沙丘2

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

Frank Herbert

1965

Book One: DUNE

CHAPTER 1

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Muad‘Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most special care that you locate Muad’Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was bom on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, Your Reverence.”

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

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

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

Your Reverence.

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

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

He mouthed her strange words: Gomjabbar… Kwisatz Haderach.

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

Arrakis—Dune—Desert Planet.

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

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

Arrakis—Dune—Desert Planet.

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

The dream faded.

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

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

Arrakis-Dune-Desert Planet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Test?” He looked up at her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Stop!” she snapped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Understand?”

“What’s in the box?”

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

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

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

“It burns,” he whispered.

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

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

His lips were so dry he had difficulty separating them.

The burning! The burning! He thought he could feel skin curling black on that agonized hand, the flesh crisping and dropping away until only charred bones remained.

It stopped! As though a switch had been turned off, the pain stopped.

Paul felt his right arm trembling, felt sweat bathing his body.

“Enough,” the old woman muttered. “Kull wahad! No woman-child ever withstood that much. I must’ve wanted you to fail.” She leaned back, withdrawing the gom jabbar from the side of his neck. “Take your hand from the box, young human, and look at it.” He fought down an aching shiver, stared at the lightless void where his hand seemed to remain of its own volition. Memory of pain inhibited every movement. Reason told him he would withdraw a blackened stump from that box.

“Do it!” she snapped.

He jerked his hand from the box, stared at it astonished. Not a mark. No sign of agony on the flesh. He held up the hand, turned it, flexed the fingers.

“Pain by nerve induction,” she said. “Can’t go around maiming potential humans. There’re those who’d give a pretty for the secret of this box, though.” She slipped it into the folds of her gown.

“But the pain—” he said.

“Pain,” she sniffed. “A human can override any nerve in the body.” Paul felt his left hand aching, uncurled the clenched fingers, looked at four bloody marks where fingernails had bitten his palm. He dropped the hand to his side, looked at the old woman. “You did that to my mother once?”

“Ever sift sand through a screen?” she asked.

The tangential slash of her question shocked his mind into a higher awareness: Sand through a screen. He nodded.

“We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans.” He lifted his right hand, willing the memory of the pain. “And that’s all there is to it—pain?”

“I observed you in pain, lad. Pain’s merely the axis of the test. Your mother’s told you about our ways of observing. I see the signs of her teaching in you. Our test is crisis and observation.” He heard the confirmation in her voice, said: “It’s truth!” She stared at him. He senses truth! Could he be the one? Could he truly be the one? She extinguished the excitement, reminding herself: “Hope clouds observation.”

“You know when people believe what they say,” she said.

“I know it.” The harmonics of ability confirmed by repeated test were in his voice. She heard them, said: “Perhaps you are the Kwisatz Haderach. Sit down, little brother, here at my feet.”

“I prefer to stand.”

“Your mother sat at my feet once.”

“I’m not my mother.”

“You hate us a little, eh?” She looked toward the door, called out: “Jessica!” The door flew open and Jessica stood there staring hard-eyed into the room.

Hardness melted from her as she saw Paul. She managed a faint smile.

“Jessica, have you ever stopped hating me?” the old woman asked.

“I both love and hate you,” Jessica said. “The hate—that’s from pains I must never forget. The love—that’s….”

“Just the basic fact,” the old woman said, but her voice was gentle. “You may come in now, but remain silent. Close that door and mind it that no one interrupts us.” Jessica stepped into the room, closed the door and stood with her back to it.

My son lives, she thought. My son lives and is… human. I knew he was … but … he lives. Now, I can go on living. The door felt hard and real against her back.

Everything in the room was immediate and pressing against her senses.

My son lives.

Paul looked at his mother. She told the truth. He wanted to get away alone and think this experience through, but knew he could not leave until he was dismissed. The old woman had gained a power over him. They spoke truth. His mother had undergone this test. There must be terrible purpose in it … the pain and fear had been terrible. He understood terrible purposes. They drove against all odds. They were their own necessity. Paul felt that he had been infected with terrible purpose. He did not know yet what the terrible purpose was.

“Some day, lad,” the old woman said, “you, too, may have to stand outside a door like that. It takes a measure of doing.” Paul looked down at the hand that had known pain, then up to the Reverend Mother. The sound of her voice had contained a difference then from any other voice in his experience. The words were outlined in brilliance. There was an edge to them. He felt that any question he might ask her would bring an answer that could lift him out of his flesh-world into something greater.

“Why do you test for humans?” he asked.

“To set you free.”

“Free?”

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

“ ‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind,’ ” Paul quoted.

“Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible,” she said.

“But what the O.C. Bible should’ve said is: ‘Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.’ Have you studied the Mentat in your service?”

“I’ve studied with Thufir Hawat.”

“The Great Revolt took away a crutch,” she said. “It forced human minds to develop. Schools were started to train human talents.”

“Bene Gesserit schools?” She nodded. “We have two chief survivors of those ancient schools: the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild. The Guild, so we think, emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Gesserit performs another function.”

“Politics,” he said.

“Kull wahad!” the old woman said. She sent a hard glance at Jessica.

“I’ve not told him, Your Reverence,” Jessica said.

The Reverend Mother returned her attention to Paul. “You did that on remarkably few clues,” she said. “Politics indeed. The original Bene Gesserit school was directed by those who saw the need of a thread of continuity in human affairs. They saw there could be no such continuity without separating human stock from animal stock—for breeding purposes.” The old woman’s words abruptly lost their special sharpness for Paul. He felt an offense against what his mother called his instinct for rightness. It wasn’t that Reverend Mother lied to him. She obviously believed what she said. It was something deeper, something tied to his terrible purpose.

He said: “But my mother tells me many Bene Gesserit of the schools don’t know their ancestry.”

“The genetic lines are always in our records,” she said. “Your mother knows that either she’s of Bene Gesserit descent or her stock was acceptable in itself.”

“Then why couldn’t she know who her parents are?”

“Some do…. Many don’t. We might, for example, have wanted to breed her to a close relative to set up a dominant in some genetic trait. We have many reasons.” Again, Paul felt the offense against rightness. He said: “You take a lot on yourselves.” The Reverend Mother stared at him, wondering: Did I hear criticism in his voice? “We carry a heavy burden,” she said.

Paul felt himself coming more and more out of the shock of the test. He leveled a measuring stare at her, said: “You say maybe I’m the … Kwisatz Haderach. What’s that, a human gom jabbar?”

“Paul,” Jessica said. “You mustn’t take that tone with—”

“I’ll handle this, Jessica,” the old woman said. “Now, lad, do you know about the Truthsayer drug?”

“You take it to improve your ability to detect falsehood,” he said. “My mother’s told me.”

“Have you ever seen truthtrance?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“The drug’s dangerous,” she said, “but it gives insight. When a Truthsayer’s gifted by the drug, she can look many places in her memory—in her body’s memory. We look down so many avenues of the past … but only feminine avenues.” Her voice took on a note of sadness. “Yet, there’s a place where no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot—into both feminine and masculine pasts.”

“Your Kwisatz Haderach?”

“Yes, the one who can be many places at once: the Kwisatz Haderach. Many men have tried the drug … so many, but none has succeeded.”

“They tried and failed, all of them?”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “They tried and died.”

CHAPTER 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!

先不说第一部好不好看了，当我看到2：00的时候应该就想着还有半小时是要杀回去复仇的戏份了，然而就这个结尾都只是刚刚组好队了就收了，难不成不拍个第二部来顺理成章岂不是要像当年倚天屠龙记之魔教教主一样被人遗憾终身吗？

另外，别拿这个电影跟指环王去比，不是一种类型的片子，而且指环王的剧情虽然长，却没有让人觉得多余的拖沓，每一处都很有意思的真正神作！

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.”

文/布莱恩·赫伯特 凯文·J·安德森

1957年，为了写一篇介绍美国农业部某研究项目的杂志文章，弗兰克·赫伯特租了一架小型飞机，来到俄勒冈州海岸的沙丘。美国农业部开发了一种稳固沙层的方法，在沙丘顶部种植耐贫瘠的植物，以防止沙丘流动并吞没道路和建筑物。他打算给这篇文章定个标题，叫“他们挡住了流沙”。

回到家开始写这篇文章时，他意识到某种比杂志文章更宏大的东西。在飞行过程中，注视着像海上波浪一样的沙丘时，他感到了一种情感的牵引。他坐在打字机前，闭上眼睛，想象出一颗广阔的沙漠星球。他看到了一个像马赫迪一样的沙漠救世主骑着马，带着一支骑着马，带着一支骑着马和骆驼的杂乱军队，如雷霆般在沙漠中驰骋。这位领袖富有魅力，能够在他的人民当中激起狂热的忠诚。

渐渐地，这些画面在弗兰克·赫伯特的脑海中变得更宏达，更广阔，他创造了一整个由外星球组成的宇宙。这颗沙漠星球将是所有星球中最重要的，它盛产一种稀缺资源——名叫“美琅脂”。帝国政府和星际公司都需要这种资源，并为控制这种资源而大打出手。

这样一个故事需要一张非常大的画布。

弗兰克·赫伯特先于所有人看过一部《沙丘》电影——一场在他脑海中上演的史诗般的电影盛事：一场梦幻般的、弥赛亚式的幻象，然后他将其打造成了一部堪称有史以来最受推崇的科幻小说。

弗兰克·赫伯特一生都热爱相机和摄影。他在报纸行业中担任专栏作家，葡萄酒编辑和专业摄影师，通常为西海岸的赫斯特旗下的报纸工作。多年后，在指导他大儿子布莱恩从事写作时，他告诉儿子，他喜欢写描述性的段落，这就像透过相机的镜头，描述他所看到的东西。

作为示例，他讲到他是如何在《沙丘》中介绍邪恶的弗拉基米尔·哈克男爵的：从一间无窗的屋子中的黑影开始，“一只戴着光彩夺目的戒指的胖手”旋转着一颗未知星球的立体星球仪。画面徐徐展开，但并不是视觉上的。首先是声音：“星球仪旁边传出一阵嗤嗤的笑声，笑声中蹦出一个低沉的嗓音……”

弗兰克·赫伯特没有正面描述男爵的外貌，而是让这个卑鄙的人用隆隆的、低沉的、冷酷的声音密谋对付高贵的雷托公爵和厄崔迪家族的计划，这种充满杀意的举止，恐吓和威胁着房间里和其他人——彼得·德伏来和菲德-罗萨·哈克南。男爵动了一下，但还是让人没法看清。相反，他“在星球仪旁的暗影中动了动身子。”

在整个章节中，作者慢慢地向读者透露了越来越多的信息，就像照相机镜头的光圈逐渐打开一样。经过三千字的悬念铺垫，男爵终于被正面描述。“当她从阴影中现身的时候，映入眼帘的是一个极为庞大的身形——不论从质量上还是体积上——和一身肥肉。他穿着黑色长袍，衣服的褶皱下有一些细微的隆起，可以看出他身上装着便携式浮空器，拖着那身肥肉。”

《沙丘》是一个极其生动、复杂，且十分完整的故事，充满了独特的想法和令人难以置信的异国情调。每一个度过这部经典小说的人，都会想象和塑造出他们自己的保罗·穆阿迪布、雷托·厄崔迪公爵、杰西卡夫人、哈克南男爵、野兽拉班、邓肯·艾达荷、哥尼·哈莱克、杜菲·哈瓦特……从而欣赏到属于他们自己的电影。

已有其他电影人将他们对《沙丘》的诠释搬上来银幕——大卫林奇1984年的电影和约翰·哈里森后来的迷你电视剧。在他们之前还有一些导演，其项目进行到了不同的阶段，但是没能将它搬上银幕。所有这些导演都是保罗的前辈，他们资源踏上沙丘星球上的炙热沙地，而这的确是对导演技巧的一次非常大的考验。

布莱恩清楚地记得，在《沙丘》最初的创作阶段，他在赫伯特大家庭里的经历。布莱恩记得自己听到父亲给母亲读了一段话：一个名叫保罗·厄崔迪的年轻人，被迫将受放进神秘的盒子里，而一个老妇人——圣母盖乌斯·海伦·莫西阿姆，用毒针顶着他的脖子。

听着听着，布莱恩被这戏剧性的场景和奇怪的话语缩吸引——戈姆刺、穆阿迪布、帕迪沙皇帝、魁萨茨·哈德拉克、厄拉克斯、贝尼·杰瑟里特。随着这些词语和名字从他父亲的舌头上滚落，以铿锵有力的声音发出，布莱恩沉醉于他门那沙哑、神秘的回响。

布莱恩后来才意识到，他听到的其实是《沙丘》的开头章节。

《沙丘》的故事在出版半个多世纪后仍然受到全世界的喜爱和推崇，而且它海将迎来更多的观众。

对传奇影业来说，导演丹尼斯·维伦纽瓦已经接受了这项兼具挑战——为弗兰克·赫伯特的杰作执导一部广受认可的电影版本。维伦纽瓦之前拍的两部科幻电影试水《降临》（2016）和《银翼杀手2049》（2017）——都是充满了想象色彩的视觉盛宴。现在，通过《沙丘》，他达成了足以确立自己地位的成就，这是一部卓越的电影，即使是最铁杆的弗兰克·赫伯特粉丝也不会失望。

任何改变自《沙丘》的电影，都是在弗兰克·赫伯特的奇幻宇宙所奠定的创意和所秒回的广博基础上进行的。“沙丘”正传系列给维伦纽瓦提供了大量素材，包括弗兰克·赫伯特的第一部小说以及它的五部续集《沙丘救世主》《沙丘之子》《沙丘神帝》《沙丘异端》《圣殿沙丘》——这些小说总共有一百多万字，跨越了五千年历史。除了这几部原著作品，我们还一起创作了许多畅销全球的小说，扩展了“沙丘”的历史和人物，从《沙丘》故事一万年前的巴特勒圣战和贝尼·杰瑟里特学校建立这样社员的故事起源，一直到五千年后的大结局。我们的后传和前传为“沙丘”传奇增加了数百万字，填补了雷托公爵的背景故事，讲述了他与卑鄙的哈克南男爵之初的冲突，以及雷托和杰西卡感人的爱情，保罗的诞生还有伊勒琅公主为了保罗·穆阿迪布的传奇一生编纂编年史所做的大量工作。

CHAPTER 8

“Yueh! Yueh! Yueh!”goes the refrain. “A million deaths were not enough for Yueh!” —from“A Child’s History of Muad’Dib”by the Princess Irulan

THE DOOR stood ajar, and Jessica stepped through it into a room with yellow walls. To her left stretched a low settee of black hide and two empty bookcases, a hanging waterflask with dust on its bulging sides. To her right, bracketing another door, stood more empty bookcases, a desk from Caladan and three chairs. At the windows directly ahead of her stood Dr. Yueh, his back to her, his attention fixed upon the outside world.

Jessica took another silent step into the room.

She saw that Yueh’s coat was wrinkled, a white smudge near the left elbow as though he had leaned against chalk. He looked, from behind, like a fleshless stick figure in overlarge black clothing, a caricature poised for stringy movement at the direction of a puppet master. Only the squarish block of head with long ebony hair caught in its silver Suk School ring at the shoulder seemed alive— turning slightly to follow some movement outside.

Again, she glanced around the room, seeing no sign of her son, but the closed door on her right, she knew, let into a small bedroom for which Paul had expressed a liking.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Yueh,”she said. “Where’s Paul?” He nodded as though to something out the window, spoke in an absent manner without turning: “Your son grew tired, Jessica. I sent him into the next room to rest.” Abruptly, he stiffened, whirled with mustache flopping over his purpled lips.

“Forgive me, my Lady! My thoughts were far away … I … did not mean to be familiar.” She smiled, held out her right hand. For a moment, she was afraid he might kneel. “Wellington, please.”

“To use your name like that … I….”

“We’ve known each other six years,”she said. “It’s long past time formalities should’ve been dropped between us—in private.” Yueh ventured a thin smile, thinking: I believe it has worked. Now, she’ll think anything unusual in my manner is due to embarrassment. She’ll not look for deeper reasons when she believes she already knows the answer.

“I’m afraid I was woolgathering,”he said. “Whenever I … feel especially sorry for you, I’m afraid I think of you as … well, Jessica.”

“Sorry for me? Whatever for?” Yueh shrugged. Long ago, he had realized Jessica was not gifted with the full Truthsay as his Wanna had been. Still, he always used the truth with Jessica whenever possible. It was safest.

“You’ve seen this place, my … Jessica.”He stumbled over the name, plunged ahead: “So barren after Caladan. And the people! Those townswomen we passed on the way here wailing beneath their veils. The way they looked at us.” She folded her arms across her breast, hugging herself, feeling the crysknife there, a blade ground from a sandworm’s tooth, if the reports were right. “It’s just that we’re strange to them—different people, different customs. They’ve known only the Harkonnens.”She looked past him out the windows. “What were you staring at out there?” He turned back to the window. “The people.” Jessica crossed to his side, looked to the left toward the front of the house where Yueh’s attention was focused. A line of twenty palm trees grew there, the ground beneath them swept clean, barren. A screen fence separated them from the road upon which robed people were passing. Jessica detected a faint shimmering in the air between her and the people—a house shield—and went on to study the passing throng, wondering why Yueh found them so absorbing.

The pattern emerged and she put a hand to her cheek. The way the passing people looked at the palm trees! She saw envy, some hate … even a sense of hope. Each person raked those trees with a fixity of expression.

“Do you know what they’re thinking?”Yueh asked.

“You profess to read minds?”she asked.

“Those minds,”he said. “They look at those trees and they think: ‘There are one hundred of us.’ That’s what they think.” She turned a puzzled frown on him. “Why?”

“Those are date palms,”he said. “One date palm requires forty liters of water a day. A man requires but eight liters. A palm, then, equals five men. There are twenty palms out there—one hundred men.”

“But some of those people look at the trees hopefully.”

“They but hope some dates will fall, except it’s the wrong season.”

“We look at this place with too critical an eye,”she said. “There’s hope as well as danger here. The spice could make us rich. With a fat treasury, we can make this world into whatever we wish.” And she laughed silently at herself: Who am I trying to convince? The laugh broke through her restraints, emerging brittle, without humor. “But you can’t buy security,”she said.

Yueh turned away to hide his face from her. If only it were possible to hate these people instead of love them! In her manner, in many ways, Jessica was like his Wanna. Yet that thought carried its own rigors, hardening him to his purpose.

The ways of the Harkonnen cruelty were devious. Wanna might not be dead. He had to be certain.

“Do not worry for us, Wellington,”Jessica said. “The problem’s ours, not yours.” She thinks I worry for her! He blinked back tears. And I do, of course. But I must stand before that black Baron with his deed accomplished, and take my one chance to strike him where he is weakest—in his gloating moment! He sighed.

“Would it disturb Paul if I looked in on him?”she asked.

“Not at all. I gave him a sedative.”

“He’s taking the change well?”she asked.

“Except for getting a bit overtired. He’s excited, but what fifteen-year-old wouldn’t be under these circumstances?”He crossed to the door, opened it.

“He’s in here.” Jessica followed, peered into a shadowy room.

Paul lay on a narrow cot, one arm beneath a light cover, the other thrown back over his head. Slatted blinds at a window beside the bed wove a loom of shadows across face and blanket.

Jessica stared at her son, seeing the oval shape of face so like her own. But the hair was the Duke’s—coal-colored and tousled. Long lashes concealed the lime-toned eyes. Jessica smiled, feeling her fears retreat. She was suddenly caught by the idea of genetic traces in her son’s features—her lines in eyes and facial outline, but sharp touches of the father peering through that outline like maturity emerging from childhood.

She thought of the boy’s features as an exquisite distillation out of random patterns—endless queues of happenstance meeting at this nexus. The thought made her want to kneel beside the bed and take her son in her arms, but she was inhibited by Yueh’s presence. She stepped back, closed the door softly.

Yueh had returned to the window, unable to bear watching the way Jessica stared at her son. Why did Wanna never give me children? he asked himself. I know as a doctor there was no physical reason against it. Was there some Bene Gesserit reason? Was she, perhaps, instructed to serve a different purpose?

What could it have been? She loved me, certainly.

For the first time, he was caught up in the thought that he might be part of a pattern more involuted and complicated than his mind could grasp.

Jessica stopped beside him, said: “What delicious abandon in the sleep of a child.” He spoke mechanically: “If only adults could relax like that.”

“Yes.”

“Where do we lose it?”he murmured.

She glanced at him, catching the odd tone, but her mind was still on Paul, thinking of the new rigors in his training here, thinking of the differences in his life now—so very different from the life they once had planned for him.

“We do, indeed, lose something,”she said.

She glanced out to the right at a slope humped with a wind-troubled graygreen of bushes—dusty leaves and dry claw branches. The too-dark sky hung over the slope like a blot, and the milky light of the Arrakeen sun gave the scene a silver cast—light like the crysknife concealed in her bodice.

“The sky’s so dark,”she said.

“That’s partly the lack of moisture,”he said.

“Water!”she snapped. “Everywhere you turn here, you’re involved with the lack of water!”

“It’s the precious mystery of Arrakis,”he said.

“Why is there so little of it? There’s volcanic rock here. There’re a dozen power sources I could name. There’s polar ice. They say you can’t drill in the desert—storms and sandtides destroy equipment faster than it can be installed, if the worms don’t get you first. They’ve never found water traces there, anyway.

But the mystery, Wellington, the real mystery is the wells that’ve been drilled up here in the sinks and basins. Have you read about those?”

“First a trickle, then nothing,”he said.

“But, Wellington, that’s the mystery. The water was there. It dries up. And never again is there water. Yet another hole nearby produces the same result: a trickle that stops. Has no one ever been curious about this?”

“It is curious,”he said. “You suspect some living agency? Wouldn’t that have shown in core samples?”

“What would have shown? Alien plant matter … or animal? Who could recognize it?”She turned back to the slope. “The water is stopped. Something plugs it. That’s my suspicion.”

“Perhaps the reason’s known,”he said. “The Harkonnens sealed off many sources of information about Arrakis. Perhaps there was reason to suppress this.”

“What reason?”she asked. “And then there’s the atmospheric moisture.

Little enough of it, certainly, but there’s some. It’s the major source of water here, caught in windtraps and precipitators. Where does that come from?”

“The polar caps?”

“Cold air takes up little moisture, Wellington. There are things here behind the Harkonnen veil that bear close investigation, and not all of those things are directly involved with the spice.”

“We are indeed behind the Harkonnen veil,”he said. “Perhaps we’ll….”He broke off, noting the sudden intense way she was looking at him. “Is something wrong?”

“The way you say ‘Harkonnen,’ ”she said. “Even my Duke’s voice doesn’t carry that weight of venom when he uses the hated name. I didn’t know you had personal reasons to hate them, Wellington.” Great Mother! he thought. I’ve aroused her suspicions! Now I must use every trick my Wanna taught me. There’s only one solution: tell the truth as far as I can.

He said: “You didn’t know that my wife, my Wanna….”He shrugged, unable to speak past a sudden constriction in his throat. Then: “They….”The words would not come out. He felt panic, closed his eyes tightly, experiencing the agony in his chest and little else until a hand touched his arm gently.

“Forgive me,”Jessica said. “I did not mean to open an old wound.”And she thought: Those animals! His wife was Bene Gesserit —the signs are all over him. And it’s obvious the Harkonnens killed her. Here’s another poor victim bound to the Atreides by a cherem of hate.

“I am sorry,”he said. “I’m unable to talk about it.”He opened his eyes, giving himself up to the internal awareness of grief. That, at least, was truth.

Jessica studied him, seeing the up-angled cheeks, the dark sequins of almond eyes, the butter complexion, and stringy mustache hanging like a curved frame around purpled lips and narrow chin. The creases of his cheeks and forehead, she saw, were as much lines of sorrow as of age. A deep affection for him came over her.

“Wellington, I’m sorry we brought you into this dangerous place,”she said.

“I came willingly,”he said. And that, too, was true.

“But this whole planet’s a Harkonnen trap. You must know that.”

“It will take more than a trap to catch the Duke Leto,”he said. And that, too, was true.

“Perhaps I should be more confident of him,”she said. “He is a brilliant tactician.”

“We’ve been uprooted,”he said. “That’s why we’re uneasy.”

“And how easy it is to kill the uprooted plant,”she said. “Especially when you put it down in hostile soil.”

“Are we certain the soil’s hostile?”

“There were water riots when it was learned how many people the Duke was adding to the population,”she said. “They stopped only when the people learned we were installing new windtraps and condensers to take care of the load.”

“There is only so much water to support human life here,”he said. “The people know if more come to drink a limited amount of water, the price goes up and the very poor die. But the Duke has solved this. It doesn’t follow that the riots mean permanent hostility toward him.”

“And guards,”she said. “Guards everywhere. And shields. You see the blurring of them everywhere you look. We did not live this way on Caladan.”

“Give this planet a chance,”he said.

But Jessica continued to stare hard-eyed out the window. “I can smell death in this place,”she said. “Hawat sent advance agents in here by the battalion.

Those guards outside are his men. The cargo handlers are his men. There’ve been unexplained withdrawals of large sums from the treasury. The amounts mean only one thing: bribes in high places.”She shook her head. “Where Thufir Hawat goes, death and deceit follow.”

“You malign him.”

“Malign? I praise him. Death and deceit are our only hopes now. I just do not fool myself about Thufir’s methods.”

“You should … keep busy,”he said. “Give yourself no time for such morbid —”

“Busy! What is it that takes most of my time, Wellington? I am the Duke’s secretary—so busy that each day I learn new things to fear … things even he doesn’t suspect I know.”She compressed her lips, spoke thinly: “Sometimes I wonder how much my Bene Gesserit business training figured in his choice of me.”

“What do you mean?”He found himself caught by the cynical tone, the bitterness that he had never seen her expose.

“Don’t you think, Wellington,”she asked, “that a secretary bound to one by love is so much safer?”

“That is not a worthy thought, Jessica.” The rebuke came naturally to his lips. There was no doubt how the Duke felt about his concubine. One had only to watch him as he followed her with his eyes.

She sighed. “You’re right. It’s not worthy.” Again, she hugged herself, pressing the sheathed crysknife against her flesh and thinking of the unfinished business it represented.

“There’ll be much bloodshed soon,”she said. “The Harkonnens won’t rest until they’re dead or my Duke destroyed. The Baron cannot forget that Leto is a cousin of the royal blood—no matter what the distance—while the Harkonnen titles came out of the CHOAM pocketbook. But the poison in him, deep in his mind, is the knowledge that an Atreides had a Harkonnen banished for cowardice after the Battle of Corrin.”

“The old feud,”Yueh muttered. And for a moment he felt an acid touch of hate. The old feud had trapped him in its web, killed his Wanna or—worse—left her for Harkonnen tortures until her husband did their bidding. The old feud had trapped him and these people were part of that poisonous thing. The irony was that such deadliness should come to flower here on Arrakis, the one source in the universe of melange, the prolonger of life, the giver of health.

“What are you thinking?”she asked.

“I am thinking that the spice brings six hundred and twenty thousand solaris the decagram on the open market right now. That is wealth to buy many things.”

“Does greed touch even you, Wellington?”

“Not greed.”

“What then?” He shrugged. “Futility.”He glanced at her. “Can you remember your first taste of spice?”

“It tasted like cinnamon.”

“But never twice the same,”he said. “It’s like life—it presents a different face each time you take it. Some hold that the spice produces a learned-flavor reaction. The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable—slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly synthesized.”

“I think it would’ve been wiser for us to go renegade, to take ourselves beyond the Imperial reach,”she said.

He saw that she hadn’t been listening to him, focused on her words, wondering: Yes—why didn’t she make him do this? She could make him do virtually anything.

He spoke quickly because here was truth and a change of subject: “Would you think it bold of me … Jessica, if I asked a personal question?” She pressed against the window ledge in an unexplainable pang of disquiet.

“Of course not. You’re … my friend.”

“Why haven’t you made the Duke marry you?” She whirled, head up, glaring. “Made him marry me? But—”

“I should not have asked,”he said.

“No.”She shrugged. “There’s good political reason—as long as my Duke remains unmarried some of the Great Houses can still hope for alliance. And….” She sighed. “… motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches. If I made him do … this, then it would not be his doing.”

“It’s a thing my Wanna might have said,”he murmured. And this, too, was truth. He put a hand to his mouth, swallowing convulsively. He had never been closer to speaking out, confessing his secret role.

Jessica spoke, shattering the moment. “Besides, Wellington, the Duke is really two men. One of them I love very much. He’s charming, witty, considerate … tender—everything a woman could desire. But the other man is … cold, callous, demanding, selfish—as harsh and cruel as a winter wind. That’s the man shaped by the father.”Her face contorted. “If only that old man had died when my Duke was born!” In the silence that came between them, a breeze from a ventilator could be heard fingering the blinds.

Presently, she took a deep breath, said, “Leto’s right—these rooms are nicer than the ones in the other sections of the house.”She turned, sweeping the room with her gaze. “If you’ll excuse me, Wellington, I want another look through this wing before I assign quarters.” He nodded. “Of course.”And he thought: If only there were some way not to do this thing that I must do.

Jessica dropped her arms, crossed to the hall door and stood there a moment, hesitating, then let herself out. All the time we talked he was hiding something, holding something back, she thought. To save my feelings, no doubt. He’s a good man. Again, she hesitated, almost turned back to confront Yueh and drag the hidden thing from him. But that would only shame him, frighten him to learn he’s so easily read. I should place more trust in my friends.

“《沙丘》的故事情节就跟制作电影的过程一样精细而复杂。”

——执行制片人监作者坦尼亚·拉朋特

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

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

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

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

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

这的确是“计中计”。《沙丘》的故事情节就跟制作电影的过程一样精细而复杂。