Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (7 page)

The young exile never made it to the strip of rock where he had hoped to establish a private camp. Instead, the worm careened into the deep desert . . . carrying Selim far from his former life.

A
fter being rebuffed on Salusa Secundus, the thinking-machine fleet headed back to their distant base on Corrin. There, the computer evermind would not be pleased to hear the report of failure.

Like lapdog servants to Omnius, the remaining neocymeks followed the defeated robot fleet. However, the six survivors of the original Titans— Agamemnon and his elite cadre— prepared a diversion. It was an opportunity to advance their own schemes against the oppressive evermind. . . .

While the dispersed battleships made their way through space carrying the vigilant watcheyes, Agamemnon discreetly flew his own ship on a different course. After escaping the Salusan Militia, the cymek general had transferred his brain canister from a soot-scarred mobile warrior-form to this sleek armored vessel. Despite the defeat, he felt exuberant and alive. There would always be other battles to fight, whether against feral humans or against Omnius.

The ancient cymeks maintained com-silence, worried that a stray electromagnetic ripple might be detected by an outlying ship in the retreating machine fleet. They plotted a faster, more dangerous route that took them closer to celestial obstacles avoided by the risk-averse robot vessels. The shortcut would buy the secretly rebellious cymeks enough time to meet in private.

As their course intercepted a simmering red dwarf star, the Titans approached a misshapen, pockmarked rock that orbited close to the dim sun. There, a sleet of stellar wind and ionized particles, coupled with strong magnetic fields, would hide them from any robotic scans. After a thousand years of serving Omnius, Agamemnon had learned ways to outwit and sidestep the accursed evermind.

The six cymeks vectored in toward the planetoid using their human skills instead of computerized navigation systems. Agamemnon chose a site within a yawning crater, and the other Titans dropped beside his vessel, finding stable terrain on a rippled plain.

Inside his ship, Agamemnon guided mechanical arms that lifted his enclosed brain canister from its control socket and installed it into another mobile terrestrial body with a set of six sturdy legs and a low-slung body core. After connecting the thoughtrodes that linked his mind through electrafluid, he tested his gleaming legs, lifting the metal pads and adjusting the hydraulics.

He walked his graceful mechanical body down the ramp onto the soft rock. The other Titans joined him, each wearing a walker body with visible internal workings and life-support systems impervious to the blazing heat and radiation. The bloodshot dwarf star loomed overhead in the black, airless sky.

The first of the surviving Titans came forward to touch sensor pads against the general’s mechanical body, delicate probings in a romantic caress. Juno was a strategic genius who had been Agamemnon’s lover back when they had worn human bodies. Now, a millennium later, they continued their partnership, needing little more than the aphrodisiac of power.

“Will we move forward soon, my love?” Juno asked. “Or must we wait another century or two?”

“Not so long, Juno. Not nearly so long.”

Next came Barbarossa, the closest thing to a masculine friend Agamemnon had known for the past thousand years. “Every moment is already an eternity,” he said. During the Titans’ initial takeover, Barbarossa had discovered how to subvert the Old Empire’s ubiquitous thinking machines. Luckily, the modest genius had also had the foresight to implant deep programming restrictions that prevented thinking machines from doing any outright harm to the Titans— restrictions that had kept Agamemnon and his cymek companions alive after the evermind’s treacherous takeover.

“I can’t decide if I’d rather smash computers or humans,” Ajax said. The most powerful enforcer of the old cymeks, the brutal bully clomped forward in a particularly massive walker-form, as if still flexing the muscles of his long-ago organic body.

“We must cover our tracks twice for every plan we make.” Dante, a skilled bureaucrat and accountant, had an easy grasp of complex details. Among the Titans, he had never been dramatic or glamorous, but the overthrow of the Old Empire could not have been achieved without his clever manipulations of clerical and administrative matters. With none of the bravado of the other conquerors, Dante had calmly worked out an equitable division of leadership that had permitted the Titans to rule smoothly for a century.

Until the computers had wrested it all from them.

The disgraced Xerxes was the last cymek to clamber into the sheltered crater. The lowliest Titan had long ago committed the unforgivable mistake that allowed the ambitious newborn computer mind to hamstring them all. Although the Titans still needed him as part of their ever-dwindling group, Agamemnon had never forgiven him for the blunder. For centuries, miserable Xerxes had had no other desire than to make up for his error. He foolishly believed that Agamemnon might embrace him again if he could find a way to redeem himself, and the cymek general made use of such enthusiasm.

Agamemnon led his five co-conspirators across the terrain to the crater shadows. There, the machines with human minds faced each other among broken rocks and half-melted boulders to speak their treason and plot revenge.

Xerxes, despite his flaws, would never betray them. A thousand years ago, after their victory, the original Titans had agreed to surgical conversion rather than accept their mortality, so that their disembodied brains could live forever and consolidate their rule. It had been a dramatic pact.

Now, Omnius occasionally rewarded loyal human followers by converting them to neo-cymeks, as well. Across the Synchronized Worlds, thousands of newer brains with machine bodies served as indentured servants to the evermind. Agamemnon could not rely upon anyone who willingly served the evermind, however.

The cymek general transmitted his words on a tight waveband that tapped directly into the Titans’ thought-processing centers. “We are not expected back on Corrin for weeks. I have seized this opportunity so that we may plan a strike against Omnius.”

“It’s about time,” Ajax said, his voice a deep grumble.

“Do you believe the evermind has grown complacent, my love— like the humans of the Old Empire?” Juno asked.

“I have noted no particular sign of weakness,” Dante interjected, “and I keep careful track of such things.”

“There are always weaknesses,” Ajax said, twitching one of his heavy armored legs and gouging a hole in the ground, “
if
you’re willing to use enough muscle to exploit them.”

Barbarossa clacked one of his metal forelegs on the hard rock. “Do not be fooled by artificial intelligence. Computers do not think like humans. Even after a thousand years, Omnius will not let his attention wander. He has enough processing power and more watcheyes than we can count.”

“Does he suspect us? Does Omnius doubt our loyalty?” Xerxes already sounded worried, and the meeting had just begun. “If he thinks we are plotting against him, why won’t he just eliminate us?”

“Sometimes I think you have a leak in your brain canister,” Agamemnon said. “Omnius has programming restrictions that prevent him from killing us.”

“You don’t have to be insulting. It’s just that Omnius is so powerful, you’d think he could override whatever Barbarossa loaded into his system.”

“He hasn’t yet, and never will. I knew what I was doing on that job, believe me,” Barbarossa said. “Remember, Omnius yearns to be efficient. He will take no unnecessary actions, will not waste resources.
We are resources to him
.”

Dante said, “If Omnius is so intent on ruling efficiently, then why does he keep human slaves around at all? Even simple robots and minimal-AI machines could perform their tasks with less bother.”

Agamemnon paced out of the thick shadows into harsh light, and then back again. Around him, the conspirators waited like huge insects made of scrap metal. “For years, I have been suggesting that we exterminate the human captives on the Synchronized Worlds, but Omnius refuses.”

“Maybe he’s reluctant because humans created thinking machines in the first place,” Xerxes suggested. “Omnius might see humans as a manifestation of God.”

Agamemnon chided him. “Are you suggesting that the computer evermind is devoutly religious?” The disgraced cymek quickly fell silent.

Barbarossa said, like a patient teacher, “No, no— Omnius simply doesn’t wish to expend the energy or cause the turmoil that such an extermination would bring about. He sees humans as resources, not to be wasted.”

“We’ve been trying to convince him otherwise for centuries,” Ajax said.

Aware that their safe window of time was rapidly dwindling, Agamemnon pushed the discussion forward. “We must find some way to spark a radical change. If we shut the computers down, then we Titans rule once more, along with any neo-cymeks we can recruit.” He swiveled his sensor-turret. “We’ve taken charge before and must do it again.”

Previously, when the human Titans had consolidated the stagnant Old Empire, combat robots had done the bulk of the fighting for them. Tlaloc, Agamemnon, and the other rebels had simply picked up the pieces. This time the Titans would have to fight for themselves.

“Maybe we should try to find Hecate,” Xerxes said. “She’s the only one of us who has never been under Omnius’s control. Our wild card.”

Hecate, the former mate of Ajax, was the sole Titan who had relinquished her rule. Before the thinking machine takeover, she had departed into deep space, never to be heard from again. But Agamemnon could never trust her— even if she could be located— any more than he trusted Xerxes. Hecate had abandoned them long ago; she was not the ally they needed.

“We should look elsewhere for assistance, take any help we can find,” Agamemnon said. “My son Vorian is one of the few humans allowed access to the central complex of the Earth-Omnius, and he delivers regular updates to the everminds on other Synchronized Worlds. Perhaps we can use him.”

Juno simulated a laugh. “You want to trust a human, my love? One of the weak vermin you despise? Moments ago you wanted to exterminate every member of the race.”

“Vorian is my genetic son, and the best of my offspring so far. I have been watching him, training him. He has read my memoirs a dozen times already. I have high hopes that one day he will be a worthy successor.”

Juno understood Agamemnon better than the other Titans did. “You’ve said similar things about your twelve previous sons, if I recall. Even so, you found excuses to kill all of them.”

“I preserved plenty of my sperm before converting myself into a cymek, and I have the time to do it right,” Agamemnon said. “But Vorian . . . ah, Vorian, I think he might be the one. One day I’ll let him become a cymek.”

Ajax interrupted, his voice pitched low, “We cannot fight two major enemies at once. Since Omnius has finally allowed us to attack the
hrethgir,
thanks to Barbarossa’s victory in the gladiator ring, I say we prosecute that war to the best of our abilities. Afterward, we deal with Omnius.”

Immersed in the crater shadows, the cymeks muttered, half-agreeing. The League humans had escaped Titan rule centuries ago, and the old cymeks had always harbored a hatred toward them. Dante’s optic threads tracked back and forth, calculating. “Yes, the humans should be easier to defeat.”

“Meanwhile, we continue to seek a means to eliminate Omnius,” Barbarossa added. “Everything in its time.”

“Perhaps you are correct,” Agamemnon admitted. The cymek general did not want to extend this clandestine gathering much longer.

He led the march back to their individual ships. “We destroy the League humans first. Using that as a springboard, we then turn our attention to the more difficult foe.”

T
hinking machines cared little for aesthetics, but the Omnius update ship was— by accident of design— a beautifully sleek silver-and-black vessel, dwarfed by the immensity of the cosmos as it journeyed from one Synchronized World to another. Finished with its current round of updates, the
Dream Voyager
was on its way back to Earth.

Vorian Atreides considered himself fortunate to be entrusted with such a vital assignment. Born from a female slave impregnated with Agamemnon’s preserved sperm, dark-haired Vorian could trace his lineage back past the Time of Titans, thousands of years to the House of Atreus in ancient Greece and another famous Agamemnon. Because of his father’s status, twenty-year-old Vor had been raised and indoctrinated on Earth under the thinking machines. He was one of the privileged “trustee” humans permitted to move about freely, serving Omnius.

He had read all the stories of his illustrious bloodline in the extensive memoirs his father had written to document his triumphs. Vor considered the Titan general’s great work to be more than a literary masterpiece, closer to a holy historical document.

Just forward of Vor’s work station, the
Dream Voyager
‘s captain, an autonomous robot, checked instruments unerringly. Seurat’s coppery-metal skinfilm flowed over a man-shaped body of polymer struts, alloy supports, gelcircuitry processors, and wound elastic-weave musculature.

While Seurat studied the instruments, he intermittently tapped into the ship’s long-range scanners or looked out the windowport with focused optic threads. Multiprocessing as he conversed, the robot captain continued the interplay with his subservient human copilot. Seurat had a strange and unfortunate penchant for telling odd jokes.

“Vorian, what do you get when you breed a pig with a human?”

“What?”