Navigators of Dune

FROM HIS FLAGSHIP Manford was astounded to see the VenHold fleet move about in confusion briefly until, in rapid succession, all of their warships vanished—folding space and retreating! Josef Venport transmitted no defiant words, issued no challenges, made no vows that he would return to finish the battle.

The entire VenHold fleet simply and inexplicably fled into space!

Manford’s bridge crew cheered and stomped their feet. Anari just stared. “We defeated them in a matter of minutes! They ran like dogs with their tails between their legs!”

Before long, heavily armored pods containing the cymek walkers rose from the Salusan surface and docked with the lone remaining VenHold ship. Then even that vessel spun away and folded space, as well.

“God has granted us a perfect victory,” Manford whispered, awed at what he had just seen.

Unable to contain his delight, he shouted for his communications officer to open a channel to the surface. He wanted to address Emperor Roderick, along with all the people he had just saved. Manford intended to take credit for this astonishing victory, even if he didn’t understand it himself.

Terrible things in the past should remain there, locked away and never spoken of.

—MOTHER SUPERIOR BERTO-ANIRUL, following her own Spice Agony

Sitting in her austere chambers, Mother Superior Valya reviewed plans in her mind, going over the way she had been constructing the perfect Sisterhood she envisioned, training a growing number of elite, highly capable women with little reliance on males.

Young and healthy, Valya had the biological urgings of any person. She had taken a few casual lovers over the years, four on Lankiveil in her youth and perhaps a dozen more since beginning her training with the Sisterhood, men who had worked for the Rossak School or in the facilities on Wallach IX. Some had been inept and clumsy in their attempts to pleasure her, while others were quite skilled.

Back on Lankiveil, one starstruck, fumbling young man had accused her of being too intense, asserting that Valya was overly preoccupied with thoughts and concerns that she refused to share with him. The observation was valid but pointless, and she had not bothered to see him again.

She recalled the naïve young man’s boyish features illuminated in memory, his sea-blue eyes and sheepish grin: Benaro Zimbal, son of a whale-boat captain. She’d liked him a little, she supposed, but even in her teens she had concentrated on the future of House Harkonnen. As a lover, Benaro was adequate, but she had not been able to picture him as a husband; he could never have advanced the position and wealth of her family beyond Lankiveil, and thus Valya could never allow herself any sort of permanent relationship with him.

Her brother Griffin had been more of a romantic, and had dreamed of true love and a lasting marriage, which she thought was a waste of time. They had to rebuild a dynasty, recapture the Harkonnen place in the Landsraad League … and eliminate the Atreides.

Valya was a powerful woman now, with great influence and unlimited potential. Considering the political, psychological, and physical training that all of her Sisters underwent, they could accomplish most anything she requested. Gradually, she would turn them loose in much greater numbers, placing Sisters throughout the Imperium, insinuating them into important positions in which they could observe and guide.

Many of the most beautiful and adept Sisters could use sex for another purpose—the primary biological purpose of reproduction, used for the furtherance of the Sisterhood and its breeding program.

“Not for the Sisterhood, for your own selfish purposes,” said a voice in her mind, a resounding condemnation that rose up from the low, often imperceptible hum of Other Memory. In that mysterious realm, an endless procession of long-dead memories was carried forward in the genetics of living Sisters, but only those who had survived the agonizing transformation into Reverend Mothers could tap into such wisdom, and never at will—only when the collective memories chose to surface in her consciousness. Within those memories crowded inside her DNA were countless experiences that saturated Valya, hundreds upon hundreds of generations going far back into ancient times. She might be physically young, but she carried the weight of millennia in her mind.

Sometimes the voices advised, sometimes they quarreled, and Valya could not control them. “My purposes are the Sisterhood’s purposes,” she said now, pushing back against the voices. “A well-coordinated breeding program can build our own goals in the long term, and the proper use of seduction can establish obligations and manipulate behavior in the short term.”