"They thought they were reaching for me. But I'm not what they expected. I've arrived before my time and they don't know it."
Jessica pressed her hands to her mouth. Great Mother! He's the Kwisatz Haderach. She felt exposed and naked before him, realizing then that he saw her with eyes from which little can be hidden and that she knew was the basis of her fear.
"You're thinking I'm the Kwisatz Haderach? Put that out of your mind! I'm something unexpected ... They won't learn about me until it's too late."
She sought to divert him, lowered her hands and said, "We will find a place among the Fremen."
"The Fremen have an old saying they credit to Shai Hulud, old father eternity." He said. "They say: Be prepared for what you meet." And he thought: yes mother mine. Among the Fremen. "You look rather blue eyed and callous besides your lovely nose from the filtered tube to your stillsuit. And you will bear my sister. St. Alia of the Knife."
"If you're not the Kwisatz Haderach," Jessica said, "what are you?"
"You couldn't possibly know." He said. "You won't believe it until you see it." And he thought, I am a seed. He suddenly saw how fertile was the ground in which he had fallen. And with this realization, a terrible purpose filled him creeping the empty place within, threatening to choke him with grief. He had seen two main branchings along the way ahead. One, he confronted an evil old Baron and said "hello grandfather." He thought of that path and what lay along sickened him. The other path held long patches of grey obscurity, except for peaks of violence. He had seen a warrior religion bare, a fire spreading across the universe with the Atreides green and black banner waving at the head of fanatic legions drunk on spice liquor. Gurney Halleck and a few others of his father's men, a pitiful few were among them. All marked by the hawk symbol from the shrine of his father's skull.
"I can't go that way." He muttered. "That's what the old witches of your school really want."
"I don't understand you, Paul." His mother said.
He remained silent, thinking like the seed he was, thinking with a braze consciousness he had first experienced as terrible purpose. He found that he could no longer hate the Bene Gesserit or the Emperor, or even the Harkonnens. They we're all caught up in the need of their race to renew its scattered inheritance. To cross and mingle and infuse their bloodlines in a great new pooling of genes. And the race knew only one sure way for this:
The ancient way.
The tried way that certain way that rolled over everything in its path:
Jihad.
Surely. I cannot chose that way. He thought. But he saw again in his mind's eye the shrine of his father's skull and the violence with the green and black banner waving in its midst.
"The Fremen will give us sanctuary?"
"Yes. They will call me Muad'Dib. He who points the way. Yes. That's what they'll call me." And he closed his eyes thinking: Now my father, I can mourn you. And he felt the tears cross his cheeks.
~ End of part 1 from DUNE by Frank Herbert