Dune: The Machine Crusade (59 page)

En route, at way stations, Venport learned of an immense catastrophe that overshadowed the earlier information. In the midst of a slave rebellion, the entire city of Starda had been annihilated, apparently through the use of atomics.

He couldn’t believe it and thought he might go mad with worry during the tedious journey. If only he had access to the space-folding technology now, he could get to Poritrin immediately. Norma was in deep trouble, and under the best-case scenario she was already exiled from the planet where she’d lived for almost three decades. He could only hope that she had gotten away from Poritrin in time. He cared much more about her welfare than about the commercial losses of his company.

But he received verification that she had never reached Rossak, and now he feared that something terrible had happened. Maybe she had never escaped Starda, and was included among the dead millions.

This personal and business emergency, more than anything else in his life, drove home the vital need for faster space transportation and communication. Not only for himself, but for the entire human race. The technology all hung by a fragile thread, however. Only the genius of Norma Cenva held the secret of using the Holtzman Effect to fold space. No one else could understand it.

Where is she?

A year ago, she had quietly postponed responding to his offer of marriage, sidestepping the question out of embarrassment, confusion, indecision… but she had promised to give him an answer when he returned. He should have come back to Poritrin much sooner. Why had he stayed away for so long?

He knew that even if Norma had agreed to accept his proposal, she would still have remained in her laboratories working on the prototype ship, and he would still have gone off to deal with the demands of his merchant business. His shoulders sagged. Just the thought of her unassuming smile, her quiet conversation, her distracted delight in being with him— whether she saw him as a friend, big brother, or lover— made him feel warm inside.

Venport knew he loved her— and had for a long time, though he’d been slow to recognize his feelings. While no one had ever considered Norma beautiful, he still found her attractive because of who she was— a gentle genius with a passion for the art of mathematics that surpassed even the purest fanaticism of the most dedicated jihadi fighter. He had already been missing her terribly. And now…

Have I lost you?

Venport reached the Isana River in the middle of the night, local time. Hard-pressed traffic controllers routed his shuttle around the blistering Starda disaster site to a temporary landing area erected for all the emergency vessels and medical ships that had raced to the planet.

The glow of the huge radioactive crater was a dull orange along the river bluffs where the nobles had lived. The sight itself lay like a heavy stone on his chest, restricting his breathing. Lord Bludd, Tio Holtzman, and hundreds of thousands of others had vanished, vaporized.

How would he ever find Norma now?

Standing among the crowds at the interim spaceport, Aurelius Venport looked into the eyes of the refugees and saw stricken, dull defeat. No one seemed to know exactly what had happened, how mere Buddislamic slaves had obtained an atomic weapon. But other indications seemed to indicate that the blast hadn’t exactly come from a nuclear chain reaction, but from something similar….

And no one knew anything about Holtzman’s former assistant. Norma Cenva was the least of their problems.

Venport realized that it might take him a long time to uncover the answers. No hotels or amenities were available now. The majority of the guest lodgings had been within the blast zone, and other apartments and hotels on the fringes were packed with survivors of the bloody uprising.

He didn’t care about his own safety, or about money. On a hill away from the river, he found an intact home with a spare room, which he rented for an exorbitant fee without quibbling. What did cost matter now? He tried to get a few hours of sleep while waiting for daybreak, when he could begin his search in earnest, but he tossed and turned all night, worrying about Norma.

There had been no further word from Tuk Keedair, either, so Venport would have to do his own detective work.

At dawn the merchant arranged for transportation, paying another stiff fee for the use of a commercial flyer for two hours. A woman with bright red hair sat at the controls, looking haggard and smudged. She talked incessantly about salvage and rescue efforts, the scores of workers plowing through the wreckage. She told him her name was Nathra Kiane, and she accepted his commission, though she felt guilty for not being at the disaster site.

“I’ll take you up the river and into the side canyon, as you wish, sir, but we can’t stay for more than an hour. Everybody’s looking for someone. There’s too much work for me, too many people to—”

“It won’t take long,” he said, knowing this was the grim truth. “I’ll find out everything I need to know in a few minutes.”

The small craft flew over agricultural fields, a green-and-yellow patch-work on the plain along the winding banks of the river. The fields were blackened after the Starda disaster, and harvesting equipment sat idle. According to official reports, the surviving Dragoon guards and minor nobles were cracking down on all remnants of the bloody uprising, but there were still pockets of armed resistance in the back country.

Slaves had been slaughtered everywhere in retaliation. Whether or not they surrendered, regardless of whether they had participated in the uprising, all Buddislamics were being massacred by vengeful mobs. Faced with doom, even those peaceful slaves took up arms to defend themselves, and the cycle of bloodshed spiraled out of control. Venport moaned at the thought.

“I haven’t been up here since the catastrophe.” The pilot gave a groan of disgust mixed with dismay. “Animals! How could those slaves do such a terrible thing?”

The exhausted Nathra Kiane was clearly in a hurry. She banked the flyer sharply and accelerated northward along the open course of the Isana River. No boats floated on the rough water anymore. Ahead, where the Isana cut a deeper channel, the offworlder saw the beginnings of canyons branching off into high walls. Norma’s remote laboratory was far from the main destruction, so he prayed that she was safe, that perhaps she had returned here despite her deportation order.

Again, he wished he had stayed with her and allowed his Tlulaxa partner to deal with VenKee business interests: Rossak pharmaceuticals, Arrakis melange, glowglobes, suspensors.

“Up ahead,” Kiane said. “Were almost there.”

He could already see the boat docks at the bottom of the canyons where shuttleboats could tie up, the passenger and cargo lifts that rose to the building on top of the bluffs, and the large hollow grotto that held the large hangar, its cantilevered roof yawning open.

And the empty docking cradle for the ship. The prototype vessel was gone.

No one moved in the laboratory— no workers, no slaves, not even Dragoon guards. Gates had been left open, barricade fences knocked down. The remaining equipment lay scattered about in laboratory areas like dead insects.

No sign of anyone.

“Land in the clearing next to the hangar opening,” he said, amazed at how steady his voice was. When the red-haired pilot looked as if she might complain, he glared at her, then urgently peered through the flyer’s window, trying to see details among the shadows inside the hangar and cave.

Venport scrambled out of the flyer as soon as the pads touched down. The air smelled of singed grit, and the ground looked trampled. He could not begin to imagine what had occurred here. Had this destruction been caused by the military takeover of the complex, when Norma and Keedair had been evicted… or had there been a slave revolt here?

Inside the empty hangar he studied a tangled mass of metal at the center of the floor, the skeleton of heavy supports that should have held the decommissioned vessel. There was no evidence of the bulky ship itself.

With a heavy heart, Venport stumbled into the calculational offices where Norma had stored her files, but he saw only a few records strewn about, insignificant scraps and receipts. No notes, blueprints, or other important documents at all.

“Sure looks like this place was ransacked,” Kiane said, tagging along with him. “Anybody here?” But her words bounced back at her. “I’ll bet the slaves rioted and then escaped upland. They must have tossed any bodies off the edge, into the river.”

“Norma!” Venport ran backdown into the hangar and then outside, where he searched small storage buildings. He knew in his heart she wasn’t here. Filled with foreboding, he inspected everything carefully, looking for the tiniest clue, anything that might tell him what had happened.

But there was no sign of what had happened to the prototype ship or the people here. It was too quiet. Deathly quiet.

“Get me out of here,” Venport said, feeling sick to his stomach.

HE SPENT FIVE more days searching urgently in and around Starda, asking questions, pleading for answers. But everyone had missing friends and family members, and the casualty toll kept mounting. Lord Bludd and Tio Holtzman had both been declared dead. Among the shattered debris, bodies were still being found. Many victims had been burned in the fires, others butchered by slaves. Among the dead across the wide continent lay thousands of Buddislamic rebels, all mangled by Dragoons in retaliation for the uprising.

No one could tell him what he needed to know, but in his heart Venport already had the answer. He tried to cling to hope that Norma had indeed gone to Rossak, and that her passage had merely been delayed. But all indications pointed in a different direction, that she had met a terrible, undeserved fate.

Filled with grief over his lost love, Venport put Poritrin behind him, and vowed never to return here.

P
ain and fear made time seem to drag out to infinity. Norma Cenva had no idea how long she had been held captive, only that she was the last of the victims to face the cymek captor’s curiosity. The two Dragoon guards and the hapless slave ship pilot had already screamed their way into a mercifully silent oblivion.

From inside the monstrous raptor vessel, the voice of the Titan Xerxes said, “We have as many methods of inflicting torture as there are stars in the sky. This comes from diligent practice.” The words seemed to come from everywhere around her.

Norma dangled paralyzed and helpless in the belly of the condor-flyer that had captured her. She could only listen, and suffer. Her bodily capabilities had never been impressive, but Norma’s mind was a different matter; it stood on its own… apart from her physical form. She tried to focus her thoughts and drive back the mounting terror, replacing it with resignation, acceptance of her impending death.

Her dreams and accomplishments had already been taken from her by the man she had faithfully served for so many years. Her experimental ship was lost to her, and she’d been driven from Poritrin in disgrace. She had let Aurelius down, along with everyone else who depended upon her.

A mere cymek could not inflict any deeper pain, or greater humiliation, than she had already suffered.

Within the belly of the huge predatory ship, the Titan’s preservation canister dangled above Norma, scanning her with an array of high-resolution optic threads.

“Long ago when I was human,” Xerxes mused, as if his words could torment her, “my body was rather small and ugly. Before I came to power and ruled over vast worlds, some people even called me a gnome.”

On hydraulic cables, the preservation canister lowered itself closer to where she hung, to get a better look at her squirming form. Her clothes were drenched in sweat, battered and stained.

“By comparison, woman, you are so ugly that your parents should have smothered you at birth… and then sterilized themselves to prevent the creation of any more monstrosities.”

Norma replied in a husky voice, “My mother… might agree with you.”

The sharp threads suspending her in the air were suddenly severed, and she tumbled to the hard interior decks Xerxes’ massive raptor ship. Gasping with pain, she hunched over. Held in place by the craft’s gravity system, which rapidly increased, like a heavy boot crushing her body, Norma could barely breathe.

She heard mechanical voices, but couldn’t make out the words.

Clinging to hope and comfortable memories, Norma closed her eyes and clutched the egg-shaped soostone, as if the glittering jewel could help her now. Despite the horrors around her, the gem made her feel a connection with Aurelius, and these thoughts strengthened and kept her alive. For the time being.

Xerxes and the brain canisters of half a dozen of his sycophant neocymeks surrounded her, hanging from the ceiling like fat arachnids, and Norma made out their words. The Titan thrummed beside the neos, speaking to them. “You are the first of the new recruits Beowulf has drawn into our rebellion against Omnius, and soon others will join us— especially after this little demonstration.”

Trapped, Norma felt more like a tasty grub worm than a human. She shivered on the cold floor while her tormentor plunged the chamber temperature down to far below freezing. The metal deckburned her skin with frozen fire, and her breath plumed away from her like white steam.

“Oh, poor little dear— are you shivering?” Xerxes inquired in a mocking synthesized voice. Using manipulator arms from above, the Titan dropped an energy blanket over her, which clung like a Rossak leech-bat, adhering to every exterior cell of her body. It made her colder. Norma struggled unsuccessfully to push it off against the quicksand of artificial gravity.

“Here, now you can be warm again.” Xerxes transmitted a signal, and the blanket suddenly glowed scarlet with meshwires that seared into her exposed flesh.