“I understand the causality of revenge,” Norma said. “Butlerian ignorance harms our future.” Her warbling voice hesitated, and then she added, “This sad mindset killed Royce Fayed.”

Ptolemy spoke to the Navigator brains as well as to Norma, although he doubted they needed encouragement. He had tremendous faith in his creations. “We will punish them. Butlerian superstitions can’t protect them from superior weapons and superior minds.”

Norma said with great portent, “Ignorance is a powerful armor against the truth.”

The eighteen walkers dropped down in landing pods that split open upon impact. They landed near the main town just as dusk was deepening. The new Titans emerged from the landers like spiders from eggs, with their claws extended, cannon arms telescoped into firing positions, and flame jets fully primed. Each combat body had a different configuration, because Ptolemy wanted to test a variety of designs.

First, the walkers descended upon Lectaire’s primary farming and market city, where the natives didn’t know how to react, except with terror. These towering cymek walkers were the embodiment of their worst nightmares.

Ptolemy did not bother with any recorded warning or explanation. There would be no survivors here, and he would be careful to leave no evidence behind that might identify the attacker. The new Titans charged through the town, and weapons fire from their bodies and arms exploded buildings and mowed down fleeing villagers.

In his observation room aboard the spacecraft, the screens were arrayed like the interlocked facets of an insect’s eye. The new Titans had visual and auditory pickups, and they transmitted the screams, crackling flames, and explosions. Ptolemy reveled in the murderous destruction for a while, then finally became numb. He muted the sounds, although he continued to watch the screens in fascination.

Carefully coordinated with the help of their superior Navigator brains, the eighteen Titans annihilated everything in the town, then spread to the outskirts, where they laid waste to surrounding farms.

Up in orbit, Norma Cenva’s ship deployed sensors to watch for any incoming ships, but Lectaire was rarely visited. Ptolemy knew the cymeks would have as much time as they needed.

“Magnificent,” he whispered, watching the impressive forms obliterate agricultural fields, farm buildings, storage silos. The mayhem was quite thorough.

From orbit they were mapping and targeting the location of every small settlement on the sparsely populated planet. Ptolemy had developed the methodical plan, though he was sure the Navigator cymeks would do an excellent tactical job. According to his best projections, they would complete the punitive scouring of Lectaire in seven days or less.

It was going to be a long but gratifying week.

Chapter 50 (Symbols are powerful motivators of human behavior)

Turning his back on the sietch that did not want him, Taref worked his way across the desert back to Arrakis City.

The week-long trek was arduous, and the desert austere and uncomfortable, but he endured the deprivation. When he reached the city, he would find other Freemen who had left their sietches, Freemen who might be tempted to join him. He vowed to himself he would not return to Directeur Venport empty-handed.

If he’d been able to recruit eager volunteers from the sietch itself, Taref would have summoned a sandworm to transport them swiftly across the open dunes. He would have stood tall atop the head of the monster, feeling the sun and grit on his face.

At the moment, though, he had no cause to celebrate. He didn’t care about the father and brothers he’d left behind; he’d known that they would sneer at the idea, because they were ignorant and closed-minded. He had been reminded of how squalid and backward his tribe was, and yet the glorious promises and shining visions he had once believed in now also tasted like dust.

When he and his friends had left poverty behind, they’d been so excited for the opportunity, especially him. Taref tried to take comfort from the fact that Shurko had lived more in his brief months working for VenHold than he would have experienced in a lifetime out in the desert. Surely his friend had seen and enjoyed some wonders on his travels.

Knowing what Kolhar, Junction Alpha, and all those other run-down spaceport worlds were like, should he bother to go back at all? If Taref were to vanish here, Directeur Venport and Draigo Roget would chalk up his loss to an unspecified desert hazard. He could easily find a way to survive, even here on Arrakis, maybe joining another spice crew.

But he didn’t want to do that, didn’t want to hide. No, Taref would go back to Directeur Venport, because he had promised. With the authorization he carried, he could have flown to Kolhar on the next spice hauler, but first he had to do what he had agreed to do. He would find volunteers, somehow.…

On the way to Arrakis City, Taref was surprised at how the desert environment now grated on him as much as the backward desert mindset did. His stillsuit was scuffed and dusty, but it still looked different with its obvious offworld modifications. He had a few coins, a Maula pistol, his stillsuit, a desert cloak, and his VenHold ID. His demeanor was no longer that of a furtive, ever-wary sand dweller. Reaching the city, he noticed the people regarding him as if he were an outcast here, too.

For a while Taref observed the spaceport operations, watching the vessels load up with melange and take off from the landing field. Before, when he’d worked on spice crews, Taref had never given much thought to where all that spice went after the haulers departed from Arrakis. Now he knew so much more. Seeing a small freighter take off, he remembered dreaming about those romantic, far-off places — Salusa Secundus, or Poritrin, or the ocean-drenched world of Caladan, a planet he still hadn’t seen. Surely there were other people here willing to leave.

He watched the freighter ascend into the lemon-colored sky, and decided he had put off his work for too long. He would convince others to join him, promising them wonders that he now doubted existed. He would find young men or women with sparkling eyes turned toward the skies imagining a far better life elsewhere. Taref would tell them everything they wanted to hear, everything he had wanted to hear.…

Then a miracle occurred in the streets.

A muscular female Swordmaster strode through Arrakis City with the stump of a man riding on her shoulders. They were accompanied by an entourage of defiant, disheveled followers, each wearing the badge of a machine gear clenched in a symbolic fist — the badge of the Butlerians.

Taref stared. This was the Butlerian leader, the man whom Directeur Venport loathed, the fanatic who had caused such turmoil … the man Venport wanted dead, by any means.

He knew immediately what he had to do.

Although he had no personal interest in politics, he owed his loyalty to Josef Venport, and Venport wanted to cut off the head of the barbarian monster that was destroying humanity’s future. The Directeur’s enemies were Taref’s enemies.

Manford rode high on Anari Idaho’s shoulders, a perfect target above the throngs around them. Taref could never fight the Swordmaster, not even with a precious wormtooth dagger, but he did know that none of the Butlerians would be wearing a body shield. They abhorred technology, foolishly expecting their faith to protect them.

Taref didn’t make a plan, didn’t think about his possible escape. He merely reacted. He already had the blood of many thousands on his hands from the spaceships he had sabotaged. This one man, though, counted for more than all of them together.