The Dune Encyclopedia

by Willis E McNelly

  When word of the traitors in their midst got back to the Fish Speaker Command, several of the leaders were even more surprised than their ruler and far more upset. Their erring sisters were not given the usual option of joining a death commando squad to atone for their sin. Instead, they were executed secretly, in a private chamber beneath one of the Fish Speaker schools. Fortunately for Moneo, no one concerned ever hinted who the driving force behind the traitors had been. The young rebel attributed his escape to good fortune, but the Journals indicate beyond doubt that Moneo's tracks had been covered by the monarch he was attempting to depose.

  In 13635 Leto finally decided the time had come to rein in his wandering Atreides. There were many reasons for his action, but two weighed most heavily. First, there was the matter of Lichna. Leto's current administrator, who was no longer in her youth and would be ready to retire by the time Moneo could be prepared to replace her. Second was Moneo's own most recent action: he had managed to bribe, cajole, and blackmail his way to several key Guild personnel connected with the weather satellites responsible for keeping the Sareer in its arid condition.

  Moneo had made no move to affect the satellites' operations, and Leto could find no future amid his prescient vision which indicated that Moneo would ever be capable of doing so. Ever mindful, however, of the lesson taught the Bene Gesserit by his father — that it was entirely possible for the breeding program's end result to materialize unexpectedly early — Leto thought it best not to chance Moneo's being outside the scope of prescience.

  Lichna had long cautioned her wayward son about the futility of attempting to escape his destiny as an Atreides; Moneo had chosen to disregard her words, counting them as the mournings of a co-opted toady in the Imperial Service. Despite his scorn, Moneo had retained enough of her information to be certain of what awaited him when Leto summoned him to his Citadel after a roundup of the compromised Guild technicians.

  He was to be tested, to be sensitized to the God Emperor's Golden Path, or be left to die if found wanting. And the test, which Lichna had warned of repeatedly, would be one exquisitely tailored to the individual. No amount of preparation could help him escape judgment.

  Frightened, but still his usual brash self, Moneo was ushered into the God Emperor's presence by a trio of hushed and terribly impressed young Fish Speakers. Leto dismissed the attendants and addressed himself to Moneo: he knew, Leto said of every action Moneo's rebellion had made; he had watched Moneo waste eight years in absolutely meaningless activity; and now the charade was no longer entertaining.

  The God Emperor's remarks had precisely the effect he desired. Moneo responded with a tirade of has own, damning Leto for having twisted the lives and minds of generation after generation of humans without partaking in any way of their humanity. Leto allowed him to rant himself nearly to exhaustion, then countered with a single furious question.

  "How dare you be offended by me?" he demanded, peering out at Moneo from the depths of his cowl. Before the young man could protest, Leto slid from the Royal Cart and herded him down into a cavern maze concealed beneath the Citadel and abandoned him in its center with a bag of food and a vial of spice-essence. For more than a day, Moneo wandered though the twisting maze, eating sparingly from his meager store and becoming more thoroughly lost with each passing hour.

  The multiple ironies surrounding the spice-essence vial tormented him, monopolizing his otherwise unengaged thoughts. It was the only liquid provided him, and he would surely be driven to consume it unless he could quickly find a way out of the maze. That prospect, carrying as it did the certainty of exposure to the "internal multitude" the Atreides were said always to harbor, frightened him far more than the idea that he might die of thirst. And yet, among that terrifying throng, was it not likely that there existed a previous servant of the Lord Leto whose memories included the directions for escaping the maze?

  After another twelve hours had passed, leaving him even deeper in confusion, Moneo realized that he had no choice. He tossed off the contents of the vial with all the enthusiasm of a man drinking hemlock, then sat down, his back in a corner, to await its effects.

  They were not long in coming. The melange opened Moneo's awareness, not only to his ancestral voices, but to the prescient scenes of death and destruction that Leto — and his father — had witnessed so long ago. They showed him the end of humanity as well as the means by which that end could be averted: the Golden Path that the God Emperor had chosen. They showed him the reason for the monstrosity he had fought more clearly than he might have wished to be shown.

  A timeless period later, when the effects of the spice wore off, Moneo was left with two certainties. The first was the escape route he must follow back up to the Lord Leto's chamber, where he would be expected. The second was that he would obey the God Emperor faithfully for the rest of his life, if only out of gratitude that Leto and not he had been forced to make the choice be had seen.

  Over the next nineteen years, Moneo was groomed to take over his mother's administrative post. He was given increasingly more responsible assignments to carry out for Leto: maintaining an overall record of the farflung Fish Speaker garrisons, for example, and acting as Leto's intermediary with the Tleilaxu. When Lichna stepped down in 13654, Moneo was able to replace her without a ripple being felt in the workings of the Court.

  Moneo took great pride in his work, seeing his role of majordomo as the best and most appropriate use of his talents. And his list of accomplishments was impressive even when compared to those of his extremely competent predecessors. In 13659 he uncovered a massive stockpile of melange on Kaitain, the planet House Corrino had used for its Court in the days of the Padishah Emperors; it was the largest such find made to that date and Moneo's agents discovered its exact location only days before representatives from the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild arrived on the same errand. He saw that a rebellion in 13664 on Shandor (third planet of Theta Shaowei) was put down with an absolute minimum of bloodshed, standing firm against the majority of the Fish Speaker Command who wanted a wholesale slaughter as an example to other would-be heretics.

  Had it not been for these greater deeds, however, he would still have been valued by the God Emperor for the flawless way in which he kept the Court running. No detail was too petty to attend to, no arrangement too minor to oversee, if it involved the interest of the Lord Leto. Nor was any bribe large enough to make him waver from his duties; his incorruptibility earned Moneo a grudging admiration even among those to whose advantage it would best be to subvert him.

  Moneo desired only three things in return for his labors: to enjoy the confidence of his ruler, to be allowed to abstain from any further experience with melange, and to preserve a quiet domestic life with Rhiani, a former Fish Speaker with whom he had lived since his entry into Royal Service. Until 13667, he was given all three.

  It was in that year that Leto informed him that he was needed as part of the God Emperor's breeding program. Moneo had known about the program from childhood, of course — all of the Atreides, and much of the population at large, knew that Leto was working toward some kind of change in the basic human stock — but Moneo had hoped that after so many years of childlessness with Rhiani he would be excused from participating.

  The exemption was not to be, and Moneo bid his Rhiani an emotional farewell after Leto commanded him to marry Seyefa, a Fish Speaker many years his junior. It was the closest Moneo had come since his rebel days to breaking with the God Emperor; but the bonds so long established between them were too strong to permit their rupture, and Moneo entered into an uneasy alliance which gradually evolved into a marriage.

  Siona Ibn Fuad al-Seyefa Atreides, Moneo's only child, was born in 13698. She lived with her parents in quarters near Leto's Citadel until the age of ten, when she was sent to the Fish Speakers school in Onn. Shortly after this separation, Moneo was made to face yet another loss; Seyefa died the following year.

  If he had been a dutiful servant before, Moneo was
now fanatic in his devotion to Leto. Anyone who threatened the God Emperor, threatened him personally — even, when she reached adolescence, Siona.

  Leto was often amused by the anger and solicitude Moneo lavished on his daughter. The former rebel appeared to be unable to see his own youth in hers; he viewed her rebellion not as a temporary and necessary phase but as a permanent and dangerous change. While the God Emperor also valued Siona (although for quite different reasons from those Moneo held) he recognized the uselessness of attempting to steer her every move. Moneo sometimes did not, and needed reminding.

  In 13724, Moneo clashed with his daughter, for the last time. While journeying to Tuono Village for the Lord Leto's wedding to Hwi Noree, Moneo was trapped in the ambush staged by Siona, Nayla, and Duncan Idaho. Early in the attack, Moneo lost his footing on the collapsing Royal Road bridge and plunged to his death, shortly to be followed by Hwi Noree and the Lord Leto. In the space of a few minutes, life for the entire Imperium had been irreversibly altered.

  Leto had once observed that Moneo was terrified of the idea of a world without the God Emperor — that he would rather die than face such an existence. Of all the choices made for him during his life, the timing of the majordomo's death may have been one of the kindest.

  C.T.

  Further references: ATREIDES, LETO II; ATREIDES, SIONA IBN FUAD AL-SEYEFA; LETO II, Journals, Rakis Ref. Cat. 65-A392.

  ATREIDES, PAUL

  EDITOR'S NOTE: The following three entries deal with the person of Paul Muad'Dib Atreides. None of them, however, is a straight-forward biography of his life; though certainly the facts of his life may have been gleaned from them, us well as from the myriad references to him in other essays in this encyclopedia. Rather than offer dry facts, these entries — the first an investigatory report dating from the reign of Leto II (a time when historical information was severely suppressed), the second an "answer" to that report written at the time of the Rakis discovery, and the third a contemporary essay dealing with Paul as Kwisatz Haderach — provide a more interesting and more historically valuable view of the influence and significance of one of history's most extraordinary figures.

  REPORT OF NEJA N'NAMKRIB, ANTHROPOLOGICAL HISTORIAN OF MIRABAR, PREPARED FOR THE PRIVATE READING OF HIS EXCELLENCY, THE ARCHBISHOP SPIL, CONCERNING THE LEGENDARY PAUL ATREIDES, THE KWISATZ HADERACH, THE MUAD'DIB, IN THE HOPE THAT THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN WILL BE OF VALUE IN THE TRIAL FOR HERESY OF THE ONE WHO CALLS HIMSELF BY NO NAME BUT IS KNOWN COMMONLY AS "THE PREACHER." THIS IS THE YEAR SINCE THE FIRST JIHAD 11781, AND SINCE THE SECOND, 1472; OF THE IMPERIAL CALENDAR, 11673.

  I

  INTRODUCTION. The figure known to us as "Paul Atreides" is perhaps a more fitting subject for the romancer or the folklorist than for the historian. Many of the attributes claimed for him (i.e., that he was prescient, that he survived the explosion of an atomic warhead) are clearly fantastic; others (i.e., that he was a great warrior) are common to virtually all mythic heroes. Yet the legends about him are persistent and far-flung, and some of them have been recorded by ancient historians and biographers whose work in other areas is known to be absolutely accurate. The following report is an attempt not to de-mythologize the figure widely assumed to have been the Messiah; it is an attempt, rather, to account for him, to identify him.

  II

  LEGENDARY HISTORY OF PAUL. The mythological or legendary history of Paul Atreides runs, in brief, according to the following line. He was born on Caladan in the year 10175, the natural son of Blessed Leto Atreides I (10140-10191), the "Red Duke" whose remains are traditionally assumed interred in the long-sought Skull Tomb or Skull Place on Arrakis. His mother was the Lady Jessica Harkonnen (10154-10256), the bastard daughter of Siridar-Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (10110-10193) and herself a Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit. He had one full sister, Alia Atreides-Idaho (10191-10219), and was father of Leto Atreides II, the Summa-Emperor, the Immortal (see genealogy chart).

  In his youth on Caladan, Paul was well instructed in all of the martial arts, in voice, in political theory, music, and history. His primary instructors were the family retainers Duncan Idaho1, Gurney Halleck, and Thufir Hawat, a mentat. Others of his teachers included his mother, already a Bene Gesserit herself but not yet a Reverend Mother, and the legendary Bene Gesserit Great Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, who may have been his maternal grandmother. It was the Great Mother who, when he was fifteen years of age, personally subjected him to the test of the gom jabbar and declared him, following the test, to be Kwisatz Haderach (Fulcrum of History).

  [1A ghola to whom Paul eventually gave his fourteen-year-old sister, Alia, as a reward for fealty!— j.b.]

  The Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV (see genealogy chart) named Leto I planetary governor of Arrakis, replacing the duke's concubine's father, in 10190. The following year Paul and his mother came to live on the planet with which his story has become so closely identified. In that same year the deposed Siridar-Baron Harkonnen, acting with the tacit approval of the Emperor2, staged a coup d'etat, assassinated the Red Duke, and forced Paul and his now pregnant mother into hitting among the Fremen of Sietch Tabr.

  [2That part would have to be in the myth, wouldn't it?—j.b.]

  Little is known of Paul's activities during the two years he spent among Fremen in the Great Desert.3 However, in 10193 he emerged from the desert as Usul, at once the leader and symbol of the Arrakis Revolt. He commanded both Fremen and what was left of the Atreides family forces in one of history's few truly masterful military campaigns. In the Battle of Arrakeen he overwhelmingly defeated the combined forces of the Padishah Emperor and the Baron Harkonnen, driving Shaddam IV into exile on Salusa Secundus and effectively assuming control of both Landsraad and CHOAM.

  [3This is because there is not room enough in two years for him to have done and learned all of the things he would have to have done and learned.—j.b.]

  Following the Battle of Arrakeen Paul was pronounced Muad'Dib, or Messiah, by the Fremen who in his name carried the Second Jihad across the worlds. He married Irulan Corrino, daughter of the exiled Emperor, but the marriage was a politically inspired formality. In 10209, the thirteenth and final year of his reign, he sired the twins Leto and Ghanima out of his formal concubine, the Fremen woman Chani Liet-Kynes of Sietch-Tabr, who died in childbed.

  The combination of his personal magnetism, capacity for leadership, vision of a green Arrakis, and reputed prescience turned Paul into an object of veneration, a virtual deity.4 It was in his name that the Second Jihad (10196-10208) was carried across the heavens and the ultimately unsuccessful transformation of Arrakis from desert into oasis was begun.

  [4These qualities together with his position as unchallenged ruler of the single vital planet in all the inhabited universe, the planet which was and is the sole source of melange...—j.b.]

  An assassination attempt in 10205 was the result of a conspiracy among several increasingly insecure political factions including the Spacing Guild, the House Corrino, and the Bene Gesserit. The attack itself was unsuccessful in that Paul miraculously survived a stoneburner explosion. He was blinded by it, however; and, apparently following the ancient Fremen custom that the blind he abandoned in the desert, Paul disappeared voluntarily from Arrakeen shortly after the births of his twin children. It is believed by many that he will one day return in triumph from the desert, and by others that he has from time to time and irregularly over the centuries re-appeared as a portent, a nameless prophet of doom.

  This, then, is the legendary history of Paul Atreides. It is of no little significance, however, that no conclusive archaeological evidence has been discovered either on Caladan or on Arrakis5 that would prove or disprove either his lineage or, indeed, his very existence. However, such circumstantial evidence as reason, folklore, and "historical" documents made available to the historical anthropological invites some interesting and useful suggestions. This evidence may answer at least some of the more pertinent questions about Paul Atreides, the Kwisatz Hadera
ch, Muad'Dib.

  [5Archaeologists have for centuries searched for the Skull Place, the legendary burial place of Leto Atreides. They've not found it. It confounds the mind to reflect upon what might be discovered if such a place ever comes to light!—t.d.f.]]

  THE LEGENDARY GENEALOGY OF PAUL ATREIDES, THE KWISATZ HADERACH, MUAD'DIB

  III

  THE QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED

  Was Paul Atreides an historical personage?

  This, obviously, is the most important question. The answer is that almost certainly he was; and the answer is based on a number of considerations. In the first place, Paul is the pivotal character both in noble and in Fremen folklore. This is particular significant. These two pools of folklore material, though possibly springing from a single pre-First Jihad source, were absolutely independent of each other at the beginning of the Second Jihad. Different motifs, different qualities praised in their gods and heroes, different moral orientations, different modes of existence both before and after the Second Jihad — yet Paul Atreides is at the center of both. The situation is unique.6 It seems much more likely that an actual, immensely popular and culture-catalyzing hero was adopted by the story tellers and balladeers of both groups than that two unrelated bodies of folk material happened to posit the same fictional, mythological hero at the same time.

  [6I wonder whether it is.—t.d.f.]

  Second, his legend is persistent, and many parts of it are consistent with known history. The Second Jihad, for example, would have required a single, immensely powerful focusing element, probably the lens of one man's visionary eye. A jihad will always acquire its own momentum soon after its launching, becoming as it grows an ungovernable whirlwind which must spend its fury before it will dissipate. But a jihad always, too, requires its impetus from the spiritual force of one man's charisma. The Second Jihad developed almost immediately after the Battle of Arrakeen and very likely had as its center the same genius who had crushed House Harkonnen and the Imperium together with a rag-tag band of desert nomads7. This genius would have been of heroic proportion; indeed, it is easy to visualize a superstitious people naming him Messiah. The name of Paul Atreides would have suited him as well as any.8