Dune 3 - Children Of Dune

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Children of Dune

Frank Herbert

Muad'Dib's teachings have become the playground of

scholastics, of the superstitious and the corrupt. He

taught a balanced way of life, a philosophy with which

a human can meet problems arising from an ever-

changing universe. He said humankind is still evolving,

in a process which will never end. He said this evolution

moves on changing principles which are known only to

eternity. How can corrupted reasoning play with such

an essence?

-Words of the Mentat Duncan Idaho

A spot of light appeared on the deep red rug which

covered the raw rock of the cave floor. The light glowed

without apparent source, having its existence only on the

red fabric surface woven of spice fiber. A questing circle

about two centimeters in diameter, it moved erratically --

now elongated, now an oval. Encountering the deep green

side of a bed, it leaped upward, folded itself across the

bed's surface.

Beneath the green covering lay a child with rusty hair,

face still round with baby fat, a generous mouth -- a figure

lacking the lean sparseness of Fremen tradition, but not as

water-fat as an off-worlder. As the light passed across

closed eyelids, the small figure stirred. The light winked

out.

Now there was only the sound of even breathing and,

faint behind it, a reassuring drip-drip-drip of water

collecting in a catch basin from the windstill far above the

cave.

Again the light appeared in the chamber -- slightly

larger, a few lumens brighter. This time there was a

suggestion of source and movement to it: a hooded figure

filled the arched doorway at the chamber's edge and the

light originated there. Once more the light flowed around

the chamber, testing, questing. There was a sense of

menace in it, a restless dissatisfaction. It avoided the

sleeping child, paused on the gridded air inlet at an upper

corner, probed a bulge in the green and gold wall hangings

which softened the enclosing rock.

Presently the light winked out. The hooded figure

moved with a betraying swish of fabric, took up a station

at one side of the arched doorway. Anyone aware of the

routine here in Sietch Tabr would have suspected at once

that this must be Stilgar, Naib of the Sietch, guardian of

the orphaned twins who would one day take up the mantle

of their father, Paul Muad'Dib. Stilgar often made night

inspections of the twins' quarters, always going first to the

chamber where Ghanima slept and ending here in the

adjoining room, where he could reassure himself that Leto

was not threatened.

I'm an old fool, Stilgar thought.

He fingered the cold surface of the light projector before

restoring it to the loop in his belt sash. The projector

irritated him even while he depended upon it. The thing

was a subtle instrument of the Imperium, a device to

detect the presence of large living bodies. It had shown

only the sleeping children in the royal bedchambers.

Stilgar knew his thoughts and emotions were like the

light. He could not still a restless inner projection. Some

greater power controlled that movement. It projected him

into this moment where he sensed the accumulated peril.

Here lay the magnet for dreams of grandeur throughout

the known universe. Here lay temporal riches, secular

authority and that most powerful of all mystic talismans:

the divine authenticity of Muad'Dib's religious bequest. In

these twins -- Leto and his sister Ghanima -- an awesome

power focused. While they lived, Muad'Dib, though dead,

lived in them.

These were not merely nine-year-old children; they

were a natural force, objects of veneration and fear. They

were the children of Paul Atreides, who had become

Muad'Dib, the Mahdi of all the Fremen. Muad'Dib had

ignited an explosion of humanity; Fremen had spread from

this planet in a jihad, carrying their fervor across the

human universe in a wave of religious government whose

scope and ubiquitous authority had left its mark on every

planet.

Yet these children of Muad'Dib are flesh and blood,

Stilgar thought. Two simple thrusts of my knife would still

their hearts. Their water would return to the tribe.

His wayward mind fell into turmoil at such a thought.

To kill Muad'Dib's children!

But the years had made him wise in introspection.

Stilgar knew the origin of such a terrible thought. It came

from the left hand of the damned, not from the right hand

of the blessed. The ayat and burhan of Life held few

mysteries for him. Once he'd been proud to think of

himself as Fremen, to think of the desert as a friend, to

name his planet Dune in his thoughts and not Arrakis, as it

was marked on all of the Imperial star charts.

How simple things were when our Messiah was only a

dream, he thought. By finding our Mahdi we loosed upon

the universe countless messianic dreams. Every people

subjugated by the jihad now dreams of a leader to come.

Stilgar glanced into the darkened bedchamber.

If my knife liberated all of those people, would they

make a messiah of me?

Leto could be heard stirring restlessly in his bed.

Stilgar sighed. He had never known the Atreides

grandfather whose name this child had taken. But many

said the moral strength of Muad'Dib had come from that

source. Would that terrifying quality of rightness skip a

generation now? Stilgar found himself unable to answer

this question.

He thought: Sietch Tabr is mine. I rule here. I am a

Naib of the Fremen. Without me there would have been no

Muad'Dib. These twins, now . . . through Chani, their

mother and my kinswoman, my blood flows in their veins,

I am there with Muad'Dib and Chani and all the others.

What have we done to our universe?

Stilgar could not explain why such thoughts came to

him in the night and why they made him feel so guilty. He

crouched within his hooded robe. Reality was not at all like

the dream. The Friendly Desert, which once had spread

from pole to pole, was reduced to half its former size. The

mythic paradise of spreading greenery filled him with

dismay. It was not like the dream. And as his planet

changed, he knew he had changed. He had become a far

more subtle person than the one-time sietch chieftain. He

was aware now of many things -- of statecraft and

profound consequences in the smallest decisions. Yet he

felt this knowledge and subtlety as a thin veneer covering

an iron core of simpler, more deterministic awareness. And

that older core called out to him, pleaded with him for a

return to cleaner values.

The morning sounds of the sietch began intruding upon

his thoughts. People were beginning to move about in the

cavern. He felt a breeze against his cheeks: people were

going out through the doorseals into the predawn

darkness. The breeze spoke of carelessness as it spoke of

the time. Warren dwellers no longer maintained the tight

water discipline of the old days. Why should they, when

rain had been recorded on this planet, when clouds were

seen, when eight Fremen had been inundated and killed by

a flash flood in a wadi? Until that event, the word drowned

had not existed in the language of Dune. But this was no

longer Dune; this was Arrakis . . . and it was the morning

of an eventful day.

He thought: Jessica, mother of Muad'Dib and

grandmother of these royal twins, returns to our planet

today. Why does she end her self-imposed exile at this

time? Why does she leave the softness and security of

Caladan for the dangers of Arrakis?

And there were other worries: Would she sense Stilgar's

doubts? She was a Bene Gesserit witch, graduate of the

Sisterhood's deepest training, and a Reverend Mother in

her own right. Such females were acute and they were

dangerous. Would she order him to fall upon his own knife

as the Umma-Protector of Liet-Kynes had been ordered?

Would I obey her? he wondered.

He could not answer that question, but now he thought

about Liet-Kynes, the planetologist who had first dreamed

of transforming the planetwide desert of Dune into the

human-supportive green planet which it was becoming.

Liet-Kynes had been Chani's father. Without him there

would have been no dream, no Chani, no royal twins. The

workings of this fragile chain dismayed Stilgar.

How have we met in this place? he asked himself. How

have we combined? For what purpose? Is it my duty to end

it all, to shatter that great combination?

Stilgar admitted the terrible urging within him now. He

could make that choice, denying love and family to do

what a Naib must do on occasion: make a deadly decision

for the good of the tribe. By one view, such a murder

represented ultimate betrayal and atrocity. To kill mere

children! Yet they were not mere children. They had eaten

melange, had shared in the sietch orgy, had probed the

desert for sandtrout and played the other games of

Fremen children . . . And they sat in the Royal Council.

Children of such tender years, yet wise enough to sit in the

Council. They might be children in flesh, but they were

ancient in experience, born with a totality of genetic

memory, a terrifying awareness which set their Aunt Alia

and themselves apart from all other living humans.

Many times in many nights had Stilgar found his mind

circling this difference shared by the twins and their aunt;

many times had he been awakened from sleep by these

torments, coming here to the twins' bedchambers with his

dreams unfinished. Now his doubts came to focus. Failure

to make a decision was in itself a decision -- he knew this.

These twins and their aunt had awakened in the womb,

knowing there all of the memories passed onto them by

their ancestors. Spice addiction had done this, spice

addiction of the mothers -- the Lady Jessica and Chani.

The Lady Jessica had borne a son, Muad'Dib before her

Addiction. Alia had come after the addiction. That was

clear in retrospect. The countless generations of selective

breeding directed by the Bene Gesserits had achieved

Muad'Dib, but nowhere in the Sisterhood's plans had they

allowed for melange. Oh, they knew about this possibility,

but they feared it and called it Abomination. That was the

most dismaying fact. Abomination. They must possess

reasons for such a judgment. And if they said Alia was an

Abomination, then that must apply equally to the twins,

because Chani, too, had been addicted, her body saturated

with spice, and her genes had somehow complemented

those of Muad'Dib.

Stilgar's thoughts moved in ferment. There could be no

doubt these twins went beyond their father. But in which

direction? The boy spoke of an ability to be his father --

and had proved it. Even as an infant, Leto had revealed

memories which only Muad'Dib should have known. Were

there other ancestors waiting in that vast spectrum of

memories -- ancestors whose beliefs and habits created

unspeakable dangers for living humans?

Abominations, the holy witches of the Bene Gesserit

said. Yet the Sisterhood coveted the genophase of these

children. The witches wanted sperm and ovum without the

disturbing flesh which carried them. Was that why the

Lady Jessica returned at this time? She had broken with

the Sisterhood to support her Ducal mate, but rumor said

she had returned to the Bene Gesserit ways.

I could end all of these dreams, Stilgar thought. How

simple it would be.

And yet again he wondered at himself that he could

contemplate such a choice. Were Muad'Dib's twins

responsible for the reality which obliterated the dreams of

others? No. They were merely the lens through which light

poured to reveal new shapes in the universe.

In torment, his mind reverted to primary Fremen

beliefs, and he thought: God's command comes; so seek

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摘要：

ChildrenofDuneFrankHerbertCopyright1976Muad'Dib'steachingshavebecometheplaygroundofscholastics,ofthesuperstitiousandthecorrupt.Hetaughtabalancedwayoflife,aphilosophywithwhichahumancanmeetproblemsarisingfromanever-changinguniverse.Hesaidhumankindisstillevolving,inaprocesswhichwillneverend.Hesaidthise...

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Dune 3 - Children Of Dune

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