Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [14]
“Take your places on either side of me. Who is the formal representative? Did the Guild send someone of particular importance?” Murbella knew only that the Guild delegation had come to the New Sisterhood, demanding—no, begging for—an audience with her.
Prior to the Battle of Junction, not even the Guild had known the location of Chapterhouse. The Sisterhood kept their homeworld hidden behind a moat of no-ships, its coordinates in no Guild navigation record. However, once the floodgates were opened and Honored Matres had arrived in droves, the site of Chapterhouse was no longer a closely held secret. Even so, few outsiders came directly to the Keep.
“Their highest human administrative official,” Doria said in a hard, flinty voice, “and a Navigator,”
“A Navigator?” Even Bellonda sounded surprised. “Here?”
Scowling at her counterpart, Doria continued. “I’ve received reports from the docking center where the Guildship landed. He’s an Edric-class Navigator bearing the gene markers of an old bloodline.”
Murbella’s wide forehead creased. She sifted through direct knowledge as well as information that had surfaced from the chain of Other Memories inside her head. “An Administrator and a Navigator?” She allowed a cold smile. “The Guild must have an important message indeed.”
“Maybe it is no more than groveling, Mother Commander,” Bellonda said. “The Guild is desperate for spice.”
“And well they should be!” Doria snapped. She and Bellonda were always at odds. Though their heated debates occasionally produced interesting perspectives, at the moment Murbella found it juvenile.
“Enough, both of you. I will not allow the Guildsmen to see you bickering. Such childish displays demonstrate weakness.” Both advisors fell silent as if a gate had slammed shut across their mouths.
As the hall’s great doors swung open, female attendants stepped aside to allow the delegation of gray-robed men to enter. The newcomers’ bodies were squat, the heads hairless, their faces slightly malformed and wrong. The Guild did not breed with an eye to physical perfection or attractiveness; they focused on maximizing the potential of the human mind.
At their lead strode a tall, silver-robed man, whose bald head was as smooth as polished marble, except for a white braid that dangled from the base of his skull like a long electrical cord. The administrative official stopped to survey the room with milky eyes (though he did not seem to be blind), then stepped forward to clear a path for the bulky construction that followed.
Behind the Guildsmen levitated a great armored aquarium, a transparent distorted-bubble of a tank filled with orange spice gas. Heavy scrolled metalwork reached up like support ribs against the tank. Through the thick plaz, Murbella observed a misshapen form, no longer quite human, its limbs wasted and thin, as if the body was little more than a stem to support the expanded mind. The Navigator.
Murbella rose from her throne as a sign that she looked down upon this delegation, not as a gesture of respect. She wondered how many times such grand representatives had presented themselves before political leaders and emperors, browbeating them with the Spacing Guild’s mighty monopoly on space travel. This time, though, she sensed a difference: The Navigator, the high Administrator, and five Guildsmen escorts came as cowed supplicants.
While the gray-robed escorts lowered their faces from her gaze, the braided representative put himself in front of the Navigator’s tank and bowed before her. “I am Administrator Rentel Gorus. We represent the Spacing Guild.”
“Obviously,” Murbella said coolly.
As if afraid of being upstaged, the Navigator drifted to the curved front pane of his tank. His voice was distorted from speaker/translators in the metal support ribs. “Mother Superior of the Bene Gesserit . . . or do we address you as Great Honored Matre?”
Murbella knew that most Navigators were so isolated