"Brian Herbert - Dune - Nightime Shadows On Open Sand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

Garan stopped as if struck by a thunderbolt. "I've heard the Fremen do it. If you drown a baby
worm, they say it spits out some kind of drug or poison. It's very rare."

Kiel nodded. "Oh, yeah. The desert people use it in their religious rituals. It makes everybody go
crazy, wild orgies and everything."

"But тАж we've only got two literjons of water in the compartment," Josten said, still nervous.

"Then we only use one. I know where we can refill it, anyway." The pilot and his sidegunner
exchanged glances. They had patrolled together long enough that they'd both thought of the same
thing.

As if understanding its fate, the worm bucked and thrashed even more, but it was already growing
weaker.

"Once we get the drug," Kiel said, "let's have some fun."




┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖


At night, with the patrol 'thopter running in stealth mode, they flew over the razor-edged
mountains, approaching from behind a ridge and landing on a rough mesa above the squalid village
of Bilar Camp. The villagers lived in hollowed-out caves and aboveground structures that extended
out to the flats. Windmills generated power; supply bins glittered with tiny lights that attracted
a few moths and the bats that fed on them.
Unlike the nomadic Fremen, these villagers were slightly more civilized but also more downtrodden:
men who worked as desert guides and joined spice-harvesting crews. They had forgotten how to
survive on their world without becoming parasites upon the planetary governors.

On an earlier patrol, Kiel and Garan had discovered a camouflaged cistern on the mesa, a treasure
trove of water. Kiel didn't know where the villagers had gotten so much moisture; most likely,
they had committed fraud, inflating their census numbers so that Harkonnen generosity provided
more than they deserved.

The people of Bilar Camp covered the cistern with rock so that it looked like a natural
protrusion, but the villagers placed no guards around their illegal stockpile. For some reason
desert culture forbade thievery even more than murder; they trusted the safety of their
possessions from bandits or thieves of the night.

Of course, the Harkonnen troopers had no intention of stealing the waterтАФthat is, no more than
enough to refill their own supply containers.

Dutifully, Josten trotted along with their sloshing container, which held the thick, noxious
substance exuded by the drowned worm after it had stopped thrashing and bucking inside the
container. Awed and nervous about what they'd done, they dumped the flaccid carcass near the
perimeter of the spice blow and then taken off with the drug.