Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (14 page)

When his father was off on his frequent missions, Vor often tried to talk with the remaining Titans, curious about the events recorded in Agamemnon’s celebrated and voluminous memoirs. He used his responsible position to better himself. Some of the original cymeks— especially Ajax— were arrogant and treated Vor as a nuisance. Others, like Juno or Barbarossa, found him amusing. All of them spoke with utmost passion about Tlaloc, the first of the great Titans, who had sparked the revolution.

“I wish I’d been able to meet Tlaloc,” Vor said, trying to keep the conversation going. Agamemnon loved to speak of his glory days.

“Yes, Tlaloc was a dreamer with ideas I had never heard before,” the cymek mused as he strode down the boulevards. “At times he was a bit naïve, not always understanding the practical repercussions of his ideas. But I pointed them out to him. That was why we made such a great team.”

Agamemnon seemed to pick up speed when he spoke of the Titans. Weary from trying to keep up the rapid pace, Vorian gasped for breath.

“Tlaloc took his name from an ancient rain god. Among the Titans, Tlaloc was our visionary, while I was the military commander. Juno was our tactician and manipulator. Dante watched over statistics, bureaucracy, and population-accounting. Barbarossa saw to the reprogramming of the thinking machines, making certain they had the same goals as we did. He gave them ambition.”

“And a good thing, too,” Vorian said.

Agamemnon hesitated, but did not voice any objections, wary of the watcheyes. “When he visited Earth, Tlaloc realized how the human race had gone stagnant, how people had become so dependent on machines that they had nothing left but apathy. Their goals were gone, their drive, their passion. When they should have had nothing to do but unleash their creative impulses, they were too lazy to perform even the work of the imagination.” His vocal speakers made a disgusted sound.

“But Tlaloc was different,” Vor said, on cue.

The cymek’s voice took on more emotion. “Tlaloc grew up in the Thalim system, on an outer colony world where life was difficult, where labor was not accomplished without sweat, blood, and blisters. He had to fight his way and earn his position. On Earth, he saw that the human spirit had all but died—
and the people hadn’t even noticed!

“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.”

G
azing 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.