Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [23]
With the Ixians and their machines happily ejected, Edrik knew it was time to call another meeting with his fellow Navigators; they needed to receive fresh guidance from the Oracle of Time. Because Junction and several other Guild planets were already compromised by Gorus and his cronies, Edrik chose a place that no one but Navigators could find.
Once they had been shown how, they could fold their Guildships deep into another dimension, a nontraditional universe where the Oracle occasionally went on personal, incomprehensible explorations.
Ignited by the light of seven newborn stars, the cosmic gases swirling around his giant ship seemed inflamed. The nebula shone pink and green and blue, depending on which window of the spectrum Edrik chose to look through. The misty curtains put on a spectacular show, a great whirlpool of ionized gases—and a perfect place to hide.
When the ships gathered, the Navigators were in quite an uproar, and their numbers were less than Edrik had hoped. So far, four hundred Heighliners had been decommissioned, their parts salvaged to construct new no-ships that relied on artificial guidance systems. Seventeen Navigators had died horribly, their tanks emptied. Edrik learned that six of his fellows had likewise murdered the Ixian engineers rather than allow them to install mathematical compilers. Four Navigators had simply disconnected the machines, and the onboard Ixian teams failed to realize that their vaunted systems were no longer functional.
“We require melange,” he transmitted. “By the grace of spice, we see through folded space.”
“But the Sisterhood has denied it to us,” one of the other Navigators said.
“They have spice. They spend spice. But they do not give it to us.”
“The witches give it to the Guild for ships . . . but the Administrators have cut us off. We are betrayed by our own.”
“They control the spice.”
“But they do not control us,” Edrik insisted. “If we find our own source of spice, we will not need the Administrators. This is for the survival of Navigators, not simply for commerce. We have struggled with this problem for years. The Tleilaxu ghola has finally come up with a solution.”
“A new source of spice? Has it been proven?”
“Is anything fully proven? If this goes well, we can destroy the corrupt old Spacing Guild and supercede them.”
“We must speak to the Oracle.”
Edrik waved his tiny, misshapen hands. “The Oracle already knows our problem.”
“The Oracle has not deigned to help us,” said another.
“The Oracle has her own reasons.”
Drifting in his tank, Edrik acknowledged their conundrum. “I have spoken to her myself, but perhaps all of us together can urge her to respond. Let us summon the Oracle.”
Using their spice-enhanced minds, the numerous Navigators shot a message arrow through the folds of space. Edrik knew they had no way to coerce the Oracle of Time—or the Oracle Infinity, as she was sometimes called—to respond, but he sensed her presence, and her deep uneasiness.
With a silent flash, a trapdoor opened in the vacuum, and the ancient container arrived. It was not quite a ship, for the Oracle could travel anywhere she wished, mentally folding space without the help of Holtzman engines.
Even in that small and nonthreatening enclosure, Edrik knew full well the power and immensity of that highly advanced mind. As a human, Norma Cenva had first discovered the connection between spice and prescience. She had developed the technology of folding space, had created the incomprehensible equations that Tio Holtzman had taken as his own.
Though the Oracle used no known transmitting device, her words were loud and implacable in their minds.