Mentats of Dune

Manford thought of his great-great-grandparents on Moroko. The planet’s entire population had been wiped out by the thinking-machine plagues. Moroko had been a charnel house with bodies strewn wherever they fell, cities emptied. The thinking machines’ plan had been to wait for the corpses to rot, so they could reclaim the undamaged planet for themselves. His own ancestors had only survived because they’d been away at the time.…

“You enslaved humanity,” Manford said to the robot, “and now I’ve enslaved you.”

The combat mek still did not respond. Apparently, military models were not conversational.

Manford looked at the machine, thinking that he could have had artificial legs for himself, biological appendages grafted onto him, the nerves reattached, the muscles operated through thoughtrodes like the ones the cymeks used. He remembered the bright-eyed scientists who had made him that offer: They’d been deluded and naïve — a man named Ptolemy and his companion … Manford had forgotten the other researcher’s name, though he still remembered his screams as he was burned alive. Elchan, was that it?

Why did scientists assume that every weakness must be fixed rather than endured? He knew he could have been whole again … and Manford’s most horrifying secret was how much he had been tempted by that.

Manford stared at the combat mek, enthralled and frightened. “We will defeat you,” he said, then blinked. “We’ve already defeated you.” He seemed to be convincing himself rather than the robot.

Manford hated his own relentless fascination with thinking machines. But by forcing himself to remember the horrors these artificial monsters had inflicted upon humanity, he would remain strong enough to resist the temptation, though sickened by the realization that others were not so strong.

Josef Venport continued to lure humanity toward damnation again with his blatant use of thinking machines. Manford would not allow it to continue! Humanity had achieved its hard-won salvation, and he didn’t dare let them throw it away.

“We will defeat you,” he said again in a husky whisper, but the combat mek remained unimpressed.

Without a word, Manford left the cell, walking briskly on his hands. This time, he refused to let Anari carry him.

Chapter 13 (There is great wisdom in)

There is great wisdom in some of the voices I hear, but others are mere distractions. I must be careful which ones I listen to.

— ANNA CORRINO, letter to her brother Roderick

Even before her mind was altered by the ordeal with poison, A

Lady Ore

When A

On the grounds of the Imperial Palace, A

That had been so long ago.

Now, at the Mentat School, A

When A

The CET’s blasphemous attempts to consolidate all human religion into a single orthodox tome, the Orange Catholic Bible, had created such an uproar that the public wanted to tear the translators apart — and had actually done so in several instances. A few of the scholars had taken sanctuary under the protection of Emperor Jules.

When A

The memory kaleidoscope shifted, and A

With a start, she realized that this was now.

She remembered Roderick sending her to Lampadas so she could train with Headmaster Albans. She tried to fit in among the Mentat students, and the exercises did help her learn to focus and organize the voices in her mind. On her lucid days, A

She remembered what it was like to interact with people, to hold a pleasant conversation that was not inundated with a universe of factual details, including lists of names and numbers. With a slight shift of the memory-kaleidoscope images, she suddenly recalled the names of every one of the 362 Mentat trainees currently at the Lampadas school. Then another shift, and she recalled the thousands of previous graduates: 2,641. The names of every student scrolled in front of her mind, but she pushed away the distracting list, telling herself it was not necessary to review them now. She could do that later, put them in proper order, alphabetically or chronologically, perhaps by birth date or planet of origin.

The kaleidoscope shifted yet again, showing her things she had never personally experienced. A

In a rush, the images blurred with the speed of decades passing, A