The Preacher drew again on the Fremen mystique by quoting from Psalm LXIII:1, a text used in the daily chanted Hymn to Water: "O God, my flesh longeth for Thy way in a dry and thirsty land!" This text prompted an appeal from an old refugee Fremen woman, "Help us, Muad'Dib. Help us!" to which The Preacher responded, pointing his right hand (of blessing) over her head: "You [the Fremen] are the only help remaining! You were rebellious. You brought the dry wind which does not cleanse, nor does it cool [Prophets LIV:11,17]. You bear the burden of our desert, and the whirlwind cometh from that place, from that terrible land [Prophets XI:1]. I have been in that wilderness [Prophets CXIII:5: 'I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought']. Water runs upon the sand from shattered qanats. Streams cross the ground [Prophets XXV:6: "in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert"]. Water has fallen from the sky in the Belt of Dune! [Cf. Laws XI:11: "the land...drinketh water of the rain of heaven."] O my friends, God has commanded me. Make straight in the desert a highway for our Lord, for I am the voice that cometh to thee from the wilderness [Prophets XXX:3: this text, by collation with one in Gospel 111:3, identifies The Preacher as adopting a John-the-Baptist mission]."
Recalling Prophets V:20 and similar passages, The Preacher pointed to the steps beneath his feet, saying: "This is no lost djedida which is no more inhabited forever! Here have we eaten the bread of heaven [Psalm CV:40], And here the noise of strangers drives us from our homes! [cf. Prophets XV:5: 'Thou shalt bring down the noise of strangers']. They breed for us a desolation, a land wherein no man dwelleth, nor any man passeth thereby [Prophets XV:2]." By now Alia's priests were working their way through the crowd to arrest The Preacher, but he had still time to allude to Prophets XXV:1, saying: "Behold our desert which could rejoice and blossom", to Job XIV:5, saying: "Behold them as they go forth to their evil work," and finally to Revelation XIII:1, carefully misquoting: "It is written: 'And I stood upon the sand, and I saw a beast rise up out of that sand, and upon the head of that beast was the name of God!'" Actually, the text states that what was written was "the name of blasphemy." The Preacher held this idea deliberately and dramatically in suspension, while angry mutterings rose from the crowd and fists were raised and shaken. Then he completed his thought by turning and aiming his blind eyes toward the Temple and raising a hand (the left hand of evil, surely) to point at the high window where Alia was watching. "One blasphemy remains!" he screamed. "Blasphemy! And the name of that blasphemy is Alia!" These were The Preacher's last words and they condemned his sister, the virgin-harlot of Revelation XVII, to Leto's execution.
Both Paul and his son Leto were extremely skilled manipulators of what Leto termed the "prevailing mystique." One way in which this is shown is in their use of left-hand and right-hand symbolism. The Fremen, at ease only in extremes, were uncomfortable in the presence of ambivalence or ambiguity. Deeds and thoughts were good or bad; they came either from the left hand of the damned or from the right hand of the blessed. This association goes back to, or perhaps rather is reflected in, Gospel XXXV, where the sheep are set on the right hand of the King but the goats on the left hand. Accordingly, when Paul Muad'Dib stood at the rock shrine enclosing his father's skull to quote word for word from "Bomoko's Legacy," he set his right hand on the shrine in order to show first that his father was one of the blessed and second that the words he was about to say came from one of the blessed. This gesture shows something of the respect with which he regarded the C.E.T. Chairman responsible for the O.C. Bible. However, when Paul and Leto had their famous confrontation in the desert, Leto accused his father of not taking his vision far enough: "Your hands did good things and evil," he said. Leto himself, ever sensitive to relative positions of threatening or supporting people in relation to himself, summed up the assassin Namri at Jacurutu when, during the interrogation, Namri entered the cell and stopped half a pace to the left of Gurney Halleck. "Ahhh, the left hand of the damned," Leto said.
M.T.
Further references: ORANGE CATHOLIC BIBLE; ATREIDES, PAUL; Anon., The Dune Gospels, Rakis Ref. Cat. 1-T2; Qizara Tafwid, The Pillars of Wisdom (Salusa Secundus: Morgan and Sharak).
Paul Muad'Dib's deep study of the O.C. Bible and the Commentaries can be witnessed most fully in Princess Irulan's Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib (Mukan: Lothar), Muad'Dib: The Religious Issues, Lib. Conf. Temp. Series 133, and The Wisdom of Muad'Dib, Arrakis Studies 52 (Grumman: United Worlds).
ORNITHOPTER
The basic method of airborne travel in the Imperium. The common ornithopter was a very late development in the history of atmospheric flight. The first ornithopters — that is, vehicles that fly like birds rather than powered gliders or helicopters — were built by a team of scientists being held as political prisoners (as a result of the abortive Thinkers' Rebellion of 7600 B.G.) by Emperor Neweh in 7585 B.G. Their head was Jehane Golitle, who was placed in charge of an understaffed, underfunded, and discouraged team of scientists, and told to earn her team's continued well-being by inventing useful devices which would make a profit for the emperor.
The group discovered many previously unsuspected uses for already existing artifacts, and they scoured Imperial Scientific Archives in a desperate search for inventions which had been discarded as unfit for a computerized society, but which might be made economically feasible if one was clever enough. One of the group's most fruitful rediscoveries was the "Heart Scallop" (Perpetuus opercularis) of the Forannis Triad. The Heart Scallop, so named because of its continual, regular, and powerful muscular contraction-expansion cycle, was a land mollusk, a soft-shelled bivalve which grew to weight upwards of three hundred pounds, noted for the astounding strength of its single muscle. The Heart Scallop begins its life cycle as an airborne polyp, anchoring itself to a likely cliff-face or large tree after a short adolescence in the planet's jet stream. After anchoring, the animal survives by pumping vast amounts of air through its alimentary canal, straining micro-organisms from the air for sustenance. Aside from its size, the Heart Scallop had been seen as nothing extraordinary, except by some of the slaves on the Forannis Triad. Golitle discovered that the slaves used the scallops to aid in their work: they would carefully trim the shell of a large scallop, and, by connecting it to a series of levers and rods, transform the Heart Scallop's continual bellows action into usable power.
Golitle had been looking for some method of constructing a flying machine that could combine the versatility of a bird with the size of an artificial aircraft, and she discovered the secret she sought in the Heart Scallop. She petitioned the emperor to allow the entire group to travel to the Forannis Triad: the petition received rapid approval. Golitle removed her entire research facility to the triad and began intensive experimentation, culminating in 7580 with the test flight of the first true ornithopter.
The basic element of the common ornithopter is the installation at the wing-junctures of a domesticated, specially-bred Heart Scallop which is connected to a series of electrical leads. The electrical currents have two purposes: one line is used to shock the bivalve into dormancy when the pilot of the ornithopter wishes to utilize fixed-wing flight (normally jet-assisted). When the power is disconnected, the Heart Scallop immediately resumes pulsing, thus providing the ornithopter with a certain amount of fail-safe capacity. The other line in the electrical system is connected to the mollusk's nerve centers, and, when engaged, causes the Heart Scallop to increase its pulsation rate by an amount which varies with the intensity of the current. This second line is seldom used except when the pilot wishes to brake rapidly or wishes to take off from a constricted site.
The efficiency of the ornithopter's "engine" is difficult to surpass. The scallops need very little maintenance. They must be periodically retrimmed to prevent them from growing beyond the constraints of their installation pods, but the connections between the mollusk and the aircraft assembly are remarkably durable, since the animal treats the wing and body of the ornithopter as if those structures were its own shell. The sc
allops need no fuel, since they strain the air they fly through (though good maintenance procedure mandates allowing the creatures to continue to function even when the ornithopter is not in use — a point which occurred late to ornithopter manufacturers who did not use detachable wings on the earlier models). The major repair and maintenance problems associated with ornithopters are the wing gears and joints, which are complicated ball-and-socket connections, and structural problems arising from the switchover from bird-like flight, which requires flexible wings for optimum performance, to fixed-wing flight, which requires rigid structures.
Ornithopters faced considerable resistance when first introduced, since the piloting of one was quite different from the flying of fixed-wing craft. The Imperial Pilots Guild refused to admit members on the basis of ornithopter flight-time until 7520 B.G. and many systems refused to permit ornithopters to be used as anything but sport or commuter vehicles. One of the earliest sport ornithopterists was I.V. Holtzman, who was seriously injured in a crash of an early model. Emperor Neweh, distressed with the slow acceptance of the ornithopter, directed the scientists who developed it to cease further development work on the device, and instead to concentrate on a unified astrological theory that could be used to detect plots against his life among his courtiers.
Although slow in coming, acceptance of ornithopters eventually arrived, and by 7000 B.G., they were the favored mode of airborne transports. The Butlerian Jihad, with its proscription of complicated machinery, advanced the simple, effective ornithopter to almost sole possession of planetary skies.
W.D.I.
Further references: Beekster Barty, The History of the Ornithopter in Sport and Commerce (Caladan; Apex); Ruuverad Zhaunz, Cost-Effective Procedures in Ornithopter Veterinary Medicine (Richese: U. of Bailey Press).
OTHEYM
(10149-10205). The Fremen destined to become one of Paul Muad'Dib's most trusted Fedaykin lieutenants and a key figure in penetrating the conspiracy against the Atreides Emperor. He was born at Sietch Tabr during an enormous sandstorm — a portent perhaps of the day Otheym would help his Lisan al-Gaib defeat the Padishah Emperor and of the holocaust that would take Otheym's life.
Otheym's mother, Lilja, an efficient organizer of children's classes, saw to her son's education. However, it was Otheym's father, Uliet, a highly experienced fighter, who had the greatest influence on his son, even though he died when Otheym was just an infant. Otheym was too young to remember the day Pardot Kynes was brought to the sietch by the three youths he had saved from the Harkonnens. From his mother Otheym heard the story: of how the debate on Kynes' fate had raged for hours until the judgment for death prevailed; of how his father, armed with a consecrated knife, approached Kynes, who was enthusiastically speaking to a group about the water paradise he foresaw for Arrakis; and of how Kynes spoke just two words to Uliet, "Remove yourself," as he swept past his would-be assassin. What happened then will always remain inexplicable: without speaking a word, Uliet moved aside and fell on his own knife. From that moment Kynes was an umma, a holy man, and in time Uliet was elevated to the sadus, the blessed company of heavenly judges. As the son of a legend, Otheym came to believe implicitly in the sacred mission of the man who had sanctified his father and bowed to devote his life to forwarding Kynes' vision.
In his youth, Otheym showed great promise as a fighter; as an adult, a huge man with broad, flat features, he easily surpassed his father's brilliance on the battlefield. As one of Stilgar's most able men, Otheym was among the group sent into the desert by Liet-Kynes' distrans to find the outworlders, Paul Atreides and Jessica. Otheym was captured by the power he felt in Paul and surrendered to an unshakable belief that Paul was Lisan al-Gaib incarnate.
In time the faithful disciple became a lieutenant of Muad'Dib's dreaded Fedaykin death commandos. On hand the day Muad'Dib became a sandrider, Otheym rode with the troop on his hero's worm to the Cave of Birds, where he helped to overwhelm the smugglers who had penetrated there, and where he observed the emotional reunion of Paul and Gurney Halleck. Although startled by the sudden attack of the ten Sardaukar who had infiltrated the smugglers, Otheym acquitted himself well in the ensuing melee, accounting for two of the seven Imperial troops slain by the Fremen. Undoubtedly Otheym's supreme moment came when he was chosen, with his friend Korba, to serve on Muad'Dib's War Council to plan the battle strategy against the Padishah Emperor.
Otheym was also indispensable in the maneuvers at the Shield Wall prior to the decisive battle at Arrakeen that resulted in the defeat of the emperor's five legions of Sardaukar and the Harkonnen mercenaries. Otheym not only functioned as a scout, but also contrived the escape of the two Sardaukar captured with the smugglers and set up watchers to note their progress. By Paul's direct orders, he was in charge of moving the check patrols out of the blast area before Paul triggered the explosives that breached the Shield Wall. Stilgar chronicles that Otheym fought ferociously as the Fremen swept across the basin under cover of the storm and then rode with the troops mounted on worms in the final massed attack on the emperor's headquarters.
In the years that followed, Otheym took part in the jihad loosed upon the universe. The unrestrained killing, the massive slaughters, the obliteration of worlds, the incalculable suffering had brought about, he said, "a lessening of me as a man." He had seen wonders, planets where water fell from the heavens, had immersed himself in the sea on Enfeil, and had gone to the ends of the universe to fight on far distant Gangishree. But he brought home wounds as well as wonders; his body bore a network of scars and the first tell-tale traces of the splitting disease (perhaps what the ancients called leprosy?) he caught on Tarahell. With him when he returned was a "surprise" for his wife Dhuri: Bijaz, a dwarf he bought on Occa, "a toy discarded by the Tleilaxu."
After his discharge, Otheym lived in obscurity with Dhuri and Lichna, his daughter by Mesha, Dhuri's sister who had died before his return. In time most of their sietch hangings and desert tapestries disappeared to pay Otheym's medical bills — sold to rich pilgrims who paid enormous sums for authentic Fremen artifacts. Although embittered, Otheym never ceased being a worshiper of Muad'Dib and was thus ready to serve his emperor once again when Stilgar approached him with suspicions of a plot against Paul.
Accordingly, Otheym moved to a cul-de-sac that housed the suspects to give him the opportunity to mark the traitors and record their names. Sometime after settling in, Otheym confided to Stilgar his outrage on discovering that Lichna had fallen in love with the blind son of their Fremen neighbor Farok. It was unthinkable that she would flaunt Fremen tradition by consorting with a sightless man! We know from Stilgar's Chronicle that Otheym was mercifully ignorant of his daughter's true plight: that Farok had given her semuta in hope of winning a woman of the People despite his son's blindness — an empty victory since the narcotic destroyed her personality. Nor did Otheym ever discover that Scytale, the Face Dancer, killed Lichna so that he might assume her appearance and lure Paul to a trap at Otheym's house.
Unaware of the trap, Otheym rose above his bitterness and his physical incapacities to perform what he thought was one more service for the man he revered: he informed Paul of the treachery and presented him with a human distrans, the dwarf Bijaz, who had recorded the names of all the traitors. This favor was literally Otheym's last act, because within moments of Paul's leaving, Otheym and his wife were destroyed in the holocaust of a stone burner meant primarily for Paul. Perhaps Otheym was not sorry to depart the world he had told Paul he no longer liked.
Just as his father Uliet, Pardot Kynes' would-be executioner, gave his life for the creator of the dream of water for Dune, Otheym gave his for his Mahdi: the one who made that dream a reality.
D.K.
Further references: SCYTALE; KYNES, PARDOT; Stilgar ben Fifrawi, The Stilgar Chronicle, tr. Mityau Gwulador, AS 5 (Grumman: United Worlds); Jama Oslo, Fremen: Lives and Legend (Salusa Secundus: Morgan and Sharak).
P
PANOPLIA PROPHETICUS
T
he most important source of material for the Bene Gesserit Missionaria Protectiva; an elaborate collection of source legend rituals and training manuals. In it are detailed the methods by which the Sisterhood manipulated religion in order to exploit primitive cultures. In general, this collection contains the prophecies and litanies embedded within young cultures in order to assure protection for Bene Gesserits doing field work among them. The primary myths used involved the worship of a female deity, the veneration of pregnant women and of the prophetic wisdom of old women, and the salvation inherent in the prophesied male savior figure, legends necessary to protect the breeding lines and the espionage work of the order.
In all the mythic pattern implantations, a formative social group was exposed to "infectious superstition" grounded in their primitive fears of the unknown and in their misunderstanding of the natural world. The spreading of the pattern is best explained by the Theory of the Open-ended Proof:
If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.
The Panoplia Propheticus, therefore, is actually a collection of all the myths ever seeded by the Sisterhood and an index of patterns suitable to specific environments, both natural and social. Until recently, the entire Panoplia Propheticus was thought to be available on the general reference shelves of the Bene Gesserit Library, but work done under the direction of historian Ahna Judehic, University of Giedi Prime, indicates that the complete collection is actually held in the Bene Gesserit Archives and fills three complete rooms.
The Dune Encyclopedia Page 90
