沙丘2

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.”

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 10

What had the Lady Jessica to sustain her in her time of trial? Think you carefully on this Bene Gesserit proverb and perhaps you will see: “Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it’s a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you can not see the mountain.”

—from “Muad’Dib: Family Commentaries” by the Princess Irulan

AT THE end of the south wing, Jessica found a metal stair spiraling up to an oval door. She glanced back down the hall, again up at the door.

Oval? she wondered. What an odd shape for a door in a house.

Through the windows beneath the spiral stair she could see the great white sun of Arrakis moving on toward evening. Long shadows stabbed down the hall.

She returned her attention to the stairs. Harsh sidelighting picked out bits of dried earth on the open metalwork of the steps.

Jessica put a hand on the rail, began to climb. The rail felt cold under her sliding palm. She stopped at the door, saw it had no handle, but there was a faint depression on the surface of it where a handle should have been.

Surely not a palm lock, she told herself. A palm lock must be keyed to one individual’s hand shape and palm lines. But it looked like a palm lock. And there were ways to open any palm lock—as she had learned at school.

Jessica glanced back to make certain she was unobserved, placed her palm against the depression in the door. The most gentle of pressures to distort the lines—a turn of the wrist, another turn, a sliding twist of the palm across the surface.

She felt the click.

But there were hurrying footsteps in the hall beneath her. Jessica lifted her hand from the door, turned, saw Mapes come to the foot of the stairs.

“There are men in the great hall say they’ve been sent by the Duke to get young master Paul,”Mapes said. “They’ve the ducal signet and the guard has identified them.”She glanced at the door, back to Jessica.

A cautious one, this Mapes, Jessica thought. That’s a good sign.

“He’s in the fifth room from this end of the hall, the small bedroom,”Jessica said. “If you have trouble waking him, call on Dr. Yueh in the next room. Paul may require a wakeshot.” Again, Mapes cast a piercing stare at the oval door, and Jessica thought she detected loathing in the expression. Before Jessica could ask about the door and what it concealed, Mapes had turned away, hurrying back down the hall.

Hawat certified this place, Jessica thought. There can’t be anything too terrible in here.

She pushed the door. It swung inward onto a small room with another oval door opposite. The other door had a wheel handle.

An air lock! Jessica thought. She glanced down, saw a door prop fallen to the floor of the little room. The prop carried Hawat’s personal mark. The door was left propped open, she thought. Someone probably knocked the prop down accidentally, not realizing the outer door would close on a palm lock.

She stepped over the lip into the little room.

Why an airlock in a house? she asked herself. And she thought suddenly of exotic creatures sealed off in special climates.

Special climate! That would make sense on Arrakis where even the driest of off-planet growing things had to be irrigated.

The door behind her began swinging closed. She caught it and propped it open securely with the stick Hawat had left. Again, she faced the wheel-locked inner door, seeing now a faint inscription etched in the metal above the handle.

She recognized Galach words, read: “O, Man! Here is a lovely portion of God’s Creation; then, stand before it and learn to love the perfection of Thy Supreme Friend.” Jessica put her weight on the wheel. It turned left and the inner door opened.

A gentle draft feathered her cheek, stirred her hair. She felt change in the air, a richer taste. She swung the door wide, looked through into massed greenery with yellow sunlight pouring across it.

A yellow sun? she asked herself. Then: Filter glass! She stepped over the sill and the door swung closed behind.

“A wet-planet conservatory,”she breathed.

Potted plants and low-pruned trees stood all about. She recognized a mimosa, a flowering quince, a sondagi, green-blossomed pleniscenta, green and white striped akarso … roses….

Even roses! She bent to breathe the fragrance of a giant pink blossom, straightened to peer around the room.

Rhythmic noise invaded her senses.

She parted a jungle overlapping of leaves, looked through to the center of the room. A low fountain stood there, small with fluted lips. The rhythmic noise was a peeling, spooling arc of water falling thud-a-gallop onto the metal bowl.

Jessica sent herself through the quick sense-clearing regimen, began a methodical inspection of the room’s perimeter. It appeared to be about ten meters square. From its placement above the end of the hall and from subtle differences in construction, she guessed it had been added onto the roof of this wing iong after the original building’s completion.

She stopped at the south limits of the room in front of the wide reach of filter glass, stared around. Every available space in the room was crowded with exotic wet-climate plants. Something rustled in the greenery. She tensed, then glimpsed a simple clock-set servok with pipe and hose arms. An arm lifted, sent out a fine spray of dampness that misted her cheeks. The arm retracted and she looked at what it had watered: a fern tree.

Water everywhere in this room—on a planet where water was the most precious juice of life. Water being wasted so conspicuously that it shocked her to inner stillness.

She glanced out at the filter-yellowed sun. It hung low on a jagged horizon above cliffs that formed part of the immense rock uplifting known as the Shield Wall.

Filter glass, she thought. To turn a white sun into something softer and more familiar. Who could have built such a place? Leto? It would be like him to surprise me with such a gift, but there hasn’t been time. And he’s been busy with more serious problems.

She recalled the report that many Arrakeen houses were sealed by airlock doors and windows to conserve and reclaim interior moisture. Leto had said it was a deliberate statement of power and wealth for this house to ignore such precautions, its doors and windows being sealed only against the omnipresent dust.

But this room embodied a statement far more significant than the lack of waterseals on outer doors. She estimated that this pleasure room used water enough to support a thousand persons on Arrakis—possibly more.

Jessica moved along the window, continuing to stare into the room. The move brought into view a metallic surface at table height beside the fountain and she glimpsed a white notepad and stylus there partly concealed by an overhanging fan leaf. She crossed to the table, noted Hawat’s daysigns on it, studied a message written on the pad: “TO THE LADY JESSICA— May this place give you as much pleasure as it has given me. Please permit the room to convey a lesson we learned from the same teachers: the proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.

My kindest wishes, MARGOT LADY FENRING” Jessica nodded, remembering that Leto had referred to the Emperor’s former proxy here as Count Fenring. But the hidden message of the note demanded immediate attention, couched as it was in a way to inform her the writer was another Bene Gesserit. A bitter thought touched Jessica in passing: The Count married his Lady.

Even as this thought flicked through her mind, she was bending to seek out the hidden message. It had to be there. The visible note contained the code phrase every Bene Gesserit not bound by a School Injunction was required to give another Bene Gesserit when conditions demanded it: “On that path lies danger.” Jessica felt the back of the note, rubbed the surface for coded dots. Nothing.

The edge of the pad came under her seeking fingers. Nothing. She replaced the pad where she had found it, feeling a sense of urgency.

Something in the position of the pad? she wondered.

But Hawat had been over this room, doubtless had moved the pad. She looked at the leaf above the pad. The leaf! She brushed a finger along the under surface, along the edge, along the stem. It was there! Her fingers detected the subtle coded dots, scanned them in a single passage: “Your son and the Duke are in immediate danger. A bedroom has been designed to attract your son. The H loaded it with death traps to be discovered, leaving one that may escape detection.”Jessica put down the urge to run back to Paul; the full message had to be learned. Her fingers sped over the dots: “I do not know the exact nature of the menace, but it has something to do with a bed.

The threat to your Duke involves defection of a trusted companion or lieutenant.

The H plan to give you as gift to a minion. To the best of my knowledge, this conservatory is safe. Forgive that I cannot tell more. My sources are few as my Count is not in the pay of the H. In haste, MF.” Jessica thrust the leaf aside, whirled to dash back to Paul. In that instant, the airlock door slammed open. Paul jumped through it, holding something in his right hand, slammed the door behind him. He saw his mother, pushed through the leaves to her, glanced at the fountain, thrust his hand and the thing it clutched under the falling water.

“Paul!”She grabbed his shoulder, staring at the hand. “What is that?” He spoke casually, but she caught the effort behind the tone: “Hunter-seeker.

Caught it in my room and smashed its nose, but I want to be sure. Water should short it out.”

“Immerse it!”she commanded.

He obeyed.

Presently, she said: “Withdraw your hand. Leave the thing in the water.” He brought out his hand, shook water from it, staring at the quiescent metal in the fountain. Jessica broke off a plant stem, prodded the deadly sliver.

It was dead.

She dropped the stem into the water, looked at Paul. His eyes studied the room with a searching intensity that she recognized—the B.G. Way.

“This place could conceal anything,”he said.

“I’ve reason to believe it’s safe,”she said.

“My room was supposed to be safe, too. Hawat said—”

“It was a hunter-seeker,”she reminded him. “That means someone inside the house to operate it. Seeker control beams have a limited range. The thing could’ve been spirited in here after Hawat’s investigation.” But she thought of the message of the leaf: “… defection of a trusted companion or lieutenant. ”Not Hawat, surely. Oh, surely not Hawat.

“Hawat’s men are searching the house right now,”he said. “That seeker almost got the old woman who came to wake me.”

“The Shadout Mapes,”Jessica said, remembering the encounter at the stairs.

“A summons from your father to—”

“That can wait,”Paul said. “Why do you think this room’s safe?” She pointed to the note, explained about it.

He relaxed slightly.

But Jessica remained inwardly tense, thinking: A hunter-seeker! Merciful Mother! It took all her training to prevent a fit of hysterical trembling.

Paul spoke matter of factly: “It’s the Harkonnens, of course. We shall have to destroy them.” A rapping sounded at the airlock door—the code knock of one of Hawat’s corps.

“Come in,”Paul called.

The door swung wide and a tall man in Atreides uniform with a Hawat insignia on his cap leaned into the room. “There you are, sir,”he said. “The housekeeper said you’d be here.”He glanced around the room. “We found a cairn in the cellar and caught a man in it. He had a seeker console.” “I’ll want to take part in the interrogation,”Jessica said.

“Sorry, my Lady. We messed him up catching him. He died.”

“Nothing to identify him?”she asked.

“We’ve found nothing yet, my Lady.”

“Was he an Arrakeen native?”Paul asked.

Jessica nodded at the astuteness of the question.

“He has the native look,”the man said. “Put into that cairn more’n a month ago, by the look, and left there to await our coming. Stone and mortar where he came through into the cellar were untouched when we inspected the place yesterday. I’ll stake my reputation on it.”

“No one questions your thoroughness,”Jessica said.

“I question it, my Lady. We should’ve used sonic probes down there.”

“I presume that’s what you’re doing now,”Paul said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Send word to my father that we’ll be delayed.”

“At once, sir.”He glanced at Jessica. “It’s Hawat’s order that under such circumstances as these the young master be guarded in a safe place.”Again, his eyes swept the room. “What of this place?”

“I’ve reason to believe it safe,”she said. “Both Hawat and I have inspected it.”

“Then I’ll mount guard outside here, m’Lady, until we’ve been over the house once more.”He bowed, touched his cap to Paul, backed out and swung the door closed behind him.

Paul broke the sudden silence, saying: “Had we better go over the house later ourselves? Your eyes might see things others would miss.”

“This wing was the only place I hadn’t examined,”she said. “I put if off to last because….”

“Because Hawat gave it his personal attention,”he said.

She darted a quick look at his face, questioning.

“Do you distrust Hawat?”she asked.

“No, but he’s getting old … he’s overworked. We could take some of the load from him.”

“That’d only shame him and impair his efficiency,”she said. “A stray insect won’t be able to wander into this wing after he hears about this. He’ll be shamed that….”

“We must take our own measures,”he said.

“Hawat has served three generations of Atreides with honor,”she said. “He deserves every respect and trust we can pay him … many times over.” Paul said: “When my father is bothered by something you’ve done he says ‘Bene Gesserit!’ like a swear word.”

“And what is it about me that bothers your father?”

“When you argue with him.”

“You are not your father, Paul.” And Paul thought: It’ll worry her, but I must tell her what that Mapes woman said about a traitor among us.

“What’re you holding back?”Jessica asked. “This isn’t like you, Paul.” He shrugged, recounted the exchange with Mapes.

And Jessica thought of the message of the leaf. She came to sudden decision, showed Paul the leaf, told him its message.

“My father must learn of this at once,”he said. “I’ll radiograph it in code and get if off.”

“No,”she said. “You will wait until you can see him alone. As few as possible must learn about it.”

“Do you mean we should trust no one?”

“There’s another possibility,”she said. “This message may have been meant to get to us. The people who gave it to us may believe it’s true, but it may be that the only purpose was to get this message to us.” Paul’s face remained sturdily somber. “To sow distrust and suspicion in our ranks, to weaken us that way,”he said.

“You must tell your father privately and caution him about this aspect of it,” she said.

“I understand.” She turned to the tall reach of filter glass, stared out to the southwest where the sun of Arrakis was sinking—a yellowed ball above the cliffs.

Paul turned with her, said: “I don’t think it’s Hawat, either. Is it possible it’s Yueh?”

“He’s not a lieutenant or companion,”she said. “And I can assure you he hates the Harkonnens as bitterly as we do.” Paul directed his attention to the cliffs, thinking: And it couldn’t be Gurney… or Duncan. Could it be one of the sub-lieutenants? Impossible. They’re all from families that’ve been loyal to us for generations—for good reason.

Jessica rubbed her forehead, sensing her own fatigue. So much peril here! She looked out at the filter-yellowed landscape, studying it. Beyond the ducal grounds stretched a high-fenced storage yard—lines of spice silos in it with stiltlegged watchtowers standing around it like so many startled spiders. She could see at least twenty storage yards of silos reaching out to the cliffs of the Shield Wall—silos repeated, stuttering across the basin.

Slowly, the filtered sun buried itself beneath the horizon. Stars leaped out.

She saw one bright star so low on the horizon that it twinkled with a clear, precise rhythm—a trembling of light: blink-blink-blink-blink-blink … Paul stirred beside her in the dusky room.

But Jessica concentrated on that single bright star, realizing that it was too low, that it must come from the Shield Wall cliffs.

Someone signalling! She tried to read the message, but it was in no code she had ever learned.

Other lights had come on down on the plain beneath the cliffs: little yellows spaced out against blue darkness. And one light off to their left grew brighter, began to wink back at the cliff—very fast: blinksquirt, glimmer, blink! And it was gone.

The false star in the cliff winked out immediately.

Signals … and they filled her with premonition.

Why were lights used to signal across the basin? she asked herself. Why couldn’t they use the communications network? The answer was obvious: the communinet was certain to be tapped now by agents of the Duke Leto. Light signals could only mean that messages were being sent between his enemies—between Harkonnen agents.

There came a tapping at the door behind them and the voice of Hawat’s man: “All clear, sir .

m‘Lady. Time to be getting the young master to his father.”

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?

毕生的梦想

这部电影的诞生有一些偶然性。

这一切始于2016年9月的威尼斯电影节。在为新电影《降临》接受媒体采访时，丹尼斯告诉记者，他毕生的梦想就是改编弗兰克·赫伯特的《沙丘》。这句话并没有被忽视，很快就被一些新闻媒体报道了。这个新闻故事突然激发出来的兴趣让我们开始讨论这本小说。他当时是这么告诉我的。

《沙丘》是一部了不起的小说，一本伟大的书。它是一个非常难改编的故事，因为它是一部史诗般的太空歌剧，充满了复杂的主题。在我还是个十几岁的少年时，我就对它十分着迷。我把所有相关的书都读了个遍。我家里就有《沙丘百科全书》。我的毕业戒指内侧刻着“穆阿迪布”这个词，我的毕业年鉴里甚至有《沙丘》的摘抄。我很喜欢它。

小说的中心主题由宗教和政治交织而成。这本书对流行文化产生了巨大的影响，对我这个电影导演来说也是如此。

你可以在《银翼杀手2049》中看到来自《沙丘》的灵感。更具体地说，是在尼安德·华莱士的办公室里。这种灵感体现在它的规模、风格和色彩上。我很想在沙漠中拍摄《沙丘》。沙漠恰好是全世界我最喜欢的地方。

两年半后，丹尼斯毕生的梦想将成为现实。

CHAPTER 11

It is said that the Duke Leto blinded himself to the perils of Arrakis, that he walked heedlessly into the pit. Would it not be more likely to suggest he had lived so long in the presence of extreme danger he misjudged a change in its intensity? Or is it possible he deliberately sacrificed himself that his son might find a better life? All evidence indicates the Duke was a man not easily hoodwinked.

—from “Muad’Dib: Family Commentaries” by the Princess Irulan

THE DUKE Leto Atreides leaned against a parapet of the landing control tower outside Arrakeen. The night’s first moon, an oblate silver coin, hung well above the southern horizon. Beneath it, the jagged cliffs of the Shield Wall shone like parched icing through a dust haze. To his left, the lights of Arrakeen glowed in the haze—yellow … white … blue.

He thought of the notices posted now above his signature all through the populous places of the planet: “Our Sublime Padishah Emperor has charged me to take possession of this planet and end all dispute.” The ritualistic formality of it touched him with a feeling of loneliness. Who was fooled by that fatuous legalism? Not the Fremen, certainly. Nor the Houses Minor who controlled the interior trade of Arrakis … and were Harkonnen creatures almost to a man.

They have tried to take the life of my son! The rage was difficult to suppress.

He saw lights of a moving vehicle coming toward the landing field from Arrakeen. He hoped it was the guard and troop carrier bringing Paul. The delay was galling even though he knew it was prompted by caution on the part of Hawat’s lieutenant.

They have tried to take the life of my son! He shook his head to drive out the angry thoughts, glanced back at the field where five of his own frigates were posted around the rim like monolithic sentries.

Better a cautious delay than …

The lieutenant was a good one, he reminded himself. A man marked for advancement, completely loyal.

“Our Sublime Padishah Emperor…. ” If the people of this decadent garrison city could only see the Emperor’s private note to his “Noble Duke”—the disdainful allusions to veiled men and women: “… but what else is one to expect of barbarians whose dearest dream is to live outside the ordered security of the faufreluches?” The Duke felt in this moment that his own dearest dream was to end all class distinctions and never again think of deadly order. He looked up and out of the dust at the unwinking stars, thought: Around one of those little lights circles Caladan … but I’ll never again see my home. The longing for Caladan was a sudden pain in his breast. He felt that it did not come from within himself, but that it reached out to him from Caladan. He could not bring himself to call this dry wasteland of Arrakis his home, and he doubted he ever would.

I must mask my feelings, he thought. For the boy’s sake. If ever he’s to have a home, this must be it. I may think of Arrakis as a hell I’ve reached before death, but he must find here that which will inspire him. There must be something.

A wave of self-pity, immediately despised and rejected, swept through him, and for some reason he found himself recalling two lines from a poem Gurney Halleck often repeated— “My lungs taste the air of Time Blown past falling sands….” Well, Gurney would find plenty of falling sands here, the Duke thought. The central wastelands beyond those moon-frosted cliffs were desert—barren rock, dunes, and blowing dust, an uncharted dry wilderness with here and there along its rim and perhaps scattered through it, knots of Fremen. If anything could buy a future for the Atreides line, the Fremen just might do it.

Provided the Harkonnens hadn’t managed to infect even the Fremen with their poisonous schemes.

They have tried to take the life of my son! A scraping metal racket vibrated through the tower, shook the parapet beneath his arms. Blast shutters dropped in front of him, blocking the view.

Shuttle’s coming in, he thought. Time to go down and get to work. He turned to the stairs behind him, headed down to the big assembly room, trying to remain calm as he descended, to prepare his face for the coming encounter.

They have tried to take the life of my son! The men were already boiling in from the field when he reached the yellow- domed room. They carried their spacebags over their shoulders, shouting and roistering like students returning from vacation.

“Hey! Feel that under your dogs? That’s gravity, man!”

“How many G’s does this place pull? Feels heavy.”

“Nine-tenths of a G by the book.” The crossfire of thrown words filled the big room.

“Did you get a good look at this hole on the way down? Where’s all the loot this place’s supposed to have?”

“The Harkonnens took it with ’em!”

“Me for a hot shower and a soft bed!”

“Haven’t you heard, stupid? No showers down here.

You scrub your ass with sand!”

“Hey! Can it! The Duke!” The Duke stepped out of the stair entry into a suddenly silent room. Gurney Halleck strode along at the point of the crowd, bag over one shoulder, the neck of his nine-string baliset clutched in the other hand. They were long-fingered hands with big thumbs, full of tiny movements that drew such delicate music from the baliset.

The Duke watched Halleck, admiring the ugly lump of a man, noting the glass-splinter eyes with their gleam of savage understanding. Here was a man who lived outside the faufreluches while obeying their every precept. What was it Paul had called him? “Gurney, the valorous. ” Halleck’s wispy blond hair trailed across barren spots on his head. His wide mouth was twisted into a pleasant sneer, and the scar of the inkvine whip slashed across his jawline seemed to move with a life of its own. His whole air was of casual, shoulder-set capability. He came up to the Duke, bowed.

“Gurney,”Leto said.

“My Lord.”He gestured with the baliset toward the men in the room. “This is the last of them. I’d have preferred coming in with the first wave, but….”

“There are still some Harkonnens for you,”the Duke said. “Step aside with me, Gurney, where we may talk.”

“Yours to command, my Lord.” They moved into an alcove beside a coil-slot water machine while the men stirred restlessly in the big room. Halleck dropped his bag into a corner, kept his grip on the baliset.

“How many men can you let Hawat have?”the Duke asked.

“Is Thufir in trouble, Sire?”

“He’s lost only two agents, but his advance men gave us an excellent line on the entire Harkonnen setup here. If we move fast we may gain a measure of security, the breathing space we require. He wants as many men as you can spare —men who won’t balk at a little knife work.”

“I can let him have three hundred of my best,”Halleck said. “Where shall I send them?”

“To the main gate. Hawat has an agent there waiting to take them.”

“Shall I get about it at once, Sire?”

“In a moment. We have another problem. The field commandant will hold the shuttle here until dawn on a pretext. The Guild Heighliner that brought us is going on about its business, and the shuttle’s supposed to make contact with a cargo ship taking up a load of spice.”

“Our spice, m’Lord?”

“Our spice. But the shuttle also will carry some of the spice hunters from the old regime. They’ve opted to leave with the change of fief and the Judge of the Change is allowing it. These are valuable workers, Gurney, about eight hundred of them. Before the shuttle leaves, you must persuade some of those men to enlist with us.”

“How strong a persuasion, Sire?”

“I want their willing cooperation, Gurney. Those men have experience and skills we need. The fact that they’re leaving suggests they’re not part of the Harkonnen machine. Hawat believes there could be some bad ones planted in the group, but he sees assassins in every shadow.”

“Thufir has found some very productive shadows in his time, m’Lord.”

“And there are some he hasn’t found. But I think planting sleepers in this outgoing crowd would show too much imagination for the Harkonnens.”

“Possibly, Sire. Where are these men?”

“Down on the lower level, in a waiting room. I suggest you go down and play a tune or two to soften their minds, then turn on the pressure. You may offer positions of authority to those who qualify. Offer twenty per cent higher wages than they received under the Harkonnens.”

“No more than that, Sire? I know the Harkonnen pay scales. And to men with their termination pay in their pockets and the wanderlust on them … well, Sire, twenty per cent would hardly seem proper inducement to stay.” Leto spoke impatiently: “Then use your own discretion in particular cases.

Just remember that the treasury isn’t bottomless. Hold it to twenty per cent whenever you can. We particularly need spice drivers, weather scanners, dune men—any with open sand experience.”

“I understand, Sire. ‘They shall come all for violence: their faces shall sup up as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity of the sand.’ ”

“A very moving quotation,”the Duke said. “Turn your crew over to a lieutenant. Have him give a short drill on water discipline, then bed the men down for the night in the barracks adjoining the field. Field personnel will direct them. And don’t forget the men for Hawat.”

“Three hundred of the best, Sire.”He took up his spacebag. “Where shall I report to you when I’ve completed my chores?”

“I’ve taken over a council room topside here. We’ll hold staff there. I want to arrange a new planetary dispersal order with armored squads going out first.” Halleck stopped in the act of turning away, caught Leto’s eye. “Are you anticipating that kind of trouble, Sire? I thought there was a Judge of the Change here.”

“Both open battle and secret,”the Duke said. “There’ll be blood aplenty spilled here before we’re through.”

“‘And the water which thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land,’ ”Halleck quoted.

The Duke sighed. “Hurry back, Gurney.”

“Very good, m‘Lord.”The whipscar rippled to his grin. “‘Behold, as a wild ass in the desert, go I forth to my work.’”He turned, strode to the center of the room, paused to relay his orders, hurried on through the men.

Leto shook his head at the retreating back. Halleck was a continual amazement—a head full of songs, quotations, and flowery phrases … and the heart of an assassin when it came to dealing with the Harkonnens.

Presently, Leto took a leisurely diagonal course across to the lift, acknowledging salutes with a casual hand wave. He recognized a propaganda corpsman, stopped to give him a message that could be relayed to the men through channels: those who had brought their women would want to know the women were safe and where they could be found. The others would wish to know that the population here appeared to boast more women than men.

The Duke slapped the propaganda man on the arm, a signal that the message had top priority to be put out immediately, then continued across the room. He nodded to the men, smiled, traded pleasantries with a subaltern.

Command must always look confident, he thought. All that faith riding on your shoulders while you sit in the critical seat and never show it.

He breathed a sigh of relief when the lift swallowed him and he could turn and face the impersonal doors.

They have tried to take the life of my son!