If the hrethgir hadn’t occupied Omnius with so many constant aggressive strikes, Agamemnon’s handful of rebels wouldn’t be able to defend against the military strength of Omnius, or even the human vermin. Either enemy could have sent an utterly overwhelming force, had they chosen to do so. The general realized that his situation was rapidly growing untenable on Richese.
Once he reached the other cymek ships in space, scout probes flitted from the shelter of the planet’s dark side to spy upon the robotic fleet.
“They— they— they are preparing to— to— to attack,” Beowulf said in a maddeningly slow, stuttering transmission. The damaged neo’s thoughts were so muddled that he could not send a clear signal through his thoughtrodes. When on the ground, Beowulf could barely make his walker-form stride forward without staggering or stumbling into things.
“I’m taking command,” Agamemnon said. No sense wasting time.
“Ack— ack— acknowledged.” At least Beowulf did not try to pretend he was still talented or capable.
“Spread in a random pattern. Open fire with pulse projectiles.”
The neo-cymek ships rushed out like eager wolf pups baring their fangs. The robotic fleet quickly pulled together into an attack formation, but the cymek ships were much smaller, harder to hit, and more spread out. Agamemnon’s defenders dodged projectile fire so they could dump their scrambler mines.
The small magnetic capsules were designed using Holtzman field technology copied from hrethgir weapons, some seized on battlefields, others provided by the human spy. Cymeks were immune to scrambling pulses, but the League of Nobles had used the technology against thinking machines for a century.
During the deployment of the mines, robotic firepower vaporized dozens of neo-cymek ships, but many scramblers flew free and clung to the metal hulls of enemy battleships, sending out waves of disruptive energy. With gelcircuitry minds erased, the robot ships drifted out of control, colliding with each other.
Seeing no need to risk himself, Agamemnon hung back but enjoyed his proximity to the battle. The thinking machines were being crushed even more resoundingly than he had anticipated.
Another ship streaked up from the city below. As it roared toward the enemy fleet, Agamemnon wondered if Dante had also decided to join the battle, but that was unlikely. The bureaucratic Titan did not like to be in the thick of things. No, this one was someone else.
He knew that many of his neo-cymeks longed to fight against Omnius— and that was no surprise. The evermind had oppressed Richese for so long, back when the neos had been mere humans; it was only natural that they wanted their revenge. The neos did not complain that the Titans ruled with just as tight a grip: Since Agamemnon had given them the opportunity to become machines with human minds, the volunteers forgave him his occasional brutalities.
The mysterious new ship rose into the thick of the Omnius forces, but did not open fire. It dodged projectiles as it threaded through the fray, passing beyond the front lines of damaged machine vessels. Signals rattled like ricochets across the communication frequencies, some coded and incomprehensible in machine language, others jeering and defiant catcalls from the neos.
“Make inroads and destroy as many Omnius ships as you can,” Agamemnon said. “They’ll go home stinging.”
The neos started forward, while the mysterious ship threaded its way deeper into the group of surviving robot ships. Agamemnon expanded the range of his sensors and watched the single unidentified ship lose its gamble. As it approached a robotic battleship, it was captured and drawn inside, like an insect snagged by the long tongue of a lizard.
Neos launched more scrambler mines. Apparently, the machines recalculated the odds and finally concluded that they had no chance for a victory here. By now the Omnius fleet was reeling from the damage and pulled back, retreating from Richese, leaving a host of their ships dead in orbit, like so much garbage.
“We have determined that other battles have higher priority,” one of the robot ship commanders announced; it sounded like a weak excuse. “We will return with a far superior force, which will maintain our losses at an acceptable level. Be aware, General Agamemnon, that Omnius’s sentence against you and your cymeks still stands.”
“Oh, of course it does. And you be aware,” Agamemnon transmitted, knowing the thinking machines would not interpret his taunting tone, “that if you come back and remind us, we’ll send you packing again.”
Leaving more than a hundred damaged or deactivated ships drifting in cold space above Richese, the Omnius fleet departed. The wreckage would be a navigational hazard, but perhaps Agamemnon and his cymeks could use them as part of a defensive barricade. Their base could not be too secure.
The cymek understood, though, that the robotic commander had issued no idle threat. The thinking machines would surely return, and next time Omnius would provide sufficient firepower to insure a victory. Agamemnon understood that he and his Titans needed to leave Richese and find other worlds to conquer, more isolated planets where they could build up impregnable strongholds and expand their territory. That would be enough to elude Omnius, for now.
He would discuss the matter with Juno and Dante, but they needed to move quickly. The evermind might be clumsy and predictable, but he was also absolutely relentless.
* * *
MUCH LATER, AFTER returning to the city and assessing the damage wrought by the robotic attack, Agamemnon discovered to his chagrin that the pilot of the lone ship had not been an ambitious neo-cymek after all.
Somehow, after fifty-six years of captivity, the independent robot Seurat had escaped and flown off to rejoin the thinking-machine fleet.
God rewards the compassionate.
— A Saying of Arrakis
Though her imagination could barely be contained within the universe itself, Norma Cenva hardly ever left her cluttered offices. Her mind went wherever she needed to go.
Utterly focused, she captured her copious ideas on static blueprints and electronic drawing boards, while Kolhar’s nearby construction yards hummed as workers fashioned her visions into reality. Ship after ship, shields, engines, weapons. The process never ended, because Norma never stopped. The Jihad never stopped.
She noticed without much surprise that it was morning again. She had worked through the night… maybe longer. She had no idea of the date.
Outside in the Kolhar shipyards, now managed by her oldest son Adrien, she heard the heavy machinery. It was a… productive sound, not distracting at all. Adrien was one of her five children by Aurelius Venport, but the other four did not have his aptitude and dedication for business. The others, two sons and two daughters, worked for VenKee Enterprises, but in lesser positions as representatives of the company. Now Adrien himself had gone to Arrakis to oversee spice deliveries and distribution.
Work crews assembled merchant vessels and warships, most with safe conventional engines, though some were outfitted with the remarkable space-folding engines that could snap a vessel from one place to another. Unfortunately, that system remained inherently risky; the loss rates were so great that few people were willing to fly spacefolders, not even the jihadis, except in the direst emergency.
Despite repeated setbacks— some caused by mathematics and physics, others caused by fanaticism— Norma would eventually find the solution, given enough time and concentration. She had no higher priority.
She stepped out into the cool air of morning, staring at the construction chaos, not hearing the din or smelling the fumes. Most of Kolhar’s resources were devoted to assembling new ships to replenish the constant attrition in the Army of the Jihad. The sheer amount of energy, materials, and work that had gone into fighting this war was incomprehensible even to her mind.
Once, she had been a stunted young woman, scorned by her mother. Now, Norma was physically beautiful, with ideas and responsibilities that spanned an entire universe and stretched far into the future. Now that she had so fundamentally changed, rising to a higher level of consciousnes
s after being tortured by the Titan Xerxes, she was a critical bridge between the present and eternity. Humankind could not fulfill its potential without her.
Norma had been fortunate, for a time. She’d been well loved and had loved in return. Aurelius, her emotional and business anchor, was gone now along with her stern and egocentric mother, both victims of the war. Norma’s relationship with Zufa had been difficult, but dear Aurelius had been a godsend, rescuing her in so many ways. He remained in her thoughts every day. Without his unwavering faith in her, Norma would not have accomplished her vital goals or realized her dreams. Early on, Aurelius had recognized her potential and had put his fortune on the line for her.
Thanks to the agreement Aurelius had negotiated with Serena Butler herself, VenKee maintained a monopoly on the space-folding technology. Someday, the new generation of ships would be more important even than Holtzman shields— as soon as Norma solved the navigation problems. But each time she found part of the solution, previously unimagined problems unfolded, making the answer appear farther away from her, like a multiplied reflection in a hall of mirrors. A chain reaction of unknowns.
As Norma watched the industrial spectacle, her mind wandered, always searching for the elusive answers. Spacefolders could leap from point to point across the universe— the propulsion itself worked perfectly— but guiding the ship around the obstacles that littered the cosmos seemed an insurmountable challenge. Though space was vast and mostly empty, if a spacefolder’s route happened to pass through an inconveniently placed star or planet, the vessel was annihilated. No chance to swerve or evade, no chance to launch a lifeboat.
As many as one-tenth of the spacefolder voyages ended in disaster.
The problem was akin to flying blindfolded through a minefield. No human mind could react to the hazards swiftly enough, no maps could plot a course through folded space with sufficient accuracy to take all problems into account. Even Norma could not do it, despite her superhuman intellect.
Years ago, she’d found a temporary solution by using fast-thinking computers, swift analytical decision-making apparatus that could anticipate errors within nanoseconds and plot alternate courses. Surreptitiously installed in the initial spacefolders, these computerized navigation machines had cut the loss rate in half, making the new technology almost— almost— feasible.
But when officers of the Army of the Jihad subsequently discovered the computers, the uproar had nearly shut down the Kolhar shipyards. Norma had been baffled, citing the evidence of success and pointing to the greater good the superfast ships would do for the Jihad. But Grand Patriarch Tambir Boro-Ginjo had been apoplectic about the “deceit” Norma had attempted to perpetrate.
Her son Adrien, a smooth talker and quick-witted negotiator like his father, had saved Norma and the shipyards, issuing abject apologies, going out of his way to extract and destroy the computerized navigation systems while dour-faced League officials watched. He had smiled, and the officials had left, looking smug. “You will find another solution,” Adrien had whispered to his mother. “I know you will.”
Though she could never use the computers again, Norma had kept several of the navigation systems hidden away— then spent decades working on the problem from first principles, an impossible handicap. Without sophisticated computerization, she could see no way around it. A navigator would have to foresee problems and correct them before they occurred— a seeming impossibility.
And so the spacefolders remained a VenKee investment pit so deep it could never be filled with profits. The technology worked exactly as Norma had designed it… but controlling it was the problem.
Fortunately, VenKee made substantial profits hauling cargo, especially the mysterious spice from Arrakis. So far only her merchant company had the connections and knew the source.
Norma used the spice herself. It had proved to be quite a boon. Melange. Preparing herself for a new day of work, she sniffed the rich cinnamon odor of a reddish-brown capsule, placed it on her tongue, and swallowed. She had lost count of how much melange she’d taken in the past few days. As much as was necessary.
The effect of spice coursing through her bloodstream, her mind, was dramatic. One moment, Norma was gazing out the window of her shipyard office, watching the fabrication of a nearby vessel. Workers hurried along scaffolds attached to the hull or maneuvered along the metal skin using suspensor belts of her own design—
The next moment she felt a rush, like the instant of folding space but different in a way she did not yet understand. During recent months she had been increasing her personal melange consumption, experimenting on herself as well as on the ships, desperately seeking an answer to the navigation conundrum. She felt alive, her thoughts a veritable flood, rushing to conclusions like cascades churning through a black-rock canyon.
Abruptly, in a mental flash, Norma was surrounded by a vision that took her far from Kolhar. She saw a tall, lean man standing in an expanse of sun-drenched desert, supervising the repair of a spice harvester. Despite the rippled nature of the vision, as if she were looking through thick glass, Norma recognized the man’s patrician profile and dark, wavy hair that still showed no gray despite his sixty-four years. The geriatric effects of his own melange consumption.
Adrien. My son. He is on Arrakis. She thought she remembered now that Adrien had gone to deal with Zensunni spice gatherers on the desert planet.
He looked so much like his father that she could almost imagine seeing Aurelius. With her son’s demonstrated business acumen, Norma had given him the operation of VenKee Enterprises so that she could concentrate on her own work.
Was this vision real? Norma didn’t know what to believe, or if what she wanted to believe might be possible.
As she watched the image of her eldest son, a sharp pain ripped through her skull as if it were being cut by a serrated edge, and she cried out. She saw only flashes and streaks of color before her eyes. She fumbled blindly for another capsule of spice, gulped it. Gradually, the pain subsided, and her vision cleared.
The dream image shifted away from Adrien, like the eyesight of an eagle swooping high over the endless dunes. Then Norma swooned and dove into blackness, like a blind worm plunging into the sand….
* * *
LATER, SHE STOOD naked before a mirror. Ever since her mental boosting, she had been able to rebuild her body and maintain a perfect appearance drawn from the gene pool of her female ancestors. Aurelius had always appreciated her for who she was, even in her misshapen form, but Norma had used the process to mold her body and make it more beautiful for him. She no longer aged. Now, in the reflection, Norma examined the faultless curves of her female form, the exquisite lines of a face that she had created long ago for the man she loved.
Within her, she felt something disconnecting from the physical world as her metamorphosed body changed even more, apparently of its own volition. It did not seem to be dying, or falling apart… but she was evolving, and did not understand the process of it at all.
Her physical appearance was no longer relevant; in fact, it was a distraction. She needed to control the power, directing it properly as her Sorceress ancestors had, but on a much larger scale. What she intended required more of her mental energy than shaping a single human body, and much more than the acts of destruction of her Sorceress ancestors.
It always takes more energy to create than to destroy.
Norma felt weary from the stresses of what she needed to do, drained by the continual construction of images, the testing… the constant failures. And when she was tired, she needed more melange.
In the mirror, she watched her statuesque body ripple and shimmer. A red blotch appeared on one shoulder. Forcibly, using her mental powers, she restored the perfection of her appearance. The blemish faded.
She kept herself perfect for the memory of Aurelius Venport. But he was gone, and even being without him would not stop her from accomplishing what was necessary.
The line between life and death is sharp and q
uick in the desert.
— Admonition to Spice Prospectors
On the crest of a windblown dune, Adrien Venport stood apart from the mechanics, watching them repair a spice harvester while others scouted for any sign of an approaching sandworm. He did not know the detailed operation of the machine, but he knew that under his intense supervision, the men worked faster and harder.
Out here in the sun-drenched desert of Arrakis, time seemed to stand still. The ocean of sand was endless, the heat intense, the aridity severe enough to crack exposed skin. He felt utterly vulnerable, with an eerie prickling sensation that someone unseen and powerful was watching him.
How can any man not be in awe of this planet?
One of the small melange-sifting machines had broken down, and VenKee was losing money for every hour it remained inoperative. Adrien had other gatherers and distributors waiting for the shipment in Arrakis City. Farther out in the golden basin, two spice-excavation behemoths worked an orange patch of spice sand. A jumbo carrier hovered low nearby, while daredevils worked with power shovels to scoop up rust-colored melange deposits, filling cargo boxes and loading them onto the aircraft for processing.
Over the staticky comline, a man shouted, “Wormsign!”
The mercenary crew ran for the carrier, while the mechanics near Adrien froze in fear. “What are we going to do? We can’t fly this thing out of here!” One of the dusty men looked helplessly at the engine parts strewn on plastic tarpaulins on the sand.
“You should have worked faster!” one of the other spice prospectors cried.
“Stop your tinkering and make no sound,” Adrien said, keeping his feet planted in the sand. “Stand perfectly still.” He nodded in the direction of the other two big excavators. “They’re making far more noise than we are. There’s no reason for that worm to pay any attention to us.”
Across the basin, the second and third crews had scrambled aboard the heavy lifter that snatched up as much of the cargo as could fit. Moments later the lifter rose from the ground, abandoning the shell of the harvesting machines— very expensive equipment, Adrien thought.
Dune: The Battle of Corrin Page 4