The giver and the recipient may each define a “reward” quite differently.
— COGITOR KWYNA,
City of Introspection Archives
Dante, calm but skeptical, sat back in his mechanical form and reeled off counterpoints as if he were reading from a list. The other two Titans had already had their say, and they listened to his summary.
“Therefore,” Dante concluded, “if you truly believe Vorian Atreides comes to us of his own free will, General, and that he will contribute to our expansion effort and turn against the hrethgir— then we had better convert him into a cymek before he changes his mind.” The optic threads on his head turret flickered on and off, the mechanical equivalent of a blink.
“I agree,” Agamemnon said, overjoyed. “We’ll cut away the extraneous meat, and then his new loyalty to us will be more than intellectual. It will be irrevocable.”
“Oh, there’s not much of anything intellectual about his decision,” Juno said. “I will prepare the surgery chamber, and our dear pet Quentin will assist me. An important test of his own… refocused loyalties.”
“Butler will hate doing that,” Dante said.
“I know. But it will demonstrate whether or not he has truly seen reason, as Vorian claims.” Juno laughed. Her walker-form clattered out of the central chamber as she went off to find their other new convert.
* * *
“YES, FATHER, I want to be a cymek. More than anything.” Vor had practiced the lie over and over. “When I was a trustee human, it was my dream. I always knew that if I made you proud, I would one day be allowed to become a cymek. Like you.”
“Then the time has come, my son.” The enormous combat walker of Agamemnon loomed in front of him at the ice bridge outside of the citadel. The Titan general’s walker-form was twice Vor’s height, adorned with golden highlights like chain mail. “They await you in surgery.”
As the two walked toward the entrance to the Cogitors’ old citadel, doubts assailed Vor. For a brief moment, he thought about taking the Dream Voyager and fleeing before the cymek surgeons could perform their horrific vivisection. But after working so hard to set up his plan, he could not give up now.
The Titan’s walker strutted beside him. “You will like being a cymek, I promise you. You can be anything you like, not limited by the failings of a weak biological form. Whatever you can imagine, we can create a suitable body for those desires.”
“I can imagine many things, Father.” Overhead, the icy sky seemed like an extension of the surface of Hessra, as if the ice and snow had lifted above them and left a layer of open air in between.
Vor drew himself up as tall as possible, still looking young and virile but feeling quite antique. Steeling himself to do what had to be done, he entered the giant structure. Inside the passageways, he was cold in spite of his protective layers of clothing. “Before I undergo surgery, why don’t I groom you one more time, like I used to?”
“For old times’ sake? Some of the old clichés remain appropriate, don’t they?”
Vor laughed, a sound rendered hollow as it dissipated into the vast emptiness around them. “Of course you could always transfer yourself into a different, clean machine form, but I just want to experience it one more time in my old body, before I give it up forever. And it would be something we’d both enjoy.”
“A wonderful idea— and then I shall admire myself.” Agamemnon rattled his chain-mail adornment as he strode into the cold, enclosed corridors that had been built centuries before. The chain-mail decoration seemed as odd and out of place as the gadgets, knives, and bolt-projectile guns he stored in the display cases around his walker-body.
Vor’s rush of adrenaline and anticipation kept him moving, flushed and anxious. But he and the Titan general were anticipating different things…
Now, while Juno prepared the surgical chamber, his father took him up a series of ramparts that were guarded by neo-cymeks with translucent preservation canisters tucked safely in their undercarriages, like strange mechanical genitalia. They climbed a tower, still half-buried in glacial ice, which loomed high above the cracked and frozen landscape. Agamemnon had always liked to survey his conquered territory, no matter how sparse it might be.
“It has been far too long since my last grooming,” Agamemnon said, easing his large walker against the maintenance equipment the cymeks had assembled. “I will enjoy this, Vorian. In fact, I think I shall perform your surgery myself, as a quid pro quo for the cleaning and polishing.”
“I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
At the top of the cold tower, they entered a large, mirrored room with four empty cymek walkers standing around the perimeter— varying forms of combat units that the Titan general preferred. Cleaning and polishing supplies were neatly arrayed in cabinets and on shelves. A broad window looked out upon the dim, icy expanse of Hessra. Vor shivered involuntarily.
As he studied the instruments and restoration devices, he recalled how young and innocent he had been in his days as a voluntary trustee. He had believed the general’s false memoirs, his stories, his theories. Vor had never thought to question anything. Now, it seemed, he believed nothing.
He had learned and experienced much.
“Well then, Father,” Vor said, turning to the waiting cymek, “let us begin.”