Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [10]
Sensing that Odrade was once again available, Murbella said to her dead mentor in the silence of her mind, “I wish this sort of thing were not necessary.”
Your way is more brutal than I’d prefer, but your challenges are great, and different from mine. I entrusted you with the task of the Sisterhood’s survival. Now the work falls to you.
“You are dead and relegated to the role of observer.”
Odrade-within chuckled. I find that role to be far less stressful.
Throughout the internal exchange, Murbella kept her face a placid mask, since so many in the receiving hall were watching her.
From beside the ornate throne, the aged and enormously fat Bellonda leaned over. “The Guildship has arrived. We are escorting their six-member delegation here with all due speed.” Bell had been Odrade’s foil and companion. The two had disagreed a great deal, especially about the Duncan Idaho project.
“I have decided to make them wait. No need to let them think we are anxious to see them.” She knew what the Guild wanted. Spice. Always the same, spice.
Bellonda’s chins folded together as she nodded. “Certainly. We can find endless formalities to observe, if you wish. Give the Guild a taste of their own bureaucracy.”
Legend holds that a pearl of Leto II’s awareness remains within each of the sandworms that arose from his divided body. The God Emperor himself said he would henceforth live in an endless dream. But what if he should waken? When he sees what we have done with ourselves, will the Tyrant laugh at us?
—PRIESTESS ARDATH,
the Cult of Sheeana on the planet Dan
T
hough the desert planet had been roasted clean of all life, the soul of Dune survived aboard the no-ship. Sheeana herself had seen to that.
She and her sober-faced aide Garimi stood at the viewing window above the Ithaca’s great hold. Garimi watched the shallow dunes stirring as the seven captive sandworms moved. “They have grown.”
The worms were smaller than the behemoths Sheeana remembered from Rakis, but larger than any she had seen on the overly moist desert band of Chapterhouse. The environmental controls in this ship’s vast hold were precise enough to provide a perfect simulated desert.
Sheeana shook her head, knowing that the creatures’ primitive memories must recall swimming through an endless sea of dunes. “Our worms are crowded, restless. They have no place to go.”
Just before the whores obliterated Rakis, Sheeana had rescued an ancient sandworm and transported it to Chapterhouse. Near death when it arrived, the mammoth creature broke down soon after it touched the fertile soil, and its skin fissioned into thousands of reproducing sandtrout that burrowed into the ground. Over the next fourteen years, those sandtrout began to transform the lush world into another arid wasteland, a new home for the worms. Finally, when conditions were right, the magnificent creatures rose again—small ones at first that over time would become larger and more powerful.
When Sheeana had decided to escape from Chapterhouse, she took some of the stunted sandworms with her.
Fascinated by movement in the sand, Garimi leaned closer to the plaz observation window. The dark-haired aide’s expression was so serious it belonged on a woman decades older. Garimi was a workhorse, a true Bene Gesserit conservative who had the parochial tendency to see the world around her as straightforward, black-and-white. Though younger than Sheeana, she clung more to Bene Gesserit purity and was deeply offended by the idea of the hated Honored Matres joining the Sisterhood. Garimi had helped Sheeana develop the risky plan that allowed them to escape from the “corruption.”
Looking at the restless worms, Garimi said, “Now that we are out of that other universe, when will Duncan find us a world? When will he decide we’re safe?”
The Ithaca had been built to serve as a great city in space. Artificially lit sectors were designed as greenhouses for produce, while algae vats and recycling ponds provided less palatable food. Because it carried