Navigators of Dune

by Brian Herbert

  He left part of his fleet at Arrakis to make damned certain no one threatened his spice operations again. Josef and his remaining ships returned to Kolhar, where he could regroup and prepare his next move. He looked forward to seeing Cioba again. She would help him decide what to do.

  But when the VenHold ships arrived at the headquarters planet, his wife had more bad news for him. While the bulk of the warships had been away, Admiral Umberto Harte had staged a daring overthrow of the foldspace carrier that had been holding his Imperial battle group hostage. They were gone.

  Cioba showed him images as he stared in disbelief. “They nearly tore the hull apart, then made their way to the Navigator deck and took control.” She turned her dark eyes downward. “I sent ships to intercept them, but the carrier folded space and vanished before we could block their way.”

  Josef reeled, feeling as if another giant boulder had crashed down on him from an unexpected direction. Norma Cenva, in her tank, listened and finally pronounced in a grave, eerie voice, “The Emperor has captured one of my Navigators.”

  Josef struggled to control his anger. He refused to let yet another disaster destroy him. He would find a way to snatch a victory out of even this collapse. He was Josef Venport, Directeur of Venport Holdings, and he refused to throw away a lifetime of work—generations of work.

  Canceling all meetings, he locked himself in his high tower offices, asking to be alone. Brooding, he paced the room and looked out the plaz windows at the bustle of arriving and departing ships on the landing field. He worked out which part of the problem to tackle first.

  Even with Harte’s ships returned to the Imperial Armed Forces, it wasn’t likely the Emperor would come to Kolhar, or Arrakis, in a direct attack. Emperor Roderick badly needed the reinforcements at Salusa, and although Admiral Harte’s ships were not spacefolders, they did represent a significant military force. They could defend the planet, if Josef ever attempted his siege again. And who knew what the Butlerians might do with all those antique ships?

  Worse, though, they had kidnapped one of his Navigators!

  For years, rival foldspace shipping companies such as Celestial Transport and EsconTran had tried to learn how to create the superior mutated humans, but no one else had succeeded—even though it was obvious they were immersed in tanks of spice gas, that was only part of the secret.

  Now, however, Roderick had a live specimen that he could poke and prod and interrogate and even dissect. Josef dreaded what the Imperial researchers would discover. It was just possible that his scientists might be able to derive the secret.

  Navigators … Norma Cenva … spice … foldspace travel … the vast wealth in interplanetary banks … the tapestry of commercial interactions that held the Imperium together. It was all connected, with Navigators at the center. Josef would not let it all unravel.

  Restless and agitated, he emerged from his office, surprised to find Cioba waiting for him there in the hall. With her Sorceress blood and Sisterhood training, she sometimes showed hints of prescience herself.

  He reached out to stroke the side of her classically lovely face with its porcelain complexion, her long and silky brown hair. “Sometimes you surprise me, my love. How did you know?”

  “Wherever you’re going, I am pledged to accompany you.”

  The open field of Navigator tanks held hundreds of sealed chambers, each containing a candidate in metamorphosis. Some writhed and thrashed, inhaling melange gas; others drifted, curled in fetal positions. Thanks to modifications in the process, under Norma’s careful guidance, two-thirds of the Navigator candidates survived the transformation, which was a vast improvement from earlier efforts.

  He and Cioba passed workers using mobile pumping reservoirs to fill the spice tanks. The VenHold employees bowed in respect to the Directeur, but Josef was preoccupied with thoughts of how extraordinarily expensive melange was going to be until he managed to build up his stockpile again—a very difficult task if he had to worry about the security of his operations on Arrakis. The efforts of the Emperor and the barbarians had redoubled against him.…

  Norma’s platform was empty. She had vanished on one of her own voyages, as she sometimes did. “The universe is ours,” she often said. But the destruction of the melange stockpile as well as the loss of the Navigator Dobrec had affected her deeply.

  Josef just stared at the empty space, feeling empty himself. He needed to speak with his great-grandmother, commiserate with her, even scold her for what had happened. Norma’s mind was so distant from political realities, though, that he was not at all certain she understood the consequences of what she had done at Salusa, and the dire position Venport Holdings was now in. So much political damage to mitigate!

  “Maybe it’s best that she is not here,” Cioba said. “Our needs and priorities frequently align with Norma’s—but not always. She is focused on her Navigators, while we have to consider the entirety of Venport Holdings—and your own aspirations. What do you wish to achieve, my husband? If you could control every action and reaction, what would your preferred outcome be?”

  Josef frowned. “My own aspirations? I thought they were clear, especially to you. I want to protect my company, conduct business across the Imperium, and ensure the steady growth of civilization. Without me, we would revert to a dark time of low technology and rampant superstition, of omens and signs and ignorance.”

  He saw one of the newer Navigator candidates spasming in the orange melange gas, her distorted face stretched in a rictus of pain, her eyes swollen shut behind reddened eyelids. Most of her hair had fallen out, and the remainder hung in odd tufts and wisps. The transformation process seemed like a horrific procedure, but in the end, successful Navigators did not regret it—or so they claimed.

  “To achieve my goals, I need to have both Navigators and spice—and I need the barbarians defeated.” He felt a knot in his chest. “Of utmost importance, I need the cooperation of Emperor Roderick, or some other Emperor sitting on the throne in his place … preferably not me.”

  Cioba stepped closer to the tank where the proto-Navigator twitched and turned to look at him. “After the fall of the thinking machines, humanity needed to achieve its potential,” Cioba said. “Mankind became free to expand, explore, and evolve. Headmaster Albans founded his Mentat School to train minds that could think like the most advanced computers. Mother Superior Raquella founded the Sisterhood school to improve human abilities as well. Other schools also explore human potential.”

  She touched the smooth plaz of the tank, and the creature inside jerked away, as if that faintest of vibrations felt like a thunderclap. “And these Navigators—this is evolution too. Forced evolution. A supreme demonstration of what humans can achieve.”

  Josef drew close and peered into the tank, noting the awful physical changes that he himself had authorized. He didn’t remember this particular candidate at all, was unaware of her name, didn’t know where she had come from or whether she had openly volunteered or been forced into the tanks.

  Looking around at all the tanks, he saw dozens of the creatures, many almost completely transformed, their heads and eyes enlarged, their bodies atrophied, their skin flaccid and discolored. Evolution … advancement of the species … but was this what humanity was destined to be?

  He looked around and raised his voice, as if all of the Navigators were listening to their conversation. The VenHold employees with their pumping tanks and medical monitors studiously pretended not to hear. “I promise I have only the best of intentions for humanity. I don’t need more power or wealth for myself—I have enough of both. I just want to do what is right for civilization.”

  Cioba’s expression grew hard, and her voice carried a tone of warning. “I’m sure General Agamemnon and the Twenty Titans also had the best of intentions.”

  Josef was so surprised by her comment that he felt a chill go down his spine. He looked up to see movement inside all the Navigator tanks. The drifting, twisted forms, the successfully trans
formed candidates as well as the newer volunteers, all turned their faces in his direction, and Josef was certain that they were staring directly at him.

  Achieving a goal can be a blessing or a disappointment. The reality is never exactly as one envisions it—for better or for worse.

  —Untitled philosophy book, the Erasmus library

  With the optical sensors connected to his memory core, Erasmus inspected his new body drifting in amniotic fluid. When Dr. Danebh and his Tlulaxa technicians drained the biological vat and brought the pale, naked form into the open air, Erasmus felt oddly disturbed … and let down.

  As Anna held his memory core in her hands, he could sense her trembling with excitement. She had rushed into the biological laboratory as soon as she received word that the body was fully grown and ready. The human form, alive but without a consciousness, lay face up on a medical table with supplementary nutrient tubes strung from the moist, soft flesh. The smooth chest rose and fell in rhythmic breathing, but the eyes were closed.

  Erasmus had watched this body grow from week to week with accelerated development—a clone from the cells of Gilbertus Albans. With perfect recall he remembered how he, as an independent robot, had raised the real Gilbertus from a dirty, feral child more than two centuries ago. This cellular replica was a near-perfect copy of Gilbertus Albans, in physical form, but Erasmus knew that the sharp mind of his ward and protector was forever gone. Indelibly recorded in his memory sphere, Erasmus saw the last moments of the real Gilbertus, when the proud Headmaster had knelt before Anari Idaho’s sword.

  Now the robot noticed slight differences in the body, smooth skin that should have been scarred, a missing mole on the left shoulder. This mindless twin looked eerily similar, but was not the same. “Did you encounter any errors in the growth process?” Erasmus inquired. “Why are there any differences at all?”

  “The DNA is the same, but even identical twins are not entirely the same. Biology is not perfect.”

  “Of course. I have realized that many times.” He knew that this body was never meant to be a new Gilbertus Albans, but rather a new Erasmus.

  “I think it’s beautiful,” Anna said. “And it will be even more beautiful once it becomes you, with your mind and storehouse of memories.”

  “The body is acceptable,” Erasmus said. He could think of so much to do after he entered this body and controlled its movements, so much to experience! So much to see and touch and feel! “A far greater challenge will be to install and interface my memory core with the nervous system.”

  “We have experience with similar situations,” Danebh said. “Our cymek work has paved the way.”

  In recent months, the Denali surgeons had become quite adept at connecting human minds to compatible, receptive machine components. Now they had to do the reverse: unite a thinking machine memory core with human systems.

  Utilizing the sensory package connected to his gelsphere, he watched Anna study the newly decanted body. She reached out to touch the face, caressed the skin.

  Soon, Erasmus would have his new body and would feel her touch—a biological form for the first time in his centuries of existence. His thoughts churned with anticipation. He said to Danebh, “I am anxious to begin.”

  * * *

  USING THEIR SOPHISTICATED cymek bodies and precision surgical apparatus, Ptolemy and Administrator Noffe performed the operation themselves, supervised and assisted by Danebh.

  Once disconnected from the sensory package he’d been using thus far, Erasmus could not determine exactly what was happening around him. He was in limbo, with no stimuli except for his own thoughts and memories … all internal. So he immersed himself in replaying an accelerated recollection of his existence under the computer evermind Omnius—the days of humanity’s enslavement and his own part in their eventual revolt, followed by the years of hiding.

  Today, Erasmus would at last achieve a new stage, the greatest of his long list of experiments involving human beings! He had dissected countless specimens, pried apart innumerable human bodies and minds (sometimes when the subjects were still alive), all in an effort to understand them.

  Now he could finally become one of them.…

  When the lengthy installation procedure was done, Erasmus opened his eyes, and the bright lights of the laboratory dome flooded him with a new reality, revealing to him for the first time the way humans looked at things. Every sense in his body awakened at once with an accompanying avalanche of sights, sounds, colors, smells—so many sensations pouring in through the myriad nerves that were woven through the flesh.

  It was as if all filters had been torn away and the sensory inputs had been turned to maximum levels. He could hardly stand it, and could scarcely get enough. He flexed his fingers, inhaled the air, smelled the laboratory and its blend of odors.

  Anna reached out to touch his face with an expression that he interpreted as wonder. Her contact felt warm to him, and her expression was filled with adulation. And as she touched him, he felt the complexity of her fingertips.

  When Erasmus spoke a moment later, he experienced the sounds coming from his lungs, his chest, his larynx, and his mouth all at once—unlike the bland speakerpatches he had used for his entire previous existence.

  “I am awake. I am alive,” he said, and his voice sounded wonderful to him. “Finally, I am human!”

  Money and effort cannot always secure a desired goal. Some things are unattainable.

  —Tlulaxa warning

  To study the captive Navigator specimen Admiral Harte had delivered to Salusa, Roderick commanded the most advanced research laboratory that Imperial funds could construct on short notice. Desperate to understand how he could make such creatures for his own Imperial purposes, he staffed the facility with skilled and eager scientists, most of them drawn from the Suk Medical School. Roderick knew that time was short and the research itself was dangerous. He had no idea what Josef Venport would do next.

  Not daring to inflame the Butlerians who still infested the capital city, the Emperor had ordered the construction of the underground laboratory in great secrecy, and stationed more than a thousand soldiers to guard it. If Manford Torondo ever learned that a captive Navigator was held somewhere in Zimia, he might summon a mob in an attempt to breach the facility, smash the large tank, and destroy the critically important work. Even worse, that might just be the beginning: Roderick recalled reports of what the violent, rampaging Butlerians had done to another Navigator they seized on Baridge.

  He hoped the heavily armed soldiers he had stationed to guard the Navigator would prevent that, and he was also concerned about something else. When Roderick ordered the stationing of the troops, he’d said to the commander, “Just as we were about to arrest Josef Venport in the throne room, Norma Cenva appeared in her tank and whisked him away, vanishing into the folds of space. If her tank appears anywhere near our captive Navigator, you are to immediately open fire on the prisoner. We will not let her have him back.…”

  Now, through a secure access, the Emperor and Haditha entered the underground facility, accompanied by a confident Umberto Harte. Roderick smelled the odor of melange, noted the jumpsuited scientists and assistants who surrounded the creature’s tank. The Suk researchers monitored the thing’s vital signs while trying to glean useful data from blood and cellular samples. Roderick had authorized all investigatory measures, including dissection, should the thing die in the course of research.

  “It says its name is Dobrec,” said Harte, looking at the tank.

  “It also says it has no use for appellations, or for our concerns.” Roderick had read the preliminary reports. “We need to find answers, so we can seize this advantage from Directeur Venport.”

  “Are you saying we need to create our own Navigators like this?” Haditha stopped beside the tank, looked deeply troubled. “What horrible things Directeur Venport must do to them—”

  The Navigator swiveled toward her, pressing close to the speakerpatch. “Wondrous things. I am
much more than I ever was before.”

  “I doubt we will convince him to switch his allegiance, Sire,” said Harte. “But if we understand the process, we can recruit new Navigators—ones that are loyal to you.”

  Roderick frowned. “That is still a long way off, Admiral.”

  “You are incapable of understanding what to do,” Dobrec said. “Only Norma Cenva knows how to guide and nurture us through the transformation.” He enfolded himself in the dense gas.

  “I hope you can find some use for him, Sire,” Harte said.

  Roderick was impressed with the Admiral. Umberto Harte was not an egotistical man, and accepted the need to hide the sensational news that he had captured a fully developed Navigator alive. For the time being, Harte’s soldiers were sequestered, not allowed to communicate with their own families. A press announcement assured the cheering Zimia citizens that the survivors were just being debriefed about Directeur Venport’s defenses at Kolhar. The entire force was confined at one of the largest Salusan military bases, many kilometers from the Imperial city. In order to keep the important secret, Roderick would likely dispatch them on another off-planet mission for the time being.

  A small man in a scarlet-and-gold jumpsuit approached from the back of the laboratory—Demos Athens, the head of the facility, accompanied by a much taller man in a long black garment. Athens nodded toward his dour companion. “Sire, may I present Robér Cecilio, an adept of the Scalpel order of the Suk Medical School, one of our most skilled deep-interrogators. His talents will be useful in extracting information from the captive Navigator.”

  Cecilio bowed. “With your blessing, Sire, I am ready to help unravel the secrets this creature holds in its mind.”

  Roderick had some unpleasant experience with the infamous Scalpel torturers. His brother had used them often—far too often, and Roderick had seen them in action. “I have never approved of your cruel methods.” He drew a breath, reminding himself that he was the Emperor now, not just a brother and a top adviser. “But I understand what may be necessary to obtain the information we desperately require.”