Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [168]
He had the power to change everything. Wasn’t he the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach? Thanks to the ultraspice and his own Atreides genes, Paolo now possessed a greater prescience than had ever before been possible. Not even the smallest event could slip past him.
In a glorious tableau, he knew he could see everything about the tapestry of the future. Every tiny detail, if he wanted! No unexplored terrain, no wrinkles or nuances in the topography of events to come.
Paolo paused in his restless pacing and gazed ahead, seeing beyond the walls of the grand machine cathedral, feeling overwhelmed by thoughts that no other human could begin to understand. His eyes changed to more than an intense blue-within-blue, to black and glassy, rippled and impenetrable like a landscape of seared dunes.
In the background, he heard the Baron’s voice. “What’s the matter with you, boy? Snap out of it.”
But the visions continued to shoot at Paolo like projectiles from a repeater gun. He couldn’t dodge them, could only receive them, like an invincible man standing up against ferocious firepower.
Outside in the grand machine city, he heard a tremendous commotion. Alarms rang, and quicksilver robots rushed out of the cathedral chamber to respond. Paolo knew exactly what was happening, could see it from every angle. And he knew how each action would turn out, regardless of how Omnius, the humans, or the Face Dancers tried to change it.
No longer able to move, Paolo stood staring at moments that were yet to come, everything he could influence and all that he could not. Each second sliced into a billion nanoseconds, then expanded and spread out across a billion star systems. The scope of it threatened to overwhelm him.
What is happening? he asked himself.
Only what we brought upon ourselves, whispered the voice of Paul-within.
With new eyes Paolo saw moment by unfolding moment, expanding outward from the machine city, beyond the planet, the whole scope of the Old Empire, the farthest reaches of the Scattering, and the vast thinking-machine empire.
Another nanosecond passed.
The ultraspice had given him absolutely uncontaminated revelation. He saw time folding forward and backward from the focal point of his consciousness.
Perfect prescience.
Caught in the tidal wave of his own power, Paolo began to see much more than he had ever wanted to see. He witnessed every heartbeat a thousand times over, every action of every single person—every being—in the entire universe. He knew how each instant would play out from now until the end of history, and in reverse, to the beginning of time.
The knowledge flooded into him, and he drowned in it.
He watched Paul Atreides in his death throes and saw his counterpart go motionless, haloed by the crimson puddle on the floor, eyes staring into blessed oblivion.
Paolo, who had wanted to be the final Kwisatz Haderach so badly he had killed for it, now became petrified by the utter tedium of his own existence. He knew every breath and pulsepoint in the entire history and future of the universe.
Another nanosecond passed.
How could any person endure this? Paolo was trapped in a predetermined path, like a computer’s infinite loop. No surprises, choices, or movement. Absolute foreknowledge rendered Paolo entirely irrelevant.
He envisioned himself sinking in slow motion to the floor and lying face up, unable to move or speak, unable even to blink his eyes. Fossilizing. Then Paolo saw the last and most terrible revelation. He was not the true and final Kwisatz Haderach, after all. It was not him. He would never accomplish what he had dreamed.
With spice roaring through him, the past went dark, and Paolo could only stare fixedly into the future, which he had already seen a thousand times over.
Another nanosecond passed.
One can always find a battlefield if one looks