For those who know where to look, the past produces clear indications for us to follow in our journey into the future.
— A History of VenKee Enterprises
After returning from Rossak, having neither expected nor received gratitude for the warning she had delivered, Norma stood naked and curious in front of a mirror. Though she was not vain, she examined her body for more than an hour. Its classic bone structure and milky skin should have made her the vision of perfection, but imperfections appeared with unfortunate frequency: growing red blotches, ripples in her skin, and shifting features, as if her bone structure and her muscles had become plastic. Puckered patches of red covered large areas of her chest and abdomen. Even her stature seemed smaller. Distorted.
So peculiar. She could always restore her appearance if she willed it, but the flaws would reappear. Norma wanted to understand what was happening.
Adrien had noticed, but she could not explain it to him. At his insistence, she consulted one of the shipyard doctors, an elderly female specialist. The doctor prodded, frowned, and then made a quick pronouncement. “Allergic reactions, probably caused by an overconsumption of melange. Your son tells me you ingest immense quantities.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Please reassure Adrien.” Her noncommittal words produced the desired effect, and the medical specialist turned to depart.
Norma would have preferred to be left alone, to concentrate on her work, and she had no intention of cutting back her melange consumption. Her recent visit to Rossak and her warning premonition about the piranha mites had left her unsettled. If the machines were indeed stirring again on Corrin, preparing new horrors against humanity, then she must always keep her mind alert and on guard.
For that, she needed more spice.
She had been experimenting with different variations of melange: solids, powders, liquids, and gases. Physically and mentally, she was already different from any other human being.
Norma could get rid of the blotches that appeared on her skin, but why bother? Now, still standing in front of the mirror, she made the blotch on her upper body fade, and then brought it back intentionally. Such folly to keep herself beautiful. For what? For whom? A waste of time and energy. Allowing her body to change would never diminish the love she held in her heart for Aurelius.
VenKee market studies showed that some people experienced immediate reactions to melange, while others developed them over time. Norma did know that large doses of spice opened doors in her mind and in the universe, allowing her to see pathways to the impossible. In fact, contrary to the doctor’s advice, she intended to take even larger doses of spice, pushing the limits of her capabilities.
Since the Great Purge, Norma had lived with a weighty, perplexed guilt because so many of the Jihad spacefolders and crews had been lost. Certainly, she had made progress on individual elements of the problem since then, but the ultimate solution still eluded her. It was time to redouble her efforts and solve the space-folding navigation problem once and for all.
From the storage bureau inside her private chamber, she removed a specially designed breathing mask, which she sealed over her mouth and nose. When she touched a button, gas hissed through the tube, carrying with it the pungent odor of melange. Rusty orange swirls colored her vision. She could barely see outside herself, but she could see within.
Due to the high level of spice already in her body, the effects were almost immediate. Norma experienced a stunning vision… at last, a brilliant epiphany in which she saw the solution to the navigation problem— a means of safely avoiding the hazards of space.
The key lay not in machinery or calculations, but in prescience, a mental ability to forecast safe paths across vast distances. Like her recent vision of the danger to Rossak. With repeated exposure to melange at high enough concentrations, she could open up far more abilities than anyone had suspected humans possessed. Her earlier computerized probability calculators had been the crudest possible attempt along these lines. But with spice, her own mind could become a far superior navigation tool.
Prescience.
Recovering from her revelation, Norma noted that her body had shifted back to something resembling its former stunted shape, the original pattern, though with more crudely formed features and a larger head. Why? A throwback? A distant cellular memory? A subconscious choice?
But her mind was expanding, crackling with energy as it focused on what was important: Melange. Navigation. Folded space. Prescience.
The answer at last!
* * *
BECAUSE HER BODY had chosen the new shape during her vision, Norma let it remain that way, a rough approximation of the body she had grown up with, blunt-featured and stunted, but with a grossly larger head in relation to her dwarfish frame.
She didn’t attempt to resculpt her appearance. It was simply an unnecessary expenditure of energy. The whole physical journey to beauty seemed shallow to her, infinitely insignificant in the scheme of the cosmos.
Unlike the spice, prescience, and folding space…
A guiding mind aboard a space-folding ship could predict disasters well before they happened, in time to plot a different path through folded space. Yet merely knowing the basis of her answer had not shown her how to physically implement the solution. Still, it was only a matter of time.
Each experiment brought Norma closer to her goal. She found it amazing that melange was both efficacious for inhibiting the Scourge and for traveling via folded space. The substance itself was a miracle— an extremely complex molecule.
Now her work required ever-increasing quantities of melange, and through VenKee she could obtain as much as she needed. The price of melange on the open market had risen swiftly. Twenty years ago, a significant percentage of the human population had survived the Omnius Scourge in large part because of the spice. Unfortunately, afterward their appetites had been whetted; many of the survivors were even addicted. The epidemic had changed the economy of the League, and VenKee Enterprises, in dramatic and unforeseen ways.
Her eldest son was ambitious and clever, just like Aurelius had been. Norma had never craved power or wealth herself, shying away from the fame her remarkable discoveries brought, but she realized that her navigational breakthrough and the feasibility of space-folding ships would allow Adrien and his descendants to expand the already wealthy VenKee Enterprises into a commercial empire as powerful as the League itself.
Norma knew that the gaseous form of melange was superior for her purposes, more intense, taking her mind to previously unattainable heights. Now, with eager anticipation, she planned to take her idea to the next stage.
Full spice immersion, total exposure, complete dependence.
* * *
OBSESSED WITH HER plan, Norma conscripted laborers and technicians from other projects in the shipyards. In comparison with the huge vessels with complex Holtzman engines and shield generators, her project was small and inexpensive. But it would have more far-reaching importance than anything else she had ever done.
Though he tried to talk with her, Adrien didn’t completely understand what his mother hoped to accomplish, and she did not try to articulate the reasons. Lately, it seemed difficult for her to speak in his language, but he never argued with her requests. He knew that whenever Norma had one of her vast ideas, the shape of the galaxy was bound to change.
The crews constructed a transparent, airtight plaz chamber fitted with nozzles, to which they connected large bottles of expensive melange gas. When the chamber was complete, Norma sealed herself inside, bringing a simple cushion on which to sit. Alone. Closing her eyes, she turned a control to pump in orange spice gas. She drew deep breaths, waiting for the effects, as the enclosure filled with more melange than she had ever before consumed. Such a potent concentration would have killed an unprepared person, but she had built up a great tolerance, and need, for the spice.
With wide-eyed Kolhar workers looking on, she inhaled deeply of the curling orange gas— and felt herself dropping away, accelerating into her mind. The cells of her misshapen body swam in the cinnamon-smelling vapor, merging with it. Total concentration, total calm.
This experience took her beyond the technology of folding space, lifting her to a level of pure spirituality. To Norma, the essence of being human was her ethereal nature. She felt like a sculptress on a cosmic scale, working with planets and suns as if they were modeling clay.
It was majestic and liberating.
She remained sealed inside the chamber without food or water— only the nourishing spice. The clearplaz walls became streaked with rusty brown, and she barely heard the constant hiss of gas jets around her.
At long last, she swam in a place where she could really think.