DUNE Page #25

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CHANI:

For four hundred years. Each fremen sietch has a basin like it. There are thousands. Listen...

They listen to the drops falling from the roof. There are not many of them.

CHANI:

Each drop extracted by the condensators is a blessing. A few centuries from now, we’ll have as much as we need. We can then change the desert. Settle the dunes with plants and create a habitable world of lakes, forests, fertile earth... Our descendants will live in a garden.

PAUL:

Who thought up this plan?

CHANI:

He who, at the age of three hundred and eighty six years produced me: Pardot Kynes.

EXTERIOR:
DESERT – DAYLIGHT

Kynes, whom a burning sun is gradually killing, is making his way among the dunes, dragging himself along and tripping like a drunk. He has no distilling device but is wearing his uniform, now in rags.

His skin exposed to the sun is bright red, covered with sores. His swollen lips are encrusted with white scabs.

The young Kynes, dressed in the planetologist’s suit he wore on his arrival on Dune, appears at the top of a dune.

THE YOUNG KYNES:

I’m Pardot Kynes, His Imperial Majesty’s ecologist, servant of this planet...

The old Kynes kneels down in the sand and strokes it with his arms and hands. The young Kynes, in the uniform of a soldier of the Emperor, is sitting on top of another dune.

THE YOUNG KYNES:

We shall try to do on Dune what has never before been seen on any other planet. We shall use man as an ecological force. We shall inject life into the sand.

The old Kynes crawls on the sand and groans.

THE OLD KYNES:

Men have been the plague of planets (getting up and shouting). We can’t keep on plundering with no thought of those who’ll follow us...

The young Kynes appears on another hill and moves forward to meet the old Kynes.

THE YOUNG KYNES:

I ask you to have a mind of faith, sacrifice and courage. In a thousand years, our work will be a reality!

The old Kynes reaches a stretch of desert where the whistling of Spice can be heard. Something is boiling under the sand. The old man plunges his arms in this place looking for humidity.

The young Kynes, standing near him, tells him:

THE YOUNG KYNES:

The gestating spice is fermenting. Little worms are beginning to lose their water in the solid mass... the carbonic gas is going to explode...

THE OLD KYNES:

The excrement of the large worm and the sperm of its larvae: excrement and seed in mother-water...

A blue sphere begins to emerge from the sand, becoming enormous... It lifts the old man, envelopes him and tears him into its center. The sphere explodes in a noise of thunder. A large part of the desert becomes covered in a blue substance, the spice, vibrating and whistling.

Pardot Kynes, with his arms in a cross, half buried in spice, is lying dead. A spice flower is growing from his open mouth.

INTERIOR:
CAVE FOR THE GREAT CEREMONY.

The Fremen are gathered together for the ceremony in an enormous cave which can hold thousands of people. Tunnels leading to all parts of the sietch come out on to a number of entrances.

The ground is covered with carpets and the fremen people, sitting in perfect order opposite a platform set up at the back of the cave. They are waiting. On the platform, two seats cut out of stone face each other about ten feet apart.

Two entry paths have been left free. They come out from two opposite tunnels and meet in the center of the group, finishing up at the platform.

The Fremen are singing a mystic tune, all seeming to be in a trance. Two groups appear on the two paths. Jessica sitting on a board, carried on their shoulders by eight women, arrives to the right. Her naked body is covered with a semi-transparent green material.

On the left, eight women are transporting a very old woman sitting on a board, like Jessica. She is almost bald, as thin as a skeleton, her back bent down with age. She looks like a monkey. She floats in Bene Guesserit clothes which are now too big for her. Like all the Fremen, her eyes are completely blue. The two groups meet on the central path and move directly towards the platform.

Paul, sitting between Stilgar and Chani in the first row, sees the two groups moving forward. Jessica and the old woman are confused together in his eyes. He looks away, horrified.

Jessica and the old woman are sat down on the platform seats, face to face. Stilgar rises and gets the singing to stop.

STILGAR:

The Harkonnens have put power into the hands of our worst enemy, Rabban the Beast. Tonight, we shall have to leave the sietch and go and hide in a place to which we alone, the Fremen, have access. The reverend mother will not be able to survive the trip and she wants to pass on her knowledge. Jessica, with her strange art, is going to try this experience. If she doesn’t die, the prophecy will be verified, and we shall have a new mother superior.

The Fremen start singing again. Two other processions appear on the left and right paths: a group of men carrying on their shoulders a transparent plastic basin about ten feet long, filled with water; and another group of men carrying another basin containing a little desert worm, alive, and ten feet long.

They place the basin filled with water between Jessica and the old woman. The singing becomes louder. They solemnly lift the basin with the worm and drop the animal in the water.

A deathly hush settles.

The worm begins dissolving on touching the water. The liquid bubbles and steams. Blue precipitates occur. Soon the worm disappears, leaving a murky blue substance in the basin. Singing breaks out again in the audience. The Reverend Mother gets up and leaps forward like an animal. She is given the end of a tube which has been put into the basin and she carries it over to Jessica.

REVEREND MOTHER:

If you are not HER, this is the water of your death. If you are HER, it is the door to the universe.

Jessica opens her legs slightly. The old woman kneels down in front of her and inserts the tube under the green veil. The old woman turns a key on the tube and the water begins irrigating Jessica’s stomach.

Jessica is suffering. She has the impression that her ovaries are being burned. Then it becomes cool and pleasant. Finally the pleasure arrives. A pleasure that she cannot contain, an intense orgasm she cannot prevent. She utters long cries of pleasure, then falls into a lethargy, breathing deeply.

The old woman takes away the tube and leans over Jessica. She brings her face against Jessica’s and opens her closed eyelids. Jessica is in the middle of an epileptic attack. She is trembling and contracting. An abundant foam is coming out of her mouth.

REVEREND MOTHER:

The poison is in your blood. If you are HER, transform it or die.

INTERIOR:
JESSICA’S VISIONS

A carbon atom. A twisting formation. A molecule of glucose. An entire chain of molecules.

VOICE OF JESSICA:

Methyl-Protein...

The chain of molecules is transforming.

VOICE OF JESSICA:

Change an atom of oxygen... Extract an atom of carbon... Mix it with oxygen... hydrogen... catalytic reaction...

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