Father chided me for being reckless, but I took all due precautions. I posed as a cult recruit, and I crept away while the rest of the Maas Kharet were engrossed in the climax of their profane rite. I cannot express the powerful pull of my curiosity to watch it to its conclusions. Father will never know the restraint I exercised tonight.
To a layperson or Harkonnen agitator, the Maas Kharet are just another form of Fremen, strange people doing rituals among the dunes. I could point out a thousand and one subtle signs that they are just a crazed cult wearing Fremen trappings, but I will focus on one obvious point, something even the most obtuse observer can see.
The Maas Kharet pray to the worms, make sacrifices of water (stolen from water transporters or the bodily fluids of unfortunate prospectors) to Shai-Hulud, the adopted avatar of their “Fremen” god. To true Fremen, such a sacrifice would be a spiritual perversion of the sacred rite of the Water of Life, or at the very least an unforgivable waste.