Evolution is the handmaiden of Death.
— NAIB ISHMAEL,
paraphrase of Zensunni Sutra
No matter how much the world changed around him, the desert remained clear and serene, vast, open, and eternally chaste. It seemed these days, however, that Ishmael had to go deeper and deeper into the great bled just to find his peace.
For centuries, the very harshness and isolation of Arrakis had driven away interlopers. Now though, because of the plague, the spice sent out too strong a call, and strangers no longer stayed away. Ishmael hated it.
The worm he summoned with his steady drumbeats was a small one, but he did not mind. He would not be taking it on a long journey. He just needed to escape the noise of offworld music and the garish colors of alien fabrics that surrounded him even among his own people. Ishmael required time for himself to cleanse his heart and mind.
Ishmael used hooks and ropes to mount the creature, accustomed to these efforts after many decades of practice. After he and his fellow escaped slaves from Poritrin had crashed here, infinitely patient Marha had shown Ishmael how to ride the sandworms, insisting it was a necessary part of understanding the legend of Selim Wormrider. How he missed her….
Now, in the gathering colors of dawn, Ishmael held the rough and crusty surface of the worm’s upper rings. He enjoyed the hot flinty wind in his face, the hiss of scraping sands as the worm forged along. The dunes, the great emptiness, a few rocks, the eternal winds, lonely plants and animals. Dune merging into dune, desert into desert. Blowing sand fogged the horizon, obscuring the rising sun.
With no explicit destination in mind, just wanting to be alone, he let the beast go where it wished. Memories rode with him, and he thought of his many decades of hardship and change… then eventual happiness. Countless ghosts followed Ishmael across the stark landscape, but his reminiscences were not frightening. He accepted the loss of friends and family, and he honored the time he had spent with loved ones.
He remembered the marsh village on Harmonthep where he’d been a little boy, then growing up as a slave on Poritrin, forced to work in agricultural fields, in the household of Savant Holtzman, and in shipyards before escaping to Arrakis. Two of the ghost-memories were blurred, made indistinct by the passage of so much time: his wife and younger daughter. It took him a moment to remember their names, it had been so long. Ozza and Falina. He’d been forced to leave them behind in the slave uprising. Stranded here, he’d eventually taken another wife… and Marha was also gone. His eyes stung with blown sand, or tears. He hated to waste his body’s water in such a way.
Ishmael pulled a sheltering fabric over his head and face to protect them from the heat of the day. Needing no maps, he would circle around and find his way back home. After all this time, Ishmael harbored no doubt of his skills.
Astrong, rich aroma of spice hovered in the air, pungent and cinnamon, penetrating even the plugs he inserted into his nostrils. The worm thrashed restlessly as it crossed rusty sands where a spice blow had occurred. Though he had been riding giant sandworms for much of his life, Ishmael did not understand their behavior. No one did. Shai-Hulud had his own thoughts and paths, and no mere human could question them.
Toward sunset he headed toward a long rocky outcropping where he decided to camp. As he approached the isolated site, his sharp eyes narrowed, and he sucked a quick, angry breath at the sight of glinting metal and rounded structures— a small village that had sprung up in the shelter of the stony island. Ishmael recalled no settlement from his previous visits out this way.
With a lurch, he yanked the hooks and applied spreading devices to steer the worm from the blot of civilization and headed around to the opposite end of the reef dozens of kilometers away. From the town, someone might have seen him astride the sinuous behemoth in the colorful dusk light. No matter. The stories of Selim Wormrider and his bandits were common knowledge— almost to the point of superstition among the swarming offworld spice rushers.
He let the weary sandworm collapse into the shallow dunes at the far edge of the reef. Ishmael sprang away from the rough surface of the creature and bounded across the sands while the worm wallowed itself deeper beneath the dunes. Despite his age, he felt rejuvenated from the exercise. He walked with a practiced uneven pace and climbed into the rocks where he would be safe.
There, Ishmael found spotty lichens and a few thorny weeds in cracks, demonstrating the hardiness and resilience of life. He hoped that his people would maintain the same tenacity and not grow weak and spoiled, despite El’hiim’s attempts to lure them from their traditional ways.
When Ishmael found a place for his sleeping pad and a flat rock on which to cook his meal, he was suddenly dismayed to find signs of human passage even here. The tracks were not made by a desert man, no expert in Zensunni ways or careful survival techniques. No, this was the blundering path of an outsider, someone who knew nothing about Arrakis.
After a moment’s hesitation, he angrily followed the trail— scuffed footprints in the dust, a few cast-off tools, overpriced metal implements that had been purchased in Arrakis City. Ishmael picked up a compass that looked shiny and new and was not surprised to find that it did not work. Next he came upon an empty water container, then crumpled food wrappers. Even though the desert and time would erase all marks, it disgusted him to see how strangers sullied the virginal purity of the desert. Soon he found tattered garments: flimsy fabrics not designed for the rough weather and unrelenting sun.
Finally Ishmael came upon the interloper himself. He had climbed down the rocks, stumbling to the sand where he could follow the edge of the reef against the ocean of dunes. Presumably the man was trying to make his way back to the new settlement many kilometers away. Ishmael stood over the nearly nude, sunburned man, who groaned and coughed, still alive, though probably not for long.
Not without help, at least.
The stranger turned a dark, blistered face upward, revealing sharp features and close-set eyes, looking at Ishmael as if he were a vengeful demon… or a rescuing angel. Ishmael recoiled. It was the Tlulaxa man he and El’hiim had met in Arrakis City. Wariff.
“I need water,” the man croaked. “Help me. Please.”
All of Ishmael’s muscles turned rigid. “Why should I? You are a Tlulaxa, a slaver. Your people destroyed my life— “
Wariff didn’t seem to hear him. “Help me. In the name of… your own conscience.”
Ishmael had supplies, of course. He would never have gone on a journey without being fully prepared. He had little to spare, but he could always obtain more in a Zensunni village. This Tlulaxa spice hunter, lured to Arrakis by promises of easy wealth, had stumbled far out of his depth— and not even out on the harshest dune sea!
Ishmael cursed his own curiosity. If he had just remained in camp, he would never have tracked this fool. The Tlulaxa would have died, as he deserved, and no man would have been the wiser. He had no responsibility for Wariff, no obligation. But now that Ishmael was faced with a helpless, desperate survivor, he could not simply turn his back.
From many years ago he remembered the Koran Sutras his grandfather had taught him: “Aman must declare peace within himself before he can find peace in the outside world.” And another one: “A person’s deeds are the measure of his soul.” Was there a lesson to be learned here?
Sighing and furious with himself, Ishmael opened his pack and withdrew a water container, squirting just a little into Wariff’s parched mouth. “You are fortunate I am not a monster— like your own people.” The sunburned man reached greedily for the spigot, but Ishmael drew it away. “Only enough for you to survive.”
This inexperienced prospector had wandered off the trails and gotten caught in the desert. Back in Arrakis City, Wariff had rudely spurned El’hiim’s offer of assistance and advice, but Ishmael’s stepson, for all his faults and delusions, would never have allowed the man to make such simpleton mistakes as this.
After Wariff gulped another rationed sip of water, Ishmael gave him part of a spice wafer to provide immediate energy. Finally, he draped the smaller man’s arm over his shoulder and stood, dragging Wariff to his feet. “I cannot carry you all the kilometers to the nearest settlement. You must help, since you caused your own misfortune.”
Wariff stumbled. “Take me to the village, and you may have all of my equipment. I don’t care about it.”
“Your offworlder baubles are worthless to me.”
They staggered along. The night stretched before them, already illuminated by two risen moons. Any healthy man could have made the trek in a day. Ishmael had no intention of summoning a worm, though it would have made their passage much faster. “You’ll survive. The company town should be able to give you medical attention.”
“I owe you my life,” Wariff said.
Ishmael scowled at him. “Your life has no more value to me than your useless equipment. Just leave my world. If you can’t take simple precautions to adapt in the desert, then you have no business on Arrakis.”