Children of Dune – Entry #4

Leto ends up in the hands of the Fremen at Jacurutu and somehow, they are working with Gurney to have Leto tested.  They repeatedly put him into spice trance.  Both looking to determine if Leto is possessed (abomination) and both looking for more.  The Jacurutu Fremen want his prescience, thinking prescience is power.  Gurney is serving Lady Jessica.  But neither really knows Leto.

In spice trance, Leto sees past and future.  In one of these trances, Leto describes a short scene that must have been with Vor Atreides.  It is so cool that even though Frank Herbert did not write the books with Vor, that a reference to Vor (an Atreides ancestor from over 10,000 years in the past) is given in this book.

     “We must negate the machines-that-think.  Humans must set their own guidelines.  This is not something machines can do.  Reasoning depends upon programming, not on hardware, and we are the ultimate program!”

     He heard the voice clearly, knew his surroundings – a vast wooden hall with dark windows.  Light came from sputtering frames.  And his minister-companion said: “Our Jihad is a ‘dump program’.  We dump the things which destroy us humans!”

     And it was in Leto’s mind that the speaker had been a servant of computers, one who knew them and serviced them.

(Children of Dune, p. 256)

Although the stories over these many thousands of years are so well crafted that one is hard pressed to find contradictions or even loose ends, I found an error in Children of Dune.  On page 286, Gahnima refers to Farad’N as looking like “his uncle, the late Shaddam IV” (Children of Dune, p. 286), yet Shaddam was Farad’N’s grandfather!