The Bene Gesserit training which Lady Jessica had given him during their years on Caladan convinced Halleck of two things: that Leto spoke the truth when he denied being possessed, and that The Preacher was, as had been rumored, Paul Muad'Dib Atreides. On the basis of those truths, Halleck agreed to return to Arrakeen with Leto and his father.
His presence there could not prevent Paul's being killed denouncing his sister to an angry crowd, that Halleck felt no guilt. Years of association with the Atreides, combined with the teachings of his mistress, had shown Halleck how little the actions of an individual mattered in the face of history — or of legend.
Leto II, immediately after his assumption of the throne, sent Halleck as his advisor in Stilgar's Council at Sietch Tabr. A faithful servant of House Atreides to the end, he performed this function until his death in 10226.
His demise marked the passing of the last of the original Duke Leto's advisors and his funeral was conducted with the ceremony and respect generally reserved for those of a much higher caste. Lady Jessica made one last trip back from Caladan to pay her respects to her loyal servant and friend, and the emperor himself presided over the rites. Following the public service, Halleck's body was taken to Sietch Tabr for the private Fremen ceremony he had requested. The water counters representing his water were given to Leto II, who is believed to have kept them among his most prized possessions throughout his long life.
C.W.
Further references: ATREIDES, JESSICA; ATREIDES, LETO I and II; ATREIDES, PAUL; GIEDI PRIME; RABBAN, COUNT GLOSSU; Chatan S. Meed, the Errant Sister, B.G. Foundation Studies 9 (Diana: Tevis); Juniper Atreo, comp., Diary of an Assassin: A Biography of Gurney Halleck, Arrakis Studies 25 (Grumman: United Worlds).
HARAH
(10157-10221), Wife by custom of Paul Atreides; widow of Jamis; nurse of Alia, Leto, and Ghanima Atreides; wife of Stilgar. The second born of twin daughters to Yajna, wife of the Fremen Dako. Harah was destined for a vigorous, fulfilling life intimately entwined with House Atreides.
The maternal impulse that was to be Harah's driving force surfaced early, most noticeably after the birth of her sister Elani. The protectiveness and tenderness she showered on her infant sister foreshadowed the solicitude she was to lavish not only on her own children but on those of the Atreides family as well. Indeed, Harah was never so happy as when she was caring for someone or something.
As the rhapsodic lines in her Memoirs tell us, the growth of the meanest planet was a source of joy. Harah conveys her delight on seeing the first shoots in the potting rooms, and then devotes pages to detailing the process of planting the dunes, of setting the dew collectors, and of nurturing the seedlings until they established themselves. Every page speaks to us of her pleasure and gratification in being involved with living things. "Surely," she writes, "there can be no more fulfilling joy than fostering and sustaining life."
Numerous records recount the fulfillment of Harah's early promise of beauty. A tall woman of sensual slimness in her full maturity, Harah was remarkable with her raven hair, olive skin, and striking angular features — a stunning woman eagerly sought after by the men of her sietch until won by Geoff. The placidity of her life with Geoff, a shy man, was disturbed only when he was challenged by the formidable Jamis — a challenge that could have only one conclusion.
As Jamis' woman, as a desert fighter par excellence, and as the mother of Kaleff (by Geoff) and Orlop (by Jamis), Harah found the tempo of her life quickening. The greater portion of her days was spent in the stillsuit shops or the planting areas, but she devoted much time to rearing her sons and creating the home she wanted for Jamis when he returned from his forays or patrols. Harah's friend Mirjna al-Chima notes in her Journal that their yali, with its smooth, clean stone floor, its filmy orange hangings in the doorways, its glowglobes and bright fabrics, its carpets warm under foot and rooms piled with soft cushions, was the envy of the sietch.
Harah's years with Jamis were good years full of achievement and family happiness. This domestic peace was shattered, however, when news reached Sietch Tabr of Jamis' death at the Cave of the Ridges. Bred as a Fremen, she met the blow as a Fremen: her grief would be private. "I'll mourn Jamis," she wrote in her Memoirs, "in the proper time." Her innate resilience allowed her to meet and accept what destiny had next in store for her.
Not that she had much choice: her future was set by Fremen custom and tradition. By law, Jamis' yali and all his possessions, excluding the funeral gifts but including his wife and sons, belonged to Paul Muad'Dib, the stripling who had dispatched Jamis. Thus, Harah became Paul's for one year, to take as wife or servant, after which time she would be free to choose as she wished. Over Harah's objections, Paul accepted her as servant.
Although her pride was hurt by Paul's rejection of her charms, Harah set aside her vanity with a practicality that surprised Paul and devoted herself to serving him as one she respected and came to love. Her content was augmented when Jessica asked her to be the infant Alia's nurse. When Paul took Chani as his concubine, Harah was not jealous but rejoiced at their happiness.
When the women and children of Sietch Tabr were forced to flee the pogrom of the Harkonnen governor, Harah went with them as an honored member of Paul's household. Though lonely in exile, Harah busied herself as Alia's guardian and governess. Trying to control a child like Alia was a frustrating job, made more difficult by Alia's knowing and speaking of things beyond her years and by flouting traditional modes of behavior. But Harah's devotion to Alia was unflagging, as evidenced by this passage from the Memoirs: "Alia is like my own flesh because she is sister to one who is like my brother. I've watched over her and guarded her from the time she was a mere babe — and I always will."
Besides raising Alia and becoming indispensable to her husband Stilgar in the years that followed Paul's ascendance to the emperor's throne, Harah became Chani's closest female friend. As Chani's intimate she stood at the side of her friend when she gave birth to the Atreides twins, Leto and Ghanima, and watched stone-faced as Chani died. It was her terrible duty to guide the now completely blind Paul-Muad'Dib first to the creche that held his children and then to the pallet that held Chani's body.
Harah was able to perform her last duty for her friend: to be observer of the holy truth and stand beside Chani for the last time at the deathstill. At Paul's request, Harah, as a friend of the mother, also stood beside Paul at the time of the naming of his son Leto for his paternal grandfather and of his daughter — over Harah's understandable objections (in Fremen ghanima meant a spoil of war) — Ghanima.
With Chani dead and Paul swallowed by the desert, Harah felt destiny had once more called her to play the role in which she excelled: the Atreides twins needed a mother. But the joy was tempered by disquiet, for these children were much as Alia had been: exasperating, unsettling, and sometimes terrifying. However, with her Fremen background, her sagacity, and the weirding ways she had learned from Paul she proved to be a match for the precocious twins.
Coming to love the twins as her own, Harah was devastated by the news that Leto had fallen victim to Laza tigers. She consoled herself by trying to console Ghanima; to ease the pain Harah applied herself to providing Stilgar with every comfort. She gave minute attention to his wardrobe and yali, supervising even the smallest housekeeping detail — preparing coffee, for example, just as Stilgar preferred it: grinding fresh roasted beans to a fine powder in a stone mortar, then boiling immediately with a pinch of melange.
But once again the evenness of her days was shattered by a crisis: early one morning Stilgar called her to view the dead bodies of Javid and, unbelievably, Duncan Idaho and to tell her that he had sent Buer Agarves to Alia with his "final obedience." But the abductors Agarves had unwittingly led to the djedida overwhelmed the fugitives and carried them off to Arrakis and Alia's prison cells.
While not present in Alia's quarters in the Keep on that disastrous day when House Atreides established its millennial dynasty, Harah heard the terrible news
soon enough: the death of Paul (the Preacher), the suicide of Alia, the seduction of Farad'n, the metamorphosis of Leto.
Though she was still vigorous at the time of Paul's and Alia's deaths, the following years saw Harah fade quickly. Their deaths, it seems, especially that of Alia preceded by her transformation into true "Abomination," diminished her. That strong maternal drive that defined the essence of Harah was struck a mortal blow. When she died in her sleep at Sietch Tabr, the one place in the universe she would have undoubtedly chosen for her end, the entire sietch, joined by the royal family at Arrakeen, mourned her and accorded her a full ritual funeral — as was fitting.
D.K.
Further references: Harah, The Memoirs of a Sietch Woman, tr.; Steewan Duunalazan (Topaz: Carolus UP); Stilgar ben Fifrawi, The Stilgar Chronicle, tr.; Mityau Gwulador, AS 5 (Grumman: United Worlds); Mirjna al-Chima, Memoirs, Rakis Ref. Cat. 7-Z101.
HARKONNEN, FEYD-RAUTHA
(10174-10193). Son of Abulurd Rabban (né Harkonnen) and the concubine Thora Rabban; grandson of the Bashar Gunseng Harkonnen; nephew of Vladimir Harkonnen, Siridar-Baron; younger brother of Glossu "Beast" Rabban.
It is known that Feyd-Rautha was a piece in the genetic pattern created by the Bene Gesserit, whose intention was to breed him with the daughter of Duke Leto Atreides and his concubine Lady Jessica, and thus create the Kwisatz Haderach. Lady Jessica, however, disobeyed the orders of the Bene Gesserit and bore a son, forever closing off the possibility of that union. The whole of this genetic pattern is still unknown. However, the discovery of part of a monograph (RRC #6094a) concerning the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen found in the ridulian crystals sheds some small light on the possibilities of Feyd-Rautha's ancestry.
The Baron Harkonnen chose Feyd-Rautha and his older brother Glossu to become members of his household when a directive of the Bene Gesserit indicated that one of them would display the manipulative military genius of the baron's historical idol, Emperor Avelard XVII. Avelard kept a number of Gamont-trained concubines in his court, one of whom was a member of the Bene Gesserit and bore Avelard his only daughter, the Lady Kai-Seran, also trained by the Bene Gesserit.
For the next two centuries, every female descendant of the original union between Avelard and his concubine became a member of the Bene Gesserit, including two who became Reverend Mothers. One daughter, the Lady Theresa du Gate, married Emperor Josif VII.
Josif was so well trained by his wife in Bene Gesserit ways that a popular joke during his reign unkindly referred to them as our "Reverend Father and Mother." Together they perfected such a ruthless manipulation of their subjects using Bene Gesserit tactics that the wealth produced during their reign has never been equalled. The monograph assumes that this union, and that of Avelard and his Bene Gesserit concubine, were of major interest to Vladimir Harkonnen in his adoption of his nephews into his household. Perhaps the baron concluded that the boys were direct-line descendants of Avelard and two centuries of Bene Gesserit gene-patterning.
Feyd-Rautha was not only a failed genetic pawn for the Bene Gesserit, but also a failed political pawn for his uncle; the baron had wished to see Feyd-Rautha on the throne. From his earliest days in the baron's household, Feyd-Rautha was trained in the sophistry and intricacies of man-to-man combat; including such unorthodox techniques as killing his training partners. But the most significant thing he was taught was to hate House Atreides.
One of the best documented events of Feyd-Rautha's short life was his seventeenth birthday celebration, when he killed his one-hundredth slave-gladiator in the family games. The killing of the slave typified Feyd-Rautha's disobedience to all rules or guidelines established for fair play in combat. To stoke his own ego, Feyd-Rautha conspired in a plan devised by the baron's Mentat, Thufir Hawat (see entry THUFIR HAWAT). While it was traditional to drug the slave, this time it was not done. Also traditional was the wearing of a white glove on the hand that held the poisoned knife, and a black glove on the hand that did not; Feyd-Rautha reversed them. Additionally, the slave was conditioned to respond to a word signal which would render him helpless. What made the event remarkable was that, in spite of all the disadvantages, the slave nearly killed him; it was probably the closest to a fair fight that Feyd-Rautha had yet seen.
It is believed that Feyd-Rautha learned more than perverse combat skills in his uncle's house. Repeated mentions have been found in standard biographies of Baron Harkonnen that his preferred sexual objects were adolescent boys, his favorite being his young nephew. Feyd-Rautha was himself homosexual, with only rare occasions of heterosexual liaisons with slave women. There is documentation of a sexual relationship with Margot Lady Fenring, but all evidence suggests that it took place under the expert Bene Gesserit manipulations of Lady Fenring in a further attempt to produce the Kwisatz Haderach, rather than because Feyd-Rautha desired sexual contact with a member of the opposite sex (see entry LADY MARGOT FENRING).
Thanks to the baron's careful teachings Feyd-Rautha hated his cousin and rival, Paul Atreides, more than anything in the universe. (There is some evidence to suggest that this animosity was exacerbated by the baron’s sexual attraction to Paul.) It was this ingrained hatred that goaded Feyd-Rautha to challenge Paul to a duel following the emotionally charged confrontation between Paul and Emperor Shaddam IV upon the emperor’s attempted takeover of the planet Arrakis.
Both young men had been trained intensively in various methods1 of combat, with Feyd-Rautha additionally trained to be ruthless and to take advantage of every trick available. Paul had been taught to be aware of the tricks, but this sense of integrity would not allow him to use any. Though he knew that Feyd-Rautha's training had included sensitivity to a code word that would render him momentarily weak, Paul did not use the word, even when he saw that Feyd-Rautha intended to kill him with a poisoned needle. In the course of the duel, Paul took advantage of the projecting needle, immobilized Feyd-Rautha against the floor, and drove home the point of his own blade through Feyd-Rautha's jaw and into his brain. At the age of nineteen, Feyd-Rautha died, as ignobly as he had lived.
(In addition to the references below, insight into the personality of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen may be obtained from a reading of Harq al-Harba's play Shaddam IV, in which Feyd-Rautha is a major character. Though it is a work of fiction, the play offers what many consider to be valid historical and psychological revelations concerning the life and personality of a badly used and abused young man.)
L.L.
Further references: HARKONNEN, VLADIMIR; RABBAN, GLOSSU; Klevanz D. Kiinar, Fear My Power, Respect My Name: Ten Thousand Years of Harkonnens (Giedi Prime: Trammel); Marya Von Wikkheiser, House Harkonnen, tr. Arazrii Pexb, Studies in Atreidean History 76 (Paseo: Institute of Galacto-Fremen Culture).
HARKONNEN, GUNSENG
(10079-10130). Siridar-Baron of Giedi Prime, father of Vladimir Harkonnen. The most colorful account of this unusual man is given in the diaries of Sil, Reeve Benin, in which that mysterious poetic wanderer gives his observations of several Great Houses. In the second volume, Pearls Before Swine, he tells of his first visit to the Harkonnen court:
Gunseng, I saw at once, was not the Harkonnen goon of which his house had been so productive. He looked out of place there — slight, fair, with large watery eyes. But the old bastard Granuk, his father, had to make the best of it; he had killed every son but Gunseng to better his chances of dying quietly in bed. That happy event could not be far distant, because Granuk had vices in number to match his jowls. I never smelled so foul a moral stench as that of his castle. Where Gunseng — a flower among the weeds — came from, only the Bene Gesserit knows.
And the lad is a musician! With nothing else to do, he studied the baliset and corpedal in his rooms while the danse-macabre went on downstairs. He knew what was going on, though, and looked like he had learned to survive. When the blood stopped flowing and he became Baron Harkonnen, he vowed to improve the house. Poor fool! Nothing short of a stoneburner would improve House Harkonnen. I was thankful just to
get away before some ignorant sycophant with martial inclinations killed me.
The "blood flowing" Sil mentions refers to Granuk's circulation, not to carnage following his death. The transition was smooth.
Granuk succumbed to a nervous disease that reduced him to a skeleton, and barricaded himself in chambers behind protection only a tyrant would find inadequate. Gunseng, then twenty-three, seemed incapable of controlling the rowdy house. But like the unprepossessing heirs of whose stories history is full, Gunseng disproved appearances. While his father lay on his deathbed, Gunseng knew his survival was in jeopardy. Taking advantage of the palace paranoia, he managed to reach his father's ear and coaxed from him an order for the execution of certain military officers and commanders of the elite guard. We cannot now verify the possibility of a coup, but Gunseng was privy to more knowledge than even his father suspected, and his later career demonstrated his ability to smell out power plays. When Granuk died within days, Gunseng's placement of his own men in the vacated positions ensured his succession.
Gunseng married Muertana, Lady Sarobella, to cement a union with that house. She bore him three sons, the first of whom died in infancy, Araskin, a club-footed giant, and Vladimir. He also fathered Abulurd (Rabban) by the concubine Gunella Sorvag.
Gunseng set about building a strong foundation of financial investments and political alliances, with the help of his mentat, Chardin Klees, and, from the age of twelve, his favored son Vladimir. Aside from Klees, chosen as much for his human sentiments as for his mentat abilities, Gunseng was the only friend Vladimir had. Among these three existed a trust and affection unique in the history of House Harkonnen.
At forty-nine, Gunseng became involved in an unofficial kanly with his wife's house, Sarobella, that would eventually cause his death. Through deft market manipulations, he had gained several CHOAM franchises for which Sarobella had been his chief rival. Success meant the dominance of one House over the other, so Gunseng moved carefully lest Sarobella be provoked into declaring open war. However, he knew he must eliminate Sarobella eventually. The resourceful Chardin orchestrated a procès verbal against the rival house, charging that Duke Fernandez conspired to increase his CHOAM holdings at the expense of House Corrino. Klees' arguments were bold but convincing. Duke Fernandez was discovered dead one morning and his planet occupied by Sardaukar as a "stabilizing force."
The Dune Encyclopedia Page 62
