Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (19 page)

He wasn’t a formal courier. His eyes were haunted and his officer’s uniform unkempt, as if he no longer cared about protocol or appearances. Xavier recognized the insignia of the Giedi Prime Home Guard. Like other League uniforms, it bore the gold sigil of free humanity on the lapel.

“I have grave news, Viceroy Butler. The fastest ships have brought me directly here.”

“What is it, young man?” Manion’s voice was filled with dread.

“Giedi Prime has fallen to the thinking machines!” The officer raised his voice against the guests’ disbelieving outcries. “The robots and cymeks found a flaw in our defenses and destroyed our scrambler-field transmitters. Much of our population has been slaughtered and the survivors enslaved. A new Omnius evermind has already been activated.”

The people in the hall wailed at hearing of the devastating defeat. Xavier clutched Serena’s hand so tightly he feared he might hurt her. Inside, he had turned to stone, his stomach filled with a cold heaviness.

He had just been to Giedi Prime, had inspected the defenses himself. Xavier had been terribly anxious to finish his inspection tour so that he could return to Serena. Could he possibly have missed something? He squeezed his eyes shut as the questions and disbelieving comments turned to a buzz around him. Was he to blame? Had a simple mistake, a bit of impatience from a young man in love, caused an entire planet to fall?

Manion Butler placed both palms on the table to steady himself. Livia reached over to touch her husband’s shoulder, adding silent support. She closed her eyes, and her lips moved as if in prayer.

The Viceroy spoke. “Another free planet lost to the Synchronized Worlds, and one of our strongholds, too.” He straightened, took a shuddering breath. “We must call an immediate war council, summon all representatives.” With a meaningful glance at Serena, he added, “Let us also include anyone who speaks for the Unallied Planets and wishes to join us in this fight.”

H
er screams rang through the quiet cliff cities above the silvery-purple jungle. Inside her private chamber, Zufa Cenva lay sweat-streaked on a pallet. She shrieked in pain, clenching her teeth, her eyes glassy.

Alone. No one dared come near a delirious Sorceress of Rossak.

A metallic doorway curtain rattled with an invisible tele-kinetic force. Wall shelves buckled in the aftershocks of Zufa’s psychic explosions, scattering pots and keepsakes all over the floor.

Her long white hair was wild, quivering with internal energy. Her pale hands gripped the sides of the pallet like scraping claws. If any woman had come close enough to try to soothe her, Zufa would have scratched her face and mentally hurled her against the whitewashed walls.

She screamed again. The chief Sorceress had endured several miscarriages before, but never one so agonizing or disruptive. She cursed worthless Aurelius Venport.

Zufa’s spine shuddered, as if someone had jolted her with electricity. Delicate ornamental objects floated into the air on invisible strings, then flew in every direction, smashing into shards. One hollowed-out irongourd stuffed with dried flowers burst into white flames, crackling and smoking.

She gasped as her body cramped, squeezing her abdominal muscles. It seemed as if this unborn child wanted to kill her, to drag her down to death before she could expel it from her uterus.

Another failure! And she so desperately wanted to produce a true daughter, a successor to lead her fellow Sorceresses to new heights of mental power. The genetic index had misled her again. Damn Venport and his failings! She should have abandoned him long ago.

Out of her head with pain and despair, Zufa wanted to kill the man who had planted the child-seed inside her, even though the pregnancy had been at her own insistence. She had completed the bloodline calculations so carefully, had gone over the genes again and again. Breeding with Venport should have produced only superior offspring.

Nothing like this.

Telepathic blasts echoed into the corridors, sending Rossak women scurrying in terror. Then she saw Aurelius Venport himself standing at the doorway, haggard with worry. His eyes were filled with concern.

But Zufa knew he was a liar.

Unafraid for his own safety, Venport entered their bedchamber, displaying patience, concern, and tolerance. His lover’s mental blasts ricocheted around the large room, overturning furniture. In a petulant attempt to slight him, she smashed a set of tiny hollownut sculptures he had given her during their courtship and genetic testing.

Still, he stepped forward, as if immune to her ferine outbursts. In the hall behind him, muted voices urged caution, but he ignored them. He came to her pallet, smiling with compassion and understanding.

Venport knelt beside the bed, stroking her sweaty hand. He whispered soothing nonsense in her ears. She couldn’t understand his words, but she grasped his fingers until she expected to feel the bones snap. But he remained frustratingly close, not intimidated by her in the least.

Zufa hurled accusations of treachery at him. “I can sense your thoughts! I know you’re thinking only of yourself.”

Her imagination concocted schemes, attributing them to his deviousness. If the great Zufa Cenva was no longer there to protect him, who would keep this man as a pet? Who would care for him? She doubted he could take care of himself.

Then, with greater fear:
Or could he?

Venport had sent Norma off on a long journey to Poritrin, arranging everything behind Zufa’s back, as if he believed that a man like Tio Holtzman truly wanted to work with her daughter. What was he planning? She gritted her teeth, wanting to prove that she understood his intentions. Her threats came as sharp gasps. “You can’t . . . let me die, bastard! No one . . . else would . . . have you!”

Instead, he looked at her, coolly patronizing. “You’ve told me many times that I come from a good genetic line, my darling. But I do not desire someone else among the Sorceresses. I prefer to stay with you.” He lowered his voice, looking at her with an oddly intense love that she could not quite fathom. “I understand you better than you do yourself, Zufa Cenva. Always pushing, constantly demanding more than anyone can possibly give. Nobody— not even you— can be perfect all the time.”

With a final prolonged shriek, she expelled her deformed, resistant fetus, a monstrously abnormal creature. Seeing the bright blood, Venport bellowed for assistance, and two brave midwives scurried into the chamber. One reached down with a towel, placing it over the fetus like a shroud, while the other bathed Zufa’s skin, adding pain-numbing salves distilled from jungle spores. Venport sent for the best drugs from his own stockpiles.

Finally, he took the squirming fetus himself, holding the bloody larval thing in his hands. It had dark skin and strange mottled spots that made it look as if proto-eyes had grown all over its limbless body. He saw the thing twitch a final time, then it stopped moving.

He wrapped it up in the towel, trying to ignore the tear in his eye. His expression stony, Venport handed the corrupt fetus to one of the midwives, saying nothing. It would be taken out into the jungles, and no one would ever see it again.

The exhausted Sorceress lay back, shuddering, just now beginning to feel a sense of reality and despair again. The miscarriage had hurt her, leaving her with a deep sadness that went beyond the goals of any breeding program. Her vision returned to focus, and she noticed the psychokinetic destruction she had caused in the room. It all spoke of weakness, of lack of control.

This was her third horrific miscarriage from mating with Venport. Deep disappointment and anger boiled inside her. “I chose you for your bloodline, Aurelius,” she muttered through dry lips. “What went wrong?”

He looked at her, still expressionless, as if his passion had been washed away. “Genetics is not an exact science.”

Zufa closed her eyes. “Failures, always failures.” She was the greatest Sorceress of Rossak, and yet she had endured so many disappointments. Sighing with disgust, Zufa thought of her stunted daughter, not wanting to believe that the ugly dwarf was the best she could achieve.

Venport shook his head, uncharacteristically stern and impatient now that the danger was past. “You have had successes, Zufa. You just don’t know how to recognize them.”

She forced herself to rest, to recuperate. Eventually, Zufa would have to try again, but with someone else.

A
rriving on Poritrin at the conclusion of her first long space voyage, Norma Cenva felt out of place. Her diminutive form drew glances, but was not so unusual that people turned pitying stares upon her. On the Unallied Planets there was a variety of races, some with stunted statures. She didn’t care about the opinions of others anyway. She only wanted to impress Tio Holtzman.

Before Norma’s departure from Rossak, her aloof mother had looked down at her with dismissive puzzlement. Zufa chose to believe that the brilliant Savant had made a mistake or had misread one of Norma’s theoretical papers. She expected her daughter to return home before long.

Aurelius Venport had made all of the arrangements, used his own profits to pay for a nicer cabin than Holtzman had offered. While her mother continued to work with the Sorceress trainees, Venport had accompanied Norma to the docking-transfer stations in Rossak orbit. He had given her a gift of delicately petrified flowers and a chaste hug before she’d climbed aboard the vessel. With a wry smile, he told her, “All of us disappointments need to stick together.”

Norma held onto that warm but troubling comment during the long journey to Poritrin. . . .

When the shuttle landed in the river-delta city of Starda, Norma carefully inserted Venport’s petrified flowers into her mousy brown hair, a sprig of beauty that contrasted with the plainness of her wide face, large head, and rounded nose. She wore a loose blouse and comfortable hose, both woven from fernfibers.

Jostled by other passengers crowded at the shuttle hatch, the girl carried only a small travel pack. Climbing down the ramp, Norma felt flushed and eager to meet the scientist she admired, a thinker who took her seriously. She had heard many stories of Savant Holtzman’s mathematical prowess, and she would be hard pressed to contribute anything the great man hadn’t already developed. She hoped she would not let him down.

Scanning the waiting crowd, she immediately recognized the eminent scientist. A clean-shaven man with shoulder-length gray hair, Holtzman appeared to be in his late middle years. His hands and fingernails were clean, his clothing impeccable and ornamented with stylish designs and badges.

He greeted her with a broad smile and open arms that let the sleeves of his white robe droop. “Welcome to Poritrin, Miss Cenva.” Holtzman placed both hands on her shoulders in formal greeting. If he experienced any disappointment upon seeing Norma’s stature and coarse, unattractive features, he did not show it. “I certainly hope you’ve brought your imagination with you.” He gestured toward a doorway. “We have a lot of work to do together.”

He steered her through the spaceport crowds, away from their curious stares, then took her away from Starda Spaceport in a private limo-barge that floated high above the graceful Isana River.

“Poritrin is a peaceful world, where I can let my mind wander and think of things that might save the human race.” Holtzman smiled proudly at her. “I’m expecting that of you, too.”

“I will do my best, Savant Holtzman.”

“What more could any person ask?”

The skies of Poritrin held a gauze of clouds painted citrus yellow with afternoon sunlight. The barge drifted above the multifingered streamlets that wrapped around shifting islands and sandbars. Traditional boats rode the current of the broad river, loaded with grains and cargo for distribution in the port city and export offworld. Fertile Poritrin fed many less-fortunate planets, in return for which they received raw materials, equipment, manufactured goods, and human slaves to add to their labor force.

Some of the largest buildings in the spaceport were actually boats on pontoons, anchored to the bases of sandstone bluffs. The roofs were composed of layered shingles of silver-blue metal, smelted in mines far to the north.

He gestured to a bluff overlooking the crowded portions of blue-roofed Starda, where she could recognize the influences of classic Navachristian architecture. “My laboratories are up there. Buildings and supply sheds, quarters for my slaves and solvers, as well as my own home— everything built into that double spire of rock.”

The floating transport circled toward two sections of stone, like adjacent fingers rising above the riverbed. She could see sheetplaz windows, awning-covered balconies, and a walkway that linked a dome on one spire with a conical stone tower and outbuildings on the other.

Holtzman was pleased to note the amazement on her face. “We have quarters for you, Norma, in addition to private lab facilities and a team of assistants to perform calculations based upon your theories. I expect you to keep them all very busy.”

Norma looked at him, puzzled. “Someone else to do the mathematics?”

“Of course!” Holtzman brushed iron-gray hair away from his face and adjusted his white robe. “You’re an
idea
person, like me. We want you to develop concepts, not bother with full-fledged implementation. You should not waste time performing tedious arithmetic. Any halfway-trained person can do that. It’s what slaves are for.”

When the floating barge settled onto a glazed-tile deck, servants emerged to take Norma’s bags and offer the two of them cool drinks. Like an eager boy, Holtzman led Norma to his impressive laboratories. The large rooms were filled with water clocks and magnetic sculptures in which spheres orbited about electrical paths without wires or gears. Sketches and half-finished drawings covered electrostatic boards, surrounded by serpentine calculations that went nowhere.