Let fat humans and thinking machines inhabit the comfortable worlds in this galaxy. We prefer the desolate, out-of-the-way places, for they invigorate our organic brains and make us invincible. Even when my cymeks have conquered everything, these difficult places shall be our favorite haunts.
— GENERAL AGAMEMNON,
New Memoirs
The Titans had killed the five Ivory Tower Cogitors too swiftly, and now General Agamemnon regretted his impetuous revenge. After so many decades of feeling hunted and impotent, I should have relished my conquest.
Now, too late, he thought of how satisfying it would have been to dissect the ancient brains, removing one sliver of mental matter at a time, erasing the snippets of thoughts contained within each rippled contour of the cerebrum. Or, Juno could have added interesting contaminants to their electrafluid and together they could have watched the unusual reactions.
But all the Cogitors were already destroyed. Stupid lack of foresight!
Instead, as the three Titans consolidated their hold on Hessra, they were forced to entertain themselves by torturing the captive secondary monks, humans who had given over their lives to tending the Cogitors. All of the secondaries had now been stripped of their fleshy burdens, their brains torn like ripe fruit from their skulls and installed unwillingly into cymek preservation canisters. Slaves, pets, experiments.
Because they’d initially refused to cooperate with the takeover, the hybrid secondary-neos were given a set of torment-inducing needles, modified thoughtrodes inserted into the naked brain tissue.
From a tower high above the sheets of ice, the Titan general focused his optic threads, swiveling his head turret to survey his bleak conquest. Wherever gray or black outcroppings showed through the glacier, strange blue smears appeared. Threads of lichens and hardy moss found sustenance within fractures of the ancient ice wall, converting the dim sunlight into enough energy to sustain their lives. Occasionally, chunks of the glacier calved off, and the many-branched blue lichens quickly withered once exposed to the frigid air.
Agamemnon had made a cursory study of some of the electrafluid records and treatises compiled by the Cogitors over millennia. Apparently minerals and other trace elements from these native lichens combined with runoff water that flowed into Hessra’s underground streams. Inside deep laboratories and factory chambers at the base of the ancient black towers, the monks had used this water to manufacture the nutrient-rich electrafluid.
For a thousand years, Agamemnon and his cymeks had required a constant supply to keep their preserved brains fresh and alert, and the Cogitors had maintained an uneasy and neutral relationship with the cymeks, allowing an illicit trade in the potent life-support liquid despite their self-imposed isolation.
But Agamemnon did not like to be beholden to anyone. The conquering Titans had confiscated the chemical production facilities and “strongly encouraged” the secondary-neos to continue making the vibrant substance.
With a clatter of methodical footsteps, another Titan walker entered the high observation tower. Agamemnon identified the newcomer as Dante, who paused and waited for the general to acknowledge him. “We have finished studying the recent images our neo-cymek scouts took of Richese and Bela Tegeuse.” He paused, making certain he had his leader’s full attention. “The news is not good.”
“These days, news is never good. What is it?”
“After we retreated, Omnius’s forces returned and laid waste to both planets, killing the rest of the human population that once served us. All the neos had already escaped— a small advantage, I suppose— but without our captive humans, we no longer have a pool from which to draw more cymeks.”
Agamemnon felt anger and gloom. “With the hrethgir writhing and dying from Yorek Thurr’s damnable plagues, Omnius can turn his attention against us again. These are dark days, Dante. The thinking machines have destroyed our last major world, leaving us trapped here with no followers, no population to enslave, only a hundred or so neos, some converted secondary monks… and three Titans.”
His artillery arms flinched as if he subconsciously wanted to blast a hole through the tower wall. “I had intended to launch a new Time of Titans, but we’ve been hounded by the thinking machines and hunted by humans and their damned Sorceresses. Look what remains of us! Who will lead our great rebellion now?”
“There are numerous neo candidates to choose from.”
“They can follow orders but they cannot produce a winning strategy. Not a single one of them shows potential as a military commander. They were raised in captivity and volunteered for a chance to have their brains yanked from their skulls. What good are they? I need a fighter, a commander.”
“We are safe here for now, General. Omnius does not know where to find us. Perhaps we should simply be content on Hessra.”
Agamemnon swiveled his head turret, his optic threads blazing. “History rarely notices those who remain content.”
As the two Titans stared up into the ocean of stars, Agamemnon’s network linked with external sensors and picked up the blip of an incoming, unexpected ship. Curiously, he focused and waited for confirmation.
Juno was in the cymek control center established in the main chamber where they had slaughtered the five Ivory Tower Cogitors. As he expected, her sweet synthesized voice soon came over the direct comline into his preservation canister. “Agamemnon, my love, I have quite a surprise for you— a visitor.”
Dante, on the same comline frequency, responded with reservations. “Has Omnius found us already? Do we need to move and hide again?”
“I am sick of hiding,” Agamemnon said. “Who is it, Juno?”
Her voice was lilting and cheery. “Why, it is the last of our Ivory Tower Cogitors— Vidad, returning home! He transmits greetings to his five companions. Alas, none of them can answer him.”
Agamemnon felt a flood of excitement wash through the sparkling electrafluid. “This is unexpected indeed. Vidad doesn’t know the other Cogitors are dead!”
“He claims he has urgent news and requests an immediate convocation,” Juno said.
“Maybe he’s finally discovered the proof to an ancient mathematical theorem,” Dante suggested sarcastically. “I can’t wait to hear it.”
“Set up an ambush,” Agamemnon said. “I want the last Cogitor captured. Then… we can take our time with him.”
* * *
DURING THE LONG voyage from Salusa Secundus, Vidad was deeply preoccupied with troubling thoughts. The foundation of the Ivory Tower Cogitors’ existence was to remain isolated, not to interfere. Both the evermind and the humans were sentient beings, intelligent life-forms, though based on fundamentally different principles. The Cogitors could not take sides in this conflict. When they had allowed Serena Butler to sway them from their long-held position, disaster had resulted. As a consequence, the fervor of the Jihad had been redoubled for the next sixty years.
Now, however, Vidad knew that the humans intended to obliterate all incarnations of Omnius. Did neutrality require complete nonparticipation, if the total extinction of a sentient presence was at stake? Or did it mandate the maintenance of a careful balance of power?
Vidad could not decide this issue by himself. The six Cogitors formed a unit, a discussion group that encompassed virtually all of human wisdom. He had hurried to Hessra in order to raise the question. After much appropriate debate, the Cogitors would reach a consensus about what to do.
Vidad had departed immediately after the Jihad Council reached its decision. He did not know how much time he had.
Piloting the fast ship were two of his loyal secondaries. Rodane was a new recruit Vidad had trained during his years in Zimia. Keats, extremely old but still functional, had been recruited by Grand Patriarch Ginjo long ago and had served the Ivory Tower Cogitors for almost seventy years; he seemed near the end of his useful life, and this trip back to Hessra would certainly be his last. Many of Ginjo’s first recruits had already died and were entombed in open crevasses on the slow-moving glaciers. Vidad’s Cogitors would need new volunteers soon.
En route, Vidad spent every hour of every day contemplating the weighty problem of the planned pulse-atomic strikes. He had not reached any tenable decision before they arrived at the icy planetoid. Vidad sent direct transmissions to the other five Cogitors waiting in their citadel, but oddly enough, received no response.
While Rodane piloted their ship down toward the target glacier, Keats peered out the cockpit windows. “Something’s happened here,” he said in his raspy voice. “Ice around the towers has been excavated. I see craters that look like they were made by… explosions. I suggest we proceed with caution.”
“We must determine what has happened,” Vidad said.
The younger pilot circled close to the citadel where they would normally land. Though his eyes were old and watery, Keats spotted the ambush first. “Machines, artillery— cymeks! Get us out of here!”
Confused, Rodane glanced to the Cogitor’s brain canister for additional orders. He worked the controls, but not fast enough.
As soon as the small craft’s course altered, cymeks emerged from their hiding places on the ice and under the citadel. Flying forms shot out, and marching combat walkers surged away from hidden shelters, raising their artillery arms and opening fire.
As shells exploded around them, bursts of light sent crippling shockwaves through the vessel. The young pilot tentatively dodged back and forth, but Keats grabbed the controls from him and flew more extreme maneuvers. “Your caution will get us killed, Rodane.”
A frantic transmission finally crackled across the comline on which Vidad had expected to hear from his fellow Cogitors. The voice was merely a pulse electronic signal deciphered by the communications systems. The ancient philosopher did not recognize the tone or inflection, but the words were astounding. It was from one of the secondary monks.
“The Titans have taken over Hessra! They’ve killed the five Cogitors and many secondaries… except for some of us, and we are not alive. We’ve been transformed into cymeks, forced to serve them. Cogitor Vidad, you are the last. Flee! Above all else, you must remain alive— ” Then came the sounds of struggle and shrieking, echoing pulses of agony transmitted into the open and uncaring universe.
Three cymek flyers accelerated toward them, blasting with projectiles, trying to knock them out of the sky. Larger walker-forms strode out onto the open icepack. One of the monstrous warrior bodies was so immense it must have been a Titan. Explosions erupted in the air all around them.
Keats punched the small craft’s engines, sparing no fuel, burning to their maximum acceleration to carry them free of Hessra. Though he was protected in his preservation canister, Vidad knew the merciless acceleration would be too much for Keats’s frail old body. “You will die.”
“And you… will live,” Keats managed to gasp before unconsciousness overtook him. He didn’t have the strength to keep breathing under such constant, brutal acceleration. Several of his brittle bones cracked.
Rodane, though, was strong and versatile. He would survive. Vidad needed only one attendant. Flying on an automatic escape vector, they pulled far from frozen Hessra, flying deep into space and away from the system. The short-range cymek pursuers dropped back, transmitting angry curses.
In his cockpit seat, Keats’s old body lay in the peculiar gray stillness of death, but the younger secondary still struggled, his breathing labored. When they reached the fringe of the system, the acceleration automatically dropped off, and Rodane came back to consciousness. Eyes wide, he looked with sad shock over at his aged companion, who had given up his life so the Cogitor could escape.
“Now where shall we go, Vidad?” the secondary asked, his voice edged with panic.
The Cogitor thought of his five companions, all murdered by the cymeks who had taken over Hessra, an apparent attempt to hide from Omnius. Vidad was the only philosopher who could make up his mind about how to react to the impending atomic holocaust Vorian Atreides wanted to unleash. He was objective, neutral, intelligent…. He had also been human once. Knowing what the cymeks had done to all of his companions, how could he not feel even an echo of long-forgotten emotion? Of… revenge? He had yet another reason to speak to the evermind.
“Set a course for Corrin,” Vidad commanded.