Navigators of Dune

He had also determined that the sexual act was quite pleasurable, objectively speaking, although Anna wanted to engage in intercourse far more often than was necessary for his research purposes. Plotting his own sensations on a curve, he developed a pattern to the sexual activities and did his best to model and measure her own responses. There was quite a significant variation each time, though.

Knowing she wanted his attentions now, he led Anna away from the preoccupied scientists. She seemed extremely pleased that he would take the initiative. For his own part, Erasmus devoted a section of his mind to considering further experiments he could perform on the Navigator brains. They were certainly interesting subjects.

But first he had sexual obligations; otherwise, Anna would not leave him alone. It was an investment in overall efficiency.

Always before, Erasmus had interpreted romance as an example of human illogic and inefficiency. Once, he had quipped to the machine ruler Omnius that if robot manufacturing lines required such a complex and unpredictable mating dance before reproducing a new combat mek or worker robot, the thinking machines would never have spread beyond a single world.

But at this time, as he continued his series of physical experiments with Anna Corrino, he began to grasp some of the nuances. From his many years on Earth, Erasmus had memorized a wealth of human writings, including a series of well-regarded professorial handbooks on sex. He accessed that information and put those techniques into practice, much to Anna’s delight. His new biological body, though, did not have the stamina of even a common robot form, and he finished long before completing the steps in the opening chapter of the first handbook.

Afterward she clung to him anyway, snuggling close. “You are the ideal lover, Erasmus. You were made just for me. Everything is so perfect! We’re sheltered in this dome, away from the Imperial Palace and planetary wars, away from everything … just you and me. Oh, how I wish we could stay here forever!”

“Forever seems longer than necessary.” He knew that the Denali facility had been created for the purpose of developing weapons against the Butlerians, and Erasmus fully intended to avenge the death of Gilbertus. But he knew that if he revealed this priority to Anna, he would hurt her feelings, and that would be counterproductive.

As he pondered, she surprised him by asking, “Do you think we could have children?” She propped herself up on an elbow and turned her bright blue eyes on him. “I’d like to have a baby. Just think of what sort of son or daughter we could produce!”

Erasmus rose from the bed in alarm. He had accepted his biological body without fully considering the implications of sexual intercourse. If Anna were to have his baby, that would be an unnecessary complication, a time-consuming distraction. He’d dealt with babies before in his experimental laboratories, and had never enjoyed being around them. And he was sure that the experience of childbirth and the pressures of motherhood would damage Anna’s already fragile psyche.

She pressed, “I could be a good mother, I know I could. Wouldn’t you like to be a father? Doesn’t that sound exciting?”

Erasmus remembered Serena Butler, the human female he had admired as an intellectual sparring partner. The thinking machines had taken her prisoner while pregnant, and he had learned much about humankind from her. But after giving birth to the needy, crying, helpless baby, Serena’s personality changed. She became argumentative and far less interesting. That baby ruined the close and intimate relationship they’d had. The child had, in fact, become such an interference to his goals that Erasmus finally threw the disruptive infant off a high balcony.…

No, he did not want children of his own, but he was wise enough to keep such comments to himself. “I’ll have one of the Tlulaxa doctors test you immediately. They can verify whether or not you are pregnant.”

With a contented smile, Anna lay back on the bed.

Erasmus worked to keep a reflexive expression of concern off his face. If Anna Corrino were indeed carrying a fertilized embryo, he would order the Tlulaxa doctors to terminate it quickly and quietly, before she knew it was there.

Opposing powers and ideologies will lead to inevitable clashes, but even with vast ideological differences, rational minds can invariably find common ground, given sufficient incentive. It is not possible, however, to negotiate with a madman.

—DIRECTEUR JOSEF VENPORT, statement to VenHold Spacing Fleet on the evacuation of Kolhar