Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [193]
After a long moment, Kynes nodded distractedly at the Naib’s comment. “Yes, I’ve accomplished much, but I still have plenty to do.” He thought of the remarkably complex plans required to complete his dream of a reborn Dune, a planetary name little known in the Imperium.
Imperium. He rarely thought of the old Emperor now—his own priorities, the emphasis of his life, had changed so greatly. Kynes could never go back to being a mere Imperial Planetologist, not after all he’d been through with these desert people.
Heinar clasped his friend’s wrist. “It is said that sunset is a time for reflection and assessment, my friend. Let us look to what we have done, rather than permit the empty gulf of the future to overwhelm us. You have been on this planet for only a little more than a year, yet already you have found a new tribe, a new wife.” Heinar smiled. “And soon you will have a new child, a son perhaps.”
Kynes returned the smile wistfully. Frieth was nearly through her gestation period. He was somewhat surprised that the pregnancy had happened at all, since he was gone so frequently. He still wasn’t certain how to react to his impending role as a first-time father. He had never thought about it before.
However, the birth would fit in neatly with the overall plan he had for this astounding planet. His child, growing up to lead the Fremen long after Kynes himself was gone, could help continue their efforts. The master plan was designed to take centuries.
As a Planetologist, he had to think in the long term, something the Fremen were not in the habit of doing—though, given their long, troubled past, they should have been accustomed to it. The desert people had an oral history going back thousands of years, tales told in the sietch describing their endless wanderings from planet to planet, a people enslaved and persecuted, until finally they had made a home here where no one else could bear to live.
The Fremen way was a conservative one, little changed from generation to generation, and these people were not used to considering the broad scope of progress. Assuming their environment could not be adapted, they remained its prisoners, rather than its masters.
Kynes hoped to change all that. He had mapped out his great plan, including rough timetables for plantings and the accumulation of water, milestones for each successive achievement. Hectare by hectare, Dune would be rescued from the wasteland.
His Fremen teams were scouring the surface, taking core samples from the Great Bled, geological specimens from the Minor Erg and the Funeral Plain—but many terraforming factors still remained unknown variables.
Pieces fell into place daily. When he expressed a desire for better maps of the planet’s surface, he was astonished to learn that the Fremen already had detailed topographical charts, even climatic surveys. “Why is it that I couldn’t get these before?” Kynes said. “I was the Imperial Planetologist, and the maps I received from satellite cartography were woefully inaccurate.”
Old Heinar had smiled at him, squinting his one eye. “We pay a substantial bribe to the Spacing Guild to keep them from watching us too closely. The cost is high, but the Fremen are free—and the Harkonnens remain in the dark, along with the rest of the Imperium.”
Kynes was astonished at first, then simply pleased, to have much of the geographical information he needed. Immediately he dispatched traders to deal with smugglers and obtain genetically engineered seeds of vigorous desert plants. He had to design and build an entire ecosystem from scratch.
In large council meetings, the Fremen asked their new “prophet” what the next step