Mentats of Dune

Chapter 9 (A memory can be the most painful)

Gilbertus closed the door of his office, withdrew an ornate old-fashioned key from his pocket, and turned it in the lock. He heard the satisfying click, but that was only superficial security. No one else at the school knew about his more sophisticated systems.

Even though the Headmaster asked not to be disturbed, he still applied a static seal around the door, threw additional hidden dead bolts, opaqued the window looking out on the marsh lake, and then activated white-noise reflectors, listening scramblers, and signal blockers against any sophisticated eavesdropping tools.

It was absurd to think that Manford Torondo, having condemned any technology more advanced than a medieval tool, would use surreptitious surveillance technology, but the Butlerian leader was a man of contradictions, situational ethics, and conditional morality. Although he railed against Josef Venport’s vast shipping empire, Manford traveled about the Imperium in advanced spacefolders, justifying space travel as a necessary evil in order for him to spread his important message. His followers had used advanced weaponry to destroy Venport’s gigantic shipyards at Thonaris, and he had forced Gilbertus to assist him in that operation. Manford was intelligent enough to see the contradictions in his own positions, but was so rabidly dedicated that he didn’t care.

Right now, Gilbertus did not want to take any chances. Only when he was convinced his office was secure — with physical barricades, as well as technological tricks he had learned while being raised among the thinking machines — did he feel safe.

Exhaling a long sigh, he worked secret controls on a cabinet, slid aside a false panel, deactivated another security system. Then he removed the most dangerous mind in the known universe — the memory core of the independent robot Erasmus, enslaver and torturer of millions of human beings.

Gilbertus’s mentor and friend.

The gelcircuitry sphere glowed a faint blue from its inner power source and simmering thoughts. “I’ve been waiting for you, my son.” Erasmus’s voice sounded small and tinny through the speakers. “I am bored.”

“You have the whole school to explore through your spy-eyes, Father. I know you observe every student and every conversation.”

“But I prefer my conversations with you.”

Long ago on Corrin, Erasmus had kept human slaves as experimental subjects, testing, prodding, torturing, and observing millions of them — and Gilbertus Albans had thought nothing of it. In those days Gilbertus had been a special case, a feral and uneducated young man, barely able to speak. Omnius, the computer evermind, had challenged Erasmus to prove the potential of humanity, and through tedious and unflagging indoctrination, the curious robot succeeded in converting that nameless wild boy into an exquisite human specimen.

That had changed Gilbertus forever, made him what he was today — and he knew it had changed Erasmus, too.

During the Battle of Corrin, Omnius had placed Gilbertus among other human hostages in booby-trapped orbiting containers. If the Army of the Jihad had opened fire on the machine stronghold, many thousands of innocent hostages would have been killed. Unable to tolerate the risk to his precious ward, Erasmus had left the thinking machines vulnerable so that he could save one small life — a completely irrational decision. A compassionate decision? Even Gilbertus only partially understood the reasons for the robot’s action, but he felt an intense devotion toward his beloved mentor.

Gilbertus had in turn rescued Erasmus. While the machine planet was overrun by the Army of the Jihad, he had smuggled out the robot’s memory core, which contained all that Erasmus was. Desperate, calling upon all the human skills he had, Gilbertus and a handful of other machine sympathizers escaped by mingling with the other refugees.…

Now, more than eight decades later, Gilbertus had built an entirely different life, created a new construct for himself, and never confessed his past.

“When will you let me begin experimenting on Anna Corrino?” Erasmus pressed. “She intrigues me.”

“Haven’t you done enough experiments on humans? You used to brag about it — hundreds of thousands of subjects.”

“But I have never seen a candidate as interesting as that young woman. Her mind is like an unsolvable puzzle, and I must solve it.”

“You once said I was your most fascinating subject,” Gilbertus teased. “Have you lost interest in me?”

The robot paused, as if to consider. “Are you jealous of my fascination with her? Tell me more about your emotions.”

“Not jealous — just protective. Anna Corrino must remain safe under my care. Any harm to her will bring down Imperial wrath on the Mentat School — and I’m quite familiar with your experiments, Father. A huge percentage of your subjects did not survive.” He walked to a decorative table next to his reading chair, bent over, and set up the pieces for their usual game of pyramid chess.

“I promise to be careful,” the robot insisted.

“No. I can’t risk the Emperor’s sister. I already walk a fine line with the Butlerians when I teach students your techniques without appearing to be a machine sympathizer.”

The robot was in a more talkative mood than usual. “Yes, I recognize the growing shadow of suspicion. Your crude attempts to make yourself look older are beginning to strain belief, and the years are adding up. You knew the time would come to leave this school. You need a new identity, a new life. We should leave Lampadas — it is too dangerous here.”

“I know.…” Feeling sad, Gilbertus looked at the gelsphere, which seemed so small and fragile on its stand, so impotent in comparison with the magnificent robot that once ruled Corrin, strutting about in bright plush robes.

Erasmus was persistent. “And you must find me another robot body. A better one than last time. I need to be mobile again so I can defend myself … so that I can explore and learn. That is my raison d’être.”

Gilbertus set up the chess pieces and made his first move, knowing Erasmus was watching him through spy-eyes in the room. “I don’t have any robot bodies to work with. The Butlerians forced me to destroy all my teaching specimens. You know that — you observed it.”

“Yes, I did. And you appeared to enjoy the mayhem.”

“It was a carefully studied expression, necessary to fool Manford Torondo and his followers. Don’t sulk.”

“Perhaps you can bring in more Tlulaxa students. They can grow a synthetic biological body to accept my memory core. Now, that would be interesting.”

Gilbertus said in a quieter voice, “I do want to help you, Father, out of gratitude for all the help you’ve given me. But we have to be more cautious now than ever. In light of the news I heard today, the danger is much increased.” He knew the robot would be tantalized.

“What news? I have monitored all student and instructor conversations.”

“I didn’t release this information to the students or the faculty, but rumors are sure to spread soon enough.” He waited for Erasmus to signal his next move on the pyramid chessboard, then dutifully moved the game piece. “One of the old machine sympathizers from Corrin was discovered in hiding, a human slave-pen manager named Horus Rakka.”

“I remember him,” Erasmus said. “An adequate employee who kept the subjects in line. He slaughtered many, but no more than the other slavemasters.”

“Well, it turns out that he escaped from Corrin, as we did. The notorious Horus Rakka changed his name and lived a new life in exile, pretending to be someone else for all this time.”

“Corrin was overrun eighty-four standard years ago,” Erasmus said. “I don’t have accurate birth records for all my human helpers, but Rakka was approximately thirty years old back then. He would be a very old man now.”

“Yes, he was old when the Butlerians found him — old and frail. But they executed him nevertheless, burned him alive in a public spectacle. This discovery only increases the Butlerian fervor, and they will keep hunting until the last ‘machine apologist’ is found — and that could be me.”

Erasmus’s voice carried an edge of uneasiness. “You must not let them find you, or me.”

“Horus Rakka lived an unobtrusive life. No one paid attention to him — and yet he was still discovered. I, on the other hand, have become prominent, and there is always a risk that someone will recognize me. At one time, I might have led a happy life in obscurity, but it’s too late for that now.”

Erasmus took offense at the idea. “I did not create you to hide your potential. You were destined for greatness. I made you that way.”

“I understand that, and I have followed the path you wanted for me, founding this great school and teaching humans to organize thoughts the way machines do — that is a legacy I share with you. With all your care, advice, and attention you have treated me like a son, have shown love toward me.”

The robot found this amusing. “Perhaps I have shown what you think is love, but I have only been able to experience a rough equivalent of the emotion. There is still a great deal I do not grasp about human love, the feelings of a father for a child, or of a mother, and the reciprocal feelings of a child toward its parents. These are things I might never understand, because I can never be a real biological father to a child, with the emotional connectivity it involves.”

Looking up from the chess game that held neither player’s interest, Gilbertus turned from the robot’s memory core, while his mind journeyed far away, entering a Mentat trance.

Inside the meticulously organized compartments of his brain, the Headmaster had created a very special private sanctuary. He called it his Memory Vault, a place where he stored his experiences from his early years as a free human after escaping Corrin.

Gilbertus had lived under a false identity for his first two decades of freedom, convincing others that he was a normal human being. He looked like a healthy young man of thirty, and he maintained his body as if it were a precision machine, just as he maintained his mind. He made his way to the remote planet Lectaire, where he decided he wanted to be a farmer. He was hired on as help, learning that agriculture in practice was different from the theory he had studied.

Now whenever Gilbertus entered his Memory Vault, he relived times with the farmer’s family, the neighbors, their summer festivals and harvest feasts, their winter prayers and spring celebrations. It was the first time Gilbertus had ever interacted in human society. He studied the people of Lectaire, he learned, he imitated. Soon enough, living among people became second nature to him, and he found that he liked his neighbors, enjoyed social interaction.

The realization surprised him, because Erasmus had always said that free humans were unruly, uncivilized, and disorganized, with squalid and unsatisfying lives. Despite his mentor’s teachings, he found that the people of Lectaire had warm hearts, and a societal machinery that let them function in ways a thinking machine would never grasp.

Gilbertus spent seven years among them, working on farms, living a quiet life. While continuing to protect the robot’s hidden memory core — and ready to kill anyone who happened to discover it — he let himself fit in. He met a young woman named Jewelia and discovered love — a thing that Erasmus had never been able to teach him. In such matters, he was forced to learn for himself.

And he learned about heartache. Jewelia had loved him, but eventually she married someone else, leaving him heartbroken and struggling to understand. His secret robot mentor could offer no comfort other than to suggest in a cavalier way that Gilbertus eliminate the rival suitor. Gilbertus didn’t understand his own feelings very well, but the independent robot understood them even less.

Instead, Gilbertus locked away every memory of Jewelia, every conversation, every moment they’d spent together, each tender kiss and embrace, preserving those experiences as an immeasurable treasure.

Gilbertus had departed Lectaire, following the robot’s grandiose dreams and encouragement to form a school that would surreptitiously teach thinking-machine techniques. Erasmus also convinced him to reclaim his original name of Gilbertus Albans, which few people had known even on Corrin, and had likely forgotten long ago.…

Similarly, Horus Rakka had tried to disappear in a normal, unobtrusive life, before his discovery and execution. But Gilbertus had given up any opportunity to be ordinary, accepting the greater calling that Erasmus cultivated within him.

Now, as he emerged from his Memory Vault, he realized that Erasmus had continued speaking, not recognizing the telltale physical signs that indicated his ward had gone into a Mentat trance. “We must develop an escape plan,” the robot said, “so we can leave Lampadas the moment there is danger. Our very existence may depend on being fully prepared.”

Gilbertus reoriented himself to the present. “I already have a private emergency aircraft in the school’s secure hangar. I can fly away if necessary.”

The robot paused. “We should take Anna Corrino with us when we go.”

“I still won’t allow you to perform experiments on her.”

“Nevertheless, I will be watching her carefully.”

A chime sounded at the locked office door, despite Gilbertus’s explicit instructions not to be disturbed. In a flurry of movement, he sealed away the dangerous memory core and concealed the cabinet behind books. He activated the speaker system, but did not unlock the doors. “I requested privacy.”

It was Alys Carroll, one of his stern female trainees, a Butlerian recruit he had been forced to accept in order to stay in Manford’s good graces. “You received a summons, Headmaster. You need to depart immediately.”

Alys had an abrasive personality; worse, she did not realize it, or perhaps didn’t care. “A summons from the Emperor?” Gilbertus unsealed the security systems, then used his old-fashioned key to unlock and open the door.

Alys stood before him. “Leader Torondo orders that you come to his headquarters.” She said Manford’s name as if he were as important as the Emperor. And Gilbertus realized that, to her, the Butlerian leader might even be on a higher level than that.

With a forced, polite smile, the Headmaster said, “I shall depart as soon as possible.”

“Immediately,” she repeated.