Xerxes soared toward the pockmarked cliffs. Below, the nimbly advancing combat machines of the eager neo-cymeks plowed through underbrush, blasting obstacles, destroying everything in sight.
In full view of the cliff warrens, Xerxes briefly hovered above the polymerized canopy that formed a small landing area for hrethgir ships, then launched fifteen projectiles. Half of them struck the hard cliff walls, detonating in white-and-black starbursts of broken rock; other shots penetrated the tunnels where humans lived like grubs infesting wood.
In rapid retreat, Xerxes raced back across the treetops and lifted into the sky. As Agamemnon and Juno soared toward him, he crowed in triumph, “Our first score! Let the neo-cymeks continue the rout.”
Smooth fiber-wound systems and extruded legs carried the neo-cymek footsoldiers through the underbrush. From front launcher tubes they shot plasma grenades that incinerated a pathway to the tunnel cities. Soft purple foliage ignited around them, fungal trees bursting into columns of flame and sending indigenous animals fleeing. Majestic birds soared into the sky, and the cymek attackers blasted them into clouds of crackling feathers.
Though pleased that the initial salvo had gone smoothly, Agamemnon did not offer any congratulations. He and Juno swept silently forward for the second airborne attack from different positions. Below them, the crablike neo-cymek walkers arrived at the cliffs to complete the destruction.
ZUFA CENVA AND her Sorceress commandos prepared themselves inside an internal room that Aurelius Venport had designed for his business meetings. None of them showed fear, only anger and determination. For the past year, these women had accepted their primary purpose in life, even if its completion would result in their deaths.
“This is what we’ve trained for,” Zufa said. “But I won’t delude you about our chances.” Uncertain of her words, she nonetheless tried to sound confident.
“We are ready, Mistress Cenva,” the women said in unison.
She drew a deep breath, calming herself, using the mental control she had worked so hard to instill in her students.
The chamber’s stone walls trembled as the first bombs found their targets, dispersing poison clouds into the tunnels. Thinking ahead, Aurelius Venport had made certain every woman had a breathing mask while he evacuated the rest of the population. Zufa was surprised she hadn’t thought of the precaution herself. She hoped he had managed to get to safety, that he hadn’t foolishly wasted time trying to protect his stockpiles of drugs.
Now she looked at the devoted women with her, knowing their names and their personalities: Tirbes, who might become the best if she could harness her potential; impulsive Silin; creative and unpredictable Camio; Rucia, who followed her code of honor…and more.
“Camio,” she said, “I choose you to strike our next blow.”
A thin young woman with long straw-white hair stood, her expression settling into a bloodless smile. “It is my honor, Mistress Cenva.”
Leaving her sisters behind, Camio adjusted the breathing mask over her face, then emerged from the sheltered chamber. She moved forward steadily and began the meditation necessary to summon the power locked within her brain. Surprisingly, she saw no bodies in the stone corridors, which reassured her that the population had been successfully evacuated. Now nothing would hinder the Sorceresses.
Rubble lay strewn on the tunnel floor, dislodged by explosive blasts. Wisps of greenish vapor carried poison into the caves. Camio was not afraid for her own life, but she had to hurry.
She heard the whistle of an approaching projectile and pressed herself against the tunnel wall. A powerful blast struck the cliffside, sending a shockwave through the interior corridors and dwelling rooms. Camio regained her balance, then pushed onward. The inside of her skull sang with pent-up energies. She did not glance at the tapestries and furniture, at the rooms and meeting chambers where she had spent her life.
Rossak was her home. The machines were her enemies. Camio herself was a weapon.
When she made her way to the opening and looked out upon the burning jungle, she saw three crablike walker-forms with heavily armored brain canisters hanging like egg sacks just above the legs. Each was a human who had sold his soul and sworn loyalty to the thinking machines.
Out in the jungle Camio heard the thunder of continued explosions, a roar of plasma blasts incinerating purplish foliage. Glider-forms soared in for a new attack, dumping poison, spraying flames. Dozens of neo-cymek walkers strode toward the protected cliffs, destroying everything around them.
She must wait until the right moment in order to eradicate as many enemies as possible, all at once.
From below, Camio heard a smooth skittering. The three fastest walker-forms were scaling the sheer cliff, using explosive-driven anchors and diamond-edged claws to grasp the rock face.
She smiled at the trio of crablike neo-cymeks. Flexible armored legs hauled the weapon-studded body cores up to the main caves. Camio stood alone in the doorway, facing her cyborg enemies. She knew when they were close enough.
The first neo-cymek invader raised itself, and she saw the sparkling optic threads around its weapon turrets. Detecting her, the cymek turned its flamers toward the new target. Fibrous scope-cameras shone brightly.
In the instant before it could fire, Camio released the pent-up energies within her mind and body. She let go with a mindstorm that boiled the brains of the three closest neo-cymeks, and damaged two others just beginning to climb the cliff. Five cymeks, removed from the battle.
Her last thought was of the excellent bargain she had made for her life.
AFTER CAMIO, FOUR more Sorceresses emerged, one at a time. As she dispatched each woman, Zufa Cenva felt the acute loss. These trainees were like true daughters, and losing them felt like swallowing gulps of acid. But her volunteers willingly marched out and sacrificed their lives to crush the cymek offensive. “The thinking machines must never win.”
Finally Zufa’s sixth volunteer, Silin, returned alive but disoriented, her milky-pale skin flushed. She had mentally prepared herself to die. Instead, she had found nothing left to destroy.
“They have retreated beyond range, Mistress Cenva,” she reported. “The cymeks are pulling back to their ships. The combat walkers and gliders have returned to the landing area.”
Zufa hurried through the wreckage to the window overhangs. She saw the charred remains of her five fallen commandos, each woman burned from the inside out with white-hot mental fire. Her heart felt the volcanic heat of anger and loss. She watched the terrible machines with human minds climb aboard their vessels and punch back into the atmosphere.
In time, the scattered refugees would return. Aurelius Venport would bring them back. Under his supervision, the Rossak people would rebuild and repair the cliff cities with pride and confidence, knowing that they had stood up against the thinking machines.
Zufa Cenva had to cling to that. “We define victories in our own way,” she said aloud.
WHEN THE THREE Titans joined their ships with the robotic battle fleet, Agamemnon issued his summary before Juno or the fool Xerxes could give the thinking machines information he didn’t want them to have. The cymek general would color the truth to suit his purposes.
“We have made a significant impact,” Agamemnon declared to the recording watcheyes. “Though we lost several neo-cymeks in our direct assault on Rossak, we did inflict mortal cellular damage on at least five of the powerful Sorceresses.”
Over a tight private channel, Juno transmitted her surprise and delight at the Titan general’s skewing of his report. Xerxes wisely knew to remain silent.
“We have caused substantial harm to the new hrethgir telepathic weapon,” Agamemnon continued, sounding proud in the face of the disaster. “It should be a drastic setback to their capabilities.”
He had similarly colored past events while writing his memoirs, painting his own biased version of history. Omnius would never question the summary, because it fit technically with the objective facts.
/> “Best of all,” Juno added, “we lost none of the Titans in this offensive. The neo-cymeks can all be replaced.”
With Rossak’s two orbital stations severely damaged by the robot warships, and thousands of humans dead on board, the thinking machine fleet withdrew from the wreckage of ships and platforms. Below, the jungles in the habitable canyons continued to burn.
“In my assessment, Omnius can record the strike on Rossak an unqualified victory!” Agamemnon said.
“Agreed,” Juno and Xerxes both chimed in.
It seems as if some perverse sorcerer set out to foul up a planet as much as possible…and then seeded it with melange for a prize.
—TUK KEEDAIR,
correspondence with Aurelius Venport
Hard-eyed scavengers positioned themselves in strategic places along the hot, dusty streets of Arrakis City. They peered through narrow slits in the dirty cloths over their faces and held out their hands or jangled small bells, begging for water. Tuk Keedair had never seen anything like it.
He’d been forced to remain here for a full month while Naib Dhartha’s nomads gathered enough melange to fill the Tlulaxa cargo ship. Keedair had paid for lodging in Arrakis City, but after a week he decided that his private shuttle at the spaceport offered better sleeping facilities. He enjoyed being away from the inquisitive eyes of other guests, fights in the halls, solicitors, and beggars. When alone, a man never had to worry about trusting his companions.
Arrakis posed so many problems to establishing a simple business. He felt like a swimmer struggling against a powerful tide…not that any native of this desert would understand the comparison. Up in the orbiting cargo ship Keedair’s would-be slave raiders were restless, so he’d had to shuttle up and resolve disputes to avert violence. A Tlulaxa knew how to cut losses. Twice now, disgusted with unruly crewmen too bored to behave themselves, he’d sold their work contracts to geological survey teams in the deep desert. If, by some chance, the rowdies returned to Arrakis City before his cargo vessel departed with its load of spice, those humbled men would crawl on their knees and beg him to take them back to the Thalim system.
Another problem. Although Naib Dhartha was ostensibly Keedair’s business partner in this enterprise, the Zensunni leader did not trust others. To increase speed and efficiency, Keedair had offered to fly his shuttle directly out to where the nomads harvested the spice, but the naib would hear none of it. Keedair then offered to ferry Dhartha and his Zensunni band out to their settlement, thus eliminating the long trek from a mountain hideaway. But that idea had been refused as well.
So Keedair had to wait at the spaceport, week after week, while groups of dusky-skinned desert rats trudged into town, their backs bowed from heavy packs filled with spice. He paid them in installments and dickered if he found inordinate amounts of sand mixed into the melange, making it artificially heavy. The naib protested his innocence, but Keedair detected a certain amount of grudging respect for an offworlder who would not be taken for a fool. Keedair’s cargo hold was filling so slowly that he thought he would go mad.
Through all the difficulties, Keedair soothed his troubled nerves by sampling more and more of the product. He became fond of spice beer, spice coffee, and just about anything else that contained the remarkable ingredient.
In his most lucid moments, Keedair questioned his decision to remain here, wondering if it might have been wiser to take a loss on this whole raid and simply go back to the civilized League Worlds. There he could start over, take possession of another cargo load of squalling slaves to be sold on Poritrin or Zanbar, or bring fresh organ resources back to the Tlulaxa farms.
As he sat in his private cabin, Keedair stroked his long braid and swore not to give up on his gamble. Returning now would force him to accept massive losses for the year, and he would be honor-bound to shear off his lovely hair. Stubborn pride compelled him to remain on Arrakis as long as possible.
He disliked the arid environment, the smell of burnt rocks in the air, and the howling storms that battered the mountains and scoured the spaceport. But oh how he loved melange! Day after day, Keedair sat alone in his shuttlecraft and consumed hefty quantities, even adding spice to his packaged food supplies, which made the blandest meals taste like ambrosia.
In a drug-fog, he envisioned selling the product to rich nobles, offworld hedonists on Salusa Secundus, Kirana III, and Pincknon—perhaps even to the fanatical bioresearchers on Tlulax. He had felt vibrant and alive since adding melange to his diet, and every day it seemed that his face looked more relaxed and younger. He stared into an illuminated mirror, studying his narrow features. The whites of his eyes had begun to show an unnatural indigo tinge, like diluted ink seeping into the sclera.
Naib Dhartha’s tribe of desert people had those eerie “blue-blue” eyes. An environmental contaminant? Maybe a manifestation of heavy melange consumption? He felt too marvelous to consider that it might be a debilitating side effect. Probably just a temporary discoloration.
He prepared a fresh cup of potent spice coffee.
THE FOLLOWING DAWN, as the star-pricked sky faded into pastel sunrise, a group of wandering nomads came to the spaceport, led by Naib Dhartha. They toted bulging packs of spice on their shoulders.
Keedair hurried to meet them, blinking into the bright morning light. Wrapped in dusty white traveling clothes, Dhartha looked pleased with himself. “This is the last of the melange you requested, Trader Keedair.”
As a matter of form, he went forward to inspect four packs at random, verifying that they indeed contained rich melange fresh from the desert scraping grounds, with sand filtered out of it.
“As before, your product is acceptable. This is all I need to complete my cargo. Now I shall return to civilization.”
But Keedair did not like the expression on Dhartha’s face. He wondered if it might become profitable for his own men to raid some cave settlements out in the deserts after all, enslaving a few of these sand rats.
“You will return to us, Trader Keedair?” A greedy glint illuminated the darkness behind the indigo of his eyes. “If you request more melange, I will be happy to provide it for you. We could come to an extended agreement.”
Keedair grunted noncommittally, unwilling to give the man too much hope for a future business relationship. “Depends on whether I can sell this load for a profit. Spice is an unproven commodity in the League, and I’m taking a big enough risk as it is.” He drew himself up. “But we’ve agreed on a deal for this load, and I am always true to my word.”
He paid Dhartha the remaining amount. “If I return, it will be many months from now, perhaps a year. If I lose money, I won’t come back at all.” Dismissively, he scanned the grimy spaceport, the desert, and the craggy mountains. “Not that there is anything else to bring me back to Arrakis.”
Dhartha looked him squarely in the eye. “No one can know the future, Trader Keedair.” Their deal consummated, the desert leader bowed and stepped back. The white-clad nomads watched Keedair like vultures eyeing a dying animal, waiting to pick apart the corpse.
He returned to his shuttle without a further farewell, anticipating that he might just turn a profit on this venture. Keedair tried to envision how to make spice into a viable long-term business, with less aggravation than procuring and handling troublesome slaves.
Unfortunately, the operations he had in mind would require a large infusion of capital, and he didn’t have that kind of money. But he had a worthy outside investor in mind. Exactly the person he needed, a connoisseur of exotic drugs, a man of great wealth and vision…an entrepreneur who could intelligently judge the potential of such an operation.
Aurelius Venport of Rossak.
“I am not evil,” said Shaitan. “Do not try to label what you do not understand.”
—Buddislamic Sutra
While Serena tended the robot’s prized flowers in their delicate terra cotta pots, Erasmus watched her with continuing fascination.
She looked up, not sure how far
she could—or should—push the thinking machine. “In order to understand humanity, Erasmus, it is not necessary to inflict so much cruelty.”
The robot swiveled his mirrored face to her, forming the flowmetal into a puzzled expression. “Cruelty? I have never had such an intent.”
“You are evil, Erasmus. I see the way you treat human slaves, how you torment them, torture them, force them to live under terrible conditions.”
“I am not evil, Serena, just curious. I pride myself on the objectivity of my researches.”
She stood behind a flowerpot holding a bright red spray of geraniums, as if it might protect her in case the robot became violent. “Oh? What about the tortures in your labs?”
Erasmus showed her an unreadable expression. “Those are my private inquiries, conducted under strict, delicate controls. You must not go into the laboratories. I forbid you to see them. I do not want you to disrupt my experiments.”
“Your experiments with them…or with me?”
The robot merely gave her a maddeningly placid smile and did not answer.
Upset with him, aware of how much harm he was doing and still despairingly heartsick now that she carried Xavier’s child, Serena overreacted, knocking the flowerpot off its ledge. It smashed on the hard glazed tiles of the greenhouse floor.
Erasmus looked at the shattered clay pot, the spilled earth, the crumpled red flowers. “Unlike humans, I never destroy indiscriminately, to no purpose.”
Serena lifted her chin. “You never show a kind side, either. Why not do good deeds for a change?”
“Good deeds?” Erasmus seemed genuinely interested. “Such as?”
Automated misters sprayed down from the greenhouse piping, watering the plants with a gentle hiss. Not wanting to lose the opportunity, Serena said, “Feed your slaves better, for one thing. Not just the privileged trustees, but the household servants and the poor wretches you keep like animals in your pens.”
The Butlerian Jihad Page 40
