Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [83]
“If used carefully, melange has important qualities,” Liet said. “Health, life extension, the possibility of prescience. And it’s a valuable commodity to sell, should you ever reconnect with CHOAM and the rest of mankind. As Qelso dries up, you may need offworld supplies for your basic needs.”
If anyone survives the outside Enemy, Stilgar thought to himself, recalling the ever-present threat of capture by the shimmering net. But these people were much more concerned with their own local enemies, fighting the desert, trying to stop the unstoppable.
He remembered the great dreams of Pardot Kynes, Liet’s father. Pardot had done the calculations and determined that the Fremen could turn Dune into a garden, but only after generations of intense effort. According to the histories, Arrakis had indeed become green and verdant for a time, before the new worms reclaimed it, and brought the desert back. The planet seemed unable to achieve a balance.
The battered craft flew low, its engines droning. Stilgar wondered if the noise of their passage would attract worms, but as he stared down at the hypnotic, oceanic dunes, he saw only a couple of patches of rust-colored sand that indicated fresh spice blows.
“Dropping signal vibrators,” Var called, while throbbing canisters—the equivalent of ancient thumpers—tumbled out of the small bays below the cockpit. “That should bring at least one of them.”
With a puff of sand and dust the thumpers plunged into the dunes and sent out droning signals. After circling back to make certain the devices were operating properly, Var selected two more spots within a radius of five kilometers. Stilgar could not determine why the craft still felt overloaded.
As they cruised in search of a worm, Stilgar described his legendary days on Dune, how he and Paul Muad’Dib had led a ragtag Fremen army to victory against far superior forces. “We used desert power. That is what you can learn from us. Once you see we are not your enemies, we can learn much from each other.”
Under Stilgar’s firm hand, these people could come to understand their possibilities. With the awakening of the populace would come the awakening of the planet, with plantings and green zones to keep the desert under control. Perhaps they could succeed, if they could just find—and maintain—an equilibrium.
Stilgar remembered something Liet’s father had said to him once. Extremes invariably lead to disaster. Only through balance can we fully harvest the fruits of nature. He leaned closer to the craft’s observation windows and saw a familiar wrinkling of the sand, ripples of deep movement disturbing the smooth dunes. “Wormsign!”
“Prepare for our first encounter of the day.” A grin wrinkled Var’s grizzled face as he turned away from the cockpit. “The shipment that came in last night brought us enough water for two targets—but we need to find them.”
Water! The heavy ship was carrying water.
The men shifted position, heading toward gunnery hatches and hoses mounted on the sides of the stripped-down flyer. The pilot banked back toward the first cluster of thumpers.
As the commandos prepared to strike, Stilgar mused about the strange turnabout. Pardot Kynes had spoken of the need to understand ecological consequences, that humans were stewards of the land, and never owners. We must do a thing on Arrakis never before attempted for an entire planet. We must use man as a constructive ecological force—inserting adapted terraform life: a plant here, an animal there, a man in that place—to transform the water cycle, to build a new kind of landscape.
The battle today was the opposite. Stilgar and Liet would help fight to prevent the desert from swallowing all of Qelso.
Through the nearest window Stilgar saw a mound in motion, a bucking sandworm drawn toward the thumper. Liet crowded close beside him, and said, “I estimate it at forty meters. Larger than Sheeana