Road to Dune (54 page)

But she wasn’t the same. Only close enough to tickle his own memories of her, of the times they had spent together.

“Tell me your beliefs about politics, philosophy, and religion,” the robot demanded. “Express your most impassioned feelings and opinions. Why do you think that even captive humans deserve to be treated with respect? Explain why you believe it is impossible for a thinking machine to achieve the equivalent of a human soul.”

“Why do you wish to discuss such subjects?” She sounded almost petulant. “Tell me how you would like me to answer, so that I can please you.”

As soon as the clone spoke, she shattered his fond remembrance of the real Serena. Though she looked exactly like Serena Butler, this simulacrum was very different in her internal makeup, the way she thought, the way she behaved. The cloned version had no social conscience, no spark, no glimmer of the personality that had become so familiar to him, and which had caused him so much interesting trouble. The real Serena’s rebellious attitude had triggered an entire Jihad, while this poor substitute lacked any such potential.

Erasmus noted the difference in the glint of her eyes, in the turn of her mouth, in the way she threw her wet hair over her shoulder. He missed the fascinating woman he had known.

“Put your clothes on,” Erasmus said. Looking on from one side, Rekur Van appeared alarmed, obviously sensing the robot’s disappointment.

She slipped into the garments he had provided, accentuating her feminine curves. “Do you find me pleasing now?”

“No. Unfortunately, you are unacceptable.”

With a blur of his flowmetal arm, Erasmus struck a swift, precise blow. He didn’t want her to suffer, yet he did not want to look at this flawed clone ever again. With all his robotic strength, he drove the sharp edge of his shaped metal hand into the base of her neck, and decapitated her as easily as he might cut a flower in his greenhouse gardens. She made no sound as her head tumbled away and her body fell, spraying blood on his clean laboratory floor.

Such a disappointment.

On his left Rekur Van made a choking sound, as if he had forgotten how to breathe. The Tlulaxa man stumbled backward, but sentinel robots stood all around the laboratory chambers. The numerous tortured experimental subjects moaned and chattered in their cages, tanks, and tables.

Erasmus took a step toward the genetics researcher. Van held up his hands and his expression telegraphed what would occur next. As usual, he would try to worm his way out of any responsibility. “I did everything possible! Her DNA matches perfectly, and she is the same in every physical characteristic.”

“She is not the same. You did not know the real Serena Butler.”

“Yes! I met her. I took the tissue samples myself when she visited Bandalong!”

Erasmus made his flowmetal face a bland expressionless mirror. “You did not
know
her.” This Tlulaxa’s ability to perfectly re-create Serena Butler had been overstated, at best. As in the robot’s own attempts to imitate the paintings of Van Gogh to the finest detail, the copy never approached the original’s perfection.

“I have many more cells. This was just our first attempt, and we can try again. Next time, I’m sure we’ll take care of the problems. That clone was different only because she never shared the real Serena’s life experiences, never faced the same challenges. We can modify the virtual reality teaching loops, make her spend more time immersed in sensory deprivation.”

Erasmus shook his head. “She will never be what I want.”

“Killing me would be a mistake, Erasmus! You can still learn much.”

Staring at the Tlulaxa, the inquisitive robot noted how objectively unpleasant he was; apparently, all of his condemned breed were similar. Van had none of the noble attributes of character that could be found in so many people of other races. The little man might have some value after all, providing a new window on the dark side of human nature.

He was reminded of one of his thought-provoking signs.
Is It More Human to Be Good? Or Evil
?

The robot’s flowmetal face formed into a broad smile.

“Why are you looking at me that way?” Van asked, nervously.

At a silent, transmitted signal from Erasmus, the sentinel robots came closer to surround the Tlulaxa man. Van had no place to run.

“Yes, I can learn from you, Rekur Van.” He turned, his plush robe swirling, and signaled for the sentinel robots to seize the man. “In fact, I already have several very interesting experiments in mind … .”

The Tlulaxa screamed.

FIXING HIS GAZE forward, Vorian Atreides sat stiffly on the bridge of the flagship. Over the past week, his assault force had been cruising across space. Soldiers and mercenaries continued their specialized drills. To the last man, they counted the days until reaching their next destination.

As the fleet entered Synchronized space, Vor mentally tallied all the weapons and firepower, all the soldiers and Ginaz mercenaries he would bring to bear against the thinking machines in the next great battle. He had not heard of the target planet before, but nevertheless Vor intended to conquer it and destroy the machine scourge.

Politics be damned. Out here is exactly where I belong.

For years after the death and defamation of Xavier, Vor had thrown himself into the struggle against Omnius. He fought one accursed machine enemy after another, striking in the sacred name of humanity.

Vor felt instilled with the holy determination of Serena, and of Xavier as well. Their strength allowed him to carry the Jihad forward. Always forward. He vowed anew to crush every thinking machine in his path. He would leave the next planet a blackened blister if there was no other way, despite the loss of unfortunate human slaves who served Omnius. By now, the Primero had learned to accept almost any cost in blood, just as long as it counted as a victory against the machines.

His two dearest friends had become martyrs in their own fashion. They had known what they were doing and had been willing to make great sacrifices, not only of their lives, but of their memories as well, allowing myths to replace truth, for the sake of the Jihad.

In a private message, Serena Butler had begged Vor and Xavier to understand the personal sacrifice she was making. Later, Xavier made his own sacrifice in order to stop the Grand Patriarch’s predatory organ farm scheme with the Tlulaxa, saving thousands of lives in the process. Xavier’s decision to leave Iblis’s name untarnished was unselfish and heroic: he knew full well how much harm would befall the Jihad if its Grand Patriarch was proven to be a fraud and a war profiteer.

Both Xavier and Serena had paid terrible, ultimate costs with full knowledge of what they were doing.
I cannot dispute the decisions of my friends,
Vor thought, feeling a universe of sadness on his shoulders.

And he realized that his own burden must be to
let them do what they intended
. He had to resist the impulse to change what Xavier and Serena had done, and to let the untruths stand in order to achieve a long-term result. In accepting their fates and accomplishing what they had hoped, Serena and Xavier had left Vor to carry on in their behalf, and to bear an unseen banner of honor for all three of them.

Not an easy task, but that was my sacrifice.

“We are approaching the target planet, Primero,” called his navigator.

On the flagship’s screens, he saw the unremarkable planet—wispy clouds, blue oceans, brown and green land masses. And a bristling force of weirdly beautiful machine warships converging to form a defensive line. Even from a distance, the angular robotic battle vessels flickered with bursts of fire as they launched machine-guided projectiles in a hailstorm toward the League fleet.

“Engage our Holtzman shields.” Vor rose from his chair and smiled confidently to the officers on the bridge with him. “Summon the Ginaz mercenaries into ground teams, ready to shuttle down as soon as we break the orbital defenses.” He spoke automatically, confidently.

Decades ago, Serena had started this Jihad to avenge the murder of her baby. Xavier had fought beside Vor, crushing many machine foes. Now Vor, without his friends, intended to see this impossible war through to its end. It was the only way he could be sure the martyrs had made worthwhile sacrifices.

“Forward!” Vor raised his voice as the first robotic shells impacted against the Holtzman shields. “We have enemies to destroy!”

SEA CHILD A TALE OF DUNE

BY BRIAN HERBERT AND KEVIN J. ANDERSON

Bene Gesserit punishments must carry an inescapable lesson, one which extends far beyond the pain.

—MOTHER SUPERIOR TARAZA, CHAPTERHOUSE ARCHIVES

A
s she had done since the brutal Honored Matres had conquered Buzzell, Sister Corysta struggled to get through the day without attracting undue notice. Most of the Bene Gesserit had already been slaughtered, and passive cooperation was the only way she could survive.

Even for a disgraced Reverend Mother such as herself, submission to a powerful though morally inferior adversary galled her. But the handful of surviving Sisters here on the isolated ocean world—all of whom had been sent here to face years of penance—could not hope to resist the “whores” that arrived unexpectedly, in such overwhelming force.

At first, the Honored Matre conquerors had resorted to primal techniques of coercion and manipulation. They killed most of the Reverend Mothers during interrogation, trying unsuccessfully to learn the location of Chapterhouse, the hidden homeworld of the Bene Gesserits. Thus far, Corysta was one of twenty Sisters who had avoided death, but she knew their odds of continued survival were not good.

Back in the terrible Famine Times after the death of Leto II, the God Emperor of Dune, much of humanity had scattered into the wilderness of star systems and struggled to survive. Left behind in the core of the old Imperium, only a few remnants had clung to the tattered civilization and rebuilt it under Bene Gesserit rule. Now, after fifteen hundred years, many of the Scattered Ones were coming back, bringing destruction with them. At the head of the unruly hordes, Honored Matres swept across planets like a raging spacestorm, returning with stolen technology and grossly altered attitudes. In appearance, the whores bore superficial similarities to the black-robed Bene Gesserits, but in reality they were unimaginably different, with different fighting skills and no apparent moral code—as they had proved many times with their captives on Buzzell.

As dawn gathered light across the water, Corysta went to the edge of a jagged inlet, her bare feet finding precarious balance on slippery rocks as she made her way down to the ocean’s edge. The Honored Matres kept the bulk of the food supplies for themselves, offering little to the surviving inhabitants of Buzzell. Thus, if Corysta failed to find her own food, she would starve. It would amuse the whores to find out that one of the hated Bene Gesserits could not care for herself; the Sisterhood had always taught the importance of human adaptation for survival in challenging environments.

The young Sister had a knot in her stomach, pangs of hunger similar to the pains of grief and emptiness. Corysta could never forget the crime that had sent her to Buzzell, a foolish and failed effort to keep her baby secret from the Sisterhood and their interminable breeding program.

In moments of despair, Corysta felt she had two sets of enemies, her own Sisters and the Honored Matres who sought supremacy over everything in the old Imperium. If the Bene Gesserits did not find a way to fight back—here and on other planets—their days would be numbered. With superior weaponry and vast armies, the Honored Matres would exterminate the Sisterhood. From her own position of disadvantage, Corysta could only hope that her Mother Superior was developing a plan on Chapterhouse that would enable the ancient organization to survive. The Sisterhood faced an immense challenge against an irrational enemy.

In a fit of violence, the Honored Matres had been provoked into unleashing incredible weapons from the Scattering against Rakis, the desert world better known as Dune. Now, the legendary planet was nothing more than a charred ball, with all sandworms dead and the source of spice obliterated. Only the Bene Gesserits, on faraway Chapterhouse, had any stockpiles left. The whores from the Scattering had destroyed tremendous wealth simply to vent their rage. It made no sense. Or did it?

Soostones were also a source of wealth in the Known Universe, and were found only on Buzzell. Therefore, Honored Matres had conquered this planet with its handful of punished Bene Gesserit Sisters. And now they meant to exploit it … .

At the water’s edge, Corysta reached into the lapping surf, withdrawing her hand-woven traps that gathered night-scurrying crustaceans. Lifting her dark skirt, she waded deeper to retrieve the nets. Her special little cove had always provided a bounty for her, vital food that she shared with her few remaining Sisters.

She found footing on the slick, rounded surface of a submerged rock. The moving currents stirred up silt, making the water murky. The sky was steel gray with clouds, but she hardly noticed them. Since the arrival of the Honored Matres, Corysta spent most of her time with her gaze lowered, seeing only the ground. She’d had enough punishment from the Bene Gesserit. As unfair as it was in the first place, her suffering had been exacerbated by the whores.

As she pulled in the net, Corysta was pleased to feel its heaviness, an indicator of a good catch.
Another day without starvation
. With difficulty she pulled the net to the surface and rested it on the rocks, where she discovered that its tangled strands did not hold a clatter of shellfish but, instead, contained a weak and greenish creature. To her surprise, she saw a small humanoid baby with smooth skin, large round eyes, a wide mouth, and gill slits. She immediately recognized the creature as one of the genetically modified “phibian” slaves the whores had brought to Buzzell to harvest soostones. But it was just an infant, floating alone and helpless.