KWISATZ HADERACH - "Shortening of the Way." This is the label applied by the Bene Gesserit to the unknown for which they sought a genetic solution: a male Bene Gesserit whose organic mental powers would bridge space and time. (from "Terminology of the Imperium" - Dune)
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"He's awake and listening to us," said the old woman. "Sly little rascal." She chuckled. "But royalty has need of slyness. And if he's really the Kwisatz Haderach...well..." (3)
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"...ever sift sand through a screen?" she asked.
The tangential slash of her question shocked his mind into a higher awareness: Sand through a screen. He nodded.
"We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans."
He lifted his right hand, willing the memory of the pain. "And that's all there is to it - pain?"
"I observed you in pain, lad. Pain's merely the axis of the test. Your mother's told you about our ways of observing. I see the signs of her teaching in you. Our test is crisis and observation."
He heard the confirmation in her voice, said: "It's truth!"
She stared at him. He senses truth! Could he be the one? Could he truly be the one? She extinguished the excitement, reminding herself: "Hope clouds observation."
"You know when people believe what they say," she said.
"I know it."
The harmonics of ability confirmed by repeated test were in his voice. She heard them, said: "Perhaps you are the Kwisatz Haderach. Sit down, little brother, here at my feet."
"I prefer to stand." (10)
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Paul felt himself coming more and more out of the shock of the test. He leveled a measuring stare at her, said: "You say maybe I'm the...Kwisatz Haderach. What's that, a human gom jabbar?"
"Paul," Jessica said. "You mustn't take that tone with - "
"I'll handle this, Jessica," the old woman said. "Now, lad, do you know about the Truthsayer drug?"
"You take it to improve your ability to detect falsehood," he said. "My mother's told me."
"Have you ever seen truthtrance?"
He shook his head. "No."
"The drug's dangerous," she said, "but it gives insight. When a Truthsayer's gifted by the drug, she can look many places in her memory - in her body's memory. We look down so many avenues of the past... but only feminine avenues." Her voice took on a note of sadness. "yet, there's a place where no Truthsayer can see. We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look where we cannot - into both feminine and masculine pasts."
"Your Kwisatz Haderach?"
"Yes, the one who can be many places at once: the Kwisatz Haderach. Many men have tried the drug...so many, but none has succeeded."
"They tried and failed, all of them?"
"Oh, no." She shook her head. "They tried and died." (13)
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"So I had a son!" Jessica flared. And she knew she was being goaded into this anger deliberately.
"You were told to bear only daughters to the Atreides."
"It meant so much to him," Jessica pleaded.
"And you in your pride thought you could produce the Kwisatz Haderach!"
Jessica lifted her chin. "I sensed the possibility." (22)
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The old woman stared at Paul, then: "Young man, as a Proctor of the Bene Gesserit, I seek the Kwisatz Haderach, the male who truly can become one of us. Your mother sees this possibility in you, but she sees with the eyes of a mother. Possibility I see, too, but no more."
She fell silent and Paul saw that she wanted him to speak. He waited her out.
Presently, she said: "As you will, then. You've depths in you, that I'll grant."
"May I go now?" he asked.
Don't you want to hear what the Reverend Mother can tell you about the Kwisatz Haderach?" Jessica asked.
"She said those who tried for it died."
"But I can help you with a few hints at why they failed," the Reverend Mother said.
She talks of hints, Paul thought. She doesn't really know any thing. And he said: "Hint then."
"And be damned to me?" she smiled wryly, a crisscross of wrinkles in the old face. "Very well: 'That which submits rules.' (27)
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"Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things..." She held up four big knuckled fingers. "...the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing..." She closed her fingers into a fist. "...without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. make that the science of your tradition!" (30).
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"She asked me to tell her what it is to rule," Paul said. "And I said that one commands. And she said I had some unlearning to do...She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel..."(31)
-Frank Herbert, Dune
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