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The desperate-looking Guildsman cringed. Around him, the Sisters moved to take control, ready for a final plunge.
Before Murbella could give the command, though, Janess broke in over their tight-linked channel, "Mother Commander! Something's changed with the machine battleships. Look at them!"
Murbella examined the images on the viewing plate. The Enemy vessels no longer moved in a tight, efficient formation. They slowed and began to spread apart, as if they had no goal, like unmanned sailing ships becalmed on a vast cosmic sea.
Left suddenly leaderless.
To her amazement, the thinking-machine fleet floated listlessly in space.
Even when caught up in his own myth, Muad'Dib pointed out that greatness is only a transitory experience. For a true Kwisatz Haderach, there are no warnings against hubris, no rules or requirements to follow. He takes from all things and gives to all things, as he wishes. How could we have deluded ourselves into believing we could control such a one?
--Bene Gesserit analysis
After the Oracle vanished, Erasmus stared at the empty space in the center of the vaulted chamber, his head slightly cocked to one side. "Omnius is gone." His voice sounded hollow to Duncan Idaho's ears. "No vestige of the evermind remains in the network of thinking machines."
Duncan felt his own mind racing, expanding, absorbing new information. The terrible Enemy he had sensed for so long--the threat that the Honored Matres had provoked--was no more. By removing the evermind, uprooting it from this universe and taking it elsewhere, the Oracle had disabled the vast thinking-machine fleet, leaving it without its controlling force.
And we still remain.
Duncan didn't know exactly what had changed inside him. Was it simply the knowledge of his raison d'etre? Had he always had access to this potential without realizing it? Assuming Paul was correct, something had lain dormant inside Duncan for all those years, through all of the lives--original and ghola--a latent power that had grown with each iteration of his existence. Now, like a massive genetic program, he had to figure out how to activate it.
Paul and his son Leto II had the blessing and curse of prescience. With their memories restored, each could claim to be a Kwisatz Haderach. Miles Teg had possessed his phenomenal capacity to move at a speed beyond comprehension and might conceivably have become a Kwisatz Haderach himself. The Navigators in the clustered Heighliners overhead could use their minds to see through folds of space and find safe paths for the great ships to travel. The Bene Gesserits could control their bodies, down to their very cells. All had expanded on traditional human abilities, expressing humankind's potential to exceed expectations.
As the ultimate and final Kwisatz Haderach, Duncan believed he might have the capability to do all of those things and much more, reaching the highest pinnacle of humanity. Thinking machines had never understood human potential, even though their "mathematical projection" credited the Kwisatz Haderach with the power to end Kralizec and change the universe.
Confidence infused him, and he thought he might discover a way to make grand, epic changes . . . but not under the control of the thinking machines. Instead, Duncan would find his own way. He would be a real Kwisatz Haderach, independent as well as all-powerful.
Dispassionately, he gazed upon the old woman in her frumpy floralprint dress and gardening apron, complete with scuffs of dirt. Her face appeared careworn, as if from nurturing people her entire life. "Something of Omnius has vanished from me, but not all."
Finally forsaking the old-woman disguise, Erasmus resumed the liquid-metal form of the independent robot attired in an elegant crimson and gold robe. "I can learn much from you, Duncan Idaho. As the new god-messiah of humankind, you are the optimal specimen for me to study."
"I am not another specimen for your laboratory analysis." Too many others had treated him that way, in too many of his past lives.
"A mere slip of my tongue." The robot smiled cheerily, as if attempting to veil his looming violence. "I have long desired a perfect understanding of what it means to be human. Now it seems you have all the answers I so assiduously sought."
"I recognize the myth in which I live." Duncan recalled Paul Atreides making similar pronouncements. Paul had felt trapped by his own mythos, which had become a force beyond his control. Duncan, however, had no fear of the forces that would emerge, either for or against him.
With penetrating vision he saw through, and around, Erasmus and his minions. Across the hall he watched Paul Atreides standing unsteadily, aided by Chani and Jessica after his terrible ordeal. Paul drank from a water flagon, which he had taken from a table near the Baron's body.
Outside, the crashing of sandworms against robotic defenders had begun to subside. Though the huge creatures had not destroyed the machine cathedral, they had caused extensive damage to the city of Synchrony.
At the perimeter of the great chamber, quicksilver robots stood attentively, the charges in their integral weapons glowing in a display of readiness. Even without the evermind, Erasmus could direct these machines to fire a deadly barrage against the humans in the vaulted room. The independent robot could attempt to kill every mortal here in a show of petulant revenge. And perhaps he would make the effort. . . .
"Neither you nor your robots can make any difference here," Duncan warned. "All of you are far too slow."
"Either you are overconfident, or you are fully aware of what you can do." The flowmetal smile tightened, just a little, and the bright optic threads glistened a bit more. "Perhaps it is the latter, and perhaps not." Somehow, Duncan knew with absolute certainty that Erasmus meant to unleash all the destructive power under his control, wreaking whatever havoc he could.
Before the robot made half a turn, Duncan was upon him with all the speed Miles Teg had shown, knocking him backward. Erasmus crashed to the floor, his weapons disabled. Was it just a test? Another experiment?
Duncan's heart pounded and his body radiated heat as he stood over the robot, but he felt exhilarated, not exhausted. He could keep fighting like this against any machines Erasmus chose to send against him. At that thought, he left the independent robot where he had fallen, dashed at hyperspeed around the circle, and battered the silvery sentinel robots with quick kicks and punches until they shattered into debris. It was so easy for him now. Before the metal pieces had finished falling to the floor, he was back, looming over Erasmus.
"I sensed your doubts as well as your intentions," Duncan said. "Admit it. Even as a thinking machine, you wanted more proof, didn't you?"
Lying on his back and looking upward through the hole in the dome at the thousands of huge Guild Heighliners in the sky, Erasmus said, "Assuming you are the long-awaited superman, why don't you simply destroy me? With Omnius gone, removing me would assure the victory of humanity."
"If the solution were that simple, a Kwisatz Haderach would not be needed to implement it." Duncan surprised Erasmus, and himself, by reaching down and helping the robot to his feet. "To end Kralizec and truly change the future requires more than just the annihilation of one side or the other."
Erasmus examined his body core and his robes to ensure his appearance, then looked up with a broad smile. "I think we just might have a meeting of the minds--something I never really achieved with Omnius."
When the time comes for our Great Unmasking, our foes will be surprised by what has been disguised in front of them since the very beginning.
--KHRONE,
communique to Face Dancers
Now that the Oracle was gone, several of the Navigators' giant Heighliners overhead folded space and disappeared from Synchrony without explanations or farewells.
Throughout the city, sandworms continued to destroy the living metal buildings. Because Omnius had never allowed them autonomy, the robotic defenders were unable to function effectively without connecting to the evermind. The vaulted hall filled with resounding silence.
Then with a loud crash, the high doors swung open. Dressed in black and followed by a throng
of Face Dancers, Khrone marched in from the bright machine streets. Identical, blank-faced drones swarmed into the room. Scytale's poison gas had killed some of the shape-shifters, but many had avoided the battle entirely.
Out in the sprawling machine city, countless Face Dancers had pretended to stand against the rampaging sandworms, but secretly melted away from the barricades the robotic soldiers had set up. Khrone had taken pleasure in watching the worms destroy the great flowmetal buildings, smashing thousands of thinking machines. Clearing the way. Making our job easier.
Khrone offered a skeletal smile as he swept forward. "I never cease to be entertained by the erroneous deductions of those who think they control us." In his mind, a Face Dancer victory was now assured.
