Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [208]
Soon, Sheeana thought, she would go and speak to them again.
She looked down at the little girl at her side and grasped her small hand. Perhaps one day she would even take her protégée with her, the young ghola of Serena Butler.
It was never too early to start preparing Serena for her role.
The desert has a beauty I could not forget in a thousand lifetimes.
—PAUL MUAD’DIB ATREIDES
Bathed in the golden rays of sunset, two figures made their way along the crest of a dune, their steps irregular so that they did not attract the huge sandworms. The pair walked side by side, inseparable.
It was warm on Dune, but not like old times. Because of the severe damage to the environment, the weather had cooled and the atmosphere had thinned. But with the return of the worms, along with sandplankton and sandtrout bursting through the cracked shell of glassy dunes, the old planet had begun to come back. As Chani’s father Liet-Kynes used to say, everything on Dune was tied together, an entire ecosystem that included the land, the available water, and the air.
And, thanks to Duncan Idaho, an extensive work force of hardened machines continued the excavation process in latitudes where the sandworms had not yet returned. Methodically, the mechanical army prepared the old sand section by section, opening the way for worms to expand their territory. Massive planting and fertilization work performed by powerful thinking-machine tractors and excavators had stabilized the seared ground, establishing a new biomatrix, while Paul’s hardy settlers monitored the growth and did their own work alongside. Through his wide-reaching thoughts, Duncan made sure the thinking machines understood what Dune had once been, before outsiders meddled with its ecosystem. Misused technology had devastated the desert planet, and now technology would help bring it back.
Paul stopped a hundred meters from the nearest rock formation, where a work crew had found the ruins of an abandoned sietch. With a small group of determined settlers, he and Chani had been salvaging the Fremen habitat with their own hands. Reclaiming the old ways.
In bygone days, he had been the legendary Muad’Dib, leading a Fremen army. Now he was content to be a modern-day Fremen, a leader of 753 people who had established austere homes in the rocks, which were on the way to becoming thriving sietches.
Paul and Chani flew out regularly with survey crews. Instilled with fresh optimism, he saw the magnificent potential for Dune. Near the excavated sietch, he had discovered an underground grotto that he and his followers planned to irrigate and artificially illuminate, to support a planting project for grasses, tubers, flowers, and shrubs. Enough to support a small population of new Fremen, but not enough to shift the desert ecosystem that the new worms were recreating, year after year.
One day, he might even ride the great worms again.
Paul turned to see the pale yellow sunrise appearing over the ocean of sand. “Dune is reawakening. Just as we are.”
Chani smiled, seeing both her beloved Usul of memory and the ghola she had grown up with. She loved each Paul for himself. Her abdomen protruded just a little, where their growing baby was beginning to show its presence. In five months, it would be the first child born on the recently resettled planet. In her second lifetime Chani did not need to worry about Imperial schemes, hidden contraceptives, or poisoned food. Her pregnancy would be normal, and the child—or children, if they were again blessed with twins—would have great potential, without the curse of terrible purpose.
Chani, even more in touch with the weather than he was, turned her face into a cool breeze. The sunrise began to show a new richness of coppery colors from dust stirred into