Navigators of Dune

77

Invasion alarms rang throughout the laboratory domes, but Anna was already running away. She did not care about political problems or space fleets. Her world had fallen apart. Sirens summoned everyone to their posts, and military transmissions from the VenHold fleet in orbit warned of an imminent attack. Denali personnel raced through the corridors in a panic.

But Anna was too absorbed in her own misery. She pressed her hands to her ears, ducked her head, and continued to run, uninterested in the crisis. In her state of mind all the noise sounded like mocking laughter, faceless shouts that seemed to taunt her with a merciless twisting of the knife.

Her heart was not just broken; it was shattered. Her mind was already a fragile construct held together by cobwebs and memories, and now it had curled up to hide from the reality she could not bear to face. She had surrendered her heart, her soul, her deepest self to Erasmus. She had unleashed her passion, shared every feeling with him. And she had been fooled, betrayed.

It was entirely her fault. She was aware that Erasmus was cold and unfeeling, an evil thinking machine, but Anna had cheated herself into believing he had changed. She had saved him from certain destruction during the fall of the Mentat School, and thought he felt something special for her in return. She thought she had repaired the robot’s dark spirit and healed him with love, helping him understand what it meant to be a human being.

But he viewed everything she had done for him and given him as nothing more than an experiment. An experiment! She felt so violated. He said he was finished with her, had no time for her. Other concerns were more important.

Back when she was a young girl on Salusa, Emperor Jules had forced her to watch brutal public and private executions—“for her own good,” he said — but those horrific experiences had scarred rather than strengthened her. Her brother Salvador had also tormented her, stealing every chance at happiness she might have had; then he’d sent her away to the Sisterhood on Rossak, where she thought she had friends, where Sister Valya had been her companion. But Valya had manipulated her too, tricked her into taking the “agony” poison that destroyed her mind. It was another experiment!

In her own family, Anna had once believed that Roderick, at least, truly loved her, that he was on her side. Yet he hadn’t wanted to deal with her eccentricities either, so he sent her away to the Mentat School.

Too many people had taken Anna’s heart, crushed it in an iron grip, and then abandoned her.

Erasmus was supposed to have been her closest friend of all, her lover, her true love. She had devoted herself entirely to him as the lifeline that kept her damaged mind together. Isolated here on Denali, at least she had him, and for a short while it had been paradise for her. She had been deliriously happy.

But now it was all smashed to bits. Erasmus’s flippant dismissal showed her that, once again, she had been tricked by her soft heart. He was no better than Hirondo, the lover her brothers had sent away from her on Salusa Secundus.

Erasmus had destroyed their relationship, and Anna had no one else. None of the scientists or laboratory workers were her friends. Even old Lady Orenna back on Salusa — the closest person Anna ever had to a mother — was dead. Anna had nothing left … only her despair, hopelessness, and bitter memories.

How many times could she be destroyed before it was enough? If this present crisis wiped out the whole Denali facility, it might be a blessing for her.

As the deafening alarms continued to ring, Anna staggered away with tears streaming down her face. Hot, wrenching sobs tore at her chest, but no one paid the slightest attention to her misery.

Eventually, she stumbled into an empty cymek hangar. Except for a few leftover walkers still patrolling the blasted landscape outside the domes, the cymek army was gone. Manford Torondo and his fanatics had destroyed the machines on Lampadas. Maybe the Butlerians had come to Denali now, and that was what the alarms were all about.

She knew the invaders would want to kill Erasmus, as they had killed so many other thinking machines. After what she’d been put through, she didn’t care if they tore Erasmus apart and dissected his gelcircuitry brain. The thought horrified her for a moment. If she saved him, maybe he would change, maybe he would apologize. A flare of hope shot higher within her, but crashed down again. She had been such a fool. She saw that clearly now. It was no mistake.

He was an evil robot, just as the Butlerians had always claimed, and she felt repulsed to have fallen in love with such a heartless, calculating monster. Erasmus had intentionally jabbed and twisted her feelings in order to create emotions for him to study, as if she were one of the specimens in his laboratory!

Alarms continued to shriek, and VenHold workers scrambled to defend Denali. Anna vowed she would never let anyone hurt her again, and couldn’t think of a pain greater than the raw and jagged ache that was tearing her apart from the inside. She had only one decision to make now, a choice that was hers and no one else’s.

Inside the cymek hangar she looked outside through the broad windows, at the swirling, greenish mists. In the darkness the drifting fog looked so peaceful, so soothing. It would embrace her if she came into contact with it. She would breathe the mist into her lungs and would drown in its lethal embrace.

She went to the airlock and closed herself inside. The cautionary interior alarm was drowned out by the racket in the domes.

Princess Anna Corrino ignored the warnings, opened the outer hatch, and staggered out into the poisonous air of Denali.

AS HE ASSESSED the newly arrived Imperial fleet and calculated their weapons versus the VenHold defenses available on the Navigator-guided ships in orbit, Erasmus realized that this facility was in serious trouble. Alarms continued to shriek. He had hoped for more time to work on developing effective new defenses, but the most interesting concepts were no more than design specs or, at best, untested prototypes.

His computer mind focused on the problem; Directeur Venport would want his assessment as soon as possible. Just like dear Gilbertus, Draigo Roget had helped him understand the overall political situation in the Imperium, explaining that Venport Holdings had more enemies than just Manford Torondo.

Erasmus had taken pleasure in seeing the Mentat’s clean and ordered thoughts — made possible, he knew, by the logic techniques he himself had developed for Gilbertus to share. The people on Denali were natural allies, thrown together to develop ways to fight the Butlerians, but now their enemy was the Emperor himself. And they would all have to fight together in order to survive.

Over the course of his existence, Erasmus had forged a number of unorthodox alliances; some had been effective, while others surprised him in the wrong way. The failures — particularly Serena Butler and the young Vorian Atreides — were usually caused by unpredictable human behavior. Their species frequently disregarded the straightforward statements they called promises. Emperor Roderick Corrino had broken a promise to Josef Venport, and now it looked certain that Denali would fall.

The Tlulaxa scientists had grown Erasmus a new body, as requested, but it had taken sweet Anna Corrino to show him the complexities and nuances of being human. Anna had helped him understand the odd and esoteric feelings caused by biological influences and chemical changes. After analyzing the young woman for a very long time, at last he thought he was beginning to understand.

Both before and during the Jihad, as a robot in a beautiful flowmetal body, he had studied hundreds of thousands of experimental subjects, building a database of observations. But those had always been external analyses, and now with this human form grown from the cells of Gilbertus, he could experience the sensations directly.

Anna had expected so much from him — more than he could give — and he knew she was disappointed. That troubled him as well, because he wished he could grasp those emotions he had admired for so long.

Alas, he simply had no time for them now. The priority was obvious: Denali was under attack. He analyzed the array of Imperial ships and prepared to make a quick report to Directeur Venport.

The VenHold ships standing in defense of Denali were going to be problematic, he realized. Norma Cenva would not sacrifice her precious Navigators even for the survival of this research facility. She was irrational about her creations, and she held significant influence over Josef Venport. That meant the available battleships were not expendable, no matter the strategic advantages, which limited the robot’s plans.

He calculated that if the Directeur sacrificed all the large VenHold spacefolders in a massive attack, they could possibly defeat or at least drive back the Imperial fleet, despite being outnumbered. At least it allowed him to formulate a plan in which the surviving scientists and personnel on Denali — including himself and of course Anna — could get away. That was paramount.

If he and Anna escaped, they might continue their studies elsewhere. Perhaps then he could develop into a full-fledged person, but such things took time. In the past few months, he had learned more about humanity than he had in his entire existence before that. He had embraced sadness and guilt over the death of Gilbertus, and genuine rage toward Manford Torondo and the Butlerians — and, yes, satisfaction, even glee, when he viewed images of the Butlerian leader being torn to shreds.

And then there was Anna, with her caring and her love. She fawned over him, which at times was oppressive and annoying, but she meant well, and he was certainly fond of her. No, it was more than that. The intensity of his emotions might eventually become what she called love. In fact, he’d been told that love was a spectrum, with varying degrees of feelings in a variety of situations. He thought he might just be someplace on that spectrum.

In a desperate attempt to bargain with the Emperor, Directeur Venport had broadcast Anna’s cheery recording that Erasmus had so carefully crafted for her. Roderick must love Anna as well, but love from a brother was a different variety of that particular emotion, although Erasmus didn’t quite understand the difference between the passionate love Anna directed toward him and the close familial love she felt toward a sibling. Or the respectful love that Gilbertus had held for him.

That was another thing to investigate when he had the time and opportunity, when there were no interruptions and no alarms.…

In a flash of insight, Erasmus realized that he had hurt Anna with his curt dismissal — hurt her terribly — when she only wanted to love and be loved in return. That was not so much to ask. He paused to review his memories of her distraught expression, her abject despair as she’d fled into the corridors. Hurting her had been unintentional on his part, and not part of any experiment. He had simply been preoccupied with more important things.

She had been so devastated, though, that Erasmus felt … sad? Guilty?

In the past, the robot would simply have filed away those observations for later assessment, but he didn’t wish to hurt Anna, didn’t want to make her sad. He wondered whether this incident might have damaged her irreparably. She was such a fragile specimen.

And she had become more than a mere experiment, much more.

Perhaps he should explain himself to her, and sooner would be better than later, especially if Denali fell and Imperial forces took over the laboratory domes. He didn’t wish to miss that chance. Although he did have defensive suggestions for Directeur Venport, he decided that his priorities should now be in finding Anna Corrino. It didn’t seem logical, but it did seem right.

He returned to their quarters, but she wasn’t there. That did not surprise him, because she had run away sobbing. Likely she was hiding somewhere, and all the shrieking alarms must be frightening her. She would want Erasmus to comfort her, and he had learned techniques to do that. He would apologize to her, which should theoretically be effective.

Erasmus searched in the various laboratories without success and finally went to the cymek hangar, only to find it open and empty. The airlock light was activated, showing that it had been used in the last minute or two. He frowned, then linked into the data from the observation imagers and pulled up the most recent recordings. On screen, he watched Anna stumble into the hangar, weeping and disoriented. She clasped her hands to her head. She looked utterly wretched.

Then, to his astonishment — no, the emotions felt different from that. Was it horror? Or disbelief? — Anna entered the airlock and exited into the caustic atmosphere of Denali. The alarm tone that signaled an unauthorized use of the airlock seemed completely irrelevant amid the urgent background clamor.

Erasmus had been a robot for his entire existence, but knew how delicate Anna’s biological form would be. She could not survive long out there in that unbreathable mixture of gases.

The airlock had reset itself, and he wished he had his powerful flowmetal body, or even one of the more cumbersome combat meks that had once held his memory core. He scanned the exterior imagers and saw that Anna had gone no more than a hundred steps from the building. He watched her drop to her knees, then collapse and fall forward.

There was no time to summon help. Erasmus felt a wrench of strange pain inside his chest … anguish and fear. There was no time! He had to act.

He strode into the airlock, sealed it, and began the cycle, ignoring the alarms. Anna was only a few steps away, but she was outside. His wonderful body, grown from the cells of Gilbertus, had its weaknesses, but his ward had a strong physique and should last long enough. The Tlulaxa could always grow him another one, but right now he simply had to rescue the frail Anna — pick her up and carry her back to the airlock. Once inside the habitable zone, she could receive treatment at the Denali Medical Center. She would make it. She had to survive.

He could see her through the windowport in the airlock door. She lay blanketed by the greenish-gray mists, but she wasn’t moving.

The airlock door opened at last, and Erasmus bounded out onto the surface. He ran at a good pace — he knew how to run. He had been exercising and testing the limits of his muscles. His physical form would no doubt be damaged by the hostile air, but Dr. Danebh or one of the other Tlulaxa scientists could fix that. He wasn’t concerned about himself — he was worried about Anna.

But the searing acid inside his mouth and nose was uncomfortable, and very disturbing. He held his breath as he ran, but before he could find her, he had to gulp in more air. Biological imperative. When he choked in a breath, it was like swallowing a river of fire. The caustic fumes charred his lung tissue with shocking pain, and his eyes burned as if someone had thrown a handful of hot sharp needles into them.

Erasmus reeled. His plan to run and retrieve Anna was quickly falling apart. Even with his running start, after a few steps he could barely see. He coughed and sucked in a deep breath, which made the situation much worse. His skin began to blister and burn. Even the fabric of his garment turned brown and began to smoke, but he kept struggling his way forward. Three additional steps. Then two more — closer to Anna. He could almost reach out and touch her.

With some difficulty he made it to Anna’s side. Erasmus dropped to his knees next to her, lifting her small body. She twitched and coughed, her body wracked with spasms. Her eyes were milky white and already burned into blindness by the acid air.

Erasmus could barely see her because his own vision was blurred and burning, but he held her, cradled her.

He spoke, his words ragged and raw. “Anna, I did not mean to hurt you.” Each breath he took caused more and more damage, as if he were being hollowed out from inside. He didn’t know if Anna could hear him, but still he spoke the words. “I am terribly, terribly sorry. You are my love. You taught me what is important in life.”

When Anna coughed, dark, smoking blood dribbled from her mouth. As if she could sense he was there, she reached out to touch his face. He strained to hear her voice, but her words were little more than a racking, faltering breath. “My Erasmus—”

Anna Corrino died as he held her. Erasmus pulled her closer against his biological body, knowing his own bodily tissues were failing. The deadly atmosphere would eat away his flesh, his bones, but he thought his brain, the gelsphere core, would survive. Anna was already a burned and disfigured form, but even his sight of her melted into a blurred mix of colors, then black, as he lost his eyes.

Erasmus thought only of how beautiful Anna had looked when he’d made love to her earlier as she had taught him, the delicate, lingering touch of their lips. Since the scientists would have to grow another body for him, maybe they could find enough viable cells to clone Anna, too.

If anything remained of Denali and its research labs.

If anyone ever found him.

When he tried to move, Erasmus found that his muscle control was gone. His limbs failed him. He tried to get to his feet, but collapsed, sprawling on the ground beside Anna. Deep in his memories of human literature and song, he thought about the legends of star-crossed lovers dying in each other’s arms. And he appreciated Anna’s last words to him.

His own name.

Reassessing now, Erasmus thought that he might truly have loved Anna in the best, most pure way possible; somehow, in simulating love he had attained more than his expectations, without realizing it. He understood now that love had made him do something foolhardy by rushing out here into the deadly atmosphere. Against logic, he had assumed he could just return to the dome after saving her.

Anna had said the Sisterhood taught that the emotion of love was dangerous, and now he had an inkling of why. There was much more to learn about many things, but he might never again have the opportunity.

Around him, his physical body smoked and bubbled, the acids scouring away his borrowed flesh, eating down to the bone, then wearing down his skull and collapsing the structure that supported the gelcircuitry sphere. Through it all, Erasmus’s thoughts kept swirling, and he pondered that this fate was not at all what he had expected.

When the biological shell finally dissolved, exposing his memory core to the destructive gases, he was shocked to feel his thoughts melting away, dispersing, disintegrating. Finally, the acids destroyed the gelsphere, erasing every last vestige of Erasmus, down to the final question mark.