Dune: The Battle of Corrin

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  “I intend to do so.” Trig reached out to clasp his friend’s hand. “If Saint Serena wills it, we will meet again.”

  “If Saint Serena wills it.” But in his heart Istian knew that it was a weak hope. “Fight well, and may your enemies fall swiftly.” After an awkward moment, he gave his longtime friend a brisk, brief hug, knowing he might never see Nar Trig again.

  As his comrade marched off, head held high, leading the group of self-taught fighters, Istian called after him one last time. “Wait, I have a question for you!” Trig turned and looked at him as if he were a stranger. “I never asked before— what was the name on the coral disk you drew from the basket on Ginaz? Whose spirit moves within you?”

  Trig hesitated as if he hadn’t thought of the question for a long time, then he reached to a pouch at his belt and withdrew the disk. He turned it so that Istian could see its polished surface— completely blank, without any name at all. Like flicking a coin, he tossed the disk to Istian, who caught it in his palm.

  “I have no guiding spirit,” Trig said. “I am a new swordmaster. I make my own decisions and my own name.”

  Evolution is the handmaiden of Death.

  — NAIB ISHMAEL,

  paraphrase of Zensunni Sutra

  No matter how much the world changed around him, the desert remained clear and serene, vast, open, and eternally chaste. It seemed these days, however, that Ishmael had to go deeper and deeper into the great bled just to find his peace.

  For centuries, the very harshness and isolation of Arrakis had driven away interlopers. Now though, because of the plague, the spice sent out too strong a call, and strangers no longer stayed away. Ishmael hated it.

  The worm he summoned with his steady drumbeats was a small one, but he did not mind. He would not be taking it on a long journey. He just needed to escape the noise of offworld music and the garish colors of alien fabrics that surrounded him even among his own people. Ishmael required time for himself to cleanse his heart and mind.

  Ishmael used hooks and ropes to mount the creature, accustomed to these efforts after many decades of practice. After he and his fellow escaped slaves from Poritrin had crashed here, infinitely patient Marha had shown Ishmael how to ride the sandworms, insisting it was a necessary part of understanding the legend of Selim Wormrider. How he missed her….

  Now, in the gathering colors of dawn, Ishmael held the rough and crusty surface of the worm’s upper rings. He enjoyed the hot flinty wind in his face, the hiss of scraping sands as the worm forged along. The dunes, the great emptiness, a few rocks, the eternal winds, lonely plants and animals. Dune merging into dune, desert into desert. Blowing sand fogged the horizon, obscuring the rising sun.

  With no explicit destination in mind, just wanting to be alone, he let the beast go where it wished. Memories rode with him, and he thought of his many decades of hardship and change… then eventual happiness. Countless ghosts followed Ishmael across the stark landscape, but his reminiscences were not frightening. He accepted the loss of friends and family, and he honored the time he had spent with loved ones.

  He remembered the marsh village on Harmonthep where he’d been a little boy, then growing up as a slave on Poritrin, forced to work in agricultural fields, in the household of Savant Holtzman, and in shipyards before escaping to Arrakis. Two of the ghost-memories were blurred, made indistinct by the passage of so much time: his wife and younger daughter. It took him a moment to remember their names, it had been so long. Ozza and Falina. He’d been forced to leave them behind in the slave uprising. Stranded here, he’d eventually taken another wife… and Marha was also gone. His eyes stung with blown sand, or tears. He hated to waste his body’s water in such a way.

  Ishmael pulled a sheltering fabric over his head and face to protect them from the heat of the day. Needing no maps, he would circle around and find his way back home. After all this time, Ishmael harbored no doubt of his skills.

  Astrong, rich aroma of spice hovered in the air, pungent and cinnamon, penetrating even the plugs he inserted into his nostrils. The worm thrashed restlessly as it crossed rusty sands where a spice blow had occurred. Though he had been riding giant sandworms for much of his life, Ishmael did not understand their behavior. No one did. Shai-Hulud had his own thoughts and paths, and no mere human could question them.

  Toward sunset he headed toward a long rocky outcropping where he decided to camp. As he approached the isolated site, his sharp eyes narrowed, and he sucked a quick, angry breath at the sight of glinting metal and rounded structures— a small village that had sprung up in the shelter of the stony island. Ishmael recalled no settlement from his previous visits out this way.

  With a lurch, he yanked the hooks and applied spreading devices to steer the worm from the blot of civilization and headed around to the opposite end of the reef dozens of kilometers away. From the town, someone might have seen him astride the sinuous behemoth in the colorful dusk light. No matter. The stories of Selim Wormrider and his bandits were common knowledge— almost to the point of superstition among the swarming offworld spice rushers.

  He let the weary sandworm collapse into the shallow dunes at the far edge of the reef. Ishmael sprang away from the rough surface of the creature and bounded across the sands while the worm wallowed itself deeper beneath the dunes. Despite his age, he felt rejuvenated from the exercise. He walked with a practiced uneven pace and climbed into the rocks where he would be safe.

  There, Ishmael found spotty lichens and a few thorny weeds in cracks, demonstrating the hardiness and resilience of life. He hoped that his people would maintain the same tenacity and not grow weak and spoiled, despite El’hiim’s attempts to lure them from their traditional ways.

  When Ishmael found a place for his sleeping pad and a flat rock on which to cook his meal, he was suddenly dismayed to find signs of human passage even here. The tracks were not made by a desert man, no expert in Zensunni ways or careful survival techniques. No, this was the blundering path of an outsider, someone who knew nothing about Arrakis.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he angrily followed the trail— scuffed footprints in the dust, a few cast-off tools, overpriced metal implements that had been purchased in Arrakis City. Ishmael picked up a compass that looked shiny and new and was not surprised to find that it did not work. Next he came upon an empty water container, then crumpled food wrappers. Even though the desert and time would erase all marks, it disgusted him to see how strangers sullied the virginal purity of the desert. Soon he found tattered garments: flimsy fabrics not designed for the rough weather and unrelenting sun.

  Finally Ishmael came upon the interloper himself. He had climbed down the rocks, stumbling to the sand where he could follow the edge of the reef against the ocean of dunes. Presumably the man was trying to make his way back to the new settlement many kilometers away. Ishmael stood over the nearly nude, sunburned man, who groaned and coughed, still alive, though probably not for long.

  Not without help, at least.

  The stranger turned a dark, blistered face upward, revealing sharp features and close-set eyes, looking at Ishmael as if he were a vengeful demon… or a rescuing angel. Ishmael recoiled. It was the Tlulaxa man he and El’hiim had met in Arrakis City. Wariff.

  “I need water,” the man croaked. “Help me. Please.”

  All of Ishmael’s muscles turned rigid. “Why should I? You are a Tlulaxa, a slaver. Your people destroyed my life— “

  Wariff didn’t seem to hear him. “Help me. In the name of… your own conscience.”

  Ishmael had supplies, of course. He would never have gone on a journey without being fully prepared. He had little to spare, but he could always obtain more in a Zensunni village. This Tlulaxa spice hunter, lured to Arrakis by promises of easy wealth, had stumbled far out of his depth— and not even out on the harshest dune sea!

  Ishmael cursed his own curiosity. If he had just remained in camp, he would never have tracked this fool. The Tlulaxa would have died, as he deserve
d, and no man would have been the wiser. He had no responsibility for Wariff, no obligation. But now that Ishmael was faced with a helpless, desperate survivor, he could not simply turn his back.

  From many years ago he remembered the Koran Sutras his grandfather had taught him: “Aman must declare peace within himself before he can find peace in the outside world.” And another one: “A person’s deeds are the measure of his soul.” Was there a lesson to be learned here?

  Sighing and furious with himself, Ishmael opened his pack and withdrew a water container, squirting just a little into Wariff’s parched mouth. “You are fortunate I am not a monster— like your own people.” The sunburned man reached greedily for the spigot, but Ishmael drew it away. “Only enough for you to survive.”

  This inexperienced prospector had wandered off the trails and gotten caught in the desert. Back in Arrakis City, Wariff had rudely spurned El’hiim’s offer of assistance and advice, but Ishmael’s stepson, for all his faults and delusions, would never have allowed the man to make such simpleton mistakes as this.

  After Wariff gulped another rationed sip of water, Ishmael gave him part of a spice wafer to provide immediate energy. Finally, he draped the smaller man’s arm over his shoulder and stood, dragging Wariff to his feet. “I cannot carry you all the kilometers to the nearest settlement. You must help, since you caused your own misfortune.”

  Wariff stumbled. “Take me to the village, and you may have all of my equipment. I don’t care about it.”

  “Your offworlder baubles are worthless to me.”

  They staggered along. The night stretched before them, already illuminated by two risen moons. Any healthy man could have made the trek in a day. Ishmael had no intention of summoning a worm, though it would have made their passage much faster. “You’ll survive. The company town should be able to give you medical attention.”

  “I owe you my life,” Wariff said.

  Ishmael scowled at him. “Your life has no more value to me than your useless equipment. Just leave my world. If you can’t take simple precautions to adapt in the desert, then you have no business on Arrakis.”

  The process of thinking: Where does it begin and where does it end?

  — Erasmus Dialogues

  When Erasmus arrived at the military parade with his body, his memories, and his personality completely intact, Omnius was quite surprised. As if nothing had happened, the independent robot came to observe the ranks of new battle machines and the fleet of recently constructed warships.

  In an intentional imitation of human pageantry, Omnius commanded the elite robots to remain at attention on a viewing stand, while mechanical forces marched, rolled, and flew past. It was all in preparation for his grand conquest of the hrethgir. The parade wound around the streets and airspace of Corrin City, with its broad boulevards and Central Spire. The display of superior weaponry seemed extravagant, impressive— and unnecessary.

  Erasmus took his place at the forefront of the viewing stand and observed. Were the thousands of human slaves supposed to cheer? For himself, he would rather have been with Gilbertus. Even the Serena Butler clone was much more interesting than this… spectacle.

  “What are you doing here?” Omnius demanded. “How is it you still exist?”

  “Am I to infer, then, that you have ceased your constant surveillance of my villa with your watcheyes? Otherwise you would be fully aware of what occurred.”

  A flurry of watcheyes buzzed around the robot’s shifting face, like angry hornets. “You did not answer my question.”

  “You asked me to study the insanity of human religions. It seems I have returned from the dead. Perhaps I am a martyr.”

  “A martyr! Who would mourn the loss of an independent robot?”

  “You might be surprised.”

  * * *

  GILBERTUS HAD BEEN extremely pleased with his solution to the dilemma. Erasmus himself was delighted when he returned to awareness to see the muscular man standing before him among the flowers and lush plants in the greenhouse courtyard.

  “What has Omnius done?” Erasmus straightened, saw the huge grin on Gilbertus’s face. “And what have you done, my Mentat?”

  “Omnius copied your memory core into himself, and when he was finished, he destroyed it. Exactly as you anticipated.”

  Nearby, the Serena clone picked a bright red lily and put it to her face, inhaling with a loud sniff. She ignored them.

  “Then how is it I am still here?”

  “You are here because I showed initiative, Father.” Unable to restrain himself, Gilbertus ran forward to hug the robot. “I surrendered your memory core to Omnius, as I was commanded. However, the instructions did not explicitly prevent me from making a copy.”

  “An excellent conclusion, Gilbertus.”

  * * *

  “SO, YOUR RESURRECTION was a trick, rather than a religious experience. That does not qualify you as a martyr.” The watcheyes circled Erasmus’s head. All operations in the machine military parade had stopped. “And now I have your disturbing personality and memories isolated inside me, while you still exist on the outside. I do not seem to have accomplished my aims.”

  The robot formed a smile, though the demonstration of emotions did little for Omnius. However, with Erasmus’s own identity inside the evermind, perhaps some part could appreciate them. “Let us hope your campaign against the League Worlds achieves better results.”

  “After internally studying your obsession with human artistic talents, I see now that there may be some merit to your work. Therefore, I will tolerate your continued existence, for now.”

  “I am pleased to… remain alive, Omnius.”

  From the small watcheye speakers, Erasmus heard a sound Omnius had never made before, almost a snort of derision. “Martyr!”

  To the independent robot’s fascination, the evermind seemed very taken with his grand new extermination army drawn from all the Synchronized Worlds. Where had Omnius developed this idea of a spectacle? And who was the intended audience? Apparently, he had copied the routine from the Army of the Jihad and considered it a necessary part of preparing for the ultimate conquest.

  Erasmus flicked a bit of grime off his polished platinum body. His flowmetal face shimmered in the ruddy blaze of Corrin’s sun. He wondered yet again if the primary evermind contained some intangible flaw in its programming, an innate quality that could not be detected by direct inspection of the gelsphere memory core. Occasionally, Omnius committed indisputable errors and his behavior seemed odd… even delusional. Now that he also held a completely separate persona within his programming, perhaps the evermind was even more dangerous.

  The voice of Omnius blared from unseen speakers all around him and throughout the city. “The humans are weak and defeated, billions of them killed by our plague. The survivors are distracted with the process of holding the remnants of their very civilization together. According to my returning spycraft, their numbers are greatly reduced, their government is ineffective. The Army of the Jihad is in chaos. Now, I shall complete the annihilation.

  “Since the enemy is no longer able to launch offensives against me, I have been gathering the bulk of my robotic warships from across the Synchronized Worlds in preparation for the final offensive. All industries have been put to work augmenting weaponry, combat robots, and warships. This force is nearly complete in orbit over Corrin. With it, I will annihilate the human government entirely and leave Salusa Secundus a sterile globe.”

  Exactly as the League Armada left Earth long ago, Erasmus thought. As usual, Omnius did not have any original ideas.

  “Afterward, with the rest of the League disorganized and helpless, I will easily impose order. Then I can systematically exterminate the race that has caused so much unnecessary damage to an orderly universe.”

  This worried Erasmus. Omnius understood only that humans presented a danger to him and his domain; therefore the evermind concluded that he needed to massacre them. All of them. But humans were such an int
eresting gene pool, capable of a wide range of emotional and intellectual actions in their comparatively short life spans.

  Erasmus hoped they wouldn’t all be destroyed.

  As he gazed into the sky, flying machines engaged a mock enemy squadron in a carefully choreographed set of maneuvers. The demonstration squadron finished its programmed work against the enemy surrogates. With a concentrated flash of weapons, they destroyed the mock squadron, and flaming pieces of shrapnel spun toward the ground.

  What a silly display, Erasmus thought.

  Overhead, the gigantic fleet was being fueled and armed, almost ready to be launched on its month-long journey to wipe out Salusa Secundus.

  If there is no plausible hope for survival, is it better to know that you are doomed, or simply to exist in blissful ignorance until the end?

  — PRIMERO QUENTIN BUTLER,

  military journals

  The information revealed in the captured spycraft was indisputable.

  On their return to Zimia, not even taking time to change uniforms, Quentin and Faykan demanded to speak with all available members of the Jihad Council. Inside the room, behind security doors, Quentin showed them the computer data core, with all of its disturbing reconnaissance about League vulnerabilities. Faykan stood silent, letting his father speak. The Council members would draw the obvious conclusions.

  “Omnius is planning to move against us. We must know how, and when.” As they sat in stunned disbelief, Quentin made his bold request. “Therefore I propose a small but vital recon expedition deep into the heart of Synchronized territory— to Corrin itself, if necessary.”

  “But with the Scourge, and the quarantines— “

  “Perhaps we should wait for the return of Supreme Commander Atreides. He should be back from Parmentier any day now— “