Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [39]
Finally she reached a fleshy chamber that might have been Monarch’s stomach, but without digestive acids. How did the captive sandworms survive? The odor of spice was more intense here than she had ever experienced—so much so that an ordinary person would have suffocated.
But I am no ordinary person.
Sheeana lay there, absorbing the warmth, letting the intense melange seep into every pore in her body, feeling Monarch’s dim consciousness merge into hers. She inhaled deeply and felt a great, cosmic sense of calm, like being in the womb of the Great Mother of the Universe.
Unexpectedly, with the unusual visitor deep in its gullet, the sandworm dove into the artificial desert and began to move through it; taking her on a strange journey. As if connected directly with Monarch’s nervous system, Sheeana could see through the eyeless worm to its companions beneath the sand. Working together, the seven sandworms were forming small veins of spice in the cargo hold.
Preparing.
Sheeana lost track of time and thought again of Leto II, whose pearl of awareness was now inside this beast and all of the others in the hold. She wondered where she fit into this paranormal realm. As the God Emperor’s queen? As the female part of the godhead? Or as something else entirely, an entity she could not begin to imagine?
The worms all carried secrets, and Sheeana understood how much the ghola children were like that as well. They each held a treasure greater than spice within their cells: their past memories and lives. Paul and Chani, Jessica, Yueh, Leto II. Even Thufir Hawat, Stilgar, Liet-Kynes . . . and now baby Alia. Each had a crucial role to play, but only if they could remember who they were.
She saw each image, but not in her own imagination. The sandworms knew what those lost figures contained. An urgency rushed toward her like a desert wind. Time, and with it their chances for survival, was slipping away too quickly. She envisioned a succession of the possible gholas, all primed like weapons, but blurred as to what each could do.
She could not wait for the Enemy. She had to act now.
The worm resurfaced, and after moving along the sands, it jolted to a stop. Inside, Sheeana caught her balance. Then, by constricting its membranous interior, the creature gently pushed her back out. She crawled from the mouth and tumbled onto the sands.
Dust and grit clung to the film coating her body. Monarch nudged her, like a mother bird urging a chick to go out on its own. Caught up in disorienting visions, she struggled and dropped to her knees on the dry sand. The faces of the ghola children wavered around her, dissolving into bright lights. Awaken!
She lay gasping for breath, her body and clothing drenched in spice essence. Beside Sheeana, the big worm turned, burrowed back into the shallow sand, and disappeared from view.
Reeking and reeling, Sheeana made her way back toward the cargohold doors, but she kept losing her footing and falling. She had to reach the ghola children . . . The worm had given her an important message, something that seeped into her consciousness like a wordless form of Other Memory. In moments, she was left with an overwhelming certainty of what she had to do.
You say that we must learn from the past. But I—I fear the past, for I have been there, and I have no desire to return.
—DR. WELLINGTON YUEH,
the ghola
After being scrubbed and showered to rid her of a spice reek so strong that even the Sisters who assisted her covered their mouths and noses, Sheeana slept for two days in deep and disturbing dreams.
When she finally emerged and found Duncan Idaho and