. "A young Odrade." Lucilla had heard this on several

occasions. Both Lucilla and Odrade were, of course, in the Atreides line with a

strong backbreeding from Siona descendants. The Fish Speakers had no monopoly

on those genes! But the Other Memories of a Reverend Mother, even with their

linear selectivity and confinement to the female side, provided important clues

to the broad shape of the ghola project. Lucilla, who had come to depend on her

experiences of the Jessica persona buried some five thousand years back in the

Sisterhood's genetic manipulations, felt a deep sense of dread from that source

now. There was a familiar pattern here. It gave off such an intense feeling of

doom that Lucilla fell automatically into the Litany Against Fear as she had

been taught it in her first introduction to the Sisterhood's rites:

"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."

Calm returned to Lucilla.

Schwangyu, sensing some of this, allowed her guard to drop slightly. Lucilla

was no dullard, no special Reverend Mother with an empty title and barely

sufficient background to function without embarrassing the Sisterhood. Lucilla

was the real thing and some reactions could not be hidden from her, not even

reactions of another Reverend Mother. Very well, let her know the full extent

of the opposition to this foolish, this dangerous project!

"I do not think their ghola will survive to see Rakis," Schwangyu said.

Lucilla let this pass. "Tell me about his friends," she said.

"He has no friends; only teachers."

"When will I meet them?" She kept her gaze on the opposite parapet where Patrin

leaned idly-against a low pillar, his heavy lasgun at the ready. Lucilla

realized with an abrupt shock that Patrin was watching her. Patrin was a

message from the Bashar! Schwangyu obviously saw and understood. We guard him!

"I presume it's Miles Teg you're so anxious to meet," Schwangyu said.

"Among others."

"Don't you want to make contact with the ghola first?"

"I've already made contact with him." Lucilla nodded toward the enclosed yard

where the child once more stood almost motionless and looking up at her. "He's

a thoughtful one."

"I've only the reports on the others," Schwangyu said, "but I suspect this is

the most thoughtful one of the series."

Lucilla suppressed an involuntary shudder at the readiness for violent

opposition in Schwangyu's words and attitude. There was not one hint that the

child below them shared a common humanity.

While Lucilla was thinking this, clouds covered the sun as they often did here

at this hour. A cold wind blew in over the Keep's walls, swirling around the

courtyard. The child turned away and picked up the speed of his exercises,

getting his warmth from increased activity.

"Where does he go to be alone?" Lucilla asked.

"Mostly to his room. He has tried a few dangerous escapades, but we have

discouraged this."

"He must hate us very much."

"I'm sure of it."

"I will have to deal with that directly."

"Surely, an Imprinter has no doubts about her ability to overcome hate."

"I was thinking of Geasa." Lucilla sent a knowing look at Schwangyu. "I find

it astonishing that you let Geasa make such a mistake."

"I don't interfere with the normal progress of the ghola's instructions. If one

of his teachers develops a real affection for him, that is not my problem."

"An attractive child," Lucilla said.

They stood a bit longer watching the Duncan Idaho ghola at his training-play.

Both Reverend Mothers thought briefly of Geasa, one of the first teachers

brought here for the ghola project. Schwangyu's attitude was plain: Geasa was

a providential failure. Lucilla thought only: Schwangyu and Geasa complicated

my task. Neither woman gave even a passing moment to the way these thoughts

reaffirmed their loyalties.

As she watched the child in the courtyard, Lucilla began to have a new

appreciation of what the Tyrant God Emperor had actually achieved. Leto II had

employed this ghola-type through uncounted lifetimes -- some thirty-five hundred

years of them, one after another. And the God Emperor Leto II had been no

ordinary force of nature. He had been the biggest juggernaut in human history,

rolling over everything: over social systems, over natural and unnatural

hatreds, over governmental forms, over rituals (both taboo and mandatory), over

religions casual and religions intense. The crushing weight of the Tyrant's

passage had left nothing unmarked, not even the Bene Gesserit.

Leto II had called it "The Golden Path" and this Duncan Idaho-type ghola below

her now had figured prominently in that awesome passage. Lucilla had studied

the Bene Gesserit accounts, probably the best in the universe. Even today on

most of the old Imperial Planets, newly married couples still scattered dollops

of water east and west, mouthing the local version of "Let Thy blessings flow

back to us from this offering, O God of Infinite Power and Infinite Mercy."

Once, it had been the task of Fish Speakers and their tame priesthood to enforce

such obeisance. But the thing had developed its own momentum, becoming a

pervasive compulsion. Even the most doubting of believers said: "Well, it can

do no harm." It was an accomplishment that the finest religious engineers of

the Bene Gesserit Missionaria Protectiva admired with frustrated awe. The

Tyrant had surpassed the Bene Gesserit best. And fifteen hundred years since

the Tyrant's death, the Sisterhood remained powerless to unlock the central knot

of that fearsome accomplishment.

"Who has charge of the child's religious training?" Lucilla asked.

"No one," Schwangyu said. "Why bother? If he is reawakened to his original

memories, he will have his own ideas. We will deal with those if we ever have

to."

The child below them completed his allotted training time. Without another look

up at the watchers on the parapet, he left the enclosed yard and entered a wide

doorway on the left. Patrin, too, abandoned his guard position without glancing

at the two Reverend Mothers.

"Don't be fooled by Teg's people," Schwangyu said. "They have eyes in the backs

of their heads. Teg's birth-mother, you know, was one of us. He is teaching

that ghola things better never shared!"

Explosions are also compressions of time. Observable changes in the natural

universe all are explosive to some degree and from some point of view; otherwise

you would not notice them. Smooth Continuity of change, if slowed sufficiently,

goes without notice by observers whose time/attention span is too short. Thus,

I tell you, I have seen changes you would never have marked.

-Leto II

The woman standing in Chapter House Planet's morning light across the table from

the Reverend Mother Superior Alma Mavis Taraza was tall and supple. The long

aba robe that encased her in shimmering black from shoulders to floor did not

completely conceal the grace with which her body expressed every movement.

Taraza leaned forward in her chairdog and scanned the Records Relay projecting

its condensed Bene Gesserit glyphs above the tabletop for her eyes only.

"Darwi Odrade," the display identified the standing woman, and then came the

essential biography, which Taraza already knew in detail. The display served

several purposes -- it provided a secure reminder for the Mother Superior, it

allowed an occasional delay for thought while she appeared to scan the records,

and it was a final argument should something negative arise from this interview.

Odrade had borne nineteen children for the Bene Gesserit, Taraza observed as the

information scrolled past her eyes. Each child by a different father. Not much

unusual about that, but even the most searching gaze could see that this

essential service to the Sisterhood had not grossened Odrade's flesh. Her

features conveyed a natural hauteur in the long nose and the complementary

angular cheeks. Every feature focused downward to a narrow chin: Her mouth,

though, was full and promised a passion that she was careful to bridle.

We can always depend on the Atreides genes, Taraza thought. A window curtain

fluttered behind Odrade and she glanced back at it. They were in Taraza's

morning room, a small and elegantly furnished space decorated in shades of

green. Only the stark white of Taraza's chairdog separated her from the

background. The room's bow windows looked eastward onto garden and lawn with

faraway snowy mountains of Chapter House Planet as backdrop.

Without looking up, Taraza said: "I was glad when both you and Lucilla accepted

the assignment. It makes my task much easier."

"I would like to have met this Lucilla," Odrade said, looking down at the top of

Taraza's head. Odrade's voice came out a soft contralto.

Dune 14 - Heretics Of Dune

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