Sandworms of Dune

by Brian Herbert

  Jessica said skeptically, “Yet eradicating computers for so many generations forced us to grow stronger and become independent. For thousands of years, humanity advanced without artificial constructions to think and decide for us.”

  “As the Fremen learned to live on Arrakis,” Chani said with clear pride. “It is a good thing.”

  “Yes, but that backlash also tied our hands and prevented us from reaching other potentials. Just because a man’s legs will grow stronger by walking, should we deny him a vehicle? Our memory improves through steady practice; should we therefore deny ourselves the means to write or record our thoughts?”

  “No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, to use one of your ancient clichés,” Erasmus said. “I threw a baby off a balcony once. The consequences were extreme.”

  “We didn’t do without machines,” Duncan said, crystallizing his thoughts. “We just redefined them. Mentats are humans whose minds are trained to function like those of machines. Tleilaxu Masters used female bodies as axlotl tanks—flesh machines that manufactured gholas or spice.”

  When Paul looked back at him, Duncan thought that the young man’s face seemed deeply old. Recovering from his past life had drained him even more than his mortal wound had. As a Kwisatz Haderach himself, as Muad’Dib, Emperor, and blind Preacher, Paul understood Duncan’s dilemma better than any human present. He nodded slightly. “No one can choose for you, Duncan.”

  Duncan let his eyes take on a far-off glaze. “We can do much, much more. I see it now. Humans and machines cooperating fully, with neither side enslaving the other. I shall stand between them, as a bridge.”

  The robot responded with genuine excitement. “Now you see, Kwisatz Haderach! You have helped me to achieve understanding along with you. You have shortened my way, too.” Erasmus’s flowmetal body shifted like a mechanical version of a Face Dancer, becoming again the wrinkled body of the kindly old woman. “My long quest is complete. At last, after thousands of years, I understand so much.” He smiled. “In fact, there is very little that interests me anymore.”

  The old woman walked over to where the still-transfixed Paolo lay, staring blankly upward. “This failed, ruined Kwisatz Haderach is an object lesson for me. The boy paid the price of too much knowledge.” Paolo’s unblinking eyes seemed to be drying out. He would probably wither away and starve to death, lost in the infinite maze of absolute prescience. “I don’t want to be bored. So I ask you, Kwisatz Haderach, help me understand something I could never truly experience, the last fascinating aspect of humanity.”

  “A demand?” Duncan asked. “Or a favor?”

  “A debt of honor.” The old woman patted his sleeve with a gnarled hand. “You now epitomize the finest qualities of man and machine. Allow me to do what only living beings can do. Guide me to my own death.”

  Duncan had not foreseen this. “You want to die? How can I help you do that?”

  The old woman shrugged her bony shoulders. “All your lives and deaths have made you an expert on the matter. Look inside yourself, and you’ll know.”

  Over the millennia since the Butlerian Jihad, Erasmus had considered distributing backup copies of himself as Omnius had done, but he had decided not to. That would have made his existence far less stimulating, and less meaningful. After all, he was an independent robot, and needed to be unique.

  Duncan saw that along with all the codes and commands that controlled the host of thinking machines, he had received the life-function commands that regulated Erasmus. He could shut down the independent robot as easily as Erasmus had shut down all of the Face Dancers.

  “I am curious to see what lies on the other side of the great divide between life and death.” The robot looked at Khrone and the identical shape-shifter bodies strewn on the floor of the cathedral chamber.

  But it wasn’t as simple as flipping a switch or sending a code. Duncan had lived and died over and over, and learned more about life and death than anyone. Did Erasmus want him to understand whether or not a robot could have a soul, now that the two of them had been inside each other’s mind?

  “You want me to serve as a guide,” Duncan said, “not just an executioner.”

  “A fine way to put it, my friend. I think you understand.” The old woman looked at him, and now her smile held a hint of nervousness. “After all, Duncan Idaho, you have done this over and over again. But this is my first time.”

  Duncan touched her forehead. The skin was warm and dry. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  The old woman sat on the stone steps. Folding her hands in her lap, she closed her eyes. “Do you suppose I will ever see Serena again?”

  “I can’t answer that.” With a mental command, Duncan activated one of the new codes he possessed. From inside his own mind, reaching down to touch his own numerous death experiences, he showed Erasmus what he knew, even if he didn’t entirely comprehend it himself. He wasn’t certain the ancient independent robot could follow. Erasmus would have to make his own way. He and Duncan parted, both of them traveling on utterly separate journeys.

  The aged body slumped quietly on the steps, and a long sigh flowed from the old woman’s lips. Her expression became utterly serene . . . and then went completely motionless, with the eyes staring straight ahead.

  In death, the robot’s human shape held.

  Where there is life, there is hope . . . or so the old sayings tell us. But for the truly faithful there is always hope, and it is not determined by either death or life.

  —TLEILAXU MASTER SCYTALE,

  My Personal Interpretations of the Shariat

  Out under the burned sky of Rakis, Waff’s despair took him to a place as bleak and dry as the devastated landscape around him. On a vitrified dune nearby, only one of his precious armored sandworms stirred with the last flickerings of life, while the others were already dead. He had failed his Prophet.

  The cellular modifications he had made were insufficient, and he had neither sandtrout specimens, nor the proper facilities to create additional test worms. He felt the last grains of sand slipping through the hourglass of his life. His body wouldn’t last long enough for him to try again with a new line of the hybrid worms, even if he’d had the chance. Only the hope of restoring these sandworms to Rakis had kept him from surrendering to the damage in his accelerated ghola body, but now he was falling apart.

  Raising his fist to the sky and shouting into the dry, caustic air, he demanded answers from God, though no mortal had the right to do so. He hammered his hands on the hard, cracked ground and wept. His clothes were dirty, his face smeared with sooty residue. Sprawled atop what had once been magnificent dunes lay the dead worm specimens. Truly, they symbolized the end of all hope.

  Rakis was forever cursed, if even the Prophet no longer wished to live there.

  Then, as he huddled on the ground, Waff felt a shudder from deep beneath the surface. The resonant vibration grew stronger, and he looked up in wonder, blinking his stinging eyes. The last dying worm twitched, as if it, too, could sense something important happening.

  With a thunderous crack in the thin, whistling air, a fissure raced across the glassy ground. Waff stumbled to his feet and stared at the zigzag progress of the widening split, hardly able to comprehend what he was seeing.

  Widening, jagged lines appeared like fine fractures in reinforced plaz struck by a hard blow. The dunes bucked and heaved as something emerged from below.

  Waff staggered backward. At his feet the last slumped sandworm stirred, as if to warn the Tleilaxu Master that it was about to end its days—and that the man, too, was about to die.

  A sequence of explosions erupted like sand geysers from deep beneath the dunes. The crevices gaped wider, revealing forms stirring underground. As if in a waking dream, he saw enormous ridges crusted with stones and dust, huge behemoths rising in a cascade of sand.

  Sandworms. Real sandworms—monsters of the size that used to roam the desert in the days when this world was known as Dune. A legend and
a mystery reborn!

  Waff stood transfixed, unable to believe, yet filled with awe and hope rather than fear. Were these survivors of the original worms? How could they still be alive after the holocaust?

  “Prophet, you have returned!” At first he saw five of the gigantic sandworms, then a dozen emerging at once. All around him the broken ground spawned more and more. Hundreds of them! The whole dead world was like an immense egg, cracking open and giving birth.

  Breaking free of their underground nest, the sandworms rampaged toward the distant encampment in the rubble of Keen. Waff supposed they would swallow up Guriff and his prospectors, devouring all of the Guildsmen.

  The sandworms would make Rakis their own again.

  He reeled forward in ecstasy, his hands raised in joyous worship. “My glorious Prophet, I am here!” God’s Messenger was so great that Waff felt like a minuscule speck, hardly worth noticing.

  His faith swelled again, and he saw that his insignificant efforts on Rakis had never mattered. Regardless of how hard he had worked with the sandtrout, trying to seed these dead dunes with enhanced worms, God had His own plans—always His own plans. He showed the way by producing a flood of life, like the wordless revelation of s’tori.

  And Waff realized what he should have known all along, something every Tleilaxu should have understood: If each of the sandworms spawned from God Emperor Leto II’s great body actually contained a pearl of the Prophet inside them—how could the worms themselves not have been prescient? How could they not have foreseen the coming of the Honored Matres and the impending destruction of Rakis?

  He clapped his hands in glee. Of course! The great worms must have envisioned the terrible Obliterator weapons. Forewarned that the surface of Rakis would become a charred ball, some sandworms had been guided by Leto II’s prescience to tunnel deep and encyst themselves protectively far beneath the sands, perhaps kilometers down. Away from the worst destruction.

  This world can take care of itself, Waff thought.

  Arrogant humans had always caused trouble here. When it was a pristine desert planet, Rakis was what it should have been before human pride and ambition terraformed it. The efforts of outsiders to “improve” Dune had resulted in the apparent extinction of the great worms, until the death of Leto II brought them back. After which humans—the Honored Matres—had wiped out the ecosystem again.

  Rakis had been beaten, stepped on, raped . . . but in the end, the magnificent world had saved itself. The Prophet had remained there all along and contributed mightily to the survival of Dune. Now all was as it should be, and Waff was immensely pleased.

  Two giant sandworms churned toward the Tleilaxu man, who stood transfixed. Plowing through the crusted ground, the worms scooped up the flaccid carcasses of the weak test worms, devouring them as if they were mere crumbs.

  Overcome by joy, Waff fell to his knees and prayed. At the last moment, he looked up into the giant mouth, with its deep, simmering flames and crystalline teeth. He smelled the spicy exhalations.

  Smiling beatifically, the Tleilaxu Master lifted his face to heaven and exclaimed, “God, my God, I am yours at last!” With the speed and fury of a crashing Guild Heighliner, the worm descended. Waff inhaled a deep, satisfying breath of spice and closed his eyes in rapture as the monster’s cavernous mouth engulfed him.

  Waff became one with his Prophet.

  Life is about determining what to do next, from moment to moment. I’ve never been afraid of making decisions.

  —DUNCAN IDAHO,

  A Thousand Lives

  Through the broken cathedral’s high dome, a preoccupied Duncan saw the sky flicker like a pattern changing in a kaleidoscope. A wealth of vessels appeared side by side, pulled along by the returning Navigator-controlled Heighliners.

  Even before the signal came to him, Duncan sensed that someone very special was aboard one of the newly arrived ships. His expanded mind showed him her face, very little changed after all these years. Murbella! Some past part of him was terrified at the prospect of being near her again, but he was so much more than that now. He was eager to see her.

  A thousand Navigator-faction Heighliners hovered over Synchrony, uncertain of their role, now that the Oracle was gone. Using his newly acquired abilities, Duncan communed with them all in a commondenominator language. The Navigators would understand him in their own way, as would the thinking machines and the humans. Duncan barely touched on his enhanced knowledge to do so.

  Important changes. Necessary changes.

  The human ships sent lighters down. Looking up through the dome’s skylights Duncan saw the glints trailing through the sky and knew that Murbella would be with them. She would come down first, and he would see her again. Almost twenty-five years . . . a mere tick on the eternal clock, yet it had seemed an eternity all its own. He waited for her.

  But the woman who entered the vaulted hall was Sheeana, worn and weary from her fighting out in the machine city. Her eyes were full of questions as she took in the blood on the floor, the smashed sentinel robots, the supine bodies of the Baron and glassy-eyed Paolo. Just by looking at the four young gholas Sheeana could tell that Paul and Chani had their memories back.

  She noticed the motionless body of the old woman slumped on the stairs and recognized her. Speaking through Sheeana’s mouth, the inner voice of Serena Butler lashed out. “Erasmus killed my innocent—the innocent baby. He was the one responsible for—”

  Duncan cut her off. “I didn’t hate him in the end. I think I pitied him more. It reminded me of when the God Emperor died. Erasmus was flawed, arrogant, and yet oddly innocent, guided only by insatiable curiosity . . . but he didn’t know how to process what he already understood.”

  Sheeana stared down, as if expecting the old woman’s eyes to snap open and a clawlike hand to grab her. “Erasmus is really dead, then?”

  “Completely.”

  “And Omnius?”

  “Gone forever. And the thinking machines are no longer our enemies.”

  “Do you control them, then? Have they been defeated?” Wonder shone on her face.

  “They are allies . . . tools . . . independent partners more than slaves, and so different. We have a whole new paradigm to grapple with, and a lot of new definitions to make.”

  WHEN MURBELLA AND a party of Guildsmen and Sisters were ushered into the chamber by courier drones, Duncan set all questions aside and just stared at her.

  She stopped in mid-step. “Duncan . . . you’ve hardly changed in more than two decades.”

  He laughed at that. “I’ve changed more than any instrument could measure.” All the machines in the hall, in the whole city, turned toward Duncan at the comment.

  He and Murbella embraced automatically, uncertain of whether this contact would rekindle their past feelings. But each sensed the difference in the other. The river of time had carved a deep canyon between them.

  As he touched Murbella, Duncan felt a bittersweet sadness to know how much damage her addictive love had done to him. Things could never be the same between them again, especially now that he was the Kwisatz Haderach. He also guided the thinking machines, but he was not their new evermind, not their new puppet master. He didn’t even know how they could exist without a controlling force. They had to adapt or die, something humans had done well for millennia.

  From across the room, Duncan recognized the spark in Sheeana’s eyes—of genuine concern rather than jealousy; no Bene Gesserit would allow herself the weakness of jealousy. In fact, Sheeana was such a staunch Bene Gesserit that she had stolen the no-ship from Chapterhouse and fled with her refugees, rather than abide by the changes Murbella had forced on the Sisterhood.

  He spoke to both women. “We have freed ourselves from the traps we set for each other. I need you, Murbella—and you, Sheeana. And the future needs all of us more than I can express.” An infinite number of machine thoughts coursed through his mind, giving him the sudden awareness that countless human planets needed help that only he co
uld provide.

  With a thought, he dispatched the guardian robots out of the hall, marching them away as if in a military exercise. Then he stretched his mind through the empty pathways of the tachyon net, and across the universe. With his instantaneous connection to all of the human defender ships once controlled by corrupted Ixian machines, as well as the machine battleships linked to Omnius’s command—Duncan’s command, now—he summoned the vessels to the former machine planet, dragging them all simultaneously through foldspace. They would all come here, to Synchrony.

  “You, Murbella, were born free, trained as an Honored Matre, and finally made into a Bene Gesserit so that you could gather the loose ends. As you were a synthesis between Honored Matre and Bene Gesserit, so I am now a fusion between free mankind and thinking machines. I stand in both domains, understanding both, creating a future where both can thrive.”

  “And . . . what are you, Duncan?” Sheeana asked.

  “I am both the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach and a new form of the evermind—and I am neither. I am something else.”

  Alarmed, Murbella glanced at Sheeana, then back at him. “Duncan! Thinking machines have been our mortal enemies since before the Butlerian Jihad—more than fifteen thousand years.”

  “I plan to untie that Gordian knot of misunderstandings.”

  “Misunderstandings! Thinking machines slaughtered trillions of human beings. The plague on Chapterhouse alone wiped out—”

  “Such is the cost of inflexibility and closed-minded fanaticism. Casualties are so often unnecessary. Honored Matres and Bene Gesserits, humans and thinking machines, heart and mind. Don’t our differences strengthen us rather than destroy us?” The reality-expanding wealth of information Erasmus had given him was tempered by the wisdom he had earned through numerous lifetimes. “Our struggle has reached an end and a watershed.” He flexed his hand, and he could feel innumerable thinking machines out there listening, waiting. “We have the power to do so much now.”