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Sheeana went to stand beside the Bashar. "I deactivated those mines myself, so that this vessel could escape. They were locked securely away, but now they've disappeared."
"If they are missing, they might have been dumped out into space . . . or planted around the ship like time bombs," Duncan said. "I suspect the latter, and that our saboteur has further plans."
The Rabbi moaned loudly. "You see? More incompetence! I should have stayed on Qelso with the rest of my people."
"Maybe you stole the mines," Garimi snapped.
He looked horrified. "You dare accuse me? A holy man of my stature? First Yueh says I manipulated him to murder a ghola baby, and now you think I have stolen explosives?" Scytale saw that the frail old man could never have lifted one of the heavy mines, much less eight of them.
"Yueh has been under the constant surveillance of Thufir Hawat and myself," Teg said. "Even if he did kill the axlotl tank and the growing ghola, he could not have stolen the mines."
"Unless he has an accomplice," Garimi said, setting off another chain of muttering.
"We will discover who took them." Sheeana cut off the squabble. "And where they have been hidden."
"We've heard similar promises in the past three years," Garimi continued, with a meaningful glare at Teg and Thufir. "But our security has been completely ineffective."
Paul Atreides sat in one of the front rows, near Chani and Jessica. "Are we certain the mines only disappeared recently? How often is the armory checked? Maybe Liet-Kynes or Stilgar took them for their war against the sandtrout without telling us."
"We should evacuate this ship," the Rabbi said. "Find another planet, or go back to Qelso." His voice quavered. "If you witches hadn't . . . hadn't . . . taken Rebecca, I would be safe now with my people. We all could have settled there."
Garimi scowled. "Rabbi, for years you've encouraged dissent with your sniping and destructive arguments, without offering alternatives."
"I speak the truth as I see it. The stolen mines are only the latest in a string of sabotage. My Rebecca remains alive only by chance when four other axlotl tanks have now been murdered. And who damaged the life-support systems, the water holding tanks? Who contaminated the algae vats and destroyed the air-filtration mats? Who poured acid on the seals of the observation window in the sandworm hold? There is a criminal among us, and he is growing bolder and bolder! Why don't you find him?"
Scytale remained silent and unobtrusive, listening to the debate. Everyone feared there would be more incidents of sabotage, and the stolen mines would be sufficient to cripple or destroy the great ship.
The Tleilaxu had no doubt they would eventually turn their suspicions toward him because of his race, but he could prove his innocence. He had laboratory records, surveillance images, a solid alibi. Nevertheless, someone had committed the acts of sabotage.
When the exhausting meeting broke up, the Rabbi stalked past Scytale in a huff, saying he was going to go sit in a vigil beside Rebecca, "to make certain no one else tries to kill her!" As the old man passed close, Scytale caught the Rabbi's usual faint, strange scent, a subtly different flavor in the air.
On instinct, Scytale emitted a barely audible whistle in a complicated melody that he remembered from deep in his past lives. The Rabbi ignored him and stalked away. Scytale frowned, not sure if he had noticed a brief hesitation as the old man walked past.
God is God, and life is His alone to give. If God Himself has not the strength to survive, then we are left with nothing but despair.
--The Cant of the Shariat
Every investigation of Rakis yielded the same result. Only a few insignificant pockets of its ecosystem had survived. The planet was empty and haunted, yet it seemed to have its own will to live. Against all odds and science, Rakis still clung to its sparse atmosphere, its gasps of moisture.
Guriff's hard-bitten prospectors happily accepted supplies that Waff and the Guildsmen offered as a gesture of goodwill. Waff's primary motivation for this was to get the men to leave him alone while he conducted his innocuous "geological investigations." The prospectors were supplied by irregular CHOAM vessels that came to check on their work, but Guriff had no idea when the next ship would come. The Tleilaxu Master had enough packaged food from the Heighliner to last for years, if his deteriorating body lasted that long.
Above all, he needed to tend to his worms.
As he'd hoped, the prospectors spent the harsh days and nights concentrating on their own digging, hoping to find the legendary lost hoard of the Tyrant's melange. Insulated scout cruisers braved the rugged weather, carrying sensors and probes up to the polar regions, while the men bored test holes, searching unsuccessfully for any threads of spice.
The large dropbox from Edrik's Heighliner had included a wide-bed groundcar that could roll across even the roughest terrain. When the prospectors departed, Waff called his four Guildsmen to assist him. With no curious eyes watching, they wrestled the long, sand-filled test tanks aboard his groundcar. Waff would make a pilgrimage out into the charred and glassy wasteland that had once been a sea of dunes.
"I will release the specimens myself. I don't need your assistance." He directed the Guildsmen to return to the rigid-walled survival tents. "Stay and prepare our food--and make certain you follow the accepted ways." He had given them precise instructions on the proper techniques. "Once I free the worms, I intend to come back for a celebration."
He did not want Guriff and his men, nor any of these untrustworthy Guild assistants, to observe such a private and holy moment. Today he would restore the Prophet to Rakis, to the planet where He belonged. Dressed in protective clothing, he keyed in coordinates and drove off with the two long aquariums in the back of his groundcar. Heading due east, he sped away into a ruddy orange dawn.
Although the landscape here was smeared, eroded, and unrecognizable, Waff knew exactly where he was going. Before coming to Rakis, he had dug up the old charts, and because the Honored Matres' Obliterators had altered even the planetary magnetic field, he had carefully recalibrated his maps from orbit. A long time ago, God's Messenger had purposefully carried him to the location of Sietch Tabr. The worms must consider it sacred, and Waff coul
d think of no more appropriate place to turn loose the armored, augmented creatures. He drove there now.
Light from the dust-thickened sky bathed the glassy ground in eerie colors. From the tanks behind him, Waff could feel the thumping of the worms as they writhed, impatient to burst out onto the open desert. Home.
Back on the Heighliner, Waff had observed the bucking and thrashing creatures, measuring their growth in the lab. He knew the worms were dangerous, and that long confinement in small tanks sapped the creatures' strength. Even under carefully controlled conditions, he hadn't been able to replicate the optimal environment, and the specimens had weakened. Something was wrong.
But hope infused him. Now that he was actually here, all would be right again. Holy Rakis! He could only pray that this injured dune world would provide what a Tleilaxu Master could not, offering some ineffable benefit to the worms, to the Prophet.
When Waff reached the plain and saw the melted rocks, he remembered the weathered line of mountains that had sheltered the buried tomb of the Fremen city. He stopped the groundcar. A vitrified crust--rocky grains melted to glass by the blasts of incomprehensible weapons--covered what had once been open sand. But the worms would know what to do.
Behind the vehicle, Waff paused a moment to close his eyes in prayer to his God and His Prophet. Then, with a flourish, he disengaged the plaz walls of the tanks and let sand spill out. Long serpentine shapes lunged free like uncoiled springs, and dropped to the ground around the vehicle. Waff gazed in wonderment at their thick, ridged bodies, and the python fluidity of their motion.
"Go, Prophet! Reclaim your world."
Eight worms slithered on the hard, smooth ground. Eight, a sacred Tleilaxu number.
The freed creatures spread out in random paths, while he watched them in awe. Waff hoped they could break through the fused sand and tunnel into softer levels below, as he had designed them to do. Each of the specimens had a tiny implanted tracer that would enable him to follow them and continue his investigations.
