Technology should have freed man from the burdens of life. Instead, it imprisoned him.
— RAYNA BUTLER,
True Visions
After more than a month of rampaging death, some might have drawn hope from the fact that Parmentier was reaching the end of its epidemic. The genetically modified RNA retrovirus was unstable in the environment and had degraded over the weeks, and the only new cases now came from unprotected contact with those who were ill.
The Omnius Scourge had run its course on the planet. The susceptible were already infected, and between a third and a half of them were dead. The final casualty count would likely never be known.
* * *
WITHIN DAYS OF beginning her work, Rayna Butler’s mission grew too large for her.
Inside every building, every home, every business, every factory, she discovered evil machines, sometimes in the open and sometimes in shadows. But she found them. Her arms ached from methodically swinging her cudgel. Her hands were covered with bruises and cuts from flying glass and metal, and her bare feet were abraded and sore, but she did not pause. Saint Serena had told her what she must do.
More and more people watched her, first as entertainment, confused as to why she would direct so much destruction toward conveniences and innocuous appliances. But finally others began to understand her obsession and started smashing machines with joyous anger. For so long they had been helpless to strike back that they now turned against any manifestation of their great enemy. At first, Rayna simply went on her way, doing little to lead those who followed in her wake.
When she was unexpectedly joined by the surviving Martyrists, already intense fanatics willing to throw away their lives as Saint Serena herself had done, Rayna’s ragtag band became more organized, and suddenly swelled. In the haunted streets of Parmentier, the new movement was unstoppable.
The Martyrists plodded after the ethereal girl, waving pennants and holding staffs high, until finally Rayna turned to them in confusion. Climbing atop an abandoned groundcar, she called out, “Why do you waste your time and energy carrying those banners? Who are you performing for? I don’t want to see flags and colors. This is a crusade, not a pageant.”
She jumped down and pushed into their midst. Confused, they made way to let the pale, hairless girl through. Rayna tore away a large fabric banner and handed the bare staff back to a man. “There. Now use this to smash machines.”
She did not care who these people were or what motivated them, as long as they aided her cause. The girl’s thin voice took on an added hardness, a tone of unshakable belief. “If you have survived this plague, then you are chosen to assist me.”
Several Martyrists lowered their banners and tore them away from the poles, which they could now use as clubs and crowbars. “We are ready!”
The bald girl faced them with a childlike earnestness, exuding a primal power from her translucent, fever-damaged skin. Her words surrounded her like an aura, and the listeners began to sway. Rayna had never practiced to become a great speaker, but she had heard enough sermons with her mother, had listened to the recorded oratory of the charismatic Grand Patriarch Iblis Ginjo, had heard her father and grandfather give military rallies. “Look all around you! You can see the curse of the demon machines. Look at the insidious marks they have left upon our land, our people.”
The throng murmured. In the empty buildings around them, the windows were dark, many of them smashed. The remnants of a few rotted, unburied bodies lay in the streets and alleys.
“Even before the Demon Scourge struck, the machines inched their way into our lives under our very noses, and we allowed it to happen! Sophisticated machines, calculational devices, mechanical assistants— yes, we pretend that we’ve gotten rid of all robots and computers, but their cousins are among us everywhere. We can no longer tolerate any of that.”
Rayna raised her crowbar, and her followers shouted.
“When I was struck down by the fever, Saint Serena herself came to me and told me what we must do.” The girl’s eyes filled with tears, and she became wistful. “I can see her face now, beautiful, glowing, surrounded by white light. I can hear her words as she revealed God’s supreme commandment to me— ‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of the human mind.’” She paused, then raised her voice without shouting: “We must obliterate any sign of them.”
One of the Martyrists picked up the shreds of a colorful banner. “I saw Serena Butler in a vision, too! She came to me.”
“And to me,” cried another man. “She is still watching over us, guiding us.”
The followers clacked their staffs and bars together, anxious to go about the destruction. But Rayna had not yet finished her speech. “And we must not disappoint her. The human race cannot give up until we achieve total victory. Do you hear me? Total victory.”
A man shouted, “Destroy all thinking machines!”
A shrill woman, whose face was streaked with scratches as if she had tried to claw out her own eyes, wailed, “We have brought our own pain upon ourselves. We have left our cities wide open to the Demon Scourge because we were not willing to take the necessary action.”
“Until now.” Rayna wagged a finger at them. “We must eradicate any computer, any machine, no matter how innocuous it may seem! A complete and total purge. Only that way can we save ourselves.”
She led her agitated followers deeper into the death-filled city. Waving cudgels and mallets, the mob swept forward. Their fervor rose as they descended on factories, industrial centers, and libraries.
Rayna knew it was just the beginning.
* * *
THE VANDALS AND fanatics only compounded the misery inflicted by the epidemic and all the subsequent breakdowns in Parmentier society, as far as Raquella was concerned. Misdirecting their hatred of the thinking machines, the wild extremists targeted every semblance of technology, eradicating even sophisticated devices that helped people. They shut down Niubbe’s intermittently functioning public transportation system, along with much of the electrical grid and communications network.
As she struggled to aid the last plague sufferers after the power went out in the hospital, Raquella could not comprehend the delusions. Did these Martyrist lunatics really think they were hurting Omnius by using rocks, crowbars, and clubs to pummel benign machines?
Every day more of them gathered outside the overcrowded medical center, looking at the large building with a strange, glazed hunger. Many shook their fists and screamed threats. In order to protect the hospital, Mohandas had positioned as many armed guards as he could hire or bribe at every entrance….
In a daze from the unending cycles of work and inadequate rest, Raquella stumbled down a corridor to a heavy door at the far end, wearing a breather over her mouth and nose. So far, she had been careful to protect herself from the obvious vectors of infection, but it would be so easy to make a small and deadly mistake. Her face, hair, and clothes always reeked of antivirals and disinfectants. Though she and Mohandas consumed whatever spice they could, just to keep themselves going, the supplies had dwindled to almost nothing.
She hoped Vorian Atreides would return soon. Isolated here on Parmentier, none of them had any idea what was happening out in the rest of the League of Nobles.
Now Raquella entered a large walk-in vault, the most secure room in the hospital. The vault door was partly open, which surprised her. Hospital rules dictated that it be kept closed and locked. Everything had grown so lax, so slipshod.
Cautiously, she pushed the heavy metalloy door, making the hinges groan softly. Inside, a startled man looked up.
“Dr. Tyrj! What are you doing?”
His face flushed behind his clearplaz breather as he tried to cover what he’d been doing, but Raquella had already glimpsed hidden pockets in his work smock crammed with doses of melange powder from the last supplies of spice kept in the hospital.
Every hospital worker received an allocation for personal use, since the spice protected them from the Scourge. But this was much more melange than any one person was allowed.
The small, wiry man tried to push past her. “I don’t know what you mean. Now get out of my way. Patients are waiting for me.”
She stopped him cold with a stiff forearm to the middle of his chest. “You’re selling spice, aren’t you?”
“Certainly not!” His left hand dipped into a side pocket, and she saw something glint as he started to bring it out.
With a swift knee to his midsection, Raquella doubled him over. A scalpel fell from his hand, clattering on the floor. She shouted for help as Tyrj lay groaning. She heard running footsteps in the corridor, and Mohandas appeared. Alarmed, he looked at Raquella, making sure she was all right. She pointed to the spice that had tumbled out of the doctor’s hidden pockets.
“I can explain this.” Tyrj struggled to his feet and tried to regain his dignity.
Mohandas touched a panel on the wall of the vault, summoning his hired security men while Tyrj babbled excuses, indignant instead of ashamed. Roughly, Suk emptied the doctor’s pockets, pulling out packet after packet of valuable spice. He stared in disbelief at the sheer amount of melange the other man had attempted to steal.
“You are disgusting,” Raquella said to him as two security officers arrived. “This is selfish betrayal, not just thievery. You’re a traitor to the people you were supposed to help. Leave this hospital.”
“You can’t afford to lose my services,” Tyrj protested.
“We can’t afford to keep you.” Mohandas took Raquella’s arm, standing beside her. “I no longer consider you a doctor. You’ve violated your oath, become no more than a war profiteer.” Looking at the security men, he said, “Throw him out to take his chances on the street. Maybe he will remember his calling and do some good. There are still plenty of suffering people.”
Raquella and Mohandas went to an open second-floor window to watch as the guards pushed the thief out the front entrance toward the brooding crowd. Tyrj fell partway down the steps, then looked around at the angry Matryrists. His desperate shouts were drowned out by the waiting mob.
“Remember Manion the Innocent!”
“Long live the Jihad!”
A pale, hairless girl stood at the front, pointing toward the hospital. Raquella couldn’t hear the girl’s words, but suddenly the crowd began to move en masse toward the hospital. On the steps, Tyrj tried to move out of their way, but the zealots rushed the hospital, trampling the wiry doctor underfoot. The guards who had thrown him out backed away, frightened for their own lives.
Raquella grabbed Mohandas by the arm and ran down the corridor toward the nearest ward. “Sound the alarm.” He pressed a security transmitter on the wall, triggering high-pitched sirens and loud klaxons.
The two of them raced to the closest entrance and attempted to secure the door. The hired guards assigned to that station had disappeared, fleeing as soon as the mob reached its flashpoint. A fanatical crowd slammed into the door, pushing it, prying it open. Despite Raquella’s best efforts, the sheer press of people overwhelmed them quickly. More zealots shattered windows and swarmed through other open doors, surging into the corridors and wards.
The hairless girl stopped, like a calm eye in the middle of the storm of unleashed fanatics. She scanned the diagnostic machines, the monitors and dispensers, then said in a penetrating voice, “Sophisticated medical devices— evil machines disguised as useful equipment. They imprison us!”
“Stop!” Mohandas screamed as rampaging men and women toppled a bank of high-resolution diagnostic scanners. “We need these machines to treat plague victims. People are going to die without them!”
But the throng only struck with greater fury. Imagers and testing probes were hurled against walls and through windows. Though they were intent on the machines, the mob could quickly turn on the medical researchers themselves.
Taking Mohandas’s hand, Raquella fled to the rooftop, where a medical evacuation flyer waited. Fires had already started in the hospital below. Some patients staggered out of their beds, trying to get away from the hospital, though others remained trapped. The doctors had already escaped.
“This place is doomed,” Mohandas groaned. “All the patients!”
“We were just trying to help.” Raquella’s voice was hoarse with disbelief. “Couldn’t they see we were saving people? Where do we go now?”
Mohandas guided the medical evacuation flyer up from the hospital rooftop. With a whine it rose above the thickening smoke, while he stared down with liquid brown eyes. “We’ve lost the battle here in the city, but I’m not ready to give up. Are you?”
She gave him a wan smile and put her hand on his forearm. “No, not if we can be together. There are plenty of places out in the country where suffering people need our help and expertise. Much as I regret it, the rest of Niubbe will have to fend for itself.”