Текст книги "Mentats of Dune"
Автор книги: Brian Herbert
Соавторы: Kevin Anderson
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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 38 страниц)
Chapter 17 (From a certain perspective, history)
From a certain perspective, history – in fact all of existence – can be viewed as a game with both winners and losers.
– GILBERTUS ALBANS, internal memo of the Mentat School
It was a spectacle in the Imperial Court, and Gilbertus played his role well, because Manford Torondo was watching him. Buried behind layers of impenetrable mental walls, he resented being treated as a performing animal for the Butlerians.
Manford considered Gilbertus neither an equal nor an ally, but rather a tool, a weapon – a means for the Butlerian leader to make his point. Other than perhaps his loyal Swordmaster, Manford viewed every human the same way, from the lowliest fanatical follower all the way up to Emperor Salvador Corrino. He showed disdain for anyone not as determined as he was … and no one was as determined as he was.
Manford had made it clear that he counted on his trained Mentat to prove that the thinking machine was inferior. If Gilbertus failed to win the assigned contest, the Butlerians would take out their disappointment on the Mentat School.
Instead of his usual Headmaster’s suit, Gilbertus wore a simple Mentat robe as he entered the satellite Imperial Audience Chamber. Even this side chamber was larger than any lecture hall at the Mentat School. The floor had been cleared to create an open expanse like a gladiatorial arena, at the center of which sat a single table for Gilbertus and his game.
In seats around the perimeter, crowds already lined the room – twitching court functionaries, stern ambassadors from varying planets, trading partners, Butlerian deacons, and wealthy nobles who had signed Manford’s antitechnology pledge.
Emperor Salvador sat on a faux throne, a pale imitation of his real green-crystal chair. It was his clumsy way of showing that Manford’s spectacle was not sufficiently important to warrant the use of the Emperor’s primary chamber with its regal furnishings.
Gilbertus noted that Empress Tabrina was conspicuously absent. Searching through his memory records of other appearances at court, he recalled numerous occasions when he’d not seen Tabrina at her husband’s side.
Roderick Corrino occupied one of the special reserved seats, close enough that he could watch the pyramid chess game. His wife, Haditha, and their young son and three daughters were with him, as if this spectacle were a pleasant family outing. Laughing and whispering to her, Roderick placed his youngest daughter, Nantha, on his knee.
Several of the orthodox Sisters who served the court were also there, waiting stiffly. Reverend Mother Dorotea hovered close to the Emperor, perhaps to give him advice, perhaps to explain nuances of the game. Although Salvador understood the rules of pyramid chess, he had never demonstrated any particular skill when he played it.
Gilbertus glanced around the audience, counting the attendees and memorizing their identities in a single eyeblink. No one here would cheer for his opponent, and the combat mek was going to be destroyed regardless of the outcome. Though the robot was a relatively primitive model, Gilbertus was sure the mek had enough awareness to understand its fate.
Without speaking, Gilbertus stepped up to the table and the chess set on display. The board and pieces were larger than standard size, so that observers in the far rows could see what was happening.
The neutered combat mek was propped in place at the game board, not struggling, with its optic sensors glowing dully. The robot’s legs were still detached, and the torso was bolted to a metal platform. All the mek’s bladed weapons had been sawed off, leaving dull stumps, which comforted the observers. This mek model was deadly in many ways beyond the obvious, however, but Gilbertus didn’t want to explain how he knew this.
“I acknowledge my opponent,” he said. Still standing, the Headmaster faced the mek in a traditional gesture of respect that caused a troubled murmuring to pass through the audience.
Anari Idaho stood next to the legless Butlerian leader, who rested on a padded palanquin. Her sword was drawn and ready in case she needed to fight the combat mek.
Manford said, “This is a challenge between the soul and the soulless, the holy mind of man and the accursed mind of machine. My Mentat, Headmaster Gilbertus Albans, formally challenges the demon machine to a game of pyramid chess. Humans do not need sophisticated technology to achieve our potential. My Mentat will prove that humans are superior to machines in every way.”
Gilbertus thought it a needlessly jingoistic speech. Every person in the audience knew what was about to occur and what the stakes were. Thinking back to ancient human history, he brought to mind Colosseum battles, gladiator against gladiator, downtrodden religious followers pitted against ravenous predators, though they had no chance of survival. Pyramid chess was a different sort of combat, but the fighting robot before him was like one of those doomed Christian prisoners.
No doubt Manford had formulated an appropriate response even if Gilbertus should lose, ready to call this a “moral victory” rather than an actual one. In that case, the Butlerians would get their revenge on the Mentat School later.
But Gilbertus didn’t plan to lose. He sat at the game table and waved an arm casually. “As challenger, I cede the first move to my opponent.” Granting the first move gave the mek a slight advantage. Gilbertus wanted to show clearly that he was not cheating or otherwise taking advantage of the robot.
Leaning forward in his seat, Roderick Corrino looked surprised; Salvador seemed disturbed. Manford had not expected him to make such an offer, but he didn’t react; the expression on his classically handsome face showed that he had utter confidence in the Mentat Headmaster.
The robot moved its Lion figure forward and up a level, to another fighting platform. Gilbertus responded with the heroic-faced Martyr, moving to block. The robot chose the Infant in a sacrificial play. The very idea disturbed the audience, bringing to mind the murder of Serena Butler’s baby by Erasmus – the event that had triggered the Butlerian Jihad.
Gilbertus countered with his own Lion, rising up three levels. He was attuned to the fine points of the game, focused on unfolding scenarios and strategies, planning ten moves ahead and thinking of a counter to any approach the mek might take.
The thinking machine moved another piece, a simple foot soldier, in a curious gambit. Gilbertus seized the foot soldier and removed it from the board. When the robot made its next move, a cascade of possibilities fell into place, and Gilbertus saw the machine’s strategy. There was indeed a good chance that his opponent might actually win. Gilbertus fine-tuned his own plans. He began to perspire a little, painfully aware that the robot would never show such a human frailty.
One of the noblemen in the audience let out a too-loud gasp; he had also caught the robot’s intention, although most of the other spectators didn’t understand. Gilbertus made a defensive move on the multilayer board, and the robot blocked it, diminishing Gilbertus’s viable options. He saw a narrow path and hoped the robot didn’t recognize it as well.
The mek was relentless, countering, blocking Gilbertus in, forcing him into a vulnerable corner on the lowest level. The audience grew restless. In his peripheral vision, he noted Manford’s stormy expression.
Gilbertus reapplied all his Mentat focus to the game. He knew one thing the audience could not possibly guess, something that even the combat mek didn’t know: For the past century and a half, he had regularly played pyramid chess with Erasmus. The independent robot was a skilled opponent who had honed Gilbertus’s tactics, teaching him many subtle tricks. This combat mek might have the rules embedded in its programming, but Gilbertus knew how to use those rules to ensure his own victory.
Two more moves of retreat by Gilbertus, and the mek advanced each time, toward the trap that the Headmaster was setting. Emperor Salvador looked decidedly uneasy. Sister Dorotea whispered in his ear, but whatever she said did not reassure him. Gilbertus made one more move, and the combat mek responded as expected.
Then the Mentat sprang his trap. He seized the Lion, and in the next two moves used one of his foot soldiers to block the Mother’s escape and then capture the piece. In three more moves, he turned the game around by capturing the Grand Patriarch and tossing the piece aside disrespectfully.
The crowd roared. The robot recognized its inevitable defeat but continued to play. Gilbertus had no choice but to finish the victory, in all of its details. He did not believe that every vestige of technology should be scorned and trampled, but this was a role, and he played it well. Though his feelings were conflicted about thinking machines, he of course sided with humanity.
Manford applauded. “The Mentat Headmaster proved what we already knew. Machines are not only evil, but are obsolete, irrelevant, and inferior to man. They serve no useful purpose. They can all be destroyed, and our civilization would be better for it. We can improve ourselves without the taint of machines.”
Anari Idaho stalked forward. Instead of her regular sharp-bladed sword, she carried a modified pulse-sword, the type once used by Swordmasters to battle robots at the height of the Jihad. She delivered the coup de grâce, thrusting her pulsing blade into the combat mek, discharging an energy burst that scrambled its gelcircuitry, unleashing a crackle of sparks. The bolted-down mek stuttered and twitched, then fell motionless.
Anari withdrew another weapon from her hip, a heavy alloy hammer, which she used to pummel the machine into a dented ruin, to ever-louder cheers.
Gilbertus stood motionless, accepting the result. This entire spectacle served little purpose except to give Manford Torondo an excuse for propaganda, and Gilbertus had knowingly played into it.
When Anari finished her exertions, she wiped sweat from her brow and stepped back. Picking up the pulse-sword in one hand, the heavy hammer in the other, she smiled at Gilbertus. “Good work, Headmaster.”
He accepted her praise, but in the secret passageways of his mind, he credited the victory to his mentor, Erasmus.
Chapter 18 (Humans are endlessly perplexing)
Humans are endlessly perplexing and fascinating. No wonder they need so many different emotions in order to concoct explanations, excuses, and rationalizations for all their irrational behavior.
– ERASMUS, Laboratory Notebooks
With Gilbertus away on Salusa Secundus, the independent robot used the spy-eyes he had installed throughout the Mentat School to observe the activities of the trainees. The students diligently followed the guidance of proctors and administrators, forcing their brains into proper focus and following the Headmaster’s curriculum … never imagining that the foundation of their instruction came from a reviled thinking machine – who watched them all the time.
Erasmus enjoyed the irony, but he was also frustrated. For centuries in the thinking-machine empire, he had been an avid researcher, participating in hands-on experiments. He had found it invigorating to manipulate human test subjects and shed blood in the name of understanding. Gilbertus had helped Erasmus in many of the experiments. Those had been excellent times.
The human subjects had not been willing participants, but throughout the history of science, what laboratory animal had happily sacrificed its life for the greater benefit of knowledge? In his research, Erasmus had come across an old saying: There were many ways to skin a cat, and cats liked none of them. The humans he had skinned (literally) did not appreciate the experience either.…
Now, trapped and impotent, the robot core’s only refuge lay in assessing the students from a distance. He observed a group of them crowded around a stainless-steel dissection table on which they had spread a reptilian swamp dragon. The dead specimen, two meters long, had spiny ridges and overlapping green armor plates, as well as curved teeth to hook prey.
Erasmus focused in on the view, increased the magnification.
His tiny robotic helpers had worked hard to place spy-eyes outside the walls of the school complex as well, so he could watch any trainee who fell prey to swamp predators. He monitored every such exercise, calculating the odds and – yes, he admitted to himself – hoping to see a bloody attack. He wanted to observe how Mentats-in-training defended themselves. So far, none had bested a swamp dragon in direct combat, though two had put up an extraordinary struggle.
Now, in the laboratory, the students used surgical knives and serrated cutting tools to make incisions through the dragon’s armor plates. Erasmus wished he could participate, standing in his former flowmetal body or even a more cumbersome mek body. He remembered his beautiful physical form with the delicate silver hands that were able to manipulate complex tools.
Personally, he had always gained more insights from dissecting human subjects while they were still alive. What better way to analyze reflexes and pain responses? Living subjects, in pain, also provided the best data on emotions. He would watch and measure the expression in their eyes, the begging and pleading, the sheer panic, and then – a distinct change that was obvious once he’d learned what to look for – the loss of hope just before the onset of death.
Now, the students pulled apart the gray muscle fibers and removed the reptile’s internal organs. Though dead, the swamp creature twitched reflexively, and its long jaws clamped down. One of the students jerked out of the way, barely in time to keep her hand from being bitten off. Even so, the curved tooth left a deep red scratch on her arm.
Erasmus focused in on the scratch. He knew that the marsh reptiles carried deadly bacteria in their saliva. A scratch from this tooth could become infected, grow gangrenous, and the student might die, feverish and babbling, in excruciating pain. Erasmus hoped the school’s medical team wouldn’t treat the scratch. It would be very interesting to study the effects of delirium on an enhanced Mentat mind.…
He switched to another set of spy-eyes to watch a room full of new trainees poring over pages and pages of random numbers, which they were then asked to reproduce from memory. The exercise helped them organize their brains, to replicate the skills of a machine (except a thinking machine never needed to practice). Many inductees failed at this stage and were released from the school, but others did manage to learn. Erasmus admired them for their persistence and determination, because humans had such great disadvantages with their soft and chaotic brains.
Erasmus took all of his basic thinking skills for granted. Long ago, he had been identical to so many other robots, programmed by Omnius to serve the Synchronized Empire. The computer evermind had been duplicated across hundreds of worlds, each separated memory core maintaining parity via update ships such as one flown by Vorian Atreides.
Erasmus had gained uniqueness only through a fortunate accident. After falling into a glacier crevasse on Corrin, he’d been trapped for over a century, during which time he had nothing to do but ponder his existence and develop his advanced personality. By the time Erasmus was rescued, he was different from any other independent robot … and that was the point at which he’d begun to do great things. His suffering had been necessary to transform him into such a superior thinking machine, one with a very creative mind.
In a sense, his current situation was similar – trapped and helpless, disembodied. But Gilbertus could save him at any time.
Now that the two of them had been hiding for so long among feral humans, Erasmus worried that his ward had become corrupted, even sympathetic to the rest of his race. It was time for them both to leave Lampadas, to change their parameters, to create a new identity for Gilbertus. The Butlerian delusions were interesting, but dangerous – and growing more so.
Gilbertus had already installed stronger defenses around the Mentat School, on the pretext of protecting the Emperor’s sister. High walls now surrounded the school complex, and the approach through the labyrinth of marshes was difficult. The gates were barred, the landing field small and secure. The lakeshore was protected with electronic and physical defenses as well, augmented by dangerous predators in the water.
But it was not enough, as far as Erasmus was concerned.
Using tiny robotic drones to complete the work, the robot core had laid down advanced conduit paths and installed hidden high-intensity power-dispersal units, a grid that could project a microwave pulse to incapacitate human enemies. He still did not let down his guard.
Erasmus’s attention continued to roam throughout the school. The time ticked away as he studied activities that had once been so fascinating, but now were boring. In an instruction chamber, seven Mentat students stared at a wall that projected blips of light in predetermined grid squares, following a complex pattern that the trainees were asked to decipher. The lights twinkled like a random display of static, and the trainees tried to predict the sequence. Most of them failed. Only one – the intriguing Anna Corrino – identified the correct sequence every time. He watched her lips move as she muttered the answers.
For a thinking machine, time was infinitely flexible, every second broken into countless pieces, but Erasmus chose to speed up the time now, slowing down his thought processes so that the lonely day passed in a blink. When he let himself become aware again, it was night outside – and Anna had returned to her quarters. Now, things would get interesting.
His external sensor pickups detected a cacophony of swamp noises, buzzing and clicking, mating calls, the screams of dispatched prey, the rustling of large animals through the underbrush, a splash of razorjaws swimming through the thick sangrove swamp.
He channeled his attention into Anna’s quarters. She was eager to go to bed every night now, because whenever she lay next to the tiny speakers implanted in the walls, she listened for his soothing voice, and answered him.
“Tell me again about your lover, Hirondo Nef,” Erasmus said.
The young woman grew alternately emotional and detached as she talked about the palace chef who had made her swoon but who – in Erasmus’s assessment – had been a mere diversion and certainly not worthy of a majestic and valuable female specimen such as Anna.
“Salvador destroyed our love,” she said with a hitch in her voice, glad to have a sympathetic listener. “He sent Hirondo away, drove us apart.”
“I’m sure he had your best interest at heart,” Erasmus suggested.
“No, my brother was thinking only of protecting his throne. He murdered Hirondo. I know it!”
Indeed, Erasmus hoped so. He wished he could witness her reaction if she discovered proof that it had really happened. It would be interesting to see the emotions on her face, and hear her screams of despair. “Tell me more about your brother,” he said.
Anna blinked in the dimness. “Which one? Roderick, or Salvador?”
“Both. We have plenty of time.”
She began to list a curiously organized set of facts: the birth dates of Roderick and Salvador, their heights, the names of their wives, the names and birth dates of Roderick’s four children. From the dreary tone in her voice, Erasmus could tell that she missed all of them terribly.
Then Anna slipped out of her analytical state. “Why do you ask so many questions? Aren’t you a memory inside my head? You should know all of this.”
“I am your friend, and friends talk with each other.” Erasmus thought of how Gilbertus had been his loyal and worshipful student, how the two of them had talked at great length, played pyramid chess until late hours, and studied the results of experiments on various human subjects. “Whatever you have to say, Anna, I will find it fascinating. You are a most intriguing—” He caught himself before he said specimen. Instead, he said, “—young woman. I want you to be my special protégée.”
He thought of the swamp dragon the Mentat trainees had dissected. Someday, if Erasmus ever got a new body so he could handle tools and equipment, perhaps he would study Anna’s brain more closely, cutting it apart and deconstructing it in order to help her … or at least in order to learn more about the human mind in general.
“I want to be a friend like you’ve never had.”
She caught her breath. “I have always wanted that.”
Anna continued talking about her brothers, and about Lady Orenna, whom she viewed as a true mother-figure. She told him how much she missed the palace on Salusa and her special retreat in the tangles of a fogwood tree.
Partway through one of her stories, Anna began to sob. Erasmus could have offered her simple platitudes to make her feel better, but he remained silent, while continuing to observe closely. Better to let this moment play out, so he could study where it would go.
Yes, she was a unique and fascinating young woman, and he could envision her brain cut wide open on a laboratory table.
