The scientist used his best voice. “In warfare, whenever one side makes a technological breakthrough, the other attempts to top it. We recently witnessed this with my atmospheric scrambler fields. Had they not been installed here, the full thinking machine fleet would have laid waste to Salusa. Unfortunately, I did not factor in the unique abilities of the cymeks. They found a chink in the armor and penetrated it.”
No one had accused him of lax work or poor planning, but this was the closest Holtzman would come to admitting that he had overlooked a major flaw. “Now it is our turn to surpass the machines with a new concept. I hope to be inspired by this tragedy, pushing my creativity to its limits.” He then stalled and looked embarrassed, even endearing. “I’ll be working on that, as soon as I get back to Poritrin. I hope to have a surprise for you very soon.”
A tall, statuesque woman glided toward the lectern, drawing attention to herself. “Perhaps I have a suggestion.” She had pale eyebrows, white hair, and luminous skin that made her seem ethereal, but charged with power.
“Let us hear from the women of Rossak. I gladly yield to Zufa Cenva.” Looking relieved, Holtzman hurried back to his seat and slumped into it.
The pale woman carried an air of mystery about her; she wore glowing jewelry on a black, diaphanous gown that revealed much of her perfect body. Pausing at the Cogitor’s life-support case, Zufa Cenva peered inside at the enlarged brain. Her brow furrowed as she concentrated, and as she did so, the brain itself seemed to vibrate; the electrafluid swirled, bubbles formed. Alarmed, the devout attendant monk withdrew his hand from the liquid.
The tall woman relaxed, satisfied, and stepped to the podium. “Because of oddities in our environment, many of the females born on Rossak exhibit enhanced telepathic abilities.” Indeed, the powerful Sorceresses of the dense, barely habitable jungles had parlayed their mental quirks into political influence. Rossak men exhibited no such telepathic enhancements.
“The League of Nobles was formed a thousand years ago for our mutual defense, first against the Titans and then against Omnius. Since then, we have barricaded ourselves, trying to protect our worlds from the enemy.” Her eyes flashed like highly polished stones. “We need to rethink this strategy. Perhaps it is time for us to take the offensive against the Synchronized Worlds. Otherwise, Omnius and his minions will never leave us alone.”
The League representatives muttered at this, looking fearful, especially after the devastation Zimia had just endured. The Viceroy was first to respond. “That is a bit premature, Madame Cenva. I’m not sure we have the capability.”
“We barely survived the last attack!” a man shouted. “And we had only a handful of cymeks to contend with.”
Manion Butler looked deeply concerned. “Confronting Omnius would be a suicide mission. What weapons would we use?”
In response, the imposing woman squared her shoulders and spread her hands, while closing her eyes and concentrating. Although Zufa was known to have extrasensory powers, she had never before displayed them in Parliament. Her milky pale skin seemed to heat up with an inner light. The air in the enclosed chamber stirred, and static electricity crackled around the assemblage, making hair stand on end.
Lightning flickered at her fingertips, as if she were holding a barely contained thunderstorm inside herself. Her own white hair coiled and writhed like snakes. When Zufa’s eyes opened again, a dazzling energy seemed ready to shoot out of them, as if the universe lived behind her pupils.
Gasps echoed through the delegates. Serena’s skin crawled and her scalp tingled, as if a thousand poisonous spiders skittered over her mind. In her preservation tank, the Cogitor Kwyna churned.
Then Zufa relaxed, throttling back the chain reaction of mental energy. Letting out a long, cold breath, the Sorceress smiled grimly at the startled onlookers. “We have a weapon.”
The eyes of common perception do not see far. Too often we make the most important decisions based only on superficial information.
— NORMA CENVA,
unpublished laboratory notebooks
After delivering her announcement to the League assembly, Zufa Cenva returned to Rossak. She had been in transit for weeks, and her shuttle now landed on a dense section of the jungle canopy that had been paved over with a polymer to seal and fuse the branches and leaves into a solid mass. To enable the trees to receive adequate moisture and gas exchange, the polymer was porous, synthesized from jungle chemicals and organics.
Toxic oceans made the native Rossak planktons, fish, kelp, and sea creatures poisonous to humans. Rugged, sterile lava plains covered much of the planet’s land area, dotted with geysers and brimstone lakes. Since the botanical chemistry did not rely on chlorophyll, the general cast of all plants was silvery purple; nothing here was fresh and green.
In a tectonically stable zone girdling the equator, large rifts in the continental plate created broad sanctuary valleys where the water was filtered and the air breathable. In these protected rift ecosystems, hardy human settlers had constructed sophisticated cave-cities like hives tunneled into the black cliffs. The declivitous external walls were overgrown with silvery-purple vines, drooping ferns, and fleshy moss. Comfortable chambers looked out upon a thick jungle canopy that pressed against the settlement cliffs. People could venture directly onto the upper rubbery branches and descend to the dense underbrush, where they harvested edibles.
As if to make up for the dearth of life elsewhere on Rossak, the rift valleys teemed with aggressive living things— mushrooms, lichens, berries, flowers, orchidlike parasites, and insects. The Rossak men, lacking the telepathic enhancement of their women, had turned their talents to developing and extracting drugs, pharmaceuticals, and occasional poisons from nature’s larder. The entire place was like a Pandora’s box that had been opened only a crack. . . .
Now the tall, luminous Sorceress watched as her much younger paramour, Aurelius Venport, crossed a suspended bridge from the open cliffs to the foamy purple treetops. His patrician features were handsome, his dark hair curly, his face long and lean. Tagging along behind him on stubby legs came Zufa’s disappointing fifteen-year-old daughter by a prior relationship.
Two misfits. No wonder they get along so well.
Prior to seducing Aurelius Venport, the chief Sorceress had arranged conjugal relationships with four other men during her peak breeding times, selecting them for their proven bloodlines. After generations of research, miserable miscarriages, and defective offspring, the women of Rossak had compiled detailed genetic indices of various families. Because of heavy environmental toxins and teratogens, the odds were against any child being born strong and healthy. But for every stillborn monster or talentless male, a miraculous pale-skinned Sorceress might occur. Each time a woman conceived a child, it was like playing a game of roulette. Genetics was never an exact science.
But Zufa had been so careful, checking and double-checking the bloodlines. Only one of those conjugal encounters had resulted in a living child— Norma, a dwarf barely four feet tall, with blocky features, mousy brown hair, and a tedious, bookish personality.
Many offspring on Rossak had defective bodies, and even the apparently healthy ones rarely exhibited the strong mental powers of the elite Sorceresses. Nevertheless, Zufa felt deep disappointment, even embarrassment, that her daughter had no telepathic skills. The greatest living Sorceress should have been able to pass along her superior mental abilities, and she desperately wanted her daughter to carry on the fight against the machines. But Norma showed no potential whatsoever. And despite Aurelius Venport’s impeccable genetic credentials, Zufa had never been able to carry one of his babies to term.
How many more times must I keep trying before I replace him with another breeder? Once more, she decided— she would attempt to get pregnant again, within the next few months. It would be Venport’s last chance.
Zufa was also disappointed in Norma’s independence and defiance. Too often the teenager spun off on obscure mathematical tangents that no
one could comprehend. Norma seemed lost in her own world.
My daughter, you should have been so much more!
No one had a heavier burden of responsibility than the small clan of Sorceresses on the planet, and Zufa’s burden was the greatest of all. If only she could count on everyone else, especially in light of this latest danger from the cymeks.
Since stunted Norma could never take part in the mental battle, Zufa had to concentrate on her daughters in spirit, those few young women who had won the “genetic lottery” and acquired superior mental abilities. Zufa would train and encourage them, showing them how to eradicate the enemy.
From her cliffside perch, she watched her lover Aurelius and young Norma reach the other side of the suspension bridge and begin to negotiate a circular network of ladders that led to the deeply shadowed jungle floor. Like two happy-go-lucky outcasts, Norma and Aurelius had grown close emotionally, using one another as crutches.
Engrossed in their own petty concerns that had nothing to do with victory, neither of them had even noticed Zufa’s return on the shuttle. No doubt the two misfits would spend hours poking through the foliage in search of new drug resources, which Aurelius would incorporate into his business ventures.
The Sorceress shook her head, not understanding his priorities. Those drugs the men developed were of little more use than Norma’s arcane mathematics. Admittedly, Aurelius was a highly intelligent and skilled businessman, but what good were enormous profits if free humanity was doomed to enslavement?
Disappointed in both of them, knowing that she and her Sorceresses would have to do the real fighting, Zufa set out to find the most powerful young women she had recruited to learn the devastating new technique she planned to unleash against the cymeks.
• • •
AS NORMA FOLLOWED him through the fleshy underbrush, Aurelius consumed capsules of a focused stimulant that his expert chemists had synthesized from the pungent pheromones of a boulder-sized burrowing beetle. Venport felt stronger, his perceptions sharpened, his reflexes enhanced. Not quite like the telepathic powers of icy Zufa, but better than his natural abilities.
Someday he would make a breakthrough, allowing him to meet the powerful Sorceress on his own terms. Maybe he and Norma would do it together.
Aurelius maintained a benign fondness for the girl’s stern mother. He tolerated Zufa’s moods and scornful attitude with good grace; Rossak women rarely allowed themselves the luxury of romantic love.
Though Aurelius knew full well that Zufa had selected him for his breeding potential, he saw through the woman’s stoic, demanding exterior. Attempting to conceal her weaknesses, the powerful Sorceress showed her doubts on occasion, afraid that she could not fulfill the responsibilities she had placed on herself. Once, when Aurelius commented that he knew how strong she was trying to be, Zufa had grown embarrassed and angry. “Somebody has to be strong” was all she had said.
Since he lacked telepathic ability, Zufa had little interest in engaging him in conversation. Perhaps she recognized his skills as a businessman, investor, and politician, but she valued none of those abilities as much as her own narrow goals. The Sorceress frequently tried to make him feel like a failure, but her derision only served to ignite his ambition, especially his desire to find a drug that would give him telepathic powers equivalent to her own.
There were other ways to fight a war.
The silvery-purple jungles offered a treasure-trove to cure diseases, expand the mind, and improve human abilities. The choices were overwhelming, but Aurelius sought to investigate everything. From proper development and marketing, the products of Rossak had already put him on the path to great wealth. He was even grudgingly respected by a number of the Sorceresses— except by his own mate.
As a visionary entrepreneur, he was accustomed to exploring alternatives. Like paths through a dense jungle, many routes could lead to the same place. Sometimes, one just had to hack through with a machete.
So far, though, the right drug eluded him.
In another venture, he had proudly distributed Norma’s exotic mathematical work among scholarly scientific circles. Though he didn’t understand her theorems, he had a gut feeling that she might come up with something important. Maybe she had already done so, and it took expert eyes to recognize it. Venport liked the intense girl, acting as a big brother to her. As far as he was concerned, Norma was a mathematical prodigy, so who cared about her height or her appearance? He was willing to give her a chance, even if her mother never would.
Beside him, Norma studied the design of a broad purple leaf, using a light-beam caliper to measure its various dimensions and the relationships among angles in the sap-filled veins. The depth of her concentration added a wistful cast to her plain features.
Glancing back at him, Norma said in a surprisingly mature voice, “This leaf has been designed and constructed by the Earth mother Gaia, or the Master Creator God, or Buddallah, or whatever you want to call it.” With blunt fingers, she held up the fleshy leaf and passed a beam of light through it, so that the intricate cellular designs showed clearly. “Patterns within patterns, all tied together in complex relationships.”
In his drug-enhanced, euphoric state, Aurelius found the design hypnotic. “God is in everything,” he said. The stimulant he had taken seemed to supercharge his synapses. He squinted through the illuminated fabric of the leaf as she pointed to the internal shapes.
“God is the mathematician of the universe. There is an ancient correlation known as the Golden Mean, a pleasing ratio of form and structure that is found in this leaf, in seashells, and in the living creatures of many planets. It is the tiniest part of the key, known since the time of the Greeks and Egyptians of Earth. They used it in their architecture and pyramids, in their Pythagorean pentagram and Fibonacci sequence.” She discarded the leaf. “But there is so much more.”
Nodding, Venport touched a moistened fingertip to a pouch of fine black powder at his belt; he rubbed the powder under the sensitive tissue of his tongue and felt another drug penetrating his senses, merging with the remnants of the last one. Norma kept talking; though he did not follow her logical development, he was certain the revelations must be fabulous.
“Give me a practical example,” he slurred. “Something with a function that I can understand.”
He had grown accustomed to Norma spouting off obscure formulations. Her basis might have been in classical geometry, but she applied her knowledge in much more complex ways. “I can envision calculations all the way to infinity,” she said, as if in a trance. “I don’t have to write them down.”
And she doesn’t even need mind-enhancement drugs to accomplish it, Aurelius marveled.
“At this very moment I envision a huge and efficient structure that could be built at a reasonable cost, tens of kilometers long— and based upon the ratio of the Golden Mean.”
“But who would ever need something so immense?”
“I cannot peer into the future, Aurelius.” Norma teased him. Then they trudged deeper into the weird jungle, still curious and intent on what they might discover. Norma’s face was radiant with energy. “But there might be something . . . something I haven’t thought of yet.”
Careful preparations and defenses can never guarantee victory. However, ignoring these precautions is an almost certain recipe for defeat.
—League Armada Strategy Manual
For four months, Tercero Xavier Harkonnen and his six Armada survey vessels traveled along a predetermined route, stopping to inspect and assess the military facilities and defensive preparations of the League Worlds. After many years of no more than a few skirmishes, no one knew where Omnius might strike next.
Xavier had never wavered from the difficult decision he’d made during the cymek attack on Zimia. The Viceroy had praised him for his nerve and determination; even so, Manion Butler had wisely sent the young officer away during the major rebuilding activities, giving Salusans time to heal their wounds without looking for a sca
pegoat.
Xavier listened to no excuses from tightwad nobles unwilling to commit the necessary resources. No expense must be spared. Any free world that fell to machine aggression would be a loss for the entire human race.
The survey ships traveled from the mines of Hagal to the broad river plains of Poritrin, then made their way to Seneca where the weather was poor and the rain so corrosive that even thinking machines would break down soon after a conquest.
The League planets of Relicon followed, then Kirana III, then Richese, with its burgeoning high-tech industries that made so many other League noblemen uneasy. In theory, the sophisticated manufacturing devices contained no computerization or artificial intelligence, but there were always questions, always doubts.
Finally Xavier’s team arrived at their final inspection stop, Giedi Prime. At last, his tour was about to end. He could return home, see Serena again, and they could make good on their promises to each other. . . .
All other League Worlds had installed scrambler field towers. The shields’ known weakness against cymeks did not completely devalue Holtzman’s ingenious work, and the costly barriers still provided substantial protection against all-out thinking machine offensives. In addition, every human world had long ago built up enormous stockpiles of atomics as part of a doomsday defense. With so many nuclear warheads, an iron-willed planetary governor could turn his world into slag rather than allowing it to fall to Omnius.
Although the thinking machines also had access to atomics, Omnius had concluded that atomics were an inefficient and nonselective way to impose control, and radioactive cleanup afterward was difficult. Besides, with unlimited resources and a deep reservoir of patience, the relentless evermind had no need of such weapons.
Now, as Xavier disembarked from the lead survey ship at the Giedi City spaceport, he blinked under bright sunlight. The well-maintained metropolis sprawled in front of him, with its habitation complexes and productive industrial buildings amid manicured parks and canals. The colors were bright and fresh, and flowers bloomed in ornate beds, although with his new Tlulaxa lungs and tissues he could smell only a hint of the most potent scents, even when he breathed deeply.
Dune: The Butlerian Jihad Page 9
