Daniel and Marty

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Daniel and Marty are fictional characters from the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. They are observers with advanced technological powers. They appear in Frank Herbert's Chapterhouse Dune and Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's Hunters of Dune.

[edit] Chapterhouse Dune

In the final chapter of Chapterhouse Dune, a mysterious couple calling themselves Daniel and Marty observe the escape of the no-ship from Chapterhouse. They speak of themselves as if they are Face Dancers:

"They had a Tleilaxu Master, too," Marty said. "I saw him when they went under the net. I would have so liked to study another Master."
"Don't see why. Always whistling^[1] at us, always making it necessary to stomp them down. I don't like treating Masters that way and you know it! If it weren't for them . . ."
"They're not gods, Daniel."
"Neither are we."
"I still think you let them escape."
"What would you have said to the Master, anyway?" Daniel asked.
"I was going to joke when he asked who we were. They always ask that. I was going to say: 'What did you expect, God Himself with a flowing beard?' "
Daniel chuckled. "That would've been funny. They have such a hard time accepting that Face Dancers can be independent of them."
"I don't see why. It's a natural consequence. They gave us the power to absorb the memories and experiences of other people. Gather enough of those and . . ."
"It's personas we take, Marty."
"Whatever. The Masters should've known we would gather enough of them one day to make our own decisions about our own future."

They hint that they observe and are familiar with various groups in the universe, and allude to their desire to capture and study the passengers of the no-ship:

Marty called after him: "Gather up enough people and you get a big ball of knowledge, Daniel! ... And those Bene Gesserit in that ship! ... Ever notice how alienated they feel when we peek at them?"
"Not to mention Mentats," he said. "There were two of them on that ship — both gholas. You want to play with them?"
"You know what you let get away, Daniel?" she demanded, coming up beside him. "That Master had a nullentropy tube in his chest. Full of ghola cells, too!"
"I saw it."
"That's why you let them get away!"
"Didn't let them ... Gholas. He's welcome to them."

Earlier, Duncan Idaho had seen the observers in a vision, and came to his own conclusions:

Reassuring faces. That thought aroused Idaho's suspicions because now he recognized the familiarity. They looked somewhat like Face Dancers, even to the pug noses ... And if they were Face Dancers, they were not Scytale's Face Dancers. Those two people behind the shimmering net belonged to no one but themselves.

There were many different theories about the true nature of Daniel and Marty, based on the interpretation of "clues" left in Chapterhouse Dune and earlier books in the series; typically the Face Dancer empire is hewed to:

"Herbert gives us a segment narrated from their point of view only at the very end of the novel. They are offshoots of the Tleilaxu Face Dancers sent out in the Scattering and have become almost godlike because of their capacity to assume the persona of whoever they kill - and they have been doing this for centuries, capturing Mentats and Tleilaxu Masters and whatever else they could assimilate, until now they play with whole planets and civilizations. They are weirdly benign when they first appear in the visions of Duncan Idaho as a calm elderly couple working in a flower garden, trying to capture him in their net..."^[2]

The interpretations typically centered on the exact nature of Daniel and Marty, the power they are affiliated with, and particularly their technology; one such theory is that they were members of the 'unmovable piece' that Duncan had visions of, and that they were using a new application of Holtzman's equations to trap people in no-ships, like Duncan and company or the Bene Gesserit sisters dispatched into the Scattering.

With the subsequent death of Frank Herbert, the identities, motives and intentions of Daniel and Marty were left to speculation.

[edit] Hunters of Dune

Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson wrote the first of two sequels, Hunters of Dune, from Frank Herbert's notes for his own seventh book, found over a decade after his death.

In Hunters, Daniel and Marty are in constant pursuit of the escaped no-ship Ithaca, which has managed to leave the Known Universe and thus elude them. Daniel and Marty believe that the long-foretold "typhoon struggle at the end of the universe" Kralizec will soon be upon them, and their victory requires the Kwisatz Haderach. According to their calculations/predictions, the escaped no-ship is the key; they believe the Kwisatz Haderach is (or will be) aboard the Ithaca. Their Face Dancer minion Khrone is executing a parallel plan to create their own Kwisatz Haderach, using a Paul Atreides ghola that will be conditioned by a ghola of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.

Daniel and Marty have the ability to create illusions, and to inflict pain on any human. ^[3]

At the end of Hunters of Dune, it is revealed that Daniel and Marty are not, in fact, Face Dancers: they are actually incarnations of the thinking machines Omnius (Daniel) and Erasmus (Marty), introduced in the Legends of Dune prequel trilogy by Brian Herbert and Anderson. In the third Legends novel Dune: The Battle of Corrin, Omnius sent out a last blast of information before being destroyed in the Battle of Corrin. It is explained in Hunters that this signal eventually connected with one of the probes disseminated from Giedi Prime several years earlier, uploading versions of Erasmus and Omnius.

[edit] Notes

• Touponce, William F. (1988). Frank Herbert. Twayne Publishers imprint, G. K. Hall & Co, 136. ISBN 0-8057-7514-5.