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Nevertheless, Edrik had no choice but to accept a team of qualified and arrogant Ixian workers who shuttled up from the Junction shipyards. The tight-lipped men boarded the Heighliner under the watchful eyes of the Guild, with their smug expressions, compiler machines, and dangerous curiosity.
In his tank, Edrik was concerned that they would snoop around under the pretext of completing their installation. The Navigator faction could not risk these men finding Waff's laboratory, the genetically altered sandtrout, and the small mutated worms he was producing in his tanks. The Tleilaxu man claimed to be making excellent progress, and his work must remain a secret.
Therefore, when the Ixian installers were all safely aboard, Edrik simply folded space, informing no one in the shipyards where he was going. He carried his empty Heighliner far out into an isolated wasteland between solar systems, and there ejected the disbelieving Ixians, along with their accursed navigation machines, out into the cold vacuum.
Problem solved.
His acts would be discovered eventually, but that could not be avoided. Edrik was a Navigator. Mere human Administrators had no hold over him.
Edrik suspected that the devious Administrator and his faction saw the melange crisis as an opportunity to shift the Guild's burden away from problematic Navigators; they did not really want a new source of spice. Gorus was now an absolute ally, if not a puppet, of the Ixians. Edrik had seen the economic projections and knew that the Administrators considered navigation machines to be more cost-effective than Navigators--and more easily controlled.
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. "Your concerns are parochial. I must find the wayward no-ship. I must determine where Duncan Idaho has taken it, before the Enemy intercepts it."
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.
