Herbert, Frank - Dune 1 by Herbert Frank

Author:Herbert,Frank [Herbert,Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-09-30T13:25:16.672000+00:00

===========================

This Fremen religious adaptation, then, is the source of what we now recognize as "The

Pillars of the Universe," whose Qizara Tafwid are among us all with signs and proofs and

prophecy. They bring us the Arrakeen mystical fusion whose profound beauty is typified

by the stirring music built on the old forms, but stamped with the new awakening. Who

has not heard and been deeply moved by "The Old Man's Hymn"?

I drove my feet through a desert

Whose mirage fluttered like a host.

Voracious for glory, greedy for danger,

I roamed the horizons of al-Kulab,

Watching time level mountains

In its search and its hunger for me.

And I saw the sparrows swiftly approach,

Bolder than the onrushing wolf.

They spread in the tree of my youth.

I heard the flock in my branches

And was caught on their beaks and claws!

-from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan

290

The man crawled across a dunetop. He was a mote caught in the glare of the noon sun. He

was dressed only in torn remnants of a jubba cloak, his skin bare to the heat through the

tatters. The hood had been ripped from the cloak, but the man had fashioned a turban

from a torn strip of cloth. Wisps of sandy hair protruded from it, matched by a sparse

beard and thick brows. Beneath the blue-within-blue eyes, remains of a dark stain spread

down to his cheeks. A matted depression across mustache and beard showed where a

stillsuit tube had marked out its path from nose to catchpockets.

The man stopped half across the dunecrest, arms stretched down the slipface. Blood had

clotted on his back and on his arms and legs. Patches of yellow-gray sand clung to the

wounds. Slowly, he brought his hands under him, pushed himself to his feet, stood there

swaying. And even in this almost-random action there remained a trace of once-precise

movement.

"I am Liet-Kynes," he said, addressing himself to the empty horizon, and his voice was a

hoarse caricature of the strength it had known. "I am His Imperial Majesty's

Planetologist," he whispered, "planetary ecologist for Arrakis. I am steward of this land."

He stumbled, fell sideways along the crusty surface of the windward face. His hands dug

feebly into the sand.

I am steward of this sand, he thought.

He realized that he was semi-delirious, that he should dig himself into the sand, find the

relatively cool underlayer and cover himself with it. But he could still smell the rank,

semisweet esters of a pre-spice pocket somewhere underneath this sand. He knew the

peril within this fact more certainly than any other Fremen. If he could smell the pre-spice

mass, that meant the gasses deep under the sand were nearing explosive pressure. He had

to get away from here.

His hands made weak scrabbling motions along the dune face.

A thought spread across his mind--clear, distinct: The real wealth of a planet is in its

landscape, how we take part in that basic source of civilization--agriculture.

And he thought how strange it was that the mind, long fixed on a single track, could not

get off that track. The Harkonnen troopers had left him here without water or stillsuit,

thinking a worm would get him if the desert didn't.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.