Ahira's Hangar

Family life of the Royal Creche is difficult for many people to understand, but I shall try to give you a capsule view of it. My father had only real friend, I think. That was Count Hasimir Fenring, the genetic-eunuch and one of the deadliest fighters in the Imperium. The Count, a dapper and ugly little man, brought a new salve-concubine to my father one day and I was dispatched by my mother to spy upon the proceedings. All of us spied upon my father as a matter of self-protection. One of the slave-concubines permitted my father under the Bene Gesserit-Guild agreement could not, of course, bear a Royal Successor, but the intrigues were constant and opressive in their similarity. We became adept, my mother and sisters and I, at avoiding subtle intruments of death. It may seem to be a dreadful thing to say, but I'm not at all sure my father was innocent in all these attempts. A Royal Family is not like other families. here was a new slave-concubine, then, red-haired like my father, willowy and graceful. She had a dancer's muscles, and her training obviously had included neuro-enticement. My father looked at her for a logn time as she postured unclothed before him. Finally he said: "She is too beautiful. We will save her as a gift." You have no idea how much consternation this restraint created in the Royal Creche. Subtlety and self-control were, after all, the most deadly threats of all.

"In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan

No wonder the members of the royal families of the Duniverse all seem to be so...off, if this is the way they were brought up and raised. Obviously, the Atreides cherished and raised and protected Paul to the best of their ability, but that certainly seems to be quite different from the way the Corrinos - and in reading between the lines - the Harkonnen - raise their children. They are raised more as spies (and perhaps worse) against their own family members than they are as human children. Raised to be paranoid rather than secure and loved. Well, even Paul is raised to be somewhat paranoid, and with reason...

In this chapter we go back to Paul and Jessica, on their desperate flight from the Harkonnen.

It is afternoon, and they are camped in a crevasse in a stilltent. Paul can see nothing other than desert. It sounds magnificently beautiful as well as harsh and bleak.

After the shock and fear and grief, Paul and Jessica are doing exactly what survivors do - trying to find the positive in the present. Paul finds Arrakis to be quiet, and hence enjoyable. perhaps a place to build a good life. Jessica thinks about how it might be nice to be able to not be looking for a knife in the back all of the time...

As evening comes, the two plan to cross the sand to an escarpment, where they can see plant life. They know there must be water there for the plants to live. Paul plants a thumper on a long fuse, which will give them about thirty minutes to cross the sand before a worm comes. They can also smell Spice - a worthless fortune under the current circumstances.

They set off, makimg sure that they do not walk rythmically. They must sound natural, so as not to draw the worms. I wonder if that was one of the long term goals of Leto II and Ghanima - to try to set humanity on a path where they will become natural and random in movement rather than predictable and rhythmic to the prescient?

The two hurry the best they can, but Paul inadvertantly steps into drum sand about 200 meters from the upcoming escarpment. The two are forced to run, which will draw the worm even as Jessica welcomes the return of normal movement. Just as we usually end up going back to our normal life rhythms - even when they hurt us... The two reach the rocks just before the worm reaches them. They all face off, about 50 meters apart.

And then another thumper calls the worm away.

It has to be the fremen - no one else would be here, out in the deep desert.

Paul and Jessica follow the line of guide poles up the escarpment. They find themselves in a beautiful place - a fremen place. There are mice, and very symbolically, a hawk (symbol of their Dukal House) comes down and snatches one.

Paul says he will set up the stilltent, and that they can look for the fremen in the morning.

But the fremen are already there, watching. And they want to take the water of Paul and Jessica...

Thanks Duchess.

I've always loved that intro for what it said about the ruling families...daughters spying on their father for their mother, (more BG intrigues of course), and the excercise of restraint being considered a deadly threat. *shakes head* Wheels within wheels within wheels.

Here is Paul's first close encounter with a sandworm...to him, they are still the monsters of the desert, random and deadly. But they are about to meet a more deadly, if less apparently random, inhabitant of that same desert. One to whom the worms are mere nuisances.

The Fremen themselves.

--A

The fremen are so cool. Not only to survive, but to master such a brutal environment.

(Too bad that in meeting Paul, they are set on the road to their own cultural destruction. )

(I have more time now that the kids are back in school, so I might pop in occasionally when I have a bit of extra time and do a chapter. )

That'll be awesome Duchess. But I'll take the next one...Gonna get motivated again this week.

--A

Some of the best chapters in the book are coming up fast!

I do not think that our Judeo-Christian morality, as such, exists in the Duniverse. The culture reminds me so much of ancient Rome - complete with slaves, concubines, Senatorial Houses, and the Imperium - and a completely foreign violent and paranoid mindset and culture that most of us can ever really understand because it is just too different from what we Westerners experience in our culture. Sure, we can study the history and literature and art and architecture and archaeology - but the mind set is just too bloody different for most of us to completely grasp it. Even though Rome is an important part of world history, in many ways studying it is like reading a fantasy novel set in some exotic imaginary place...

Agreed. I'm sure the parrallels with Rome for example are deliberate.

--A

You're an optimist huh?

--A