Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [159]
The Spacing Guild preferred environments that did not interfere with its important work. To a Navigator, any distractions were potentially dangerous. Every Guild student learned this lesson early, as did the young candidate D’murr—far from home and totally engrossed in his studies to the exclusion of any worries about his former planet’s troubles.
On a blakgras field he was immersed in his own container of melange gas—half swimming and half crawling as his body continued to change, his physical systems altering to adapt to the bombardment of spice. Membranes had begun to connect his toes and fingers; his body had grown longer than before and more flaccid, taking on a fish shape. No one had explained the extent of the inevitable changes to him, and he neither chose—nor needed—to ask. It made no difference. So much of the universe had been opened to him, he considered it a modest price to pay.
D’murr’s eyes had grown smaller, without lashes; they were also developing cataracts. He didn’t need them to see anymore, though, since he had other eyes . . . inner vision. The panorama of the universe unfolded for him. In the process, he felt as if he were leaving everything else behind . . . and it didn’t bother him.
Through the haze D’murr saw that the blakgras field was covered with neat rows of containerized candidates and their Navigator trainers. One life per container. The tanks vented orange clouds of filtered melange exhaust, swirling around masked humanoid attendants who stood nearby, waiting to move the tanks when told to do so.
The Head Instructor, a Navigator Steersman named Grodin, floated inside a black-framed tank that had been raised high on a platform; the trainees saw him more with their minds than with their eyes. Grodin had just returned from foldspace with a student, whose tank was adjacent to his and connected with flexible tubing, so that their gases merged.
D’murr himself had accomplished short flights on three occasions now. He was considered one of the top trainees. Once he learned to travel through foldspace by himself, he could be licensed as a Pilot, the lowest-ranking Navigator . . . but still vastly higher than he’d once been as a mere human.
Steersman Grodin’s foldspace treks were legendary quests of discovery through incomprehensible dimensional knots. The Head Instructor’s voice gurgled from a speaker inside D’murr’s tank, using higher-order language. He described a time he had transported dinosaur-like creatures in an old-style Heighliner. Unknown to him, the monsters could stretch their necks to incredible lengths. While the Heighliner was in flight, one had chewed its way into a navigation chamber, so that its face appeared outside Grodin’s tank, peering in with a curious, wide-eyed expression. . . .
So pleasant in here, D’murr thought without forming words as he absorbed the story. With enlarged nostrils he drew in a deep breath of the sharp, rich melange. Humans with dulled senses compared this pungent scent to strong cinnamon . . . but melange was so much more than that, so infinitely complex.
D’murr no longer needed to concern himself with the mundane affairs of humans, so trivial were they, so limited and shortsighted: political machinations, populations milling about like ants in a disturbed hill, lives flickering bright and dull like sparks from a campfire. His former life was only a vague and fading memory, without specific names or faces. He saw images, but ignored them. He could never go back to what he had been.
Instead of simply finishing his story about the dinosaur creature, Steersman Grodin spoke on a tangent about the technical aspects of what the chosen student had just accomplished on his interstellar journey, how they had employed high-order mathematics and dimensional changes to peer into the future—much the same way the long-necked monster