When Paul killed Jamis after the hot-tempered Fremen called him out by challenging Jessica's part in the legend, Chani was forced to reconsider. After all, this supposedly soft outworlder had managed to slay an adult Fremen with a knife while receiving hardly a scratch himself. But it was not until his mother "passed within" to become a Reverend Mother and take Ramallo's place (the old woman had not survived long enough for Chani to succeed her) that Chani realized how Paul would dominate the rest of her life.
The new Reverend Mother had converted the Water of Life for the tribe, distributing it among them to induce the spice orgy — the touching of minds which bound the Fremen more tightly to one another. Sensitive to the wishes of the others, Chani drew away Usul, as Paul was now known, allowing the tribe to enjoy their communion without the discordant note of a still-alien mind. The two of them retreated to Chani's private quarters, where the presence of the rest of the tribe could scarcely be felt.
Chani, now a complete orphan, reminded him that they were alike in one thing: each had lost a father to the Harkonnens. Paul revealed to her the visions that had shown him far closer connections with her. Lost in the spice-trance, Chani shared those visions and found that she had entered a state of Fremen tau with this newcomer; the two of them had been inseparably joined.
The next two years were both the most joyous and the most frightening of Chani's life. She had her Usul, her mate, despite the Reverend Mother Jessica's misgivings concerning their "marriage of youth." She watched the legend and the power grow around him, rejoicing in his strength and exulting in his victories. She added to his stature among the tribes at times by fighting challengers she considered unworthy of facing him, and sending them to the deathstills herself. It was during this period, too, that she presented him with his firstborn son, whom they named Leto in honor of the martyred Duke. But there was terror in those years as well. Usul, though not a Fremen born, had to behave as one or lose his hold on the tribes — this adaptation required him to learn, much later in life than was usual, the ways of the free people. Chani was the Sayyadina of the Rite the morning Usul became a sandrider, calling and controlling the huge sandworm that terrified all but the Fremen and awed even them. She was one of the most anxious observers of the struggle between her mate and Stilgar, her uncle and Naib.
The most frightening moment of all came when she was summoned to help revive Paul after his three-week sleep in the Waters of Life. He regained consciousness only after Chani tested his reaction to the illuminating poison in its raw state, which Jessica had never thought to try. The younger woman, raised on the legends of the Fremen mahdi, both recognized the look of the coma and realized that trying to convert the raw Water himself was a battle Usul might very well win.
This tumultuous period ended with the final battle for Arrakis in 10193, when Paul Atreides wrested control of the planet and its spice from Shaddam IV and forced his abdication. Chani could take comfort only from Paul's presence, not his triumph: with their Leto dead, a casualty of that battle, she could take no joy in the victory.
When she brought the news of the boy's death to her Usul — who knew it already, and shared her grief — she reduced the Fremen waiting with him to silence. The loss of her son had broken a reserve that had withstood the deaths of her mother, her father, and sietchmates past counting. Chani gave water to the dead, letting the tears flow as if such a precious sacrifice could persuade Shai-Hulud to free her from her pain.
During the three years of negotiations proceeding Paul's formal acceptance by the Landsraad and the Spacing Guild, Chani assisted Lady Jessica in bargaining with the outgoing emperor. (Jessica often said, after the seemingly endless round of talks drew to a close, that she hoped never to have to negotiate any kind of terms against a Freman, since their ferocity in battle paled before their determination at a conference table. While Jessica's own skills in such matters were not to be doubted, we can safely assume that many of the concessions were won for the new Emperor by his Fremen concubine.)
Chani had other worries during these years beyond those of a negotiator. Five times during this period, attempts were made on the Royal Concubine's life; once, the would-be assassin managed to infiltrate her apartments and might have succeeded in his aim had his knifework been just a fraction more expert. Chani managed to dispatch him with her crysknife and stormed into the Council Chamber without pausing to change her robe. The sight of her bursting into the room, stained with her assailant's blood, her hand still poised on the sheathed crysknife's handle, threw the table into an uproar. Amid the confusion, Lady Jessica — as Chani had anticipated she would — focused her attention on Irulan, soon to be Paul's Consort-in-name. The Princess was genuinely stunned, but what convinced Jessica of Irulan's innocence was the brief expression of surprised pleasure that escaped her before her Bene Gesserit training could conceal it. Although this was none of Irulan's doing, she was enough angered by her secondary place that she was delighted the attempt had been made.
For twelve years after the beginning of her mate's legal reign in 10196 Chani served him as wife, companion, and advisor — but never, in spite of their efforts, as mother of his royal heirs. That neither of them were sterile was certain. Chani's pregnancy with Leto had been initiated quickly and free of complications that might have rendered her barren. And while they had practiced contraception in the Fremen way during the years when Chani's full attention was required for the negotiations, they had not done so since, and their continued childlessness was a source of mystery and much pain.
So distressed was Chani by her inability to provide an heir for House Atreides that she at last considered, and finally decided on, another course for her mate to take. In spite of revulsion at the thought of Paul's making the Princess Irulan his wife-in-fact, Chani suggested that he allow Irulan to have her chance at producing a child.
Although angry and suspicious that Irulan might have used Chani to advance her schemes for power, the emperor was quickly convinced that his concubine wished only to secure the throne for a line of Atreides Emperors and saw Irulan as the logical source for progeny if their childless state continued.
Paul refused to consider the idea, turning Chani's arguments in its favor aside. Irulan, he told her, was too dangerous; her position, should she bear his child, would be too secure. (This was before the Princess's complicity in the plot to overthrow him — proof, certainly, of his beliefs concerning her — was known.) Only Chani would provide the heir he wanted, and he was willing to wait for their child.
Convinced that the Imperial physicians could be of no further help, Chani reverted to the traditions of her people. She visited the desert's edge and prayed to Shai-Hulud for a child. She consulted older women from among the tribes, listened to their advice, and embarked on a special diet, one supposed to promote fertility. The ingredients she needed were brought to her personally by a trusted friend from Sietch Tabr, and Chani prepared the meals herself, not allowing anyone else to touch the food.
The diet worked; Chani was pregnant within weeks of abandoning her regular food. However, during her first session with the doctors following the conception, traces of a potent contraceptive drag, now being cleared from her system by the new regimen, were found.
Long-term ingestion of the contraceptive had harmed Chani, primarily by interaction with the melange with which her body was saturated. From the moment the fetuses occupied her womb, Chani's metabolism had sped up to a terrifying rate. Her physicians told her that she would have to eat three or four times the food she would ordinarily consume, along with increasingly larger doses of the spice. Nine months was far longer than this pregnancy would last: assuming that she could survive, Chani's children would be born in less than six months.
No mentat was needed to see who had most to gain from Chani's barrenness, or who, residing in another portion of the Keep, had the best opportunities to slip the drug into the Royal Concubine's food. Had her Usul not asked her to spare Irulan, Chani would not have rested until she h
ad found the Corrino Princess's life with a crysknife blade. But foregoing revenge did nothing to calm the hatred Chani felt toward the Royal Consort.
Most of the next half-year fled quickly as a dream for Chani. External problems — the advancement of the plot against the emperor, Usul's blindness in the wake of the stoneburner attack — persisted, and could not be ignored. Still, everything affected her as from a distance, having first to break through the self-preoccupation the lightning-fast pregnancy forced upon her. Her emotions changed so quickly that she could no longer be certain even of what she was feeling, or why. Once, after snapping at Paul for wearing a shabby old jacket, and having been told that "even an emperor has his favorite clothing," she had found herself giving water to the dead. And her, a Fremen! A fog surrounded her, limiting her vision until she could see only as far ahead as the birth. Her life, she once told Paul, would have to begin again from that day. His silence following the remark only added to her confusion.
Paul returned with her to Sietch Tabr for the children to be born in-sietch, as she had been certain he would. The moment came unexpectedly, when she was conversing with the ghola of Duncan Idaho, and with his guidance she made it back into the sietch from the spot she had chosen for a look out over the desert. Her last thought, before she abandoned herself to the mindlessness of labor, was that she had never remembered to ask Usul if he knew she carried twins. He had always spoken of their child, in the singular, surely it was impossible that he did not know the truth?
Less than an hour after the onset of contractions, Chani's son and daughter had been born. Thin, but healthy-looking, they divided their first few minutes of life between crying and sipping at the Water of Conception fed them by their godmother, Harah. These were minutes their mother did not share: Chani, calling for her Usul, had died giving birth to the children Paul named Leto and Ghanima.
Even with Chani's death, her role as a pawn in the game of empire did not end. It was with the prospect of restoring her flesh as a ghola that Scytale, the face dancer, bargained first with Alia, then with Paul. Bijaz, the dwarf intended to trigger Duncan Idaho into attacking Paul, again offered a revival of that flesh after Paul killed the Face Dancer. Not until Duncan Idaho slew Bijaz, putting his master out of temptation's reach, was Chani's body taken to the deathstill.
At the ceremony held that evening to release her spirit, the Princess Irulan astonished the friends of Chani who had gathered for the rite by joining their circle. There was muttering at her presence, and anger, since it was believed that she would defile the ritual and bring disaster to all those attending.
Their concern proved unfounded. When her turn came, the Royal Consort rose from her seat, walking to the pile of Chani's possessions that lay heaped on the cavern floor, and picked up a small stone pendant. "I was a friend of Chani's," she said, and usually ironclad control slipping from her voice during the unfamiliar words. "She taught me that nobility and noble birth are two things, and I have learned something about myself." Then speaking Fremen haltingly, she said, "Ish yara al-ahdab hadbat-u” — a hunchback does not see his own hunch.
It was the first sign of Irulan's defection, the shifting of sides that would end in her becoming one of the adults responsible for Paul's and Chani's twins. And even Alia, whom Harah had restrained from driving Irulan out of the cavern on sight, had no quarrel with the fitness of the epitaph.
C.T.
Further references: ATREIDES, LADY JESSICA; ATREIDES, PAUL MUAD'DIB; FREMEN MENSTRUATION; FREMEN WATER CUSTOMS; CORRINO, PRINCESS IRULAN; STILGAR; Princess Irulan Atreides-Corrino Muad'Dib, Family Commentaries, Lib. Conf. Temp. Series 437; Princess Irulan, Muad'Dib, The Man, tr. Mityau Gwulador, Arrakis Studies 4 (Grumman: United Worlds); al-Ada, Harq, The Mother of God (Grumman: Tern).
ATREIDES, GHANIMA
(10208-10516). The twin sister of Leto II, remembered as "Our Lady and Mother Ghanima." From the materials found at Dar-es-Balat, we now have proof that Ghanima is more than a legend, having lived during three hundred years of her brother's Imperium. While officially his wife, records and memoirs show that she was his wife in name only. Her primary function in Leto's empire was to begin a breeding program which united Houses chosen by Leto: Atreides, Corrino, Harkonnen, Fenring, and Liet-Kynes, Houses chosen for their genetic characteristics. There has always been some question about who fathered this new family line (the legendary descriptions of the God Emperor give no indication that he was capable of breeding, and the folk tales of his sexual prowess, with descriptions of his sexual apparatus, are difficult to believe — a special tooth, indeed). The newly discovered materials show that although Ghanima was wed to Leto, she was mated to Farad'n Corrino (Harq al-Ada) and bore ten children.
Of the many documents dealing with Ghanima, The Book of Ghanima reveals the most intimate record of her daily life. Recent linguistic and philological analyses indicate that Volume One of the memoirs is in Ghanima's voice. She tells of her childhood in Sietch Tabr with Naib Stilgar and Harah who served as her surrogate parents. During this time she and Leto shared both their external and internal environments, often living not only as themselves but as extensions of their real parents, Muad'Dib (Paul Atreides) and Chani Liet-Kynes, a "possession" game they eventually found difficult to control. It was during these possessions that Ghanima established the bond with her mother that would become so important to her welfare. Though the children were labeled "abominations" by the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, and though Ghanima was fearful of possession by one of the memory lives within her consciousness, she retained mastery of her own personality all her life. In her report to the Sisterhood, Lady Jessica said that this control was established by Ghanima through "a state of constant hypnotic suppression which was induced under stress and which can be manipulated at will by Ghanima through the intercession of her benign ancestor, her mother, who leads the mohalata which protects Ghanima."
In her later life, Ghanima worked actively with her inner voices, producing the extensive history of the Bene Gesserit, The Book of Voices, as well as an appendix, a collection of songs and poems from various Voices throughout history. In the process of this work, Ghanima discovered the identity of her paternal great grandmother — Gaius Helen Mohiam — though recent discoveries show the information was probably suppressed by Leto II for political and personal reasons. At the instigation of Harq al-Ada she also contacted philosophers from her past and, while he worked with the men, she produced a comprehensive overview of women philosophers, The Women Who Knew the Good. Later in her life she also produced her Commentaries to the Voices, incisive analytical reactions to the historical overview which she had developed during her original investigations. Some of the poetry included in this work appears to be her own.
After a tumultuous childhood which included assassination attempts on the twins, kidnappings, threats of possession, and threats of obliteration whenever she disagreed with her Aunt Alia, Ghanima settled into what some historians refer to as "a relatively normal adult existence." After her marriage, at nine, to her brother, she resumed her studies under the tutelage of Harq al-Ada, the Atreides scribe and former Corrino prince who was destined to be her loving companion. From him she learned academic disciplines (neglected by both Alia and Irulan in their instructions), and gained a love of history and philosophy, arts and science which would sustain her throughout her long life. Later both she and al-Ada became patrons of the Imperium's leading poets, musicians, dramatists, and artists, establishing a renaissance in culture for Leto's empire. In 10278, they became acquainted with the work of Harq al-Harba and for the next thirty years served as his patrons. Ghanima particularly liked his comedies, while al-Ada served as consultant for the histories, and Leto eventually declared him "Dramatist Laureate" for the Imperium. Apparently while al-Harba enjoyed the help and the company of the royal family, he felt somewhat out of place at court, refusing the suite of rooms offered to him by Ghanima. He did allow her to attend rehearsals, though, and even occasionally let the royal children play
walk-on parts, much to their delight. But al-Harba was just one of the many creative people supported by the royal trio.
For aristocrats, Ghanima and al-Ada lived an unusual family life — they spent a considerable amount of time with their children. Leto also participated frequently in family events, though as his transformation continued, he found it increasingly difficult to be with little children who could not resist touching him. Eventually Leto removed himself to separate living quarters, but the family retained a large gathering hall in which Leto could join them. In spite of their love for each other, Ghanima and al-Ada also established separate sleeping quarters, adjoining their mutual library and work rooms and separated from the nursery and schoolroom areas by the general living and dining rooms. The decision to have separate sleeping areas resulted from their very different backgrounds. Ghanima felt most at home in quarters resembling the sietch of her childhood, while al-Ada was more comfortable among the antiques of his youth. As Ghanima says in her memoirs, "Poor Farad'n gets claustrophobia among my rugs and pillows — and he says the incense makes him sneeze. On the other hand, I think his old furniture with its wood and glass and its prickly embroideries is cold and sterile — it's like being in a museum. Thank heaven we have Grandmother's arboretum to have our 'evenings' in. He certainly doesn't mind candlelight and cushions there!" Ghanima also insisted that Irulan have living quarters separate from the family, and that she stay out of Ghanima's work room and the children's school rooms. She did join the family for dinners and often accompanied the group to picnics at Sietch Tabr.
Probably the fact that neither Ghanima nor al-Ada had lived secure childhoods led them to develop a close family framework in which their children could flourish. The oldest child, Trebor, was the delight of both his parents and Leto. A rusty-haired cherub, he seems to have accompanied his father even into the privacy of al-Ada's library. Ghanima remembers that "We couldn't believe we had produced this silly, darling little boy. After the intense childhood (or really the lack of any real childhood) I had, I saw his lighthearted existence as idyllic. Farad'n and I probably spoiled that child — we had so much more time to give to him than we did to the other children who followed — but to this day I can still see his beaming face as his chubby little legs hurried to keep up with his father's long strides." Eventually the other boys were born, Lliwis, Regor, Tisamenus, and Boris; but Trebor remained Leto's favorite, becoming the first in the long line of Atreides stewards to serve the God Emperor.
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