Mentats of Dune

by Brian Herbert

  When the Mentat Draigo Roget had made his offer, Taref at first had tried to remain aloof, but the longing wasstic blood.

  Watching the desert planet recede as the spacefolder accelerated away, Taref struggled to imagine the sights and experiences they would have on faraway worlds. The Holtzman engines folded space, and the ship twisted itself out of the Canopus star system.

  While the great vessel was in transit, Draigo went to address his new recruits. “You have everything you need? We will provide water, food, and new clothing.”

  “So much water,” Lillis said in a voice like a sigh.

  “And we already have clothing,” Chumel said.

  Though Taref knew their distilling suits were well-made outfits that had saved their lives many times out in the open desert, Draigo frowned at the dusty garb. “You will clean up and dress exactly like other workers. You cannot complete your mission if you stand out. You must pass unnoticed like faint shadows.” He wrinkled his nose and sniffed deeply, although Taref had never noticed any odor among the desert people. “We will instruct you in traditional hygiene practices.”

  “No Freeman will let another take away his stillsuit,” said Bentur, a gruff-voiced young man who usually kept his words to himself.

  “We will provide better garments for your temporary use. In the meantime we will hold your things for you and return them whenever you wish to go back to Arrakis.”

  “I heard offworlders are thieves,” Shurko said.

  Draigo gave a small smile that was more like a smirk. “And I heard that the Freemen of the desert know very little about offworlders.” Shurko took offense and looked ready to fight the Mentat.

  Taref said, “Stop, Shurko—you gave me your word.”

  “I did not agree to be insulted!”

  “Stop being stupid. They are taking us away from Arrakis at great expense, showing us their ways. They have no need to steal from us. Remember that planet with the ocean and the rain falling from the sky? If he meant to deceive us, this is an elaborate and costly trick.”

  “But what does he expect from us that would be worth such an investment?” Lillis asked.

  “It is not a trick—it’s an opportunity,” Draigo said. “We will teach you about offworlders and about our commercial competitors. We will give you the modern wonders that were merely rumors in your little desert village.”

  “It’s called a sietch,” Lillis said.

  Draigo gave a brief nod. “Very well. I will learn from you, as you learn from me.”

  * * *

  +Tore the TAREF WAS STUNNED when he and his friends were sprayed with water to rinse off the dust and grit, and the leftover water was allowed to simply drain away, where it was presumably recycled. Always before, he had scrubbed his hands and body with fine powder-sand, but now he felt much cleaner—even cleaner than a person might be if he were blasted by a sandstorm.

  This waste of water was an unbelievable extravagance—and a hint of what was possible out there. Draigo had told them there were many worlds in the Imperium, and most were far more hospitable than Arrakis. Thinking back on his life up to this point, Taref realized that he had seen nothing, done nothing, been nothing. If VenHold let him travel as promised, there seemed as many possibilities for him now as there were stars in the night sky.

  Lillis was unsettled and unrecognizable when she came to him wearing a clean jumpsuit. Her light brown hair was clean and loose, and—Taref marveled about this—still wet. Waddoch drank and drank of the free-flowing water until he became sick and vomited up a puddle, which embarrassed him. The ship’s maintenance workers used even more water to wash the vomit away.

  “This is … unbelievable.” Taref felt a bit ill from being surrounded by so much moisture; he and his companions had some difficulty breathing the humid air, but he assumed that gradually they would get used to it.

  When the spacefolder arrived at Kolhar, the planetary shields were shunted aside to allow passage for the descending shuttle. The ship passed through storm clouds, and water pelted the hull, streaming in amazing runnels along the windowport.

  When they landed at the Kolhar spaceport and emerged onto a new world, cold white ice fell from the sky and pelted Taref’s face. He had never felt such biting cold. The stinging droplets drenched him and his companions. Shurko protected his face with his hands and peered through his fingers into the sky, awestruck and afraid.

  Draigo laughed and ushered them away. “That is called sleet, or snow—frozen water. It falls from the sky and collects on the ground. Some planets are covered with it, just as Arrakis is covered with sand.”

  Taref held out his hand, marveling as the snowflakes dissolved in his palm. “This is water? Frozen water?” The snow continued to fall, and though it melted quickly at the warm spaceport, brushstrokes of white marked the hills outside the city.

  “Offworld weather patterns may be interesting to you, but they are not relevant to our goals.” Draigo brushed white flakes off his shoulders. “This is just a part of the new universe I have promised you. We’ll show you more later, and there will be time for instruction.”

  * * *

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, Draigo took Taref and his companions out to the field of proto-Navigators, private compartments that contained volunteers undergoing transformation.

  Taref sniffed. “There is melange in the air.”

  “Not much of it, I hope,” Draigo said. “Spice is too valuable to let it leak out indiscriminately.”

  Lillis went to one of the chambers and peered through an observation window. “There are people inside, suffocating in spice gas!”

  “It causes them to transform into something special. This is why we need to harvest escape plan,” the robot saided. p so much melange from Arrakis. Combined Mercantiles helps us create the Navigators that guide our starships.”

  The desert people gathered around the chambers, saw misshapen forms wallowing in spice gas. “Spice helps the Freemen to open their minds and see possibilities,” Taref said. But this was not what he had expected, and the grotesque sight made him uneasy.

  “It does the same for our Navigators, but in ways no one can understand,” Draigo said. “They encompass the vastness of space in their minds, and envision safe pathways for our spaceships.”

  The pungent cinnamon odor was comforting to Taref, though he did not miss the desert planet at all. Although Shurko and Bentur already seemed homesick, Taref did not regret his choice. He was determined to see the marvels in the rest of the galaxy. While these spice-filled chambers and the distorted Navigators were intriguing, Taref thought the snow falling from the sky was even more amazing.…

  Draigo took them back to the sprawling Kolhar space

  Thinking machines did not have a monopoly on cruelty, for human beings do unspeakable things as well. The Butlerians paint machines with too broad a stroke, and use only the color black. They do as much harm to human civilization as the thinking machines ever did.

  —GILBERTUS ALBANS, personal journal, Mentat School records (redacted as inappropriate)

  After the madness in the streets of Zimia, and his disturbing time with Manford Torondo, Gilbertus was glad to be safely back at the Mentat School. The Butlerian leader had not seemed at all troubled by the destruction his followers had caused.

  Gilbertus hoped to calm himself by playing a round of pyramid chess with the Erasmus core. His robot mentor was far more intelligent than a combat mek and would likely win the game, as he usually did, but Gilbertus knew tricks that were not based entirely on mathematical analyses. Anytime he won a game, it was because he leveraged his humanity, adding to the knowledge this unique robot had given him over the centuries.

  In his sealed and secure office, the Headmaster brought out the gelcircuitry memory core and set up the antique pyramid chessboard. Erasmus said, “I would have been disappointed if you’d lost the game to that cumbersome combat mek, my son.”

  “I would have been disappointed as well, Father,” Gilbertus replie
d. “In fact, I would be dead, because they would have executed me.”

  “Then I am doubly glad you won. That mek was a rudimentary model, utterly without sophistication. You should have had no trouble formulating a strategy to defeat it.”

  “I should have had no trouble—and yet it was a close match. I was under great stress, of course, which might have disrupted my thinking processes. My emotions interfered with my Mentat abilities. My human vulnerability and mortality seeped into my mind, and nearly sabotaged me.”

  The robot’s core throbbed with pale blue light. “The mek used its intelligence, meager though it was, to intimidate you into making mistakes. Doesn’t that demonstrate the superiority of thinking machines?”

  Gilbertus moved a piece, then analyzed the new layout of the board. “Manford Torondo drew exactly the opposite conclusion.” He had to engage the robot, distract him.

  Erasmus chose his next move, illuminated the destination square, and Gilbertus moved the piece for him. He leaned back to reassess his opponent’s strategy. He and Erasmus had played this game countless times before, so Gilbertus knew how difficult it was to surprise his mentor. He felt very calm now, without the damaging effects of emotion on his mental processes.

  “They used my victory to vilify thinking machines. Prior to that, they did their best to humiliate the combat mek, cutting off its integrated weapons and even its legs. Then after the match they smashed it to pieces and dragged its body through the streets.”

  “As I’ve + bal impenetrablestated many times, my son: Human society is a barbaric, feral mess,” Erasmus said. “Consider how many thinking-machine allies have been hunted down and murdered over the years—even the old man Horus Rakka, who lived his life quietly in hiding.” Gilbertus was surprised to hear agitation in the robot’s simulated voice. “Humans are monstrous and destructive. I am worried about you … about both of us. We are no longer safe here.”

  For some time now Gilbertus had also been concerned, though he wanted to conceal the true danger from his mentor. He moved one of the foot soldier pieces, leaving it vulnerable to attack—intentionally so. Erasmus responded by taking the piece, as expected. Gilbertus then sacrificed a midlevel officer, luring more of his opponent’s important pieces to where he wanted them.

  “You seem distracted, my son,” Erasmus said. “I worry about you.”

  Gilbertus quelled his smile. The independent robot was the one who was growing distracted. “You don’t understand the concept of worrying.”

  “I have been developing that capacity for centuries. I believe I have made some progress in all that time.”

  Gilbertus smiled. “Yes, Father, I suppose you have. There is much weighing on my mind, especially after the rabid violence in Zimia.” Not exactly a lie, but a distraction, an excuse designed to lull his opponent, altering the independent robot’s focus. “So many people killed by the mobs, even Prince Roderick’s innocent little daughter. The Butlerians grow more and more dangerous—I did not believe it possible. I fear that I may be on the wrong side of this fight.”

  “You are. I thought we had agreed about that long ago.”

  Gilbertus couldn’t help but think about his former student Draigo Roget, the epitome of what a Mentat should be. By siding with Josef Venport at the Thonaris shipyards, the brilliant Draigo had embraced the cause of reason and civilization, while Gilbertus had inadvertently allied himself with those who feared technology. His finest student had chosen the correct cause … and now Gilbertus found himself in a position where he had to fight against Draigo.

  The erudite robot continued, “From its inception, our Mentat School was intended to preserve the ways of logic through efficient thought processes—humans emulating thinking machines in order to preserve the advances of the Synchronized Empire.”

  Gilbertus let his hand hover over one of the chess pieces. “Did I tell you that Manford is an avid student of your own laboratory journals? He told me on board our warships when we were heading toward Thonaris.”

  “Oh? Manford has my journals?”

  “He obtained several volumes salvaged from the ruins of Corrin, and now he studies them. I think he is even obsessed with your writing. He might be as fascinated by thinking machines as you are by humans. Wouldn’t that be a supreme irony?”

  “My journals are just words. He can’t know me from them, though he might learn something from my diligent work.”

  “Words are powerful things,” Gilbertus countered. “Manford knows this, and is afraid of the damage that words can do.” He remembered how his own hypothetical stance in defense of computers had nearly brought down the school. “I must be extremely careful about everything I say and write.”

  The Headmaster moved a battle cruiser into position, but without sufficiently+ ch woman shielding it. Again, Erasmus pounced.

  “Just to be safe, we must develop our long-overdue escape plan,” the robot said. “You have been at this school for too many decades. We should slip away and lie low for a few years—perhaps going back to that quaint world of Lectaire, where you pretended to be a farmer. Afterward, you and I can continue our good works.”

  Gilbertus would not see Lectaire again, although he missed the woman Jewelia, whom he had loved. She would be very old now, if she even still lived. “But what if my good work is this Mentat School? I have influence here, and even the Butlerians listen to me, after a fashion. If I were to flee, I would be abandoning human civilization to the fires of fanaticism.”

  “I am trying to save both of us from being burned,” Erasmus said. “That sort of demise is not pleasant to imagine, even for a robot.”

  Gilbertus remained hesitant. He had built this academy and understood the true importance of what it represented. He loved the bright students and the intense curriculum, even the walls rising up from the marsh lake and swamp. He was proud of what he had accomplished here. He couldn’t turn his back and allow it to be corrupted.

  As the game continued, the robot changed the subject. “I have been observing Anna Corrino. I analyzed her fragmented brain by recording her conversations and conversed directly with her. She is fascinating.”

  Gilbertus raised his eyebrows. “You communicated with her? You should not have revealed yourself.”

  “That young woman already hears voices in her mind, so I’m just another imaginary friend. But she has Sorceress genes in her bloodline, and her rearranged brain has unique, most intriguing pathways.” He paused. “We can use her, but first I am learning to understand her. We should experiment—”

  “You will not.” Gilbertus recalled the robot’s laboratory on Corrin, the organ regrowth experiments he had conducted, the horrific plagues he had developed, the slaughter of countless humans, the cruel operations he had performed on living victims without anesthetic.

  Erasmus sounded defensive. “Through my research I achieve greatness. Just look at what I created in you.”

  Gilbertus remained firm. “I won’t let you tamper with the Emperor’s sister. It is too dangerous and could lead to tremendous reprisals. If you don’t cease this line of inquiry, I will cut you off entirely. I can sever all connections to your spy-eyes and leave you isolated again.”

  “You would never do that.” Erasmus sounded hard and dominant, as he’d been decades before, when he was a powerful robot slavemaster. “Why else do I exist except to learn and expand my mind? I cannot tolerate being static. As for your own priorities, you would harm the defenses of this school by blinding me!” When Gilbertus made no response, the robot tried a different approach.

  “You cannot uproot all of my work without tearing down every building. Besides, there are advantages to my surveillance. Do you know that Alys Carroll watches you like a snake, ready to strike? She keeps records of every statement you make that might be questionable.”

  Gilbertus was disturbed, though not surprised, by the actions of the Butlerian student. “Can you delete those records?”

  “They are not electronic files. She writes w
ith a stylus on paper. It is rather quaint.”

  Gilbertus frowned, made another move on the chess Work crews as

  We can never atone for all the harm we cause in our lifetimes. We each make decisions based on personal priorities. In the process, people are invariably shunted aside. Someone suffers.

  —teaching of the new Philosophical Academy

  The shuttle that Vorian Atreides rode down to Lankiveil was a flying bus full of laborers, mostly offworlders ready to work in boats on the cold seas. More than fifty men and women had been transferred here to fill jobs promised by the wealthy Bushnell family, who had encroached on the best fur-wh forward to meeting her,” Vor said tp the otherale harvesting waters. As House Harkonnen waned, the Bushnells saw an opportunity and moved into territory that Vergyl Harkonnen could no longer protect.

  The Bushnells had noble blood, but a century ago they had fallen into political disfavor after withdrawing from some of the most vigorous battles in the Jihad. Even so far from Salusa Secundus, the Landsraad still had influence, and current Bushnell ambitions had been thwarted by other nobles who still held grudges. Seeking to recover their standing, the family had moved in on backwater Lankiveil, where the Harkonnens were also held in low esteem.

  Vor knew the Harkonnens had little chance without good business leadership. Their noble house had fallen on hard times after several commercial failures, especially the loss of an entire season’s whale-fur harvest when a cheap cargo carrier vanished in foldspace. Vergyl Harkonnen was not a skilled planetary ruler, and his elder son, Griffin, had been the family’s best hope … until Griffin was murdered on Arrakis, with Vor at his side, unable to protect him.

  Now Vor hoped that if he went to Lankiveil, he could do something for Griffin’s family. The proud Harkonnens would never accept charity or assistance from the man who had caused their downfall, but if he could accomplish it without their knowledge.…