Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [203]
No matter how much Liet-Kynes worked to remake Qelso, it would never be Dune. The fertile landscape was giving way to dry waves of sand, but it would not be the same. Eons ago, had Arrakis been fertile? Had some forgotten superior civilization transplanted sandtrout and sandworms there, much as Mother Superior Odrade had when she sent her Bene Gesserit to Qelso? Perhaps it had been the Muadru, who left mysterious symbols on rocks and cliffs, and in caves across the galaxy. Liet didn’t know. His father might have been intrigued by the mystery, but Liet considered himself more practical.
Preparing for the day’s work, he looked over at Stilgar, whose eyes had begun to turn blue-within-blue. For years the people here had stubbornly denied themselves the use of melange, but Stilgar called it a sacred reward from the desert, a gift from Shai-Hulud. He had small groups harvesting spice for their own uses, and Liet knew that spice was like a velvet chain—pleasant enough, until one tried to break free of it.
Two chattering and flirtatious teenage girls brought the men breakfast on a tray, knowing what Stilgar and Liet preferred for their morning meal. The girls were lovely, but so young. Liet knew they saw only his youthful body, not knowing how many years he carried in his mind. At times like these, he truly missed his wife Faroula, Chani’s mother. But that had been so long ago. . . .
Stilgar, however, remained the same. After they finished their coffee and sweet cakes, Liet stood and clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Today we will go out into the deep dunes and plant weather devices. We need better resolution to track the desiccation patterns.”
“Why do you obsess over details? The desert is the desert. It will always be hot and dry, and here on Qelso it will keep growing.” The former naib did not see anything particularly tragic or wrong with the dying ecosystem. To Stilgar, it was the natural order of things. “Shai-Hulud continues to build his domain no matter what you do.”
“The scientist pursues knowledge,” Liet said, and his companion had no answer for that.
Taking one of the small flyers the Ithaca had left behind, he had gone to the northern and as yet undamaged latitudes where the forests stood tall, the rivers flowed, and snowcaps crowned the mountains. Cities and towns still flourished in the valleys and on the hillsides, though the people knew they would all be gone before long. Var’s commandos were poignantly reminded every day of how much they were missing, how much they had lost. Stilgar did not see it.
The two friends, along with a group of rugged volunteers, donned newly manufactured stillsuits and adjusted the fittings. When the commandos marched into the open desert, they walked in single file on the dunes. Liet had them practice the random stutter-step that would not attract a worm. The yellow sun grew swiftly hotter, reflecting off the granular sands, but they plodded onward, practicing their lives here. Far in the distance Liet saw the rusty-brown smear of powdery smoke that indicated a spice blow, and he thought he saw the rippling tracks of a worm moving out there.
Stilgar shouted and pointed up at the sky. The desert men instinctively clustered together in a defensive formation.
Hundreds of huge metallic ships suddenly descended, made of angular plates bristling with weapons and powered by enormous engines. The vessels looked like nothing Liet had ever seen before. Enemy ships?
For a moment he hoped the Ithaca had returned with them, but these were unlike the no-ship and unusual in their formation, moving in a coordinated fashion. They dropped indiscriminately onto the open desert, scattering sand and flattening dunes. Their pilots seemed oblivious to the fact that the dull vibrations would attract sandworms. As Liet stood gaping at the ships’ sheer size, he had no doubt that their weapons could brush aside a worm attack as if it were no more than a nuisance.
The dusty