Though her body remained statuesque and beautiful, Norma Cenva had reverted to her old habits of working obsessively, and alone.

Inside the guidance chamber of one of the converted spacefolders nearing completion, she saw her own reflection on the shiny black walls. In the frenzy of her work she had not bathed or changed her clothes for days. Her worksuit and green laboratory smock, dirty and wrinkled, hung loosely around her body.

Other things were far more important to her. So far she and her construction teams had converted eighteen of the immense spacefolders into battleships, and they were about to be put into service— to benefit the Army of the Jihad, if she could only make them navigate more safely, without so many disastrous mistakes. More than forty new space-folding javelins were also under construction.

No one could help her, not even the most brilliant League engineers. Only she had any grasp of the immensely complex mathematics.

With her mother and Aurelius gone to Salusa, and with the other Sorceress guardians instructed to watch Norma’s young son, she had immersed herself in the necessities of solving the Holtzman navigation difficulties, of improving safety. Now that the Jihad troops had come here to the shipyards, the problem had reached a cruxpoint. She had to make everything work. It was all up to her.

Curiously, even though she had not been eating regularly or taking adequate fluids, her body showed no signs of weight loss or fatigue. But still she had her limits.

After three days of working without even a brief rest, Norma finally went to the bedchambers she occasionally shared with her husband, whenever she didn’t spend the night in her labs and testing chambers. Within moments she sank into a sleep of complete exhaustion, and when she woke, she felt dull-witted and listless.

By accident while dressing, Norma found a supply of melange Aurelius kept for himself inside his bureau. Since VenKee Enterprises still maintained a booming business in shipping spice from Arrakis, he always had some on hand, which he consumed regularly. He claimed it kept his thoughts sharp, his body young, his imagination soaring.

Norma thought it might be exactly what she needed right now. She consumed one of the melange wafers without any inkling of the proper dosage, especially not for her metamorphosed body. By the time she reached the spaceflight testing chambers, Norma could feel the effects of the spice building inside of her, like the contents of a cauldron coming to a boil. Flashes of light appeared inside her skull, galaxy-scale ideas.

She activated the computerized navigation system and began to run test sequences, demonstrating what it would be like to fly from Kolhar to a distant simulated battle zone. Star systems appeared and shifted as a pulsating orange light flashed, representing the path of the spacefolder. Separate holoscreens showed essential information, including astronomical coordinates and the historical movements of cosmic bodies.

It looked different now that the melange coursed through her bloodstream. Her fingers moved faster, with greater precision. Alternately, Norma sped and slowed the systems, checking for problems, watching the hypnotic universal dance as nebulas folded into one another.

So beautiful out here.

Abruptly, Norma realized that she had lost perspective, that she had imagined herself on a spacefolder in actual flight, but in slow motion. She had been on countless simulated voyages, but had shied from the real thing because of the ever-present danger that she might not survive. The loss of Norma Cenva would have been devastating to the development program.

Now she felt as if she were floating, adrift in a sea. The solution to the difficulties had dissolved into the ethereal water, and she needed to distill it back out….

Serious navigation problems persisted. Just a week ago, a vessel had emerged into the wrong sector without colliding with anything, and had been salvaged with no loss of life. Another spacefolder had skimmed a meteor, causing superficial damage to the hull and a fire that was quickly extinguished. And a small scout ship on a mission to find Primero Atreides had vanished in flight.

She glanced at the shimmering holoscreens with their data displays, but her eyes slipped out of focus, then locked onto another vista. Again she seemed to be in deep space, with suns blinking all around her as she sped past them. An infinity of solar systems, one right after another. Galaxies spinning, nebulas glowing in every color, intense light, and the blackest black in creation.

Then, like her earlier tortured vision involving her maternal lineage, when all of the forms of her ancestors had merged into one she selected for her own likeness, the suns consolidated and burned with a fierce incandescence. She seemed to be heading toward all of them, into a brilliant light.

Then the melange hit her even harder.

Terrified and thrilled, Norma gazed ahead, and plunged through the cosmos. The image of a human being filled the foreground— Serena Butler in a white robe— but for only an instant. The Priestess of the Jihad glowed golden and then disappeared into the flames. But somehow the flames were not real. Norma could not comprehend what she was seeing.

Norma saw through the eyes of Serena, to a throng of thinking machines around the Jihad leader. Before Norma could react, the apparition of Serena diminished in a wink, leaving only an ember in her memory.

Then she saw her mother and Aurelius in terrible danger… surrounded by cymeks who wanted to steal the space-folding technology from them. A current of fear shot through Norma, and she struggled to control her vision. She saw the powerful Sorceress reveling in her last moments, just as she had taught so many apprentices, blazing as her own telepathic powers consumed her… and Norma’s husband, too, unable to withstand the supernova of energy.

Aurelius is dead, Norma realized with gnawing dread, not sure if the vision foretold something, or if it reflected what had already happened… or if she could do anything to prevent it. Serena Butler. My husband. My mother. All of them gone, or soon to be lost.

Norma saw through the flames ahead of her, into the heart of an immense, all-consuming sun. In her mental spacefolder, Norma Cenva passed through the light into a hidden realm, revealing a new universe.

She saw giant sandworms writhing on the desert world of Arrakis, and an eternal substance that the people called the Water of Life. Sustenance for the body, the mind, and the soul.

A pathway to infinity, she thought. And perhaps beyond.

She saw mankind’s future, with space-folding ships connecting a vast empire… a civilization that remained linked to the past through a long line of Sorceresses dressed in black, hooded robes.

And she heard a harmonious, hypnotic chant from the desert: “Muad’Dib… Muad’Dib… Muad’Dib…” Norma joined the ecstasy of voices, then swallowed the Water of Life, and screamed in rapture.

She awoke from her vision, hoping to see the face of Aurelius kneeling over her and stroking her blond hair.

But she was alone, nearly crushed by the astounding, shattering implications of all she had witnessed.

“I have seen into the heart of the universe.”