Sandworms of Dune

by Brian Herbert

  “You put the other Bene Gesserits to death,” Sheeana said, “and killed our companion Stuka. Am I next?”

  “No. Because I said I would keep you alive.”

  The weathered man led them through the settlement. Workers were already disassembling large warehouse tents to move them farther from the edge of the sand. A heavy groundcar rumbled by, full of crates. A bloated flyer circled and landed near the smooth sand. Some kind of tanker?

  Var led them to a large central building made from sectional metal walls and a conical roof. Inside, a long table was cluttered with charts. Reports were fastened to the walls, and one entire wall displayed a polymer-paper map, a high-resolution topographic projection of the entire continent. Mark after mark showed the steady growth of the desert belt.

  Men sat around the table sharing reports and raising their voices in a tumult of conversation. Stilgar and Liet-Kynes, both dressed in dusty shipsuits, waved a greeting at the other two prisoners. The young men seemed pleased and relaxed.

  As he scanned the setup, it was obvious to Teg that Stilgar and Liet had spent the whole previous day in the command tent. The old leader positioned himself between them, leaving Teg and Sheeana to stand.

  Var pounded on the table, interrupting the cacophony. Everyone stopped talking, impatiently it seemed, and stared at him. “We have listened to our new friends describe what our world is sure to become. We’ve all heard legends of long-lost Dune, where water is more precious than blood.” His face had a pinched look. “If we fail and the worms take over, our planet will become valuable only by the standards of outsiders.”

  One of the men snarled at Sheeana, “Damned Bene Gesserits!” The others glared at her as well, and she met their disapproval squarely, without comment.

  Liet and Stilgar seemed to be in their element. Teg recalled the Bene Gesserit discussions over the original ghola project, how the long-forgotten abilities of those historical personages might become relevant again. Here was a perfect example. This duo of prominent survivors from the old days of Arrakis certainly knew how to deal with the crisis these people now faced.

  The grizzled leader raised his hands, and his voice sounded as dry as the air. “After the death of the Tyrant long ago, my people fled into the Scattering. When they reached Qelso, they thought they had found Eden. It was a paradise for fifteen hundred years afterward.”

  The men glowered at Sheeana. Var explained how the refugees had established a thriving society, built cities, planted crops, mined for metals and minerals. They had no wish to overextend themselves or go searching for other lost brothers who had escaped during the Famine Times.

  “Then a few decades ago everything changed. Visitors came, Bene Gesserits. At first we welcomed them, glad to have news from the outside. We offered them a new home. They became our guests. But the ingrates raped our entire planet, and now it is dying.”

  Another man clenched his hands into fists as he picked up the story. “The sandtrout multiplied out of control. Huge forests and vast plains died within years—only a few years! Great fires started in the wastelands, and weather patterns changed, turning much of our world into a dust bowl.”

  Teg spoke up, using his command voice. “If Liet and Stilgar told you about our no-ship and its mission, then you know we don’t carry sandtrout and we have no intention of harming your world. We stopped here only to replenish vital supplies.”

  “In fact, we fled the heart of the Bene Gesserit order because we disagreed with the policies and leadership,” Sheeana added.

  “You have seven large sandworms in your hold,” Var accused.

  “Yes, and we will not release them here.”

  Liet-Kynes spoke quietly, as if lecturing children. “As we already told you, once it has begun, the desertification process is a chain reaction. The sandtrout have no natural enemies, and their encysting of water is so swift that nothing can adapt quickly enough to fight against them.”

  “Nevertheless, we will fight,” Var said. “You see how simply we live in this camp. We have given up everything to stay here.”

  “But why?” Sheeana asked. “Even as the desert spreads, you have many years to prepare.”

  “Prepare? Do you mean surrender? You may call it a hopeless fight, but it is still a fight. If we cannot stop the desert, we will at least slow it. We’ll battle the worms and the sands.” The men at the table muttered. “No matter what you say, we will try to hinder the desert’s progress in every way. We kill sandtrout, we hunt the new worms.” Var stood up, and the others followed suit. “We are commandos sworn to slow the death of our world.”

  The desert still calls me. It sings in my blood like a love song.

  —LIET-KYNES,

  Planetology: New Treatises

  Early the next morning, Var led his group of dusty, determined fighters to a landing zone of fire-baked pavement. “Today, my new friends, we’ll show you how to kill a worm. Maybe two.”

  “Shai-Hulud,” Stilgar said with great uneasiness. “Fremen used to worship the great worms.”

  “Fremen depended upon the worms and the spice,” Liet replied quietly. “These people do not.”

  “With each demon we eliminate, we give our planet a little more time to survive.” Var stared out into the desert as if his hatred could drive back the sands. Stilgar followed the man’s gaze across the deeply shadowed dunes, trying to imagine the landscape in front of him as lush and green.

  The sun was just rising over an escarpment, glinting off the silvery hull of an old low-altitude flyer parked on an area of pounded gravel and flash-fused cement. Var’s people did not bother with permanent landing strips or spaceport zones, which would only be swallowed up by the spreading dunes.

  Despite the protests of the two young men, Sheeana and Teg were forced to remain behind in the camp as hostages, watched suspiciously. Liet and Stilgar had been accepted on the hunt because of their invaluable knowledge of the desert. Today, they would demonstrate their skills.

  Var’s commandos clambered into the heavily used craft. It had obviously weathered countless storms, rough flights, and incomplete maintenance; its hull was scuffed and scraped. The interior smelled of oil and sweat, and the seats were stone-hard, with only bars or straps for the passengers to hold onto.

  Stilgar felt comfortable enough among the twenty weathered, grim men. To his trained eye, the commandos had a look of edgy anticipation, but they were too soft in the flesh for the adaptations they would soon face. With the rapid climate shift, even living in their nomadic camps at the fringe of the sand, these people remained unaware of the desert’s true harshness. They would have to learn swiftly enough to face the escalating hardships. He and his friend could teach them—if they would listen.

  Liet took his seat beside Stilgar and spoke to Var’s men with genuine enthusiasm. “Right now, Qelso’s air still contains enough moisture that truly dramatic measures aren’t required. Soon, though, you will need to be careful not to waste so much as a thimbleful of water.”

  “We already live under the strictest conservation,” one man said, as if Liet had insulted him.

  “Oh? You don’t recycle your sweat, respiration, or urine. You still import water from the higher latitudes, where it is readily available. Many regions on Qelso are still able to grow crops, and people live a fairly normal life.”

  “It will get worse,” Stilgar agreed. “Your people have much hardening to do before the planet reaches its new equilibrium. This is the first day of your new field training.”

  The men muttered uncertainly at hearing such words from two seeming boys, but Liet sounded optimistic. “It is not so bad. We can teach you how to make stillsuits, how to conserve every breath, every sweat droplet. Your fighting instincts are admirable, but useless against sandworms. You must learn to survive among the behemoths that will eventually take control of your world. It is a necessary shift in attitude.”

  “The Fremen did so for a long time.” Stilgar seated himself beside his friend. “It wa
s an honorable way of life.”

  The fighters held onto straps and spread their feet for balance, preparing for takeoff. “That is what lies in store for us? Drinking recycled sweat and piss? Living in sealed chambers?”

  “Only if we fail,” old Var said. “I choose to believe we still have a chance, no matter how naïve that sounds.” He closed the ship’s hatch and strapped himself into the creaking pilot seat. “So, if that doesn’t sound pleasant to you, then we’d better stop the desert from gaining more of a foothold.”

  The flyer lifted from the dry camp and swung out over the ghost forests and hummocks of fresh dunes that were swallowing the remnants of grasslands. The engine sputtered periodically as they flew southeast to a region where sandworms had been sighted. The craft seemed like a sluggish bumblebee, its tanks overloaded and heavy.

  “We will stop the moving sands,” one young commando said.

  “Next you will try to stop the wind.” Stilgar grabbed a dangling strap as a thermal updraft shook the craft. “In a few short years, your planet will be sand and rock. Do you expect a miracle to turn the desert back?”

  “We’ll create that miracle for ourselves,” Var answered, and his team murmured in agreement.

  They flew across the wilderness of dunes, far past the point where they could see anything but buttery tan from horizon to horizon. Stilgar tapped a finger against the scratched windowplaz and shouted against the engine noise. “See the desert for what it is—not a place to fear and loathe, but a great engine to power an empire.”

  Liet added, “Already, small worms in the desert belt have created priceless amounts of melange just waiting to be mined. How have you survived for so long without spice?”

  “We haven’t needed spice for fifteen hundred years, not since we came to Qelso,” Var called from the cockpit. “When you do not have a thing, you learn to live without it, or you don’t live.”

  “We don’t give a damn about spice,” one of the commandos said. “I’d rather give a damn about trees and crops and fat herds.”

  Var continued, “Our first settlers brought a great deal of spice from far away, and three generations fought addiction until the supplies were gone. Then what? We were forced to survive without it—and we have. Why should we open ourselves to that monstrous dependency again? My people are better off without it.”

  “If used carefully, melange has important qualities,” Liet said. “Health, life extension, the possibility of prescience. And it’s a valuable commodity to sell, should you ever reconnect with CHOAM and the rest of mankind. As Qelso dries up, you may need offworld supplies for your basic needs.”

  If anyone survives the outside Enemy, Stilgar thought to himself, recalling the ever-present threat of capture by the shimmering net. But these people were much more concerned with their own local enemies, fighting the desert, trying to stop the unstoppable.

  He remembered the great dreams of Pardot Kynes, Liet’s father. Pardot had done the calculations and determined that the Fremen could turn Dune into a garden, but only after generations of intense effort. According to the histories, Arrakis had indeed become green and verdant for a time, before the new worms reclaimed it, and brought the desert back. The planet seemed unable to achieve a balance.

  The battered craft flew low, its engines droning. Stilgar wondered if the noise of their passage would attract worms, but as he stared down at the hypnotic, oceanic dunes, he saw only a couple of patches of rust-colored sand that indicated fresh spice blows.

  “Dropping signal vibrators,” Var called, while throbbing canisters—the equivalent of ancient thumpers—tumbled out of the small bays below the cockpit. “That should bring at least one of them.”

  With a puff of sand and dust the thumpers plunged into the dunes and sent out droning signals. After circling back to make certain the devices were operating properly, Var selected two more spots within a radius of five kilometers. Stilgar could not determine why the craft still felt overloaded.

  As they cruised in search of a worm, Stilgar described his legendary days on Dune, how he and Paul Muad’Dib had led a ragtag Fremen army to victory against far superior forces. “We used desert power. That is what you can learn from us. Once you see we are not your enemies, we can learn much from each other.”

  Under Stilgar’s firm hand, these people could come to understand their possibilities. With the awakening of the populace would come the awakening of the planet, with plantings and green zones to keep the desert under control. Perhaps they could succeed, if they could just find—and maintain—an equilibrium.

  Stilgar remembered something Liet’s father had said to him once. Extremes invariably lead to disaster. Only through balance can we fully harvest the fruits of nature. He leaned closer to the craft’s observation windows and saw a familiar wrinkling of the sand, ripples of deep movement disturbing the smooth dunes. “Wormsign!”

  “Prepare for our first encounter of the day.” A grin wrinkled Var’s grizzled face as he turned away from the cockpit. “The shipment that came in last night brought us enough water for two targets—but we need to find them.”

  Water! The heavy ship was carrying water.

  The men shifted position, heading toward gunnery hatches and hoses mounted on the sides of the stripped-down flyer. The pilot banked back toward the first cluster of thumpers.

  As the commandos prepared to strike, Stilgar mused about the strange turnabout. Pardot Kynes had spoken of the need to understand ecological consequences, that humans were stewards of the land, and never owners. We must do a thing on Arrakis never before attempted for an entire planet. We must use man as a constructive ecological force—inserting adapted terraform life: a plant here, an animal there, a man in that place—to transform the water cycle, to build a new kind of landscape.

  The battle today was the opposite. Stilgar and Liet would help fight to prevent the desert from swallowing all of Qelso.

  Through the nearest window Stilgar saw a mound in motion, a bucking sandworm drawn toward the thumper. Liet crowded close beside him, and said, “I estimate it at forty meters. Larger than Sheeana’s worms in our hold.”

  “These have grown in the open desert,” Stilgar said. “Shai-Hulud wants this planet.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Var said. But as if to defy him, directly below the flyer an immense head surfaced and quested around, trying to track the conflicting sources of vibrations.

  Long tubes protruded from the front and rear of the flyer. The commandos gripped their gun mountings, nozzles that could be turned and aimed. The flyer swooped low. “Fire when ready, but conserve what you can. The water’s deadly enough.”

  The fighters shot high-pressure streams from their hoses, blasting the sandworm below. The drenching bursts were more effective than artillery shells.

  Taken by surprise, the creature writhed and twisted its round head back and forth, convulsing. Hard ring segments split apart to reveal softer pink flesh between, and water burned like acid into the vulnerable parts. The worm rolled on the wet sand, in obvious agony.

  “They are killing Shai-Hulud,” Stilgar said, sickened.

  Liet was also stunned, but said, “These people have to defend themselves.”

  “That’s enough! It is dead—or soon will be,” Var shouted. The small force reluctantly shut off their hoses, looking with hatred upon the dying worm. Unable to dig deep enough to escape the poisonous moisture, the mortally wounded creature continued to squirm as the flyer circled over its death throes. Finally the beast gave a great final shudder and stopped moving.

  Stilgar nodded, his expression still grim. “There are necessities to life in the desert, hard decisions to be made.” He had to accept the clear fact that this worm did not belong here on Qelso. No sandworm did. On the way back to the settlement, they encountered a second worm, drawn by the vibrations of their flyer’s engines. The commandos emptied their water reservoirs, and the second worm perished even more quickly.

  Liet and Stilgar sat togethe
r in uncomfortable silence, wrapped up in what they had seen and the fight they had agreed to join. “Even though she doesn’t have her memories back yet,” Liet said, “I’m glad my daughter Chani did not see this.”

  Though the mood of the fighters was upbeat aboard the flyer, the two young men, remembering Arrakis, murmured Fremen prayers. Stilgar was still contemplating what they had seen and done when Var yelled a strangled-sounding alarm.

  Suddenly strange ships swarmed around them.

  You see only harshness, devastation, and ugliness. That is because you have no faith. Around me I see a potential paradise, for Rakis is the birthplace of my beloved Prophet.

  —WAFF of the Tleilaxu

  When he first glimpsed Rakis, the bleak ruins brought dismay to Waff’s heart. But when Edrik’s Heighliner deposited him and his small team of Guild assistants there, he experienced the joy of setting foot on the desert planet again. He could feel the holy calling deep inside his bones.

  In his previous lifetime he had stood on these sands, face to face with the Prophet. With Sheeana and Reverend Mother Odrade, he had ridden a great worm out to the ruins of Sietch Tabr. His ghola memories were corrupted and uncertain, riddled with annoying gaps. Waff could not recall his final moments as the whores closed in around the desert planet, deploying their awful Obliterators. Had he run for hopeless shelter, looking behind him like Lot’s wife for a last glimpse of the doomed city? Had he seen explosions and walls of flame searing the sky, sweeping toward him?

  But the cells of another Waff ghola had been grown in an axlotl tank in Bandalong as part of the usual process. The secret council of the kehl had planned for the serial immortality of all Tleilaxu Masters long before anyone had heard of Honored Matres. The next thing he knew, Waff was awakened to his past life during a grand guignol stage show as the brutal women murdered one of his twins after another until just one of them—him—reached a sufficiently desperate crisis to break through the ghola barrier and reveal his past. Some of it, at least.