Dune: The Machine Crusade (35 page)

Was the League Armada still at Earth, attacking the evermind incarnation there? Could Omnius escape? Seurat had been ordered to take the last update sphere of the Earth evermind and had slipped away from the planet even as Jihad warships closed in with atomic weapons.

Is the update sphere still safe? Or have I failed in my most vital mission?

Scanning with his reactivated optic threads, Seurat located the secure storage receptacle for the Omnius copy. His nimble hands opened the compartment to reveal the silvery gelsphere, intact and apparently undamaged. A sensation akin to great relief brushed through his systems.

He had protected the update of the Earth evermind, the only copy of the final thoughts of the once-central Omnius. Vorian Atreides had not taken it, though he’d had the opportunity. Who could understand humans?

No matter. The gelsphere was safe, and still in Seurat’s possession. His mission remained unchanged: deliver it.

In a matter of minutes that seemed like much longer, his systems completed their self-diagnostic and repair routines. Now Seurat turned his attention to the update ship, relieved to discover that the engines had come back online properly, even though subsystems were still cold.

Vorian Atreides had only stunned the robot captain, undoubtedly to keep him from escaping. But over time Seurat’s sophisticated gelcircuitry systems must have repaired themselves.

The ship’s instrument panel lit up in a rainbow of flashing chromatics, punctuated by computer signal beeps and whines, as if tiny creatures inside the mechanism were awakening. The still-functional chronometer provided him with startling information. Nearly twenty-five standard Earth years had passed since he had been deactivated.
Twenty-five years!

After Seurat fired the engines to full operating power, he guided the ship carefully back down into the planetary neighborhood. Using his long-distance sensors as he approached, he remained alert for any sign of the troublesome League Armada. The battle could not still be under way: human attention spans did not last long. By this time Omnius had either crushed the human invasion, and the update sphere in Seurat’s custody was irrelevant… or the evermind had been destroyed and the stored computer information was more important now than ever.

He guided his vessel close enough to the cloud-smeared world to see that the continents and once-magnificent machine cities were no more than distorted, glassy black remains. Seurat detected excessive radioactivity, but no machine signals, no active power grids, no response to any of his inquiries on standard Omnius channels. And no signs of biological activity.

Earth was destroyed. The thinking machines had been eradicated here, and the humans had caused so much damage to accomplish it that even they could no longer live on their own ancestral home planet.

This was only small consolation for him.

As Seurat cruised over the lifeless, useless world, a realization hit him like a meteor slamming into the ship. Earth had been destroyed. This meant that in all probability, he had the only backup copy of the Earth-Omnius in existence.

The only one.

Seurat began to assess priorities. If, in fact, there had been no machine survivors of the holocaust on Earth, then none of the current Omniuses had access to the crucial data Seurat’s update contained. Now his mission was paramount. Internal programs spoke to him in unison.

You have another duty to perform.

Touching pressure pads, Seurat set a direct course for the nearest Synchronized World, where he would deliver the gelsphere that held the final thoughts of the Earth-Omnius. He would continue his update route, as he had been instructed to do a quarter century before. Soon, the information would be shared among all incarnations of the evermind, and it would be as if the Earth-Omnius had never been destroyed. The humans’ victory would be short-lived, and Seurat would have the last joke on Vorian Atreides.

R
aising children should not be such a trial, filled with frustration, lack of cooperation, and ridiculously slow progress. Human offspring should be eager to learn from their superiors, enaing them to reach their potential. If every parent had the sort of trouble Erasmus was having with his young ward from the slave pens, the human race would have gone extinct long before their civilization had advanced sufficiently to invent thinking machines.

But such thoughts inevitably led back to his own actions. Could Erasmus possibly be doing something wrong? He didn’t like to think of it that way. He just had more to learn.

Still, he wished Omnius had chosen any other human as a subject. This learning process was exceedingly difficult.

By contrast with humans, a thinking machine was fully functional from the moment of activation. Robots, being infinitely more useful than humans, did as they were instructed. They followed through on thoughts and completed tasks efficiently, achieving goals in a logical sequence.

This feral human child, though, despite Erasmus’s best efforts as a mentorrobot, was… chaos incarnate. And Erasmus had nowhere to turn for advice. Not for the first time, he wished Serena Butler had remained with him.

Each robot was linked to a larger network under the control of the computer evermind, a labyrinth of circuitry that functioned in unison, building the Synchronized Worlds to a larger, more comprehensive state of order and progress.

Humans, on the other hand, clung to their much vaunted “free will,” which enabled them to make horrendous, bumbling mistakes and mutter inane excuses afterward. Their freedoms, however, gave them the creativity and imagination to complete marvelous works, to succeed in monumental achievements that the vast majority of machine minds could never conceive. There were advantages.

But this… creature was none of those things. He was barely distinguishable from an animal. The young man— singlehandedly— seemed intent on increasing the universe’s entropy by an order of magnitude.

“Stop that, Gilbertus Albans.” The command was the same one Erasmus had uttered many times before, but the boy did not seem to comprehend simple instructions.

Erasmus had chosen the name for the boy after studying classical history, selecting sounds that carried respectable and important tonalities. Thus far, however, the appellation did not at all reflect the child’s behavior, or his complete inability to follow simple instructions.

The feral slave boy heard the same thing over and over and simply did not do as he was told. At times Erasmus wondered if it was stupidity or stubborn refusal.

Gilbertus knocked over one of the robot’s flowerpots, smashing the terra-cotta, spilling dirt on the tile floor, and killing the plant.

“Stop doing that,” Erasmus repeated, more sternly this time. The harshness seemed to have no effect. But what purpose did the child’s defiance serve? Gilbertus gained nothing from all the destruction he wreaked; he just seemed to enjoy his ruinous acts because Erasmus had told him not to commit them.

Gilbertus smashed another flowerpot, then scampered out of the greenhouse alcove and scuttled toward his rooms. The distinguished robot strode after him, his luxuriant robes swishing with the speed of his gait.

No doubt Omnius was enjoying every moment of this, observing vicariously through his ever-present watcheyes.

By the time Erasmus reached the boy’s room, Gilbertus had already torn the sheets and pillows from the bed and tossed them across the room. He yanked down the diaphanous curtains hanging from posts overhead, then proceeded to fling off his clothes, one article at a time.

“Stop that, Gilbertus Albans,” Erasmus demanded, forming his flowmetal face into a stern, paternal visage.

In response, the feral boy tossed soiled underwear onto the robot’s mirrored head.

This called for a change of tactics.

Even as the chaos continued, a squad of household robots entered the room and started picking up the mess. They gathered bedsheets and strewn clothes; in the greenhouse, other crews had already disposed of the smashed pots and swept clean the scattered dirt and terra-cotta fragments. The boy tried to stay one step ahead of them.

Gilbertus Albans stood naked, laughing and making rude noises as he jumped onto the bed and avoided the robots deftly, though they made no overt move to capture him— not yet.

Observing him, Erasmus assessed what to do. The boy had been attired in the finest clothes, but did not seem to value them in the least. Repeatedly and patiently, the robot had tried to tutor him in manners, social responsibilities, and other acceptable behavior patterns. Yet Gilbertus insisted on smashing valuable objects, messing his room, ripping up books, and ignoring his studies.

Although the wild boy did not seem to be listening, the mirror-faced robot said calmly, “It is not efficient for me to continue repairing the damage in your wake. My system of benevolence and rewards has had no discernible effect.” He emitted a silent signal for the household robots. They moved forward with stealthy speed and seized Gilbertus, holding him firmly despite his struggles.

Erasmus said, “Now we shall begin a course of strict supervision and punishment.” He stepped aside so that the captor robots could move through the doorway. “Remove him to my laboratories. We will see if we can make him behave.”

After centuries of dissection and careful observation involving thousands of humans, Erasmus knew exactly how to inflict pain, unpleasantness, and fear upon them. The robot had grown skilled enough in his technique to proceed vigorously without causing any permanent damage. If possible, he wanted to avoid harming or perhaps killing the frustrating boy. Not out of any compassion on his part. The boy was a challenge to him. And besides, he didn’t want to have to admit failure to Omnius.

Drugs and brain surgeries were options, but Erasmus supposed that such methods might stretch the boundaries of his agreement with the evermind who had issued the challenge. For now he would hold that in reserve.

Still struggling and defiant, the boy seemed annoyed but not beaten. Erasmus knew he could keep going longer than his ward. “I alone see your potential, Gilbertus Albans, and I have the incentive not to give up on you.”

They marched down the corridors toward the extensive surgical rooms and laboratories. “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you. But always remember: I’m doing it for your own good.”

The comments seemed illogical to Erasmus, but he was practicing a new technique, mimicking the words human parents often spoke to their offspring before administering punishments. As they entered the laboratories and the squirming boy began to show genuine fear, the robot said in a flat voice, “From now on, you must pay closer attention to your lessons.”

I
blis Ginjo was trapped, as if he had been swallowed by a gigantic spacefaring whale. All of his ship’s systems had shut down; the power grids and monitor panels lay dark, paralyzed and cold. Now he and his two companions were caught in a pitch-black grotto deep within the mysterious artificial asteroid.

We are doomed
.

Though they had sworn to protect the Grand Patriarch, his two Jipol aides could do nothing. Floriscia Xico had turned pale, her short-cropped auburn curls clumped with sweat. She stared at the Grand Patriarch as if Iblis could simply command a bolt of lightning from God to destroy this peculiar captor. Even staunch Yorek Thurr— who had successfully completed countless dangerous missions for his master and had masterfully exposed machine spies in all parts of the League— looked terrified.

Iblis dared not show weakness. To distract himself from his own apprehension, he glowered at the others and said, “The Jipol has faced any number of hazards without wavering from its faith in my leadership and in the cause of Serena Butler’s Jihad. And now a mysterious asteroid turns you into frightened, superstitious fools?”

They waited in darkness and silence. What else was there to do?

Quite suddenly, strange lights flashed outside the ship in the enclosing grotto, as if filtered through diamond lenses. The asteroid chamber reflected the spangles with the intensity of small suns bouncing off polished planes.

The young Jipol sergeant shielded her eyes, while Yorek Thurr gazed with unapologetic curiosity. Iblis, the tallest of the three, stood behind the others and peered out. Vaporous mists curled around the well-lit chamber. “It’s as if the asteroid swallowed a mouthful of heaven….”

Finally system lights blinked on around the hatch, and a soothing female voice spoke over the captured ship’s loudspeakers. “Step out of your craft, Iblis Ginjo. I wish to meet the Grand Patriarch in person. Don’t be shy— I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to arrange this little party.”

The female sergeant looked at Iblis with eyes as round as glowglobes, but Thurr met him with a hard gaze. “I will accompany you, Grand Patriarch.”

Trying to look courageous and commanding, Iblis snapped at Xico, “Stop acting so frightened, Sergeant. It is certain that this… entity… does not wish to destroy us. Not yet, anyway.”