“He gave speeches attempting to rally the humans, to make them see what was happening. A few watched him with interest, considering him a novelty.” Agamemnon raised one of his powerful metal arms. “But they heard his words only as a diversion. Soon the bored audiences returned to their slothful, hedonistic pursuits.”
“But not you, Father.”
“I was dissatisfied with my uneventful life. I had already met Juno, and the two of us had dreams. Tlaloc crystallized them for us. After Juno and I joined him, we set in motion the events that led to the downfall of the Old Empire.”
Father and son arrived at the central complex where the Earth-Omnius resided, although redundant nodes of the evermind were distributed around the planet in a network of armored vaults and high towers. Vorian followed the cymek into the main structure, eager to do his part. This was a ritual they had completed many times.
The walker body strode through wide halls and entered a maintenance facility filled with lubricant tubes, bubbling nutrient cylinders, polished tabletops, and flickering analysis systems. Vor retrieved a tool kit, then turned on vacuum hoses and high-pressure water jets, found soft rags and polishing lotions. He considered it his most important task as a trustee.
In the center of the sterile room, Agamemnon halted beneath a lifting apparatus. A magnetic claw-hand came down and attached itself to the preservation canister that held his ancient brain. Neural connection ports popped open, and thoughtrode cables spiraled away. The lifting arm raised the canister, still attached to temporary batteries and life-support systems.
Vorian came forward with an armload of equipment. “I know you can’t feel this, Father, but I like to think it makes you more comfortable and efficient.” He blasted the connection ports with high-pressure air and streams of warm water, using a wadded cloth to polish every surface. The cymek general transmitted wordless gratified murmurings.
Vor completed the cleaning and polishing, then adjusted wires and cables and hooked up diagnostics. “All functions optimal, Father.”
“With your attentive maintenance, it is no wonder. Thank you, my son. You take such good care of me.”
“It is my honor to do so.”
His synthesized voice purring, Agamemnon said, “One day, Vorian, if you continue serving me so well, I will recommend you for the greatest reward. I will ask Omnius to surgically convert you into a cymek, like me.”
At the mention of this wonderful prospect, Vorian again polished the canister, then looked lovingly at the creamy contours of the brain inside. He tried to hide his flush of eager embarrassment, but tears came to his eyes. “That is the best a human can hope for.”
Humans, with such fragile physical forms, are easily crushed. Is it any challenge to hurt or damage them?
—ERASMUS,
uncollated laboratory files
Gazing out upon the skies of Earth again through hundreds of appraising optic threads, Erasmus was not pleased. The robot stood in a high bell tower of his villa, staring through a curving expanse of armored windowplate. The landscape of this world, with its oceans and forests and cities built upon the bones of other cities had already seen countless civilizations rise and fall. The scope of history made his own accomplishments seem small and contrived.
Therefore, he would have to try harder.
Neither Omnius nor any of his delegated architect robots understood true beauty. To Erasmus, the buildings and the layout of the rebuilt city resembled components with sharp angles, abrupt discontinuities. A city must be more than an efficient circuit diagram. Under his multiphased scrutiny, the metropolis looked like an elaborate mechanism, designed and constructed with utilitarian force. It had its own clean lines and systematic efficiency, which resulted in a completely serendipitous beauty…but there was no finesse whatsoever.
It was such a disappointment when the omniscient evermind refused to live up to his potential. Sometimes, gloriously unrealistic human ambitions had a certain merit.
Omnius either ignored or intentionally refuted the graceful beauty of Golden Age human architecture. But such cold and petulant superiority was not logical. Admittedly, Erasmus could see a certain beauty in streamlined machines and components—he rather liked his own burnished platinum skinfilm, the smooth grace of his mirrored face with which he formed facial expressions. But he saw no point in maintaining ugliness just to spite a perceived enemy’s concept of beauty.
How could a vast computer mind distributed across hundreds of planets exhibit even a hint of narrow-mindedness? To Erasmus, with his detached and mature understanding developed through long contemplation, Omnius’s attitude revealed a lack of comprehensive thinking.
Making the sound of an exaggerated sigh that he had copied from humans, he transmitted a thought-command that caused projection shades to drop over the windows in the bell tower. Choosing his mood, he projected artificial, pastoral views from other worlds. So soothing and peaceful.
On one wall he paused at a clothing synthesizer, selected the design he wanted, and waited while a garment was prepared for him. A traditional painter’s smock. When it was ready, he draped it over his sleek body and crossed the room to an easel where he had already set up a blank canvas, a palette of paints, and fine brushes.
At a wave of his hand, the projection shades shifted to display enlarged images of masterpiece paintings, each one highlighting a different great master. He selected “Cottages at Cordeville” by an ancient Earth artist, Vincent Van Gogh. It was bold and colorful but basically crude in its implementation, with inept lines and childish pigment applications that featured thick globs of paint and smears of color. Yet when considered as a whole, the painting itself possessed a certain raw energy, an indefinable primitive vibrancy.
After deep concentration, Erasmus thought he had a delicate understanding of Van Gogh’s technique. But the comprehension of why anyone would want to create it in the first place eluded him.
Although he had never painted before, he copied the artwork exactly. Brushstroke for brushstroke, pigment for pigment. When he was finished, Erasmus examined his masterpiece. “There, the sincerest form of flattery.”
The nearest wall-mounted screen brightened to a pale gray wash of light. Omnius had been watching, as always. Erasmus would no doubt have to justify his activities, since the evermind would never understand what the independent robot was doing.
He studied the painting again. Why was it so hard to understand creativity? Should he just change some of the components at random and call it an original work? As the robot finished his scrutiny, satisfied that he had made no mistakes, that he had not deviated from the tolerances he could see in the image of the painting, Erasmus waited for a rush of comprehension.
Slowly, he came to realize that what he had just completed was not really art, any more than a printing press created literature. He had only copied the ancient composition in every detail. He had added nothing, synthesized no newness. And he burned with the need to understand the difference.
Frustrated, Erasmus took a different tack. In an implacable voice, he summoned three servants and ordered them to carry his painting supplies out to one of the laboratory buildings. “I intend to create a new work of art, all my own. A still life, of sorts. You three will be vital parts of the process. Rejoice in your good fortune.”
In the sterile environment of the laboratory, with the cold assistance of his personal robot guards, Erasmus proceeded to vivisect the trio of victims, oblivious to their screams. “I want to get to the heart of the matter,” he quipped, “the lifeblood of it.”
With stained metal hands he studied the dripping organs, squeezed them, watched their juices flow and cellular structures collapse. He performed a cursory analysis, discovering sloppy mechanics and inefficient circulatory systems that were unnecessarily complex and prone to failure.
Then, feeling a vibrant energy, an impulsiveness, Erasmus set up a tableau to paint. A new work, completely unique! It would be his own arrangement, and he would tint
the images using different filters, making a few intentional mistakes to better approximate human imperfection and uncertainty.
At last, he must be on the right track.
At his command, the sentinel robots brought in a vat filled with fresh, uncoagulated human blood. Erasmus began removing the interesting array of human organs—still warm to the touch—from his table, and instructed two cleaning drones to scrape out the insides from the donor bodies. Contemplating the arrangement and order, he dropped organ after organ into the blood and watched them bob in the liquid—eyes, livers, kidneys, hearts.
Slowly assessing each step of the process, he set up exactly what his “creative urges” told him to do. Whim upon whim. Erasmus added more ingredients to the grisly stew. Pursuant to something he had learned about the artist Van Gogh, he sliced an ear off one of the corpses and tossed it into the vat as well.
Finally, his metal hands dripping gore, he stepped back. A beautiful arrangement—one that was totally original to him. He could think of no famous human artist who had worked on such a canvas. No one else had ever done anything approaching this.
Erasmus wiped his smooth metallic hands and began to paint upon a virgin canvas. On the blank medium, he astutely drew one of the three hearts, showing in perfect detail the ventricals, auricles, and aorta. But this was not meant to be a realistic dissection image. Dissatisfied, he smeared some of the lines to add an artistic flair. True art required the right amount of uncertainty, just as gourmet cooking needed the proper spices and flavors.
This must be how creativity worked. As he painted, Erasmus tried to imagine the kinesthetic relationship between his brain and his mechanical fingers, the thought impulses that set the fingers into motion.
“Is that what the humans define as art?” Omnius said from a wallscreen.
For once, Erasmus did not debate with the evermind. Omnius was correct in his skepticism. Erasmus had not attained true creativity. Yes, he had produced an original and graphic arrangement. But in human artwork, the sum of the components added up to more than the individual items. Just ripping organs from victims, floating them in blood, and painting them brought him no closer to understanding human inspiration. Even if he manipulated the details, he remained imprecise and uninspired.
Still, this might be a step in the right direction.
Erasmus could not carry this thought to the next logical step, and he came to understand why. The process was not ratiocinative at all. Creativity and the precision of analysis were mutually exclusive.
Frustrated, the robot gripped the macabre painting in his powerful hands, broke the frame, and tore the canvas to shreds. He would have to do better than this, much better. Erasmus shifted his metallic polymer face to a stylized pensive mask. He was no closer to comprehending humans, despite a century of intensive research and musings.
Walking slowly, Erasmus went to his private sanctuary, a botanical garden where he listened to classical music piped through the cellular structures of plants. “Rhapsody in Blue,” by a composer of Old Earth.
In the contemplative garden, the troubled robot sat in the ruddy sunlight and felt warmth on his metal skin. This was another thing that humans seemed to enjoy, but he did not understand why. Even with his sensory enhancement module, it just seemed like heat.
And machines that overheated broke down.
The tapestry of the universe is vast and complex, with infinite patterns. While threads of tragedy may form the primary weave, humanity with its undaunted optimism still manages to embroider small designs of happiness and love.
—COGITOR KWYNA,
City of Introspection archives
After his long sojourn in space, Xavier could think only of being home, and back in the warm embrace of Serena Butler.
On furlough, he returned to the Tantor estate where he was welcomed by his adoptive parents and their enthusiastic son Vergyl. The Tantors were a soft-spoken older couple, gentle and intelligent, with dark skin and hair the color of thick smoke. Xavier seemed to be cut from the same mold, with similar interests and high moral values. He had grown up in this warm and spacious manor house, which he still considered home. Though he had legally inherited other Harkonnen holdings—mining and industrial operations on three planets—many rooms in the Tantor mansion were still set aside for his use.
As he entered his familiar large suite, Xavier found a pair of shaggy gray wolfhounds awaiting him, wagging their tails. He dropped his bags and wrestled with the dogs. The animals, larger than his little brother, were always playful and delighted to see him.
That evening, the family feasted on the cook’s specialty of sage fowl roasted with honey, slivered nuts, and olives from the Tantors’ own groves. Unfortunately, after his exposure to the cymeks’ searing gas, the subtle nuances of flavors and aromas now eluded him. The cook gave him an alarmed look when he dumped salt and seasoning—which he needed to taste anything at all—onto the delicate food.
Another thing the thinking machines had taken from him.
Afterward, Xavier lounged in a heavy oak chair before a roaring fire, sipping a red wine from the Tantor family vineyards—also, unfortunately, nearly tasteless. He luxuriated in relaxing at home, away from military protocol. He had spent almost half a year aboard the efficient but bare-bones Armada survey ships; tonight he would sleep like a babe in his own bedchamber.
One of the gray wolfhounds snored loudly, resting a furry muzzle on Xavier’s stockinged feet. Emil Tantor, with a fringe of smoky hair around his bald crown, sat in the chair opposite his adopted son. Emil asked about the strategic positions of the Synchronized Worlds and the military capabilities of the Armada. “What are the chances of the war escalating after the attack on Zimia? Can we ever do more than drive them back?”
Xavier finished his wine, poured another half glass for himself and a full one for the older man, then sat back in the chair again, all without disturbing the gray dog. “The situation looks grim, Father.” Barely remembering his own parents, he had always called the Tantor lord his father. “But, then, it has always looked grim, ever since the Time of Titans. Perhaps we lived too comfortably in the days of the Old Empire. We forgot how to be ourselves, how to live up to our potential, and for a thousand years afterward we’ve paid the price. We were easy prey—first for evil men, then for soulless machines.”
Emil Tantor sipped his wine, and stared into the fireplace. “So is there hope, at least? We must have something to cling to.”
Xavier’s lips formed a gentle smile. “We are human, Father. As long as we hold onto that, there is always hope.”
THE NEXT DAY Xavier sent a message to the Butler estate, asking permission to accompany the Viceroy’s daughter on the annual bristleback hunt, scheduled in two days. Serena would already know that Xavier had returned. His survey ships had arrived with much fanfare, and Manion Butler would have been expecting his note.
Still, Salusan society was formal and extravagant. In order to court the beautiful daughter of the Viceroy, one had to bow to certain expectations.
In late morning a messenger pounded on the doors of the Tantor manor house; Vergyl stood beside his big brother, grinning when he saw the expression on Xavier’s face. “What is it? Can I come along? Did the Viceroy say yes?”
Xavier made a mock-stern expression. “How could he possibly turn down the man who saved Salusa Secundus from the cymeks? Remember that, Vergyl, if you ever wish to win the affections of a young lady.”
“I need to save a planet just to have a girlfriend?” The boy sounded skeptical, though wary of outright disbelief when it came to Xavier’s words.
“For a woman as magnificent as Serena, that is exactly what you must do.” He strode into the great house to tell the Tantors his plans.
The next dawn, Xavier dressed in his finest equestrian outfit and rode into brightening daylight toward the Butler property. He borrowed his father’s chocolate-brown Salusan stallion, a fine beast with a braided mane, narrow muzzle, and bright eyes. The ani
mal’s ears were large, and its gait flowed without the jarring rhythm of less conditioned horses. On the crest of a grassy hill stood a cluster of ornate whitewashed buildings—a main house, stables, servants’ quarters, and storage sheds arranged as outbuildings along the perimeter of a split-rail fence. As his horse climbed, he saw impressive vistas of the white spires of Zimia far behind him.
A path paved with crushed limestone wound up to the crest. The gravel crunched under the stallion’s hooves as Xavier rode, breathing the crisp air. He could feel the moist chill of early spring, saw fresh leaves on the trees, a dazzle of wildflowers in their first bloom. But each breath he drew into his new lungs smelled flat.
Grapevines lined the hill like green corduroy, carefully tended and watered, each vine tied to cables between stakes so that the clusters would hang off the ground for easy picking. Twisted olive trees surrounded the main house, their low branches awash with white flowers. Each year, the first pressings of grapes and olives were cause for feasting in every Salusan household; local vineyards vied against each other to see which could produce the best vintages.
As Xavier rode through the gates and into the courtyard, other horsemen in hunting outfits milled about. Barking dogs dodged around the stallion’s legs, but the chocolate-brown horse stood majestically, ignoring the hounds as if they were ill-mannered little boys.
Contract huntsmen grabbed the leashes and pulled the dogs back into order. A number of short black hunting horses pranced about, as impatient as the dogs. Two of the huntsmen whistled loudly and others joined them, ready to begin the day’s festivities.
Manion Butler strolled out of the stables, calling up his team like a military commander positioning troops for battle. He glanced at the young officer, raised a hand in greeting.
Then Xavier saw Serena riding out on a gray mare with beautiful lines and an ornate saddle. She wore high boots, jodhpurs, and a black riding jacket. Her eyes were like electric sparks as her gaze met his.
The Butlerian Jihad Page 11