The thinking machine I admire most is the human brain.

—NORMA CENVA, early technical journal article submitted to Tio Holtzman

Josef Venport preferred to think of his surprise attack on the Thonaris machine shipyards as an industrial consolidation rather than a conquest. He was a businessman, after all, not a military leader. With his seventy armed vessels, the takeover was straightforward and efficient.

The seized and rechristened Celestial Transport vessels now flew under Venport colors. The CT employees working on-site to repair the robotic ships had been conscripted into VenHold service—most of them voluntarily. Some had demanded increased wages, while only a few required physical coercion.

Josef and his Mentat stood inside the warm and well-lit administrative hub connected to the major assembly grids. “I am very satisfied with the results of this operation, Draigo. You have more than earned back your full Mentat tuition from the Lampadas school—and for your comrades as well.” His smile curled his thick mustache. “You have set a high bar for the level of performance I expect from you.”

Draigo responded with a complacent nod. “I shall attempt to meet the challenge, sir.”

In the past, when Josef located an intact battle group or depot, he had only plundered and reconditioned the robotic ships, but Thonaris offered much more. In addition to the dozens of complete or partially constructed robotic battleships that were simply there for the taking, these shipyards comprised a fully automated, independent manufacturing facility that included brute-force ore extractors, smelters, fabricators, and robotic assembly lines. Not only could he refurbish the existing robot ships, he could reprogram the automatic fabricators to build properly designed ships in the first place.

Josef immediately gave his engineering crews the task of studying the depot’s control systems and getting the assembly lines operational again, after removing any existing AI circuitry or sentient control chips. He felt giddy at the prospects.

Josef received progress reports as his engineers explored the cold, shut-down facilities. Arjen Gates and his Celestial Transport crew had only bothered with the easy pickings. Josef doubted they would have dared to reawaken the entire factory. Arjen Gates had not been a man with vision.

As reports and images of the valuable operations came in, Josef passed the details on to his Mentat for study and memorization.

Draigo mused, “During my schooling on Lampadas, we were forced to listen to condemnations of all thinking machines. Even I am surprised to find myself in such a place.”

“I hope the barbarians didn’t brainwash you. I need your intellect, not your superstition.”

“I serve you, sir, but I wish to express my concern that it would be very bad for us if the Butlerians were to discover these operations.”

Josef scoffed. “They are savages who shake sticks and howl at the moon. I cannot take them seriously.”

Draigo brushed a hand down his black singlesuit. “Nevertheless, remember that my former teacher, the Headmaster of the Mentat School, helped me calculate the position of these shipyards.”

Josef’s heavy eyebrows drew together. “Is he a Butlerian sympathizer?”

“Difficult to tell. He is an intelligent, rational man, and he says what he needs to say. I cannot guess, however, whether or not he believes it.”

To prove that he didn’t care, Josef ordered his work crews to redouble their efforts. Each day, more parts of the Thonaris manufacturing complex were up and running.…

Now, eight days into the occupation, an unexpected VenHold ship flew to Thonaris, a small vessel that contained only two passengers—both enclosed in tanks. Norma Cenva had commandeered the vessel and used her own Navigator skills to fly directly from Kolhar. Josef doubted his great-grandmother had explained her intentions to anyone in the spaceport towers, and the company spaceport administration must be in a frenzy. He trusted Cioba to deal with the matter. By this time, though, his people should be accustomed to Norma’s quirks.

When she arrived at the robotic facility and announced herself, Josef called for Draigo to accompany him and took a small craft from the admin-hub over to her ship. Norma seemed pleased by the burgeoning operations she saw. “More ships,” she transmitted, “for more Navigators.”

Norma had installed her tank in the vessel’s Navigation deck, an open plaz-framed enclosure where an enclosed Navigator could look through the swirl of melange gas to view the universe while space folded around the ship. As a concession to his great-grandmother’s desires, Josef had instructed that all VenHold ships be modified with appropriate observation decks for the Navigators.

When he and his Mentat came aboard, Josef was surprised to see that the second tank contained the captured spy, Royce Fayed, who continued to undergo his mutation-transformation. Remarkably, the spy had proved intelligent and adaptable, and was progressing through the change even more smoothly than most intentionally selected candidates.

Norma’s vibrating, emotionless voice came from her tank’s speaker. “I have brought my protégé on his first flight.”

“Is he ready for it?” Josef asked.

“He will be. I am guiding him. His mind is … interesting.” She swam closer to the tank’s viewport, where she could look across at Fayed, who hovered inside his own enclosure, his swollen eyes closed as if in meditation. “He races along the pathways of higher physics, following the trail through tenth-order dimensional mathematics.”

As if words and sentences were a great challenge to him, Fayed spoke aloud, but his eyes didn’t open and his expression did not change. “It is easy to concentrate upward … easy to become lost in thought.” He inhaled a swirling plume of freshly released melange gas, then exhaled it like a man smoking a hookah. “But … so difficult to concentrate downward.”

Norma said, “Self-discovery and mind expansion are the important and obvious parts of becoming a Navigator. But my son Adrien taught me that it is just as important for a Navigator to remember his or her humanity. If that link is broken, we are no longer better than the average human. We are lost from them.”

Josef smiled at the turn of circumstances. His original intent in placing the spy in the conversion tank had simply been to execute him in a creative, perhaps poetic way; he had never expected Fayed to thrive. While he didn’t trust anyone who would sell his loyalty to VenHold’s greatest rival, he did trust Norma Cenva—completely. She had vetted the new Navigator through a complex process that no one else could understand, using her prescience. She had proved many times that her intuition was more accurate than Draigo’s most sophisticated Mentat projections. Norma could see into the future and explore converging timelines, and if she vouched for Fayed’s talent and reliability, he accepted that.

Nevertheless, Josef refused to drop his guard. “Our operations here have been consolidated with remarkable speed. Still, I am vigilant against any possible retaliation from Celestial Transport,” he said to Norma. He didn’t intend to make the same naïve and foolish mistakes that Arjen Gates had.

Rather than leaving the Thonaris shipyards unprotected, Josef kept twenty armed ships here on patrol while the rest of the VenHold Spacing Fleet returned to their regularly scheduled routes. Josef couldn’t afford to lose the profits of so many commercial runs.

Draigo added, “By now CT will have concluded that something went terribly wrong here. They will come to investigate, and possibly fight.”

Norma swam in her tank, silent for a long moment, before pronouncing with firm confidence, “You need not be concerned about Celestial Transport.”

Josef assumed it was a prescient vision, but she dropped back into the spice gas and did not speak further. When her silence drew out for a long moment, he realized she had gotten distracted, wandering off in pursuit of some profound and intriguing idea. He did not try to force her attention back, however, since Norma’s brainstorms were often extremely profitable. She was more than a genius. She was the sum total of all geniuses who had ever lived, and ever would live, combined into her one remarkable mind.

Royce Fayed spoke. “We will return to Kolhar now. I will guide us.”

Josef could not hide the alarm in his voice. “Are you qualified?” He could not imagine losing his supremely talented great-grandmother to a navigational mishap.

“Norma Cenva has explained the theory, shown me examples, and demonstrated the correct technique. I am ready.” The ship began to hum, and the command circuits connected to the Navigator tanks flashed as they received new input. The transformed spy added, “You should both leave now.”

“Come, Draigo. Quickly!” Josef knew that once Navigators turned their minds to a problem, they could forget about mere humans altogether. With Josef piloting, the shuttle separated from the VenHold vessel and headed back to Thonaris’s main admin-hub. He had not even finished docking when he saw the ship wink out of existence behind him, folding space back to Kolhar.…

He was glad to have received Norma’s tacit approval for his success here; at least he assumed she was pleased. And he expected Thonaris to become a powerful, vibrant facility that would produce great profits for Venport Holdings.

Around him, the automated manufactory lines were lighting up and humming, using materials that the extractor machines had mined from the planetoids. In this facility, new ships were being constructed on assembler docks, adding to the Venhold Spacing Fleet’s vast and comprehensive network—the glue with which he was binding the thousands of planets in the Imperium.

Now that he knew Celestial Transport was no longer a threat, thanks to Norma’s prescience, he let himself relax. Thonaris was a bustling complex, a base to rival (and potentially even replace) the original Kolhar shipyards established by Norma Cenva and Aurelius Venport. Yes, this was a good day.

He looked out the admin-hub’s broad viewing port and admired his prize—the body of Arjen Gates himself—captured during the raid on the shipyards. The one man among all the CT workers and pilots whom Josef could not forgive.

From his studies of human history, Josef knew that ancient sailing ships had been adorned with carefully chosen figureheads, and now Arjen Gates had become his. A gruesome statue … a trophy.

Pathetic, despairing, begging for his life, Gates had been strapped to a steel crossbar, his arms and legs bound, his neck tied to keep his head upright. VenHold workers had suited up, and Josef joined them, smiling through his faceplate as he watched the vulnerable and fragile Gates squirm. The rival shouted curses as they marched him into the airlock.

“You are a nuisance,” Josef had said through the suit speakers. “You refused to learn your place, and you kept taking what is mine. I’m not a man of infinite patience.”

The airlock cycled, and the decompression had killed the man swiftly enough. Bound to the framework, straining against the empty vacuum, Gates immediately froze solid, his face drawn back in horror and dismay, his eyeballs shattered. Yes, mounted outside the admin-hub of the robotic shipyards, the petrified corpse made a very satisfactory figurehead.

Josef didn’t gloat, however, and turned back to study the Thonaris operations and all the work he had to do.