Children of Dune
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Always newness, he thought. I must always find the new threads out of my vision.
In the early afternoon his attention was caught by a protuberance ahead and slightly to the right of his course. Slowly the protuberance became a narrow butte, an upthrust rock precisely where he'd expected it.
Now Namri... Now Sabiha, let us see how your brethren take to my presence, he thought. This was a most delicate thread ahead of him, dangerous more for its lures than its open threats.
The butte was a long time changing dimensions. And it appeared for a while that it approached him instead of him approaching it.
The worm, tiring now, kept veering left. Leto slid down the immense slope to set his hooks anew and keep the giant on a straight course. A soft sharpness of melange came to his nostrils, the signal of a rich vein. They passed the leprous blotches of violet sand where a spiceblow had erupted and he held the worm firmly until they were well past the vein. The breeze, redolent with the gingery odor of cinnamon, pursued them for a time until Leto rolled the worm onto its new course, headed directly toward the rising butte.
Abruptly colors blinked far out on the southern bled: the unwary rainbow flashing of a man-made artifact in that immensity. He brought up his binoculars, focused the oil lenses, and saw in the distance the outbanking wings of a spice-scout glittering in the sunlight. Beneath it a big harvester was shedding its wings like a chrysalis before lumbering off. When Leto lowered the binoculars the harvester dwindled to a speck, and he felt himself overcome by the hadhdhab, the immense omnipresence of the desert, it told him how those spice-hunters would see him, a dark object between desert and sky, which was the Fremen symbol for man. They'd see him, of course, and they'd be cautious. They'd wait. Fremen were always suspicious of one another in the desert until they recognized the newcomer or saw for certain that he posed no threat. Even within the fine patina of Imperial civilization and its sophisticated rules they remained half-tamed savages, aware always that a crysknife dissolved at the death of its owner.
That's what can save us, Leto thought. That wildness.
In the distance the spice-scout banked right, then left, a signal to the ground. He imagined the occupants scanning the desert behind him for sign that he might be more than a single rider on a single worm.
Leto rolled the worm to the left, held it until it had reversed its course, dropped down the flank, and leaped clear. The worm, released from his goading, sulked on the surface for a few breaths, then sank its front third and lay there recuperating, a sure sign that it had been ridden too long.
He turned away from the worm; it would stay there now. The scout was circling its crawler, still giving wing signals. They were smuggler-paid renegades for certain, wary of electronic communications. The hunters would be on spice out there. That was the message of the crawler's presence.
The scout circled once more, dipped its wings, came out of the circle and headed directly toward him. He recognized it for a type of light 'thopter his grandfather had introduced on Arrakis. The craft circled once above him, went out along the dune where he stood, and banked to land against the breeze. It came down within ten meters of him, stirring up a scattering of dust. The door on his side cracked enough to emit a single figure in a heavy Fremen robe with a spear symbol at the right breast.
The Fremen approached slowly, giving each of them time to study the other. The man was tall with the total indigo of spice-eyes. The stillsuit mask concealed the lower half of his face and the hood had been drawn down to protect his brows. The movement of the robe revealed a hand beneath it holding a maula pistol.
The man stopped two paces from Leto, looked down at him with a puzzled crinkling around the eyes.
"Good fortune to us all," Leto said.
The man peered all around, scanning the emptiness, then returned his attention to Leto. "What do you here, child?" he demanded. His voice was muffled by the stillsuit mask. "Are you trying to be the cork in a wormhole?"
Again Leto used traditional Fremen formula: "The desert is my home."
"Wenn?" the man demanded. Which way do you go?
"I travel south from Jacurutu."
An abrupt laugh erupted from the man. "Well, Batigh! You are the strangest thing I've ever seen in the Tanzerouft."
"I'm not your Little Melon," Leto said, responding to Batigh. That was a label with dire overtones. The Little Melon on the desert's edge offered its water to any finder.
"We'll not drink you, Batigh," the man said. "I am Muriz. I am the arifa of this taif." He indicated with a head motion the distant spice-crawler.
Leto noted how the man called himself the Judge of his group and referred to the others as taif, a band or company. They were not ichwan, not a band of brothers. Paid renegades for sure. Here lay the thread he required.
When Leto remained silent, Muriz asked: "Do you have a name?"
"Batigh will do."
A chuckle shook Muriz. "You've not told me what you do here?"
"I seek the footprints of a worm," Leto said, using the religious phrase which said he was on hajj for his own umma, his personal revelation.
"One so young?" Muriz asked. He shook his head. "I don't know what to do with you. You have seen us."
"What have I seen?" Leto asked. "I speak of Jacurutu and you make no response."
"Riddle games," Muriz said. "What is that, then?" He nodded toward the distant butte.
Leto spoke from his vision: "Only Shuloch."
Muriz stiffened and Leto felt his own pulse quicken.
A long silence ensued and Leto could see the man debating and discarding various responses. Shuloch! In the quiet story time after a sietch meal, stories of the Shuloch caravanserie were often repeated. Listeners always assumed that Shuloch was a myth, a place for interesting things to happen and only for the sake of the story. Leto recalled a Shuloch story: A waif was found at the desert's edge and brought into the sietch. At first the waif refused to respond to his saviors, then when he spoke no one could understand his words. As days passed he continued unresponsive, refused to dress himself or cooperate in any way. Every time he was left alone he made odd motions with his hands. All the specialists in the sietch were called in to study this waif but arrived at no answer. Then a very old woman passed the doorway, saw the moving hands, and laughed. "He only imitates his father who rolls the spice-fibers into rope," she explained. "It's the way they still do it at Shuloch. He's just trying to feel less lonely." And the moral: "In the old ways of Shuloch there is security and a sense of belonging to the golden thread of life".