"Herbert, Brian & Anderson, Kevin J. - Dune - House Corrino" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

The pretty Acolyte looked at her in astonishment, then accepted the news. She led Anirul to an elegant private parlor, where Reverend Mother Mohiam waited. A hollow-cheeked woman with graying hair, Mohiam wore a black aba robe, the traditional, conservative dress of the Sisterhood.

Before Mohiam could speak, Anirul crisply and emotionlessly told her about the death of Lobia. The other Reverend Mother did not seem surprised. "I, too, bring long-anticipated news, Lady Anirul. You will find it especially heartening on this day of passing." She spoke in an ancient, forgotten language that no eavesdropper could interpret. "At last, Jessica carries the child of Duke Leto Atreides."

"As she has been instructed to do." Anirul's expression lost its air of gloom, and she seized upon the bright prospect of new life.

After millennia of meticulous planning, the most important Bene Oessent plans would soon come to fruition. The daughter now in Jessica's womb would become the mother of their long-awaited prize, the Kwisatz Haderach, a messiah under the control of the Sisterhood.

"Perhaps this is not such a dark day after all."

If every living human had the power of prescience, it would be meaningless . For where could it then be applied?

Ч NORMA CENVA, The Calculus of Philosophy, ancient Guild records, private Rossak collection

HUMAN HABITATION OF THE PLANET JUNCTION dated back before the founding of the Spacing Guild by the legendary patriot and commercial magnate Aurelius Venport. Centuries after the Butlerian Jihad, when the still-fledgling Guild had sought a homeworld that could accommodate their massive Heighliners, the sweeping plains and sparse population of Junction fit the requirements perfectly. Now the world was covered with Guild landing fields, repair facilities, immense maintenance yards, and high-security schools for the mysterious Navigators.

No longer entirely human, Steersman D'murr swam inside a sealed tank of spice gas and gazed out upon Junction with the eyes of his mind. The pungent cinnamon odor of pure melange permeated his skin, his lungs, his mind. Nothing could possibly smell sweeter.

His armored chamber was carried in the mechanical grasp of a podplane that soared silently above the skyline toward the new Heighliner to which he had been assigned. D'murr lived for making foldspace journeys across star systems in the blink of an eye. And that was only the smallest part of what he understood, now that he had evolved so far beyond his original form.

The bulbous podplane crossed a broad field of grounded HeighlinersЧkilometers and kilometers of monstrous ships, responsible for the commerce of the Imperium. Pride was a primitive human emotion, but D'murr could still take pleasure in knowing his place in the universe.

He gazed at the main yard and maintenance locks, where

the vessels were serviced and upgraded with modular fittings. The hull of one immense craft was pitted from severe asteroid damage; an old Navigator had been severely injured aboard it. D'murr felt a flicker of sadness, another lingering shadow of the Ixian boy he had once been. One day, if he focused his expanded mind, even that remnant of his former self would be vanquished.

Ahead lay the neat white markers of Navigator's Field, which memorialized fallen Navigators. A pair of markers were bright and new, installed only recently, after the deaths of two Pilots who had been experimental subjects. The volunteers had been altered for a dangerous instantaneous-communications project called Guildlink, based on D'murr's own longdistance connection with his twin brother C'tair.

That project had failed, though. After only a few successful uses, the mentally coupled Navigators had collapsed into brain-dead torpidity. The Guild had scrapped further Guildlink research, despite the enormous potential profits: Navigators were too talented and too expensive to risk in such a way.

With a whir of jets and rushing air, the podplane set down at the perimeter of the memorial field, near the base of the Oracle of Infinity. The large, clearplaz globe contained swirls and streaks of gold, an ever-changing nebula of stars, moving and shifting. The activity increased as a uniformed Guildsman guided D'murr's tank out of the transport craft.

Prior to each tour of duty, it was customary for a Navigator to "commune" at the Oracle, to enhance and refine his prescient abilities. The experience, similar to the very act of traveling through the glories of foldspace, connected him with the mysterious origins of the Guild.

Closing his small eyes, D'murr felt the Oracle of Infinity fill his senses, wave after incoming wave opening his mind until all possibilities were apparent to him. He felt another presence watching over him, like the sentient mind of the Guild itself, and it gave him a sense of peace.

Guided by the ancient and powerful Oracle, D'murr's mind experienced the past and future of time and space, all that was beautiful in cre-ition, all that was perfect. The spice gas in his tank seemed to stretch until t encompassed the mutated faces of thousands of Navigators. Images lanced and shifted, from Navigator to human, back and forth. He saw a voman, her body changing and atrophying until she became little more ban a naked, enormous brain. . . .

Inside the Oracle, the images faded, leaving him with an ominous, mpty feeling. His eyes still closed, he saw only the swirling nebula within he clearplaz globe. As the claws of the podcraft grasped his tank and aised him again, flying toward the waiting Heighliner, D'murr was left in n unsettled quandary.

He saw many things through foldspace, but not all ... not nearly

enough. Powerful, unpredictable forces were at work across the cosmos forces that even the Oracle of Infinity could not see. Mere humans, not fven powerful leaders like Shaddam IV, could not understand what they

might unleash.

And the universe was a dangerous place.

Melange is a many-handed monster. The spice gives with one hand and takes with all of its others.