Sisterhood of Dune

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  The man submitted to a hasty medical examination by Dr. Ori Zhoma herself, the head of the Suk School, who had recently returned to Zimia for business at the old Suk headquarters. His blood samples were even now being analyzed.

  While waiting for the answers, Salvador didn’t know whether to be honored or nervous. He needed to talk with Roderick. In the meantime, claiming urgent Imperial matters, he offered Vorian Atreides temporary guest quarters in the Palace. The man from the past seemed to understand Salvador’s reticence, felt the awkwardness of their meeting, and took his leave. “I shall await your summons, Sire.”

  Rather than attending to other business, though, Salvador sat by himself, wrestling with possible scenarios, and spent the afternoon anticipating Dr. Zhoma’s report.

  Finally, the doctor walked into the throne room, efficient and all business. She performed a pro forma bow to the throne, straightened, and delivered her results in a crisp, professional voice. “We have run our tests, Sire, comparing the new samples with DNA extracted from historical Jihad artifacts. This man is indeed who he says he is: Vorian Atreides.”

  The Emperor nodded, though he was not entirely pleased with the news. The hero’s appearance might cause instability at a time when the Imperium could least afford it. Salvador and his brother needed to decide what to do.

  * * *

  AFTER NEWS OF Vor’s return spread, the people of Zimia sprang up in spontaneous celebration, like drooping flowers awakening after a rain. The greatest hero of the Jihad! The legendary Primero who had fought the thinking machines for more than two life spans, from the start of the conflict to its bloody end! The very idea fired their imaginations, excited them, lifted their minds from their troubled, mundane lives. It was as if he had stepped out of a history tome, magically come to life.

  Hauling out banners and reenacting pageantry from the days before the Battle of Corrin, the Butlerians marched and chanted, revering the three martyrs: Serena Butler, her baby son, Manion, and Grand Patriarch Iblis Ginjo.

  Emperor Salvador accompanied Vor with great smiles in the midst of public acclaim, welcoming him as a long-lost comrade. As the crowds turned out in the Palace square, the Emperor accepted the applause as partially his own. Vor participated in the spectacle like a man enduring an unpleasant medical procedure.

  The people treated him as a savior, begging him to touch their babies, to bless their loved ones. The Butlerians adopted him as one of their own, though he did not encourage them. Their movement seemed even more extreme than Rayna Butler’s crusade against all forms of machines and technology back during the darkest days of the Jihad. Rayna’s followers had wrought a great deal of damage, especially on Parmentier, where his own granddaughter Raquella had tended those who fell ill from the Omnius plagues, and Rayna Butler’s followers had turned on her.

  These Butlerians made him uneasy.

  Decades had passed since Vor last set foot in the capital city, and as he looked around he saw indications of decrepitude; the level of technology had regressed instead of advancing. Subtle signs: vehicles, instruments, even lighting and sound systems for the grand parade in his honor … everything seemed slightly more primitive. But he politely watched as the colorful parade filed past the Imperial viewing stand.

  Salvador sat next to him, smiling, while his brother, Roderick, remained behind the scenes arranging the event. As the crowds continued to swell in the Palace square, the cheers and excited voices became deafening. The people called out for Vor, chanting his name and demanding that he give a speech. The Emperor raised his hands and tried to impose order, with little success. But when Vor stood up, the crowd fell into a thunderous hush as swiftly as air rushing from an open airlock.

  “I thank you for such a wondrous welcome. It’s been such a long time. I fought my battles in Serena Butler’s Jihad, and now I see the victory I truly gained—a free Imperium, a vibrant civilization, unhindered by the threat of thinking machines.” He smiled with false modesty. “And I’m touched that you haven’t forgotten me.”

  In the lull after his words, someone in the crowd shouted out, “Have you come to take the throne? Are you here to lead us?”

  Someone else called, “Are you our next Emperor?”

  Voices swelled up in a deafening roar, chanting his name: “Vorian! Vorian!”

  Startled, Vor laughed and dismissed the comments. “No, no—I came to protect my people on Kepler, nothing more. The Emperor’s throne belongs to the Corrinos.” He turned to Salvador and bowed slightly in deference to him, inspiring further applause among the crowd. But he could still hear them chanting his name, not Salvador’s.

  And he could see that the Emperor was not at all pleased.

  Superstitious fears are childish, a measure of ignorance and gullibility. Sometimes, however, those fears are well-founded.

  —SUK MEDICAL SCHOOL RECORDS, ANALYSIS OF STRESSES ON THE HUMAN PSYCHE

  “I taught you to think beyond yourself,” the Erasmus sphere said. “Now, like the best thinking machine, you can project far into the future, make plans and estimates. Under my guidance, you formed your school here seventy years ago. We taught many humans to order their minds like computers. We improved them, made them less volatile.”

  Gilbertus said, “And I am pleased by our seventy years of success, starting a decade after the fall of the Synchronized Empire.”

  “But we must not give up on Utopia.” Erasmus’s simulated voice held an undertone of scolding.

  Utopia. Gilbertus took a deep breath, didn’t say what was on his mind, that he no longer felt as he had in his youth, that a thinking-machine Utopia was the most ideal state of society, better than anything humans could create. That had been one of Erasmus’s oft-repeated opinions, and it had become so ingrained in Gilbertus’s psyche that he had not doubted a word of what the independent robot said to him.

  In the years since the end of the Jihad and the Battle of Corrin, Gilbertus had done his own research, keeping careful secrets even from the independent robot. Living among the freed humans, watching the growth of the new Imperium, Gilbertus had studied aspects of society that Erasmus had never shown him. Back on Corrin, the robot had performed many violent experiments on captives and drawn conclusions based on that isolated data set, but once he read the numerous accounts from the old League of Nobles, Gilbertus saw things differently and understood the true bravery displayed during Serena Butler’s Jihad, when humans had risked their entire race to throw off the yoke of the thinking machines.

  These unfiltered stories were not the same as those Erasmus had taught him, and Gilbertus began to develop a more balanced perspective. It bothered him to think that his great mentor might not be entirely correct, or objective.

  But he could not tell Erasmus.

  The robot’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “I am helpless and vulnerable in this state, Gilbertus, and I grow concerned. Must it really take so long for you to find me another body? Let me have one of those decommissioned combat meks, if you must. You and I together can then fashion a suitable means for me to return to full functionality.” He simulated a sigh. “Ah, what a fine body I used to have!”

  “It is not wise to rush, Father. A single mistake could destroy everything, and I don’t dare lose you.” Nor did he dare admit that he feared what Erasmus might do if given his full capabilities again, the destruction he was likely to wreak across the entire populated galaxy. None of this meant that Gilbertus felt any less affection for the independent robot, who would always be his father, but it made their relationship more complex, and guided the decisions he had to make about what he would allow the mental core to do, and where he needed to draw the line.

  “But if anything should happen to you…” The robot let his words hang in a pregnant pause.

  “You did give me the life-extension treatment, remember? But I suppose I could die in an accident. I have considered bringing my student Draigo in on our little secret. An objective man—the best of all the Butlerian trainees Manford
has forced me to allow into the school.”

  Erasmus sounded excited. “You have spoken much of Draigo Roget. If you are positive he can aid us, then by all means we should indoctrinate him.”

  “But I’m not yet positive of his unconditional loyalty.”

  The school had started out small. He had escaped Corrin with the rest of the refugees, and after scraping by for a few years, he went to secret stashes that Erasmus identified and gathered the seeds of a fortune, which he’d used to launch his training center. Gilbertus kept his real name, because no one from Corrin had ever known it.

  They had chosen Lampadas for its isolation, a place where his students could organize their mental processes without being disturbed. The planet was unkind to them at first, the marshes inhospitable and the training difficult. But Gilbertus succeeded, with the secret help of the independent robot.

  Under the system the two of them set up, some of the Mentat School’s graduates remained behind to teach classes, while certain special students worked as teaching assistants. Other graduates recruited new candidates from around the Imperium, who in turn came to Lampadas and departed years later as Mentats themselves.…

  And in all that time, Draigo was the best student (and teaching assistant) of all, soon to graduate with the highest honors in the history of the school.

  “I’ll ponder it more thoroughly, Father,” he said, then carefully sealed away the memory core.

  * * *

  WHEN GILBERTUS ASKED his student Alys Carroll to assist him in completing an inventory of the robot components kept in the teaching storeroom, she reacted as if he had asked her to join him in the depths of hell. Predictably. And exactly why he chose her in the first place.

  “It is a menial task, Headmaster.” She took one step backward and looked away. “Surely one of the newer students would be more appropriate for the task.”

  “But I did not ask one of the newer students. I asked you.” He narrowed his eyes. “I am the creator and Headmaster of this entire school, yet I am willing to do the task because I see the need. I accepted you into this school as a personal favor to Manford Torondo, promising that I would teach you all I know. I’m sure that arrogance was not one of the teachings in our curriculum.”

  The young woman still looked tense and pale, and she stammered, “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean—”

  “When you go out into the Imperium and serve a noble household or a large business or banking operation, will you pick and choose among the assignments your master gives you?”

  Alys’s reply did not answer the question. “I will work for the Butlerian movement, Headmaster, not for any commercial entity. In fact, I have considered remaining here as a teacher. It is vital and necessary to make sure the students receive proper instruction.”

  “They receive proper instruction,” Gilbertus said, his tone edgy. “Whether you are a Butlerian or not, a Mentat must be objective and thorough. Reality does not change just because you don’t like the data.”

  “But a proper presentation of the data can change how reality is perceived.”

  “This has the makings of a fascinating debate, young woman, but right now, there’s a job to be done. Come with me.”

  With obvious reluctance, Alys followed him to an austere storeroom. He unlocked the door with a key on the chain at his waistcoat pocket. Motion-sensing glowglobes shone like harsh white stars, casting long shadows.

  Inside were several partially dismantled robots that Gilbertus had confiscated and applied for teaching purposes—detached robot heads with burnished faces, dark constellations of optic threads, burly piston-and-cable driven combat-mek arms, grasping claws that had been removed from cylindrical torsos. Three combat meks were intact, except that all of their weapons systems had been extracted as a safety precaution.

  Alys hesitated at the threshold, just staring at the machines, then forced herself to enter the storeroom.

  “Most of these still have rudimentary power sources,” Gilbertus said. “We need to know how many of each model we have, which pieces can still be powered on, and which are just worthless scrap metal, serving no purpose. I want a functional inventory.”

  Because he often visited here, pondering the potential of all these components, he knew the inventory quite well already. Each robot, each dismantled piece, had been obtained at a dear price and after much argument. The Butlerians wanted every vestige of thinking machines eradicated, but he, as well as the instructors at the Swordmaster School on Ginaz, insisted that the leftover robots were necessary for their schools.

  “Must we risk powering them on?”

  “Risk?” Gilbertus asked. “Why do you say risk?”

  “They are thinking machines!”

  “Defeated thinking machines. You should take more pride in our accomplishments.” Allowing no further argument, he stepped up to a metal shelf that contained four detached robot heads.

  He knew that Erasmus was watching him now. Spyeyes had been incorporated cleverly into hidden corners of the storeroom, as well as lecture halls, the dining hall, sports enclosures, and some of the perimeter towers. Incredibly thin circuit paths made out of flowmetal no more than a few molecules thick extended like the growing fibers of a complex forest root network, all tracing back to the robot’s isolated memory core.

  As he looked at the combat meks and forlorn appendages, Gilbertus stroked his goatee and contemplated the incredibly organized civilization of the Synchronized Worlds—all gone, due to the destructiveness of human fear and hatred. And now civilization was being threatened by a movement that feared technology in all its forms, even down to basic industrial mechanisms. Although it sickened Gilbertus, he had to accept the Butlerians and their support of his school … for the time being.

  Suddenly the optic threads on two of the robot heads in front of him began to glow, glimmering like asterisms. Next, detached combat-mek arms twitched and bent, the segmented fingers extending and then folding again. On the other side of the room, an intact combat mek swiveled from side to side.

  Alys Carroll screamed.

  The other detached components began to shudder and jump, awakening. Another combat mek glowed to life, raising one weaponless arm.

  “They are possessed!” Alys cried. “They must be destroyed. We need to barricade the chamber!” She backed toward the storeroom door, her face as white as milk.

  Gilbertus remained calm. “It’s just a random power surge, easily fixed.” He walked up to the nearest combat mek, fiddled with the torso casing, and removed the power pack so that the robot slumped, dim and dead once more. “Nothing to worry about.”

  He was sure she didn’t believe him, perhaps couldn’t even hear his answer. He deactivated the second combat mek, then went methodically around the room, keeping his face placid, although his own emotions were rising. Gilbertus had no question in his mind who had done this. Erasmus had been growing increasingly restless; Gilbertus would have to do something soon to keep the robot in his place.

  He shut down the separated limbs, powered off the machine heads, all the while sure that Erasmus was watching, and no doubt amused. Was it a practical joke intended to frighten or provoke his Mentat student? A way to force Gilbertus to take action? The last robot arm clicked its metal fingers together, as if taunting; Gilbertus shut it down by removing the small power cell.

  He looked up at Alys and smiled. “You see, this is trivial, although it’s a lesson we must learn. In the future we shall take extra precautions.” He guided her out of the storeroom, pulled the door shut and, using the key in his pocket again, locked it securely.

  In the hall Alys bolted, and he knew she would talk among the other Butlerian students, possibly even submitting a report to Manford. Gilbertus took measured, unhurried steps back to his office, pretending that he felt no urgency.

  * * *

  AFTER ACTIVATING THE hidden panels to reveal the memory core, Gilbertus did not wait before blurting out, “That was dangerous, and foolish!” Though the
doors were locked, he fought to keep his voice low, so that no one might overhear him talking while supposedly alone in his private office. “What did your little trick accomplish, except to increase the superstitious fear of one of my students?”

  “Your student has already made her feelings quite clear. Her mind may be organized along the Mentat lines you have taught her, but it is not open to new beliefs.”

  “You didn’t make her any more open-minded with what you did! Now she’s even more terrified.”

  The robot manufactured one of his tinny laughs. “I have analyzed many images of her facial expressions. It was quite amusing.”

  “It was stupid!” Gilbertus snapped. “And there may be repercussions. People will want explanations. Manford could send Butlerian inspectors here.”

  “Let them come. They will find nothing. I simply wanted to test my new extensions, and I was able to verify my theory about that woman’s reaction. Butlerian sympathizers are so predictable.”

  Gilbertus felt quite agitated. He still wasn’t getting through to the independent robot. “You have to understand, Manford and his followers are dangerous! If they find you, they will destroy you, and me, and this entire school.”

  “I’m bored,” Erasmus said. “We should go away from here and find a place where we can work together in peace. We can build our own machine city and fabricate an appropriate new body for me. Things can once again be the way they were.”

  “Things will never be as they were,” Gilbertus said. “I give you updates and news reports, but you don’t see all the tiny activities going on throughout the Imperium. You don’t feel the mood of the people. Trust me. You’ll just have to bide your time.”