Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [79]
Teg recognized the strategy. “The old leader wants to interrogate our young ones first.” Var and his hard-bitten comrades would assume the youths would be easily intimidated, not capable of resisting difficult questioning.
Teg and Sheeana were taken to a holding tent made of a tough, weather-worn polymer. The structure was an odd mixture of primitive design and sophisticated technology, made for serviceability and ease of transport. The guard closed the flap but remained outside.
The windowless tent was just an empty enclosure, devoid of blankets, cushions, or tools of any kind. Teg paced in a small circle, then sat beside her on the packed dirt. Digging with his fingers, he quickly found a couple of sharp pebbles.
With Mentat clarity, he assessed their options. “When we do not return or report in,” he said in a low voice, “we can expect Duncan to send another party down. He will be prepared. It sounds trite, but rescue will come.” He knew that these nomads would crumble easily against a direct military assault. “Duncan is wise, and I trained him well. He will know what to do.”
Sheeana stared at the door as if in meditative trance. “Duncan has lived hundreds of lives and remembers them all, Miles. I doubt you taught him anything new.”
Teg gripped one of the pebbles, and it seemed to aid his concentration. Even in an empty tent, he saw a thousand possible avenues of escape. He and Sheeana could easily break out, kill the guard, and fight their way back to the lighter. Teg might not even need to take advantage of his accelerated speed. “These people are no match for me, or for you. But I will not leave Stilgar and Liet behind.”
“Ah, the loyal Bashar.”
“I wouldn’t leave you, either. However, I fear that these people have disabled our ship, which would certainly tangle our escape plans. I heard them ransacking it.”
Sheeana continued to stare at the shadowy wall of the tent. “Miles, I’m not so concerned about the possibility of escape as I am curious to learn why they kept us alive. Especially me, if what they said about the Sisterhood is true. They have good reason to hate me.”
Teg tried to imagine the incredible exodus and reorganization of populations on this planet. Within years, all the inhabitants of the towns and cities would have seen the sands strangling their croplands, killing their orchards, creeping closer and closer to the city boundaries. They would have pulled away from the desert zone like people fleeing a slowly advancing fire.
Var’s nomads, though . . . were they scavengers and misfits? Outcasts from the larger population centers? Why insist on staying at the threshold of the advancing desert, where they would have to uproot their settlement and retreat constantly? To what purpose?
These were technologically capable people, and Qelso clearly must have been settled long ago during the Scattering. They had their own groundcars and low-altitude flyers, fast ships to take them back and forth across the dunes. If they weren’t outright exiles, perhaps Var’s people replenished their supplies in the distant northern cities.
Teg and Sheeana hardly spoke for hours as they listened to the muffled sounds outside, the dry wind pushing and tugging at the tent, the scritch of blowing sand. Everything seemed to be comprised of movement outside: The people sent out parties, marched back and forth, set machinery to work.
As Teg listened to the noises, he catalogued them in his mind, building a picture of the operations. He heard a pounding drill that bored a well shaft, followed by a pump dispensing water into small cisterns. Each time, after only a brief gush of liquid, the flow dwindled to less than a trickle and stopped. He knew that such problems, caused by sandtrout, had been the bane of drilling operations on Arrakis. Water existed in deep enough strata, but it was blocked off by the voracious little Makers. Like platelets at the site of a wound, sandtrout would swiftly seal off the leak. As he listened to the resigned complaints of these people, Teg