Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (50 page)

Naib Dhartha would be terrified— or at the very least impressed. Perhaps Buddallah would smite the treacherous naib as punishment for what he had done to innocent Selim. Or perhaps the young man would be given the chance to take his own revenge, in his own way. In fact, Selim would have found that preferable. . . .

After more than a year of living by his own wiles, he was well-fed, healthy, and happy. God continued to smile on him. The rugged teenager consumed more melange than ever before.

Selim had established six additional supply outposts around the desert, making eight in all, including another abandoned botanical testing station he had discovered even farther from the settled mountains. He’d scavenged more material than he had ever dreamed possible, making him wealthy by the standards of his people.

At night he laughed alone at how Naib Dhartha and the other cliff-dwellers had thought they were punishing him with exile. Instead, Selim had been reborn out here in the desert. Buddallah had kept him safe, protected him. The sands had scoured him clean, making him a new person. Bold, resourceful, and defiant, he would become a legend among the desert nomads. Selim Wormrider!

But that could happen only if the Zensunni
knew
about him. Only then could he achieve the destiny he had in mind for himself, a man revered by his people. He would show them what he had become.

Selim goaded the mammoth worm back toward the old familiar mountains. After so much time alone, with no one to talk to but himself, he was returning to the only place he could truly call home, despite its deficiencies and challenges.

He made out cliffs ahead, lines of vertical rock like a fortress wall that blocked worms from the sheltered valleys beyond. The Zensunni Wanderers had built their homes in those caves, keeping the entrances secret from outside eyes. Selim knew the way.

Beneath the young man’s aching legs, the worm thrashed, reluctant to go closer to the rocks. Selim obliged by turning the beast, making it pass in front of the high cliffs.

Holding his metal staff, pressing hard so that the spread segments remained exposed, he stood high up on top, maintaining his balance. His dirty white cloak flapped in the wind. As the worm crossed before the honeycombed cave openings, he could see tiny figures appearing to gaze out at him in amazement. Worms never came so close to the rock walls, but
he
had guided this one in, like a monster across a vast ocean. He controlled it completely.

Selim saw more figures on the rocks and heard faint shouts, people summoning others. Soon, astonished Zensunni villagers stood all along the ledges. He enjoyed seeing their wide eyes and open mouths.

Selim drove the sandworm past them all, shouting into the wind and waving insolently. Using his goads and his stick, he forced the demon to turn about yet again, twisting its serpentine head and churning back in front of the cliff wall like a performing animal.

None of the audience waved to him, or moved much at all.

Showing off, Selim laughed and hooted, bellowing insults at evil Naib Dhartha and the traitorous Ebrahim. In his desert robe with a cloth wrapped over his face, Selim doubted anyone would guess who he was. Wouldn’t they be shocked to learn it was the supposed water thief, the scalawag exile?

It would have been more satisfying if Selim had shown them who he was and heard their gasps, but he would tease them for a while first, creating a legend. One day he would laugh at their disbelief, perhaps even approach close enough to invite Naib Dhartha along for a ride. He chuckled to himself.

When he had given them enough of a taste, Selim turned the worm back toward the desert. With a hissing rumble of friction, the sandworm rushed back out onto the open dunes. Selim laughed all the way, thanking Buddallah for such a joyous trick.

CROWDED WITH THE others on a ledge, Mahmad, the son of Naib Dhartha, stared in disbelief as the huge worm turned about like a faithful pet, then surged away, crossing the rippling sands. A single man had guided the creature, one small person who stood fearlessly atop the mounded ridges.

Unbelievable. My eyes have seen more than most Zensunni do in all their lives.
And he was only twelve standard years old.

Mahmad heard eager boys chattering about how exciting it would be to ride a worm. Some attempted to guess the identity of the mad stranger who could command the desert demons. Other Zensunni refugees had founded villages and cave cities throughout the mountains of Arrakis, so it could have been a member of any tribe.

Mahmad looked up, his mouth full of questions, then saw his father standing beside him, his face set in stone. “What a fool,” Naib Dhartha growled. “Who could be so reckless and disdainful of his own life? That one deserves to be devoured by the beasts.”

“Yes, Father,” Mahmad agreed out of habit, but interesting possibilities surfaced in his mind.

W
hen Tio Holtzman discovered a calculational error in the design of his failed alloy-resonance generator, he flew into a righteous rage. He had been sitting in his private study, surrounded by the new glowglobes Norma had designed, going through the tedious mathematics himself.

He had not asked the young woman to study the details of the catastrophic accident, because he was afraid she might pinpoint a genuine design flaw, and that would have been too embarrassing. All along, Norma had said the device would not work as predicted, and she had been correct. Damn her!

As a consequence, the inventor had spent hours figuring and refiguring the work that had been done by the roomful of slave solvers. And he did indeed uncover three minor mistakes. Objectively speaking, even if the arithmetic had been done correctly, his original design would have remained unworkable . . . but that was beside the point, he decided.

The solvers had committed inexcusable errors, regardless of their relevance to the overall question. It was certainly enough to shift the blame from him.

Holtzman marched into the hushed room where human calculators sat at tables, churning through equation iterations that Norma had given them. He halted inside the doorway and surveyed them as they worked at their calculation devices and made entries on pads.

“You will cease activity now! Henceforth, all of your work will be closely monitored and verified, no matter how long it takes. I will go through each paper, study every solution you derive. Your errors have set back our defense of humanity by months and perhaps longer, and I am not pleased.”

The slaves hung their heads, did not make eye contact.

But Holtzman was just getting started. “Haven’t I been a good master to you? Haven’t I given you a better life than you would have had in the cane fields or on the riverbanks? And this is how you repay me?”

The new solvers looked at him, terror on their young faces. The older workers, the ones who had not died from the fever, sagged with gloom.

“How many other errors have you made? How many other tests are likely to be ruined by your incompetence?” He glared at the slaves, then grabbed a paper at random. “Henceforth, if I find any
intentional
mistakes, you will be executed— mark my words! Since we are working on a war program, that would be sabotage and sedition.”

Norma hurried into the room, taking uneven strides on her short legs. “What is this, Savant Holtzman?”

He held up a sheet marked with his own scribblings. “I have found serious mistakes in my alloy-resonance calculations. We can no longer rely on their work. You and I, Norma, will double-check everything they do. Right now.”

Her blunt-featured face looked alarmed. She bowed slightly. “As you wish.”

“In the meantime,” Holtzman said, gathering up papers, “I am cutting your rations in half. Why should I keep your bellies full while you undermine our efforts to defeat the enemy?” The slaves groaned. Holtzman summoned his Dragoon guards to usher them away. “I will not abide such sloppiness. Too much is at stake.”

When they were alone in the room, he and Norma sat down and began to study the new calculations, one sheet at a time. The Rossak woman looked at the scientist as if he were overreacting, but he simply glowered and bent over a table that had papers spread all over it.

Eventually they did find a mathematical mistake made by one of the new young solvers named Aliid. Worse, the error had not been caught by his partner as it should have been, a boy named Ishmael.

“See, it would have been another expensive disaster! They must be plotting against us.”

“They are just boys, Savant,” Norma said. “I am surprised they are capable of these mathematics at all.”

Ignoring her, Holtzman ordered the Dragoon guards to summon the two young men— then, as an afterthought he called for all the solvers to file back into the room. As the terrified youths were dragged forward, he hurled accusations at the pair, who did not look capable of sophisticated mathematical sabotage. “Do you boys consider this a joke, a game? Omnius could destroy us at any time. This invention just might have saved us!”

Norma watched the inventor, not sure if he knew much about her project. But he was full of self-righteousness now. “When planting clam seedlings or cutting cane, an error of a few centimeters doesn’t matter. But this”— he waved the calculations in front of their faces—”
this
could have meant the destruction of an entire battle fleet!”

He swept his angry gaze around the group of solvers. “Reduced rations should straighten you out. Maybe with your stomachs growling, you can focus on your work.” He turned to the boys, who cringed at his anger. “And you two have lost your opportunity to work with me at all. I will ask Lord Bludd to assign you to hard labor instead. Perhaps there, you can prove your worth, because you are certainly of no value to me.”

He turned to Norma, grumbling under his breath. “I’d toss the whole lot of them out, but then I’d lose even more time training replacements.”

Deaf to their groans of disappointment, not wishing to entertain any appeals, the infuriated scientist strode out of the room, leaving Norma to stare after him in his outburst.

A pair of burly Dragoon guards marched forward to take Ishmael and Aliid away.

A
gamemnon led his fleet of armored ships against the Sorceresses of Rossak. The primary robotic vessels carried the cymek general and his two Titan companions, as well as dozens of ambitious neo-cymeks. The watcheyes of Omnius monitored their movements.

Behind the cymeks, a fleet of robot warships accelerated and veered around them to arrive first, sleek projectiles with enormous engines and heavily loaded with artillery. The machine warships were one-way units, never meant to go home; their engines burned hot, saving no fuel for a return journey. They came in so fast that by the time the orbiting Rossak sentry stations detected them, the thinking machines had arrived and opened fire. The picket ships and the sentries at the system’s perimeter never had a chance to launch a shot.

While the robot ships engaged the orbital stations, the cymeks planned to take their personal revenge on the surface.

As the strike force cruised closer to Rossak, the cymeks prepared their armored warrior-forms. Servo-handlers installed individual brain canisters into protected sockets, linking thoughtrodes with control systems, priming weapons. The three Titans would use powerful glider-forms, armed flying bodies. In contrast, the neo-cymeks wore destructive combat bodies, crablike walkers that could march unhindered through jungle obstacles.

Agamemnon and his cymeks accelerated into the ionized wake of the robot vessels that had already flashed past. Installed in his flying body, the general tested his integral weapons. He was anxious to feel rock, metal, and flesh in the grip of his extruded cutting claws.

He studied tactical diagrams and watched the first robotic salvos hit the defensive stations above Rossak. This League outpost was a minor planet with a relatively small population clustered in jungle-choked rift valleys, while the rest of the surface and oceans remained inhospitable. Rossak had not yet installed the expensive Holtzman scrambler shield defenses that protected major human worlds such as Salusa Secundus and Giedi Prime.

But the deadly Sorceresses with their freakish mental powers had sparked the ire of the cymeks. Ignoring the space battle, Agamemnon’s ships plunged toward the smoky atmosphere. In the sheltered cave cities they would find the Sorceresses, their families and friends. Victims, all of them.

Mentally, he opened a link to his cymek fighting force. “Xerxes, lead the vanguard as you did on Salusa Secundus. I want your ship at the point.”

In his broadband transmitted response, Xerxes could not conceal his fear. “We should be cautious against these telepathic women, Agamemnon. They killed Barbarossa, destroyed everything on Giedi Prime—”

“Then set an example for us. Take pride in being the first on the battlefield. Prove your worth, and be grateful for the opportunity.”

“I . . . have proven my worth many times over the centuries.” Xerxes sounded petulant. “Why not just send combat robots in first? We’ve seen no indication that Rossak has a full scrambler network in place—”

“Nevertheless, you
will
lead the charge. Have you no pride . . . or shame?”

Xerxes offered no further excuses or entreaties. No matter what he did to redeem himself, he could not possibly make up for the mistake he had committed a thousand years before. . . .

When the early Titans were still in human form, Xerxes had always been a sycophantic yes-man, eager to be part of great events. But he’d never had the ambition or drive to make himself an indispensible revolutionary. Once the original conquest was over, he had contentedly ruled the subset of planets deeded to him by the other Titans. Xerxes had been the most hedonistic of the original twenty, relishing the pleasures of his physical body. He had been the last to undergo cymek surgery, not wanting to give up his precious sensations.