Dune: The Machine Crusade (44 page)

Aziz stood atop the dune, gripping a metal staff with the innocent confidence of a believer. Dhartha was old, but his eyesight remained sharp, and he could see the boy confront the upwelling of sand, the churning wake as the behemoth circled around and then went toward him with the force and destructiveness of a desert storm.

Like a beetle on a hot rock, Aziz ran along the narrow dune crest to get into better position, but the motion of the subterranean demon caused the loose sand to crumble and slide. The boy lost his footing and tumbled head over heels. He dropped his spear, a flash of silver in the morning light.

Before Aziz could regain his footing or grabhis tools, a gigantic mouth lined with crystal fangs rose up and
up,
gulping sand and dirt… and a morsel of human flesh.

NaibDhartha stared with his mouth open and tears of grief and rage glinting in his eyes. The innocent boy was gone in an instant, misled by an insane belief that he could tame the demons of the dunes, like the outlaw wormriders who had a pact with Shaitan himself.

Selim is at fault for this.

The beast sank beneath the sand and began to move away. The stirring of its passage erased all signs of struggle.

Around NaibDhartha’s head, like the shadowy flickering of raven wings, he thought he heard the bitter, accursed laugh of Selim Wormrider.

S
ince his days riding with the robot Seurat aboard the
Dream Voyager,
Vor had been a restless person, never wanting to settle in one place. With a fresh curiosity and an eagerness to witness the full scope of free humanity, he absorbed the flavor of every new planet, adding it to his catalog of experiences. He liked seeing the people, the cultures, the threads that bound the various human races more tightly than Omnius could ever control the Synchronized Worlds.

Even now, moving silently along his update route, Seurat would be delivering the contaminated Omnius sphere from planet to planet and infecting the evermind. It was a grand trick, perhaps the most destructive military ruse in history. Xavier would have chosen to implement a rigid, full-force strategy in which the Army of the Jihad followed Seurat and struckhard at each reeling machine world, but such a plan would be impractical, tactically speaking, and would undoubtedly tip off both Seurat and Omnius before Vor’s plan had a chance to spread and do maximum damage without any loss of human life.

Vor would let the machines destroy themselves, while he went about the more formal business of the Jihad.

Vor had never been to water-rich Caladan— an isolated, sparsely populated Unallied Planet— but it seemed like a pleasant place. After Vor returned from sneaking the corrupted evermind update into Seurat’s derelict ship, Serena Butler had issued her new plan for prosecuting the Jihad.

Even before Xavier returned from his surprising victory on Ix, Vor happily volunteered to do the footwork.

For months he had traveled among strategically important planets on the fringes of League territory, searching for places to establish Jihad outposts. These underprotected worlds would probably appeal to thinking machines, as IV Anbus had, as potential beachheads.

Each new place gave Vor a broader perspective on the scope of the war, and the vital reasons why the human race must win. Sometimes when he thought about it, he wondered how AI-machines had gotten out of control in the first place, and how matters had come to the present state of extreme crisis.

In his early life, he had admired the efficient industries and cities built by Omnius, along with monuments celebrating the achievements of the Titans. But among scattered human settlements, even those not affiliated with League Worlds, Vor now felt a different sort of admiration. The carefree people exhibited happiness in many ways: They took pleasure in daily life, in good food, wine, and a warm bed. They drew joy from each other’s company, from the different aspects of love and friendship. They celebrated their fervor and enthusiasm for the Jihad by building heartfelt memorials to Serena’s baby.

Vor did not regret having left his trustee life behind. He was proud of how the entire Galaxy had changed because of his decision to turn away from his father and rescue the grieving Serena Butler. After that, he had felt more alive than ever before, more human.

He wished only one thing had turned out differently… that Serena might have reciprocated his love for her. But her heart had turned to granite, forcing Vor to accept that, with few regrets. His new life of freedom was rich in countless other ways.

With his health and perpetual youth, Vor Atreides found it easy to attract lovers in the various spaceports. Some of them were one-night adventures, others were women to whom he returned again and again. He probably had many unidentified, unclaimed children across the Galaxy, but he could never be a real father to any of them. Fearing reprisals from the cymeks, not wanting to give his father Agamemnon any hold over him, Vor always pretended to be a low-ranked jihadi during stopovers, never revealing his identity or his heritage. It was for their own safety, not his….

For similar reasons, he avoided the sort of lifetime commitment that Xavier and Octa had. In addition to the identity of his own cymek father, Vor kept the secret of his near immortality; he would have no choice but to watch helplessly as any woman he married grew old and died. For now he just took each day, each planet, and each relationship on its own terms, without worries.

Now, in coming to Caladan, his mission was to establish an observation outpost. In the past half century, thinking machine marauders had been sighted numerous times in the system, not far from where Xavier Harkonnen’s family had been attacked and killed by cymeks forty-three years before. Already, Caladan had dispatched representatives to Salusa Secundus, announcing that the fishing villages and coastal cities were amenable to forming a loose planetary government, which, in theory, would be willing to join the League of Nobles.

Vor wanted to establish a Jihad presence that would act as a buffer if Omnius’s aggressions ever grew more overt here. For the moment, the fervor of the Jihad kept the thinking machines on the defensive, but the evermind had been setting plans for centuries; no one could ever know exactly what the mechanical superbrain might attempt next. League forces had to be ready.

Though he held a high rank, Vor did not assume unquestioning respect for military officers. With no desire to be saluted or treated with particular deference, and for his own comfort, he often dressed in casual clothes without any insignia. He could be a Primero during military strategy sessions in the Jihad Council, but on his time off he wanted to socialize as an equal with old and new friends.

He fit in among ordinary people, loved roughhousing with village men at impromptu sporting games or gambling with the best of them, winning and losing a month’s pay at Fleur de Lys or other games. As hard as he worked for the war effort, he put almost as much effort into any free time he could get. There would be time for some relaxation here, while researching the best place to set up a military outpost.

Caladanian fishing villages were quaint and rustic. The people built their boats and painted the sails with family markings. Without weather satellites, they studied wind patterns and even tasted salty air to predict storms. They knew which seasons offered the best fishing, where to find the shells and edible seaweed that formed the staples of their diet.

Now, after three days of surveying headlands to the north for a potential site, Vor watched boats come in as the sun dipped on the horizon. On the docks, crude handmade shrines memorializing Manion the Innocent were strewn with flowers and colorful shells. One of the shrines up the coast even claimed to contain a holy lock of the boy’s hair.

He heard water lapping against the pilings and felt a peace he had not experienced in recent memory. He drew in a deep breath; despite the iodine smell of old seaweed clinging to the soft wood, and the rankaroma of unsold fish waiting to be turned into fertilizer meal, he enjoyed this place.

Many of his military engineers stayed with the orbiting Jihad ships to establish a network of observation satellites that could also provide hurricane warnings for the people of Caladan. Other crews operated from isolated points of land near the main fishing villages, constructing rigid uplink towers for the surveillance network. Still more jihadis would be stationed here on Caladan to perform necessary maintenance.

In the dockside town Vor had already found a warm, well-lit tavern where the locals gathered every night to drink a home-brewed distillate of fermented kelp that tasted remotely like bitter beer but was as potent as hard liquor. Vor discovered its effects quickly enough.

As a soldier in the Army of the Jihad, Vor Atreides was a breath of fresh air among the locals. Fishermen offered him drinks and treats of crunchy shellfish in exchange for news and stories. He went by his chosen alter ego of “Virk” and ostensibly worked as a common jihadi engineer. Most of the League’s planetside crew didn’t even know his real identity, and the rest of them kept his secret.

As the kelp beer blurred his senses, Vor became more talkative and told of numerous adventures he’d had, always careful not to talk about his time as a human trustee on Earth or his ranks an officer. It was obvious from the adoring looks of the young women that they believed him, and just as apparent from the amused but skeptical frowns of the men that they thought he was exaggerating. By the way the girls flirted and hung close, Vor knew he would be a welcome guest in someone’s home this night; the challenge would be to decide which rendezvous to choose.

Oddly enough, his gaze was drawn frequently to a busy young woman who worked the tables, pouring mugs of kelp beer at the bar and hurrying back and forth from the kitchen to deliver food. She had eyes the color of darkpecans, and rich brown hair that hung in a mass of ringlets that looked so soft and tempting that he could barely restrain his urge to reach out and touch them. Her figure was well rounded and she was tall, but most of all he found himself drawn to her heart-shaped face and engaging smile. In an indefinable way, she reminded him of Serena.

When it was his turn to buy a round of drinks, Vor called the woman over. Her eyes danced teasingly. “I can understand why your throat is dry with that constant stream of nonsense flowing out of it.”

The men laughed good-naturedly at Vor’s expense, and he chuckled along with them. “So, if I said how beautiful you are, you would consider it more of my nonsense?”

She tossed her ringlets and called to him over her shoulder as she went to get their drinks, “Nonsense of the purest form.” Some of the other young women frowned, as if Vor had already snubbed them.

His eyes went back to her as she stood at the bar. She glanced in his direction, then turned away. “Ten credits to the man who tells me her name,” he said boldly, holding out the coin.

A chorus answered him with “Leronica Tergiet,” but he gave the coin to a fisherman who provided more information. “Her father has a deepsea boat, but he hates the work. He bought this place, and Leronica pretty much runs it.”

One of the pouting girls clung to Vor. “That one won’t relax for a moment. She’ll work herself into old age when she’s still in her childbearing years.” Her voice deepened. “A pretty dull companion, I’d say.”

“Maybe she just needs someone to make her laugh.”

When Leronica returned to their table, her arms laden with freshly filled mugs, Vor raised his glass in a toast. “To the lovely Leronica Tergiet, who knows the difference between a genuine compliment and utter nonsense.”

She set down the rest of the kelp beer. “I hear so little honesty around here that it’s hard to make the comparison. I don’t have time for silly stories about places I’ll never visit.”

Vor lifted his voice above the hubbub. “I can wait for a private conversation. Don’t think I didn’t notice you listening to my stories and pretending not to.”

She snorted. “I have to workpast closing. You’d be better off going back to your nice clean ship.”

Vor smiled disarmingly. “I’d trade a warm bed for a clean ship any day. I’ll wait.”

The men made catcalls, but Leronica raised her eyebrows. “A patient man is a novelty around here.”

Vor remained unruffled. “Then I hope you like novelties.”

S
alusa Secundus glimmered like an oasis in the harsh wilderness of war, a sanctuary where Xavier could regain his strength before going backout with the Army of the Jihad. Now, though, as he sped by groundcar away from the Zimia Spaceport, he hoped he was in time. He had just arrived backhome from the Ixian battlegrounds.

For months he’d known that Octa was pregnant— apparently their lovemaking on the night before his departure for Ix had been quite surprisingly successful— and her delivery was now imminent. He had not been present for the births of Roella or Omilia— his duty to the Jihad always came first— but his wife was forty-six now, causing her delivery to be fraught with a greater than usual potential for complications. She insisted that he should not worry, which made him all the more concerned.

Xavier sped along a winding road into the hills toward the Butler estate, while the sun dropped lower in the western sky. He had made contact as soon as the ballistas entered the home system, and had received regular reports on Octa’s condition. He was cutting it quite close.

Octa had chosen to deliver at home, as she had done with her two older children, because she wanted the resources of the medical centers to remain available for the war, especially for the wounded who were receiving replacement organs from the generous Tlulaxa organ farms.