Back when she was a young girl on Salusa, Emperor Jules had forced her to watch brutal public and private executions—“for her own good,” he said — but those horrific experiences had scarred rather than strengthened her. Her brother Salvador had also tormented her, stealing every chance at happiness she might have had; then he’d sent her away to the Sisterhood on Rossak, where she thought she had friends, where Sister Valya had been her companion. But Valya had manipulated her too, tricked her into taking the “agony” poison that destroyed her mind. It was another experiment!
In her own family, Anna had once believed that Roderick, at least, truly loved her, that he was on her side. Yet he hadn’t wanted to deal with her eccentricities either, so he sent her away to the Mentat School.
Too many people had taken Anna’s heart, crushed it in an iron grip, and then abandoned her.
Erasmus was supposed to have been her closest friend of all, her lover, her true love. She had devoted herself entirely to him as the lifeline that kept her damaged mind together. Isolated here on Denali, at least she had him, and for a short while it had been paradise for her. She had been deliriously happy.
But now it was all smashed to bits. Erasmus’s flippant dismissal showed her that, once again, she had been tricked by her soft heart. He was no better than Hirondo, the lover her brothers had sent away from her on Salusa Secundus.
Erasmus had destroyed their relationship, and Anna had no one else. None of the scientists or laboratory workers were her friends. Even old Lady Orenna back on Salusa — the closest person Anna ever had to a mother — was dead. Anna had nothing left … only her despair, hopelessness, and bitter memories.
How many times could she be destroyed before it was enough? If this present crisis wiped out the whole Denali facility, it might be a blessing for her.
As the deafening alarms continued to ring, Anna staggered away with tears streaming down her face. Hot, wrenching sobs tore at her chest, but no one paid the slightest attention to her misery.
Eventually, she stumbled into an empty cymek hangar. Except for a few leftover walkers still patrolling the blasted landscape outside the domes, the cymek army was gone. Manford Torondo and his fanatics had destroyed the machines on Lampadas. Maybe the Butlerians had come to Denali now, and that was what the alarms were all about.
She knew the invaders would want to kill Erasmus, as they had killed so many other thinking machines. After what she’d been put through, she didn’t care if they tore Erasmus apart and dissected his gelcircuitry brain. The thought horrified her for a moment. If she saved him, maybe he would change, maybe he would apologize. A flare of hope shot higher within her, but crashed down again. She had been such a fool. She saw that clearly now. It was no mistake.
He was an evil robot, just as the Butlerians had always claimed, and she felt repulsed to have fallen in love with such a heartless, calculating monster. Erasmus had intentionally jabbed and twisted her feelings in order to create emotions for him to study, as if she were one of the specimens in his laboratory!
Alarms continued to shriek, and VenHold workers scrambled to defend Denali. Anna vowed she would never let anyone hurt her again, and couldn’t think of a pain greater than the raw and jagged ache that was tearing her apart from the inside. She had only one decision to make now, a choice that was hers and no one else’s.
Inside the cymek hangar she looked outside through the broad windows, at the swirling, greenish mists. In the darkness the drifting fog looked so peaceful, so soothing. It would embrace her if she came into contact with it. She would breathe the mist into her lungs and would drown in its lethal embrace.
She went to the airlock and closed herself inside. The cautionary interior alarm was drowned out by the racket in the domes.
Princess Anna Corrino ignored the warnings, opened the outer hatch, and staggered out into the poisonous air of Denali.
AS HE ASSESSED the newly arrived Imperial fleet and calculated their weapons versus the VenHold defenses available on the Navigator-guided ships in orbit, Erasmus realized that this facility was in serious trouble. Alarms continued to shriek. He had hoped for more time to work on developing effective new defenses, but the most interesting concepts were no more than design specs or, at best, untested prototypes.
His computer mind focused on the problem; Directeur Venport would want his assessment as soon as possible. Just like dear Gilbertus, Draigo Roget had helped him understand the overall political situation in the Imperium, explaining that Venport Holdings had more enemies than just Manford Torondo.
Erasmus had taken pleasure in seeing the Mentat’s clean and ordered thoughts — made possible, he knew, by the logic techniques he himself had developed for Gilbertus to share. The people on Denali were natural allies, thrown together to develop ways to fight the Butlerians, but now their enemy was the Emperor himself. And they would all have to fight together in order to survive.
Over the course of his existence, Erasmus had forged a number of unorthodox alliances; some had been effective, while others surprised him in the wrong way. The failures — particularly Serena Butler and the young Vorian Atreides — were usually caused by unpredictable human behavior. Their species frequently disregarded the straightforward statements they called promises. Emperor Roderick Corrino had broken a promise to Josef Venport, and now it looked certain that Denali would fall.
The Tlulaxa scientists had grown Erasmus a new body, as requested, but it had taken sweet Anna Corrino to show him the complexities and nuances of being human. Anna had helped him understand the odd and esoteric feelings caused by biological influences and chemical changes. After analyzing the young woman for a very long time, at last he thought he was beginning to understand.
Both before and during the Jihad, as a robot in a beautiful flowmetal body, he had studied hundreds of thousands of experimental subjects, building a database of observations. But those had always been external analyses, and now with this human form grown from the cells of Gilbertus, he could experience the sensations directly.
Anna had expected so much from him — more than he could give — and he knew she was disappointed. That troubled him as well, because he wished he could grasp those emotions he had admired for so long.
Alas, he simply had no time for them now. The priority was obvious: Denali was under attack. He analyzed the array of Imperial ships and prepared to make a quick report to Directeur Venport.
The VenHold ships standing in defense of Denali were going to be problematic, he realized. Norma Cenva would not sacrifice her precious Navigators even for the survival of this research facility. She was irrational about her creations, and she held significant influence over Josef Venport. That meant the available battleships were not expendable, no matter the strategic advantages, which limited the robot’s plans.
He calculated that if the Directeur sacrificed all the large VenHold spacefolders in a massive attack, they could possibly defeat or at least drive back the Imperial fleet, despite being outnumbered. At least it allowed him to formulate a plan in which the surviving scientists and personnel on Denali — including himself and of course Anna — could get away. That was paramount.
If he and Anna escaped, they might continue their studies elsewhere. Perhaps then he could develop into a full-fledged person, but such things took time. In the past few months, he had learned more about humanity than he had in his entire existence before that. He had embraced sadness and guilt over the death of Gilbertus, and genuine rage toward Manford Torondo and the Butlerians — and, yes, satisfaction, even glee, when he viewed images of the Butlerian leader being torn to shreds.