It was Duncan who first recognized the military potential of the Fremen. As the leader of the second wave onto Arrakis, it was his responsibility to initiate contact and negotiations with the desert commandos. The success with which he did this demonstrates Duncan's thoroughness and care in matters relating to House Atreides. He was the one who learned of the danger of Shields in the desert, who delivered the first crysknife to Duke Leto, and who stopped Leto's anger when the Naib Stilgar spat on the table to honor the Duke. He also established a temporary truce with the Fremen. While he was never the ideal diplomat, his character made him the ideal liaison with the Fremen. His morality, pride, ruthlessness, loyalty, prowess, and fondness for the truth were a perfect match with the puritanical, rigid, and brutally direct Stilgar. In addition, his honoring of the slain Fremen, Turok, shortly after the Atreides arrived in Arrakeen, created the opportunity for Duncan to accept dual allegiance. Duncan's familiarity with the deserts of Arrakis, gained during his time in the sietches, would later be an irreplaceable asset following the Harkonnen/Sardaukar attack. His knowledge enabled him to guide Paul and the Lady Jessica to freedom and to find Liet-Kynes.
In spite of his obvious skills and singular loyalty, Duncan Prime's life was filled with bitter anomalies. His impulsive actions, which often spelled the difference between life and death, were out of place, in the Atreides world of intrigue, politics and prescience. Duncan was unreflecting and imprudent, frequently as the result of inner forces he could not understand. For example, directed by Duke Leto to watch the Lady Jessica, who had been falsely accused as a spy by a Harkonnen ploy, Duncan became drunk on spice beer. Troubled by his homesickness, misguided by his lack of understanding, marked by his characteristic doubt and intrinsically self-destructive, he unthinkingly accused Lady Jessica.
Even his rescue of Paul and Jessica, following the Harkonnen-Sardaukar attack, was tainted. Having successfully led them into the desert and gone for Liet-Kynes, he unwittingly led the Sardaukar back to the three where they hid in the ecological testing station. Yet he gave his life to save theirs, taking with him such an astonishing number of the Sardaukar commandos that his body was frozen and sent to the Bene Tleilax axolotl tanks for regeneration.
Amid the cosmic concerns and Machiavellian forces that swirled around him, Duncan contributed the glories of ancient times to a millennium that might otherwise have been sterile in its preoccupation with great issues. His devil-may-care humanity and frailty provided color and excitement. A true swashbuckler, his black goatish hair over sharp, dark features, his chin marked by a small mole, his never-relinquished habit of the insignia-less, black uniform of the Atreides' House Guard, and his gently observant eyes melted women's hearts and often made him the designated Atreides' escort. Duncan was a man out of his time who carved magic in an age of rationality and contrivance. He recalled an age when noble action was always the most admirable choice, when virtue was selfevident and at the call of the bright and the good, and when loyalty was the greatest gift.
The many gholas of Duncan Idaho created over the ensuing centuries retained the original Duncan's unique characteristics. The God Emperor recognized Duncan's charms, and used it to maintain the Fish Speakers' bond to the Duncans, and the gholas were the asexual Leto II's gift to his amazons. However, in his fear of the relationship between Duncan-the-Last and Hwi Noree, Leto II remarked in his diaries that Duncan could always see into the souls of women and get them to do whatever he wanted. While he was rarely simply a Lothario, Duncan was a romantic figure, often called "an aristocrat of the sword." Even as a ghola, he was a poet in actions and words, and "The Ghola's Hymn," Duncan-10208's eulogy for his "young master," remains one of the tenderest expressions of the spirit of Duncan and the House Atreides.
In her commentaries and before her abomination, St. Alia-of-the-Knife described Duncan as a vulnerable "child-man-adolescent" under seige. His whimsy and attractiveness were always constants in the eyes of the Atreides, much to their misfortune, but certainly to the betterment of later ages.
R.S.
Further references: Princess Irulan Atreides-Corrino, Arrakis Awakening, Arrakis Studies 15 (Grumman: United Worlds), and The Humanity of Muad'Dib, Lib. Conf. Temp. Series 139; Siona Atreides, Commentaries on the Welbeck Fragment (Centralia: Kutath); Duncan Idaho-10208, The Hayt Chronicle, tr. Kershel, Reeve Shautin (Finally: Mosaic); Harq al-Ada, The Dune Catastrophe, tr. Miigal Reed (Mukan: Lothar).
IDAHO, DUNCAN-HAYT
(10202-10208). The first ghola of Duncan Idaho was a gift to the newly crowned emperor, Paul Atreides, from the Spacing Guild. Hayt was delivered to the new court by the first Guild ambassador, Edric, during the presentation of diplomatic credentials. Having been regenerated in the Bene Tleilax axolotl tanks, Hayt was an exact physical duplication of the original Duncan Idaho. In fact, due to the methods of regeneration the Tleilaxu were using at the time, Hayt's flesh was Duncan's. The ghola Hayt differed from the original in only four ways: he had no memory of his life as Idaho; his natural eyes had been replaced by lead-colored metal ones, a change resulting from Tleilaxu whimsy rather than any injury; he had been educated as a mentat and a Zensunni philosopher; and he was conditioned to be a weapon that could have destroyed the Atreides.
Many historians maintain that the Hayt gift should have been rejected. His Bene Tleilax eyes and regenerated flesh evoked all of Stilgar's Fremen superstitions, and the Naib strongly advised Paul to reject the ghola. Paul himself was uneasy with a being who appeared and acted like an old, trusted friend, but who was merely an appearance rather than a reality. Nonetheless, the Idaho-Atreides bond held true and the "young master" could not reject even the image of his beloved teacher and comrade. Paul Atreides was still a young man, and he sorely felt the loneliness and isolation of his role as emperor and his character as Kwisatz Haderach. Just as loneliness partly motivated Paul's love for Chani, so too he sought in Hayt the solace of his past amid an antagonistic empire.
But Stilgar and Paul were well advised to fear Hayt. The ghola himself admitted that his purpose was to destroy Paul and advised his own rejection. Hayt had been purchased from the Bene Tleilaxu by the Spacing Guild. The purchase was part of a conspiracy involving the Guild, the Bene Tleilax, and the Bene Gesserit, all of whom feared the young emperor's control of the priceless melange. The agents were the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohaim, Ambassador Edric, the Princess Irulan, and the face dancer Scytale. They cloaked their machinations behind Edric's ability as a Guild navigator to be concealed from Paul's and Alia's prescience.
Hayt was conditioned to accomplish two initial subtle purposes before the assassination of Paul. First, through Hayt's echoing of Idaho's and the Atreides' morality and through the circumlocutions of Zensunni philosophy, he was to blunt Paul's judgment. The conspirators wanted to encourage Paul to differentiate between the critical positive and negative aspects of life and religion, thus poisoning Paul's psyche and creating an empire he could not live in: the decisiveness and ethical agility that Paul needed to survive, prosper, and control his jihad would become repugnant to him. Second, Hayt was to use the renowned Duncan attractiveness to women to seduce Alia. Alia may have held within her memory the sexual activities of numerous women before her, but her flesh was innocent at this time. Moreover, Hayt was able to appeal to Alia's intellect through his mentat training. As Stilgar remarked when he and Paul came upon the naked Alia dueling the target dummy to eleven lights, she had to have a mate. The conspirators were either very lucky or very intelligent to present Hayt to Alia at her most physically vulnerable time.
However, the conspirators and the Bene Tleilax technicians had failed to anticipate the unplumbed depths of Duncan Idaho. Certainly, the singularity of purpose of Idaho's life encouraged superficial conclusions. Yet, from the very beginning, Duncan-made-Hayt violated expectations. Had the Bene Gesserit been less smug and the Bene Tleilax more sensitive, they would have recognized the dangers. Hayt's loneliness when he emerged from the axolotl tank, which the Bene
Tleilax told him was a sickness, persisted and should have warned them that even this chemically reproduced flesh would need the same affections and loyalty that had marked the original Idaho. In addition, Hayt manifested behavior atypical of Idaho. These deviations were attributed to the new mentat and Zensunni training, rather than perceived as the unexpected combination of the new and the old. Almost without fail, Hayt was Duncan when he was not expected to be, and none of his training and conditioning produced the anticipated results. He was something new.
Hayt's lack of a past freed him from the extreme loyalty to the Atreides even though his dispositions drew him back to them. For the first time, a Duncan Idaho could pursue himself, and this liberation allowed for considerable, intensive self-reflection and self-development. Most accurately, then, this new freedom of self, combined with genetic memories of his past and his Zensunni and mentat training, made Hayt and his later awakened self an evolution of Duncan Idaho. Since, after Hayt, the Bene Tleilax used dire confrontation to restore the memories of the numerous Duncans, he was the only one of the restorations to have this opportunity for personal growth.
An important element in Hayt's pursuit of himself was a Zensunni belief he often repeated: "Every man carries his own past with him." Hayt perceived his own genetic memories from a new perspective that stressed his unique person-ness. While he may have been moved to "give water to the dead" by the vital memory of a friend's arm on his shoulders, he was also able to mold himself as a person, an opportunity unavailable to Idaho and a power unanticipated by Hayt's creators.
Thus, Alia perceived Hayt as the most complex creature she had ever seen, a profound statement from someone who could draw upon racial memory. As the "new man," Hayt also dared and understood far more than his progenitor. For example, his mentat training recognized Alia's erotic stirrings and his new initiative dared respond, in small ways at first, to her desires. This candor and pursuit of his own life is also apparent in Hayt's own words, taken from "The Ghola Speaks":
I think what a joy it is to be alive, and I wonder if I'll ever leap inward to the root of this flesh and know myself as I once was. The root is there. Whether any act of mine can find it, that remains tangled in the future. But all things a man can do are mine. Any act of mine may do it.
Hayt derived his greatest pleasure from seeing the reflection of Duncan Idaho in the reactions of others and from his own drive to both create and discover himself. Hayt gained his special distinction from pursuing his own interests, not the Atreides'.
It is unlikely that a new, inexperienced ghola of Duncan Idaho could have resisted the Tleilaxu's conditioning and power words. A Hayt without the process of becoming would have pliantly carried the Tleilaxu offer of a ghola of the dead Chani from the dwarf Bijaz to the grieving Paul, and would have struck Paul down in his moment of decision. Hayt was still "innocence under siege," as Alia saw him in her trance. His confession of the Bene Tleilaxu compulsion to Paul illustrated his threatened innocence, but it also demonstrated his horror at being controlled and the strength of his determination. While Paul-as-oracle saw a portion of Duncan in Hayt and knew that there would be no violence from the ghola, even when Paul spoke the compulsion trigger, "She [Chani] is gone," this moment marked Hayt's partial return to his past as Duncan Idaho. As Paul Atreides indicated in his memoirs, Hayt called the emperor "young master," the beginning of the restoration that was completed when Hayt confronted his compulsion to kill.
The person who emerged from this trauma was a new being. As quickly as Hayt-Duncan responded to Paul's entreaty in Atreides' battle language to slay Bijaz and as much as his swiftness echoed the unquestioning loyalty of Duncan Idaho, the new Duncan was unanticipated by his Tleilaxu creators and the Atreides. He was still loyal and retained many of Idaho's characteristics, such as his ability to charm women. Yet the man who accompanied the truly blind Paul Atreides on the beginning of his walk into the desert was a mutated and hybrid consciousness. His marriage to Alia, a mark of the Duncan tradition of service, further estranged him from his pasts as Hayt and Duncan Idaho.
An excellent mirror of this new being is "The Ghola's Hymn," a eulogy (reprinted in Overby's Poems of Antiquity) written for Paul Atreides by the awakened ghola after Paul had gone off into the desert to be slain by Shai-Hulud. A haiku, traditionally attributed to the transfigured Hayt, provides further perceptions of a Duncan who empathized with Paul, rather than revered him:
Young Master, Usul,
God who walks the Golden Path,
My comrade in doubts.
Here Paul became both a god and a man for Hayt. Written after Paul's death walk but before the appearance of The Preacher in Arrakeen, it shows the continued growth of understanding after the grief had lessened, and Duncan's further perception of his unified place in a seemingly chaotic cosmos.
This new being demands separate study [see entry DUNCAN IDAHO-10208], but despite all his new awareness and powers, he remained the crucible and the catalyst. The chemistry of his involvement with the Atreides and his roles as Hayt and husband to Alia continued to reflect the danger and sanctuary that Duncan Idaho always offered to his patron family.
R.S.
Further references: GHOLA; DUNCAN IDAHO; Princess Irulan Atreides-Corrino, Arrakis Awakening, tr. Zhaulya Muurazharat, AS 15 (Grumman: United Worlds); Alia Atreides, Commentary to "The Ghola Speaks," by Duncan Idaho-10219, tr. Kershel, Reeve Shautin (Finally: Mosaic); Harq al-Ada, The Dune Catastrophe, tr. Miigal Reed (Mukan: Lothar); "The Poems of Hayt" in Poems of Antiquity, tr. W.L. Overby (Caladan: Apex); Harq al-Harba, Poem XCVI in The Complete Works, ed. Blaigvor Ewanz (Grumman: Tern).
IDAHO, DUNCAN-10208
Within the nexus created by the death of Chani, the failure of the Bene Tleilax to Convert Chani and Paul Atreides into gholas, and the birth of Leto II and Ghanima, the ghola Hayt became the new Duncan Idaho (10208-10231). Transformed by the crisis initiated by the dwarf Bijaz, this new being was the agonized fusion of the vital memories of Duncan Prime and the Zensunni and mentat training of Hayt. The "new" Duncan Idaho was distinct from both his predecessors and, as the consort to Alia-of-the-Knife, as the apparent antagonist of Jessica Atreides, and as the ally of the reborn Paul Atreides ("The Preacher"), he merits separate attention.
The agony of Duncan Idaho's marriage to Alia was one of the deepest personal tragedies ever to afflict the Atreides' dynasty. The union was founded in genuine affection, strong physical attraction, and shared grief for the seemingly dead Paul Atreides. It ended in horror and abomination. If Duncan-10208 had not had the sensitivities of a mentat and a poet, he might have survived as a cuckolded fool, continuing to believe in the existence of the early joy and comfort that marked the beginning of the marriage. However, as Leto II and Ghanima suspected, Duncan could not remain unaware of Alia's adultery, especially after The Preacher announced it in public. As it was, the new Duncan was too perceptive to remain ignorant for long. While his loyalty to the Atreides, practically a genetic trait, made him suspend negative judgments about Alia, his Tleilaxu eyes revealed her true nature. As The Preacher observed many times, and Farad'n Corrino echoed, loyalty can be bought only by loyalty, and the Baron-possessed Alia had none even for herself, much less for Duncan.
Duncan was immediately suspicious of Javid's self-serving interest in Alia. While the Harkonnen persona in Alia insisted to her that Duncan's mentat consciousness would be untroubled by her numerous fleshly indulgences, Duncan was jealous. His was a jealousy tempered by mentat awareness, but the pain remained. What the Old Baron predicted would be indifference became, in actuality, icy hardness. The new Duncan's emotions, gained in large part from Duncan Prime, still found Alia's continual violations of their bond lacerating, and, contrary to popular belief, his Tleilaxu eyes were not immune to tears. Alia maintained her liaison with Duncan because of his mentat capabilities, especially important in light of her flawed access to past lives, and for most of Duncan-10208's life, she was unaware that he could see her pathetic psychic st
ate. To Duncan, however, she was dead flesh, a vision so repugnant that he could not look at her without averting his eyes, she was an empty shell, a house of ghosts.
Yet in spite of his wisdom and vision, Duncan never surrendered his affection for the Alia he once knew, and for a short time he was able to challenge the truth and maintain a "myth-Alia" in his consciousness. He was, thus, so stricken when he learned, while prisoner on Salusa Secundus, that Alia had offered herself as Farad'n Corrino's bride, that Duncan exercised an old mentat drill, controlled his muscles, and severed the artery in his right wrist with his shigawire bonds.
This unsuccessful suicide attempt drew Lady Jessica's inaccurate contempt. She saw it as stemming from Duncan's innate self-destructiveness, and failed to realize that the true motivations were Alia's actions and the unbearable burden that loyalty to his beloved House Atreides had become. Like many, she let her memory of the old Duncan Idaho cloud her vision of the new. His hybrid qualities left Jessica uneasy: this Duncan was out of keeping with what she thought he should be. A portion of this can be excused. Just as this Duncan was immune to the Bene Gesserit "Voice," he was also partially hidden from the Sisterhood's perceptions, an advantage that would remain secret until the advent of Duncan-13724.
Farad'n Corrino, writing as Harq al-Ada in The Dune Catastrophe, talks of Duncan Idaho:
There was a sense of duration about Idaho, a feeling that he could not be worn down. He gave the impression of being self-contained, an organized and firmly integrated whole. The Tleilaxu tanks had set something more than human into motion. There was a self-renewing movement about the man, as though he acted in accordance with immutable laws, beginning over at every ending. He moved in a fixed orbit with an endurance about him like that of a planet around a star. He would respond to pressure without breaking — merely shifting his orbit slightly but not really changing anything basic. The Atreides were the star of his orbit.
The Dune Encyclopedia Page 69