Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [67]
Scowling, Doria steadied the controls. “That does not make us in any way alike.”
Below, patches of sand and dust swirled, temporarily obscuring the ground. The dunes were encroaching on a line of already dead trees. Comparing the coordinates on a bulkhead screen with her notebook, Bellonda estimated that the desert had advanced by almost fifty kilometers in only a few months. More sand meant more territory for the growing worms, and consequently more spice. Murbella would be pleased.
When the air currents smoothed, Bellonda spotted an interesting exposed rock formation that had previously been obscured by thick forest. On a sheer side of the rock, she saw a magnificent splash of primitive paintings in red and yellow ochre that had somehow endured the passage of time. She had heard of these ancient sites, supposedly indications of the mysterious, vanished Muadru people from millennia past, but she had never seen evidence of them before. It surprised her that the lost race had reached this obscure planet. What had drawn them all the way out here?
Not surprisingly, Doria showed no interest whatsoever in the archaeological oddity.
Presently the aircraft landed on a flat section of rock, near one of the first worm observatories Odrade had established. The small, blocky structure towered above them as they disembarked. When the ’thopter’s canopy opened and the two stepped out onto the drifting dunes near Desert Watch Station, Bellonda felt perspiration at her temples and in the small of her back, despite the cooling properties of the black singlesuit.
She took a long sniff. The parched landscape smelled dead with all the vegetation and soil gone. This desert band was dry enough for sandworms to grow, though it had not yet achieved the flinty, sterile cleanness of the real desert on lost Rakis.
Taking a lift tube to the top of the station tower, Bellonda and Doria entered the reinforced observatory. In the distance they could see a small spice-harvesting operation where a mixed crew of men and women worked a vein of rust-colored sand.
Doria used a high-powered viewing scope to gaze out over the dunes. “Wormsign!”
Through her own scope, Bellonda watched a mound in motion just beneath the sand. Judging from the size of the moving ripple, the worm was small, only five meters or so. Farther out in the dune sea, she spotted another small sand-dweller churning in toward the spice operations. These new-generation worms did not yet have the power and ferocity to mark out their territories.
“Larger worms will create more melange,” Bellonda said. “In a few years, our specimens may pose a genuine danger to the spice crews. We may have to institute the more expensive hovering harvesters.”
Updating charts on her handheld data screen, Doria said, “Soon we will be able to export large enough quantities of spice to make ourselves rich. We can buy all the new equipment we like.”
“The purpose of the spice is to increase the power of our New Sisterhood, not to line your pockets. What good is wealth, if none of us survives the Enemy? Given enough spice, we can build a powerful army.”
Doria shot her a hard glare. “You parrot the Mother Commander so well.” Gazing through the angled windows toward the faint shadows of forests smothered beneath the sand, Doria shielded her eyes against the glare. “Such devastation. When Honored Matres did a similar thing to your planets with their Obliterators, you called it senseless destruction. Yet on your own planet, you Sisters take pride in it.”
“Transformation is often a messy business, and not everyone sees the end result as a good thing. It is a matter of perspective. And intelligence.”
Evil can be detected by its smell.
—PAUL MUAD’DIB,
the original
K
hrone received regular reports on the child Baron’s progress from his many Face Dancers in Bandalong. At first he had asked for the creation of the ghola out of mere curiosity, but by the time the baby was two years old, he had developed plans