Mentats of Dune

by Brian Herbert

  Quemada stood near her now on the grass outside the palace, and his very presence seemed to suck warmth out of the air. The tall, black-haired man had a strange charisma, a predatory appeal. He watched Dorotea with a gaze as sharp as a hawk’s talons as she led her orthodox Sisters through a training session in Truthsaying. She wondered if Salvador had sent him to keep an eye on them.

  By ordering the massacre on Rossak, the Emperor had tried to wipe out the Sisterhood school without regard to which women were loyal and which secretly supported the use of forbidden computers. He didn’t have the patience to sort wheat from chaff, but Dorotea had convinced him of her own usefulness. The survival of her followers—and the core of the Sisterhood itself—required that she not fail. Through their Truthsaying skill, Dorotea and her companions were beginning to prove their worth, but she had to be careful at all times.

  And now the Grand Inquisitor was watching.

  On some far-flung world, the defeated Mother Superior Raquella was trying to draw together her scattered Sisters, a sad, pathetic effort. Even the Emperor had lost interest in them.

  Dorotea, though, had a hundred Sisters with her now, and her truthsense would help her select new candidates. When she found a protégée with the proper skills, she would supervise her training, then give her the opportunity to consume the Rossak drug when she was ready; if the candidate survived, she would become a Reverend Mother. Dorotea was building a new, strong Sisterhood, like a vibrant tree rising from the roots of an old stump.

  First, though, she needed to secure the absolute trust of the Emperor.

  For today’s training session, Dorotea had brought eight Sisters who were taught to use their internal skills of observation to discern truth from lies. Sister Esther-Cano led the women through the paces. As one of the last surviving pureblood Sorceresses born on Rossak, she had exceptional lie-detection skills.

  Esther-Cano had searched the Imperial prisons and identified six of the most notorious liars on Salusa Secundus—embezzlers, frauds, scam artists. A team of guards had removed them from their confinement, dressed them in business attire or casual clothing, and mixed them into a group of ordinary citizen volunteers. All of them had been given instructions, while the cautious guards watched. The twelve subjects sat on chairsThere are far more pleasant places for an Emperorre m1O on the lawn, recounting their purported life stories. Some were telling the truth, and some were lying.

  “I grew up in the slums of south Zimia, so I began life with a setback,” said a slender, middle-aged woman. Dorotea raised her eyebrows, sure that Emperor Salvador would never admit slums existed anywhere in the capital city. “Stealing was the only way I could survive. I took things from my parents, from my teachers, and from local merchants.” She paused, shuddered, and continued. “Only when I found the truth written in the Orange Catholic Bible did I understand that I needed to save other people, rather than take advantage of them.” Her eyes brimmed with tears as she continued to relate her tale. “I shared the word, preached to anyone who would listen.”

  When the woman finished recounting her story, Esther-Cano selected one of her students to comment. Sister Avemar was young and pretty, with dark curly hair and attentive brown eyes. “I don’t trust what she’s saying. Her story is fiction.” She ticked off telltale indicators: perspiration on the brow and lip, a slight trembling of the hands, a change in the tenor of the voice that indicated falsehood, posture, direction of gaze, even the selection of evasive words.

  Dorotea smiled, for she had come to the same conclusion.

  “Now close your eyes and look inward,” Esther-Cano said to Avemar, while the liar squirmed on her chair, forced to remain silent during the discussion. “Take a moment, and tell me more about this subject.”

  Avemar meditated, breathing shallowly, and when she finally opened her eyes, they shone with a new brightness. “Everything this woman said was true, but it was also a lie—a lie by way of concealment. She did engage in many illegal activities as a young woman, she did use religion to turn her life around, she did take up the cause of preaching from the Orange Catholic Bible. But she used her fervor to advance her own cause. She took money from her faithful listeners under false pretenses.”

  The woman on the chair flushed, squirmed, and finally nodded. Avemar pointed out, “The tears pouring down her cheeks are real.”

  “Very good,” Esther-Cano said. “Concealment can be as great a lie as an overt falsehood.”

  Next, an elderly man in another chair said in an accented voice, “My life history is not interesting at all. After serving in the armed forces of Emperor Jules, I attended the Zimia college to study accounting. After graduating, I worked for an export company on Ecaz for years, then took a similar position on Hagal. My wife and I accumulated a nest egg by honest means, then retired here on Salusa.”

  Esther-Cano indicated for another man to tell his story, so the students had two to consider at the same time. The next speaker was a technician who maintained the Emperor’s lion-drawn royal carriages. He tried to elicit a chuckle as he recounted the time a male lion tried to mount a female lion in heat while both of them were in harness; they overturned the whole carriage with two footmen inside.

  After Reverend Mothers critiqued the stories, the other test subjects told their tales until all twelve had spoken. Dorotea watched, easily drawing the correct conclusions. Every one of the subjects told falsehoods or exaggerated to some degree; it didn’t matter whether they were criminals or ordinary citizens. She was also pleased to see that the other Sisters were gradually learning to utilize their instincts and subconscious thoughts to ascertain information.BRIAN HERBERT s woman

  “It is all about observation,” Esther-Cano said to them. “Using the human senses available to you.”

  Quemada was silent beside Dorotea. His handsome, even kindly features concealed his efficient cruelty—his own form of a lie. None of the Grand Inquisitor’s subjects would ever consider him a gentle person, no matter his appearance. When the twelve subjects finished their tales, Dorotea turned to him. “And what is your assessment?” She met his seemingly unthreatening gaze.

  “I think your students need considerably more practice.”

  “That is why they are called students.”

  He gave a thin smile. “My methods are superior. The Suk School has seen to that.”

  �r. Taking yo

  A memory can be the most painful punishment, and a Mentat is doomed to revisit each memory with the clarity of immediate experience.

  —GILBERTUS ALBANS, Annals of the Mentat School (redacted as inappropriate)

  Gilbertus closed the door of his office, withdrew an ornate old-fashioned key from his pocket, and turned it in the lock. He heard the satisfying click, but that was only superficial security. No one else at the school knew about his more sophisticated systems.

  Even though the Headmaster asked not to be disturbed, he still applied a static seal around the door, threw additional hidden dead bolts, opaqued the window looking out on the marsh lake, and then activated white-noise reflectors, listening scramblers, and signal blockers against any sophisticated eavesdropping tools.

  It was absurd to think that Manford Torondo, having condemned any technology more advanced than a medieval tool, would use surreptitious surveillance technology, but the Butlerian leader was a man of contradictions, situational ethics, and conditional morality. Although he railedDeacon Kalifer Mentattoo against Josef Venport’s vast shipping empire, Manford traveled about the Imperium in advanced spacefolders, justifying space travel as a necessary evil in order for him to spread his important message. His followers had used advanced weaponry to destroy Venport’s gigantic shipyards at Thonaris, and he had forced Gilbertus to assist him in that operation. Manford was intelligent enough to see the contradictions in his own positions, but was so rabidly dedicated that he didn’t care.

  Right now, Gilbertus did not want to take any chances. Only when he was convinced his office was secure—with physica
l barricades, as well as technological tricks he had learned while being raised among the thinking machines—did he feel safe.

  Exhaling a long sigh, he worked secret controls on a cabinet, slid aside a false panel, deactivated another security system. Then he removed the most dangerous mind in the known universe—the memory core of the independent robot Erasmus, enslaver and torturer of millions of human beings.

  Gilbertus’s mentor and friend.

  The gelcircuitry sphere glowed a faint blue from its inner power source and simmering thoughts. “I’ve been waiting for you, my son.” Erasmus’s voice sounded small and tinny through the speakers. “I am bored.”

  “You have the whole school to explore through your spy-eyes, Father. I know you observe every student and every conversation.”

  “But I prefer my conversations with you.”

  Long ago on Corrin, Erasmus had kept human slaves as experimental subjects, testing, prodding, torturing, and observing millions of them—and Gilbertus Albans had thought nothing of it. In those days Gilbertus had been a special case, a feral and uneducated young man, barely able to speak. Omnius, the computer evermind, had challenged Erasmus to prove the potential of humanity, and through tedious and unflagging indoctrination, the curious robot succeeded in converting that nameless wild boy into an exquisite human specimen.

  That had changed Gilbertus forever, made him what he was today—and he knew it had changed Erasmus, too.

  During the Battle of Corrin, Omnius had placed Gilbertus among other human hostages in booby-trapped orbiting containers. If the Army of the Jihad had opened fire on the machine stronghold, many thousands of innocent hostages would have been killed. Unable to tolerate the risk to his precious ward, Erasmus had left the thinking machines vulnerable so that he could save one small life—a completely irrational decision. A compassionate decision? Even Gilbertus only partially understood the reasons for the robot’s action, but he felt an intense devotion toward his beloved mentor.

  Gilbertus had in turn rescued Erasmus. While the machine planet was overrun by the Army of the Jihad, he had smuggled out the robot’s memory core, which contained all that Erasmus was. Desperate, calling upon all the human skills he had, Gilbertus and a handful of other machine sympathizers escaped by mingling with the other refugees.…

  Now, more than eight decades later, Gilbertus had built an entirely different life, created a new construct for himself, and never confessed his past.

  “When will you let me begin experimenting on Anna Corrino?” Erasmus pressed. “She intrigues me.”

  “Haven’t you done enough experiments on humans? You used to brag about it—hundreds of thousands of subjects.”

  “But I have never seen a candidate as interesting as that young woman. Her mind is like an unsolvab and efficient s womanle puzzle, and I must solve it.”

  “You once said I was your most fascinating subject,” Gilbertus teased. “Have you lost interest in me?”

  The robot paused, as if to consider. “Are you jealous of my fascination with her? Tell me more about your emotions.”

  “Not jealous—just protective. Anna Corrino must remain safe under my care. Any harm to her will bring down Imperial wrath on the Mentat School—and I’m quite familiar with your experiments, Father. A huge percentage of your subjects did not survive.” He walked to a decorative table next to his reading chair, bent over, and set up the pieces for their usual game of pyramid chess.

  “I promise to be careful,” the robot insisted.

  “No. I can’t risk the Emperor’s sister. I already walk a fine line with the Butlerians when I teach students your techniques without appearing to be a machine sympathizer.”

  The robot was in a more talkative mood than usual. “Yes, I recognize the growing shadow of suspicion. Your crude attempts to make yourself look older are beginning to strain belief, and the years are adding up. You knew the time would come to leave this school. You need a new identity, a new life. We should leave Lampadas—it is too dangerous here.”

  “I know.…” Feeling sad, Gilbertus looked at the gelsphere, which seemed so small and fragile on its stand, so impotent in comparison with the magnificent robot that once ruled Corrin, strutting about in bright plush robes.

  Erasmus was persistent. “And you must find me another robot body. A better one than last time. I need to be mobile again so I can defend myself … so that I can explore and learn. That is my raison d’être.”

  Gilbertus set up the chess pieces and made his first move, knowing Erasmus was watching him through spy-eyes in the room. “I don’t have any robot bodies to work with. The Butlerians forced me to destroy all my teaching specimens. You know that—you observed it.”

  “Yes, I did. And you appeared to enjoy the mayhem.”

  “It was a carefully studied expression, necessary to fool Manford Torondo and his followers. Don’t sulk.”

  “Perhaps you can bring in more Tlulaxa students. They can grow a synthetic biological body to accept my memory core. Now, that would be interesting.”

  Gilbertus said in a quieter voice, “I do want to help you, Father, out of gratitude for all the help you’ve given me. But we have to be more cautious now than ever. In light of the news I heard today, the danger is much increased.” He knew the robot would be tantalized.

  “What news? I have monitored all student and instructor conversations.”

  “I didn’t release this information to the students or the faculty, but rumors are sure to spread soon enough.” He waited for Erasmus to signal his next move on the pyramid chessboard, then dutifully moved the game piece. “One of the old machine sympathizers from Corrin was discovered in hiding, a human slave-pen manager named Horus Rakka.”

  “I remember him,” Erasmus said. “An adequate employee who kept the subjects in line. He slaughtered many, but no more than the other slavemasters.”

  “Well, it turns out that he escaped from Corrin, as we did. The and efficient s womannotorious Horus Rakka changed his name and lived a new life in exile, pretending to be someone else for all this time.”

  “Corrin was overrun eighty-four standard years ago,” Erasmus said. “I don’t have accurate birth records for all my human helpers, but Rakka was approximately thirty years old back then. He would be a very old man now.”

  “Yes, he was old when the Butlerians found him—old and frail. But they executed him nevertheless, burned him alive in a public spectacle. This discovery only increases the Butlerian fervor, and they will keep hunting until the last ‘machine apologist’ is found—and that could be me.”

  Erasmus’s voice carried an edge of uneasiness. “You must not let them find you, or me.”

  “Horus Rakka lived an unobtrusive life. No one paid attention to him—and yet he was still discovered. I, on the other hand, have become prominent, and there is always a risk that someone will recognize me. At one time, I might have led a happy life in obscurity, but it’s too late for that now.”

  Erasmus took offense at the idea. “I did not create you to hide your potential. You were destined for greatness. I made you that way.”

  “I understand that, and I have followed the path you wanted for me, founding this great school and teaching humans to organize thoughts the way machines do—that is a legacy I share with you. With all your care, advice, and attention you have treated me like a son, have shown love toward me.”

  The robot found this amusing. “Perhaps I have shown what you think is love, but I have only been able to experience a rough equivalent of the emotion. There is still a great deal I do not grasp about human love, the feelings of a father for a child, or of a mother, and the reciprocal feelings of a child toward its parents. These are things I might never understand, because I can never be a real biological father to a child, with the emotional connectivity it involves.”

  Looking up from the chess game that held neither player’s interest, Gilbertus turned from the robot’s memory core, while his mind journeyed far away, entering a Mentat t
rance.

  Inside the meticulously organized compartments of his brain, the Headmaster had created a very special private sanctuary. He called it his Memory Vault, a place where he stored his experiences from his early years as a free human after escaping Corrin.

  Gilbertus had lived under a false identity for his first two decades of freedom, convincing others that he was a normal human being. He looked like a healthy young man of thirty, and he maintained his body as if it were a precision machine, just as he maintained his mind. He made his way to the remote planet Lectaire, where he decided he wanted to be a farmer. He was hired on as help, learning that agriculture in practice was different from the theory he had studied.

  Now whenever Gilbertus entered his Memory Vault, he relived times with the farmer’s family, the neighbors, their summer festivals and harvest feasts, their winter prayers and spring celebrations. It was the first time Gilbertus had ever interacted in human society. He studied the people of Lectaire, he learned, he imitated. Soon enough, living among people became second nature to him, and he found that he liked his neighbors, enjoyed social interaction.

  The realization surprised him, because Erasmus had always said that free humans were unruly, uncivilized, and disorganized, with squalid and unsatisfying lives. Despite his mentor’s teachings, he founds in return?”

  Gilbertus spent seven years among them, working on farms, living a quiet life. While continuing to protect the robot’s hidden memory core—and ready to kill anyone who happened to discover it—he let himself fit in. He met a young woman named Jewelia and discovered love—a thing that Erasmus had never been able to teach him. In such matters, he was forced to learn for himself.

  And he learned about heartache. Jewelia had loved him, but eventually she married someone else, leaving him heartbroken and struggling to understand. His secret robot mentor could offer no comfort other than to suggest in a cavalier way that Gilbertus eliminate the rival suitor. Gilbertus didn’t understand his own feelings very well, but the independent robot understood them even less.