The Machine Crusade

by Brian Herbert

"Maybe we should just let him drift without life support and see if he can find his way back to Salusa Secundus," Beowulf suggested, eager to contribute.

  "We could loan him one of our spaceship bodies," Dante said dryly. "Of course, we would need to remove his brain first. Did we bring along an extra preservation canister?"

  "Interesting idea," Juno said. "Yessss. We can create a neo-qmiek out of one of the fanatical fighters." From her linked ship, she looked around. "Who volunteers to cut out his brain?"

  Almost simultaneously, the four cymeks sprouted razor-sharp blades from the artificial bodies that held their disembodied brains. Long claws scraped the outside of the clean plaz bubble enclosure.

  "Would you like to answer our questions now, dear?" Juno importuned. For good measure she triggered a jolt of agony that made the captive writhe and spin in the weightless bubble until his joints made a loud cracking sound.

  Vergyl's eyes were glassy and unfocused from the pain, but he refused to speak.

  Now Dante, usually not the most violent of the cymeks, surprised his companions. From his side of the conglomerated vessel he fired a precision dart at the human's head. The sharp projectile struck him on one cheek, shattering teeth and penetating his mouth.

  Vergyl spat blood, but his screams fell on mechanical tympanic sensors. He called out the names of his wife and children: Sheel, Emilio, Jisp, Ulana. Apparently, he had no hope that they could help him, but locking images of their faces in his mind gave him strength.

  Juno sent another spike of pain through the young man's nervous system, and said in a clinical tone, "He feels as if his lower body is on fire. I can continue the sensation for as long as I wish. Yessss. Perhaps we should alternate pleasure and pain stimulations, intensifying the control we have over him."

  Fighting off the pain impulses, Vergyl reached up to jerk the sharp dart from his bloody cheek, tossed it aside, then made a defiant hand gesture. Agamemnon was exceedingly pleased at this, since this meant the captive was frustrated and afraid, with no other means of striking back. The dart floated around in the gravity-free enclosure.

  Agamemnon said, "Tercero Tantor, how long can you hold your breath? Most frail humans can manage only a minute or so, but you look young and strong. Could you last three minutes, perhaps four?"

  Abruptly the bubble slid open, leaving the bleeding captive in the vacuum of space as released cabin air roared out around him. Before Vergyl could drift into the emptiness, Agamemnon fired a small, tethered harpoon. The shaft sank into the young man's thigh, catching him like a fish. "There, we wouldn't want you to float away on us."

  Vergyl's scream vanished in the vacuum. Intense, deep-space cold hit him like a hammer from all directions, attacking the cells of his body.

  With a twitch of a segmented metal arm, Agamemnon jerked on the tether, and the barbed harpoon hooks dug into the victim's leg muscles. The cymek general reeled him back in, sealed the bubble, and let air surge into the enclosure.

  Vergyl curled into a shivering ball and struggled for breath, gasping from the lack of oxygen and the raw pain. With half-numb hands that could not grip well, he tried to tear the harpoon from his thigh. Blood particles floated in the low gravity and spattered inside the bubble enclosure.

  "Such old-fashioned methods," Dante said. "We have not made sufficient use of Juno's new devices."

  "We are not finished with him yet," Agamemnon said. "This could take a long time."

  Without warning, Agamemnon shot Vergyl back out into the subzero, pressureless void, while Juno simultaneously pulsed her pain amplifiers. The agonized officer seemed to be trying to turn himself inside out, as he writhed wildly. Blood vessels burst in his eyes and ears, but Vergyl remained defiant. Floating in the enclosure once more, he spat blood and choked and cursed. He couldn't stop shivering,

  Agamemnon thrust a manipulator arm through the bubble wall to grab the captive and pull him close. The Titan general cupped an artificial hand over the young man's head and discharged needle probes through his skull, into the soft brain tissue beneath.

  Vergyl screamed, whimpered Xavier's name, and then went limp.

  "He's in an ecstasy of pain," Juno said. "This is truly delightful."

  Murmurs of agreement passed among the cymeks.

  "Those probes can help facilitate direct interrogation," Beowulf said to Juno. "I helped invent them myself, and the robot Erasmus used up many of his slaves in order to test the systems. Unfortunately, the data is not in a format that thinking machines can assimilate directly."

  "But I can," Agamemnon said, then made a deprecating noise. "This human's brain is filled with exaggerations, lies, and preposterous propaganda spouted by the professional agitator, Iblis Ginjo. He actually believes it all."

  "Nothing but useless information," Juno said with a mock sigh. "We should just kill him. Let me do it, my love. Please?"

  "Vergyl Tantor," Agamemnon said, "tell me about my son Vorian Atreides. He was your friend? Someone you respected?"

  The prisoner's eyes opened to narrow slits, and his lips moved. With his sharply tuned tympanic sensors, Agamemnon heard him whisper, "Primero Atreides is… a great hero… of the Jihad. He will bring you machine demons… to justice."

  Agamemnon thrust the brain probes deeper, eliciting a howl from Vergyl. A pair of wires penetrated his eyes from inside his skull, grabbing the orbs and jerking them deeper into the skull cavity.

  The human flailed about and pleaded, "Let me die!"

  "In due course," the general promised. "But first you must help Juno test her device to its fullest capacity."

  Juno purred, "That could take a while longer."

  In fact, it took the better part of a day before Vergyl finally surrendered his life, much to the disappointment of the cymeks, who kept thinking of new and interesting tests…

  With all the artillery, ships, and manpower in the military, our Commanders often forget that ideas can be the greatest weapons of all

  —Cogitor Kwyna

  High inside the Cogitor's tower in the City of Introspection, Serena Butler felt isolated and safe; at the same time, she was surrounded by the enlightenment and advice that her heart had craved ever since the murder of her eleven-month-old son. For all those years, ancient Cogitor Kwyna had been her most valued advisor, mentor, teacher, and sounding board.

  But some problems simply had no answers.

  The disembodied female philosopher had lived a full life in human form and then had spent over a thousand years simply contemplating everything she had learned. Despite all her efforts, Serena could barely taste even a droplet of Kwyna's potent revelations… but still she knew she must try.

  Ever since she had been captured by the thinking machines while on a mission of mercy to Giedi Prime, and taken in as a household slave to serve the monstrous robot master Erasmus, her life and the human race itself had stopped making sense.

  Serena would not surrender entirely to her doubts and questions. She hoped and prayed that Kwyna could help clear all the turmoil and allow her to see clearly…

  She ascended the steps to Kwyna's tower and sent her Seraphim away, along with the loyal secondaries who attended the female Cogitor. All were familiar with Serena's frequent visits here, and the Priestess did not have to explain herself. Niriem, her most devoted Seraph, was the last to leave. The young woman stood at the doorway gazing sadly at Serena, as if wishing she could find some way to help. Finally, Niriem turned and departed.

  And Serena was alone again with Kwyna.

  Smiling in anticipation, Serena let her eyes fall closed. She knew that the weary brain also enjoyed these sessions, although Kwyna's thoughts were always cautionary, as the Cogitor took care not to reveal too much.

  Each time she had a mental discussion with the philosopher her own brain filled with answers to an avalanche of questions she had not even known she was going to ask. Afterward, Serena would need days to simply absorb everything that had been hammered into her mind, and even more time to wrestle with
the doubts that each new explanation raised.

  But she would have it no other way. She could never stop, even if it felt as if her brain was filled to capacity, and that her skull might crack and explode. Serena was addicted to these interactions. One day they would provide her with all the solutions she needed.

  Kwyna's complex and intricately contoured brain rested in its bath of electrafluid, the chemicals faintly bubbling and hissing as they provided the necessary energy and life-support functions. The disembodied philosopher had spent centuries in the precursor of the City of Introspection.

  Slowly yet eagerly, Serena dipped her fingers into the fluid, controlling her impatience. She drew a deep breath, and built a mental wall to keep out all distractions. Her lavender eyes saw only the insides of her eyelids, so that her vision and thoughts could turn inward. Here within her mind, she was linked with the Cogitor. They were like two people having the most private of all conversations. Kwyna's thoughts and voice flooded into her, and Serena smiled, relieved to be in the embrace of the philosopher's wisdom.

  "I sense your mental strength growing from our visits, Serena." The Cogitor's voice thrummed in her mind. "But I fear you have come to rely on me too much. You want to have answers simply given to you instead of discovering them for yourself."

  "When all around me is emptiness, Kwyna, you are my only spark of hope. In too many things I must fumble around like a woman lost in the fog. Do not deny me your beacon."

  Kwyna hesitated, then replied, "Iblis Ginjo believes he is you: beacon."

  "Yes, he is a great strength to me. He has taken many responsibilities that I would otherwise have to endure. He maintains the momentum of the Jihad. He focuses the struggle. He finds me those answers that you do not provide."

  Kwyna seemed reluctant to follow this line of discussion, but she continued. "The Grand Patriarch does not discover answers as I have asked you to do, Serena. Nor does he receive them from a person of greater wisdom. Iblis Ginjo creates the answers that he wishes to hear, and then plants a backward trail to justify them."

  Serena was troubled and defensive. "He does what is necessary."

  "Is it, in truth, necessary? That is an answer I will not give you, Serena. You must discover it for yourself the way you discovered your own path out of the madness of grief."

  Serena felt the shadows of old memories settle upon her. "You were my beacon then as well, Kwyna."

  While the Jihad raged in the name of her son Manion, Serena had withdrawn here to recover from her misery. In the solitude and safety behind these walls, she had spent much time with her mother Livia, who had lost her teenage son, Octa's twin brother Fredo, to a wasting disease.

  Livia insisted that she could understand the intense sorrow her daughter endured, but Serena refused to believe it. It was different having a grown and talented son fall to a sickness that was no one's fault. Serena had been forced to watch her innocent son — a bright toddler full of potential — slaughtered by Erasmus out of sheer vindictiveness.

  Kwyna had been a greater help in counseling her. Though the disembodied ancient brain might have seemed distant and less able to comprehend human tragedies, Serena found that Kwyna could indeed offer a healing perspective that no one else, not even Serena's own mother, had been able to offer.

  "You are a good friend, Kwyna, a bastion of strength in the League of Nobles. If only all people were as objective and dedicated, we would have no worries about the Jihad ever faltering through lack of resolve."

  It troubled her that she had received reports of growing protests against the Jihad, people demanding that the brave human fighters simply withdraw from the struggle against Omnius. They moaned that twenty-four years was too long for a war — even an epic struggle against the pervasive evil of the computer evermind.

  But the thinking machines had been in power for over a thousand years, and the great struggle had gone on for less than a quarter century. People had such a short attention span, but this undoubtedly had something to do with their own life expectancies. They didn't want to spend entire lives at war.

  "Now you sound like the Grand Patriarch instead of Serena Butler," Kwyna chided. "Is this the primary lesson you have taken from my philosophies? A resolve and determination to continue the fight against the thinking machines?"

  "I am not a Cogitor," Serena said. "I am still in a human body, saddled with a brief life and too much to do. I require action instead of mere contemplation."

  Kwyna pulsed beneath her fingertips. "Then that is what you must do, Serena Butler. You must act."

  Serena thought of all the ways she had tried to strengthen her people, walking among them, honoring their dead, speaking to the wounded and the heartsick refugees, visiting camps, spending her entire share of the Butler fortune. The populace loved her, yet she wanted to do so much more.

  Interrupted by a commotion outside the tower room, she broke her connection with Kwyna and withdrew her dripping fingers from the electrafluid. She turned around and blinked in the bright sunlight that streamed through the high windows.

  She saw her Seraph Niriem standing with arms rigid at her sides, her purple-trimmed white robes neat and dazzling. "Priestess Butler, we have received a message from outside the system. The Jihad fleet has returned from IV Anbus."

  Serena smiled. Xavier and Vorian would be coming home. "Contact the Grand Patriarch. We must prepare a suitable welcome for our heroes."

  Of all the battles he had faced and all the enemies he had fought, Xavier Harkonnen feared this ordeal more than any of them. But now that he had returned to Salusa Secundus, he could not shirk the obligation.

  Duty, honor, and responsibility had formed the foundation of his character since his military training with the Salusan Militia.

  As soon as the Jihad fleet had returned to the League capital, he took a white Salusan stallion and rode up along the pathway to the Tantor Estate, the old noble holdings where he'd spent his childhood. He'd had no sleep, but could not delay.

  Over the years, the great house had been mostly shut down. Old Emil Tantor and his wife Lucille, the kindly couple who had taken in the orphaned six-year-old Xavier, had raised him as their foster son and then formally adopted him. Later, they'd unexpectedly had a son of their own.

  Vergyl.

  Decades earlier, Xavier had married Octa and moved away to the Butler Estate, and then Vergyl had gone off to join the Army of the Jihad. Six years ago, Lucille Tantor had died in a flyer crash, leaving the old man alone. In the years afterward, Emil had made himself quietly content, living in one of the smaller outbuildings, where a few faithful servants attended him.

  Someday, the Tantor Estate should have been Vergyl's legacy. Now it would become the home of the young man's widow and his children…

  Xavier dismounted and tied the stallion to an ornate post at the front of the main house. Then, with heavy heart and sinking stomach, he set off to look for the man he called father. The terrible news he brought would likely destroy the old man, but it would be no kindness to withhold it. Xavier only hoped he had made his way here quickly enough that rumors hadn't already found Emil in his secluded home.

  Helpful servants, impressed with the immaculate green-and-crimson Jihad uniform, directed him to Emil Tantor, who sat outside under a gazebo surrounded by hummingbird feeders. Golden creatures hovered about the sweet nectar, their wings a blur in the air. They kept the old man company as he sat reading a leatherbound book of legends and history.

  "I remember when you used to read aloud to me, and to Vergyl," Xavier said.

  Emil smiled at him, his lips parting to expose bright teeth. The elder Tantor's hair was like a cloud of pale smoke from a greenwood fire. His skin was dark and deeply creased with age, but his brown eyes were bright, not diluted with weariness. He set the book aside and lurched to his feet, slightly more unsteady than he realized. "Xavier, my boy! A delightful surprise. What brings you—"

  Then he seemed to understand. The old man sensed something in Xavier
's reluctance, the screaming grief barely contained like a monster inside of him. Emil took in the formal uniform, Xavier's rigid posture, and the hesitation in his eyes. "Oh, no," he said. "Not my son."

  Xavier said numbly, as if reading from a report that he could not believe himself, "We defeated the thinking machines at the battle for IV Anbus. We saved the world from falling under the domination of Omnius and stopped them from establishing another base in their encroachment on League territory." His breath hitched. "But then, when we thought it was all over and our victory assured, a group of cymeks attacked. They caused a great deal of damage and many deaths. They destroyed ballistas, javelins." He swallowed. "And captured Vergyl."

  "Captured?" Emil Tantor perked up, clinging to a thin thread. "There's hope mat he might still be alive? Answer me honestly, Xavier."

  Xavier averted his eyes. "We humans exist on hope. It's what separates us from thinking machines." But in truth, he had fought the robots and cymeks for so many years that he knew their precision and viciousness. In his own heart, Xavier harbored no hope that his adoptive brother would ever be saved. Even if his little brother had been whisked sway to become a slave somewhere deep within the Synchronized Worlds, how could Xavier or the Jihad forces ever hope to free him?

  As he continued, his words cracked with swelling emotions that threatened to choke him. "I wish I could tell you he died swiftly, cleanly, painlessly — I was there, but too far away. I could do nothing to save my own brother."

  Emil accepted the answer in silence, not questioning the presumption that Vergyl would never return. He reached out a strong hand and clasped Xavier's wrist. "Can you at least say that he met his end bravely?"

  Xavier nodded, tears sparkling in his eyes. "That much I can promise you without any hesitation whatsoever." He took the old man by the arm and led him with slow, painstaking footsteps back toward the small house. They sat on a bench on the lawn and opened one of the family's oldest bottles of Mervignon wine to toast the memory of Vergyl.

  "Your brother always looked up to you, Xavier, wanted to be like you. After Ellram, I had to sign a special dispensation for him to join the Jihad when he was only seventeen. Your mother had grave reservations about it, and while I feared for his safety, I feared more the disappointment that boy would experience if I held him back. I knew he would try to join no matter what I said, even if he had to lie, so I wanted him to at least have the protection of our family name and his relationship with you."