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He dumped the paraphernalia into the airlock booth and considered the rumpled debris of a past life. It seemed like so little, but with such great portent. He stepped back and reached for the controls.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed a strand of hair still clinging to his sleeve. One of Murbella's hairs had come loose from her garments, a single amber strand . . . as if she still wanted to cling to Duncan.
He plucked the hair with his fingertips, looked at it for a long, painful moment, and finally let it drift down among the other items. He sealed the airlock door and, before he could think, cycled the systems. The last breaths of air were evacuated, and the material was swept out into space. Irretrievable.
He stared out into the emptiness, where the objects quickly disappeared from view. He felt immeasurably lighter . . . or perhaps that was just emptiness.
From now on, Duncan Idaho would rise above any temptations that were thrust in front of him. He would be his own man, no longer a piece to be moved around on someone else's game board.
At last, after our long journey, we have reached the beginning.
--ancient Mentat conundrum
T
he Enemy ships cruised toward the Old Empire, thousands upon thousands of enormous vessels, each carrying weapons sufficient to sterilize a planet, plagues that could eradicate entire populations. Everything was going extremely well after so many millennia of planning.
Back on the central machine world, the old man had dropped his illusions. No more games or facades, only rigid preparations for the final conflict foretold both by human prophecy and extensive machine calculations: Kralizec.
"I assume you're quite pleased that you have already destroyed sixteen additional human planets on your march to victory." The old woman had not yet dispensed with her guise.
"So far," said the booming old man's voice that echoed from all buildings and all screens everywhere.
The structures in the endless machine city were alive and moving like an immense engine, tall towers and spires of flowmetal, enormous blocky constructions built to house substations and command nodes. With each new conquest, cities just like Synchrony would be built on planet after planet.
The old woman looked at her hands, brushed the front of her dress. "Even these forms seem primitive to me, but I have grown rather fond of them. Perhaps accustomed is a more precise word." At last, her voice faded, changed, and settled on an old familiar timbre. In her place stood the independent robot Erasmus, intellectual foil and counterpoint to Omnius. He had retained his platinum, flowmetal body, draped in the plush robes to which he had grown accustomed so long ago.
Having discarded his physical form, Omnius spoke through millions of speakers in the great city. "Our forces have pushed to the fringes of the human Scattering. Nothing can stop us." The computer evermind always had such grandiose dreams and aspirations.
Erasmus had hoped that by constraining the evermind within the guise of an old man, Omnius might begin to understand humans and learn to steer clear of these extreme gestures. That had worked for a few thousand years, but when the violent Honored Matres careened into the carefully reconstituted Synchronized Empire, Omnius had been forced to respond. In truth, the anxious evermind had simply been looking for an excuse.
Now he said, "We will prove that the Butlerian Jihad was merely a setback, not a defeat."
Erasmus stood in the middle of the vast, vaulted chamber of the central machine cathedral. All around them, the buildings themselves stepped back, shifting aside like sycophants. "This is an event we should commemorate. Behold!"
Though the evermind thought he controlled everything himself, Erasmus made a gesture, and the floor of the chamber cooperated. The smooth metal plates spread apart, pulling away to reveal a crystal-lined gullet, a wide pit whose floor rose up, lifting a preserved object.
A small and innocuous-looking probe.
"Even seemingly insignificant things have great import. As this device proves."
Centuries before the Battle of Corrin, the last great defeat of the thinking machines, one of the evermind copies had dispatched probes out to the unexplored reaches of the galaxy with the intent of setting up receiving stations, planting seeds for the later expansion of the machine empire. Most of the probes had been lost or destroyed, never reaching a solid world.
Erasmus looked down at the small device, marvelously engineered, pitted and discolored from its many centuries of unguided flight. This probe had found a distant planet, landed, and begun its work, waiting . . . and listening.
"During the Battle of Corrin, fanatical humans almost--almost--annihilated the last Omnius," the robot said. "That evermind contained a complete and isolated copy of me inside itself, a data packet from the time when you once tried to destroy me. You showed great foresight."
"I always had secondary plans for survival," the voice boomed. Watcheyes came closer, flitting over the probe like curious tourists.
"Come now, Omnius, you never imagined such a dramatic defeat," Erasmus said, not scolding but merely stating a fact. "You transmitted a complete copy of yourself off into nothingness. A last-gasp attempt at survival. A desperate hope--something a human might feel."
"Do not insult me."
That transmission had traveled for thousands of years, degrading along the way, deteriorating into something else. Erasmus had no memory of that endless, silent journey at the speed of light. After their incalculable trek through static and interstellar waste, the Omnius signal had encountered one of the long-dispatched probes and seized upon it as a beachhead. Far, far from any taint of human civilization, the restored Omnius began to re-create itself. Over millennia it had regenerated, building a new Synchronized Empire--and Omnius had begun making plans to return, this time with a far superior machine force.
"Nothing can match the patience of machines," the evermind said.
Fully restored from his backup copy while the new civilization built itself, Erasmus had pondered the fate of humans, a species he had studied in painstaking detail. The creatures had always been infuriating, yet intriguing. He was curious as to how they would fare without the guidance of efficient machines.
He looked down at the small probe on its altarlike stand. If that receiver hadn't been in the right place, the Omnius signal might still be drifting, attenuating. Quite an ignominious end . . .
Meanwhile, believing themselves victorious, the human race had gone through their own struggles. They continued to push their boundaries; they clashed with each other. Ten thousand years after the Battle of Corrin, a Tleilaxu Master named Hidar Fen Ajidica improved and dispatched a new breed of Face Dancers as colonists bound for far-flung wastelands.
As his empire regrew, Omnius had intercepted those first Face Dancer ambassadors--beings based on humans but with some attributes of the best machines. Erasmus, fascinated with the possibilities, had quickly converted them to appropriate goals, then bred more of the shape-shifters.
In fact, the independent robot still had some of those first Face Dancer specimens preserved in long-term storage. Occasionally he took them out for inspection, just to remind himself of how far he had come. Long ago on Corrin, Erasmus had dabbled with similar biomechanics, trying to create biological machines that could mimic the flowmetal capabilities of his own face and body. His new breed of Face Dancers did that, and more.
Erasmus could replay all of the memories in his head. He wished he had a few more of those Face Dancers here, to experiment on because they were so fascinating, but he had already sent them back into the human-settled star systems, to pave the way for the great machine conquest. He had already absorbed the lives and experiences of thousands of these Face Dancer "ambassadors." Or were they better called spies? Erasmus had so many of them ringing through his head that he was no longer entirely himself.
Knowing the strength and capabilities of human civilization and understanding the extent of his enemy's capabilities, Omnius had reassembled his forces. Large asteroids were brok
en down and converted into raw materials. Construction robots assembled weapons and battleships; new designs were tested, improved, tested again, and then produced in great numbers. The buildup lasted for thousands of years.
The result was indisputable. Kralizec.
When he could tell that Omnius was not impressed with history or nostalgia, Erasmus caused the floor to swallow the enshrined probe again and fill the crystal-walled gullet.
Leaving the vaulted cathedral, the robot strode through the streets of the synchronized city. The structures moved around him, pumping and sliding smoothly, always leaving openings for him. He pondered the buildings, all of which were mere manifestations of the evermind's spreading body. He and Omnius had both evolved greatly over fifteen millennia, but their goals remained the same. Soon every planet would be exactly like this one.
"No more games or illusions," said the booming voice of Omnius. "We must focus on the greater battle. We are what we are." As he listened, Erasmus wondered why the evermind liked to hear himself talk so much. "We have gathered our strength, measured our enemy, and improved our odds of success."
"Remember, we still need the Kwisatz Haderach, according to our mathematical projections," Erasmus cautioned.
Omnius sounded miffed. "If we get a human superman, so much the better. But even if we do not, the conclusion of this conflict is still clear."
The independent robot linked himself to the computer evermind, accessing everything that Omnius could see and experience. A part of the extravagant computer was aboard each one of the numerous machine war vessels. Through the connection Erasmus could see the vessel swarms plunging ahead, spreading plagues, launching waves of destruction. They were expanding the boundaries of the machine empire, and soon they would swallow all human territories.
Efficiency required it. Omnius required it. The great battleships moved onward.
BRIEF TIMELINE OF THE DUNE UNIVERSE
Approx 1287 B.G. (Before Guild) Time of Titans begins, led by Agamemnon and "Twenty Titans," all of whom eventually convert to cymeks, "machines with human minds."
