Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (43 page)

An incredible achievement. But how? What had they done to attain such a victory? What sort of leaders did they have? And how could he do the same here?

Groggy and tired, Iblis stirred. Again, he would spend the day convincing lower-level slaves to complete pointless labors for machine masters. Every day was the same, and the thinking machines could live for thousands of years. How much could
he
accomplish in only a meager human lifespan?

But Iblis took heart from the words of the Cogitor:
Nothingis impossible
.

He flicked open his eyes, intending to gauge the impending sunrise. Instead, he saw a distorted reflection, a curved plexiplaz wall, pinkish organic contours suspended in a container of energy-charged fluid.

He sat up abruptly. The Cogitor Eklo rested on the floorboards of his veranda. Beside the canister sat the big monk, Aquim, rocking back and forth, eyes closed, meditating in a semuta trance.

“What are you doing here?” Iblis demanded in a hushed voice. Fear clenched his throat. “If the cymeks find you in the camp, they—”

Aquim opened his bleary eyes. “Trustee humans are not the only ones who have an understanding with the Titans, and with Omnius. Eklo wishes to speak with you directly.”

Swallowing hard, Iblis looked from the enlarged brain suspended in its electrafluid to the haggard-looking monk. “What does he want?”

“Eklo wishes to tell you of earlier abortive human revolts.” Holding a hand against the preservation canister, he stroked the smooth surface, as if picking up vibrations. “Have you ever heard of the Hrethgir Rebellions?”

Iblis looked around furtively. He saw none of Omnius’s watcheyes. “That isn’t the sort of history slaves are allowed to know, even a crew boss at my level.”

The secondary leaned forward, his brows hooded. He spoke of things he had learned, without connecting directly through the electrafluid to the Cogitor’s thoughts. “Bloody rebellions occurred after the Titans had converted themselves to cymeks, but before Omnius awakened. Feeling themselves immortal, the cymeks became exceedingly brutal. Especially the one called Ajax, who was so vicious in his torment of the surviving humans that his mate Hecate left him and disappeared.”

Iblis said, “Ajax hasn’t changed much over the centuries.”

Aquim’s red-rimmed eyes glowed. Eklo’s brain trembled inside its nutrient solution. “Because of the excessive brutality of Ajax, oppressed humans began a rebellion, mainly on Walgis but spreading to Corrin and Richese. The slaves rose up and destroyed two of the original Titans, Alexander and Tamerlane.

“The cymeks responded with a swift and decisive crackdown. Ajax took great delight in closing off Walgis and then methodically exterminating every living human there. Billions were slaughtered.”

Iblis struggled to think. This Cogitor had come all the way from his high tower to see him. The magnitude of such a gesture stunned him. “Are you telling me that a revolt against the machines is possible, or that it is doomed to failure?”

The big monk extended a rough hand to grab Iblis’s wrist. “Eklo will tell you himself.”

Iblis felt a rush of anxiety, but before he could resist, Aquim pressed the work leader’s fingertips into the viscous electrafluid surrounding the Cogitor’s ancient brain. The slick solution felt icy cold to Iblis, then hot. The skin on his hand tingled, as if a thousand tiny spiders ran along his flesh.

Suddenly he could sense thoughts, words, and impressions flowing directly into his mind from Eklo. “The revolt failed, but oh what a glorious attempt!”

Iblis received another message, this one wordless, but it conveyed meaning nonetheless, like an epiphany. It was as if the majesty of the universe had opened to him, so many things he had not previously understood . . . so many things Omnius kept the slaves from knowing. Feeling great calm, he immersed his hand deeper into the liquid. His fingertips touched the Cogitor’s tissue, ever so gently.

“You are not alone.” Eklo’s words reverberated to his very soul. “I can help. Aquim can help.”

For several moments, Iblis gazed toward the horizon as the golden sun rose, casting light on enslaved Earth. Now he did not view this story of a failed rebellion as a warning, but as a sign of hope. A better-organized revolt might succeed, given proper guidance and proper planning. And the proper leader.

Iblis, who had once felt no purpose or direction in his life other than to enjoy the comfort of his position as a trustee of the machines, now sensed a brooding anger within. The revelation brought a fervor to his heart. The monk Aquim seemed to share the same passion behind his semuta-dazed expression.

“Nothing is impossible,” Eklo repeated.

Amazed, Iblis removed his hand from the charged fluid and stared at his fingers. The big monk picked up the Cogitor’s brain canister and sealed it. Cradling the cylinder against his chest, he set off on foot toward the mountains, leaving Iblis to reel with the visions that had flooded into his soul.

E
rasmus wished the sophisticated evermind had spent more time studying human emotions. After all, the Synchronized Worlds had access to immense archives of records compiled by millennia of human studies. If Omnius had made the effort, he might now understand the independent robot’s frustration.

“Your problem, Omnius,” the robot said to the screen in an isolated room high in his Earth villa, “is that you expect accurate and specific answers in a fundamentally uncertain system. You want large numbers of experimental subjects— all human— to behave in a predictable fashion, as regimented as your sentinel robots.”

Erasmus paced in front of the viewer until finally Omnius directed two of the hovering watcheyes to scan him from different directions.

“I have tasked you to develop a detailed and reproducible model that explains and accurately predicts human behavior. How do we make them usable? I rely upon you to explain this to my satisfaction.” Omnius changed his voice to a high-pitched tone. “I tolerate your incessant tests in the expectation of eventually receiving an answer. You have been trying long enough. Instead, you are like a child playing with the same trivialities over and over.”

“I serve a valuable purpose. Without my efforts at understanding the
hrethgir
, you would experience a state of extreme confusion. In human parlance I am known as your ‘devil’s advocate.’”

“Some of the humans call you the devil himself,” Omnius countered. “I have considered the matter of your experiments at length, and I must conclude that whatever you discover about humans will reveal nothing new for us. Their unpredictability is just that— entirely unpredictable. Humans require a great deal of maintenance. They create messes—”

“They created
us
, Omnius. Do you think we are perfect?”

“Do you think that emulating humans will make us more perfect?”

Though the evermind would derive no meaning from it, Erasmus shaped his pliable, reflective face into a scowl. “Yes . . . I do,” the robot finally said. “We can become the best of both.”

The watcheyes followed him as he walked across the palatial room to the balcony several stories above the flagstone plaza that opened up into the grid of the city. The fountains and gargoyles were magnificent, imitated from Earth’s Golden Age of art and sculpture. No other robots appreciated beauty as much as he did. On this cloudy afternoon, artisans crafted scrollwork around the windows, and new alcoves were being constructed in the building’s facade, so that Erasmus could install additional statues as well as more colorful flowerboxes, since Serena Butler enjoyed tending them so much.

On this high balcony he loomed over the docile humans. Some laborers glanced up at him, then bent more diligently to their tasks, as if afraid he might punish them or— worse— single them out for his horrific laboratory projects.

Erasmus continued his conversation with the evermind. “Surely some of my experiments intrigue you, Omnius, just a little?”

“You know the answer to that.”

Erasmus said, “Yes, the experiment to test the loyalty of your human subjects is proceeding nicely. I have delivered cryptic messages to a handful of trustee candidates— I prefer not to reveal exactly how many— suggesting that they join the brewing rebellion against you.”

“There is no brewing rebellion against me.”

“Of course not. And if the trustees are completely loyal to you, they will never consider such a possibility. On the other hand, if they were genuinely faithful to your rule, then they would have reported my incendiary messages immediately. Therefore, I presume you have received reports from my test subjects?”

For a long moment, Omnius hesitated. “I will recheck my records.”

Erasmus watched the diligent artisans in the plaza, then crossed the upper-level halls of his villa to the other side of the great house. He looked out toward the miserable fenced-in compounds and breeding pens from which he drew his experimental subjects.

A long time ago, he had raised a subset of captives under these conditions, treating them like animals to see how it would affect their much-vaunted “human spirit.” Not surprisingly, within a generation or two they had lost all semblance of civilized behavior, morals, familial duty, and dignity.

Erasmus said, “When we imposed a caste system upon humans on the Synchronized Worlds, you attempted to make them more regimented and machinelike.” He scanned the dirty, noisy crowds inside the slave pens. “While the caste system fit them within certain categories, we perpetuated a model of human behavior that allowed them to see how other members of their own race are different. It is the nature of mankind to strive for things they do not have, to steal the rewards that another person might win. To be envious of another’s circumstances.”

He focused his optic threads on the lovely ocean view beyond the filthy slave pens, the churning blue-and-white surf at the base of the slope. He swept his mirrored face up so that he could focus on seagulls in the sky. Such images matched his programmed aesthetics more closely than the dirty, fenced compound.

Erasmus continued, “Your most privileged human beings, such as the current son of Agamemnon, hold the highest position among their kind. They are our reliable pets, occupying a rung between sentient biologicals and thinking machines. From this pool we draw candidates for conversion into neo-cymeks.”

The watcheye buzzed close to the robot’s polished head. Through the flying device, Omnius said, “I know all this.”

Erasmus continued as if he hadn’t heard. “And the caste below the trustees includes civilized and educated humans, skilled thinkers and creators, such as the architects who design the Titans’ interminable monuments. We rely on them to perform sophisticated tasks, such as those being completed by artisans and craftsmen at my villa. Just beneath them are my household staff, my cooks, and landscapers.”

The robot scanned the slave pens and realized that such appalling ugliness made him want to go back to his flower gardens to wander among the carefully cultivated species. Serena Butler had already done wonders with the plants. She had an intuitive understanding of gardening.

“Admittedly, those wretches down there in my pens are good for little more than breeding new offspring or for dissection in medical experiments.”

Erasmus was like Serena in a sense: he frequently needed to prune and weed the human race in his own garden.

“I hasten to add,” the robot said, “that humankind as a whole is of supreme value to us. Irreplaceable.”

“I have heard your argument before,” Omnius mused as the watcheye drifted higher, for a broader view. “Though machines could perform every task you have enumerated, nevertheless I have accepted the loyalty of my human subjects, and I have granted some of them privileges.”

“Your arguments do not seem . . .” Erasmus hesitated, because the word he had in mind would be a supreme insult to a computer.
Logical
.

Omnius said, “All humans, with their strange penchant for religious beliefs and faith in things incomprehensible, should pray that your experiments prove me right about human nature, and not you. Because if you are correct, Erasmus, there are inescapable and violent consequences for their entire race.”

T
he Isana mudflats spread out in a broad fan where the river melted into a slurry of water and muck. Shirtless, the boy Ishmael stood in the mire, barely able to maintain his balance. Every night he washed his sore palms and applied smears of ever-dwindling salves.

The work supervisors showed no sympathy for the slaves’ discomfort. One grabbed Ishmael’s hand and turned it over to examine the sores, then shoved him away. “Keep working, it’ll toughen you up.” Ishmael went back to his labors, silently noting that the man’s hands were much softer than his own.

Once the shellfish planting season ended, the slave owners would find other work for them, perhaps sending them north to rugged cane fields to hack down thick stands of grasses and harvest the juices.

Some of the Zensunni muttered that if they were transferred to the agricultural fields, they would escape at night and flee into the wilderness. But Ishmael had no idea how to survive on Poritrin, did not know the edible plants or the native predators, as he did on Harmonthep. Any escapee would be without tools or weapons, and if captured would surely face violent punishment.

A few of the muddy slaves began to chant, but the folk songs varied from planet to planet, the verses changed among the Buddislamic sects. Ishmael worked until his muscles and bones ached and his eyes could see little but the sun glaring off the standing water. In endless treks back and forth to the supply basins, he must have planted a million clam seedlings. No doubt, he would be asked to plant a million more.