And so we journey on, in this metal ship,
Through the endless void, with a heart's tip,
And though we may be small, we stand tall,
For we are a traveler, experiencing it all.
- FROM THE 'LOVE SONG TO THE SCATTERING', FIRST RANK STEERSMAN SOLIDEUM
"Will she make it?" was Visella's terse question, which the repeater recorded and replayed inside the Navigator's chamber at frequencies more in tune with his ears. Her expression gave away nothing. Her body was motionless. She did not wear the Bene Gesserit's traditional garments but a silvery jacket and shorts. Nevertheless First Rank Navigator Solideum's big blue eyes saw the eyes of the ibad of the thin woman while both were trapped in a miniscule room full of air. The mere existence of such a narrow space made his heart race. His hairless body rotated around its main axis, suspended in the no-field of his tank, seeking to hide among the dense spice gasses.
He squirmed: "Once more: what does a Reverend Mother do on this planet, may we ask?" He closed his eyes, filled his lungs with the gasses to fight the claustrophobia. His confinement was sickening, the walls of the small room seemed to cave in to collapse on him. He could not remember the last time he had been planet-bound. First the machines, and now a Bene Gesserit with her disciple!
"Answer me first, Steersman, or I will cut your melange supply off."
Why does this Reverend Mother believe she has a hold on me? He was thirsty for the vastness of space he called home. His elongated body trembled inside the gas fog, his finned feet twitching. "On whose authority?" he replied. "We, Steersman of First Rank, are too valuable to the captors who hold me. We will speak with them and no one else."
"Only when I will have secured your collaboration," replied the Reverend Mother. "And don't think they hold your person or talents in high regard. You are alive If you don't collaborate, then you will be expendable, like me."
"I will wait."
"For whom? I run this planet's Department of State. And an entire continent for them."
"For the machines?" Solideum opened his eyes wide. Witches.
"Reverend Mother?" The intruding voice came from a young girl standing to the side, fidgeting. Her voice made his tank ring with a metallic echo. She looked alien and dressed in an outlanding fashion. Nausea took over even though nausea was not anymore in his body's repertoire. "Please?"
"Leerna, remember your lesson," the Reverend Mother scolded her. "Look at me, space squid, and answer! Will this acolyte survive the spice ordeal, yes or no?"
Probing the future paths seemed like an escape to the Navigator, out of his prison and into the expanse of higher dimensions. It took time to scan for a specific sound, the voice of that headache-inducing girl, as his inner eyes were trained on the harmonics of vessels and deep space, not on four-legged creatures he once felt he belonged to. "Exceedingly likely." His blue eyes turned a shade deeper. "But you already were confident about that, Reverend Mother-without-an-aba."
"Beautiful," the Reverend Mother stopped him. "If you lie, I will see you confined inside a closet. Now, it's time for a story. Pray tell me how a Navigator with a Heighliner lets himself be captured."
"How?" lamented Solideum. "They possess that which controls your life and mine." As the first transport ships had landed on Tupile, Solideum had realized that wherever the spice was moving to, he would follow.
"Look at this thing, Leerna. Impress this creature on your memory, for this may be the last Steersman left in the entire universe. What a pity, an all-seeing being who can't track down his own brethren. Did you know prescience is solipsistic and one-eyed? How would you know if any Navigator survived Junction? Oracles like you cannot see other oracles, can you?"
"Don't mock us. And about you, what are you doing here? Are you free to rejoin your Order back in the Old Imperium?"
"Hold your tongue." She turned to the disciple. "Leerna, leave us."
The woman turned on her head and left the room without a sound, leaving it far less crowded for the anthropophobic Navigator. "The girl obeys you? The Bene Gesserit is always fashioning new puppets, we see," he commented.
"Confirm broadcasts are off," the Bene Gesserit muttered to no one visible. Then after a moment, she continued: "As you have intuited, we are both captive on this planet, First Rank Steersman Solideum."
"Yet your manners cast you as somebody in command," he replied sniffing the spice gasses.
"They are studying me, testing me, even teaching my skills to one of them, turning her into a Reverend Mother under their control. How am I in control?"
"Studying you? Do you know what they did to us? They had us submit to a physiological inspection!" the Navigator sneered, in a mix of outrage and self-consciousness.
"Verily, they will fashion trials that will throw off your balance," she remarked.
The Navigator hesitated. "Is anybody eavesdropping?"
He has a dangerous question, and he just asks! "No," the Reverend Mother reassured him. Visella wondered at the extent to which confinement, spice starvation, and survivor trauma conspired to strip the Navigator of all visible defenses.
"Off balance," continued the Navigator, "That's what you went through? A Bene Gesserit, so easily swayed and turned?"
"I am off-balance. But who said they swayed me, Navigator? But I caution you: they are persuasive. They target the body, the mind and the soul. They will embrace you, and you will feel like one of them." And indeed I feel one of them, and willingly, she thought.
"I am a pupil of the Guild. Do not assume I behave like one of yours. You dare tell me what will happen to us? We need no help to discover what the future holds," he cried. There was a long silence, like two ancient antagonists stared each other down, waiting for a move.
"I must apologize," said Visella. "It's easy to fall into old habits. But circumstances have changed, Steerman. The Bene Gesserit and the Guild could forge an alliance on this planet. Fragile, but possible."
"I am not naive, Reverend Mother Visella. Outcasts do not forge alliances. You aim to secure our services on behalf of these machines," he ventured.
"And my ask is that you collaborate with them; so that in the meantime, the two of us work out a path to escape."
"Candid. Unusual. We appreciate your straight talk. Bene Gesserit gifts, however, usually come with strings."
"No strings. I cannot leave without your talents, and I do not need your talents after I leave."
"Let's assume we believed you. How do we escape?"
"I have the plan and you visualize it."
The Steersman paused, looking inward. If only he could see this Siona-descendant in his mind's eye. "Will you flee this planet and leave behind the spice that is our sustenance?"
"There is a way to secure what we both need."
"Illustrate that part to me."
"As you said before, why don't you just use your oracular powers?"
The Steersman's big snake eyes blinked. He could not tell the Reverend Mother the degree to which he was temporarily blind to future paths, lest he lose a bargaining chip with her and the machines. Clouds of blind spots obfuscated the harmonics of Time around this alien planet. The only clear exception was his death, present in a non-trivial amount of infinities. He also saw infrequently-occurring infinities where he left in a large ship, but the white noise was deafening. "You speak of powers but know nothing."
"Truly I know nothing," replied the Reverend Mother. "I only have questions. If your Navigators' prescience were infallible, then why did the Guild perish at Junction?" What ghafla distracted all of you prideful egos while scores of Honored Matres swarmed around your home planet? "I will give you a way to escape with the spice, Steersman of First Rank, enough spice for your lifetime, and you will help me detect the largest-probability path for it. What do we have to lose?"
The Navigator remained quiet. The Reverend Mother observed him, unable to read the mutant. She could only count on her instincts.
In an unusual display of frankness, Solideum replied: "Assume we escape, you still have the Bene Gesserit, but what of me... I belong to an extinct species." The Navigator's voice tapered to a tremulous tenor voice.
So you are still human. Join the Sisterhood, or join this planet, or join me. He may accept living as an exile rather than cruising along in a lonely universe. Was it disdain? Or tact? The Reverend Mother did not reply to the Navigator's show of vulnerability, but bid him farewell and turned around.
"Wait.. I agree..." the voice of the Navigator trailed behind her.
She walked out. Aides swarmed after her the moment the doors closed behind the Steersman. Leerna was first in line to receive the Reverend Mother's instructions. "Continue to decrease his spice supply but monitor his vitals. Triple the size of his quarters, but keep him planetbound."
"Reverend Mother, will he collaborate?" Leerna asked.
"Why not? He feels guilty for being the only survivor of an entire species. He has no home nor people to come back to. He he has nowhere to turn but us."
Only later that the disciple realized Visella had omitted whom the word 'us' referred to.