Manford thought of his great-great-grandparents on Moroko. The planet’s entire population had been wiped out by the thinking-machine plagues. Moroko had been a charnel house with bodies strewn wherever they fell, cities emptied. The thinking machines’ plan had been to wait for the corpses to rot, so they could reclaim the undamaged planet for themselves. His own ancestors had only survived because they’d been away at the time.…

“You enslaved humanity,” Manford said to the robot, “and now I’ve enslaved you.”

The combat mek still did not respond. Apparently, military models were not conversational.

Manford looked at the machine, thinking that he could have had artificial legs for himself, biological appendages grafted onto him, the nerves reattached, the muscles operated through thoughtrodes like the ones the cymeks used. He remembered the bright-eyed scientists who had made him that offer: They’d been deluded and naïve — a man named Ptolemy and his companion … Manford had forgotten the other researcher’s name, though he still remembered his screams as he was burned alive. Elchan, was that it?

Why did scientists assume that every weakness must be fixed rather than endured? He knew he could have been whole again … and Manford’s most horrifying secret was how much he had been tempted by that.

Manford stared at the combat mek, enthralled and frightened. “We will defeat you,” he said, then blinked. “We’ve already defeated you.” He seemed to be convincing himself rather than the robot.

Manford hated his own relentless fascination with thinking machines. But by forcing himself to remember the horrors these artificial monsters had inflicted upon humanity, he would remain strong enough to resist the temptation, though sickened by the realization that others were not so strong.

Josef Venport continued to lure humanity toward damnation again with his blatant use of thinking machines. Manford would not allow it to continue! Humanity had achieved its hard-won salvation, and he didn’t dare let them throw it away.

“We will defeat you,” he said again in a husky whisper, but the combat mek remained unimpressed.

Without a word, Manford left the cell, walking briskly on his hands. This time, he refused to let Anari carry him.

Even before her mind was altered by the ordeal with poison, Anna Corrino had heard the voices of people who weren’t necessarily there. As a girl, she’d often talked about those voices and repeated their advice; her instructors and court mentors dismissed the “imaginary friends” as a child’s fantasies.

Lady Orenna, though, was more sensitive to Anna; the Virgin Empress understood her better than anyone else at court. Gossipers found the pair’s closeness peculiar, because Orenna had reason to resent her husband’s bastard daughter, but the old woman chose not to punish an innocent girl for the indiscretions of Emperor Jules Corrino.

When Anna was only twelve years old, Lady Orenna said to her, “I’ve discovered more information about your real mother.” Anna had never known the Emperor’s mistress, who disappeared shortly after giving birth to her. “Bridgit Arquettas was more than just a concubine — your mother had Sorceress blood, from Rossak. That means you’re special, dear Anna. You might have abilities the rest of us can’t understand.” Orenna had smiled. “That’s why I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the voices you hear.”

On the grounds of the Imperial Palace, Anna had her own special hiding place in a fogwood tree, an impressive growth with drooping branches and multiple trunks that formed a labyrinthine thicket. Her mind was attuned to the psychically sensitive plant, and with her thoughts Anna could manipulate the tree’s growth and shape the branches into a special fortress that only she could enter. Even after Orenna had discovered the girl’s hiding place, the old woman kept it a close secret, strengthening the bond between them.…

That had been so long ago.

Now, at the Mentat School, Anna sometimes recognized where she was, while at other times she wandered down empty, complicated halls of memories, many of which she knew were not her own. And there were more voices after she had consumed the Rossak poison in an attempt to become a Reverend Mother.

When Anna had emerged from that coma, her mind was like a kaleidoscope image, beautiful colors and fascinating patterns, but fractured and never the same from one moment to the next. In one memory fragment, she saw herself blundering into a private cottage on the palace grounds. There she found Lady Orenna naked and entwined with Toure Bomoko, one of the exiled members of the Commission of Ecumenical Translators.

The CET’s blasphemous attempts to consolidate all human religion into a single orthodox tome, the Orange Catholic Bible, had created such an uproar that the public wanted to tear the translators apart — and had actually done so in several instances. A few of the scholars had taken sanctuary under the protection of Emperor Jules.

When Anna witnessed Bomoko attacking Orenna, the girl fled, screaming, and sounded the alarm. Afterward, Emperor Jules had forced her to watch the horrific executions, which had scarred Anna deeply. And those scars only grew thicker and uglier when she realized, years later, that what she’d witnessed might not have actually been a rape.…

The memory kaleidoscope shifted, and Anna found herself back at the Mentat School studying complex tables of numbers and examining intricate patterns, a huge grid of lights that blinked on and off in a sequence that only a Mentat or thinking machine could discern. Anna spotted the pattern right away.

With a start, she realized that this was now.

She remembered Roderick sending her to Lampadas so she could train with Headmaster Albans. She tried to fit in among the Mentat students, and the exercises did help her learn to focus and organize the voices in her mind. On her lucid days, Anna could become almost normal.

She remembered what it was like to interact with people, to hold a pleasant conversation that was not inundated with a universe of factual details, including lists of names and numbers. With a slight shift of the memory-kaleidoscope images, she suddenly recalled the names of every one of the 362 Mentat trainees currently at the Lampadas school. Then another shift, and she recalled the thousands of previous graduates: 2,641. The names of every student scrolled in front of her mind, but she pushed away the distracting list, telling herself it was not necessary to review them now. She could do that later, put them in proper order, alphabetically or chronologically, perhaps by birth date or planet of origin.

The kaleidoscope shifted yet again, showing her things she had never personally experienced. Anna saw the spectacle of the Imperial Palace on Salusa Secundus, the lavish rooms, the concubine chambers — and Emperor Jules as a handsome young man, aggressive and charismatic. Anna had never seen her father that way, and she realized this was a memory direct from her mother. As she thought back along the train of dusty images, Anna recognized young Bridgit Arquettas in the cliff city on Rossak. Bridgit had grown up with a trace of Sorceress blood in her veins, before being taken away from Rossak by her father. The family moved to Ecaz, which also had many jungles.

In a rush, the images blurred with the speed of decades passing, Anna saw how her mother was — actually herself, if these memories were now part of her. Bridgit had auditioned to become part of the Emperor’s enclave, and she had caught the eye of Jules Corrino. Anna heard more whispered voices from the past in her head: Jules flattering Bridgit after they made love, whispering promises that they both knew were as empty as a discarded gift box.