Dune Dissection chapter one

A new beginning: Dune chapter one! A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Muad'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time; born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most speacial care that you locate Muad'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was born on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.
~ from "Manual of Muad"Dib" by the Princess Irulan

The ruling family of the planet Caladan is leaving in one week for the planet Arrakis. They have ruled Caladan for 26 generations; more than 500 years by our reckoning of generations, which each lasting about twenty years. Few ruling families on Earth have ever lasted so long!

As our novel opens, a fifteen year old boy named Paul is in his bed, and he overhears his mother, the Lady Jessica, having a conversation with a visitor, an old woman whose shadow reminds him of a witch. His mother, the concubine of a duke and mother to that duke's heir, treats the old woman with a great deference. Mysterious words like Kwizatch Haderach and gom jabbar are used. Paul wonders about this very strange conversation as he falls asleep and dreams a dream he knows will predict the future. The dream is set upon the world his family is leaving their homeworld to rule - Arrakis, the desert world known as Dune.

Some things become clear in Paul's thoughts. The move to Arrakis is both a great victory for his royal house, Atreides, and a great danger. His father is a very popular man among the Great Houses, and is seen as a possible threat by the powers that be. Paul is overprotected and lonely on Caladan, and it does not seem that he will miss the world of his birth. And Paul's mother has trained him in great mental discipline, and in something called the Bene Gesserit way.

In the morning Jessica comes for her son, to take him to the old woman, who turns out to be the Reverand Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, and the Emperor's own truth sayer. Jessica is afraid. The Rev. Mother is peevish from her journey, and fusses in her mind about Jessica having a boy rather than a girl, as she had been ordered to do. It immediately makes you wonder about people who have the power to order around the pregnancies of a woman who is the mate of the man who rules a planet. The old woman looks at Paul, and sees his ancestors in his face and coloring, including a maternal grandfather who cannot be named. Makes you wonder if that "cannot be named" means he is unknown, or if there is something deeper and more mysterious going on...

The old woman sends Jessica away, and calls Paul over to her. She has him stick his hand in a black box which produces pain, then sticks a needle coated with a deadly poison against his neck. That needle is the gom jabbar. And being able to stand there as his hand feels as if it is being burned off without moving (if he moves the needle will kill him) is the test of whether or not he is human!

Paul passes the test, with the help of the mind exercises his mother has taught him. The old woman admits she used more pain on him than on anyone she had previously tested, and she gets excited when she learns he can tell whether or not someone is telling the truth. She wnders, in her thoughts, if he could be the one?

The old woman tells Paul to sit at her feet, as his mother did as a girl, but he refuses.

A relieved Jessica is called back into the room, and a brief conversation takes place about an ancient revolt called the Butlerian Jihad that set humans free from their enslavement by thinking machines. Paul is told that the Bene Gesserit comes down from those days, with a beginning as a group which trained human minds to replace the machine mind overlords. One purpose is politics, another for sorting people into humans from animals for breeding purposes. One of the goals of the breeding is to produce the Kwisatch Haderach, a man who can function like a Bene Gesserit who has used a special truth drug, but who can mentally go places the women cannot.

Thus far, any male who has tried to do this has died from the testing.