Assuming the success of the early conditioning and education, age fifteen was the year of decision, of sponsorship as a Mentat candidate. The applicant's predisposition — his commitment — had been amply demonstrated by fifteen, leaving only his "calling" to be heard to gain acceptance. The applicant secluded himself and meditated, awaiting the call. For some it never came. For others, the vocation grew from patient deliberation. For a few, a flash from the core of being cried "Yes" to the opportunities and dangers of life as a Mentat. Those who never received the call were not disgraced; many still loved the Order and served it in a variety of ways — as teachers of the young, as administrators, or in the auxiliary, The Friends of the Order of Mentats. But if the call did come, the Order rejoiced; other applicants and their mentors pledged to help and support the Called One throughout his life whatever his final progress on his path through the ranks of the Order.
P.F.
NOTES
1Gilbertus Albans, The Mentat Handbook, rev. G. O. Playt, tr. Dale, Reeve Mara (1252; Finally: Mosaic), p. 46.
2Albans, Mentat Handbook, p. 292.
Further reference: MENTATS, HISTORY OF THE ORDER.
MENTATS, TWISTED
Tleilaxu "twisted" mentats were different from normal Mentats in those characteristics nonessential to pure computational ability. These variants took the form of body structure, emotional nature, and psychological make-up, depending upon customers' orders. Tleilaxu Mentats were produced universally from the axolotl tanks — itself a notable distinction. Mentats produced by legitimate schools were also bred with certain characteristics in mind, but these were relatively benign in comparison to the Tleilaxu machinations and not the result of genetic engineering.
One of the most notorious twisted Mentats to be produced by The Tleilaxu was Goya Solidar (8463-8514), ordered by House Krin for its Department of Military Intelligence during its imperialistic subjugation of several planets with warlike populations. Goya was to be an interrogator extraordinaire. Other mentat schools might have provided an adequate product, but after military defeats in which Krin suffered heavy losses, retaliation became a motive.
Goya Solidar was a mentat-neurologist whose speciality was pain centers and whose raison d'être was sadism, a fixation that had been engineered to a refinement. His computational ability exercised itself on intrigue and interrogation, the latter involving sophisticated techniques of torture noted for their high successes in eliciting pain while keeping the victim both alive and conscious. His methods and observations are detailed in his unsanctioned Book of the Kindjal Question, which need not involve speculation about the "long knife" of the title. One might suspect Goya posed a threat to House Krin itself, but his appetite was neither for conquest nor governmental power.
As a twisted mentat, Solidar can be contrasted with the more normal Barkale-zon-Rale, the "Compassionate Brain" from Har. This scion of a Great House, after a hedonistic youth, was discovered to have mentat capability, and he began training. Once graduated, he combined his natural compassion and his mentat training toward improving living standards on several planets within the Har system.
What is noteworthy here is that mentat training capitalized upon and benefited from Barkale's natural characteristics. It was the standard practice of the legitimate Mentat schools to select admirable individuals as students. Tleilaxu Mentats, born from axolotl tanks, were a separate breed, displaying artificially produced characteristics. That these traits were often odious speaks as much against the Tleilaxu as against the Great Houses who were Bene Tleilax supporters.
Gharant the Player, produced for House Revs in its private cheops war with House Borgoi, demonstrated the encouragement of the Great Houses. These two houses decided upon a cheops tournament to settle their disputes. House Reys observed that no rules bound behavior during play, and they sent a requisition to the Tleilaxu. Gharant the Player was created as a supreme cheops master. He stood four meters tall, had long, dangling arms and a drooping, expressive face. Given to mumbling, shrieking, guttural explosions as well as sudden, incoherent movements of his arms and legs, he constantly unnerved his opponents. The total effect drove some of them to hysteria — especially when, after a brilliant move, Gharant would salivate and sing to himself. Outside of cheops tournaments, Gharant had no life. Once House Borgoi resigned in defeat, Gharant fell into despair and soon became catatonic, a state of little matter to House Reys, which had no further use for him.
One of the most subtle Tleilaxu Mentats was Hamle the Paralyzer (4815-4897), ordered by the Emperor Mikael II after his restoration from cryogenic suspension. Hamle served as a roving Imperial ambassador-without-portfolio, passing himself off as a confidant of Mikael through whom unofficial communications could be sent. Charming, handsome, magnanimous, and eloquent, Hamle became popular with the Great Houses, whose leaders eventually took him into their confidence and sought his counsel in endeavors relating to House Corrino. By his advice, Hamle proceeded to hamstring them. So great was his computational ability, but so involved and convoluted his arguments, that he provided his victims no valuable advice whatsoever. Points were met with counterpoints of such complexities and intricacies that those who listened were rendered comatose by Hamle's "pale cast of thought." But such was Hamle's decisive presence that he was given no blame at all for this paralysis.
The Bene Tleilax never lacked customers, and there were numerous twisted Mentats: Multifest Hydros, the mentat-politician who possessed seven different personalities; Piter de Vries, House Harkonnen's effeminate psychopathic killer; Lizao Twine, the mentat-hermaphrodite whose courtesan palace disguised a notorious web of intrigue; Bliss Numera, the female mentat-monk-chemist, who for twenty-six years lived in solitary confinement, existing on vegetable broth, but failed to perfect the formulae by which House Dardan hoped to transform silverfern into melange.
The final point to be made about twisted Mentats is that some were more twisted than others, and a few not very twisted at all. Nevertheless, because the Mentats produced by the Tleilaxu were so often warped and bizarre in nature, they came universally to be regarded as objects of repugnance.
S.T.
Further references: TLEILAX; MENTAT ORGANIZATION; Itiina Grezharee, Tleilaxu Products and Plans in the Atreides Imperium (Chusuk: Salrejina); Goya Solidar, Book of the Kindjal Question, ed. Leeman Bend (Zimaona: Kinat).
MISSIONARIA PROTECTIVA
The Missionaria Protectiva's general function within the Bene Gesserit was to spread "passwords" throughout known space so that communities would be conditioned to give aid and comfort to a stranger who "said the secret word."
The Bene Gesserit breeding program was set up to extend through an unprecedented number of generations. Realizing that an accident or two could set back their effort drastically, redundancy was essential: many offspring, many lines, many possible combinations. The greatest investment of Bene Gesserit resources went into the redundancy program, and the Missionaria Protective was a second-line backup, deep within the grandiose plans.
Most agents of the Missionaria Protectiva were "outer-circle" trainees, women whose genes or dynamism did not qualify them for even intermediate status within the organization. The Missionaria Protectiva corps was usually an organizational dead-end; however, the records suggest that many of the missionaries were patternmakers, "creative artists."
The Missionaria Protectiva's eventual operational extravagance is dazzling. Devising and installing elaborate password systems throughout different cultures, setting testing systems so the passwords could not be misused, and arranging both systems so that the cultures would use them innocently compounded the complexity of the operation. Each separate culture needed a different set of password and test sequences. Some cultures needed only the minor manipulation of a compatible mythology, but the societies farthest from "civilization" had to be completely reprogrammed. Legends, with all the accompanying accessories of songs, rumors, and nursery rhymes, had to be invented and inserted in the primitive cultures
. These inventions had to mesh with existing beliefs but also soften the cultures' reflexive fear of strangers, so that a mysterious intruder with uncanny powers would be welcomed instead of rejected and killed. The preliminary scholarship, the pattern weaving, the courage of the agents who did the actual transmitting to strange planetary systems are all staggering in their magnitude. The Missionaria Protectiva also had to establish a "feed-through" network within the Bene Gesserit so that trainees and adepts would know what they could expect when threatened in a distant place. The insertion of the appropriate litany in adab memory for recall under just the proper conditions is merely one example of such training.
The Missionaria Protectiva sought and used cultural pivot points in two ways. First, they made the approach to the crucial point dependent on some mysterious benefactor. Since the benefactor would mean an improved chance of success, the civilization must recognize and enlist the agent rather than spurn and despise her. Second, the Missionaria Protectiva inserted another stranger on the far side of the crucial turning point. This "savior" or "redeemer" symbolized success itself. The transition crisis in any culture's legends could be constructed or altered by the Missionaria Protectiva to pave the way for a Bene Gesserit adept who would bring mysterious techniques to help in achieving success and for a Great Leader who would signify that success was at hand.
There were many variations in the Missionaria Protectiva's operating methods. Once the target culture's value system had been assessed and whole-cloth or engraftable stories had been devised to mesh with those values, missionary agents infiltrated as patterners ("artists"). Having learned the legends, melodies, rhythms, cultural techniques, and modulation skills of the planet, they provided entertainment that appeared to be "homegrown." The agent could adopt almost any identity. As journalists, itinerant crafters, or image-recorders, they could "sell" their wares from any kind of base. They tried to achieve great popularity so that whatever they composed would be easily accepted. Another method was to join the educational system and gradually alter the curriculum. Complete catalogs of techniques for adjusting a culture's belief structures fill volumes. Some patternmakers drifted through society spreading obscene jokes and inscribing public walls. Others wrote, composed, painted and holo'd their way into classic status without help from curriculum manipulators. At fairs, festivals, and faddish museums, in pulp serials and bound volumes, via interplanetary broadwave and personal digidisk, they spread each other's work across a civilization. Meanwhile, other missionaries were analyzing and inscribing and disseminating elsewhere throughout the galaxy.
The Missionaria Protectiva's method, then, was to implant recognition signals in a culture. A Bene Gesserit wayfarer would be noticed, tested and, if her abilities were up to the test, spared. The legends were designed so that the risk of mistreating her and the reward for aiding her were high enough to encourage sincere processing of all strangers, preserving genes that might be significant in the breeding program for the Kwisatz Haderach. Underneath the layer of password and test, the Missionaria Protectiva wove a thin but strong anticipation of a messiah figure, an individual whose coming would signal the beginning of the culture's final triumph, the fulfillment of its ultimate hopes.
DUNE INVOLVEMENT. Fremen legends show several signs of having been adjusted by the Bene Gesserit Missionaria Protectiva. The Fremen were waiting a "Mahdi," for instance. The general pattern of transition-to-success had been implanted long before they arrived on Arrakis. However, Arrakis was a very special place, the source of the spice that had become crucially important to the Bene Gesserit. Their Reverend Mothers needed it, and their Truthsayers appear to have employed it. Thus the source of the spice received special attention from all of the Bene Gesserit agencies. The Missionaria Protectiva provided an umbrella of protection not simply for any Bene Gesserit adept who might be one small piece in the genetic jigsaw, but for sophisticated initiates as well. Dune was also a nexus in the Bene Gesserit scheme and deserved extra care from the Missionaria Protectiva planners.
The Missionaria Protectiva had established the Fremen shari'a (superstitious rituals) long before the tribe migrated to Arrakis. The ilm and figh (aspects of Zensunni religion) underpinnings of their culture had included latent suggestions of a Mahdi for millennia. The Fremen knew that someday a "Twelfth Imam" would emerge from hiding (or be "reborn") to unite The People, the Community of All Believers, and lead them against "the infidel" to realization of the "ideal religio-political community, the 'umma,'" the "brotherhood of prophets." Thus the Fremen would avenge their persecution and achieve their water-rich Paradise. This pattern paralleled the transition nexus aligned by the Missionaria Protectiva to prepare for the coming of the Kwisatz Haderach somewhere in the galaxy. At the time when they reinforced this sequence within the panoply of Fremen/Zensunni beliefs, the Missionaria Protectiva could not anticipate that either the "messiah" or the Zensunni would ever be physically present on Arrakis.
The agency's main concern on Dune was the relationship between the place — not the culture — and the Bene Gesserit's intermediate — not merely breeding program — needs. A visitor to the spice planet might be an extremely important Sister, perhaps even a Reverend Mother. So that planet — with little heed to the civilization inhabiting it — was primed for the sacred "mysterious stranger." She might seem to be a witch, a representative of dark powers, but she would bring great favor to the natives if saved and great peril if mistreated. She might even, so the rumor was planted, be the Great Mother whose offspring would be the "messiah"/"savior"/Kwisatz Haderach. It is easy to imagine how volatile this place-specific legend and prophecy became when it mingled with the anticipations of the Mahdi brought to Arrakis by the oppressed Zensunni/Fremen, The cues implanted to signal the coming of a "savior" may have been similar everywhere. The Dunebuk evidence about the "messiah's" appearance is straightforward. The Missionaria Protectiva planted a swath of indicators to serve as signals. He was to be "a child who thinks and speaks like a man," with "questing eyes" and an air of "reserved candor." And he would seek to know Fremen ways "as though born to them." In a society that holds important hopes and where discomfort is accepted because today's pain will speed the achievement of tomorrow's hopes, a glimpse of the signs of coming success is itself urgently desired.
The more desperate the civilization, in other words, the easier it was to establish a pattern of signals the populace would seize upon. The Missionaria Protectiva's scattering of hints that might signal the coming of a Kwisatz Haderach fell on fertile soil in the persecuted, resigned, yet hopeful Fremen culture. Thus Paul Atreides' acceptance by the Fremen was eased significantly by the latent prophecies planted by the Missionaria Protective.
Much more important, however, was the scheme established to guarantee the acceptance of a "Great Mother." The risks on both sides were high. The "candidate," the mysterious woman who might be bringing useful techniques, had to be tested. If she failed the test, she deserved the fate of any threatening outsider, sacrificial expulsion. If those doing the testing did not administer the sequence correctly, they might either disqualify a deserving stranger or preserve one who ought to have been sacrificed. Therefore two circumstances had to be arranged. There had to be more than one test, with the sequence moving from relatively easy responses to more difficult challenges. And the sequence had to develop "naturally"; there could be no suspicion of conspiracy in aid of the candidate. The Missionaria Protectiva arranged their legend implantations so that the tests could be passed only by Bene Gesserit initiates. Cued responses were a part of the candidate's training. For Arrakis, the Missionaria Protectiva made the "prophesied" challenges so difficult that only a potential Reverend Mother would have had the training to meet all of them. The recitation of the "prayer of the salat" would qualify a Bene Gesserit to play the rote of "Auliya," or "handmaiden of God"; it prepared the Fremen to accept her as a candidate for their version of a "Reverend Mother." Notice that an "adab" test, rooted in the unconscious level of advanced Ben
e Gesserit training, was the end of the Missionaria Protectiva's password sequence.
The Fremen adapted the legend by insisting that she had to be championed by someone who had come with her. This modification was not a Missionaria Protectiva implantation; it would not have made a Bene Gesserit's survival contingent on a male companion. This Fremen requirement was a mutation, a product of the intermingling of Zensunni heritage, Missionaria Protectiva prophecies about a Kwisatz Haderach, and the special spice-planet overlay.
The Bene Gesserit then was faced with the final challenge: the Fremen addition of the transformation of the Water of Life. This was truly a Reverend Mother's challenge. A neophyte Bene Gesserit, and even some adepts, would not be able to work the catalytic transformation by way of homeostatic adjustment. Only an individual who possessed both proper genes and specialized training could change the poison into elixir. This requirement had not been inserted by the Missionaria Protectiva into the Fremen tradition. Their goal was survival for a threatened Bene Gesserit, not high visibility and power for the survivor.
Paul Atreides was correct when he wrote that the Missionaria Protectiva had "bought them a bolthole" in the desert. They had indeed arranged, as best they could, to preserve any Bene Gesserit adept who stumbled into a strange environment. They had escalated the mythology on Arrakis so that even a Reverend Mother was likely to be recognized as a deeply threatening "witch."
In relation to their original purpose, the Missionaria Protectiva made a minor contribution to the saga recorded in Arrakeen history. They were supposed to have been a second line of defense, behind the genetic redundancy arrangements, against accidents that might disturb the breeding program. Incidentally, they were to help prepare the galaxy for the eventual arrival of the Kwisatz Haderach. Intended to guard against accidents, the Missionaria Protectiva helped, unintentionally, to bring about an important, and extremely unlikely, coincidence. They laced Zensunni legends with Kwisatz Haderach preparations, thus reinforcing the ancient expectations of the Mahdi, They set up Arrakis to welcome a Reverend Mother. They did not, however, track the several reinforcing vectors, especially the harmonics of Zensunni plus Arrakis toward the forging of Fremen fanatics. Nor did they comprehend the combination of ecological hope and historic despair that converged in the Fremen, making the nexus of their prophecies so volatile and irresistibly self-fulfilling.
The Dune Encyclopedia Page 83
