Free Dune by Frank Herbert Page A

Can you decide now . . . or do you need more time?”
    There was no hesitation in his answer. “I’ll go on with the training.”
    “Formidable indeed,” the Duke murmured, and Paul saw the proud smile on his
father’s face. The smile shocked Paul: it had a skull look on the Duke’s narrow
features. Paul closed his eyes, feeling the terrible purpose reawaken within
him. Perhaps being a Mentat is terrible purpose, he thought.
    But even as he focused on this thought, his new awareness denied it.
    = = = = = =
    With the Lady Jessica and Arrakis, the Bene Gesserit system of sowing implant-
legends through the Missionaria Protectiva came to its full fruition. The wisdom
of seeding the known universe with a prophecy pattern for the protection of B.G.
personnel has long been appreciated, but never have we seen a condition-?ut-
extremis with more ideal mating of person and preparation. The prophetic legends
had taken on Arrakis even to the extent of adopted labels (including Reverend
Mother, canto and respondu, and most of the Shari-?a panoplia propheticus). And
it is generally accepted now that the Lady Jessica’s latent abilities were
grossly underestimated.
-from “Analysis: The Arrakeen Crisis” by the Princess Irulan [Private
circulation: B.G. file number AR-81088587]
    All around the Lady Jessica — piled in corners of the Arrakeen great hall,
mounded in the open spaces — stood the packaged freight of their lives: boxes,
trunks, cartons, cases — some partly unpacked. She could hear the cargo
handlers from the Guild shuttle depositing another load in the entry.
Jessica stood in the center of the hall. She moved in a slow turn, looking
up and around at shadowed carvings, crannies and deeply recessed windows. This
giant anachronism of a room reminded her of the Sisters’ Hall at her Bene
Gesserit school. But at the school the effect had been of warmth. Here, all was
bleak stone.
    Some architect had reached far back into history for these buttressed walls
and dark hangings, she thought. The arched ceiling stood two stories above her
with great crossbeams she felt sure had been shipped here to Arrakis across
space at monstrous cost. No planet of this system grew trees to make such beams
– unless the beams were imitation wood.
    She thought not.
    This had been the government mansion in the days of the Old Empire. Costs
had been of less importance then. It had been before the Harkonnens and their
new megalopolis of Carthag — a cheap and brassy place some two hundred
kilometers northeast across the Broken Land. Leto had been wise to choose this
place for his seat of government. The name, Arrakeen, had a good sound, filled
with tradition. And this was a smaller city, easier to sterilize and defend.
    Again there came the clatter of boxes being unloaded in the entry. Jessica
sighed.
    Against a carton to her right stood the painting of the Duke’s father.
Wrapping twine hung from it like a frayed decoration. A piece of the twine was
still clutched in Jessica’s left hand. Beside the painting lay a black bull’s
head mounted on a polished board. The head was a dark island in a sea of wadded
paper. Its plaque lay flat on the floor, and the bull’s shiny muzzle pointed at
the ceiling as though the beast were ready to bellow a challenge into this
echoing room.
    Jessica wondered what compulsion had brought her to uncover those two things
first — the head and the painting. She knew there was something symbolic in the
action. Not since the day when the Duke’s buyers had taken her from the school
had she felt this frightened and unsure of herself.
    The head and the picture.
    They heightened her feelings of confusion. She shuddered, glanced at the
slit windows high overhead. It was still early afternoon here, and in these
latitudes the sky looked black and cold — so much darker than the warm blue of
Caladan. A pang of homesickness throbbed through her.
    So far away, Caladan.
    “Here