I am not afraid to use any weapon at my disposal—and information can be the deadliest weapon of all.

—JOSEF VENPORT, internal VenHold memo

When Draigo Roget arrived on Kolhar, freshly graduated from his intensive and costly schooling on Lampadas, Josef Venport greeted him like a returning hero.

The nascent Mentat wore a black tunic and billowing black trousers. He emerged from the shuttle and stood blinking in midday sunlight, looking around at the spaceport towers, the spacing fleet administrative headquarters, and the blocky structures of engine-fabrication plants. Josef and a small welcoming committee sped across the landing field in a humming groundcar. As they stepped out, Draigo came forward and gave a curt bow to his benefactor. “Your plan worked perfectly, sir.”

Josef shook the man’s hand energetically, then stepped back and regarded Draigo, looking him up and down. “You’ve changed. Your entire demeanor looks much more … intense.” He meant it as a compliment.

Draigo nodded slightly. “And focused. It was a long and difficult process to become a Mentat, but you will not regret your investment.”

Josef could not stop himself from smiling. “You’re among the first of the candidates we seeded into the school, and I expect others to join us soon. VenHold requires skilled Mentats.” He planned to use them to monitor accounts in his banking operations on different planets, and the VenHold subsidiary Combined Mercantiles had vast and complex record-keeping requirements as well.

Josef had tested many young candidates for Mentat training, with Cioba conducting careful interviews on his behalf. Once the best ones were culled out, his security chief, Ekbir, crafted completely new identities and histories for the students before they traveled to Lampadas, to conceal their loyalties from any persistently curious Butlerian observers. The Mentat School was much too closely and uneasily allied with Manford Torondo and his barbarians, and Josef would not be surprised if the petulant fanatics refused his candidates access to the specialized training. So, VenHold secretly funded their tuition—and these students did not know one another, for security purposes.

“So I am among the first?” Draigo asked. “I am pleased to learn that.”

“Many more will follow you,” Josef said. “Tomorrow, Cioba and I will start familiarizing you with the new work you’ll be doing for us.”

*   *   *

THE TWO MEN stood out on the sunlit field, where light reflected off the enclosed tanks filled with melange gas. Draigo regarded the mutating forms of the Navigator-candidates with great interest. Previously, Josef had kept this operation secret from him. “Thank you for revealing all this to me, Directeur Venport.”

Josef shrugged. “A Mentat with incomplete data is useless.”

His wife joined them, wearing a conservative dress suit, her long hair pinned up under a scarf. She and Norma Cenva had returned from their odd and unexpected journey to Rossak; Josef did not look fondly on them sharing confidential VenHold information with the Sisterhood, but both Norma and Cioba, not to mention Josef’s own daughters, were inextricably linked with those women, and he knew it would serve no purpose to force them to choose their loyalties.

Cioba followed him as they walked down the aisles to one tank he had chosen in particular. Josef peered into the curved plaz viewing port and spoke out of the side of his mouth to the dark-clad Mentat. “What you underwent was a difficult thing, Draigo, but the metamorphosis into a Navigator requires even more extreme changes. This man here, for instance, is a very interesting case—not a volunteer, actually, but a spy that we caught in the act.”

“A spy? What was he after?”

“Everything we’re doing with the Navigators … but we stopped him before he could divulge our secrets to his employer, Celestial Transport. I placed him in the chamber, intending nothing more than a poetic execution, but he’s surprising me with his adaptive abilities.” Josef rapped his knuckles on the clearplaz viewport. The sticklike figure inside twitched and turned like a marionette on invisible strings. “His name is apparently Royce Fayed, though I don’t know if he’ll remember a trivial thing like that after the transformation is complete. My great-grandmother is guiding him. I think he may survive to become a Navigator after all.”

Fayed’s face looked distorted and swollen, his eyes enlarged, his cheeks rounded, and chin melting away as if he were a wax figure exposed to too much heat. His large eyes blinked, but his mouth didn’t move. He made no attempt to say anything.

“If he was a spy, then he is your enemy.” Draigo peered through the murky clouds inside the chamber. “Logically, he cannot be trustworthy as a Navigator. Given this extreme mutation inflicted upon him, how can the man not hate Venport Holdings? If you place him aboard one of your spacefolder ships, what is to stop him from crashing the vessel with all passengers and cargo, or taking it to Celestial Transport? It would seem a large risk for you to take.”

“Norma assures us there is no risk,” Cioba said. “Now that the initial mutation has occurred and his mind is expanding, he is very eager to become a Navigator for us. He wants this very much.”

“Interesting,” Draigo said noncommittally.

Josef sounded more defensive than he intended. “If Norma Cenva tells me to trust him, how can I dispute her? She is the heart of our entire commercial empire.”

“I accept your conclusion, sir. You will need all the Navigators you can create, considering the discovery I recently made.” The new Mentat turned dryly toward him. “It is my gift to you. A very interesting projection.”

Josef raised his eyebrows. “Now you have my attention.”

“Before I completed my Mentat training, Gilbertus Albans and I studied more than a century of records, traced known flight paths and movements of thinking-machine ships. After compiling the myriad clues, we performed an extensive Mentat projection and each of us reached the same conclusion.” Draigo smiled, drawing out the suspense. “Sir, I have postulated the likely location of a very large machine shipyard, a manufacturing and refueling facility that in all probability holds a great many ships and orbiting industries. Since there is no record of this depot—if it exists—I must conclude the entire facility is almost certainly undiscovered and intact.”

Josef brightened. “And there for the taking.” He glanced at the twisted figure floating on suspensors in the gas-filled tank. “The spy mentioned that Celestial Transport has located just such a facility, but I have no idea where it is.”

“Maybe I do,” Draigo said.