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But the cells of another Waff ghola had been grown in an axlotl tank in Bandalong as part of the usual process. The secret council of the kehl had planned for the serial immortality of all Tleilaxu Masters long before anyone had heard of Honored Matres. The next thing he knew, Waff was awakened to his past life during a grand guignol stage show as the brutal women murdered one of his twins after another until just one of them--him--reached a sufficiently desperate crisis to break through the ghola barrier and reveal his past. Some of it, at least.
But not until now had Waff actually seen the Armageddon that the whores had wrought on this sacred world.
The ecosystem of Rakis had been fundamentally destroyed. Half of the atmosphere was burned away, the ground sterilized, most life forms dead--from the microscopic sandplankton all the way up to the giant sandworms. It made the old Dune seem comfortable by comparison.
The sky was a dark purple, touched with an underburn of orange. As their ship circled, searching for a spot less hellish than others, Waff studied a panel of atmospheric readings. The moisture content was abnormally high. At some point in its geologic history, Arrakis had possessed open water, but sandtrout had sealed it all away. During the bombardment, underground rivers and seas must have been vaporized as they were released from aquifers.
The Honored Matres' horrific weapons had not only turned the soft dunes to a baked moonscape, they had also thrown up great clouds of dust that had not settled entirely out of the atmosphere, even decades later. The Coriolis storms would be worse than ever before.
He and his team would likely have to wear special bodily protection and supplemental breather masks; their small dwelling huts would need to be sealed and pressurized. Waff didn't mind. Was that so different from wearing a stillsuit? By degrees, perhaps, but not fundamentally harder.
His lighter circled over the remains of a sprawling metropolis that had been called Arrakeen in the days of Muad'Dib, then the Festival City of Onn during the reign of the God Emperor, and later--after Leto II's death--the moated city of Keen. No longer concerned about secrecy, now that the seaworms had successfully taken hold on Buzzell, Waff was happy to have four assistants help him with the hard work he was sure to face on this Obliterator-blasted planet.
Studying the surface, he discerned lumpy geometric shapes that had once been angled streets and tall buildings. Surprisingly, in the dimness of seared daylight, he also spotted numerous artificial illumination sources and a few dark structures of recent construction. "There seems to be a camp down there. Who else would come to Rakis? What could they possibly want here?"
"The same as us," said the Guildsman. "Spice."
He shook his head. "Too little here anymore, at least until we bring back the worms. No one else has that skill."
"Pilgrims perhaps? There may still be those who make a hajj," a second assistant said. Waff knew that a dizzying mishmash of religious splinter groups and cults had sprung from Rakis.
"More likely," suggested a third Guildsman, "they are treasure hunters."
Waff quoted quietly from the Cant of the Shariat: " 'When greed and desperation are coupled, men accomplish superhuman feats--though for the wrong reasons.' "
He considered choosing a different place for their base camp, then accepted the idea that joining resources with the strangers might help them all last longer in the harsh environment. No one knew when--or if--Edrik might be coming back for them, or how long the sandworm work would take, or how much longer Waff himself would last. He planned to be here for the remainder of his days.
After the lighter landed unannounced at the edge of the camp, the Guildsmen waited for instructions from Waff. The Tleilaxu man settled goggles over his eyes to protect against the caustic wind, and emerged. For long journeys outside, he might have to wear a supplemental oxygen mask, but the Rakian atmosphere was surprisingly breathable.
Six tall and dirty men faced him from the encampment. They wore rags wrapped around their heads, carried knives and antique maula pistols. Their eyes were red-veined, their skin rough and cracked. The foremost man had shaggy black hair, a square chest, and a rock-hard potbelly. "You are fortunate that I'm curious about why you are here. Otherwise, we would've shot you out of the sky."
Waff held up his hands. "We are no threat to you, whoever you are."
Five men leveled their maula pistols, and the other slashed the air with his knife. "We have claimed Rakis for ourselves. All spice here is ours."
"You've claimed a whole planet?"
"Yes, the whole damned planet." The first man tossed back his dark hair. "I'm Guriff, and these are my prospectors. There's damned little spice left in the burned crust, and it's ours."
"Then you may have it." Waff performed a perfunctory bow. "We have other interests, as geological investigators and archaeologists. We wish to take readings and run tests to determine the extent of damage to the ecosystem." The four Guild assistants waited beside him in complete silence.
Guriff laughed loudly and heartily. "There isn't much of an ecosystem left here."
"Then where does breathable oxygen come from?" He knew that Liet-Kynes had asked that question in the ancient days, curious because the planet had neither widespread plant life nor volcanoes to generate an atmosphere.
The man just stared. Obviously, he had not thought about this. "Do I look like a planetologist to you? Go ahead and look into it, but don't expect any help from us. Here on Rakis, you are self-sufficient or you die."
The Tleilaxu man raised his eyebrows. "And what if we wish to share some of our spice coffee with you, as a token of friendship? I understand that water is more easily obtainable than in the old days."
Guriff glanced at his prospectors, then said, "We're happy to accept your hospitality, but we have no intention of reciprocating."
"Nonetheless, our offer stands."
INSIDE GURIFF'S DUSTY hut, Waff used his own supplies of melange (left over from his sandworm experiments) to brew coffee. Guriff didn't have a desperate shortage of water in his camp, though his dwelling smelled of long-unwashed bodies and the savory sweetness of a drug smoke that Waff could not identify.
At his command, the four Guildsmen erected the shelters brought down from the Heighliner, setting up armored sleeping tents and laboratory enclosures. Waff saw no reason to assist them. He was a Tleilaxu Master after all, and these were his workers, so he would allow them to perform their tasks.
While they drank a second pot of spice coffee, Guriff grew more relaxed. He didn't trust the diminutive Tleilaxu, but he didn't seem to trust anyone. He took pains to say he harbored no particular hatred toward Waff's race, and that his scavengers held no grudges against others of low social position. Guriff cared only about Rakis.
"All that melted sand and plascrete. By chipping away the upper crust of glass, we were able to get down to the foundations of the sturdier buildings in Keen." Guri
ff produced a hand-drawn chart. "Scraping out buried treasure. We found what we think is the original Bene Gesserit Keep--a few heavily barricaded bomb shelters filled with skeletons." He smiled. "We also uncovered the extravagant temple built by the Priests of the Divided God. It was so huge we couldn't miss it. Full of trinkets, but still not enough to pay for our effort. CHOAM is expecting us to find something much more extraordinary, though they seem happy enough to sell containers of 'genuine Rakian sand' to gullible fools."
Waff didn't reply. Edrik and the Navigators had obtained such Rakian sand for him to use in his original experiments.
"But we've got a lot more digging to do. Keen was a big city."
In his previous life, Waff had seen those structures before they were destroyed. He knew the ostentation that the deluded Priests placed in all the rooms and towers (as if God cared about such gaudiness!). Guriff and his men would indeed find plenty of treasure there. But the wrong kind.
"The Priesthood's temple had collapsed worse than most other large buildings. Maybe it was a direct target of the Honored Matre attack." The prospector smiled with thick lips. "But deep in the sublevels beneath the temple, we did find chests of stored solaris and hoarded melange. A worthwhile haul. More than we expected, but not so much. We're after something bigger. The Tyrant buried a huge spice hoard deep in the southern polar regions--I'm sure of it."
Waff made a skeptical sound as he sipped spice coffee. "No one has been able to find that treasure for fifteen hundred years."
Guriff held up a finger, noticed a hangnail, and chewed on it. "Still, the bombardment may have churned up the crust enough to reveal the mother lode. And, thanks be to the gods--there are no worms left to torment us."
Waff made a noncommittal sound. Not yet.
WITHOUT BOTHERING TO sleep, knowing his time was short, the Tleilaxu man began to make preparations to continue his work. His Guild companions seemed confident that the Navigator would eventually return, though Waff wasn't so sure. He was here on Rakis, and this gave him great pleasure.
