For we are Misr the People and to us have been revealed the Piqh and Urn [the half legendary sources of the Zensunm faith] which none other have seen This remains We remain Despite their belief in their own racial survival, loss of the homeworld weighed heavily on the Zensunm On Pontnn where a plentiful supply of water a long growing season, and a gentle climate combined to make the work of settling the planet unusually light, leisure time was frequently spent in reshaping and adapting the mystic doctrines and superstitions of the sect, and much of the reshaping concerned itself with the Zensunm's lost point of origin By 3500 many of the Uletna (doctors of Zensunm theology often, any Zensunm reli gious leader) and Sayyadma no longer preached that the Zensunm had been gathered and transported to* Pontnn by the interfering plane tary government Instead, they taught that the Zensunm had fled Nilotic al Ourouba (translates roughly as The Place of Truth and Mystery) to escape persecution and death-a subtle alteration of the truth which fit easily with the concept of the Zensunm being the sole bearers of mystic truths By the end of another five centimes, most Zensunm had been taught, and wholeheartedly believed, that Pontnn was their original homeworld Nilotic ai-Ourouba was still believed to be the place in which the ten thousand sunnah would be answered but it was also believed that this would not take place until the Zensunm s time on Pontnn was completed Then they would make a ZENSUNNI HISTORY 513 ZENSUNNI HISTORY great hajra (a religious journey) to Nilotic al-Ourouba to seek those answers Only a small, select number of the Sayyadina passed on the truth concerning the migration from one generation to the next, even the Ulema had forgotten, or never been told, the facts The easy living conditions on Pontnn af fected the sect s societal makeup even more drastically Since a large number of people could be comfortably fed and housed on a relatively small land area, the population began to stabilize Permanent settlements, some of them comparable in size to small cities elsewhere in the Impenum, grew all over the planet The ways of the ancient Zensunra-the nomadic lifestyle, the fierce insistence on independence-were abandoned The new Zensunm, the soft ones, were no match then for the raiders who were dispatched to Pontnn in 4492 by die Landsraad leaders of the First Republic It was their wish that Pontnn be used as a new homework! for House Alexin (whose native world Pelouzen had been rendered uninhabitable by a series of semi legal atomics tests) and the existing population divided between colonies on Bela Tegeuse and Salusa Secundus It had taken the entire force of House Mikarrol to locate and transport the Zensunm on Old Terra On Pontnn, the task required a mere five legions approximately one nun dred fifty thousand men Their easy success with so light a force against an entire population-the Zensunm are believed to have numbered over ten million by this time-was due even more to the Pontnn Zensunm s superstitious beliefs than to their weakness Until almost the moment of departure, when a handful of the craftiest Sayyadina managed to learn the actual destinations of the heighhners on which the Zensunm were to travel, the populace had simply accepted the arrival of the Landsraad force as a fulfilling of the Zensunm prophecies concerning the hajra they must make to Nilotic al-Qurouba, Then- fame on Pontnn was done, the raiders had said, and they were there to take them to their designated place Where cOuld that place be, if not the planet from the legend7 To their credit, the Sayyadina even managed to get the word out among their people, but it was to no avail The Zensunm were as effectively contained as cattle m a ground transport, and the reward for the women who had fried to save them, when they were found, was torture and death at the hands of their captors It is interesting to note that, in spite of their having been split from friends, neighbors, and in many cases, loved ones, the Zensunm on the ships bound for both planets were reported as showing no signs of personal grief Theirs was a deeper grief the chance for salvation for their people had been stolen from them Each ship s crew gave an account of the same cry punctuating the captives' incessant wailing They denied us the Hajra' SALUSA SECUNDUS Some five million Zensunm were transferred to Salusa Secundus, the homeworld of House Comno which had been made the Impenal Prison Planet when the Cornnos shifted their capital to Kaitain (1487) The prison planet had an ecological system so harsh that six out of thirteen persons bdrn there died before the age of eleven Among those nor native to the planet, the death rate was markedly higher This was the environment m which the relatively pampered Zensunm found themselves It was made worse for them by the fact that the Landsraad troops had recognized their unshakable sense of loyalty and community, even m conditions of extreme penl, considering this, they were held as slaves and made to perform the most difficult and dangerous tasks in the hope of breaking their spirit and making them easier to manage The plan did not work, quite dh expected While thousands, then hundreds of thousands, of the Zensunm died within the first few years of their captivity the \ast majority of them appeared to have reverted to the ways of their barely remembered ancestors At the end of their first generation as slaves, the off-planet Zensunm were exhibiting a surviv al rate which compared very favorably to that of those born on Salusa Secundus (the traditional place of recruitment for the Impe nal Sardaukar, the Padishah Emperor's sol dier-fanatics) Different approaches were tried Subjected to ever more ngorous oppression, the third ZENSUNNI, HISTORY 514 ZENSUNNI, HISTORY generation proved more resilient than the second.