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"If we're going to be consistent and advocate freedom of speech we have to advocate freedom of encrypted speech too. The genie is out of the bottle, cryptologically."
- Neal Stephenson

Swimming Tubes  
  Used to connect buildings for use by amphibious species.  

Frank Herbert loved the sea, having written books about it before his Dune series established him as a science fiction writer. Designs for undersea dwellings usually included air-filled tubes connecting different buildings; the use of a water-filled tube connecting land dwellings of amphibians is a great inversion of the idea.

Gowachin never strayed far from water. The Graluz - that central pool and sanctuary for females, the place where the Gowachin raised those tads which survived the ravenous weeding by the male parent - the Graluz always remained a central fixation for the Gowachin.

There was always the water, contained water, the nervous slapping of wavelets against walls. The sound conveyed no fixed rhythms, but it was a profound clue to the Gowachin: contained, yet always different.

For all short distances, swimming tubes connected Gowachin facilities. They traversed long distances by jumpdoor or in hissing jetcars which moved on magnetic cushions.

And the odors! What memories they brought back to him. Graluz musk, the bitter pressing of exotic seeds, permeated every breath. And the caraeli, tiny, froglike pets, invaded your sleep at every dawning with their exquisite belling arias.

From The Dosadi Experiment, by Frank Herbert.
Published by Berkley Putnam in 1977
Additional resources -

As always, the invention serves to emphasize the alien nature of the Gowachin, a frog-like people that are just one of the interesting alien races in this novel. All Gowachin keep a graluz, a pond for fertile females and offspring. Herbert spends a lot of time in the novel exploring the idea of what a sentient frog might be like; would males feel guilt when (as in nature) eating the slowest and least fit offspring? The Gowachin prided themselves on staying true to their animal nature and heritage while achieving a high level of civilization.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Dosadi Experiment
  More Ideas and Technology by Frank Herbert
  Tech news articles related to The Dosadi Experiment
  Tech news articles related to works by Frank Herbert

Swimming Tubes-related news articles:
  - Labyrinth Aquarium Has Swimming Tubes

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