Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (53 page)

The captives took their seats and sat rigidly, staring at the food, their hands fumbling on their laps. They all carried a look of skittish fear mixed with confusion. Many of the guests looked as if they would rather be anywhere but here, for no one trusted the master of the house. The food was probably poisoned, and all the guests would die horribly while Erasmus took notes.

“Eat!” the robot said. “I have prepared this feast. It is my good deed.”

Now Serena understood what he was doing. “This isn’t what I meant, Erasmus. I intended for you to give them better rations, to improve their daily nutrition, to make them healthier. A single banquet does nothing.”

“It increases their goodwill toward me.” Some guests tentatively put food on their plates, but no one had yet dared to take a bite. “Why are they not eating? I have made a generous effort.” The robot looked at Serena for an answer.

“They are terrified of you, Erasmus.”

“But I am not being evil now.”

“How do they know that? How can they trust you? Tell me the truth, did you poison the food? Maybe just random dishes?”

“An interesting idea, but that is not part of the experiment.” Erasmus remained perplexed. “However, an observer often affects the outcome of his experiment. I see no way around this problem.” Then his pliable face formed a large grin. “Unless I become part of the experiment myself.”

Extruding his snakelike sensory probe, Erasmus strutted around the nearest table, dipping the analytical tip into different sauces and dishes, studying each bit of spice or flavor chemically. The people watched him uncertainly.

Serena saw many faces turn toward her, hopeful. Arriving at a decision, she smiled reassuringly and raised her voice. “Listen to me. Eat, and enjoy his feast. Erasmus has no evil purpose in mind today.” She looked at the robot. “Unless he has lied to me.”

“I do not know how to lie.”

“I’m certain you could learn, if you studied enough.”

Serena marched to the nearest banquet table, where she picked up a morsel of tender meat from the nearest platter and popped it into her mouth. Then she went down the table, plucked a slice of fruit, tasted a dessert.

The people smiled, their eyes shining. The young woman seemed angelic and reassuring as she sampled dishes, doing her best to prove that the banquet was indeed what it appeared to be. “Come, my friends, and join me. Though I cannot give you your freedom, we shall at least share one afternoon of happiness.”

Like starving men, the captives fell to the platters of food, taking large helpings, groaning with pleasure, spilling sauces, and then licking everything up so as not to waste a speck. They looked at her with gratitude and admiration, and Serena felt warm inside, glad that she had at last accomplished something for these poor people.

For the first time, Erasmus had tried to do a good deed. Serena hoped to coerce him into doing more.

One woman came over and tugged at Serena’s sleeve. Serena looked at the large dark eyes, the haggard but hopeful expression. “What is your name?” the slave asked. “We need to know. We will tell others what you have done here.”

“I am Serena,” she said. “Serena Butler. And I have asked Erasmus to improve your living conditions. He will see that you receive better rations every day.” She turned to look at the robot, narrowing her eyes. “Isn’t that correct?”

The robot gave her a placid, comfortable smile as if content— not at what he had done, but at the interesting things he had observed. “As you wish, Serena Butler.”

A
fter blaming the failure of his alloy resonator on incompetent solvers, Tio Holtzman abandoned the project without further personal embarrassment. He now realized privately that the generator could never be made selective enough to harm a robotic enemy without significant collateral damage.

Somewhat chagrined, Lord Bludd had strongly suggested that his great inventor pursue other concepts. Even so, it had been a promising idea. . . .

The scientist returned to his original scrambler field that could disrupt the sophisticated gelcircuitry of thinking machines. Other engineers continued to modify the field-portable scramblers for use in ground assaults, but Holtzman felt there might be more, that the scrambler design could be adapted into a strong barrier against a different sort of weapon.

Engrossed in his task, and avoiding Norma (with her irritating tendency to point out his errors), he stared at his calculations. With the goal of increasing the field’s power and distribution, he wrestled the equations as if they were living things. He needed to seal the loophole that had allowed the cymeks to penetrate Salusa Secundus.

He thought of offensive and defensive weapons at the same time, bouncing them around in his mind like playthings. On general principles, Holtzman knew that
outright destruction
of the enemy would be relatively straightforward, once the League got past Omnius’s defenses. Simple bombardment with an overwhelming number of old-fashioned atomic warheads could obliterate the Sychronized Worlds— but would also kill billions of enslaved human beings. Not a viable solution.

In his orrery atop a narrow staircase, Holtzman tapped the hologram image of a large moon that orbited a watery planet. The moon spun out in a long ellipse, escaping the gravitational clutches of its parent planet and careening through the imaginary solar system until it finally collided with another world, destroying both heavenly bodies. He frowned and shut off the image.

Yes, destruction was easy enough. Protection was much harder.

Holtzman had considered bringing Norma in on his new scheme, but he felt intimidated by the young woman. Despite his earlier successes, he was ashamed that his own mathematical intuition was inferior to hers. She would have been pleased to work beside him, of course, but he felt proprietary toward the concept. For once he wanted to accomplish something entirely by himself, by rigid adherence to the calculational results.

But why had he brought Norma all the way from Rossak, if not to take advantage of her skills? Annoyed at his own indecisiveness, Holtzman returned the planetary projector to the clutter of a shelf. Time to get back to work.

A Dragoon guard marched through the doorway in a jangle of gold-scale armor. He delivered a sheaf of calculation sheets from the solver teams, the last round of simulation models.

Holtzman studied the final numbers, skimming successive calculations. He had worked and reworked his fundamental theory, and his solvers had finally found the answers he needed. Excited, he slapped his palm on the table, scattering piled documents.
Yes!

Pleased, the inventor organized his papers, neatly stacking notes, sketches, and blueprint films. Then he spread out the calculation sheets like a treasure display— and summoned Norma Cenva. When she came in, he proudly explained what he had done. “Please— I invite you to study my results.”

“I would be happy to, Savant Holtzman.” Norma evinced no competitiveness, no desire for fame. Holtzman was glad for all of that. But he took a deep breath of trepidation.

I fear her.
He hated the thought, tried to set it aside.

She climbed onto a stool, tapping her squarish chin as she pored over the equations. Holtzman walked around his laboratory, flashing glances over his shoulder, but she would not be distracted— not even when he disturbed a stack of resonating tone prisms.

Norma absorbed the new concepts as if she were in a hypnotic trance. He wasn’t certain how her mental processes worked, only that they did. Finally she emerged from her alternate world and set the papers aside. “It is indeed a new form of protective field, Savant. Your manipulation of basic equations is innovative, and even I have difficulty comprehending them in detail.” She smiled at him, looking very girlish, and he tried not to swell with relief and pride.

Then, to his dismay, her tone changed. “However, I’m not certain that the application you intend will be valid.”

Her words fell like drops of hot lead on his skin. “What do you mean? The field can disrupt both computer gelcircuitry and physical intrusion.”

Norma ran her fingers across a section of calculations on the third page. “Your major limiting factor is the radius of effective projection, here and here. No matter how much energy you pump into the shield generator, you cannot expand it beyond a certain constant value. Such a field could protect ships and large buildings— marvelously, in fact— but it will never scale up to the diameter of a planet.”

“Can we use multiple small ones, then?” Holtzman asked in an anxious tone. “Overlap them?”

“Maybe,” Norma agreed, though without enthusiasm. “But the surprising thing to me is
this
, the velocity variable.” She circled another part of an equation with her fingertip. “If you rework the mathematics here”— she took a calculation box, rapidly punched a scribe through several openings to engage internal mechanisms, and slid narrow surface plates back and forth—”the incident velocity becomes relevant when you separate it as a function of the shield’s effectiveness. Thus, at some minimum value for the velocity, the protection factor becomes completely insignificant.”

Holtzman stared, struggling to follow her argument. “What do you mean?”

Norma was incredibly patient with him. “In other words, if a projectile moves
slowly enough
, it can penetrate your shields. The shield will stop a fast bullet, but anything slower than a certain critical value passes through.”

“What sort of enemy fires slow-moving bullets anyway?” Holtzman said, pulling the papers back toward him. “Are you afraid someone will be hurt by a tossed apple?”

“I am simply explaining the ramifications of the mathematics, Savant.”

“So my shields can protect only small areas, and only against fast projectiles. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not I, Savant Holtzman. That is what your own equations say.”

“Well, there must be a practical application. I just wanted to show you my work in progress. I’m sure you’ll come up with something much more earth-shattering on your own.”

Norma seemed not to notice his petulance. “Might I have a copy of this?”

Holtzman frowned at himself for being petty, even unproductive. “Yes, yes, I’ll have the solvers make one for you, while I go into private contemplation. I may be gone for several days.”

“I’ll remain here,” Norma said, still staring at the mathematics, “and keep working.”

FLOATING ON THE river aboard a lavish traditional barge, Holtzman paced the airy deck and mulled over possibilities. The water currents stroking the sides of the barge brought a wet scent of metal and mud.

In the covered aft section, a group of vacationers drank foaming wines and sang songs, distracting him with their revelry as the driftbarge cruised upriver. When one woman recognized the famous scientist, the whole party invited him to join their table, which he did. After a fine dinner, they shared expensive drinks and reasonably intelligent conversation. He basked in the adulation.

But in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, he resumed his work.

Clinging to his past successes, remembering when the ideas had flowed so easily, he refused to give up on the new concept. His innovative shields had remarkable potential, but perhaps he was thinking in the wrong paradigm. His canvas was large and his mission vague, but his strokes had been too broad.

Why must he worry about armoring an entire planet at a time? Was that really necessary?

There were other kinds of warfare: personal combat with ground troops, hand-to-hand battles in which humans could free their captive brothers on the Synchronized Worlds. Massive, planet-wrecking strikes wasted lives. Since an artificial intelligence could copy itself indefinitely, Omnius would never surrender, not even in the face of overwhelming military resistance. The evermind would be nearly impervious . . . unless commando teams could move directly into a machine control center, as they had done on Giedi Prime.

Now, as he paced the breezy deck of the river barge, stars glimmered overhead. Holtzman gazed ahead into the sheer rock walls of the Isana canyon, a deep gorge formed by the torrential river. He could hear a whispering rumble of rapids approaching, but knew the barge would steer through a safe channel along one side. He let his mind wander.

Smaller shields . . . personal shields. Perhaps the invisible armor would not stop slow projectiles, but they would be proof against most military attacks. And the machines need never know the vulnerability.

Personal shields.

While the success and accolades might be less glorious, the new defensive concept could still prove useful. In fact, it might save billions of lives. People could wear the shields for personal protection. Individuals, like tiny fortresses, could be made nearly impervious to attack.

Breathless, he returned to his luxurious cabin on the upper deck of the barge, the interior of which was illuminated by one of Norma’s faceted glowglobes. Far into the night, he wrote and rewrote his equations. Finally he studied his results with bleary, grainy eyes and proudly labeled them the “Holtzman Effect.”

Yes, this will do nicely indeed.

He would summon a fast transport and return to Starda, downriver. He couldn’t wait to see the expression of bewilderment and awe on Norma’s face when she recognized his true genius, and realized that he had never lost it.

O
n the granite walls of the narrow river canyon, the slaves— mostly boys like Ishmael and Aliid— dangled in harnesses over the empty abyss. The young men worked far from the listening overseers, without any hope of escape. They had no place to go except down the rock face to the frothing waters far below.

The abrasive knife of the Isana had sliced a steep gorge, leaving stone walls so flat and polished that no weed or bush could gain a roothold. Though the river was fast and the waters treacherous, this bottleneck was part of the vital trade route downriver. Floating barges from the continental flatlands— loaded with cargoes of grain, fermented grass juices, flowers, and local spices— passed through the gorge.