The Dune Encyclopedia

by Willis E McNelly

  The handbook was divided into four major parts, the first dealing with poisons — a legacy from the first version — the second with other weapons and their uses, and the third section with a discussion of strategies and odds, as well as methods of circumventing the Great Convention, and the rules of kanly. The fourth section of the Handbook described certain professional standards and rules of prudence.

  In the section devoted to poisons, the various possibilities of chaumurky and basilia receive the greatest attention. Chaumurky was a general term for any poison administered in a drink, and was thus a logical agent for murder for a political world heavily dependent on festivals and ceremony. Basilia is a poison which acts swiftly when injected into the bloodstream and which was therefore often placed on the tip of a knife or sword. Since basilia was also nearly invisible to the naked eye, it was a favorite with many professional assassins in the Old Imperium, though its use depended usually on some context where the rules of hand-to-hand combat would apply.

  Yet another poison of note discussed in the manual was kriminon, a gas capable of being carried in a tiny capsule, which upon its release might well prove lethal to the occupants of a large room, even an auditorium. Students of the history of the Atreides family will recall that Duke Leto was armed by his traitorous physician with a tooth containing kriminon. When Duke Leto depressed the false tooth, at his last audience with Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, the expanding cloud killed the baron's master assassin and very nearly brought about the baron's death.

  Finally a poison of particular interest because of its painful side-effects is given a brief but special eminence in the Handbook. Most of the poisons in the book were valued because of their swift action, and their ability to be disguised. But one seldom-used poison, zenobia, or the "throat of hell," was highly respected because of the excruciating pain it imposed on the victim when ingested in food or drink. Zenobia was recommended for those special occasions when the prospective victim was completely at the assassin's mercy, and the killer wanted to impose a remarkably horrifying demise on his — and often her — enemy. Generally, the professional assassin was advised to eschew personal feeling and to approach his work with a suitable objectivity and craftsmanship beyond mere vulgar expressions of personality; but the Handbook acknowledged that there were some occasions when even the professional using the logical approach stressed by mentat training might well find it pleasurable to allow himself some of the enjoyment of personal revenge.

  The second section of the Handbook devoted itself to the discussion of conventional weapons, primarily swords and lasguns, and their functional advantages and disadvantages for the assassin. As with the poisons, subtlety was recommended, for as the Handbook comments, "Any mindless mercenary can commit indiscriminate homicide which will probably rebound upon himself." (In passing, it might be noted that the manual was written in a style that was often trenchant and sometimes characterized by a rich sense of irony.) Assassins were instructed to acquire swordmaster training as a matter of course, and, if at all possible, to develop considerable competence in marksmanship, although the Handbook implies that the master assassin would, whenever possible, leave slaughter with lasguns to ordinary journeymen.

  Section three of the Handbook provided a detailed analysis of the odds for success in given situations where the assassin might be expected to perform his work. The best strategies, for instance, for murdering guests at a formal dinner were evaluated, as well as the methods of avoiding swift reprisal. Much space was given to the problems of infiltrating a ducal palace or launching attacks at public events and ceremonies, especially sporting events.

  The fourth part of the Handbook's commentary presented the rules of the Great Convention and the code of kanly and provided numerous suggestions of how these might be circumvented or turned to the advantage of the assassin. A favorite method involved bribing the judges or Imperial representatives at various transactions between the great houses. The use of poisoned swords at single combat was brought up again here, although much had already been said of this tactic in earlier sections. Various means of infiltrating the defenses of ducal castles, despite the use of shields and other protections, were also considered at length here.

  This section also presented the conventions and ritual formulas involved in a War of Assassins, from the formal declaration of intent with the Imperial Registrar and the Landsraad Secretariat to the final moment when victory was declared for one side or the other. The Handbook, however, seemed to imply that even such formal wars were best carried out on a small scale and waged with subtlety by experts, rather than becoming engagements involving large groups of soldiers. A frequent metaphor in the Handbook is that of the Cheops master, and the authors seemed to regard the art of assassination as a profession rather like that of the grand master of Cheops.

  A final note at the end of the Handbook concerned the assassin's need for self-protection. He was enjoined to learn much of his employer's private crimes, and to store the information in places beyond the employer's reach, with provisions that would allow it to become public in the event of his own death. The assassin was also warned to make himself as valuable as possible to his master, yet never to believe himself irreplaceable. Most important, the Handbook advised the assassin to respect his profession and to avoid the temptations of political ambition or personal involvement in his work. Although many famous assassins found the first easy enough, some authorities doubt that most of them were able to avoid the second pitfall.

  One fascinating aspect of the study of the Handbook is the discovery of two surviving copies with annotations. One that once belonged to the Harkonnen family contains many terse and interesting comments on practical matters of technique, together with a surprising passage near the end where the author, in a vengeful tone, makes several animadversions on a "Bene Gesserit witch." The last entry is indeed astonishing, because many of the earlier annotations had remarked on the folly of emotional involvement in the theory and practice of assassination. The presence of the initials "T. H." in several places makes the identification of the author as Thufir Hawat, as assassin in the employ of the Atreides House, and later a servant of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, extremely plausible, as Harq al-Ada contends in a note in House Atreides: A Historical Overview. However, Kuuraveer argues in The Art of Legal Murder that such an attribution is too obvious, and puts forward an alternative case for Tomar Haanigan, a contract killer and owner of several bordellos on Silverado where the Harkonnen slave raiders went in search of fresh victims.

  The other copy of the Handbook contains two sets of annotations. Apparently lodged in the Fremen Museum on Arrakis at one time (several of the first set of notes refer to Fremen weapons and rituals), it seems that later during the Duncan Days it was taken elsewhere, and is now located in a museum on Grumman. The second group of notes, much later than the first annotations, discuss the vagaries of feminine warriors, with some obvious allusions to the Fish Speakers. Even more curious is the fact that the two sets of annotations were made centuries or even millennia apart, yet there exists a curious similarity between the handwriting of each set. This strange phenomenon has seemed good grounds for some scholars, even including Kuuraveer, to credit the notes in this book to two different incarnations of Duncan Idaho.

  It may safely be concluded from a study of the Handbook and its role in the stormy history of the Imperium, both in pre-Atreides times and in the days of the Atreides emperors, that it is in many ways a symbol of the barbaric world of those times. Contemporary readers may well rejoice that they live in a more enlightened era, when the practice of legalized murder is no longer tolerated.

  E.C.

  Further references: WAR OF ASSASSINS; HALLECK, GURNEY; Zhautii Kuuraveer, The Practice of Death and The Art of the Duel, both from Kaitain Varna; Otho, Count Fenring, The Fine Art of Professional Homicide, ed. and tr. Tovat Gwinsted (Grumman: Tern); Margot Lady Fenring, Arrakis and After, Arrakis Studies 12 (Grumman: United Worlds); Jaspar Koburn, House Harkonnen: A
Historical Sketch (Stoddard: Brujovia); Zhautii Kuuraveer, The Art of Legal Murder (Grumman: Tern); Harq al-Ada, House Atreides: A Historical Overview, tr. Zhaulya Muurazharat (Libermann: Pinetree); Landsraad-Imperial Committee on Conflict Containment, The Assassin's Handbook, Lib. Conf. Temp. Series 88.

  ATREIDES, LADY ALIA

  (also "The Womb of Heaven," "The Accursed One," "Saint Alia-of-the-Knife"; 10191-10220).

  BIOGRAPHICAL DATA. Born in 10191, within a year of her parents' move from Caladan to Arrakis, the Lady Alia was the first of the Atreides pre-born. Her consciousness was permanently altered during the Water of Life ceremony which made her mother, the Lady Jessica, a Fremen Reverend Mother. The desert folk did not know of Jessica's pregnancy, and so had no way of knowing that they were creating more than a new Reverend Mother when they fed Lady Jessica the "illuminating poison"; the recently-widowed Lady knew the effect the raw Water of Life would have on her unborn daughter, but could not refuse the ceremony. The result was the creation of something Jessica's Bene Gesserit superiors had long feared: a child born with full awareness and knowledge of her ancestral memories.

  The superstitious Fremen were affected by the child from the moment of her birth. After only a few moments of crying, the newborn looked around the birthing room as if taking in every detail with her already-focused eyes, and with a curious smile, drank the Water of Conception fed her by her godmother Harah. Some of the other women present at the birth were unnerved by this behavior and spread the word among their people that their new Reverend Mother had given birth to a child who would bear careful watching. The Bene Gesserit were not the only group in the Imperium with legends of Abomination.

  Alia's precocity in other matters did nothing to soothe the Fremen's unease. By the time she could walk, only eight months after her birth, she was exercising their water discipline as thoroughly as any adult among them. Her access to Fremen memories, in addition to those of her own ancestors, meant she did not have to learn the discipline but simply implement what she already knew. Her first words to her godmother and nurse were not the nonsense syllables the Fremen women would have expected from a baby, but a recognizable sentence: "I love you, Harah." But most unsettling was the child's habit of sitting alone at the edge of the desert, practicing adult Bene Gesserit exercises.

  Only the stature of her mother and brother among the tribes saved the child Alia from being put to the Test of Possession. The Fremen seldom used the ritual, for it evoked a feeling of communal guilt as no other action could; but the sight of a child behaving so much older than her known years was enough to make them consider it.

  In 10193, during the last engagements between the forces of Shaddam IV and Muad'Dib's Fremen, the two-year-old Alia permitted herself to be captured by the Emperor's Sardaukar rafter than take responsibility for telling her brother that his son had been killed in the fighting. Taken before the Emperor, his Truthsayer R.M. Gaius Helen Mohiam, and the Baron Harkonnen, the little girl exhibited such poise and intelligence that she unnerved all three. The Reverend Mother demanded that she be killed at once, claiming that she was the Abomination the Sisterhood had long known was possible, a development feared above all other consequences of their breeding program. Shaddam IV insisted that she reveal her brother's whereabouts and tried futilely to frighten her as though she were any other child. The old Baron, already known to the girl as her maternal grandfather, made the most foolish mistake of all by seizing her, believing that she was helpless and easily dispatched. The "helpless" child struck him with a poisoned needle; the Harkonnen died moments later.

  As she grew older Alia often mentioned her loneliness and isolation from the rest of humanity. Not even Muad'Dib, for all his own prescient abilities, shared her unique position as a pre-born. Jessica, while she understood what had happened to her daughter as well as one who had not experienced such an awakening could, provided little comfort to the girl who increasingly came to view her mother as the person to blame for her condition.

  In another sense, she was never alone. Maintaining an individual identity amid the barrage of memories was a constant drain, made more difficult by Alia's part in her brother's legend. As he was Muad'Dib, the Mahdi who would lead his Fremen to paradise over the bodies of the unbelievers, so she became transformed into Saint Alia-of-the-Knife, the divine huntress who sought out the faithless, who could not be deceived. For Alia herself — as child, adolescent, or young woman — there was little room.

  Following her brother's disappearance into the desert in 10209, Lady Alia was appointed as Regent for his twins, Leto and Ghanima. One of her first acts in that capacity was to order the deaths of those who had conspired against the Emperor, sparing none but the repentant Princess Irulan. Interestingly, in light of Paul's having ordered that the old woman be spared, Alia's orders included the execution of Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam. It was assumed at the time that her action resulted from a simple desire for revenge, but recent revelations concerning the possibility that the Reverend Mother was Lady Jessica's biological mother make such an uncomplicated explanation suspect. This violation of her brother's express command marked the Lady's first departure from usual Atreides' behavior.

  Within a month after becoming Regent, Alia married the first ghola of Duncan Idaho, the Atreides swordmaster. The marriage ceremony was performed before an audience of hundreds of thousands of Imperial subjects in the capital city of Arrakeen as befitted the bride's rank; but the ceremony was unfamiliar to most of the watchers. Alia had chosen to observe the Fremen rites, omitting only those sections of the ritual which involved removing her crysknife from its sheath at her waist. She was still too much under the Fremen influence to unsheath a crysknife before a crowd of out-freyn and already adept enough a politician to realize how such an action would have alienated the people who made up her power base.

  During the earliest years of her Regency, Lady Alia seemed little changed from the young woman who had led crowds of pilgrims in prayer and prophesied for them during the Muad'Dib days. As rebellions were put down and problems solved, however, she found herself more often subject to the demands of her ancestral memories for a second chance, a new life gained at her expense, the Bene Gesserit litanies and rituals helped to silence the inner voices for a time, as did the Zensunni rituals Alia knew from her background of Fremen memories. But the interior personalities grew stronger with time and were strengthened still further by the Regent's frequent recourse to heavy doses of melange.

  Her decisions as Regent, as well as those affected by them, suffered. Aides whispered to one another of their mistress's "divine rages"; those closest to her, including her husband, urged her to spare herself more, to rest. Driven from within, she ignored their advice.

  One of the schemes most important to her involved the twins placed in her care. With the Lady Jessica safely out of the way in Castle Caladan, and their Fremen guardian Stilgar content to defer to her in all things, Alia was in complete control of Leto and Ghanima. She knew that they were pre-born, as she had been, and that they had avoided taking large doses of melange because they feared its effects on them. If they could be persuaded to attempt the spice-trance, a greater degree of prescience might be available to them than was to her. And to whom could they relate their visions, if not to their waiting and sympathetic aunt? She encouraged them to experiment with the spice from their earliest years in her care, never realizing that they were capable of seeing what such a course had done to her and determined to avoid it at all costs. The twin's lack of cooperation left their aunt puzzled, annoyed, and finally infuriated. It was another barrier to her exercising full control over the Imperium she had been given to command, another unneeded drain on her diminishing personal resources.

  By 10217, the strain of dealing with her inner voices finally became too great for Alia to handle alone. To avoid total personality fragmentation, she made an alliance with the memory of old Baron Harkonnen, the family enemy she herself had killed many years earlier. With this strong perso
nality acting in concert with hers, she was able to shut out the maddening internal voices and act decisively once again. It is not known whether the Regent realized or cared that her relationship with her grandfather's memory-self had to change the direction her actions would take.

  From this year onward, Alia's decisions grew increasingly more self-protective, less representative of the old Atreides codes. Her use of Bene Gesserit techniques to maintain her young body dated from this time. Her change soon prompted the Sisterhood to send a delegation to the Lady Jessica on Caladan, asking her help in investigating her daughter. Jessica accepted at once: if Alia indeed were slipping into a state of Abomination, she wanted to be the one to confirm it and perhaps help her daughter save herself. Jessica knew her B.G. sisters well; they would think only to destroy an Abomination.

  Her mother learned firsthand just how true were the rumors concerning Alia. Within weeks of her arrival in Arrakeen, Jessica was a captive of House Corrino, young Leto was presumed dead, and an engagement between Ghanima and Farad'n Corrino was in the works. Alia was free to act with even greater vigor in expanding her control of the Imperium and of the young woman, her niece, who was ostensibly to inherit it. The Regent tightened her grip wherever possible, not realizing that other plans were in progress to bring about her ruin.

  Those plans — among them those of Jessica, Gurney Halleck, Leto, Farad'n, Ghanima, and Duncan Idaho — blossomed within weeks of one another in 10220. Alia was put in the position of having to take more and greater risks when her assassin failed to kill Halleck, her husband's death forced Stilgar to take Irulan and Ghanima with him as he fled into the desert, and her internal ally, the old Baron, spent more time lusting after the young men in her court than he did helping her. Despite her eventual success in securing Irulan and Stilgar in her dungeons and in persuading Ghanima to feign acceptance of Farad'n, she had spread herself too thin. When Leto, now protected and strengthened by his sandtrout skin, arrived at Alia's temple, he faced an adversary he could now overcome, in spite of her legendary prowess at hand-to-hand combat. Subdued by Leto, Alia exerted the force of her own personality one final time. In spite of the protests of her inner voices, she chose to take her own life rather than to submit to a Fremen Trial of Possession. As she flung herself to the Temple courtyard, she performed her first independent act in years.