Sandworms of Dune

by Brian Herbert

  Obviously, that was how Omnius intended to force Paul to cooperate, if he won this duel. His love for his companions would only intensify, and they would suffer because of him. Since the computer evermind had far more patience than any human, the machines could torture and kill these hostages with impunity, take cell scrapings and grow new gholas. Over and over! Perhaps Erasmus would bring back his sister Alia, his father the Duke, or Gurney, or Thufir. Kill them, resurrect them, and kill them again. Unless Paul Atreides, the Kwisatz Haderach, bowed to their demands, the thinking machines would make his life an unending hell. Or so they intended.

  Now he understood the dilemma of his destiny. And again he saw himself dying in a pool of blood. Perhaps some things could not be changed. But if he was a true Kwisatz Haderach, he should be able to defeat such petty tactics.

  He fought on with wild passion, driving himself into a sweaty frenzy. Paolo kicked at him with his feet and slashed with the Emperor’s dagger. Paul dove, rolled, and the younger ghola pounced on him. The Emperor’s blade drove down hard in what would have been a killing thrust, but Paul slipped to the side, barely in time.

  The blade slashed his sleeve, cut a thin line of blood on his left shoulder, then clanged against the stone floor. Paolo, his wrist jolted by the sharp impact, barely maintained a grip on the hilt.

  On the polished floor, Paul swept his feet sideways, getting them under his rival and kicking upward. He did have the advantage of being physically stronger than a twelve-year-old. Paul grabbed his counterpart’s wrist and pulled himself to his feet, but Paolo locked his fingers around Paul’s knife arm, preventing the crysknife from stabbing down. Paul pushed, using his leverage to maneuver them both back toward the shimmering lava fountain.

  “Not very . . . innovative!” The younger ghola’s breath rasped as he struggled, and Paul continued to drive him back. The heat from the fountain gushed in all directions. If he knocked Paolo into the incandescent metal, would he be killing himself—or saving himself?

  Paul saw his opponent clearly and could not hate the other ghola. At the core, both of them were Paul Atreides. Paolo was not innately evil, but had been corrupted by terrible things that had been done to him, things he had been taught, not things done of his own volition. Paul did not let his sympathy for his rival weaken him. If he did, Paolo would not hesitate to kill him and claim victory. But Paul—because he was Paul—would fight with every ounce of his being to save the future of humanity.

  Omnius and Erasmus observed without cheering for either fighter. They would accept whichever one proved victorious. Khrone’s shadowed, olive-pit eyes held no emotion at all. The Baron was scowling. Paul didn’t want to look toward Chani or his mother.

  The roaring lava fountain dumped heat into the air. Paul’s already sweaty body became slicker. Wiry Paolo used that to his advantage, squirmed, and Paul’s grip began to slip. Suddenly, at the very verge of the fountain, the younger man allowed his knees to buckle.

  Paul overcompensated, which threw him off balance. He kneed his opponent in the stomach, but young Paolo had untapped reserves. When Paul raised the crysknife in his sweat-slickened grip, Paolo brought his own hand up backward, using the jeweled hilt of his dagger to smash the base of Paul’s knife hand. Tendons twitched in reflexive reaction. The crysknife dropped free, clattered on the edge of the fountain, and tumbled into the molten pool.

  Gone.

  With the force of dominating vision, stronger than just the knowledge of his own death, Paul realized what he should have known from the beginning: I am not the Kwisatz Haderach that Omnius wants. It isn’t me!

  Time seemed to slow down and freeze. Was this what Bashar Teg had experienced when he accelerated himself? But Paul Atreides could move no faster than the events around him. They held him captive and squeezed in on him like the steely embrace of Death.

  Wearing a venomous grin, young Paolo swung the gold-hilted dagger around in a perfect arc and, with exquisite slowness, drove the point into Paul’s side. He slipped the dagger between his opponent’s ribs and kept pushing, shoving the deadly point through Paul’s lung and up into his heart.

  Then Paolo yanked the murderous weapon free, and time resumed its normal speed. From far away, Paul heard Chani screaming.

  Blood gushed from his wound, and Paul stumbled against the base of the hot fountain. It was a mortal wound; there could be no denying it. The prescient voice in his head hammered at him to no purpose. It seemed to be mocking him. I am not the final Kwisatz Haderach!

  He slithered to the floor like a broken doll, barely saw Chani and Jessica running toward him. Jessica had Yueh by the collar and was dragging the Suk doctor over to her bleeding son.

  Paul had never known that one body could contain so much blood. With fading vision, he looked up and saw Paolo prancing victoriously, holding the dripping red dagger. “You knew I would kill you! You might as well have driven in the knife with your own hands!”

  It was a perfect reproduction of his visions. He lay on the floor, dying as swiftly as his body would allow.

  In the background he heard the Baron Harkonnen’s boisterous laughter. The sound was intolerable, but Paul could do nothing to stop it.

  When they pour in at once, my memories will be like a sandstorm—and just as destructive. Who can control the wind? If I am truly the God Emperor, then I can control it.

  —GHOLA OF LETO II,

  last preparatory assignment delivered to Bashar Miles Teg

  Sand and worms poured out of the entrapped no-ship’s hold into the carefully ordered machine metropolis. The writhing creatures plowed into the open streets like maddened Salusan bulls bursting from their pens. Beside Leto, watching the hold empty in a deafening rush, Sheeana opened her mouth, and her eyes went wide with surprise.

  Through his strange connection to the worms, Leto II’s mind surged outward with them into the sparkling city. Standing high above at the doorway to the immense cargo bay, he felt a wave of relief and freedom. Without a word to Sheeana, he dove into the sliding, flowing sand, following the worms in their wild exodus. He let the grit carry him, like a swimmer caught in an undertow being rapidly whisked out to sea.

  “Leto! What are you doing? Stop!”

  He could not have stopped to answer even if he had wanted to. The current of flowing powder sucked him downward—exactly where he wanted to be. Leto plunged under the sand, and his lungs somehow adapted to the dust, as did all of his senses. Like a sandworm he saw without eyes, and perceived the creatures ahead of him, as if he were looking at them through clear water. This was what he had been born to do, what he had died to do, ever so long ago.

  Memories reverberated in him like echoes of the past—not a visceral recollection, but greater than the knowledge he had acquired by reading the Ithaca’s archives. Those entries had been about another young man, another Leto II, but still himself. A thought surfaced: My skin is not my own. In those days, his body had been covered with interlinked sandtrout, their membranous bodies meshing with his soft flesh and nerves. They had imparted strength to him, enabling him to run like the wind.

  Though still in human form, Leto II recalled some of the fantastic power, not from ghola memories but from the pearl of awareness that the original God Emperor had left within each worm descendant. They remembered, and Leto remembered with them.

  Histories had been written by so many people who loathed him, who misunderstood what he had been forced to do. They decried the Tyrant’s purported cruelty and inhumanity, his willingness to sacrifice everything for the extraordinary Golden Path. But none of the histories—not even his own testamentary journals—had recorded the joy and exuberance of a young man experiencing such unexpected and wondrous power. Leto remembered it all now.

  He swam through the flow of sand to where the seven giant worms writhed, and then burst upward to break through the surface. Knowing instinctively what he had to do, Leto staggered toward the largest worm, Monarch. He caught the small part of the thrashing tail, leapt o
nto the hard rings, and scrambled up like a bare-footed Caladanian primitive scaling a rough-barked palm tree.

  As soon as Leto touched the greatest of the seven worms, his fingers and feet seemed to acquire an unnatural adhesion. He could climb and hold on, as if he were part of the creature. And in a way, that was true. Fundamentally, he and the sandworms were one.

  Sensing that Leto had joined them, all of the worms paused like enormous soldiers coming to attention. Reaching a perch atop Monarch’s curved head, Leto surveyed the sprawling complex of living metal structures, and smelled the strong odor of cinnamon.

  From his high vantage point, he watched the city of Synchrony as it shifted buildings into formidable barricades, trying to impede the long-confined sandworms. This was Leto’s army, his living battering rams—and he would turn them loose against humanity’s Enemy.

  Dizzy and euphoric in the redolence of spice, Leto held onto the worm’s ridges, which parted to expose the soft pink flesh underneath. He found it enticing, and his body longed for the full sensation, direct contact. Leto slid his bare hands between the ring segments, into the soft tissue membrane. There, he felt as if he was touching the nerve center of the beast itself, plunging his fingers into the neural circuitry that joined these primal creatures together. The sensation hit him like a jolt of electricity. This was where he had belonged for eternity.

  At his behest, the sandworms reared higher, like angry cobras no longer interested in the soothing music of a snake charmer. Leto controlled them now. All seven of the worms went on a rampage through the machine streets, and Omnius could do nothing to stop them.

  When Leto’s mind merged with the largest sandworm, he felt a flood of intense sensations and recalled a similar thing that another Leto II had done thousands of years before. Again he experienced the raspy feel of fast-flowing sand beneath a long and sinuous body. He relished the exquisite dryness of old Arrakis, and knew what it had meant to be the God Emperor, the synthesis of man and sandworm. That had been the zenith of his experience. But did something even greater lie in store for him?

  As a ghola child raised aboard the no-ship, Leto II was never entirely sure how the Tleilaxu had obtained his original cells. Had they been taken when he and Ghanima underwent routine medical inspections as children? If so, an awakened Leto ghola would have only the memories of a normal child, the son of Muad’Dib. What if, however, the cells in Scytale’s nullentropy capsule had been stolen from the actual God Emperor in his prime? Some unlikely scraping of his enormous vermiform corpse? Or a tissue sampling by one of the devout followers who had taken the Tyrant’s withered, drowned body from the bank of the Idaho River?

  As Leto’s mind fused with Monarch, and all of the surrounding worms, he realized that it didn’t matter. This incredible joining now unlocked everything that was within his ghola body and within each nugget of awareness buried deep in the sandworms. Leto II finally became his true self again, as well as the conflicted ghola boy he had been—a loner child and an absolute emperor with the blood of trillions on his conscience. He understood in exquisite detail all his centuries of decisions, his terrible grief, and his determination.

  They call me Tyrant without comprehending my kindness, the great purpose behind my actions! They don’t know that I foresaw the final conflict all along.

  In those last years, God Emperor Leto had strayed so far from humanity that he had forgotten innumerable marvels, especially the softening influence of love. But, as he rode Monarch now, young Leto remembered how much he had adored his twin sister Ghanima, the good times they had shared in their father’s incredible palace, and how they had been slated to rule the vast empire of Muad’Dib.

  Now Leto was everything he had ever been and more, enhanced by the firsthand memories of his own experiences. With his new vision, as fresh precursors of spice from the worm’s body pumped through his blood, he beheld the Golden Path extending gloriously before him. But even with this remarkable revelation, he could not quite see around all the corners ahead. There were blind spots.

  High atop his worm, young Leto smiled in determination, and with a single thought he sent the serpentine army forward. The leviathans charged between the great buildings, throwing themselves against reinforced barricades and breaking through. Nothing could stop them.

  Hands still buried deep between the ring segments, Leto II rode with a shout of joy on his lips. He gazed forward through eyes that had suddenly become blue-within-blue, eyes that saw what others could not.

  Now that I have ridden one of the sandworms and touched the immensity of its existence, I understand the awe the ancient Fremen experienced, why they considered the worms to be their god, Shai-Hulud.

  —TLEILAXU MASTER WAFF,

  letter to the Council of Masters in Bandalong, dispatched

  immediately before the destruction of Rakis

  The last pair of Waff’s sandworm specimens died inside the arid terrarium.

  When freeing the first test worms out in the desert, he had kept two with him at the modular laboratory for research, hoping that what he learned would improve their chances of survival. It did not go well.

  Waff prayed vigorously each day, meditated on the holy texts he had brought with him, and sought guidance from God on how best to nurture the reborn Prophet. The first eight specimens were now loose, tunneling through the brittle, crusted sand like explorers on a dead world. The Tleilaxu Master hoped they had survived in the blast-zone environment.

  In their final days, the last two little worms in his laboratory aquarium became sluggish, unable to process the nutrients he gave them, though the food was chemically balanced to provide the sandworms with what they needed. He wondered if the small creatures could experience despair. When they lifted their round heads above the sandy surface of the holding tank, it seemed as if they had lost their will to live.

  And within a week they both perished.

  Though he revered these creatures and what they represented, Waff was desperate for vital scientific information with which to better the other worms’ chances of survival. Once the specimens were dead, he had little compunction against picking apart their carcasses, spreading their rings, and cutting into the internal organs. God would understand. If he himself lived long enough, Waff would begin the next phase, as soon as Edrik came back for him. If the Navigator ever came back, with his Heighliner and the sophisticated laboratory facilities aboard.

  His own Guild assistants offered their help—persistently—but Waff preferred to work alone. Now that these men had set up their standalone camp, the Tleilaxu Master had no further use for them. As far as he was concerned, the Guildsmen were free to join Guriff and his treasure hunters in seeking lost spice hoards out in the wasteland.

  When one of the bland Guildsmen appeared before him, demanding his attention, Waff easily lost the delicate balance of his thoughts. “What? What is it?”

  “The Heighliner should have returned by now. Something is wrong. Guild Navigators are never late.”

  “He did not promise to come back. When is Guriff’s next CHOAM ship due to arrive? You are welcome to depart on it.” In fact, I encourage that.

  “The Navigator may not be concerned with you, Tleilaxu, but he made promises to us.”

  Waff didn’t care about the insult. “Then he will return, eventually. If nothing else, he will want to know how my new sandworms are doing.”

  The Guild assistant frowned at the flayed creature spread out on the analytical table. “Your pets do not appear to be thriving.”

  “Today I will go out and monitor the specimens I released earlier. I expect to find them healthy, and stronger than ever.”

  When the flustered Guildsman left, Waff changed into external protective clothing and hopped into the camp’s groundcar. The locator signals showed him that the released worms had not ranged far from the ruins of Sietch Tabr. Attempting to be optimistic, he assumed they had found a habitable subterranean band and were establishing their new domain. As more and mor
e worms grew on Rakis, they would become tillers of the soil, restoring the desert to its former glory. Sandworms, sandtrout, sandplankton, melange. The great ecological cycle would be reestablished.

  Reciting ritual prayers, Waff drove across the eerie black-glass desert. His muscles trembled and his bones ached. Like the assembly lines in a war-damaged factory, his degenerating organs labored to keep him alive. Waff’s flawed body could fall apart any day now, but he was not afraid. He had died already—many times, in fact.

  Always before, he’d had the faith and confidence that a new ghola was being grown for him. This time, though convinced he would not return to life, Waff was content with what he had accomplished. His legacy. The evil Honored Matres had tried to exterminate God’s Messenger on Rakis, and Waff would bring Him back. What greater accomplishment could a man hope to attain in this life? In any number of lives?

  Following the tracker signals, he drove away from the weathered mountains, to the dunes. Ah, the new sandworms must have fled out into open terrain, looking for fresh sand in which to bury themselves and begin their lives anew!

  Instead, what he saw horrified him.

  He easily located the eight fledgling worms. Much too easily. Waff stopped the groundcar and scrambled out. The hot, thin air made him gasp, and his lungs and throat burned. He could barely see through stinging tears as he hurried forward.

  His precious sandworms lay on the hard ground, barely moving. They had cracked the melted crust of the dunes and churned through the soft grainy dirt beneath, only to emerge again. And now they lay dying.

  Waff knelt beside one of the weak, failing creatures. It was flaccid, grayish, barely twitching. Another had heaved itself high enough to sprawl across a broken rock, and there it lay deflated and unable to move. Waff touched it, pressed down on the hard rings. The worm hissed and flinched.