Sandworms of Dune

by Brian Herbert

  Will the rest of the Reverend Mothers rally behind me—or will they start sniffing out my weaknesses again like hungry hyenas?

  She could not afford to waste time and energy battling her own people. Few enough of them remained alive after the plague. What if the Sisterhood was infiltrated by Face Dancers again? Could one of them, trained in exotic fighting techniques, pose as an Honored Matre challenger and kill Murbella? What if a Face Dancer became the Mother Commander of the Sisterhood? Then all indeed would be lost.

  She lay back, closed her eyes, and plunged into a healing trance. Time was of the essence. She had to regain her full strength. The forces of Omnius had located this world and would be coming soon.

  Every man casts a shadow . . . some darker than others.

  —The Cant of the Shariat

  While Yueh was under arrest and interrogation, yet another instance of sabotage occurred.

  The Bene Gesserit Sisters summoned the passengers to the great auditorium for an emergency meeting. Garimi seemed particularly agitated; Duncan Idaho and Miles Teg were alert. Eyes intent, Scytale observed, always the outsider. What had happened now? And will they blame me for it?

  Was it worse than the murder of another ghola and axlotl tank? Had someone else been killed? Had another water reservoir dumped into space, squandering the new supplies they had acquired at Qelso? Spice stockpiles contaminated? Food vats destroyed? The seven captive sandworms harmed?

  The Tleilaxu man sat back, watching everyone stream in from outside corridors and take their seats in islands of friendship or shared opinions. Palpable tension radiated from them. More than two hundred gathered, most of them curious, alarmed, or frightened. Only a few proctors stayed in isolated sections with the younger children that had been born during the journey; others were old enough to be treated as adults.

  The Bashar himself made the announcement. “Explosive mines have disappeared from the sealed armory. Eight of the hundred and twelve—certainly enough to cause severe damage to this ship.”

  After a brief silence, conversation returned in a riptide of whispers, gasps, and accusations.

  “The mines,” Teg repeated. “Back on Chapterhouse they were placed around this ship as a self-destruct mechanism in case Duncan or anyone else tried to steal it. Now eight of them are gone.”

  Sheeana went to stand beside the Bashar. “I deactivated those mines myself, so that this vessel could escape. They were locked securely away, but now they’ve disappeared.”

  “If they are missing, they might have been dumped out into space . . . or planted around the ship like time bombs,” Duncan said. “I suspect the latter, and that our saboteur has further plans.”

  The Rabbi moaned loudly. “You see? More incompetence! I should have stayed on Qelso with the rest of my people.”

  “Maybe you stole the mines,” Garimi snapped.

  He looked horrified. “You dare accuse me? A holy man of my stature? First Yueh says I manipulated him to murder a ghola baby, and now you think I have stolen explosives?” Scytale saw that the frail old man could never have lifted one of the heavy mines, much less eight of them.

  “Yueh has been under the constant surveillance of Thufir Hawat and myself,” Teg said. “Even if he did kill the axlotl tank and the growing ghola, he could not have stolen the mines.”

  “Unless he has an accomplice,” Garimi said, setting off another chain of muttering.

  “We will discover who took them.” Sheeana cut off the squabble. “And where they have been hidden.”

  “We’ve heard similar promises in the past three years,” Garimi continued, with a meaningful glare at Teg and Thufir. “But our security has been completely ineffective.”

  Paul Atreides sat in one of the front rows, near Chani and Jessica. “Are we certain the mines only disappeared recently? How often is the armory checked? Maybe Liet-Kynes or Stilgar took them for their war against the sandtrout without telling us.”

  “We should evacuate this ship,” the Rabbi said. “Find another planet, or go back to Qelso.” His voice quavered. “If you witches hadn’t . . . hadn’t . . . taken Rebecca, I would be safe now with my people. We all could have settled there.”

  Garimi scowled. “Rabbi, for years you’ve encouraged dissent with your sniping and destructive arguments, without offering alternatives.”

  “I speak the truth as I see it. The stolen mines are only the latest in a string of sabotage. My Rebecca remains alive only by chance when four other axlotl tanks have now been murdered. And who damaged the life-support systems, the water holding tanks? Who contaminated the algae vats and destroyed the air-filtration mats? Who poured acid on the seals of the observation window in the sandworm hold? There is a criminal among us, and he is growing bolder and bolder! Why don’t you find him?”

  Scytale remained silent and unobtrusive, listening to the debate. Everyone feared there would be more incidents of sabotage, and the stolen mines would be sufficient to cripple or destroy the great ship.

  The Tleilaxu had no doubt they would eventually turn their suspicions toward him because of his race, but he could prove his innocence. He had laboratory records, surveillance images, a solid alibi. Nevertheless, someone had committed the acts of sabotage.

  When the exhausting meeting broke up, the Rabbi stalked past Scytale in a huff, saying he was going to go sit in a vigil beside Rebecca, “to make certain no one else tries to kill her!” As the old man passed close, Scytale caught the Rabbi’s usual faint, strange scent, a subtly different flavor in the air.

  On instinct, Scytale emitted a barely audible whistle in a complicated melody that he remembered from deep in his past lives. The Rabbi ignored him and stalked away. Scytale frowned, not sure if he had noticed a brief hesitation as the old man walked past.

  God is God, and life is His alone to give. If God Himself has not the strength to survive, then we are left with nothing but despair.

  —The Cant of the Shariat

  Every investigation of Rakis yielded the same result. Only a few insignificant pockets of its ecosystem had survived. The planet was empty and haunted, yet it seemed to have its own will to live. Against all odds and science, Rakis still clung to its sparse atmosphere, its gasps of moisture.

  Guriff’s hard-bitten prospectors happily accepted supplies that Waff and the Guildsmen offered as a gesture of goodwill. Waff’s primary motivation for this was to get the men to leave him alone while he conducted his innocuous “geological investigations.” The prospectors were supplied by irregular CHOAM vessels that came to check on their work, but Guriff had no idea when the next ship would come. The Tleilaxu Master had enough packaged food from the Heighliner to last for years, if his deteriorating body lasted that long.

  Above all, he needed to tend to his worms.

  As he’d hoped, the prospectors spent the harsh days and nights concentrating on their own digging, hoping to find the legendary lost hoard of the Tyrant’s melange. Insulated scout cruisers braved the rugged weather, carrying sensors and probes up to the polar regions, while the men bored test holes, searching unsuccessfully for any threads of spice.

  The large dropbox from Edrik’s Heighliner had included a wide-bed groundcar that could roll across even the roughest terrain. When the prospectors departed, Waff called his four Guildsmen to assist him. With no curious eyes watching, they wrestled the long, sand-filled test tanks aboard his groundcar. Waff would make a pilgrimage out into the charred and glassy wasteland that had once been a sea of dunes.

  “I will release the specimens myself. I don’t need your assistance.” He directed the Guildsmen to return to the rigid-walled survival tents. “Stay and prepare our food—and make certain you follow the accepted ways.” He had given them precise instructions on the proper techniques. “Once I free the worms, I intend to come back for a celebration.”

  He did not want Guriff and his men, nor any of these untrustworthy Guild assistants, to observe such a private and holy moment. Today he would restore the Prophet to
Rakis, to the planet where He belonged. Dressed in protective clothing, he keyed in coordinates and drove off with the two long aquariums in the back of his groundcar. Heading due east, he sped away into a ruddy orange dawn.

  Although the landscape here was smeared, eroded, and unrecognizable, Waff knew exactly where he was going. Before coming to Rakis, he had dug up the old charts, and because the Honored Matres’ Obliterators had altered even the planetary magnetic field, he had carefully recalibrated his maps from orbit. A long time ago, God’s Messenger had purposefully carried him to the location of Sietch Tabr. The worms must consider it sacred, and Waff could think of no more appropriate place to turn loose the armored, augmented creatures. He drove there now.

  Light from the dust-thickened sky bathed the glassy ground in eerie colors. From the tanks behind him, Waff could feel the thumping of the worms as they writhed, impatient to burst out onto the open desert. Home.

  Back on the Heighliner, Waff had observed the bucking and thrashing creatures, measuring their growth in the lab. He knew the worms were dangerous, and that long confinement in small tanks sapped the creatures’ strength. Even under carefully controlled conditions, he hadn’t been able to replicate the optimal environment, and the specimens had weakened. Something was wrong.

  But hope infused him. Now that he was actually here, all would be right again. Holy Rakis! He could only pray that this injured dune world would provide what a Tleilaxu Master could not, offering some ineffable benefit to the worms, to the Prophet.

  When Waff reached the plain and saw the melted rocks, he remembered the weathered line of mountains that had sheltered the buried tomb of the Fremen city. He stopped the groundcar. A vitrified crust—rocky grains melted to glass by the blasts of incomprehensible weapons—covered what had once been open sand. But the worms would know what to do.

  Behind the vehicle, Waff paused a moment to close his eyes in prayer to his God and His Prophet. Then, with a flourish, he disengaged the plaz walls of the tanks and let sand spill out. Long serpentine shapes lunged free like uncoiled springs, and dropped to the ground around the vehicle. Waff gazed in wonderment at their thick, ridged bodies, and the python fluidity of their motion.

  “Go, Prophet! Reclaim your world.”

  Eight worms slithered on the hard, smooth ground. Eight, a sacred Tleilaxu number.

  The freed creatures spread out in random paths, while he watched them in awe. Waff hoped they could break through the fused sand and tunnel into softer levels below, as he had designed them to do. Each of the specimens had a tiny implanted tracer that would enable him to follow them and continue his investigations.

  However, the sandworms turned and circled the vehicle, coming closer. Hunting him. In a moment of fear, Waff froze. They were certainly large enough to attack and kill him. “Prophet, do not harm me. I have brought you back to Rakis. You are free to make this your kingdom once again.”

  The worms raised their blunt heads, swaying back and forth. Are they trying to send me some sort of message? He struggled to comprehend. Could their hypnotic movements be an alien dance? Or a predatory maneuver?

  He did not move. He waited.

  If this landscape was too harsh for them, if the Prophet needed to consume him in order to survive, Waff was fully prepared to donate the flesh of his own deteriorating body. If this was to be the end, so be it.

  Then, as if at a silent signal, the sandworms turned in unison and sped off, their flexing ridges bumping across the glassy dunes. Presently they stopped, bent their armored heads downward, and smashed into the hard surface. They broke the crust and plunged downward, tunneling into the pristine, sterilized sands. Returning to the desert! Waff’s heart swelled. He knew they would survive.

  As he returned to the groundcar, he realized he had tears in his eyes.

  When the forces are arrayed and the final battle is engaged, the outcome may be decided in only a few moments. Remember this: By the time the first shot is fired, half the battle is already over. Victory or defeat can be determined by the preparations that are set in place weeks or even months beforehand.

  —BASHAR MILES TEG,

  resource allocation request to the Bene Gesserit

  Chief Fabricator Shayama Sen agreed to come to Chapterhouse, but the Ixian dignitary remained aboard his ship high in orbit, far above the recovery operations. He would not risk exposure to any last vestiges of the plague, though the disease had burned itself out down there.

  Murbella had to go to him to make her demands—but under the strictest quarantine conditions. Encased in her own decontamination sphere, like a laboratory specimen in a tank, she felt foolish and helpless. The Bene Gesserit sphere’s outer hull—though scorched by its passage through the atmosphere on the way to orbit and then exposed to the vacuum of space—underwent additional irradiation and sterilization procedures up there. Fail-safes, redundancies. Justified paranoia, she admitted to herself. Although Murbella did not fault him for taking such extraordinary precautions, the Ixian nevertheless had much explaining to do.

  While waiting inside her sealed chamber aboard the Guildship (which was guided by a mathematical compiler rather than a Navigator), she composed herself. Still sore and battered from her duel with Kiria, she was satisfied that her violent response to the stupid power play had been necessary. None of the other distraught Sisters would challenge her now, thus leaving her role as Mother Commander uncontested.

  Once again, Murbella cursed the rebel Honored Matres and their mindless destruction of the massive shipyards and weapons shops on Richese. Had that not happened, with both Ix and Richese producing armaments, the human race could have consolidated a meaningful defense. Now that Ix was the primary industrial center, the Chief Fabricator felt he could be intractable. Shortsighted fools!

  Shayama Sen marched into the large metal-walled room and took a comfortable seat facing her. He looked smug and safe, while she felt like a caged zoo animal. “You called me away from our work, Mother Commander?”

  Despite the inherent awkwardness of her position, Murbella tried to take command of the meeting. “Chief Fabricator, you have had three years to duplicate the Obliterators we provided, but all we’ve received in exchange for our melange payments are reports on your tests, and promise after promise. The Enemy has destroyed more than a hundred planets, and their battleships keep coming. Chapterhouse itself was nearly eradicated by the recent plague.”

  Sen bowed formally. “We are fully aware of this, Mother Commander, and you have my condolences.” He got up and poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher, then roamed the large meeting room, flaunting his own freedom.

  Anger heated her cheeks and neck. How could this man sound so calm in the face of the crumbling human civilization? “We require the weapons you promised us—and without further delay.”

  Sen tapped his circuitry-imprinted fingernails together, pondering her containment sphere with a blank stare. “But we have not yet received full payment, and we hear your New Sisterhood is in dire financial straits. If we continue to devote all our resources to these Obliterators, and you renege—”

  “The agreed-upon amount of melange is yours the moment you finish installing Obliterators in our new warships. You know this.” She didn’t dare let Sen discover that she had released a great deal of stockpiled spice to help her fellow Reverend Mothers fight the plague.

  “Ah, but if your spice is contaminated by the plague, of what use is it to us? How else will you pay?”

  Murbella couldn’t believe his blindness. “The spice is not contaminated. We will implement any sterilization measures you require.”

  “And what if that destroys its efficacy?”

  “Then we will give you the original spice to decontaminate in whatever manner you see fit. Stop quibbling about nonsense when the extinction of the human race is imminent!”

  Sen seemed scandalized. “You call it nonsense? The properties of spice are complex and could be harmed by such aggressive measures. The substance
is of no value to us if we cannot use it.”

  “The plague organism has a short lifetime. Unless it is transferred from host to host, the disease dies swiftly. Place the spice on an airless moon for a year if you choose to.”

  “But the difficulties and the inconvenience . . . I believe these circumstances merit a renegotiation of our price.”

  If the container wall had not prevented her, Murbella would have killed him for his insolence. “Have you any idea of how much destruction the Enemy has spread?”

  He pursed his lips, and said, “Let me dispense with subtleties, Mother Commander. Honored Matres provoked this Enemy into launching its fleet against them, and in turn against the rest of us. Your association with the whores was your own folly, and the whole human race has paid for it. Ix has no quarrel with these robotic invaders. Since they evolved from ancient thinking machines, it is possible that we Ixians have more in common with them than with manipulative, murderous females.”

  Ah. Now she was beginning to understand. Listening to the sharp voice of Odrade-within and a thousand other Reverend Mothers frantically offering advice, Murbella forced calm upon herself. It was clear that the Ixian was trying to escalate this discussion. But why? To distract her? Had he failed to make as much progress in developing the Obliterators as he claimed? Was production running behind schedule?

  She selected a gambit that she hoped would shut down his blathering. “I authorize a thirty percent increase in your spice allotment, to be put in a trust fund held in the Guild Bank of your choosing. I expect that is sufficient to make up for any inconvenience? However, payment will be contingent upon your actual delivery of the weaponry in our contract. The Guild has delivered our new warships. Now, where are my Obliterators?”