DUNE Page #13

---

Before eating, each businessman takes out his individual poison-taster and analyses the food. The machines gives out a negative signal. Then they eat.

INTERIOR:
SECOND FLOOR CORRIDOR

From the second floor-corridor, the first floor can be seen to be split up into four distinct, autonomous parts. In each of the rooms a different party is being given.

Leto, Hawatt and Paul watch how the young industrialist treats the children. Paul, in indignation, takes hold of the top of his sword.

LETO:

Be patient, Paul!

Paul sheathes his sword. They are walking in the corridor, glancing at the other parties.

LETO:

A great idea, Hawatt! Industrialists, Fremen, smugglers, spice searchers! All we have to do is to convert the four dances into one!

HAWATT:

Impossible!

LETO:

Tonight or never!

INTERIOR:
FREMEN BALLROOM.

The Fremen party: a four-man band is playing folk music. A lot of dancers are turning around like dervishes.

The Fremen have brought along their cushions and carpets. A large carpet with square drawings on it is placed in the middle of the room. On each side, groups teams. Each team, after violent discussion, moves pieces and takes pawns. It’s a complicated game of chess. The rings worn by the women in their hair, around their arms and neck are the stake of the bets. Kynes, ill at ease in his uniform of Imperium employee, is leading one of the groups. His friends are feeling the military uniform and laughing at him without animosity.

Farok is leading the second group. A violent Fremen, Stilgar, is at the head of the third and Duncan Idaho, dressed as a Fremen, leads the fourth. Involved in the game, he doesn’t say no to the many spice pipes which the women hand him. The whole scene is bathed in the blue smoke of spice which is coming out of a lot of pipes.

Servants are passing round typically Fremen dishes bathing in a blue spice sauce. None of them drinks the glasses of water which are served to them, but they pour the contents into their distilling device pockets.

INTERIOR:
GOVERNMENT PALACE HALL.

Adolescents, industrialists’ daughters, who are beautiful but outrageously sophisticated, are leaning through the opened upper window of a door giving on to the Fremen’ room. The girls come down from the piece of furniture on which they had pulled themselves up, and are now fanning themselves.

FIRST GIRL:

What a smell!

SECOND GIRL:

They eat their own excrement!

THIRD GIRL:

And drink urine!

Making disgusted and ironic comments, they lean through another window, giving on to the spice searchers’ party.

INTERIOR:
SPICE SEARCHERS’ ROOM

The atmosphere is one of a large working people’s orgy, The women and men are stout, peasant, simple and sporting types. They are eating like pigs. Their feet, wearing heavy boots, stamp the ground to the rhythm of an instrument which looks like a violin, played by a thin, bearded old man. The old man is chewing spice and spits it out in a metal bowl.

Like drunks, they pierce a barrel with hefty blows, and take handfuls of spice from it, which they chew. The men and women woo each other brutally. The women are wearing dresses held up at the shoulders; the men greet the Duke’s passage with drunken hurrahs, while the women show him their behinds. The old, completely drunk violinist, is bathing in the water from a jar which is then poured over his head.

INTERIOR:
SECOND FLOOR GALLERY

Leto, Hawatt and Paul are watching the spice searchers’ dance. They return their greeting and set off again as far as the smugglers’ room.

HAWATT:

To get them to come, we had to give ten soldiers as hostage for each of the smugglers!

INTERIOR:
SMUGGLERS ROOM.

The smugglers are half pirates and half astronauts. They are giving a number of small shows: torch-jugglers, women turning, hanging by the neck, bears disguised as clowns performing wire acrobatics, a donkey made up and wearing a hat and a placard with ‘RABBAN THE BEAST’ written on it.

Beautiful, half-naked women are wearing necklaces fastened to a padlock and behave like pets. They are wearing gloves provided with claws and false tails.

Their leader, ESMER TUEK, is a one-eyed giant covered with scars. One of his hands is replaced by a hook. He is surrounded by six slaves covered with rings, necklaces, ear pendants and bracelets in massive gold. He is measuring his strength with another pirate, twisting an iron bar. Tuek wins.

A large hippopotamus is in the middle of the circle from which the men, one after the other, try to get him to leave, without success.

Tuek pulls the animal out of the circle. The smugglers applaud him admiringly. The women lie down on top of him and cover him with caresses.

Everyone is taking spice powder through little gold tubes. They are pouring water over the body of a naked woman, which the men then lick all over.

EXTERIOR:
GOVERNMENT PALACE - ENTRANCE

Some brackets where the arms handed over by the guests have been put away, are installed in the hall. A group of soldiers are acting as porters, some of whom watch over the square.

Using tables, four different halls have been created. In one of them, a rich businessman, accompanied by his family, his slaves, dogs, and bodyguards, is putting on his arms. On the other side of the tables, the spice searchers are handing in their hooks. Seeing them, the businessman’s wife reacts disgustedly. The searchers make fun of her. To shock her, one of them lifts the skirts of his girlfriend, takes down his trousers and mimes an exaggerated orgasm on the table. The bodyguards want to intervene but the Atreides soldiers step in, make the spice searchers enter their dance without delay, and calm is re-established.

There are a number of beggars. Their thin hands are outstretched in an imploring gesture. A slave of the industrialists’ group has put down in front of him some fingerbowls together with a small towel. He pours water into them, which he takes out in pot fulls from three large barrels. The industrialist’s family washes its hands, each in his own personal fingerbowl; then each member wipes his hands with a towel, which they throw to the ground, together with the water. The beggars fight for the towels.

The strongest go off wringing them and licking them while the others lick the floorboards. The businessman offers the end of his shoe to a beggar, who licks off the drop of water which has fallen on it.

Leto, Hawatt and Paul are present at this scene and are indignant.

LETO:

(to the slave)

Who put you here?

THE SLAVE:

It’s a favor from Linger Webt, the Water trader.

LETO:

Take these fingerbowls away immediately!

THE SLAVE:

But... it’s the custom!

Leto draws his sword and puts the point of it to the slave’s throat.

LETO:

The old customs are dead! I shall teach you new ones. During the dance, you will distribute water! Start straight away!

The trembling slave loads up with a barrel and begins to distribute the water to the beggars who line up. They arrive in hundreds from all sides. Leto and Paul overturn the table where the finger-bowls, which they smash, used to be.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes