The flesh may not be excused from the laws of matter, but the mind is not so fettered. Thought transcends the physics of the brain.
— “Origins of the Spacing Guild” (a League publication)
Though he had decided not to smash into his mother’s spice-immersion enclosure, Adrien Venport paced the floor. His brothers and sisters, scattered across the League on VenKee business assignments, could not help him. He doubted they could even understand his quandary.
From within the misty chamber, Norma could sense her son’s indecision and concern. His worries were diverting him from vital VenKee business matters. He knew full well that if his odd and esoteric mother could truly and safely guide the spacefolders, VenKee would effectively control all future commerce between star systems. But she depended on him to keep the trading company strong, because she required its infrastructure for her next grand step.
She would have to quell his unreasonable fears. Finished with her main work, Norma knew it was time to change. Adrien needed enough answers to reassure— and even exhilarate him.
Forcing her expanding mind back to the real world, concentrating on her body and its immediate environs, Norma summoned him. With slow, painstaking effort, mouthing her words with uncooperative lips, scrawling letters in the spice stains on the plaz walls, she convinced Adrien that she wanted him to join her inside the chamber— provided that he wore a clearplaz breather and eye protection.
Her son did not question her. He ran out of the laboratory building shouting orders. In less than half an hour he returned, fully clothed in an environment suit. Apparently, he didn’t even want to risk exposing his skin to concentrated spice gas. Norma realized that was probably wise.
With a mental command, using Sorceress powers she rarely practiced, Norma allowed part of her enclosure to open, creating an inward vortex that made the spice gas swirl and kept most of it inside. Though clearly intimidated, Adrien raised his head and stepped inside. The door sealed quickly behind him, and she took deep gulps of spice gas, watching him as he walked through the murk.
“Oh, the universe I have seen, Adrien!” she exclaimed. “And there is so much more to explore!”
He was overjoyed just to be close to her again. “We should install a speaker system, Mother. It has been impossible— so many questions, and we couldn’t get through to you.” He knelt by her half-dissolved cushion on the tank’s floor.
“A speaker system is acceptable,” she said. “But as long as you and I have an understanding, Adrien— as long as we have trust and confidence in each other— you can enter this chamber whenever I tell you it is safe.”
With a perplexed expression, he asked, “When would it not be safe to enter your tank?”
“When I am using my mind, my prescience, to calculate a safe course through folded space. Did you forget the purpose of this project?”
Her voice sounded eerie to her own ears as she spoke at length, explaining how melange saturation had enhanced her ability to envision future events, to avoid disastrous paths. “I have worked out all of the final details in my mind.”
Through his clearplaz mask she saw that his patrician features were still tight with concern. “I understand, Mother, but I have to be certain you are safe. Let the medical personnel examine you to make sure you’re healthy. You look emaciated.”
“I am better than I have ever been,” she said, with a distant smile on her wide, bony face. “And healthy.” From all appearances, her body had degenerated into a form that hardly seemed capable of supporting the freakishly large head. Her skin rippled and her limbs had lost definition and become cordlike. “I’ve been altering into something… and toward something.”
She took his much larger hands in her own, gripped them tightly, lovingly. With a penetrating gaze from her spice-blue eyes, Norma said, “Load my test chamber into one of the spacefolder ships, so that I can demonstrate my new navigation abilities. I will be able to pilot it.”
“Are you sure it’s safe?”
“Adrien, life is inherently perilous, as fragile as a flower bud in a storm. But, like the bud, it contains incredible beauty, a reflection of God’s intent for the universe. Is folding space safe compared to what? By odds, it is probably safer than a woman undergoing childbirth, but… yes, it is more dangerous than hiding and never venturing outside your front door.”
“We really need this breakthrough,” he agreed, thinking like a businessman again. Then he crossed his arms stubbornly as the spice gas swirled around him. “But if it’s as safe as you say, then I insist on going with you, to demonstrate my faith in your abilities.”
She nodded slowly, her enlarged head drifting up and down on the thin stalk of her neck. “You are as tough a negotiator as your father. Very well, then. I will show you the universe.”
* * *
UNDER NORMA’S STRICT though distant supervision, and Adrien’s intense scrutiny of every detail, the preparations for her first space-folding journey were completed. This trip would be different for Norma, exciting and concrete, not just theoretical. A test, proof— liberation.
Hundreds of Kolhar workers made certain that the medium-sized cargo vessel and the modifications to her spice-gas chamber met exacting specifications. Once the speaker system was installed inside the tank, Adrien could communicate directly with his mother, though he often had trouble focusing her attention or getting information from her in a useful form.
When all components were ready for the prescient voyage, only two people climbed aboard: Norma sealed inside the chamber, and Adrien secured inside a lifepod on the same deck with her. He knew he was risking the future of VenKee Enterprises on this one flight, since none of his siblings could manage even a fraction of the necessary business activities.
But Adrien trusted his mother. Through the plaz of their respective enclosures, they could see each other, and talk through the direct comline. The Holtzman engines would fold space and transport them from Kolhar to a different place entirely. Norma would choose the proper course.
Before embarking, she increased the gas mixture in her enclosure to its maximum concentration and went into a trance that opened up the universe like the unfolding petals of a magnificent rose. Each time she peered into space it was more beautiful than the time before. And on this occasion Norma would make the leap, guiding the ship along a prescient pathway that her mind had already foreseen.
Norma focused on the future, saw the swirling colors of the cosmos and her infinitesimally small ship. It was a cosmic conundrum, but one she understood fully. Space would wrap itself around the vessel in a loving embrace, like an attentive mother cradling her child. In her core, she felt a powerful soundless humming, and without actually turning back to look, she saw Adrien vibrating with life inside his protective lifepod.
Once the Holtzman engines folded space, bending one coordinate to another, the journey was set, and the ship glided through layers of distance and space. Adrien was shaking, both from the ship’s vibration and from fear, as if his body and his mind might come apart, but he did not regret what he was experiencing.
Then they were on the other side of their destination. She saw Adrien existing at one coordinate, then appearing at another. In only a moment, the universe became very small.
“We’ve done it, Mother! Look below!” Amazed, he peered through a viewing port in the cargo ship and recognized the dry, cracked planet. From orbit, it looked like a basin of gold. “Arrakis? I’ve been here many times.”
“For my first prescient voyage,” Norma said, “I thought it appropriate to travel to the source of the melange.”
Arrakis beckoned her as a place to anchor all prescient experiences, a place where she could build upon everything that was yet to come— for her, for Adrien, and for all of humankind.
“Stunning, in more ways than one,” he said. “With an instantaneous assured conduit to the source of the spice, VenKee can make even greater profits.”
“Not all profits are monetary. Arrakis is like the spice it contains, complex beyond comprehension, valuable beyond measure.”
Norma knew that spice and navigation were inextricably linked. Supplies of melange would have to be guaranteed. VenKee Enterprises might need to station its own company military force here to protect its spice sands. Arrakis was not the sort of place to be bound by legalities. It was a raw, untamed world where only the strongest survived.
From her sealed, spice-impregnated navchamber, Norma mentally guided the VenKee transport ship low over the barren planet with conventional engines. The ocean of dunes dwarfed her spacefolder. With her powerful mind, Norma observed great sandworms, dust clouds, and ferocious Coriolis storms. Her mind opened in two directions at once, to the past and the future, and she saw bands of people moving across the landscape, some on foot and others actually riding the worms.
“If only we could find another source of spice, so that we were not so dependent on this one world, which has already been overrun by spice rushers,” Adrien said, his voice floating into her gaseous chamber. “Since the Scourge, everyone knows the riches waiting here, and Arrakis is swarming with spice harvesters and even slavers.”
“Melange is the heart of the universe,” she said. “There is only one heart.”
Hovering their ship over the vast deserts, she saw into the future of human commerce. Adrien could not possibly comprehend what a powerful organization he would help create.
“History will say that your father developed these great ships,” she said. “Aurelius Venport will be remembered as the visionary inventor, a great patriot for the cause of humanity. As time passes, with all of the actual participants gone, no one will be able to separate fact from myth. This thought makes me very happy and content. It is my last gift to the man I love. I want you to understand this as the leader of VenKee Enterprises, a company that will evolve into something much more.”
He nodded. “You’re doing that out of love, and out of appreciation for when my father was the only one who believed in you. I understand that, Mother.”
After what seemed like a long time over harsh Arrakis, Norma Cenva took her transport ship back into the void, bound for Kolhar.