The Dune Encyclopedia

by Willis E McNelly

  That the priests of Alia's time regarded Yueh as the Atreides betrayer is clear. During their systematic inquisitions into the heretical views of their religious and political rivals, the Ixians, Alia's priesthood condemned a number of outspoken scholars and historians to death. One of these, Bronso of Ix, was accused of many traitorous "crimes." The priesthood accused Bronso of maintaining that Yueh was merely an innocent victim of a classic feudal economic and political rivalry. Bronso saw Yueh as of no possible value in military terms to either the Harkonnens or the Atreides. He noted that Yueh's chief concerns during his final years were for the medical welfare of the Atreides and their subjects on Caladan. He also was largely occupied by concern for the safety of his wife, Wanna, whom the Harkonnens had taken as a political prisoner approximately seven years before Yueh's death.

  Bronso maintained, however, that Yueh knew enough of Harkonnen ways to have realized that Wanna could not have survived more than a few months of her captivity.4 As evidence Bronso notes that Yueh went through a prolonged spiritual and emotional depression. He submitted to extended psycho-counseling sessions, after which he personally conducted a memorial service for Wanna and finally grieved her passing. All this took place at the Atreides family estate on Caladan three years before the family received the news that it would be leaving Caladan for Dune.

  The political significance of the claims made by Bronso would not have been lost on Alia's priesthood, which was dogmatically committed to the view that Yueh's motive for betraying Duke Leto was to win Wanna's freedom from the Harkonnens. Man's opinion was similar, but clearly more sophisticated, as one might expect from a near-adept of the Bene Gesserit. Irulan maintained that Yueh's motive was not to seek Wanna's freedom, but finally to put to rest all of his private doubts about her death.

  Bronso maintained until his death that Yueh was innocent. The priesthood, apparently acting under instructions from Alia, silenced Bronso, claiming he was part of an Ixian plot to undermine the empire. They then released the only item of hard but inconclusive evidence that this complex study has been able to discover. It is a fragment of a Guild transport bill of passage that shows a party of "four Sardaukar and one female of the Bene..."5 This party of five traveled to Caladan about four months before Yueh and the others in the Atreides household left for Dune, spending only one evening on Caladan. On that specific date Yueh is known to have been away from the family estate, traveling on a medical inspection to a village very close to where the Guild shuttle landed. The priesthood, using this small fragment, maintained that Yueh met that Guild transport and saw Wanna alive but under guard. Having seen his beloved, Yueh agreed to betray Duke Leto, thinking thereby to free his wife.

  It is impossible to confirm or deny the authenticity of the Guild fragment. Bills of passage would have been easy for the government's religious bureaucracy to obtain or forge. But of greater interest is the context within which those words appeared. Perhaps the missing word was not "Gesserit" but "Tleilax." A few scholars have suggested that the fifth person in that party, if indeed there ever was such a party, was not Wanna but a Tleilaxu face dancer, perhaps hired by the Harkonnens to deceive Yueh. Yueh, who was not trained to detect face dancers, would never have suspected that he was being deceived.6

  The Atreides view that Yueh's Imperial Conditioning failed and that he betrayed his Duke was shared by Alia during her youth and in the early days of her Regency. However, toward the end her opinion seems to have shifted dramatically. She is said to have confided to her personal guards that she regarded Yueh as a hero who died in defense of his Duke. That she was "possessed" by the persona of Baron Harkonnen undoubtedly had much to do with this change of heart. Thufir Hawat is also thought to have held the same view. Shortly before his death, as he traveled to Dune in the Harkonnen and Corrino entourage, he told Irulan that he had suspected the Lady Jessica to have been the traitor. Hawat apparently thought that Yueh was killed defending the family Atreides.

  What, then, are we left with? Alia and Hawat are unreliable witnesses. Muad'Dib never spoke publicly on the issue. Irulan may have been too eager to please the Atreides. The priesthood was concerned to preserve its religious authority. Although sure of himself, Bronso was, at bottom, merely speculating and as an Ixian may have been generally hostile to the Atreides. The Suk School apologists were eager only to be rid of the scandal of Yueh.

  Even a retrospective analysis of Yueh's possible motives is impossible, given confusion about whether he believed Wanna to be alive or not. Ultimately we come back to that very act of betrayal. When did it occur? What did Yueh actually do? What were his thoughts at the time? And was there ever the alleged "final confrontation" between Duke Leto and the Baron Harkonnen? If indeed there was such a confrontation, not one witness lived long enough to record accurately and without bias that turning point of human history. We can thus likely rule out Irulan's hypothesis that Yueh was a malicious traitor as well as the Suk interpretation that he was an assassin. We are then left with three other possibilities: insanity, incompetence, and love.

  It has been argued that Yueh was insane, driven to madness by inconsistent Harkonnen messages about Wanna. This theory, advanced by Leto II's criminologist, Duncan Idaho-11736, maintains that the Baron Harkonnen's Mentat, Piter de Vries, developed a method to drive Yueh mad and thereby defeat his Imperial Conditioning.7 There is clear evidence that the Suk of those ancient times knew the dangers of insanity and privately warned all who purchased Suk doctors that the Imperial Conditioning against disloyalty could not be guaranteed if the doctor went insane. The buyers were advised to be aware of telltale signs of insanity. In Yueh's case there had been his depression on Caladan, noted earlier. However, there were no signs of a relapse and no other signs of insanity in Yueh's behavior. Nonetheless, Idaho maintained that Yueh's encounter with the face dancer Wanna shortly before his leaving the familiar Caladan for the inhospitable Dune was the shock that drove Yueh mad. Yueh's actions after that point moved toward betrayal not out of hate, but out of an insane doubt and manic paranoia. Idaho laments that his former self, the original Idaho, was so occupied with preparations for Dune that he failed to detect Yueh's insanity. The chief counter-evidence to this interpretation is that Yueh's insanity and his plotting with the Harkonnens escaped the notice of the entire Atreides household including Paul, Hawat the Mentat, and Jessica, the Bene Gesserit adept. That insanity could go unnoticed for so long seems unlikely. On the other hand, that Leto II allowed Idaho to advance the view gives it some credibility in the light of Leto II's renowned quasi-omniscience.

  The second hypothesis, incompetence, was proposed later by one of Siona's descendants, Ritah.8 Ritah maintained that Yueh was indeed desperate with the false hope that Wanna lived, but that he was perfectly sane, and that no one in the Atreides household suspected Yueh of treachery. Ritah paints a picture of Yueh as a weak-willed, confused, desperate and lonely man who would do anything in his power to learn the truth about Wanna. Ritah's position is harsh; she scoffs at Yueh, saying that one did not have to be a Mentat to know beyond doubt that Wanna would never be freed. Further, Yueh would have to have been a complete fool not to know that by his act of betrayal all manner of evil consequences would befall the Atreides. Yueh, according to Ritah, should be held individually and personally accountable for the fall of Duke Leto, the seizure of Dune by the Harkonnens, the death of many loyal Atreides subjects, and the permanent ruin of the Suk School's reputation.

  The third view, that Yueh acted out of love, albeit a desperate and perhaps misguided passion is based on suggestions found in the Journal of Nayla.9 One can see in Yueh, as in Nayla, a profound personal tension between conflicting imperatives. To obey his Imperial Conditioning he should be loyal to that person whose medical welfare he was guarding. Yet Yueh's Imperial Conditioning did not specify exactly who that person was. As the years passed in ease on Caladan, Yueh could comfortably serve Duke Leto and his family. But when Wanna was taken from him he became desperate and confused. Finally
his love for Wanna and his love for his Duke moved him in opposite, contradictory directions. He acted not as a fool, not as a madman, but as a lover who could hope to save only one of the two people he loved most. He hoped to save Wanna, perhaps believing that no matter what he did he could not save Duke Leto from the superior forces of the Harkonnens. We do know that his love led him to give his life helping Lady Jessica and Paul escape the Harkonnen trap.

  Whatever his true motives and actions, without Yueh's crucial role there would have been no Paul Muad'Dib, no fall of the Corrino dynasty, no rise of the Fremen, no liberation of Arrakis, nor even the great God Emperor Leto II and the Scattering in which humankind was released from its unitary destiny. Out of a love misguided, Yueh set in motion those events that ultimately led us all through the desert of the ancient feudal rivalries into the long peace and Golden Path of the Atreides Imperium.

  P.F.

  NOTES

  1Th. Eisor Zhurcia, The Great Masquerade: Yueh and the Atreides (10200; rpt. Lib. Conf. Temporary Series 582).

  2Published under its alternate title, Analysis: The Arrakeen Crisis trans. Doorsh Suuwaa, Arrakis Studies 20 (Grumman: United Worlds).

  3Quoted in Naib Guaddaf's Judgment on Arrakeen, Rakis Ref. Cat. 29-Z182.

  4See Chapter 2 of his The Atreides Imperium, Lib. Conf. Temporary Series 70.

  5Quizarate Proclamation 10.15.10210, found in Rakis Ref. Cat. 99-T106. The bill cited bears a partially obliterated Guild passage number "- - - /CAL 44281": the three dashes mark the position of the abbreviation for point of origin. Obviously, if that abbreviation had been "GIP" for Giedi Prime, one thesis is supported; if it had been "TLE" for Tleilax, the other gains authority.

  6This fragmentary Bill of Passage is a historian's headache, raising more problems than it settles. If it had originally read "and one female of the Bene Gesserit," then it was redundant: there were no male Bene Gesserits. If it had read "and one female of the Bene Tleilax," and that female was a face dancer, then the face dancer was already in disguise — a wearying exercise — when he had no reason to be: remember the Guild motto, "Anything, anytime, anyplace." The Spacing Guild was bound by Convention, tradition, and self-interest to impose no restrictions whatsoever on its consigned cargo.

  7The original of the report has disappeared, but Leto's transcription may be found in his Journal, Rakis Ref. Cat. 2-A213. As a Mentat, Piter de Vries would have been familiar with methods of disrupting members of his own Order, and may have reasoned that they might work on Yueh.

  8Ritah al-Jofar Nisri Atreides, "Factors in the Yueh Betrayal," Studies in Imperial History, OS 146:449-70.

  9Not, of course, that Nayla's Journal (Rakis Ref. Cat. 2-A816) makes any reference to Yueh but the divided loyalties of the two share many features, and the comparison can be instructive.

  Z

  ZENSUNNI WANDERERS, Cultural Traditions

  Fremen culture encompassed extremes. Both group and individual could be important, both active control of events and passive acceptance of destiny were rooted in their heritage. To some extent these "inconsistencies" are explained by the curious mixture of Sunni and Zen traditions in the heritage of the Zensunni Wanderers.

  All Fremen themselves traced their migrations at least as far back as Poritrin, the third planet of Epsilon Alangue. There, grown soft, they were raided and half were sent to Salusa Secundus, third planet of Gamma Waiping, home of House Corrino and the cradle of the Sardaukar. Its harsh environment produced a population of survivors. The other half were sent to relative security on Bela Tegeuse, fifth planet of Kuentsing. All inhabited Ishia within fifty generations of their arrival at Arrakis. On Rossak their Reverend Mothers became acquainted with the poison drug that let their direct chain of "ancestral" memory supplement the Wanderers' oral legends. Circumstantial evidence from the Imperial Records about Rossak implies that the Bene Gesserit's Missionaria Protectiva and Panoplia Propheticus apparatus was grafted to the Fremen's Zensunni heritage there. "The People" dwelt for a time on Harmonthep, ending up on Arrakis, the last stop on the Zensunni hajra, or journey of seeking. The ergs and spice and drought of their last "home" closely resembled the Nilotic lands of "camels" and spices where their distant ancestors first rebelled.

  The Fremen's Zensunni heritage became mingled with other deep-strata convictions during their long quest. Their interest in messianic psychology, for instance, was augmented by the Missionaria Protectiva's long-range planning. "Hearthside supersititions" were accumulated in non-desert surroundings. The addictive spice-water ecology entered the Fremen society on Arrakis. So it is not easy to be certain what parts of their theology (ilm), ritual and behavioral assumptions were as ancient as their Terran origins. A single deity who does not interfere in day-to-day events but does determine the overall pattern of temporal affairs dominated their theology; that god was merciful and compassionate rather than vengeful. The prohibition against tombs for Fremen implies that a spiritual rather than bodily afterlife was large in their anticipations, yet Leto II's satisfactory description of the Paradise to Come implies that physical senses would be rekindled after death. As might be expected, water was at the core of the dreams of paradise; Pardot Kynes' plans for the water-bringing ecological change certainly harmonized with the Fremen's ultimate hopes. On their way to Paradise, the Fremen expected that there would be a grand devastation, a Ragnarok or Kralizec, the Typhoon Wind at the end of the substantial world.

  Zensunni beliefs parallel the sweep of cultural patterns we can trace in the Orange Catholic Bible. The general model calls for a Creation of the Universe for the benefit of Humankind, the corruption of Humans by an Antagonist, and a tempestuous battle, at some predetermined but unspecified End, between Creator and Antagonist. The Fremen identified Shai-Hulud, the worm-snake-dragon, with Satan, a legendary "evil-one"; they feared demonic possession (Taqwa): Duncan/Hayt told Stilgar that the Naib "wears a collar"; Alia's Abomination disqualified her as a Fremen leader, Such great struggles between opposites were part of the Fremen tradition.

  The ancient model of specific Beginning and Ending would be peculiar even if it were consistent and all-inclusive. When it thrived, however, the model was neither. Each solar system, usually each separate satellite, and sometimes different communication groups on a single satellite, believed that its population alone would survive the climax-battle. The different "sects" of "all-believers" — calling themselves "The Chosen" or "The People" (Misr) — reinforced their community through prejudice against strangers (the "unwashed" or the "infidel") who did not accept their metaphysics and rituals. This tendency to splinter instead of embrace is noteworthy because, as the Wanderers illustrate, a heritage of persecution and enslavement and flight can compress a culture of believers into patient fanatics. Defeat and exile were transformed by the faithful Wanderers into seeking — hajr — and eventually into vengeful triumph — jihad — where the true believers struck back and justified the long-nurtured reciprocity of faith in the Creator and Creator's faith in The People.

  The desert-exile-tribe heritage is the Sunni component of the Zensunni tradition of the Fremen. The apparent theology has been discussed. Important practices and customs (fiqh) are also traceable to the Sunni background. Most important, probably, is the basic understanding that the group is more important than the individual: "for the good of the tribe" was justification for otherwise distasteful acts. Tribal leaders — until Paul Muad'Dib questioned the ritual — were selected by challenge and combat, a standard survival feature in threatened cultures. Justice was dispensed by the leader, on petition from a wronged party, in accordance with the ancient shari'a, or code of conduct. Loyalty was a cardinal virtue. The sacramental Water of Life was shared by the entire sietch after the ritual of miraculous transformation by a Reverend Mother. Infants sipped their amniotic fluid; children had to ride their own sandworm before being accepted as full-fledged members of the tribe. The Ourouba tradition, their distrust of self-styled keepers of mystery, kept a priestly class from taking con
trol of the shari'a from the pragmatic leader-survivor. All these customs and rituals are essentially preservative, conservative, communal: in a harsh environment where cooperation is essential, any change from what-has-always-worked is extremely risky. The old ways are the best, as Naib Stilgar recalled, for the safety of the community.

  Perhaps as good a summary as any of the Sunni way is Stilgar's agreement with Leto II that doing what is expected is the way one's sincerity is measured. There was little room for novelty in the sietch, whose way of life was neither secular nor religious but simply the Fremen way, the traditional way. God, through ilm and fiqh and shari'a, shows the way; the tribe follows; those who swerve from the way do not serve the tribe. Tradition, the tried and true, was the core of the Sunni heritage.

  All of this has been traced back through the fabled Maometh to Terra's Muhammed. The Sunni branch of his followers, with its Ulema and Usul and Mahdi, carried through the Fremen jihad. Vestiges remain in the harshest of our own outpost territories, carried there by Muad'Dib's most enterprising warriors. The "Zen" part of the Fremen background, however, is harder to trace with confidence.

  The ghola Duncan/Hayt is the best source of information, although there are statistical matches of moderate confidence with the O.C.B.'s "Buddhism" and with today's "portal of the soul" believers. The names "Ohashi" and "Nisai," connected with Zensunni origins, imply (because of linguistic evidence of transliteration from one of Terra's ideographic languages) an engraftment onto the Sunni trunk. The new scion was clearly more individualistic and less directive of behavior than the mass of Sunni patterns. It has proved feasible to work transformations (via regressive template matching) on Duncan Idaho-10208's attitudes and on some post-Arrakis commentaries, and therefrom to infer a great deal about the nature of "Zen." (Those who speculate that Zen provides all the answers to otherwise inexplicable Fremen matters merely substitute one mystery for another.)