Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [67]
Long ago, Norma had created the precursor to the Guild as a means of fighting the thinking machines. Since that time, the Guild had taken on a life of its own, growing away from her while she stretched herself farther into the cosmos. Politics between planets, power struggles between the Navigator faction and the human Administrators, monopolies on valuable commodities such as soostones, Ixian technologies, or melange—such problems did not concern her.
Keeping watch over mankind required an investment of her mental currency. She felt the turmoil in civilization, knew the great schism in the Guild. She would have chastised the Administrators for creating such a crisis, if she could only remember how to speak to such small people. Norma found it exhausting to talk in simple enough terms to make herself comprehensible even to her advanced Navigators. She had to make them understand the true Enemy, so that they could shoulder the burden of fighting.
If the Oracle of Time did not attend to grander priorities, no one else would. No one else in the universe could possibly do it. With her prescience, she grasped what was most important: Find the lost no-ship. The final Kwisatz Haderach was aboard, and Kralizec’s black cloud had already released its torrents. But Omnius was searching for the same thing and might get to it first.
She had felt the recent struggles between the Bene Gesserits and the Honored Matres. Before that she had witnessed the original Scattering and Famine Times, as well as the extended life and traumatic death of the God Emperor. But all of those events were little more than background noise.
Find the no-ship.
As she had always foreseen and feared, the unrelenting foe had come back. No matter what guise the thinking machines now wore, regardless of how much they had changed, the Enemy was still the Enemy.
And Kralizec is well under way.
While her prescience flowed outward and inward, ripples of time eddied around her, making accurate predictions difficult. She encountered a vortex, a random, powerful factor that could change the outcome in uncounted ways: a Kwisatz Haderach, a person as anomalous as Norma Cenva herself, a wildcard variable.
Omnius wanted to guide and control that special human. The evermind and his Face Dancers had sought the no-ship for years, but so far Duncan Idaho had eluded capture. Even the Oracle had been unable to find him again.
Norma had done her best to thwart the Enemy every step of the way. She had saved the no-ship, hoping to protect the people onboard, but she had lost contact afterward. Something on the ship was more effective than a no-field at blinding her search. She could only hope the thinking machines were as blind.
The Oracle’s search continued, her thoughts reeling out in delicate probes. Alas, the vessel simply was not there. In some mysterious manner, the passengers hid it from her . . . assuming it had not been destroyed.
Though her prescience was not clear, Norma realized that time was growing shorter and shorter, for everyone. The crux point had to occur soon. Thus, she needed to gather her allies. The foolish Administrators had reconfigured many of their great ships, installing artificial controls—like thinking machines!—so that she could no longer call upon them through her paranormal means. But she could still command a thousand of her loyal Navigators. She would make them ready for battle, the final battle.
As soon as she found the no-ship. . . .
The Oracle of Time expanded her mind, casting her thoughts into the void like a fisherman, until the neural ache was incredible. She pushed harder than ever, stretching her boundaries beyond anything she had previously attempted. No price of pain could be too great. She knew full well the consequences of failure.
All around her, a vast clock ticked.
There must be a place where we can find a home, where we can be safe and rest.