Dune: House Atreides (7 page)

But this population center was wrong, like a pustule on the skin of the planet.

Another outpost to the southwest, Arrakeen, was a more primitive city that had grown slowly, naturally, nestled against a mountainous barrier called the Shield Wall. Perhaps Kynes should have gone there first. But political requirements had forced him to establish his base with the rulers of the planet.

At least that had given him the opportunity to search for one of the giant sandworms.

The large 'thopter transport carrying Rabban's hunting party lifted off, and soon Kynes received his initial glimpse of the true desert. Kynes peered out the windowplaz at the rippled wastelands below. From experiences in other desert regions, he was able to identify dune patterns . . . shapes and sinuous curves that revealed much about seasonal wind patterns, prevailing air currents, and the severity of storms. So much could be learned from studying these ripples and lines, the fingerprints of weather. He pressed his face to the plaz observation ports; none of the other passengers appeared to be interested at all.

The Harkonnen troops fidgeted, hot in their heavy blue uniforms and armor.

Their weapons clattered against each other and scraped the floor plates. The men seemed uneasy without their personal body, shields, but the presence of a shield and its Holtzman field would drive any nearby worms into a killing frenzy. Today, Rabban himself wanted to do the killing.

Glossu Rabban, the twenty-one-year-old son of the planet's former lackluster governor, sat up front near the pilot, looking for targets out on the sand.

With severely cropped brown hair, he was broad-shouldered, deep-voiced, and short-tempered. Icy pale blue eyes looked out from a sunburned face. He seemed to do everything possible to be the opposite of his father.

"Will we see worm tracks from the sky?" he asked.

Behind him, Thekar the desert guide leaned very close, as if wishing to remain within Rabban's personal space. "The sands shift and mask the passage of a worm. Often they travel deep. You will not see a worm moving until it approaches the surface and is ready to attack."

The tall, angular Kynes listened intently, taking mental notes. He wanted to record all of these details in his logbook, but that would have to wait until later.

"Then how are we going to find one? I heard the open desert is crawling with worms."

"Not that simple, m'Lord Rabban," Thekar responded. "The great worms have their own domains, some extending to hundreds of square kilometers. Within these boundaries they hunt and kill any intruders."

Growing impatient, Rabban turned around in his seat. His skin grew darker.

"How do we know where to find a worm's domain?"

Thekar smiled, and his dark, close-set eyes took on a distant look. "All of the desert is owned by Shai-Hulud."

"By what? Stop evading my questions." Within another moment, Kynes was sure Rabban would cuff the desert man across the jaw.

"You have been on Arrakis for so long, and you did not know this, m'Lord Rabban?

The Fremen consider the great sandworms to be gods," Thekar answered quietly.

"They name him, collectively, Shai-Hulud."

"Then today we shall kill a god," Rabban announced in a loud voice, causing the other hunters in the back of the compartment to cheer. He turned sharply toward the desert guide. "I depart for Giedi Prime in two days, and must have a trophy to take back with me. This hunt will be successful."

Giedi Prime, Kynes thought. Ancestral homeworld of House Harkonnen. At least I won't have to worry about him once he's gone.

"You will have your trophy, m'Lord," Thekar promised.

"No doubt about that," Rabban said, but in a more ominous tone.

Seated alone in the rear of the troop transport, huddled in his desert gear, Kynes felt uncomfortable in such company. He had no interest in the glorious ambitions of the Baron's nephew . . . but if this excursion gave him a good look at one of the monsters, it could be worth months of intensive effort on his own.

Rabban stared out through the front of the transport; his hard, squinting eyes were surrounded by thick folds of skin. He scrutinized the desert as if it were a delicacy he intended to eat, seeing none of the beauty Kynes noted in the landscape.

"I have a plan, and this is how we'll follow it." Rabban turned to the troops and opened the comsystem to the spotter ornithopters flying in formation around the transport. They cruised out over the expanse of open sand. The dune ripples below looked like wrinkles on an old man's skin.

"That outcropping of rock down there" -- he gestured, and read off the coordinates -- "will be our base. About three hundred meters from the rock we'll touch down in the open sand, where we'll drop Thekar with a gadget he calls a thumper. Then we'll lift off to the safety of the rock outcroppings, where the worm can't go."

The lean desert man looked up in alarm. "Leave me out there? But m'Lord, I'm not --"

"You gave me the idea." He turned back to address the uniformed troops.

"Thekar here says that this Fremen device, a thumper, will bring a worm. We'll plant one along with enough explosives to take care of the beast when it comes.

Thekar, we will leave you behind to rig the explosives and trigger the thumper.

You can run across the sands and make it to safety with us before a worm can come, right?" Rabban gave him a delicious little grin.

"I -- I . . ." Thekar stammered. "It appears I have no choice."

"Even if you can't make it, the worm will probably go for the thumper first.

The explosives will get the beast before you become its next target."

"I take comfort in that, m'Lord," Thekar said.

Intrigued by the Fremen device, Kynes considered obtaining one for himself. He wished he could watch this desert native up close to witness how he ran across the sands, how he eluded pursuit from the vibration-sensitive "Old Man of the Desert." But the Planetologist knew enough to remain quiet and avoid Rabban's notice, hoping that the hot-blooded young Harkonnen wouldn't volunteer him to assist Thekar.

Inside the personnel compartment at the back of the craft, the Bator -- a commander of a small troop -- and his underlings looked through the weapons stockpile, removing lasguns for themselves. They rigged explosives to the stakelike mechanism that Thekar had brought along. A thumper.

With curious eyes, Kynes could see that it was just a spring-wound clockwork device that would thunk out a loud, rhythmic vibration. When plunged into the sand, the thumper would send reverberations deep below the desert to where

"Shai-Hulud" could hear them.

"As soon as we land, you'd better rig up these explosives fast," Rabban said to Thekar. "The engines of these ornithopters will do a good job of attracting the worm, even without the help of your Fremen toy."

"I know that all too well, m'Lord," Thekar said. His olive skin now had a grayish, oily tinge of terror.

The ornithopter struts kissed the sands, throwing up loose dust. The hatch opened, and Thekar -- determined, now -- grabbed his thumper and sprang out, landing with spread feet on the soft desert. He flashed a longing glance back up at the flying craft, then turned toward the dubious safety of the line of solid rock some three hundred meters away.

The Bator handed the explosives down to the hapless desert man, while Rabban gestured for them to hurry. "I hope you don't become worm food, my friend," he said with a laugh. Even before the doors could close on the ornithopter, the pilot lifted off the sands again, leaving Thekar alone.

Kynes and the other Harkonnen soldiers rushed to the starboard side of the transport, crowding the windowplaz to watch their guide's desperate actions out on the open sands. The desert man had reverted to a different, feral human being as they watched.

"Excuse me. Just how much explosive does it take to kill a worm?" Kynes asked curiously.

"Thekar should have plenty, Planetologist," the Bator answered. "We gave him enough to wipe out an entire city square."

Kynes turned his attention back to the drama below. As the craft rose higher, Thekar worked in a flurry, grabbing the explosive components, piling them in a mound and linking them together with shigawire cables. Kynes could see tiny ready lights winking on. Then the whip-thin man stabbed his thumper into the sand next to the deadly cache, as if he were pounding a stake into the heart of the desert.

The troop 'thopter swerved and arrowed straight toward the bulwark of rock where the great hunter Rabban would wait in comfort and safety. Thekar triggered the thumper's spring-wound mechanism and began to run.

Inside the ornithopter, some of the soldiers placed bets on the outcome.

Within moments the craft alighted on the ridge of blackened, pitted rock that looked like a reef in the soft desert. The pilot shut down his engines, and the

'thopter doors opened. Rabban shoved his troops aside to be the first to stand upon the shimmering rock. The others in the party piled out afterward; Kynes waited his turn and emerged from the rear.

The guards took up watch positions, directing the oil lenses of their binoculars at the small running figure. Rabban stood tall, holding a high-powered lasgun, though Kynes couldn't imagine what he intended to do with the weapon at this point. Through a spotting-scope, the Baron's nephew stared out into the heat-addled air, seeing the ripples and mirages. He centered on the clacking thumper and the dark landmark of piled explosives.

One of the high spotter 'thopters reported possible wormsign about two kilometers to the south.

Out on the desert, Thekar ran frantically, kicking up sand. He advanced toward the archipelago of safety, the rocky islands in the sea of sand -- but he was still many minutes away.

Kynes watched the odd manner in which Thekar placed his footsteps. He seemed to jitter and hop erratically, running like a spastic insect. Kynes wondered if this was some sort of arrhythmic pattern to fool an oncoming sandworm. Was this technique something that desert travelers learned? If so, who could teach it to Kynes? He had to know everything about this place and its people, the worms and the spice and the dunes. Not only was it his Imperial directive: Pardot Kynes wanted to know for himself. Once he became involved in a project, he hated unanswered questions.

The group waited, and time passed slowly. The soldiers talked. The desert man continued his peculiar running, moving imperceptibly closer. Kynes could feel the stillsuit micro-sandwich layers sucking up his droplets of sweat.

He knelt and studied the umber rock at his feet. Basaltic lava, it contained eroded pockets that had been formed from leftover gaseous bubbles in the molten rock, or softer stone eaten away by the legendary Coriolis storms of Arrakis.

Kynes picked up a handful of sand and let it run through his fingers. Not unexpectedly, he saw that the grains of sand were quartz particles, shimmering in the sun with a few flecks of darker material that might have been magnetite.

At other places he had seen rusty colorations in the sand, striations of tan, orange, and coral, hinting at various oxides. Some of the coloring could also have been from weathered deposits of the spice melange, but Kynes had never seen unprocessed spice in the wild before. Not yet.

Finally, the spotter 'thopters overhead confirmed an approaching worm. A large one, moving fast.

The guards rose to their feet. Looking out onto the blurry landscape, Kynes saw a ripple on the sand, like an immense finger being drawn beneath the surface, disturbing the upper layers. The size of it astounded him.

"Worm's coming in from the side!" the Bator called.

"It's going straight for Thekar!" Rabban shouted, with cruel glee. "He's between the worm and the thumper. Awe, bad luck." His wide face now showed a different kind of anticipation.

Even from this distance, Kynes could see Thekar put on a burst of speed, forgetting his staggering walk as he saw the mound of the approaching worm tunneling toward him faster and faster. Kynes could well imagine the look of horror and hopeless despair on the desert man's face.

Then with a grim resolve and a sudden desperation, Thekar came to a full stop and lay flat on the sand, motionless, staring up at the sky, perhaps praying fervently to Shai-Hulud.

With the tiny footstep vibrations stopped, the distant thumper seemed as loud as an Imperial band. Thump, thump, thump. The worm paused -- then altered its path to head straight toward the cache of explosives.

Rabban gave a twitch of a shrug, nonchalant acceptance of an irrelevant defeat.

Kynes could hear the underground hiss of shifting sands, the approach of the behemoth. It came closer and closer, attracted like an iron filing to a deadly magnet. As it neared the thumper, the worm dived deeper underground, circled, and came up to engulf that which had attracted it, angered it -- or whatever instinctive reaction these blind leviathans experienced.

When the worm rose from the sands, it revealed a mouth large enough to swallow a spacecraft, ascending higher and higher, its maw opening wider as its flexible jaws spread like the petals of a flower. In an instant it engulfed the insignificant black speck of the thumper and all the explosives. Its crystal teeth shone like tiny sharp thorns spiraling down its bottomless gullet.

From three hundred meters away, Kynes saw ridges of ancient skin, overlapping folds of armor that protected the creature in its passage beneath the ground.

The worm gulped the booby-trapped bait and began to wallow into the sands again.

Rabban stood up with a demonic grin on his face and worked small transmitting controls. A hot breeze dusted his face, peppering his teeth with grains of sand. He pushed a button.

A distant thunderclap sent a tremor through the desert. The sands shifted in tiny avalanches from the fingernail dunes. The sequenced bomb ripped through the internal channels of the worm, blasting open its gut and splitting its armored segments.

As the dust cleared, Kynes saw the writhing, dying monstrosity that lay in a pool of disrupted sand, like a beached fur-whale.