Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (65 page)

After a thousand years of domination, Omnius was not prepared for this.

Like an avalanche, the frenzied rebels swept up others, even those who had hesitated to join the fledgling underground movement. Seeing a glimmer of hope, the slaves smashed everything technological they could find.

In the firelit darkness, Iblis climbed to a vantage point atop the Victory of the Titans frieze. From there he activated his crude transmitter. Hidden systems implanted in the chiseled wall burst forth. Every megalithic cymek statue in the mural cracked open, revealing the deadly arsenal inside.

Below in the museum square, he saw several neo-cymeks scrambling about in walker-forms. Guided by traitorous disembodied brains, the neo-cymeks rallied to attack a crowd of human rebels. Before long, other hybrid machines would arrive, undoubtedly wearing weapon-studded warrior bodies. Iblis could not let that happen.

He directed weapons fire. Rockets assembled from construction explosives launched out of embedded tubes in the frieze, exploding into the enemy. The crude blasts sheared off the fiber-metallic legs of two neo-cymeks. While they writhed on the ground and struggled to continue, Iblis shot two more rockets into their preservation canisters, spilling the electrafluids and crisping the organic brain tissue to cinders.

Even if Iblis’s followers overthrew the cymeks and the sentinel robots, the revolution would still need to deal with the all-powerful Omnius evermind. Standing high above the city grid and gazing at the spreading glow of rising fires, he felt a surge of confidence and optimism.

Bathed in surreal moonlight, the humans cheered. Flames crackled and spread in the gaudy, empty buildings of the machine capital. Near the spaceport, an armory blew up in a tremendous explosion, sending flames hundreds of meters into the air.

Iblis watched the numbers of his followers grow before his very eyes, and his heart swelled. He still could not believe the scale of what he saw occurring. Had scattered rebel cells responded to the call— or had he started this conflagration alone?

Like a chain reaction that could not be stopped, mobs ran through the streets, increasing their vengeance moment by moment.

T
he people of Poritrin had kept slaves for so long that they had grown complacent with their comfortable, pampered way of life. As the insurgents’ stranglehold on planetary commerce tightened, word of the uprising spread to all Zensunni and Zenshiite laborers in Starda. Work shut down in the entire city— and beyond. Agricultural slaves stopped their harvesting. Some set fire to the rustling cane fields; others sabotaged farm machinery.

Encamped with the other young artisans above the granite-walled Isana canyon, Ishmael and his exhausted companions spent the night inside flapping tents that caught the evening breezes on the upland plateau.

Abruptly, Ishmael awakened, recognized Aliid shaking him. “I sneaked out and listened to the overseers. There is a slave uprising at the delta! Listen to this. . . .”

The two boys returned to their still-smoldering campfire and sat huddled in the night chill. Aliid’s dark eyes sparkled in the dim light. “I knew we wouldn’t have to wait for centuries to be free again.” His breath smelled of the spicy porridge they had received for their evening meal. “Bel Moulay will bring justice. Lord Bludd will have to grant our demands.”

Ishmael frowned, feeling little of his friend’s enthusiasm. “You can’t expect the nobles to simply shrug and change the way Poritrin society has worked for hundreds of years.”

“They’ll have no choice.” Aliid clenched his fist. “Oh, how I wish we were back in Starda so that we could join the uprising. I don’t want to hide out here. I want to be part of the fight.” He made a disgusted noise. “We’re spending our days making pretty pictures on a cliffside for the glory of our oppressors. Does that make sense?” As the boy leaned back on his hands, a smile crept across his narrow face. “We can do something about it, you know. Even here.”

Ishmael dreaded what Aliid was going to suggest.

IN THE DEAD of night, after the overseers had gone to sleep in their insulated pavilions, Aliid recruited Ishmael to the cause by promising that there would be no bloodshed. “We are just making a statement,” Aliid said, his lips upturned in a humorless grin.

The pair then flitted from tent to tent, rallying confederates. Even with a simmering uprising in far-off Starda, the guards were not overly worried about a handful of boys exhausted from hours of work on the gorge walls.

Whispering in the starlight, the young men stole harnesses from the equipment shack. With callused fingers they strapped on the connections, belting themselves across the waist and chest, securing loops under their arms, attaching cables to the cliffside pulleys.

Fourteen young slaves dropped over the cliffside where the saga of the Bludd dynasty, ten times life-size, sprawled across the canyon wall. The boys had sweated to create each meticulous pixel of the illustration, following the laser-scribed patterns designed for Lord Bludd.

Now the youths dropped surreptitiously on their cables, running across the smooth cliff face with bare toes. As he swung like a pendulum, Aliid struck with his sharp rock hammer, chipping off colorful tiles, defacing the image. The distant thunder of whitewater rapids and wind whistling around the rock formations muffled the clinking of the tool against rock.

Ishmael dropped lower than his friend and hammered away at a section of blue-glazed tiles that, when seen from a distance, would have been the dream-filled eye of an ancient lord named Drigo Bludd.

Aliid had no actual plan in mind. He hammered randomly, moving laterally and climbing up again. His small sledge flaked off hundreds of tiles in a swath of random destruction across the mosaic. Chipped tiles broke away in jewel-colored shards, falling into bottomless darkness. The other slave boys did their own damage to the spectacle of Poritrin, as if by defacing the artwork they could rewrite history.

Hushed and giggling, they worked together for hours. Though they were only vague outlines in the starlight, Aliid and Ishmael grinned at each other with boyish enjoyment at their crude vandalism, then returned to the task at hand.

Finally, as the first streaks of light began to paint the horizon, the boys clambered up the cliff face in their harnesses, returned the equipment to the supply shack, and ducked into their tents. Ishmael hoped to snatch at least an hour of rest before the overseers roused them.

They made it back undetected. At dawn, alarms sounded and men bellowed into the open air, summoning the young workers and lining them up along the cliff edge. The red-faced work bosses wanted answers, demanded to know the identity of the perpetrators. They whipped the boys, one after the other, hurting them badly enough that they wouldn’t be able to work for days; they denied them rations, cut back on water allowances.

But, of course, none of the slave boys knew a thing. They insisted they had been asleep in their tents all night.

THE MALICIOUS DEFACING of the magnificent canyon mural was the final blow to Lord Bludd. He had tried to be reasonable and patient during the uprising. For weeks he attempted to use civilized means to bring Bel Moulay and his insurgent followers back into line.

When he had declared the Day of Shame, it had not worked on the psyches of the uncivilized captives— they simply didn’t care— and in the end he realized he had been deluding himself. The Zensunni and Zenshiite clans belonged to the barest fringe of the human race, practically a different species. Unable to work for the common good, these ungrateful primitives relied on the sufferance of cultured people. Based on what they had done, the Buddislamic fanatics had no moral conscience.

The slaves had sabotaged the installation of shields on Armada warships and refused to continue work on Tio Holtzman’s important new inventions. The dark-bearded insurrection leader had taken noblemen hostage and held them in slave pens. Moulay had crippled the Starda Spaceport, preventing any imports or exports, grinding all commerce to a halt. His criminal followers burned buildings, destroyed vital facilities, and ruined productive agricultural estates. Even worse, Bel Moulay had demanded the emancipation of all slaves— as if freedom was something a human being could simply have without earning it! Such an idea was a slap in the face to those billions who had fought and died to keep the thinking machines at bay.

Bludd thought of the slaughtered citizens on Giedi Prime, the victims of the cymek skirmish on Salusa Secundus, the Rossak Sorceresses who had given their lives to destroy cymeks. It disgusted him that this Bel Moulay would rally malcontent slaves to hinder every effort of the human race. The selfish arrogance of these undeserving Buddislamics!

Lord Bludd tried to communicate with them. He had expected that they would see reason, understand the stakes, and make up for the past cowardice of their people. Now, he saw that as a foolish hope.

Learning of the mosaic sabotage, he flew to the bottleneck gorge and stared in disbelief from his project observation platform. With a sinking heart, he saw first-hand the hideous damage done to his beautiful mural— the proud history of the Bludd family desecrated! Such an insult Lord Niko Bludd would not tolerate.

His knuckles turned white as he clenched the railing. His entourage was frightened by his demeanor, by the determination that boiled beneath the powdered and perfumed features that had always seemed so erudite.

“This insanity must stop forthwith.” His icy words were meant for the Dragoon guards. He turned to the gold-armored soldier beside him. “You know what to do, Commander.”

ALREADY INCONVENIENCED BY the inexplicable behavior of his slaves, Tio Holtzman was happy to receive the invitation to accompany Lord Bludd. He was eager to see the first large-scale practical demonstration of his new shields.

“Just a civil defense exercise, Tio— but alas, necessary,” Bludd said. “Nevertheless, we will observe your invention in action.”

The scientist stood beside the nobleman on the observation platform. Norma Cenva and a handful of well-dressed nobles waited behind them, looking down from the platform at the unruly crowd of slaves. The smell of smoke hung in the air, and deep-throated shouts and angry chants wafted up from the beseiged spaceport.

On the ground, Dragoon guards marched forward, protected by shimmering body shields. The squad moved like an inexorable wedge into the blockaded spaceport, wielding clubs and spears. Some carried Chandler pistols, prepared to mow down the unruly insurgents in droves, if it came to that.

Holding onto a railing, Holtzman peered down at the advancing Dragoons. “Look, the slaves can’t stop us.” Norma’s skin had gone pale and clammy. She realized the slaughter she was about to witness, but was unable to speak out against it.

The gold-armored men did not pause in their relentless progress, although the angry slaves tried to block their way. Men threw themselves against the Dragoons’ shields. The front ranks of Lord Bludd’s soldiers raised their bludgeons and cracked bones, knocking aside anyone who did not let them pass. The slaves shouted, regrouping and surging forward en masse, but they could not penetrate the shields. Gathering momentum, the Dragoons pushed into the melee, cutting through the unruly slaves.

The mob fell back and tried to form a barrier to protect the mastermind of the uprising. Standing in the bed of a groundtruck, Bel Moulay raised his voice high and clear, shouting in Chakobsa, “Do not falter! Hold onto your dreams. This is our only chance. All slaves must stand together!”

“Oh, why didn’t they fight like that against the thinking machines?” Niko Bludd grumbled, and several of the nobles around him chuckled.

When the sheer press of slaves finally halted the Dragoon forces, the legion commander shouted, his voice booming above the din. “I have orders to arrest the traitor Bel Moulay. Surrender him immediately.”

None of the insurgents moved. Moments later, the Dragoons brought out their Chandler pistols, switched off their shields, and opened fire. Crystal needle shards sprayed out, creating clouds of splattering blood and torn flesh. Slaves screamed and scrambled to escape, only to find that they were packed too closely around Bel Moulay to move.

The bearded leader shouted orders in his arcane language, but panic swept through the slaves, and they began to break up. The rain of crystal darts continued to slaughter them. Hundreds fell dead or maimed.

“Don’t worry,” Bludd said out of the corner of his mouth. “They have orders to take Bel Moulay alive.”

Norma turned away, heaving deep breaths, afraid that she was about to vomit over the edge of the observation barge. But she clamped her lips shut and brought herself back under control.

As the slaves either died or broke ranks around Bel Moulay, the black-bearded leader grabbed a staff and tried to rally them. But the Dragoon guards, seeing a clear path to their objective, charged forward like rowdies into a brawl. They surrounded the Zenshiite mastermind and tackled him to the pavement. A great shout of dismay rose as the slaves saw their leader fall under a flurry of gold-gauntleted fists.

Witnessing Moulay’s plight, the surviving insurgents clumped into angry knots and sought to rebuild their courage. But Dragoon guards shot needle pistols again, and the resistance collapsed into wailing confusion.

The Dragoons dragged Bel Moulay away, while armed vehicles and footsoldiers streamed into the spaceport, rescuing the hostage noblemen and ladies from their pens.

From the observation platform, Niko Bludd looked sadly at the crimson splashes and mangled corpses scattered around the flat landing grids. “I had hoped it would not come to this. I gave the slaves every opportunity to back down, but they left me no choice.”

In spite of the carnage, Holtzman could not hide his pleasure at how well his personal shields had performed. “You acted with honor, my Lord.”