The Machine Crusade

by Brian Herbert

  Knowing that he could easily erase all the gelcircuitry with a single burst from his scrambler, the scientist composed himself and switched off the device. Holtzman looked back to the plaz barricades, noting that three of Iblis's nondescript Jipol attendants had taken up wary positions near the more agitated representatives.

  The silver update sphere, still hovering in the air, said in a loud voice, "I have never experienced anything quite like that… sensation."

  "You felt the machine equivalent of human pain. I think you were about to scream."

  "Do not be absurd."

  "Oddly enough, computers can be as stubborn as humans," Holtzman commented petulantly to the Grand Patriarch.

  Iblis wore a thin smile, though his own skin had crawled at the sound of Omnius's synthesized voice. He hated the computer evermind, wanted to take a dub and smash it. "I did not mean to disturb you, Savant. I simply came here searching for the Cogitor Kwyna." He looked wistfully at the ancient brain in its preservation tank. "I have many ideas and questions. Perhaps she can help me to focus my thoughts."

  "Or to misinterpret more scriptures?" the yellow-robed secondary said, his voice flat as a paving stone.

  Iblis was alarmed at the audacity. "If the meanings are clear to no one, who is to say I am misinterpreting them?"

  "Because people die whenever you find meaning in old runes or ancient writings."

  "People die in every war."

  "And more people die in a Jihad."

  The Grand Patriarch showed a flicker of anger, then grinned. "You see, Savant? This is exactly the type of debate I wish to have… although I would prefer more time in private, if the Cogitor will allow me?" His dark eyes flashed.

  Frustrated by his lack of success against the captive evermind, Holtzman gathered his equipment. "Unfortunately, I don't have the time to continue this series of interrogations at the moment. A space liner is due to depart shortly for Poritrin, and I have important obligations back on my home world." He looked over at Iblis. "The… uh, project suggested by Primero Atreides."

  The Grand Patriarch smiled at him. "While that plan may not be exactly 'scientific,' it may fool the thinking machines nonetheless."

  Holtzman had hoped to depart from Zimia in triumph, but his weeks here had been disturbingly unfruitful. Next time, he would bring along some of his best assistants; they would find a way to solve the problem. He decided not to include Norma Cenva.

  Though Norma Cenva saw great revelations in the intricacies of the cosmos, sometimes she could not distinguish night from day, or one place from another. Perhaps she did not need to identify such things, because she was capable of journeying across an entire universe in her mind.

  Was her brain physically capable of assembling huge quantities of data and using that information to identify large-scale events and complex trends? Or was it instead some inexplicable extrasensory phenomenon that enabled her to exceed the thinking capacities of any person who had lived before her? Or of any thinking machine?

  Generations later, her biographers would argue over her mental powers, but Norma herself might not have resolved the debate. Realistically, she would have cared less about how her brain worked than she cared about the actual performance of her mind and the incredible results of its inquiries.

  —Norma Cenva and the Spacing Guild, a confidential Guild memorandum

  Wherever she was, whatever she did, everything contributed raw material to the busy factory of Norma Cenva's mind.

  For reasons that were not explained to her, Holtzman moved her offices and laboratory space to a smaller, cheaper building near the warehouses on the Isana River. The rooms were cramped, but she needed few luxuries other than time and solitude. She no longer had access to dedicated slaves whose sole job was to solve equations; now the captive solvers were assigned to the more profitable tasks proposed by the Savant's other young and ambitious assistants. Norma didn't mind — in truth she preferred doing the mathematics herself. She spent her days going in and out of a fugue state, mentally following the flow of higher-order numerics.

  For years she had been adrift in a sea of equations she could never have explained to Holtzman or to any of the League's other theorists. She was engrossed in her own vision, and each time she solved the riddle of another grain of sand on an extensive mathematical shore, she came closer to finding her safe harbor.

  She would learn how to fold space… to travel across great distances without actually moving. She knew it was possible.

  Ostensibly, Savant Holtzman still kept her on his extended staff as an assistant, but the small-statured woman had stopped working on anything other than her massive cyclical calculations. Nothing else interested her.

  Every once in awhile he would look in on her and try to draw her into conversation to see what she was doing. But he understood very little of what she told him, and the years passed. It occurred to Norma that he might prefer to have her where he could monitor her.

  Though she had provided him with no recent advances he could claim for himself, she had surprised him many times before. Since the start of the Jihad, she had modified Holtzman's shields on League Armada ships so that they did not overheat so quickly in a battle engagement. Thermal buildup still remained a flaw in the system, but her shields were significantly improved over the original versions.

  Four years after that, Holtzman had offered a "flicker and fire" technique for his shields, a carefully choreographed system that allowed a League ship to fire through microsecond gaps in the shields. Norma had cleaned up his calculations, preventing yet another mishap. She had never dared to tell him what she had done, knowing he would have grown indignant and defensive.

  Now, for the past eight years, she had worked in her own private laboratories, following her research whims. In the midst of the small facility's cluttered work space, Norma had set aside only tiny areas for cooking, sleeping, and personal hygiene. Such human needs were secondary to her, while the products of her mind were paramount. Holtzman still allowed her a minimal level of funding, though Norma required only the resources of her own mind, since her work was primarily theoretical. So far.

  For three days now, Norma had labored without interruption on a particularly complex manipulation of Holtzman's seminal equations. Hunched over the workbench that had been modified to accommodate her dwarfish stature, she ate and drank little, not wanting to be bothered with the demands of her physical body.

  Though she'd been born a daughter of the chief Sorceress of Rossak, Norma had spent most of her life here on Poritrin, not as a citizen but as a visitor invited by Savant Holtzman. Long ago, when Norma's stern mother had seen her as only a failure and a disappointment, Holtzman had noticed the girl's quiet genius and had given her the opportunity to work with him.

  In all that time, she had received few accolades. Humble but dedicated, Norma did not mind being overshadowed by the great man. She was a patriot in her own unassuming way and wanted only to make certain that the advanced technology was put to use to benefit the Jihad.

  For years Norma had actually protected Holtzman, catching embarrassing inconsistencies that might have led to disastrous consequences. She did this out of gratitude, since he was her patron. But once she had realized that the Savant spent so much time rubbing elbows with nobles that he accomplished little on his own, she spent less time trying to save his image and devoted full concentration to her own research.

  She found his current expensive project to be particularly foolish from a scientific point of view. Building a giant sham fleet in orbit! It was no more than a bluff, an illusion. Even if the scheme worked, as Primero Atreides insisted it would — Norma thought the Savant should have focused his intellectual resources on something more challenging than smoke and mirrors.

  From her squalid dockside workplace, she could hear the hammering and hum of the factories and shipyards across the Isana mudflats. Foundries hissed; steam and sparks boiled out of assembly lines. Barges hauled cargo loads of ore into the shipy
ards and carried away completed components.

  Luckily, when Norma focussed her thoughts, all distractions faded into the background.

  Finally, hungry and dehydrated, her body screaming for rest, Norma lay her head on stacks of scrawled equations, as if the symbols could keep penetrating her mind by osmosis. Even in slumber her unconscious mind continued to process the formulas she had been reviewing…

  Mathematical equations cycled through her sleeping mind. She could compartmentalize tasks, assigning separate sections of her brain to perform specific functions, resulting in a coordinated mass-production process in her cerebral cortex. After so long, the entire iterative simulation was coming to a climax, and she felt her dreaming self rising from great depths through the catacombs of her mind.

  Abruptly, Norma sat straight up at her workbench, nearly falling off the raised chair. Her bloodshot eyes flew open, but did not see their immediate surroundings. Still surrounded by a vivid dream, Norma gazed across an infinite distance, as if her thought impulses could extend from one side of the universe to the other and bring the distant parts together, folding the underlying fabric of space. After days without rest, her subconscious finally let the puzzle pieces snick into place.

  At last!

  She became aware of her physical self, of her heart hammering so rapidly it threatened to burst out of her chest. She sucked in a breath but desperately tried to remain focused, to retain her grasp on what she had dreamed. The answer!

  As she awoke, her mind clung to the revelation, having captured it like a butterfly in a net. She envisioned great spaceships crossing the universe without moving, guided by prescient navigators who could see safe pathways through space. Immense companies and empires would rise up from this foundation, and there would be a fundamental shift in the nature of warfare, travel, and politics.

  Tio Holtzman had never foreseen such consequences to his equations. He would not be capable of seeing them now. Norma did not dare waste time. The Savant would challenge her, question her "unprovable" mathematics, and she didn't want to lose precious time answering him. She had worked too hard, the potential was too great. This breakthrough was hers alone.

  She had no interest in ownership or credit for the discovery, but she had to make certain the concept received the full-scale commercial and military exploitation it deserved. Savant Holtzman would not understand the grandeur of what she had done; he would let it drift into obscurity.

  No, Norma had to find another way. The future awaits me.

  Smiling, she let out a long, slow breath. She should have thought of the possibility long ago. She knew exactly where to obtain the independent funding she needed for research, development, and production.

  Peering back through the magnifying glass of time, men and women in the future view the personalities of the Great Revolt as larger-than-life. Such an impression comes not through any distortion of the glass, nor from a process of embellishment that generates mythology. Instead, the heroes of the Jihad were much as they are now remembered; they rose to the occasion when humanity needed them more than ever before.

  —Princess Irulan, The Lens of Time

  After a decade of construction, sculpting, and polishing, the memorial to the war dead of the Jihad was finally completed. Aurelius Venport, whose merchant company VenKee Enterprises was one of the largest donors, received a fine seat at the unveiling ceremonies in Zimia.

  The night was cool, the darkness kept at bay by spotlights and illuminated buildings around the central plaza. Crowds milled in nearby alleys and streets, kept back from the posh VIP stands within the parklike square itself.

  Venport sipped carefully from a fluted glass of bubbly champia; he had never cared for the cloying sweetness of the slightly alcoholic drink from Rossak, but it was one of his company's prime exports. He had delivered a full load of the vintage to Salusa Secundus just for this event.

  The monument was striking and surreal, comprised of two free-form pillars with soft curves and organic shapes representing humanity, towering over a boxy monolith that lay toppled and broken at their feet. It symbolized the victory of life over machines.

  An identical monument had been built on Giedi Prime, a site of terrible loss of life but also a significant victory over the machines. If plans had proceeded as expected, the second memorial was also complete and ready to be unveiled simultaneously with this one. On one of his merchant runs to Giedi City, Venport had seen the bustling work area and the huge structure being erected there as well.

  A decade earlier, when the Jihad had already simmered and flared across the star systems for fourteen years, Xavier Harkonnen had spearheaded the movement to erect an appropriate memorial to those slain by the thinking machines. In the previous two years, thinking machines had attacked and conquered the small colony of Ellram, then struck and — at great cost — been driven away from Peridot Colony. A group of enthusiastic and ill-advised jihadi soldiers had launched their own vengeful strike against the main Synchronized World of Corrin. But they had all been killed. Martyrs to the cause.

  In the uproar following so many setbacks, Primero Harkonnen had called for the monuments, so that the fallen soldiers would never be forgotten. Serena Butler, still the League's Interim Viceroy though she had withdrawn into the City of Introspection, had added her support to the project, using her influence to obtain financial backing from political and business leaders.

  Moved by Serena's plea, and having witnessed some of the more difficult struggles against the thinking machines firsthand, Aurelius Venport had decided to do his part, despite initial objections from his Tlulaxa business partner, Tuk Keedair. Since the start of the Jihad, the profits of VenKee Enterprises had grown substantially as their merchant ships transported war materials and supplies to suffering colonies. They were also turning large profits by exporting increasingly popular luxury items such as glowglobes and, most lucrative of all, the spice melange from Arrakis.

  Venport prided himself on his business acumen, his ability to recognize money-making opportunities and to capitalize on them. The League of Nobles was vast, and open for commerce. Through his access to Rossak pharmaceuticals, Arrakis melange, and glowglobe and suspensor products invented by dear Norma, he had leveraged his advantages as much as possible, which pleased him immensely.

  His former mate Zufa Cenva had always insisted he would never amount to anything, nor would her stunted daughter. They had both proved Zufa wrong.

  It had been many years since he'd been the chief Sorceress's lover and partner. Through it all, Zufa had never believed that Venport with his commercial interests or Norma with her dabbling in mathematics would ever do enough for the fight.

  Even when Venport had personally contributed enough credits to pay for a large portion of the Zimia memorial, he had not expected Zufa to be impressed. The stern woman had devoted her life and soul to the Jihad, training Sorceresses who threw themselves against cymek strongholds as suicidal psychic bombs. Not surprisingly, Zufa considered his donation, and the memorial project itself, a frivolous waste of money better used for purchasing weapons or constructing new battleships.

  Venport smiled to himself at the thought. If nothing else, Zufa was consistent and predictable. Against all reason, he had loved and admired her since the day they met. But, in business terms, it had never been a worthwhile investment of his emotional capital.

  Seated in the open-air stands beside a beautiful young woman — one of his grown granddaughters? — the retired Viceroy Manion Butler caught Venport's eye and smiled cordially. Nearby, Primero Harkonnen's adoptive father, the aged, dignified Emil Tantor, sat alone looking sleepy.

  A smiling attendant offered another glass of champia, which Venport declined. He settled back and waited for the show. The audience was just beginning to grow restless, but Grand Patriarch Iblis Ginjo was a master of timing and would begin exactly when enthusiasm had peaked and before the mood slid into impatience.

  Though the Grand Patriarch had arrived at the cerem
ony on time, flanked by intimidating Jipol guards, he wanted the VIP guests to mill about while the larger crowds bought souvenirs and clutched bunches of brilliant marigolds, Manion's flower.

  Venport turned toward a swell of cheers, saw Iblis Ginjo and Serena Butler make their grand entrance. Serena wore her usual purple-trimmed robe of such a glowing white that she looked like an angel incarnate. Fixing his squarish face in a confident smile, the Grand Patriarch, garbed in a dashing black blazer embroidered in gold, accompanied her onto the ornate stands, while dazzling lights cast glowing haloes around them.

  Iblis was silently followed by his beautiful wife, Camie Boro. This was obviously not a love match, but a trophy marriage; during his rise to power, the man had shrewdly chosen a woman of impeccable heritage, a direct descendent of the Old Empire's last ruler.

  Around Iblis's neck dangled a prismatic chain that supported a pendant of brilliant blue-green Hagal quartz. Possibly part of his wife's fortune. No one questioned where the Grand Patriarch obtained the money for such luxuries, or for other aspects of his opulent lifestyle. His value to the League could not be measured in monetary terms. He was surrounded by his own developing mythology.

  Iblis raised his hands, and his voice boomed out with a resonant amplification. "When we see this memorial, we must remember those who paid the ultimate price against the demon machines. But we must also remember what they fought for."

  Serena stepped forward and continued in her clear, passionate voice. "This monument is not only a reminder of fallen heroes, but a symbol of yet another step toward our ultimate victory over Omnius!"

  With a brilliant flash like an exploding star, two spears of light shot upward, illuminating the memorial and the entire park. A reflecting pool became a mirror of stars under the night sky, graced with feathery fountains at one end. The spotlights blazed brighter, as if trying to outdo each other, the fountains sprayed higher, and the cheers of the crowd swelled to a deafening roar. Bright yellow-orange marigolds were strewn across the grass and in the pools; their heady scent wafting through the evening air.