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"Only if we fail," old Var said. "I choose to believe we still have a chance, no matter how naive that sounds." He closed the ship's hatch and strapped himself into the creaking pilot seat. "So, if that doesn't sound pleasant to you, then we'd better stop the desert from gaining more of a foothold."
The flyer lifted from the dry camp and swung out over the ghost forests and hummocks of fresh dunes that were swallowing the remnants of grasslands. The engine sputtered periodically as they flew southeast to a region where sandworms had been sighted. The craft seemed like a sluggish bumblebee, its tanks overloaded and heavy.
"We will stop the moving sands," one young commando said.
"Next you will try to stop the wind." Stilgar grabbed a dangling strap as a thermal updraft shook the craft. "In a few short years, your planet will be sand and rock. Do you expect a miracle to turn the desert back?"
"We'll create that miracle for ourselves," Var answered, and his team murmured in agreement.
They flew across the wilderness of dunes, far past the point where they could see anything but buttery tan from horizon to horizon. Stilgar tapped a finger against the scratched windowplaz and shouted against the engine noise. "See the desert for what it is--not a place to fear and loathe, but a great engine to power an empire."
Liet added, "Already, small worms in the desert belt have created priceless amounts of melange just waiting to be mined. How have you survived for so long without spice?"
"We haven't needed spice for fifteen hundred years, not since we came to Qelso," Var called from the cockpit. "When you do not have a thing, you learn to live without it, or you don't live."
"We don't give a damn about spice," one of the commandos said. "I'd rather give a damn about trees and crops and fat herds."
Var continued, "Our first settlers brought a great deal of spice from far away, and three generations fought addiction until the supplies were gone. Then what? We were forced to survive without it--and we have. Why should we open ourselves to that monstrous dependency again? My people are better off without it."
"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's worms in our hold."
"These have grown in the open desert," Stilgar said. "Shai-Hulud wants this planet."
"Not if I can help it," Var said. But as if to defy him, directly below the flyer an immense head surfaced and quested around, trying to track the conflicting sources of vibrations.
Long tubes protruded from the front and rear of the flyer. The commandos gripped their gun mountings, nozzles that could be turned and aimed. The flyer swooped low. "Fire when ready, but conserve what you can. The water's deadly enough."
The fighters shot high-pressure streams from their hoses, blasting the sandworm below. The drenching bursts were more effective than artillery shells.
Taken by surprise, the creature writhed and twisted its round head back and forth, convulsing. Hard ring segments split apart to reveal softer pink flesh between, and water burned like acid into the vulnerable parts. The worm rolled on the wet sand, in obvious agony.
"They are killing Shai-Hulud," Stilgar said, sickened.
Liet was also stunned, but said, "These people have to defend themselves."
"That's enough! It is dead--or soon will be," Var shouted. The small force reluctantly shut off their hoses, looking with hatred upon the dying worm. Unable to dig deep enough to escape the poisonous moisture, the mortally wounded creature continued to squirm as the flyer circled over its death throes. Finally the beast gave a great final shudder and stopped moving.
Stilgar nodded, his expression still grim. "There are necessities to life in the desert, hard decisions to be made." He had to accept the clear fact that this worm did not belong here on Qelso. No sandworm did. On the way back to the settlement, they encountered a second worm, drawn by the vibrations of their flyer's engines. The commandos emptied their water reservoirs, and the second worm perished even more quickly.
Liet and Stilgar sat together in uncomfortable silence, wrapped up in what they had seen and the fight they had agreed to join. "Even though she doesn't have her memories back yet," Liet said, "I'm glad my daughter Chani did not see this."
Though the mood of the fighters was upbeat aboard the flyer, the two young men, remembering Arrakis, murmured Fremen prayers. Stilgar was still contemplating what they had seen and
done when Var yelled a strangled-sounding alarm.
Suddenly strange ships swarmed around them.
You see only harshness, devastation, and ugliness. That is because you have no faith. Around me I see a potential paradise, for Rakis is the birthplace of my beloved Prophet.
--WAFF of the Tleilaxu
When he first glimpsed Rakis, the bleak ruins brought dismay to Waff's heart. But when Edrik's Heighliner deposited him and his small team of Guild assistants there, he experienced the joy of setting foot on the desert planet again. He could feel the holy calling deep inside his bones.
In his previous lifetime he had stood on these sands, face to face with the Prophet. With Sheeana and Reverend Mother Odrade, he had ridden a great worm out to the ruins of Sietch Tabr. His ghola memories were corrupted and uncertain, riddled with annoying gaps. Waff could not recall his final moments as the whores closed in around the desert planet, deploying their awful Obliterators. Had he run for hopeless shelter, looking behind him like Lot's wife for a last glimpse of the doomed city? Had he seen explosions and walls of flame searing the sky, sweeping toward him?
