Dune: The Machine Crusade (73 page)

After months of massive preparation and investment, the construction of the great shipyards was under way. During the brief warm season, the marshy flatlands came to life with flowers, thick weeds and algae, birds, and flying insects. This year would be different, however. From this day forth, the vast expanse would be home to gigantic ships whose engines could fold space. The landscape of Kolhar would be forever changed.

Standing on one edge of the bog, Aurelius Venport huddled against the chill wind, and pulled a furry hood tight around his face. A dusting of snow reflected brilliant whiteness in the morning sunlight, making him squint; he adjusted the dark filterplaz over his eyes.

The offworld construction workers wore similar attire. Venport watched them and wondered how much each moment of this huge effort was costing him. He had borrowed heavily through his diversified companies, leveraging his businesses. He had also sent well-equipped teams to Arrakis to increase the spice output, now that Naib Dhartha had vanished, and the bandits had— for whatever reason— ceased to be a problem.

Everything to raise enough capital for this one enterprise.
Norma’s dream
.

From his earliest commercial ventures with Rossak pharmaceuticals, Venport had been a risk-taker. But nothing had ever come close to the scale of this. His knees felt weak when he thought about it. Still, despite the enormous expenses, his reliable instincts told him this was the correct decision. As always he found Norma compelling and enthusiastic. She had no deceit within her, only a phenomenal confidence. He trusted her vision implicitly.

This course of action would either ruin him or make him the wealthiest man in the universe. He saw no middle ground.

He devoted himself to the work here, leaving other VenKee representatives to keep an eye on the melange and other businesses. More than ever, he wished he knew what had happened to Tuk Keedair…. After all this time, it seemed certain that his Tlulaxa partner had perished in the Poritrin massacres, just like so many hundreds of thousands of other unidentified victims. Now the risks, and the rewards, were Venport’s own. And so was the company itself.

Kolhar’s marshy plain extended to the horizon, but the vast structures Norma envisioned here seemed nearly as large. Every week, she took him out in a fast ground vehicle to show him the perimeter of each building. Before long, they would begin to build the actual spacefolder ships, following Norma’s detailed plans.

From the bustling construction village came constant noises of machinery, vehicles emerging, engines growing louder and fading. Norma seemed to find the sounds reassuring, comforted to know that the work continued at all hours.

She scurried around the high plain, consulting with architects and construction managers, laying out additional structures and landing fields for her innovative space-folding ships. Her new, energized form had little need— or time— for sleep.

When she saw him inspecting the workfield, she hurried over to be with him. Despite her full schedule, Norma always managed to spare time and warmth for Aurelius. After greeting him with a warm embrace, she revealed the surprising, perfect reason for the attentiveness. “I have seen the thinking machines, and I do not want to become like them.” She smiled at him now and, despite her amazing perfection, Venport could still detect the original uncertain girl beneath the skin. “I must allow myself time to be human.”

He hugged her. “That’s good, Norma.” But it seemed to Venport that in her enhanced, beautiful state she was far beyond him— or any human. No one could ever match her abilities, or even come close. She defied comparison. Just like her mother.

“And to that end, I have allowed myself to conceive our first child.”

He stared at her, too startled to ask questions, but she continued her explanations. “It seems a logical extension of what I intend to do. The sensations are unusual, but interesting. The child will be a male, I believe. I intend to make certain he is well formed and healthy.”

He did not need to inquire how she would do that. He had never pretended to understand all of the amazing things Norma could do— either before or after her strange metamorphosis.

Recently, her mother had returned to her cave city on nearby Rossak for the last month of her pregnancy. Despite sophisticated new drugs that his own pharmaceutical operations had developed from native jungle growths, Zufa Cenva was concerned that something might still go wrong with her child fathered by Iblis Ginjo. She did not have Norma’s powers of internal cellular and chemical manipulation.

Venport still experienced mixed feelings whenever he looked at Zufa. On occasion during her time here at the shipyards, he had noticed a sadness in the tall Sorceress’s pale, icy eyes when she looked at him. Long ago he had truly cared for her, but Zufa had always been scornful of him, preoccupying herself with other matters, expending all of her passion on the war effort and personal gratification, rather than on him….

Unlike Norma, thankfully.

Venport heard crackling, telekinetic explosions in the distance. Because of this unusual and extremely important venture, Zufa had summoned fourteen of her most powerful young Sorceress candidates to watch over the site while she was gone. The adept women provided additional safety as a “telepathic defense shield,” roaming at large and watching for threats. Although mercenary guards watched the industries and approaches to the planet, the Sorceresses had skills the mercenaries did not.

Rumor had it that the cymeks were now at war with Omnius, but there could be no predicting the behavior of the hybrids. No predatory cymek would ever survive a probing strike here. No machine spy would steal the secrets of the Kolhar shipyards. Norma would not lose this venture, as she had lost her experimental complex on Poritrin.

Against any obstacles, it would succeed.

BY THE TIME her pregnancy progressed beyond its eighth month, Zufa Cenva wished she could do without men at all, inseminating herself and giving birth androgynously like the ancient goddess Sophia of Old Earth. But the Supreme Sorceress of the Jihad was hampered by the limitations of her mortal body. Her daughter Norma, with her burgeoning mental and creative powers, might be another matter.

After torture and nearly complete cellular destruction, Norma had
recreated
her body in every respect. Now that she had married Aurelius Venport— whose bloodline Zufa knew carried numerous advantages— Norma would no doubt discover the potential of her own reproductive systems….

Norma had also found a way to control the telepathic mindstorm that could annihilate cymeks, saving herself in the process. Ah, if only Zufa could learn that skill and teach it to her other telepathic commandos….

Zufa stood at a window opening in the lava rock caves, looking out at the swarming foliage and smelling the humid soup of living scents. She had come home to the sheltered cliff cities to finish out her pregnancy. She remembered all too well the numerous painful miscarriages she had suffered, the stillborn monstrosities, the devastating disappointments.

How strange, how ironic it was that Norma, against all odds, had become that flawless, talented child. Zufa thought about her daughter with mixed feelings: pride for what she had become and what she intended to do, but confusion as well, and even fear. Zufa feared what she did not understand. She was also bothered by guilt for mistreating the young woman all those years.

The spark must have been there all along, the potential— but I couldn’t see it. I, the greatest Sorceress, was blind to the possibilities of my own flesh and blood.

Now Zufa wanted to promote her daughter’s grandiose dream, but craved additional information. She hoped to preserve and even improve their new relationship. With the birth imminent, the Sorceress focused her thoughts down inside of her, thinking of the new girl child— one Zufa had wanted for so long. This baby daughter was coming at a most inconvenient time.

Zufa promised herself that she would remain on Rossak only as long as necessary to deliver the infant and hand her over to Sorceress caretakers, to assure that she would be raised properly. Her duty and obsession called her to return to Kolhar, where Venport and Norma were consumed with the initial excavation of what would become the most enormous shipyard in the League…

Zufa rested a hand on her swollen abdomen. She stood on a high ledge, gazing across the thick jungle canopy. Despite its environmental toxins and rough landscape across most continents, Rossak was still the most beautiful of all the planets she had visited. The silvery-purple jungle provided food, tamed the atmosphere, and yielded numerous drugs and pharmaceuticals that had formed the foundation of Aurelius Venport’s commercial empire.

She contemplated the never-ending cycles of nature, all the species supported by the jungles of this single world, the complex interactions and ecological niches that even the tiniest life-forms of Rossak found for themselves. A stirring within reminded her of her own place in the biology of the planet, and in the Jihad.

Zufa felt a gush between her legs, a flow of warm amniotic water running down onto her feet and the stone path. Even sooner than she had expected! She summoned one of the young Sorceresses who stood nearby. “Send for breeding mistress Ticia Oss. Tell her I require her services—
now
.”

Though other Sorceresses came to aid her, Zufa insisted on walking by herself down the rocky corridor to her quarters, which had already been prepared with the necessary birthing equipment.

Seven women had taken turns watching Zufa during the final weeks of this important pregnancy. The Supreme Sorceress loved them as her own family, having trained five of them to be psychic weapons if called upon. She had already decided to name her daughter after the breeding mistress who guided the birth.

Ticia. My daughter will carry that name for all of her days.
And perhaps the breeding mistress would agree to act as guardian and surrogate mother for a time, so that Zufa could journey back to Kolhar.

She lay back on the bed, and as her head sank into the soft pillow she felt a violent contraction, followed moments later by another. “It is coming fast.”

Perhaps this daughter was as anxious to be born as Zufa was to be free of its burden….

Tall, pale Sorceresses filled the room, each with a familiar task to perform. Zufa tried to focus on a wall tapestry to forget about her pain, using her mental focus to guide the birth and block the swelling pain. Despite all such attempts, the baby wrenched Zufa’s thoughts back to the birth with each labor spasm.

Finally, Ticia Oss drew forth a gleaming red infant and cut the umbilical cord while the assistants came forward with towels and warm cloths. “You have a beautiful baby daughter.”

“I expected nothing less,” Zufa said, exhausted and sweating. Ticia Oss handed her the fragile child wrapped in a pale green blanket.

As she held the newborn child, crimson and wrinkled from its ordeal, Zufa felt immense relief this had not been another misshapen horror that would need to be buried out in the jungle. She had experienced that disappointment too many times already. No, this child— Ticia Cenva— was healthy and would easily survive without Zufa’s constant attendance. The girl would be strong.

After recovering for only a few days, Zufa would arrange to return to Kolhar. She had unfairly scorned both Aurelius and Norma in the past, and now she wanted to make up for it.

W
hich choice will you make?

The ragged remnants of the slave population on Bela Tegeuse had never fended for their own survival, or even set up a semblance of government. For countless generations they had lived under the benevolent care of the thinking machines. Looking back at the time between the destruction of the local Omnius and the takeover by the rebel cymeks, their temporary freedom seemed harsh by contrast, not a kindness to them at all.

Now, after picking up the pieces following the atomic blast at Comati, the Tegeusan survivors were ripe for conversion… through brainwashing. They would think only what the Titan Juno told them to think.

Leaving the docile and reprogrammed thinking machine fleet in orbit, ready to drive back any incursions by the Army of the Jihad or Omnius’s robot forces, Agamemnon made this wounded Synchronized World a centerpiece and base of operations for his eventual conquest of the hated computer evermind. He had expended no resources and lost no cymek fighters in this initial victory, but still the Titan general needed to enlarge his rebellious force so that he could withstand any outside attack.

Agamemnon and his cymeks had the will and the vision, but their most important next step was to develop a large, unstoppable army. As soon as possible. They needed more industries, more weapons… and more neos. Many more.

Using the robotic warships, the conquering cymeks shuttled large groups of human prisoners from the radioactive outskirts of Comati. As a matter of efficiency and logical planning, the thinking machines set up stockpiles of supplies, and when Agamemnon offered the frightened survivors more food, medicines, and a slightly increased measure of freedom, the former Bela Tegeusan captives looked upon the Titans as saviors. Now, relatively well fed and still starry-eyed from their changed circumstances, they were ripe for Juno and her mesmerizing speech.

The female Titan had assembled a larger, more glorious walker body for this occasion than she had used in some time— more than was necessary to impress anyone. Juno used reprogrammed servant robots to polish and etch every exposed surface, so that she gleamed like a walking tarantula made of engraved chrome and silver. Her intent was to inspire awe in those who viewed her, to harken back to the fabled Time of Titans.

She linked her speaker patch through thoughtrode transmitters to amplifiers that boomed her voice.