“Serena found allies among the humans on Earth,” Manion said. “Two trustees, men raised by the machines. She convinced them to flee with her.”
Xavier frowned. “Are you certain they are not spies?”
Manion shrugged. “Serena trusts them.”
“Then I suppose that is good enough.”
They entered the Dream Voyager, and Xavier felt a cold heaviness in his chest. He knew where Manion was taking him. Aboard the update ship, he noticed the odd configurations, the smooth curves, the clean metallic lines that denoted efficiency and also carried an unconscious sleek beauty.
“We’ve not moved the boy,” said Manion. “I told them to wait for you.”
“I don’t know if I should thank you for that.” When the Viceroy opened a sealed storage compartment and a wispy breath of cold steam crawled like feathers into the air, Xavier overcame his reluctance and leaned forward.
The child’s body was wrapped in a tough, dark covering, a sealed preservation shroud that hid specific details, leaving only a small, painfully sad shape of what had once been a vibrant little boy. Xavier touched the cold wrapping. His fingertips were gentle, as if he didn’t want to disturb his son’s slumber.
Behind him, Manion was breathing hard. “Serena said…she said she named the boy after me.” Then his words choked off, and Xavier reached in to lift out the wrapped package, all that remained of the child he had never met, had never even known about until it was too late. The boy seemed unbelievably, absurdly light.
Xavier found he had nothing to say, but as he carried his son out into the night air of Salusa Secundus, taking little Manion home for the first and only time, he wept openly.
Machines may be predictable, but we are also reliable. Conversely, humans change their beliefs and their loyalties with remarkable, and distressing, ease.
—ERASMUS
Erasmus Dialogues
Vorian Atreides sat at a large, polished table in a debriefing room, ready to face a crowd of gathered political leaders, all of whom had questions and suspicions. He hoped he had answers for them.
Iblis Ginjo would be interviewed separately. The League had already dispatched its fastest scout ship to Earth to verify the stories and assess the current status of the revolt.
Looking around the capital city had absolutely astounded Vor. The buildings of Zimia had none of the outrageous grandeur of Earth, and the streets seemed…disorganized. But the people he saw, the colors, the clothes, the expressions on their faces—he felt as if he had awakened from a dream. Vor steeled himself and resolved to cooperate so he could help the free humans in every way possible. If they would allow him.
For an interrogation session such as this, Agamemnon would have used pain stimulators and exotic torture devices. Undoubtedly, the League saw this as a remarkable opportunity to obtain inside information on Omnius. Sitting around the table and standing against the walls, representatives regarded him with curiosity, some with hatred or at least resentment.
Always before, Vor had been proud of his lineage, deluded by the perceived glories of Agamemnon and the Titans. Free humans, though, had a different view of history. A more accurate view, he hoped.
Uncomfortable before so many agitated people, Vor felt adrift, missing Serena, hoping she was all right. Had she reunited with Xavier Harkonnen yet? Would she ever want to see Vor again?
Before the buzz of conversation could dwindle in the debriefing room, Vor spoke, starting slowly and selecting his words with the utmost care. “I make no excuses for my behavior. My cooperation with the machines has certainly caused harm and pain to people in the League of Nobles.” He looked around the room, met each curious eye. “Yes, I worked as a trustee on an update ship, delivering copies of Omnius to the Synchronized Worlds. I was raised by the thinking machines, taught their version of history. I even revered my father, General Agamemnon. I thought he was a great cymek.”
He heard mutters around the room. “Serena Butler, though, opened my eyes. She challenged me to question what I had been taught, and finally I saw that I had been deceived.” He wrestled with what he was about to offer. It seemed the final betrayal of his past.
Let it be so.
He took a deep breath, continued. “It is my fervent hope that I can use my knowledge and skill—as well as my detailed information about the workings of the thinking machines—to assist my fellow human beings, who are currently in revolt against Omnius on Earth.”
A growing mutter passed among the listeners around the table as the representatives began to realize the implications of his words. “I distrust any man who would betray his father,” one of the representatives said, a tall man with a pockmarked face. “How will we know he is not giving us distorted intelligence?”
Vor frowned at the accusation. Surprisingly, the coldly beautiful Zufa Cenva of Rossak said from one side, “No, he speaks the truth.” Her dark eyes penetrated him, and he had difficulty looking into them for more than a moment. “If he dares to lie here, I will know.”
One of the debriefers looked at his notes. “And now, Vorian Atreides, we have many questions for you.”
Is there any greater joy than to return home? Are any other memories so vivid, any other hopes so bright?
—SERENA BUTLER
When Serena awoke with the first pale light of dawn, she found herself alone in a soft bed surrounded by soothing sounds, colors, and smells. Many times after Fredo’s death, she had visited her mother in the City of Introspection and enjoyed the contemplative atmosphere. But after a short time she had always grown impatient with meditation and pondering, preferring to do something more active.
She dressed quickly as the morning light grew outside. Xavier might be back on Salusa by now. The brief sleep had done her good, but she felt a leaden weight in her chest that she knew would never lift until she found Xavier and told him the terrible news about their son. Despite her bruised heart and soul, she had never backed down from her responsibilities.
Before the City of Introspection became fully awake, Serena quietly went to the outbuildings and found a small groundcar. She didn’t want to disturb her mother. Raising her chin in determination, Serena refused to delay. It had been long enough already.
Climbing into the vehicle, she went through the motions of powering up the familiar engines. She knew where she had to go. Serena rode off through the open gates, heading down the road toward the Tantor estate, where Xavier had made his home. She hoped she would find him there….
Emil Tantor opened the heavy wooden door and looked at her with astonishment. “We were delighted to hear of your return!” His brown eyes were as kind and warm as she had remembered.
Gray wolfhounds barked inside the foyer and slipped past Emil to bound in circles, greeting Serena. Despite the dread in her heart, she smiled. A wide-eyed boy came out to look at her. “Vergyl! You’ve grown so much!” She fought a swell of sadness at the vivid reminder of how long she had been away.
Before the boy could answer, Emil gestured her inside. “Vergyl, please take the dogs outside so this poor woman can have a bit of quiet, after what she’s been through.” He gave her a small, deeply compassionate smile. “I didn’t expect you to come here. Would you have a glass of morning tea with me, Serena? Lucille always brews it strong.”
She hesitated. “Actually, I need to see Xavier. Is he back yet? I need to—” The old man’s startled expression stopped her. “What is it? Is he all right?”
“No, no, Xavier is fine, but…he isn’t here. He went directly to your father’s estate.” Emil Tantor seemed to have more to tell her, but his voice trailed off.
Troubled by his reaction, Serena thanked him and ran back to her groundcar, leaving the old man standing at the wooden door. “I’ll see him there, then.” Xavier probably had business with her father. Perhaps they were already planning to aid the human rebels on Earth.
She drove to the familiar manor house atop the high hill, surrounded by vineyards and olive groves. Her hea
rt ached as she slowed to a halt by the main entry. Home. And Xavier was here.
She parked near the wellspring and breathlessly approached the front door. Her eyes were stinging, her legs trembling. She could hear her pulse pounding in her ears. Greater even than the guilt she bore or the fear of what she must say, was a longing to be with her lover again.
Xavier opened the door even before she reached it. At first his face seemed like a sunrise, nearly blinding her. He looked older, stronger, more handsome than he had even in her fantasies. She wanted to melt.
“Serena!” He gasped, then grinned and swept her into his arms. After only a moment he pulled away awkwardly. “I knew you were at the City of Introspection, but I didn’t realize you had recovered yet. I just returned in the middle of the night, and I, uh—” He seemed to be fumbling for words.
“Oh, Xavier, it doesn’t matter! I needed to be with you so badly. There is so much…so much to tell.” All at once the magnitude of what she needed to say seemed to crush her shoulders. Her voice caught.
He stroked her cheek. “Serena, I already know the terrible news. I’ve heard about…our son.” He looked at her with sadness and pain, but a firm acceptance.
When they stepped into the foyer, Xavier withdrew to an awkward distance, as if facing her was more difficult than confronting all the forces of the machine armies. “It has been so long, Serena, and everyone thought you were dead. We found the wreckage of your ship, analyzed the blood samples, confirmed your DNA.”
She reached out to clasp his hand. “But I survived, my love! I thought of you constantly.” Her eyes searched his face for answers. “My memories of you were all I had to sustain me.”
Finally, his words falling like heavy stones, he said, “I am married now, Serena.”
Her heart seemed to stop beating. Serena took a halting step backward, and bumped into a small table, which toppled over with a crash, spilling a vase and fresh red roses, like blood on the tile floor.
She heard hurried footsteps from the main sitting room. The slight figure of a young woman appeared, with long hair and large eyes, rushing toward her. “Serena! Oh, Serena!” Octa carried a bundle in her arms, held close to her bosom, but she managed to give her sister a fierce hug anyway.
Overjoyed, Octa stood beside her husband and her sister, but as she looked from one to the other, her happy expression crumbled into embarrassment and shame.
The bundle stirred in Octa’s arms, and made a soft sound. “This is our daughter Roella,” she said, almost apologetically, and drew aside the cloth to show Serena the child’s beautiful face.
An image flashed through Serena’s mind: her terror-stricken son only seconds before Erasmus dropped him from the high balcony. The baby girl Octa held looked remarkably like little Manion, who had also been Xavier’s child.
In stunned disbelief, Serena stumbled toward the door, her world crashing down around her. She whirled and ran off like a wounded fawn.
The Butlerian Jihad arose from just such stupidity. An infant was killed. The bereaved mother struck out at the nonhuman machinery that had caused the senseless death. Soon, the violence was in the hands of the extended mob and became known as a jihad.
—PRIMERO FAYKAN BUTLER,
Memoirs of the Jihad
Earth remained the flaming heart of rebellion even without the charismatic Iblis Ginjo. Thrust into the center of the struggle, the Cogitor’s secondary Aquim tried to keep the resistance alive and organize the ill-planned fight in the face of Omnius’s increasingly violent retaliation.
Aquim had always been a man of contemplation, mulling over Eklo’s esoteric revelations in the high monastery towers. He had forgotten how to deal with destruction and bloodshed. While he had a network of contacts through his relationship with Eklo, only rarely were they fighters. For the most part, these people were deep thinkers who came up with so many options to consider that they could not move quickly. The situation at hand was outdistancing them.
Mobs ruled with very little leadership.
Surprised and overwhelmed at the realization that they had broken free after centuries of oppression, the rebels had no focus or goal—only a raw, unchanneled need for revenge. Once unleashed, these slaves could never turn back. Even Iblis had not made long-term plans. Fires raged across the city grids. Factory and maintenance buildings exploded as saboteurs brought down the manufacturing and support capabilities of Omnius. Arson and vandalism spread across the continents from industrial centers to human settlements.
The evermind unleashed his cymeks, activated his ranks of warrior robots. The entire planet became a battleground…and not long afterward, a charnel house. Thinking machines had no capacity for forgiveness.
Unfettered at last, Agamemnon and his bloodthirsty cymeks marched into human habitation camps and razed them to the ground. For the first time since the Titans had been overthrown by the evermind, Omnius’s diversified fighters were bound together by a rapacious enthusiasm for vengeance. Cymeks sprayed poison gas, acid plumes, and ribbons of molten fire.
Robotic extermination squads moved from gutted buildings to squalid shelters and pens. Crops were burned, food-distribution depots leveled. Even those who survived the mechanical onslaught would starve within months.
Ten thousand slaves paid in blood for every robot or cymek damaged. No humans could escape with their lives. None were meant to.
HIGH IN THE isolated mountains, the Cogitor’s tower trembled like a living creature. Pieces of stone flaked away. On the uppermost level, where Eklo’s ancient brain rested in its preservation canister, the exterior windows changed color from yellow to orange.
A distraught Aquim dipped his fingers into the electrafluid, connecting his thoughts to those of the revered Cogitor. “I gave them your message, Eklo. The Titan Juno is coming. She wishes to speak with you.”
“As she did, long ago.”
Wishing to put an end to the bloodshed, Eklo had asked to see the Titans, hoping there would be some way to reason with them. Long ago, the Cogitor had unwittingly aided Juno and her companions in their overthrow of the Old Empire, and Eklo’s disembodied brain had been the inspiration for the Titans to convert themselves into cymeks.
In those days he had been a spiritual human named Arn Eklo, philosopher and orator who had fallen to the diversions of sexual pleasures. In his shame and dismay, he had met Kwyna and her metaphysical scholars who wanted to eliminate all distractions in order to develop their thinking powers. Eklo’s physical form, the petty desires of his body, became unimportant to him, nothing in comparison to unraveling the mysteries of the universe.
His orations became different after that, exceedingly cerebral, so that many people could not understand him. His followers began to drift away, and the business investors in the congregation, seeing the dramatic decline in revenues, questioned him. They didn’t understand what he was saying either.
Then one day, Arn Eklo simply disappeared. As a group, he and the other Cogitors planned to embark on an epic journey to the deep reaches of the spiritual realm. Far beyond the bounds of flesh.
Since undergoing the remarkable surgery, his mind had lived for more than two thousand years separated from the weaknesses and limitations of his human body. At last, he and Kwyna and the other Cogitors had all the time anyone could need. It was the greatest gift any of them could have received. Time.
Now Aquim interrupted his ponderous thoughts. “Juno is here.”
With his canister resting on a ledge of the high tower, Eklo observed a massive cymek warrior-form easily climbing the steep mountain path.
“Give Juno this message,” Eklo said to Aquim. Below, numerous secondaries appeared to be in a frenzy, hurrying toward the stairs that led to the top of the tower. “Tell her nothing is impossible. Tell her that love is what separates humans from other living creatures, not hatred. Not violence—”
The windows turned bloodred, and powerful explosions ripped through the tower. Juno raised her cannon forelimbs and launc
hed a volley of projectiles, pummeling the reinforced monastery structure until the tower crumbled.
The ceiling collapsed, and Aquim threw himself forward, trying to shield the preservation canister and the magnificent brain of the ancient Cogitor. But the avalanche came down, crushing everything….
After the tower had tumbled into a dusty heap, Juno used her mechanical arms to tear through the rubble, knocking stones and girders aside. She crawled over the wreckage, discarding the broken bodies of secondaries until finally she found the preservation canister. The dead monk Aquim and the curved plexiplaz tank had kept the Cogitor’s brain from being pulverized, but the container was cracked. Bluish electrafluid dripped into the dirt and debris.
Juno tossed Aquim’s body away like a limp doll. Then she extended a flowmetal hand, extruding long and sharp fingers into the broken container to retrieve the puckered grayish mass of the Cogitor Eklo. She sensed faint flickers of energy from the quivering brain.
She decided to send him on another journey, even farther from the realm of flesh. Her flowmetal hand clenched, squeezing the spongy gray matter into dripping pulp.
“Nothing is impossible,” she said, then swiveled about and marched back toward the city grid and her important work.
WITHOUT EMOTION—ONLY a desire to rid himself of a problem—Omnius decreed the complete annihilation of all human life on Earth.
His robotic forces proceeded relentlessly, going about their bloody task with few impediments. Ajax’s bloodbath on Walgis during the long-ago Hrethgir Rebellions had been merely a brief prelude.
After the evermind determined that it had no further use for the humans on this planet, he made similar assessments for all of the other Synchronized Worlds. Despite the fact that humans had originally created thinking machines, the unruly biologicals had always been more trouble than they were worth. At last he agreed with Agamemnon, who had been urging such a final solution for centuries. Omnius would extinguish the human species.
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