Chapterhouse: Dune – Entry #3

Maybe Mother Superior Odrade feels a bond of trust with Duncan because she is Atreides.  But she has to convince her sisters and her closest advisors, like Bell, that they should trust him also.  So what are these sisters so worried about?  Well Duncan knows.

When the Sisters learn of his Mentat ability they would know immediately that his mind carried the memories of more than one ghola lifetime.  The original did not have that talent.  They would suspect he was a latent Kwisatz Haderach.  Look how they rationed his mélange.  They were clearly terrified of repeating the mistake they had made with Paul Atreides and his Tyrant son.  Thirty-five hundred years of bondage!

(Chapterhouse: Dune, p. 71)

But there certainly was something different happening with Duncan.  An ability or sight that he couldn’t understand but it provided insight into the danger that was out there somewhere.  Perhaps what the Honored Matres had run from.

A shimmering net undulating like an infinite borealis.

Then the net would part and he would see two people – man and woman.  How ordinary they appeared and yet extraordinary.  A grandmother and grandfather in antique clothing: bib coveralls for the man and a long dress with headscarf for the woman.  Working in a flower garden!  He thought it must be more of the illusion.  I am seeing this but it is not really what I see.

They always noticed him eventually.  He heard their voices.  “There he is again, Marty,” the man would say, calling the woman’s attention to Idaho.

“I wonder how it is he can look through?” Marty asked once.  “Doesn’t seem possible.”

“He’s spread pretty thin, I think.  Wonder if he knows the danger?”

Danger.  That was the word that always jerked him out of the vision.

(Chapterhouse: Dune, p. 75)

All this ties to Leto II’s Golden Path which Leto II saw as necessary for the survival of humankind after Kralizec, the end war.  Duncan sees it, perhaps because of his many lives spent with the Tyrant, and he helps Odrade see it too.

Golden Path: humankind “erupting” into the universe … never again confined to any single planet and susceptible to a singular fate.  All of our eggs no longer in one basket.

(Chapterhouse: Dune, p. 80)