There is no more optimistic person in the universe than the high-level graduate who is fresh from completing his studies and ready to fulfill far-reaching dreams.

—from an Imperial study of the schools movement

Twelve Mentat students had completed their training. A panel of stern instructors interrogated them, then sent the dozen candidates along to Gilbertus Albans for his final approval.

Among them were the talented Draigo Roget, two Sisters from Rossak, and others he had come to know well over the years of their instruction. Gilbertus passed them all. There was no doubt in his mind.…

Some might find it incongruous that at an institution devoted to logic and precise mental organization, the commencement ceremonies were steeped in manufactured tradition. In establishing the Mentat School, Gilbertus had taken great pains to imbue it with a sense of reverence and history. All the buildings looked old and solid, the rules were complex, the forms dense to give the impression of a weighty bureaucracy. Each graduation certificate was ornately lettered, hand-illuminated, and presented on real parchment. The graduates wore embroidered, voluminous robes and puffy, impractical caps.

Everything, Gilbertus knew, was merely symbolic and served no real purpose, though the students and instructors loved it—the Butlerian candidates in particular. Outsiders could not help but be impressed with the graduation ritual, pronouncements spoken in ancient, nearly forgotten tongues that each Mentat student had been forced to memorize. Some might have said that learning those dead languages was a useless exercise, but Gilbertus foresaw that those dialects, understood by very few living humans, could be useful as private languages for battlefield commands or business espionage.

Well rehearsed before the event, the twelve students now lined up while Gilbertus stood at a podium in the main amphitheater. He droned on, reciting by rote the same statement over and over again, recognizing each student as a true Mentat, granting him the blessing of the Lampadas school.

“I hereby dispatch you to promote clarity of thought and advancement of human mental capabilities.” At the end of each pronouncement, the audience intoned, “The mind of man is holy,” a concession to the Butlerians that Gilbertus had included in the ceremony.

When they were finished, Draigo Roget came up to speak to Gilbertus. He had taken off his graduate robe, hung up the braid in his quarters, and now stood in his trim black jumpsuit again. He bowed formally. “I came to thank you for your instruction, Headmaster. You have granted me an opportunity I will never forget.”

“I wish you would stay with us, Draigo. I could not ask for a more promising instructor. You would rise high in our school, perhaps to my position. I won’t be here forever, you know.” In truth, Gilbertus thought he might endure physically for centuries or more, but time was pressing in on him. Before long, he would have to leave the school and take up another identity. Too many decades had passed, and he could simulate only so much age and decrepitude, even reaching the limits of the known geriatric benefits of melange consumption—which he let people think he used.

“I could do that, sir, but the whole Imperium awaits. I think my destiny lies out there.”

Reluctantly, Gilbertus nodded. “Then I wish you the best of luck, and hope we meet again.”

*   *   *

GILBERTUS STOOD ON the floating airfield, raising a hand in farewell as the shuttle containing Draigo Roget and other passengers prepared to take off. The black-haired Draigo sat at a windowport, apparently not seeing him. Presently, with a smooth and remarkably silent surge of suspensor engines, the white craft ascended quickly, until it was a speck in the sky, and then gone.

As he watched, Gilbertus felt sadness at the departure, mixed with joy and pride for his most accomplished student. With the long letter of recommendation that he had written for Draigo, the young man should have no trouble finding a secure position with one of the noble families, maybe even at the Imperial Court. Considering his qualifications and ambitions, the new Mentat would undoubtedly lead an interesting life. He certainly had the potential.

Around the airfield, barge crews used cranes to drop boulders into a shallow section of the marsh lake, forming a breakwater for the expanding shuttleport. The rumble of space traffic had disturbed some of the larger marsh creatures, provoking them to ram the floating airfield and damage it. As a result, Gilbertus had ordered the landing area moved to shallow water, and further protected against attack.

Much mystery remained in the wilderness around the school; few of the creatures that lived in and around the murky waters had been studied by naturalists. Gilbertus preferred it that way, because unknown dangers required constant readiness and adaptability, and higher states of intelligence to survive. Erasmus had demonstrated repeatedly that risk-taking expanded mental capabilities.…

Returning to his private office, with the door securely locked and purple drapes drawn, Gilbertus conversed with the shimmering memory core. After such a long time, he was attuned to subtle indications of the independent robot’s moods, and the gelcircuitry sphere looked odd today, glowing a lighter hue. He interpreted it as anxiety.

“Now that the graduates have departed, you have an opportunity to create a temporary body for me,” Erasmus said. “I can assist you in any way you desire. I have already planned numerous new tests and experiments to perform, which will increase knowledge about human behavior.”

“To whose benefit?”

“Knowledge is a benefit in and of itself.”

Gilbertus knew he had run out of acceptable excuses to grant his mentor such a wish, but it remained impossible at present. “My materials are limited.”

“I am confident in your resourcefulness.”

Gilbertus sighed. “I will do what I can, but it’s difficult, and dangerous.”

“And painfully slow.”

The Headmaster leaned back in his chair, feeling troubled and sad. Despite his reservations about what the robot had done to all his human experimental subjects, he realized he was also lonely without his mentor. And in the final moments of the Battle of Corrin, when it looked as if the thinking machines would indeed defeat the Army of Humanity, Erasmus had sabotaged the robot attack to save him from certain death—a mere human.

Gilbertus shook his head. “Today, Draigo Roget left. We’d grown close over the years, but he didn’t want to stay.”

“I understand,” Erasmus said. “He was your favorite student, just as you were mine.”

“It was a great joy to be a mentor to him. He is the best of the new Mentats.”

“I fully understand, though I am not certain that our Mentats serve on the right side of the conflict. In a sense, we are helping to prove the Butlerian assertion that thinking machines are unnecessary.” The robot enjoyed disseminating esoteric information. “The Butlerians are like the Luddites of ancient history, parochial thinkers on Old Earth in the nineteenth century of the old calendar. They were small-minded rioters in England who blamed their financial hardships on efficient machines that had been brought into local factories. Rampaging mobs destroyed the machines, expecting that would bring about a return to prosperity. It did not work.”

The memory core glowed brighter. “I believe superstition and fear are enslaving humanity more harshly than Omnius ever did. Rather than suffering under the yoke of thinking machines, you are bullied by unthinking humans. Technological progress cannot be held back forever.”

“And yet, if we don’t at least pretend to serve the Butlerian purposes, they could destroy this school,” Gilbertus said. He realized that as the robot’s soliloquy grew more vehement, the core glowed pale orange, then a rich, dark copper. “What have you done to yourself?”

As if caught, the core reverted to its original golden hue, then went through an entire spectral display of colors. “I was bored in my cabinet, so I modified some of the internal programming. It is my way of staying ‘sane,’ perhaps, in my own synthesized way. Please understand, I have only a few avenues of personal growth.”

Gilbertus wondered if he should be alarmed. “I will do my best to find a suitable mobile apparatus to hold you, at least temporarily, but we must set up strict controls about where you use it, in order to keep you from being discovered.”

“Maybe I could become a hunter of the wild creatures around here. Set me loose on the land around the marsh, and I’ll occupy myself studying wild animals, using that data to augment my studies of human beings.”

“An interesting idea, but we are not ready to set you loose anywhere. For one thing, how do I know you won’t try to create a thinking-machine empire again?”

The robot simulated his laughter. “Why should I wish to create another evermind? Omnius caused me as many problems as humans did. Why do you think I taught you how to be a Mentat? It is to demonstrate that humans could be more than they had been before. The same holds true for thinking machines. We must coexist with humans in the future, a partnership of machine and man.”

Gilbertus responded, “A partnership of man and machine, in that order, is more appropriate—with humankind in charge.”

Erasmus remained silent for a moment. “A matter of perspective. However, don’t forget, without me, you’re nothing.”

“We must stand on each other’s shoulders,” Gilbertus said with a gentle smile.