Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [24]
The Oracle often chose her own esoteric goals without explaining them. One of the Navigators asked, “Why is the no-ship so important, Oracle?”
“Because the Enemy wishes to have it. Our great foe is Omnius—except that he is as changed from his former computer evermind as I am evolved from the human I once was. The machines have completed their high-order projections. The evermind knows he must have the Kwisatz Haderach, just as I know the Enemy must not have him.” The Oracle let the silence hang in space like a hole, before she added a stinging rebuke. “Your appetite for spice is not the priority. I must find the ship.”
Abruptly discontinuing the debate, she winked out again and vanished into her own place in an alternate universe.
Edrik and the gathered Navigators were shocked by her response. Navigators were dying, spice was dwindling away to nothing, Administrators were trying to overthrow the Guild—and the Oracle simply wanted to find a lost ship?
TWENTY-TWO YEARS AFTER
ESCAPE FROM CHAPTERHOUSE
These new Face Dancers cannot be detected by DNA analysis or any other form of cellular scrutiny. As far as we know, only a Tleilaxu Master can tell the difference.
—Bene Gesserit report on human mutation
Though the Ixian specialists had studied the Obliterators for half a year, they still hadn’t given the Sisterhood an answer. Murbella brooded in her offices on Chapterhouse, waiting. The news seemed to worsen with each passing day.
She received regular updates on the depredations of the thinking-machine fleet. The powerful Enemy ships moved inexorably through the fringe systems like a crashing tidal wave, drowning world after world. Another ten planets evacuated or contaminated by plagues, another ten lost, and more refugees flooded into the Old Empire.
A network of Sisters met with any refugee ships that came from the battleground systems. Taking statements from groups of survivors, they compiled an exhaustive three-dimensional map of the movements of the machine fleet. The pattern seeped like a bloodstain through the galaxy.
In a single desperate stand, nineteen Sisterhood no-ships expended their last three Obliterators to destroy a whole battle group of oncoming machine ships and temporarily prevent the annihilation of one human-inhabited system. In the end, though, even that devastation amounted to only a brief delay; the machine fleet came back with greater strength and crushed the world after all, killing every inhabitant. With the last Obliterators gone, the New Sisterhood was woefully underdefended.
Unless the Ixians could help. What was taking them so long?
Finally, a lone Ixian engineer came to Chapterhouse to deliver his news. When he said he would speak to no one but the Mother Commander herself, escorts brought him to the main Keep. Waiting on her imposing throne in front of the dust-streaked, segmented window, Murbella could respect the man for bypassing bureaucracy and getting to the core of the matter.
The engineer’s face was bland and unmemorable, his brown hair closely cropped, his demeanor unassuming. He had a peculiar, unpleasant odor about him, perhaps from chemical residue or the machinery of Ix’s underground fabrication plants. He bowed perfunctorily and stepped in front of her. “Our best engineers and scientists have deconstructed and analyzed the sample Obliterators you provided.”
Murbella leaned forward, giving him her full attention. “And you can reproduce them?”
“Better than that, Mother Commander.” His confident smile held no warmth at all, was simply an imitation of a facial expression. “Our fabricators understand the underlying concept of the weapon, and are able to concentrate its destructive power. Previously, it required several Honored Matre battleships deploying multiple Obliterators to kill a planet. With our enhanced weapon a single ship can launch enough firepower to do what was done to Rakis.” He gave a perfunctory