Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (59 page)

A
fter concluding tests against every conceivable projectile and explosive, Tio Holtzman was eager to put his personal shield design into commercial production. He had already spoken with the managers of factory centers in Poritrin’s northwest mining belt and assembly shops in Starda. With slave labor, he could make a substantial profit. His patents alone would place him, and his patron Lord Bludd, among the wealthiest men in the League of Nobles.

Unfortunately, as he worked through the projections of inventory and supply, thinking as a businessman rather than a scientist, he came to an inescapable conclusion: Poritrin, a bucolic world, could never handle the level of demand this wondrous invention was sure to arouse. Lord Bludd would not be happy to lose so much business to an offworld manufacturer, but Holtzman had no choice but to look to other League industrial centers.

Before he could send the fabrication units to Vertree Colony or to the restored and hungry industries of Giedi Prime, he decided he should first test his personal shield against a nonprojectile weapon, an energy beam. Intense laser weaponry was almost never used in combat, since it was much less energy-efficient than explosives or simple projectile guns. Still, he wanted to be certain.

For one final test, he ordered his household guards to obtain a laser gun from an ancient military armory. After a good deal of searching and a plethora of requisition forms, the necessary weapon was finally located and brought to the blufftop laboratories. Because his shields had proven effective in every previous test, the scientist found each demonstration less exciting, simply another step in the process. Soon, the profits would begin to roll in.

Norma Cenva had returned to her continued ponderings of the Holtzman equations. The scientist had left her to her obsessive calculations while he basked in his own success.

For the laser test, he placed a slave within the shield, intending to fire the weapon himself. He brought only one assistant into the reinforced demonstration dome to record impressions of the test, as they had done many times before. Holtzman fiddled with the laser weapon’s antique controls, trying to figure out how to fire the beam.

Norma rushed in, running like a clumsy girl. Her blocky face was flushed, her short arms waving. “Wait! Savant Holtzman, you are in terrible danger!”

He frowned like a stern father dismissing an overly rambunctious child. “You were skeptical during my first shield test, too. Look, I’m not even in the line of fire.”

Her expression was frighteningly earnest and urgent. “The interaction of your force field with a collimated laser beam will have extraordinary consequences— massive destruction.” She held up papers covered with equations and her own incomprehensible shorthand notations.

Impatiently, he lowered the laser weapon, and sighed heavily. “I don’t suppose you can show me any
basis
for your alarm?” The targeted Zenshiite slave looked nervously through the shimmering shield. “Or is this just another one of your mysterious intuitions?”

She thrust the mathematics forward. “Savant, I have been unable to extract a specific basis for the anomaly when I introduce a factor of coherent laser energy into the field interface. But there is clearly a dramatic singularity potential.”

Holtzman looked at the scribblings, but they meant nothing to him: The lines were so messy, steps skipped, odd notations to denote factors he had never seen before. He frowned, not wanting to admit that he was unable to understand. “Not a very rigorous proof, Norma— and not convincing either.”

“Can you
dis
prove it? Can you take the risk? This could be even worse than the disaster with the alloy-resonance generator, a huge catastrophe.”

Holtzman’s expression remained stony, though a feather of doubt tickled his mind. He could not ignore this woman’s sheer brilliance. He had always suspected that Norma understood the concepts of his own field better than he did. “Very well. If you insist, I’ll take an extra precaution or two. Any suggestions?”

“Conduct the test far away, on a moon or, better yet, an asteroid.”

“On an
asteroid
! Do you know the added expense that would entail?”

“Less expensive than rebuilding the entire city of Starda.”

He chuckled, then saw that she wasn’t joking. “I will postpone my test to consider this. But I insist that you provide proof. Back up your intuition before I go to such great trouble and expense. I can’t justify such a huge undertaking just because your feet are cold.”

NORMA CENVA WAS a scientific and mathematical adept, but she had never been schooled in personal politics. Like a naïve child, she went to see Lord Niko Bludd in his noble residence on the bluff overlooking the Isana.

Atop the tall conical tower, the enameled roof tiles were different from the blue metal so common on most other Starda buildings. Dragoon guards lined the interior halls like gold-skinned reptiles adorned with helmet crests, crimson capes, and segmented gauntlets.

Bludd seemed in good enough cheer. He tugged at his curly beard. “Welcome, young lady. Did you know, at a recent meeting on Salusa I had another opportunity to speak with your mother? Her Sorceresses had just driven off another cymek attack, this time on Rossak. I can see where you received your special talent.” His blue eyes twinkled.

Embarrassed, Norma looked at the tiled floor. “Indeed, Lord Bludd. My mother has . . . high expectations of me. As you can see, however”— she gestured to her misshapen form—”I will never match her physical beauty.”

“External loveliness is not everything,” Bludd said without casting a glance at the five gorgeous women who hovered around him. “Savant Holtzman believes your mind is full of remarkable ideas. Has he sent you? Does the Savant have another project to demonstrate?”

A well-dressed slave woman came forward carrying a silver tray with two goblets of fizzing clear liquid. She offered one to Norma, who held the ornate cup awkwardly in her small hands. Lord Bludd sipped from his own goblet, and Norma drank with him.

“He has another demonstration planned, Lord Bludd.” Norma hesistated. “But I must ask you to intervene.”

Inquisitive lines creased his forehead. “Whatever for?”

“Savant Holtzman means to test his new shield using a laser weapon, but there is danger, sir. I . . . I am afraid there may be a violent interaction. Extremely violent.”

She began to speak in mathematical terms, defending her convictions insofar as she could, but this only caused the nobleman to raise his hands in helpless confusion. “And what does the Savant think of your concern?”

“He . . . trusts in my abilities, but I fear that he wants to perform the test quickly and inexpensively, and is afraid to displease you if he incurs a great cost.” She swallowed hard, amazed at her audacity. “If I am correct, however, the aftereffects could devastate an entire district of Starda, perhaps even more.”

“You mean like an atomic explosion?” Bludd was astonished. “How can that be? A shield is a defensive weapon. Atomics are destructive in—”

“Second- and third-order interactions are difficult to predict, Lord Bludd. Would it not be wiser to take precautions, despite the additional cost? Think of the profits Poritrin will make from this invention. Every important person and every private vessel will require a personal shield, and you will receive a royalty on each one.”

She looked for a place to set down her heavy goblet. “On the other hand, imagine the disgrace if such a flaw is discovered after the products are in widespread use. Think of the losses you would endure.”

The nobleman scratched his bearded chin and toyed with the jeweled chains on his chest. “Very well, I shall consider it an investment. Savant Holtzman has earned us enough to fund his eccentric ideas a hundred times over anyway.”

Norma bowed deeply. “Thank you, Lord Bludd.”

As she hurried off to tell her mentor, Norma never considered the gaffe she had committed in circumventing his authority. She expected a man like Tio Holtzman to decide matters rationally, not emotionally, unaffected by petty concerns and personality conflicts.

After growing up under her mother’s frequent reproach, Norma had a thick skin for insults. How could the great Savant be any less of a person?

THE TEST TOOK place on a bleak asteroid orbiting far from Poritrin. A team of construction workers excavated a test zone in a flat crater, erected a few recording devices, then placed a shield-generating apparatus in the crumbly dust of the crater floor. Then they departed the asteroid to join with a larger frigate bound for Poritrin.

To observe, Norma and Holtzman sat inside a small military shuttle flown by a reserve Armada pilot. The Savant had expected to rig sophisticated remote-firing laser weapons down in the crater around the target zone. Aware of his budgetary concerns, though, Norma had suggested that it might be sufficient just to fly over the target and shoot at it with an old laser weapon installed in the ship.

As the pilot guided them over the test area, the moody scientist hardly responded to Norma’s attempts at conversation. Holtzman watched as they closed in on the target crater. He seemed annoyed, anxious to prove the young woman wrong. Norma peered through the shuttle windows at the pockmarks, mounds of precariously balanced boulders, deep fissures caused by tidal stresses. The place looked as if it had already been destroyed.

“Let’s be done with this,” Holtzman said. “Pilot, shoot your laser weapon when you are ready.”

Norma looked out the window to watch as the shuttle cruised low until the cleared test area was directly below them. “Preparing to fire, Savant.”

Casually and offhandedly, Holtzman said, “You’ll see that you have imagined excessive—”

The pilot fired a bright beam from the shuttle’s laser. The appalling flare of light and energy snatched the words from his mouth. Even in the silence of space, the shockwave seemed louder than a crack of thunder.

The pulse surged upward, and the pilot yanked the shuttle’s flight controls. “Hang on!” Powerful engines tore them away; the acceleration nearly pressed Norma into unconsciousness.

Then a hammer struck them from the rear, batting the ship like a toy. The shuttle spun out of control, and the asteroid fragmented into white-hot molten boulders radiating from the center of the blast like the spokes of a wheel.

Aghast, Holtzman turned away from the blazing light while the pilot tried to impose order upon the military spacecraft. The scientist’s breaths came in rapid, astonished bursts.

Beside him, even Norma was astounded. She stared at her mentor, her lips moving without producing words. None were necessary. If Holtzman had blithely conducted this experiment inside his lab, he would have vaporized the lab, his residence, part of the city, and possibly even rerouted the Isana River.

He looked at Norma, first in anger, then amazement. Never again would he doubt her intuition or challenge her scientific abilities.

Still, he felt a knife twist inside him, a blow to his self-confidence and to his public image. His benefactor Niko Bludd would now know the truth. Norma had openly challenged Holtzman’s judgment, and her doubts had been undeniably justified.

He didn’t see how to keep everyone on Poritrin— the lords, the Dragoon guards, even the slaves— from learning that the stunted Rossak mathematician had upstaged him. News of this test would travel rapidly.

Tio Holtzman had been spectacularly
wrong
, and the deep wound from this might never heal.

T
he desert night was silent and untroubled. The first moon had already set while the dimmer second moon hung above the horizon like a sleepy eye, yellow with weariness.

Little more than a shadow, Selim squatted on a boulder, watching the black honeycomb of caves above him. He didn’t know the villagers here, or their treasures— but Buddallah had guided him to this isolated place. The desert and all its inhabitants were part of Selim’s mysterious larger destiny, and he did not question— or bother to justify— his actions.

These people had little contact with Naib Dhartha’s tribe, yet like all of the struggling Zensunni inhabitants, they sent regular expeditions to Arrakis City to obtain necessary supplies. Even with sheltered agricultural methods and careful water conservation, no desert tribe could ever be entirely self-sufficient here.

And neither could he, despite his best efforts. Air-condensation devices in his two derelict botanical testing stations replenished Selim’s water. Abandoned storage caches provided most of the food he needed. But in the past year and a half, those ancient supplies had dwindled along with his powerpacks, and one of his tools had broken. He needed more stores to maintain his solitary existence.

God had given Selim many blessings, many advantages . . . but other necessities he must obtain for himself. He did not need to understand how all the pieces fit into Buddallah’s comprehensive plan. There must be a reason, and someday he would discover it.

For several days Selim had observed this outlying settlement, watching the movement of the natives. The women kept beehives just inside the cave mouths, where the buzzing insects could seek out small desert flowers that struggled in sheltered crannies. Selim’s mouth watered. He had tasted honey only once in his life, after Naib Dhartha had traded for a large pot of the sticky sweetener and had given each tribal member a small dab. The taste had been delicious, but taunting, reminding the poor Zensunnis of their dearth of luxuries.