The flow of spice had to remain uninterrupted, and under Combined Mercantiles control. Norma needed to care for her Navigators — she’d made that abundantly clear — and VenHold required continuing supplies of melange to feed the clamoring market that this feud had already disrupted. Thus, he needed to eliminate interests that were in opposition to his own.
Since the Imperial warships were cut off and had no hope of imminent reinforcements, they could not withstand a concerted attack. Norma summoned her Navigators and brought in a dozen more VenHold warships. Soon enough, Josef’s forces overwhelmed the remaining Imperial ships without firing a shot, taking the enemy commanders into “temporary detention” until Emperor Roderick could arrange for their release and return to Salusa Secundus.
Now, Josef could push his spice operations without further complications, and within a week he had made significant progress in filling his spice bank. Modoc’s Freemen had evacuated, per the agreement, and the teams now working inside the sietch were all trusted VenHold employees.
The Mentats Rogin and Tomkir organized the inventory stored inside the numerous cave chambers and passageways. Engineering crews installed armored doors and moisture-sealed vaults to preserve the melange.
Among the workers were three silent and eerie men who walked with a swaying gait, as if their spines had been irreparably curved. From their large heads and smooth skin, Josef knew that these were Navigator candidates who had nearly drowned in the spice gas before their transformation was terminated. They had been rescued, but were forever altered; now, they volunteered to work in the VenHold spice bank, and Norma had a special connection to them. The three moved in complete silence, as if they could communicate through thoughts and expressions.
From her tank, Norma approved of the large, protected stockpile. Her sealed chamber appeared just inside the narrow defile and the open area that led to the cave warrens. When Josef explained the continuing plans, she listened in silence, absorbing the data.
In order to gain ready access to the modified sietch, his engineers had blasted open a cave roof and torn down several rock walls. Right now, two cargo fliers cruised through the dusty air carrying large loads of packaged melange, some of it stolen from black marketeers. Other supplies had been moved into the sietch from other VenHold stockpiles.
The cargo fliers hovered over the open area while spice-laden pallets dropped out of their belly compartments. Suspensor packs lowered the deliveries to the ground, stirring up a burst of sand. Josef no longer had to worry about Imperial patrols, and although someone might notice all this activity, the only possible prying eyes now belonged to desert nomads or poachers, and Josef would install enough security to be proof against that.
“This is excellent progress. So much spice for my Navigators,” Norma said in her otherworldly, wistful voice. “Enough to create hundreds more.”
“With this stockpile, we’ll have enough to last for years — for my purposes, and yours.”
“The universe is ours,” Norma agreed.
VenHold now had so much spice it would take weeks to load everything into the secure chambers, but he could see that the situation was well in hand here. It was time to go back to Kolhar, to make sure the defenses would stand against any Imperial attack. By overthrowing the Emperor’s spice operations here, he might have provoked Roderick into making a hasty move. “We need to go home, Grandmother. Our place is back on our homeworld until the end of this dispute.”
Her voice took on a strange, alarming tone. “Yes. We must hurry.”
Her comment gave him an uneasy feeling. He wondered if Norma had seen something through her spice-enriched prescience, something she had not told him yet.…
21
The human mind is more difficult to reprogram than a thinking machine. There is a limit to how much effort we should expend in trying to retrain the Orthodox Sisters. Our patience is not infinite. We may have to kill them.
Mother Superior Valya meant to build the Sisterhood into something far more powerful than it had been in the past, but first she needed to be absolutely confident she could rely on her people. At Valya’s feet, an unconscious woman lay on the floor of the windowless cell, bleeding from her ears.
For weeks, Sister Esther-Cano had undergone rigorous reeducation, but had resisted every step. Valya and her subordinates had isolated the defiant Sister with barely enough food and water to stay alive. Esther-Cano had been commanded repeatedly to admit that Dorotea’s misguided Orthodox beliefs had caused the devastating schism in the Sisterhood, and to admit that there had never been any hidden computers. Though Valya knew the last part wasn’t true, since she herself had stored them in ultra-secure underground chambers, she wanted to force Sister Esther-Cano to utter the words.
Yet the beaten woman remained pathologically stubborn.
Valya had interrogated Esther-Cano for two hours that afternoon, improvising original methods when the traditional ones had failed. There would be no crude and clumsy torture implements such as the Scalpel interrogators used. No, this prisoner was an accomplished Truthsayer and a Reverend Mother, but Esther-Cano had no defense against the manipulative power of Voice that Valya had mastered.
Testing her abilities, Valya showed that she could overcome Esther-Cano with mere words. Sharpening her verbal weapons, the Mother Superior attacked her subject with vocal jabs that subdued her and turned her into a bleeding wreck on the floor. Valya had not laid a finger on the other woman, but her soft hypnotic Voice had convinced Esther-Cano that the sound was tremendously loud, rather than the whisper that it really was, and the mere suggestion of noise had actually destroyed the inside of her ears. Amazing and unexpected! When Esther-Cano returned to consciousness she would realize that she was completely deaf.
After the rough session, Sister Olivia would come in to help handle the unconscious prisoner, although even faithful Olivia was not allowed to learn about the use of Voice. Not yet. Valya had used the technique on Olivia, too, making her forget that she had ever received the eerie, irresistible command. Now Olivia returned, looking confused as to why she had gone. “Would you like me to take over now, Mother Superior?” She knelt beside the unconscious woman. “Oh, she’s bleeding! What happened to her ears?”
“Perhaps they could not stand to hear any more of her own lies.”
Olivia rose to her feet. “Shall I summon the medics?”
“Not just yet.”
Valya was learning her own abilities, experimenting with the effects. She wondered just how much physical damage a person could psychosomatically inflict on her own body. Could the victim’s mind cause subconscious constrictions to stop her own heart, burst her liver? Maybe the intractable traitor Esther-Cano could be useful to the Sisterhood as an experimental object.
On the cold floor, the woman began to stir, clutching at her ears and whimpering in pain. Seeing the blood smeared on her hands, she struggled to a sitting position, glared at the Mother Superior. “What have you done to me? I can’t hear my own voice!”
Valya leaned over and spoke softly, knowing the woman could not hear her. “I was trying to toughen you. I must teach you the proper way of thinking, of seeing the world.”