Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [191]
Duncan knew this was the point of no return. Do it.
The mental floodgates opened, filling his mind to bursting with the robot’s experiences and coldly factual, regimented information. And he began to see things from that entirely alien viewpoint.
In thousands upon thousands of years of experimentation, Erasmus had struggled to understand humans. How could they remain so mysterious? The robot’s incredible range of experiences made even Duncan’s numerous lives seem insignificant. Visions and memories roared around the Kwisatz Haderach, and he knew it would take him much more than another lifetime just to sift through it all.
He saw Serena Butler in the flesh, along with her baby, and the startling reaction of the multitudes to what Erasmus had thought was a simple, meaningless death . . . howling humans rising up in a fight they had no chance to win. They were irrational, desperate, and in the end, victorious. Incomprehensible. Illogical. And yet, they had achieved the impossible.
For fifteen thousand years, Erasmus had longed to understand, but had lacked the fundamental revelation. Duncan could feel the robot digging around inside him, looking for the secret, not out of any need for domination and conquest, but simply to know.
Duncan had difficulty focusing amidst so much information. Presently he withdrew, and felt the flowmetal move the other direction, away from him—though not completely, for his internal cellular structure was forever changed.
In an epiphany, he realized that he was a new evermind, but of an entirely different sort from the original. Erasmus had not deceived him. With eyes that extended to centillions of sensors, Duncan could see all of the Enemy ships, the fighting drones and worker robots, every cog in the awe-inspiring reborn empire.
And he could stop everything in its tracks. If he wanted to.
When Duncan returned to himself, in his relatively human body again, he looked through his own eyes around the great chamber. Erasmus stood before him, separate now and smiling with what seemed to be genuine satisfaction.
“What happened, Duncan?” Paul asked.
Duncan let out a long breath of stale air. “Nothing I didn’t initiate, Paul, but I’m here, I’m back.”
Yueh rushed up. “Are you hurt? We thought you might be trapped in a coma like . . . like him.” He gestured toward the still-frozen Paolo.
“I’m unharmed . . . but not unchanged.” Duncan looked around the vaulted chamber, and gazed out into the vast city with a new sense of wonder. “Erasmus shared everything with me . . . even the best parts of himself.”
“An adequate summation,” the robot said, undeniably pleased. “When you merged into me and kept going deeper and deeper, you made yourself vulnerable. Had I wished to win the game, I could have tried to take over your mind and program you to do exactly what benefits me and thinking machines. Just as I did with the Face Dancers.”
“But I knew you wouldn’t,” Duncan said.
“From prescience, or faith?” A crafty smile crept across the robot’s face. “You now have control of the thinking machines. They are yours, Kwisatz Haderach—all, including me. Now you have everything you need. With the power in your hands, you will change the universe. It is Kralizec. See? We have made the prophecy come true after all.”
Seemingly alone in the remnants of a vast empire, Erasmus walked casually around the chamber again. “You can shut them all down permanently, if that is your preference, and eliminate thinking machines forever. Or, if you have the courage, you can do something more useful with them.”
Jessica said, “Shut them down, Duncan. Finish it now! Think of all the trillions they’ve killed, all the planets they’ve destroyed.”
Duncan looked at his hands in wonder. “And is that the honorable thing to do?”
Erasmus kept his voice carefully neutral, not pleading. “For millennia I studied