Under the guidance of the sietch Naib, the four would each receive one mouthful of rice, placed before them in the center of an enormous bowl. The size of the bowl, contrasting with the portion of rice, symbolized the enormity of the task yet ahead. The sayings "May your bowl be full" and "My bowl is now full" to indicate the start and achievement of tremendous tasks have their roots in the pundi rice ceremony.
The Naib and the four sat in the middle of a circle of all the sietch members. The circle symbolized the equality of importance of each man, woman and child in the achievement of the task. The Naib would hold up his bowl of rice and say:
"The water of our world is created by four things," to which the four participants would add, in turn:
"The learning of the wise;"
"The justice of the great;"
"The prayers of the good at heart;"
"The valor of the brave."
The leader would then continue: "But all of these are as nothing, all of these are as a teardrop given to the dead, without the tears of all of us, given that we may live." Then before any one of the four touched his rice, the Naib served every member of the sietch his "bowl of tears," which were then eaten grain by grain, slowly, to symbolize the length of time the task would take.
L.L.
Further references: CEREMONY OF THE SEED; Defa 'l-Fanini, Taaj 'l-Fremen, 12 v. (Salusa Secundus: Morgan and Sharak).
R
RABBAN, COUNT GLOSSU
(10132-10193). Siridar-Regent of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen on Arrakis during the period House Harkonnen held it as a subfief. Count Glossu was the son of Abulurd, Vladimir's youngest demi-brother. Glossu's regency on Arrakis was notorious for its cruel suppression of the natives, which earned him the epithet "Beast Rabban." He was killed during the assault on Arrakeen by Fremen forces.
Glossu's father, Abulurd, was the product of Gunseng Harkonnen and Gunella Sorvaag; of the children of concubines, only Abulurd survived the deadly political climate of the royal palace of Harko. Once Vladimir was pronounced na-Baron, Abulurd renounced the Harkonnen name and all rights to the title in exchange for the subdistrict governorship of Rabban-Lankiveil. He really had no choice: Gunseng wished a clear and undisputed succession, and Abulurd could not compete with Vladimir.
While Count of Rabban-Lankiveil, Abulurd took as concubine Thora Rabban, daughter of Elsun Rabban, a Minor House ruler. She bore him two sons, Glossu and Feyd-Rautha. Feyd-Rautha's superior talents made him na-Baron of Giedi Prime, but even so, Glossu won a name for himself, though an infamous one.
Glossu was stocky of build, with the Harkonnen paternal line's narrow-set eyes, and as slow-witted as he was thuglike in appearance. What he lacked in brightness he more than made up for in crude power of will. Once he made up his mind to do something it was done with tenacity, not with style or subtlety. He delighted in crushing his opponents by sheer strength. But above all, he obeyed orders, having little personal initiative.
Such a character appealed to Vladimir when he was awarded the melange riches of Arrakis. The Baron had great ambitions for this financial coup — a CHOAM Directorship and the defeat of House Atreides. Vladimir had too many other irons in the fire to administer Arrakis personally and Feyd-Rautha was too young to serve in his stead, but Glossu was trusted and available. House Harkonnen needed all the capital it could get for Vladimir's schemes. Consequently, when Glossu was made Siridar-Regent, his orders were to produce high yields of melange with the lowest possible overhead, to squeeze the planet's population and economy. In addition, his success would also be measured by how much spice he was able to stuff into secret Harkonnen warehouses.
The Count was the needed steamroller. Arrakis' native population became a slave-labor force. But as repression continued, more and more Arrakians either plotted rebellion or fled to the desert. And with each instance of sabotage, real or suspected, Glossu increased the numbers of agents, executions, and police sweeps.
By these techniques the general population was cowed. Yet the dungeons of Carthag became the central symbol of evil as they continuously swallowed anyone even remotely associated with anti-Harkonnen intrigue or propaganda. Meanwhile the Arrakians worked reluctantly for minimal wages and neglected the maintenance of spice-production equipment.
The major cost of this repression was the number of Fremen who fled to the desert. Beast Rabban could not reach them there, nor could he survey their activities, because the Guild refused to orbit reconnaissance satellites over the southern polar regions of Dune. Harkonnen expeditions there were invariably wiped out. Fremen enclaves remained outside his control, resulting in the Revolution undertaken by Muad'Dib. Then Glossu's cruelty returned to him, fatally.
This cruelty is usually attributed to House Harkonnen itself, whose genetic constitution over the centuries acquired a sadistic nature. Yet this cause fails to perceive Count Glossu as an individual in his own time. Much of his bullying was probably the result of sibling rivalry between him and his younger and more intelligent and attractive brother, Feyd-Rautha. An older brother, passed over for approval, will often turn bitter, especially if the reasons for the preference are sound.
Following the defeat of the Red Duke on Arrakis and Glossu's restoration as Siridar-Regent, he squeezed the Arrakians even harder, not only for personal relish but to gain favor with his uncle. He had something to prove. Even though Feyd-Rautha was na-Baron, Glossu thought he could advance his own fortunes by surpassing his previous history of ruthlessness, with a supreme demonstration of loyalty, as it were. Little did he know that this brutality was exactly what Vladimir wanted before deposing him to bring in Feyd-Rautha as the savior of Arrakis.
But Vladimir's scheme was frustrated. Before the rupturing of the Shield Wall, Glossu had been sent to review the perimeter of Harkonnen forces around Arrakeen. There he was killed during the onslaught of sandworm riders storming through the breach.
In spite of his reputation for ferocity, Glossu Rabban must go down in history as a mere tool, used at every turn by Baron Harkonnen. He might feel better were he to know that both Feyd-Rautha and his uncle also died in the greater game of empire.
S.T.
Further references: HOUSE HARKONNEN; HARKONNEN, VLADIMIR; HARKONNEN, FEYD-RAUTHA; Klevanz D. Kiinar, Fear My Power, Respect My Name: 10,000 Years of Harkonnens (Giedi Prime: Trammel); Marya von Wikkheiser, House Harkonnen, tr. Arazrii Pezb, SAH 76 (Paseo: Institute of Galacto-Fremen Culture).
RAKIS FINDS
DISCOVERY. Laymen believe that weather control satellites and modern ecology will turn every inch of a planet into an Eden, but they are wrong. The change of climate obtains for the planet as a whole, and depending on a multitude of considerations, some parts will benefit more than others. The Kalatorano region of Rakis most probably looks a great deal like it did when the planet deserved the name Dune, since it has benefitted less than most. It is a region of karst topography, with poorly-vegetated rolling hills, their dusty surface punctuated here and there with steep sink-holes. Less rain falls in Kalatorano than is typical for the planet, and seeps quickly into the soil, leaving it as dry the next day as it was the day before. The only settlement of important size in Kalatorano is the city of Dar-es-Balat, a minor administrative center for the region.
Al-Habaqi, mayor of Dar-es-Balat, was an energetic and far-sighted man, ambitious to improve the economy of his city and region. He successfully urged the construction of a large stadium on the outskirts of town, both as a public works project of importance to the area and as a recreational facility. And the stadium was only one of several plans he had devised both to increase the population and to stimulate commerce. First, he hoped that the unusual topography, if skillfully promoted, would attract tourists to the natural bridge, the limestone caverns, and the sink-holes. Second, less sure but with greater potential, wealth might flow from the mining of uranium, if survey reports fulfilled the promise that they showed. Anticipating a substantial growth for Dar-es-Balat, al-Habaqi lobbied and secured authorization for
a stadium that would accommodate every resident of the city (as it was then) with ease.
Nor would the stadium empty the public purse. The site (which he himself had originally proposed) would take advantage of several thousand years of nature's cooperation. A water course had run near Dar-es-Balat since the renewing of Rakis, and the erosion of millennia had worn an originally shallow valley many meters deeper. But a century before al-Habaqi's term in office, the river had been diverted. Now the valley stood dry not far from the town, its walls forming two sides of a natural amphitheater. Al-Habaqi argued plausibly that relatively little excavating of the valley, moving earth from the center of the slopes, would form a cheap foundation for the cement to be poured. And it would be a secure foundation, too: knowing the caverns that wormed through the rock in the area, al-Habaqi was careful to engage engineers to sound the floor of the valley. Their instruments showed solid earth and rock to the limits of their reliability.
After the ceremonial groundbreaking, al-Habaqi often took time from his official duties to watch the progress of the work that would cap his career, the stadium that he fervently and secretly hoped would bear his name. Thus, he was watching from the top of a hill on a hot, dusty afternoon of Madai, the second of Shawwal, 15525. In the valley below him, large earthmovers were scraping away, already in some places five meters deeper than the old streambed. It was before his astonished eyes, therefore, that one of the large shovels stopped, seemed to tremble for a few seconds, and then vanished from sight.
By the time al-Habaqi scrambled to the valley floor, a comedy of errors was in progress, a comedy which the players were in no position to appreciate. Twelve tons of shovel had disappeared, leaving not even a track in the dirt. Standing some meters away were two workers and a foreman; when they saw the shovel disappear, they ran to the spot, and they too vanished. An understandable caution now took possession of the construction crew, who, hesitant to move any closer, formed a rough circle some thirty meters in diameter around the place where the shovel had stood. Within the circle was the bare unbroken floor of the excavation, but no trace of the shovel or the four people.
Within moments the paralysis was broken when the bystanders heard cries for help from their missing fellows, still nowhere to be seen. A supervisor then climbed into the cab of an omnimover, drove to the edge of the circle and extended its waldoes horizontally to their full limit; they slowly entered the circle and passed through it in plain view to the opposite side. To an increasingly panicky chorus of cries for help, the supervisor retracted the waldoes and sat bemused in the cab.
A faint tearing sound was heard, which grew to a crackling, rumbling roar. Just then, one of the spectral voices cried, "Look out!" and the omnimover appeared to lift its rear end into the air. Then it too, together with four workers standing beside it, disappeared. Almost simultaneously, workers winked from view here and there around the circle. With the roaring in their ears, the remnant of the crew rushed for the nearby valley walls.
Most huddled in shock at various heights above the placid-looking excavation floor, although some stopped their retreat only upon reaching Dar-es-Balat. Those in full flight therefore missed the disappearance of the other heavy equipment — trucks, cranes, even the construction trailer — as, to the accompaniment of sharp cracks, they one by one departed from view.
Al-Habaqi was among the lucky, and he saw mirrored in the faces around him his own confusion and terror, yet as he looked longingly at the construction engineer for some sign of expert understanding, he saw still another emotion — utter amazement — added to those the man already displayed. Following the engineer's gaze, al-Habaqi's own chin fell to his chest as he saw the bucket of the shovel rise from the excavation floor like a metal beanstalk. Seconds later, a dusty and disheveled foreman — the second person to be blotted out — rose bit by bit from the ground, obviously climbing the arm of the shovel. When the foreman reached the bucket, he shouted, "Get back!"
"The floor's a mirage," he said. "There's a big cave down there, and some of us are hurt. The whole valley might collapse."
The engineer, to whom these words were addressed, was fixed in a slack-jawed stupor, but a clerk called back to the foreman: "There's a commset in the shovel — call Dar-es-Balat!"
The foreman climbed down, apparently swallowed up by the valley floor. A few minutes later he reappeared.
"The commset's working, but we can't get anybody, not even the commercial stations!"
"How do you know it's working?"
"When we call, it comes over the sets in the other equipment down there."
The clerk had a receiver on a chain around her neck, and the music from the small, shell-like ornament now became the loudest sound on the site.
"Well, I'm picking up a station," she said. "The fall must have broken the set in the shovel."
Al-Habaqi listened with an increasing sense of unreality as there then ensued an argument shouted from valley floor to side, between a tattered man on a metal pole and a woman holding a coffee pot, about the quality, maintenance, and durability of the commsets purchased by the Tarabuq Construction Company. When the argument progressed heatedly from the equipment to the management of the company, he said quietly, "Excuse me, but you have a coffee pot in your hand."
With a puzzled expression, the clerk looked at the container whose handle she clenched in her fist, and at the blood in her palm where her nails had dug into her hand. The observation seemed to clear her mind. Giving the pot to the mayor, she said, "I'll go to town for help," and headed up the hillside.
Thus it was that al-Habaqi sat, sipping coffee from a pot, staring at what looked like a raving flagpole sitter, when the rescue 'thopters arrived.
Leto's no-room had been found.
EXPLORATION. Even before the nature of the discovery became known, the Rakis Finds were protected by swift initial action, both governmental and private. After the fortuitous breakthrough of the construction crew into the subterranean vaults, rescue help was swift in arriving. After the workers had been removed from the partially collapsed floor of the excavation site near Dar-es-Balat, the whole site was cordoned off by police. Their action protected the material within the structure below, even though their concern was simply that more subsidence might occur. In this assumption they were correct, for smaller falls took place on the third and fourth of Shawwal until the slope of the pit was stabilized. Local officials, not realizing what had been brought to light, assumed that the site inspection had been in error, and that the pit opened into a natural cavern. But those workers who had fallen into it soon convinced the town leaders that they had not been inside a cave, but inside a carefully finished chamber.
Regional officials who conducted the first intentional descent into the chambers immediately recognized that they had penetrated a storehouse of artifacts. Under Rakeen law, antiquities are the property of the government, and officials temporarily sealed the opening until expert help could be obtained in the investigation. The famous archaeologist Hadi Benotto was in the quadrant, attending a regional conference, and she was summoned to Rakis. Under her direction, the exploration of the Rakis Finds began.
As the Fremen used to say of those whom fortune favored, aksi-ni-uutban minjah — and indeed, that day all mankind was "dressed in a garment of glory." The diagram "Leto's NoRoom, Sideview” shows the relationship of the excavation site to the structure beneath it; had the stream that cut the valley been half a kilometer in any direction from its actual position, the library of Leto II would not have been found.
The impressions of the first explorers of the library were widely reported in the popular media and are available in a number of books (see below, Further References). What follows here is a description of the structure inside Leto's no-room, and some speculations about its form.
The library is made up of hexagonal chambers, each thirty meters in diameter and fifteen meters from floor to ceiling. Walls and ceilings throughout are one meter thick, and each successively lower l
evel contains one more ring of chambers than the level above it. The 159-meter depth of the structure, therefore, could theoretically contain 1001 chambers of the specified size, but each level has been worked into a pattern that diminishes the total number of chambers. Communication between levels is by means of a circular ramp that connects the central room on each level. Reference to the diagrams of the ten levels will disclose the arrangement of the chambers on each.
Level 1: 30 m in diameter, one room. No crystals were found here, and its purpose, at the very top of the structure, is a mystery.
Level 2: 92 m in diameter, 7 rooms. Some crystals in the northwest room were damaged by falling rock and equipment.
Level 3: 154 m in diameter, 13 rooms in a trefoil shape.
Level 4: 216 m in diameter, 22 rooms in an extended trefoil with divided leaves.
Level 5: 278 m in diameter, 49 rooms in six hexagons around a central hexagon. Workers dubbed this level "hexagon squared."
Level 6: 340 m in diameter, 61 rooms in a trefoil arrangement of six hexagonal rings with branches.
Level 7: 402 m in diameter, 73 rooms in a trefoil of three hexagonal rings with complex, asymmetrical branches.
Level 8:464 m in diameter (theoretically), 89 rooms. The eighth is the only level with an apparently random arrangement of chambers and the only one except for Level 1 to contain no crystals. Researchers called this level "the Wormhole."
Level 9: 526 m in diameter, 121 rooms in a hexafoil arrangement of hexagonal rings, six with connecting stems. Nicknamed "Leto's Bouquet."
The Dune Encyclopedia Page 92