Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [5]
Another flitting watcheye scanned the same records Erasmus was reading. Omnius spoke through resonating plates in the walls. “I find their contradictions—posed as fact—to be unsettling.”
“Unsettling perhaps, but fascinating.” Erasmus disengaged himself from the stacks of historical files. “Their histories show how they view themselves and the universe around them. Obviously, these humans need someone to take firm control again.”
Why is religion important? Because logic alone does not compel a person to make great sacrifices. Given sufficient religious fervor, however, people will throw themselves against impossible odds and consider themselves blessed for doing so.
—MISSIONARIA PROTECTIVA,
First Primer
Two male workers appeared at the door of Murbella’s coldly ostentatious council chambers during a tense meeting. Using suspensor clamps, they hauled a large, motionless robot between them. “Mother Commander? You asked for this to be delivered here.”
The combat machine was built from blue and black metal, reinforced with struts and overlapping armor. Its conical head contained a suite of sensors and targeting arrays, and four engine-driven arms were wrapped with cables and augmented with weapons. Damaged during a recent skirmish, the fighting robot had dark smears across its bulky torso where high-energy blasts had knocked out its internal processors. The robotic thing was shut down, dead, defeated. But even deactivated, it was cause for nightmares.
Murbella’s advisors, startled out of their discussions and arguments, stared at the big machine. All of the gathered women wore the plain black unitard of the New Sisterhood, following a code of homogenized dress that allowed no indication of their origins as either Bene Gesserit or Honored Matre.
Murbella gestured to the intimidated-looking workers. “Bring that thing inside where we can see it every time we talk about the Enemy. It will do us good to be reminded of the adversary we’re up against.”
Even with the suspensor clamps, the men sweated as they wrestled the machine into the room. Murbella strode to the bulky combat robot and stared with defiance up into its dull optic sensors. She glanced proudly at her daughter. “Bashar Idaho brought this specimen back from the battle at Duvalle.”
“It should be sent to the scrap heap. Or shot into space,” said Kiria, a hard-edged former Honored Matre. “What if it still has passive spy programming?”
“It’s been thoroughly purged,” said Janess Idaho. As the newly appointed commandant of the Sisterhood’s military forces, she had become a very pragmatic young woman.
“A trophy, Mother Commander?” asked Laera, a dark-skinned Reverend Mother who often quietly supported Murbella. “Or a prisoner of war?”
“This is the only one our armies found intact. We blew up four machine ships before we retreated and let them destroy the planet behind us. They had already turned their plagues loose on Ronto and Pital, leaving no survivors. Total population losses number in the billions.”
Duvalle, Ronto, and Pital were just the latest casualties as the machine army continued its forward march through the outlying systems. Because of the distances involved and the sheer might of the attacking ships, reports were sketchy and often outdated. Refugees and couriers surged away from battle zones, heading inward from the fringes of the Scattering.
Murbella turned her back on the deactivated robot and faced the Sisters. “Knowing that a tempest approaches, we have the option of simply evacuating—abandoning everything we have. That is the Honored Matre way.”
Some of the Sisters flinched at the comment. Long ago, Honored Matres had chosen to run from the Enemy, pillaging on their way out, hoping to stay one step ahead of the storm. To them, the Old Empire had been no more than a crude barricade to be thrown up against