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Authors: Frank Herbert

Dune

BOOK: Dune
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Table of Contents
 
 
 
 
Books by Frank Herbert
THE BOOK OF FRANK HERBERT
DESTINATION: VOID (revised edition)
DIRECT DESCENT
THE DOSADI EXPERIMENT
EYE
THE EYES OF HEISENBERG
THE GODMAKERS
THE GREEN BRAIN
THE MAKER OF DUNE
THE SANTAROGA BARRIER
SOUL CATCHER
WHIPPING STAR
THE WHITE PLAGUE
THE WORLDS OF FRANK HERBERT
MAN OF TWO WORLDS (with Brian Herbert)
 
The Dune Chronicles
 
DUNE
DUNE MESSIAH
CHILDREN OF DUNE
GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE
HERETICS OF DUNE
CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE
 
Books by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom
 
THE JESUS INCIDENT
THE LAZARUS EFFECT
THE ASCENSION FACTOR
 
Books edited by Brian Herbert
 
THE NOTEBOOKS OF FRANK HERBERT'S DUNE
SONGS OF MAUD'DIB
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
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South Africa
 
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
 
Copyright © 1965 by Herbert Properties LLC.
 
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without
permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the
author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
ACE is an imprint of The Berkley Publishing Group.
ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
 
 
eISBN : 978-0-441-01359-3
 
 
Herbert, Frank
Dune.
I . Title
PS3558.E63D.54
83-16030
eISBN : 978-0-441-01359-3
 
 

http://us.penguingroup.com

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.
Book One
DUNE
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 born 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 cooled-sweat 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:
Gom jabbar. . .
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 nerve-blood 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-the-Sight. Even the Padishah Emperor's Truthsayer couldn't evade that responsibility when the duty call came.
BOOK: Dune
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