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  Science Fiction Stories

  Treasure in the Sand

  Dog Soldier

  When SysAdmins Ruled the Earth

  The Ruby Dice

  Fantasy Stories

  Sisters of Sarronym; Sisters of Westwind

  As Black As Hell

  What Sleeps in the Shallows Belongs to the Depths

  Benny Comes Home

  Classic Stories Title: Lulu

  Pollock and the Porroh Man

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  The Ancient Ones, Part 2

  Travials with Momma, Part 2

  Fish Story, Episode 2

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  Obituary

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  The Editor's Page—August 2006

  Salvos Against Big Brother

  The Gutenberg Column

  Science Fiction Stories

  Treasure in the Sand

  Author: Kevin Anderson and Brian Herbert

  Illustrated by Phil Renne

  "When the last worm dies and the last melange is harvested upon our sands, these deep treasures will spring up throughout our universe. As the power of the spice monopoly fades and the hidden stockpiles make their mark, new powers will appear throughout our realm."

  —Leto Atreides II, the God Emperor of Dune

  Pressing his fingers against the windowport of the Spacing Guild landing shuttle, Lokar stared at the blasted world beneath them. Rakis, once called Dune—home of the holy sandworms, the only natural source of the spice melange, the place where the God Emperor Leto II had gone into the sand.

  Now everything was dead, incinerated by the obliterating weapons of the Honored Matres. . . .

  Lokar, one of the last Priests of the Divided God, closed his eyes before tears could come. Giving water to the dead. To a whole dead world. He murmured a prayer, which was drowned out by the sound of dry air currents that buffeted the descending ship.

  "The planet looks like one giant scab. How can there be anything left down there?" asked Dak Pellenquin. Lokar didn't like him; he was the expedition member who had talked loudest and bragged most frequently during the Heighliner journey to Rakis. "One giant scab. Is this expedition going to be worth our while? Worth anyone's while?"

  "We'll find whatever there is to find." Guriff, the expedition leader, cut him off. "Our priest will show us where to dig." Guriff had close-cropped dark hair, narrow-set eyes, and a persistent bristly stubble on his chin, no matter how often he attended to his facial hygiene. "Anything left down there—that whole planet is ours for the taking."

  "Only because no one else wants it," said a stocky man. He had a jovial expression, but icy cold eyes behind his forced smile. This one called himself Ivex, though rumor held that this was not his true name. He propped his feet up on the empty seat in front of him.

  Lokar didn't answer any of them, just clung to his prayer like a lifeline, eyes shut. Joining these treasure hunters on the departure planet of Cherodo had been a risk, but the devout priest had considered his options. Rakis was the most sacred of all worlds, home of the great sandworms that comprised the Divided God. Away from Rakis on a mission during the cataclysm, Lokar had survived by the purest luck—or divine destiny. He must recover what he could, if only to atone.

  Since scanning had proved imprecise on the planet still in flux after the bombardment, Lokar had offered to use his own instincts and first-hand knowledge to guide their searches. Among many poor choices, this one made the most sense, the only way he could afford to travel back to what was left of his beloved Rakis. A last, desperate pilgrimage.

  He had agreed to accompany their "archaeological expedition"—what a euphemism!—under very specific terms. CHOAM, the ancient and powerful trading organization, financed the expedition for its own reasons, hoping for a financial boon. They had agreed to the priest's demands, drawn up a contract, and specified the terms. Provided the Priest of the Divided God could indeed show the scavengers the way, Guriff's men were authorized to grab whatever physical treasures they managed to dig out of the blasted sands, but any sacred relics would be turned over to Lokar (though the distinction between "sacred relics" and "treasure" remained uncomfortably nebulous).

  A slender woman stepped out of the cockpit and looked at the hodge-podge members of the expedition. Representing CHOAM, Alaenor Ven had reddish-gold hair that hung to her shoulders, the strands so precisely neat and straight that they seemed held in place with a nullentropy field. Her eyes were crystalline blue, her facial features flawlessly (and probably artificially) sculpted to the absolute perfection one might find on the visage of a mannequin. In an odd way, her very lack of flaws made her seem cold and unattractive.

  "CHOAM has provided all the equipment you will need. You have two survey 'thopters, two groundcars, prefabricated shelters, excavation machines, and supplies for two months. Even with all of the sand plankton killed, sample probes show the air is thin but breathable. The oxygen content remains tolerable, though diminished."

  Ivex gave a scornful laugh. "How can that be? If sand plankton create the oxygen, and they were all burned away —"

  "I merely report the readings. I do not explain them. You will have to find your own answers."

  Listening without participating, Lokar nodded quietly to himself at the obvious explanation: It was a miracle. There had always been mysteries about the planet Dune. This was just one more.

  "Though the environment is not as inhospitable as one might expect, do not allow yourselves to be overconfident. Rakis is still a harsh place." She looked at them again. "We land in forty minutes. Our schedule permits you only three standard hours to unload and make your preparations."

  Eleven members of the team shifted in their seats, fully attentive; two pretended to sleep, as if ignoring the challenges they would face; the remaining three peered through the windowports with varying levels of interest and trepidation.

  Pellenquin cried, "Three hours? Can't you wait a day or two to make sure we're not stranded there."

  Guriff scowled at his own crewman. "The Spacing Guild has schedules and customers. If you don't trust your own survival abilities, Dak, you have no business on my team. Tear up your contract now and go back with Alaenor Ven if you like."

  "I would if she'd have me," Ivex said with a snort. A few others chuckled in their seats. The icily beautiful CHOAM woman's expression did not change at all.

  High overhead, the huge Heighliner that had carried them here orbited the seared desert planet as the landing shuttle set down on the unmarked ground. Devastating weapons had entirely reshaped the terrain—cities leveled, mountains turned to glass, oceans of sand vitrified. A few sketchy landmarks remained, and despite the planet's unpredictable magnetics, the transport's deep-scan probes had found enough of a street grid to identify the buried city of Keen. The team would set up camp there.

  When the cargo doors opened onto the glassy, baked plain, Guriff's team wore oxygen intensifiers with supplemental tanks on their shoulders. Lokar was the first to remove his breather and inhale deeply. The air was thin and dry, with what others found to be an unpleasant burnt smell; even so, when he filled his lungs, the taste was sweet. He was returning home. He fell to his knees on the hard, scorched sand, thanking the Divided God for bringing him back safely, for helping him to continue holy work.

  Guriff went over to the kneeling priest and nudged him roughly. "Work now, pray later. You'll have plenty of time to commune with your desert once we set up the camp."

  Under a tight schedule, the crew threw themselve
s into the task at hand. Guriff shouted orders to them, and the scavengers moved about unloading the groundcars and 'thopters, removing the shelter structures, prefabricated huts, crates of food supplies, and large barrels of water. To protect the exploratory 'thopters and groundcars, they erected a hangar dome.

  For his own shelter, Lokar had specified a simple desert tent. To really understand this planet, to touch its pulse, the Holy Books of the Divided God said it was better to live on the surface and in natural rock formations, facing the heat, sandstorms, and behemoth worms. But this was not the old Rakis, not a great planetary expanse of windblown sand. Much of the loose sand had turned to glass, and surely the great worms had all perished in the conflagration.

  The scavengers spoke excitedly of the great treasure the God Emperor was said to have concealed on Rakis. Though no one had found the hoards in thousands of years, during prime conditions on Rakis, the scavengers hoped the very devastation had churned something up from the depths.

  In less than three standard hours, they had unloaded the equipment and supplies. All the while, the CHOAM representative stood staring at the wasteland, frequently consulting her wrist-embedded chronometer. She stepped back into the transport precisely when her schedule told her to do so. "A ship will return to gather whatever you have found in thirty standard days. Complete your survey and assess any value this planet retains." Her voice became harder. "But do not disappoint us."

  With a hum of suspensor engines and a roar of displaced air, the large landing shuttle climbed back into the atmosphere, leaving Lokar with Guriff's crew, alone on an entire planet.

  ****

  Like frenzied worker bees, the treasure hunters laid out their equipment and gear, ready to begin their work. Guriff and his men fanned out with handheld probes, using several models of Ixian ground-penetrating scanners in a useless attempt to peer through the sandy surface. Lokar watched them with patient skepticism. The Divided God would never make their work so simple. They would have to labor, sweat, and suffer for any gains they achieved.

  These men would learn, he knew.

  It was late afternoon, with the sun low in the restless atmosphere, but the men were anxious to get underway, frustrated by the long wait of the journey. They made a lot of noise, unlike the old days when such vibrations would have brought the monster worms. Not anymore. Lokar felt a wave of sadness.

  Off by himself, he moved to a low spot, a glassy featureless depression that he thought might be the center of the lost city. He placed himself in relation to the low rocky escarpments that distinguished the site from the rest of the bleak surroundings. The sensation felt right, as if his entire life and all its experiences, large and small, had pointed him in this direction.

  The Priests of the Divided God had placed many of the God Emperor's treasures in safekeeping at their temple in the city of Keen. Though he held only a middle rank, Lokar had once seen the protected subterranean vaults. Perhaps those chambers were far enough beneath the surface to have survived the bombardment.

  The air, while dry and thin, was disturbingly cool, as if the planet's great furnace had flickered out. But he could not shake the belief that his Divided God still lived here, somehow. As he stared, hypnotically drawn to the shimmering and melted surface, Lokar began to see with a different set of eyes.

  He walked around the blasted city with an increasing sensation. Each step of the way he knew exactly where he was. When he narrowed his eyes, ancient structures began to appear around him like mirages, dancing on the sand in ghostly, flickering color, as if his mind had its own scanner.

  Am I going mad? Or am I receiving divine guidance?

  A few hundred meters away, the others gathered around the expedition leader, shaking their heads at their equipment in anger, hurling it to the ground and cursing it. Pellenquin shouted, "Just like they said. Our damned scanners don't work here!"

  Although Guriff brought out a tough, thin map printed on spice paper, he and his companions could not get their bearings. Annoyed, he stuffed it back in his pocket.

  "Maybe our priest will have a revelation," Ivex said with a forced chuckle.

  Guriff led them over to Lokar. "Priest, you had better earn your keep."

  Still seeing spectral images of the lost city, he nodded distractedly. "The Divided God is speaking to you through this planet. All of your technology didn't destroy it. Rakis still has a pulse."

  "We didn't destroy it," Pellenquin protested. "Don't blame us for this."

  "Mankind is a single organism. We are all responsible for what occurred here."

  "He's talking strangely," Ivex said. "Again."

  "If you insist on thinking that way, you will never understand." Lokar narrowed his eyes, and the illusory splendor of the great city danced beyond and around the men. "Tomorrow, I will show you the way."

  ****

  As he slept alone in his flimsy tent, listening to the rustle of silence outside, Lokar lived through a peculiar dream. He saw the Temple at Keen restored in all of its glory, with dark-robed priests going about their business as if the Divided God would last forever.

  Lokar had not been one of the Priesthood's elite, though he'd undergone rituals and tests that could one day grant him entry into the most secret sanctums. In his dream he gazed through the slit-window of a tower that overlooked the sands, the realm of the holy worms. A procession of hooded priests entered the tower room and gathered around him. They pulled down their hoods to reveal their faces: Guriff, Pellenquin, Ivex, and the others.

  The shock awoke him, and he sat up in the darkness of his tent. Poking his head out through the flap seals, Lokar smelled moisture in the darkness, an oddly heavy night-scent unlike any of the Rakian odors he remembered. What had the bombardment done to the cycles of water on this planet? In bygone days there had been subterranean caches of water, but the devastating weapons must have damaged them, broken them loose. He drew another deep breath, savoring the smell. Moist air on Rakis!

  Above the disconcertingly bumpy eastern horizon, the sky glowed softly red, then brightened with sunrise to profile the nubby, melted escarpments. The treasure hunters emerged from their stiff-walled shelters and milled around.

  Lokar walked out onto the sandy surface. The men formed a circle outside, opened food and beverage packages provided by CHOAM, and made faces as they chewed and swallowed. He picked up a breakfast pack and joined them, lifting a self-heating coffee cup from an extruded holder on his plate. The dark blend should have had melange in it, especially on Rakis. It had been so long since he'd had good spice coffee.

  Eager to get started, stocky Ivex tested his handheld scanner again. In disgust he tossed it into a half-buried storage bin.

  At sunset the night before, their two survey 'thopters had already taken off for a first look at the surrounding area. When they returned, the men had streamed out of them like enraged bees. Lokar didn't have to hear their complaints and expectations. Their faces told it all. Rakis had not met their expectations, and now they were stuck here for at least a month.

  Guriff said, "We're relying on you, Priest. Where is the buried temple?" He pointed over his left shoulder. "That way?"

  "No. Government offices were in that direction, and the Bene Gesserit keep."

  The expedition leader brought out the rumpled spice-paper map. "So the temple was more to the west?"

  "Your map is flawed. Important streets and structures are missing. The scale is off."

  "Reliable documents about Rakis are hard to come by, especially now. No one thought maps of Keen would ever be useful again."

  "I'm your only reliable map now." He could easily have led them off track, but he was anxious to explore the religious site himself—and they had the appropriate tools. "Remember, according to my CHOAM agreement, I am to be the caretaker of the most important religious artifacts. And I am to decide which artifacts are the most significant."

  "Yes, yes." Guriff's eyes flashed angrily. "But first you have to find something for us to dis
cuss."

  Lokar pointed to the northwest. "The great Temple of Keen is that way. Follow me."

  As if his comment had fired the starting gun in a race, the scavengers ran for digging machines kept in the 'thopters and began assembling the components. He had seen the powerful wheeled machines demonstrated back on Cherodo, during preparation for the expedition.

  As the priest led the treasure hunters across the desolate sand, he hoped he was doing the right thing. If God didn't want me to do this, he would tell me so. With each step, a more intense trancelike state came over him, as if the Divided God were still transmitting across the cosmos, telling the priest exactly what to do, despite the grievous injury that had been committed against Him.

  Through narrowed eyes, Lokar absorbed the images of the lost buildings, and the grandeur of Keen danced around him. These unbelievers noticed nothing more than dead rolling sand around them. He led the men along a thoroughfare that only he could see, a wide boulevard that once had been lined with devout followers. Behind him, the men chattered anxiously over the soft rumble of their rolling, self-propelled digging machines.

  At the main entrance of the Temple, where a statue-lined bridge had once crossed a deep, dry arroyo, Lokar pointed a wavering finger downward. "Dig there. Carefully."

  Two men donned protective suits and climbed onto a pair of digging machines. Side by side, they began to bore downward at an angle into the fused sandy surface, blasting a reinforced shell into the soft, sloping walls. Behind them, the exhaust funnels spewed dirt back out with great force, shooting material high into the air.

  Guriff handed an imager headset to the priest. "Here, watch the progress of the drilling. Tell us if you see anything wrong."

  When Lokar put the device on, the illusory images of the city faded in his mind, leaving only ugly reality. He watched as the tunnelers reached a glassy-black surface several meters beneath the surface—the remains of a melted structure that had been covered over by blowing sand. The headlamps of the digging machines revealed a partially uncovered door and an ancient symbol.