ATREIDES, LADY ALIA

(also "The Womb of Heaven," "The Accursed One," "Saint Alia-of-the-Knife"; 10191-10220).

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA. Born in 10191, within a year of her parents' move from Caladan to Arrakis, the Lady Alia was the first of the Atreides pre-born. Her consciousness was permanently altered during the Water of Life ceremony which made her mother, the Lady Jessica, a Fremen Reverend Mother. The desert folk did not know of Jessica's pregnancy, and so had no way of knowing that they were creating more than a new Reverend Mother when they fed Lady Jessica the "illuminating poison"; the recently-widowed Lady knew the effect the raw Water of Life would have on her unborn daughter, but could not refuse the ceremony. The result was the creation of something Jessica's Bene Gesserit superiors had long feared: a child born with full awareness and knowledge of her ancestral memories.

The superstitious Fremen were affected by the child from the moment of her birth. After only a few moments of crying, the newborn looked around the birthing room as if taking in every detail with her already-focused eyes, and with a curious smile, drank the Water of Conception fed her by her godmother Harah. Some of the other women present at the birth were unnerved by this behavior and spread the word among their people that their new Reverend Mother had given birth to a child who would bear careful watching. The Bene Gesserit were not the only group in the Imperium with legends of Abomination.

Alia's precocity in other matters did nothing to soothe the Fremen's unease. By the time she could walk, only eight months after her birth, she was exercising their water discipline as thoroughly as any adult among them. Her access to Fremen memories, in addition to those of her own ancestors, meant she did not have to learn the discipline but simply implement what she already knew. Her first words to her godmother and nurse where not the nonsense syllables the Fremen women would have expected from a baby, but a recognizable sentence: "I love you, Harah." But most unsettling was the child's habit of sitting alone at the edge of the desert, practicing adult Bene Gesserit exercises.

Only the stature of her mother and brother among the tribes saved the child Alia from being put to the Test of Possession. The Fremen seldom used the ritual, for it evoked a feeling of communal guilt as no other action could; but the sight of a child behaving so much older than her known years was enough to make them consider it.

In 10193, during the last engagements between the forces of Shaddam IV and Muad'Dib's Fremen, the two-year-old Alia permitted herself to be captured by the Emperor's Sardaukar rather than take responsibility for telling her brother that his son had been killed in the fighting. Taken before the Emperor, his Truthsayer R.M. Gaius Helen Mohiam, and the Baron Harkonnen, the little girl exhibited such poise and intelligence that she unnerved all three. The Reverend Mother demanded that she be killed at once, claiming that she was the Abomination the Sisterhood had long known was possible, a development feared above all other consequences of their breeding program. Shaddam IV insisted that she reveal her brother's whereabouts and tried futilely to frighten her as though she were any other child. The old Baron, already known to the girl as her maternal grandfather, made the most foolish mistake of all by seizing her, believing that she was helpless and easily dispatched. The "helpless" child struck him with a poisoned needle; the Harkonnen died moments later.

As she grew older Alia often mentioned her loneliness and isolation from the rest of humanity. Not even Muad'Dib, for all his own prescient abilities, shared her unique position as a pre-born. Jessica, while she understood what had happened to her daughter as well as one who had not experienced such an awakening could, provided little comfort to the girl who increasingly came to view her mother as the person to blame for her condition.

In another sense, she was never alone. Maintaining an individual identity amid the barrage of memories was a constant drain, made more difficult by Alia's part in her brother's legend. As he was Muad'Dib, the Mahdi who would lead his Fremen to paradise over the bodies of the unbelievers, so she became transformed into Saint Alia-of-the-Knife, the divine huntress who sought out the faithless, who could not be deceived. For Alia herself-as child, adolescent, or young woman-there was little room.

Following her brother's disappearance into the desert in 10209, Lady Alia was appointed as Regent for his twins, Leto and Ghanima. One of her first acts in that capacity was to order the deaths of those who had conspired against the Emperor, sparing none but the repentant Princess Irulan. Interestingly, in light of Paul's having ordered that the old woman be spared, Alia's orders included the execution of Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam. It was assumed at the time that her action resulted from a simple desire for revenge, but recent revelations concerning the possibility that the Reverend Mother was Lady Jessica's biological mother make such an uncomplicated explanation suspect. This violation of her brother's express command marked the Lady's first departure from usual Atreides' behavior.

Within a month after becoming Regent, Alia married the first ghola of Duncan Idaho, the Atreides swordmaster. The marriage ceremony was performed before an audience of hundreds of thousands of Imperial subjects in the capital city of Arrakeen as befitted the bride's rank; but the ceremony was unfamiliar to most of the watchers. Alia had chosen to observe the Fremen rites, omitting only those sections of the ritual which involved removing her crysknife from its sheath at her waist. She was still too much under the Fremen influence to unsheath a crysknife before a crowd of out-freyn and already adept enough a politician to realize how such an action would have alienated the people who made up her power base.

During the earliest years of her Regency, Lady Alia seemed little changed from the young woman who had led crowds of pilgrims in prayer and prophesied for them during the Muad'Dib days. As rebellions were put down and problems solved, however, she found herself more often subject to the demands of her ancestral memories for a second chance, a new life gained at her expense. The Bene Gesserit litanies and rituals helped to silence the inner voices for a time, as did the Zensunni rituals Alia knew from her background of Fremen memories. But the interior personalities grew stronger with time and were strengthened still further by the Regent's frequent recourse to heavy doses of melange.

Her decisions as Regent, as well as those affected by them, suffered. Aides whispered to one another of their mistress's "divine rages"; those closest to her, including her husband, urged her to spare herself more, to rest. Driven from within, she ignored their advice.

One of the schemes most important to her involved the twins placed in her care. With the Lady Jessica safely out of the way in Castle Caladan, and their Fremen guardian Stilgar content to defer to her in all things, Alia was in complete control of Leto and Ghanima. She knew that they were pre-born, as she had been, and that they had avoided taking large doses of melange because they feared its effects on them. If they could be persuaded to attempt the spice-trance, a greater degree of prescience might be available to them than was to her. And to whom they relate their visions, if not to their waiting and sympathetic aunt? She encouraged them to experiment with the spice from their earliest years in her care, never realizing that they were capable of seeing what such a course had done to her and determined to avoid it at all costs. The twin's lack of cooperation left their aunt puzzled, annoyed, and finally infuriated. It was another barrier to her exercising full control over the Imperium she had been given to command, another unneeded drain on her diminishing personal resources.

Continued