Sandworms of Dune

by Brian Herbert

  Long ago, Norma had created the precursor to the Guild as a means of fighting the thinking machines. Since that time, the Guild had taken on a life of its own, growing away from her while she stretched herself farther into the cosmos. Politics between planets, power struggles between the Navigator faction and the human Administrators, monopolies on valuable commodities such as soostones, Ixian technologies, or melange—such problems did not concern her.

  Keeping watch over mankind required an investment of her mental currency. She felt the turmoil in civilization, knew the great schism in the Guild. She would have chastised the Administrators for creating such a crisis, if she could only remember how to speak to such small people. Norma found it exhausting to talk in simple enough terms to make herself comprehensible even to her advanced Navigators. She had to make them understand the true Enemy, so that they could shoulder the burden of fighting.

  If the Oracle of Time did not attend to grander priorities, no one else would. No one else in the universe could possibly do it. With her prescience, she grasped what was most important: Find the lost no-ship. The final Kwisatz Haderach was aboard, and Kralizec’s black cloud had already released its torrents. But Omnius was searching for the same thing and might get to it first.

  She had felt the recent struggles between the Bene Gesserits and the Honored Matres. Before that she had witnessed the original Scattering and Famine Times, as well as the extended life and traumatic death of the God Emperor. But all of those events were little more than background noise.

  Find the no-ship.

  As she had always foreseen and feared, the unrelenting foe had come back. No matter what guise the thinking machines now wore, regardless of how much they had changed, the Enemy was still the Enemy.

  And Kralizec is well under way.

  While her prescience flowed outward and inward, ripples of time eddied around her, making accurate predictions difficult. She encountered a vortex, a random, powerful factor that could change the outcome in uncounted ways: a Kwisatz Haderach, a person as anomalous as Norma Cenva herself, a wildcard variable.

  Omnius wanted to guide and control that special human. The evermind and his Face Dancers had sought the no-ship for years, but so far Duncan Idaho had eluded capture. Even the Oracle had been unable to find him again.

  Norma had done her best to thwart the Enemy every step of the way. She had saved the no-ship, hoping to protect the people onboard, but she had lost contact afterward. Something on the ship was more effective than a no-field at blinding her search. She could only hope the thinking machines were as blind.

  The Oracle’s search continued, her thoughts reeling out in delicate probes. Alas, the vessel simply was not there. In some mysterious manner, the passengers hid it from her . . . assuming it had not been destroyed.

  Though her prescience was not clear, Norma realized that time was growing shorter and shorter, for everyone. The crux point had to occur soon. Thus, she needed to gather her allies. The foolish Administrators had reconfigured many of their great ships, installing artificial controls—like thinking machines!—so that she could no longer call upon them through her paranormal means. But she could still command a thousand of her loyal Navigators. She would make them ready for battle, the final battle.

  As soon as she found the no-ship. . . .

  The Oracle of Time expanded her mind, casting her thoughts into the void like a fisherman, until the neural ache was incredible. She pushed harder than ever, stretching her boundaries beyond anything she had previously attempted. No price of pain could be too great. She knew full well the consequences of failure.

  All around her, a vast clock ticked.

  There must be a place where we can find a home, where we can be safe and rest. The Bene Gesserit sent out so many Sisters on their own Scattering before the Honored Matres came. Are they all lost, as well?

  —SHEEANA,

  confidential no-ship journals

  Flying ever onward, the Ithaca reeled from the recent spate of damage. And the saboteur continued to elude them. What more can we do to track him down? Even Duncan’s most thorough Mentat projections offered no new suggestions.

  Miles Teg and Thufir Hawat once again dispatched teams to inspect, and even ransack, the quarters of all passengers, hoping to find incriminating evidence. The Rabbi and his people complained about purported violations of their privacy, but Sheeana demanded their full cooperation. To the extent possible, Teg had been closing down sections of the immense vessel with electronic barricades, but the clever saboteur was able to get through anyway.

  Assuming no further incidents, with the life-support, airrecirculation, and food-growth systems crippled, the passengers could not last more than a few months without stopping somewhere to replenish the stores. But it had been years since they had found another suitable world.

  Duncan wondered: Is someone trying to destroy us . . . or drive us to a particular place?

  With no starmaps or reliable guidance, he tried to use his uncanny prescience one more time. Another big gamble. Activating the Holtzman engines and closing his eyes, Duncan folded space again, spinning the cosmic roulette wheel—

  And the no-ship emerged, intact but still lost, at the perimeter of a star system. A yellow sun with a necklace of worlds, including a terrestrial planet that orbited at the appropriate distance to support life. Possibly habitable, certainly with oxygen and water that the Ithaca could take aboard. A chance . . .

  Others had gathered on the navigation bridge by the time the no-ship approached the uncharted world. Sheeana got down to business. “What do we have here? Breathable air? Food? A place to live?”

  Gazing through the observation window, Duncan was pleased at what he saw. “The instruments say yes. I suggest we send a team immediately.”

  “Resupply is not good enough,” Garimi said, her tone gruff. “It never was. We should consider remaining here, if this is the kind of world we’ve been looking for.”

  “We considered that at the planet of the Handlers, too,” Sheeana said.

  “If the saboteur drove us here, we need to be very cautious,” Duncan said. “I know it was a random foldspace jump, but I’m still troubled. Our pursuers cast a wide net. I would not be quick to dismiss the possibility that this place is a trap.”

  “Or our salvation,” Garimi suggested.

  “We’ll have to see for ourselves,” Teg said. Working with the bridge controls, he displayed high-resolution images on the wide screens. “Plentiful oxygen and vegetation, especially at the higher latitudes away from the equator. Clear signs of habitation, small villages, midsized cities, mostly far to the north. Large-scale meteorological scans show that the climate is in upheaval.” He pointed to storm patterns, swaths of dying forests and plains, large lakes and inland seas shriveling into dust bowls. “Very few clouds in the equatorial latitudes. Minimal atmospheric moisture.”

  Stilgar and Liet-Kynes, always fascinated with new worlds, joined the group on the high deck. Kynes drew a quick breath. “It’s turning into a wasteland down there. An artificial desert!”

  “I’ve seen this before.” Sheeana studied a clear brown band like a knife slash across what had apparently been a lushly forested continent. “It’s like Chapterhouse.”

  “Could this be one of Odrade’s seed planets?” Stuka asked, from her usual position at Garimi’s side. “Did they bring sandtrout here and disperse them? Will we find our Sisters down on that planet?”

  “Untainted Sisters,” Garimi said with a gleam in her eyes.

  “Quite possibly,” Sheeana said. “We’ll have to go down there. This looks like more than a place to replenish our resources.”

  “A new colony.” Stuka’s excitement was infectious. “This could be the world we’ve been looking for, a site to reestablish Chapterhouse. A new Dune!”

  Duncan nodded. “We cannot pass up an opportunity like this. My instincts brought us here for a reason.”

  Are we the last ones left alive? What if the Enemy has
destroyed the rest of mankind by now, back in the Old Empire . . . back with Murbella? In that case, it is imperative that we establish as many colonies as possible.

  —DUNCAN IDAHO,

  no-ship logs

  Keeping themselves hidden from the planet’s inhabitants, several teams of efficient Bene Gesserits launched a major effort to restock the no-ship with necessary air, water, and chemicals. They sent out mining ships, air scoops, water-purification tankers. That was the Ithaca’s immediate priority.

  Stilgar and Liet-Kynes insisted on going down to inspect the growing desert band. Seeing the passion on the faces of the two awakened gholas, neither Teg nor Duncan could deny the request. Everyone was guardedly optimistic about finding a welcoming landscape here, and Sheeana wondered if this might be a place where she could release her seven captive sandworms. Although Duncan could not leave the veiling of the no-ship, because then he would be exposed to the Enemy searchers, he had no cause to prevent the others from finding a home at last. Perhaps this would be it.

  Bashar Teg piloted the lighter down to the surface himself, accompanied by Sheeana and an eager Stuka, who had long wanted to establish a new Bene Gesserit center, rather than just drift aimlessly in space. Garimi had let her staunch supporter make the first foray, while she formulated plans with her ultraconservative Sisters aboard the no-ship. Stilgar and Liet were most eager just to set foot on the desert—a real desert with open skies and endless sands.

  Teg flew directly toward the ravaged arid zone, where an ecological battle was taking place. If this was indeed one of Odrade’s seed planets, the Bashar knew how voracious sandtrout would seal away a planet’s water, drop by drop. Environmental checks and balances would fight back with shifting weather patterns; animals would migrate to still-untouched regions; stranded plant life would struggle to adapt, and mostly fail. Reproducing sandtrout could act much faster than a world could adapt.

  Sheeana and Stuka stared through the lighter’s plaz viewing windows, seeing the spreading desert as a success, a triumph of Odrade’s Scattering. To the exquisitely prudent Bene Gesserit, even the ruin of an entire ecosystem was an “acceptable casualty” if it created a new Dune.

  “The change is happening so swiftly,” Liet-Kynes said, his voice tinged with awe.

  “Surely, Shai-Hulud is already here,” Stilgar added.

  Stuka echoed words that Garimi had said time and again. “This world will be a new Chapterhouse. The hardships will mean nothing to us.”

  With the detailed information in their archives, the people aboard the Ithaca had all the expertise they needed to establish a new place to live. Yes, a colony. Teg rather liked the sound of the word, because it represented the hope of a better future.

  Teg knew, however, that Duncan could never stop running, unless he chose to face the Enemy directly. The mysterious old man and woman were still after him with their sinister net, or after something on the no-ship, maybe the vessel itself.

  The lighter descended with a rough roar through the china-blue sky. In the middle of the abrupt desert band, dunes stretched as far as he could see. Sunlight reflected from the sands into bone-dry air, and thermal currents jostled the ship from side to side. Teg wrestled with the guidance systems.

  In the back, Stilgar chuckled. “Just like riding a sandworm.”

  Cruising over the middle of the widening desert belt, Liet-Kynes pointed at a rusty-red splash that marked an eruption from beneath the surface. “Spice blow! No mistaking the color or pattern.” He gave a wry smile to his friend Stilgar. “I died on one of those. Damn the Harkonnens for leaving me to die!”

  Mounds rippled and stirred the top layer of sand, but they did not emerge into open air. “If those are worms, they are smaller than the ones in our hold,” Stilgar said.

  “But still impressive,” Liet added.

  “They have had less time to mature,” Sheeana pointed out. “Mother Superior Odrade did not send volunteers on her Scattering until after the desertification of Chapterhouse was well under way. And we do not know how long the wandering Sisters took to get here.”

  Below, obvious lines marked the rapid expansion of the sandy wasteland, like ripples on a pond. At the fringes were die-off perimeters, places where all vegetation had perished and the dirt had become blowing dust. The encroaching desert had created ghost forests and inundated villages.

  Flying low, searching with uneasy anticipation, Teg discovered half-buried rooftops, the pinnacles of once proud buildings drowned under the spreading desert. In one shocking glimpse, he saw a high dock and part of a capsized boat that sat atop a blistering dune.

  “I look forward to seeing our Bene Gesserit Sisters.” Stuka sounded eager. “Obviously they succeeded here in their mission.”

  “I expect they will welcome us,” Sheeana admitted.

  After seeing the city drowned in sand, Teg did not think the original inhabitants of this planet would have appreciated what the refugee Sisters had done.

  As the lighter followed the northern edge of the desert, the scanners picked out small huts and tents erected just beyond the sand’s reach. Teg wondered how often the nomadic villages were required to move. If the arid zone expanded as rapidly as it had on Chapterhouse, this world would be losing thousands of acres every day—and accelerating as sandtrout continued to steal precious water.

  “Set down at one of those settlements, Bashar,” Sheeana said to him. “Any of our lost Sisters could be here on the edge of the dunes to monitor the progress.”

  “I long to feel real sand under my boots again,” Stilgar muttered.

  “It’s all so fascinating,” Liet said.

  As Teg circled above one of the nomadic villages, people ran out and pointed up at them. Sheeana and Stuka pressed excitedly against the plaz windows, searching for distinctive dark Bene Gesserit robes, but they saw none.

  A formation of rocks towered over the village, a bulwark offering shelter against blowing sand and dust. People, waving, stood atop the pinnacles, but Teg could not determine if the gestures were friendly or threatening.

  “See, they cover their heads and faces with cloths and filters,” Liet said. “The increased aridity forces them to adapt. In order to live here on the edge of the dry dunes, they are already learning to conserve bodily moisture.”

  “We could teach them how to make real stillsuits,” Stilgar said with a smile. “It has been a long time since I wore a decent one. I spent a dozen years aboard that ship, drowning my lungs with moisture. I can’t wait to taste dry air again!”

  Teg found an open landing area and brought the lighter down. He felt unaccountably troubled as the natives scurried toward them. “Those are obviously nomadic camps. Why wouldn’t they move inland, to where the climate is more hospitable?”

  “People adapt,” Sheeana said.

  “But why would they have to? Yes, the desert belt is growing, but there are still plenty of wide forests, even cities not far from here. Those people could outrun the spreading dunes for generations to come. Yet they stubbornly remain here.”

  Before the hatch opened to let in a breath of parched air, the nomads encircled the craft. Sheeana and Stuka, both wearing traditional dark robes from Chapterhouse so that their refugee Sisters would recognize them, boldly led the way. Teg followed with Stilgar and Liet.

  “We are Bene Gesserit,” Sheeana called to the people in universal Galach. “Are any of our Sisters among you?” Shielding her eyes against the brightness, she searched the few weathered female faces she saw, but got no response.

  “Perhaps another village would be best,” Teg suggested in a whisper. His tactical senses were alert.

  “Not yet.”

  An elderly man drew closer, pushing a filter mask away from his face. “You ask for Bene Gesserits? Here on Qelso?” Though coarse, his accent was understandable. Despite his age, he appeared to be healthy and energetic.

  Taking the lead, Stuka stepped ahead of Sheeana. “The ones who wore black robes, like ours. Where are
they?”

  “All dead.” The old man’s eyes flashed.

  Stuka’s suspicion came too late. Moving like a striking snake, the man hurled a hidden knife from his sleeve, with deadly accuracy. At an unseen signal the rest of the throng rushed forward.

  Stuka plucked clumsily at the blade that protruded from her chest but could not make her fingers work. Crumpling to her knees, she tumbled sideways off the lighter’s ramp.

  Sheeana was already moving, retreating. Teg shouted for Liet and Stilgar to get back inside the ship as he drew one of the stun weapons he had brought from the no-ship’s armory. A large rock struck Stilgar in the head, and Liet helped his young friend, trying to drag him back into the lighter. Teg fired a swath of silvery energy, making part of the dusty mob collapse, but more knives and stones clattered at them.

  Frenzied people rushed the ramp from all sides, jumping at Teg. Many hands grabbed his wrist before he could fire again, and someone ripped the stunner out of his grip. More took hold of Liet by the shoulders, pulling him away.

  Sheeana fought with a whirlwind of blows from her repertoire of Bene Gesserit fighting techniques. Soon a crowd of fallen attackers lay around her.

  With a roar, Teg prepared to lurch into his hyperaccelerated metabolism, with which he could easily dodge blows and weapons, but a silvery beam from his own stunner gushed out like tinkling rain, dropping the Bashar, and then Sheeana.

  IN SHORT ORDER the villagers bound the hands of their four prisoners with strong cords. Though badly beaten, Teg regained consciousness and saw that Liet and Stilgar were tied together. Stuka’s body lay near the ramp while the attackers ransacked the lighter for equipment and hauled things off.

  A group of men lifted Stuka’s body. The old man retrieved his knife, yanking it from the dead woman’s chest and wiping it on her robe with an expression of revulsion. He glowered at the corpse and spat, then marched toward the prisoners. Looking at the three young men, he shook his head in disapproval. “I did not introduce myself. You may call me Var.”