Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (34 page)

“Yes, sir.” Vor knew better than to waste the Titan’s time with unnecessary details. The general would already have received a full report. “I will answer any questions you might have, Father.”

“I have no questions, only
commands
.” Instead of instructing his son to begin the process of grooming and polishing his components, Agamemnon raised a gauntleted hand, clutched Vorian by the chest, and pushed him forcefully against an upright table.

Vor was slammed against the smooth surface and felt a burst of pain. His father was so powerful that he could accidentally break bones, sever the spine. “What is it, Father? What—”

Holding him immobile, Agamemnon clamped on wrist bindings, a waist restraint, and ankle cuffs. Helpless now, Vor twisted his head to look at what his father was doing and saw that complex devices had been brought into the chamber. With trepidation he noted hollow cylinders filled with bluish fluids, neuromechanical pumps, and chittering machines that waved questing sensor tips in the air.

“Please, Father.” Vor’s deepest fears careened through his mind, ricocheting off the pain, each impact increasing his doubts and terrors. “What have I done wrong?”

Showing no readable expression on his head turret, Agamemnon extended an array of long needles toward his son’s squirming body. The steel points penetrated his chest, poking between his ribs, seeking out and finding his lungs, his heart. Two silver shafts pierced his throat. Blood oozed out everywhere. Vor’s neck sinews bulged as he clenched his jaw and curled back his lips, biting back a scream.

But the scream broke through anyway.

The cymek manipulated the machinery connected to Vorian’s body, increasing the pain beyond all imaginable levels. Convinced that he had failed somehow, Vor assumed it was his time to die— like the twelve unknown brothers who had preceded him. Now, it seemed, Vorian had not lived up to Agamemnon’s expectations.

Agony swelled higher, with no crest in sight. His scream became a prolonged wail, as acid-colored fluids were pumped into his body. Soon even his vocal cords gave out, and his shriek continued only in his mind . . . yet it continued nevertheless. He could endure no more. He could not imagine the grievous injury his stretched and torn body must already have endured.

When finally the torture concluded and Vor came back to himself, he didn’t know how long he had been unconscious— perhaps even lost in the cloak of death. His body felt as if it had been crushed into a ball and then stretched back into the form of a man.

The colossus shape of Agamemnon loomed over him, a galaxy of optic threads glittering on his body. Even though the remnants of excruciating pain echoed inside his skull, Vor resisted crying out. His father had kept him alive after all, for his own reasons. He stared into the Titan’s implacable metal face and could only hope that his father had not revived him just to inflict more agony.

What have I done wrong?

Yet the ancient cymek did not have murder on his mind. Instead he said, “I am exceedingly pleased with your actions aboard the
Dream Voyager
, Vorian. I have analyzed Seurat’s report and determined that your tactical prowess in escaping from the League Armada was innovative and unexpected.”

Vorian couldn’t understand the context of his father’s words. They seemed unrelated to the tortures the general had inflicted on him.

“No thinking machine would have considered such a deceitful trick. I doubt even another trustee would have been so quick to think of the ruse. In fact, Omnius’s summation concludes that any other action would likely have resulted in the capture or destruction of the
Dream Voyager
. Seurat would never have been capable of surviving by himself. You not only saved the ship, you saved the Omnius update spheres and returned them intact.” Agamemnon paused, then reiterated. “Yes, I am exceedingly pleased, my son. You have the potential of becoming a great cymek someday.”

Vor’s raw throat convulsed as he tried to force out words. The needle-studded cradle had been yanked away, and now Agamemnon released the body restraints that held him against the hard surface. Vorian’s watery muscles could not support him, and he drooped like a rag, sliding down until he pooled on his knees on the floor. Finally he choked, “Then why was I tortured? Why have you punished me?”

Agamemnon simulated a laugh. “When I choose to punish you, son, you will know. That was a
reward
. Omnius allowed me to grant you this rare gift. In fact, no other human in all the Synchronized Worlds has been so honored.”

“But how, Father? Please explain it to me. My mind is still throbbing.” His voice hitched.

“What are a few moments of pain, in comparison with the gift you have received?” The colossus paced back and forth across the sparkling maintenance room, shaking the floor and the walls. “Unfortunately, I was unable to convince Omnius to convert you into a neo-cymek— you are too young— but I am sure the time will come. I wanted you to serve at my side— more than a trustee, but as my true successor.” His sparkling optic threads glowed brighter. “Instead, I have done the next best thing for you.”

The cymek general explained that he had given Vorian a rigorous biotech treatment, a cellular replacement system that would dramatically extend his life as a human. “Geriatric specialists developed the technique in the Old Empire . . . though to what purpose I cannot fathom. Those oafs did nothing productive during their normal lifespans, so why should they want to live for centuries longer and accomplish even less? Through new proteins, rejection of free radicals, more efficient cellular repair mechanisms, they prolonged their pointless existences. Most of them were murdered in the rebellions when we Titans cemented our control.”

Agamemnon swiveled at his torso joint. “While we still wore human bodies at the beginning of our rule, all twenty Titans underwent the biotech life extension, just like you, so I am quite familiar with the level of pain you endured. We
needed
to live for centuries, because we required that much time to reassert vision and competent leadership upon the waning Old Empire. Even after we converted ourselves into cymeks, the process helped prevent our ancient biological brains from degenerating because of our extreme age.”

His mechanical body strode closer. “This life-extension process is our little secret, Vorian. The League of Nobles would tear themselves into a frenzy if they knew we had such technology.” Agamemnon made a wistful sound, almost a sigh. “But beware, my son: Even such enhancements cannot protect you against accidents or outright assassination attempts. As, unfortunately, Barbarossa recently discovered.”

Vor finally struggled shakily to his feet. He located a water dispenser, gulped a beaker of cool liquid, and felt his heartbeat slowing.

“Astonishing events await you, my son. Your life is no longer a candle in the wind. You have time to experience many things, important things.”

The hulking cymek stalked over to a harness and used an intricate network of artificial hands and clamps extruded from the metal wall to link to the thoughtrodes of his brain canister. Flexible lifting arms raised the cylinder out of the colossus body core and shuttled it over to one of the chrome pedestals.

“Now you are one step closer to your potential, Vorian,” Agamemnon said through a wall speaker, detached from the mobile body.

Though weak and still in pain, Vor knew what his father expected of him now. He hurried to the conditioning devices and with trembling hands attached power cables to the magsockets of the translucent brain chamber. The bluish electrafluid seemed full of mental energy.

Trying to restore a sense of normalcy amid the clamoring disbelief at what had just happened to him, Vor went through his habitual grooming duties, tending his father’s mechanical systems. Lovingly, the young man gazed at the wrinkled mass of brain, the ancient mind so full of profound ideas and difficult decisions, as expressed in the general’s extensive memoirs. Each time he read them, Vor hoped to understand his complex father better.

He wondered if Agamemnon had kept him in the dark to play a cruel joke on him, or to challenge his resolve. Vor would always accept whatever the cymek general commanded, would never try to flee. Now that the agony was over, he hoped he had passed whatever test his father had administered.

As Vor continued the patient grooming of the preservation tank, Agamemnon spoke softly, a susurration. “You are very quiet, my son. What do you think about the great gift you have received?”

The young man paused a moment, not certain how to respond. Agamemnon was often impulsive and difficult to understand, but he rarely acted without a larger purpose in mind. Vor could only hope to comprehend the overall picture someday, the grand tapestry.

“Thank you, Father,” he finally said, “for giving me more time to accomplish everything you want me to do.”

T
he identical twin girls looked peaceful and asleep, side by side, like little angels in a cozy bed. The snakelike brain scanners inserted through holes drilled into their skulls were almost unnoticeable.

Immobilized by drugs, the unconscious children lay on a laboratory table inside the experimental zone. Erasmus’s mirror-smooth face reshaped itself into an exaggerated frown, as if the severity of his expression could force them to reveal their secrets about humanity.

Damn you!

He could not comprehend these intelligent creatures that had somehow created Omnius and an amazing civilization of thinking machines. Was it a miraculous fluke? The more Erasmus learned, the more questions he developed. The inarguable successes of their chaotic civilization presented a deep quandary in his mind. He had dissected the brains of more than a thousand specimens, young and old, male and female, intelligent and dimwitted. He had made detailed analyses and comparisons, processing data through the unlimited capacity of the Omnius evermind.

Even so, none of the answers were clear.

The brains of no two human beings were exactly identical, not even when the subjects were raised under matching conditions, or if they started out as twins.
A confusing mass of unnecessary variables!
No aspect of their physiology remained consistent from person to person.

Maddening exceptions, everywhere!

Nonetheless, Erasmus did notice patterns. Humans were full of differences and surprises, but as a species they behaved according to general rules. Under certain conditions, especially when crowded into confined spaces, people reacted with a pack mentality, blindly following others, eschewing individuality.

Sometimes humans were valiant; sometimes they were cowards. It especially intrigued Erasmus to see what happened when he conducted “panic experiments” on crowds of them in the breeding pens, wading in and butchering some while letting others survive. In such circumstances of extreme stress, leaders invariably emerged, people who behaved with more inner strength than the others. Erasmus especially liked to kill those individuals and then watch the devastating effect it had on the rest of the people.

Perhaps his sample group of experimental subjects over the centuries was too small. He might need to vivisect and dissect tens of thousands more before he could draw meaningful conclusions. A monumental task, but as a machine Erasmus had no limitations on energy, or patience.

With one of his personal probes, he touched the cheek of the larger of the two girls and sensed her steady pulse. Every droplet of blood seemed to withhold secrets from him, as if the entire race was participating in a massive conspiracy against him. Would Erasmus be considered the ultimate fool of all time? The fibrous probe glided back into access channels in his composite skin, but not before he intentionally, petulantly, scratched her skin.

When the independent robot had taken these identical twins from the worker pens, their mother had cursed at him and called him a monster. Humans could be so parochial, failing to see the importance of what he was doing, the larger picture.

With a self-cauterizing scalpel-beam, he cut into the cerebellum of the smaller girl (who was 1.09 centimeters shorter and 0.7 kilograms lighter— therefore, not “identical” at all), and watched the brain activity of her drugged sister go wild— a sympathetic reaction. Fascinating. But the girls were not physically connected to each other, not through body contact nor by machine. Could they sense one another’s pain?

He chided himself for his lack of foresight and planning.
I should have put the mother on the same table.

His thoughts were interrupted by Omnius, who spoke from the nearest wallscreen. “Your new female slave has arrived, a last gift from the Titan Barbarossa. She awaits you in the sitting room.”

Erasmus raised his bloody metal hands. He had looked forward to receiving the woman captured from Giedi Prime, supposedly the daughter of the League Viceroy. Her familial ties suggested genetic superiority, and he had many questions to ask her about the government of the feral humans.

“Will you vivisect her as well?”

“I prefer to keep my options open.”

Erasmus looked down at the twin girls, one already dead from the interrupted exposure of her brain tissue. A wasted opportunity.

“Analyzing docile slaves gives you irrelevant results, Erasmus. All thoughts of revolt have been bred out of them. Therefore, any information you derive is of questionable applicability for military purposes.” The evermind’s voice boomed from the wallscreen.

Erasmus soaked his organic-plastic hands in solvent to eliminate the drying blood. He had access to thousands of years of human-compiled psychological studies, but even with so much data it was not possible to create a clear answer. Many self-proclaimed “experts” offered wildly disparate answers.

On the table, the surviving twin continued to mewl her pain and fear. “I disagree, Omnius. The human creature is innately rebellious. The trait is inherent in their species. Slaves will never be entirely loyal to us, no matter how many generations they have served. Trustees, workers, it makes no difference.”