Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [105]
Puzzle pieces snicked into place, and he saw it: a way to obliterate his old rival House Vernius—payback for Dominic’s effrontery involving the royal concubine Shando, and for the new Heighliner design that threatened to wreak havoc on Imperial profit systems. Oh, this will be magnificent!
Sitting on the steps to the crystal pedestal of the throne, Hasimir Fenring did not understand why the Emperor smiled with such smug satisfaction. The silence drew out for a long moment. He wondered if it might have something to do with the mind-eating effects of the slow chaumurky. The old man would soon become increasingly irrational and paranoid. And after that he would die. Horribly, I hope.
But before then, all the proper wheels would have been set in motion.
“Yes, Hidar Fen Ajidica. We do have the place for your efforts, I believe,” Elrood said. “A perfect place.”
Dominic must not know until it is too late, the Emperor thought. And then he must know who did it to him. Right before he dies.
The timing, as in so many matters of the Imperium, had to be precise.
The Spacing Guild has worked for centuries to surround our elite Navigators with mystique. They are revered, from the lowest Pilot to the most talented Steersman. They live in tanks of spice gas, see all paths through space and time, guide ships to the far reaches of the Imperium. But no one knows the human cost of becoming a Navigator. We must keep this a secret, for if they really knew the truth, they would pity us.
—Spacing Guild Training Manual
Handbook for Steersmen (Classified)
The austere Guild Embassy Building contrasted severely with the rest of Ixian grandeur in the stalactite city. The structure was drab, utilitarian, and gray among the sparkling and ornate cavern towers. The Spacing Guild had priorities beyond ornamentation or ostentation.
Today C’tair and D’murr Pilru would be tested, in hopes of becoming Guild Navigators. C’tair didn’t know whether to be excited or terrified.
As the twin brothers marched shoulder to shoulder across a shielded crystal walkway from the Grand Palais, C’tair found the Embassy Building so aesthetically repulsive that he considered turning around and leaving. In the face of the Guild’s enormous wealth, the lack of splendor seemed odd, to the point of making him ill at ease.
As if thinking the same thing but coming to a different conclusion, his brother looked at C’tair and said, “Once the wonders of space are opened up to a Guild Navigator’s mind, what other decorations are necessary? How can any ornamentation rival the wonders a Navigator sees on a single journey through foldspace? The universe, brother! The whole universe.”
C’tair nodded, conceding the point. “All right, we’ll both have to use different criteria from now on. ‘Think outside the box’—remember what old Davee Rogo used to tell us? Things are going to be so . . . changed.”
If he passed these examinations, he would have to be up to the challenge, though he had no real desire to leave the beautiful cavern city of Vernii. His mother S’tina was an important Guild banker, his father a respected ambassador, and—with help from Earl Vernius himself—they had arranged to give the twins this remarkable chance. He would make Ix proud of him. Maybe someone would erect a sculpture in his honor someday, or name a side grotto after him and his brother. . . .
While their father attended to diplomatic duties with the Emperor and a thousand functionaries on Kaitain, his twin sons remained in the underground city, grooming and preparing themselves for “bigger things.” Over the years of their subterranean childhood, C’tair and his brother had come to the Guild facility many times to see their mother. Always before, they had been guests in the building, but this time the twins were going for a much more rigorous ordeal.
C’tair’s future would be determined in a few hours. Bankers, auditors, and commerce specialists were all humans, bureaucrats. But a Navigator was so much more.
No matter how much he tried to shore up his confidence, C’tair