Josef yelled across the comm, “I said crippling shots only!” He knew this was problematic. “But feel free to destroy as many of the barbarians as you can.”
Now all the Butlerians charged into the fray, wildly opening fire. The VenHold ships were forced to respond with all their weaponry. Silent explosions peppered space, and two of the fanatic ships were wiped out in the first salvo. But their crews didn’t even seem to care. They kept coming, using their available weapons.
“Josef, our spice!” Norma cried from inside her tank. “We have to protect it!”
“Yes, Grandmother!” He didn’t know what she wanted him to do. “We’ll take care of the spice.”
In the heat of the battle, he tried once again to appeal to reason, transmitting to the Emperor in his sheltered bunker. “Roderick Corrino, you know the Butlerians are our mutual enemy! They are the savages who bullied your brother into bad decisions. They are the monsters who killed your daughter. You know Manford Torondo is an evil man. We should be fighting him together. I implore you, Sire, let us make peace between us.”
Norma spoke more loudly through the speakerpatch. “Josef, we will go. Now.”
Incensed, the Butlerians swept on toward the VenHold ships, and Josef’s fleet continued to bombard them. Another Butlerian vessel exploded, but one of the smaller VenHold ships also erupted in a bright flare as their shields failed and reactors detonated.
Josef was on edge, but excited. He didn’t want to be overconfident. He knew the half-Manford’s barbarians were mad and chaotic, accepting no rules of engagement, giving no thought to their own survival. “Choose your targets and open fire. We have to save ourselves”—he lifted his chin and added something he truly believed—“and the Imperium.”
Norma took him completely by surprise. “We go now, Josef.” As weapons fire built up and the VenHold ships closed in, ready to slaughter the barbarians, she spoke with a strange, determined tone. “My Navigators are required elsewhere. This battle is no longer relevant.”
At first, Josef didn’t comprehend what she said. Then he felt the foldspace engines power up in a rushed preparation for departure. Across the board he watched the same thing occur on the rest of his vessels, even in the thick of battle against Manford’s forces. “What the hell is happening?”
Agitated, Norma thrashed her webbed hands. “Draigo’s ship will remain here to retrieve the cymek Navigator brains. I have already dispatched orders. All other VenHold vessels will depart now.”
Victory was only moments away, but Josef watched the first three ships of his fleet fold space and vanish from the combat zone.
Josef’s jaw dropped. “No, Grandmother! We’re in the middle of a critical battle—we can’t leave!”
“My crisis supersedes political squabbles. It may already be too late.”
Josef rushed over to Norma’s tank. “What is it? We can’t—”
She cut him off. “Our spice bank on Arrakis is being destroyed. It is under attack!” His flagship twisted, jumped, and vanished into folded space.
* * *
NORMA’S MIND WAS the universe, wrapped in the fabric of folded space. When necessary, she could tighten her thoughts, focus and simplify concepts in order to converse with mere humans, such as Josef. But her Navigators were her children, her companions … a new enhanced species. They were the only ones who could truly understand and share with her.
The universe is ours. That had become her motto, and all Navigators shared that hope with her. She had to create more of them.
With the resources of Venport Holdings, Josef had been supporting her aspirations in the same way that she’d been assisting in his political ambitions whenever she could. Yet Norma’s priorities were her own. Her murky window of prescience showed a much larger picture, a future that he might not entirely endorse. No matter.
Right now, Norma’s choice was clear. Josef could return to Salusa Secundus and butt heads with Emperor Roderick later, but she refused to ignore the urgent, sundering alarm that yanked at her strings of prescience, a dissonant clamor from the minds of the failed-Navigator assistants who were stationed on Arrakis at the secret spice bank. That stockpile was in great danger!
She whisked all the VenHold spacefolders to Arrakis.
* * *
FROM HIS FLAGSHIP Manford was astounded to see the VenHold fleet move about in confusion briefly until, in rapid succession, all of their warships vanished—folding space and retreating! Josef Venport transmitted no defiant words, issued no challenges, made no vows that he would return to finish the battle.
The entire VenHold fleet simply and inexplicably fled into space!
Manford’s bridge crew cheered and stomped their feet. Anari just stared. “We defeated them in a matter of minutes! They ran like dogs with their tails between their legs!”
Before long, heavily armored pods containing the cymek walkers rose from the Salusan surface and docked with the lone remaining VenHold ship. Then even that vessel spun away and folded space, as well.
“God has granted us a perfect victory,” Manford whispered, awed at what he had just seen.
Unable to contain his delight, he shouted for his communications officer to open a channel to the surface. He wanted to address Emperor Roderick, along with all the people he had just saved. Manford intended to take credit for this astonishing victory, even if he didn’t understand it himself.
Terrible things in the past should remain there, locked away and never spoken of.
—MOTHER SUPERIOR BERTO-ANIRUL, following her own Spice Agony
Sitting in her austere chambers, Mother Superior Valya reviewed plans in her mind, going over the way she had been constructing the perfect Sisterhood she envisioned, training a growing number of elite, highly capable women with little reliance on males.
Young and healthy, Valya had the biological urgings of any person. She had taken a few casual lovers over the years, four on Lankiveil in her youth and perhaps a dozen more since beginning her training with the Sisterhood, men who had worked for the Rossak School or in the facilities on Wallach IX. Some had been inept and clumsy in their attempts to pleasure her, while others were quite skilled.
Back on Lankiveil, one starstruck, fumbling young man had accused her of being too intense, asserting that Valya was overly preoccupied with thoughts and concerns that she refused to share with him. The observation was valid but pointless, and she had not bothered to see him again.
She recalled the naïve young man’s boyish features illuminated in memory, his sea-blue eyes and sheepish grin: Benaro Zimbal, son of a whale-boat captain. She’d liked him a little, she supposed, but even in her teens she had concentrated on the future of House Harkonnen. As a lover, Benaro was adequate, but she had not been able to picture him as a husband; he could never have advanced the position and wealth of her family beyond Lankiveil, and thus Valya could never allow herself any sort of permanent relationship with him.
Her brother Griffin had been more of a romantic, and had dreamed of true love and a lasting marriage, which she thought was a waste of time. They had to rebuild a dynasty, recapture the Harkonnen place in the Landsraad League … and eliminate the Atreides.
Valya was a powerful woman now, with great influence and unlimited potential. Considering the political, psychological, and physical training that all of her Sisters underwent, they could accomplish most anything she requested. Gradually, she would turn them loose in much greater numbers, placing Sisters throughout the Imperium, insinuating them into important positions in which they could observe and guide.
Many of the most beautiful and adept Sisters could use sex for another purpose—the primary biological purpose of reproduction, used for the furtherance of the Sisterhood and its breeding program.
“Not for the Sisterhood, for your own selfish purposes,” said a voice in her mind, a resounding condemnation that rose up from the low, often imperceptible hum of Other Memory. In that mysterious realm, an endless procession of long-dead memories w
as carried forward in the genetics of living Sisters, but only those who had survived the agonizing transformation into Reverend Mothers could tap into such wisdom, and never at will—only when the collective memories chose to surface in her consciousness. Within those memories crowded inside her DNA were countless experiences that saturated Valya, hundreds upon hundreds of generations going far back into ancient times. She might be physically young, but she carried the weight of millennia in her mind.
Sometimes the voices advised, sometimes they quarreled, and Valya could not control them. “My purposes are the Sisterhood’s purposes,” she said now, pushing back against the voices. “A well-coordinated breeding program can build our own goals in the long term, and the proper use of seduction can establish obligations and manipulate behavior in the short term.”
The advisers in Other Memory were unpredictable and sometimes more bothersome than helpful. Valya—Mother Superior Valya as well as Valya Harkonnen—could build her own future, using the resources she had available.
The wealthiest and most powerful Landsraad nobles were primarily male, and Valya did not entirely dismiss them in the political framework of the Imperium. She even admired and respected some for their leadership abilities or specific skills and talents. But she did not need to rely on them. Her Sisters in the order had an entirely different skill set.
More voices pestered her. “You should be building the Sisterhood to become strong, make our members valued. We can be the bright pathway to improving humankind, creating the pinnacle of civilization.” The voices overlapped, sounding wistful, as if all those past lives wanted to exist vicariously in an age far more perfect than any previous generation had been born into.
“Precisely what I am doing.” Valya waved a hand in front of her face, as if the presences in Other Memory were a cloud of irritating gnats to be shooed away. “The breeding index in the hidden computers shows all the best permutations of human genetics. By training the appropriate Sisters to breed, we can obtain whatever bloodlines we need. The future is in our control.”
“You are obsessed with the breeding program, wasting the time and energy of yourself, and of your Sisters. There are other matters of great importance as well, especially the spread of our influence in all the noble houses of the Landsraad, where Sisters can advise the powerful, subtly guiding political and financial decisions.”
“I’m doing all those things for the Sisterhood, so your criticisms are not valid. Besides, I am the Mother Superior now, and the future of the order is mine to decide.”
“The Sisterhood is the Sisterhood, and it belongs to no one person.”
In her mind, Valya unfolded her far-reaching plans for the growth of the all-female organization, how she would not only place Sisters in the noble houses, but would also dispatch missionaries throughout the Imperium, to infiltrate their representatives and beliefs in harsh, primitive societies. In those remote, backward places Sisters would create and enhance superstitions like seeds, to bear fruit millennia in the future. And through it all, with her breeding volunteers the order would navigate the largely uncharted sea of human genetics to create and preserve the bloodlines that Valya wished to emphasize—such as House Harkonnen.
With the churning past lives in Other Memory cowed by the breadth of her plans, Valya said, “While I value your wisdom, you represent the past, and I must look to the future. I will listen, but I may override. I am the one to guide the Sisterhood. I will decide.”
The arguments swirled around, but they were merely a background hum of muttering, until one said, “You are Harkonnen before you are a Sister. You should leave all things Harkonnen outside, and not bring them with you here.”
“I am both the Mother Superior and a proud Harkonnen. One does not preclude the other.”
“You leave bodies in your wake.”
“Only those who deserve it. Sister Ingrid and Reverend Mother Dorotea threatened to upset Mother Superior Raquella’s breeding program by attacking the use of computers. Both needed to die; both were a danger to the best interests of the order.”
“You’ve turned Tula into a murderess, too. Is that the future you envision for House Harkonnen, and for the Sisterhood—advancement through murder? The combat exercises you have Sisters performing are really preparations for murder—assassination squads.”
“That is not the purpose of the exercises, even if killings are sometimes necessary. All strong leaders in history understand that it is necessary to take lives. It is an unfortunate historical truth, a necessity. I do not shrink from it, nor from any of my responsibilities. Like Ingrid and Dorotea, the killing of Orry Atreides had to be done—although admittedly he had to be eliminated for the benefit of House Harkonnen. I feel no shame for ordering his death. I am a Harkonnen by blood, and I will not abandon my own Great House and history.”
“We can stop you,” one of the voices said.
“We can, and we will,” said another.
Valya heard a murmuring of concurrence from within.
“We won’t sit idly by,” said a shrill voice, “not with so much at stake. Not with the entire Sisterhood at stake.”
“We can drive you insane,” said another voice, lower and more ominous than the others. “We can keep talking, endlessly, not allowing you to sleep or think.” This one had the most to say. “We can make you jump off a cliff, or kill yourself in some other way. You are good at killing people, aren’t you? Well, that expertise should prove very useful when you determine how best to do away with yourself.”
“You can’t make me do anything,” Valya said, though this assault took her by surprise, and she wasn’t sure if they could follow through on their threat. “I am my own person. I’m not your puppet. I won’t do your bidding each time your voices emerge from your deep sleep, each time you are displeased with one thing or another.”
The voices grew louder and more unpleasant, a mounting roar in her mind. If they defeated her, Valya was uncertain what would become of her, and of her hopes and dreams. As the voices grew more maddening, she wanted the cacophony to end.
Ways to kill herself flashed across her mind. Death might be a relief.
She stared at a sharp knife on a table, looked at the ornate carved handle, the sharp, gleaming blade that would cut so smoothly through her skin, into her internal organs.
Were the dead Sisters in Other Memory reading her thoughts? Manipulating them? Valya assumed they were. They continued to grow louder and more clamorous in her brain.
She considered reaching for the dagger and plunging it into her heart … or was that a suggestion they planted in her mind? Like she had driven Dorotea to kill herself?
Out of her deepest despair and uncertainty, Valya felt her courage mounting, coming forth like her own army of voices, with a stronger will than this outspoken mental multitude, and she had a greater determination to win. Valya was stronger than they were, and she could overcome them.
She began to laugh, and went through several combat exercises by herself, striking out at the air, spinning around, doing flips and airborne kicks, as if she were attacking physical forms that went with the voices. In her mind she envisioned faces and forms to go with the specific voices she could recall. She even saw a large group of Sisters massed in opposition, making an outcry against her. But that was all they could do—they could only talk. They could not really harm her if she did not allow them to gain control of her body and physical powers, making her injure or kill herself.
She shouted over their clatter of noise. “You can’t make me do what I don’t want to do! At one time, House Harkonnen fell low, losing most of the influence and glory we once had—but so did the Sisterhood! When Emperor Salvador drove us away from Rossak and disbanded our order, we were nothing … just as my Great House was nothing after Vorian Atreides humiliated Abulurd Harkonnen. Now we will both rise from the ashes like the mythical phoenix, the Sisterhood and House Harkonnen side by side!” She allowed herself a hard, satisfied smile as she felt the Other M
emory voices begin to recede in defeat. “And I am making it happen,” Valya insisted. “I am not sending the Sisterhood to ruination—I am strengthening it!”
The voices grew quieter and quieter, until she heard nothing.
Pushing the annoying experience aside, Valya went to her bedchambers to retire. She felt strong and confident.
Though she was the Mother Superior, she occupied only Spartan quarters that had previously belonged to Raquella. Like her predecessor, she didn’t need opulence or comforts, although she reminded herself that House Harkonnen was entitled to such things. Thanks to her relentless work behind the scenes, her family would have that wealth and influence again.
She got into her nightclothes. Then, intending to calm her thoughts before going to bed, she sat in a hard chair, to gaze through the open window at the nighttime sky. She heard a much quieter swirl of voices surrounding her, but this time she had the strength to push them back.
“I’m going to sleep in a little while,” she announced in a firm, calm voice. “You won’t bother me in my dreams, or disturb me anymore when I am awake—because if you do, I will destroy the Sisterhood. I will kill every last Reverend Mother, including myself, and when that is accomplished, all of you will vanish. You will have no outlets whatsoever for your displeasure, no human minds to occupy with your presence.” She smiled to herself. “You say I am good at killing, and I don’t deny that. All of you are physically dead, but you aren’t completely dead, are you? With my expertise at killing, I can totally eliminate you.”
The voices diminished, but only a little.
She spoke over them. “From this point forward, you are only to emerge if you have something to say that will help me advance the interests of the Sisterhood. I do have the interests of the Sisterhood at heart, and I alone have the strength to take it to the next level. I know this, and you know it. You also know now that it is dangerous to displease me.”
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