Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [194]
Some of the Fremen bit back groans of despair, while the rest listened stoically to the Umma, and then set about doing what he asked. Three hundred to five hundred years. Long-term thinking, beyond their personal lifetimes. The Fremen had to alter their ways.
Seeing a vision from God, the would-be assassin Uliet had sacrificed himself for this man. From that moment on, the Fremen had been fully convinced of Kynes’s divine inspiration. He had only to point, and any Fremen in the sietch would do as he bid.
The feeling of power might have been abused by any other person. But Pardot Kynes simply took it in stride and continued his work. He envisioned the future in terms of eons and worlds, not in terms of individuals or small plots of land.
Now, as the sun vanished below the sands in a brassy symphony of color, Kynes drained the last drops of his spice coffee, then wiped a forearm across his sandy beard. Despite what Heinar had said, he found it difficult to reflect patiently on the past year . . . the demands of the labors for centuries to come seemed so much more significant, so much more demanding of his attention.
“Heinar, how many Fremen are there?” he asked, staring across the serene open desert. He’d heard tales of many other sietches, had seen isolated Fremen in the Harkonnen towns and villages . . . but they seemed like the ghosts of an endangered species. “How many in the whole world?”
“Do you wish us to count our numbers, Umma Kynes?” Heinar asked, not in disbelief, simply clarifying an order.
“I need to know your population if I’m to project our terraforming activities. I must understand just how many workers we have available.”
Heinar stood up. “It shall be done. We shall number our sietches, and tally the people in them. I will send sandriders and distrans bats to all the communities, and we shall have an accounting for you soon.”
“Thank you.” Kynes picked up his cup, but before he could gather the dishes himself, Frieth rushed out of the cave shadows—she must have been waiting there for them to finish—and gathered up the pieces of the coffee service. Her pregnancy hadn’t slowed her down at all.
The first Fremen census, Kynes thought. A momentous occasion.
Bright-eyed and eager, Stilgar came to Kynes’s cavern quarters the next morning. “We are packing for your long journey, Umma Kynes. Far to the south. We have important things to show you.”
Since his recovery from the Harkonnen knife wound, Stilgar had become one of Kynes’s most devoted followers. He seemed to draw status from his relationship with the Planetologist, his brother-in-law. Stilgar served not for himself, though, but for the greater good of the Fremen.
“How long will the journey be?” Kynes inquired. “And where are we going?”
The young man’s grin sparkled, a broad display of white. “A surprise! This is something you must see, or you may not believe. Think of it as a gift from us to you.”
Curious, Kynes looked over at his work alcove. He would bring along his notes to document this journey. “But how long will it take?”
“Twenty thumpers,” Stilgar answered in the terminology of the deep desert, then called over his shoulder as he left, “Far to the south.”
Kynes’s wife Frieth, now enormously pregnant, nevertheless spent long hours working the looms and the stillsuit-repair benches. This morning Kynes finished his coffee and breakfasted at her side, though they spoke little to each other. Frieth simply watched him, and he felt he didn’t understand a thing.
Fremen women seemed to have their own separate world, their own place in the society of these desert dwellers, with no connection to the interaction Kynes had found elsewhere in the Imperium. It was said, though, that Fremen women