Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [134]
After surviving the plague, the Sisterhood’s leadership had forced all human protectors to finally band together against the thinking-machine fleet, to defend their race rather than simply their own worlds. The hundreds of new ships that emerged from the Junction shipyards were being loaded with enough Obliterators for a final, concerted stand against the oncoming wave of Omnius’s ships. So far, the evermind’s forces had encountered very little significant resistance, and now they were on their way to Chapterhouse. For the last time.
Khrone had actually been tempted to let the Reverend Mothers and their last-stand defenders succeed. Given enough functional Obliterators, they could send the machine fleet reeling. Humans and thinking machines could easily annihilate each other. However, that was simply too . . . easy. Kralizec demanded much more! This time, the fundamental shift in the universe would get rid of both rivals, leaving all the remnants of the Old Empire for the Face Dancers.
Khrone felt completely confident in the future as he landed his ship in the convoluted labyrinth of copper steeples, golden turrets, and interlocked silvery buildings. Sentient structures shifted aside to allow a place for his ship to settle. When the small vessel came to rest on a smooth quicksilver plain, Khrone stepped out, breathing air that smelled of smoke and hot metal. He did not spare a moment to look around.
The central machine world was based entirely on theatrics. He suspected the touch of Erasmus in this, though Omnius had such an overblown perception of his own importance that he no doubt wanted all machine minions to bow before him as a god—even if the evermind had to program them to do so.
Rectangular plates appeared on the ground, laying down an interlocked pathway that guided Khrone to his destination in the magnificent arched cathedral. Head held high, he strode along carrying his precious package, refusing to look like a supplicant summoned before his lord. Rather, Khrone was a man on a mission with important business to complete. Omnius would be pleased to have the concentrated ultraspice for use with his cloned Kwisatz Haderach. . . .
Inside the ostentatious hall, the ghola of Baron Harkonnen stood with young Paolo at a nine-level pyramid chess board. Glowering, the Baron knocked over a rook on one of the top levels. “That move is not allowed, Paolo.”
“It enabled me to win, didn’t it?” Pleased with his ingenuity, the young man crossed his arms over his chest.
“By cheating.”
“It’s a new rule. If we are as important as you say, we should be allowed to make up our own rules.”
A flash of anger crossed the Baron’s face, and then vanished into a chuckle. “I see your reasoning—and that you are learning.”
When Khrone stepped forward, they looked at him with identical expressions of distaste. “Oh, it’s you.” The Baron sounded entirely different from when he’d been tormented by the Face Dancers. “I didn’t think we’d be seeing you again. Bored of Caladan?”
Ignoring them, Khrone noted that the two principal thinking machines had resumed their guise of an elderly couple in gardening clothes. Why were they wearing these personas now? For the benefit of these two gholas? It wasn’t as if the thinking machines were keeping secrets from anybody here. Khrone had never been able to determine a pattern in their behavior.
Perhaps it was linked to the fact that Omnius and Erasmus wanted to receive all of the lives Khrone had gathered and assimilated during his last mission among the humans. They looked forward to the sharing of their Face Dancer “ambassadors” each time one of the far-flung representatives returned. It seemed to make them feel superior, and allowed the independent robot to feel that he belonged to the human race, somehow.
“Look, he’s brought something,” Paolo pointed out. “A present for us?”
Khrone went directly to the old man and woman. As the woman leaned toward him,