Dune: House Atreides (57 page)

"Come. We must be ready for the arrival of Shai-Hulud," Stilgar said, nudging the Planetologist to follow as they trudged into position on the sun-drenched dunes. The Fremen whispered among themselves

Presently Kynes detected what he had experienced only once before, the unforgettable hissing, rushing roar of a sandworm's approach as it was drawn inexorably to the throb of the thumper.

On top of the dune Ommun crouched, grasping his hooks and goads. Long curls of rope hung at his waist. He remained perfectly motionless. His Fremen brethren waited on the crest of a nearby dune.

"There! Do you see it?" Stilgar said, hardly able to suppress his excitement.

He pointed off to the south where the sand rippled as if a subterranean warship were heading straight for the thumper.

Kynes didn't know what was going on. Did Ommun intend to battle the great beast? Some sort of a ceremony or sacrifice before their long journey across the desert?

"Be ready," Stilgar said and grasped Kynes's arm. "We will help you in every way we can."

Before the Planetologist could ask another question, a roaring vortex of sand formed around the thumper. Alert and battle-ready, Ommun skittered back, crouching down, ready to spring.

Then the enormous mouth of the sandworm emerged from the depths and engulfed the thumper. The monster's broad-ringed back rose out of the desert.

Ommun sprinted, running with all his might to keep pace with the moving worm, but he wallowed in the loose sand. Then he sprang, onto the arched, segmented back using the hooks and claws to haul himself atop one of the worm segments.

Kynes stared in awe, unable to organize his thoughts or comprehend what the daring young man was doing. This can't be happening, he thought. It's not possible.

Ommun dug one of his scooplike hooks into the crevice between worm segments and then yanked hard, separating the well-protected rings and exposing pinkish flesh underneath.

The worm rolled to keep its sensitive exposed segment away from the abrasive sands. Ommun scrambled up and planted another hook, spreading wide a second segment so that the worm was forced to rise higher out of its secret world beneath the desert. At the highest point on the worm's back, behind its huge head, the young Fremen planted a stake and dropped his long ropes so that they hung from the sides. Now he stood tall and proud on the worm, signaling for the others to come.

Cheering, the Fremen ran forward, bringing Kynes with them. He stumbled to keep up. Three other young men scaled the ropes, adding more of what they called

"maker hooks" to keep the worm above the dunes. The big creature began to move forward, but in a confused fashion, as if unable to understand why these bothersome creatures were goading it.

As the Fremen kept pace, they tossed up supplies; packs were lashed to the worm's back with more ropes. The first riders assembled a small structure as fast as they could. Prodded by Stilgar, an astonished Kynes ran up beside the towering worm. The Planetologist could feel friction heat rising from beneath, and he tried to imagine what awesome chemical fires formed a furnace deep within the worm itself.

"Up you go, Umma Kynes!" Stilgar shouted, helping him place his feet into loops in the ropes. Clumsily, Kynes scrambled up, his desert boots finding purchase on the worm's rough hide. He climbed and climbed. The simmering energy of Shai-Hulud caused him to lose his breath, but Stilgar helped him to the top where the other Fremen riders had gathered.

They had assembled a crude platform and seat for him, a palanquin. The other Fremen stood, holding their ropes against the enormous worm as if it were a bucking steed. Gratefully, Kynes took the proffered seat and held on to the arms. He had a disconcerting feeling up here, as if he didn't belong and could easily be toppled off and crushed to death. The rolling movement of the worm made his stomach lurch.

"Normally such seats are reserved for our Sayyadinas," Stilgar said. "But we know you do not have the training to ride Shai-Hulud, and so this shall be a place of honor for our prophet. There is no shame in it."

Kynes nodded distractedly and looked ahead. The other Fremen congratulated Ommun, who had successfully completed this important rite of passage. He was now a respected sandrider, a true man of the sietch.

Ommun pulled on the ropes and hooks, guiding the worm. "Haiiii-Yoh!" The huge sinuous creature raced across the sands, heading south . . . .

KYNES RODE ALL that day, with the dry, dusty wind blowing in his face and sunlight reflecting off the sands. He had no way of estimating the speed at which the worm cruised, but he knew it must be astonishing.

As the hot breezes whipped around him, he could smell freshets of oxygen and the flinty burned-stone odors of the worm's passage. In the absence of extensive plant cover on Dune, the Planetologist realized the worms themselves must generate much of the atmospheric oxygen.

It was all Kynes could do to hold on to his palanquin. He had no way to access his notes and records in the pack on his back. What a magnificent report this would make -- though he knew in his heart he could never give such information to the Emperor. No one but the Fremen knew this secret, and it must remain that way. We are actually riding a worm! He had other obligations now, new and far more important allegiances.

Centuries earlier, the Imperium had placed biological testing stations at strategic points on the surface of Dune, but such facilities had fallen into disrepair. In recent months Kynes had been reopening them, using a few Imperial troops assigned to the planet just to maintain appearances; for the most part, though, he staffed them with his own Fremen. He was amazed at the ability of his sietch brothers to infiltrate the system, find things for themselves, and employ technology. They were a marvelously adaptable breed -- and adapting was the only way to survive on a place like Dune.

Under Kynes's direction the Fremen workers stripped equipment from the isolated biological stations, took necessary items back to their sietches, and filled out paperwork to report the pieces as lost or damaged; the oblivious Imperium then replaced the losses with new instruments so that the station monitors could continue their work . . . .

After hours of rapid travel across the Great Flat, the enormous worm became sluggish, exhibiting obvious fatigue, and Ommun had difficulty exerting control.

The worm showed signs of wanting to bury itself beneath the sand, increasingly willing to risk abrading its sensitive, exposed tissue.

Finally Ommun brought the behemoth around until it ground to a halt, exhausted.

The troop of desert men dropped off while Kynes slid down the rough worm segments onto loose sand. Ommun tossed down the remaining packs and dismounted, letting the worm -- too utterly tired to turn and attack them -- wallow its way into the sands. The Fremen removed the hooks so the worm, their Shai-Hulud, could recover.

The men sprinted to a line of rock, where there would be caves and shelter, and

-- Kynes was surprised to see -- a small sietch that welcomed them for the night with food and conversation. Word of the Planetologist's dream had spread to all the secret places across Dune, and the sietch leader there told them it was his great honor to host Umma Kynes.

The next day the group set off again on another sandworm, and another. Kynes soon gained a more complete understanding of what Stilgar had meant with his assessment of a "twenty-thumper" journey.

The wind was fresh, and the sand was bright, and the Fremen took enormous pleasure in their grand adventure. Kynes sat atop his palanquin like an emperor himself, looking out over the desertscape. For him the dunes were endlessly fascinating, and yet strangely the same at so many latitudes.

Near Heinar's sietch a month earlier, Kynes had flown alone in his small Imperial ornithopter, exploring aimlessly. He had been blown off course by a small storm. He'd held control, even against the gusting winds, but he had been awestruck to look down upon the open sands where the storm had scoured clean a flat white basin -- a salt pan.

Kynes had seen such things before, but never here on Dune. The geological formation looked like a white mirrored oval, marking the boundaries of what had once been an open sea thousands of years ago. By his estimate, the pan was three hundred kilometers long. It thrilled him to imagine that in the past, this basin might have been a large inland ocean.

Kynes had landed the 'thopter and stepped out in his stillsuit, ducking low and squinting into the blowing dust. He knelt and dug his fingers into the powdery white surface. He tasted his fingertip to confirm what he'd suspected. Bitter salt. Now he could have no doubt that there had once been open water on this world. But for some reason it had all disappeared.

As successive sandworms took them below the equator and into the deep southern portion of the wasteland planet, Kynes saw many other such things to remind him of his discovery: glinting depressions that might have been the remnants of ancient lakes, other open water. He mentioned these things to his Fremen guides, but they could explain them only by myths and legends that made no scientific sense. His fellow travelers seemed more intent on their destination.

Finally, after exhausting and long days, they left the last worm behind. The Fremen pushed on into the rocky landscapes of the deep southern regions of Dune, near the antarctic circle where the great Shai-Hulud refused to travel. Though a few water merchants had explored the northern ice caps, the lower latitudes remained primarily uninhabited, avoided, shrouded in mystery. No one came here

-- except for these Fremen.

Growing more and more excited, the troop walked for a day over gravelly ground, until finally Kynes saw what they had been so eager to show him. Here, the Fremen had created and tended a vast treasure.

Not far from the diminutive polar ice cap in a region where he had been told the weather was too cold and inhospitable for habitation, the Fremen of various sietches had set up a secret camp. Following the length of a wash, they entered a rugged canyon. The floor was composed of stones rounded from long-ago running water. The air was chilly, but warmer than he had ever expected so deep in the antarctic circle.

From a sheer cliff overhead where ice and cold winds at the top gave way to warmer air in the depths, water actually trickled from cracks in the rock-and ran seasonally along the length of the wash they had followed to get there. The Fremen teams had cleverly installed solar mirrors and magnifiers in the cliff walls to warm the air and melt frost from the ground. And there, in the rocky soil, they had nurtured plants.

Kynes was speechless. It was his dream, before his very eyes!

He wondered if the source could be water from hot springs, but upon touching it he found it to be cool. He tasted, and found it not sulfurous but refreshing --easily the best he had drunk since coming to Dune. Pure water, not recycled a thousand times through filters and stillsuits.

"Behold our secret, Umma Kynes," Stilgar said. "We have done all this in less than a year."

Tufts of hardy grass grew in moist patches on the floor of the arroyo, bright desert sunflowers, even the low, creeping vines of a tough gourd plant. But most amazing of all, Kynes saw rows of stunted young date palms, clinging to life, sucking up the moisture that found its way through cracks in the porous rock and seeped up from a water table beneath the canyon floor.

"Palm trees!" he said. "You've already begun."

"Yes, Umma." Stilgar nodded. "We can see a glimpse of Dune's future here. As you promised us, it can be done. Fremen from all across the world have already begun your tasks of scattering grasses on the downwind sides of the dunes to anchor them."

Kynes beamed. So, they had been listening to him after all! Those scattered grasses would spread out their webwork of roots, retaining water, stabilizing the dunes. With equipment stolen from the biological testing stations, the Fremen could continue their work of cutting catchbasins, erecting windstills, and finding other means to grasp every droplet of water borne on the wind . . .

.

His group remained in the sheltered canyon for several days, and Kynes felt giddy with what he saw there. As they camped and slept and walked among the palmaries, Fremen from other sietches came at intervals. This place seemed to be a new gathering point for the hidden people. Emissaries arrived to gaze with awe upon the palm trees and plants growing in the open air, upon the faint smear of moisture oozing from the rocks.

One evening a single sandrider came trudging in carrying his gear, looking for Umma Kynes. Breathless, the newly arrived traveler lowered his eyes, as if he didn't want to meet the Planetologist's gaze.

"At your command, our numbering has been completed," he announced. "We have received word from all the sietches, and we now know how many Fremen there are."

"Good," Kynes said, smiling. "I need an approximate number so I can plan for our work." Then he waited expectantly.

The young man looked up and stared at him directly with blue-in-blue eyes. "The sietches are counted in excess of five hundred."

Kynes drew a quick breath. Far more than he had suspected!

"And the number of actual Fremen on Dune is approximately ten million. Would you like me to compile the exact numbers, Umma Kynes?"

Kynes staggered backward with a gasp. Incredible! The Imperial estimates and the Harkonnen reports had implied mere hundreds of thousands, a million at the very most.

"Ten million!" He hugged the astonished young Fremen messenger. So many willing workers. With such an army of laborers, we can indeed remake an entire planet!

The messenger beamed and stepped back, bowing at the honor the Planetologist had shown him.

"And there is more news, Umma Kynes," the man said. "I've been instructed to tell you that your wife Frieth has given birth to a strong young son who is sure to be the pride of his sietch one day."

Kynes gasped and didn't know what to say. He was a father! He looked at Ommun and Stilgar and the members of his exploration team. The Fremen raised their hands and shouted congratulations to him. He had not let it penetrate through his consciousness until now, but he felt a flood of pride washing over his surprise.