Frank Herbert - Dune Book 5 - Heretics of Dune

by Frank Herbert

  "They say there was a big river," Sheeana said.

  Odrade heard the lilting note of derision in Sheeana's voice. The child learned quickly!

  Waff turned and scowled at them. He heard it, too. What was he thinking about Sheeana now?

  Odrade held Sheeana's shoulder with one hand and pointed with the other. "There was a bridge right there. The great wall of the Sareer was left open there to permit the passage of the Idaho River. The bridge spanned that break."

  Sheeana sighed. "A real river," she whispered.

  "Not a qanat and too big for a canal," Odrade said.

  "I've never seen a river," Sheeana said.

  "That was where they dumped Shai-hulud into the river," Odrade said. She gestured to her left. "Over on this side, many kilometers in that direction, he built his palace."

  "There's nothing over there but sand," Sheeana said.

  "The palace was torn down in the Famine Times," Odrade said. "People thought there was a hoard of spice in it. They were wrong, of course. He was much too clever for that."

  Sheeana leaned close to Odrade and whispered: "There is a great treasure of the spice, though. The chantings tell about it. I've heard it many times. My . . . they say it's in a cave."

  Odrade smiled. Sheeana referred to the Oral History, of course. And she had almost said: "My father . . ." meaning her real father who had died in this desert. Odrade already had lured that story from the girl.

  Still whispering close to Odrade's ear, Sheeana said: "Why is that little man with us? I don't like him."

  "It is necessary for the demonstration," Odrade said.

  Waff took that moment to step off the causeway onto the first soft slope of open sand. He moved with care but no visible hesitation. Once on the sand, he turned, his eyes glistening in the hot sunlight, and stared first at Sheeana and then at Odrade.

  Still that awe in him when he looks at Sheeana, Odrade thought. What great things he believes he will discover here. He will be restored. And the prestige!

  Sheeana sheltered her eyes with one hand and studied the desert.

  "Shaitan likes the heat," Sheeana said. "People hide inside when it's hot but that's when Shaitan comes."

  Not Shai-hulud, Odrade thought. Shaitan! You predicted it well, Tyrant. What else did you know about our times?

  Was it really the Tyrant out there dormant in all of his worm descendants?

  None of the analyses Odrade had studied gave a sure explanation of what had driven one human being to make himself into a symbiote with that original worm of Arrakis. What went through his mind in the millennia of that awful transformation? Was any of that, even the smallest fragment, preserved in today's Rakian worms?

  "He is near, Mother," Sheeana said. "Do you smell him?"

  Waff peered apprehensively at Sheeana.

  Odrade inhaled deeply: a rich swelling of cinnamon on the bitter flint undertones. Fire, brimstone -- the crystal-banked inferno of the great worm. She stooped and brought up a pinch of blown sand to her tongue. All of the background was there: the Dune of Other Memory and the Rakis of this day.

  Sheeana pointed at an angle to her left, directly into the light breeze from the desert. "Out there. We must hurry."

  Without waiting for permission from Odrade, Sheeana ran lightly down the causeway, past Waff and out onto the first dune. She stopped there until Odrade and Waff caught up with her. Off the dune face she led them, up another with sand clogging their passage, out along a great curving barracan with wisps of dusty saltation blowing from its crest. Soon, they had put almost a kilometer between themselves and the water-girded security of Dar-es-Balat.

  Again, Sheeana stopped.

  Waff came to a panting halt behind her. Perspiration glistened where his stillsuit hood crossed his brow.

  Odrade stopped a pace behind Waff. She took deep, calming breaths while she peered past Waff to where Sheeana's attention was fixed.

  A furious tide of sand had poured across the desert beyond the dune where they stood, driven by a storm wind. Bedrock lay exposed in a long narrow avenue of giant boulders, which lay scattered and upturned like the broken building blocks of a mad promethean. Through this wild maze, the sand had poured like a river, leaving its signature in deep scratches and gouges, then plunging off a low escarpment to lose itself in more dunes.

  "Down there," Sheeana said, pointing at the avenue of bedrock. Off their dune she went, sliding and scrambling in spilled sand. At the bottom, she stopped beside a boulder at least twice her height.

  Waff and Odrade paused just behind her.

  The slipface of another giant barracan, sinuous as the back of a sporting whale, lifted into the silver-blue sky beside them.

  Odrade used the pause to recompose her oxygen balance. That mad run had made great demands on flesh. Waff, she noted, was red-faced and breathing deeply. The flinty cinnamon smell was oppressive in the confined passage. Waff sniffed and rubbed at his nose with the back of a hand. Sheeana lifted herself on one toe, pivoted and darted ten paces across the rocky avenue. She put one foot up on the sandy incline of the outer dune and lifted both arms to the sky. Slowly at first and then with increasing tempo, she began to dance, moving up onto the sand.

  The 'thopter sounds grew louder overhead.

  "Listen!" Sheeana called, not pausing in her dance.

  It was not to the 'thopters that she called their attention. Odrade turned her head to present both ears to a new sound intruding on their rock-tumbled maze.

  A sibilant hiss, subterranean and muted by sand -- it became louder with shocking swiftness. There was heat in it, a noticeable warming of the breeze that twisted down their rocky avenue. The hissing swelled to a crescendo roar. Abruptly, the crystal-ringed gaping of a gigantic mouth lifted over the dune directly above Sheeana.

  "Shaitan!" Sheeana screamed, not breaking the rhythm of her dance. "Here I am, Shaitan!"

  As it crested the dune, the worm dipped its mouth downward toward Sheeana. Sand cascaded around her feet, forcing her to stop her dance. The smell of cinnamon filled the rocky defile. The worm stopped above them.

  "Messenger of God," Waff breathed.

  Heat dried the perspiration on Odrade's exposed face and made the automatic insulation of her stillsuit puff outward perceptibly. She inhaled deeply, sorting the components behind that cinnamon assault. The air around them was sharp with ozone and swiftly oxygen rich. Her senses at full alert, Odrade stored impressions.

  If I survive, she thought.

  Yes, this was valuable data. The day might come when others would use it.

  Sheeana backed out of the spilled sand onto the exposed rock. She resumed her dance, moving more wildly, flinging her head at each turn. Hair whipped across her face and each time she whirled to confront the worm, she screamed "Shaitan!"

  Daintily, like a child on unfamiliar ground, the worm once more moved forward. It slid across the dune crest, curled itself down onto the exposed rock and presented its burning mouth slightly above and about two paces from Sheeana.

  As it stopped, Odrade became conscious of the deep furnace rumbling of the worm. She could not tear her gaze away from the reflections of lambent orange flames within the creature. It was a cave of mysterious fire.

  Sheeana stopped her dance. She clenched both fists at her sides and stared back at the monster she had summoned.

  Odrade took timed breaths, the controlled pacing of a Reverend Mother gathering all of her powers. If this was the end -- well, she had obeyed Taraza's orders. Let the Mother Superior learn what she would from the watchers overhead.

  "Hello, Shaitan," Sheeana said. "I have brought a Reverend Mother and a man of the Tleilaxu with me."

  Waff slumped to his knees and bowed.

  Odrade slipped past him to stand beside Sheeana.

  Sheeana breathed deeply. Her face was flushed.

  Odrade heard the click-ticking of their overworked stillsuits. The hot, cinnamon-drenched air around them was charged with the sounds of this meeting,
all dominated by the murmurous burning within the quiescent worm.

  Waff came up beside Odrade, his trancelike gaze fixed on the worm.

  "I am here," he whispered.

  Odrade silently cursed him. Any unwarranted noise could attract this beast onto them. She knew what Waff was thinking, though: No other Tleilaxu had ever stood this close to a descendant of his Prophet. Not even the Rakian priests had ever done this!

  With her right hand, Sheeana made a sudden downward gesture. "Down to us, Shaitan!" she said.

  The worm lowered its gaping mouth until the internal firepit filled the rocky defile in front of them.

  Her voice little more than a whisper, Sheeana said: "See how Shaitan obeys me, Mother?"

  Odrade could feel Sheeana's control over the worm, a pulse of hidden language between child and monster. It was uncanny.

  Her voice rising in impudent arrogance, Sheeana said: "I will ask Shaitan to let us ride him!" She scrambled up the slipface of the dune beside the worm.

  Immediately, the great mouth lifted to follow her movements. "Stay there!" Sheeana shouted. The worm stopped.

  It's not her words that command it, Odrade thought. Something else . . . something else . . .

  "Mother, come with me," Sheeana called.

  Thrusting Waff ahead of her, Odrade obeyed. They scrambled up the sandy slope behind Sheeana. Dislodged sand spilled down beside the waiting worm, piling up in the defile. Ahead of them, the worm's tapering tail curved along the dune crest. Sheeana led them at a sand-clotted trot to the very tip of the thing. There, she gripped the leading edge of a ring in the corrugated surface and scrambled up onto her desert beast.

  More slowly, Odrade and Waff followed. The worm's warm surface felt non-organic to Odrade, as though it were some Ixian artifact.

  Sheeana skipped forward along the back and squatted just behind its mouth where the rings bulged thick and wide.

  "Like this," Sheeana said. She leaned forward and clutched beneath the leading edge of a ring, lifting it slightly to expose pink softness underneath.

  Waff obeyed her immediately but Odrade moved with more caution, storing impressions. The ring surface was as hard as plascrete and covered with tiny encrustations. Odrade's fingers probed the softness under the leading edge. It pulsed faintly. The surface around them lifted and fell with an almost imperceptible rhythm. Odrade heard a tiny rasping with each movement.

  Sheeana kicked the worm surface behind her.

  "Shaitan, go!" she said.

  The worm did not respond.

  "Please, Shaitan," Sheeana pleaded.

  Odrade heard the desperation in Sheeana's voice. The child was so confident of her Shaitan but Odrade knew that the girl had been allowed to ride only that first time. Odrade had the full story from death-wish to priestly confusion but none of it told her what would happen next.

  Abruptly, the worm lurched into motion. It lifted sharply, twisted to the left and made a tight curve out of the rocky defile, then moved directly away from Dar-es-Balat into the open desert.

  "We go with God!" Waff shouted.

  The sound of his voice shocked Odrade. Such wildness! She sensed the power in his faith. The thwock-thwock of following ornithopters came from overhead. The wind of their passage whipped past Odrade full of ozone and the hot furnace odors stirred up by the friction of the rushing behemoth.

  Odrade glanced over her shoulders at the 'thopters, thinking how easy it would be for enemies to rid this planet of a troublesome child, an equally troublesome Reverend Mother and a despised Tleilaxu -- all in one violently vulnerable moment on the open desert. The priestly cabal might attempt it, she knew, hoping that Odrade's own watchers up there would be too late to prevent it.

  Would curiosity and fear hold them back?

  Odrade admitted to a mighty curiosity herself.

  Where is this thing taking us?

  Certainly, it was not headed toward Keen. She lifted her head and peered past Sheeana. On the horizon directly ahead lay that tell-tale indentation of fallen stones, that place where the Tyrant had been spilled from the surface of his faery bridge.

  The place of Other Memory warning.

  Abrupt revelation locked Odrade's mind. She understood the warning. The Tyrant had died at a place of his own choosing. Many deaths had left their imprint on that place but his the greatest. The Tyrant chose his peregrination route with purpose. Sheeana had not told her worm to go there. It moved that way of its own volition. The magnet of the Tyrant's endless dream drew it back to the place where the dream began.

  There was this drylander who was asked which was more important, a literjon of water or a vast pool of water? The drylander thought a moment and then said: "The literjon is more important. No single person could own a great pool of water. But a literjon you could hide under your cloak and run away with it. No one would know."

  -The Jokes of Ancient Dune, Bene Gesserit Archives

  It was a long session in the no-globe's practice hall, Duncan in a mobile cage driving the exercise, adamant that this particular training series would continue until his new body had adapted to the seven central attitudes of combat response against attack from eight directions. His green singlesuit was dark with perspiration. Twenty days they had been at this one lesson!

  Teg knew the ancient lore that Duncan revived here but knew it by different names and sequencing. Before they had been into it five days, Teg doubted the superiority of modern methods. Now, he was convinced that Duncan did something completely new -- mixing the old with what he had learned in the Keep.

  Teg sat at his own control console, as much an observer as a participant. The consoles that guided the dangerous shadow forces in this practice had required mental adjustment by Teg, but he felt familiar with them now and moved the attack with facility and frequent inspiration.

  A simmering Lucilla glanced into the hall occasionally. She watched and then left without comment. Teg did not know what Duncan was doing about the Imprinter but there was a feeling that the reawakened ghola played a delaying game with his seductress. She would not allow that to continue long, Teg knew, but it was out of his hands. Duncan no longer was "too young" for the Imprinter. That young body carried a mature male mind with experiences from which to make his own decisions.

  Duncan and Teg had been on the floor with only one break all morning. Hunger pangs gnawed at Teg but he felt reluctant to halt the session. Duncan's abilities had climbed to a new level today and he was still improving.

  Teg, seated in a fixed console's cage seat, twisted the attack forces into a complex maneuver, striking from left, right, and above.

  The Harkonnen armory had produced an abundance of these exotic weapons and training instruments, some of which Teg had known only from historical accounts. Duncan knew them all, apparently, and with an intimacy that Teg admired. Hunter-seekers geared to penetrate a force shield were part of the shadow system they used now.

  "They automatically slow down to go through the shield," Duncan explained in his young-old voice. "Too fast a strike, of course, and the shield repels."

  "Shields of that type have almost gone out of fashion," Teg said. "A few societies maintain them as a kind of sport but otherwise . . ."

  Duncan executed a riposte of blurred speed that dropped three hunter-seekers to the floor damaged enough to require the no-globe's maintenance services. He removed the cage and damped the system but left it idling while he came over to Teg, breathing deeply but easily. Looking past Teg, Duncan smiled and nodded. Teg whirled but there was only the flick of Lucilla's gown as she left them.

  "It's like a duel," Duncan said. "She tries to thrust through my guard and I counterattack."

  "Have a care," Teg said. "That's a full Reverend Mother."

  "I've known a few of them in my time, Bashar."

  Once more, Teg found himself confounded. He had been warned that he would have to readjust to this different Duncan Idaho but he had not fully anticipated the constant mental demands of that read
justment. The look in Duncan's eyes right now was disconcerting.

  "Our roles are changed a bit, Bashar," Duncan said. He picked up a towel from the floor and mopped his face.

  "I'm no longer sure of what I can teach you," Teg admitted. He wished, though, that Duncan would take his warning about Lucilla. Did Duncan imagine that the Reverend Mothers of those ancient days were identical with the women of today? Teg thought that highly unlikely. In the way of all other life, the Sisterhood evolved and changed.

  It was obvious to Teg that Duncan had come to a decision about his place in Taraza's machinations. Duncan was not merely biding his time. He was training his body to a personally chosen peak and he had made a judgment about the Bene Gesserit.