Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [165]
“The Heighliner should have returned by now. Something is wrong. Guild Navigators are never late.”
“He did not promise to come back. When is Guriff’s next CHOAM ship due to arrive? You are welcome to depart on it.” In fact, I encourage that.
“The Navigator may not be concerned with you, Tleilaxu, but he made promises to us.”
Waff didn’t care about the insult. “Then he will return, eventually. If nothing else, he will want to know how my new sandworms are doing.”
The Guild assistant frowned at the flayed creature spread out on the analytical table. “Your pets do not appear to be thriving.”
“Today I will go out and monitor the specimens I released earlier. I expect to find them healthy, and stronger than ever.”
When the flustered Guildsman left, Waff changed into external protective clothing and hopped into the camp’s groundcar. The locator signals showed him that the released worms had not ranged far from the ruins of Sietch Tabr. Attempting to be optimistic, he assumed they had found a habitable subterranean band and were establishing their new domain. As more and more worms grew on Rakis, they would become tillers of the soil, restoring the desert to its former glory. Sandworms, sandtrout, sandplankton, melange. The great ecological cycle would be reestablished.
Reciting ritual prayers, Waff drove across the eerie black-glass desert. His muscles trembled and his bones ached. Like the assembly lines in a war-damaged factory, his degenerating organs labored to keep him alive. Waff’s flawed body could fall apart any day now, but he was not afraid. He had died already—many times, in fact.
Always before, he’d had the faith and confidence that a new ghola was being grown for him. This time, though convinced he would not return to life, Waff was content with what he had accomplished. His legacy. The evil Honored Matres had tried to exterminate God’s Messenger on Rakis, and Waff would bring Him back. What greater accomplishment could a man hope to attain in this life? In any number of lives?
Following the tracker signals, he drove away from the weathered mountains, to the dunes. Ah, the new sandworms must have fled out into open terrain, looking for fresh sand in which to bury themselves and begin their lives anew!
Instead, what he saw horrified him.
He easily located the eight fledgling worms. Much too easily. Waff stopped the groundcar and scrambled out. The hot, thin air made him gasp, and his lungs and throat burned. He could barely see through stinging tears as he hurried forward.
His precious sandworms lay on the hard ground, barely moving. They had cracked the melted crust of the dunes and churned through the soft grainy dirt beneath, only to emerge again. And now they lay dying.
Waff knelt beside one of the weak, failing creatures. It was flaccid, grayish, barely twitching. Another had heaved itself high enough to sprawl across a broken rock, and there it lay deflated and unable to move. Waff touched it, pressed down on the hard rings. The worm hissed and flinched.
“You cannot die! You are the Prophet, and this is Rakis, your home, your holy sanctuary. You must live!” His body was wracked by a spasm of pain, as if his own life was tied to those of the sandworms. “You can’t perish, not again!”
But it seemed that the crippling damage to this world was simply too much for the worms. If even the great Prophet Himself could not endure, then these must assuredly be the End Times.
He had heard of it in ancient prophecies: Kralizec, the great battle at the end of the universe. The crux point that would change everything. Without God’s Messenger, surely humanity would be lost. The final days were at hand.
Waff pressed his forehead against the dusty, dying creature’s yielding surface. He had done everything he could. Maybe Rakis would never again support the behemoth worms. Maybe this was indeed the end.
From what he saw with his own eyes, he could not deny that the Prophet had truly fallen.
People strive to achieve perfection—ostensibly an honorable goal—but complete