Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [229]
As he trudged along, a small piece of vegetation caught his eye. Halting the kulon behind him, he knelt to inspect the small, pale green plant that grew in a shaded niche where dust and sand had collected. He recognized the specimen as a rare root plant and brushed the dust from its tiny waxy leaves.
“Look here, Frieth,” he said, like a teacher, his eyes shining. “Marvelously tenacious.”
Frieth nodded. “We have dug those roots in times of need. It is said a single tuber can yield half a liter of water, enough for a person to survive for several days.”
Kynes wondered how much desert knowledge Stilgar’s sister held within her Fremen mind; until now she had shared virtually none of it with him. It was his own fault, he told himself, for not paying enough attention to her.
Eager to eat the fresh leaves of the struggling plant, the kulon lowered its muzzle to the ground, nostrils flaring as it sniffed. But Kynes nudged it away. “That plant is too important to be a snack for you.”
He scanned the ground, intent on finding other tubers, but noticed none in the immediate vicinity. From what he had learned, these plants were native to Dune, survivors of whatever cataclysm had drained or diverted the moisture from this world.
The travelers took a short break to feed their child. As Frieth set up a shade-floater on a ledge, Kynes recalled the work of recent months and the tremendous progress he and his people had already made as they began their centuries-long project.
Dune had once been a botanical testing station, an isolated outpost with a few sample plantings placed centuries ago in the days of Imperial expansion. This had been done even before the prescient and geriatric properties of melange were discovered . . . back when this world had been a desert hellhole with no discernible use. But the botanical stations had been abandoned; the sparse plantings as well as animal and insect life-forms were left to fare as best they could in the rough environment.
Many species had survived and diversified, demonstrating remarkable durability and adaptability . . . mutated sword grasses, cacti, and other arid-country vegetation. Kynes had already arranged with smugglers to bring in cargoes of the most promising seeds and embryos. Fremen workers then set about sowing the sands and spreading the precious seeds, each one a vital kernel of life, a grain of Dune’s future.
From a water merchant, Kynes had learned of the death of Emperor Elrood IX. That had brought back vivid memories of his audience on Kaitain, when the ancient ruler had given him his assignment to come here and research the ecology of Arrakis. The Planetologist owed his entire future to that one meeting. He owed Elrood a great debt of gratitude, but he doubted the ancient Emperor had even remembered him in the last year or so.
Upon hearing the startling news, Kynes had considered trudging back to Arrakeen, booking passage on a Heighliner, and attending the state funeral—but decided he would have felt entirely out of place. He was a desert dweller now, rugged, hardened, and far from the niceties of Imperial politics. Besides, Pardot Kynes had much more important work to complete here.
In the deep south, far from Harkonnen watchers, the Fremen had planted adaptive poverty grasses along the downwind sides of chosen dunes, anchoring them across the prevailing westerly winds. Once the slipfaces were held stable, the windward faces of the dunes grew higher and higher, trying to overcome the plantings, but the Fremen moved their grasses to keep pace, eventually building gigantic sifs that rose as a sinuous soft barrier for many kilometers, some of them more than fifteen hundred meters high. . . .
As he contemplated, Kynes heard his wife stirring under