Free Dune: The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson

tolerated, but maintained.
    As a sentient machine, Seurat routinely received new instructions and memory transfers from the overall Omnius brain, but because he spent so much time disconnected while journeying between the stars, he had developed his own personality and independence. In Vor’s opinion, Seurat was the best of the machine minds, although the robot could be irritating at times. Especially with that peculiar sense of humor.
    Vor clasped his hands and cracked his knuckles. He sighed with pleasure. “Sure feels good to loosen up. Too bad it’s something you can’t do.”
    “I do not require loosening up.”
    Vorian didn’t admit that he, too, found his own organic body to be inferior in many ways, fragile and prone to aches, sicknesses, and injuries that any machine could have easily fixed. He hoped that his physical form would remain functional long enough for him to be made into one of the enduring neo-cymeks, all of whom had once been valued trustee humans, like himself. One day Agamemnon would receive permission from Omnius for that, if Vor worked very hard to serve the evermind.
    The Dream Voyager had been in space on a long update run, and the young trustee was glad to be going home. He would see his eminent father soon.
    As the Dream Voyager soared between stars, undisturbed, Seurat suggested a friendly competition. The two sat at a table and engaged in one of their customary diversions, an amusing private game they had developed through frequent practice. The strategy involved an imaginary space battle between two alien races— the “Vorians” and the “Seurats”— each of which had a space fleet with precise capabilities and limitations. Though the robot captain had a perfect machine memory, Vor still fared well, as he invariably came up with creative tactics that surprised his opponent.
    Now, as they took turns placing warships in the various sectors of their fanciful space battlefield, Seurat reeled off an endless succession of human jokes and riddles he had found in his old databases. Annoyed, Vor finally said, “You’re making an overt attempt to distract me. Where did you learn to do that?”
    “Why, from you, of course.” The robot proceeded to mention the many times in which Vor had teased him, threatening to sabotage the ship without ever really intending to do so, concocting extraordinarily unpredictable emergencies. “Do you consider it cheating? On your part, or on mine?”
    This revelation astonished Vor. “It saddens me to think that, even in jest, I have taught you deception. It makes me ashamed to be human.” No doubt, Agamemnon would be disappointed in him.
    After two more rounds, Vor lost the tactical game. His heart was no longer in it.

Every endeavor is a game, is it not?

    — IBLIS GINJO,

    Options for Total Liberation
    O n a garden terrace overlooking the scarred ruins of Zimia, Xavier Harkonnen stood somberly by himself, dreading the upcoming “victory” parade. Afternoon sunlight warmed his face. Birdsong had replaced the screams and explosions; breezes had scoured away the worst of the poisonous smoke.
    Still, the League would be a long time recovering. Nothing would ever be the same.
    Even days after the attack, he still saw smears of smoke wafting from the rubble and trailing into a cloudless sky. He could not smell the soot, though. The cymeks’ poison gas had so damaged his tissues that he would never smell or taste much of anything again. Even breathing had become no more that a mechanical act, not an enjoyable inhalation of sweet fresh air.
    But he could not wallow in misery when so many others had lost much more. In the aftermath of the cymek attack, he had been kept alive by the heroic efforts of a Salusan medical team. Serena Butler had come to him at the hospital, but he remembered her only through a fog of pain, drugs, and life-support systems. In an extraordinary procedure, Xavier had received a double lung transplant, healthy organs provided by the