Chapter 21

[Freakzilla]

Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form of
understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ability to learn. The
judgmental precedents of law function that way, littering your path with dead
ends. Be warned. Understand nothing. All comprehension is temporary.
-Mentat Fixe (adacto)

Duncan is sitting at his console in the no-ship and sees "the net" and the old couple again. The seem god-like yet common with the garden behind them. This is the fist time he's had one of these visions outside of the no-ship's hold. He wonders if he's a Kwisatz Haderach and fears the Bene Gesserits would kill him if they found out. The old couple seem familiar. The old man holds a metal sphere in one had which begins to make a piercing whistle that forces Duncan to hold his ears. It doesn't help but it eventually goes away. Duncan realizes why they look familiar now, they look like face dancers. He leans forward, whispers "face dancers" and the net and old couple vanish. He then realizes he's looking at Murbella who's just come from the practice floor. She knows something is wrong, he's all sweaty. He tells her he thinks the Tleilaxu have tampered with his mind. He thinks about all his past lives and realizes the common thread thru them all is what it means to be alive. He worries what happens if the Bene Gesserit should fail and looks up at the comeyes and tells Odrade he needs to talk to her. He think's he's getting into the minds of the Honored Matres. He feels matched with Murbella the way the old couple in the visions are matched and wonder if they are sexually trained by them. He has looked at their problem from the perspective of the Honored Matres, how to overcome the Bene Gesserit. The Scattering dwarfs this little episode. He suspects that the old couple in his vision are who the Honored Matres are running from. If they are Face Dancers, they are not Tleilaxu but individuals.

[GholaHayt]

For me, Idaho's first vision of the couple in "the net" evokes something similar to the painting "American Gothic"


Did anyone else get this impression? And if so, do you think that FH may have intended it that way?

[A Thing of Eternity]

Welcome to Jacurutu - and yes, that's pretty much the impression I got, but shorter and heavier.

[Rakis]

Anyone saw the first episode of Star Trek : Voyager? The vision at the farm and power of the Caretaker? I'm sure it's a rip-off C:D...

[Freakzilla]

Yes, I imagined American Gothic when I read about Marty and Daniel, too. I'd bet FH envoked that imagry intentionally but who knows?

[SadisticCynic]

I've never seen that image before but, yeah it does have the right atmosphere.

[TheDukester]

I've never seen that image before but, yeah it does have the right atmosphere.

I'll bet you have, though. If nothing else, you've probably seen it parodied — I remember reading that it was like the second-most parodied image ever, right behind the Mona Lisa.

I'd guess you've seen American Gothic so many times that your brain just stopped registering it many years ago.

[Freakzilla]

Revised