Accadia, the old Archives Mother, stood in the center of the projection field in silent reverence, with a hundred of the New Sisterhood's most intelligent followers. "This shows what you need to know, and the scope of the threat we now face. I've drawn heavily on candid testimonies provided by our former Honored Matres, tracking their initial expansion into unexplored territories… and their recent abrupt withdrawal back into the Old Empire."
Now that Murbella had broken through the black wall in her Other Memories, she understood exactly what the Enemy was and what the Honored Matres had done to provoke them. She knew more about the nature of the Outside Enemy than Odrade, Taraza, or any previous Bene Gesserit leader had ever guessed.
She had lived those lives.
In particular she saw herself as a harsh, ambitious, and successful commander, driving her squadron of ships outward, ever outward. Lenise. That was my name.
In those days she'd had spiky black hair, obsidian eyes, and an array of metal adornments protruding from her cheeks and brow-battle trophies, one for each rival she had killed in her rise to power. But after failing in a bid to assassinate a higher rank, she had taken her loyal squadrons and plunged farther out into uncharted territory. Not as an act of cowardice, Lenise had assured herself. Not to flee. But to conquer new territory of her own.
In their rapacious expansion, she and her Honored Matres had blundered into the fringe of a vast and growing empire—a nonhuman empire—the existence of which had not been previously suspected. Unknown to them, this dangerous Enemy had its genesis more than fifteen thousand years ago, in the last days of the Butlerian Jihad.
The Honored Matres had encountered a strange manufacturing outpost, a bustling interconnected metropolis inhabited entirely by machines. Thinking machines.
The significance of this had been lost on Lenise and her women; they had asked few questions about the origin of what they'd found.
The self-perpetuating, evolving computer evermind had taken root again, building and spreading a vastly networked landscape of machine intelligences.
Lenise had not understood, nor had she cared. She had issued the order—lost in the vision of history now, Murbella mouthed the words again—and the Honored Matres had done what they did best: attacking without provocation, expecting to conquer and dominate.
Never guessing the scale or strength of what she had found, Lenise and her Honored Matres had surprised the machines, stolen shiploads of powerful and exotic weapons, destroyed the outpost… and then left. She had added several metal adornments to her face to celebrate the victory. And then returned to reconquer the other Honored Matres who had initially defeated her.
The machines' response had been swift and terrible. They launched a massive retaliation that swept forward into the settled worlds of the Scattering, exterminating whole Honored Matre planets with deadly new viruses. The Enemy continued to hound them, hunting down and destroying the whores in their hiding places.
Murbella saw various generations in different memories. Never terribly subtle, the Honored Matres began their panicked flight, stampeding across star systems, plundering them before moving on. Setting bonfires and burning bridges behind them. What an embarrassment to them… how resoundingly they had been defeated by their foe!
All the while, they led the Enemy toward the Old Empire.
Murbella knew it all. She saw it vividly in her past, in her history, in her memories. She needed to Share those experiences with other Sisters who had not yet unlocked their generational secrets. The Enemy is Omnius. The Enemy is coming.
Now, under the domed rotunda with the audience hushed, Accadia worked the display with gnarled fingers. A holoprojection of the Known Universe materialized over their heads in the great vaulted room, highlighting key star systems in the Old Empire as well as planets described by those who had returned from the Scattering. A variety of independent federations had formed out there—clustered governments, trade alliances, and isolated religious colonies, all tied together by a thin common thread of humanity.
The Tyrant spoke of this in his Golden Path, Murbella thought. Or is our understanding imperfect, as usual! The old librarian's voice crackled. "Here are the planets the whores already charred, using the terrible Obliterator weapons they stole from the Enemy."
A spangle of red spattered like blood across the star chart. Too much red! So many Bene Gesserit planets, even Rakis, all of the Tleilaxu worlds, and any other planet that happened to be in the way. Lampadas, Qalloway, Andosia, the low-gravity fairyland cities on Oalar… Now graveyards, all of them.
How could she not have seen this blatant horror when she called herself an Honored Matre? We never looked behind us except to find out how close the Enemy was. We knew we had provoked something ferocious, but we still barged into the Old Empire like a hound into a chicken house, wreaking havoc in our attempt to flee.
When the Enemy got here, the stirred-up planets would fight instinctively, and they would be annihilated. The Honored Matres used that as a stalling tactic, throwing obstructions in the path of the oncoming opponent.
"The whores did all that?" breathed Reverend Mother Laera, one of Murbella's administrative advisors.
Accadia seemed intrinsically fascinated by what she could show. "Look—this is far more frightening."
Another swath of the perimeter systems turned a dull, sickly blue. The star charts displayed some as blurry points, indicating unverified coordinates. The number of affected worlds was far greater than the red wound of Honored Matre destruction.
"These are the planets we know have already been destroyed by the Enemy out in the Scattering. Honored Matre worlds wiped out primarily through devastating plagues."
Studying the huge, complex projection, Murbella didn't need a Mentat to draw the obvious conclusions from the patterns she saw. Her Bene Gesserit and Honored Matre advisors muttered uneasily. They had never before seen the outside threat so plainly displayed. Murbella could truly sense the nearness of "Arafel," the cloud-darkness at the end of the universe. With so many dark legends pointing in the same direction, she smelled her human mortality. Even Chapterhouse, marked on the three-dimensional holoprojection as a pristine white ball far from the Guild's main shipping lanes, would become the target of those relentless hunters.
The unified Sisters now had the Spacing Guild to assist them, though Murbella did not fully trust the Navigators or the less-mutated Administrators. She harbored no illusions about a lasting alliance with the Guild or CHOAM, if the war went badly. The Navigator Edrik dealt with her only because she'd bribed him with spice, and he would cease to cooperate if he ever found an alternative source of mélange. If the Guild's administrative faction chose to rely on Ixian mathematical compilers, then she had very little hold over them.
"The Enemy does not seem to be in a particular hurry," Janess said.
"Why should they be?" Kiria said. "They are coming, and nothing seems able to slow them."
Searching, Murbella noted the general mark—a locus in space, poorly defined by only anecdotal coordinates—of the first encounter with the Enemy, where a long-dead Honored Matre named Lenise had stumbled upon the fringe outpost.
And now we are left to clean up the mess.
Maybe her beloved Duncan Idaho would survive far out there. She felt a pang for him in her heart. What if, at the end of fabled Kralizec, the only remnants of humanity were those few with Duncan and Sheeana aboard the no-ship? A life raft in the cosmos. She scanned the grand projection that filled the library. She had no idea where the vessel might be.
31
Each life is the sum total of its moments.
DUNCAN IDAHO, Memories of More Than a Mentat
Duncan looked in on the ghola children as they engaged in a role-playing game inside one of the activity chambers. They had grown old enough now to show distinct personalities, to think and interact not only with each other but with the crew members. They understood their prior relationships and tried to deal with the oddities of t
heir existence.
Genetically a grandmother to little Leto II, Jessica had bonded closely with him, but she acted more like his big sister. Stilgar and Liet-Kynes were close, as usual; Yueh tried to be friends with them, but he remained a perpetual outsider, though Garimi studied him very closely. Thufir Hawat seemed to have changed, matured, since his experiences on the planet of the Handlers; soon, Duncan expected the young warrior-Mentat to be very useful to their planning. Paul and Chani always stayed close to each other, though she seemed a veritable stranger to Liet, her "father."
So many living reminders of Duncan's pasts.
In her last assessment the Proctor Superior had offered her analysis that the Bene Gesserits should begin to awaken their memories. At least some of the ghola children were ready. Duncan felt a twinge of anxiety and anticipation.
As he turned to walk away, he saw Sheeana standing in the empty corridor, watching him with an enigmatic smile. He felt an involuntary flush of desire, followed by embarrassment. She had bonded him, broken him… saved him. But he would not let himself become trapped by her the way he had been bound to Murbella. He forced out the words. "It is best if we keep our distance from each other. At least for now."
"We're on the same ship, Duncan. We can't just hide."
"But we can be careful."
He felt burned by the sexual cauterization that had cured him of Murbella, but knew it had been necessary. His own weakness had made it necessary. He dared not let it happen again, and Sheeana had the power to ensnare him—if he let her. "Love is too dangerous to play with, Sheeana. It is not a tool to be used."
*
ONE LAST THING remained for him to do, and he couldn't avoid it any longer.
Duncan had retrieved all of Murbella's belongings. Master Scytale had carefully picked over them after Duncan had unceremoniously dropped them on the deck when the alarms rang. Duncan had demanded them back, then turned a deaf ear as the Tleilaxu Master insisted that most of the cells were too old, too long out of nullentropy storage, but the possibility of usable DNA fragments—Duncan had cut him off, walked away with the garments. He didn't want to hear any more, didn't want to know about the possibilities. All such possibilities were unwise ones.
He had tried to fool himself that he could just ignore the idea, make up his mind not to think about her anymore. Sheeana had freed him of his chains to Murbella… but, oh, the temptation! He felt like an alcoholic staring at an open bottle.
Enough. Duncan himself had to do the last of it.
He stared at the rumpled garments, the keepsakes, the few stray strands of amber hair. When he gathered everything in his arms, it was as if he held her—at least the essence of her, without the weight of her body.
His eyes misted over.
Murbella hadn't left much of herself behind. Despite all the time she'd spent on the no-ship with Duncan, she'd kept only a few temporary possessions here, never really calling it her home.
Remove the threat. Remove the temptation. Remove the possibility. Only then could he finally be free.
Marching down the corridors with intense concentration, he made his way to one of the small maintenance airlocks. Years ago, this was how they had ejected the mummified remains of Bene Gesserit Sisters into space during the memorial service. Now Duncan would perform another sort of funeral service.
He dumped the paraphernalia into the airlock booth and considered the rumpled debris of a past life. It seemed like so little, but with such great portent.
He stepped back and reached for the controls.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed a strand of hair still clinging to his sleeve. One of Murbella's hairs had come loose from her garments, a single amber strand… as if she still wanted to cling to Duncan.
He plucked the hair with his fingertips, looked at it for a long, painful moment, and finally let it drift down among the other items. He sealed the airlock door and, before he could think, cycled the systems. The last breaths of air were evacuated, and the material was swept out into space.
Irretrievable.
He stared out into the emptiness, where the objects quickly disappeared from view. He felt immeasurably lighter… or perhaps that was just emptiness.
From now on, Duncan Idaho would rise above any temptations that were thrust in front of him. He would be his own man, no longer a piece to be moved around on someone else's game board.
32
At last, after our long journey, we have reached the beginning.
ancient Mentat conundrum
The Enemy ships cruised toward the Old Empire, thousands upon thousands of enormous vessels, each carrying weapons sufficient to sterilize a planet, plagues that could eradicate entire populations. Everything was going extremely well after so many millennia of planning.
Back on the central machine world, the old man had dropped his illusions. No more games or facades, only rigid preparations for the final conflict foretold both by human prophecy and extensive machine calculations: Kralizec.
"I assume you're quite pleased that you have already destroyed sixteen additional human planets on your march to victory." The old woman had not yet dispensed with her guise.
"So far," said the booming old man's voice that echoed from all buildings and all screens everywhere.
The structures in the endless machine city were alive and moving like an immense engine, tall towers and spires of flowmetal, enormous blocky constructions built to house substations and command nodes. With each new conquest, cities just like Synchrony would be built on planet after planet.
The old woman looked at her hands, brushed the front of her dress. "Even these forms seem primitive to me, but I have grown rather fond of them. Perhaps accustomed is a more precise word." At last, her voice faded, changed, and settled on an old familiar timbre. In her place stood the independent robot Erasmus, intellectual foil and counterpoint to Omnius. He had retained his platinum, flowmetal body, draped in the plush robes to which he had grown accustomed so long ago.
Having discarded his physical form, Omnius spoke through millions of speakers in the great city. "Our forces have pushed to the fringes of the human Scattering. Nothing can stop us." The computer evermind always had such grandiose dreams and aspirations.
Erasmus had hoped that by constraining the evermind within the guise of an old man, Omnius might begin to understand humans and learn to steer clear of these extreme gestures. That had worked for a few thousand years, but when the violent Honored Mattes careened into the carefully reconstituted Synchronized Empire, Omnius had been forced to respond. In truth, the anxious evermind had simply been looking for an excuse.
Now he said, "We will prove that the Butlerian Jihad was merely a setback, not a defeat."
Erasmus stood in the middle of the vast, vaulted chamber of the central machine cathedral. All around them, the buildings themselves stepped back, shifting aside like sycophants. "This is an event we should commemorate.
Behold!"
Though the evermind thought he controlled everything himself, Erasmus made a gesture, and the floor of the chamber cooperated. The smooth metal plates spread apart, pulling away to reveal a crystal-lined gullet, a wide pit whose floor rose up, lifting a preserved object.
A small and innocuous-looking probe.
"Even seemingly insignificant things have great import. As this device proves."
Centuries before the Battle of Corrin, the last great defeat of the thinking machines, one of the evermind copies had dispatched probes out to the unexplored reaches of the galaxy with the intent of setting up receiving stations, planting seeds for the later expansion of the machine empire. Most of the probes had been lost or destroyed, never reaching a solid world.
Erasmus looked down at the small device, marvelously engineered, pitted and discolored from its many centuries of unguided flight. This probe had found a distant planet, landed, and begun its work, waiting… and listening.
"During the Battle of Corrin, fanatical humans almost—almost—a
nnihilated the last Omnius," the robot said. "That evermind contained a complete and isolated copy of me inside itself, a data packet from the time when you once tried to destroy me. You showed great foresight."
"I always had secondary plans for survival," the voice boomed. Watcheyes came closer, flitting over the probe like curious tourists.
"Come now, Omnius, you never imagined such a dramatic defeat," Erasmus said, not scolding but merely stating a fact. "You transmitted a complete copy of yourself off into nothingness. A last-gasp attempt at survival. A desperate hope—something a human might feel."
"Do not insult me."
That transmission had traveled for thousands of years, degrading along the way, deteriorating into something else. Erasmus had no memory of that endless, silent journey at the speed of light. After their incalculable trek through static and interstellar waste, the Omnius signal had encountered one of the long-dispatched probes and seized upon it as a beachhead. Far, far from any taint of human civilization, the restored Omnius began to re-create itself.
Over millennia it had regenerated, building a new Synchronized Empire—and Omnius had begun making plans to return, this time with a far superior machine force.
"Nothing can match the patience of machines," the evermind said.
Fully restored from his backup copy while the new civilization built itself, Erasmus had pondered the fate of humans, a species he had studied in painstaking detail. The creatures had always been infuriating, yet intriguing.
He was curious as to how they would fare without the guidance of efficient machines.
He looked down at the small probe on its altarlike stand. If that receiver hadn't been in the right place, the Omnius signal might still be drifting, attenuating. Quite an ignominious end…
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