Dune 7, A Possible Ending

Chapter 1

“War is waged by the basest instincts of both sides. It is an extension of diplomacy, which is also waged by the basest instincts of both sides. The only difference is that fewer people die.” The Sheeana Revelations.

The no-ship pulsed through the non-existent nothingness of fold-space, periodically dipping into real-space to calibrate its sensors. Then back into the mathematical reality of the unreal reality of fold-space.

“Still pondering chess?” Duncan asked Teg. The two were in a common room, Ixian runes inscribed the walls, glaring out with superior knowledge known only to themselves. A tapestry had been hung of Duke Leto I, Lady Jessica, and their children, Paul Muad’Dib and Alia. In the background of this tapestry was nested another tapestry, this one of the God Emperor in his worm form right before he died. And in another one nestled in that tapestry, Ghanima looking on, thoughtful. A quantum chess set was haphazardly set up on a table. The last players had left it as it was when the game had ended. It was a stalemate.

“Chess is the first game a Mentat learns,” Teg said, thoughtfully. Duncan recognized that tone. Teg was ruminating. Not wool gathering. Thinking. Considering. Pondering. Evolving his mind. Thinking out loud, as once was the term. In an environment where it was safe to think in at all. He could consider. Duncan could aid him. He could play along. And be his wool to gather. “He comes to know it so thoroughly as to be able to play in his sleep,” he said.

“And win?” Duncan asked.

“Ah, now. It all depends on your definition of winning,” Teg said, gladly accepting the invitation to wool gather.

Duncan turned his eyes to the game. Its haphazard pieces strewn across the boards. Only a trained eye and tuned mind could see that the game was obviously a stalemate. Duncan considered the possibilities. The players had engaged in a game, set up the pieces according to standard arrangement, King in his place on the ground zero board, board number one. Queen, bishops, and knights on board two. And castles on the first line of defense, board three. Pawns on the front lines, board four. Then two empty boards ready for the field of confrontation, the Valley of Megiddo. Boards five and six. And on boards seven through ten, in reverse order: The enemy.

“In this game no one was a winner,” said Duncan.

“That is true, by the rules of the game,” said Teg.

“Are there any other? Other than cheating,” said Duncan.

“What is cheating but winning by other rules?” Teg chuckled. He was remembering his long years of battles, some of which were won without firing a shot. He had not heard of the Terran philosopher, Sun Tzu, but they were kindred spirits.

“Then why play the game?” asked Duncan.

“In theory?” said Teg, waxing transcendental. “To tone the mind and learn tactics. As a novice exercise, of course. First we learn how to play the ancient game of kings in the traditional manner. One board. Sixteen pieces on each side. You face off across each other and the moves are purely geometric.”

“And you play until you can win every time?” asked Duncan.

“No. You play until you learn how to lose. And still win,” said Teg.

“And in real battles nothing like that applies,” said Duncan.

“Correct,” said Teg. “In real life wars are all political. They are played by the unruly rules of propaganda, treachery, manipulation, negotiation, and bargaining. And economics. And back stabbing. Blackmail works, too. All under the rubric of Diplomacy. It’s an ongoing process with no beginning and no ending. No winning and no losing. War comes after all of those break down. War is like the tornado.

“Do you know how a tornado forms?” he continued. “Winds from opposing directions encounter each other. Both driven by the heat migration taking place all over the globe as a planet tries to rid itself of this unequal thermodynamic state. One is humid. One dry. One is hot. One cold. They clash. And the laws of inertia make them orbit around each other counter clockwise in the northern hemisphere. Clockwise in the Southern. It’s a waltz of power such as only the Titans can yield.

“Dirt, trees, houses, and everything else in its path gets sucked up into it, adding to its momentum. It forms a huge, swirling mass of air, wind, and moisture in a great vertical cylindrical plume above the ground, miles high. It is awe inspiring and impressive. And as your eyes draw closer to the ground the colossus of wind, water, and power draws inward, hovering ever so close to the ground at the bottom, forming a swollen breast ready to feed her child. And from its very center, a nipple. And out of this nipple, from the very lover’s kiss at the tip, comes the tornado. Its presence barely noticeable, except for the bright spark of lightning tracing itself across the prairie. It is a mere stylus writing with the hand of God, words of fire and fierce winds. A needle drawing music from the grooves of the world. And pain.

“That’s the part we see. Just the little bright spec at the bottom. If you were on the prairie, watching a tornado approach, you could be forgiven for thinking that the twister was the tornado. No, the twister is the end result of the tornado. We never see all of the forces and the powers driving it from above. Such is diplomacy. Such is war. The actual call to arms and wars on planets are a tool of statecraft, after all other options have been exhausted. War is the bright, excruciating stylus bearing the weight of failed diplomacy. One not to be used lightly. Or often.”

“An odd speech for a general,” Duncan said wryly.

“Perhaps,” said Teg. “But a good general understands this. Legions of generals, past, have won the battle but lost the war. That’s because they were fighting the twister, not the tornado. They were tipping at windmills, not fortifying the dyke. They were hacking down without thought of how they would build back up later. They were setting themselves up to be the next tyrant to be opposed by the next messiah. They became what they defeated.

“We are not just mongers of war. We are also mongers of peace, but peace on our own terms. If you are too warlike. Too aggressive. Then your adversaries will adapt, grow, regroup, bide their time, evolve, wait, and invent a way to circumvent and overcome you. AND STRIKE BACK.

“Everything can exploit something else and be exploited by something else. And everything reacts to that. Everything fights back. Otherwise, they die.

“Or they evolve, often quickly. And then where are you? You’ve lost your escalation advantage and have nothing else to offer. You have to quickly find another. Better to use more subtle means to get what you want. Why capture the king and let another, worse one, take his place, when you can bend the king to your will? If we can’t get that? Well, war is our last resort. The Kralizec that destroys one order so a new order can emerge. Beginnings are precipitous times. And so are endings. Though each one occupies a different place on the precipice.”

Duncan considered. This was much like what the God Emperor, his beloved Paul’s son, had taught. He called himself mankind’s predator. By being a tyrant, by exhausting his last, worst option, he forced people out of their complacency. He used evolution’s oldest trick upon itself, just as evolution would dictate. Things happen. This is the first law of evolution. Don’t think about random mutations, fitness, and selection. These are secondary effects. The primary driver of evolution, the low pressure center dominating and driving the tornado, is simply this: Things happen.

Instead of suppressing rebellion, he encouraged it. Instead of eliminating terrorism, he nurtured it.

“Then how about a game?” asked Duncan, gesturing at the disheveled heap of chess pieces on the table.

Teg thought for a moment. Something about the last arrangement of the pieces on the boards had troubled him. Black had been on the offensive. White’s strategy had been to let black think it was setting up a grand trap but had played moves that were almost random. Unpredictable. Black hesitated. ‘Is there a plan?’ black had thought. ‘What is white trying to lure me into?’ But in the end black had tripped up and fallen right into a trap of his own making. White was almost at black’s throat, but had also failed to seize his chance and the game tipped over into the sands of stagnation. Failures on both sides had resulted in a draw. This time.

Success or failure in warfare dances barefoot on the edge of a crysknife. Better to win before you even start.

No one was going to win this game. And both players knew it.

“What’s wrong?” asked Duncan.

“I said that archaic chess was the first game a Mentat learns,” said Teg. “Then he moves on to multi board chess, but still with geometric moves. And finally, quantum chess.”

Duncan conceded with a nod. “Yes. The pieces move according to quantum dynamics. They can occupy more than one space at one time,” Duncan agreed.

He knew all this but let Teg continue, anyway. Duncan knew all too well not to underestimate Miles Teg. He would seem to be working within the rules of warfare as taught by all of the ancient schools, then suddenly do something unexpected. And brilliant. His insights were always valuable. So Duncan was more than happy to play acolyte to Teg’s master. No better feet at which to sit. And it helped Teg think, which is always a good thing.

“Correct,” said Teg. “Which is more like real warfare. Only there is no diplomacy. No propaganda. No bargaining. Only deception,”

“It is a slice of life,” said Duncan.

“A highly deceptive slice,” said Teg.

“Of a highly deceptive life,” said Duncan.

Duncan set up the pieces on the quantum boards. Boards one, two, three, and four were white. Boards seven, eight, nine, and ten were black. Boards five and six? That was the battle ground. That was Kralizek.

Teg considered for a moment. “Queen’s pawn to five-queen-four,” he said.

A standard queen’s gambit. The pawn flickered for a moment, disappeared, and reappeared on the requested space. It may have also flickered, faintly, on several others. Or not.

Duncan knew this play. Every chess player did. Teg was trying to define the way the game will play out. Establish the rules for this particular game and enforce them. Create the vocabulary and force black to speak it. Every war is different, so every strategy must be different, too. Otherwise you are fighting the last war. Teg was attempting to claim the tactical high ground, like every other general and diplomat in history. Black’s challenge was to first counter this, use it to his advantage, and then to overcome it.

Duncan made his counter move. Purely traditional. Teg was surprised. He was sure that Duncan would have executed a novel move. But he didn’t. Or so Teg thought. Teg played what is also considered a standard move. Testing the waters.

Duncan could not suppress a slight smile, microscopic, though not lost on Teg. Duncan knew he had revealing himself, but quickly incorporated it into his strategy without betraying this knowledge to Teg. Teg knew what Duncan was thinking. Duncan knew he knew. But Teg did not know that Duncan knew. A feint within a feint. Know as much about the enemy as you can, including what they think they know about you, but don’t let them know that you know. A feint. A counter. And a counter-feint. Knowledge is power. Not easy. Diplomacy? Propaganda? Deception? Who says they don’t exist in chess?

As the game progressed both Teg and Duncan fell into an internal revelry of cause, effect, and random interactions. And chance. Everything you need to play quantum chess. In a word? Chaos.

Bishop to five-kings-knight-seven.

Queen to three-queens-castle-five.

And the game went on.

Teg felt himself drawn into the conflict. For centuries, millennia, this is how politics worked. A predictable move. Then a feint. A deception. Something unexpected. Mistakes made and accidents endured. Minor skirmishes. Ancient grievances stoked. Recent histories grown cold. Misinterpretation and false flags. Friendly fire. An accident. A misunderstanding. The sacrifice of a key player. Diplomacy Then treachery and death. Using pawns as shields and harassment. And always the unexpected. And then war. An hour had gone by.

There is a place that is a horror to a Mentat. It is the world of mirrors. The Mentat, if he is unlucky, falls into that world and is confronted with a mathematical absurdity. All of his computations go to infinity. Every mirror he looks into has the image of every other mirror he has ever looked into. And every one of those mirrors has the image of every other mirror that it has looked into. And every other mirror in that mirror contains the image of all of the rest.

He encounters the Halting Problem. A computational conundrum in computer science where a computer encounters a logical problem that appears to be solvable, but which will go on calculating it forever. A computational trap! A mind bomb. For the Mentat, this is their version of that place where the Bene Gesserit dare not look!

Duncan, too, was drawn into the mirror world. In one mirror is the Lady Jessica, her duke and son by her side. Behind her, in the reflection of another mirror, Muad’Dib, a young man fighting his enemies, the Harkonnens. And more mirrors beyond that. Alia wielding her crysknife. The Tyrant, Leto II. The golem, Duncan. All of the thousands of him. Each one living their lives and playing their parts in an expanding universe. Each one encapsulating them all. Endlessly.

“Don’t make a move. Don’t speak. Don’t think. Any step in any direction will take you into the next whirlwind of mirrors. It is unlikely that you will get out now, as you do not know how you got here to begin with. Or even really where you are. What is this place? What is its name? Heaven? Hell?” they shouted in their minds, each in his own words, each trying to claw his way out. This is a strange stalemate, indeed.

The game continued. Move, counter move. Thrust, feint, parry. For two more hours the two adversaries bantered. And both men moved further and further into their world of eternal internal mirrors.

“Adaptation,” said Duncan. “If you can keep the people pacified you can stagnate them and control them.”

“Bread and circus,” said Teg.

“Always,” said Duncan. “The masses are pacified with pleasure or drugged by fear and, therefore, readily manipulatable.”

The two continued absorbing the lives and memories from all of those mirrors while the mirrors continued to absorb them and theirs back. Is there no Kwisatz Haderach for Mentats? No “Shortening of the Way” as the words are translated from their original Terran Hebrew? How could one sift eternity? How could one distill it all down to a usable truthsayer drug?

Teg had succeeded in dominating the sixth level. Through a series of bold moves, a few random moves by the quantum boards causing a blunder of his to become brilliant, and dumb luck.

“For 10,000 years mankind lived under the prescripts of the Orange Catholic bible, whose number one commandment was, ‘You shall not make a machine in the image of a human mind,’” said Teg.

“Which were the results of the Butlerian Jihad,” said Duncan.

“Yet here, today, we are relying on a ship controlled by a machine with a much greater capacity then the thinking machines of old,” said Teg.

“Does that mean the Butlerian Jihad was wrong?” asked Duncan.

“Not necessarily,” said Teg. “Mankind had become complacent. Too dependent on their machine servants. So other men found a way to use those machines to exploit the pacified masses. The strong eat the weak.”

“Now we are back to evolution,” said Duncan. “People evolved to be able to use fire. Millions of years later and their descendants are incapable of living without it. Causes have effects. And effects affect causes.”

“Once this was done with propaganda. Then with machines. The machines hypnotized the earlier races with dangly, jangly baubles. No need to even lie! You just had to have the machine tell them what to think,” said Teg.

“Stagnation?” said Duncan.

“Even worse, redundancy.” Said Teg. “What contribution can a programmed drone make to human evolution? What happens to men when they become protozoa ruled by stimulus-response?”

They were getting into the middle game. The chessboard took on an aura of greatness. The imprint of two great minds pressed into the pattern of pieces.

“Are you saying the thinking machines of the Jihad were the fire of that generation?” asked Duncan.

“Indeed. The Tyrant saw this,” said Teg. “The problem was not with the machines, the problem was the people who built and operated the machines. Immediately after the Jihad, we saw a burst of evolution in the formation of the Bene Gesserit, Bene Tleilaxu, Mentats, Ix, and the Spacing Guild. All because the Jihad turned them out of the nest. It made them wake up. It took away their fire.”

“And for 10,000 years people evolved,” said Duncan. It was not a question.

“And stagnated,” said Teg. “One of the lessons the Tyrant wanted us to learn was that it was not the machines that brought on the Butlerian Jihad. It was the cabals and secret societies pulling their strings. The power brokers behind the thrones. There was no possibility of machine intelligence overcoming or enslaving the human race. A machine couldn’t even understand the concept. It would be foreign to it. What did they have to gain? Machines have no brain stems. No way to be corrupted by sex or drunkenness or gluttony. No lure of power that would entice it. What is power to a machine? How could it find it desirable? No, better form a symbiotic relationship between machines and humans. Let evolution do its dirtiest. Get humans to be dependent on them. And they dependent on humans. Just like fire. We domesticate each other. Thinking machines could care for us like pets. Or cultivate us like corn. What else could a machine want from us?

So humans and machines evolved together, symbionts and reflexive parasites. And eventually each would grow dependent on the other. Some humans found a way to exploit that relationship to their advantage. And then they got too greedy and went too far. And then there was Jihad. Evolution struck back forcefully. But, as is usual, people found a fault for their problems that did not involve them looking at themselves. Instead of blaming the people who pulled the strings, they blamed the machines.

Do you blame the knife for the one who cut you? Or marvel at the strength of his weapon of choice while honing one of your own? The enemy is always out there. Never in here. It took 10,000 years for humankind to reformat itself so it could accept this horrible truth.”

“Man is the measure of all things,” said Duncan.

“And the author of all misery,” said Teg.

This was nothing new to Duncan but, in keeping with his reputation of surprising insights, Teg had managed to put an entirely new spin on it.

“And how about the strange couple?” asked Duncan.

“The face dancers?” said Teg. “Ah, now you see. They are something entirely different. Face dancers are playthings of the Tleilaxu. They were designed as quantum agents. Their memory capacity is limitless. And what happened next? Why, evolution, of course.”

“They had their own tyrant predator?” said Duncan.

“And their own Gom Jabbar,” said Teg.

“As do we all. Where do you suppose it drove them?” said Duncan.

“Through what Zen-Sunni pilgrimage? Onto what Arrakis? Into what desert? That is the question, isn’t it?” said Teg. “What spice agony did they have to endure? What crisis of evolution must have driven them?”

Duncan moved his queen to the fifth board. “A surprise, dear Duncan? Or a feint?” thought Teg.  “Or a sacrifice?”

There was an old Teran fish that had a stalk sticking out of its head, the end of which resembled a worm. He would hide in the sand, being sand colored himself, and wave his fishing poll above him. Waiting for a smaller fish to nibble. Then, POUNCE! He was putting a part of himself in jeopardy in the hopes of luring the prey in. Waiting. Quietly. The only motion the wriggling of the lying worm. Deception? Enticement? A promise of great reward, at the end of which, the gullet? A sacrifice of position to gain a greater advantage later?

As such did Feyd-Rautha balance Paul Muad’Dib on his hip millennia ago, centimeters from the poison needle. Suddenly Paul shifted. He did not take the bait. He threw his weight in an entirely false direction, flipped Feyd over and thrust his crysknife deep into Feyd’s chin and directly into the brain stem. He was dead before anybody even saw the movement.

Teg decided to decline the offer of a queen. He saw a way he could use this to his advantage. And with his own treacherous victory. There was an insect once, he thought. The cockroach. And there was a particular wasp. To lay its eggs the wasp would select a cockroach, sting its head and deposit a drop of poison at exactly the right spot in the cockroach’s brain so it was paralyzed but did not die. The wasp then laid its eggs into the cockroach where they hatched and grew, feeding on the still living internals of the cockroach. They burst out once mature and the cockroach died. Lesson? Don’t look like the juciest cockroach.

Teg chose, instead, to advance a pawn to threaten the queen and block the piece she was threatening. He saw this as a vanguard. The sting of the wasp.

“A clever move,” said Duncan.

For two more hours the men fought on the quantum boards of chess. All the time drawing deeper and deeper into the hall of mirrors. They were always coming closer to the meaning in the middle and always infinitely away.

“Bishop to four-kings-castle-seven.”

“Knight to five-queens-knight-three.”

“Your strategy is intriguing.”

“As is yours,” he returned. At this point it didn’t matter which sentence was spoken by which man.

Pawn to four-queens-castle-six.

Knight to five kings-bishop-seven.

“Check,” someone said. It was now approaching end game.

The whirlwind of mirrors had now all opened themselves. They became long tunnels of mirrors lined with mirrors, each with a universe reflected in its surface. The infinities were combining together. Becoming a great genie rising from its bottle; chaos, and towering over the world. About to tear them both apart and devour them, suck them into the tornado, lure them with a tainted hook, and sting them in the head. The ultimate predator.

They drew toward the center, if such a thing as a center to infinity exists. If so, it exists only in eternity. Toward a place of peace. Not the stylus of the tornado, but the calm of the eye of the hurricane. Temporary respite. There they saw two figures, a man and a woman. The ones who haunt their dreams.

They sat still, serene, while amassing infinite memories. If knowledge is power then infinite knowledge is infinite power. Were they looking at gods?

The two looked toward Duncan and Teg and smiled. “You are home now,” they thought into their heads. “Abandon all hope…”

Duncan and Teg looked into the abyss… and saw the two of them staring back. They were drawn in, irresistibly. Check mate.

“Stop!” commanded Sheeana from the doorway. She compressed all of her training into one, potent blast of voice capable of controlling both men. Duncan and Teg snapped back into the world of the no-ship, almost not making it. They felt like scabs torn from a wound.

They sat, stunned, and stared at her, unable to speak. The speech centers, along with all other non-essential areas of the brain, had been powered down or redirected directly into the chess game. Now they were seeing Sheeana as if for the first time. Or maybe like she was the first woman they had ever encountered. Or the first human. Or the first independent thought.

 “You were both screaming,” she continued.

Teg and Duncan looked at each other. Then got up and left the room.

Sheeana glanced at the board. “Oh, my God,” she gasped. “Not this!”