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

particularly complex manipulation of Holtzman’s seminal equations. Hunched over the workbench that had been modified to accommodate her dwarfish stature, she ate and drank little, not wanting to be bothered with the demands of her physical body.
    Though she’d been born a daughter of the chief Sorceress of Rossak, Norma had spent most of her life here on Poritrin, not as a citizen but as a visitor invited by Savant Holtzman. Long ago, when Norma’s stern mother had seen her as only a failure and a disappointment, Holtzman had noticed the girl’s quiet genius and had given her the opportunity to work with him.
    In all that time, she had received few accolades. Humble but dedicated, Norma did not mind being overshadowed by the great man. She was a patriot in her own unassuming way and wanted only to make certain that the advanced technology was put to use to benefit the Jihad.
    For years Norma had actually protected Holtzman, catching embarrassing inconsistencies that might have led to disastrous consequences. She did this out of gratitude, since he was her patron. But once she had realized that the Savant spent so much time rubbing elbows with nobles that he accomplished little on his own, she spent less time trying to save his image and devoted full concentration to her own research.
    She found his current expensive project to be particularly foolish from a scientific point of view. Building a giant sham fleet in orbit! It was no more than a bluff, an illusion. Even if the scheme worked— as Primero Atreides insisted it would— Norma thought the Savant should have focused his intellectual resources on something more challenging than smoke and mirrors.
    From her squalid dockside workplace, she could hear the hammering and hum of the factories and shipyards across the Isana mudflats. Foundries hissed; steam and sparks boiled out of assembly lines. Barges hauled cargo loads of ore into the shipyards and carried away completed components.
    Luckily, when Norma focused her thoughts, all distractions faded into the background.
    Finally, hungry and dehydrated, her body screaming for rest, Norma lay her head on stacks of scrawled equations, as if the symbols could keep penetrating her mind by osmosis. Even in slumber her unconscious mind continued to process the formulas she had been reviewing….
    Mathematical equations cycled through her sleeping mind. She could compartmentalize tasks, assigning separate sections of her brain to perform specific functions, resulting in a coordinated mass-production process in her cerebral cortex. After so long, the entire iterative simulation was coming to a climax, and she felt her dreaming self rising from great depths through the catacombs of her mind.
    Abruptly, Norma sat straight up at her workbench, nearly falling off the raised chair. Her bloodshot eyes flew open, but did not see their immediate surroundings. Still surrounded by a vivid dream, Norma gazed across an infinite distance, as if her thought impulses could extend from one side of the universe to the other and bring the distant parts together, folding the underlying fabric of space. After days without rest, her subconscious finally let the puzzle pieces click into place.
    At last!
    She became aware of her physical self, of her heart hammering so rapidly it threatened to burst out of her chest. She sucked in a breath but desperately tried to remain focused, to retain her grasp on what she had dreamed. The answer!
    As she awoke, her mind clung to the revelation, having captured it like a butterfly in a net. She envisioned great spaceships crossing the universe without moving, guided by prescient navigators who could see safe pathways through space. Immense companies and empires would rise up from this foundation, and there would be a fundamental shift in the nature of warfare, travel, and politics.
    Tio Holtzman had never foreseen such consequences to his equations. He would not be capable of seeing them now. Norma did not dare