Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [109]
Guriff’s hard-bitten prospectors happily accepted supplies that Waff and the Guildsmen offered as a gesture of goodwill. Waff’s primary motivation for this was to get the men to leave him alone while he conducted his innocuous “geological investigations.” The prospectors were supplied by irregular CHOAM vessels that came to check on their work, but Guriff had no idea when the next ship would come. The Tleilaxu Master had enough packaged food from the Heighliner to last for years, if his deteriorating body lasted that long.
Above all, he needed to tend to his worms.
As he’d hoped, the prospectors spent the harsh days and nights concentrating on their own digging, hoping to find the legendary lost hoard of the Tyrant’s melange. Insulated scout cruisers braved the rugged weather, carrying sensors and probes up to the polar regions, while the men bored test holes, searching unsuccessfully for any threads of spice.
The large dropbox from Edrik’s Heighliner had included a wide-bed groundcar that could roll across even the roughest terrain. When the prospectors departed, Waff called his four Guildsmen to assist him. With no curious eyes watching, they wrestled the long, sand-filled test tanks aboard his groundcar. Waff would make a pilgrimage out into the charred and glassy wasteland that had once been a sea of dunes.
“I will release the specimens myself. I don’t need your assistance.” He directed the Guildsmen to return to the rigid-walled survival tents. “Stay and prepare our food—and make certain you follow the accepted ways.” He had given them precise instructions on the proper techniques. “Once I free the worms, I intend to come back for a celebration.”
He did not want Guriff and his men, nor any of these untrustworthy Guild assistants, to observe such a private and holy moment. Today he would restore the Prophet to Rakis, to the planet where He belonged. Dressed in protective clothing, he keyed in coordinates and drove off with the two long aquariums in the back of his groundcar. Heading due east, he sped away into a ruddy orange dawn.
Although the landscape here was smeared, eroded, and unrecognizable, Waff knew exactly where he was going. Before coming to Rakis, he had dug up the old charts, and because the Honored Matres’ Obliterators had altered even the planetary magnetic field, he had carefully recalibrated his maps from orbit. A long time ago, God’s Messenger had purposefully carried him to the location of Sietch Tabr. The worms must consider it sacred, and Waff could think of no more appropriate place to turn loose the armored, augmented creatures. He drove there now.
Light from the dust-thickened sky bathed the glassy ground in eerie colors. From the tanks behind him, Waff could feel the thumping of the worms as they writhed, impatient to burst out onto the open desert. Home.
Back on the Heighliner, Waff had observed the bucking and thrashing creatures, measuring their growth in the lab. He knew the worms were dangerous, and that long confinement in small tanks sapped the creatures’ strength. Even under carefully controlled conditions, he hadn’t been able to replicate the optimal environment, and the specimens had weakened. Something was wrong.
But hope infused him. Now that he was actually here, all would be right again. Holy Rakis! He could only pray that this injured dune world would provide what a Tleilaxu Master could not, offering some ineffable benefit to the worms, to the Prophet.
When Waff reached the plain and saw the melted rocks, he remembered the weathered line of mountains that had sheltered the buried tomb of the Fremen city. He stopped the groundcar. A vitrified crust—rocky grains melted to glass by the blasts of incomprehensible weapons—covered what had once been open sand. But the worms would know what to do.
Behind the vehicle,