A relatively short time later, the first Atreides Emperor, Paul Muad'Dib, also found it necessary to pursue the prescient vision provided by the Water of Life, if only to gain independence from the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild. It should be noted that Paul's success was directly influenced by Jessica's pioneering experience. His consumption of only one drop of the Water of Life was clearly a pivotal moment in the ascendency of the House Atreides and provided the awareness that was the basis of the Atreides/Fremen Empire. Emerging from a three-day coma when Chani revived him with the raw Water of Life, it was obvious that Paul was the Kwisatz Haderach, able to see in the "direction-that-is-dark," the place which is inaccessible to the Bene Gesserit.
Ironically, even though the Ceremony of the Seed allowed Paul and the Atreides freedom from and dominance over the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, and House Corrino, the prescience gained became the bane of the Atreides. It took all of Leto II's immense reign to breed Siona Atreides and free his descendents from the fatalistic Arafel and Ijaz of melange awareness and restore chance to the universe.
Further references: Harq al-Ada, The Dune Catastrophe, tr. Miigal Reed (Mukan: Lothar); K.R. Barauz, ed., The Azhar Book, Vol. 1-4, Arrakis Studies 49 (Grumman: United Worlds); Regor Kluursh, The Ceremony of the Seed (Diana: Synonym); Princess Irulan Atreides-Corrino ed., The Dunebuk, Rakis Ref. Cat. 7-Z331; Princess Irulan Atreides-Corrino, Muad'Dib: The Man, tr. Mityau Gwulador, Arrakis Studies 4 (Grumman: United Worlds), and Muad'Dib: The Religious Issues, Lib. Conf. Temp. Series 133; Pander Oulson, St. Alia. Huntress of a Billion Worlds, Rakis Ref-Cat. 2-A439; Qizara Tafwid, ed., The Pillars of Wisdom, Rakis Ref. Cat. 6-A698.
CEVNA, NORMA
(148-78 B.G.): Ixian shipwright and navigator, "Foster-mother of the Spacing Guild." Norma Cevna was the most original and brilliant of the Ixian refugees who left that planet in search of a world on which to solve the problem paramount in their minds: the reunion of mankind by developing a computerless interstellar navigation system. Cevna's common sense and intelligence complemented the ferocious energy of her lover, Aurelius Venport, and the two of them made possible the later organization of the Spacing Guild, with all the effect on mankind which that implies.
On one of the stops during the wanderings of the Aurelian exiles, Cevna accepted among their number a woman who claimed to be outcast from the Bene Gesserit, one Dardanius Leona Shard. The identity, purpose, and influence of the alleged ex-Reverend Mother are some of the many mysteries surrounding the early history of the Spacing Guild, but it is clear that Leona and Cevna became close friends, establishing a comity that was later to direct the course of the exiles' research.
On reaching Tupile, the exiles began to develop a navigation system that would overcome the greatest handicap caused by the Butlerian Jihad — the loss of computers, Cevna devoted her time to the design of hyperspace ships; she also became the first known pilot to experiment with the use of melange in ship direction. Through her friendship with Leona, Cevna learned the ways of the Bene Gesserit, but only those techniques that would realize the navigational potential of spice-trance prescience. These studies strained her relationship with Venport, as the anonymous Aurelian Memoirs relate. Venport supposedly said, "You spend altogether too much time with the Gesserit witch; it works to our harm," to which Cevna replied, "No, it works to our help; not only will I give you your ship, I will show you how to guide it — pick the farthest star, and I will take it there and bring it back" (p. 166).
And she kept almost all of that grandiose promise. Using the industry rebuilt by Venport, she designed the first Guild ship, The Golden Advent (legend has it that Cevna christened the ship for Venport's dream of the return of travel, and in his honor, playing on the meaning of his name; Venport, so the legend goes, wanted to call it the Jehanne Be Damned). When the ship was completed in 84 B.G., ambitious, even revolutionary in its design, Norma Cevna piloted it on its maiden voyage, and in this promise she failed in part, through too heavy a reliance on technological traditions.
As both designer and accomplished pilot, Cevna was to serve as both captain and navigator, but she was suspicious of the reliability of melange and unable to free herself entirely from the allure of man/machine interfacing. Simply put, she intended to shortcut her way through the many problems still to be solved by replacing the computer with her own spice-heightened brain. Terminals were implanted in both hemispheres of Cevna's cerebral cortex; she was thus physically linked to the guidance subsystems slaved to the ship's Holtzman Drive generators. While the right hemisphere dropped the ship into The Void at the spice-directed exact moment, the left hemisphere navigated by shifting mass-compensators mounted on a universal gear. The Golden Advent reached the test destination on schedule, but Cevna suffered increasingly (and silently) from the strain imposed by her dual role, as the others on board thought. The real cause was much worse: electrical "minicharges" were sympathetically induced in her brain by the implanted electrodes, and her spice prescience caused her to "foresee," albeit subconsciously, the trauma these charges would cause. The physiological effects are a matter of medical conjecture, but experiments on laboratory animals suggest that in such a situation, spice-awareness causes functions to be shunted from one hemisphere to the other in an attempt to maintain the functions and to minimize damage. But Cevna's constant connection made a feedback loop unavoidable, and the condition spiraled upward in intensity. When the return voyage was nearly completed, Cevna went into convulsions like those of grand mal epilepsy. Venport had to drop the ship into normal space and complete its return on back-up systems.
Doctors on Tupile eventually diagnosed her condition as induced cortical epilepsy, but her seizures continued despite their best treatments. As a last resort, they separated the two hemispheres by cutting the corpus callosum to halt the continued shifting of functions. The seizures stopped, but Cevna's abilities were permanently crippled. She fell into depression and retired from active life; when Venport failed to return from his test flight of 79 B.G., she declined rapidly and died the following year.
Norma Cevna's contributions to the Spacing Guild cannot be overestimated. Although little remains of her original designs, she showed that melange could stimulate the human mind to replace the forbidden computers. To gain this knowledge, she paid the greatest possible price.
Further references: SPACING GUILD, FOUNDATION; SPACING GUILD, OPERATIONS; INTERSTELLAR FLIGHT, PRE-GUILD; VENPORT, AURELIUS; Anon., Aurelian Memoirs, Lib. Conf. Temp. Series 684.
CHAKOBSA
Any of several languages used for purposes of secrecy by various groups. Originally, the cant of the hired assassins of the first War of Assassins.
Although the term chakobsa is encountered many times in the various records of the Rakis Hoard, it may have different specific meanings depending on the time, the situation, and the speakers. The earliest references yet uncovered make it appear that chakobsa was a common noun in the partially reconstructed language Bhotani, having the meaning "jargon" or "shop-talk." Thus, there presumably may have been a falconers' chakobsa, and a carpenters' chakobsa, and so on. The particular chakobsa that survived its parent language, however, was that of the Assassins, who used it much like a thieves' cant. Its usefulness for secret communications as well as its large vocabulary of the many specialized devices and techniques of the assassins caused it to endure when its parent language was no longer spoken as a native tongue.
The word therefore changed in meaning, undergoing specialization from "jargon" to "Assassins' jargon"; with the passage of time, it underwent a second change (as Bhotani became obsolete) from "Assassins' jargon" to "Assassins' secret language." There was still a third change to come however.
It must be remembered that during the days of the Empire, each Great House had the requirements and responsibilities of a national government, including that of a military establishment. The army of the Imperium and those of each Great House needed not only secure channels of communications but also secure codes. It appe
ars that the example of the Assassins led to an adoption of their method. The word chakobsa underwent a third change of meaning (probably not before 6000); through the process of commonization, it came to mean "any secret language, especially for military purposes."
In most cases, these various chakobsas also resembled that of the Assassins in nature: they were simply intense variants of the mother language, heavily loaded with words used in specialized senses. Of course, armies with memberships of diverse linguistic background (such as the Sardaukar) had chakobsas that amounted to a separate military language. Such a chakobsa became part of the unit's esprit de corps, furnishing a badge of membership.
With the metamorphoses of the word in mind, let us examine a particularly thorny example of its use, one taken from Princess Irulan's In My Father's House.
Irulan reports the reminiscences of Muad'Dib of his and his mother's acceptance into the Fremen, and their attendance at the ritual in which the water of his antagonist, Jamis, was credited to his account. Chani blessed the water and added these words: "Ekkeri-akairi, this is the water, fillissin-follasy of Paul Muad'Dib! Kivi a-kavi, never the more nakalas! Nakelas! to be measured and counted, ukair-an! by the heartbeats jan-jan-jan of our friend Jamis." Paul is then quoted as saying that his mother "had recognized fragments of the ritual, identified the shards of Chakobsa and Bhotani-jib in the words."
Jessica was certainly in a position to identify the language: one of the first Fremen she met on Arrakis was the Shadout Mapes, Harq al-Ada reports the conversation of the two women in his House Atreides: A Historical Overview from notes kept by Jessica herself. She had indicated that she recognized that Shadout was a title, and that she knew its meaning. In response to Mapes' question, Jessica replied, "Tongues are the Bene Gesserit's first learning. I know the Bhotani Jib and the Chakobsa, all the hunting languages."
Her reply to Mapes shows that she is using chakobsa in its original sense: the chakobsa of the Fremen was not just the code of hunted clans living on the margin of the law, a slang of their own devising for security, but the language of the Assassins. That first Bhotani-derived code worked admirably for their purposes, but one wonders how the Fremen came to know it. Note too that the Fremen used it not only for secrecy during clandestine activities (such as when Stilgar's patrol located Paul and Jessica) for also for ritual purposes, as the water ceremony shows.
Where then had the Fremen encountered Bhotani? The Zensunni had originated on Terra, and various tribes dwelled for times on Poritrin, Bela Tegeuse, Salusa Secundus, Ishia, Rossak, and Harmonthep before their reunion on Arrakis. Gwilit Mignail has conjectured that the Sardaukar (whose chakobsa was also a complete language, not just a jargon) used Bhotani-Jib, and that the Fremen came to appreciate its usefulness and acquire mastery in it during their sojourn on the prison planet. This theory has an attractiveness in another respect, too: suppose that during the Harkonnen administration of Arrakis, the Fremen use of Bhotani was discovered. Shaddam IV had already been uneased by the competence and loyalty of Duke Leto's army; when Leto took possession of Arrakis, the Duke would not only have a much larger supply of trainable fighters in the Fremen, he would also have, coincidentally, the Sardaukar's military code, if such were the case, it was a small but substantial additional reason to lend the use of the Sardaukar to crush Leto. Unfortunately for this handsome conjecture, there is no shred of evidence to support it: the chakobsa of the Sardaukar has been completely lost, and the guess that the Fremen learned Bhotani from them is no more than a guess. Until additional light is shed on the provenience of the Fremen ritual and hunting language, guesses are all we have.
CHAUMURKY
One of the most famous and popular poisons of the old Imperium, often used by assassins. Chaumurky was a colorless and odorless liquid, nearly always administered in drinks. Because of its lack of distinguishing characteristics, chaumurky was difficult to detect by even the best poison testers and master assassins. Its action was extremely swift, its victims usually succumbed within a minute. No antidotes were known to be effective, although the Oral History claimed that two or three primitive ones had some success.
Chaumurky has been called the aristocratic poison par excellence. One of its most famous victims was the Emperor Elrood IX, murdered in 10156, the immediate predecessor of Shaddam IV. It is widely believed that Shaddam IV was responsible for this poisoning, although he was not, of course, the immediate agent involved. Seven Imperial servants were executed as a result of the death.
The list of the distinguished victims of chaumurky is too long to cite here, but it should be mentioned that the poison was a favorite of House Harkonnen.
E.C.
Further references: HARKONNEN, BARON VLADIMIR; Zhautii Kuuraveer, The Art of Legal Murder (Grumman: Tern).
CHENOEH, HOLY SISTER QUINTINIUS VIOLET
(13670-13728). The woman who became the focal point of one of the most persistent religious cults of, post-Imperium history, born on Wallach IX to a Bene Gesserit proctor-aide, sister Alexius Gayle Chenoeh. Her father, Shimon Rasnic, was a servitor with House Corrino who had accompanied his master on a tour of the Bene Gesserit school.
Marik Corrino (13628-13695) had been lured to Wallach IX by an invitation from the Sisterhood: knowing of his search for a suitable wife, they offered him the chance to examine some prospects among their students. The Corrino found none of the women at the school to his liking, which did not trouble the B.G. in the least. There was no place in their program, limited as it was at this point by the God Emperor's rule, for Marik. He was already exhibiting the earliest symptoms of Yankovich's Syndrome, the degenerative nerve disease which would kill him at sixty-seven (extremely early for one with Marik's access to melange).
The Sisterhood was far more interested in obtaining a cross between one of their members and Shimon Rasnic, Marik's secretary and scribe. A careful study of Rasnic's ancestry revealed an unbroken line of exceptionally intelligent men, most of whom had served House Corrino either as scribes or as tutors. Many of them had exhibited mentat capabilities, in spite of Leto II's injunction against the training of Mentats, and Rasnic appeared to be one of the most promising. His talents — or more accurately, the possible talents of his offspring — were far too valuable for the B.G. to ignore.
Sister A.G. Chenoeh was considered the best choice available to provide the other half of the genetic material. Her own lineage was recorded in the Wallach IX archives as far back as Margot Lady Fenring, and she was of a physical type especially appealing to Rasnic. Her seduction of the Corrino aide was accomplished as effortlessly as her hypnotic command that he immediately forget the encounter.
Although born in the school hospital, Quintinius Violet Chenoeh was not considered a Bene Gesserit until she officially entered her training in the Sisterhood at five. The young Sister, in addition to the usual course given to the B.G. pupils, was assigned special tutoring in the areas of mnemonics, history, and psychology. The earliest reports on file from her teachers indicate that she fulfilled and exceeded their expectations in every area. Her removal from the school dormitories to private service with Reverend Mother Tertius Marie Hargus in her tenth year is a good indicator of her progress; such an assignment was most often made three to five years later in a student's career.
In 13686, Sister Chenoeh was taken on her first off-world journey, a trip to a Bene Gesserit conclave on Grumman. She served as personal aide to Reverend Mother Hargus, but her true function was that of apprentice recorder. (Another, more experienced sister was also part of the delegation and submitted her own report of events.) Her report, reviewed by a committee of proctors on the Wallach IX delegation's return, was considered satisfactory: while the sixteen-year-old had allowed an unfortunate amount of excitement to color her evaluations, her reportage of facts was nearly flawless. In those sections of the report in which R.M. Hargus had demanded she record speeches or papers verbatim, no error could be found.
Only emotional reactions stood between the young sister
and the level of expertise to which she might aspire. The Sisterhood was confident of their ability to remove those barriers, or force the girl over them. They had the knowledge of centuries of such manipulation, both in their files and in the memories of their Reverend Mothers.
In the same year as her daughter's trip to Grumman, Sister Alexius Gayle Chenoeh achieved the status of Reverend Mother. She was appointed B.G. representative to the Ixians and transferred to that distant planet, never to see her child again. Alexius's survival of the melange overdose was duly noted on Sister Q.V. Chenoeh's file; a candidate's chance of surviving the initiation as a Reverend Mother was always considered better if a near relative had previously emerged from it safely.
The young mnemonist was frequently sent off-world after her initial assignment. By 13696, a decade after her first trip to Grumman, she was serving as senior recorder on some of the Sisterhood's most sensitive missions, including a "diplomatic" visit to Giedi Prime to revive another Cult of Alia. (The Cult would come to Leto II's attention in 13718 as the B.G.'s latest attempt to locate spice hoards. For over twenty years, however, the Sisterhood's hand in the revival would remain unknown.)
Sister Chenoeh's services to the B.G. did not stop at those of recorder. In 13694 and again in 13710, she bore daughters as part of their breeding program. The elder girl, Clarisse, proved far less talented than her mother and was eventually married to a minor official in the God Emperor's court. The second daughter — unnamed — was taken from her mother and killed by a delegation from the Fish Speakers garrison on Wallach IX only moments after her birth.
Since the Sisterhood could not be certain of the reasons for Leto II's objection to the second birth, it was decided not to risk needlessly so valuable a member of the community. Sister Chenoeh had no more children.
The Dune Encyclopedia Page 35
