Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [158]
“And what are they to do with these weapons?” Jessica asked, though the answer was obvious to everyone.
The robot looked at her in surprise. “It is only appropriate that we solve this problem in a particularly human way: a duel to the death, of course! Is that not perfect?”
The worm is outside for all to see, and the worm is within me, part of me. Beware, for I am the worm. Beware!
—LETO II,
Dar-es-Balat recordings, in his voice
After Paul and his companions were taken from the no-ship, Sheeana found young Leto II in his quarters. Huddling all alone in the dark, the youth was feverish and trembling. At first she thought he was terrified at having been left behind, but she soon realized he was genuinely sick.
Seeing her, the boy forced himself to his feet. He swayed, and perspiration glistened on his brow. He looked pleadingly at her. “Reverend Mother Sheeana! You’re the only one—the only one who knows the worms.” His large, dark eyes flicked from side to side. “Can you hear them? I can.”
She frowned. “Hear them? I don’t—”
“The sandworms! The worms in the hold. They’re calling me, tunneling through my mind, tearing me up inside.”
Raising her hand for silence, she paused, deep in thought. All her life, Shaitan had understood her, but she had never received any actual messages from the creatures, even when she’d tried to become part of them.
But now, by extending her senses she did feel a tumultuous thrumming in her head and through the walls of the damaged no-ship. Since the Ithaca’s capture, Sheeana had ascribed such feelings to the crushing weight of failure after their long flight. But now she began to understand. Something had been scraping through her subconscious, like dull fingernails raking across the slate of her fear. Subsonic pulses of invitation. The sandworms.
“We have to go to the hold,” Leto announced. “They are calling. They . . . I know what to do.”
Sheeana gripped the boy’s shoulders. “What is it? What do we have to do?”
He pointed to himself. “Something of me is inside the worms. Shai-Hulud is calling.”
With the no-ship safely trapped in living-metal constructions, the thinking machines paid little attention to the vessel. Apparently, they had wanted to own and control the Kwisatz Haderach . . . a goal that was not as simple as it sounded, as the Sisterhood had learned long ago. Now that he had Paul Atreides in his machine cathedral, Omnius seemed to think he possessed everything he needed. The remaining passengers were irrelevant prisoners of war.
The Bene Gesserits had planned the creation of their superman over hundreds of generations, subtly guiding bloodlines and breeding maps to produce the long-anticipated messiah. But after Paul Muad’Dib turned against them and created havoc in their carefully ordered timeline, the Sisters had vowed never to unleash another Kwisatz Haderach. But in the long-ago aftermath, Muad’Dib’s twin children had been born before the damage could be fully understood. One of those twins, Leto II, had been a Kwisatz Haderach, like his father.
A key turned in Sheeana’s mind, unlocking other thoughts. Perhaps in the solemn twelve-year-old Leto, the thinking machines had a blind spot! Could he be the final Kwisatz Haderach they sought? Had Omnius even considered the possibility that the machines might have the wrong one? Her pulse quickened. Prophecies were notorious for misdirection. Maybe Erasmus had missed the obvious! She could hear the inner voice of Serena Butler laughing at the possibility, and she allowed herself to cling to a tiny kernel of hope.
“Let’s go to the cargo hold, then.” Sheeana took the boy’s hand, and they hurried down the corridors and dropchutes to the lower levels.
As they approached the great doors, Sheeana heard explosive thunder from the other side. The frenzied worms charged from one end of the kilometer-long space to the other, smashing into the walls.
By the time they arrived at