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Following a flurry of test skirmishes, the wall of robotic battleships had encountered and swiftly destroyed fringe outpost worlds settled by humans. Vanguard drones mapped out the planets ahead and distributed deadly biological plagues that Erasmus had developed; by the time the actual machine fleet arrived at a target world, military action was often unnecessary against a dying population. Each combat engagement, even clashes with isolated groups of Honored Matres, was equally decisive.
To keep himself occupied, the independent robot reviewed the streams of data sent back to him. This was the part he enjoyed best. A buzzing watcheye flitted in front of him, and he brushed it away. "If you allow me to concentrate, Omnius, I may find some way to speed up our progress against the humans."
"How do I know you will not make another mistake?"
"Because you have confidence in my abilities."
The watcheye flitted away.
While the machine fleet crushed one human planet after another, Erasmus issued additional instructions for the invader robots. As the infected humans lay writhing, vomiting, and bleeding from their pores, machine scouts casually ransacked databases, halls of records, libraries, and other sources. This was different from the information to be winnowed from the random lives that Face Dancers had assimilated.
With all the fresh data flowing in, Erasmus had the luxury of becoming a scientist again, as he had been long ago. The pursuit of scientific truth had always been his true reason for existence. Now the flood was greater than ever before. Glad to possess so much new information, so much undigested data, he gorged his elaborate mind on raw facts and histories.
After the supposed destruction of thinking machines more than fifteen millennia earlier, the fecund humans had spread, building civilizations and destroying them. Erasmus was intrigued by how, after the Battle of Corrin, the Butler family had founded an empire and ruled it under the name of Corrino for ten thousand years, with a few gaps and interregnums, only to be overthrown by a fanatical leader named Muad'Dib.
Paul Atreides. The first Kwisatz Haderach.
A more fundamental change, however, had come from his son Leto II, called the God Emperor or Tyrant. Another Kwisatz Haderach--a unique hybrid of man and sandworm that had imposed a draconian rule for thirty-five hundred years. After his assassination, human civilization fragmented. Fleeing to the far reaches of the galaxy in the Scattering, people became hardened by their privations until the worst sort of humans--Honored Matres--had blundered into the burgeoning machine empire. . . .
Another flitting watcheye scanned the same records Erasmus was reading. Omnius spoke through resonating plates in the walls. "I find their contradictions--posed as fact--to be unsettling."
"Unsettling perhaps, but fascinating." Erasmus disengaged himself from the stacks of historical files. "Their histories show how they view themselves and the universe around them. Obviously, these humans need someone to take firm control again."
Why is religion important? Because logic alone does not compel a person to make great sacrifices. Given sufficient religious fervor, however, people will throw themselves against impossible odds and consider themselves blessed for doing so.
--MISSIONARIA PROTECTIVA,
First Primer
Two male workers appeared at the door of Murbella's coldly ostentatious council chambers during a tense meeting. Using suspensor clamps, they hauled a large, motionless robot between them. "Mother Commander? You asked for this to be delivered here."
The combat machine was built from blue and black metal, reinforced with struts and overlapping armor. Its conical head contained a suite of sensors and targeting arrays, and four engine-driven arms were wrapped with cables and augmented with weapons. Damaged during a recent skirmish, the fighting robot had dark smears across its bulky torso where high-energy blasts had knocked out its internal processors. The robotic thing was shut down, dead, defeated. But even deactivated, it was cause for nightmares.
Murbella's advisors, startled out of their discussions and arguments, stared at the big machine. All of the gathered women wore the plain black unitard of the New Sisterhood, following a code of homogenized dress that allowed no indication of their origins as either Bene Gesserit or Honored Matre.
Murbella gestured to the intimidated-looking workers. "Bring that thing inside where we can see it every time we talk about the Enemy. It will do us good to be reminded of the adversary we're up against."
Even with the suspensor clamps, the men sweated as they wrestled the machine into the room. Murbella strode to the bulky combat robot and stared with defiance up into its dull optic sensors. She glanced proudly at her daughter. "Bashar Idaho brought this specimen back from the battle at Duvalle."
"It should be sent to the scrap heap. Or shot into space," said Kiria, a hard-edged former Honored Matre. "What if it still has passive spy programming?"
"It's been thoroughly purged," said Janess Idaho. As the newly appointed commandant of the Sisterhood's military forces, she had become a very pragmatic young woman.
"A trophy, Mother Commander?" asked Laera, a dark-skinned Reverend Mother who often quietly supported Murbella. "Or a prisoner of war?"
"This is the only one our armies found intact. We blew up four machine ships before we retreated and let them destroy the planet behind us. They had already turned their plagues loose on Ronto and Pital, leaving no survivors. Total population losses number in the billions."
Duvalle, Ronto, and Pital were just the latest casualties as the machine army continued its forward march through the outlying systems. Because of the distances involved and the sheer might of the attacking ships, reports were sketchy and often outdated. Refugees and couriers surged away from battle zones, heading inward from the fringes of the Scattering.
Murbella turned her back on the deactivated robot and faced the Sisters. "Knowing that a tempest approaches, we have the option of simply evacuating--abandoning everything we have. That is the Honored Matre way."
Some of the Sisters flinched at the comment. Long ago, Honored Matres had chosen to run from the Enemy, pillaging on their way out, hoping to stay one step ahead of the storm. To them, the Old Empire had been no more than a crude barricade to be thrown up against the Enemy; they had simply hoped it would last long enough for them to get away.
"Or, we can board up our windows, strengthen our walls, and ride it out. And hope we survive."
"This is no mere storm, Mother Commander," said Laera. "The repercussions are already being felt. Refugees fleeing the battlefront are overwhelming the support systems of second-wave worlds, all of which are preparing for evacuation as well. The people won't stand and fight."
"Like waterlogged rats crowding to the corner of a sinking raft," Kiria muttered.
"Says the Honored Matre, who did exactly the same," Janess said from the end of the table, then tried to cover her comment by loudly sipping her spice coffee. Kiria glared at her.
"A shadow deep in our Honored Matre past," Murbella said. "Through hubris, and a violent predisposition to strike first and understand later, the whores caused all these problems." By digging deep into her mind and history, she had been the first to remember how her long-dead sisters had stupidly provoked the thinking machines.
Kiria was indignant, clearly still associating herself with the Honored Matres. Murbella found it disturbing. "You yourself revealed why the Honored Matres are what they are, Mother Commander. Descended from tortured Tleilaxu females, rogue Reverend Mothers, and a few Fish Speakers. They had every right to be vengeful."
"They had no right to be stupid!" Murbella snapped. "A painful past did not give them the right to lash out against anything they encountered. They couldn't salve their conscience by pretending they knew what they were doing when they attacked a machine outpost and stole weapons they didn't understand." She smiled slightly. "If anything, I can relate to--though not approve of--their revenge against the Tleilaxu worlds. In Other Memory I know what the Tleilaxu did to my ancestors . . . I reme
mber being one of their vile axlotl tanks. But make no mistake, that kind of provocative and poorly planned violence has caused immeasurable trouble for the human race. And now look what we face!"
"How can we strengthen ourselves against this storm, Mother Commander?" The question came from ancient Accadia, a Reverend Mother who lived in the Chapterhouse Archives. Accadia hardly ever slept and rarely allowed sunlight to touch her parchment skin. "What defenses do we have?" The hulking combat robot seemed to mock them from the corner of the room, where the men had left it.
"We have the weapon of religion. Especially Sheeana."
