A year after his father's death, Liet-Kynes returned to Sietch Tabr for a more extended visit. During the months of his stay, he married Falra, a Tabr woman with whom he had been raised. Liet-Kynes men carried on another of his late father's practices by leaving Tabr a few weeks after the wedding, not to return for more than three months.
Chani, the couple's daughter, was born the following year. Stilgar and his wife Misra stood as godparents to the child, and the girl's father made one of his infrequent visits to see the ceremony. Liet-Kynes spent more time with the child than his own father had with him, but he approached her upbringing in quite a different way. Whereas Pardot Kynes had seen him as an heir, a person who could lead the Fremen tribes and see that the ecological transformation went on as scheduled, Liet-Kynes envisioned no such future for Chani, Influential she might well become, in the way that Fremen women — particularly those in the Sayyadina — often were, but she would not be accepted as Naib or as leader of all the tribes. Under Falra's tutelage, and under that of Stilgar and Misra following Falra's accidental death in 10180, Chani was raised solely as Fremen with no interference from Imperial appointments or from out-freyn ways.
Liet-Kynes continued his father's practice of aiding the Fremen and gulling the Harkonnens wherever possible, and his life and work continued with relative smoothness until the Arrakeen change-of-fief in 10190. Like the people he led, the Imperial servant greeted the departure of House Harkonnen and the arrival of House Atreides with guarded optimism. Unlike them, however, he knew enough of the Atreides-Harkonnen conflict to realize that the changeover would not go easily; he also had the advantage of his court-appointed position as Judge of the Change, in charge of overseeing the shift in power, to provide him with more information. When he received a secret communication from the emperor, advising him that all but the grossest violations on the part of the Harkonnens were to be ignored, he decided that his only option was to do as his father might have done: to ride out the transition and the eventual destruction of House Atreides without involving or endangering himself or the Fremen.
This resolve was shattered and Liet-Kynes was again made a pawn of the greater forces surrounding him when he was drawn into the aftermath of the combined Harkonnen-Sardaukar attack against the Atreides. The Duke Leto already dead, Paul Atreides and the Lady Jessica were in desperate need of some refuge from the forces that had killed him. Liet-Kynes provided that refuge, and sent the pair to shelter with the Fremen, because he had sensed that the boy was sympathetic to the Fremen dream and capable of helping it to come true. Against all his training, and very nearly against his will, Liet-Kynes found himself unable to refuse help to the potential leader he saw in Paul Atreides.
This impulse cost him his life. Captured by Harkonnens who cared little for his standing as an Imperial servant, Liet-Kynes was severely beaten and left in the desert to die. His captors had deprived him of water, equipment, and stillsuit, seemingly much amused by the idea that the desert he knew so well would be the cause of his death. The ecologist is believed to have perished in a pre-spice mass, caught in the explosive sand exchange which occurred when such masses reached their critical point.
Neither his life nor his death, however, had been in vain. By serving as an interim leader between his father and Paul Muad'Dib Atreides, Liet-Kynes ensured that the Fremen would survive this period; by fathering Chani, who would become the mother of Leto II, he had contributed to the continuation of the Atreides line; and by seeing that the new Atreides Duke and his mother found a place among the desert folk, he changed the course of history for millennia to come.
C.W.
Further references: ATREIDES. PAUL MUAD'DIB; ARRAKIS; ARRAKIS: ECOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION; KYNES, PARDOT.
KYNES, PARDOT
(10121-10175), First planetary ecologist of Arrakis; mastermind of that planet's ecological transformation. Born on Paseo, Kynes was the only son of Leuis and Marique Kynes, two of the most prominent members of the Pasean scientific community. Leuis was a botanist specializing in interplanetary transfer; Marique was a biologist whose impressive credentials included five years of secret postgraduate study with the Bene Tleilax. Kynes' chosen field may be seen as a synthesis of those of his parents, as the ecologist himself wrote in the introduction to his masterwork. Ecology of Dune:
I chose to become a planetologist — if, indeed, that position may be said not to have chosen me — for the freedom of inquiry it provided. The ecology of a world is not made up only of flora and fauna; it encompasses weather, geology, even history as it applies to the balances present on that world. No area is beyond ecological consideration.
Kynes went about achieving his goal with great precision, as if applying the scientific method to his own life. Enrolling as soon as he reached the age of admission (fifteen) in the unparalleled Imperial University on Kaitain, the boy immersed himself in the study of planetary ecology. The next six years were spent in singleminded pursuit of knowledge to the exclusion of all other interests; Kynes did not even visit his homeworld during this period, seeing his parents only when they arranged to travel to the university.
(His isolation may have saved Kynes' life. Had he remained on Paseo and studied at the Planetary University, it is almost certain that he would have been present at the infamous Milberne lecture in 10141, when a guest speaker unwittingly loosed a few Ecazian glow-spores in the campus's main hall. Of the three thousand students, faculty members, and guest attendees — Kynes' parents among them — none survived exposure to the deadly spores.)
In 10142, following his graduation at the head of his class, Kynes entered Imperial service as a research assistant in an ecological survey station on Ecaz. He spent two years with the station, transferring to a similar station on Topaz at the end of that period, this time as a full-fledged researcher. He continued to advance during his tenure on that world and was appointed as head of the largest such facility on Topaz in 10147.
Along with his promotions, Kynes was earning a widening reputation among his colleagues. Professionally, he was seen as one of their leading lights, astonishingly competent for one so young; socially, however, even those who liked and admired him considered him cold and distant. In reality, it was not aloofness which prompted Kynes to so often remove himself from the company of others; it was, rather, a sense of time passing in which he had too much to accomplish to permit himself any distractions. His friends accepted this attitude, his enemies did not, and Kynes himself refused to let it concern him.
The outbreak of Catha fungus suffered by Ecaz in 10148 provided Kynes with an opportunity to boost his standing even further. The fogwood crop, representing one of Ecaz's most important exports, stood in danger of being completely destroyed by the fast-spreading growth; Kynes, already familiar with the checks and balances of that world, recommended importing spores of Kuenn's Fungus (named for its discoverer, Christofer Kuenn), the nearest known equivalent to an organic catalyst, to halt the plague. The tactic worked, with the imported fungus crowding out the malignant growth while not harming the valuable fogwood, and Kynes was formally commended by House Xitan, the Ecazian administrator.
This commendation earned him the attention of Emperor Elrood IX. The position of Imperial Planetologist for Arrakis was available, and Elrood offered it to Kynes as reward. The ecologist, who had long considered the desert planet one of the most intriguing and understudied places in the Imperium, accepted at once.
Kynes' supporters considered his appointment long overdue, while his detractors thought him too young and inexperienced to handle such an important position. Again, Kynes refused to allow himself to be drawn into their arguments, preferring instead to concentrate on learning the finer points of Arrakeen ecology.
The near-religious fervor which overcame the new Imperial Planetologist — and, eventually, the Arrakeen Fremen — as a result of his studies has been chronicled elsewhere in this volume. So, too, has the ecological transformation which Kynes engineered and, with his Fremen, began (see AR
RAKIS, ECOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION). The greening of Arrakis is perceived as the ecologist’s gift to the desert folk, but is far from the only gift Kynes left behind. His various writings, many of which were preserved and have been rediscovered in the Rakis Hoard, also serve to preserve his memory.
Ecology of Dune, published in 10150 and considered the seminal work pertaining to Arrakeen ecology, is his best-known piece, but there are a number of other works equally worthy of study. Notes of a Planetary Ecologist, for example, offers a detailed comparison of the ecological systems of a dozen worlds, stressing the similarities underlying the differences necessitated by the changes in locale. Storm Systems and Their Effects provides its readers with an astute analysis of the major weather patterns throughout the Imperial planets, with special emphasis on the role of storms in accelerating erosion and soil damage. Kynes' books and articles have provided generations of scholars with insights and information unavailable from any other source.
The Fremen who accepted the ecologist’s leadership provided Kynes with a memorial of their own. In 10175, Kynes and a party of Fremen were trapped in a landslide when the Plaster Basin cave warren — containing one of the secret water catches established under Kynes' direction — collapsed, killing all those within. The bodies were recovered and rendered for their water, according to the Fremen custom, but a radical departure was made in dealing with the disaster area itself. Ordinarily, the Fremen would have tunneled into the holding system, where the hoarded water was so carefully sealed that not even the tons of rock and sand which collapsed around it could have affected it; instead, a ceremony was held in which the concealed water was dedicated to the spirit of Pardot Kynes. It was believed, according to one account of this unusual act, that the water would not return to the ground system until the ecological transformation was nearly complete. In this way, Kynes would be a participant in the process he had begun, long after his actions in the real world had been abruptly halted.
C.W.
Further references: ARRAKIS:ECOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION; FREMEN; KYNES. LIET; Pardot Kynes, Ecology of Dune, tr. Ewan Gwatan, Arrakis Studies 24 (Grumman: United Worlds); idem, Notes of a Planetary Ecologist, Lib. Conf. Temp. Series 287; idem, Storm Systems and Their Effects, Lib. Conf. Temp. Series 289.
L
LANDSRAAD
(History and Structure). The most ancient of those institutions which formed the Imperium. The Imperium did not exist until all of its institutions were combined: CHOAM, the Imperial House, the Spacing Guild and the Landsraad. CHOAM and the Guild early became part of the structure of the economy and supporters of the government, but the Landsraad had already existed for more than two millennia. Given this long history, it is not surprising that the nature of the Landsraad changed during the chaotic few centuries which saw the rise of the Butlerian Jihad, the birth of feudal governments on most of the inhabited worlds, and finally the development of the Imperium.
The pre-Butlerian Landsraad was an organization of representatives of governments which was granted certain restricted powers by those governments. The Landsraad collected no taxes and maintained no armed forces of its own. It could call upon the military strength of its members to enforce a decision made during one of its sessions, but even then participation in such expeditions was voluntary on the part of the governments.
The early Landsraad served as a deliberative body for the debate and adjudication of disputes between two or more of its member governments, or alleged violations of some agreement between the parties. In exceptional cases the Landsraad might intrude itself into a quarrel if one of the parties was determined to have violated some fundamental provision of international law.
Even before the Great Revolt, the number of worlds represented in the Landsraad was substantial, though not as large as it would become under the empire. Even the thirteen thousand planets of the period of the Jihad, however, would have created an insurmountable problem if each of them had been entitled to a delegate. But since the Landsraad recognized governments, and not planets, such was not necessary. Each government sent only one representative to the meetings of the body. These delegates then cast a number of votes determined by the size of the population they spoke for, with the minimum stipulation that no independent planet could have less than one vote. With the limited information currently available, researchers have yet to determine the formula used for allotting votes to delegates, though it is clear there was one.
In the years before expansion under the empire, the number of voting members exceeded four thousand. Such a large number of individuals making serious decisions in the name of millions of people created many problems. The wide variety of governments represented caused irreconcilable differences. Given the problems associated with an assembly of this type, strict rules were adopted for voting. Consultation with the homeworld was prohibited. While each delegate could bring with him a sizable, though limited, body of advisors, only the delegate would be permitted to vote. Delegates would be permitted to confer with their advisors prior to casting their ballots, but the vote had to be cast within one Standard day after the announcement of an issue.
Under these circumstances, the voting delegates eventually became virtually independent ministers. They arrived at meetings with as clear and full instructions as their individual governments could supply, but it was understood that problems might arise for which their governments had not briefed them. For this reason alone, a strict rule was adopted and enforced by the Landsraad: each delegate was to be granted total immunity from any kind of prosecution or sanction within his home state arising from any action while a delegate at Landsraad meetings.
Since it was impossible for such a large body to deal with every issue placed before it, there were subsidiary structures. The largest of these were the regional divisions of the Landsraad, the Sysselraads, empowered to screen all matters and refer to the full session of the senior body only those issues which would affect others than the members of the Sysselraad in question. Attempts to pass on issues which should have been decided at that level were dealt with very curtly by the Landsraad High Council, Each Sysselraad represented no less than two but no more than five districts.
Each district, in turn, was composed of delegates from no less than two nor more than five solar systems. In fact, only a very few districts included only two solar systems, especially after the rise of the feudal states. Since solar systems rarely had more than two habitable planets (usually under the control of one government), constituting districts from only two systems was generally inefficient. District meetings were empowered to decide matters affecting their own members and to mediate their disputes. If such mediation failed, the appropriate Sysselraad would arbitrate.
Occasionally a district would be large enough to be divided into subdistricts composed of one or more systems. These entities met only to decide agendas. Their deliberations were semi-formal. Matters not discussed at a sub-district gathering could still be submitted to a district session. Sub-district bodies, where they existed, met annually. District meetings were held every two years, while meetings of the Sysselraads were convened every five years, one year before the meeting of the entire Landsraad, also held every five years.
The last step between the Sysselraads and the Landsraad itself was the Landsraad High Council. Presiding officers were elected by each session from the delegates, but the secretaries were bureaucrats, employees of the Landsraad, and served at the pleasure of the Landsraad. The best of them remained in these posts for several years. The Landsraad High Council was composed of both these officials and the voting members of the High Council, who numbered 100. The Sysselraad secretaries served as advisors to the voting members, who were selected by lot from the delegates to the most recent Landsraad session.
This body set the agenda for each meeting of the entire Landsraad. Any legal dispute between worlds not under the same government could be referred to the Landsraad if the issue in question had not been decided at a lower level. In addition, the L
andsraad took up certain cases as a matter of course, including changes of government by revolution or invasion by a foreign interstellar government. The Landsraad's rules ignore rebellion, defined as a change in the identity of the governing officials without a shift in the governing system: this was conceived as an internal matter. An attempt was also made to distinguish between wars of reasonable cause and simple imperialistic expansion; the Landsraad tried to discourage the latter, but was not always successful.
Such was the structure and function of the Landsraad prior to the Great Revolt. The Jihad did not destroy the Landsraad, nor did it work major changes in the structure of the organization. It did, however, change the nature of most of the participating governments. Historical study of the Jihad has concentrated attention upon the movement as a religious phenomenon, and tended to overlook the political results of this sweeping sword of death and destruction.
The loss of life due to starvation, disease, and other causes which resulted from the destruction of computers and thinking machines was impossible to assess. But the carnage did not end with the cessation of fighting. Government, medicine, business and the trading enterprises of affected worlds had come to depend on computers and thinking machines for their very existence. All the various aspects of government, from voting to sanitation, could be traced finally to the thinking machines which the crusaders destroyed. The only planets which escaped the destruction of their governments were those few anarchical states which had no governments in the first place. But for other populations the effect was to reduce the cohesion and organization of their social fabric to a level below that of the anarchistic worlds. For most, the Butlerian Jihad meant anarchy without any preparation for that state. More billions died after the Jihad.
Under such conditions, the rise of military and economic entrepreneurs was inevitable. A complete breakdown of all facets of social structure created a void into which personal relationships moved, and when personal ties replaced the normal workings of a state in such matters as military organization, taxation and legal systems, feudalism emerged. This form of government has historically arisen when no state is strong enough to maintain order and protect the weak against the strong.
The Dune Encyclopedia Page 78
