Dune: The Machine Crusade by Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson

revelations in the intricacies of the cosmos, sometimes she could not distinguish night from day, or one place from another. Perhaps she did not need to identify such things, because she was capable of journeying across an entire universe in her mind.

    Was her brain physically capable of assembling huge quantities of data and using that information to identify large-scale events and complex trends? Or was it instead some inexplicable extrasensory phenomenon that enabled her to exceed the thinking capacities of any person who had lived before her? Or of any thinking machine?

    Generations later, her biographers would argue over her mental powers, but Norma herself might not have resolved the debate. Realistically, she would have cared less about how her brain worked than she cared about the actual performance of her mind and the incredible results of its inquiries.

    —”Norma Cenva and the Spacing Guild,” a confidential Guild memorandum
    W herever she was, whatever she did, everything contributed raw material to the busy factory of Norma Cenva’s mind.
    For reasons that were not explained to her, Holtzman moved her offices and laboratory space to a smaller, cheaper building near the warehouses on the Isana River. The rooms were cramped, but she needed few luxuries other than time and solitude. She no longer had access to dedicated slaves whose sole job was to solve equations; now the captive solvers were assigned to the more profitable tasks proposed by the Savant’s other young and ambitious assistants. Norma didn’t mind— in truth she preferred doing the mathematics herself. She spent her days going in and out of a fugue state, mentally following the flow of higher-order numerics.
    For years she had been adrift in a sea of equations she could never have explained to Holtzman or to any of the League’s other theorists. She was engrossed in her own vision, and each time she solved the riddle of another grain of sand on an extensive mathematical shore, she came closer to finding her safe harbor.
    She would learn how to fold space… to travel across great distances without actually moving. She knew it was possible.
    Ostensibly, Savant Holtzman still kept her on his extended staff as an assistant, but the small-statured woman had stopped working on anything other than her massive cyclical calculations. Nothing else interested her.
    Every once in a while he would look in on her and try to draw her into conversation to see what she was doing. But he understood very little of what she told him, and the years passed. It occurred to Norma that he might prefer to have her where he could monitor her.
    Though she had provided him with no recent advances he could claim for himself, she had surprised him many times before. Since the start of the Jihad, she had modified Holtzman’s shields on League Armada ships so that they did not overheat so quickly in a battle engagement. Thermal buildup still remained a flaw in the system, but her shields were significantly improved over the original versions.
    Four years after that, Holtzman had offered a “flicker and fire” technique for his shields, a carefully choreographed system that allowed a League ship to fire through microsecond gaps in the shields. Norma had cleaned up his calculations, preventing yet another mishap. She had never dared to tell him what she had done, knowing he would have grown indignant and defensive.
    Now, for the past eight years, she had worked in her own private laboratories, following her research whims. In the midst of the small facility’s cluttered work space, Norma had set aside only tiny areas for cooking, sleeping, and personal hygiene. Such human needs were secondary to her, while the products of her mind were paramount. Holtzman still allowed her a minimal level of funding, though Norma required only the resources of her own mind, since her work was primarily theoretical. So far.
    For three days now, Norma had labored without interruption on a