Hunters of Dune - Entry #14

     This is my last entry for Hunters of Dune.  Then on to Sandworms of Dune and Kralizec and the end of our collective journey.

     There is one last hint about the Outside Enemy before the secrets of the Outside Enemy and the Oracle of Time are revealed.  The no-ship had come across a promising looking planet, perhaps one that some of the Ithaca passengers could settle on. The rabbi, Sheeana, ghola Miles Teg, and ghola Thufir Hawat, went down to the planet to inspect.  They found that the habitants were "Handlers" who had created Futars to hunt Honored Matres.  Thinking that if they share the same enemy, they must be friends, they cautiously accepted the Handlers hospitality.  But things just didn't seem right.  And here is the hint ... at one point Teg recognized that the trees in the forest "had been laid out in a precise order, carefully staged to present an appearance of "geometrical naturalness"". (Hunters of Dune, p. 448)  He then came to a Mentat projection: "although the original planters of this seeping forest had strived to create the appearance of wildness, they had not been able to get past their innate sense of order". (Hunters of Dune, p. 448)

     Then come the revelations in the climax of this book.

     The old man nodded in satisfaction.  "The incursion will proceed with greater vigor now.  Once we begin to engage in direct battles, I will not allow you to waste time, energy, or imagination on such stage shows." 

     The old woman flicker her fingers as if to knock away an insect.  "My amusements cost little, and I have never lost sight of our overall goal.  Everything we see and do contains an element of illusion, in one form or another.  We simply choose which layers to unveil."  She shrugged.  "But if you continue to nag me about it, I would be happy for us to revert to our original forms whenever you like." 

     In a blink, all of the realistic images were gone and the two found themselves standing in the midst of the immense kaleidoscopic metropolis. 

     "We have waited fifteen thousand years for this," the old man said. 

     "Yes, we have.  But that isn't really very long fur us, is it?" 

(Hunters of Dune, p. 513)

     And then in the very next chapter, the Oracle of Time is searching for the no-ship and its precious cargo.

     Trillions of humans over tens of thousands of years had exhibited a latent racial prescient ability.  In myths and legends, the same prediction kept cropping up -- the End Times, titanic battles that signaled epic changes in history and society.  The Butlerian Jihad had been one such battle.  She had been there, too, fighting against the terrific antagonist that threatened to obliterate humanity.  

     Now, that ancient Enemy was returning, an all-powerful foe that the Oracle of Time had sworn to destroy back when she was a mere human named Norma Cenva. 

(Hunters of Dune, p. 515)

     There you have it.  The ancient Enemy ... two characters ... Omnius and Erasmus.  The Oracle of Time ... the humble visionary Norma Cenva.

Hunters of Dune - Entry #13

Chapter starter:

     Even a great tower has its weak point. The accomplished warrior finds and exploits the smallest flaws to bring about complete ruin.

-- MATRE SUPERIOR HELLICA,

Internal Directive 67B-1138

(Hunters of Dune, p. 400)

     Murbella's need to delve in to her past to understand the Honored Matres as she prepares to go in to battle against them finally leads to full disclosure in a spice trance.  It is worth including some lengthy passages here so I can look back at this in the blog to recall the details.

     Yes, during the Famine Times, a splinter group of rogue Bene Gesserits, a few untrained wild Reverend Mothers, and fugitive Fish Speakers had indeed escaped in the turmoil after the Tyrant's death.  Yet that was only a small part of the answer. 

     In their flight, those women had also encountered isolated and insular Tleilaxu worlds.  For more than ten thousand years, the fanatical Bene Tleilax had used their females only as breeding machines and axlotl tanks.  In a closely guarded secret, they kept their women immobilized, comatose, and uneducated, no more than wombs on tables.  No Bene Gesserit, no outsider, had ever seen a Tleilaxu female. 

     When those rogue Bene Gesserits and militant Fish Speakers discovered the horrific truth, their reaction was swift and unforgiving: they left not a single Tleilaxu male alive on those outlying worlds.  Liberating the breeding tanks, they took the Tleilaxu females with them on their journey, tending them, trying to bring them back. 

     ... 

     The renegade Reverend Mothers, militaristic Fish Speakers, and recovered Tleilaxu females had united to form the Honored Matres.  Lost out in the Scattering for more than a dozen centuries, they had no access to melange, could no longer undergo the Spice Agony, and were unable to find an alternative that would allow them access to Other Memories.  Over time, interbreeding with males from populations they encountered, then dominated on other worlds, those women had become something else entirely. 

     And now Murbella knew why her chain of predecessors ended in dark emptiness.  She traveled back, generation to generation, all the way to a Tleilaxu female who had been a comatose breeding tank, a mindless womb.  

     Gathering her courage and focusing her rage, Murbella pushed harder and became the paralyzed tank that Tleilaxu female had once been.  She shuddered as the dim and helpless sensations and memories seeped into her.  She had been that young girl raised in captivity, understanding little of the world beyond her pitiful confinement, unable to read, barely able to speak.  In the month of her first menstruation, she had been dragged away, strapped to a table, and turned into a flesh vat.  No longer conscious, the nameless woman had no idea how many offspring her body produced. Then she had been awakened and liberated. 

(Hunters of Dune, pp. 438 - 439)

     Pretty easy to see why they behave so fiercely, why they demand respect of all and show no respect to men.

Hunters of Dune - Entry #12

     So we have been led to believe that there is or will be a Kwisatz Haderach on the no-ship, Ithaca.  The awesome powers of the characters on the no-ship is mind-boggling.  There is Duncan with his many lifetimes, unique character, and ability to somehow span his mind across space to see the far-removed old man and woman as well as the tachyon net.  There is Sheeana, an Atreides, who I recently devoted a whole entry to and why can't a Kwisatz Haderach be a woman?  And finally, there is Miles Teg, also an Atreides with special abilites, especially to be able to see through no-fields.

     Duncan lets Miles guide the ship through a foldspace jump to a place where he sees what no one else can see ... a planet hidden by a planet-wide no-field.  Duncan and Sheeana witness this and Duncan is awed.  Sheeana's repsonse is "The Bashar has Atreides genes, Duncan.  You should know by now not to underestimate them." (Hunters of Dune, pp. 356)

     Sheeana and Garimi go to investigate the planet that has no living humans on it but has much evidence of a civilization that was wiped out relatively recently.  They learned from the planet something they had already suspected, humans out in the Scattering, including the Honored Matres, have been under attack by devastating biological warfare.

     "That's unheard of! No disease could possibly be so --"
     "This one was.  The proof is here."  Sheeana shook her head.  "Even the horrific plagues from the Butlerian Jihad were not so efficient, and that epidemic spread everywhere and nearly brought an end to human civilization."

(Hunters of Dune, pp. 362)

Do I need to remind you who was behind that efficient epidemic?