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"I was looking out there." Odrade pointed. "That was where Shai-hulud began, Sheeana."
Waff stopped at the end of the causeway, one step short of the encroaching sand and now about forty paces ahead of Odrade and Sheeana. Odrade's voice brought him to stiff alertness but he did not turn. Odrade could feel the displeasure in his posture. Waff would not like even a hint of cynicism directed at his Prophet. He always suspected cynicism from Reverend Mothers. Especially where religious matters were concerned. Waff was not yet ready to accept that the long-detested and feared Bene Gesserit might share his Great Belief. That ground would have to be filled in with care--as was always the way with the Missionaria Protectiva.
"They say there was a big river," Sheeana said.
Odrade heard the lilting note of derision in Sheeana's voice. The child learned quickly!
Waff turned and scowled at them. He heard it, too. What was he thinking about Sheeana now?
Odrade held Sheeana's shoulder with one hand and pointed with the other. "There was a bridge right there. The great wall of the Sareer was left open there to permit the passage of the Idaho River. The bridge spanned that break."
Sheeana sighed. "A real river," she whispered.
"Not a qanat and too big for a canal," Odrade said.
"I've never seen a river," Sheeana said.
"That was where they dumped Shai-hulud into the river," Odrade said. She gestured to her left. "Over on this side, many kilometers in that direction, he built his palace."
"There's nothing over there but sand," Sheeana said.
"The palace was torn down in the Famine Times," Odrade said. "People thought there was a hoard of spice in it. They were wrong, of course. He was much too clever for that."
Sheeana leaned close to Odrade and whispered: "There is a great treasure of the spice, though. The chantings tell about it. I've heard it many times. My... they say it's in a cave."
Odrade smiled. Sheeana referred to the Oral History, of course. And she had almost said: "My father... " meaning her real father who had died in this desert. Odrade already had lured that story from the girl.
Still whispering close to Odrade's ear, Sheeana said: "Why is that little man with us? I don't like him."
"It is necessary for the demonstration," Odrade said.
Waff took that moment to step off the causeway onto the first soft slope of open sand. He moved with care but no visible hesitation. Once on the sand, he turned, his eyes glistening in the hot sunlight, and stared first at Sheeana and then at Odrade.
Still that awe in him when he looks at Sheeana, Odrade thought. What great things he believes he will discover here. He will be restored. And the prestige!
Sheeana sheltered her eyes with one hand and studied the desert.
"Shaitan likes the heat," Sheeana said. "People hide inside when it's hot but that's when Shaitan comes."
Not Shai-hulud, Odrade thought. Shaitan! You predicted it well, Tyrant. What else did you know about our times?
Was it really the Tyrant out there dormant in all of his worm descendants?
None of the analyses Odrade had studied gave a sure explanation of what had driven one human being to make himself into a symbiote with that original worm of Arrakis. What went through his mind in the millennia of that awful transformation? Was any of that, even the smallest fragment, preserved in today's Rakian worms?
"He is near, Mother," Sheeana said. "Do you smell him?"
Waff peered apprehensively at Sheeana.
Odrade inhaled deeply: a rich swelling of cinnamon on the bitter flint undertones. Fire, brimstone--the crystal-banked inferno of the great worm. She stooped and brought up a pinch of blown sand to her tongue. All of the background was there: the Dune of Other Memory and the Rakis of this day.
Sheeana pointed at an angle to her left, directly into the light breeze from the desert. "Out there. We must hurry."
Without waiting for permission from Odrade, Sheeana ran lightly down the causeway, past Waff and out onto the first dune. She stopped there until Odrade and Waff caught up with her. Off the dune face she led them, up another with sand clogging their passage, out along a great curving barracan with wisps of dusty saltation blowing from its crest. Soon, they had put almost a kilometer between themselves and the water-girded security of Dar-es-Balat.
Again, Sheeana stopped.
Waff came to a panting halt behind her. Perspiration glistened where his stillsuit hood crossed his brow.
Odrade stopped a pace behind Waff. She took deep, calming breaths while she peered past Waff to where Sheeana's attention was fixed.
A furious tide of sand had poured across the desert beyond the dune where they stood, driven by a storm wind. Bedrock lay exposed in a long narrow avenue of giant boulders, which lay scattered and upturned like the broken building blocks of a mad promethean. Through this wild maze, the sand had poured like a river, leaving its signature in deep scratches and gouges, then plunging off a low escarpment to lose itself in more dunes.
"Down there," Sheeana said, pointing at the avenue of bedrock. Off their dune she went, sliding and scrambling in spilled sand. At the bottom, she stopped beside a boulder at least twice her height.
Waff and Odrade paused just behind her.
The slipface of another giant barracan, sinuous as the back of a sporting whale, lifted into the silver-blue sky beside them.
Odrade used the pause to recompose her oxygen balance. That mad run had made great demands on flesh. Waff, she noted, was red-faced and breathing deeply. The flinty cinnamon smell was oppressive in the confined passage. Waff sniffed and rubbed at his nose with the back of a hand. Sheeana lifted herself on one toe, pivoted and darted ten paces across the rocky avenue. She put one foot up on the sandy incline of the outer dune and lifted both arms to the sky. Slowly at first and then with increasing tempo, she began to dance, moving up onto the sand.
The 'thopter sounds grew louder overhead.
"Listen!" Sheeana called, not pausing in her dance.
It was not to the 'thopters that she called their attention. Odrade turned her head to present both ears to a new sound intruding on their rock-tumbled maze.
A sibilant hiss, subterranean and muted by sand--it became louder with shocking swiftness. There was heat in it, a noticeable warming of the breeze that twisted down their rocky avenue. The hissing swelled to a crescendo roar. Abruptly, the crystal-ringed gaping of a gigantic mouth lifted over the dune directly above Sheeana.
"Shaitan!" Sheeana screamed, not breaking the rhyth
m of her dance. "Here I am, Shaitan!"
As it crested the dune, the worm dipped its mouth downward toward Sheeana. Sand cascaded around her feet, forcing her to stop her dance. The smell of cinnamon filled the rocky defile. The worm stopped above them.
"Messenger of God," Waff breathed.
Heat dried the perspiration on Odrade's exposed face and made the automatic insulation of her stillsuit puff outward perceptibly. She inhaled deeply, sorting the components behind that cinnamon assault. The air around them was sharp with ozone and swiftly oxygen rich. Her senses at full alert, Odrade stored impressions.
If I survive, she thought.
Yes, this was valuable data. The day might come when others would use it.
Sheeana backed out of the spilled sand onto the exposed rock. She resumed her dance, moving more wildly, flinging her head at each turn. Hair whipped across her face and each time she whirled to confront the worm, she screamed "Shaitan!"
Daintily, like a child on unfamiliar ground, the worm once more moved forward. It slid across the dune crest, curled itself down onto the exposed rock and presented its burning mouth slightly above and about two paces from Sheeana.
As it stopped, Odrade became conscious of the deep furnace rumbling of the worm. She could not tear her gaze away from the reflections of lambent orange flames within the creature. It was a cave of mysterious fire.
Sheeana stopped her dance. She clenched both fists at her sides and stared back at the monster she had summoned.
Odrade took timed breaths, the controlled pacing of a Reverend Mother gathering all of her powers. If this was the end--well, she had obeyed Taraza's orders. Let the Mother Superior learn what she would from the watchers overhead.
"Hello, Shaitan," Sheeana said. "I have brought a Reverend Mother and a man of the Tleilaxu with me."
Waff slumped to his knees and bowed.
Odrade slipped past him to stand beside Sheeana.
Sheeana breathed deeply. Her face was flushed.
Odrade heard the click-ticking of their overworked stillsuits. The hot, cinnamon-drenched air around them was charged with the sounds of this meeting, all dominated by the murmurous burning within the quiescent worm.
Waff came up beside Odrade, his trancelike gaze fixed on the worm.
"I am here," he whispered.
Odrade silently cursed him. Any unwarranted noise could attract this beast onto them. She knew what Waff was thinking, though: No other Tleilaxu had ever stood this close to a descendant of his Prophet. Not even the Rakian priests had ever done this!
