Dune: The Machine Crusade (64 page)

Rafel grabbed the small Tlulaxa man, pulled out the scrap-metal knife Ishmael had given him, and raised it in front of the man’s face. But the former slaver did not flinch. Tauntingly, Keedair tapped fingers against his throat. “Go ahead, or are you a coward… like all your people?”

Ingu strode up, fists bunched, as if ready to join in the fight, but Rafel tossed the Tlulaxa man aside. “Buddallah would punish me for killing a man in cold blood, no matter how much suffering you have caused. I have memorized the sutras, I have listened to Ishmael.” Rafel scowled, restraining himself. Truly, he wanted to feel this evil man’s hot blood run off the metal of his knife blade and down onto his hand.

Keedair sneered at them from where he had fallen in the dust. “Yes, use me as your scapegoat, since I am the brunt of generations of your pitiful anger, the only target for your simpering. I did not want to bring you here, and I cannot help you now. If I could find rescuers, I would call them.”

“I have been waiting for an excuse to get rid of you, no matter what Ishmael says.” Rafel gestured away from the scout vessel. “Go out into the desert then, and find your own way. Why not eat your valuable melange? I see plenty of it around here.”

Against his better judgment, the Tlulaxa man staggered out toward the dunes, then turned back to them. “You’re hurting your chances for survival by getting rid of me.”

Ingu looked smugly pleased at the man’s predicament. Rafel said, “We will survive longer if we don’t have to share our rations with a flesh peddler.”

With a mixture of relief to be away and fear at being left alone in the cruel desert, Keedair squared his shoulders, then walked bravely away, into the sea of sand. “I am dead either way. And so are you.”

Rafel looked after him with awkward uncertainty. Was this what Ishmael had intended? Had there been a subtle message Rafel had not interpreted? The young man wanted to impress his father-in-law, but wasn’t sure he understood what he was supposed to do….

Afterward, Rafel and Ingu sat outside the ship in the cool evening. They ate sparingly of protein wafers and sipped water. The two men pulled emergency sleeping pads from the small storage compartment and spread them on the soft sand. As he lay down, feeling utterly weary, Rafel wished he could be beside Chamal.

He put away the scrap-metal knife, wondering if there might be nighttime predators out in the deep desert… or if the desperate slaver might sneak back and kill them in their sleep, then steal the scout craft for himself.

Grimly, he decided they needed more protection around the camp. Leaving Ingu snoring on his mat, Rafel climbed into the cockpit and saw, not surprisingly, that Norma Cenva had equipped the small craft with Holtzman shields. It would be a good defense.

Confident, he powered up the shields, which surrounded their camp with a shimmering umbrella of ionized air. Then he went back to his sleeping pad and felt safe… for a moment.

The ground shook, as from an earthquake. The dunes shifted and churned, and a rumble came from deep below them. With a rushing sound like a hurricane, the dunes collapsed. The scout ship lurched, knocked off of its landing gear.

Yelping, Rafel scrambled to his feet, only to stagger and fall on the uneven, shifting sand. Ingu threw himself off the sleeping mat with a yell, wind milling his arms for balance.

Abruptly, the night desert erupted into a storm of frenzied shapes around them, huge segmented demons that rose up like living nightmares. Rafel fell on his back, already half buried in the turbulent sand, and looking into the cavernous mouths of monsters rising up from below, driven wild… by the thrumming shields!

Ingu screamed in an oddly high-pitched voice.

All the worms struck at once, pounding the scout craft, the camp, the two men. Rafel thought he was gazing up at a giant fire-eating dragon. But there were no eyes. He saw a flash of glittering crystalline points around the huge mouth.

Then shadows, a sharp burst of pain, and endless darkness.

I
rritated but curious, Zufa Cenva arrived on Kolhar in response to the strange telepathic demand that had targeted her from across space. The Sorceress found the planet austere and rudimentary; the colony there had survived but wasn’t exactly thriving. Why would anyone want her to come here? The world had few resources and a bleak climate just on the survivable edge of harshness.

But the summons had been undeniable.
Who could want me here? And how dare they summon me?

While she’d been training her most talented sisters on Rossak, leading them through dangerous mental exercises in the noisome jungles, the compulsion had yanked her thoughts so severely that she’d nearly allowed her mental focus to collapse, with potentially disastrous results. The Sorceress recruits who depended upon Zufa’s guidance had desperately juggled their deadly energies, barely containing the holocaust in their minds.

But she couldn’t drive the thought away, or ignore it. The calling had been like a loud shout in Zufa’s brain, demanding that she leave immediately.
Come to Kolhar. Meet me there
. She, the Supreme Sorceress of the Jihad, had no choice.

This unremarkable planet was on the nearby trade routes from Ginaz, but she had never thought much about it. Kolhar had always been beneath her notice. Zufa had other priorities in the Jihad.

Come to Kolhar!

Now, as her private spacecraft descended and her ship’s onboard systems scanned for a dry spot to land near the rough settlements at the edge of the cold marshy wastes, a leaden dullness seeped into her like poison. The sky, the water, the soggy ground, and even the twisted trees, all looked ashen.

Mother. Come to Kolhar. Now!

Mother? Could it be some strange communication from the unborn fetus growing inside Zufa, the daughter of Iblis Ginjo… already prescient and sending her on a mission? If so, this could be the greatest Sorceress of all time. Smiling to herself, Zufa touched her abdomen, which did not yet show signs of pregnancy.

Certainly, stunted Norma could not possibly have such powers…. She had heard nothing from her daughter in years. Even Savant Holtzman had stopped wasting time on her, and may have deported her from Poritrin prior to the disastrous slave uprising there.

Did that mean that Norma was alive, that she had survived? Despite her disappointment in Norma, Zufa was her mother, and still cared about her.

But even if Norma had survived, this message could not possibly be from her….

A dusky outpost city with an outdated spaceport came into view. The primary Kolhar settlement held only a few hundred thousand inhabitants at most.

As she approached for a landing, the Sorceress received clearance from a thin-voiced male attendant. Zufa noticed no other offworld ships anywhere, only the lethargic movement of local traffic. “We have a berth reserved for your vessel, Sorceress, and instructions for your arrival. We have been expecting you.”

Curious to the point of annoyance, Zufa pressed him, even used a bit of telepathic nudging, but the man simply couldn’t tell her anything more. She just wanted to learn the answer to this mystery, and then get back to her real work.

Following the mental summons, she hired a railtaxi and took it from the sleepy spaceport to a subsidiary village two hundred kilometers north. Why would anyone go out here by choice? The small car glided slowly on a narrow-gauge track; the ride was bumpy, especially when it ascended to a high plateau surrounded on three sides by snow-capped mountains. Zufa wanted to use her telekinetic powers to propel the sluggish transport at greater speed, but resisted the temptation.

When Zufa finally debarked at a little station and stepped onto a painted wooden platform open to the cool winds, a stunningly beautiful blonde woman called out to her. “Supreme Sorceress Cenva. I have been waiting for you.”

Though the air of Kolhar was damp and brisk, the woman wore only thin, loose clothing that somehow resisted blowing in the breezes. She was young yet somehow ageless, with gentle blue eyes and unblemished skin like delicate porcelain. She looked familiar in an odd sort of way.

“Why have I been summoned here? By what means did you send such a signal?” Always conscious of her own status, Zufa wished she had not used the word
summoned,
as if she were no more than a lackey to be ordered about by a master.

The beautiful stranger gave her an odd, infuriating smile. “Follow me. We have much to discuss… as soon as you are ready for the answers.”

Zufa followed the woman into the station building, where a scrawny old man bowed subserviently and offered her a thickcoat. Zufa gestured the man away, paying no attention to the chill air on the plateau. “Who are you?” Suddenly, she remembered one of the messages:
Mother. Come to Kolhar. Now!

The woman turned to look at her calmly, as if waiting for something. Her features were tantalizingly familiar, clearly of Rossak stock, with high cheekbones and a classical profile. She looked like one of the great Sorceresses, but with a softer, more elegant beauty. In a way, her eyes reminded Zufa of… but it couldn’t be!

“If you open your eyes, you will see that there are no limitations on possibilities, Mother. Are you capable of seeing me in a different form?”

Startled, Zufa jerked her head back, then stepped forward, her eyes narrow and suspicious. “This is not possible!”

“Come with me, Mother, and we will talk. I have much to share with you.”

In a bubble-top groundcar Norma drove her away from the plateau village and out onto a barren, slushy plain of half-frozen marshland. As the vehicle worked its way over the rough, roadless terrain, Norma told a remarkable tale. Astonished, Zufa could barely believe the revelations, but could not deny what she saw with her own eyes. “You have potential after all!”

“The cymek torture shocked my brain to capabilities I never knew I had. My mind turned inward, where I found my own beauty and peace. A soostone Aurelius gave me triggered something inside and helped me to focus… something the cymeks never expected. And they paid for it with their lives. Afterward, I had the luxury of fashioning my new body according to the blueprints stored in my genes. Given the potential of my ancestors, this is how I
should
have appeared.”

Zufa’s astonishment and wonder were palpable. “All my life this is what I expected— even demanded— of you. Though you never showed the potential before, I’m pleased to see that I was not wrong. I was hard on you because that is what you required. You did have it in you.” She nodded, expressing what she meant as a compliment. “You are worthy of my name after all.”

Norma remained unruffled, showing that nothing her mother said could hurt her. Her gaze contained a hint of skepticism, as if she didn’t totally believe what Zufa was saying.

“My beauty is irrelevant to the work I can do now. When my body was destroyed, I rebuilt it according to images drawn from my female bloodline. This body suits me, though I suppose I could revert to my previous form if I wished. I never minded it as much as you always did. Appearances are, after all, only
appearances
.”

Zufa was perplexed. After spending years as a disappointing dwarf, her daughter seemed to consider the new physical beauty almost an afterthought. Norma had not adopted this perfect female form to impress anyone— or so she claimed.

“You should not have given up on me, Mother.” Despite her pointed words, Norma seemed beyond anger and vengeance, with a calmly superior confidence in herself. “Many of your trainees have died in mental attacks against cymeks. But I managed to control a telepathic holocaust that would have wiped out any other Sorceress— even you.”

Zufa was amazed at the possibility. She had seen so many of her talented sisters die in strikes against the machines with human minds. “You must show me how to do it.” She watched her daughter, wondered what she was thinking.

Norma parked the groundcar a short distance away from an isolated cottage, and got out with her mother. As if frozen in place by the cold winds, Norma focused on a small rock formation a few meters away. It had been weeks since the incident that completely changed her life, and in that time she had not attempted to use her power again. Not out of fatigue, but out of uncertainty and concern that her abilities might manifest in ways she did not expect. Most of all, she feared harming her mother, who sat nearby.

Norma relaxed her body. “Not now. I’m not ready. When I reshaped myself, it was external only— and triggered by extreme duress. But I feel that this is only the beginning, Mother, just an interim phase for me. Do not be surprised if I change even more in the future. Do not be surprised by anything I am now capable of.”

The comment frightened the experienced Sorceress, who looked away, cheeks burning with shame.

Norma seemed distant and preoccupied. “I am more concerned with the future, not the past. If I am no longer a disappointment to you, then we can be strong together, more powerful than you can imagine.” An arctic wind blew her long blond hair, giving her an ethereal appearance against the snowy mountains beyond. “Now is a good enough time to lay a new foundation for our relationship. We have work to do.”

Zufa could not bring herself to admit openly that she was sorry— a lifetime of sincere apologies would not undo the scorn and disappointment she had heaped on Norma for so long— but perhaps she could work harder now, and the two of them could join their abilities to make significant strides against the enemy. Norma would understand her implied apology, eventually.

The Sorceress tentatively reached out both hands, and as she did so, she saw Norma doing the same, only a fraction of a second later. Or had it been simultaneous? The two women clasped hands awkwardly, then hugged in a fashion unfamiliar to either of them.

They walked over rough, frozen ground to the cottage, an old prefabricated building erected long ago by a well-meaning colonist who had given up on his dreams of independence. Norma had renovated it and made it livable again.