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Duncan was the same person again and again, perfecting himself, constantly filtering out impurities, like passing through a fine mesh strainer to sift out only the best of qualities, leaving him as the One. He allowed himself a secret smile at the irony. He had succeeded only because of the meddling of the Tleilaxu, though he was certain that the Masters had never intended to create a savior for humanity.
Duncan's Mentat mind burned through the data, confirming his conclusion, knowing that the Oracle of Time must be correct. "Truly, I am the Kwisatz Haderach!" He wished Miles Teg could have been there with him. "And what of the great war--Kralizec?"
"We are in the midst of it now. Kralizec is not merely a war, but a point of change." Her image flickered. "And you are the culmination of it."
"But what about the rest of humanity?" Murbella. "They need to know. How will they understand what has happened?"
"My Navigators will inform them, perhaps even bring their leaders here. First, however, I need to eliminate a threat that should have been gone millennia ago. An enemy I fought ten thousand years before you were first born."
The Oracle slid through the air toward the indignant-looking old man, Omnius. Facing him, she made her voice boom more loudly than the evermind's speakers ever had. "I must ensure that the thinking machines can no longer harm anyone. That was my mission ages ago, when I was merely a woman, when I invented the concept of the foldspace engine, when I discovered the mind-expanding powers of melange. I shall remove you, Omnius."
The evermind laughed, a remote old man's chuckle. The slightly stooped manifestation suddenly grew larger, looming like a giant over her image. "You cannot remove me, for I am not a corporeal being. I am information, so my existence has spread anywhere the tachyon net stretches. I am everywhere."
The female image formed a smile. "And I am more than that. I am the Oracle of Time. Now hear my laughter." In an eerie voice Norma Cenva chuckled long and hard, causing even the oversized Omnius to take a step backward. "I am heard across star systems and eons, across time and space, far beyond the range of your net."
Omnius took another step backward.
"First I crippled your fleet. Now I will rip you out like the weed that you are, and discard you."
"Impossible--" The old man began to dissolve as he retreated into his own network.
"I will extract you--every shred of information from every node." Her misty image became amorphous and seeped around Omnius. He nearly staggered into Erasmus, but the independent robot easily slid out of the way, his old-woman face expressing curiosity and bemusement.
"I will take you to a place where such information is no longer comprehensible, where physical laws do not apply."
Duncan heard the evermind's voice cry out in rage, but it was muffled. In the vaulted hall, the insectile sentinel robots who tried to move forward in the service of Omnius seemed strangely disoriented and sluggish.
"There are many universes, Omnius. Duncan Idaho has visited more than one, and he knows the place of which I speak. I rescued him and his no-ship from it long ago. You, however, will never find your way back."
Duncan considered the incomprehensible struggle before him. Indeed, when he had first stolen the no-ship from Chapterhouse, he had lurched through the fabric of space in a desperate attempt to avoid capture and had taken them to a bizarrely skewed universe. He shuddered to think of it.
"Nothing shall rescue you, Omnius."
"Impossible!" the old man bellowed, losing his physical form and becoming no more than a spangled outline.
"Yes, impossible. Wonderfully so."
The air in the chamber crackled with clouds of electricity that spread thinner and thinner, as the Oracle wrapped herself like a net around the iconic thinking machine. For an instant, Duncan saw Norma's face superimposed over that of the old man. The two countenances merged into one: Hers. The beautiful woman smiled, and the air filled with sparkling, hair-fine strands of electricity that she drew around her like an elegant cloak.
Then she uprooted herself from reality and vanished into the incomprehensible void, taking with her all traces of Omnius.
Forever.
You see enemies everywhere, but I see only obstacles--and I know what to do with obstacles. Either move them or crush them, so that we can be on our way.
--MOTHER COMMANDER MURBELLA,
address to the combined Sisterhood
Even after the Navigators destroyed the bulk of the Enemy fleet in a flurry of unexpected Obliterators, a second wave of machine ships advanced toward Chapterhouse.
The Oracle, upon locating Duncan Idaho and the lost no-ship, had promptly taken most of her Heighliners to Synchrony, only assigning a small percentage to aid in the defenses of other human-inhabited planets. With the outcome of those missions unknown, some or all of the other planets could still be vulnerable. One thing was certain: At Chapterhouse, Murbella and her defenders faced the remaining machine ships alone. Through it all, the Mother Commander didn't have much time to process her shock at discovering that Duncan was still alive.
Administrator Gorus groaned. "Will they never stop?"
"No." Murbella scowled at him for forcing her to state the obvious. "They are thinking machines."
High over the Bene Gesserit world, her hundred last-stand vessels hung surrounded by the debris from thousands of destroyed machine battleships. This fight had inflicted a substantial toll on the Enemy, but unfortunately it was not enough.
The new wave of Omnius vessels would not thumb their noses at the human defenders, as the first had. Murbella expected no mercy this time and didn't have much hope for the last-stand ships at other strategic points, either. The machines intended to annihilate Chapterhouse and every other world that stood in their way.
She cursed the clumsy, uncooperative Guild vessels that the Junction shipyards had produced and the worthless weapons the Ixians had supplied. She had to think of something on her own. "I won't just let our ships sit here with their throats bared, like lambs waiting for slaughter!"
"The mathematical compilers controlled our foldspace guidance and standard--"
She shouted at Gorus. "Rip out those damned navigation devices--we'll maneuver our vessels by hand!"
"But we will not know where we are going. We could crash!"
"Then we must crash into the Enemy, instead of each other." She wondered if the machines would feel a need for vengeance when they saw the wreckage of the first wave. Honored Matres certainly would.
The Enemy kept coming. Murbella studied the complex tactical projections. Surely they did not need such a vast number of vessels to conquer the minimally inhabited Chapterhouse. It seemed obvious that the evermind had learned the value of intimidation and showmanship, as well as the wisdom of redundancy.
In the Heighliner control center, two Guildsmen argued with Gorus. One claimed that disconnecting the mathematical compiler was impossible, while the other warned that it was unwise. Murbella ended the debate with the compelling power of Bene Gesserit Voice. The Guildsmen shuddered and, unable to resist her, did as she commanded.
Although the machine forces outgunned them by a substantial margin, Murbella did not flinch from what had to be done. Instead, she allowed herself to reawaken her old Honored Matre anger. This was not a time to calculate odds. It was a time to unleash every bit of destruction her people could muster. Their chances were better now than they had been when this last stand began. If they all embraced viciousness and fought like frenzied Honored Matres, they could inflict significant damage. They might still go down in flames, but if they bought sufficient time for the Oracle and her Navigators to defeat Omnius, Murbella would count it a victory. She just wished she could have seen Duncan one more time.
Murbella turned toward the broad projection plate that magnified the oncoming vessels. "Arm all weaponry and stand ready to ram. The moment we deplete conventional armaments, our own ships will become the final weapons. A hundred of us will take out at least as many of their ships."
Up to this point, Gorus had called her battle strategy suicidal. Now, he looked as if he might try something foolish to stop her. "Why not negotiate with them? Would it not be preferable to surrender? We cannot stop them from destroying their targets!"
Murbella fixed her gaze on the Administrator as if he were weak prey. Even the Sisters who had started out as pure Bene Gesserits now reacted with a feral Honored Matre strength. They would never back down.
"And you base this suggestion on the success of your emissaries to the thinking machines? All those emissaries who disappeared?" Murbella's voice sizzled like hot acid. "Administrator, if you'd like to seek another solution, I would be happy to eject you from an airlock and let you fly across the empty vacuum. As the last breath explodes out of your lungs, maybe you can gasp out your personal surrender terms. Be my guest, if you believe the thinking machines will listen to you."
