Further references: Anon., The Azhar Book, ed. K. R. Barauz, vol. 1-4, Arrakis Studies 49 (Grumman: United Worlds); Maro Ghappato, Miraculous Voices at Rakis (Diana: Synonym); R. M. Cassius Ida Treac, "New Views of an Old System," Archives Quarterly Review 15:199-253; R. M. Treac and Ahna Judehic, The Roots of Tomorrow (Wallach: Soror).
B
BALISET
This brief history of the baliset contained in-one crystal was undoubtedly written at the time of Muad'Dib. Why Leto II chose to save it rather than other longer and more detailed descriptions of baliset making is unknown. One possible explanation might be that it was originally written either by Varota himself as a brief popular summary of his life's work, or that it might have been contained in some longer communication possibly written by Gurney Halleck. — Ed.
The baliset is a portable nine-stringed instrument played by an individual musician, usually a troubadour or a member of the nobility. It is not unlike an ancient instrument popular on Old Terra at the beginning of known space travel called the "guitar." Like it, the baliset consists of a resonance chamber, neck, head, strings, and tuning knobs. Like it, the baliset can be slung from the shoulder or around the neck by means of a strap. The embellishments on the baliset strap, however, usually display the player's station and origins rather than simple decoration as was the case with the guitar.
Since the time of Ahdn-Hahd, who developed the techniques used to this day, the best balisets have been made entirely of a fibrous resin called stimic. Fifty-seven sheets of the material are treated with heat, an exacting process involving precision timing. The sheets are exposed to one hour of intense sunlight beginning precisely at high noon for one hundred consecutive days. The rays of the sun strike the heart of the stimic at the properly progressing angles, guaranteeing lasting strength and resonance. Varota on Chusuk, famed baliset maker, was known to state that carelessness or a mistake in this process would destroy the tone quality of the instrument.
At the end of the prescribed time, indeed precisely at the end of the final hour of exposure to the sun, the treated sheets are placed over the baliset master form, one by one. The covered form is returned to the sunlight where it remains until sundown. Thereafter it is turned hourly, day and night, for forty days. The warming during daylight hours and the cooling at night while Chusuk's three moons complete their circuit account for the gradual melding of the layers of stimic into an harmonious whole.
Each manufacturer has a master form on which the body is made. Before the time of Ahdn-Hahd all balisets were made of elacca wood, but the proclivity of that substance to translate any atonal music into semuta music precluded its continued use. The Butlerian Jihad and its scrutiny of all machines and instruments of any kind resulted in the prohibition of the use of elacca wood in the construction of balisets. Not until generations later when Ahdn-Hahd began his work in stimic were balisets made in commercial quantities for sale. Surviving elacca wood balisets typically serve as forms, kept under tight security.
The making of a baliset involves strict discipline and nearly mindless obedience. These attributes in the workers are crucial. The consummate artistry of a luthier such as Varota coordinates the efforts of his apprentices and produces an instrument which is itself a work of art.
No matter how carefully the forming process has been carried out some qualitative differences of tonal substance will exist in new baliset bodies. Through judicious buffing and planning, the still-incomplete baliset is given its own individual sound characteristics. Beyond this the characteristics built into the body must be honored by the qualities of the nine strings. A baliset of authoritative tone would reseat gentle strings, just as harsher strings on a more subdued instrument would be an indignity.
The strings themselves are produced by stretching long filaments of stravidium until the proper dimension is achieved. The speed with which the filaments are stretched dictates the tone quality of the string. Rapid stretching produces a narrower, more strident tone. Slow stretching results in a kinder sound. Another consideration exists in the fact that the filaments cannot be cut to the required length: it must be stretched to measure. If a particular filament is stretched too far or not far enough, it must be discarded and the process begun again.
Each of the nine strings is capable of producing pitches between those of its neighbors, including the highest note of its lower neighbor and the lowest note of the next higher. The strings are tuned in a seven-tone scale with no half-tones. Seven of the strings are pitched in quarter intervals beginning with C. The pattern evolves as follows: C-F-B-E-A-D-C. These tones are equally tempered, ensuring fidelity of pitch and tone. The absence of half-tones makes equal temper mandatory since even well-temper would destroy the characteristic harmonic factor. Strings 8 and 9 are drones places at the side of the neck of the instrument. They are essentially bass strings, and are set to the pitch appropriate for the mode desired by adjusting the noter attached to the body of the instrument. They are particularly responsive to the particular harmonics involved in the chord being played. This characteristic makes the baliset, even the stimic baliset, so effective in evoking semuta music. In effect the atonal combination of pitches in semuta is given both support and surrealistic intensity by the drones.
The lower pitched strings are wrapped in additional filaments with particular attention paid to the number of wraps per millimeter. Each string is attached to the baliset at the foot by twisting it smartly around tiny hooks below the resonance aperture. At the head each string is wrapped around its own tuning knob. This accomplished, the fledgling baliset has only to be fine-tuned and inscribed with the birthname of the individual who commissioned it. This original tuning is of utmost importance because it informs the strings of their particular mission and ensures that only minor tuning adjustments will be needed in the future.
The lyre, lute, and zythra were early ancestors of the baliset. Larger instruments lost favor when space exploration was young and space vehicles very limited in areas for storage. Perhaps the most successful space traveler among instruments was the crohm-vellar — a small, stringed tambourine with the advantage of clinging to space-suit material no matter what the effects of speed, or weightlessness. From these small beginnings the fardahggen and vintule developed. Both of these were really small versions of the baliset, but both were overwhelmed with sometimes three, or four drone strings, far too many for the comparative crudity of the instruments. The baliset grew out of the colonization of space: communities were established and planets settled. A slightly larger instrument soon developed. At the same time, this instrument needed to be compact enough for individuals to take along on any intra- or inter-planetary voyages. The baliset grew out of expedience.
The future of the instrument is difficult to predict. Scientists like Ahdn-Hahd and artists like Varota are discouraged with the loss of apprentices applying to their studios. Troubadors are met infrequently on the road and heard rarely in town squares. The noble families seem not to encourage young people to learn the intricacies of playing the baliset and few common folk can afford one. Word has come, however, that the birth town of Varota on the planet Chusuk is planning an annual baliset festival in honor of the famous artist. Players from around the galaxy are expected to attend, and perhaps this event will spur interest in the baliset again.
Further references: LIGALLO, TAIAZOR; HALLECK, GURNEY; E. B. Setro, Techniques of Instrument Making in the Reign of the Padishahs (Chusuk: Salrejina); Anon., The Baliset, Rakis Ref. Cat.
BARADYE PISTOL
Usually found in a Fremen Fremkit for survival in the desert on Arrakis, this gun was not an offensive weapon but rather a means for measurement or signaling. Its primary purpose was to mark off a large area for dye which could be used in the capture of sandworms, or to signal spice merchants approaching from the air. Unlike the maula pistol, this device used a static charge. Its invention, however, is another testimony to sophistication of Fremen technology, and their ability to make use of whatever material
s were at hand.
Further references: FREMKIT; Jarret Oslo, Fremen: Lives and Legend (Salusa Secundus: Morgan and Sharak).
BENE GESSERIT ARCHIVES
In this and all entries drawn from Bene Gesserit material, the reader should keep in mind that B.G. institutions have politely but firmly rejected invitations to join the Library Confraternity. Collation of Rakis material with B.G. material has proceeded, when allowed, subject to restrictions imposed by their order (as is, of course, their right). Nevertheless, the reader should weigh carefully all claims made in such entries. — Ed.
The Archives (officially, the Archivae), as distinct from the Bene Gesserit Library and the Chronicles of the Chapter House, is a private collection of the Sisterhood's records, files, papers, and literary collections, so private that only a select group of Reverend Mothers has access to it. The Archivae is located on Wallach IX, under the main Chapter House building in three levels of subterranean vaults. In order to enter the Archivae, one must traverse a series of mazelike tunnels connected by shafts with lifts — obviously once powered by machinery but now traversed by one's own muscles. In order to facilitate the Dar-es-Balat research work, the Bene Gesserit has opened a portion of the Archivae to Ahna Judehic, linguistic historian, whose work is associated with that of R.M. Cassius Ida Treac. Supervising and directing the translation work is R.M. Marcellus Irulan Moiam. Only those sections of the Archivae containing documents pertaining to the history of the Atreides family and the more public aspects of the history of the Sisterhood have been made available for study.
The three levels, each consisting of thirty-three rooms, are arranged by subject matter and by chronology. The lowest level contains material collected before the Butlerian Jihad, some of it supposedly of Terran origin. The files, opened only briefly to the researchers, contained sheets of transparent film upon which are printed images of "book" pages reduced to microscopic size so that an entire volume is often contained on a single sheet. All of these records need magnifying machines to be read, but no such machinery seems to be present. The second level contains records from the Butlerian Jihad through Leto II. Much of this level was opened for research, but since most of the records were in Bene Gesserit codes, translation is done only under R.M. Moiam's supervision. The first, and highest, level contains a complex of reference rooms, a general reading room, a series of work rooms, and twenty rooms of files. These files purportedly contain only records from the time of the Starvation and the Scattering, but activity and continual evidence of recent filing indicate that these might be open files.
The materials made available for research on level two were the Atreides Collection, the Bene Gesserit Private Files containing agent reports for the period of Elrood IX through Leto II, and the official documents of the Bene Gesserit from the Imperium era, documents which the order regards as historical rather than active. The Bene Gesserit files and documents are primarily transcriptions from minimic film, shigawire, and imprints on ridulian crystals. The Agent files were particularly interesting, with much information available through Bene Gesserits such as Anuril Corrino, Margot Fenring, R.M. Gaius Helen Mohiam, Irulan Atreides-Corrino, and Wensicia Corrino. There are also annual reports filed by Jessica Atreides, ending abruptly in 10175, and extensive reports, summaries, histories, and evaluations (some four hundred folios) by Irulan Atreides, including her famous breeding report, "The Atreides Problem." Reports are also available from the second and third millennia of Leto's reign: The Chenoeh Reports, The Syaska Reports, The Anteac Reports, and The Moiam Reports, to name a few. As a generous courtesy, the Sisterhood has also opened the Jehanne Butler collection to scholars specializing in the Butlerian Jihad. At Judhic's request, R.M. Moiam has opened the R.M. Gaius Helen Mohiam Collection. Her memoirs, reports, letters, and treatises are extensive, although incomplete, and seem uncensored, in sharp contrast to what is left of her papers in the Chronicles of the Chapter House".
Of particular interest in the Atreides Collection are the following documents:
The Book of the Voices
The Collected Works of Paul Muad'Dib
The Preacher at Arrakeen
The Apocrypha of Muad'Dib
The Collected Works of Harq al-Ada
The Commentaries to the Voices
Eulogy for an Ideal and Other Poems
The Other Half of the Universe
The Book of Ghanima
The Irulan Collected Works
The Welbeck Apologia
Although much of this material duplicates that of the Rakis Hoard, there are some oddities and some discrepancies. The Commentaries to the Voices, though similar to the Rakis copy, is not identical. The Archive copy contains an additional seventy-six crystals. Some of the additional crystals are political and philosophical commentary concerning the Emperor himself, some highly critical of him, and thus will prove useful to historians if their authenticity can be ascertained. The collection of poetry, found with The Commentaries, is anonymous but from the inscription techniques is thought to be from the second or third century of Leto's reign. The philosophical tone and the mournful attitude support tentative affiliation with Leto himself, but the content of many of the poems makes such an assumption highly controversial. A second theory, rejected by some stylistic analysts but supported by a few linguistic analysts, is that the poems are by the Voices themselves and were transcribed by Ghanima. Supporting this theory is the stylistic correlation between the title poem and poetry found in the collection of R.M. Gaius Helen Mohiam's work.
The two autobiographical or biographical texts on Ghanima also raise questions. The Book of Ghanima traditionally has been attributed to Leto II, but now with the Commentaries to use as a reference point, some stylists contend that the early portion was written by Ghanima herself, the middle section by one of her daughters (Elaine), and only the later, more melancholy portion by Leto in memory of his sister/wife. The Other Half of the Universe also causes controversy. It is not listed in the Archivae reference index, no other copy is recorded in any known library collections, and none was found at Dar-es-Balat. A shigawire voice-print, this haunting work is set in the universal mind of Ghanima-Leto but expresses a "minority" opinion of the Emperor's actions in the early formation of his power. Of particular interest are the sections highly critical of his Fish Speakers and of their growing religion. Initially attributed to Leto as a devil's advocate argument against his own policies, it is now tentatively attributed to Ghanima or to an early Duncan Idaho. The primary supporting argument for this theory is a stylistic analysis of word usage, syntactical construction, and idiomatic expression as well as a voice-pattern scan comparing this recording to Ghanima's voice pattern in The Book of the Voices. A counter argument is that Leto held Ghanima's voice in his memory-lives after her death (which leads to a different theological or logical argument). Another argument against Leto's authorship is the placement of the only extant copy hidden in the Bene Gesserit Archivae — how would the order come into possession of such a recording if it were Leto's voice? A third theory is that the shigawire is a Bene Gesserit propaganda ploy that was never used, a weapon to be used against Leto after Ghanima's death. The proof to this argument is lacking.
Finally, The Welbeck Apologia opens an interesting political history debate. This manuscript appears to be the original of the "Welbeck Fragment" found at Dar-es-Balat, a dialogue between Moneo and Siona. The Apologia might well be a piece of propaganda written by Leto himself. In the same file with the Apologia is a monologue of Bene Gesserit authorship, The Captivity of Siona, apparently distributed after the public release of the Apologia in order to counter Leto's persuasiveness. Though the dating of these manuscripts is difficult, the Captivity may have been distributed in 13723, a year when Bene Gesserit records show a severe reduction in its annual allotment of melange. But controversy notwithstanding, the documents within the Atreides Collection provide a wealth of new information for historians and theologians alike.
The reference material
offered for use on the first level, while not dealing directly with the time of the Imperium, does open reference work in the area of Bene Gesserit history and governance through this period. No material pertaining to Bene Gesserit matters after Leto II or to the modern Sisterhood; is available. For example, the Canons with which R.M. Treac and Judehic are working; are ancient and incomplete, allowing an inference that the modern Canons are not included. Of historical interest is The Annotated Variorum Edition of the Founding Legends, a twenty-volume compendium of letters, reports, treatises, and myths transcribed in 402 B.G. from the ancient, third-level files (presumably using appropriate transcription machinery no longer in existence). The six-volume Legends available in the Chronicles of the Chapter House are selections from this private collection. More mundane, and more trustworthy, are the Bene Gesserit Papers of Incorporation, detailing the development of the chapter house system, the General Chapter House Listings, and the Annual Chapter House and the Annual Mother House Reports, which include roll calls and budgets. Also in this reference section are the indices to the Bene Gesserit Private Papers, giving the researchers access to the Legislative, Judicial, and Executive files for the Imperium period. The files were not opened, but the researchers were allowed to request particular entries. Other documents useful in understanding the structure of the ancient order are the Ordines Matrium, which delineates the rank order of the Sisterhood and the Compendium Matres, which is a chronological list of Reverend Mothers from the Great Revolt through Leto II. The final historical document offered for use is the Credo — a chronological collection of creeds used by the order from its inception to the time of the Scattering. This volume is particularly intriguing because through it can be seen the psychological evolution of the Sisterhood. Two files were offered only for cursory inspection: The Summa and The Mikkro-Fishedotte. The Summa fills three rooms, floor to ceiling, in twenty-meter racks, twelve to a room. This enormous holding is the complete breeding index of the Sisterhood, and from what little could be seen, it appears to stretch back to the Golden Age of Terra. The Sisterhood claims that the index begins in the early dawn of humanity, but no proof was offered. The Breeding Index available to the general Sisterhood in the Chronicles is a selected one, showing only the breeding from the past which developed the kwisatz haderachs and the lineage of the Matres Executrice. The Mikkro-Fishedotte is the complete family-line mating chart which originated, supposedly, in complicated Terran aristocratic breeding lines. There is an abbreviated Mating Index in the Chronicles for general use, but the Mikkro-Fishedotte itself fills two rooms. In general, the difference between the Summa and the Mikkro-Fishedotte is that the first is strictly genetic while the second appears to be political.
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