In the cockpit he discovered the familiar humanoid shape of the captain with whom he had served, a robotic pilot who had taken countless Omnius update spheres from one Synchronized World to another. Seurat remained motionless, his mirrored, coppery face reflecting a distorted image of Vor looking down at him through the breathing mask.
"So, I see you've waited for me," Vor said, driving away the nostalgia that flickered around the edges of his mind. "I didn't leave you in a very dignified position, I fear. Sorry, Old Metalmind."
He opened the secret storage compartment from which he had originally stolen the Omnius update a quarter century earlier. Removing the silvery gelsphere from the pack at his side, he replaced it in the empty waiting cradle, precisely where he had found it. Though the League scientists had already performed decades of interrogation and analysis, Vor had meticulously deleted all those memories. Even the tainted update itself wouldn't know what had happened.
With a sly smile, Vor resealed the storage compartment, careful not to leave any evidence of his intrusion. The information inside would look totally legitimate, though it was modified in ways that no thinking machine could readily detect.
Briefly, he worried what would happen to the independent robot pilot, once Omnius discovered the destruction Seurat unwittingly carried. He hoped the mechanical captain would not be destroyed out of spite. Perhaps his memory core would be completely wiped. A sad end for a decent companion… but at least Seurat would forget all those atrociously bad jokes he used to tell.
Maybe Omnius would just put Seurat back to work, provided the evermind survived the chaos Old Metalmind would bring. Vor wished he could be there to watch…
Finally, he took great pleasure in restarting the systems he had deactivated in Seurat's body. Vor wished he could stay and talk with his old chum and teach him how to play Fleur de Lys, or tell him some of the twisted Omnius jokes that jihadi soldiers exchanged in their crew quarters — but Vor knew that wasn't possible. In a few days the robot would awaken, assuming his gelcircuitry systems gradually repaired themselves.
By then, Vorian Atreides would be long gone.
His mission complete, he returned through the hatch to his own ship. Though it would not be apparent for some time yet, he was convinced that he had just struck a devastating blow against the Synchronized Worlds.
After years of the bloody Jihad, it was finally time to let Omnius defeat himself. Vor could almost taste the irony…
There- is a time to attack and a time to wait.
—From a Corrin-Omnius update
After dutifully completing his public appearance on Poritrin, Iblis Ginjo was asked to consider going to Ix, where the fighting would be heaviest. Lord Bludd insisted that his presence would boost the morale of the jihadi soldiers who were sacrificing so much.
But Iblis dismissed the idea out of hand, without even raising the question with Yorek Thurr. Unstable conditions there were too dangerous for him. The human revolution on that Synchronized World, led by his own Jipol professional agitators, had been in full eruption long before the Jihad invasion fleet was due to arrive. Even if human forces won this offensive, tens of thousands would lie dead in the streets. And if Primero Harkonnen lost, the death toll would be even higher.
No, Iblis did not want to be there. It would be risking too much, both personally and politically.
Only after an Ixian victory was assured and the jihadis had cleaned up the remaining thinking machines would the Grand Patriarch make his triumphant arrival. At that time, he could saunter in and take most of the credit for victory. From then on, he could always use Ix as a rallying cry for even more major offensives, as he had done with Poritrin.
If Primero Harkonnen's military operation was on schedule, he should arrive at Ix soon, though they had no means of instant communication at such distances. Within days the big battle should commence, though it would be some time before the Grand Patriarch learned the results…
Iblis remained on Poritrin for a month and arranged a series of private meetings with noblemen, some of whom had journeyed from Ecaz and other League Worlds for the belated festival. Despite the gravity of the machine threat, the patricians were in no mood to discuss serious matters. They wanted to savor their victory for a while, though it was only a small step toward the ultimate goal. Dealing with these fools, Iblis finally reached a peak of frustration, and announced that he would be leaving in order to oversee the important matters of the Jihad.
In a good-natured fashion, Lord Bludd had protested the Grand Patriarch's early departure, but Iblis could see that he did not particularly care one way or another. So he left Poritrin accompanied by two Jipol officers, the grim and unshakeable Yorek Thurr and a young female sergeant newly recruited into Iblis's private police force. While Thurr flew the ship competently, the new sergeant, Floriscia Xico, acted as copilot and attendant. Iblis retired to his own plush cabin to relax and plan during the long voyage.
In the luxurious chamber he sat on a deep-cushion chair, where he participated in a roleplaying bioholo set on ancient Earth, ostensibly to learn about the founder of the original Islamic faith before the Second and Third Movements in the Old Empire. Iblis's object was to learn about the first jihad, and to understand it completely.
Immersed in the bioholo, Iblis Ginjo saw himself as a fictional companion who walked alongside the great man, without ever actually speaking to him. The white-robed prophet stood on the crest of a dune, speaking to a throng of followers arrayed below him.
Abruptly the images around Iblis wavered, then flickered out of focus until the walls of his plush cabin stood out sharply around him again. Voices in the ancient reenactment clashed with real voices over the spaceship comsystem. Alarms sounded, and Iblis wrenched himself back to reality.
Someone was shaking him and shouting into his ear. He looked into the flushed face of curly-haired Floriscia Xico. "Grand Patriarch, you must come to the flight deck immediately!"
Struggling to reorient himself, he lurched after her. Through the front viewport, he saw an immense asteroid filling space, spinning wildly as it headed toward them.
"It's not moving in a natural orbit, sir," Yorek Thurr said, not taking his eyes from the controls or their trajectory map. "It keeps adjusting course whenever I take evasive action, and its acceleration is obviously artificial."
Iblis calmed himself and stood tall, the commander that his Jipol expected to see. Both the swarthy little Thurr and the younger, less seasoned Xico seemed uncharacteristically uneasy. "Our craft has augmented engines," Iblis said. "We can outrun any asteroid."
"Theoretically," Thurr said as he wrestled with the controls, "but it keeps accelerating, sir. Heading straight toward us."
"Fifty seconds to collision," Xico reported, from the copilot seat.
"That's ridiculous. It's just an asteroid -"
One of the big rock's largest craters glowed, and the ship lurched, as if suddenly caught in a fisherman's net. Lights dimmed, and the flight deck shuddered. Thurr said, "Tractor beam has us."
A shower of sparks sprayed out of the control console like a Poritrin fireflower display. Iblis heard an explosion belowdecks, deep in the engine compartment. In front of Thurr and Xico, the control panels went dark.
The asteroid loomed closer and closer, moving under its own inexorable power. Xico slumped in her seat as if she had given up. In disgust, Thurr slapped the controls. "Our engines are disabled! We're dead in space." Sweat glistened on his bald head.
The asteroid drew them closer, pulling them into a yawning crater. The cosmic body was obviously a huge, disguised ship. But who did it belong to? Angry and fearful, Iblis swallowed hard.
Abruptly, all power went out, even the backup systems. A chill wind seemed to accompany the darkness that engulfed the ship as they were swallowed by the gigantic asteroid.
Biological life is an insidious, powerful force. Even when one thinks it has been wiped out, it has a way of concealing itself… and regenerating. When the
human mind is combined with this ultimate survival instinct, we have a formidable enemy.
—Omnius, Jihad Datafiles
Far above earth's solar system the small update vessel drifted without engine power, ranging to the edge of a diffuse cometary cloud. Seurat returned to a dim but increasing awareness, not knowing where he was or how much time had elapsed.
Normal systems reactivated on the frozen ship. and frost melted from the bulkheads, dripping down onto the motionless robot captain. Somewhere deep in his mechanical consciousness, Seurat heard and felt the droplets hitting him, wisps of moisture condensing out of the air. Dissonant thought patterns made him recall an ancient Earth torture method, but most of his memory circuits were inaccessible to him, for the moment.
He could not judge the passage of time or where he was now. He had been in the update ship when his last conscious thoughts ended abruptly. A probability program told him: That is where I must be now. And he recalled his last mission.
Without moving, he absorbed what little information was available. Another tiny drop of water fell on his metal body, like dew.
The cabin is thawing. Therefore, it must have been frozen. Therefore, sufficient time must have passed for standard systems to shut down and the internal temperature to drop.
Since his internal circuitry was not functioning completely, Seurat wondered if his gelcircuitry mind had suffered damage. How much time had passed? He probed, but could not tell. However, as he tested his mental paths, he found that he could access more with each passing moment.
I was deactivated.
The process of coming back to life seemed slow to the independent robot Consciously, he activated a secondary damage assessment-and-mitigation program. His scattered memory remained a chaotic jumble and mostly inaccessible, but he could tell that it was reassembling itself bit by bit.
Is this a dream? The result of a gelcircuitry malfunction? Can machines dream?
The probability program broadened its functions and told him, like a voice from within: This is real.
He heard crisp popping and snapping sounds, and high-range spinning noises. Then his core program jolted into full awareness, quickly sorting out disjointed recollections. Finally he obtained an internal report on the last few moments: Seurat's escape from Earth while it was under atomic attack by the League Armada… the pursuit… Vorian Atreides. The human trustee had damaged the update ship, boarded the vessel, and forcibly deactivated him.
While most of the robot's external sensors were not yet operational, he did not detect the presence of any other sentient beings inside the cabin — human or machine. The human aggressor was gone.
The robot realized that his lengthy interaction with the son of Agamemnon had left him vulnerable to the pandemonium and unpredictability' of human actions. Recalling his copilot, Seurat had difficulty thinking of the former trustee as his enemy, even though Vor had clearly stunned him — twice!
Why did my friend do that to me?
Understanding the motivations of human beings was not Seurat's strong suit, or even part of his programming. The robot captain performed his duties with the tools that Omnius had provided for him. Of greater importance, he needed to discover if the damage was permanent Would he be able to restore all of his former functions?
As if answering him, his systems continued to awaken, faster now. More than eighty percent.
Despite the unsettling lack of predictability, Seurat still preferred the missions he had shared with Vorian Atreides to those he had flown alone. He is not like other, exceedingly dull humans I have observed.
Abruptly, his programs came fully alive and began to assault him full-force, informing Seurat of slowly compounded errors that distracted him with considerations of such troubling matters. His optic threads glimmered, suddenly flooding him with detailed images from around the cold, dead cabin of the update ship.
His mental functions accelerated and smoothed into an internal hum of systems checking and rechecking information, scooping up bits of errant data and discarding them. Around the walls, deck, and control panels, he detected subtle indications of corrosion, age, and disuse. He probed again, to determine how much time had passed. Still uncertain.
Was the League Armada still at Earth, attacking the evermind incarnation there? Could Omnius escape? Seurat had been ordered to take the last update sphere of the Earth evermind and had slipped away from the planet even as Jihad warships closed in with atomic weapons.
Is the update sphere still safe? Or have I failed in my most vital mission?
Scanning with his reactivated optic threads, Seurat located the secure storage receptacle for the Omnius copy. His nimble hands opened the compartment to reveal the silvery gelsphere, intact and apparently undamaged. A sensation akin to great relief brushed through his systems.
He had protected the update of the Earth evermind, the only copy of the final thoughts of the once-central Omnius. Vorian Atreides had not taken it, though he'd had the opportunity. Who could understand humans?
No matter. The gelsphere was safe, and still in Seurat's possession. His mission remained unchanged: deliver it.
In a matter of minutes that seemed like much longer, his systems completed their self-diagnostic and repair routines. Now Seurat turned his attention to the update ship, relieved to discover that the engines had come back online properly, even though subsystems were still cold.
Vorian Atreides had only stunned the robot captain, undoubtedly to keep him from escaping. But over time Seurat's sophisticated gelcircuitry systems must have repaired themselves.
The ship's instrument panel lit up in a rainbow of flashing chromatics, punctuated by computer signal beeps and whines, as if tiny creatures inside the mechanism were awakening. The still-functional chronometer provided him with startling information. Nearly twenty-five standard Earth years had passed since he had been deactivated. Twenty-five years!
After Seurat fired the engines to full operating power, he guided the ship carefully back down into the planetary neighborhood. Using his long-distance sensors as he approached, he remained alert for any sign of the troublesome League Armada. The battle could not still be under way: human attention spans did not last long. By this time Omnius had either crushed the human invasion, and the update sphere in Seurat's custody was irrelevant… or the evermind had been destroyed and the stored computer information was more important now than ever.
He guided his vessel close enough to the cloud-smeared world to see that the continents and once-magnificent machine cities were no more than distorted, glassy black remains. Seurat detected excessive radioactivity, but no machine signals, no active power grids, no response to any of his inquiries on standard Omnius channels. And no signs of biological activity.
Earth was destroyed. The thinking machines had been eradicated here, and the humans had caused so much damage to accomplish it that even they could no longer live on their own ancestral home planet.
This was only small consolation for him.
As Seurat cruised over the lifeless, useless world, a realization hit him like a meteor slamming into the ship. Earth had been destroyed. This meant that in all probability, he had the only backup copy of the Earth-Omnius in existence.
The only one.
Seurat began to assess priorities. If, in fact, there had been no machine survivors of the holocaust on Earth, then none of the current Omniuses had access to the crucial data Seurat's update contained. Now his mission was paramount. Internal programs spoke to him in unison.
You have another duty to perform.
Touching pressure pads, Seurat set a direct course for the nearest Synchronized World, where he would deliver the gelsphere that held the final thoughts of the Earth-Omnius. He would continue his update route, as he had been instructed to do a quarter century before. Soon, the information would be shared among all incarnations of the evermind, and it would be as if the Earth-Omnius had never been destroyed. The humans' victory would be short-lived, and Seurat would
have the last joke on Vorian Atreides.
How interesting it would be if I could upload and share information from sentient biological life, like computers transferring data. So much investigative effort and useless conjecture would be saved, because I could spend time deep inside the minds of my subjects. In a sense that has been the goal of my human experiments all along, and to an extent I have climbed inside their collective skin, allowing me to think as they think. But humans have shallow and deep levels of thought and of behavior, and for the most part I have only discovered the shallow. Each locked psychic door that I finally open reveals another locked door, and another, and another… each requiring a different key. Such complex, mysterious creatures, these humans. To construct one from scratch… what a supreme challenge that would be!
—Erasmus, Reflections on Sentient Biologicals
Raising children should not be such a trial, filled with frustration, lack of cooperation, and ridiculously slow progress. Human offspring should be eager to learn from their superiors, enabling them to reach their potential. If every parent had the sort of trouble Erasmus was having with his young ward from the slave pens, the human race would have gone extinct long before their civilization had advanced sufficiently to invent thinking machines.
But such thoughts inevitably led back to his own actions. Could Erasmus possibly be doing something wrong? He didn't like to think of it that way. He just had more to learn.
Still, he wished Omnius had chosen any other human as a subject. This learning process was exceedingly difficult.
By contrast with humans, a thinking machine was fully functional from the moment of activation. Robots, being infinitely more useful than humans, did as they were instructed. They followed through on thoughts and completed tasks efficiently, achieving goals in a logical sequence.
This feral human child though, despite Erasmus's best efforts as a mentor robot, was… chaos incarnate. And Erasmus had nowhere to turn for advice. Not for the first time, he wished Serena Butler had remained with him.
The Machine Crusade Page 26
