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"You will, or you'll receive none of our melange."
Sen roamed again, frowning. "What is this test? What does it do?"
"It is mostly automated." Murbella explained the principle to him and the easy steps. "As a bonus for you, we can allow Ix to produce these in great quantities. There are plenty of suspicious people who see Face Dancers everywhere. You could make a tidy profit selling these kits."
Sen considered. "You may be right."
While Murbella observed, he went through the motions, standing close enough to her bubble that she could watch his every movement. As far as the Reverend Mothers knew, the test could not easily be foiled, and the Chief Fabricator had had no time to prepare a deception. She waited with intense interest, and was relieved when the indicators declared him fully human. Shayama Sen was not a Face Dancer.
With an irritated expression on his face, he held the chemical tab up for her to see. "Are you satisfied now?"
"I am. And I advise you to perform this test on all of your chief engineers and team leaders. Ix is a likely target for the Enemy to infiltrate. Another reason for my Sisters to supervise your vital work for us."
Sen looked genuinely disturbed, as if that possibility had not occurred to him. "I concede your point, Mother Commander. I would like to see those results myself."
"Then include them when you send your data about the Obliterator tests. In the meantime, prepare to install your weapons in all the new warships coming out of the Junction shipyards. We are about to engage in an all-out offensive against the thinking-machine fleet."
Each sentient life requires a place of extreme serenity, where the mind may roam afterward in memory and to which the body longs to return.
--ERASMUS,
contemplation notes
Now that you have been among us for more than a year, it is time to show you my special place, Paolo." The independent robot waved a metal arm, and his majestic robes flowed around him. "And you too, of course, Baron Harkonnen."
The Baron scowled, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Your special place? I'm sure we'll be charmed by what a robot considers to be a special place."
During the time that he and Paolo had lived on Synchrony, he'd lost his awe and fear of thinking machines. They seemed plodding and grandiose, full of redundancy and very little impulsivity. Since Omnius thought he needed Paolo, along with the Baron to keep Paolo in line, the two were safe enough. Even so, the Baron felt a need to show some backbone, and turn the circumstances to his own benefit.
Around the interior of the now-familiar cathedral chamber, the walls became a wash of color, as if invisible painters were hard at work. Instead of blank metal and stone surfaces, the murky shades of green and brown sharpened into highly realistic trees and birds. The oppressive ceiling opened to the sky, and peculiar synthesized music began playing. A gemgravel pathway ran through the lush garden with comfortable reclining benches at intermittent intervals. A lily pond appeared on one side.
"My contemplation garden." Erasmus formed his artificial smile. "I enjoy this place very much. It is special to me."
"At least the flowers don't stink." Paolo ripped up one of the bright chrysanthemums, sniffed it, and discarded it at the side of the path. After a year of constant training, the Baron had finally made the boy's personality into something he could be proud of.
"This is all lovely," the Baron said drily. "And utterly pointless."
Be careful what you say to him, Grandfather, cautioned the Aliavoice within. Don't get us killed today. It was one of her continual harangues.
"Is something troubling you, Baron?" Erasmus asked. "This should be a place of peace and contemplation."
See what you've done! Get out of my head.
But I'm trapped here with you. You can't get rid of me. I killed you once with the gom jabbar, and I can do it again with a little careful manipulation.
"I see that you are often plagued by disturbing thoughts." Erasmus stepped closer. "Would you like me to open your skull and look inside? I could fix the problem."
Be careful with me, Abomination! I just may take him up on the offer!
He forced a smile as he replied to the independent robot. "I'm just impatient to learn exactly how we can work with Omnius. Your war against humanity has gone on for some time now, and we've been your guests for a year. When will we do what you brought us here for?"
Paolo kicked a divot into the gemgravel path. "Yes, Erasmus. When do we get to have fun?"
"Soon enough." The robot swirled his robes and guided his companions through the garden.
The boy had just passed his eleventh birthday and was developing into a strong young man, well-muscled and highly trained. Thanks to the Baron's constant influence, virtually all traces of the former Atreides personality had been extinguished. Erasmus himself had supervised Paolo's vigorous combat training against fighting meks, all to prime him to become the supposed Kwisatz Haderach.
But the Baron still could not fathom why. Why would the machines care about some obscure human religious figure from ancient history?
Erasmus motioned for them to sit on the nearest bench. The synthesized music and birdsong around them grew louder and more energetic until they became intertwined melodies. The robot's expression shifted once again, as if in reverie. "Is it not beautiful? I composed it myself."
"Most impressive." The Baron despised the music as too smooth and peaceful; he preferred more cacophonous, discordant selections.
"Over the millennia, I created wondrous works of art and many illusions." Erasmus's face and body shifted, and he became entirely human in appearance. Even the gaudy and unnecessary garments altered, until the robot stood before them again as a matronly old woman in a floralprint dress holding a small hand trowel. "This is one of my favorites. I have perfected it over the years, drawing from more and more of the lives my Face Dancers bring me."
With the hand trowel she dug in the simulated soil near the bench, getting rid of weeds that the Baron was sure had not been there moments earlier. A worm crawled out of the exposed, dark dirt, and the old woman sliced it in half with the trowel. The two parts of the squirming creature faded into the dirt.
A gentle undercurrent flowed in her voice, not unlike that of a grandmother telling bedtime s
tories to children. "Long ago--during your original lifetime, dear Baron--a Tleilaxu researcher named Hidar Fen Ajidica created an artificial spice that he called amal. Though the substance proved to have significant defects, Ajidica consumed huge quantities of it himself, and as a result he went increasingly mad, which led to his demise."
"Sounds like a failure," Paolo said.
"Oh, Ajidica failed spectacularly, but he did accomplish something very important. Call it a side effect. For his special ambassadors, he created greatly improved Face Dancers, with which he intended to populate a new domain. He dispatched them into deep space as scouts, colonizers, preparers of the way. He died before he could join them. Poor foolish man."
The old woman left her trowel stuck in the ground. When she straightened, she pressed her hand against the small of her back, as if to comfort an ache. "The new Face Dancers located our machine empire, and Omnius allowed me to study them. I spent generations working with the shape-shifters, learning how to draw information from them. Lovely biological machines, far superior to their predecessors. Yes, they are proving to be extremely helpful in winning our final war."
Looking around the illusory garden, the Baron saw other forms, minor workers who appeared to be human. New Face Dancers? "So you made an alliance with them?"
The old woman pursed her lips. "An alliance? They are servants, not our partners. Face Dancers were made to serve. To them, Omnius and I are like gods, greater Masters than the Tleilaxu ever were." Erasmus seemed to be pondering. "I do wish they had brought one of their Masters to me before the Honored Matres destroyed nearly all of them. The discussion could have been most enlightening."
Paolo brought the conversation back around to a subject that interested him. "As the final Kwisatz Haderach, I will be a god, too."
Erasmus laughed, an old woman's cachinnation. "Beware of megalomania, young man. It has brought down many a human--such as Hidar Fen Ajidica. Soon I expect to have a key to help you reach your potential. We need to free the god that crouches inside your body. And that requires a powerful catalyst."
"What is it?" the young man demanded.
"I keep forgetting how impatient you humans are!" The old woman brushed off her flower-print dress. "That is why I enjoy the Face Dancers so much. In them, I see the potential for perfecting humans. Face Dancers could be the sort of humans that even thinking machines might tolerate."
