Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (68 page)

Vor caught himself, astonished to realize his allegiance was shifting. It both exhilarated and frightened him. He felt himself drawing away from the security of his known life in machine society, toward the chaos of the unknown and his own feral biological roots. But he knew he had to do it. He understood too much now, saw through different eyes.

Around him, frenzied slaves did not worry about the consequences of their rampage. The mob had an eclectic supply of weapons, from primitive clubs to sophisticated cellular-displacement guns removed from sentinel robots. The rebels set off incendiary devices in the old spaceport’s control building and killed a skittering neo-cymek who tried to escape, splitting open his brain canister with a cellgun blast.

When he felt it was safe, Vor broke away from the crowd, maintaining his disguise, and wandered with other humans through the damp streets, deeper into the city grid. He looked like a ragged straggler but had a definite goal.

He needed to reach the villa of Erasmus.

In the canyons between large buildings, darkness began to arrive ahead of twilight, intensified because the Earth-Omnius had severed power in sectors overrun by slaves. Thunderclouds closed in, pregnant with smoke and rain. A brisk wind cut through Vor’s thin clothing, and he shivered.

He hoped Serena was still alive.

A group of rough-looking slaves broke down a metal gate and surged into a building. The mangled remains of thinking machines lay in disarray. He heard from excited chatter that even the Titan Ajax had been slain.
Ajax!
At first he couldn’t believe it, and then he didn’t doubt what he had heard. A block away, a building erupted in flames, casting eerie light into the street.

Even after what he had learned about the crimes and abuses of the original Titans, Vor felt a twinge of concern for his father. If Agamemnon was on Earth, the cymek general would be somewhere in the midst of this revolt, trying to quell it. In spite of all the lies and misleading stories Agamemnon had told, he was still Vor’s father.

Quickening his pace, Vor made his way toward Erasmus’s villa. He was tired and sore. In the plaza fronting the main house, a crowd of angry rebels pressed against a hastily erected barricade fence. The worst fighting had passed into the primary centers of the capital city grid, but here the freed slaves seemed to be maintaining an angry vigil, for reasons that Vor did not understand. He asked questions, carefully.

“We’re waiting for Iblis Ginjo,” a man with a thin beard said. “He wants to lead the assault personally. Erasmus is still inside there.” The man spat on the paving stones. “And so is the woman.”

Vor felt a jolt. What woman did the man mean? Could it be Serena?

Before he could ask, robotic defensive installations on the ornate crenellations fired scattered shots, trying to disperse the crowd. But more rebels arrived, swelling their numbers, maintaining the siege. A group dressed in stained work clothes took up strategic positions and launched two crude explosive projectiles, smashing the rooftop gun emplacements.

A small section of the rain-slick plaza had been cordoned off with posts and plazwire, and the humans had surrounded it like guardians . . . or, oddly,
pilgrims
. Vor saw flowers and colorful ribbons scattered on the plaza. Curious, he pushed closer and asked a gaunt old woman about it.

“Sacred ground,” she said. “A child was murdered here, and his mother fought against the monster Erasmus. Serena, who helped us, changed our lives, made things better for us. By standing up to the thinking machines, Serena showed us what is possible.” Sickened, Vor pressed for details, heard how the robot had thrown the little boy to his death.

Serena’s baby.
Murdered
.

“What about Serena?” Vor asked, grabbing the crone. “Is she safe?”

She shrugged her bony shoulders. “Erasmus has barricaded himself in the villa, and we have not seen her since. Three days. Who knows what goes on behind those walls?”

The mob cleared a path, and a rugged-looking man marched through, wearing the black tunic and headband of a crew boss. A dozen heavily armed men guarded him as if he were an important leader. He raised his hands, while the milling slaves cheered and called him by name. “Iblis! Iblis Ginjo!”

“I promised you it could be done!” he shouted. “I told you all!” Even without mechanical amplification, his voice was powerful with resonant warmth. “Look at all we’ve already accomplished. Now we must secure another victory. The robot Erasmus committed the crime that sparked our glorious revolt. He can no longer hide behind his walls— it is time to punish him!”

The man’s passionate voice was like fuel thrown on the flames of rebellion. The people roared their call for revenge— and Vor could not help himself. Alarmed, he raised his own voice, demanding to be heard. “And save the mother! We must rescue her!”

Iblis looked at him, and the two men locked eyes. The charismatic leader hesitated for a fraction of a second, then bellowed, “Yes, save Serena!”

At Iblis’s command, the mob became an organized weapon, a hammer slamming into the anvil of the barricaded villa. They had torn weapon-arms from robots they had overcome, using them to blast the walls of the villa until the damaged power cells ran out. With an improvised battering ram, men rushed the main gate and struck it, bending the heavy metal. Again and again they pounded, and the gate buckled. Overhead, from brooding gray skies, oily rain began to come down again.

Inside, armored household robots tried to reinforce the door barrier. Vor guessed that most of these defenders had been reprogrammed from other duties, and did not have the capacity to resist for long.

The battering ram struck again, and the gap in the heavy doors opened wider. The machines were losing ground.

Though uncertain how to handle his new feelings toward machines, Vor didn’t trust the frenzied mob, either. They didn’t really care about Serena, even if she had unwittingly provided the spark that launched the revolt. If she remained here, she would certainly become a target of retaliation from Omnius.

As he stood in the rain looking on, Vorian Atreides had his own focus. He swore to himself that he would rescue Serena. He would steal a ship and fly her far from here, escaping the Synchronized Worlds.

Yes, he would take her back to her beloved Salusa Secundus . . . even if it meant delivering her into the arms of her lost love.

C
iting the most ancient of Poritrin laws, Lord Bludd decreed the terrible punishment for Bel Moulay’s crimes. Most slaves would receive amnesty, since Poritrin needed the labor pool, but the insurrection leader could not be forgiven.

Ishmael pressed close to Aliid, the two captive boys sharing silent support and grief. The young slaves from the canyon mosaic had been brought back to Starda and confined where they would be forced to watch the execution. As punishment for the damage to the mural, Niko Bludd would put them back to work with extended shifts. But only after they witnessed the consequences of Bel Moulay’s folly. All slaves were required to be present.

The boys crowded together, hungry and tired, their clothes dirty and their bodies smelly because they had not bathed in days. The work overseers growled at them, “If you behave like dogs, you will be treated like dogs. Once you start behaving like humans, then perhaps we will reconsider.”

Aliid muttered defiantly under his breath.

In the central plaza of Starda, Dragoon guards hauled Bel Moulay in chains toward a high platform that had been erected for the spectacle. The crowd fell into an uneasy silence. Moulay’s inky beard and hair had been shorn away, leaving pale spots on his scalp and chin. But his eyes blazed with unshakable anger and confidence, as if he refused to accept that his rebellion had failed.

Holding him, the gold-armored guards tore off the Zenshiite leader’s robes. They let the rags fall away from the platform, leaving Moulay completely naked, shaming him. The slaves grumbled, but their leader stood firm and brave, amazingly unafraid.

The voice of Lord Bludd echoed across the square. “Bel Moulay, you have committed grievous crimes against all the citizens of Poritrin. It is within my rights to punish every man, woman, and child who participated in this insurrection, but I am merciful. You alone shall bear the penalty of your transgressions.”

The crowd moaned softly. Aliid slammed a fist into his palm. Bel Moulay said nothing, but his expression spoke volumes.

Niko Bludd tried to sound benevolent. “If you people learn from this, perhaps you will eventually earn the right to a normal life of servitude again, to pay your debt to humanity.”

Now the slaves howled. The Dragoon guards pressed closer, thumping their long-bladed staffs against the ground. Ishmael sensed that in spite of the ugly mood, the slaves had been beaten, for now at least. They had seen their leader publicly humiliated, put in chains, shaved, and stripped naked. And, while he showed no sign of being defeated, his followers no longer had the spark.

Bludd said, “The old laws are violent, some might say barbarous. But since your actions have been uncivilized and barbaric, they demand the same response.”

Bel Moulay was given no opportunity to speak on his own behalf. Instead, Dragoon guards battered out his teeth with a hammer, then used long metal tongs to reach into his mouth. Moulay struggled in defiance but not terror. With surgical precision, they cut out his tongue and tossed the gory, sluglike mass into the crowd.

Next, they used their diamond-bladed axes to chop off his hands and threw them into the recoiling throng as well. Bel Moulay’s bloody stumps sprayed scarlet rain into the air. Next, using hot irons, the Dragoon guards burned out his eyes. Only at the very end did he make any sounds of pain, though he somehow found the resolve to stifle them.

Blinded, the insurrection leader could not see what the gold-armored torturers were doing until they had slipped the noose over his neck and strung him over a gibbet. He struggled as the noose tightened around his windpipe, choking him slowly, never breaking his neck. Even after his horrific injuries, he seemed ready to fight against the guards, if they gave him the slightest chance.

Ishmael vomited on the ground. Several boys dropped to their knees, sobbing. Aliid clenched his teeth as if to suppress a thousand screams inside his throat.

AFTER THE EXECUTION, Norma Cenva felt a coldness in the pit of her stomach. She hardly spoke beside Tio Holtzman as the scientist looked grimly on, dressed in his finest white suit.

“Well, he brought it upon himself, didn’t he?” the Savant said. “We never treated our slaves badly. Why did Bel Moulay have to do this to us, to our war against the thinking machines?” Holtzman drew in long, deep breaths, his nostrils flaring, and glanced down at the diminutive woman. “Now perhaps we can get back to business. I suspect the slaves will behave now.”

Norma just shook her head. “This repression is unwise.” From a distance, she looked at the still-twitching body dangling on the projecting arm of the gibbet. “Lord Bludd has only succeeded in turning the man into a martyr. I fear we have not seen the end of this.”

E
ven though Erasmus had dispatched his last functional sentinel robots to defend the villa, he knew it was only a delaying action. The vigor and violence of the slave revolt amazed him, exceeding any of his projections.

Humans have an infinite capacity to surprise the most rational mind.

The slaves in the squalid main pens had been freed by their
hrethgir
brethren, flooding the ranks of the angry rebels. The revolt had spread through the capital city and to other urban complexes across Earth. His villa was surrounded and would surely fall before long.

Experiments sometimes produce unexpected results
.

Donning his most ferocious countenance, designed to inspire nightmares in humans, Erasmus stood on the high balcony from which he had thrown the child. His flowmetal visage was as fierce and frightening as any of the gargoyles in the plaza, while his mechanical mind scanned all available information, processing and reprocessing. Had it been a mistake to kill the little boy? Who would have thought such a trivial death might create a stir like this?

I miscalculated their response
.

The crowd in the plaza cursed him and peppered the balcony with small arms fire, which did no harm. More worrisome, they were surging against the heavy metal gate with a battering ram, and the sentinel robots were having trouble preventing them from breaking through. If the rebels got inside the villa, they would surely destroy Erasmus, just as they had killed the Titan Ajax, as they had smashed innumerable robots and neo-cymeks. Erasmus would be their prime target.

In the midst of the throng, a sturdy charismatic man was inciting the rebels. The leader waved his hands, spoke passionately, and seemed to have a hypnotic effect on the mob. He shouted up at Erasmus, causing an uproar from the crowd.

With a pause to assess new data, the robot recognized the rebel leader as one of the subjects of his loyalty experiment.
Iblis Ginjo
. Reassessments and connections clamored in his mind.

Iblis had been a crew boss, well treated, well rewarded, one of the content trustees. Yet he had thrown his support to the revolt, perhaps even inspired it. Through a few vague, experimental communiqués, Erasmus had somehow galvanized this slave leader into action. But he had not expected such a monumental, incomprehensible response.

Either way, Erasmus had proved his point. Beside him on the balcony, one of the evermind’s glittering watcheyes hovered close to him. The robot did not try to contain his smug realization. “Omnius, it is as I predicted— even the most trusted humans will ultimately turn against you.”