It has been said of Yorek Thurr that if humans had gears and bolts, his would be stripped and loose.
— The Jihad Chronicles,
attributed to ERASMUS
Even though fleeing to Corrin saved his life when the Army of the Jihad obliterated Wallach IX, Yorek Thurr regretted ever having come here. Now after nineteen interminable, frustrating years, Thurr was trapped and useless on the only remaining Synchronized World.
Omnius had turned this planet into a desperate stronghold, a fantastically armed camp. Thurr was theoretically safe. But what was the point of it? How could he make his bold mark on history with his hands tied like this?
Wearing protective eyewear under the bloodred sun, the bald, leathery man paced beyond the pens of pathetic human slaves, glancing at the tall Central Spire inhabited by the evermind.
As soon as the space-folding ships of the Great Purge had arrived at Wallach IX, Thurr immediately guessed what the humans meant to do. Before the first kindjal bombers had begun deploying their pulse-atomics, Thurr had leaped aboard an escape vessel and streaked far away, carrying a copy of the local evermind as a bargaining chip. At the time, he could easily have found some other place to inhabit. Why had he come to Corrin? Stupid, ill-considered decision!
With his immunity to the RNA retrovirus, and the life-extension treatment he’d received, Thurr should have been invincible. It had been instinct that drove him back to the heart of the Synchronized Worlds. Of course, with his standard space-travel engines, he had arrived far too late, after the holocaust was over and the humans had tightened their noose around the last evermind. In his League-configuration ship, Thurr had transmitted conflicting orders to the fatigued and stressed pilots who were scrambling to put their blockade in place. They had not been watching for someone trying to sneak into Corrin. While Omnius retrenched and brought together all his mechanical defenses on the surface and in layers of low orbits, Thurr had transmitted his own secret overrides and identification codes, which granted him passage and then sanctuary.
But now he could never leave! What had he been thinking? He had wrongly imagined that the machines would win, somehow. Omnius had commanded the Synchronized Worlds for more than a millennium— how could the whole machine empire fall in a month?
I should have gone elsewhere… anywhere.
Now with the Army of Humanity’s watchdog fleet monitoring the entire Corrin system, neither Thurr nor any force of thinking machines could ever get away. It was such a waste of his time and talents, more frustrating even than living in the pathetic League. Tired of chastising himself, he had long wanted to hurt someone else. The standoff had lasted for decades, and for Thurr it had grown quite tiresome.
If only he could just go up there, face the League military, and bluff his way through. After all his famous works in Jipol, all his accomplishments, surely his face and name were still known, even after so much time. Camie Boro-Ginjo had taken most of the credit, though Thurr himself had done the work, vilifying Xavier Harkonnen and turning Ginjo into a saint. But Camie had outmaneuvered him, forced him to abandon the League. Perhaps he shouldn’t have done such a good job of faking his death….
Every step of the way, Thurr had made wrong decisions.
In Erasmus’s laboratories, he had found a kindred spirit in Rekur Van. He and the limbless Tlulaxa researcher had combined their knowledge and destructive appetites into horrifically imaginative schemes against the weakling humans— and oh, how they deserved their fates. Once Erasmus had declared the limb-regeneration experiments a failure, Rekur Van had harbored no aspirations of escaping. But Thurr could be free to roam the habitable planets and make his mark… if ever he could get away.
He stared up into the sky. Not likely anytime soon.
The intriguingly unpredictable robot Erasmus visited him, bringing his companion, Gilbertus Albans. The robot seemed to understand Thurr’s frustration, but could offer no hope for freedom from Corrin. “Perhaps you can develop an innovative idea that will fool the League watchdog fleet.”
“As I did with the plagues? As I did with the recent targeted projectile factories? I hear they succeeded in breaking through the cordon.” He gave a thin smile. “I shouldn’t have to solve all of our problems— but I will if I can. I want to get out of here more than any of you machines.”
Erasmus wasn’t convinced. “Unfortunately, now the Army of Humanity will be even more vigilant.”
“Especially after the mechanical devourers reach their targets and begin to work.” More than anything else, Thurr wished he could be there himself to witness the mayhem.
Erasmus turned to his straw-haired, muscular companion. Thurr resented the robot’s “pet,” because Gilbertus had received the immortality treatment while he was still young enough to benefit from it.
“And what do you think, Gilbertus?” the robot asked.
Blandly, the other man turned to look at the bald man as if he were no more than a failed experimental specimen. “I think Yorek Thurr operates too close to the fringe of human behavior.”
“I agree,” Erasmus said, apparently delighted with the assessment.
“Even if that is so,” Thurr sneered, “I am still within the realm of humanity, and that you can never understand, robot.” When he saw that Erasmus was taken aback, Thurr felt a great satisfaction.
It wasn’t freedom, of course, but at least he had achieved a small victory.