Mentats of Dune

by Brian Herbert

  The Mentat used his fingers to tick off the sequence of events. “That allows you to lure the Butlerians out of central Zimia. They will flood to the chosen villages, and the journey itself may drain their exuberance. Then you can set up security perimeters with your troops and bottle the Butlerians in those three towns.”

  Roderick frowned. “I don’t like it. The mobs will ransack the target villages.”

  Screams and explosions could be heard outside. A column of fire rose into the night.

  “But they will be away from Zimia.” The Headmaster shrugged. “We cannot always find a solution that we like.”

  * * *

  THE REPORTS OF destruction throughout Zimia forced Roderick to cut his losses. The Mentat was right. Studying maps, he selected three underpopulated and easily defensible towns, and gave his decision to the Headmaster.

  Gilbertus Albans slipped out among the Butlerians and initiated a cascade of rumors, suggesting that computers and robots were secretly stored in those three outlying villages. Roderick felt anguished about the welfare of the citizens there, but he needed to protect the capital. He dispatched urgent messages ahead of the mobs, hoping to convince the targeted townspeople to flee while they still had time.

  Well after midnight, as the rampage began to die down in the heart of Zimia, Manford Torondo heard the rumors himself. Reacting quickly, he sent teams of his supporters to punish the accused towns. After making his announcement, Manford summoned his Mentat and Swordmaster to join him, and departed from Salusa Secundus, turning his back on the mayhem he had caused. Roderick felt that the man was slipping away to hide from the consequences of what he had done.

  At last, though, Roderick had a chance to snuff out the uprising. With Manford gone, his followers were confused but still keyed up. Roderick rushed Imperial troops to surround the three scapegoat towns and bottle up the most vehement Butlerians—and he told the troops to be ruthless. Just before dawn, the crisis began to wind down.

  Red-eyed and exhausted, Roderick sent a message to his brother, giving him the good news, although Salvador was cautious, suggesting that he remain in isolation a while longer, just to be certain. Roderick didn’t argue with him, for now, but he knew that when day broke+ p. p, the people would want to be reassured that their Emperor had survived. In the interim, Roderick was the Emperor’s proxy and dealt with the response throughout Zimia. He spoke in public, looking calm and steady, a firm bastion in this crisis. Roderick Corrino was what they needed to see.

  As dawn arrived, cleanup operations began in the capital city; fires were put out, “revelers” arrested, and field hospitals set up where Suk doctors triaged the injured. Numerous bodies—Butlerians, Zimia police, Imperial troops, innocent bystanders, and even children—were discovered in the rubble around the central plaza. Many of the victims had simply come out to see the parade and were swept up in the mayhem. The bodies were brought to a central holding area to be processed and identified.

  Roderick felt so weary and wrung out that he indulged in a cup of bitter spice coffee, and the stimulant gave him a needed boost. At last he received the welcome news that Haditha and his children had been taken to a place of safety, but right now he had no chance to go home to them.

  By midmorning, Roderick felt that the worst had been brought under control, and he began to feel a hint of calm. Then a haggard-looking Haditha burst into his office in the Hall of Parliament, pulling ahead of a distraught-looking guard. Roderick rushed to greet her with an embrace, knowing how frightened and exhausted she must be.

  But when he held her, she pulled back with a terrible expression on her face, her entire body shaking so hard she could not speak. A wan-looking guard who had accompanied her stood awkwardly nearby.

  “Nantha!” Haditha finally cried, and the name sounded raw, as if torn from her throat. She could form no other words.

  Roderick took her by the shoulders and stared at her grief-stricken expression. Beside her, the guard mumbled, “We received word that the bodies of your youngest daughter and her nanny were found among the wreckage. Apparently they were trampled.…”

  Roderick couldn’t believe what he had heard. “But I received a report that my family was safe!”

  The guard looked away. “Apparently, they didn’t account for all your children, Prince. There was much confusion.”

  “Nantha wanted to see the parade!” Haditha sobbed. “She begged her nanny, and they went out together. I didn’t think anything of it. And all night, I hoped—I hoped.…”

  Of course Nantha would have gone out to the parade, Roderick realized with a sick despair. The seven-year-old girl had always liked the colors and pageantry. He could imagine Nantha tugging the nanny’s arm, pleading, laughing, and the nanny would have relented. And why not? They had seen many parades together.

  Haditha’s moans cut through to his heart. Roderick could not focus his eyes, so he clorampage festiv

  If you strike me, I will strike you harder. If you hate me, I will hate you more. You cannot win.

  —GENERAL AGAMEMNON, A Time for Titans

  Though Denali’s atmosphere was poisonous, Ptolemy felt safe here. It was the Butlerians who made him nervous. They were more dangerous than any planet.

  He made his way across the bleak, deadly landscape, riding inside the cab of his specially adapted walker, his arms and legs connected to modified thoughtrodes that let him control the complex machine systems. But working the systems manually was a chore, and Ptolemy envied the nimble new cymeks.

  Installed in their preservation tanks and connected to a network of thoughtrodes, the proto-Navigator brains easily adapted to the powerful walker forms he had given them. Ptolemy was particularly impressed by the agility and intensity of two former mercenary officers who had left their service to volunteer for Navigator conversion, Hok Evander and Adem Garl. Now they were among the most aggressive of the walker-brains.

  Eight of the installed brains used old walkers salvaged from the ruins of the previous cymek base here, but other Navigator brains rode in new mechanical bodies built by Denali engineers. The enhanced walkers would be more than sufficient against any weapons the barbarians were likely to use.

  Today, Ptolemy accompanied the new walkers. They were breathtaking! With improved thoughtrode sensors, his shiny cymeks danced across the rugged landscape like mechanical spiders. In contrast, the older salvaged walkers had a po thinking machinesdp the othernderous gait, as if the brains had to work harder to move their unwieldy systems. Walker bodies were interchangeable, and brain canisters could be transferred from a walker machine into a flyer or a manipulator body as needed. Ptolemy wanted his new Navigator Titans to learn how to use every possible form.

  He preferred the burly, intimidating walkers, though. There was something satisfying about imagining them approaching their targets in an inexorable phalanx that made the victims feel the terror of what was going to happen to them. Yes, he wanted Manford Torondo to know what was coming for him.

  Away from the protected lab domes, Ptolemy rode inside a pressurized life-support cab installed in one of the old walkers. This allowed him to walk alongside his new creations in the poisonous atmosphere, looking for ways to improve them. If he ever became a cymek himself, Ptolemy would not need to worry about life-support systems anymore. He would go wherever he wished, in any environment, and he would fear nothing.

  Directeur Venport had already seen Ptolemy’s reports. Perhaps the Directeur would want to become a cymek, and then he could guide the new Titans. Ptolemy did not see himself as a leader and had no wish to become like the despot Agamemnon. He had not, in fact, wanted any part of the role he now had—but the barbarians had forced him into it by destroying his life, his lab, his friend.

  Now, Ptolemy tried to keep up with the exuberant Navigator cymeks as they strutted across the terrain. Their multiple legs moved with remarkable ease, and they practiced ripping huge boulders from the ground and hurling them as far as possible. Due to the caustic mists, Pt
olemy could not even see where they landed.

  Inside his older machine, he struggled to keep up with the new-model cymeks as they thundered over the rocky ground. He worked his arms, linked to the controls, but the walker limbs were not analogous, and he occasionally became tangled, feeling clumsy. His other machines were so graceful.

  Practicing their fighting abilities, they grappled with one another to test strength and reflexes, warrior arm against warrior arm. He identified each of them by unique light panels on their bodies. One walker, operated by the brain of the female Xinshop, sprang to a high outcropping, but failed to gain sufficient height. Before she could tumble down, however, rockets erupted from the body’s rear thrusters, lifting the new cymek to safety on top of the rocks. Once stabilized, Xinshop raised a pair of grappling arms as if in triumph.

  Ptolemy liked Xinshop’s willingness to serve. She had been among the first of the failed Navigators to embrace her new possibilities as a cymek. Each time he spoke with her, he envisioned what Xinshop used to look like before he’d met her, when she had been a radiant young woman volunteering for the VenHold Spacing Fleet. Sometimes Ptolemy even imagined that they might be together as a couple, both of them cymeks. But before that happened, he had a lot of work to do getting his mechanized force together, refining systems. That was his priority.

  He also liked the reemerging personality of Yabido Onel, who was bounding across the rugged landscape in the foreground. For a long time Yabido had refused to say much through the speakerpatch, except for his desire to die because he had failed as a Navigator candidate. But after Ptolemy showed him what he could achieve as a cymek, he had felt renewed hope and determination, which expressed itself as bright energy patterns in his brain.

  Ptolemy could still see the glow of research domes. Although his expanding Titan project had siphoned some of Denali’s most talented engineers and support staff, Administrator Noffe was still developing weaponry in in+zp mmedependent programs, such as scrambler pulses that could boil human brains, in much the way the Sorceresses of Rossak had killed the old cymeks. One research team created small mechanical “crickets” that could skitter into enemy ships and ignite volatile fuel storage chambers.

  Ptolemy’s fellow researchers had their own reasons to dislike the fanatics, but he believed his program would be the one that guaranteed victory against Manford Torondo. A marching horde of new Titans powered by proto-Navigator brains would strike fear into any populace.

  As he trudged along in his repaired walker, far from the research domes, Ptolemy noticed two amber warning lights on the control board inside the cab. His life-support systems were losing power due to a leak in a coupling, eroded by the caustic atmosphere. And he was trapped in his small chamber.

  He ran an estimate and realized that he barely had time to hurry back to the shielded complex. No safety margin.

  Without delay, he worked the controls and turned his walker around while transmitting a distress signal to his Titans. With a jittering gait, he tried to hobble across the landscape, but he was too anxious, which made him uncoordinated. His arms twitched inside the linkages, the thoughtrode signals scrambled.

  He didn’t want to die out here, not with his work incomplete.

  A hose snapped and began to leak fuel onto the ground outside. Warning lights flashed across the cab controls. Now Ptolemy realized he could not possibly make it back. Unable to control the mechanical legs, he stumbled, and went down.

  Moments later, two burly Titans—the pair of mercenaries Hok Evander and Adem Garl—appeared on either side and grasped his smaller cymek body with their mechanical claws. They raised his walker form off the ground like two metal crabs lifting their little brother. With an eerily coordinated gait, the Navigator cymeks bounded across the rugged rocks toward the glowing domes.

  Another leak, and Ptolemy’s life-support system failed entirely. The caustic gases seeping into the systems would eat away more seals.

  His comm system was still active, and he transmitted an emergency alert to the base. The rest of the Navigator Titans rushed back toward the facility like a coordinated rescue team, so that when Ptolemy arrived at the main dome’s airlock door, they could assist.

  Through the swirling mists, Ptolemy made out the dome just ahead, but he could also smell the acrid vapors leaking into the life-support cab, beginning to poison him. The chamber integrity had failed in five separate areas. His eyes burned from the acid fumes, but somehow (delirium?) it didn’t feel as painful as the burning tears that had streamed down his face after he saw Dr. Elchan roasted alive in the lab.

  Having received Ptolemy’s emergency transmission, Administrator Noffe appeared on the screen. “Ready to receive you. You’re going to be safe.”

  “It’ll be close.” Ptolemy coughed, and each breath seared like heated glass dust washed down with acid. He coughed again, and a splatter of blood appeared on the control screen in front of his face.

  Alarmed, Administrator Noffe shouted commands to the two cymeks carrying Ptolemy’s walker. They hauled him to the wide-open door of the hangar dome and roughly tossed the twitching, failing walker body inside. Using nimble claw hands, they operated the airlock controls.

  Sealed in his cab, Ptolemy coughed uncontrollably. He breathed in a blistering-hot chemical mist. With a roar of loud wind, the air ex+zp mmechangers inside the dome began to suck away the contaminated atmosphere, venting it outside. Even before the green light winked on, Ptolemy disengaged the cab’s hatch and popped it open. He couldn’t wait any longer. How could the air within the hangar dome be deadl

  Every hammer has the innate capacity to strike a nail. Every human mind has the innate capacity for greatness. But not every hammer is properly used, nor is every human mind.

  —DRAIGO ROGET, Mentat debriefing for Venport Holdings

  Even before he left Arrakis orbit, Taref was weary of being astonished. He didn’t know how many more remarkable things he could endure. Even his dreams had never imagined so much.

  If he returned to the desert sietch now and told them everything he had experienced in the sh+ what p the otherort time since accepting VenHold’s offer, Naib Rurik would tell him to abandon such nonsense, and his older brothers would mock him.

  But Taref knew it was all true.

  His wide-eyed companions clustered together aboard the VenHold shuttle, staring out the windowports as the craft rose into orbit and approached the main spacefolder. The isolated Freemen tribes were vaguely aware of other planets and other ways, but none of his friends had known much beyond their lives in an isolated cave settlement … until now.

  Taref and Lillis stood at the windowport, marveling at the view. Even dour Shurko, unable to hide his nervousness, stared at the brassy sphere of the planet. That was Arrakis down there—it seemed utterly incomprehensible. The largest sietch was no more than an immeasurable speck from here, and the sandworms were too small to be seen. Even Arrakis City, the largest metropolis Taref had ever visited or imagined, was barely a mark tucked into a sheltered rock-rimmed basin. As the shuttle continued to rise, he managed to locate the city only after careful concentration and help from Lillis.

  “Will we ever go back? Did we make the right decision, Taref?” she asked, and Shurko looked to him as well, eager to hear his answer.

  “Of course we did. Our people will be proud.”

  “Our people will never understand us,” Shurko said. “They won’t know why we did this.”

  Taref had always felt like a misfit, imagining stories and worlds while the rest of his tribe found all they needed to know in the sand at their feet and the wind on their faces. But he remembered history. “Generations ago, our ancestors escaped slavery and flew an unguided spacefolder to our new home. We’ve been stranded on Arrakis ever since—and now we are simply returning to the rest of the universe, breaking our chains and escaping our enslavement to the desert. And if we do well out there, my friends, we’ll be the first of many Freemen who branch out. Our people no longer need
to be trapped where there is nothing but dunes and the prospect of a parched death.”

  Taref doubted he would ever want to return to that dust bowl, and he did not know many others in the sietch who thought the way he did. Even though he had instilled a sense of curiosity in his friends, they didn’t really feel the depth of his dreams; the others merely listened to his impassioned stories rather than dreaming for themselves.

  For much of his life, Taref had felt trapped in the isolated, primitive settlement. His father had berated him for dreaming about places other than Arrakis. “How does that help your survival? If Shai-Hulud comes because you walk with too much rhythm across the sands, will he listen to your stories before he devours you?”

  But Taref had dreamed anyway. He chafed under Naib Rurik’s stern disapproval, and questioned many of the rules of the desert. He knew that traditions were a basis for day-to-day survival, but some of the old ways were no longer valid. He asked questions about old customs, drawing only ire from other tribe members, not answers. Peculiar Taref would never become his people’s Naib, nor did he ever want to. Naib Rurik would probably rule the sietch for many years, and Taref’s two older brothers would take their father’s place.

  Taref had seen the rigid path his own life was set to take, like a channel carved deep into the rock—and he didn’t accept what he saw. He wanted the universe! It must be so wonderful out there, planet after planet of miracles. Back in the clear, dry air of the desert, he used to look up at the stars and imagine other worlds+ with . p. Several times, he had made the journey to Arrakis City just to watch the spaceships arrive and depart … and dream of what might be.

  Taref wanted to be like the offworlders. They had so many opportunities open to them, yet in a way he also resented them. Several times he had volunteered to work aboard spice harvesters because he knew it would draw his father’s disapproval. And when he and his friends sabotaged the harvesting equipment, Taref pretended he was getting even with the offworlders because of who they were and the opportunities they had.