With few exceptions, members of the Imperial family did not attend the myriad social functions which gave the Court its reputation for glittering splendor. Nor is it true (with the possible exception of the Court of Chalic I, 8216-8225) that behind-the-scenes life on Kaitain consisted of perpetual orgies, feasts, and drinking bouts. The private diaries and journals of the Royal Household, still undergoing translation, indicate that Imperial duties, not privilege, held sway on Kaitain.
These duties included not only the administration of the Imperial planets and the management of feudal dues, obligations, and tithes, but also the day-to-day workings of various departments and ministries. There was the Imperial Census to be attended to every ten-years (requiring quite a bureaucracy of its own: no one outside its offices claimed to know the exact number of worlds under Imperial sway, yet the Census concerned itself with individuals); the Imperial Dictionary — ostensibly a record of Galach only, but in need of constant revision and expansion; the Ecological, Botanical, and Zoological Research Centers (under strict control to limit technological advance); not to mention the Imperial Intelligence Agency, whose records, though available, have as of this writing still resisted translation. The emperor's day, excluding audiences, was a round of reports and conferences, requiring the services of a battery of mentat-secretaries and aides.
Regional and planetary courts of the Houses Major tended to ape the customs and fashions of the Imperial House. Dukes and Barons grandly held audiences, heard suits, and granted petitions all over the galaxy in imitation of their sublime overlord. Most Great Houses, indeed, granted subfiefs to vassals of their own, lords of the Houses Minor, in a double effort to (a) increase their own prestige by creating personal vassals, and (b) reduce the personal work and expenditure necessary to govern a planet. This process of subinfeudation could continue, with Houses Minor granting subfiefs to other Houses Minor or even private individuals (or even, in extraordinary cases, to impoverished Houses Major), until a huge bureaucracy became necessary just to sort out who owed what obligations to whom. The fall of certain Great Houses to the status of House Minor (entailing loss of Landsraad representation, Guild shipping privileges, and membership in CHOAM) can be traced directly to the House becoming entangled in a coil of conflicting loyalties and obligations. (See E. Alaynbat, The Fall of the House of Hiirak [Grumman: Lodni], for a detailed and interesting case history.) An astute and not-too-scrupulous House Minor could, of course, use the subinfeudation process to advance itself to the status of House Major, and many of the minor planetary intrigues and plots were designs of this nature.
The siridar-lord and lady of a planet were expected to be more than just political figures. As planetary governors, they were considered father- and mother-surrogates to their people. Thus, in addition to ensuring peace and prosperity, they set and enforced certain social standards, patterns of courtesy as it were, among their populations. In practice, this duty came down to a velvet-gloved but iron-fisted enforcement of the faufreluches class system: "A place for every man and every man in his place." A strict hierarchy of social privilege and rank prevailed throughout the empire, and each member of society took care to maintain his pride of place against the lower orders, from the emperor himself down through the Houses, the merchants, artisans, and freedmen, to peons, servants, and slaves. Mobility within the ranks was theoretically impossible, as one's status was determined at birth by the rank of the one's family and the educational opportunities open to the offspring of such a family. Official policy discouraged aspirations of upward mobility. Yet roads were open to those bold enough (or foolish enough) to try them.
Evidence of potential mentat ability, or intelligence plus a willingness to allow one's Pyretic Conscience to be tampered with, could be a passport out of middle-class life, either legitimately through Suk School Conditioning, or not so legitimately (nor so safely) through renegade training at the hands of the Tleilaxu.
Psychologically safer, but still physically dangerous, the most common route out of the lower classes lay through the military. It was not true, as rumor would have it, that an enterprising young man could, through prowess and bravery, make his way into the elite corps of Sardaukar, although many tried by means of the emperor's supporting levies. Yet a man could rise through the ranks of many a planetary army to become a commander, a general, even a Master of Assassins (for example, see Juniper Atreo, ed. Diary of an Assassin: A Biography of Gurney Halleck, Arrakis Studies 25 [Grumman: United Worlds], compiled from records found at the Great Library on Caladan.)
The third way around the hierarchy of the faufreluches was, as may be expected, financial. As new planets with new products and exports opened up, it was possible for legitimate businessmen, and their illegitimate cousins the smugglers, to make fortunes in trade: such wealth could be used to buy titles or House Minor (and even House Major) status through discreet negotiations in the proper quarters. The accusation of purse-nobility — that one's titles came out of one's pocketbook — was one of the deadliest insults in the Imperium, yet sources show that a case could be made for the Harkonnen titles having been acquired in this way.
At times whole populations lived outside the faufreluches system: one example is certainly the Fremen on Arrakis. Another example, although possibly a legendary one (the records are fragmentary), is the planet(s?) of Tupile and the population, certainly great in rumor if not in fact, that sought sanctuary there over the centuries.
The Imperial government, of course, consciously blocked all efforts to circumvent the faufreluches system. House Corrino had not maintained its ascendancy for so many generations by encouraging change, or even the hope of change. The feudal pyramid must appear to all members of the Imperium as if carved in stone: no movement was easy, no revolt possible. Imperial agents cultivated a persistent pessimism among the population to bolster their power base. This pessimism acted as a psychological deterrent (in addition to religious restrictions) against technological and political innovation, keeping the empire safely feudalist for over 10,000 years.
Those forces which could oppose the emperor — the Landsraad and the Spacing Guild — were absorbed into the feudal pyramid, indeed, were indispensable to its stability. The Federated Great Houses of the Landsraad had been formed, initially, to constitute a defense against the Imperium, as each Great House lived in fear of finding the Sardaukar on its doorstep, perhaps disguised in another House's livery, and the Houses could fight the Sardaukar only in combination. In practice, however, the Landsraad acted as a self-policing agency, keeping House-to-House disputes from getting out of hand, supervising changes of fief, kanly vendettas, and Wars of Assassins, enforcing the rules of the Great Convention, so the emperor would have no need of using the Sardaukar. In any emergency, the Landsraad would act to safeguard profits, not rights, and for 10,000 years the profits had gone with House Corrino. The regional Sysselraads, formed by the Houses Minor in imitation of the Landsraad, performed essentially the same function in miniature with regard to individual Houses Major.
The third leg of the political tripod was the Spacing Guild, with its monopoly on interstellar travel and transport and thus on interstellar banking. Although it owed formal allegiance to the Imperial House, from whom it received its charter, the Guild was in actual fact equal in power to both the emperor and the combined forces of the Landsraad Houses, should it choose to use that power, this was acknowledged tacitly, if symbolically, by the fact that the Imperial Calendar began its reckoning with the establishment of the Guild Peace in the year 1. All communication, travel, trade, and military operations were dependent upon Guild approval. No Great House, including the formally all-powerful House Corrino, dared endanger its Guild shipping privileges through ill-advised infringements of the Guild Peace, and the emperor himself was forced to employ spies and smugglers in an attempt to circumvent total Guild control.
Yet the Guild itself was a fundamentally conservative organization. Its conservatism was rooted in two sources: the fear that technolog
ical advances in such places as Ix or Tleilax would break its monopoly through new methods of space travel, and the fear that its supply of melange which alone made such travel possible — would be cut off. The Guildsmen believed, rightly for over 10,000 years, that the Imperium with its feudal structure and religious strictures against technology was its only safeguard against these dangers. To perpetuate itself, the Guild was willing to allow rubber-stamp control over its charter by the emperor, and to balance its power against that of the Landsraad and any other threat to the established Imperial order. Only on Arrakis, the sole source of melange, did the Guild's policy prove ill-founded, but that mistake was disastrous, not only for the Guild, but for the Corrino Imperium as a whole. With the establishment of the Regency government in 10196, the classic period of Imperial feudalism ended, although the forms endured for many generations thereafter.
J.T.
INKVINE
(Toxicodendron crudatus). A parasitic vine native to Giedi Prime, used since the planet was first settled as a whip. The vine grows on any surface, clinging to it by producing a compound which includes hydrochloric acid and several different types of poisons. This compound is secreted through the aerial roots lining the side of the vine shaded from the light: The acid allows the inkvine to penetrate solid rock or glass, while the poisons allow the vine's rootlets to bore into the bark of trees, eventually killing them. The aerial roots of the inkvine are very sturdy and extremely sharp, enabling it to exploit the narrowest crevices in the bark of a host plant.
When used as a whip, the inkvine can be a very convincing argument against laziness or misbehavior. The tough, flexible vine can be swung with nearly as much force as a normal leather or plastic whip. The unique aspect of the inkvine, however, is found in the aerial roots. When they strike unprotected flesh, they puncture the skin and inject a few drops of the parasitic poison and acid combination. The compound causes an intense, burning pain which lasts for several hours, followed by a permanent discoloration where the skin has been "tattooed" by the roots, and a continual low-level ache lasting for up to six years.
The use of inkvines as whips is no longer widespread, mainly because of the cessation of the enthusiastic support of House Harkonnen.
INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL, PRE-GUILD
The three-dimensional incarnation of the Holtzman Effect field, the so-called suspensor-nullification effect, had made interstellar travel possible at least by 13000 B.G., but it was not made reliable until 7562 B.G., when I.V. Holtzman made hyperspace communication possible. In that year, his "first pass," he revealed the equations for the one-dimensional incarnation of the effect, commonly termed Holtzman Waves.
Navigation was, is, and will no doubt always be the overwhelming problem in hyperspace travel; the staggering amount of data to be processed and the infinitesimally short time available for computation made pre-Guild navigation entirely the work of computers. Before the discovery of, Holtzman Waves, many considerations limited navigational problems to small and less powerful shipboard computers. Consequently, travel (and therefore trade) could not be centrally directed; organization of shipping and transportation was haphazard and desultory, carried on by companies that might be out of communication, in direct rivalry, or even in open combat with one another. One company might operate more or less efficiently in one star-system while adjacent systems were beset by shipping strikes and conflicts of interest that benefited no one.
Improvement came with the Holtzman Wave, nationally a mathematical phenomenon causing microcatastrophic folds in real spacetime along a selectable vector, when the vector impacts with matter denser than interstellar hydrogen, it excites that matter to emit long radio waves, which can then be received on normal radio antennae. With interstellar communication now possible, navigation could be enormously improved.
For example, Transcom, a trading corporation of the seventh millennium B.G., directed its snips from a central computer-bank called Centrans. Centrans was located on the artificial satellite Xenophon, situated in deep space far from the Transcom planet (for freedom from electromagnetic interference). The central computer served both to extend interstellar limits and to define and control areas of commercial influence, as well as to control navigation: at predesignated points in transit (the well-known "mail drops"), ships en route would reenter normal space, communicate with Centrans via Holtzman Waves, and receive course corrections or updates from the computer. But at no time did Centrans ever achieve its potential: Transcom was never more than a loose cartel of members jealous of their traditional prerogatives. Centrans was like an efficient nervous system inside a loosely articulated, weakly muscled body.
When the Butlerian Jihad erupted, Transcom was one of the early casualties. Xenophon and similar facilities were obliterated, and the danger of depending on centralized data-retrieval was revealed: each cartel was fragmented, unable to navigate even in its own preserve. The cartels fell one by one as the Jihad burned across space.
The fate of interstellar flight was shared by endeavors throughout the known worlds, and whatever the spiritual gains of the Jihad, and there were many, there were vast offsetting losses. True, the interests of the cartels had been almost exclusively commercial, but they had at least promoted an awareness of common human identity and interest. Now the elimination of man-machine interaction threw hyperspace navigation back 10,000 years, and shrank humanity's awareness of its breadth and diversity. Not until the Spacing Guild became the wings of the Imperium was unity within plurality reestablished.
W.D.I.
Further references: HOLTZMAN EFFECT; Lors Karden, The Flame and the Flower: A Short History of the Butlerian Jihad (Yorba: Rose).
IX
The ninth planet of the system of Eridani A, known prior to the Butlerian Jihad as Komos; diameter at equator 40,000 kilometers, 50% land area, freshwater lakes 10%, salt oceans 40%. Very restricted polar ice, mean annual temperature 22°, average low 2°, average high 34°. Unusually deep soil base: planet average 5 meters to 8 meters. Average annual rainfall one meter. Planet is ideal for production of grain crops over much of surface; drier sections capable of sustaining large herds of grazing animals. Estimated annual production in excess of 100 billion bushels of various grains annual; livestock 200,000 head annually. After the Butlerian Jihad, Ix became the secret source of sophisticated technology. Before the Great Revolt, the planet Komos was a province of its neighbor, Richese, which appointed a planetary governor, or "Exarch," to rule at the discretion of the home government. The Exarch was given a small garrison, but the domination of Komos did not depend upon actual military force. Rather, Richese controlled Komos through the threat of force: the population of Richese was close to five hundred million, and their army was larger than the total population of Komos. Richese forbade Komos space vessels, while maintaining a sizable steller army of its own.
The Exarch was charged with few responsibilities by the home government, but these were specific: 1) Ensure the tribute; 2) Keep the peace. The order of these charges rejected the priorities of the government. To Richese, nothing was more important than the flow of grain and livestock from Komos. Since Richese produced no foodstuffs itself, the population depended for its very existence on the bounty provided by their province.
Beyond the office of Exarch, the planet was divided into ten administrative districts, whose bureaucratic chiefs were called "Logistoi." Each Logistos was chosen from the population of the administrative district he directed. His chief responsibility was to provide the central government in Pylos, the capital city of Komos, with accurate estimates of the harvest of his district each year and to oversee the collection of the tribute when the harvest was in.
The grip of Richese's domination of Komos was loose. There was no attempt to enforce the legal system of Richese on Komos, nor was the religion or language of the dominant planet pressed on the Komans. Except for the collection of the tribute, Komos was left almost entirely alone. The citizens of Richese, when they thought of Komos at all, consid
ered their exploitation of the planet to be benevolent and gentle. While it is true that the control of Komos was far less merciless than it might have been, the population of Komos did not think of their overlords as benevolent. In fact, had it not been for the restraint Richese showed in their relations with their province, the revolt which finally overcame Richese would likely have occurred.
But the limited presence of Richese in the lives of the Komans helped to make the burden of their servitude more bearable. Most of the population had no contact whatever with the government of Richese unless they accompanied the tribute convoys into one of the district capitals after the harvest. Even during the tribute collection, most of the population remained at home on ranch or farm. The Komans were obdurately rural.
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