Sandworms of Dune

by Brian Herbert

  Paul could feel her nails digging into his arm as she ignored the boy and talked to him instead. “The Bashar’s teachings were right, Usul. A ghola’s worth is not intrinsic in its cells. The process can go horribly wrong—as it clearly did with this young monster.”

  “It’s more a matter of parenting,” the Baron said. “Imagine how the universe would be changed if the original Muad’Dib had received different instructions in the uses of power—if I had raised him, as I tried to do with the lovely boy, Feyd-Rautha.”

  “Enough of this,” Omnius broke in. “My machine battleships are even now clashing with—or should I say annihilating?—the pathetic remnants of human defenses. According to my last reports, the humans were making simultaneous stands across space. That will allow me to destroy them all at once and be done with it.”

  Erasmus nodded to the humans in the cathedral chamber. “Within a few more centuries your own warring factions would have torn your race apart anyway.”

  The old man shot the independent robot an annoyed look. “Now that I have the final Kwisatz Haderach here, all the conditions have been fulfilled. It is time to end this. There is no need to bother with grinding every inhabited world to dust.” His lips quirked in a strange smile. “Though that would be enjoyable as well.”

  Musing, Erasmus looked from Paul to Paolo. “Although genetically identical, you two have slightly different ages, memories, and experiences. Our Paolo is technically a clone, grown from blood cells preserved on a dagger. But this other Paul Atreides—what is the origin of your cells? Where did the Tleilaxu find them?”

  “I don’t know,” Paul said. According to Duncan, the elderly man and woman had begun their merciless pursuit well before anyone had suggested the ghola project, before old Scytale revealed his nullentropy capsule. How could the evermind have known that Paul would reappear here? Had the machines rigged a complex game? Had the sentient machines developed an artificial but sophisticated form of prescience?

  Erasmus made a humming sound. “Even so, I believe you each have the potential to be the Kwisatz Haderach we need. But which of you will prove superior and achieve it?”

  “It’s me.” Paolo strutted around. “We all know that.” Obviously the younger boy had been raised with a belief in his role, so that his head was filled with confidence—though it was a confidence born of true skill, not one arising from imagination.

  “And how will that be determined?” Jessica asked, looking at both Pauls, weighing them with her eyes.

  A side door flowed open near the fountain that sprayed molten metal, and a man in a black one-piece suit emerged carrying an ornate bloodwood box topped with a smaller wrapped package. He was gaunt, with bland features.

  “Khrone, there you are! We have been waiting.”

  “I am here, Lord Omnius.” The man glanced at the assemblage and then, either in surrender or a flash of independence, his unremarkable human features faded away to reveal him as a pale and sunken-eyed Face Dancer. Setting the box aside, he carefully unwrapped the translucent fabric of the small package to reveal a brownish-blue paste flecked with gold spangles.

  “This is a concentrated and unusually potent form of spice.” The Face Dancer rubbed his fingertips and lifted them to his inhuman nose, as if the smell pleased him. “Harvested from a modified worm that grows in the oceans of Buzzell. It will not be long before the witches understand and begin their own operations there to capture the worms and extract the spice. At the moment, though, I hold the only sample of this ultraspice. Its sheer power should be sufficient to plunge the Kwisatz Haderach—one of you—into a perfect prescient trance. You will achieve powers that only prophecy could predict. You will see everything, know everything, and become the key to the culmination of Kralizec.”

  Erasmus spoke, sounding almost cheery. “After observing how the human race has ruined things without us around to maintain order, the universe definitely needs changing.” The robot picked up the bloodwood box and raised the finely etched lid. Inside lay an ornate, gold-hilted dagger, which he picked up with something like reverence. A smear of old blood remained on the blade.

  Behind Paul, his mother gasped. “I know that dagger! It’s as clear and fresh in my mind as if I just saw it. Emperor Shaddam himself presented it to Duke Leto as a gift, and years later at Shaddam’s trial Leto gave it back to him.”

  “Oh, there is more than that.” The Baron’s eyes glittered. “I believe the Emperor gave that same dagger to my beloved nephew Feyd-Rautha for his duel with your son. Unfortunately, Feyd didn’t quite succeed in that battle.”

  “I love convoluted stories,” Erasmus added. “Later still, Hasimir Fenring stabbed Emperor Muad’Dib with it and nearly killed him. So you see, this dagger has a long and checkered past.” He lifted it, letting the light of the cathedral chamber gleam off the blade. “The perfect weapon to help us make our choice, don’t you think?”

  Paul drew the crysknife Chani had made for him from its sheath at his side. The hilt felt warm in his grip, the curved milky blade perfectly balanced. “I have my own weapon.”

  Paolo danced back warily, looking at the Baron, Omnius, and Erasmus, as if expecting them to leap to his aid. He snatched the gold-hilted dagger from the robot’s hand and pointed the sharp tip at Paul.

  “And what are they to do with these weapons?” Jessica asked, though the answer was obvious to everyone.

  The robot looked at her in surprise. “It is only appropriate that we solve this problem in a particularly human way: a duel to the death, of course! Is that not perfect?”

  The worm is outside for all to see, and the worm is within me, part of me. Beware, for I am the worm. Beware!

  —LETO II,

  Dar-es-Balat recordings, in his voice

  After Paul and his companions were taken from the no-ship, Sheeana found young Leto II in his quarters. Huddling all alone in the dark, the youth was feverish and trembling. At first she thought he was terrified at having been left behind, but she soon realized he was genuinely sick.

  Seeing her, the boy forced himself to his feet. He swayed, and perspiration glistened on his brow. He looked pleadingly at her. “Reverend Mother Sheeana! You’re the only one—the only one who knows the worms.” His large, dark eyes flicked from side to side. “Can you hear them? I can.”

  She frowned. “Hear them? I don’t—”

  “The sandworms! The worms in the hold. They’re calling me, tunneling through my mind, tearing me up inside.”

  Raising her hand for silence, she paused, deep in thought. All her life, Shaitan had understood her, but she had never received any actual messages from the creatures, even when she’d tried to become part of them.

  But now, by extending her senses she did feel a tumultuous thrumming in her head and through the walls of the damaged no-ship. Since the Ithaca’s capture, Sheeana had ascribed such feelings to the crushing weight of failure after their long flight. But now she began to understand. Something had been scraping through her subconscious, like dull fingernails raking across the slate of her fear. Subsonic pulses of invitation. The sandworms.

  “We have to go to the hold,” Leto announced. “They are calling. They . . . I know what to do.”

  Sheeana gripped the boy’s shoulders. “What is it? What do we have to do?”

  He pointed to himself. “Something of me is inside the worms. Shai-Hulud is calling.”

  With the no-ship safely trapped in living-metal constructions, the thinking machines paid little attention to the vessel. Apparently, they had wanted to own and control the Kwisatz Haderach . . . a goal that was not as simple as it sounded, as the Sisterhood had learned long ago. Now that he had Paul Atreides in his machine cathedral, Omnius seemed to think he possessed everything he needed. The remaining passengers were irrelevant prisoners of war.

  The Bene Gesserits had planned the creation of their superman over hundreds of generations, subtly guiding bloodlines and breeding maps to produce the long-anticipated messiah. But after Paul
Muad’Dib turned against them and created havoc in their carefully ordered timeline, the Sisters had vowed never to unleash another Kwisatz Haderach. But in the long-ago aftermath, Muad’Dib’s twin children had been born before the damage could be fully understood. One of those twins, Leto II, had been a Kwisatz Haderach, like his father.

  A key turned in Sheeana’s mind, unlocking other thoughts. Perhaps in the solemn twelve-year-old Leto, the thinking machines had a blind spot! Could he be the final Kwisatz Haderach they sought? Had Omnius even considered the possibility that the machines might have the wrong one? Her pulse quickened. Prophecies were notorious for misdirection. Maybe Erasmus had missed the obvious! She could hear the inner voice of Serena Butler laughing at the possibility, and she allowed herself to cling to a tiny kernel of hope.

  “Let’s go to the cargo hold, then.” Sheeana took the boy’s hand, and they hurried down the corridors and dropchutes to the lower levels.

  As they approached the great doors, Sheeana heard explosive thunder from the other side. The frenzied worms charged from one end of the kilometer-long space to the other, smashing into the walls.

  By the time they arrived at the access door, young Leto seemed ready to collapse. “We have to go in,” he said, his face flushed. “The worms . . . I need to talk with them, calm them.”

  Sheeana, who had never been afraid of the sandworms before, now hesitated, worried that in their wild state they might not grant safety to her or Leto. But the boy worked the controls, and the sealed door slid aside. Hot, dry air blew onto their faces. Leto waded out and up to his knees in the soft dunes, and Sheeana hurried after him.

  When Leto raised his arms and shouted, all seven worms charged toward him like snorting predators, with the largest one—Monarch—at the fore. Sheeana could feel the hot wave of their anger, their need for destruction . . . but something told her that rage was not directed at either of them. The creatures rose up from the sand and towered over the two humans.

  “The thinking machines are outside the ship,” Sheeana said to Leto. “Will the worms . . . will they fight for us?”

  The boy looked forlorn. “They will follow my path if I lay it out for them, but I can’t see it yet myself!”

  Looking at him, she wondered again if this boy could be the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach, the link in the chain that Omnius had overlooked. What if Paul Atreides was no more than a feint in the final duel between man and machine?

  Leto shook himself, visibly bolstering his determination. “But the prior me, the God Emperor, had tremendous prescience. Maybe he foresaw this as well and prepared the beasts. I . . . trust them.”

  At this, the worms dipped in unison, as if bowing. Leto swayed, and they swayed with him. For a moment the walls of the hold seemed to recede, and the sand dunes flowed out to eternity. The ceiling disappeared in a vertiginous haze of dust. Suddenly, everything snapped back into focus.

  Leto caught his breath and called out, “The Golden Path is coming to meet me! It is time to release the worms—here, and now.”

  Sheeana sensed the rightness of this and knew what to do. All systems were still programmed to obey her instructions. “The machines deactivated the weapons and engines, but I can still open the great cargo doors.”

  She and Leto hurried to the controls in the hall, where she input the commands. Machinery hummed and strained. Then, with a loud clank and a bang, a gap appeared in the long-sealed walls. From the corridor, Sheeana and the boy watched the immense lower doors slide open, like clenched teeth being pried apart.

  Tons of sand spilled out in a rushing stream and propelled the sandworms, like living battering rams, into the streets of the machine capital.

  Prescience reveals no absolutes, only possibilities. The surest way to know exactly what the future holds is to experience it in real time.

  —from “Conversations with Muad’Dib” by the

  PRINCESS IRULAN

  A duel makes no sense.” The Baron frowned as he looked around the cathedral chamber. “It is wasteful. Naturally, I am convinced my dear Paolo will defeat this upstart, but why not keep both Kwisatz Haderachs for yourself, Omnius?”

  “I desire only the best one,” the evermind said.

  “And we could not be certain of controlling two of them as they struggled for preeminence with their new powers,” Erasmus said.

  “Whichever of you wins the duel will receive the ultraspice,” Omnius announced. “When the winner consumes it, I will have my true and final Kwisatz Haderach. I can then conclude this wasteful nonsense and begin my real work of remaking the universe.”

  Chani kept one hand on Paul’s arm. “How do you know either of them is your Kwisatz Haderach?”

  “You could be delusional,” Yueh said, and the boy Paolo shot him a glare.

  “And why should I cooperate if I win?” Paul said, but the sickening echoes of recurring visions strangled his protest. He thought he knew what was going to happen, or some piece of it.

  “Because we have faith.” The Baron, a paragon of unholiness, laughed at his own joke, but no one else did.

  Paolo drew designs in the air with the tip of his gold-hilted knife. “I have the Emperor’s dagger! You were stabbed with it once.”

  “That won’t happen again. This is my day of triumph.” But Paul heard the brittleness in his measured words, the vulnerability behind the bravado. He could see no way to avoid the duel, and wasn’t sure he wanted to. In his mind, he drove back the troubling flashes of vision. This perverse version of himself needed to be cut out like a cancer.

  The time had come. Paul gathered all of his concentration for the fight. Hardly seeing Chani, he kissed her. The wormtooth dagger she had made felt perfectly balanced in his hand. He had practiced with the crysknife on the no-ship, and he knew how to fight.

  I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.

  Young Paolo pressed his lips together in a tight smile. “I can tell you’ve had the visions, too! See, we are alike in yet another aspect.”

  “I’ve had many visions.” I will face my fear.

  “Not like these.” His opponent’s knowing smile was maddening, unnerving. . . . Paul stiffened his resolve. He would not give Paolo the satisfaction of showing dread or uncertainty.

  Quicksilver robots appeared and removed the human observers to the sidelines of the expansive hall. The Baron stepped back beside Khrone, his gaze flicking back and forth between young Paolo and the tempting dose of ultraspice. He licked his thick lips hungrily, as if wishing he could try some for himself.

  On the smooth combat floor of the chamber, Paul stood poised a couple of meters from Paolo. His younger foe tossed the gold-hilted dagger from hand to hand and smiled at him, showing white teeth.

  Calming himself, Paul summoned all the important lessons he had learned: Bene Gesserit attitudes and prana-bindu instruction, the precise muscular training and rigorous attack exercises that Duncan and the Bashar had drilled into all of the ghola children.

  He spoke to his fear: I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

  It would all culminate here. Paul felt confident that if he rose to the challenge and won, his Kwisatz Haderach powers would surface, and he would be able to go on to defeat the thinking machines. But if Paolo won . . . He didn’t want to consider that possibility.

  “Usul, remember your time among the Fremen,” Chani called from the side of the hall. “Remember how they taught you to fight!”

  “He remembers none of it, bitch!” Paolo slashed the Emperor’s knife across the air, as if slitting an invisible throat. “But I am fully trained, a tempered fighting machine.”

  The Baron applauded, but only a little. “No one likes a braggart, Paolo . . . unless, of course, you succeed and prove to everyone that you were merely stating facts.”

  Paul refused to be controlled by his visions. If I am the Kwisatz Haderach, I’ll change the visions. I shall fight. I shall be everywhere at once.

  Young Paolo must have been thinking the same thi
ng, for he lunged like a viper. Startled by the abrupt beginning of the duel, Erasmus swept his plush robes aside and stepped quickly out of the way. Apparently he had intended to delineate the rules of the challenge, but Paolo wanted to make it a brawl.

  Paul bent backward like a reed and let the Emperor’s blade whistle past, within a centimeter of his neck. Young Paolo snickered. “That was just practice!” He held up the dagger, showing the rust-red stains. “I am one step ahead of you, for this knife is already blooded!”

  “It’s more your blood than mine,” Paul said under his breath. He drove forward with the crysknife, weaving, making the blade dance.

  The younger ghola responded by mirroring Paul’s movements, as if the pair had an unconscious telepathic connection. He stabbed to the side, and Paul flowed in the other direction. Was this a form of prescience, Paul wondered, subconsciously foreseeing each blow, or did the two of them know and reproduce each other’s fighting styles exactly? They had entirely different training, entirely different upbringings. But still . . .

  Concentrating on the duel, Paul’s hearing became a fuzz of static. At first he heard encouragement, gasps, shouts of concern from his mother and Chani, but he blocked everything out. Did he have the potential to become the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach that Omnius was searching for? Did he want to be? He had read the histories, knew the bloodshed and suffering that Paul Muad’Dib and Leto II had both caused as Kwisatz Haderachs. What would the machines try to accomplish by possessing an even stronger Kwisatz Haderach? Some locked-away part of Paul already had the ability to look where no one else could—into both feminine and masculine pasts. What other powers lie untapped within me? Do I dare find out? If I win this duel, what will the thinking machines demand of me afterward?

  He felt like a gladiator on ancient Terra having to prove himself in an arena. And he had a fatal weakness: Omnius held Chani, Jessica, Duncan, and so many others as hostages. If Paul got his ghola memories back, his feelings for them would be even stronger.