For a long time we humans thought of electronics as a mirror to biology. We named our programs "neural nets", used "memory chips", and created "electronic viruses". We completely disregarded the emergent nature of the software itself, a potential for life and intelligence that cannot be defined in biological terms, requiring instead its own brand-new vocabulary.
– THE IXIAN RENAISSANCE
Cables were sprawled on the floor of the work room. Reverend Mother Garimi caught herself before stumbling on a mass of wires that blocked the way in. "Who is there?" she asked hesitantly. Two steps forward, and she caught the shape of two bare feet, attached to a pair of black pants that disappeared below a cabinet made of shelves of electronics.
"Duncan?" she hesitated for a moment. The Mentat was in fact laboring under a tower of shelves, wafers an inch thick that hid inside all the marvels of Ixian technology. He was carefully extracting them, one by one; stacks piled up across the hallway showed he had been labeling them, connecting them, and sorting them. As he got out from under the wafers and stood up, shirt off due to the heat coming from the bright lighting, to continue the sorting operation, Garimi noticed drips of sweat falling from his bronze skin on the floor.
"Do you know how Ixian navigation systems work, Garimi?"' Duncan asked her, his voice pensive.
"Superficially. Navigation imitates the mental state of a Guild Navigator," she replied, leaning on the wall a few feet away.
"Metaphorically. But exactly?"
"It's technical work," she replied, dismissive.
"I wish we had not left technology development in the hands of a single faction for millennia. An old Bene Gesserit preconception right there. You Sisters are humanists. You get technicians to order around and do the work. How come so few of you have ever become scientists?"
"Our subject of study is the human race, not subatomic particles," she replied. "No matter the technology, there is usually a human behind the controls."
"I am sure that's quoted somewhere in your manuals. Subatomic particles won't transport you through megaparsecs of empty space to Delphyne," continued Duncan.
"Is this a routine control of the ship's systems? You said you have never found any tampering by the Sisterhood," she cautiously asked. In the beginning, Duncan had disappeared for weeks examining the low level code of the ship systems, searching for traps laid by the Sisterhood, comms hacks, autopilot overrides, finding nothing. Searches for tracking devices had not borne fruit. What was he up to? Sheeana had warned Garimi: "Duncan is a friend with of undetermined value." She smiled. "Whatever you do, remember the stories about Duncan being irresistible to women, sister mine. The Bene Tleilax's first ghola was also designed to appeal to Alia Atreides. Be sure the Tyrant had the Tleilaxu enhance that trait throughout the eons." That was undoubtedly true. Duncan physique was attractive, but even more the pheromones she detected in the smell that permeated the small room. Captivating. Sense-pleasing. A human equivalent of catnip. A woman could stand there in the room for a whole day, just breathing.
"It must be the Holzmann effect," he muttered mostly to himself as he slid down back under the stacks.
"What?" she asked, breaking out of her temporary daydreaming.
"There must be technology out there capable of seeing and trapping a no-ship."
Garimi stood quietly. No reason to interrupt a Mentat's wanderings. "I will be on my way, Duncan." She backtracked and at the last instant, took the shirt that laid on the floor with her. She continued toward her apartments, smelling the fabric. If he wants it back, he is going to have to come and get it.
The oblivious Duncan remained in the small room, deciphering the hardware. The warm lights and the small volume of space made the air warm. The electronics were cold to the touch, differently than his old days in the Imperium. Light conduction at low temperatures. There were parts of the ship systems that were immersed in cryogenic chambers.
Back on Chapterhouse I could see the Gardeners, and they saw me back. Despite the no-ship cloaking. It was I who searched for them, when in the right mind state, or did they seek me out? Who did we establish a bridge that ignored the Ixian machinery? Are they prescient? How did their net work? I recall I escaped the net when I dumped the ship's navigation systems, and chose a place at random. Actually, he reminded himself, it was not exactly at random. Manually choosing one of thousands of pre-coded locations in the Scattering – no reason to emerge in one of the deep Voids.
There is technology out there capable of seeing and trapping a no-ship. But how come it was neutralized by dumping the ship's navigation systems?
A remembrance took over his field of vision. His past. On a Guild heighliner of old, en route to the Ixian Core. Leto sent me to Ix to get an engineer's training once. Not that the Ixians had been very forthwith.
He snapped out of that unbidden memory, came to sit on the floor. Another uncontrolled flash took over. He stood like he was now, but on a terrace. The vision was so engrossing he sensed the smell of flowers, a sense of humidity. The gross, beastly body of the God-Emperor was behind him, he could feel the vibration in the air that compelled him to complete attention, lest the Emperor decided to bring forth his fury. Fix this in your memory Duncan, he had started, the sandtrout that I carry will turn any planet into a new Dune, if you follow these instructions…
He had memorized, but not understood.
Duncan blinked, and was back into the work room. He focused on the no-ship. The Ixians modeled the machine to replicate the ability of a Guild Navigator. Pity that he had not gone to train with the Ixians at that time. If a machine can do the job of a Navigator, could technology be prescient? Were the Gardeners bridging into the navigation systems to navigate the ship to them?
He compared the ship's electronics, now neatly organized in the new layout, to the plans he had found in the system's themselves. It was going to be a long day. Longer, if he could not shake away the deja-vus in his mind. The sexual withdrawal was playing tricks on his mind. He had tried ingesting any medical substance he found to be helping.
A vision came to him again. Now it was the Saher desert, on a starry night.
"Never again," the voice besides him had said, the Second Moon's light sparkling on the yellow sand devoid of melange.
"Never?" That one Duncan had turned to the worm laying flat against the surface of the dune.
"No, there will never be somebody like me, Duncan-seed."
"You consider yourself a one-time cure."
"Do not be dull. I am humanity's rearer," continued the voice, a voice full of the sounds and tones of man but encased in a large deformed body. "Never again will there be a prescient seer of my caliber, Duncan-seed. That gene will die with me. I ensured the Atreides line does not have enough of it. Only me." The Emperor's body flowed in the sand to rest ten paces away. His gesture showed disapproval of him. Was he being too slow?
He was old, old for a Duncan. He had lived up to expectations.
"Why do I keep you in my genetic program, Duncan?" the Emperor had asked from the crest of the next dune, the vibrations in the sand hinting at the tremendous force kept on leash there.
"To avoid in-breeding, Sire."
"Since when do you passively accept my suggestions? Function as a Mentat. Doesn't being the ancestor of my majordomos across so many bloodlines defeat the purpose?"
"I am an idealist. A counterbalance to the power-hungry Corrino and Atreides genes both?" The answer seemed to annoy Leto. Something in the air trembled. You ignored the worm's sounds at your peril.
"I have already told you what my Golden Path is about. Never before I have told a Duncan." He had sneered at the remark that there had been many like him.
"Yes, Sire. Invisibility to prescience."
"Stop being asinine!"
"What?"
"Summon your talents, and tell me what the Path is really about!" There was a deadly callousness in Leto's voice, the worm sitting in acquiescence but continuing to emit tiny vibrations that made sand share lightly on the crest of the dune.
Duncan's mind had raced quickly, with that sense of urgency that so many times had saved him at the crucial moment. Prescience. Invisibility. Project the current state of the Imperium, Fish Speakers, total space travel control, absence of melange and extrapolate to an upside-down future universe. A Mentat projection, he had thought, will take too long. Leto knew that and wanted a leap of insight from him.
"You seek… you seek... the large-scale imprinting of human nature into something that is not susceptible to tyranny."
A pause. "Continue." A flat-voice order.
Continue?
"Your plan is to shield humanity from peril. No!" he quickly added seeing a flash in Leto's angry eyes; the worm-body still. "You want humanity to evolve into a state where it can take care of itself." Silence in the Saher. "It implies eradicating all existing powers, prescience, male combativeness, and your own," he had ventured, breaking the silence.
The Emperor was quiet. Duncan had continued.
"How do you achieve that? Invisibility to prescience, Atreides bloodlines. That can't be enough. What is the point of invisibility if you are saying there will never be a prescient seer like you again? You Atreides are more ambitious than that. You seek... the profound reprogramming of the human species."
"Maturation, Duncan-seed. See? You are a man on the sand. Sand is not a human's environment. I slide on sand while you stumble on it. A man has to evolve, adapt to its surroundings. Humans are the genetic product of a small, beautiful, life-teeming planet. They were not born the children of the universe."
The Emperor had paused, looking up as a shooting star traced a wide arc into the night sky.
"There will always be prescience, Duncan-seed. You, you are but a patch of soil, which I am lovingly attending to. Water and air and sunlight. The seed does not understand, but at the right time it will transform into a sprout."
"You speak of designs that I am too immature to grasp."
"There will be many types of prescience. But never again like mine. I am the last universal Oracle."
Duncan's mind kept investigating lines of inquiry. "Unsolved paradox, Sire. You are creating your own blindness. You say you exist for humanity to be free, but you enslave it and create a blind spot to your powers. Your prescience cannot see if your long-term plan will be achieved. Can it"
"Do you think so?" Leto's voice had a finality in it.
"You are just a… a gambler, then? On a cosmic scale?"
No, no no!
The rush of the air was a distraction while Duncan's mind raced… Can he see the action around the blind area? I have to… but Leto's sandworm body landed squarely on him, crushing all his bones. Stupid, had been his last thought.
His mind shook the memory and the pain away. It took a minute to calm his body, restore normal breathing. The wafers of circuitry were there, unchanged. Only a fraction of a second had passed. Duncan got back to his work, sorting circuits, sorting memories.