Carrying a stack of reports, Laera did not react well to the news. "But Mother Commander, you've been gone so long. Many documents await your attention. You have to make decisions, give proper--"
"I decide the priorities."
Kiria, looking scornful, bit her words back when she noted the Mother Commander's complete seriousness. They all crowded aboard an empty ornithopter, then waited for the tedious takeoff preparations. Murbella wouldn't sit still for a moment. "If I don't get a pilot, I'll fly this damned thing myself." A young male pilot was quickly brought to her.
As the 'thopter took off, she finally turned to her advisors and explained, "The Guild demands an exorbitant payment for all the warships we have under construction. Ix already accepts payments only in melange, and now that soostones from Buzzell are no longer economically viable, everything hinges on spice. That is our only coin significant enough to appease the Guild."
"Appease them?" Kiria snapped. "What madness is this? We should conquer them and force them to produce the weapons and vessels we need. Are we the only ones who understand the threat? Thinking machines are coming!"
Janess was astonished by the other woman's suggestion. "Attacking the Guild would create open civil warfare at a time when we can least afford it."
"Do we have enough resources to spend on these ships?" asked Laera. "Our credit has already been strained past its limits with the Guild Bank."
"We all face a common enemy," old Accadia said. "Surely, the Guild and Ix would be willing--"
Murbella clenched her hands. "This has nothing to do with altruism or greed. Despite the best intentions, resources and raw materials do not appear like rainbows after a storm. Populations must be fed, ships must be fueled, energy must be produced and expended. Money is only a symbol, but economics is the engine that drives the whole machine. The piper must be paid."
The 'thopter raced across the sky, buffeted by dry winds and blown dust long before they saw the desert. Murbella gazed out the curved window, sure that dunes had not extended this far across the continent the last time she'd visited the desert. It was a spreading antiflood, total dryness sweeping outward in waves. At the heart of the desert, the worms grew and reproduced, keeping the cycle going in a perpetually increasing spiral.
The Mother Commander turned to the woman behind her. "Laera, I require a complete assessment of our spice-harvesting operations. I need to know numbers. How many long tons of melange do we gather? How much do we have in our stockpiles, and how much is available for export?"
"We produce enough to meet our needs, Mother Commander. Our investment continues to go into expanding the operations, but our expenditures have increased dramatically."
Kiria muttered a bitter comment about the Ixians and their endless bills.
"We may need to bring in outside workers," Janess pointed out. "These obstacles can be overcome."
The 'thopter swooped toward a chimney-plume of dust and sand thrown up by a harvester. Around it, like wolves circling a wounded animal, several sandworms approached the vibrations. Already the operations were beginning to wrap up, with miners rushing and carryalls hovering to snatch the heavy machinery away as soon as worms ventured too close.
Murbella said, "Squeeze the desert, wring out every gram of spice."
"Beast Rabban was given the same task long ago, during the days of Muad'Dib," said Accadia. "And he failed in a spectacular fashion."
"Rabban did not have the Sisterhood behind him." She could see Laera, Janess, and Kiria all making silent mental calculations. How many workers could be diverted to the desert zone? How many offplanet prospectors and treasure hunters could they allow on Chapterhouse? And how much spice would be enough to keep Guild and Ixian engineers producing the desperately needed ships and weapons?
The male pilot, having been silent until now, said, "While we are out here, Mother Commander, shall I take you to our desert research station? The planetology crew is studying the sandworm cycle, the spread of desert, and the parameters necessary for the most effective spice harvest."
" 'Understanding is required before success is possible,' " Laera said, quoting directly from the old Orange Catholic Bible.
"Yes, let me inspect this station. Research is necessary, but in times like these it must be practical research. We have no time for frivolous studies concocted by the whim of an offworld scientist."
The pilot banked the 'thopter and accelerated far out into the open desert. On the horizon, a lumpy, black ridge showed a reef of buried rock, a safe bastion where worms could not go.
Shakkad Station had been named after Shakkad the Wise, a ruler from days before the Butlerian Jihad. Nearly lost in the mists of legend, Shakkad's chemist had been the first man in history to recognize the geriatric properties of melange. Now, far from Chapterhouse Keep or any outside interference, a group of fifty scientists, Sisters, and their support staff lived and worked. They set up weather-testing devices, traveled out onto the dunes to measure chemical changes during spice blows and monitor the growth and movement of sandworms.
When the 'thopter settled onto a flat cliff outcropping that served as a makeshift landing pad, a group of scientists came out to meet them. Dusty and windblown, a survey team was just returning from the edges of the desert where they had set out sampling poles and weather-testing instruments. They wore stillsuits, exact reproductions of those once used by the Fremen.
A majority of the scientists at Shakkad Station were men, and several of the older ones had made brief expeditions to charred Rakis itself. Three decades had passed since the ecological destruction of the desert planet, and by now few experts could claim firsthand knowledge of the sandworms or original conditions on Dune.
"How may we assist you, Mother Commander?" asked the station manager, an offworlder who pushed dusty protective goggles up onto his forehead. The man's owlish eyes had already begun to turn a faint blue. Spice had been in his diet every day since his arrival at the outpost. His body gave off an unpleasant sour odor, as if he had taken his assignment in the waterless belt with particular seriousness, even to the point of foregoing regular bathing.
"Assist us by getting more melange," Murbella answered bluntly.
"Do your teams have everything they need?" Laera asked. "Do you require additional supplies or workers?"
"No, no. We just want solitude and the freedom to work. Oh, and time."
"I can give you the first two. But time is a commodity none of us has."
We can conquer our enemy, of course, but is it worthwhile to achieve victory without understanding the flaws of our opponent? Such an analysis is the most interesting part.
--ERASMUS,
Laboratory Notebooks
The machine-based cathedral on Synchrony was a mere manifestation of what the rest of the galaxy might become. Omnius was pleased at the progress the thinking-machine fleet had made in the past few years, conquering one system after another, but Erasmus knew that so much more remained to do.
The voice of Omnius boomed much louder than necessary, as he sometimes liked to do. "The New Sisterhood offers the strongest resistance to us, but I know how to defeat them. Scouts have verified the secret location of Chapterhouse, and I have already dispatched plague probes there. Those women will soon be extinct." Omnius sounded quite bored. "Shall I display the map of star systems, so you know just how many we have encountered and conquered? Not a single failure."
Displays jabbed into Erasmus's mind, regardless of whether he wanted to see them or not. In bygone days the independent robot had been able to decide what he wanted to download from the evermind, and what he didn't. Increasingly, however, Omnius had found ways to override the robot's decision-making abilities, forcing data into his internal systems, sliding it past multiple firewalls.
"Those are mere symbolic victories," Erasmus said, intentionally shifting to his disguise of the wrinkled old woman in gardening clothes. "I am pleased that we have made it to the edge of the Old Empire, but we still have not won this
war. I have spent millennia studying these stubborn, resourceful humans. Do not assume victory until we actually have it in our hands. Remember what happened last time."
Omnius's snort of disbelief echoed through the entire city of Synchrony. "We are by definition better than flawed humanity." From a thousand watcheyes, he looked down upon Erasmus and his matronly disguise. "Why do you persist in wearing that embarrassing shape? It makes you look weak."
"My physical body does not determine my strength. My mind makes me what I am."
"I am not interested in your mind either. I simply wish to win this war. I must win. I need to win. Where is the no-ship? Where is my Kwisatz Haderach?"
"You sound as demanding as Baron Harkonnen. Are you unconsciously imitating him?"
"You gave me the mathematical projections, Erasmus. Where is the superhuman? Answer me."
The robot chuckled. "You already have Paolo."
"Your prophecy also guaranteed a Kwisatz Haderach aboard the no-ship. I want both versions--redundancy to assure victory. And I do not want the humans to have one. I must control them both."
"We will find the no-ship. We already know there are many intriguing things aboard, including a Tleilaxu Master. He may be the only one left alive, and I would very much like to speak with him--as would you. The Master needs to see how all those Face Dancers have shaped us, built us, so that we could become closer to gods. Closer than humans, at any rate."
"We will keep sending out our net. And we will find that ship."
All around the city, in a dramatic statement of the evermind's impatience, towering buildings collapsed, full metal structures fell in upon themselves. Hearing the thundering sounds and feeling the floor shake beneath him, the independent robot was not impressed. Too many times he had witnessed such overblown theatrics. Omnius certainly enjoyed running the show, for better and often for worse, though Erasmus continually tried to control the evermind's excesses. The future depended on it--the future that Erasmus had ordained.
He dug through the projections that he'd digested from trillions of datapoints. All of his results were colored to fit precisely the prophecies he had formulated himself. Omnius believed them all. The gullible evermind relied too much on filtered information, and the robot played him well.
Given the proper parameters, Erasmus was absolutely certain the millennia ahead would turn out properly.
Those who see do not always understand. Those who claim to understand can be the blindest of all.
--the Oracle of Time
What remained of Norma Cenva's ancient corporeal form was confined inside a chamber that had been built and modified around her during thousands of years. But her mind knew no physical boundaries. She was only tenuously connected to flesh, a biological generator of pure thought. The Oracle of Time.
Her mental links to the fabric of the universe gave her the ability to travel anywhere along infinite possibilities. She could see the future and the past, but not always with perfect clarity. Her brain was such that she could touch the Infinite and almost--almost--comprehend it.
Her nemesis, the evermind, had laid down a vast electronic network throughout the fabric of space, a complex tachyon road map that most people could not see. Omnius used it as a net to sift for his prey, but so far he had not managed to snare the no-ship.
Long ago, Norma had created the precursor to the Guild as a means of fighting the thinking machines. Since that time, the Guild had taken on a life of its own, growing away from her while she stretched herself farther into the cosmos. Politics between planets, power struggles between the Navigator faction and the human Administrators, monopolies on valuable commodities such as soostones, Ixian technologies, or melange--such problems did not concern her.
Keeping watch over mankind required an investment of her mental currency. She felt the turmoil in civilization, knew the great schism in the Guild. She would have chastised the Administrators for creating such a crisis, if she could only remember how to speak to such small people. Norma found it exhausting to talk in simple enough terms to make herself comprehensible even to her advanced Navigators. She had to make them understand the true Enemy, so that they could shoulder the burden of fighting.
If the Oracle of Time did not attend to grander priorities, no one else would. No one else in the universe could possibly do it. With her prescience, she grasped what was most important: Find the lost no-ship. The final Kwisatz Haderach was aboard, and Kralizec's black cloud had already released its torrents. But Omnius was searching for the same thing and might get to it first.
She had felt the recent struggles between the Bene Gesserits and the Honored Matres. Before that she had witnessed the original Scattering and Famine Times, as well as the extended life and traumatic death of the God Emperor. But all of those events were little more than background noise.
Find the no-ship.
As she had always foreseen and feared, the unrelenting foe had come back. No matter what guise the thinking machines now wore, regardless of how much they had changed, the Enemy was still the Enemy.
And Kralizec is well under way.
While her prescience flowed outward and inward, ripples of time eddied around her, making accurate predictions difficult. She encountered a vortex, a random, powerful factor that could change the outcome in uncounted ways: a Kwisatz Haderach, a person as anomalous as Norma Cenva herself, a wildcard variable.
Omnius wanted to guide and control that special human. The evermind and his Face Dancers had sought the no-ship for years, but so far Duncan Idaho had eluded capture. Even the Oracle had been unable to find him again.
Norma had done her best to thwart the Enemy every step of the way. She had saved the no-ship, hoping to protect the people onboard, but she had lost contact afterward. Something on the ship was more effective than a no-field at blinding her search. She could only hope the thinking machines were as blind.
The Oracle's search continued, her thoughts reeling out in delicate probes. Alas, the vessel simply was not there. In some mysterious manner, the passengers hid it from her . . . assuming it had not been destroyed.
Though her prescience was not clear, Norma realized that time was growing shorter and shorter, for everyone. The crux point had to occur soon. Thus, she needed to gather her allies. The foolish Administrators had reconfigured many of their great ships, installing artificial controls--like thinking machines!--so that she could no longer call upon them through her paranormal means. But she could still command a thousand of her loyal Navigators. She would make them ready for battle, the final battle.
As soon as she found the no-ship. . . .
The Oracle of Time expanded her mind, casting her thoughts into the void like a fisherman, until the neural ache was incredible. She pushed harder than ever, stretching her boundaries beyond anything she had previously attempted. No price of pain could be too great. She knew full well the consequences of failure.
All around her, a vast clock ticked.
There must be a place where we can find a home, where we can be safe and rest. The Bene Gesserit sent out so many Sisters on their own Scattering before the Honored Matres came. Are they all lost, as well?
--SHEEANA,
confidential no-ship journals
Flying ever onward, the Ithaca reeled from the recent spate of damage. And the saboteur continued to elude them. What more can we do to track him down? Even Duncan's most thorough Mentat projections offered no new suggestions.
Miles Teg and Thufir Hawat once again dispatched teams to inspect, and even ransack, the quarters of all passengers, hoping to find incriminating evidence. The Rabbi and his people complained about purported violations of their privacy, but Sheeana demanded their full cooperation. To the extent possible, Teg had been closing down sections of the immense vessel with electronic barricades, but the clever saboteur was able to get through anyway.
Assuming no further incidents, with the life-support, airrecirculation, and food-growth systems crippled, the passengers could
not last more than a few months without stopping somewhere to replenish the stores. But it had been years since they had found another suitable world.
Duncan wondered: Is someone trying to destroy us . . . or drive us to a particular place?
With no starmaps or reliable guidance, he tried to use his uncanny prescience one more time. Another big gamble. Activating the Holtzman engines and closing his eyes, Duncan folded space again, spinning the cosmic roulette wheel--
And the no-ship emerged, intact but still lost, at the perimeter of a star system. A yellow sun with a necklace of worlds, including a terrestrial planet that orbited at the appropriate distance to support life. Possibly habitable, certainly with oxygen and water that the Ithaca could take aboard. A chance . . .
Others had gathered on the navigation bridge by the time the no-ship approached the uncharted world. Sheeana got down to business. "What do we have here? Breathable air? Food? A place to live?"
Gazing through the observation window, Duncan was pleased at what he saw. "The instruments say yes. I suggest we send a team immediately."
"Resupply is not good enough," Garimi said, her tone gruff. "It never was. We should consider remaining here, if this is the kind of world we've been looking for."
"We considered that at the planet of the Handlers, too," Sheeana said.
"If the saboteur drove us here, we need to be very cautious," Duncan said. "I know it was a random foldspace jump, but I'm still troubled. Our pursuers cast a wide net. I would not be quick to dismiss the possibility that this place is a trap."
"Or our salvation," Garimi suggested.
"We'll have to see for ourselves," Teg said. Working with the bridge controls, he displayed high-resolution images on the wide screens. "Plentiful oxygen and vegetation, especially at the higher latitudes away from the equator. Clear signs of habitation, small villages, midsized cities, mostly far to the north. Large-scale meteorological scans show that the climate is in upheaval." He pointed to storm patterns, swaths of dying forests and plains, large lakes and inland seas shriveling into dust bowls. "Very few clouds in the equatorial latitudes. Minimal atmospheric moisture."