Sorrow | Dune | Gurney Halleck

Chapter Thirty Four

"You're Fremen?" Paul asked.

"I am accepted in both sietch and village. Now, come and see the spice sands on which your livelihoods depend."

The tone and the way her eyes casted to the side made it look as if she were hiding something. That was an opinion Mildred kept to herself. She tried not to judge someone based on a first meeting. However, something felt off about the woman. There would be three ornithopters that would fly to one of the harvest sites. Her father would pilot the one that Dr. Kynes, Paul, Gurney and Mildred rode in. She knew her father tried to fly any chance he got.

She climbed into the ornithopter and took a seat next to Gurney. She secured the seatbelt, but Gurney stood to check it. She raised an eyebrow at him. "Do you not think I'm capable of putting a seatbelt on?"

"It's not you I'm worried about. It's the potential for sabotage that worries me." He admitted and moved to check Paul's seat.

Dr. Kynes watched the young woman and Warmaster as they interacted. It didn't take her long to discover that they were married, at least she assumed they were. The gazes. The way they smiled at one another. How close they stood. She leaned over to Lady Mildred as she slipped her headset on and spoke quietly, "I've never seen a royal couple actually love each other."

"Oh," Mildred said. "Yes, I suppose it's a rare commodity. Do the Fremen marry for love?"

"Most do. Some widows remarry to save them and their children." She admitted while Gurney settled back into his seat.

Despite the homesickness that Mildred had been feeling, the desert was actually quite beautiful as her father flew them across the surface. It seemed endless. Sand everywhere. She knew the darker colored patches of sand represented the spice.

"What would you do if your ornithopter went down out here?" Paul asked curiously while he gazed out the window.

"You wouldn't want to go down out there. It's worm territory." Dr. Kynes told him.

The sand worms. Mildred had almost forgotten about the giant creatures that lived under the sand.

Gurney leaned forward. "Dust cloud."

Mildred's eyes fixated onto the horizon and she could barely make out the dust with the naked eye. All that mattered was that her father saw it.

"That's one of your harvesters." Dr. Kynes said as the dingy looking machinery came into view. "You can see the spice scattered over the surface. A rich spice bed by the color. If you get a little higher, you'll have a better view."

Leto pulled on the control stick and the ornithopter moved towards the sky.

"You see these spotter aircrafts looking for wormsign." The doctor noted as smaller ships flew over them.

"Wormsign?" Paul asked.

"A sand wave moving toward the crawler. Worms travel deep but get closer to the surface when they attack. If you are patient, we should see one."

"A worm always comes?" Gurney asked.

Dr. Kynes turned to look at him. "Always. They're drawn to rhythmic noises."

Mildred glanced back out the window, looking back and forth from the crawler to the surface. In the distance, something caught her eye. Another sand cloud, but it couldn't have been another machine.

"Is that a worm?" Mildred asked.

Dr. Kynes picked up her binoculars and looked where Mildred had pointed. "Big one. You have good eyes. Calling crawler Delta Ajax niner. Wormsign warning. Acknowledge."